Phantom Embrace

by Dianne Duvall

  Stanislav did the same while they waited for Chris’s crew to arrive and collect the human victims.

  * * *

  Cat entered the home of David, the second eldest and second most powerful immortal on the planet. Located in the North Carolinian countryside with no nearby neighbors who might panic upon seeing powerful warriors come and go with bloodstained clothing (hunting insane vampires was a violent, messy business), this sprawling one-story home appeared to be the hub of the Immortal Guardians’ world here on the East Coast.

  Cat had been drawn to this place—and to these people, these warriors—ever since her brother Bastien had raised a vampire army and done his damnedest to bring the immortals down.

  What a terrifying time that had been. Terrifying and frustrating and heartbreaking. She had known Bastien was in the wrong, that he had focused his quest for revenge upon the wrong man, but had had no way to convey it to him.

  And she had feared every day that it would be his downfall.

  Had Seth, the Immortal Guardians’ leader, not been so forgiving, she knew her brother would be dead now, killed in that final battle between his vampire army and the Immortal Guardians.

  American and British immortals Ethan and Edward entered David’s home behind her and strolled past, their long black coats glistening with the blood of the vampires they had slain.

  Krysta and Étienne, still newly wed, called greetings and offered the duo smiles.

  Étienne’s twin, Richart, and Richart’s wife Jenna added their own hellos.

  Yes, Cat thought, as she watched the immortals smile and trade jests, it was the people who drew her here time and time again. They were different. And not just because they were infected with the same virus that afflicted vampires. No, these men and women, these immortals, had been born like Cat—with special gifts no humans or vampires possessed.

  Krysta could see auras. Étienne and his sister Lisette were both telepathic. Richart could teleport. Jenna, as the descendant of a healer, had been born with far greater regenerative capabilities than ordinary humans enjoyed.

  Roland, considered the antisocial one of the group, and his wife Sarah entered from the hallway on the opposite side of the room. Roland could heal with his hands and bore some telekinetic abilities. Sarah had prophetic dreams.

  Bastien, Cat’s brother, could discern one’s emotions through touch and determine truth from falsehood. His wife, Dr. Melanie Lipton, had minor precognitive abilities.

  And Cat? Cat had always been able to see an object’s history, glimpse those who had held it and the like, by touching it. She just hadn’t understood why she could until she had begun haunting David’s home after David and Seth had captured her brother and pretty much forced him to join the Immortal Guardians’ ranks.

  Every immortal, or gifted one, as they had called themselves before being infected with the vampiric virus, had been born with advanced DNA, the origins of which Cat still didn’t understand.

  That advanced DNA lent immortals their gifts and, thankfully, offered some protection from the more corrosive aspects of the virus that infected them. Immortals didn’t suffer brain damage the way humans did and, thus, weren’t driven insane. This enabled them to live . . . well . . . forever, unless their heads were stricken from their bodies. The older the immortal, the more powerful and plentiful his or her gifts, because their bloodlines had been less diluted by ordinary human DNA.

  David, who had lived thousands of years, was such a powerful healer that he could reattach severed limbs. He could also shapeshift, among other things, and could withstand several hours of exposure to daylight before he began to suffer the consequences younger immortals suffered immediately.

  Seth . . .

  Well, she’d yet to find anything the immensely powerful Immortal Guardians’ leader couldn’t do.

  Bastien and Melanie entered, laughing and holding hands like teenagers.

  Dawn must be approaching.

  Many of the immortals in the area congregated here at David’s after each night’s hunt. Some spent the days there, too.

  Frowning at the bay window, Cat wondered how the two Russian immortals she had followed earlier had fared in their battle.

  For a moment, when she had knelt down to address the stray cat, the taller one—Yuri—had seemed to look right at her.

  Excitement had skittered through her.

  Then she had heard the vampires coming.

