Hunter's Fall (19 page)

Read Hunter's Fall Online

Authors: Shiloh Walker

Tags: #Romance, #Contemporary, #General, #Paranormal, #Fiction

BOOK: Hunter's Fall
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She whistled under her breath. “Real damn good. I thought I sensed you moving around, but I didn’t expect to really find you awake until the sun was gone.”
Dominic just stared at her.
“A man of many words, aren’t you?” she asked, tongue in cheek. Then she shoved the door shut behind her and shrugged. “That’s okay. The sexy brooder thing works for you.”
“Sexy brooder.” He snorted and shook his head. “You sound like Sheila.” He stood aside to let her enter the cabin.
Glancing around, he found his bag sitting by one of the chairs, as well as his shoes. The shirt he’d worn the previous night was tossed over the arm of the chair, but he didn’t remember putting it there. Come to think of it, he didn’t remember settling down under the bed, either, although that had been the plan.
The last few minutes before the sleep hit him were always blurred, but not this bad. Pushed it too long, he figured. He had probably been operating on some level just barely above autopilot.
Snagging his bag, he tossed it onto the bed and unzipped it.
“So . . . you in here questioning your sanity?”
With a humorless smirk, Dominic muttered, “How did you guess?”
“Because that’s what I would be doing.” Kelsey shrugged and settled into the chair near the fireplace.
A memory flashed through his mind—Malachi. Before he’d fallen under, Malachi had been in the cabin, and he’d sat in that same chair.
More . . . he’d told Dominic they’d talk. He would tell Dominic where to find Nessa.
“So does this mean you’ve changed your mind?”
Her voice was carefully devoid of any emotion and her face was a smooth, expressionless mask. But there was a scent in the air, one he recognized. Humans learned to read facial expressions. Vamps and shifters took it a bit deeper than that. They could even read the faintest shift in body chemistry—fear, worry, excitement.
Kelsey was worried.
Looking at her, he said softly, “No. I want to see her. Hell, if nothing else, maybe I’ll look at her and realize this is nothing but bullsh . . . bull. That I’ll look at her and not know her.”
“You don’t really think that’s going to happen, though, do you?”
Those eyes of hers saw too much, Dominic thought sourly. Shooting her another glance, he shook his head. “No. I think I’m going to look at her and realize I’ve spent my whole life waiting to find her.”
Something hot and painful crept through his gut as he added in a rough whisper, “My whole life—thirty-four fucking years. It seems like forever. But if this is real, if all this is really happening, then it’s been a hell of a lot longer.”
His gut in a tight, hot knot, he looked at the silent witch. “How many years, Kelsey? Do you know?”
“Yes.” She sighed, watching him with sad, sympathetic eyes. “I know.”
“How long?”
For one long, strained moment, she didn’t speak. Then finally, she looked away and murmured, “Five hundred years.”
Blood began to roar in his ears. His legs went numb and he sagged against the bed. He curled one hand around a carved wooden post. If the bed hadn’t been close, he damn well might have ended up on his ass.
“Five hundred years,” he repeated, his tongue thick in his throat. “I left her alone for
five hundred years
?”
“You didn’t
leave
her.” Kelsey drew a knee to her chest and rested her chin on it, watching Dominic with a compassionate gaze. “You were taken from her—you didn’t have a choice. Not in how you were pulled away, and not in how you ended up back here. How . . . why . . . when. You had no say in the matter.”
Dominic closed his eyes. “The past few years, something has changed in my dreams.
She
changed. I don’t know why, don’t know what caused it, but she’s different. I feel it. The pain . . . the pain I feel inside her, it’s worse. I feel her more. I feel her pain more, and that pain . . . God, I don’t know how she lives with it.”
Lifting his lashes, he stared at Kelsey. “How long has she been like that? Has she spent every day feeling
that
empty?”
Kelsey looked at him, her pretty face unhappy. But she gave him no answer.
Dominic shoved a hand through his hair and looked away. Grabbing his duffel bag, he headed for the bathroom. “I need a shower.”
When he came out of the bathroom ten minutes later, Kelsey was gone. But the room wasn’t empty—Malachi was there.
He rubbed his damp hair with a towel as he met the older vampire’s gaze. “Where is she?”
“And good morning to you, too.” A faint smile curled Malachi’s lips.
Dominic bared his teeth. That restless energy was back, and he’d be damned if he waited around here—not even for another ten minutes, another twenty. Hell, he’d be out the door this second if he knew where to go. “You told me you would tell me where she was. Tell me.”
“Now that isn’t exactly what I told you now was it, lad?” Malachi arched a dark red brow.
Dominic snarled at him. “You damn well did. This morning—right before I passed out.”
“No. What I said was that we would discuss it when you awoke. Now you’re awake—we’ll discuss it.”
Dominic clenched his fist, and just barely managed to keep from jumping the older vampire. It didn’t matter that the guy would pound his head in. What mattered was that he was keeping him away from
her
. His voice was a low growl as he bit off, “What’s there to talk about? I just want to know where to find her.”
“Well, that’s the thing.” Malachi settled on the edge of the chair and leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. Dark red hair fell forward, shielding his face as he stared at the ground. One big pale hand curled into a fist.
Dominic wasn’t as good at reading emotions as others. He couldn’t rely on his nose, not with non-mortals. Some of his fellow Hunters could have read a vamp’s emotions the same way others read a book.
Malachi was a very closed book, but that one clenched fist gave him away.
The bottom of Dominic’s stomach fell out. His legs turned to water. For a minute he thought he just might go to his knees. In a low raspy voice, he demanded, “Tell me. Enough with the bullshit. Tell me what’s going on.”
Malachi sighed. Slowly he looked up. Through a curtain of hair, his dark blue eyes gleamed. “She’s missing, lad. She left here nearly a week ago and I wasn’t worried about that. But a few days ago she . . . well, it’s like she’s gone off our radar, so to speak, and none of us have any clue where to find her.”
“What do you mean she’s missing?”
“Just that.” Malachi leaned back in the chair, big body slumped. “She’s missing, and not a one of us know where she is.”
“You mean you can’t fucking find her? Don’t tell me none of you have any way of tracking her down. Damn it, she’s one of us. Somebody
has
to be able to find her.”
His eyes troubled, Malachi replied, “Under normal circumstances, yes, one of us should be able to sense her. I can sense Tobias almost as easily as I can sense Kelsey—I’ve worked with that old wolf for a long time. Almost as long as I had worked with Nessa. But she’s not the same woman she was—you don’t know Nessa. She’s the strongest witch we have—the oldest witch we have. She’s one of the oldest among us. And trust me—age will grant you a few tricks. Nessa knows how to use them. If she doesn’t want to be found, she will not be found. At least not by us. Going to take some tricks I just don’t know.” Now Malachi leaned back in his chair and eyed Dominic, a sly smile curling his lips. “We can’t find her. But I suspect you can.”
I suspect you can . . .
Those words circled around in Dominic’s head. Could he? Could he really?
But he didn’t even have to think it through. Yeah, he could find her. That’s why he was so fucking anxious to get out of here—something was pulling at him, drawing him toward her. Damn straight he could find her.
So what in the holy hell was he waiting for?
With that thought in mind, he turned away from Malachi and started to pack.
“I need wheels.”
“Wheels?”
Glancing over his shoulder, he said, “Yeah. Wheels. As in something to drive. I wasn’t planning on sightseeing when I left Memphis and I didn’t bring my bike with me. I don’t have a vehicle with me. I need wheels.”
Malachi lifted a brow. “Well, I imagine we can find something that will work. So . . . does that mean you’re going to try to find her?”
“I’m not going to try. I
will
find her.”
“You sound sure of it.”
Humorlessly, Dominic smiled. “What other choice do I have? This is why I’m here, don’t you think? Why I’m here, why I’m here
now
.” He shook his head. He hadn’t ever been much of one to spend a lot of time thinking about fate, or things meant to be, but he also wasn’t one to ignore something after it had been all but thrown in his face.
Fate couldn’t have been much clearer on this if it had wrapped it up in a shiny red bow.
“Before you go, perhaps we should talk a bit. There is some . . . information you should know.”
Dominic shook his head. “Whatever is it, I don’t care. I’m going after her, and I’m going after her now.” There was an urgency in his gut, one that was just now making itself known, and rather loudly.
Slanting a look at Malachi, he said, “I have to go. I have to go
now
.”
“Do you even know where you’re going?”
“No.” He had no clue. But he wasn’t going to let that stop him. He could feel
her
. Feel her pulling at him. He’d just follow.
 
