Hunter's Salvation (20 page)

“You have nothing to say?”

She glanced over her shoulder at him as she opened the closet. “What do you want me to say? Yeah, somebody came to me about this physician. Yeah, I went and spoke with him. Yeah, I know about the tests he's running and I know that this has opened a can of worms that we probably shouldn't mess with. But the can is already open, and at least with Radley, we know what he's doing. He's a good man, Mal. He keeps us updated—”

“Us.” His tone was silky, and saner people would probably have run for cover. His dark blue eyes glinted hard and cold.

Kelsey pursed her lips and studied him. What was he so miffed about? “Tobias and me.” She tugged a cream-colored Aran sweater off the shelf and pulled it on, snuggling into it. Didn't completely eliminate the chill, but it helped a little. Absently, she freed her braid and combed through it with her fingers. “You see, when Radley asked to speak with the Council,
you
weren't around. I tried several times to get in touch with you—you might remember. I sent the message out with, oh, two or three different Hunters, and they were told to
fuck off, sod off,
or
stay the bloody hell away
.” She deepened her voice and managed a fairly decent imitation of a Scottish burr, lowering her brows over her eyes and doing her best to look aloof, angry, and arrogant.

But nobody did aloof, angry, and arrogant quite as well as Malachi did. He stomped over and grabbed her by the front of her thick sweater and jerked her up onto her toes. “Then he isn't keeping
us
informed at all, is he, wife?”

“Don't tell me that you have your boxers in a twist because you didn't know about this,” she said. She tried to arch away from him, but he just pulled her closer. “You're impossible!”

“I head the Council, Kelsey. You'd best remember that.”

Okay, now she was getting pissed. “If you don't want me to ram your balls into your throat, you're going to put me down.
Right
now.”

It wasn't an empty threat. She really would do it. But before she could, he turned them both around, bracing Kelsey against the wall and leaning into her. “I've more pleasant things in mind for that part of my anatomy, pet. But not until this is settled.”

Anger nearly melted away, but she was just a little too annoyed to give up on it so easily. Even if lust was settling in her belly, hot and liquid. She wanted to curl up against him, but at the same time she was mad enough to punch him in that straight, perfect nose.

Instead Kelsey stiffened her body. She couldn't push him, so she didn't bother. She settled on keeping her body as unyielding as a board while she glared at him. “Why don't you tell me what your problem with this is?”

“My
problem
? Bloody hell, is it so hard to understand? This man, this doctor, threatens all of us, yet you and Tobias made this decision to allow him to do this?” He looked down, staring at his hand, at the sweater bunched up inside his fist.

He looked as if he had forgotten how it came to be there, how he had her sweater clutched in his fist. Slowly, he uncurled his hand, and Kelsey felt the tension relax. Malachi backed away from her and turned away, scrubbing his hands over his face. “I'm sorry,” he said quietly.

He sighed and shook his head. Softly, he said, “It's just…Kelsey, do you understand how dangerous this is?”

“Yes.”

Malachi turned to look at her. “How can you possibly understand it, but
allow
it?” His expression was incredulous.

“I couldn't stop it. There is no ‘allowing' about it. Radley came to us. He didn't have to. That right there proved to me that I could trust him.” She shoved a hand through her hair. It tangled in the thick curls and she jerked lightly, concentrating on the slight pain instead of on her frustration. It didn't help. It didn't clear her mind at all. Kelsey turned to look at Malachi, her voice pleading with him to understand. “Mal, even if we did attempt to keep him from his research, somebody else simply would have explored those same areas. And we might not have known about them.”

Mal muttered something under his breath, something too low for her to hear. He stared out the window, but Kelsey suspected he wasn't seeing the mountains or the evening sky as it slowly changed from day to night. “Has he attempted this unmaking yet?”

“No. He isn't convinced it's safe. He won't try anything until he's certain it won't harm his patients.”

“And how does he plan to find these patients? I cannot see him taking out an ad in the newspaper.” His voice was flat, almost bored, but she wasn't convinced that the storm had passed. He was too unpredictable, even for her.

Still, the thought of a classified made Kelsey smile a little.
Looking for witches to participate in a dangerous, risky experiment that may or may not work. Could be deadly. Side effects unknown. Outcome questionable. Please respond to [email protected].

Oh, yeah. She could see it. Still smiling, Kelsey looked up at Mal and shook her head. “No. That wouldn't be the best way. But at least he isn't going to grab unsuspecting witches off the streets. He plans on asking for volunteers.”

“Volunteers?”
Malachi turned his head, staring at her.

He simply couldn't comprehend it.

Poor guy. He was getting surprise after surprise today—the man who usually couldn't be surprised. “Yeah. Volunteers.”

“But what sane person would agree to this?” Malachi shook his head and turned away, staring again out the window.

He truly didn't understand it. Kelsey sighed and ran her hands over her hair, then curled them at the nape of her neck. “One who was miserable. Damn it, Mal. Look at Nessa. She lived five centuries.
Alone.
Completely alone. In love with a man that died when she was hardly more than a child. Do you think she lived all that time without once wishing that she had been normal? Free to live out her life as she chose, to die when she should? Even when her body finally let go, her power wouldn't let her. She's stuck here…again. In a young body, with all that power.”

“Do you know how many people live because of Agnes Milcher?”

Sadness swamped Kelsey. “Hundreds. Maybe thousands. I can't imagine how many people she's saved. But she lost herself. She's been lost for five hundred years, and just when she had a chance of being at peace, that magick of hers yanked her back. Back into this life, back into this battle.”

