by Beth Alvarez
“Most Keepers have ten or twelve of us they look after, at minimum. If we’re lucky, we don’t need ’em often.” Kade threw his bags in after hers, shutting the hatch. It was a sleek new vehicle, top of the line, but not unusual enough to draw unnecessary attention. He’d expressed some displeasure at the loss of his truck, but he’d gotten over it fast enough. There was still work to do, and right now, that took precedence.
“And they’re in charge of what? Criminal records?” She’d managed to compose herself, steeling her resolve while they gathered their things and checked out from their room, but she wouldn’t deny the easy comfort she’d felt around him was gone. She still felt a heart-aching tingle of excitement when he brushed against her on his way to open the car door, but it was tempered with reason now. As much as she wanted to pretend nothing was different, she couldn’t keep acting like it. And the feelings that seemed so clear hours ago—when he’d pinned her to the bed for a second round of enthusiastic lovemaking—now created a tangled mess of heartstrings and common sense.
It wasn’t that she thought he’d lied when he said she could convince him to stay. It was simply that, after she’d calmed herself and thought about his Keeper’s visit, she understood staying wasn’t a reasonable option. He could milk another month out of Holly Hill, maybe more, but if his goal was to stay unnoticed, she couldn’t imagine he’d last longer. Keeping his nature secret was vital for survival; he’d established that much when he’d told her why he kept his prizes out of the public eye. She just hadn’t realized then that he was speaking of himself, too.
“They’re in charge of a lot of things.” Kade opened the passenger door, gesturing for her to climb in. “Keepin’ clean records for their charges is one of them, yes. As is changin’ identities, when too much happens to clean one up.”
Felicity slid into the front seat and fastened her seat belt, waiting until he climbed into the driver’s seat and shut the door before she spoke again. “Is Kade your real name?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He braced his arm against the back of her seat, turning to watch behind him as he pulled out. “Never messed up bad enough to need records scrubbed. At least, not until now. And I’m still young, besides.” He gave her a sidewise glance and a mirthless smile. “You can always tell the young ones.”
“How so?”
He chuckled, putting the SUV in gear. “They haven’t broke the habit of breathin’ yet.”
Pretending she hadn’t heard that, she changed the subject. “So where to next?”
“Place called William’s Woe. Ranch, apparently. Fella you conked on the head with that flashlight was so kind as to point us that direction. Got any idea where it is?”
Frowning, Felicity pulled her stained notebook out of her pocket. She’d taken it back from his things; it was her research, after all. And if they were working together, she wanted to feel like she had some sort of leverage. “It doesn’t sound familiar, actually. But I might be able to find out where it is. All the ranchers in the area talk to each other. It benefits them to be friendly.”
He nodded. “All right, then. Where do we start?”
“Well, Marshall McCullough would have been a good resource, but I think he’s out of the question.” She rubbed her chin, paging through her notes. “If we cut south about twenty minutes, there’s a small farm we can stop by. I can try to get some information there.”
“They gonna welcome people after dark?”
Felicity rolled her eyes. “It’s barely after five. They’ll probably still be working. Besides, all these little farms out here sell eggs and things, they’re used to people popping by on the way home from work to buy goods.”
Shrugging, Kade turned south. “Well, you’re the expert.”
She raised a brow. “I’m the expert? I thought you were a cowboy from Tennessee.”
“I grew up in the suburbs of Nashville and started doin’ farm work to get closer to my targets, because they almost all live in rural habitats. There’s a bit of a difference, there.”
Crossing her arms, she gave him a skeptical look. “How does a city boy end up becoming a cattle-wrangling bounty hunter for mythical creatures?”
“Funny story, actually.” He grinned, scratching the shadow of stubble on his jaw. The Keeper’s warning about his teeth popped into her head and she examined his mouth a moment before she caught herself and turned away. They’d get to that, just not now.
