He’d found prey.
Decker clapped his heels to Sitara’s sides and she bolted down the trail of disturbed rock and sand the runaway left behind. Hoofprints gouged holes in the packed sand, across a trickling stream and down a striped gully.
Sitara tensed under him when he pulled her to a halt.
Not the time to be troublesome.
Decker deepened his seat before she threw her head and bucked. No hunt, no free rein to run. He deserved the violent attempts to dislodge him, but goddamn,notright now.
“Sitara,” he hissed, fighting her to bring all four hooves to the ground. Between the jarring lurch of his saddle, his attention snapped to twigs crackling behind a jagged outcropping. Sitara pranced in a circle, tail high, and before she could begin again, he leapt off and set her loose with a toss of reins over the pommel.
Goddamn horse. Should’ve left you with the general and you would’ve got sent to the knackery instead of being a problem.
A groan wheezed through the wind, carried from the rocks. Decker’s scalp prickled as he searched the red-tinted night.
Sandalwood and incense.
Another groan, quieter. Pained, but not to the point of bleeding dry.
The wind whistled through the gully and cut into his thin shirt. Despite himself, he shivered.
Laurie rose from the sagebrush.
The heavy form of a man lay beneath him, unmoving.
“You’ll never forgive yourself if you kill him,” Decker said softly.
Laurie hissed, fangs glinting.
No blood.
Decker breathed a sigh.
The man groaned when Laurie’s fingers tightened in the collar of his shirt.
“Come back home.” Decker eased towards him. “Safine’s been working on the stuff you brought back from Whitton. Some sort of blood he concocted—if it works, you might not have to kill.”
Laurie shook his head, shuffling backwards and dragging the man with. Cloth pouches trailed from the man’s pockets, stained red, orange, purple. Clay from the striped hills.
“I—I have to, I have to. This is what you made me, this is how I am.”
“It’s not how you have to be. Not howwehave to be,” Decker said softly. Surfaced memories like corpses in a lake would save them.
His kind—theirkind—wasn’t meant to be alone. Atrophied willpower, murky recollections of the past, all prevented with a gathering of people like him, if Decker had just trusted who he had become.
“I was wrong. Let me show you what I remember, Laurie.”
“No. No—I need—I need to eat,” he muttered, his tongue darting out in an attempt to moisten his lips. His grip loosened on the man’s collar.
Decker struck while he could.
The force knocked Laurie to the side and prickly brush ripped at their arms. A snarl rippled from Laurie as he scrambled up, teeth bared and gaze darting to the still form behind Decker.
He swayed in place, a tortured expression that was so painfully Laurie clawing to the surface. “I don’t want to…I don’t want to do this.”
“There’s another way, Laurie.” Slowly, Decker crouched, never leaving his gaze. The man’s pulse fluttered under his lips when he brought his wrist to his mouth. “Be patient,” he murmured.
He hadn’t fed since Nathan. He’d restrained himself enough to save Laurie. Now he had to restrain himself enough to save him a second time.
