Not a K-bar this time, but a sliver-thin stiletto. He grabbed it and struck out, burying it in the feral 's neck. Hissing, the feral tore away and clawed at the blade until he knocked it free.

"Enough of this," he spat at Kel.

Kel wasn't the only one who'd come into this armed, he realized. The gun in the feral 's hand was a different make than the Hunter preferred. A Glock-and Kel had no illusions about what sort of ammo the gun carried.

"Enough." A faint, eerie smile curled the feral's lips and he flicked his glance towards the house.

Unable to keep from doing the same, Kel followed the feral 's gaze. But he didn't just glance. He looked. And because he looked, he saw Angel rising from a crouch on the porch.

And in her hand, she held Kel's Beretta.

His very-much-loaded Beretta.

"Yes." Kel's lips curled in a smile as she lifted the gun. He dropped the shields that had held them apart for twelve years and felt her calm, certain resolve as she squeezed the trigger. "Enough."

He looked back at the feral just in time to see the feral turn his head towards Angel, just in time to see the very messy results as a specially made bullet, hollow, silver-tipped little suckers, the head filled with silver nitrate, tore through flesh and bone.

The feral's head exploded and brain matter, blood and bone littered the night.

"Enough," Kel whispered.

And then, his head fell back onto the ground and his lids drooped.

Blackness wrapped around him in a comforting cocoon, thick, impenetrable. Warm. He hadn't been warm since he'd lost her, but it made sense that now, he was warm one last time.

Death, he decided, wasn't going to be that bad.

She was safe...and she'd be free of him. She could start to get over him. That was what mattered.

It was his last conscious thought as he slid into oblivion, the wound in his shoulder spilling blood onto the ground.

Chapter Eight.

The clock's ticking was abnormally loud. Or at least it seemed that way to Angel as she shifted on the floor and rolled her head to stare at Kel.

Her entire body ached from the chore of dragging him into the house. Even as she'd done it, she wondered why she bothered.

He was dead.

This time, well and truly. She'd never have answers for where he'd been, what had happened...why he'd left her. The ugly injury in his chest had long since stopped bleeding and when she 'd touched her fingers to his neck, desperately seeking a pulse, there hadn't been one. After trying to feel one for a few seconds, she'd bent over him, listened desperately for the sound of his breathing. Anything.

But his chest didn't rise, his heart didn't beat and even though it had only taken her seconds to get to him after she'd shot...the other...his body had already started to cool. Getting him in the house-had she wasted precious time? She didn't know much about first aid, but if she'd stopped the blood flow sooner would it have helped?

Logically, her brain said no. There was so much blood. It didn 't seem possible somebody could survive losing that much blood.

He was dead.

So she sat there on the floor beside him, staring at his face through a veil of tears. Occasionally, she reached out and combed her fingers through his silken gold-touched hair, or traced the line of his jaw. If she'd had any doubt, the coolness of his skin, his absolute stillness would have destroyed it.

He was as cold as a corpse and he hadn't once tried to breathe since she'd dragged him into the house nearly an hour earlier.

The tears continued to roll down her cheeks. She'd long since stopped wiping them away, long since stopped trying to come up with answers. There were none. No answers. No justice. No explanation for why she'd lost him, why he'd returned after twelve years only to die, truly die this time, right in front of her.

"Girl."

She should have been afraid. After the hell she'd witnessed through the night, the sound of somebody speaking to her should have terrified her. Especially when she turned her head and saw that it was the blond stranger, swaying in the open door, naked as a jaybird and staring at Kel with wide, worried eyes.

There was an ugly, and she did mean ugly, wound in the guy's belly. It was almost like something had tried to claw its way in-or out, perhaps. It was seeping red, wet blood, blood streaking down over his right hip, over his thigh. It wasn't the only injury, either. There were bruises that looked days old, yet he hadn't had them before he left the house, had he? He'd had the cuts from flying glass on his back, but he hadn't looked like he'd gone a round or two with Rocky Balboa.

He did now, though. His body was liberally littered with injuries. Scratches, bruises, bleeding cuts.

"Sunrise."

That was all he said, but it didn't make much sense to her. She slid her gaze past his shoulder to stare at the eastern horizon at his back. The sun was rising and in a few minutes, she'd been able to see the results from last night in bright, vivid detail.

Instead of answering, she just turned her head and stared at Kel. At his still face. He still looked so damned perfect. Under the blood and the scrapes and bruises, she suspected he'd still look pretty much like he had then.

"Damn it. Sunrise."

The man's voice was imperative this time and it hit her shields with enough force to make her flinch. Turning her head, she said in a clear, level voice, "What the fuck do I care if the sun is rising?"

