Know Thine Enemy (2 page)

"
That's you, isn't it?" he demanded. "I talk to your mama still, the darky-loving bitch. Just to check up on you. See where you are, if she's seen your ghost like my people have. Funny. She was told you died after Vicksburg." He sneered. "The fever. Looking pretty good for a dead man."

Ryker
's heart softened. He hadn't braved contacting his mother, not after what happened with Maggie. He might have avoided condemning Georgiana Ryker to the same fate he'd condemned Caroline, but he doubted she'd take his transformation any better than Maggie had. Better she assumed he was in the ground. Better for everyone.

"
Michael." Ryker stepped forward. "I'm sorry."

"
Sorry."
He spat the word as if it were poison. "For what you did to her?"

Resignation set in. In the end, he supposed, there was little sense dancing around an issue the man would likely not remember the next morning, especially when he doubted very much he and Michael would cross paths again. Time could not make him think the action he
'd taken was wrong, which was what Michael truly needed to hear, but Ryker was sorry for the way things had unfolded. He hated what had happened to Caroline in the end—he hated he'd been the cause.

But he
didn't regret changing her. If he'd known what would happen, he would have held her hand through the transition. He would have made damn sure she knew she wasn't an unholy creature, that he hadn't condemned her to eternal hellfire.

"
Yes," Ryker said. "I am sorry for that."

"
So you confess it."

"
I am what you think I am, Michael. Caroline fell ill with the fever. She was going to die. I tried to save her."

"
By making her an evil thing."

"
By making her a vampire. I tried to save her."

Michael nodded eagerly.
"What happened?"

"
I failed. Simple as that."

"
No. Not simple. Not
simple.
You cursed her and she—"

"
I was young. I'd been a vampire but two days when I turned Caroline. I couldn't have known what would happen."

"
You didn't—"

"
I thought I was saving her. I have no apologies beyond that."

"
No
blessed
apologies?"

"
No. I've made my peace." Ryker inclined his head. "I haven't forgotten her."

"
Not her, but me. Me and everyone else."

"
For good reason, as you have demonstrated tonight." He took a step forward. "Good night, Michael."

He would have been a blind idiot to miss the fury in his cousin
's eyes, but Ryker didn't address it. Let Michael hate him—anger was a cool drug, both fanning motivation and overpowering sorrow. His cousin had been caught in a maelstrom of incomplete emotions since the war ended, and while he would have Ryker's pity, he would have no more.

That life wasn
't his.

"
Oh, no, you don't." Michael seized him by the forearm. "Not like this."

"
It's over."

Michael
's nostrils flared, drool dribbling over his lips. "It's never over for me, you hear!" He swung wildly. "Never over!"

His fists flew once, twice, before finally landing a punch
on Ryker's jaw. For a drunkard, the hit was a good one, carrying enough power to rock the vampire back on his feet.

Damn.

Hitting a creature of the night was dangerous, especially one as relatively young as Ryker. Instinct trumped any potential sense of reservation. If attacked, the thing to do was strike back and make sure the offender didn't get up. Before he could stop himself, Ryker was on his feet and had returned the blow with a rather brutal one of his own. He watched belatedly as Michael stumbled back and smacked his head against Caroline's tomb. Bone cracked, and flesh tore, sending faint whiffs of blood into the air. The impact knocked him out, as any good blow would, but that was the extent of the damage.

Ryker still heard the drunkard
's heart beating through an otherwise silent night as ruby red drops of liquid ecstasy trickled down his face. Just a hint was enough. Ryker's gums tingled, his fangs aching to come out and play. He hadn't supped tonight. It had seemed inappropriate to dine before tracking his way up to Caroline's grave. Yet now, with Michael's blood in the air, he wished he had. Ryker enjoyed moderate control over his inner monster—not complete—and if he allowed himself to stay, the echo of Michael's heartbeat would fade forever.

No.
No.
Michael would live.

Ryker recoiled and turned away before he lost all semblance of
control.

No more.

He would send someone to help as soon as he returned to town. He couldn't trust himself here, and he wouldn't drink from family. Not again. Never again.    Especially not like this.

Chapter One

Present Day

Ryker hadn't had the foggiest idea what to expect when he accepted Connor's request, but it certainly wasn't this.

He
'd followed her for the last few days, looking, observing, and gathering as much information as he could. Granted, Ryker didn't particularly care for games of hide-and-go-spy; he'd been around long enough to prefer the up close and personal method of conflict resolution. If anyone but Connor had asked . . . well, that would have been troubling. Connor was pretty much the only person around who knew his name.

Connor would also do anything for him. Add the fact
The Wall was one of the few sanctuaries Ryker had left, and there was no way he could say no. As it was, pride typically prevented the rotund bartender from asking anyone for help, so being the one asked meant a lot in a strange way. It meant Ryker was respected and trusted to not completely fuck this up.

Not to mention lending a hand also meant two weeks of free drinks.

So, here he stood, submerged in the shadows behind one of the Washington Avenue lofts, watching the same black-haired vixen battle three hapless vampires who had fallen for her trap and mistaken her for a drunk college student. The vixen—
Izzie,
her name—had a fairly good routine. She stumbled and swayed and slurred her words to attract attention, and, when attention came, she leapt to the ready. Not liking her was hard, even knowing what she was.

Even knowing she might well try to kill him
when he introduced himself properly.

After all, demon hunters tended to
kill first and ask questions later.

