Hunter's Prey: Bloodhounds, Book 2 (10 page)

“Assuming he’s not already dead.”

“Yes, assuming that.”

Kirkland waved a hand. “Go. I doubt they’ll come back here, not tonight.”

If they did, it would be Hunter’s job to deal with it. From the moment Archer and Wilder set foot over the city limits, Hunter would be the law in Iron Creek.

The house was quiet when Ophelia rose.

She wrapped her robe tight around her and ventured down the stairs. Judging from the scents of coffee and sausage drifting from the kitchen, Caroline had come and gone, a supposition that was confirmed when she entered the room. The warming dishes on the sideboard had been piled high with far more food than three people could eat.

“It’ll keep,” Ophelia murmured aloud as she poured a cup of coffee. “With luck, everyone else will be back before noon.” The closest she would come to a prayer, though her hand shook around her mug as she uttered the words.

“Perhaps not quite so soon,” came a quiet voice from behind her.

Hunter stood in the doorway, hat in hand. Aside from the dust that coated his clothes, he looked more settled than she’d ever seen him. Calmer. “You startled me, Hunter.”

“I’m sorry.” He held his hat against his chest and stepped into the room. “I’ve been to check on the doctor, and received word from Satira. They’re still following the tracks northwest, but it looks like McCutcheon and the others crossed the border.”

At least another day of worry, then. “I see. Thank you for telling me.”

“Of course.” He stood awkwardly for a moment, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, and cleared his throat. “Would you have breakfast with me, Ophelia?”

He was nervous, and she bit her lip against a smile. “I’d like nothing more.”

He dropped his hat on the side table and stepped forward to pull out a chair. “Have a seat. Tell me what you’d like.”

“I can serve myself. Both of us, for that matter.”

Hunter smiled. “Indulge me? It was a long night.”

“All right.” She slid into one of the kitchen chairs and watched him. “Sausage and eggs, please.”

He fetched her a plate in silence, loaded one of his own and sat to her left. “I owe you an apology. I haven’t been feeling myself in…well, a long while now.”

Ophelia studied him as she unfolded her napkin in her lap. “I don’t need an apology, Hunter. Just…help me understand.”

“I haven’t been whole,” he said slowly. “Sometimes I feel like I’m two people, trapped in one body. And whoever I’m meant to become…he’s not either of them.”

That fight had become painfully clear during the new moon. Ophelia swallowed past the knot in her throat and stretched her hand across the table. “Will you let me be here with you while you figure it out?”

He lowered his hand to cover hers. “In all honesty, it’s a struggle to imagine why you’d want to be. I’m a mess.”

So many reasons, and every one of them came back to the tenderness that filled her at his touch. “You’re a good man, Hunter. No matter who or what you are or will be, that hasn’t changed.”

He stroked his thumb over the back of her hand, then withdrew his touch to wrap his fingers around his coffee cup. “There’s one thing I need to confess, much as it pains me to do so. But I need to be honest with you.”

A knot formed in the pit of her stomach, but she nodded anyway. “Of course.”

“I don’t—” He cleared his throat and stared ahead. “The new moon is a blur. There are bits I remember. Feeling safe, knowing I had you. But I don’t recall most of what I did, and that scared me more than a little. But it doesn’t mean you didn’t matter, that I didn’t need you.”

“Oh, honey, I know. That’s normal, it’s—” She’d told him—during the new moon. No reason for him to remember that any more than he remembered what he’d done. “That’s not what hurt me.”

“What hurt you, then?”

She barely knew how to explain, and she had no idea if he would understand. “You seemed so hesitant, like being with me was the last thing you ever wanted. And when it happened during the new moon, it was like you blamed yourself for not stopping it.”

“I didn’t—” The coffee cup cracked under his white-knuckled grip, and he jerked his hand back and stared at it. “Hell, Ophelia. If I’m this destructive when I’m in my right mind? No, I didn’t want to be with you when I wasn’t. The last thing I ever wanted was to hurt you.”

“And you didn’t. All I want is for you to believe that.”

He took a deep breath and braced both hands against the table. “I believe you,” he said finally. “I just…wish it didn’t feel like luck. But I can learn to not let it be.”

She blinked at him. “Luck that you didn’t hurt me?”

