Hunting Death

Chapter 26

"I don't get it," Madison said after a long stretch of uncomfortable silence fell between them.

"Pardon?" Keith asked, still lost in his own thoughts. He sensed the reel of emotions Madison went through, anger, confusion, disgust, empathy, she underwent almost every emotion possible as she tried to digest Keith's admission, and during that time, the more he analyzed it, Keith had to do his best not to blame himself for Kieri's death, he had enough blood on his hands already.

"You're like two different people. I don't understand how you go from a compassionate, and ethical man to a callous monster. Does the urge to drink human blood really trump your morals? You rescue and rehabilitate animals, I've seen how much it bothers you when you take in these sick and abused dogs, I felt it Keith, you're not very good at hiding it when you talk about them. And yet you can conscientiously go out and assault women?"

"Now wait a damn minute!" Keith sputtered, appalled by the comparison.

"No, I'm sorry. What else would you like me to call it, Keith? How are you any better than a rapist? So you don't have sex with those women, but you certainly don't give them a choice in the matter either!"

"Because it's too dangerous! Have you not listened to a word I've said? Danielle is proof of that, damn it! How many more women would you have me kill?"

Madison stood and turned her back on him, her frustration boiling over. "Danielle was an accident! An accident, Keith!" She shouted, whirling around to face him and towering over him as he still sat at the table. "You've been doing this for over forty years, how many women have died before her?"

Keith pressed himself against the back of his chair, honestly scared of the slight woman screaming at him. Worse than that, she'd been right. Because of Cybil and her brutality, Keith had sought others like him, determined to live a pacifist lifestyle. Only, he hadn't anymore, he'd strayed from the path.

Cybil had dragged innocent men and women before him, demanding he feed in the same fashion as his sire, as her pack. Without the least bit of morality, she tortured and murdered, disposing of the bodies with little care or thought to who they may have left behind. And though she sought a cure to her fierce bloodlust, it often contradicted her actions. Many times she'd acted like a savage beast, her pack members feeding on her predatory instincts and treating anyone, even teenagers, like prey.

It was little wonder to Keith back then that someone had hunted her. Who wouldn't want to exterminate such a beast? After being turned, he'd considered doing it himself, but Keith realized he wouldn't be strong enough, and even if he used his intelligence to get the upper hand, her pack would have destroyed him. Once he'd seen her for what she really was, he wanted to finish the serum and get her out of his life as fast as possible.

After nearly two years of traveling the world, two years of hunting wild game and eating raw meat, or drinking butcher's blood, and feeling like half a man the entire time, Keith met Lucas and Kaila, and Lucas taught him how to manage his own bloodlust.

"I wouldn't want to imagine being Cain, or any other pure-blood for that matter," Keith said quietly, drawing Madison's attention after she'd turned her back on him having finished chewing him out. "Vampires have been hunted to near extinction, Lucas told me many years ago that there are probably less than a hundred of their race left, and nobody's even sure if Cain himself is still alive."

Madison raised a brow, "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Before Danielle, I gave people a choice. It wasn't like this, and honestly, until now, when you brought it up, I never realized I was doing anything wrong. I didn't hurt them or kill them, and I've never raped anyone..."