  After spending two hundred years with Bastien and his psychotic vampire friends, Cat could no longer abide being near the fiends. And when the immortals inevitably defeated the vampires in battle, setting their spirits free . . .

  Cat shuddered.

  No. She’d had to leave.

  The front door opened once more and, as though conjured by her thoughts, Yuri and Stanislav entered.

  A little thrill darted through her as it always did in Yuri’s presence. She wasn’t sure why. There was just something about him that drew her to him and always compelled her to single him out with her gaze, even when a host of other warriors surrounded him.

  She didn’t think it was because he was handsome. They were all handsome.

  Although Yuri did seem to be even easier on the eye, as she’d heard one of the female Seconds say, than the others.

  He stood about six foot four, just under a foot taller than her own five foot five. He kept his black hair short in back and on the sides, but long enough on top to reveal a tendency to wave. Dark brows hovered over piercing brown eyes that seemed to miss nothing. She’d once heard him tell Bastien that his patrician nose used to be crooked from being broken in a brawl in his youth, but had straightened when he had transformed. His lips were a little fuller than most men’s, but were by no means feminine. A perpetual five o’clock shadow hugged his strong jaw.

  Broad shoulders. A slender, yet muscular build. A smooth stroll that did odd things to her insides.

  Cat drifted into a corner and watched the other immortals call greetings and trade gibes with him before Yuri headed down the hallway toward the basement stairs. No doubt he intended to wash the night’s hunt off him in the bedroom he’d claimed when Seth had transferred him to North Carolina a couple of years ago. Just before he turned into the basement stairwell, Yuri glanced over his shoulder and looked in her direction.

  Perhaps, Cat thought, her attraction to him simply resulted from times like this when he almost seemed to acknowledge her presence.

  The others never did. Except for Marcus, who had only done so once. He had bellowed at her to get out when he had been arguing with Ami and Cat had inadvertently intruded.

  Speaking of whom . . .

  Marcus and Ami passed Yuri in the hallway and joined the others in the living room. Ami was about a foot shorter than her husband, with slender arms and legs and a huge protruding belly that turned her walk into a waddle.

  The couple sank onto a cushy sofa and began to chat with Roland and Sarah.

  Cat eased forward, her eyes on the petite redhead.

  Ami shifted, as though the babe in her belly wouldn’t allow her to get comfortable.

  Cat claimed the empty space beside Ami and lowered her eyes to Ami’s round tummy.

  A few minutes later, her careful scrutiny was rewarded when the babe shifted. What appeared to be the faint shape of a knee slid across the knit shirt that molded itself to Ami’s torso.

  Ami absently placed a hand over the knee and gave it a pat.

  Pleasure and pain warred within Cat.

  She remembered how that had felt. Her married friends had expounded upon the beauty of feeling a child move within them when they were breeding. But in the privacy of her bedchamber, when Cat had lowered the bedcovers and raised her nightgown to watch this limb or that shift and slide and press against her skin from inside her belly, she had thought it a strange combination of funny and creepy.

  Her chest tightened.

  How nervous she had been. Nervous and excited and afraid all at once. She had barely bee
n more than a child herself and had had no idea what caring for a babe would entail. Nor had she known what childbirth would bring. Women had spoken of it only in the most generic of terms back then. She’d known it would be painful. That it would be messy. And that she might not survive it.

  But she had loved the baby within her so much that she had thought it well worth the risk.

  Ami gave her big belly one last stroke, then dropped her hand to her lap.

  Ami carried a baby girl.

  All of Cat’s friends—her mother, too—had thought Cat had carried a boy.

  Her eyes burned. How many times had she wondered, with something akin to panic, what she would do with a boy? If raising a son would be harder than raising a girl in the male-dominated world in which she had resided? How great a role she would be able to play in his life? If he would love her as much as she already adored him?

  Immortals continued to move about the room, but Cat paid them no heed.

  Eyes burning, she reached a hand out and rested it on Ami’s belly.

