Night Unbound

by Dianne Duvall

Crossing the kitchen, she stopped a foot away from Zach and tilted her head back to look up at him.

  “Ask me again,” she ordered softly.

  “Why are you doing this?” he murmured.

  “Because I’m drawn to you, Zach.”

  His heart began to beat faster.

  As did hers. “I’m drawn to you in a way that makes me want to risk everything just for the chance to know more of you.”

  His eyes lit with a mild golden glow. “Why?”

  She gave her head a slow shake. “I don’t know. But I suspect . . . I hope . . . that it’s the same for you, that that’s why you came here—to me—when you were so badly injured and needed help.”

  He raised one of his hands and, almost as though she were a bird he feared he might frighten away, captured a damp strand of hair that dangled in front of her ear, testing its texture with his fingers. “I came to you because you were all I could think of while I was being tortured.” He drew the lock closer to his face and breathed in the citrus scent of her shampoo. “I came to you because you were all that enabled me to endure it.”

  I am in so much trouble here, Lisette thought. Reaching up, she caressed his face, delighting in the rasp of his stubble against her fingertips and palm.

  He stiffened.

  “Is this okay?” she asked, wondering if he had gone so still because she was hurting him.

  “I’m not accustomed to being touched,” he whispered.

  That surprised her . . . and didn’t. Zach was so incredibly handsome. One would think women would throw themselves at him everywhere he went.

  At the same time, though, he really did remind her of Roland. So untrusting. So solitary. So apart from everything and everyone. Who knew how long Roland had gone without a woman’s touch before Sarah had come into his life. Perhaps it had been the same for Zach.

  “I touched you in my dream,” she said.

  “That was different.”

  “How so?”

  “It wasn’t real.”

  In the dream, he had reached up and held her hand to his cheek. He had kissed her. Touched her breast. Set her body aflame.

  He did none of that now, though he looked as though he wanted to.

  “Should I stop?” she asked, filled with uncertainty. She didn’t want to stop.

  He nodded.

  Hurt pricked her. Did he not like her touch?

  “The water is boiling,” he said, never taking his eyes from hers.

  Oh. She hadn’t even noticed.

  Lowering her hand, she turned and headed back to the stove. Her long hair trailed through his fingers, then slipped free.

  “Have a seat,” she encouraged once more, trying to get her pulse back under control.

  Finally, Zach relaxed enough to sit down.

  Lisette didn’t hear him move. She just glanced over and found him sitting sideways in a chair at the table, one arm resting on the chair back and the other on the table, the tips of his wings brushing the floor behind him.

  “How are your wings?”

  Zach watched Lisette move around the kitchen as she prepared their meal. “Better.” He flexed his wings the tiniest bit. Pain arced through him like an electric current, but he bore it in silence. “They’ll be healed soon.”

  “Good.”

  His heart still raced from her nearness.

  Her hand had been small and warm against his jaw, her touch tender. So many feelings had inundated him, all new and unfamiliar, that it had been a struggle to speak.

  “Is tea all right?” She removed a large pitcher from the refrigerator.

  He nodded.

  His skin still tingled. His thoughts raced.

  No wonder, an inner voice spoke with awe. No wonder Seth left us. No wonder he abandoned the cold, sterile existence of the Others and sought the companionship of humans.

  When Seth had first seen the human woman he had taken as his wife thousands of years ago, had he—like Zach—been instantly fascinated? Had his life changed course that very day? Or had Seth, like Zach, spent weeks or months watching her until he became willing to risk all just to speak to her? Hiding his fixation from the Others. Shielding his actions and whereabouts so none of them would guess.

  And none of them had guessed. Zach had been as shocked as the rest of them.

  Lisette approached—he loved to watch her move—and set a tall glass of tea on the table beside him.

  Zach curled his fingers around the cold glass to keep himself from reaching for her. “Thank you.”

  She smiled.

  Trebly rock music filled the kitchen.

  Zach cursed whoever was calling when Lisette backed away and drew her cell phone from a back pocket.

  “Excuse me, please. Oui?”

  “Hi. It’s me,” he heard her Second say.

  Lisette glanced at Zach. “Hi. Are you still at David’s?”

  “Yeah. How’d tonight’s hunt go?”

  “It went well. Ethan joined me, and we took out four vamps.”

  “Cool. I’m pretty bushed from training with Darnell. Is it okay if I bunk here again today?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay. Call me if you need anything.”

  “I will. Sleep well.”

  “You too.”

  Lisette ended the call and returned the phone to her pocket. Turning away, she drew a metal colander from a lower cabinet, placed it in the sink, and drained the water from the pasta. “Don’t worry. She knows I want some time alone, but she doesn’t know anything about this, so Seth and David won’t see you in her thoughts.”

  He watched Lisette heap two plates full of pasta and top it with the aromatic sauce. “Doesn’t she mind your keeping secrets from her?”

  “Probably. But she understands the necessity of it. She’s been around telepaths long enough to know that any secret I want to keep from Étienne, I must keep from her. Once his curiosity is aroused, he’ll peek into any brain he has to, to find the information he wants.”

