Hunter's Rise (7 page)

I’ll get you out…
The voice whispered from her subconscious, but she shoved it down. No time for that now. She had a job, a monster to hunt.

Couldn’t do that if she let herself fall into a pit of memories, could she?

All of that should be locked away, in the past where memories belonged. Right now, her mind needed to be focused on the damn job.

She took a deep, steadying breath. The feel of oxygen moving in and out of her rarely used lungs was calming. When she opened her eyes, she made herself stare at the other boys, not just Toby. Studied the other victims.

Four boys dead, and all of them could be connected to Pulaski. Plus, others who’d been caught on video— no telling what had become of
them
. After he’d disappeared, a more detailed search had been conducted— not just of his house, but of the property surrounding it— and they’d found where he liked to play with his victims.

The videos— shit, the videos.

Those were the things she’d like scrubbed from her mind. She’d seen too many awful things in her years to be easily
affected, but still… pity, grief and rage swam through her. Yes. Very often the monsters in the world were human.

Sylvia didn’t have any problem at all hunting that breed of human.

Y

He was still waiting. So far, he didn’t see
fine
coming any time soon.

Sometimes he did okay. After more than a century, for the most part, he dealt with it, not having any past to look back to, any memory of a family.

Plus, after more than a century, he
had
a past… one he’d built. He should focus on that more. Think more about the friends he had. Granted, the good friends were few and far between. Toronto was a prickly, abrasive son of a bitch at the best of times and he knew it. He liked it that way. People were just easier when he kept them at a distance.

He did have those friends, though, and they were close enough that he could almost call them brother, sister.

But there were times when those black, empty years crept out to haunt him, a screaming void that wrapped around him and wouldn’t turn him free. Tonight was one of those nights.

He lay there in his bed, staring up at the ceiling, edgy, restless, his skin practically crawling with it, and the void in
his mind was a black hell while instinct hummed under his skin.

What are you doing with this life of yours?

Why are you here?

Why did you
live?

It wasn’t just because he was meant to be a Hunter. He wasn’t even that good of one. He refused to lead. He hated to follow. He questioned every damn thing, hated authority and most of the time, sheer boredom drove him more than any inborn desire to protect. That wasn’t how a Hunter should be and he knew it.

But if he wasn’t called for this, then why had he survived that attack?

He should be
more
than this. But whatever in the hell he
should
be, he didn’t know. And too often, he didn’t care.

His brooding reverie was interrupted by a pounding fist on the door and he closed his eyes, wishing he could shut the rest of the world out today.

“Go away,” he said, keeping his voice flat and level. He didn’t need to yell to be heard, not when the person on the other side of the door was a vampire.

“Problems.”

In response, Toronto lifted a hand and flipped off the vampire on the other side of the door. Not that Kel could see— he might have vampire hearing, but he didn’t have X-ray vision.

Apparently, he didn’t need it.

The door opened a few seconds later and Toronto tried to decide if he wanted to waste the energy and knock the idiot boy out of his room, or just continue in his brood. He had a pretty good groove going. He wanted to continue it.

“Rafe needs you.”

Forgetting his earlier resolve to try and push a little less was as easy as blinking an eye.

“Tell the
Master
,” Toronto said, his voice mocking, heavy with derision, “he can kiss my ass.”

Kel’s brows arched. “It’s your funeral, man.” Then he sauntered out of the room, not bothering to close the door.

Toronto glared at the vampire’s back for a moment, but
he didn’t care enough to get up and shut the door, and he lacked the motivation to knock the kid around. Because if he did that, he’d have to deal with Kel’s wife, Angel.

He’d rather avoid that.

The girl was spooky.

Very spooky, and worse… she knew it.

Kel wasn’t worth dealing with Angel, and the aggravation wasn’t worth throwing off the brood he had going.

L

Going one-on-one with Kel wouldn’t do more than irritate him.

Going one-on-one with Rafe would irritate him, but it would also require a bit more concentration and would probably entail some pain. Actually… Toronto lowered his arm, popping one eye open to study Rafe. A good, dirty fight didn’t seem like a bad idea.

“I’m tired of this fucking shit,” Rafe said, his voice terse and abrupt. “I told you— just
hours
ago. If you want to be here, then you’ll damn well
be
here. If not, you’ll damn well get the hell
out
.” He paused, and then added icily, “I suspect it’s not a matter of want with you. You don’t give a flying fuck.”

The slash of the vampire’s rage cut through the air, a cold, heavy punch, but even as Toronto readied himself for that down and dirty fight he really, really wanted, Rafe turned on his heel and stalked away.

That was it.

“What the…”

Over his shoulder, Rafe said, “Make up your fucking mind. Either you’re here to be a Hunter or you’re not. If you’re
not
, get out and get out
now
—I’ll make it simple. Decide.
Now.
Or the next time you and I have this conversation, it’s going to involve serious bloodshed. You won’t keep challenging me this way.”

