Page 15 of Bird on a Blade (Hunter’s Heart #1)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

SAWYER

W e go inside. I don’t bother turning the generator on during the day, so everything’s lit up by the candy-colored sunlight pouring in through the stained glass window. Ambrose lets out a hum of approval. He has this thing about religion. Jaxon told me once he was a preacher, a long long time ago.

“Seems you’re doing all right for yourself.” Ambrose strolls down the center aisle, still taking in the church. “After the revival.” He stops beside the front pew and looks up at the altar, where I’ve laid out my mask and weapons.

“It was Ambrose’s idea to check up on you.” Jaxon steps up beside me, silent as a cat. “We knew your mother wouldn’t do shit.”

I scowl at the mention of Mama. “She knows she doesn’t need to worry about me.” Which is true. We’re Hunters; she taught me how to hunt, the way a mountain lion does her cubs. When she knew I could hunt without getting myself caught, she went south again, to pursue her own prey. It’s how things are.

But Jaxon just shrugs. “I fucking hated my first revival,” he says. “And I had it easier than most. ”

Up at the front of the church, Ambrose chuckles darkly. “Oh, you’re willing to admit it was easier for you now?”

Jaxon rolls his eyes; I’ve heard this argument a dozen times already. Ambrose has a habit of adopting younger Hunters. Keeping an eye on them. He did it for Jaxon, and then both of them did it for me.

“Y’all want something to eat?” I say. That was a lesson from Mama, too, something leftover from growing up in east Texas. Something I rarely need to utilize.

It turns out they do want something to eat; they flew into Raleigh-Durham and then rented a car to drive up into the mountains proper. Hadn’t stopped to eat for whatever reason. I fix them the same venison sandwiches I had for lunch, and we all sit down at the little folding card table I have set up in the kitchen while they eat and I drink another beer.

The conversation flows easy, the way it always does with them. They tell me about their work: Jaxon down in the Louisiana swamp, and Ambrose out in west Texas, stomping around in the blood-soaked dust. There’s a new Hunter, he tells us, somewhere on the Texas coastline, although he hasn’t reached out to them yet. Jaxon’s been courting the media, posing his scenes with alligator skulls and palm fronds and other artsy shit and leaving them for some innocent bystander to find. Ambrose tells him how fucking stupid that is, and they bicker about it and I lean back in my chair and listen and it’s like old times, right after Mama left but when I was still finding my footing. Before Edie and the murders at the camp, of course. Long before.

Eventually, though, they start asking about me. About the murders themselves, at first, with Ambrose grilling me like he’s a schoolteacher and I just failed a test. “How the hell did you get shot in the head?” he demands. “Why didn’t you have your eye on the door?”

I’m cagey. “Better than getting arrested.” Which is true; the last thing one of us wants is to get stuck in jail, where dying means getting dragged to a mortuary and pumped full of chemicals. Still, Ambrose frowns.

“You should have known better,” he says. “I saw the one who shot you. He looked like a fucking infant. I know you’re young, but?—”

“You were distracted.” Jaxon gives me his Cheshire cat grin. “Weren’t you, Sawyer?”

Now, how the hell could he know that?

“No,” I say, too quickly. Too defensively. Both of them smell the lie and pounce on it like the predators they are.

“Shit, that makes sense.” Ambrose leans forward, dark and imposing in his long black coat. “What was it? One of ‘em boys give you hell?”

“The big one,” Jaxon says, nodding. “The football star, right? He was there when you were shot.”

“He was already dead,” I snap, irritated that they think I struggled with one of my kills. “And I handled him just fine.”

It’s Jaxon who picks up on it. His blue eyes go wide and then glitter devilishly, and I immediately regret saying anything. I should have let them think it was that boy.

“The girl,” he says slyly. “The survivor.”

“The survivor.” Ambrose hisses the word like a snake. “Oh, I should have known.”

They both look at me. There’s no denying it. I’m caught.

“Fine,” I snap, crunching my empty beer can down on the table. “I was a little distracted.”

That sets both of them to laughing and hollering and slapping each other’s backs like this is just the funniest thing in the world. I scowl at them and go over to the cooler to dig out another beer, crack it open, and take a long drink.

“I saw her,” Ambrose says. “In the papers and such. No cuts. Did you even touch her?”

My scowl deepens as I sink down in my chair .

“What was her name?” Jaxon asks. “I remember seeing her around. She went on that one podcast, what’s it called?—”

“Podcasts,” Ambrose scoffs. “Not doing us any favors, those things. Makes anyone think they can start investigating our killings.”

I’m not in a mind to listen to Ambrose rant about new-fangled technology, although there’s a part of me that wants to know what the podcast is called. Wants to listen to it. Hear my perfect prey talk about me and what I did. What lies she told about those final moments before my death.

“She said you tried to strangle her or something,” Jaxon says. “If I’m remembering right.” He leans over the table, that devilish glint still in his eyes. “But you aren’t a strangler. I know that much about you. You wouldn’t give up your knife for anything.”

My face is hot, and I drink my beer to keep from answering. Not that it’ll work. Both of them are staring at me, waiting for me to answer.

“The girl got you killed,” Ambrose says when I swallow my beer.

“No, she didn’t,” I snap. “I got myself killed. Turned my back to the door. And yeah, I was distracted, like I said.” I can’t decide if I want to tell them about her. I’m not worried they’ll kill her themselves; that’s not their style. But they’ll tell me I should kill her. That I could take my time and enjoy myself, sure. But ultimately, they’d say the same thing as Mama.

It’s better for her to be dead.

“She was pretty,” Jaxon says. “I remember that.”

My face gets even hotter, and before I can stop myself I say, “She’s still pretty.”

