She had become good at spotting even the vampires, whose energy was by far the most difficult to discern, as they tended to hide it. But she had never felt anything like the energy of this man. It was as if he was strong in spirit as well as body. And that’s what made him a warrior.
He had the strong face of a warrior too, angular with a prominent nose and a square jaw, and a surprisingly sensual mouth. Her eyes fixed on it and he smiled even though he was facing the street and couldn’t possibly see her watching him. He knew exactly what he could do to a woman with his mouth.
Her body began to heat as she imagined his mouth on hers, on her body and throat. The image of him puncturing her throat with his fangs made her heart miss a beat, and she inhaled sharply to stifle the sensual sensation.
This would not do, no matter how attractive he was, or how unruly her imagination was getting. He was holding her against her will, even if he claimed to be helping. She would not forget that, no matter that her body did.
But it was impossible to ignore him. Flustered, she cleared her throat. “Did you really find out where I live from my mind?” More importantly, could he read her thoughts about him?
He shrugged, still smiling, which wasn’t reassuring. “You live at the UCL hall on Gower Street, right?”
She wasn’t really surprised. “Yes. Do you know how to get there?”
“I’ve had three centuries to roam London. I know it better than the cab drivers.”
She couldn’t quite wrap her mind around the idea that he had lived so long. Were all two-natureds long-living? Was Toby older than he looked? It had never occurred to her to ask.
“I’m not very familiar with London. I’m from Bedford.”
“Me too! Whereabouts there?”
Baffled by the coincidence, she answered him, even though the sensible part of her insisted on holding her tongue. “Goldington.”
“Ah. It was fields and pasture back in my days. We had a small farm south of the river. Sheep.”
His words conjured a charming image of pastoral idyll. “Is it still there?”
“No. Our last human relative sold it in the late nineteenth century and moved to America. They’ve built a road over it.”
So much for that idyll. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. It was a ramshackle place by then.”
She tried to imagine what life had been like in his youth, but she had only a vague notion that people were malnourished and small. “You’ve grown big.”
He laughed. “It’s the vampire gene. Makes us larger. You should see some of the vampire-born.”
“What does that mean?”
He looked surprised, as if he had expected her to know. “Someone with two vampire parents, and most likely a long line of vampires in their ancestry too. I’m human-born. Both my parents were humans.”
“So how come you’re a vampire?” They were almost at her home, and as much as she had wanted to flee earlier, she wanted to continue the conversation now.
“The two-natured gene is recessive. Humans can carry it, but unless the child has the gene from both of them, it won’t do anything. Apparently both of mine had it and they passed it on to me and my brother. The leader of our organisation recognised it and made me and my brother vampires.”
“I didn’t know humans could be made vampires.” She had never given it a thought, actually.
“We all start as humans.”
She stared at him, amazed at the notion. He glanced at her and grinned. “Eye-opener, eh?”
“You can say that again.”
They were at her hall. The street was empty and dark, the streetlamps switched off already. Jeremy pulled the car over on the no parking zone in front of the main entrance and cut the engine. “I’ll see you in.” He didn’t add ‘to erase her memory’, but that’s what he meant.
Her stomach fell and she was slightly nauseous as she got out of the car. She didn’t want to have her memory of him taken from her. As scared as she had been of him, she now found him utterly fascinating. With stiff legs, she walked up the steps to the front door of the Edwardian brown brick. Her fingers shook a little as she put the key to a lock.
“Imagine, before I ran into that … man, I thought the worst thing to happen to me tonight was losing my job.” She was stalling, but she didn’t want the night to end just yet.
“You lost your job? Why?”
She smiled, mirthlessly. “I poured a bucket of ice on a customer at the club where I was waitressing.”
He laughed. “Why did you do that?”
“He was creepy.” Then a memory dawned. “In fact, he felt like the guy you killed.”
He stilled, instantly alert. “Where was it?”
“At the Nightingale Club.”
“I have to go.”
He turned around and was in his car before she had made it through the front door. She watched, baffled, how he drove away, too fast, speaking to his mobile. She must have said something important. That, or he didn’t want to have anything to do with her all of a sudden.
The thought made her sad.
She climbed to her room and collapsed on the bed. She stared at the ceiling for a long time, trying to commit him and everything he had told her to memory. Maybe he couldn’t wipe everything away.
She shot up, energised. He had forgotten to erase her mind!
She powered up her laptop and opened her diary, feeling giddy. She would write everything down before he returned. Because she had no doubt he would return. Men like him didn’t leave loose ends.
When he did return, she would have a memory of him he couldn’t easily erase.
Chapter Four
Jeremy was sitting at a hearty meal hours later, showered and shaved, when it hit him. He hadn’t erased Corynn’s memory of him.
“Fuck!” The thirty or so warriors in the dining room turned to look at him, but he wouldn’t elaborate. Abandoning his supper, he left the room, only to bump into his brother. They were similar in size and looks, but Jas carried a scar on the side of his shaven head as a memento of the battle that nearly cost his life.
