Hunter's Rise (26 page)

“No. That’s just Angel.” He caught her arm and pulled her to a stop. “Trust me. Angel isn’t going to hurt you, try to hurt you, or anything. But she’s…” He paused and tried to think of the right explanation. “Angel’s kind of weird. She was attacked when she was a kid, survived it. But she was kind of different before that.”

“Different how?”

“You’ll see.” It was a good thing she’d fed, though. Angel sometimes had a disturbing effect on vampires.

S

He’d had fun, knowing he was toying with her and damaging her in a way that would leave her vulnerable. But she hadn’t been the only one. He’d had other… toys. One of them had been a girl. She’d been younger than Sylvia, probably only fourteen or fifteen when he’d gotten ahold of her, and whatever atrocities he’d done to her had frozen her forever at that stage.

She hadn’t been a vampire, nor had she been human.

And she’d… smelled so good. So unbearably good. Sylvia had spent weeks across from that woman-child, with the hunger all but driving her mad, and the promise of the sweetest meal…

She knew if she had gotten out, she would have killed the female. Not out of any desire to harm her, but because she wouldn’t have been able to control herself. But then one day, the strange woman had pissed him off. Sylvia had listened to her tortured screams for hours as he methodically, and slowly, killed her.

In all the years since then, Sylvia had met perhaps two
others who had been like that girl and she’d kept a very, very wide berth. But now, as she trailed along behind Toronto, she caught that first whisper of scent. Wine-rich and intoxicating. Hunger burned inside her, even though she’d already fed, and fed well.

She tensed when he reached for the door and as he opened it, she saw him slide her a quick glance. If she hadn’t been watching for it, she wouldn’t have seen the muscles in his body tense.

The door opened, revealing a slender blonde. She was average height, maybe five foot six, and she looked like she belonged on a basketball court in a cute cheerleader uniform, shaking a pair of pom-poms or something, Sylvia thought.
That’s it, focus on the inane—anything but how damn good she smells
.

Anything but how easy it would be to lunge, grab, feed—

A smile curved the blonde’s lips. “Probably not as easy as you think, lady.”

Sylvia blinked. She hadn’t said a damn thing.

“Nah. You don’t have to.” The girl reached up and tapped her temple. “I’m just a little bit psychic.”

Sylvia fell back a step, the burning hunger turning to ice.

“A little?” Toronto echoed. “Saying she’s a little bit psychic is kind of like calling the Mississippi a little bit of a crick.” He cocked a brow at the girl and then looked back at Sylvia. “It doesn’t seem that vamps have any natural immunity to her abilities, either. I’d think if you don’t project too loudly, it might help, but I don’t know.”

“It helps.” Without waiting for any kind of invitation, the woman sauntered inside, her hands tucked inside her back pockets, her eyes locked on Sylvia’s face. “Makes it a little more of a murmur. I can ignore murmurs a lot easier.”

“Why don’t you just ignore it
all
?” Sylvia snapped.

“For me, it’s a lot like trying to not hear the music some idiot kid is blasting at maximum volume as he drives down the street.” She shrugged. “I tune it out for the most part, and after I’m around somebody for a while, I can mostly filter their voices out. But newer people… it’s not so easy.”

Sylvia lifted a brow. “Try harder.”

“Angel…” Toronto slid between them when the woman might have said something.

Angel?
Sylvia rolled her eyes. What a name.

She tried to ignore how close he was standing to the woman now. Too close. Sylvia frowned, edging around the room and watching the two of them. He was smiling at the girl— a weird smile, too. Something that looked torn between amusement and frustration. She didn’t like it. Not at all.

“What are you doing here?” Toronto asked.

“A couple of things.” She shrugged absently, her gaze roaming around the room. “Rafe had Josiah go out to that house.”

“Josiah?” Toronto frowned, then nodded. “He went to check the scent thing, didn’t he?”

“Yeah. Apparently it’s all messed up. Josiah was almost delirious with joy— he hasn’t been that happy since they cancelled
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
. He’s running some samples from the yard and the house, but basically, it’s used to cover scent— actually, it
erases
scent. Some sort of plant base is in it— he thinks it’s in the mint family. There are some enzymes in there that he thinks are responsible for erasing the scent trail, although he hasn’t gotten that detailed yet. He said it will take a few days to get anything final, but any evidence that we might have found? You can thank the mystery chemical.”

Sylvia watched them, mystified. Mystery chemicals. Enzymes. Plant base. Shit. This was like watching
CSI: Vampire Unit
. Or the Horticulture Unit.

Angel shot her a grin and then looked back at Toronto. “You asked about somebody named Kit.”

“Yeah. Did Rafe know something about him?”

Angel shrugged a shoulder and brushed past Toronto, sauntering into the living room. She came within a few inches of Sylvia— close enough that the hunger started to whisper inside her once more. Hot and sweet.
One taste…

Sylvia scented the air just once, felt her control trembling. As she did so, the blonde looked her way. A smile curved her lips and if she wasn’t mistaken, those blue eyes glowed.

“You can handle it,” Angel murmured.

“Arrogant little bitch.” Sylvia shook her head.

Angel just shrugged. “You live with vamps, you get an idea what they look like when the hunger is riding them hard. You also know which of them are close to the breaking point. You aren’t. You just think you are.”

Sylvia stilled. “Keep your fingers out of my head.”

“I’m not in your head. All of that is written in your eyes.” Angel smiled and then settled on a chair, crossing one leg over the other.

