by Lynsay Sands
The sound of a door slamming made all three of them glance toward the back of the house.
Eyebrows rising, Scotty headed down the hall, with Beth following closely on his heels. There were several doors on the right, each seeming to lead into a bedroom. But there was only one doorway on the left and it was at the far end of the hall. She and Scotty turned in to a family room that took up the near side of the large open space, while a kitchen filled the other half. She spotted the door that had slammed at once. It was in the back corner on the kitchen side, but she didn't move toward it. Instead, she stared out the large windows that seemed to make up the back wall of the house. Through them, she could see the huge backyard, the two outbuildings, and Donny running toward a kennel where two beautiful Doberman pinschers were jumping at the fence, barking excitedly as the ginger-haired man approached.
"Will they bite him?" Beth asked with concern.
"I do not know," Matias admitted with a frown. "He is terribly excited and if he excites them too much . . ."
"Crap," Beth breathed and hurried to the door to go after the young immortal.
"I'm thinking we should take him dancing sooner rather than later," Matias called after them as Scotty followed her.
Beth was too busy running to comment, but she thought that was a damned good idea.
"Have you known Matias long?"
Scotty winced at that loud shout in his ear and tore his gaze away from Beth's gyrating body on the dance floor to peer down at the girl who had cozied up to him on the couch. She was one of the half-dozen women who had been draping themselves all over Matias since they'd arrived here more than an hour ago. He seemed to be popular. But Scotty supposed the little girl with blue hair leaning up against him had tired of trying to vie for the young man's attention and shifted her focus to him.
"Have you?" she asked again. She was shouting to be heard over the music. He wished she wouldn't. Her shouting was giving him a headache. Fortunately, she seemed to realize how unattractive having to shout might appear and made a little moue with her lips. She also blinked her eyelashes at him in a way that made him wonder if she had something in her eye . . . or eyes.
"Nay," he answered her question and then shifted his attention back to the dance floor, finding Beth again as Donny twirled her around to the manic beat.
"Do you like to dance?" the girl tried again.
"Nay," he answered, not even looking at her this time.
"Do you--"
"Matias," Scotty growled. He didn't shout. Immortals had superior hearing and the young Spaniard caught his warning. A moment later the warm weight against his side eased away and then was gone. Scotty supposed the Spaniard had slipped into her thoughts and either urged her back to his side or sent her away. He didn't care which.
"If you keep staring at her like that she will surely burst into flames."
Scotty gave a start at that comment and turned to look around. Matias hadn't sent just the little blue-haired girl away. He'd sent all the women away. He'd also moved next to him on the couch and was eyeing him with curiosity.
"You like my cousin," he said finally.
Scotty merely turned his gaze back to the dance floor.
"Beth says you are over eight hundred years old. Is that true?" he asked.
"Aye," he muttered.
"Interesting," Matias murmured so softly that despite his hearing, Scotty nearly didn't catch it.
Eyes narrowing, he turned to peer at him in question. "Why?"
Matias hesitated and then, instead of answering, asked, "Why didn't you want Beth to be a Rogue Hunter?"
Scotty stiffened. "Who says I did no' want her to be a hunter?"
Matias grinned and raised his eyebrows. "You tried to convince my uncle and Drina not to let her train, and then, once she'd finished training, you traveled to Spain to try to convince the Council to refuse her a position as a hunter. Everyone knows that."
"Beth too?" he asked with alarm.
Matias nodded. "My uncle sat her down and said you didn't think she should be a hunter, and he'd argued on her behalf to the Council. He told her not to screw up and prove him wrong."
Cursing, Scotty glanced back to the dancers. He should have realized that she would find out. Not that it would have stopped him. He'd been desperate to keep her safe. He would have appreciated it had everyone kept their mouths shut, though. It just complicated the situation further, he thought and began to frown, partially because of that, and partially because he couldn't find Beth on the dance floor.
Where the hell had she got to? he wondered, getting to his feet to improve his view of the dancers.
"What is it?" Matias asked, standing up as well.
"I can no' find Beth," he muttered, looking for her little black dress among the dancers. The problem was, there were a ton of women in black. Why the hell would she wear such a common color? She was not a common woman.
"I see Donny," Matias said after a moment. "Beth's not with him. Perhaps she went to the ladies' room."
"Aye," Scotty murmured and settled back on the couch.
Beth flushed the toilet and stepped out of the stall to find the bathroom apparently empty. There had been half a dozen women primping in the mirror or washing their hands when she'd entered, but it seemed they'd finished their business and left.
