by Anne Hope
Something flashed in his eyes, a flicker of grief followed by relief. “Then why have you spent your life running?”
“Because the Kleptopsychs aren’t interested in killing me,” she explained. “It’s my soul they want.” A cloud drifted across the sun, sucking the light from the room. “And my mother is convinced the world will end if they get their hands on it.”
Adrian lapsed into silence, and the weight in Emma’s chest grew crushing. Only moments ago he’d held her in his arms, stroked her back, brushed his lips across her cheek. No man had ever shown her such tenderness. The emotions the act had triggered within her had shaken her so profoundly, she’d briefly lost control of her limbs.
What would’ve happened if she hadn’t dropped that mug? Would he have kissed her? Would she have kissed him back?
“I think your mother may be right,” he said, and the enticing image taking shape in her mind disintegrated.
“You do?” She’d always wondered what made her soul such a prize for those who hunted her and what they planned to do with it once they acquired it. “Why?”
He dissected her with his stare until her pores tingled. “Your soul, it’s—” he paused as though searching for the right word, “—whole.”
Emma furrowed her brows in confusion. “And that makes it special because—?”
“I’m not much of a history buff,” he told her, “but I know this. After the Great Flood, souls were divided. Most people get half a soul, sometimes less. If you’re lucky, you find your soul mate and achieve that state of wholeness humans once knew.”
He captured her gaze, held it. The intense glitter in his eyes threatened to melt her bones. “No one’s gotten a full soul for thousands of years,” he continued. “But recently, that seems to have changed.”
“How come?”
“Depends on who you ask.” He leaned his head against the backrest, clenching and unclenching his fingers to relieve the pain.
She touched him tentatively with her left hand—the one that had no traces of blood on it—hoping to undo the damage she’d caused. Earlier in the truck, his wound had healed instantly at her touch. With any luck it would do so again.
The heat of his gaze branded her, and it was an effort not to withdraw her hand. “There’s a group we call the Watchers,” he explained. “They’re Hybrids, like me, and they’ve appointed themselves the world’s guardians. Their leader, Cal, is convinced an apocalypse is coming. From what I understand, he believes the sudden appearance of these twin souls is a sign that the end is near.”
“Great.” Emma was glad to see his wounds were shrinking. It was funny how she could burn him with her blood, then heal him with nothing more than a touch. She still wasn’t sure exactly how that worked. She’d never had the ability to heal anyone before.
“So am I destined to save the world or destroy it?”
“I really don’t have all the facts,” he confessed. “I’ve made it a point to steer clear of the Watchers over the years.” His lids drooped and he exhaled heavily, lulled by the soft strokes of her fingers. Encouraged, Emma traced wide circles across his palm with her thumb. He settled deeper into the couch.
It was intoxicating, having that kind of power over a man—the power to ravage and the power to cure. She wished she could touch more of him. She had the inexplicable urge to slide her palm up his muscular arm, to explore the broad curve of his shoulder, to run her fingers over the sharp angle of his collarbone and slowly let it drift down toward his wide, athletic chest.
How would he react if she gave in to temptation and caressed him, the way he’d caressed her earlier? Did she want to find out?
When she raised her gaze to his face, his eyes were sealed shut. He lay as still as death. She couldn’t even tell if he was breathing.
He’s just sleeping.
It was to be expected after the trying day he’d had, not to mention the wounds he’d suffered at her hand. Still, a part of her couldn’t help but worry that she’d inadvertently killed him.
She lowered her face to his, relaxing only when she felt the reassuring heat of his breath on her lips. With a relieved sigh, she rested her cheek on his torso, comforted by the steady tempo of his heartbeat.
Maybe it was wrong of her to take pleasure in the act, when her mother was probably going through hell right now. Maybe she didn’t deserve the sense of rightness that swept over her as she inhaled Adrian’s spicy male scent and reveled in his warmth. Maybe she was a bad person, not a savior at all but a selfish woman hungering for a moment of respite.
