Page 18 of Bird on a Blade (Hunter’s Heart #1)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

SAWYER

M y prey is lean and athletic. He moves with an easy grace as he lopes through the rain, even though he has no idea how to do so quietly. I can sense the irritation radiating off him that he’s out here in the middle of nowhere, ruining his expensive suit. But there’s excitement there, too, that he found his own quarry.

“Edie!” he calls out. “This is getting absurd! It’s going to start storming any minute!”

My fingers curl around my knife.

He stops under a big tulip tree, cursing quietly beneath his breath. I move closer, never taking my eyes off him. Edie said this isn’t her ex-husband, but it is someone who could tell her ex-husband where she is, and we absolutely can’t have that.

Which is why, when the man pulls out his cell phone, I purposefully crack a nearby branch as I step out from behind the greenery.

The prey jerks his head up, my Edie’s name on his lips, but he freezes when he sees me standing there, my new Bowie knife clutched in one hand. Jaxon and Ambrose left yesterday, leaving me with the knife, a garish sigil painted on the back of my church, and a fair amount of warnings not to do what I’m about to do. But I asked Edie, and she didn’t say no, and my heart fluttered furiously in my chest that she would accept this gift from me.

“Who the hell are you?” The man’s fear makes the words dance.

I say nothing.

“Early Halloween costume, huh?” He looks down at his phone, trying to play it cool, and I step toward him, making the leaves rustle.

He looks up. There’s a soft pattering as the rain starts again.

“Shit,” he hisses. “Look, man, whatever you’re doing—” His eyes drop to my knife, back up to my mask. “I’m looking for someone. A woman in her thirties. Dark curly hair. She ran out here and…”

I take another step forward, and my prey’s voice trails off. The scent of his fear lifts off his skin, pungent against the steely scent of the rain.

“This isn’t fucking funny,” he says, and then he laughs, nervously, like it is. “She put you up to this, didn’t she?” He laughs again, a breathy, panicky sound. “You can come out now, Edie!” He shouts it out into the incoming storm. “Call off your fucking redneck!”

I’m tired of it, his bravado and the scent of his fear. I want to smell his blood.

So I launch at him, moving with a Hunter’s swiftness, and plunge the knife into his belly. He makes a sharp noise of surprise, lifting his eyes to my mask, and the usual expressions flicker across his face: shock, confusion, a burst of betrayal. As if I owe him anything.

I wrench the knife sideways so his blood spills out along with a mess of glistening organs. I don’t care about those as much as the blood, which is rich and salty. I’ve never been to the ocean, but I imagine it as smelling like blood .

“Edie,” he gasps out. “Did you ki—” Blood burbles from his lips.

I stab the knife higher into his abdomen, quick sharp penetrative bursts, each one splattering more blood over my hands and arms and chest. The rain makes it runny, but every stab brings another hot spray. More. I need more. And the man is tottering on his feet. He’s dying.

So I cut one of the threads of blood in his neck—the carotid artery or the jugular vein, I never bothered to learn fucking anatomy. All I know is that it erupts. Blood gushes out in a gorgeous, steaming fountain, and I gasp it as washes over me, its heat a perfect contrast to the cold rain. I hold him up a minute, relishing his gasps and gurgles. When he finally silences, I drop him.

For a minute, I stand there, breathing heavy. My cock strains again my pants, and I consider, briefly, fucking one of the holes I made in him. But then I think of Edie waiting back at my church, and I realize that I don’t want to be unfaithful to her.

I do palm myself, trying to ease my fire. But it’s raining and cold and I can’t enjoy this moment properly, so I give up.

Maybe, maybe , I can fuck my perfect prey instead. I can see it, me still covered in blood, thrusting deep into her.

My blade slicing across her throat just as she starts to come ? —

No. I will not kill her like that. I have to focus.

I move quickly, irritated by the rain. I pick up the man’s phone, turning it around in my hands. It’s locked, but I try his fingers and pressing his forefinger against the back opens it up. So I saw off his finger, then shove it and my phone in my pocket.

I want more than a fingerbone to remember this one, though. I don’t feel like trying to get his head, so I take his arm instead, the one with the hand intact. The rest of the body I leave where it is after I root around in his pockets for his car keys—I’ll need to dispose of that once I get cleaned up. Can’t leave it in front of Edie’s cabin .

Fortunately, we’re far enough away from the trail and the cabin that it’s unlikely anyone’s gonna find his body. And soon enough the leaves will cover him, and then the snow, and then he’ll be gone.

