Hunter's Rise (9 page)

Children were precious… and this bastard had slaughtered them.

“No,” Rafe said, his voice tight and angry. “I don’t want her stopped— I’d happily let her kill him.” His gaze locked on those nameless, lost boys. “But those boys’ parents? They deserve closure, too. She can’t kill him if there’s a chance we can find out what he did with those other boys.” Then he knelt down in front of Lindsey. “But if it makes you feel better… I wasn’t going to let you go out on this one, anyway.”

She scowled at him.

“We’ve got James pegged at over a century. I don’t think she’s Master level or I likely would have sensed her when she came onto my land. Still, I’m not taking chances— there are some who can cloak that and I won’t risk her being one of them. All of you are now on alert— watch for signs of her. An older one has to handle this Hunt.” He caught a lock of her hair and tugged. “But I’ll order you a pizza before I head out.”

Toronto shoved off the wall. “I’ll go.”

Rafe paused, those black, black eyes narrowing. Although an uneasy truce might have been reached, the Master didn’t look too fond of that idea. “You’ll go,” he echoed, his voice flat.

“I’m better-suited.” He hooked his thumbs in his pockets, kept his voice level.

“Better-suited.” Rafe ran his tongue over his teeth and then he glanced around the room. “You all, head out.”

The rest of the Hunters left, a heavy, weighted silence wrapping around them.

“One reason, Tor,” Rafe said quietly. “Give me just one reason why I shouldn’t boot you out of here.”

“I’m the strongest Hunter you have at your disposal, for one,” Toronto said, although they both knew that was an obvious answer… and it was also something that could be easily rectified. All Rafe had to do was ask for more Hunters and he’d get them. Granted, he may not get another Master as strong as Tor. Not many of them were willing to serve. Most of them wanted to lead or just fly solo. But he could get stronger Hunters and they both knew it.

“Not enough.” Rafe called him on it, shaking his head. “Kel can hold down the fort for a while and Lindsey, Josiah, they may never be Masters, but they aren’t weak. Dom already volunteered to help for a while if I need him— one phone call and that means I’ll have both him and Nessa here. You’re not needed with that kind of firepower.”

It burned Toronto’s ass to realize that he’d been enough of an ass to deserve a dismissal. Not just today, but often. Very often. It burned, it tore at him, and pissed him off… and left him shamed. He’d failed. The one thing he could do, he’d failed. He wouldn’t keep doing it. It stopped. Now.

And there was no way Toronto was letting anybody else go after that woman. In the back of his mind, the wolf kept growling, pacing, muttering,
Mine… want…
All very Neanderthal, but Toronto’s wolf was a rather basic, primitive thing. He wasn’t going to try and modernize the thing, especially when he really, really understood that
mine, want
instinct. As long as Toronto didn’t let those Neanderthal instincts rule what he did, it was all good, right?

“I’ll offer my apologies,” he said, his voice harsh and tight. “I’ve been an asshole and I’ll apologize.

“But I’m going to disagree— you
do
need me. If this woman needs to be tracked down before she kills her target, your best bet is a day-walker, somebody who can track her while she sleeps. That would be me— I’m your best tracker. I don’t need to sleep much and you know it. I can take as long as I need to, even if she leaves Memphis— you can’t. This is your territory and you’re needed here. I’m your best choice.”

“And I can trust that hot temper of yours?” Rafe asked, tossing the remote from one hand to the other.

Toronto’s instinctive reply,
Well, I haven’t pounded you bloody yet, have I?
leaped to his lips and he bit it back. Instead, he looked at the images on the display. Innocence stared back at him. Innocence broken, destroyed… killed. And their families… left without answers. Had he left behind a family like that?

It was something he’d never know, and the pity he felt for both the children and their families, the rage he felt for what had been done to them, tore at him, and he felt the burn of something he hadn’t felt in too long.

He could fix this.

Damn it, he could fix this… get those answers for the families. He could never have them for himself, but he could get closure for them. And after that— he could maybe see to it that Pulaski suffered an unhappy, painful accident.

“You don’t need to worry about my hot temper. I can do what needs to be done for those boys,” he said softly. “And if there are three, there may well be more. They deserve answers.”

On silent feet, he moved to stand in front of the screen, so close that the faces on it blurred— it didn’t matter. They were burned on his mind. He lifted a hand and let it hover above the screen and then he turned, met Rafe’s gaze across the quiet room.

“You don’t know what it’s like to not have answers— to live your entire life with that ache inside you.” The growl was back in his voice, but this time, it had nothing to do with temper, nothing to do with rage. Stripped raw and bare, he said gruffly, “I do.”

C
HAPTER 6

R

AFE
wasn’t surprised when Nessa and Dominic arrived on his doorstep not long before sunset. Although he was jealous, he’d never admit it. Not in a hundred years. At least not around Agnes Milcher— no. Ralston. They’d married. She was known as Agnes Ralston— Nessa Ralston.

There were benefits to being married to a freaky strong witch, Rafe knew. Studying Dominic’s face, he glanced out at the sinking sun. He could take some rays, but only some. Out and traveling around the daylight? Different story. “Kind of early for you to be up and crawling around, isn’t it?”