“
W
ELL, that was a good night’s work.”
Morgan swallowed, her throat dry. Nausea roiled in her stomach. She wanted nothing more than to find in her stomach. She wanted nothing more than to find someplace dark and quiet so she could hide. From the rest of the world, from her sister and herself. The pain at the base of her skull was back, dancing and twisting around and around. Jagged, ugly streaks of nauseating red flashed through her line of sight, obscuring her vision.
She couldn’t believe what she had just done.
“Would you just stop your bellyaching? You did good. Bastard is out of business, you can’t say that’s a bad thing.”
Desperately, she slammed up a mental wall. She couldn’t listen to her own self-doubts, her own self-recriminations right now. She was having a hard enough time staying on her feet.
Pain throbbed inside her head. Bile began to churn its way up her throat and she swallowed reflexively, determined not to throw up.
Not here. If she started, it would be a good long time before she could stop. No. They had to get far away from here. Back to the safety of their home.
Jazzy slung an arm around her shoulders. “Why do you look so nervous? Why are you so upset?”
“Probably because I just killed somebody.”
Oh, dear God, please forgive me. What have I done?
Jazzy stared at her. “Morgan, he was a fucking pimp. He beat his girls on a regular basis. He cheated them out of their money. He ran a fucking whorehouse. Hell, a couple of the girls he had working for him aren’t any older than me. The world doesn’t need another man like him around. We did the world a favor.”
Morgan looked down. Although the blood had been washed away she could still see it. She could still feel it, the hot, wet slickness of it. She’d killed him.
She could live with that.
But she was having a hard time accepting
why
she’d killed him.
For all the wrong reasons, she knew.
The right thing . . . for the wrong reason. It was entirely possible, she knew.
Quietly, she murmured, “But we didn’t do it to do the world a favor. We did it for the blood. For the blood, and for his money.”
“You’re probably just all rattled from the high. Getting the energy fix always leaves you rattled.” Jazzy shrugged. “You’ll settle down and you’ll feel all better.”

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