“He’s a Gatherer.”
“Yeah, but to her, he could be Prince Charming.”
Lachlan sighed and rubbed a rough hand over his face. “This girl doesn’t want Prince Charming. She wants a very suave and debonair Dracula.”
Brian choked back a laugh. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“Then that’s what we’ll give her.”
“She’s already got one.”
“Maybe,” Brian said, smiling, “but we’ll make this one better. Can I assume this girl belongs to the hot babe I met here the other day?”
“Aye.”
“And Mom disapproves of our lure demon, right?”
“Aye.”
“Why?”
“He’s eight years too old and rides a motorbike.”
“Excellent.” Brian waved at the young man near the window. “Carlos, buddy, come here a sec.”
The young man crossed the room with a typical teenage swagger and Lachlan eyed him carefully. He was slimly built, Hispanic, with long black hair and a tattoo of a cobra on his wrist.
“How old are you?” Brian asked Carlos.
“Eighteen.”
“You’ve been a Gatherer for only a year, right? Think you could pass for a sixteen-year-old high school student?”
The lad shrugged. “Sure.”
“A bit of makeup, some black clothes”—Brian beamed at Lachlan—“and there you have it, Something better. Younger, with no motorcycle. Bad boy, but not too bad. A charming Dracula she can invite home for dinner.”
“It might work.”
“Come on,” Brian prodded. “Admit it, the plan has legs. What’s the downside to giving it a whirl?”
“Discovery.”
“Don’t sweat it. I’m well aware that the devil is in the details. I’ll coach him personally.”
“You are the farthest thing I know from a Goth teen,” Lachlan pointed out. “How can you possibly coach him?”
“I have my sources. Trust me, we can do this.”
Thoughtfully, Lachlan studied Carlos. The lad was young and inexperienced, but also confident and difficult to read. Putting him into play was a risk, but how great a risk? “Are you sure you want to do this, Carlos? What’s at stake here isn’t a short stint in juvie hall; it’s oblivion.”
The lad shrugged. “In my old life, I played for the same stakes every day.”
“And lost. That’s why you’re here.”
“I’m a bit smarter now.”
“Maybe, but this time your soul could go to hell.”
“My five-year-old brother died right alongside me, man. I’m already in hell.”
Lachlan could have argued that it wasn’t the same, but the bleak look in Carlos’s eyes told him there was no point. “Fine, we’ll go with it. Get him decked out and enroll him in Emily’s school while I try to figure out the demon’s next step.” As Brian turned away to lecture Carlos, Lachlan grabbed him by the arm. “Don’t be a hero. Either one of you. If Emily displays the slightest suspicion, back away.”
“You bet.”
Lachlan nodded and turned back to his notes.
The truth was, the Carlos plan might be risky, but it was also convenient. Having someone else interrupt the relationship between Drusus and Emily would allow him to focus on winning back the souls of his family. He could concentrate on finding Drusus and crushing him.
But first he had to figure out what weapon in his arsenal was powerful enough to kick the demon’s arse permanently back to hell. The most obvious contender was the new sword Stefan had made for him, the claidheamh mòr. The replica of his old war blade offered him both enhanced magic and a familiarity born of many successful battles. There would be a certain justice to using it to bring Drusus down: an old blade for a very old crime.
A ghost of memory shuddered through him.
“We done for the day?”
He glanced up at Brian. “Aye. Be back tomorrow at eight.”
“In the morning? On a Sunday? Doesn’t three hours of brutality today entitle us to sleep in tomorrow?”
“No. From now on we train every day.”
“But—”
“That’s the deal, Webster. Take it or leave it.”
“I’ve created a monster. This training gig is definitely not rounding out your personality the way I’d hoped.”
Lachlan didn’t rise to the bait. He simply returned Brian’s stare until the other man shrugged and followed the other Gatherers out the door, leaving Lachlan to his thoughts.