  Ami didn’t react, just kept chatting with Sarah.

  On Ami’s other side, Marcus frowned at Cat and looked—for a moment—as though he would shove her hand away from his wife and unborn babe.

  But he didn’t.

  It only made Cat want to weep more.

  She liked to think she would’ve been a good mother. That she would’ve raised a fine young man. As fine and honorable as the warriors in this room.

  How she regretted having been denied the chance to do so.

  How she hated her husband for murdering her before she could birth their child.

  Cat squeezed her eyes shut as memories of violence and death attempted to intrude. A tear slipped down her cheek. She couldn’t think of that tonight. Couldn’t bear it.

  Lifting her lashes, she withdrew her hand from Ami’s tummy, glanced away, and looked directly into Yuri’s warm brown eyes.

  Her breath caught. When had he seated himself across from her?

  Her heart did an odd trip-hammer thing in her chest as he continued to meet her gaze.

  Or appeared to meet her gaze. Did he see her?

  He couldn’t possibly. Only Marcus could see her because the gift with which he had been born enabled him to see spirits and ghosts.

  Frowning, she glanced over her shoulder.

  Tracy and Nichole, two of the Seconds or human assistants who aided immortals, sat behind her, laughing and talking as they explored something on one of those electronic tablets.

  Ah. He must be looking at one of them.

  Cat turned back around, cursing herself for feeling so disappointed. For a moment . . .

  Again Yuri seemed to meet her gaze.

  No, it wasn’t just his looks that drew her, she thought. It was the uncanny way he had of appearing to look right at her.

  It happened with others from time to time. She would find herself standing between two people and one would seem to look her right in the eye. But it happened often enough with Yuri to make her wish it weren’t coincidence.

  She sighed.

  And now even more sadness afflicted her.

  Well, she didn’t want to stay here and watch Yuri admire whichever woman behind her had caught his attention.

  Rising, Cat strolled across the room and, passing through a few walls, looked in on the kittens snoozing in David’s study.

  Chapter Two

  Yuri had never been much of a talker.

  He wasn’t antisocial, like Roland. He just would rather listen and observe and toss in a word here or there than do the constant back-and-forth thing.

  Lounging on the sofa, he let the conversations of his brethren flow around him and tried to forget the tear that had slipped down the cheek of the beauty beside Ami.

  Who was the mysterious woman who haunted both David’s home and Yuri’s thoughts? Why did she linger here? Why did she follow Yuri on his hunts on occasion?

  Was she an Immortal Guardian who had been slain in the line of duty? Or a Second?

  He’d lost so many Seconds of his own over the centuries. Mortal men he had loved like brothers.

  “How did tonight’s hunt go?”

  Yuri looked around at the sound of his current Second’s inquiry.

  Dmitry stood next to him, munching an apple.

  “It went well.”

  Dmitry nodded. “Where are your weapons?”

  “In the armory.”

  “I’ll clean and sharpen them for you. Anything else you need me to do?”

  “I could use a new coat,” Yuri said. “A vampire tried to hamstring me, so mine’s looking a little ragged now.”

  Dmitry scowled. “I hate it when they do that. Why don’t the bastards just learn how to fight?”

  “One of the vampires we fought tonight did,” Yuri admitted with a wry smile. “He actually proved to be quite a challenge.”

  “Really?” Surprise lightened Dmitry’s blue eyes. He knew Yuri wasn’t easy to defeat. “Do you need blood?”

  “No, I’m good.” His wounds had been superficial enough to heal without an infusion.

  “Okay. I’ll have a new coat for you before tomorrow night’s hunt. Anything else? Something to eat, perhaps?” Dmitry held up a second apple.

  Smiling, Yuri held out his hand. “I’ll take it.”

  Dmitry tossed it to him. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

  Yuri shook his head and rose. “I think I’m going to turn in.” Leaving the living room, Yuri resisted the urge to peer into every doorway he passed in search of the woman in the long, cream-colored dress.