His eyes narrowed. He lurched inside, blood dripping from his side to plop onto the floor. He stumbled to his knees beside Kel, but when he reached out to touch him, Angel came off the floor and leaped for him. "Leave him alone!" she snarled, swinging out and clipping him on the chin.

He caught her wrists in a brutal, merciless grasp. "He can't be here..." His voice broke off and he panted for air. "When the sun rises...it will kill him."

Something about those words should have bothered her. If she had cared about anything. But she didn't. In a dull voice, she replied, "He's already dead."

"Fuck." He shoved her off to the side. Weak as he appeared, he had the strength to send her stumbling back onto her ass. He grabbed Kel's body and slung him over a wide, blood-streaked shoulder in a fireman's hold, like Kel didn't even weigh fifty pounds.

"Leave him alone!" Angel demanded again, shoving upright and reaching out.

This time, he caught her wrist and jerked her against him. He bent down low and put his face in hers. "I didn't live through this to watch him die now." "He's already dead!" she screamed. So loud, so ragged-it hurt her throat, but she didn't know how much of that came from saying the words or from her screaming.

But he wasn't affected at all. He just pulled away, stumbled out of the living room, leaving behind him a dripping trail of blood.

"Not happening this way," Toronto muttered, keeping one hand braced against the wall in effort to keep from falling forward on his face. "Not going to happen."

The silver lingering in his system pretty much sapped what little strength he had, but sheer determination had gotten him to his feet, just like it had gotten him into the house, just like it had gotten him to pick up Kel -and it would get him into the kitchen because there was a door there that led downstairs. He'd seen it when he came in through the back door, and being the good little soldier he was, Toronto had taken two seconds to check it out. It led to a basement. Someplace dark where Kel could sleep safely, away from the daylight.

She was following along behind him and Toronto wished he had the strength to reassure her. To say something. But it was getting harder and harder with every step just to stay upright. By the time he'd stumbled into the kitchen, his legs were shaking and by the time he made it to the basement door, his vision was graying out. One step at a time. One step...

On the fourth to last step, his strength gave out and his abused, toxin-filled body went down. Kel, limp as a rag doll, hit the ground. Casting a quick look around the basement, Toronto reached out, grabbed Kel's wrist and began to crawl. Crawl until the two of them were in the far northeast corner of the house, out the sight of the few windows and hopefully...away from the sun.

Stunned dismay was the only thing to describe what she felt as she followed the blond down the steps, watched as he fell.

Kel's body went flying and Angel stifled a scream. Her heart, already barely beating, died just a little more.

But the man wasn't done.

No, it wasn't enough that he'd grabbed Kel away from her and used his physical strength to keep Angel from getting to him.

On his knees and one hand, the other hand holding Kel's wrist, he dragged both himself and Kel into the shadows. She stood at the bottom of the steps now, staring as he settled in a corner and pulled Kel closer, kind of the same way a girl might hold a rag doll, with him tucked up against his side.

"Sunset."

Angel blinked and tried to focus on the man's face better, but all she could see was his eyes. Those pale blue eyes-blue...but in the darkness, they gleamed yellow. His lids drooped, shielding his gaze.

He muttered it again. "Sunset. You'll see. It's okay. 'sall okay."

Then his head slumped to the side and he passed out.

"Sunset." The word slipped out through numb lips. Angel shuffled forward, her limbs stiff. She knew from experience how very physical the pain from a broken heart could be-it was a pain that no medicine could ease, no doctor could fix.

Nothing could fix it. Even time... Time may dim the pain a bit, but nothing took it away.

But this guy seemed to think sunset was going to do...what, exactly? She swallowed the lump in her throat and crouched down by the two men. Blondie's chest was moving up and down in a slow, steady rhythm, but Kel-he was still now as he'd been upstairs.

She wanted to cry, but her eyes were painfully dry as she reached out and trailed her fingers along his jawline. How could it be possible that he looked exactly the same? No signs that he'd aged, no physical signs of change at all.

So cold.

So cold.

The cold of his flesh seemed to seep into hers and she shivered, pulling away. The ugly, pitted wound in his chest caught her eye just before she stood and she frowned, leaned in a little. It...no. A trick of the light? Had to be. Something made that wound seem a little smaller.

"You can't just stay here like this. You need to do something," she mumbled. She needed to do something. Call the police. An ambulance for the crazy blond.

Slowly, she straightened, bracing her weight against the wall. If she hadn 't had something to lean on, she never would have made it upright. Once she was, she leaned against the wall and closed her eyes.