Hunter gestured to the coffee cup. “Didn’t exactly plan to break that, or the chair in Wilder’s study. Or to rip the knob off the faucet on my tub. Maybe that other half of me is better at knowing its own strength, but it’s hard not to feel like I break everything I touch right now.”

She moved without thinking, before reason and good judgment could stop her. She rose, stripped off her robe and began to unlace the ribbon ties of her nightgown. “So touch me now. You won’t break me, Hunter, I promise.”

His eyes widened as he gawked at her. “I was intending to
court
you first. At least a little.”

“I’m not asking you to fuck me over the table.” Her gown fell to the floor, and she stepped free of the fabric and reached for his hand. “Touch me, that’s all.”

He was breathing hard, but the hand that closed around hers was steady enough. Strong and warm, strength leashed in careful control. “And where do you want me to touch you?”

“Anywhere,” she whispered, but laid his hand on the side of her throat so that his thumb rested on her pulse.

Hunter stroked the side of her neck softly, then circled the tip of his thumb over one of the spots she knew bore the mark of his teeth. “I’m not opposed to being demanding with a woman who enjoys it, but it isn’t right to be that way when you’re not in control of yourself. I don’t blame you, Ophelia, and I don’t regret you. But I like my control.”

“We have that much in common.” They both knew that terrifying moment when the control you relished so much began to slip away, and no matter how tightly you tried to snatch it back, it dissolved before your eyes.

“I don’t—” His fingers tightened, a heartbeat of pressure before his hand fell away and he turned, placing the bulk of his body between her and the door. “Did you hear that?”

All she could hear was the blood pounding in her ears. “What?”

He tilted his head, and a moment later the sound drifted up. Gears turning in the center of the house as the elevator began its slow ascent.

It made no sense, because Caroline was gone. She was gone, and she wouldn’t have gone downstairs anyway because of— “Nate,” Ophelia whispered. “Hunter, he can’t come up here. The windows.”

“Damn it all.” Hunter snatched up her robe and pressed it into her hand. “Maybe it’s nothing. But I should check on him.”

“Wait.” She shoved her arms into the robe and hastily tied it, but by the time she made it to the kitchen doorway, Hunter was almost to the front door.

The
open
front door.

Hunter stepped out into the morning sunlight, his voice rising with fear. Ophelia’s own heart took up the panicked refrain, thumping as she ran down the hall.

“Nate, for God’s sake, what the hell—”

Footsteps scrabbled outside. Boots on wood, then gravel. A thud of bodies colliding. When she reached the door, Hunter was wrestling Nate to the ground, fighting to shield the half-vampire’s body from the morning sun.

Oh God.
Ophelia bit her tongue to hold back a scream as she clawed at a curtain panel hanging on the front window. The heavy brass rod crashed to the table beneath it, shattering an electric lamp, but she paid it no mind as she dragged the heavy fall of velvet out the door.

It wasn’t until she reached the top of the steps that she realized something was wrong. Hunter leveraged his body up, twisting away with a curse, and Nate rolled to his back and spread his arms wide, as if inviting the sun to take him.

Nothing happened.

Ophelia stood there, her bare feet stinging with cuts and her knuckles clenched so tight they already ached. She’d only seen one vampire die from exposure to direct sunlight and, though it had taken a while, the effects had been immediate. “He’s not burning.”

Nate’s jagged laughter cut through the air. “No mercy for me, is there?”

Her shock receded, replaced in an instant by a rush of anger. “Get up. Get
up
, goddamn it!”

Hunter scrambled to his feet and dragged Nate up with one rough hand under the vampire’s arm. “You can go on inside, Ophelia. We’ll be right along.”

“Like hell I will,” she muttered, shoving the curtain at Hunter. “What are you doing, Nate? And did you specifically wait until Satira was gone to try it, you coward?”

Nate wouldn’t meet her gaze. “Would have been easier on her if it had worked. She doesn’t need to waste her life on making one for me.”

“And what of how horrible she would have felt?” Ophelia asked helplessly. “How much she would have blamed herself for not being here? Nate, for Christ’s sake—”

“Inside,” Hunter said again, and this time it held the steel of an order. He glanced at Ophelia and tilted his head toward the front of the property. Though the manor was set at the end of a quiet street on the edge of town, people were still out and about, and more than a few had begun to drift closer. “He can’t afford to be out here, starting rumors.”

