Page 14 of Bird on a Blade (Hunter’s Heart #1)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SAWYER
I t takes me five strokes before hot cum spills over my fingers, my body shuddering. I groan and slide my other hand out of my mouth, where I lapped up the last of Edie’s taste, and lean back in the seat of my truck. My church waits for me on the other side of the windshield.
It was torture driving away from the old campgrounds, her scent wafting around me, filling up the truck cab. I had half a mind to pull over to the side of the road, but I made it home even if I didn’t bother to get out of the truck first.
I wipe the cum off my fingers using a handful of old fast food napkins that had been in the dashboard when I bought the truck, then step out into the cool forest air. I’m still buzzing from touching her again, especially since I hadn’t expected to even see her at all. When she came running out of that cabin, her dress streaming out behind her like a flag, my heart nearly erupted out of my chest. I wasn’t ready.
She wanted you .
I hear it in Mama’s voice, her whiskeyed Texas drawl. My brain fills in the rest of what Mama would say: If I want to fuck her, I should fuck her, and then kill her so she doesn’t start causing me problems. You can’t be soft with these girls. You aren’t like them, Sawyer. Neither of us are .
I stalk over to my church, thoughts drumming. It’s been too long since I killed someone, that’s the real problem. Both of the heads from my earlier kill are still up in the tree, the flesh soft and rotting. I need to add more to my collection. The more bones I have, the quieter the urge’ll be, and then I can fuck my perfect prey without worrying that’ll be the end of her.
I go into the church, the door slamming shut behind me. The mask I bought is propped up on the old altar, glaring at me as I walk down the aisle. I swipe it off and go back outside, blood pumping furiously through my veins. Then I sniff the air.
It’s the usual scents: The forest. Edie. Faint whispers of other humans, hikers or campers making their way through some distant part of the woods. I’ll find one of them. It doesn’t matter who.
I just need a kill. I just need to feel the hot blood gush over my hands. Then she’ll be safe, my Edie. Then I can touch her the way I want.
Still, it takes me the better part of an hour to find my victim. A hitchhiker, grimy from travel, a threadbare backpack on his thin shoulders. I catch his scent as I wind down the mountain, wafting off the highway where he’s trudging along the side of the road. As soon as I see him, my vision goes red, and I get this hot surge of lust that isn’t exactly like when I see Edie, although it’s close. In the same neighborhood, as they say.
Killing him is easy. He doesn’t know I’m there, doesn’t see me coming. It’s not like the last kill, where I had a reason for it beyond my own raging hunger, and I do it pretty quick, stabbing him in the side so I can drag him behind the tree line, where I open his throat and let the blood run hot over my hands. I like the way it looks, the blood all red and glossy, and I have this fantasy about touching Edie with my bloody hands, leaving streaks of crimson across her pale belly .
It’s a nice thought, and it doesn’t send a hot fire raging through me, neither, so the killing really did help. Left me satiated, you know. I leave the hitchhiker where I killed him except for the head and one of the hands. Trophies for my collection.
It’s nice to have my head clear for the first time in a week. I take the long way home so I can pass by the old campgrounds, although I stay deep in the trees and shadows while I watch the house. Edie closed everything up, the windows and the front door. I don’t know if it’s because of me or because it’s late in the day and the temperature’s dropping. It is colder than when I set out, but I hardly noticed it from all the exertion.
The next day, I tell myself I’m going to work on my bones and my church. Now that I’m calmer, and she’s let me finger her sweet pussy on two separate occasions, it ought to be time to ask Edie if she wants to fuck. I don’t think she’ll say no. But I’m still hesitant about it. Someone like her, someone I’ve dreamt of for so long, I don’t know what it’s going to do to my brain the second I’m inside her. What if fucking her with my cock isn’t enough? What if I need to sink my knife into her smooth, soft flesh, over and over, while I draw in her last gasping breaths?
I can’t fucking stand the thought, even if at the same time it makes me rock hard.
So I focus on my first task of the day: stripping the meat off my victim’s head and hand as best I can. It’s too late in the season for the bugs and heat to do the work. I might have to bury everything, at least until the frost settles, so I work on tilling up a bone garden just outside the entrance of the church. The air’s cool but the sun’s out, and it bears down on me, slicking my skin with sweat.
