Deciding to just slip out to avoid any hassle, Allie slid off the gurney she’d awoken on, and then had to stop and grab at it to steady herself when the world wobbled around her. It was a full minute before the floor stopped moving, and then she released a small sigh and shuffled to the opening in the curtain. She was in bad shape, worse than she’d ever been. Allie loved Liam to bits, but that love was killing her.
Pushing that thought away for now, she paused and peered out. There were several doctors and nurses bustling around, moving from one curtained-off area to another. There were also two tall men all in black talking to the doctor who had treated her. One of the men was dressed in black leather pants, a black T-shirt, and a heavy black leather coat. The other was in a black suit and long coat. The detectives, Allie supposed as she watched Officer Mannly and his partner approach them.
Allie started to shift her attention away when a flash of silver caught her eye. It wasn’t from a wristwatch, or a ring one of the two detectives was wearing, but from their eyes. Her blood ran cold when she saw the metallic glitter in their depths. When one of the two new men then looked her way, she quickly ducked behind the curtain, her heart racing and the world wobbling again.
Allie forced herself to take a couple of deep breaths to steady herself. She was seriously low on blood at the moment. If she were a car they’d say she was running on fumes. At least, that’s how it felt. It was what had precipitated this risky and ridiculous venture of robbing the blood bank. It was also going to slow her down. But she needed to get out of there. And without those two “detectives” seeing her.
Allie considered her options and then crossed the small curtained-off room to the opposite side. There, she dropped to her knees and peered under the curtains. Not spotting any feet moving around in the next curtained-off area, she crawled quickly under. There was someone on the gurney here, but they were curled up on their side, clutching their stomach with their eyes squeezed closed in pain.
Thinking that was fortuitous, Allie quickly scrambled around the gurney to the opposite side. Still on all fours, she paused to check this new area. Here, there were feet and legs in white shoes and pants. Fortunately, even as she spotted them, they turned from the gurney and moved out of the curtained area. The moment they did, Allie crawled under the curtain here too and scrambled toward the opposite side.
“Hello?” The question was part surprise and part dismay from the gurney. The voice sounded like an old woman’s, but Allie didn’t glance around to see if her guess was right. She merely muttered, “Hello, sorry,” and scrambled out the other side of the curtained area where she climbed carefully to her feet. It was the end of the examination rooms, if you could call curtained-off areas that. This was a small alcove with cupboards and a sink right next to a door that she suspected led to the rest of the hospital and other exits. She moved to the end of the uncurtained alcove and risked a peek out.
The doctor had moved away from the two detectives and they were now talking to the police officers. The detectives’ expressions were oddly concentrated. The sight merely made her more determined than ever to leave as quickly as she could. She needed to get home, grab Liam and the Go bags she always kept packed, and get the hell out of Toronto. She’d hoped the city would allow them to stay lost longer, and it had seemed to work. They’d managed to stay here for four months instead of the usual two or three, but they’d been found again and it was time to move.
The very idea was a depressing one to Allie. She was exhausted in body, heart, and mind and just wanted to curl up and sleep for a week . . . or maybe a year. But she didn’t have that option. She just had to suck it up and keep moving. For Liam.
“So, we have handled the police and the doctors,” Magnus murmured as the police officers moved away, their memories of the events surrounding Allie Chambers removed.
“Yeah.” Tybo scanned the emergency area, no doubt checking the minds and memories of the nurses and doctors present to be sure they hadn’t missed anyone. “Mortimer will have to send someone to erase any physical evidence. The 911 call and so on.”
“Is that necessary? I didn’t even think it was necessary to remove the events from the minds of the doctors and police. They all seemed to think it was just a mistake. That she was there for innocent purposes.”
“But she’s a possible life mate to you, Magnus, so that’s a connection to us and we need to remove anything that connects to us.”
“Of course,” Magnus said quietly, knowing that was true. He should have realized that at once, but he was a little distracted at the prospect of meeting his life mate. A possible life mate, he reminded himself. Just because she might suit him didn’t mean she would agree to become his life mate. Sighing, he straightened his shoulders. “So? We approach her now and get her out of here?”
“No.”
Magnus turned on him sharply. “No?”
“I mean, we can’t approach her,” Tybo said with a grimace. “At least, not here. She left while we were dealing with the police officers.”
“What?” Magnus asked with dismay. “What do you mean she left? Why did you not stop her?”
“Because I didn’t want her causing a ruckus here after we’d worked so hard to erase everyone’s memories,” Tybo said soothingly. “But it’s fine. We have her address. We’ll just go to her home and you can . . .” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Introduce yourself or something. Speaking of which, how did you plan to handle things?”
“I—” Magnus scowled. “Well, not like this. A seemingly accidental encounter, maybe. Something that appears random or natural, and then I would woo her.”
“Woo?” Tybo grinned.
“What?” Magnus asked, his eyes narrowing.
“Nothing,” the younger man said at once, but his grin widened. “You’re just showing your age. Wooing is kind of old school.”
“The word or the activity?” Magnus asked with irritation.
