Hunter's Fall Read Free Page B

isn’t it?”
     
     
    “ I WILL find you. No matter where you go. No matter how far.”
    With a snort, Nessa looked away from the TV and focused on Mei-Lin’s hair. The teenager grinned up at her. “It’s romantic, Nessa. You can’t snort like that when Daniel Day-Lewis is on the screen saying a line like that .” With a sigh, the girl rested a hand on her heart and gazed at the TV with rapt eyes.
    The Last of the Mohicans was the girl’s favorite movie. They usually watched it once a month.
    Unless Nessa could see a way out. Today was Mei-Lin’s seventeenth birthday, though, and she’d wanted to watch the silly film before she went out with some friends.
    Weaving the girl’s silky hair into a tight braid, Nessa glanced at the screen. Spectacular scenery. Strong, sexy men with big guns, innocent-looking girls with simpering eyes. Romantic bits like, I will find you .
    It stuck a knife in her heart.
    Although it had been five hundred years, she could still hear Elias’s voice.
    I will come back . . . I will find you again . . .
    Only God Himself could keep me from you, love.
    And God Himself had spent the last five centuries doing just that. Nessa couldn’t watch this damn film without reliving her memories. A time when she was torn away from her husband.
    Not by pissed off Natives, but by death.
    By God.
    He had taken her lover from her, and had kept her from joining him.
    She was alone, and empty. So empty inside. Not even her dream lover could ease that ache. At least not for long.
    She blew out a sigh and used an elastic band to keep Mei-Lin’s braid from unraveling. Rising from the couch, she gathered up the ice-cream cartons from the floor and carted them into the kitchen to dump them in the trash.
    From the corner of her eye, she saw Mei-Lin and despite herself, she had to smile.
    This girl had pulled Nessa back from the edge of madness, despair.
    Even as she tried to draw her mind away from the memories, she found herself caught in them again. It had been a few years since her life had been turned upside down.
    One last battle . . . she’d been so sure when she went to face the young witch that it would be her last .
    And after more than five hundred years, she was so very, very tired. So empty inside, but she’d become accustomed to that. The exhaustion, though, weighed on her more and more, with each and every year.
    The thought of just being done had been such a . . . sweet relief. She’d yearned for it, ached for it. Longed for it. She’d gone to battle with a young woman who used her magic to steal life and power from others—Morgan Wakefield. She had practiced blood magic, and it was addictive. Once a witch gave in to that lure, it became a hunger, a need. Fighting it was almost impossible, and Morgan hadn’t wanted to.
    The only way to keep her from killing was to end her life—a sad, sorry fact, but one Nessa had been prepared to handle. She’d been prepared for all likely outcomes—including her own death.
    She hadn’t been prepared to live. She certainly hadn’t been prepared to live like this.
    Absently, she glanced at the ornamental mirror hanging over the sofa and studied her face.
    Morgan’s face.
    No. She hadn’t been prepared for this. She’d fought the young, deceptive, blood-thirsty witch, and as she’d expected, her body hadn’t survived the battle. But somehow, her spirit had. She hadn’t planned for it—hadn’t done a damn thing to make this happen—at least not consciously. Nessa had wanted death, craved it. Craved it the way Morgan had craved blood. The way a drug addict craved their next fix. She’d needed it.
    But instead of the sweet relief of death, she lived. In Morgan’s body.
    For so long after it had happened, Nessa had been lost—trapped in a muddle of depression, despair, memories and madness. Even as she began to emerge from that fog, she’d hated it—she’d yearned for the sweet, oblivious cloud where she’d lived.
    Until Mei-Lin.
    They had met