Drusus had disappeared nine days before the attack on the manor house, during the massive raid on the Campbells that had won the MacGregors their land back. Everyone had presumed him a casualty. Elspeth had even wept over the poor lad’s tragic loss.
The fountain pen in his hand snapped in two, and blue ink sprayed over the countertop.
Lachlan had known the truth—that Drusus was alive and well—and the blame for what happened next lay squarely upon his shoulders. He deserved every moment he’d spent in purgatory, forced to relive the events in excruciating detail for five hundred years. He’d likely end up in hell for his part in his family’s horrific demise, and rightly so.
But Drusus was far from blameless.
How fitting it would be for a claidheamh mòr, a weapon out of their mutual past, to bring the filthy bastard down. But he wouldn’t rely solely on the sword. He’d brush up on his magic, as well.
One way or another, justice would be served.
7
“Where’s Emily?” Lachlan asked.
Rachel smiled and opened the door wider. “In her room. Why?”
“I need to speak with you, and I’d prefer we were alone.”
Rachel ushered him inside the apartment, then turned to face him. She wore a snug green T-shirt and a pair of faded blue jeans, leaving her feet delightfully bare. Her gleaming hair hung loosely past her shoulders, a graceful tumble of soft dark curls.
“Alone sounds good,” she said. “Except that I’m supposed to be working, and you’re hell on my concentration.”
He pinned her gaze. His entire body had responded instantly to her scent, his blood pumping hot and heavy through his veins, insisting she was his to claim. He let her catch a glimpse of the burn it caused inside him. “How curious, you have exactly the same effect on me.”
Rachel gave a gusty laugh and glanced away, shoving her hands into her pockets. “You know, that doesn’t help at all.”
“Sorry,” he said. Except he wasn’t. “Can you take a short break to answer a question?”
“Is it important?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“One question?”
“Just one.”
“Couldn’t you have done that over the phone?”
“Aye, but had I called you on the phone,” he said quietly, “I wouldn’t have been able to see your naked toes, or smell your shampoo, or watch you lick your lips and wish you were licking mine.”
She stared at him, the pulse in her throat beating like a hummingbird’s wings. Then she closed her eyes and groaned. “God, what was I thinking? I should never have opened the door.”
With her chin tilted slightly upward, her eyes closed, and her body open to him, Rachel was a lure too enticing to resist. Lachlan bent and stole a brief, hard kiss.
“I’m glad you did,” he murmured as he breathed her in. Sweet and warm, like honeysuckle on a summer’s eve.
She leapt back. “I’m trying to be good here, and you’re not making it easy.”
“Sorry,” he lied—again.
“Sure you are.” She retreated into the apartment, cheeks flushed. “Go sit in the armchair.”
“Will that really help?” he asked, doubtful. To his mind, nothing short of putting the Pacific Ocean between them would help.
Her eyes narrowed, and she pointed. “Go.”
Lachlan did as he was told.
Rachel stomped into the kitchen and grabbed a pitcher of tea from the fridge.
He smiled faintly when he saw her double up the ice cubes in one glass, leaving almost no room for tea.
“Hoping to cool me off?” he asked, accepting the iced tea.
“Stop smirking and ask your question.” She stood a safe distance away and sipped at her drink.
“What are you cooking?”
“That’s your question?”
“No, I’m just curious. Your apartment smells delicious.” The savory scent of meat in the oven, the quiet background music on the radio, the lit candles, and the family mementos on the fireplace mantel … it all felt wonderfully inviting. Homelike.
“Roast chicken,” she confessed, giving a quick smile of pride at his compliment.
A pang of loss hit him hard then. It had been a long time since he’d let himself think about a home or a woman’s cooking, about plying compliments intended to tug smiles from reluctant faces. He’d been quite good at that once.
With a slight wobble in his hand, Lachlan set his glass down on the side table. “My real question is, what’s the one thing Emily wants most?”
“Why do you need to know?”
“If Drusus is intent on sucking her into his view of the world, he’ll attempt to give it to her, to win her confidence.”
Rachel stilled, her oval face pensive. “I have no idea.”
