Hunter's Edge

Chapter Eleven

 I don't count birthdays

The cool air drifting through the open window dried the sweat on his body. It wasn't his—but Phoebe's. Vampires didn't sweat. They also didn't get cold too easily. They never got hot. He did like the warm feel of Phoebe's small, delicate form plastered up against his cooler body.

"Happy Birthday," she whispered, her voice soft, drowsy.

A faint smile curled his lips. "I don't count birthdays any more," he reminded her. He'd told her that the first time she'd asked him about his birthday, and the second, and the third...and when she'd finally snooped in his wallet and found the fake ID he carried, she'd asked him if that was his real birthday.

Pretty much every Hunter had a fake ID. They came in handy. They tried to keep the facts as close to their own personal data as they could, and when somebody at the enclave had gotten the fake ID for Kel, they'd used his birth date...minus ten years. There was no way he could pass for somebody in his thirties. He'd be lucky to pass for twenty-five.

"It's the day I was born, but I don't celebrate birthdays," he'd told her. Birthdays were for the living...not dead men walking. And no matter what Phoebe said, that was how he saw himself.

It didn't have so much to do with the vampire crap, legends of the undead or any of that shit. At least not as much any more. He just felt dead inside. He didn't look forward to the beginning of a new day, or the end of one. He didn't look forward to feeding, he didn't look forward to sex, he didn't look forward to life.

He didn't have a life.

Unless he was on the Hunt, speeding down the highway on his bike, or tearing up the sheets—literally—with Phoebe, he felt dead inside.

It wasn't really even Phoebe who made him feel alive, either, and she probably knew it. It was the way they pushed each other, hovering just on the edge of sheer madness, the way they used pain to bring that false sense of life.

After nearly a year of this, Kel had managed to stop feeling so guilty every time he gave in and came to her. She'd become his regular feeding companion, or as much as he'd let himself have one, although he still never came over more than once a month. More often than not, he had to force himself to do it even then, although once he got here and she put her hot little hands on his body, urging him on, he did grow a bit more enthusiastic.

Kel was still young enough as a vamp that he needed to feed once or twice a week if he wanted to keep the hunger under control, but those feeds were quick and anonymous. Finding a lonely woman in a bar, buying her a few drinks, having a few dances and then coaxing her into the shadows. One thing about Phoebe was that time he spent with her was enough to keep his sex drive under control.

Under control so that he no longer feared feeding as much because he knew his need for sex wouldn't get the better of him. He wouldn't close his eyes and pretend he was making love to Angel, and then drown in the instinctive surge of guilt once he'd satisfied himself, guilt over making love to a woman who wasn't Angel, guilt over using some anonymous woman and pretending she was somebody else.

They never remembered him come morning. A vampire's bite healed quickly thanks to the enzymes in their saliva. Although the bite itself wasn't gone in the blink of an eye, it healed quicker than wounds generally did and a lightly placed compulsion kept the woman from even thinking about the bite, had her hiding it without understanding why until even the faintest mark was gone. Generally, it just took a few days.

No harm. No foul. They didn't get used for anything other than a few sips of blood they'd never miss, and he didn't walk away from it feeling like a man betraying his wedding vows.