When I’ve buried my bones, I move on to repairing another window in the church, stripping out the old sealing and replacing it with some new strips of rubber I picked up at the hardware store in Altarida. By the time I finish that, it’s noon, and my stomach is growling and my muscles are aching from all the hard work I’ve done.
I also successfully distracted myself from the thousands of things I want to do to my perfect prey.
I go inside and take a long shower, washing away the grime. Then I start fixing up my lunch.
That’s when I notice it. A change on the air.
Hunters.
I smell two of ‘em, the coppery blood scent that always marks another of my kind. I take my sandwich and cold beer outside to get a better handle on the situation. They’re close, from the scent of it, but they’d been downwind when I was out working, coming up from the south. North Carolina, probably.
I eat standing up, squinting out at the forest. If it’s who I think it is, they’ll be coming here. But if they don’t come here, then it’s not who I think, and we’ll have a problem.
Especially if they’re here for Edie.
Is her ex-husband rich enough to hire Hunters to track her down? I know some of us sell our services, even if I personally find the thought repugnant. I doubt he’s a Hunter himself, from what she said. Human men are as capable of killing as we are. They just aren’t as good at it. So with Edie still being alive?
Her husband’s human.
Still, I worry as I open another beer and nurse it, drawing in the Hunters’ scent as they come closer. I’m halfway through the can when I hear the crunch of tires on the narrow, overgrown dirt road winding up to the church. I finger the knife in my belt. Try not to think about Edie.
The car that pulls up in front of my church is as small and dark as a bullet. The windows are tinted, hiding the occupants, but I can smell them over the gasoline and machine-metal scent of the car. By this point, though, I’m pretty sure I know who it is.
Jaxon and Ambrose.
The car’s engine cuts out, but I don’t move from where I’m standing, leaning up against the column that holds up the overhang. I wait for them to get out of the car, and sure enough, Jaxon steps out of the driver’s side, laughing when he sees me. He’s grown his hair out, black ribbons falling around his shoulders.
“Holy shit,” he laughs. “Ambrose was right. You’re back.”
Ambrose follows right behind him. He looks identical to the last time I saw him. Brown hair, grey stubble, a perpetual scowl.
“Told you I sensed him.” Ambrose slams the door shut and strides toward me in his black cowboy boots. Fifteen years and he’s still wearing the same damn shoes.
“I figured I had at least another month before you boys showed up.”
Jaxon grins at that, sharp and wolfish. “It’s your first resurrection,” he says. “We weren’t going to make you wait that long.”
My cheeks heat. I’m younger than the two of them, the least experienced, but I don’t necessarily want to be reminded of it.
At least they’re friends. Or the closest thing to friends people like us can have.
“Brought you something,” Ambrose says, nodding over at Jaxon, who reaches into the backseat of the car and pulls out a slim black box. My heartbeat quickens at the sight of it. “After you went under, I saw on the news that they found your old place. Figured you’d lost everything.”
“Not everything.” I take the box from Jaxon, and I know immediately what it is. I can feel the energy of it coursing right into my hands. “But they took my good knife off me at the scene.”
Jaxon chuckles at that, a mirthless laugh that seems to slice through the softness of the forest. “Always take your good weapons with you. Didn’t your Mama teach you?”
I ignore him. I don’t feel like telling either of them why I didn’t have my Bowie knife on me when I dragged myself into the dirt, that it was because I’d slammed it into the wall so Edie would let me touch her.
“You wanna come inside?” I ask them as I pull the lid of the box away. Sure enough, there’s a brand new Bowie knife laid out in there, identical to the one I’d had before. I pull it out, hold it up so it gleams in the sunlight.
As much as I like Edie’s kitchen knife, that’s purely sentimental. This knife feels like an extension of me. A part of my body.
I get a sudden flash of an image, me sliding the knife up between Edie’s perfect thighs while she arches her back in ecstasy.
I shut it out. No. No . It doesn’t matter how sweet a picture that is, I can’t do it. I want Edie to stay.
To live.
“Depends.” Jaxon’s voice jerks me out of my head. “How disgusting is it?”
“I’ve been fixing it up.” I push the door open. “It’s nicer than what I had before.”
And then I let them in.