“Take your time.”
Her eyes met his, filled with genuine pain. “No, you don’t understand. I really have no idea. I used to know her so well, but now … I haven’t a clue.”
“Didn’t you say you read her diary?”
“Yes. Pages upon pages of dark angst over school and friends and boys. Nothing about her deeper wants and desires. Half of it was in code, anyway, people’s initials instead of their names.”
“Is there a dream she wants to fulfill, an impossible item she’s always wanted to purchase?”
She grimaced. “Not that I know of. I mean, she makes the usual oohs and aahs about the stuff she sees on TV, but minutes later, it’s forgotten.”
“Okay,” he said, getting to his feet. “Keep thinking on it. Let me know if you come up with something. It’ll help us figure out what he’s planning next.”
“Can I ask Em?”
“I’d rather you didn’t. If she shares the discussion with Drusus, he’ll be on to us.”
“Okay.”
The look of failure on Rachel’s face was too much to bear. Lachlan tugged her into his arms and rested his chin in the soft cloud of her hair. Standing here like this, with their bodies loosely entwined and the urge to protect her a warm burn in his chest, he could almost fool himself into believing a future together was possible.
“You know her better than you think,” he said gently. “The Goth outfit hasn’t changed the girl beneath. What’s important to Emily now is likely the very same as when she was a child. Dig a little deeper and it’ll come to you.”
She gave him a grateful squeeze, and then laid her cheek against his chest. Her sigh was barely audible, not intended for his ears, but he heard it.
“Can I keep you?”
He closed his eyes. His heartbeat was an echo of the very same question. Unfortunately, he knew the answer.
After he had gone, Rachel returned to her illustration, but it was a waste of time. Lachlan’s question kept ringing in her ears: What’s the one thing Emily wants most?
Wow. What kind of mother doesn’t know what her child dreams about? She often accused Grant of not knowing his own daughter, but was she any better? At least he had an excuse—he lived in a different city. She lived with Em day in and day out. Saw her at breakfast every morning. Ate dinner with her. How could she not know?
But she didn’t. Not even a decent guess.
At age six, Em had dreamed of growing wings and becoming a fairy. And at nine, she’d desperately wanted a pony. But now? Her spoken desires amounted to little more than a plea for hot concert tickets or a new pair of earrings. Or that damned tattoo she’d asked for last month. But it couldn’t be something as simple as a tattoo.
Rachel flicked on the oven light and peered in at the chicken. Starting to brown. Time to start thinking about the rest of the meal.
She set the burner under the potatoes to high and opened the fridge. All the ingredients were there for a salad, so she pulled them out, plus butter and milk for the potatoes. The milk carton was almost empty.
Leaning around the kitchen wall, she called, “Em.”
No answer.
She shook her head, trod the four feet of hallway, and turned the doorknob. Em lay on her bed, reading a book with her MP3 player hooked into her ears. To compensate for the attention barriers, Rachel upped her voice level. “Em, I need you to run down to the 7-Eleven for me.”
“I’m reading.”
“I can see that. But we’re out of milk. Don’t you want to get out for a few minutes?”
Em chewed her lip.
It was day ten of the two-week grounding, and other than the trip to the fairgrounds that night, as far as Rachel knew, Em hadn’t been anywhere except school. The attraction of leaving the apartment, even for a chore, had to be high.
Sure enough, Em tucked a bookmark into the latest installment of her urban fantasy saga and crawled off the bed. “Okay.”
Five minutes later, alone in the apartment, Rachel was chopping up tomatoes and cucumber for the salad. The grandfather clock chimed the half hour, and just like that, an idea popped into her head—one she couldn’t seem to shake.
She had a brief opportunity to peek into Em’s bedroom.
Everything Em claimed as her own ended up in that room: her coat, her shoes, her schoolbag—everything. If it was Em’s, it went into the cave, sometimes never to be seen again. If she wanted to find a clue to what Em desired most, wasn’t that the best place to look?
