by Anne Hope
“Not if you’re going to insist on setting yourself up as bait again.” The stubborn set of his jaw told her she had her work cut out for her. Moonlight spilled over him, accentuating the sharp slant of his cheeks and the flat line of his mouth. He looked like a marble statue, firm and unyielding.
“By doing nothing, we’re only delaying the inevitable,” she argued. “Sooner or later the Kleptopsychs are going to catch up to me. They always do.” She tasted pine on the breeze and a hint of juniper. “And if they don’t, the Watchers will.”
She gripped his biceps, and he tensed at her touch. The marble statue she’d compared him to seemed a fitting analogy. “You can’t hide me here forever. I need to face this on my terms, not theirs.”
His stone-hard determination faltered. “It’s too risky.”
Frustration nibbled at her patience. “You’ll be there to protect me.” She squeezed his arm. “You took out six of those things with nothing more than a little switchblade. And you were hurt at the time. Imagine what you can do when you’re in top shape.”
She’d learned a little flattery went a long way. Not that what she was saying wasn’t true. She believed every word. “And now we’ve got guns, and Eddie is super impressed with the progress I’ve made. He says I’m a natural.”
He turned a pair of incredulous eyes her way. “Shooting a couple of cans doesn’t make you a warrior.”
“No, but it does make me less helpless than I was before.” She moved her hand from his arm to his shoulder blade, felt resistance ripple down his back. “And don’t forget, I can’t be seriously hurt. I can heal as fast as you can.” Of course, it was never her physical well-being that was at stake. It was her soul. “We just have to make sure they don’t take me the way they did my mom.”
Silence swelled between them, as thick as the night. “And if this plan of yours fails?”
“It won’t. We won’t let it. And I trust you to watch over me.”
He averted his gaze. “You have too much faith in me. I’m not sure I deserve it.” Regret saturated his voice, as did a trace of guilt.
“I can’t help it. I feel safe with you.” She gave him a shy smile. One she wasn’t sure he saw in the darkening shadows. “Stronger, if that makes any sense.”
The huff he released was part defeat, part aggravation. “So what exactly do you suggest we do?” Finally, a chink in the metal armor. “Send out a broadcast?”
“No.” She grinned. “Nothing that conspicuous. I’d like to go to the apartment complex in Maryvale where the Kleptopsychs were staying. I want to ask some questions, skulk around, make my presence known. Chances are, someone will report the news back to the Kleptopsychs.”
“And when they show up? What then?”
“We set a trap for them.”
Somewhere nearby a motor roared. She knew there were others living on this ranch that wasn’t really ranch, but oddly enough in the three days she’d been here she hadn’t seen anyone apart from Adrian and Eddie. She couldn’t help but wonder if they’d been warned to make themselves scarce.
Adrian stared long and hard into the night. The tension emanating from his body was a tangible thing, electric and alive. “If we do this,” he finally said. “We’re not doing it alone. Are you ready for that?”
A thread of apprehension unfurled within her. “What do you mean?”
“Are you ready to put your faith not only in me, but in others like me?”
Her gaze flickered to the tight clusters of homes that flanked Adrian’s. “I’m not sure.” Her heart sped up, but she calmed it with a gulp of pine- and juniper-scented air. “But I know I’m willing to try.”
He nodded stiffly, satisfied with her answer. “I’ll talk to Eddie, see what we can come up with.” He aimed an admonishing glance her way. “In the meantime, I want you to be patient and stay put.”
A smile burst through her, and she almost hugged him. “Where would I go?” As insane as it sounded, this townhouse development was the closest thing to home she’d ever known, maybe because it was the only place she’d ever felt safe.
The fierce way he studied her made an odd tingle spread through her system. His mere presence filled her head with images she didn’t understand and her soul with feelings that were equally perplexing.
She didn’t know much, but she knew this—Adrian was part fallen angel, his lost soul dwelled inside her, and she was about to entrust him not only with her safety but with that of the entire world.
He wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulders and drew her to him, holding her in that special way that always made emotion ball in her throat. Emma sank into the embrace, helpless to resist.
She had no doubt she could trust him with her life. The question was, could she trust him with her heart?
Chapter Seventeen
The next few days passed in a flurry of training and planning. She spent mornings at boot camp with Eddie, getting in a few hours of target practice before he had to leave for the precinct. Evenings were dedicated to researching and strategizing, mostly with Adrian but sometimes with others as well.
Emma had come to accept the other inhabitants of this community, slowly getting to know them. There was William, who worked in the district attorney’s office; Sheila, a superior court judge who seemed to be sweet on Eddie; Norman, a prison warden; and Ralph, the prison chaplain. If they didn’t work for the justice system in one capacity or another, they worked for the media.
All of them had one thing in common, however. Whatever job they held, it allowed them to attend executions. When she’d inquired as to why that was, Adrian had explained that his recruits fed only on diseased souls, souls that couldn’t be redeemed. The souls of serial killers and pedophiles and mass murderers.
“How do they know they’re guilty?” she asked him one evening after everyone had gone home. People were wrongfully accused every day. It wasn’t a stretch of the imagination to assume some of the death-row inmates were innocent.
“You’re forgetting that my kind can read minds.” He tossed a fat log into the fireplace. “We can see inside a person’s soul, hear that person’s thoughts. If any Rogue living in this community gets wind of the fact that a prisoner is innocent, that soul is off limits to everyone. Not only that, but my Rogues do everything in their power to ensure the prisoner is acquitted.”
My Rogues. She never would’ve believed this kind of affiliation could exist among the soulless, and yet it did.
“How can you be sure of that? For all you know, they could be lurking in dark alleys, feeding on the homeless.”
Adrian wagged his head in instant denial. “Because if they did that, the Watchers would be upon us in a matter of hours.” He looked at her as though he didn’t recognize her. “When did you become such a skeptic?”
His observation hurt. She hadn’t always been this cynical. There was a time when she’d been an idealist, determined to change the world. “It kinda comes with the territory when you’ve spent your whole life on the run.”
“And your mother,” he asked, “is she a skeptic, too?”
Bittersweet emotion traveled through her. “Definitely. She doesn’t trust her own shadow. She worries so much, she borders on neurotic.” Memories of her mom were both comforting and painful. “She used to be this pampered socialite, back when she was young.” Emma wished she’d known her then, when life hadn’t been so complicated. “Then she had me, and everything changed.”
“You make your birth sound like a curse.” He crouched by the hearth, lighting a fire. The flames roared to life, gilding his skin and drawing her attention to his powerful profile.
“That’s because it was.” Remorse forced her to pause. “She lost everything, her home, her savings. After that first attack on my life, she drained her bank accounts, jacked up her credit lines, and ran.” Her voice dropped to a whisper, weighed down by the heavy burden of guilt she carried. “She never stopped running, even after the bank seized all our assets. Even after the police s
topped looking for us. Even after our relatives held a funeral for us and announced it on the news.”
He stood and walked toward her, the glow of the fire casting a pulsing halo around him. “Where did you live, before you went on the run?”
She lifted her gaze to his face. “Manhattan.” Something shifted behind his eyes, a bright spark that had nothing to do with the flames at his back. “I don’t remember anything about it, though. I was only a baby when we left. I’ve always wanted to see it, but that’s the one place my mother refuses to go back to. Ever.”
“Why?” She could’ve sworn she caught a hitch in his voice.
“She said we’d be exposing ourselves if we returned, but I think it’s more than that.” She shrugged. “There are too many painful memories for her there.” Her mom hadn’t only lost her fortune in New York, she’d lost a chunk of her soul.
Emma hesitated, feeling the slicing edge of her own loss. “I dream about it sometimes. My birthplace.” He sat beside her and she reveled at his closeness. When Adrian was near, she didn’t feel so alone.