“Where’s the fire?”
“I forgot to erase a witness’s mind.”
“Fuck.” They were brothers alike in more than just looks. “Need a hand?”
“Thanks, but I know where to find her. She won’t be a problem.” He wouldn’t let her be.
It wasn’t like him to forget his duties, not even for a beautiful woman. Especially not for a beautiful woman. He wouldn’t have shared personal information with her if he hadn’t truly meant to take her memories. It wasn’t solely to protect the Crimson Circle, it was to protect her too. She was his responsibility.
The notion that he had failed to protect Corynn made him rush to his BMW and drive faster than was advisable down the narrow lane that led from the manor to the main gate. Ridding the world of renegades was important, but protecting women was more so when a serial killer was on the loose. It couldn’t be coincidence that Corynn had been targeted by renegades twice in the same night. She was marked by them now and they would return.
When she had told him about the renegade at the club, he had completely forgotten his duty to her. But rushing to the club with every warrior he had been able to alert hadn’t paid. The club had already closed by the time they got there, with no trace of renegades for them to follow. But they had helped themselves into the club and had been able to confirm Corynn’s notion. Renegade presence had been strong there – too strong to be a onetime occurrence.
“Let’s not waste this opportunity,” Gabriel Hamilton, Alexander’s First Son, had said. He was a century and a half older than Zach, immensely powerful and worthy of succeeding Alexander one day. The brothers looked much alike, but Gabe was more frightening. His cold eyes and his long hair pulled back in a tight cue in the manner of warriors of old made the classically beautiful features they shared look stark and unyielding. “We’ll start a surveillance operation on this place.”
“Pity we can’t get one of our own to work in the club.” Renegades could sense vampires as easily as vampires could sense them.
Gabe smiled and it was a scary sight. “I may have something that could work. I’ll need a couple of days to arrange it.” He wouldn’t elaborate and the warriors had known better than to pry.
Organising the stakeout, getting home to Ewell on the far end of Epsom where the Circle Manor was, showering and eating had brought the night to morning. Corynn had had hours to do what she willed with the information he had given her. But he didn’t regret telling her everything; she had been so frightened and he had needed to distract her. He just should have remembered his duty.
He broke the speed limits on the motorway, but once he reached London he had to slow down. The morning rush was at its worst, and so it was closer to nine before he pulled over outside Corynn’s hall.
The place looked deserted. There was no early morning hub he had expected, students rushing to their first lectures and such. Since the human calendar was fairly meaningless in his life, and he didn’t have first-hand experience in university schedules, it took him a moment to figure out it was the Easter holiday. His sense of urgency eased a little. Corynn would most likely be in her room, still sleeping, and he wouldn’t have to hunt her across the campus.
The locked front door yielded to his magic in seconds and it was a moment’s work to locate her room. He paused outside it and scanned the room – an ability special to vampires, which allowed them to see the unseen and through walls. She was in, and asleep. Erasing her mind before she woke up would be the sensible thing to do, so he should get in fast. But instead of entering as silently as possible, he found himself knocking on the door.
It took her a while to react, but he waited patiently, listening to her scurrying out of the bed and into a robe. When she answered the door, the hastily donned robe barely covered her faded tank-top with a picture of the Enterprise on it, and flannel shorts. Her hair was messy and her face flustered from sleep. He found her … endearing.
Her face lit when she saw him, only to dim when she realised why he was there.
“Hi.” There was nothing else to say.
“Hi.”
He needed a physical contact for what he was about to do, so he took her hand. Then he stared at it, struggling with himself. Before he could have second thoughts, he gathered a bit of Might for his magic and gently glided into her mind. Her memory of last night was clear and easy to locate. A brush of his magic and she had no recollection of him, or what had happened. But he couldn’t let her see him here or it might return, so he charmed her briefly to give him time to leave. He didn’t look back.
As he entered his car a moment later, he felt wretched.
Corynn startled awake, utterly disoriented. Only a reflexive grip on the open door of her room saved her from falling. She looked around at the empty hallway, trying to figure out why she had come to the door, but her mind was blank. Had she been walking in her sleep? If so, she was grateful that her dream-self had thought to put on a robe.
Baffled, but not terribly troubled, she closed the door and went back to bed.
A knock on the door woke her up with an odd déjà-vu a couple of hours later. She jumped out of the bed, excited to see who it was, only to feel disappointed when it turned out to be Toby. Who had she expected if not her best friend?
“Want to go for a run?” Toby asked, jumping up and down to warm up. He was too energetic for such an early hour, and she only grunted in answer as she stepped back to let him in.
He was a tall and lithe man, his long legs and tight build ideal for running. He should have looked gangly, but his movements had feline grace and savage strength as a courtesy of his leopard-shifter side. “The weather is great.”
Running had been her hobby – way of life, really – for all her life, and the two of them had been running together since her first year in London. They made good running companions. She was tall and long-legged too, and could keep up with him no matter how long they ran. He pushed her to new goals and so, thanks to him, she had completed her first marathon the previous year. They were currently training for the London Marathon in two weeks’ time.