Whatever the case, she couldn’t stop the sensations that coursed through her any more than she could stop herself from breathing. Here, tucked away in a remote corner of the globe, her head resting against Adrian’s beating heart, Emma experienced her first taste of peace.
And she liked it.
Diane didn’t like it when things didn’t go as planned. She’d worked too hard over the past eighteen months to see her project fail now. All she’d ever wanted was power, and she’d finally gotten it.
Thanks to Kyros and his ingenious soul extractor.
When the Watchers had burned down their operation at the Rivershore Hospital, it had seemed like a disastrous setback. Their breeding program had been compromised, their prisoners freed, their embryo trials destroyed. But the soul extractor had survived, and that had given Diane all the leverage she’d needed.
Kyros’s untimely death hadn’t hurt, either. The Kleptopsychs had been in need of a new leader, and Diane had happily stepped in and filled the position her old partner had vacated. Of course, getting the Kleptopsychs to follow her—especially given how she looked—had been no easy task.
She ran her hand over her distorted face. These past two years, she’d ingested countless souls, hoping to heal the damage caused by the angel’s blood that Hybrid bitch had injected into her system, but the scars refused to fade.
Now she had only one goal—to see humans and Hybrids alike suffer as she had.
“Has the old hag talked?” she asked one of the soldiers she’d dispatched to collect the latest human who bore the mark. Instead they’d returned with the woman’s mother, a fact Diane was none too pleased about.
“Not yet. Her spirit is strong, her mind difficult to breach.”
“How hard can it be to break a seventy-year-old woman?” She stood in her lab, buried in a bunker deep within the Nevada desert, one of the many she’d appropriated when she’d taken over a secret military base. Now that the Watchers had the run of the catacombs, the Kleptopsychs needed another way to survive the coming flood, and these war bunkers were ideal.
“She’s not what she seems. There’s this wall around her mind…” He shook his head, trailed off.
Diane checked on the embryos she was growing in the assembly of ten-gallon tanks erected in the center of the steel-coated room. So far, all her trials had failed, which meant they wouldn’t be able to start mass-producing humans anytime soon. She needed another alternative. Something foolproof. “A wall? That’s your excuse?” Pathetic, all of them. It was impossible to get good help these days.
“We’ve tried everything. She won’t reveal her daughter’s location, and we can’t seem to read her thoughts or mold her will.”
Exasperation swelled in her chest, a result of the feeding she’d had that morning. With the soul extractor at her disposal, nearly filled to capacity with human essences, Diane no longer had to stagger her feedings or deprive herself. She often dropped by the extraction chamber for a quick snack, addicted to the emotional rush it gave her.
Imagine if she got her hands on one of the chosen. What had that angel woman called them when she’d appeared to her, mere hours after the Watchers had raided the Rivershore Hospital—the Sacred Four? The angel had asked Diane to relay the information to Kyros, but Diane had kept it to herself, making off with the soul extractor instead.
She’d known Kyros would never have forgiven her for allowing his precious operation to burn
to the ground. He would’ve attempted to have her executed, the way his father had.
Instead, she’d turned the tables on him, stealing his creation from right under his nose. Now it was hers to do with as she pleased, and what she wanted most was to see the device filled with an essence so powerful, it could sustain her kind indefinitely, maybe even heal the damage to her face.
Her hand drifted to her mottled cheek once more. What she would give to be beautiful again. She dreamed of it, yearned for it, almost as much as she yearned to see the world cleansed of the lesser races.
Diane took off her lab coat, placing it on the hook by the magnetically sealed door. She turned to the Kleptopsych, whose name she couldn’t remember. Resolve hardened her spine and increased the anticipation building in her throat. “Take me to her.”
If you wanted something done, you had to do it yourself.