“It was right after my thirtieth birthday,” Kade continued, not noticing her scrutiny. “I was havin’ a bit of a bad spell, really. Bad breakup, got laid off from my job, didn’t have many prospects. Had to move back in with my parents, and knowin’ how things were between me and my dad . . . well, it just wasn’t good. Some friends invited me to go huntin’, and I hadn’t been for a couple years. Used to hunt a lot, when I was younger. Through high school and college and that. They picked on me a bit, sayin’ I’d be too rusty to take anything home, but I thought it’d be fun. So we packed up and went campin’ in the Ozarks with plans to hunt boar.”
Felicity snorted. “Doesn’t sound very funny yet.”
“Well, it was. See, we were out there in them hills all weekend. Turned out I was rusty as all get out. I couldn’t hit a darn thing. I was mad as a hornet about it, too. So while they were drinkin’ and grillin’ something or another, I went out to the woods by myself. I ended up trackin’ a big ol’ boar, figured that was my chance to get a trophy I could be proud of.” He chuckled, nudging his hat a little higher.
“Did the pig have wings?” she asked dryly, though she cracked a smile.
Kade laughed. “Well, I don’t know. It might’ve. I never saw, ’cause I shot, but I didn’t get the pig at all. Lord have mercy. It was a damn good shot, too. I saw it go down and thought I’d be rubbin’ their faces in it for weeks. So imagine my surprise when I get over there and find out instead of a wild hog, I’d shot a sasquatch right through the eye.”
Her mouth fell open. “You’re joking!”
“I swear I ain’t. Scared the livin’ daylights out of me. I’d never been big on cryptozoology or whatever, so I wasn’t sure what it was right off, but who hasn’t heard of Bigfoot? And I’d shot him.” He shook his head, still grinning. “Anyone else probably would have seen it and thought they were about to be rich. I saw it and thought I was ’bout to go to jail, since that was the kind of month I was havin’. I was standin’ there, about to lose my mind, when another hunter came through the trees, cursin’ louder than any sailor I’d ever heard. And one of my friends was a Marine, mind, so I’d heard plenty.”
Understanding, Felicity raised her chin. “He was the hunter looking for it.”
“Mmhm. And this sorry, down-on-his-luck city boy had sniped his prize kill right out from under him.” Kade rubbed his nose, sniffing and stifling a smirk. “I think I spent ten minutes beggin’ him not to turn me in before he told me he’d been sent to kill it. Turned out the thing had been stirring up trouble at a nearby campground. After it killed somebody’s dogs, the Keepers decided it was time to take it out. The fellow didn’t believe me when I said I’d shot it by accident. The shot was too good. So he asked me how I’d like a job like his, gettin’ paid a fortune to claim bounties on things that weren’t supposed to exist.”
“And you accepted?”
“Not right off, but yeah. Though I guess you already had the ending figured out.” He smiled at her, but this time his eyes held a hint of sorrow.
The tangle of confusion in her head and heart pulled a little tighter. She tried to ignore it, along with the ache of sadness it lodged in her chest. “Wasn’t it hard? Leaving your family and friends behind?”
The question wiped the smile off his face. He mulled it over for a while before he spoke. “You ever feel like everything’s gone wrong, and it makes you want to run away and start a new life somewhere else?”
That struck too close, making Felicity wince and bow her head. She’d felt the urge more than once; in the years after her mothe
r’s diagnosis, she felt it more often, frequently in the small hours of the night when she couldn’t sleep.
Kade nodded. “It was somethin’ like that. Took me a while to make up my mind. But he’d given me a card and after a while, I decided to call it. That was how I met Thaddeus. Who happened to be looking for a new hunter, since the one I met . . .” He gave his head a slight shake. “Well, like I told you before. Hunters don’t tend to live too long.”
“What happened to him?” she asked quietly.
“Rogue lycanthrope. They’re probably the hardest quarry to take down. Them and rogue vampires.” He frowned, lowering his voice. “For more reasons than one.”