  “I would’ve thought an Immortal Guardian would suffer twinges of conscience over breeching another’s privacy in such a way.” Weren’t Immortal Guardians supposed to be the boy scouts of the preternatural world?

  She sent him a sheepish grin. “I’m just as bad.” Picking up the plates, she carried them to the table. “If you weren’t so much older than I am, I probably would have examined every nook and cranny of your mind by now.”

  Then he was fortunate she couldn’t do so. There were some very dark days in his past.

  Dark days and dark deeds he didn’t want her to see.

  She set one plate in front of him and one in front of the chair catty-corner to him.

  Zach’s view of her shapely bottom, as she turned away, was blocked by her long hair. He had never seen it loose before. The ends had begun to dry and curled every which way. The rest rippled with soft waves.

  She returned, carrying a second glass of tea and a plate of bread.

  Zach rose and drew her chair out for her.

  Surprise and pleasure lit her light brown eyes as she sat and let him scoot the chair forward a bit.

  He was a little surprised himself. It was yet another first for him.

  Zach retook his seat and turned a bit so he could face the table more. Pain shot through his wings again when he accidentally jostled them.

  “You didn’t have wings in the dream,” she mentioned, “when we were outside David’s place.”

  He forced his muscles to unbunch and relax. He had kissed her in that dream, had touched her full breast. How he wished he could do the same now. Instead he picked up his fork and tucked into his meal. “I can retract them if I wish and make them—for all intents and purposes—disappear.”

  “Oh.”

  “I would do so now, but I can’t until they’re healed.”

  Her brow furrowed as she chewed.

  She even did that beautifully, he thought with an inward shake of his head, following the motion of her pale, elegant throat as she
swallowed.

  “Does Seth have wings?”

  Unease crept through him. He didn’t know how he should respond to questions about Seth. “Seth is a shape-shifter like David. He can have or be anything he wants.”

  Her look carried a reprimand. “You know that isn’t what I meant. Is Seth like you?”

  Zach toyed with his food for a long moment, considering his words carefully. “Lisette . . .”

  Her eyes fastened on his, acquiring an amber glow.

  “What?” he asked, confused. Had he angered her?

  “I don’t think you’ve ever called me by my name before.”

  Because doing so felt intimate. “Forgive me. I should have asked—”

  “No,” she interrupted. “I like it. I’m sorry. You were saying?”

  “Lisette,” he began again, “if we . . . spend time together . . .”

  “Yes?” she encouraged when he faltered.

  How should he put this? “There will be things—about myself and about Seth—that I won’t be able to share with you.”

  She looked down at her plate. “Because you don’t trust me?”

  “I wouldn’t be here now if I didn’t trust you.” The trust he was willing to place in her astonished him. Were her safety not at risk, he suspected he would’ve answered every question she asked him.

  “Then why?”

  “For the same reason you don’t tell your Second certain things. I can’t risk your brother, or any other telepathic immortal, finding the information in your thoughts.”

  A full minute passed while she studied her plate.

  “No protest?” he asked.

  “No,” she muttered. “Étienne has been in my head so much, I have a hard time keeping secrets from him. And I can’t promise I’ll never let my guard down. I get tired. I get wounded. I sleep. And my barriers fall.” She speared some pasta, but didn’t raise it to her lips. “Even with my barriers in place, Seth and David could read me if they wanted to.”

  Silence engulfed them. It wasn’t a particularly comfortable one.

  Zach scrambled for something to say. “Would you like me to leave?”

  “No,” she said without hesitation, but both her words and tone lacked pleasure. “If I were like Ethan, would you tell me? Would you answer my questions?”

  “I fear I would, yes.”

  At last she met his gaze. “Why fear?”

  He considered his answer. “I once heard Roland ask Seth—long ago, before you were born—what the source of gifted ones’ advanced DNA was. Seth refused to answer. His explanation: that, if he did, bloodshed would follow.”

  A spark of interest lit her eyes. “Do you know the source of our advanced DNA?”

  “Yes. But speaking of such things, as well as of Seth’s origins and my own, always results in bloodshed.”

  “Why?”

  “Because someone always shares the information with someone they shouldn’t. Someone always trusts where he or she shouldn’t. And the consequences are far greater than you could imagine.”

  “You say that as if you know from experience. Did you tell someone in the past?”

  “No.” After a short mental debate, he revealed, “Seth did. His wife.”

  Her eyes widened. “Seth was married?”

  “Once.”

  “What happened?”

  “She was slain. As were their children.”

  “Seth had children?”

  “A son and a daughter. His son gave his heart and his trust to a woman who did not keep Seth’s secret. She trusted where she should not have, told a friend, and . . .” Zach shook his head. “It unleashed a storm even Seth could not contain.”

  Lisette raised the pasta to her lips and slipped it within.

  Zach almost forgot to eat as he watched the rhythmic motions of her jaw.

  “Are you as powerful as Seth is?” she asked after a moment.

  “No.” Fury filled him. “But I will be.”

  “Why are you so angry with him?”

  Hard for her not to pick up on, he supposed, since he tensed up and practically snarled every time she mentioned Seth’s name. “Because he’s the reason I was tortured.”