Connor had seen the girl
—Izzie Bennett—in his bar more than three nights running, and pretty girls just didn't go into The Wall alone. They
especially
didn't go into The Wall if their goal wasn't to drown their sorrows in cheap spirits, and Izzie hadn't ordered a damn thing. She went in, found a shadowy booth, and watched as regulars and stragglers chose their poison.

Not the most innovative way to scope out vamps. Ryker had
witnessed this dance enough times to guess her intention. Initially, at least. So had Connor. Demon hunters in a popular demon bar were bad for business. Yet Connor didn't feel comfortable approaching a pretty girl under normal circumstances, let alone to ask if she planned on killing one of his customers. This was where Ryker came in. He could follow her without being detected and determine once and for all her objective.

Not that she needed continued surveillance. No, Ryker felt he had enough information to placate Connor. Yet, he couldn
't tear himself away. Hell, these last few nights, she'd dominated his thoughts. The more he saw the more he needed to see, and damned if he knew why. Izzie wasn't like the other hunters who passed through town.

She wasn
't like much of anyone he'd ever seen, hunter or not. For starters, she didn't go after vampires—she waited for them to come after her.

And come they did.

Ryker had seen vamp hunters from all walks of life. Young, old, male, female, fat, thin, red, yellow, black, and white, they were equals in his sight. And no matter how unique they seemed, they were linked by one commonality. Something that remained entirely theirs.

A cause.

No one stumbled into demon hunting for the thrill of it. Sure, a certain subset of teens enjoyed roaming cemeteries and pretending they were Blade, but once they got a taste of the real deal—a true-to-life fucking vampire—they typically bolted fast and hard in the opposite direction. Real dedication to the cause was born through personal suffering. Those who hunted had once been hunted and more than likely had seen a loved one murdered at the hands of a night monster.

The hunters were easy to detect. For a group of people who enjoyed thinking they blended in, they constantly gave themselves away
. Looking tough and cautious, concealing excessive weaponry behind baggy clothing, doing all those things that helped them blend among humans while never realizing they stuck out like the proverbial sore thumbs to their targets.

An old vampire could see a hunter coming a mile away. The clothes, the attitude, the fire in their eyes. The heated need to extract a pound of flesh in return for what they had lost.

All hunters looked the same where it counted.

All except Izzie.
For the first time in nearly a hundred and fifty years, Ryker saw a hunter without a driving force. Without the flash. The motivation. The cause.

The same could not be said for Izzie Bennett
's traveling companion, a man Ryker had taken to calling 'Butch.' Every night following her sweep of St. Louis's current hotspots, Izzie would retreat to The Wall, watch the interactions of the vamps and demons who wandered in, then leave to meet Butch. The man was not her husband, as Ryker had first assumed. At least if he was, it wasn't a happy marriage. They had rented separate rooms in their East St. Louis motel.

Ryker hadn
't made an effort to get to know Butch as he had Izzie, particularly since the guy didn't seem to have the first clue about The Wall, which made him no threat to Connor. Still, Ryker had seen enough to determine the man could be trouble should they ever cross paths. The cause missing in Izzie's eyes blazed in his. Whatever happened to Butch, whatever provoked his warpath through the underworld, had been horrible enough to earn the hydrogen bomb.

Unless Connor made a new request, Ryker intended to leave Butch alone.
His interest in Izzie and her mysterious motivation left little attention for anyone else.

He sighed and shoved his hands into the pockets of his duster. She was something else, all right.

For the third night in a row, every free inch in the Washington Avenue loft district crawled with undead predators. This happened every so often—there'd be a rush of tourists or an influx of new college students, and suddenly the residential undead were out and about, searching for a fresh neck and a dark corner. The lofts were particularly popular during the spring and fall—recent grads of southern Missouri who didn't want to get too far outside the blanket of home made their way northward to go to school or search for employment. Bloodsuckers had new conquests at their disposal, and, in a city with such a sizeable crime rate, local authorities overlooked the disappearances of new residents.

Hell, a metropolis of any particular size was bound to attract night crawlers. Blending in was beyond easy, and, unlike in smaller havens, no one really gave a damn if a tourist disappeared.

Izzie Bennett, however, was no tourist. She moved with cool grace and fluid ease, like a performer lost in the dance. Her black hair was pulled up in an inelegant ponytail that bounced and flopped with every fancy twist her small body made. Unlike other hunters, she wore a skintight black tank top and black cargo pants, which emphasized her moonlight skin. She looked little more than flesh and bone, though her muscles were well defined, and she knew how to utilize the strength she possessed. She had the make, build, everything a skilled hunter needed—everything except the conviction. She swung and stabbed, but it wasn't personal. She showed no outrage or disgust, nothing to suggest she fought for any reason other than to be the one who walked away. She was something he'd never seen: a hunter—and a skilled one at that—without a cause.

It was extraordinary.

Tonight was the night. The night he'd step out of the shadows. The night those gorgeous eyes would land on him. Ryker didn't like jeopardizing his parts any more than the next guy, but sometimes a good mystery was worth the risk.

In the meantime, he wanted to watch the fight. He wanted to see her in action again, especially if it was the last time. Once he made himself known, his stint as a voyeur end
ed. She wouldn't be caught unawares after this. The lady was a professional, no doubt about it.

"
Pretty little thing got lost," one of the vamps snarled to his companions. He was a tall guy with a goatee, dark hair, and shabby wardrobe. He seemed every bit the type to pick the slow and stupid out of a crowd for a quick buzz. "Whaddya say we escort her home, boys?"