The Hunter Read Online Free PDF

taken a slug of the whiskey Marley had given him.
    Winn grumbled something underneath his breath about little brothers as he rolled his thick shoulders. “Look, I got a murder a day to contend with, sometimes more. I don’t need the trouble you trail in your wake, Colt.”
    The truth stung. Being around normal people just wasn’t something a Hunter could do. Inevitably they’d get sucked into the troubles that followed like a dark cloud of dust. “Spoken like a true big brother.”
    “Spoken like the town sheriff.”
    Colt’s gaze flicked to the cells. Of the four, three were empty. Behind the black iron bars of the last cell, spread out on the robe bed and olive green wool blanket, the squatter lay facedown, his back raising and lowering in deep rhythmic breaths.
    Winn followed his gaze and waved a hand in dismissal. “Don’t worry about Billy. He sleeps it off in there every other night. He’ll be out until daybreak. It’s safe to talk.”
    Colt feigned a sigh. He hadn’t been planning on a reunion either, but he still needed Winn’s help. “I got marshals on my tail for killin’ a saloon girl out in Arizona Territory.”
    Winn slumped back into his chair and rubbed his hands over his jaw, a small vertical crease forming between his brows. “Ah, hell. Why’d you go and do a fool thing like that for?”
    Colt’s shoulders stiffened at the rebuff. “She was about to sink her fangs into my neck.”
    Winn grunted with understanding and sat forward, bracing his elbows on his wide, scarred desk. “Still hunting, then, are you?”
    Colt stared his brother down. “If you’re lookin’ for me to apologize, it ain’t gonna happen, Winn. It’s in our blood, far back as we know. And there ain’t nothin’ gonna change that. It’s what we’ve been trained to do.”
    “No, it’s what Pa trained you to do.” Winn pointed a thick index finger at him, the crease between his brows deepening further, the ghosts of the past flickering in his eyes. “I’m not interested. I’ve chosen a different life.” Winn had never gotten over that demon attacking Colt when Colt had been fourteen. Winn had dispatched the demon, nearly gotten killed in the process, and never done another day of hunting since, something Colt couldn’t fathom.
    “You ever wonder how many murders in this town might be caused by something supernatural prowling around Bodie?”
    Winn huffed and stared out the window, refusing to meet Colt’s gaze. “I try to stay the hell out of anything unnatural. It’s hard enough to get a conviction from the crooked judge in this district without introducing a lot of hocus-pocus into the trial.”
    “But you know it’s a possibility.”
    Winn glared at him. “Doesn’t mean I want to wallow around in it like a pig in mud.”
    “Still trying to be shiny clean, the perfect gentleman, ain’t you? Well, I got news for you, brother.” Colt leaned forward, tipping his cowboy hat slightly off his forehead. “Marshals are the least of my worries. Hell is coming to Bodie, if it ain’t followed me here already.”
    Winn’s eyes narrowed, his bottom lip flattening into a taut line beneath the level of his dark mustache. “What’d you do?”
    “Seems that saloon girl weren’t no ordinary vampire. ’Course I didn’t realize it until later. She was Rathe’s girl. His baby girl, to be precise.”
    “Sweet Jesus on a shingle,” Winn breathed. He rubbed his palms back and forth through his slicked-back hair, making it stand up in awkward black spikes and tufts. “He’s gonna want your head for his collection.”
    “And he’s going to do some damage getting it.”
    Rathe was evil incarnate. There was no need to compare him to Lucifer. The archdemon Rathe was more like Lucifer’s ugly badman big brother—the one you didn’t mess with. No Hunter with half a brain beneath his hat would be stupid enough to go against Rathe alone and believe he could survive.
    Usually there wasn’t enough left of his