“Tell me about it.” His voice slid over her like coarse silk.
“I have visions of Central Park.” For the first time, she wasn’t afraid—afraid of her visions, of what they meant or said about her sanity. “I feel the breeze on my face, smell that strange blend of sweet air mingling with the heavy musk of the sewers. I walk through the subway tunnels in my dreams, hear the speeding trains, feel the vibrations beneath my feet like I’m actually standing there.”
He didn’t speak, didn’t so much as breathe, but she felt the intensity of his gaze the way she would a touch. Her skin hummed with awareness, her pores tingling, hungering for a caress that never came. “But most impressive of all is the lair.”
“The lair?” Silk gave way to sand.
“That’s the only way I can explain it. It looks like a manor, with glittering chandeliers, elaborately carved columns, priceless antiques and beautiful marble statues. But I know it’s underground because I can feel the trains overhead. And there’s a man there and he’s—” She flushed. He’d asked her to tell him about her birthplace, not her fantasy lover. One she strongly suspected was him.
“Do you think—” She bit her tongue self-consciously.
“Do I think what?” His tone had reclaimed it steady coolness.
“That I might be recalling a past life? You said that your soul—and by extension mine—has been reborn several times since you lost it. Is it possible that some of those old memories are still in there?”
An evasive look flitted across his face. “Souls are usually cleansed between incarnations, but anything’s possible.” His gaze connected with hers, full of fire and expectation. She got the distinct feeling he was waiting for something, a revelation of some kind, but she didn’t know what that was.
So she changed the subject. “I’ve told you so much about myself, but I barely know anything about you. Who are you, really?”
“I’m just Adrian.”
That had to be the understatement of the century. “You’ve been around for how many years now? A few hundred?”
“I just turned a hundred and ninety-five in August.”
“A hundred and ninety-five.” She shook her head in amazement. “You must have done and seen a lot in nearly two centuries.”
That shuttered look swept over his face again. “Not really.”
She studied his profile, that perfect combination of power and grace, his skin bronzed by the flames dancing in the hearth. “I have a hard time believing that.” When he didn’t reply, she pushed further. “Where were you born?”
“Nowhere and everywhere.”
She sighed. Could the man be any more cryptic? “That’s impossible.”
His gaze cut to hers, and there was no pretense within it. “I was born in the catacombs,” he explained, “where all points meet. Humans aren’t aware of this, but endless tunnels stretch beneath the earth. My grandfather built them before the Great Flood. It is thanks to the catacombs that the Nephilim survived to breed again.”
He grabbed a napkin that lay forgotten on the cocktail table. “Time and space is warped in those tunnels.” He folded the napkin down the middle, bringing the two ends together. “Imagine you’re standing in the center.” He indicated the fold. “If you turn one way, you’ll find yourself on the West Coast. Turn the other, and you’re in Manhattan.”
He tossed the napkin back on the table, satisfied with his explanation, but Emma was still confused. “Are you talking about teleportation?”
“Nothing that elaborate. Just bridges in space.” He paused, a frown pinching his features. “It’s been decades since I’ve been down there. The catacombs collapsed a little over two years ago, but rumor has it that the Watchers have rebuilt them. They’re the only ones who have access to them now.”
Awe slackened her jaw. “How has your kind managed to keep something like this a secret?”
A slow, bitter smile crept across his mouth, flattening it. “When you can control people’s thoughts, you can make them see things that aren’t there—” he trapped her with nothing more than the power of his glance, “—and make them blind to things that are.”
“I’m glad you can’t control my thoughts.” The words escaped her lips in a low, husky voice. One she barely recognized.
“I wouldn’t even if I could.”
The sincerity she caught on his face convinced her he was telling the truth. Still, sitting across from him, mesmerized by his potent stare, she sensed a far greater threat. A threat to her identity, to her heart and soul. His hold on her was so powerful that she sometimes dreamed she was someone else.
