Hunter's Edge

Chapter Seven

The Change

Age 31

Kel shoved his arms into a worn-out blue jean jacket and his feet into a pair of worn tennis shoes. Hunger gnawed at his stomach like a vicious beast and his gums ached, throbbed. Automatically, he ran his tongue over them, pressed it against one of the narrow notch depressions just behind his regular teeth. His fangs throbbed and burned, ready to push down, to sink into some soft neck and feel the sweet fire of blood as it flowed down his throat.

"Easier said than done," he muttered, shoving tumbled brown hair out of his eyes.

"You need to go feed, damn it. Why do you have to fight it so hard?"

He could see Sheila's pretty blue eyes, see the worry there, the sympathy. He hated her. Hated those soft blue eyes, her long blonde hair—she reminded him too much of Angel. Even after twelve years, he couldn't see a blue-eyed blonde without thinking of Angel. He'd loved her—still did.

And he'd lost her. He couldn't ever have her back.

Again, his hunger screamed at him and he heard the nagging echo of Sheila's voice from the past day. Go feed, Kel. Feed. Go feed off some woman who'd get all soft and needy, who'd press her body to his, who'd rub against him. His body wouldn't listen to him—it would respond, and he'd want.

If he was weak at the time, or especially lonely, he'd give in. Then after it passed, once the hunger was sated and his body was satisfied, he'd be miserable.

Would be easier to go on like this if he could just get Angel out of his head. He knew she was out of his reach now, but he couldn't quit thinking about her. Couldn't quit dreaming about her. Couldn't quit wanting her.

It would be impossible, considering that weird connection between them had become ten times stronger than it had been back before he'd been Changed. Before that, Kel's psychic abilities had been nil. It had all been on Angel's side, her natural gifts had formed a bond between them and their feelings for each other had augmented that bond, letting them feel each other, sense other.

It had been that bond with her, Kel suspected, that had kept the feral who had Changed him from working his vamp mojo on Kel. Even now, twelve years later, he remembered the innate urge he'd had to leave when the feral had suggested just that.

Kel was stubborn, always had been, but it hadn't been his stubbornness that enabled him to resist. The strength had been born from their bond, a bond that wouldn't have existed without Angel's psychic abilities.

But vampirism was a weird thing. It created a mind-reading ability. While it wasn't exactly psychic abilities, it made a vamp able to sense a person's thoughts. Usually just prey, whether a woman's secret fantasies would make her that much easier to seduce, to fuck and feed, or the fear of those who preyed on others.

"It's a Hunter's calling," Kel had been told. Told time and again, but he didn't have any desire to be a Hunter, to be some altruistic defender of the innocent. Part of him knew it was because he blamed them. Blamed people like Rafe and Sheila, not only because they'd failed to save him and not even for the failure to save Angel.

No. He blamed them for saving him. Now he was stuck in what looked to be one long-ass life, a life where he was able to feel, hear, dream about Angel, but never to touch her again. Never to see her.

A life where she'd grow old and die—without him.

She was still the only woman he'd ever loved, and the time that stretched out between them didn't change that. Neither did the fact that she wasn't even aware he was alive.