“This is the path that was chosen for her,” Malachi said. He shook his head. His eyes were haunted. “I know it has been a hard one, but she is needed.”

“She
was
needed. She should have been done.” Moving over, Kelsey slipped her arms around his waist and rested her cheek on his chest. “Nessa doesn't have her soul mate waiting at the end of this road for her. She already had him and lost him. Can you imagine how much she much she is hurting? Haven't you ever wished you hadn't been chosen for this life?”

“No.” He reached up, cupping his hand over the back of her neck.

“Not once?” Kelsey leaned back so she could see his face. She traced her fingers over his back. She couldn't feel the scars through the thermal cotton weave of his shirt, but she knew they were there. She knew how each mark looked, couldn't even begin to imagine the pain he had felt when those scars were still fresh. That had been two thousand years ago, give or take a few centuries. He spoke very little of his early life, but Kelsey knew he'd been a Roman slave before he had been Changed. He had landed in Scotland probably in the second or third century, although he didn't know exactly when.

Before he had been Changed, Malachi's life had been hell.

After he'd been Changed, his life had been empty.

“Two thousand years, and you've never once wished you'd been born the son of a Roman merchant? Grown up to become a soldier?”

“Not once.” His fingers threaded into her hair and fisted there. His dark blue eyes stared into hers as he murmured, “Not for even one day. Not for even one second. Because every second, every day was just that much closer to you. Everything I have done has brought me here. Brought me to you. For you, I would have gone through a thousand years of slavery, ten millennia of solitude. If I had you waiting for me at the end of it all, it would have been worth it.”

Kelsey felt her heart melt. She felt all gooey and syrupy inside, and when he lowered his face towards hers, she pushed up onto her toes and met him halfway. Their lips met, a slow, gentle kiss. When he pulled away, Kelsey wouldn't have been surprised if her legs had given out and she ended up in an ooey, gooey puddle right in front of his size-thirteens.

“Not one day,” he repeated. “There is much in this life that has confused me, much that has left me angry, empty, even cold with terror and fear. But one thing I do know—all my life, everything I have ever done has led me to you. Undoing what I am would have broken that path. I might never have found you.”

 

T
HE
minute Dena had been taken off their hands, Vax had told Jess to get her stuff together. That took less than a minute.

Driving to the chain hotel off the I-64 near Evansville, Indiana, took nearly forty-five minutes. Jess dozed most of the drive, but when the car stopped right in front of the hotel, she had came awake. Seeing the hotel was like catching a glimpse of paradise.

A bathtub. A comfortable bed, not a cot.
Coffee
…It was past midnight, and the courtesy pot in the lobby was probably a few hours old, but she didn't care. She saw Vax looking at her with a faint grin on his face. So what if she had an addiction to coffee that was a little extreme.

Okay, maybe a lot extreme. One sip of the stale coffee cleared some of the cobwebs in her head, and the pounding inside her skull receded a little. After two more sips, she thought that maybe she'd be able to carry on a coherent conversation. Which was good. She needed to talk to Vax.

They checked into two adjoining rooms and the first thing she did was brew some fresh coffee. The second thing was taking the coffee into the bathroom where she stripped naked and climbed into the shower, coffee still in hand.

Ten minutes later, she felt a little more human. Clean clothes would have helped even more. She wore the same clothes she had put on that morning after her shower at the truck stop. One thing was certain: Tomorrow they were going to have to go someplace where she could grab a few changes of clothes.

Resisting the urge to look in the mirror, Jess walked over to the door that connected her room to Vax's. When it opened, Jess decided she might have to reevaluate the part about having a coherent conversation. Or even a coherent thought.

Vax stood there bare-chested, one hand resting on the doorknob. The light landed on his warm golden skin with a soft glow. Muscles rippled as he reached up and rested his other hand on the doorjamb. His thundercloud gaze dropped, lingering on her mouth before he met her eyes.

She shifted from one foot to the other, trying to remember why she had knocked. She had wanted to talk to him, right?

“Something wrong with the room?” he asked as she continued just to stand there.

Numb, she shook her head. “Ah, no. The room's fine. A Dumpster would probably be an improvement over that cabin.” Vax reached up to scratch his chest, and Jess found herself staring at it. The skin under his hand was smooth and hairless, a warm, perfect shade of gold.

The black strip of rawhide around his neck had a small black stone hanging from it. A hole had been drilled through the flattened end, and he'd threaded the rawhide through so that he could wear it.

“Did you need something?”

Jess tried once more to remember why she'd wanted to talk to him. “Um, yes?” It sounded more like a question than like an answer.

As he sighed, his chest lifted and fell. “Maybe you should have drunk a little more coffee. You aren't making much sense.” Then he stepped aside and said, “Come on in, if you want.”

She did, still trying to remember what she had wanted to talk about. Talking was so not what she had in mind now.

He'd taken a shower, too. His room was the reverse of hers, the door to the bathroom on the right instead of the left, and she could still smell the scent of the hotel soap lingering in the air.

He had pulled his hair back from his face, and it was secured in a queue at the nape of his neck. Jess wanted to pull it loose. She wanted to comb her fingers through his hair, pull his mouth down to hers, and kiss him. Damn, but she wanted to feel his mouth on hers.

Wanted to feel his body on hers. She could all but see it, lying on that bed, his big body crushing her into the mattress, rubbing against her…. Jess spun away and wiped a hand across her mouth. She wasn't drooling. Yet.

Taking a deep breath, Jess tried to find something else to think about besides him. Not so easy. Like most hotel rooms, this one had that bland, sterile décor, uninspired prints on the wall, a blue and yellow patterned quilt on the bed.