Hunter's Rise (27 page)

Time. She needed a little more time to let that image settle.

It was almost ready to form a whole.

Sighing, she bent over the book in front of her. She had a feeling Rafe… and Kel… wouldn’t be happy with her. They’d wanted her to keep her focus
here
. Only here.

Not exactly my fault this thing is flying off in five different directions, now is it?

“H

Angel looked up from her locker.

The redhead next to her smiled.

“Who?”

She rolled her eyes. “Mr. Edwards. He’s a jerk.”

Angel shrugged. “I’ve met worse.” Then she wrinkled her
nose and said, “Although I think he might have been looking at my ass yesterday.”

“Just don’t ever stay after for tutoring. He’ll check out your tits. And good luck trying to mention that to the staff. You get marked as a
problem child
.” She opened her locker and switched out her books. “I’m Rachel, by the way. I sit a few seats behind you.”

“Angie.” She pretended to think. “We’re in French together, too, right?”

“Yep. At least that teacher isn’t a sleaze.”

Angel laughed. “Seems like they got them at every school.”

Rachel sighed. “We’ve got more than we need, that’s for sure.” Something shifted in her eyes but then she smiled, shrugged. “I just stay away from the creeps.”

You didn’t stay far enough, did you?

Angel wanted to grab the girl, hug her. Something had happened to her. Something dark and awful… and when she’d tried to talk…

“Hello, Rachel.”

A woman emerged from a classroom at the side.

“Hi, Ms. Braddock,” Rachel whispered.

Braddock.
Angel tucked that name in the back of her mind, even as she pretended to blithely ignore the woman— the look of her bothered Angel. She couldn’t even say why. She just made her… itchy. Rachel was terrified. Still not looking at the woman, Angel hooked her arm through Rachel’s. “So you think we could eat lunch together? I haven’t really met anybody yet. New schools really, really suck.”

Rachel stood there, like her feet were frozen. And Angel suspected it was because they were— the girl’s very
thoughts
felt frozen. Frozen… and blurred. What the hell… Deliberately, Angel gave her a sharp psychic jab. It was something only another psychic could sense and the woman behind them was no psychic. She was
something
, but not psychic.

Rachel blinked, her gaze unfocusing and then refocusing on Angel’s face. She smiled and then said, “Sure.”

Angel glanced up, as if just noticing the teacher. “Hi!” She
gave the lady a bright, vacuous smile and then, after slamming her locker shut, they started to walk.

The farther they got from the woman, the less clouded, the less iced, the girl at her side felt.

What the hell…

“So.” Angel smiled over at Rachel and asked, “Is there anything we can eat here that isn’t completely toxic?”

As they rounded the corner, she glanced back.

The woman, Ms. Braddock, was still standing there. Watching.

Good. Angel could use a better look at her face. It gave her a better focus. It just made it that much easier to get a better lock.

T

“I know where he keeps the keys.”

She looked at the boy, uncaring. She cared even less now than she had a month earlier. It had been a month of hell—endless rapes, beatings… and worse.

They were no longer in California. He’d dragged them across the country, kept them locked up at all times. They were in Toronto now; and she was in hell. Trapped in a small cell, starved… little more than an animal. A desperate, desperate animal.

But the boy did not seem to realize it. Nor did he seem to notice the changes in her. He only stood there, watching her with pleading eyes, his surly friend at his back. “Please, Sada—”

“Boy, do not speak my name.” She closed her eyes, wishing he would just leave. It was so hard to sit still with him there. Of late, even being around the women who brought her food and bathing water caused her pain. Caused such an awful hunger inside her.

She stared at him and saw blood.

As though realizing the danger, the boy at his back curled a hand over his friend’s shoulder. “We need to go.”

“But I have to tell her, Sol! I have to let her know—”

“You already tried.” Although the two boys were likely of the same age, this one was bigger and stronger. He had older eyes. Wiser. Or perhaps he just wasn’t as likely to trust anybody. He stared at Sada with an intent, watchful look in his eyes and as her gaze shifted to his, she saw the warning there.

Stay away,
he warned.

She looked away, resting her head against the wall. As if he need worry. She had no way out of here.

So completely trapped—

“S

Whatever dreams were bothering her, they must be monstrous— usually a vampire’s sleep was a little more placid than this. They weren’t without dreams, but their bodies tended to conserve their energy for rest, leaving them almost trapped in the cage of their mind.

It took one hell of a dream to break that.

She tensed, her spine a long, rigid bow. Pressing his lips to her brow, he wished he could find a way to take those nightmares. They all had to live with them and he wasn’t any more disposed to let somebody’s nightmares get to him. But then again, he’d never lain in a bed with Sylvia James before… and she had already proven that she could tangle him into knots.

She threw out a hand, clenched into a fist. Catching it, Toronto brought it to his lips. “Rest, Sylvia… you’re safe. Nobody’s going to bother you here. You’re safe.” Still stroking her back, he continued to murmur to her until the tension drained from her body.