And if someone comes looking for him? Well, I’ll kill them, too. I’ll kill anyone who comes searching for my perfect prey.

It doesn’t take me too long to get home, and I make it just before the skies unleash the storm, the air buzzing with electricity. I race across the clearing, head ducked down. Edie’s waiting for me in the church; I can smell her, that sweet honeyed scent, and it makes me feel all warm and shuddery that she came here, that she’s waiting for me. I never told Jaxon and Ambrose and I certainly never told Mama, but I always wanted to come home after killing to find a woman waiting for me, all wide-eyed and worried about me while I was on the hunt.

Before I go in and see Edie, I go around back to turn on the generator. She’s probably cold. I also drop the arm there since I figure she doesn’t want to see that.

This is where Jaxon painted his stupid sigil—in paint , at least, but it still looks creepy as shit. Maybe I’ll just keep her away from the back of the church completely.

Once everything’s settled outside, I go in through the side door, stepping into my little bedroom just as fat raindrops splatter across the clearing. Inside, it’s dark and cool and the cover’s been stripped off the bed. Edie’s doing, no doubt.

I peel off my mask and drop it on the bedside table. Its work is done.

“Edie?” I call out, relishing the way it feels, calling out to my girl as I come home. If she even is my girl.

I go down the hallway, bump up the heat, and then step out into the church proper .

She’s waiting for me, just like I always imagined.

She’s wrapped up in the blanket on the front pew, the light from her phone shining onto her face. Her hair’s all wet and bedraggled, but she looks at me as I step into the room.

Fear shoots through her, ruining the image.

“It’s done,” I say, as if it’s not obvious, with me still streaked with blood. I pull the phone out of my pocket. “Got this for you.”

Edie swallows. “Thank you.” She puts her own phone aside. “I—Did you check? To see if he had contacted my—contacted anyone?”

I just shook my head. “Brought his finger so you can open it up, though.”

She blanches at that. Fuck, this isn’t what I thought it’d be like. She’s so fucking pretty, but she’s also like this scared little rabbit, and my blood is up and my cock is hard and I keep picturing myself cutting her open while I fuck her.

“You cold?” I say, trying to be normal for once. “You can borrow some of my clothes while yours dry. I need to take a shower anyway.”

I can’t resist coming closer to her. I need to give her the phone. And the finger.

“I turned the generator on, too,” I add. “But I only heat the back.” I tilt my head. “The kitchen. And the bedroom.”

We both know she went in my bedroom; she’s got my bed’s blanket wrapped around her shoulders. But the word feels loaded to me anyway. Puts visions in my head I shouldn’t be thinking about.

“O-okay,” she says slowly. “The heat—the heat will be nice.”

I smile at her, trying to make this feel the way I’d always imagined it. And to my surprise, she smiles back. It’s small and it’s scared, but it’s there.

“Come on,” I tell her, and I wait for her to get out of the pew. As soon as her back’s to me, I pull the finger out and open up the phone for her, then tap her on the shoulder so I can hand it to her. She blinks down at it.

“Don’t let it lock,” I say. “Unless?—”

“Right,” she says quickly. “The, uh, the finger.”

I nod.

We go into the kitchen together and Edie sits down at the table, still shivering beneath her blanket. She swipes through the phone, her brow furrowed, her worry lifting off her. I duck into my room and dig out some clothes—fresh jeans and flannel for me, sweatpants and a sweatshirt for her. When I come back into the kitchen, she looks up at me. Does she look… relieved?

“He hasn’t sent anything to Scott,” she says, setting the phone down on the table. “About where I am, I mean. But it looks like he had a partner. They knew he was here.”

“Don’t worry about that.” I put the sweatshirt and sweatpants on the table, and Edie just stares down at them. “For you,” I say, worried it’s not clear.

Edie looks at them, looks up at me. She seems hesitant, and I don’t know why. “Thank you,” she finally says. “I’ll—I’ll wait here while you—” She swallows. “While you clean up.”

I study her for a second longer, the way she looks sitting in my kitchen, wrapped in my bed’s blanket. My cock throbs a little. I’ll need to take care of it in the shower so I don’t do something I regret.

I gather my change of clothes up to my chest. I keep thinking about what her blood will look like against her pale skin, but I don’t want to end her forever.

I hate it, this push-pull. These warring desires.

I leave her in the kitchen.