She bit back a retort because he was
right
, damn it. “I’ll be in the sitting room,” she muttered, then walked, as straight and stiff as she could, back through the front door.

She made it down the hallway before she heard Hunter’s angry tread pounding up the steps. The door slammed hard enough to shake the house, and Hunter’s voice snapped through the entryway. “You take your sorry ass into the sitting room after her, and you fucking well apologize.”

“Hunter, I don’t have to—”

Hunter cut him off with a growled command. “Go.”

Nate appeared in the doorway, rumpled and contrite. Suddenly, the gravity of what he’d done—what he’d
tried
to do—slammed into Ophelia, and she shook her head. “No. I’m upset, Nate, not angry. It’s…” She swallowed hard and could barely choke out the words. “Has it really been so terrible?”

He didn’t meet her eyes. Instead he stared past her, his shoulders slumped, his entire posture screaming of soul-deep exhaustion. “I understand now why the bloodhounds take new names. I thought it was about loyalty and unity, but it’s not.”

It made her think of Hunter and how insistent he’d been that his old name was gone. “It isn’t the life you wanted or expected, but it’s a
life
. Don’t give it up so quickly. Please.”

“I lived one full life,” Nate said, still staring out the window at the sunlight that hadn’t killed him. “The last time I looked this young, you hadn’t been born yet. I wasn’t cut down in my prime, Ophelia. I was returned to it, and I was already tired.”

“And you can’t think of any reason this might be a blessing? Another chance to get things done?”

He finally dragged his gaze to hers. “I suppose, now that I know I can walk under the sunlight…maybe I can turn my mind in that direction.”

“There are plenty of things you can do,” she said firmly. “Anything you want.”

“Perhaps not
anything
.” He sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face, then ran his fingers through his hair. “Don’t tell Satira. I won’t do anything else. I promise.”

“I’m not going to tell Satira, but I think you should. Talk to her, Nate.”

“Maybe.” A pause, and his jaw tightened. “Your feet are bleeding, Ophelia. You should let Hunter see to you.”

She’d kept her feet tucked carefully under her floor-length robe, but she supposed one couldn’t hide blood from a vampire. “I will.”

He turned without another word. Hunter appeared in the doorway, but stepped aside to let Nate pass before moving into the room. “Sit down, Ophelia. Please.”

She clenched her hands into fists. “Hunter.”

He didn’t budge. “I need to look at your feet.”

“My feet?” she repeated. “Nate just tried to kill himself. I don’t give a hearty
damn
about my feet.”

“And I can’t concentrate while you’re bleeding everywhere,” he snarled. “We’ll talk when I can think.”

She dropped to the sofa and groaned when she saw the spots of blood soaked into the carpet. “I need a few bandages, that’s all.”

Hunter knelt in front of her and lifted one foot, hands gentle. “I heard what Nate said to you.”

“I imagine so, since you were hovering outside the door.”

“Did you expect me to leave you alone with a vampire so crazed he’d just walked into the sun?”

“He’s not crazy,” she protested. “He’s hurting, and I would think you, of all people, would understand that.”

He smiled a little, his thumb sweeping over the ball of her foot. “Yes, I understand self-destructive bastards. We’re crazy because we’re hurting. But I understand something else too.”

“And what’s that?”

“Sometimes, you just need to learn that things won’t always be as bad as they are now. You need a little hope. Nate did a dumb thing, but he got some hope.”

Hunter looked so
sure
of it. Ophelia reached for him without thinking, cupping his face in her hands. “And you? Do you have hope now?”

That slow smile widened. “I’m speaking in full sentences, aren’t I? Ain’t much, but it’s something.”

He was beautiful. “Can you trust me, then, that everything between us is going to be all right?”

“We’ll get there.” His breath hissed out as he lifted her other foot. “I want Doc to come and take a look at this cut.”

It was a little deeper than the others, but still not bad enough to warrant the doctor’s attention. “I’ve had worse and patched it up myself. You can help me.”

His shoulders tightened, just like the fingers curled around her ankle. “What do you think Wilder would do if Satira cut her foot like this?”

Wilder would send for Dr. Kirkland and then make the poor man stand outside while he fussed over Satira himself. “I think he’d do what he could to help her, just like you should. You can start by carrying me upstairs.”