Rachel put down the paring knife and wiped her hands on a tea towel. Taking a deep breath, she returned to her daughter’s bedroom and pushed open the door.
Standing on the threshold, she slowly swept the room, absorbing the familiar, post-apocalypse flavor. Clothes and garbage were strewn everywhere. The picture on the dresser caught her eye: a family shot—Christmas Eve, maybe five or six years ago—with all three of them sitting in front of the holly-decked fireplace of their home in Connecticut, hugging and laughing as if their lives weren’t on the verge of falling apart. A handful of loose change, one lone earring, and a bottle of black nail polish littered the dresser top, but there were no magazines or notes that might serve as clues.
The big double bed stood against the far wall, its black cotton sheets rumpled and the lightweight comforter balled up against the wall. Above the bed, tacked to the wall at crazy angles, hung posters of several Goth bands and singers, including Siouxsie Sioux, the Cure, and Lycia.
The walk-in closet displayed racks of untidily hung black clothes, with a pile of mismatched shoes at the bottom. Even the knee-high lace-up leather boots Em had promised to keep in pristine condition were tossed onto the heap.
Rachel stepped into the room.
She dodged the clumps of scattered clothes on the floor and crossed to the desk. Unearthing a couple of magazines from beneath the junk food wrappers around the computer, she searched for dog-eared pages and open spreads—anything that would suggest interest. When that turned up nothing, she dug through the drawers.
And found a knife.
Not just any knife, one of her ebony-handled Shun steak knives—razor sharp. Rachel picked it up, frowning. Why would Em have a knife in her room?
“What the hell are you doing?”
At the low snarl of Em’s voice, Rachel spun around, her heart ricocheting against her rib cage. Her daughter stood at the door, MP3 player in hand, betrayal a dark stain in her eyes.
Oh God.
At a loss for anything else, Rachel went with the truth. “I feel as if I’m losing you, Em. I came in here looking for a sign, I guess, of the person you’ve become. Something that would help me talk to you.”
Em yanked open the dresser drawer and dug for a spare battery. “Or maybe you just wanted another go at my diary.”
“I didn’t read your diary.”
“Why not? Did I come back a little too soon? How inconvenient of me to interrupt Mommy on her little spy mission.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Rachel said defensively.
“Not really feelin’ the love here, Mom. Groundings, room rousts. Christ, next you’ll be putting bars on my windows and a lock on my door.”
Flushing, Rachel quickly changed the subject. “Why do you have a steak knife in your room?”
“Why does that matter?” Em’s shoulders hunched. “I was probably eating something.”
“Em, listen to me. I’m just worried about you, that’s all. This whole thing with Drew has me freaked-out, I’ll admit it. He scares me.”
“Oh yeah, he’s really scary. He wears a black leather jacket and drives a bike.”
“There’s more to him than that.” Rachel needed to believe that a piece of the old Em still existed. The bright, straight-A student who questioned everything. Surely if Em knew what kind of person Drew really was, she’d do the smart thing and walk away? “He’s not what you think he is, Em. Lach—Father MacGregor used to know Drew, and he told me he was involved in something pretty bad.”
At the mention of Father MacGregor, Em grew still, and Rachel knew she had a chance. Although she didn’t want to frighten Em, the truth had worked so far—
“He sells drugs, Em.”
As soon as the words were out, a shutter fell over Em’s face. She gave a harsh laugh and sauntered over to the window. “Wow, he was right. He said you’d dredge up some over-the-top story, that you’d go out of your way to make him look bad. I didn’t believe it, but hey, here we are.”
“It’s not a story. It’s true.”
“Really? Better get your facts straight, Mom. I talked to Father MacGregor about Drew, and guess what? He understood. He totally got it. He never once tried to convince me Drew was some evil, despicable drug dealer.”
Too late, Rachel realized the trap she’d fallen into and she backpedaled. “He didn’t want to frighten you.”
“Nice try, but guess what? I don’t buy it.”
Drawn into Darkness Page 10