“Angel… what does Rafe have to say about Kit?”

“How would I know?” Angel shrugged. “I didn’t ask him. I just talked to Josiah earlier.”

Toronto closed his eyes and muttered, “I don’t need another crazy cryptic chick in my life.” Without explaining that comment, he sat on a chair across from Angel and rubbed his hands over his face and then focused on her face again. “Come on, Angel. Help us bumbling simpletons out. I’m not connecting the dots here. Are you here about Kit or not?”

“I am.” She rested her chin in her hand and grinned at him. “But Rafe doesn’t know anything about him. For that matter, I don’t. I was back at the house— heard Lindsey mention the name and I wanted to…”

Her voice trailed off and she leaned forward, her gaze unfocused.

“Angel?”

Sylvia moved deeper into the room. The tension in the air was almost electric— she could feel it, all but taste it. The hairs on her arms, the back of her neck stood on edge and if lightning had started to crack outside, it wouldn’t have surprised her.

Drawn inside by some force she couldn’t name, she found herself sitting on the table just a few feet away from Angel. Then the blonde closed her eyes. Sylvia frowned, rubbing her arms. She was cold for some reason. Very cold—

Angel opened her eyes. And that blue held an eerie, eerie glow…

She touched Sylvia’s arm and Sylvia hissed as electricity
crackled between them. “There’s a connection,” Angel murmured. “It’s there. I can’t find it yet.”

Her eyes met Sylvia’s— the jolt from it rocked Sylvia clear to her toes. “Some of us change with age— it doesn’t always have much to do with the Change. We can’t blame all our failings on that.” Her lashes drifted low for a moment, a harsh sigh escaping her. “Some of us break… because we break ourselves. We let failures, fears, all of it fester inside until it’s a poison that turns to madness.”

And then, she rose from the chair, walked past Sylvia, past Toronto, headed for the door. At the door, she paused and said, “But there are others who become more. We become better.” The eerie glow left her eyes and she turned away.

“Wait!” Sylvia shot to her feet, rushing for the other woman.

Angel closed the door behind her.

“I said,
wait
.”

But Toronto caught her arm before she cleared the room. “Let her go,” he said. There was an exasperated look on his face as he stared after the blonde.

“She knows something, damn it,” Sylvia said, jerking against his hold.

“Not yet, she doesn’t.” They listened as the van outside started up. “Something’s probably coming to her, but it’s not like doing math with
two + two
. She’s doing a puzzle and a third of the pieces are still missing. She’ll get the big picture, but for now, she’s got to go on the few pieces she has.”

I

Angel had no intention of screwing this up and she knew she needed to focus— there was a lot riding on this, and not just because it was her first chance to prove to Rafe that she could be useful around the Enclave. That was a minor concern, in the scheme of things.

Kids were being hurt.

People had died.

And all of it was tied to this place— she’d felt that the minute she stepped inside. Others were hiding it and that
painted a bigger problem— it took power to hide this kind of stuff from a Hunter, and that spelled bad things. Rafe’s control of the land was being threatened, being tested and if he couldn’t prove he could hold that control, the other predators around here would rise up against them. There would be bloodshed. Lots of it. And if it happened
here
, it would happen in other places.

Personally, that mattered to Angel because her husband was one of Rafe’s lieutenants. She also didn’t like the idea of her friends having to go to war, didn’t like the idea of the mortals who’d get caught in the middle.

But her brain was clogged today— it kept spiraling down a path of memories that wasn’t her own. She saw a newspaper. An article about a dead child— Angel recognized him. One of Alan Pulaski’s victims— Pulaski, the man Toronto was hunting. Other dead children. Then a longer spiral, like a dark vortex, sucking her back through time and then she was trapped, chained in a room, while the hunger tore into her and a boy stared at her through a series of bars.

Locked. Locked in a room while a boy stared at her and cried.

There was another boy with him.

Familiar— the boy looked familiar.

I’m sorry…

I’ll get you out… die trying…

And screams— long, tortured screams. Guilt, and misery—

“… any time today?”

A slight vibration jerked her back to the here and now. Angel looked up and saw the teacher staring at her. It was “Tank” Edwards. Mr. Edwards, she was supposed to call him. He taught the honors English course and she’d decided from the get-go she didn’t like him— he’d checked out her ass as she left the classroom yesterday.

“I was asking if you knew the answer.” He gave her a faint smile and then shifted his gaze away. “Perhaps—”

Angel heard the echo of the question he’d asked drift from the mind of the student next to her. She could have just stayed quiet. It didn’t matter if he thought she was a slacker, and hell, she
had
been drifting off in la-la land. But she
smiled at him and answered. The slight flicker in his eyes betrayed him.

Then he patted her shoulder. “Very good.”

That light touch—

She had to fight not to tense. Not to react. Not to puke.

She’d been straight-up honest when she’d told Sylvia that most people were just too loud for her to block out their thoughts. There were others, though, who had a natural resistance to psychic skill. Their thoughts were on a quieter frequency. Before Angel had been bitten, before her body had undergone whatever weird physiological changes, those quieter frequencies would have likely been silent.

She heard them now, but it took physical contact and sometimes all she got was a rush of images, a blur that didn’t always make sense.

That was what she got from Tank Edwards.

And as he moved past her, continuing with his random little questions, Angel sat there and tried to puzzle through what she’d picked up.

Very little was clear… but there was a man. One she recognized. He had somebody with him, and as that image solidified in her mind, Angel felt a few more pieces settle into place.