Hunter's Edge

Chapter Eighteen

What If It Was Me?

Josiah swore and scrambled backward, a look of dumb amazement on his haggard face. His graying beard was kept cropped close and his long hair always pulled back away from his face. He rubbed his hands over his face, unintentionally leaving smears of his own blood on his cheek.

In his mortal life, Josiah had been a bounty hunter and it wasn't a stretch to picture the man in the Old West, chasing after wanted men and dragging them back to the hands of the law. He was rough, he was often too short-tempered, as quick to laugh as he was to fight and it wasn't easy to catch him off-guard.

Rafe was pretty sure he hadn't ever seen that look of utter surprise on his face.

"Fuck me... Tell me I didn't just see that!" Josiah muttered, shaking his head.

Charlie sent a scathing look at Josiah but it seemed more of a habit than anything. Before he'd been Changed, Charlie had been a Baptist minister in South Carolina—a bit of an oddity altogether, not just because he'd accepted his new life with a grace most people wouldn't expect coming from a man of God. A bit of a pacifist, most of the Hunters had expected the man to be dead within a year—a Hunter that advocates peace seemed like he'd be easy prey for those who didn't much buy the peace bit. Except Charlie had an intolerance for those who inflicted suffering on others—and it showed in his work.

Josiah ignored Charlie, focusing instead on Rafe, his eyes disbelieving. "I didn't just see that, did I?"

Abruptly, Sheila laughed and Rafe sent her a narrow look.

"This isn't funny, Belle. This is bad. Hell-in-a-fucking-handbasket bad."

"Oh, I don't know." Her laugh faded, but the smile on her face didn't. "Rafe, sweetie, a baby vamp just dematerialized right in front of us. He's only been a vamp for what...twelve years? I've been doing this three times as long as he has and I can't dematerialize. You have been a vampire for more than a hundred years, and you can't do it. And then poor Kel—everybody feels sorry for him, none of you trust him any farther than you can throw him..." She broke off, winced. "Okay, you can throw farther than you can trust. Kel, a vamp twelve years—and he dematerialized. He's not a Master, he can't do that very cool mist thing and he doesn't feed enough to keep an anorexic teen alive—and he just dematerialized."

Through gritted teeth, Rafe said, "I know what he just did, Sheila. I also know this is beyond bad news."

A sad smile curled her lips. "I don't think you're giving Kel much credit at all. I don't see him hurting her."

"As a decent guy, I give him plenty of credit. But his control? It sucks," Rafe said, his voice flat.

Sheila lifted her gaze and glanced at the mass of bodies crowding the hall. She said nothing, but as one, they all withdrew until only Rafe, Sheila and his lieutenants remained. She ignored Dominic and Toronto, coming forward until she was close enough to reach out and cup Rafe's face. "Rafe...what if it was me?"

A muscle jerked in his jaw and the immediate blast of instinctive, protective rage had him reaching for her, dragging her soft body against his. "You think I haven't thought of it that way? You think I don't realize this is killing him? But he's got too little control for this, Belle. You know that."

"Actually, no, I don't." She slipped her arms around his waist, lifting her face to his. "What I know is that he's pissed off, he's hurt—I know it's because of her. I know he hasn't allowed himself to go back there even just to see her one last time, because he doesn't trust himself. But that's caution, Rafe. That is control. More, it's love. He won't hurt her."