Chapter Eight
When Adrian awoke, the sun had begun its slow glide toward the mountains. The purple hue of twilight filled the living room, casting ghostlike shadows on the walls. He rose from the couch, surprised when no weakness assailed him. He studied his hand, rotating it sideways, first to the left, then to the right.
His wounds had healed. Only a thin, silvery scar lined the top of his hand where Emma’s switchblade had cut him. That was one of the benefits of having his soul mate under the same roof. He could regenerate himself twice as fast.
He searched the townhouse for her, tunneling his vision. Physical barriers weren’t an obstacle for him. With the right amount of concentration, Adrian could see past walls and ceilings and scan the house in a matter of seconds. When he failed to catch sight of her, he turned his gaze inward instead, relying on his instincts to guide him.
He found her in the backyard, watching the sunset, her arms crossed over her breasts. The wind gusted, and a shiver coursed through her.
“You should’ve worn a jacket.” Although he wasn’t susceptible to the cold, he knew the evenings could get pretty chilly out here. Emma had told him she didn’t get sick, but old fears were hard to banish.
“I’m fine.” She ventured a glance in his direction. “How ’bout you? Feeling better?”
“As good as new.” He slid in closer, until only a few inches separated their bodies. Emma tensed but didn’t attempt to move away from him. Energy hummed between them, even though they weren’t touching. “Sorry I passed out on you.”
Shame swept over her face. “It’s my fault. I should’ve warned you about my blood.”
He still hadn’t wrapped his brain around that. How could a human’s blood be so powerful, so lethal to him?
The wind blew her hair off her shoulders, revealing her birthmark. Adrian ran his thumb over it, enthralled. “Could be because of this mark,” he thought out loud.
Emma hugged herself tighter. “I still don’t get why we have the same birthmark.”
He had a theory, but he wasn’t ready to share it with her yet. Instead, he focused on the facts. “Eddie and I have been following the abductions for over a year now.”
Surprise slackened her jaw. “There have been others?”
He nodded. “Dozens of them. All across North America.” The sun dipped behind the mountains, and the shadows greedily swept in to engulf them. “The victims all had birthmarks similar to ours. Yours, however, is the first I’ve seen that’s identical to mine.”
“What became of them?” Her voice dropped to a whisper, weighed down by remorse. “The people who were abducted.”
“Most of the bodies were never found. Only one washed up in the Pacific.” The corpse had been shriveled beyond recognition. The victim had been identified with the help of dental records, but the cause of death had been listed as unknown. That was how Eddie had stumbled across the case. He had a system set up that identified crimes that appeared Kleptopsych- or Rogue-related, and an unknown cause of death was a definite red flag.
“Were these people abducted because the Kleptopsychs were looking for me?” Her tone was flat, resigned.
“Possibly.” He’d sworn a long time ago that he’d never lie to her.
“Then maybe it’s time I stop running and face them.”
On second thought, the truth sometimes proved a liability. “You can’t do that.”
“I can’t keep letting people die because of me.” Here was a spark of the woman he knew, the woman who was willing to put everything on the line for something she believed in.
“You don’t have a choice. If we’re right and the Kleptopsychs are after your soul, we can’t let them find you. If we do, we’d be risking not only a handful of people, but all of mankind. Is that what you want?”
“Hell, no. But what else can I do?” She shifted her weight, and her arm brushed his, sending electric sparks shooting across his nerve endings.
Turning to face her, he seized her by the arms, reveling at the secret thrill he experienced each time he touched her. “Work with me. I swear, we’ll figure this thing out.”
Her gaze rose to meet his. Doubt creased her forehead and thinned her mouth. He ached to soften that mouth, to pry her lips open with his tongue, to remind her of what they’d once shared. On the night he’d met Angie, he’d stolen her memories with a kiss. Now, all he wanted was to make Emma remember.
She took a step away from him. “Why are you so determined to help me? What’s in it for you?”