“Both,” Tybo decided, and then clapped a hand on his shoulder and used the hold to urge him toward the exit. “I’m afraid the accidental encounter thing is out. We need to find out what she was really up to tonight.”
“We know what she was up to,” Magnus pointed out as they exited the emergency area. “She was moving some blood she forgot to take care of before leaving work that day and—”
“Maybe,” Tybo interrupted. “But we need to find out for sure.”
“Of course we do,” Magnus agreed wearily, but wasn’t happy with the knowledge. He’d hoped to have a more natural introduction into her life. This was not going to be natural and could make things harder. But even hard was better than not having the chance. He’d waited a long time to meet his life mate. “So, we are going to her place?”
“Yeah,” Tybo said, and then they both fell silent as they left the building and headed for the SUV. Neither of them actually spoke again until Tybo pulled into the parking lot of an apartment building some twenty minutes later. Turning off the engine, he then turned to Magnus. “How do you want to play this? I mean, I don’t want to make this any harder for you than it has to be. You could wait in the car and I could go in alone, read her mind, and if everything is aboveboard, and she wasn’t stealing blood, just leave and let you do your whole accidental encounter and wooing later.”
“You would do that?” he asked with surprise.
“Sure,” Tybo said, and then pointed out, “It’s not like you’d be much help anyway. If she’s a possible life mate you can’t read or control her. So, really, if she wasn’t stealing blood, it makes more sense for you to wait here so you can approach her without complications later.”
Magnus nodded, but his attention had caught on two men moving through the darkness along the front of the building, half-hidden by the bushes that ran along it. He tensed when he noted the way their eyes glowed in the dark.
“So, I’ll leave the car on and—”
“Allie lives on the first floor, does she not?” Magnus interrupted.
“Y
es,” Tybo said, sounding bewildered by the question.
“The front of the building?” Magnus asked.
“I don’t know. I just know her apartment is 107.”
“I am pretty sure she probably lives in the front,” Magnus said grimly, reaching for his door handle.
“Why?”
“Because there are two immortals presently breaking into a ground-floor apartment,” Magnus said grimly as he got out of the car.
Cursing, Tybo turned off the engine and followed.
Two
“Mommy!”
Allie pushed the door closed and forced a smile as she turned to watch her little boy race up the hall toward her. His dark hair was sleep-tousled and his Spider-Man pajamas rumpled.
“Liam,” she breathed. Relieved to see he was alive and well and that at least one of her worries had been for nothing, she bent to hug him when he threw himself against her. “You should be napping.”
“I woke up and you were gone,” the boy complained, raising his head to glare at her accusingly.
“I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be gone so long,” she said apologetically, her eyes moving past him and up the hall. She needed to get their Go bags and get him out of there. Allie didn’t know how long she had, but having vampires show up at the hospital looking into her wasn’t a good thing. All the way home in the taxi she’d been terrified she’d arrive to find Liam gone and vampires waiting to kill or take her.
“What is this?”
She felt him plucking at the bandage around her head and shifted her attention to the boy. “Nothing,” she assured him. “Now you need to go get your teddy bear while I grab our Go bags,” she said, easing him away. “We need to leave.”
“We’re moving again?” the boy asked unhappily.
“Yes, honey. Right now. So go get your teddy or we’ll have to leave him,” she added firmly, giving him a push up the hall. She didn’t miss the way his shoulders sagged at the news, or how miserable it obviously made him, but his safety was her first priority and they weren’t safe here anymore.
Sighing, she stood and moved to the hall closet. Allie had just grabbed their Go bags and swung them over her shoulder when she heard Liam cry out in fear from his room. Panic seizing her, Allie rushed up the hall and through the living room, headed for the bedroom door. She never made it. She’d barely stepped into the living room when she was grabbed and restrained. The speed of her attacker told her she was dealing with a vampire. His strength backed it up, and then a second man strode out of the bedroom holding a limp Liam, his eyes aglow with golden fire.
“Why haven’t you taken control of her?” Liam’s captor asked with a scowl when he saw Allie struggling uselessly against the man holding her.
“I like it when they fight,” the man holding her said with a laugh, and then stiffened, a gurgling sound coming from his throat. Allie hardly noticed that, though, or the fact that she was suddenly free. Her wide-eyed gaze was fixed on the man who had suddenly appeared behind Liam’s captor and caught him around the neck. Liam was immediately dropped as the grubby man who had grabbed him turned to confront his own attacker.
“Liam!” Allie rushed to his side and helped the bewildered, but unharmed, boy up and out of the way of the battling men. She then urged him around her own captor and the man he was struggling with and toward the door.
Allie recognized their rescuers as the “detectives” from the hospital, but had no idea what was going on. She’d assumed on first seeing them that they were members of the vampire group that had been hunting her and Liam. But if that was the case, who were the two men who had just tried to grab them? And just how many damned vampires were out there? Allie had assumed, or at least hoped, that there was just the one group—the head vampire who had turned Stella and his minions. But obviously that wasn’t the case. The problem was she had no idea what the case was. She wasn’t willing to stop and ask questions, however. Her main concern was getting Liam out of there and to safety.
