Hunter's Fall Read Online Free PDF Page B

lives.
     
     
    S HE cried.
    His pretty little witch was crying.
    Standing in a field of stone, surrounded by people, yet utterly alone.
    Day bled into night and the people drifted from her side and still she cried. She was alone now, save for one woman and one man.
    Anger bit into him as the man—the vampire —dared to lift a hand to touch the witch. Dared to wrap a big arm around her slender shoulders and draw her close.
    Tears choked him.
    Her pain racked him.
    He wanted to reach out to her. He wanted to be the one to comfort her, to hold her against him as she wept.
    But when he whispered her name, she didn’t hear him.
     
     
    D OMINIC came awake with her name on his lips and a tearing pain in his heart.
    Snarling, he fought free of the covers and dashed a hand over his damp face. Crying. Damn it. Again. Dreams of some woman he’d never met and he wakes up crying. He stared at the pink smears on his fingertips and stormed into the bathroom to wash away the blood-tinged tears.
    With water dripping from his face, he looked at the mirror. A muscle worked in his jaw and he gripped the edge of the marble counter.
    “This is fucking ridiculous,” he muttered.
    He was obsessed. Obsessed, dreaming about the same woman, night after night, year after year. And now he was even crying like some fucking pansy in his dreams.
    “What in the hell is this?” Shoving away from the counter, he strode to the enclosed shower and turned on the water with an angry flick of his wrist. He needed a damn hot shower, he needed a good hard run, maybe even a down and dirty fight—if he could get all three of those, it might lighten his dark mood.
    But somehow he doubted it.
    The dreams were getting worse, and he had a bad feeling he knew why.
    Dominic Ralston was going crazy.
     
     
    F IVE minutes later, he climbed out of the shower and stood naked in front of the mirror as he towel-dried off. Although legend might say otherwise, vampires did have reflections, and Dominic’s looked the same now as it had the night his human life had ended. Five ten, 170 pounds of lean, ropy muscle stretched over a frame that probably needed another twenty pounds on it. He’d been in medical school when the Change had been pushed onto him.
    Now he’d forever look like that medical student, running on caffeine, nerves and not enough food or sleep. It was a fact he’d come to accept, and he was grateful he’d been on the skinnier side since this was the body he’d live with until somebody put a silver knife through his heart or relieved him of the burden of his head.
    There was no telling how long that could be, though. It could be tonight or it could be in a couple hundred years. Hunters lived erratic, somewhat dangerous lives. And very often, they were lonely lives.
    Damned lonely. Damned empty.
    Oh, he could have found a lover. He could maybe even have found one who understood his life, who would share those nights and days with him.
    But unless it was the right someone, he wasn’t interested. And lately, it seemed the right someone only existed in his dreams.
    Dreams about a sad, blue-eyed witch, dreams that left him crying in his sleep.
    Yeah. He was pretty sure he was going crazy.

CHAPTER 2
     
    CHICAGO
    ONE YEAR LATER
     
    S o high up. What were people thinking, making something reach so high into the sky?
    Nessa peered down at the earth far below, so far that the people down there didn’t really look like people. More like little bugs scurrying back and forth.
    “Why don’t you just jump?”
    It was only the third time Morgan had said it. If Nessa didn’t know better, she’d think the ghost was getting bored.
    “I won’t jump because that would be too easy for you,” she said, her voice flat and cold. “Too easy for us both.”
    “Easy . . . what in the fuck do you care if it’s easy for you? You want it over, so just end it already. Be done with it.”
    Nessa swayed forward. Tempted. So very tempted. But she wouldn’t do it. It was