Hunter's Rise (43 page)

She opened her mouth to argue, but his words echoed in her mind.
I’m gone… gone… gone—

Swallowing, she closed her eyes and covered her face with her hands. This… this wasn’t happening. “What… what happened?” She lowered her hands to stare at him as the ache in her chest spread.

“What do you mean, what happened?” He flipped the
meat onto a piece of bread and added another slice of bologna to the skillet. But just as it started to sizzle, a weird look came over his face.

“I mean
what happened
,” she snarled.

“I…” He turned around, scratching at his bare chest. Then he shook his head. “I’ve got to go, Syl.”

He padded toward her, a sad smile on his face. As he paused at her side, she thought she could almost smell him, and she thought maybe, she could almost touch him. But when she reached out, her hand passed right through him. “Take care of yourself, sweetheart.”

From one blink to the next, he was gone.

W

ITH
a scowl, Toronto swung himself out of the small bunk he had tucked in a small room in the main house.

The dream about Sylvia clouded his mind. It wasn’t the first one he’d had, but it felt different. He’d like to sit around and analyze it, think it through… brood… but he didn’t have that luxury.

The bite of anger was in the air.

The entire fucking reason he was here.

There wasn’t a clock in his room— there was barely room for a damn bed, but this was the only place for him. He grabbed his phone and checked the time. Past midnight. Shit. He was fucking
pissed
.

It was after midnight, he’d already been asleep, and there was no reason for anybody to be at the house, all chewed up with rage. It was there— the stink of it clouding the air even from here. And unless Toronto was way off base, he smelled booze. A lot of it. Which was exactly what it would take to get a shifter drunk— a lot of it. Hard, and fast, in copious amounts.

Slipping out of the room, he made his way down the hall, listening to the voices.

“You don’t fucking
belong
here.”

“Graham, it’s late. You should go back home, back to your wife.” Matt was in the office where his dad had
conducted most of his business, and although he was hiding it, it was hard for the kid to be in there.

Poor guy, forced to be a man too early.

It wasn’t going to get any easier for him any time soon.

He made himself stop in the doorway. Matt had to handle this. It didn’t matter that the kid was only sixteen. It didn’t matter that the other guy outweighed him, outreached him.

Matt was the stronger wolf and if he wanted to hold his place, he had to prove he
could
.

Toronto couldn’t do that for him.

But he could damn well make sure the buffoon in front of him knew he was being watched.

It took him a few seconds to realize it, the knowledge having to work its way past the fog of alcohol and the haze of stupidity the guy wore like a shield. He half fell as he turned to glare at Toronto, eyes flashing with rage, glowing despite all the alcohol he had in his system.

Alcohol still depressed the body— it should make it harder to shift. Higher level shifters and weres could always find a way, though.

Great, so the kid had a stupid fuck with enough juice in him to make it interesting. And Toronto couldn’t do jack but watch.

“What are you doing, you fucking moron?” The man glared at Toronto. “This ain’t none of your concern, you mongrel dog. You shouldn’t even be here.”

Toronto bared his teeth. “If the kid had a halfway decent right-hand man, I wouldn’t have to be. Don’t worry, I’m just here to watch.”

“There’s nothing to watch.” Matt gave both of them an equally derisive look, still slumped in the big leather chair behind the massive sprawl of oak that had been his father’s desk.

He looked too small behind it, too young, Toronto thought. Another thing they had to work on.

“Graham, you need to go home,” Matt said. “It’s late, I’m tired and there’s nothing…”

The sound of ripping cloth was a loud echo in the room. Too loud. Toronto shifted his gaze to the boy.

Matt was already on his feet. “I’m not fighting you in here.”

Then you better move your ass outside
, Toronto mused. The drunk idiot wanted to fight, and he wasn’t going to leave until he tasted blood. Toronto wouldn’t have minded giving it to him, but he was here to help the kid
find
control, and
get
control.

Not
take
control.

Hard-ass job.

I

T
only took Matt a few minutes. As he straightened up over Graham’s prone body, the fur melting away into his skin, he had a look of molten fury on his face, one that whispered of madness lurking too close.

As he went to kick the still form, Toronto moved.

He caught the boy’s arm and said, “It’s done. He’s had enough.”

“He fucking challenged me— in the middle of the night.
Drunk.
I say when it’s done,” Matt snarled.

Toronto dropped his voice. “Look around. You’re not alone. You want to be known for beating an unconscious follower?”

Matt trembled under Toronto’s hand and he could feel the violence spurring inside him. Feel it burning through the kid. Toronto could understand that, but Matt couldn’t lose it like this. For every step forward he took, he either fell backwards ten or was pushed twenty.

It had to stop.

And Toronto was damned well going to see it happen soon.

“Look at them,” he said again. “What do you want them to remember about tonight— that somebody challenged you and you
won
? Or that you were beating an unconscious man?”