Tightly gripping the boy’s hand, Allie hustled him out of the apartment and rushed him up the hall as fast as she could. At her strongest, Liam could have outrun her easily. Weak as she presently was, and weighed down by the Go bags, she was just holding him back, but there was nothing she could do about it. She was moving as quickly as she could.
They had just turned the corner out of the hallway and into the foyer when Allie was grabbed from behind again and dragged back around the corner they’d just rounded. This time she was caught around the waist and held more gently, her mouth covered so she couldn’t scream. Even so, her panic was enough that she nearly didn’t hear the man holding her whisper, “Their friends are out there. Look.”
Blinking as his words registered, Allie peered around the corner, surprised when he allowed it. She stared silently at the three vehicles that had pulled up in front of her building. Men were piling out of them and moving toward the entry doors. They all looked grubby and most had long hair like the men who had first grabbed her and Liam in her apartment. She also noticed that their eyes were glowing slightly in the night as if reflecting the light like a cat’s.
“Is there a back door in this building?”
Allie’s attention was forced away from the men approaching the doors when the man holding her eased her back against his chest and turned with her toward the man who had asked the question. The man in black jeans was holding Liam like an affectionate uncle rather than a kidnapper, the boy settled on his hip and one arm around him to keep him from tumbling, but not really restraining him. Still, Allie hesitated. As far as she knew, all vampires were bad. Well, accept for Liam, of course, and his mom had been good too in the end.
“I’m Tybo and the guy behind you is Magnus,” the vampire holding Liam announced. “We’re the good guys. We hunt rogues like the two men in your apartment and the ones out front, but there are too many of them, so we need to slip you out of here as quickly and quietly as possible, and preferably unseen. Is there a back door to the building?”
Allie hesitated briefly, unsure whether to believe and trust these two vampires or not. But they had saved them from the first two in her apartment, and they did appear to want to get them away from the men even now probably trying the entry door, so she took a chance and pointed back the way they’d come. Allie found herself immediately scooped up by the man named Magnus.
They nearly flew down the hall. Allie wanted to protest at being carried like a child, but knew she couldn’t move as fast as them, so forced herself to remain still in the arms of Magnus, the “detective” in the black suit and long coat. Who smelled ridiculously good, she noted, and immediately felt bad for noticing.
They’d nearly reached the end of the hall when Allie heard the crash of glass breaking behind them. Then Tybo pushed the emergency exit open and carried her precious boy outside. The door didn’t even start to close before Magnus was passing through as well with her.
“We won’t be able to get back to the SUV unseen.” Tybo’s voice was hushed as he paused to peer along the small paved laneway they’d come out on. It was just a track paved to allow the garbage trucks to come empty the building’s big bins. Otherwise it was usually empty as it was now. They were standing between the back of the apartment building and a high fence that blocked it off from the business plaza beyond.
“Over the fence,” Magnus ordered, and Allie watched with amazement as the man carrying Liam did just that. He took two running steps toward the eight-foot-high fence and then simply jumped over it like some Superman without the cape. He’d barely dropped out of sight on the other side of the fence with Liam when Magnus started forward.
Allie clutched at his shoulders, squeezed her eyes shut, and prayed as they suddenly launched into the air. She stayed like that until they landed on the other side of the fence with a jolt that rippled from his body to hers. When Magnus started running again, she opened her eyes to look around.
They were behind the plaza where deliveries were made to the
individual stores, but the men were heading toward the end of it. She thought they’d run around the corner to the front of the stores. There were a couple of restaurants there where they could have sought haven, but instead they went to the back door of the last store with something or other Pizza on the sign. Allie wasn’t sure what it read. She never had spare money for fast food anymore so had never paid attention to the name of the nearby pizza joint, and the men were moving too quickly for her to read it properly before the door was open and they were inside with warm air rushing over them.
“I’ll see about getting us a ride,” Tybo announced.
When the man holding her grunted in what she assumed was agreement, Tybo carried Liam off up the hall toward the noise and delicious smells of the kitchen.
“The boy is safe with Tybo.”
Allie tore her concerned gaze away from the pair to peer at the man holding her. She quickly looked away again, though. Holding her as he was, his face was just inches from hers, his breath feathering her lips and cheeks when she’d faced him.
“You can put me down now,” she said quietly, and after a small hesitation, Magnus bent slightly to set her on her feet.
“Thank you,” Allie said, trying not to sound as relieved as she felt.
“You are welcome.”
Allie glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and then turned toward where she could see Tybo talking to an aproned man in the entry to the kitchen. Her eyes slid anxiously to what she could see of Liam. Her son was leaning into Tybo with his little arms around his neck as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Allie frowned at the sight. Liam usually didn’t take to strangers. Not that he met a lot of them, she supposed as she became aware that the Go bags were slipping and hefted them to a more secure position higher up her shoulder.
“Can I carry those for you?”
Glancing around to see Magnus’s hand reaching for the straps of the Go bags, Allie instinctively jerked back a step and slapped his hand away. “No.”
Immortal Born EPB Page 2