Both of them go quiet. I run my thumb around the rim of my new beer can, wiping up the condensation.

Ambrose clears his throat. “You looked her up? You’ve been back two damn weeks, Sawyer.”

My head buzzes. I can feel my blood pumping furiously through my body. The truth is I don’t want to keep her a secret. I want to tell them everything I can about her. I don’t have no one to talk to except my bones and they don’t talk back. And yeah, I know what Jaxon and Ambrose are gonna say. But god, it’s like a final breath building inside me, waiting to exhale.

“I didn’t look her up.” I peer up at him. “She’s here. She’s at the camp.”

Both of them stare at me from across the table. Jaxon’s the first one to speak.

“Did you bring her here?”

“No. She showed up a day or two after I woke up.”

They look at each other. Ambrose’s expression is dark, his brow furrowed. Jaxon laughs, though, and shakes his head a little.

“Well,” he says. “Then it’s gotta be fate, doesn’t it?”

“It absolutely is not fate,” Ambrose says. “It’s dangerous.”

But Jaxon keeps going on, looking right at me, his blue eyes burning. “The gods picked someone for you,” he says. “And you’re bound together.”

“Not this shit again,” Ambrose mutters.

Part of me agrees with Ambrose. This is Jaxon’s thing, that there are these gods in the swamp and they tell him who to kill and every murder scene he sets up is some kind of prayer to them. I don’t know, I don’t go in for religion much myself. But right now, with my perfect prey ten minutes away from me? Knowing she arrived at the same time I dragged myself out of the dirt?

I can see it, those connections, those lines of fate drawing us together like threads of blood.

“I’m serious,” Jaxon says, excitement building up in his voice. “You were chosen, man. The gods chose you, and chose this girl.”

“We’ll see about that when she calls the cops on him,” Ambrose mutters. “Which will inevitably happen when she sees him skulking around the woods.”

My skin prickles. “She hasn’t called the cops.” It’s out before I can stop it .

Ambrose jerks his head up. “ She knows you’re here? ”

I nod silently, my heart thundering.

Ambrose narrows his eyes. “What else does she know?”

I glance at Jaxon, who’s watching this conversation with obvious interest, his eyes gleaming. I sigh. “More than you’d say she should.” More than I know she should.

Jaxon laughs with delight and says something in that made-up language he uses. Ambrose just keeps glaring at me.

“What,” he says, “does she know?” He shakes his head. “What did you do that night you got killed?”

I’m not telling them about everything I’ve done with her, about making her come and kissing her and all that. But I do tell them the story of the night fifteen years ago, how I did it for her and how she knows I did it for her. How I hugged her and she never told anybody, not even the cops. And how I killed for her again, last week, and she’s kept my secrets this whole time.

Jaxon’s thrilled by the story, the romantic that he is. “It’s the Unnamed,” he says confidently, which is what he calls one of the gods. “You’ve been marked.”

Ambrose rolls his eyes. But Jaxon pushes back from the table, brimming with excitement. “I need to mark the church with the Unnamed’s sigil,” he says. “It’s chosen you, Sawyer. It’s the least you can do.”

I know exactly how Jaxon plans to mark the church. He did the same thing to his own house: killed someone and then used their blood to draw sigils on the walls. I don’t want blood sigils on my church, though, not if I’m gonna bring Edie here. “Can you use paint?” I say, which makes Ambrose snicker and Jaxon scowl. “There’s a bunch of buckets of it in the storage closet.”

“No, I can not use paint ? — ”

“Sit down,” Ambrose barks. “We’re not finished talking about this.”

He disapproves. The deep lines on his brow are more than enough evidence .

“What’s there talk about?” Jaxon doesn’t sit down. I know that sigil’s getting painted whether I like it or not. “Even an old asshole like you has to see all the coincidences, right? These two are connected.”

“Coincidences, yes.” Ambrose is quiet, thoughtful. I understand his concern, I do. He’s older than both of us, by a lot, and that means he’s survived a lot. It means he’s been careful. I trust his advice. Mama never told me who my father was, just that he was another Hunter, and Ambrose stepped into that role nice and tidy.

So when he speaks, I listen. Even if my heart likes what Jaxon’s saying, too.

“Maybe there’s something to it,” Ambrose says slowly. “You and this girl. You sure she’s human?”

I know what he means. But I shake my head. “She’s not one of us,” I say. “Not a Hunter.” She smells like prey, when I breathe in her scent. She reacts to my touch like prey.

That’s why she’s so fucking appealing, but I don’t tell Ambrose. If she were one of us, another Hunter, then she wouldn’t be my Edie. I wouldn’t want her so badly. I’m not certain of much, but I’m certain of that.

Ambrose’s frown deepens even more. “You’re young,” he says softly. “But even you have to understand our kind isn’t meant to get tender about humans.”

I lean back in my chair. Wrap my fingers around the beer can. “I know that,” I mutter. But she’s different .

I don’t know how, exactly. Maybe those gods of Jaxon’s are real after all. Maybe they did tie us together that night, my blood-coated arms wrapped around her shoulders. Maybe I’m meant to protect her.

I definitely don’t say that to Ambrose.

Instead, I just knock back a long drink of beer. It’s gone warm and flat. “Mama always said the same thing,” I tell them. “But I don’t know. Edie—” I look through the grimy window at the forest outside, the leaves already browning at the edges.

She’s different.

“She didn’t call the cops.”

Ambrose scoffs. Jaxon says something about that podcast he listened to, about the story she spun out for the real world, the one about me trying to kill her. Says it proves his theory. Because what sort of human lies to protect one of us?

He has a point.

“Just be careful,” Ambrose says. “That’s all I’m asking.”

And I know he’s right.