Her distrust struck him like a slap. Because you still matter to me. Because I can’t imagine going through the hell of losing you again. Because you’re my goddamn soul mate and you don’t even know it.
“Because the last thing I want is to see the Kleptopsychs gain any more ammunition. They’re ruthless and calculating and won’t quit until they’ve achieved whatever twisted goal they’re after.” It was as close to the truth as he could get without revealing the depths of his feelings for her. “I may not know what their agenda is, but I can tell you this, it won’t bode well for mankind. It never does.”
Her wariness melted away, and her features softened. “I didn’t mean to offend you. I guess I’m not very good at trusting people, especially—” She bit her lower lip, cutting off her next words.
“Those of the soulless variety?” he supplied for her.
Even in the graying shadows he could see the potent flush that colored her cheeks. “I can’t seem to help myself, can I?” She averted her eyes. “I keep insulting you, whether I intend to or not.”
Placing his thumb under her chin, he raised her face until she had no choice but to meet his gaze. “You’ve spent your entire life being hunted by my kind, fearing them, hating them. I don’t expect that to change in a day.”
But sooner or later you’re going to remember that you once loved me, and you’ll realize there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.
His head fell forward, his thumb still supporting her chin, his gaze delving into hers. He thought he could fight his baser impulses, act the way a man was supposed to act with a woman he’d only just met. But those familiar eyes sucked him in and pulverized his self-control.
He remembered the look in those eyes before they’d closed for the last time, the silent plea she’d uttered. “Please, don’t let me go.”
He hadn’t been able to grant her wish then, but he could now.
Emma didn’t pull away from him as he’d expected. She watched him with a glint of apprehension and something else—anticipation. Every instinct he possessed told him she wanted him to kiss her.
The space between their mouths narrowed, but he wasn’t sure which one of them had moved. He stroked her cheek with the back of his hand, enjoying the velvet softness of her skin and the pleasant thrum that traveled through him.
He’d seduced her once before, slowly and skillfully. Could he do so again, or would the beast take over? Could he control the yearning, the hunger, the loneliness? Or would they control him?
He never got to find out.
“There you are.” Eddie’s voice pierced the fog swaddling
Adrian’s brain, and he reluctantly released Emma and turned to face the Rogue. “I’ve got a lead. Thought you might be interested in hearing it.”
Eddie’s gaze flitted over Emma. He studied her briefly, then shook his head and frowned. Adrian understood the man’s bewilderment. If anyone knew how disconcerting Emma’s resemblance to Angie could be, it was him.
“What have you learned?” The distant howl of a coyote perforated the encroaching night. Coyotes were prevalent around these parts, and Adrian had grown accustomed to their evening serenades.
But Emma visibly tensed. She scanned the forest nervously, her hands clenching at her sides.
“Sketches were drawn from the descriptions the witnesses gave,” Eddie said. “They were released to the public earlier today. Several people called in, but only one lead panned out.”
He dug into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “The bastards are holed up in an apartment complex in Maryvale.”
“Figures.” That community was rich in crime, particularly gang activity. Several stories had dominated the news recently—drug busts, drop-house raids, burglaries—all based in Maryvale.
The Kleptopsychs had no doubt had a hand in that. The dark energy they gave out would be enough to corrupt the most decent of souls. When damaged souls were exposed to it, the results were both violent and catastrophic.
“Think they’re still there?” Adrian asked.
“If they’re combing Phoenix, hoping to pick up Emma’s trail, probably. I’m not sure how long they’ll remain in the area, though.”
“Did you find out anything about my mother?” Emma walked up to Eddie, looking a lot more at ease around him than she had earlier.
Eddie wagged his head. “No one mentioned seeing a woman with them. Sorry.” The cop turned his analytical gaze to Adrian. “Did you try tracking her?”
Every person left a unique signature behind, like a fingerprint. Adrian had inherited his father’s ability to read energy patterns and follow them. It was this very skill that had allowed him to track down criminals in his former life and dispatch them.