She felt painfully, achingly ancient-as though she'd aged decades in the span of one night. Each step took far too much energy and by the time she reached the basement stairs, her legs were shaking with exhaustion. Still, she forced herself to climb and she didn't once look back.

It wouldn't help.

He was dead. All these years, Jake had been right to hope that somehow, Kel had survived whatever happened to him that night. He'd survived that night only to die now.

Man. Fate was such an ugly bitch.

The phone caught her gaze but instead of going to it, she shambled into the living room and stared at the gaping open window frame. The glass was shattered, laying all over the floor. A few distant thoughts circled through her mind that she should clean up the glass-she didn't want Rufus cutting his feet.

But the distant thoughts never quite spurred any action. All she did was shuffle around the perimeter of the room until she could get to the door. She hadn't even closed it after she'd dragged Kel inside her house and now, the interior of the house was cool.

Shivering, she reached for the door and started to shut it- But the sunlight creeping over the horizon caught her eye. Don't look don't look don't look-but she looked. Smears and splatters of blood all over the porch. A couple of busted floorboards and the banister on the western side of the porch was trashed.

She could also see why the floodlight hadn 't been working earlier. It had been mounted on a wooden pole next to the driveway, and now, that wooden pole was split into two pieces, one laying off to the side and the bottom half jutting up from the earth.

One foot in front of the other, one step at a time, she moved out of the house, onto the porch and down the porch steps. The farther she went, the worse it got. As she neared the place where Kel had lain as he died, there was grass still wet with blood.

Sunlight fell across the grass at her feet-and the body laying just off to her right. Angel felt oddly disconnected as she shifted her gaze from the blood-stained grass to the corpse.

That weird disconnected feeling persisted as she stood there. In some part of her head she heard a weird, crackling hiss and in that same part of her head, she realized she smelled smoke. But she didn't attribute the sounds or the scents to the body at her feet until the flames broke out.

It was sudden-one moment, nothing. Then next-whoosh. Flames exploded, greedily consuming the flesh and reaching out to lick at hers. Half in shock, Angel didn't acknowledge the danger until the fiery pain scorched her flesh through her pants and she stumbled back, landing on her ass a few feet away as fire ate the body.

Even the bones burned and Angel was pretty certain that wasn't normal. Bones didn't burn like that...right?

The moments dragged on as she watched the fire consume the dead man's body and those moments seemed to last forever, but in all reality, Angel knew it had only taken minutes. As the flames died down and faded away, completely on their own, the sun was still slowly rising in the east so it couldn't have taken that much time.

A vise wrapped around her throat as she shoved to her feet, staring at the smoldering pile of ash. She fell back a step and as she did, something under her foot hissed. It felt like slow motion as she lowered her gaze, looking down...down...down...until she was staring at the blood-splattered grass.

The grass was steaming. Little wisps of steam rising up as the sunlight shed its light across the land. Steaming, the way water did when splashed on a hot skillet. But that wasn't the only thing happened.

As the grass steamed, the blood disappeared-no, burned. The sun's rays touched the blades of grass and steam rose upward, there was a hissing sound and then the grass was true and green once more. No sign of blood.

The blood-the sun was burning away the blood.

She jerked her head and stared at the pile of ash. A breeze kicked up and the pile of ash went flying. Angel hissed out a breath and backed away as a gray cloud filled the air. The wind died down and when it did, little of the ash remained.

And where the body had lain, the grass underneath was untouched. Not one blade of grass was burned. Angel prided herself on being fairly rational. Aside from the few months she spent in a pit of despair after Kel... After that night, she tried to act with reason and not with emotion.

But no amount of reasoning would explain this away.

She retreated backwards towards the house, never dragging her eyes away from the spot where she 'd watched the body burn. Save for a dusty bit of remnant ash, there was no sign that just a few minutes ago, a body had been burning in the front yard.

Once inside the house, she closed the door, taking extreme care to turn each lock. The care seemed a bit foolish since just off to the side, the gaping window frame would pretty much give anything or anybody a very easy entry.

"Maybe you've finally lost your mind."

The more she thought about it, the more she realized that maybe there was a rational explanation. She'd gone crazy. It was a lot more rational to think she might be hallucinating than to consider the possibility that the sun had made that body burn.

This was real life.

Not fiction.

In real life, bodies didn't burn on their own and they didn't burn under sunlight either.

That only happened in movies or TV shows.

Her mind jerked away before she let herself finish that thought. Her thoughts shut down on her, jerked away, retreated back inside her and hiding, much like she was doing as she settled on the couch and pulled her knees to her chest, closing her eyes.

It hadn't happened.

She didn't know what was going on, didn't know if something had happened to push her over the edge, but that was where she was.