Running with him was the best part of her life, but today she shook her head. “I don’t know. I have a horrible headache.” She hadn’t even realised it until she said it aloud, and then it felt like her skull would break.
He was undeterred. “Running will cure it.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re never sick.”
Toby grinned, and there was more than a little Cheshire Cat in his expression. A well-defined jaw and stark eyebrows made him look masculine, but his hair was a sandy mess and his golden eyes shone with mischief. “Perks of being an improved human.”
The sense of familiarity was strong again, as if she had heard the expression before. She tried to place the memory, but it only made her head hurt worse and she abandoned the task. Most likely it had been Toby the previous time too.
He nudged her. “Come on, you’ll feel better at work tonight if you go.”
Her stomach fell in upset. “I’m not going back. I was fired.”
Toby was instantly sympathetic, his eyes softening. Of all her friends, he was the most emotional and caring. He even felt warmer to be around, a courtesy of his shifter nature.
A memory rose of a different kind of energy: cool, calm and powerful. Her headache spiked and she hurried to the bathroom to take a painkiller and prepare for the run.
“What happened?”
It was easier to tell it to him through the closed bathroom door. In the morning light, her reaction seemed strong, but the foulness she had sensed in that man still made her feel ill, and she was glad she had poured the ice on him.
“Why do you think you reacted so strongly?”
“I only know that I absolutely had to get away from him.” A sense of urgency seized her when she said it, as if she should remember something important, but again the memory evaded her. Had she suffered a head trauma she couldn’t remember? She felt her skull with her fingers as she pulled her hair into a ponytail, but apart from the headache, her head was fine.
Then she discovered a huge bruise on her bottom she had no recollection of getting. Had she hit it against a table corner at work? In the throng, that happened all the time.
“Well, you’ve always been sensitive to second natures,” Toby noted when she exited the bathroom in her running gear. Her sensitivity had made him reveal to her that he was a two-natured when he’d kept it from their other classmates. “Maybe it was similar to my Might energy, only repelling.”
It always amazed her how little she knew of him and his kind, after three years of friendship. “What’s Might energy?”
“Natural energy created by everything living that fills the world, but only the two-natureds can make use of it. Our second natures depend on it.”
She nodded. Then another question popped up. “How old are you?”
He cocked a sandy brow, slightly darker than his skin – for now. Once the summer kicked in, he would have a nice tan and sun-bleached hair. Like a true feline, he loved the sun. Then again, so did she. “Where did that come from, after all these years?”
She felt vaguely ashamed, as if she should have asked it before. It had never occurred to her he might be any other age than what he looked, mid-twenties. “I don’t know. I…” Her mind was blank. “I have no idea.”
He smiled, ruefully. “You’ll stop being my friend if I tell you.”
“Why would I do that? I didn’t when you introduced your boyfriend to me.” After she had made a move on him. Mercifully, they were past that little embarrassment already.
He regarded her for a moment, assessing if she was ready for the truth, the playful feline replaced by a serious man. “I’m seventy-two.”
“Only?”
He burst laughing. “Not the reaction I expected.”
It wasn’t how she had thought she would react
either. “I guess you made me believe you’d be hundreds of years old.”
“Shifters can live that long, but I couldn’t pass as a twenty-something if I was more than two hundred. Now, if I were a vampire, it would be a different matter. They can remain eternally young if they wish.”
Vampires.
Her heart sped up in exhilaration for the mere word, a happy reaction that didn’t make sense. She didn’t know any vampires.
As she followed Toby out, she couldn’t shake the notion that vampires were very significant to her. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t figure out why. It only made her head hurt worse.
Curiously, her heart seemed to be aching too.
* * *
They always ran in Regent’s Park. It was located a convenient distance from Corynn’s hall and had many paths for runners, but it had another advantage too. It wasn’t the territory of any particular shifter clan.
She hadn’t known that shifters were restricted to using certain parks back when they ran together for the first time. Only after Toby revealed that he was a leopard-shifter did the matter come up.
“Shifters have settled to urban areas fairly recently, during the past two centuries,” he had explained. “London Zoo was already in Regent’s Park by the time our kind began to require safe spaces to shift within London, so it was left for the caged animals.”
“Which park belongs to your clan?”
He grinned. “Greenwich.”
The longest running route in the park was a little under four miles long, and they usually ran it two or three times. Early April, the park was at its most beautiful, which should have made the experience even better. But running didn’t calm Corynn’s mind like usually, although her headache did ease.
“Can we try a different route for a change?”
Toby didn’t ask for a reason, he just nodded. “How about the canal?” The Regent’s Canal wove around the northern edge of the park and through Camden Town towards her hall on its way to the Thames. A footpath along it made it perfect for them and they headed there.
The morning rush was over and they had the embankment to themselves. It was nice to run there, although the water made the air chilly. Toby shivered and she smiled. “Too cold for a cat?”
Her Warrior for Eternity Page 3
