Inhuman

way he smiled—as if he'd just found it, just this moment wrapped his lips around the sound. He ran both hands along her hair. "I can't… if I'm to keep you safe, I can't be distracted."
    "You're turning me down."
    He grimaced. "I'm turning us both down, but it's hard." His eyebrows lifted in brief surprise. "That was a pun, wasn't it?"
    Actually, it
wasn't
hard. Not anymore. "Ah… did you do something just now? Because you aren't… things changed."
    "I control my body. I've been controlling it around you from the first day we met. The wanting is still there, but it isn't reinforced physically."
    Well. He'd been controlling his desire from the time they met? That struck her as a good news, bad news deal. He'd wanted her all along, but he didn't want to want her… because sex was too lonely without a bond, he'd said.
    But friendship was a bond, a strong one. That tipped things to the good news side, she decided. "Who's this queen that sent you here?"
    "I'll tell you." With a sigh he released her. "Sit with me and I'll tell you whatever you want to know."

----
Chapter 11

    WHEN Nathan was sent to Earth to find a renegade mage, a redheaded queen was sitting on England's throne. The Spaniards had just founded the first European settlement in North America at St. Augustine, and William Shakespeare hadn't yet set foot on a London stage. In Italy, a young man named Galileo Galilei was disappointing his father by studying pendulums and other nonsense instead of medicine. And the Purge was just beginning.
    For thirty-two years, Nathan had tracked the mage. When he finished his hunt, both Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth were dead; Jamestown had been established; and the Purge was over, with thousands of Gifted dead at the hands of the Inquisition, their governments, or their own neighbors. And Nathan had been stranded, cut off from all he knew, even from his proper shape.
    "like had violated many laws, committed many sins," Nathan said, "but the queens don't intervene in lesser matters. But he crossed one line too many when he practiced death magic."
    Kai lay against Nathan's chest, listening to his heartbeat as well as his voice. His arms were around her; his colors swam with hers. In front of them the mage light burned steadily like a heatless campfire. "Death magic, huh? He' must have been a major bad guy."
    She heard a smile in his voice. "Hellhounds aren't set on the trail of jaywalkers. You are… okay with this? That my purpose was to hunt and kill those who broke the queens' laws?"
    "I'm okay with policemen and soldiers. Your role was something like theirs."
    He fell silent, toying absently with the ends of her hair in a way she found most distracting. Not that she wanted him to stop. Finally he said, "I haven't killed only at my queen's command. When I was stranded here… an able-bodied man can't simply decide to never again use his hands and arms. Common sense and instinct will defeat him. That's how it is for a hound and the hunt. I couldn't simply decide not to hunt, but it was hard, very hard, to learn how to choose my own hunts. The queen never loosed me lightly, so I tried to choose as she might have, but at first I didn't understand human society. Death isn't always a solution. Even when the prey is causing obvious harm, killing can spread ill instead of containing it."
    "Have you… here in Midland, I mean. Have you hunted here?"
    "Not a true hunt. Not to the death, except for the ghoul. I've learned to take satisfaction in lesser hunts, though. I couldn't be a law officer otherwise."
    "Ghoul? You mean there was—No, never mind." She set that aside for another time. "I'm having trouble getting my mind around this. I know you, know your colors, the shapes of your thoughts. I've never known anyone with less anger. You aren't a violent man."
    "Anger is too big a response for most things. It gets in the way. You haven't seen me on a true hunt. I am violent then, Kai."
    He wasn't apologizing. He was stating a fact.
    She didn't say anything for several minutes. She wasn't sure how she felt. Nathan killed according to rules she didn't know, but he'd spent years—lifetimes, maybe, by her way of measuring—evolving those rules. He didn't just come from a different culture, but from a different species.
    Was she bothered by the violence in him, or did she just think she ought to be? His arms still felt right around her; his heartbeat still soothed her. She didn't understand, no, but maybe—right this