Chris always knew that Kate was dangerous. Even as a child he could feel it. His sister was a dominating, domineering presence, always poised to strike out and take what she felt to be hers. She was Gerard's daughter through-and-through. She had a natural talent for hunting, a rising star. Chris feared her and adored her in equal measure when they were young.

Even years later he could recall moments from their childhood and youth as clearly as though they happened only months prior. The memories came in hot flashes, usually at night, vivid memories of seemingly insignificant moments: Kate in a white dress by the pool, kicking her feet in the water, the sun reflected off her dirty-blonde hair. Kate, in the same dress, with grape juice spilled over the skirt, a horrifyingly stark stain – yet she only laughed, throwing her head back as if it were the most amusing thing. Kate with her first gun, eyes squinted slightly as she aimed for the bull's eye, her shoulders tense, jaw clenched in concentration. In a few years, the tension would evaporate into easy elegance, the only thing remaining to remember it by – the bright, hot fire in her eyes.

Chris remembered how she had studied, not for school but for the hunts and the stakeouts, her room filled with research, a painstakingly organized mess on the carpeted floor of her bedroom. He could remember how she smiled the first time she made a kill, and the weight of her approving hand on his shoulder when he made his. Kate lived for the thrill and the danger, for the feeling of being something beyond ordinary comprehension. She loved the dirty secret of the hunter's life, the illicit, extra-legal nature of the thing, of being able to take the world into her hands, make of it what she would.

Kate did not understand how to follow rules. She could hardly follow the Code. This last horrified Chris, who felt uneasy with the experience unless he thought it necessary. Chris hunted out of duty and honor and the understanding that desperate problems required desperate measures. Kate hunted for the pure joy of the thing.

Despite all of this, she was still his sister and Chris loved her with the sort of abandon he could never love anyone. Not even his wife. Kate was only a half-mystery to him. He did not understand some of her inner-workings but he could predict her, he knew what made her happy and what made her angry. Few things made Kate truly sad. She was a provocative secret, a thin razor edge that Chris felt a duty to walk. Fear never stopped him in anything, though, so he faced Kate the way he faced all other mysterious and dangerous things – with cautious admiration and determination.

Hunters were a tightly knit sort. Most groups were large families or a couple of families connected through marriage. Hunters almost always married members of other hunting families. Arranged marriages were typical up to the mid-twentieth century. Gerard's marriage was arranged, but Chris and Victoria's was not. It was considered simply easier and safer if less rather than more people knew. Chris couldn't exactly tell his high school or college friends why he would suddenly disappear for a couple of days every other month or so. Sometimes more often, if there was a crisis.

It wasn't that he could talk about it to Kate, either. Kate was not one to talk, certainly not about sentimental things, which she considered beneath her. But Kate lived the same life he did, so she understood what some things meant to him, even if she pretended not to. She made fun of him for his obsession with following the Code, but she also knew better than to bother him after a messy raid. Sometimes, she would even condescend to sympathy.

But even sympathy took a wild form in Kate, the sort of carnal, dangerous endeavor that her entire life was, balanced precariously somewhere between grandeur and disaster. For as long as he lived, Chris would never forget what it felt like to be sixteen, with Kate's hair in his face and her lips against his neck. She whispered into his ear, "We've purged another cesspool, little brother. How exciting, isn't it?" Her hot breath made him shiver and ache, intrusive and welcome.

There was a hunt the night after his eighteenth birthday. Chris and Kate were posted in an old shed to lay ambush. Slithers of moonlight slid through the high, narrow windows and covered the dusty floor, lighting up the space in an ethereal, tranquil mist. Kate sat on the floor, her back against the wall. She looked up at the moonlight and smiled a sharp, anticipatory smiled, softened just barely by the dreamily exalted quality of her mood.

"It will get rough," Chris said, pushing off the back wall of the shed and pacing to the door. He stopped, one hand against the flimsy wooden boards of the walls, head cocked sideways, Kate's profile at the edge of his vision.

"Nervous?" A taunting note in her tone.

"No."

"Ah." Kate stood, reached for him slowly. "You're tense though. Still so tense." She stroked one hand over his shoulder and down his chest. "You need to relax. Before such a rough night."

"We're supposed to be on watch." The argument was week, and Chris could hear the insincerity in his own tone.

"You know we have at least forty minutes. More than enough time."

"For what?"

Kate was so close that he probably would have been able to see her eyes even without the moon. "For you to relax." Her hand slipped further down. He caught it to stop her but did not dare to move away or question why she was doing this. Kate rarely did as she was supposed to – she did as she pleased. And, apparently, she please this. Whatever it was.

Kate pushed through his protest, pressing her mouth against his, sucking up all of Chris's will. He could feel her breasts against his chest when Kate pushed their bodies together. He could taste the acidic excitement broiling within her as she kissed him. His hands found her hips and drew her in closer. Kate allowed him to pretend like he was in control as he took her. He was never in control. It would take years for him to end up on par with Kate. At that moment, he was just a boy in the grip of her passion and his own, drawn-out desire.

His marriage to Victoria separated them somewhat. Allison's birth put the first nail in that coffin. Kate moved away and Chris was finally able to grow out of Kate's shadow, stop the constant race for Kate's attention. He could have never caught up with her anyway – Kate moved at breakneck speeds into utter darkness. Chris was saved from following her there.

But he never forgot how it felt to be with her – the way a werewolf must feel on the night of a full moon.