It called to mind the Keeper’s warning, and Felicity puzzled over the question for a long time before she finally asked it. “Your Keeper, Thaddeus . . . did he mean what he said? About you being hunted?”
A grim look settled on his face. “I ain’t plannin’ on it.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
His mouth tightened, his knit brow making him look more stern than worried. “When somethin’ that isn’t supposed to exist turns into a problem, it’s our job to eliminate it. There are no exceptions. One of us makes themselves publicly known, that’s as big a problem as the chupacabra panic towns get down here every so often. Bigger, in some ways. When you’re afraid of a monster, it ain’t gonna make you suspect your neighbor might be one. We ain’t out to start any witch hunts.”
Felicity hugged herself through her coat. She understood the reasoning, but the thought of someone hunting him made her cold inside. No matter how she felt about him being a vampire—which she still didn’t really know—or how she felt knowing he’d have to leave, the idea of something happening to him made her sick. “Aren’t you worried?”
He gave her a reprimanding look. “I appreciate the concern, Filly, but this is my job.”
“It’s mine, too,” she protested. “You’re not the only one who has something riding on this.”
“It’s under control,” he said calmly. “You just worry about gettin’ us to that ranch. We’ll figure out the rest from there.”
She wanted to argue, but instead, Felicity just nodded. Worrying about it now wasn’t going to help much, either way.
* * *
William’s Woe, as it happened, was a local name for a small outfit formally known as William’s West. The ranch had never been successful, but the woe came from the way the owner’s descendants squabbled over who would inherit the land until it was seized out from underneath them. In all the time they’d spent arguing over inheritance rights, no one stopped to pay the mortgage.
After the property was foreclosed, the fields sat fallow, the buildings left to decay. No one seemed to know why the bank didn’t auction off the land, but no one seemed to care, either. So the fences fell, and the rusted gate across the drive hung off its hinges, leaving the private lane wide open.
Given that the impending loss of Felicity’s own home had driven her here, the sight was more haunting than it should have been.
Kade watched the grasses around them, muttering about the headlights being too noticeable.
Despite his irritable complaints about the sleek SUV and its blue-toned headlights, he seemed perfectly calm. Not at all like someone who was about to load up guns and charge into abandoned buildings, looking for a beast that could kill either one of them with ease.
The farther they drove, the more she thought about that, too. He’d changed because it gave him an advantage, let him stand against the monsters he fought. She didn’t expect she’d be going in empty-handed. She’d grown up in rural Texas; she was as confident with a pistol as she was with a rifle, but it didn’t change the fact that she was only human.
It was a handicap, she admitted, but thinking about her disadvantage only made her more determined. No matter who made the kill, they’d profit. And she wasn’t going in alone, which had to do something to level the playing field. Besides, it wasn’t like she intended to hunt anything else once this was over. The change was unnecessary for her.
But it might change things between them.
Something in the grass caught her eye before she could pursue that thought. She stiffened. Then the critter turned, peeking out at the passing vehicle with bandit-masked eyes.
Just a raccoon.
Felicity exhaled, composing herself. Whether or not the gate was open, they were trespassing, and the dilapidated buildings that loomed out of the dead grasses and weeds gave her an eerie feeling.
Death festered here. She didn’t have to see monsters to know it. This place had been someone’s home, once; now it sat, a rotting husk of deserted dreams. Scraggly saplings burst from a crumbling shed, clawing at the night sky like so many bony fingers. Beyond them, the broken supports of an old greenhouse jutted from the earth like shattered ribs.
Shuddering, Felicity tore her eyes away. “What are we looking for?” She couldn’t help the urge to keep her voice low.
“Signs of people. Signs of the chupacabra, too. If you see it, you’ll know. Hard to mistake it for anything normal.” He drove at a snail’s pace, creeping up the lane, sitting tall in his seat and scouring the land around them. She got the impression he saw well in the dark, but how good, she didn’t know. She didn’t like the idea of him having preternatural abilities, but she couldn’t escape the reality of them, either.