  “What?”

  “He led the Others to me, knowing they would punish me.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Because he blamed me for something I didn’t do.”

  “I don’t believe that. I can’t.”

  Of course not. The Immortal Guardians all thought their leader infallible.

  “Believe it.” Glancing up, he saw confusion and disillusionment darken her eyes and sighed. “Sometimes the truth is too harsh to bear even for someone of Seth’s age. It’s easier, in such instances, to believe a lie.”

  Lisette said nothing. She seemed stunned by the possibility that her much-revered leader could have accused Zach of something he hadn’t done.

  “Is it not easier,” he asked, “for a child to believe that Santa Claus exists than it is for him to believe his parents lied to him and betrayed him?”

  “Seth isn’t a child.”

  “Nor were you,” he forced himself to say gently, “when your husband turned on you.”

  He might as well have slapped her.

  She paled. “What?”

  “You’re telepathic,” he continued, his voice as soft and coaxing as he could make it. “You must have known something was not right with him long before the night your husband attacked you and transformed you.”

  Resentment flared in her features.

  “Was it not easier for you to tell yourself it was nothing?” he asked. “That his sudden, violent bursts of temper were the result of too much drink? Not enough sleep? Bad luck at cards? Anything that enabled you to ignore the madness that steadily claimed him?”

  At first, he thought she might lash out and hit him.

  Then her throat moved with a swallow. “Yes,” she whispered painfully. “How did you know that?”

  “I didn’t. I knew only that your husband was vampire and turned you in a fit of madness. I guessed the rest.”

  She set her fork down and clasped her hands in her lap, clenching them until her knuckles turned white. “I should have said something.” The pain in the eyes that met his surpassed the physical torment he had suffered these past few months. “If I had told Richart and Étienne what was happening . . .” She shook her head. Moisture welled in her eyes. “I was so ashamed. I begged Father to let me marry Philippe, to let me marry that . . . that monster. I couldn’t bring myself to tell them. If I had—”

  “They could have done nothing.”

  “They could have had him locked up in an asylum or . . .”

  Zach reached over and covered her hands with one of his. “An asylum would not have held him, Lisette. You know that. He was vampire. The attendants would have been human. Their drugs would not have affected him. Their shackles would not have restrained him. They would have been helpless against his speed and strength.” He squeezed her hands. “Had you told your brothers, they would have confronted him and been slain.”

  Her hands relaxed beneath his.

  “Forgive me. I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said with genuine regret. “I merely wanted to help you understand why Seth did what he did, why he was so eager to leap to the conclusion that I had betrayed him.” And Zach had damned near convinced himself to forgive the bastard in the process. What the hell was he thinking?

  She unclasped her hands and sandwiched his between her own. “I’m sorry. It’s a sore subject.” A weary sigh escaped her. “I don’t think I’ll ever be free of the guilt of turning my brothers.”

  From what Zach had gleaned from his eavesdropping sessions, her brothers had offered her their blood after her transformation in an attempt to hide her condition, not knowing that repeated exposure to the virus in low doses would eventually cause them to transform as well. “Did it never occur to you that your brothers might also harbor guilt?”

  “What do you mean
?”

  “They introduced you to your husband. They must have guessed, after the fact, how he had treated you as his insanity grew, that he had hurt you. They blame themselves for it all, not you.”

  Another long pause followed as she considered it. “You’re just guessing. You can’t—”

  “I hear things,” he interrupted. “I heard them.”

  “While you were up on the roof?”

  “Pulling gargoyle duty,” he said wryly. “You should harbor no guilt. Your brothers don’t blame you. And both are revoltingly happy now.”

  She laughed. “Yes, they are.” Still smiling, she smoothed her hand over the back of his, sending tingles of warmth dancing up his arm. “I thought you didn’t like to be touched.”

  He found he had to clear his throat before he could speak. “I said I’m not accustomed to being touched.” He drew a circle on her silky skin with his thumb. “Or to touching.”

  She cast him a flirtatious look through her long lashes. “Is it something you think you could get used to?”

  He smiled. “With you? Absolutely.”

  Raising his hand to her lips, she pressed a tender kiss to his knuckles.

  And Zach was lost.

  “I have one more question, then I’ll let you finish your meal.”

  He just hoped he would be able to answer it.

  “Can you make me like Ethan?”

  He quirked an eyebrow. “You wish to be cocky, arrogant, self-absorbed—”

  She laughed. “I’ll give you the cocky and arrogant part, but he isn’t self-absorbed. And you know that isn’t what I meant. Can you make it harder for other telepaths to read my thoughts and memories?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know what makes him so difficult to read. Anything you don’t wish others to find, I would have to bury.”

  “So I would forget it, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it was worth a shot.”

  Muffled rock music again filled the kitchen.

  “Excuse me for a moment.” Releasing his hand, she pulled her cell phone from her back pocket and answered the call. “Oui?”

  “It’s me again,” he heard Tracy say. “I just wanted to let you know that Chris has called a meeting for tomorrow night, an hour after sunset.”

  “I’ll be there. Do you want me to bring you anything?”