“I

Once they got through September, things would get easier, maybe, but he couldn’t even think about that— he had bigger problems to deal with than hot tempers and stupid actions. He had to fix this fucking problem first, because if he didn’t, there was going to be a lot more violence happening once the non-mortals around realized what had been happening here.

There was also the problem of the Council— they didn’t like it when shit like this happened, and it had happened under his watch.

And now he apparently needed to call them up and request a witch? That was just the icing on the cake.

“You need to get a witch,” Angel said again.

“So you’ve already told me…” Rafe let his voice trail off, but Angel didn’t elaborate. Hell, he’d already pried all the information out of Paul’s mind— that witch had caused problems, all right. Rafe had suspected he would, but he came in under the “peaceful existence” promise and as long as he’d sworn to abide by the laws of the Council, Rafe hadn’t been able to touch him.

He’d broken those laws— a fact he very much regretted now.

“Look, we’ve got a witch involved already in custody— I’ve picked his brain apart and other than the fact that he threw a camouflage over things and had a few phone calls with some vamp, he hasn’t done much, doesn’t know much.” Rafe stared out into the night, his skin crawling all over, his head itching. “Why should we get a witch here?”

“There’s more going on,” Angel said, her voice soft, but even over the phone Rafe could hear the certainty. “There’s more… and I don’t know if I’ll be enough to untwist it. If you’re looking for hard-and-fast answers, I can’t give them to you. I just think a witch has a better chance at unraveling this.”

From the doorway, he heard Toronto’s voice. “Good call.”

Rafe closed his eyes, unsurprised. He’d known the other Hunter was there. “Tor, I’ll be with you in a minute.” Although he didn’t really want to know why Toronto was agreeing with Angel— the two of them were supposed to be working with two different things. “Angel, I’ll call up to
Excelsior and see what happens— if they shoot me down, that’s it. No promises.”

As he hung the phone up, he turned and met Toronto’s gaze.

“You know if you tell them we need a witch, they’ll send one. They aren’t going to shoot you down.”

Rafe just stared at him.

Toronto shrugged. “Fine. Be a hard-ass.”

“That’s a laugh and a half, coming from you,” Rafe muttered, shoving a hand through his hair.

“True. But, still, it’s not like I’m wrong. We need a witch. A decent one can untangle the muck from Paul, plus maybe track down where this is all coming from. And if Angel thinks we need one for her problem? All the more reason.” He paused and then added, “But you’d have already thought of all of that. So what’s the problem?”

“The problem.” Rafe sank down into the seat behind his desk, folding his hands over his belly. “The problem would be this… all of this is happening on my land, and I can’t fucking stop it. Not without help. That’s the fucking problem.”

He’d fucked up. He’d lost control of his territory and people were getting hurt.

“You’re not God,” Toronto said quietly. “We’ve got a lock on it now and we’ll fix it. It’s the best we can do. None of us are perfect.”

“The best we can do.” Rafe stared at Toronto. Abruptly, the fury in him surged to the forefront and he rose to his feet, sent his desk flying and stormed across the room. In Toronto’s face, he snarled, “I’ve got a fucking pedophile who likes to kill kids somewhere in my territory and I want him dead… but I can’t kill him, and so far, we’re having trouble even finding him, or you wouldn’t be here. There’s some sort of fucking sex ring going on a few miles away from here… and I didn’t know jack
shit
about it until you told me. And that’s the
best
I can do? If that’s the best I can do, do I really belong here?”

He whirled away, stalking to the door.

The sound of Toronto’s quiet voice made him pause.
“If you’re going to let this knock you down without a fight, then maybe you don’t.”

“Don’t you have a job to be doing?” Rafe closed his eyes and wondered where in the hell that cocky, irresponsible son of a bitch he’d been fighting with for
years
had disappeared to. The
last
thing he needed right now was for Toronto to be talking him down, damn it.

“Yes. And I’m trying to do it.” Toronto pulled a mangled pack of gum from his pocket, popped a piece into his mouth. “It seems to me you’ve got a job to do, too. There’s a mess to clean up here, Rafe. We both know it. So do we clean it up, or do we sit around here and brood and moan about how we’ve fucked up?”

“We didn’t fuck up,” Rafe swore and turned around, facing the werewolf. “
I
fucked up. I’m the Master.”

“You’re
the
Master. But I’m every bit as strong as you, and you know it. If there was something that off, I should have sensed it, too. Now we need to figure out why we didn’t. And fix it.” Toronto blew a bubble, and just to be annoying, he snapped it loudly before flashing Rafe a wicked smile. “So are you going to brood and moan? Or deal?”

Rafe narrowed his eyes at him. “You’re such an asshole.”

“Yeah.” He shrugged.

“The witch you sent me after— he doesn’t have much to do with anything. He camouflaged and got his rocks off on the power high, but that’s it.” Rafe rubbed his hands over his face before meeting Toronto’s gaze once more. “There was a vamp involved— he told me that, but he doesn’t have so much as a fucking name. The vamp called him, every time, warned him when something would go down so Paul was ready to cover. The most Paul ever got was a number, in case there were ‘problems.’”