  David’s home boasted a basement that, with a few recent additions, was twice the size of the ground floor. A large sparring or training room took up a lot of square feet on the left. The rest of the basement provided bedrooms that now had all been soundproofed for any immortals who chose to spend the day there.

  And a lot did. Almost every immortal in the area, in fact. They had really been sticking close to offer their support and protection to Ami, the first mortal woman ever to conceive a child by an immortal.

  Yuri strode down the long hallway. Entering the bedroom he had claimed for his own, he closed the door behind him.

  Blessed silence.

  Tugging off his boots, he sank down in one of the two chairs in his reading nook. He and Stanislav had spent many a morning in those chairs, poring over books filched from David’s extensive library.

  Now Yuri retrieved his favorite dagger and applied it to the apple.

  No sooner had he placed the first slice between his lips than the woman in the cream-colored dress walked through his door.

  Yuri paused, then began to chew slowly as he watched her.

  Sadness clung to her, weighing every movement, though no tears stained her cheeks, he noted with some relief.

  He cut another slice, slipped the fruit—both tart and sweet—between his lips.

  This wasn’t the first time she had visited his quarters. She had been to his room more times than he could count since Seth had transferred him here.

  Yuri hadn’t known how long or how brief a time he would spend in North Carolina, so he had simply claimed this room at David’s home rather than choosing a house and going to the trouble of moving all of this things down from New York.

  She meandered around the room, studying his possessions.

  There hadn’t been very many personal effects at first. Yuri had thought his stay would be brief, so he hadn’t brought much with him.

  Then this lovely spirit had begun to visit and had seemed so curious about the few items he had brought with him.

  Giving in to what he had considered an absurd urge to please her, Yuri had asked Richart to teleport him to his apartment in New York so he could retrieve more.

  Sap. A smart-ass voice spoke in his head.

  Yuri ignored it.

  Every week or so, he put out something new. His first pocket watch—now an antique. His mother’s brooch, also an ant
ique. Hell, almost all of his favorite things were antiques. Even his favorite quill.

  And each time the beauty in the cream-colored dress would find the new objects, she would pause and admire them, then appeared to touch them.

  Could she touch them? he wondered idly. Some spirits were endowed with that ability. Some weren’t. Or so he had observed over the centuries.

  Could she touch him? he wondered next, then cursed the flutter of excitement and, yes, arousal, that struck at the notion. Of course she couldn’t touch him, nor would she. The woman hadn’t even spoken to him.

  He continued to munch the apple.

  He found he didn’t mind her silent company. He was a quiet man himself, so the fact that she never spoke didn’t bother him. Much. He wouldn’t mind having his curiosity appeased, though curiosity had proven detrimental in the past.

  She seemed curious about him. Or so he thought. Why else would she spend so many hours here, sitting with him while he read or watched television or continued to try to figure out the electronic gadgets Dmitry kept buying him?

  And if Yuri were honest with himself, it had become harder and harder in recent decades to keep loneliness at bay. It was actually kind of nice, having her here with him.

  Setting the dagger and the half-eaten apple on the nightstand, he rested his head against the chair’s high back and closed his eyes.

  So odd to know that someone was in the room with him, yet to hear no heartbeat, no clothing rustling, or the like. With his hypersensitive ears, he never enjoyed such silence in another’s presence.

  Her grief called out to him, though, niggling him until he did something he had vowed never to do again.

  “I can feel your sadness,” he murmured, not knowing why he spoke. “I wish I could alleviate it, little one.”

  No response came, of course.

  Sighing, he opened his eyes, half expecting her to be gone, and found her staring at him from across the room.

  “Is there anything I can do to alleviate it?” he asked her.

  She glanced behind her, as she always did when she caught him watching her, then returned wide eyes to him. “Can you see me?” she asked in a whisper, her expression a mixture of hope and disbelief as she touched a hand to her chest.