Hunter's Edge

Chapter Ten

Still dreamed of him.

Still cried for him.

Still hurt for him.

Because she loved him so much, she knew she couldn't walk away from his father. For as long as Jake needed her, she'd be around. Kel wasn't there to take care of his dad, but Angel was. So she would.

Driving him to the store, to the doctor's office, helping him with his physical therapy, transcribing his dictated notes onto the computer. Whether or not Jake would ever try to publish the long, rather sad story of his life, she didn't know.

But telling it was therapeutic for him. She knew that.

She just wished it was as therapeutic for her, plunking out details about Kel's life, from his birth to a death that came way too early. Pair that with the fact that Jake still had hopes that Kel was alive, that he'd come back—shit, it hurt.

Rufus whined and nosed her leg again. Sighing, Angel muttered, "Yeah, I know." Shoving out of the bed, she shuffled to the bathroom.

It wasn't even seven in the morning, way too early for her to want to be awake. But if she stayed in bed too long, she'd never make it to Jake's before the old man decided to try his hand at making breakfast again.

She shuddered, recalling the last attempt. Since the stroke, Jake had a problem with short-term memory. He would start breakfast and then wander off. It wasn't until the bacon would burn, the biscuits turned to charcoal and every smoke detector in the house was going off that he'd remember he'd left the oven on.

The last time it had happened, she'd walked into the kitchen with Rufus just as a grease fire was starting. Thinking about how close Jake had come to setting his home on fire, Angel had made the decision to start taking care of breakfast, as well as lunch and dinner.

Sundays tended to be her only days off. God love them, the women's committee at Jake's old congregation had settled into a routine where one of them would come for Jake in the morning for breakfast and then church, followed by lunch and usually dinner.

You should come with us sometime, Angel. It would do you a world of good.

No, thanks.

Angel believed in God, but she completely lacked Jake's steadfast patience. After losing her dad, then Kel...then Meredith, watching as Jake grew old, sick and feeble, Angel decided she was too pissed off at God to consider stepping foot inside a church.

Not to mention that half of the women there had some freaky idea of trying to pair Angel up with the young preacher who had taken over Jake's position. Seth Roberts was a nice guy, pretty nice to look at, but he left her cold.

Every man did.

With a flick of her wrist, she turned on the shower. As steam started to billow out, she stripped out of the T-shirt and panties she slept in. She climbed into the shower and lifted her face to the spray, let the water sluice over her and wash away the cobwebs.

Cold. That pretty much described how she felt damn near all the time. The only time she felt warmth was in dreams she couldn't quite remember. Even now, with the hot pulse of water beating down on her, she was chilled.

What she wouldn't give to feel warm and safe again. It was a comfort that had been denied to her since awaking in the hospital to find Kel's parents at her bedside, watching her with tearful, hopeful eyes.

She'd dashed those hopes when she told them she didn't know what happened, that she couldn't remember the attack, or anything about Kel. She couldn't explain the blood loss, she couldn't explain her bruises.

Her attack was another mystery because she'd been admitted to the hospital for massive blood loss, treated for blood loss—responded to that treatment—but there'd been hardly a mark on her. A couple of punctures at her neck, but nowhere near the jugular and certainly not deep enough to explain the blood loss.

She didn't have any answers about her attack or about what had happened to Kel.

He'd tried to save her. She didn't need the memory to know that. He'd tried to save her from...something...whatever or whoever had attacked her and it had gotten him.

Because of her, he was dead. Cold, lonely misery was the least she deserved.

Slumping against the shower wall, she wrapped her arms around her body and started to rock. "Kel..." Sinking down to the floor, she huddled there and whispered his name again.

Images that she couldn't quite make sense of flashed before her eyes. Someplace dark, the pulse of music throbbing, a woman's face—

Blood.

Her mouth watered and for a few moments, the bathroom faded away and she was someplace dark. Some place warm. The taste of blood filled her mouth...

Outside the shower door, Rufus barked.

Jerking herself back into awareness, Angel shoved to her feet and hurriedly washed her hair, her body. The spray of water went cold before she finished but it didn't matter. She was already so chilled it wouldn't make a difference.

Nobody knew the bizarre hallucinations that had plagued her after Kel's death had never completely gone away. Back in the black days that separated her old life from the life she lived now, those dark, awful days plagued by inhuman urges and hungers, the hallucinations had seem too vivid to not be real.

Now they weren't so strong, but the fascination was still there. She'd wake in the night to the sound of her own heartbeat, or at least it seemed that way, so painfully aware of the sound. She could be walking through a store and realize she was staring at the throats of the people around her, thinking about the rhythm of their pulse, the warmth of flesh.

Mindful of how hypnotic those unwanted thoughts were, Angel had taken to wearing a thick rubber band around one wrist. When she realized she was daydreaming about blood, almost running through the woods, chasing after some unknown prey, she'd snap the rubber band. That small, sharp pain helped her clear her head, helped her focus.

There were days when she'd have red welts on her wrist from it.

It had been really bad the past few days. Seriously bad. Even the sight of somebody's throat was enough to have her mouth watering. She'd promised herself last night if it got worse, she was going to make an appointment. She'd stopped going to therapy years ago, but when she found herself this close...

Oddly enough, though, this morning, it was better.

Easier.

Her mind seemed more like her own as she stepped out of the shower and went to inspect her pale, wan face. Her eyes were puffy from her crying jag, but that was nothing new. Sometimes she could go days without crying.

But then others...

Time heals all wounds.

"Not in my book," she muttered. Time hadn't healed her.

She'd never quite managed to get her appetite back after Kel had disappeared and she was still reed-thin, too thin. The ache in her heart hadn't ever gotten easier to handle and even the years she'd spent taking antidepressants hadn't helped.

It was like she just wasn't capable of letting go.

And after twelve years, she didn't expect that to change.