Page 64 of Turn That River Red

I don’t feel anything but blood and firm, warm skin. But then he slides my hand a little lower, and my fingers graze across a ridge of scar tissue. Trembling, I let my hands trace along the scar as it runs from one side of his torso to the other.

“I sliced eight inches into myself to show you what I am,” Ambrose says softly.

I yank my hand away. “A demon.”

But he shakes his head. “No. A Hunter.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

AMBROSE

Mercy’s fear is like the fine, smokey tequila I used to drink in my youth. The Aguirre family in my hometown distilled it in a little wooden building outside their house, and I always carried a bottle with me whenever I went on my travels. But that branch of the Aguirre line died out sometime in the 1950s, and I haven’t tasted anything like it since.

Until now.

Mercy stares at me from where she’s curled up on the couch, a vision drenched in blood. She’s tucked her skirts around her thighs, but I saw what her cunt looked like when I slid out of her, how my wound painted it crimson while I fucked her. There’s a part of me that wishes I could skip the conversation we’re about to have and dive between her legs and clean her with my tongue.

Maybe I’ll do it when we’re done. A reward for breaking a promise to myself and my mother to never tell a human about the nature of my people.

“What do you mean when you say you’re a Hunter?” she asks, her voice trembling. “You hunt people?”

“Yes,” I say. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

Her fear spikes, and I breathe it in, getting drunk on it like I used to the Aguirres’ tequila. But not so drunk I can’t stop her when she tries to scramble off the couch. I grab her by the waist and pull her onto my lap, all in the span of a few seconds. Mercy lets out a terrified gasp and goes petrified on top of me. Can’t say I mind.

“Let me explain,” I mutter into her ear, smoothing her hair away from her neck. The blood looks so pretty on the blond, violence mixed with sunlight. “I keep telling you I’m not going to hurt you, and I mean it.”

“Why not?” she sobs. “Why do you keep—touching me and making me—” Her voice falters.

“I’m fond of you.” I shift her around so she’s draped across my lap sideways and I can stare down at her blood-streak face, her features even more delicate when she’s terrified. “Would rather keep you in this world than take you out of it.”

“But you weren’tfondof Raul,” she spits out.

I sigh. “Raul was a means to an end. If it makes you feel any better, he didn’t suffer.”

He’s also currently tucked away in my deep freeze, or at least the meaty parts of him, but I don’t mention it.

“Butwhy?” she demands, fury momentarily working through her fear. I like it. A sprinkle of cayenne mixed in with the smoke.

“I needed to get on the Church of the Well compound to find Charlotte’s file. That part was true.” I smile at her, hoping to reassure her a bit. It doesn’t work. “But Gunner keeps y’all isolated, and I needed a way to destabilize things so I could get on the campus.” I brush my fingers through my hair, and it pleases me when she doesn’t pull away. “Fortunately for me, there was a beautiful woman down by the Concho when I?—”

“Don’t do that,” Mercy snarls. “Don’tcomplimentme like that.”

“It’s true, though.” I smooth her hair away from her face, and she keeps glaring at me, but she doesn’t bat my hand away. Doesn’t try to scramble off my lap. Maybe she’s too afraid to move—but I don’t think so. She did let me fuck her, after all.

“You still haven’t told me what you are,” she says. “Why you were able to cut yourself like that.”

My chest squeezes with tension. Talking about killing is one thing. Human men kill all the time. But this, the truth of what I am—this is what I don’t want to tell her.

“You called me a demon,” I say carefully. “But I’m not from hell. I’m not a spirit. Not in league with Satan.”

Mercy glares at me, even though the fire of her anger still hasn’t overtaken her fear.

“But I am—more than human.” Her body is warm against mine, her heart thudding wildly. “Better than human. Capable of hunting humans to fill an urge I don’t think you could ever understand.”

Mercy pales beneath the blood. “But whatareyou?”

I consider this question for far longer than I probably should. “There’s no word for what I am,” I finally say. “My people, people like me—we have different names for ourselves. My mother called us los cocos.”

---