He was still alive—in a sense—and still a part of her life. If there weren’t something supernatural about him, he wouldn’t be. It had only been a few days and the bullet holes in his chest and stomach were all but healed.
She cleared her throat. “So does this monster have any weak points?”
Kade frowned. “I thought you read those books I told you to look at.”
“I got distracted looking at your pictures,” she admitted, sheepish. “Now that I think of it, how do you have pictures of you with your kills? You don’t have a reflection, how do you show up on film?”
“I don’t show up on film,” he replied. “But nobody uses film anymore, so it ain’t a problem. Unless they’re usin’ one of them fancy cameras with the mirrors inside. Then I guess they’d find me out. I got a little digital camera, though. Keep it handy when I’m huntin’ so I can get my trophy picture. Get ’em printed at the drug store.”
The idea of him developing pictures of yetis and who knew what else at a self-service kiosk made her snort a laugh.
He seemed to share her amusement, from the way the corners of his mouth twisted. “I don’t know how the old ones survived. Now we got blackout curtains and digital cameras, electric razors and SPF 100 sunscreen. Quite a time to be . . . well, not alive, I suppose.”
“Sounds like you’re spoiled,” she teased. “Never having to live through basic struggles like those.”
“I got my own struggles.” His humor faded, his gaze lingering on her just long enough to make her uncomfortable before he tore his eyes away. “Though I ain’t had them until recently.”
Her mouth felt dry. She drew her tongue over her lips, as if expecting it would help. “Kade-”
“Shh,” he cut her off, raising a hand, stopping the SUV and switching off the lights. “I see something.”
Felicity leaned forward, peering into the dark. “The monster?”
“No,” he murmured, unfastening his seat belt. “People.”
She stared straight ahead as he slid between the seats and into the back of the SUV, half aware of the sound of him digging through the bags. At the corner of one of the shadowy buildings, she caught a glint of flickering light, almost too faint to see.
“How could you see that?” she asked.
“I spend a lot of time in the dark. I probably see better in it.” His gun’s magazine snapped into place with a metallic click. “You may want to wait here.”
She spun in her seat, unbuckling in a hurry. “I’m going with you.”
Kade frowned. “I don’t know how many people are there. It’s a barn, looks like they h
ave the windows boarded off. They could have the chupacabra in there, or it could be a whole gaggle of people with guns.”
“Either way, it sounds like you shouldn’t be there alone.” She slid back to join him, looking at the pistol in his hands. “Do you have one I can use?”
“Filly-”
She cut him off, raising a hand. “When I thought you were dead, I realized I couldn’t count on you to save the Hilltop House for me. I never should have. If I’m getting something out of this, I’m earning my cut. And I’m not asking you to protect me. We already worked out an agreement. We’re in this together, whether you like it or not.”
“The deal was you help me find it,” Kade said, “not you headin’ out here with guns by your lonesome.”
Felicity took the gun from his hands. “Well, it’s a good thing I’m not alone.”
He sighed, frustration mingled with longing on his face.
She shook her head. “I’m not changing my mind.”
“You sure you know how to use that?”
Shrugging, Felicity checked the safeties, holding the firearm with a practiced grip. “I was champion of the Little Annie Oakley shooting competition at the county fair for eight years running. I don’t know what girls are like back in Nashville, but this is Texas.”
“Well, ain’t you full of surprises?” He pulled the bag forward, taking out a second case, popping the latches and lifting a pistol free. “Just promise me one thing.”
“What’s that?”
He leveled his gaze with hers, snapping the full magazine into place. “You already know a couple bullets ain’t gonna do me in. If things get ugly, stay behind me.”
She couldn’t think of any reason to refuse, nodding silently.
They slid out of the SUV together, Kade leading the way up the lane. Every movement he made was fluid and graceful, carefully controlled. Felicity tried to stay quiet, but felt awkward behind him. He had practice, she reminded herself; hunting was his life, and it seemed hunting people was little different from hunting monsters.