Nessa patted a hand against his chest as she came inside, Dominic grinning, his teeth a brilliant white flash in his face. And although Rafe hadn’t voiced his envy, his friend already knew.

“We were in the Bahamas a few weeks ago,” Dominic said. “I watched the sun come up over the ocean.”

“Jackass.”

Nessa chuckled. Then she stopped in the middle of the brightly lit foyer, her head tilted to the side, wisps of blond hair escaping from her braid. “He’s not here.”

Dominic frowned at her. “Who?”

“Toronto. He’s gone.” She turned to face Rafe, a solemn look in her blue eyes. “You didn’t set him after the mercenary, did you?”

Rafe didn’t bother asking how Nessa knew about Sylvia James. This was Nessa. He’d be more surprised if she
didn’t
know. “Is that a problem?” Something in her voice made a sliver of cold run through him.

Nessa sighed. Then she closed her eyes, pressing the tips of her fingers to one temple. “It would seem that wolf finally found a way to let his past catch up to him.”

K

EEPING
her attention split between watching her back and searching for her target slowed her down. Sylvia’s first spot was Pulaski’s home. Not that she expected to find him there, but she could always hope.

It was empty, and as much as she’d hoped to find clues, or a glaring neon sign to point the way, there was nothing.

Since she couldn’t find a glaring neon sign, she checked her iPhone and followed that instead. She’d done a search for areas where she’d find those with particular tastes in Memphis, and that meant another drive.

She might not find him there, but maybe she could find somebody who knew him.

It always started like this, these vague sorts of chases. Little bits of nothing, until she finally had something.

Sylvia suspected she’d been chasing little bits of nothing for a while.

Before she climbed back on her bike, she sent an e-mail to a contact. She wanted an idea of Pulaski’s history— a background search that she couldn’t run without risking tipping off the police and the like. It could be done, but she wasn’t as interested in learning tech as some, so she let others do it.

All it would cost her was some cash.

Once she had that request sent off, she got on her bike and paused, lingered. That vague, itchy sensation still lingered low on her spine but it wasn’t too bad.

Nobody was trailing her. Yet.

Hunters all over the place, but nobody at her back.

“Let’s just hope that holds,” she muttered.

T

ORONTO
figured the best way to find a hired killer would be to track the hired killer’s prey. He needed to keep the scum alive long enough for Rafe or one of the other vamps to get the information they needed about the rest of the victims from Pulaski, which meant finding him before Sylvia James did.

He had a few advantages on her.

He knew Memphis.

It wasn’t his town, exactly. That would imply it was home, and it wasn’t. But he’d been living here for quite a while and he knew the place. Sylvia, though, she wasn’t from around here. If she had been in the area long, he would have known. Rafe would have known. They would have crossed paths.

Which was why the mercenaries tended to keep their distances from Hunter types. As long as mercenaries didn’t go over a certain line, Hunters didn’t worry about them. They had their hands too full dealing with the ferals to worry about other shit, but some of the mercenaries traipsed just a little too close to that line.

He’d almost found himself bending too near that line a few times, but he’d always managed to pull back.

Rafe didn’t think he could control himself around Pulaski. Toronto got that. His temper was nothing if not explosive and he didn’t always bother trying to control himself. The irritating thing for people like Rafe was that they knew he
could
control himself. He just rarely did. He let his temper lead him around.

Just like you have since the day you woke up… you might have learned to control the violence, but are you really that much
better?

Pushing that irritating voice aside, he crouched down on the roof of a building. Down below, Beale Street was alive with action. Pulsing and throbbing with life, lust and laughter, and below, there were licks of anger, aggression, apathy.
The smell of liquor was strong in the air, along with the smell of food. He caught the sharp edge of drugs but ignored it. He had another job today and besides, if these idiots wanted to waste their short, fleeting lives rotting their brains out on something that would eat those brain cells and those fleeting days, let them.

He’d only step in there if he saw drugs being peddled to kids.

Then he’d step in and shed blood before he was done.

For now, he was looking for somebody.

A familiar head of wiry red hair caught his eyes. A satisfied smile curled his lips and he rose to a half crouch and then leaped. It was a three-story jump down and he landed with his knees flexed, the impact as minimal to him as if he’d jumped off a curb.

The man was gone by the time he moved into the crowds of Beale Street, but that was fine. Toronto knew where he was going. It was a little dive just around the corner where the strippers looked younger than they were, where the clientele was just a few steps up from the scum-suckers and nobody wanted to talk to anybody.

They would, though.

Especially Bobby Prescott.

Bobby Prescott and Toronto had a special relationship.

Toronto hated the sick little fuck and wanted to kill him.

Bobby knew this, and he wanted to live. He was a werewolf, but his abilities were weak— he’d barely survived the Change and now he spent the night of the full moon locked in a cage because he didn’t trust his control.

But that wasn’t the worst part.

He had a weakness for pretty boys—
boys
, in the most literal sense. His particularly favorite age was right about fourteen. But he’d managed to keep that weakness to just dreams, and as long as he looked like he was able to control it, Toronto wouldn’t kill him. Toronto’s unhappy responsibility was making sure he watched Bobby, and closely.