Feeling a little deflated, and maybe, okay, yeah, a
little guilty, Toronto climbed out of bed. Snagging a pair of pants from the foot of the bed, he tugged them on and lingered by the bathroom long enough to splash some water on his face and brush his teeth.

The face in the mirror hadn’t changed much over the past century. He’d been attacked when he was in his teenage years. By the time he hit his late twenties, his body had hit full maturation and the aging process had stopped. Back then, it had still been called a curse. Now they knew it to be a virus, one that warped and mutated the genes until they no longer resembled anything human.

Werewolves and shapeshifters aged, but it was a slow process and the stronger the creature, the slower the aging process.

Toronto was pretty damn strong.

His hair was pale blond, almost white blond and he wore it long, kept it tied in a queue at his nape. His eyes were a pale, silvery blue, rimmed with a deeper blue. More often than once, that pretty face had thrown people off balance, unless somebody looked deeper.

Although werewolves healed with amazing speed, he wasn’t without scars. Some remained from the attack that had made him a were— bite marks on his arms, chest, thighs. Others were from his life since the attack, a nasty slice down his left pectoral from a silver blade, another low on his belly. There was only one that was likely from his forgotten mortal years— a messy affair on the back of his right forearm, a jagged line that somebody had ineptly tried to stitch closed.

Scars aside, he had a handsome face, and he knew it. Handsome, bordering on pretty… but there was something that lurked just behind the eyes. A wildness that even more than a century couldn’t curb, and the body belonged to a warrior, a fighter.

Right now, he was a fighter looking to rumble, and the one chance he’d had of a decent fight had been denied. But he couldn’t really be pissed about it, either— he had screwed up. Again. And there was the icy anger he’d heard in Rafe’s voice that wasn’t about him. Toronto’s fuckheadedness was just part of it.

A heavy weight hung in the air, one he realized he would have sensed already if he hadn’t let himself get so caught up in his own problems.

Heavy— almost oppressive.

It all but choked the oxygen out of the air.

Rubbing the heel of his hand over his chest, he padded on bare feet toward the Master’s office.

H

Memphis was lousy with them. The feel of them was an itch on her spine, but she ignored it. Once she’d decided to take the job, she’d driven the four hours to Memphis to start getting a lay of the land and the Hunters weren’t going to stop her.

Technically, they
couldn’t
… unless she went around breaking laws.

She wouldn’t, either. She had a job to do and she’d see it completed, come hell, high water or holier-than-thou Hunter types.

If she needed incentive, she had it in the form of a photograph tucked inside her back pocket.

Not that she really needed the reminder. His face was one she’d never forget. Actually,
none
of the boys Pulaski had taken were likely to be forgotten. Four kids, lost.

Four kids who deserved justice; Sylvia could give it to them, and all she had to do was find his trail.

She’d be a lot harder to dodge than the police, too.

She’d have to move quickly— in, out— assuming he was in Memphis.

If she’d done her homework right, the local Master here was Rafe, a vampire. He was a Hunter— no big surprise there. On the rare occasion a non-Hunter set up an official territory, it was usually somebody who was on good standing with the do-gooders of the freak world.

Mostly, Sylvia didn’t have much issue with Hunter types as long as they stayed out of her way. She’d much rather a Hunter get a Master’s call than a non-Hunter. Hunters didn’t go feral— it was like they didn’t have that ability to break
inside them— they somehow maintained that much needed humanity.

Or maybe they just didn’t have that innate cruelty. She knew all about that innate sense of cruelty. It was something she’d seen in both mortal and non-mortal. That was one reason she made a very, very good living. She got paid for killing cruel sons of bitches.

The Hunters did it out of altruism. She did it for a paycheck.

No, on a professional level, she didn’t have a problem with Hunters, as long as they stayed out of her way. They served a purpose and kept things under control when the monsters would have turned mortals into their personal play and feeding ground.

But personally, Sylvia didn’t like them and she didn’t want to have to deal with them, especially not when she was on a hunt of her own.

Master vampires were territorial bastards, and rumors were that Rafe, the local Master, was more of a bastard than most— he wasn’t going to tolerate having a murdering pedophile in his territory, but if she knew Hunters, he’d want to turn the man over to mortal authorities. Hunters did interfere with mortal issues, but when it was likely the matter would catch attention, they often let the mortal cops take the reins, guiding things like an unseen puppet master. Keeping in the shadows, not drawing any undue attention— after all, none of them wanted any of the mortals to know about them. Sylvia understood it. Attention to their kind was bad.

Letting monsters like Pulaski live was worse.

“In. Out.” She prowled around the house, keeping her distance, searching for signs of life, signs of the cops, signs that anybody might be watching her.