S

HE’D
just left Toronto’s empty house— and she meant
empty
. There was nobody there, and more than that… his clothes had been gone, the few weapons she’d noticed the
one time she’d been there. Maybe she shouldn’t have looked, but Rafe’s words had left a hollow feeling in her gut— an empty ache that just kept spreading and spreading until it felt like it was going to swallow her whole.

He’s not with us anymore…

What in the hell did that mean, anyway? She could have called back. Demanded the information on the phone. But she wasn’t going to have them stonewall her. Have them handing her empty answers, giving her the runaround or any of that.

Hoping against hope, she’d come here first. It had been a mistake, because she now had the image of his empty closet in the back of her mind, the empty dresser. And the weapons chest, that was gone, too.

With that knowledge adding to the ache in her chest, she blinked away the tears that tried to turn her field of vision red. She didn’t have time for this. She had a Master vampire to deal with, and a Master werewolf to find.

He’d be there. That was the only way she managed to make the drive, by convincing herself he would be there, or that she’d find out where he was.

Yet in the back of her mind, she kept hearing,
He’s not with us anymore
.

As she drew closer to the Enclave, she realized she’d picked up a tail. Several of them, actually. A couple running on four feet. Some just watching from the shadows. Fear tried to well inside her, but she shoved it aside. She wasn’t breaking any laws being here— nothing to be afraid of.

Nothing.

Yet when she felt the buzz over her skin as she crossed over the official line of Rafe’s territory, she had to yank herself under control. She wasn’t going to walk in there stinking of fear, damn it. She had no reason.

She wasn’t one of
them
, damn it.

But she wasn’t one of the monsters, either—

Whoa.

That was… unexpected.

I’m not one of the monsters
…

The road abruptly curved and she came around the corner, still wrestling with the knowledge reverberating through her
brain; she didn’t notice the house until she was almost on top of it. What caught her attention first was them. All of them.

That was when she noticed the house. Because there were even a couple of people up on the roof.

Oookay
…

Slowing her bike to a halt, she met the dark gaze of the vampire who had to be the Master. Nobody else here quite carried the punch he did. He wasn’t as strong as some she’d met and she suspected he wasn’t too much older than she was, but he carried some serious power in him.

And he could kill her in an instant. She knew that before she’d even managed to turn the bike off.

“Hello, Ms. James.”

She remained on her bike. “Everybody seems to know who I am. I don’t much care for that.”

“Sorry.” He smiled, his teeth a bright flash in the dark. “What can I say… your reputation has just… preceded you.”

Eyeing him narrowly, she tried to figure out how to respond to that. Then she decided not to bother. She didn’t give a damn about her reputation. Swallowing around the knot in her throat, she asked, “I’d like to speak with Toronto.”

Around them, people shifted, looked to Rafe, then to her. Then away.

“I already told you… he’s not with us any longer.”

Her heart shattered. It was like that organ had just been turned into glass, and then smashed with a hammer. Pain splintered through her and she wanted to scream, wanted to rail, wanted to cry—

Yet she just stared at him. Rafe held her gaze levelly, unflinchingly. He wasn’t lying. And she didn’t catch any hint of that scent…

No
—

Convulsively, her hands gripped the handlebars of her bike while she fought for control.
Gone
. He was
gone
—

She started her bike. Fuck. She had to get out of there.
Now.
Before she lost it. Finding out what happened could come later and if whoever killed him was still breathing, they wouldn’t be
for much longer. It might take a bomb to do the bastard in, if Toronto hadn’t been able to handle it, but still.

Shit. This wasn’t happening.

A hand touched her shoulder.

Snarling, she shrugged it off.

When that didn’t work, she whipped her head around and said, “Get the fuck—”

Angel’s blue gaze met hers. “Rafe’s an idiot sometimes… Sylvia, Toronto isn’t
dead
.”

C
HAPTER 26

A

NOTHER
day.

Another dipshit.

“I just don’t understand how much longer
he
has to be here.”

Matt sat behind his desk. Still that solid, heavy oak that had been his father’s. Toronto had asked him the other day to consider getting a new one. They could use the old desk in the library, if Matt couldn’t part with it.

Matt didn’t seem to see the point.

Telling him it made him look that much more like a boy trying to fill a man’s shoes hadn’t exactly made the kid like him more.

Still, as Matt faced yet another one of the adults from the broken pack, there was a little less antipathy in his gaze. It had been almost a week since the last fight, the one involving a drunken fool.

It wasn’t much, but after more than two months, Toronto was ready for any sign of improvement.

“He’ll be here for as long as we need him here,” Matt said, looking bored as he hunched over a laptop. The
spreadsheet held the information on the pack’s finances. Toronto had been helping him get things back under control after they’d been left to float for just a little too long. They weren’t in bad shape, but they weren’t exactly ready to dance on the mountainside, either.