Was she that lonely, that desperate to be loved? “Did you ever control her thoughts?”
She didn’t have to explain who she meant. He understood. Pain slashed across his face, and he broke eye contact. “I tried to make her forget.”
Emma swallowed past the lump in her throat. Even a fool could see he still loved this woman, whoever she was. “Forget what?”
He stared into the flames. “Me.” He leaned forward, propping his elbows on his bent knees, his expression as distant as the moon. “It didn’t work.” He turned to look at her again, and she fought to ignore the brilliant glow of his gaze. “Some things are impossible to forget, no matter how hard we try.”
Her heart crumpled onto itself, like the napkin he’d discarded.
She shot to her feet, the deep-seated urge to flee nipping at her heels. “It’s late. We should get some sleep. Eddie will be here at dawn.” Turning her back to him, she retreated toward the stairs, not bothering to glance back when she felt him following her.
His strides were longer, and they reached the foot of the staircase at the same time. She tensed when his arm grazed hers, praying he didn’t feel the soft shiver that coursed through her at his touch. He hung back, waiting for her to go first, and she complied.
She didn’t want him looking at her face, didn’t want him to see how deeply his words had cut her. But more importantly, she didn’t want him to see how much she longed to be the woman he spoke of. The woman he’d loved beyond reason.
The woman he could never forget. No matter how hard he tried.
The last thing Diane needed or wanted when she returned to the lab was a visitor. She’d spent the last hour with the prisoner, attempting to breach the woman’s mind, failing yet again. Regardless of the numerous forms of torture she devised, the old hag refused to surrender. Diane had never seen anything like it.
“Where have you been?” Kora emerged from the shadows in a ridiculous flurry of skirts. Her style was surprisingly archaic for one living in Europe, where fashion trends were born. “You know I hate to be kept waiting.”
“Had I known you were coming,” Diane countered, “I would’ve been here to greet you.” She approached the firstborn with confident steps. “So, what brings you to my neck of the woods?”
Kora hated air travel almost as much as sh
e’d once hated traveling by sea. That was one of the reasons she’d agreed to grant Diane the right to reign over the Kleptopsychs in North America. Letting the woman in on the secret of the soul extractor hadn’t hurt, either.
“I merely wish to check on the progress of our little operation. Have you made any headway with the embryo program?” Diane couldn’t quite place the Kleptopsych’s accent, but it was clearly Northern European.
“Not exactly. The last batch failed again.” They couldn’t seem to keep the fetuses alive long enough for them to begin glowing with the telltale sign of a soul. “This one has survived the longest. Twenty-three weeks now.” She pointed to the nearest ten-gallon tank, within which floated the specimen she was most proud of. “I tweaked the formula a little, and so far this fetus has outlived all the others.”
Kora’s eyes were as expressionless as her unsmiling red lips. “Let’s hope this latest trial proves successful. Without a means to mass-produce souls, we can’t see this plan to fruition. It would be akin to suicide.”
“Unless we find one of the Sacred Four,” Diane reminded her.
“I haven’t had much luck in Europe. Neither have my contacts in Africa and Asia. How about you?” The firstborn’s gaze never wavered from Diane’s face.
Both Athanatos and Kyros had been unable to look at Diane’s face for more than a few seconds after she’d been damaged. Their preoccupation with her appearance had blinded them to her potential, which was why she’d chosen to partner up with a female instead this time.
“There is one candidate I’m feeling hopeful about. A young woman who goes by the name of Emma.” She glided her palm across the cool glass of the tank. The fetus stared back at her through heavy-lidded eyes. For a split second she felt as though it were watching her.
“Have you seized her?”
Pivoting on her heels, Diane turned her back to the fetus and its unnerving stare. “Not yet. But I did manage to capture her mother. Unfortunately, the woman’s love for her daughter keeps her from breaking.” It killed her to admit defeat, especially to the likes of Kora.
