Goddamnit preacher, save it for later.
Pain and hunger and exhaustion lethally honed Decker’s voice. “You’re right, you were meant for pining after men you can’t have and crying over your Bible until it made my ears bleed.”
“And this has made it worse,” Laurie snarled, struggling against his grip as his breath came hard and fast. “I could have stayed away; I could have hid my shame for a lifetime—”
There you are. The blood is a side effect and your afflictions are your illness.
“Wanting a man is the least of your worries, preacher,” Decker said.
Laurie’s struggling waned, and he went limp. Eyes flickered to a watery teak brown. “It won’t let me in. I can’t—I can’t get in,” he choked out, splinter-and-bone fingertipsclutching at him.
“I know,” Decker said softly. His grip on Laurie’s wrists loosened, and he leaned in, lips brushing Laurie’s forehead. “I’m sorry.”
“I can’t,” Laurie said. “I can’t,” he said again, his whisper harsh against him.
Teeth like white-hot metal plunged into Decker’s neck before he ripped away, cutting into the night. Decker staggered against the chapel, clutching the four points of his neck where Laurie so carefully removed his fangs before he fled.
His fledgling was on the hunt.
Sitara thundered through the moonlit hills, red nostrils blown wide, intent on finding the scent of the shirt Decker thrust to her nose. A fledgling on the run, his moral code at odds with instinct—Decker had been there himself, leaving behind a trail of bodies. Laurie wouldn’t forgive himself for murder and didn’t possess the stubbornness that had kept Decker alive all these years.
Elias was in these hills, unless he’d skulked away to his old ally in Silver Creek; he’d discover him gone, and Decker only hoped his isolation didn’t make him more dangerous. Safine, too, was in these hills, meeting with Three Hawks for ritual herbs.
A hungry fledgling wouldn’t recognize their prey at first glance.
Faster, Sitara.
He pressed in his heels and she squealed, her neck snaking low to the ground. Veering right, she bolted up a hill where she stoodtrembling, bathed in moonlight, her head cocking from side to side. Listening.
Decker strained his hearing. Coyotes, slinking from their dens, the near-silent brush of an owl winging overhead, ruffling feathers from grouse under the brush.
There.
Footsteps. Lengthy, hurried, darting.
Tracking.
Decker swore and Sitara charged ahead. Laurie could be hunting anyone. A single ranch hand riding to his next job, a family traveling west, a lost child far from Amaretto.
Bent low over Sitara’s neck, eyes narrowed against the wind, he focused over the pounding thud of her hooves, and she scented the air, snorting, squealing, teeth gnashing at a rabbit that leapt in front of her.
The rabbit’s spine crunched between her teeth and she skidded to a halt, shaking the carcass like a dog. Ignoring Decker’s gentle heels in her side and the quiet urge to move on, she crushed it into a pulp of bloody fur, her muzzle stained red.
The mangled rabbit dropped to the ground and her ears pricked forward, swiveling, searching. A guttural huff rolled out of her chest and she stalked forward, picking through the rock without a sound.
Sitara heard something he couldn’t.
He finally caught the through the wind.
Scattered hoofbeats.
Frenzied.
The horse burst over the crest of the hill, stirrups from her empty saddle thudding against her belly as she galloped past.
Sitara wheeled, screaming and fighting against the reins at the prospect of a larger hunt. Decker reined her in, spinning in a circle. On a normal night, the snap of her teeth at his leg would have resulted in a sweat-soaked run until she was content—now, he nudged her nose away with his boot.
Riderless horse. No Laurie.