Shrugging, she quickly walked to the sink and washed her hands. By the time she finished and turned off the tap, the rushing of water from the toilet had stopped too, leaving the room silent except for the somewhat muffled throb of the music coming from the dance floor . . . and heartbreaking sobs coming from one of the stalls.
Frowning, Beth ripped off a section of paper towel and dried her hands, her gaze traveling along the floor under the row of stalls. Two of them were occupied. The one nearest the door, and one two doors over from that. Beth wasn't sure from which one the crying was coming, but suspected it was from the one closest to the door.
"Hello? Are you all right?" she asked, tossing the paper into the wastebasket. When she didn't get an immediate response, Beth walked to the last stall, only to stumble to a stop as it flew open and a young woman hurried out, nearly crashing into her.
"Sorry, sorry," the woman cried and rushed for the exit.
Beth tried to slip into the woman's mind to slow and calm her, but ran up against a wall of pain, confusion, and helplessness that brought her up short. By the time she regained herself, the woman was out the door. Frowning, she followed and stepped out into the hall in time to see the woman disappear through a door marked Emergency Exit at the back of the building.
Hesitating, Beth glanced briefly up the hall toward the dance floor, but then turned to follow the woman's path to the other end of the hall and the waiting door. She couldn't help herself. She recognized all those feelings the woman was experiencing. Fear, pain, helplessness . . . Beth had suffered them often enough when she was young. She knew how debilitating they were, and wanted to help her. If she could.
The emergency exit led to an alley, Beth discovered when she pushed through it. A long, dark alley with boarded windows and large metal garbage bins on one side, she noted as she sought out the source of the fast tap, tap, tap of fleeing high heels. The woman was already halfway up the alley. Beth hesitated again, glancing back to the closing door. The men had no idea where she was and--Her thoughts died abruptly when a loud cry from the woman made Beth turn back toward her. She had stopped at the midway point and was hunched over, sobbing violently.
Mouth tightening, Beth started forward. She would just find out what was wrong. There was a chance she could help, but at the very least, she could slip into her mind and calm and soothe her. The woman had stopped just this side of the metal bins, but as Beth neared her, she suddenly scuttled forward, halfway into the shadows cast by the bins. There she dropped into a squat.
Reaching her, Beth hesitated, but then dropped into a squat as well. Before she could reach for the crying woman, however, a thunk overhead made her glance up sharply. She stared blankl
y at the sword embedded in the boarded-up window above. Had she not dropped when she had, it would have been in her neck right now, she realized as she sought out its owner in the shadows just past the crying woman. All Beth saw was a dark-clad figure holding the sword in a two-handed grip, and then the sword was pulled free, and her survival instinct kicked in.
Jerking upright with a curse, she grabbed for the sword and the figure in the darkness at the same time. Her right hand went for the assailant's throat, nails digging into the skin with vicious intent. With her left, she caught the sword and gripped it, ignoring the pain as it sliced into her skin.
"Beth!"
Startled by the sound of her name, Beth glanced over her shoulder to see Scotty standing in the open club door, concern on his face. That momentary distraction cost her. She didn't see her attacker remove one hand from the sword, and only realized it happened when she was punched in the kidneys.
Gasping in surprised pain, Beth lost her grip on the sword and stepped back, but then instinctively moved her arm up to block the sword as she heard it singing toward her again. Pain immediately sliced through her, radiating out from her arm as she stumbled and leaned back from the blade, trying to get her neck as far from it as possible in case her arm was lobbed off and the sword's momentum carried it into her neck. Fortunately that didn't happen, although the sword did dig deep. Her lower arm and hand were still attached when the sword pulled away, but just barely. Beth was pretty sure the sword had cut most of the way through the bone before being stopped, and she instinctively wrapped her hand around the wound as she glanced around to see the attacker racing away up the alley. Her gaze narrowed on the dark figure moving faster than a mortal could.
The thud of new footsteps heralded Scotty's arrival, and she turned to face him as she squeezed her hand tighter around her wound, trying to keep it closed. The more blood she kept from dripping out, the more blood the nanos had to work with until she could get to the supply in the SUV.
"Here." Scotty wrenched the tail of his linen shirt out of his black leather pants and quickly tore a strip off the bottom.
Beth watched silently as he quickly and efficiently bound the wound. The man had obviously done a lot of that, she thought wryly. But then, most hunters had.
"What happened?" he asked as he tied off the makeshift bandage.
Beth shook her head helplessly. "I was in the bathroom and heard a girl crying."
"Your attacker was a woman?" he asked with surprise.
"No," she said and then shrugged. "I don't know. The person was super tall, wearing a dark suit, and had wide shoulders, so no, probably not," she added on a sigh and then gestured toward the ground behind Scotty and concluded, "She was the woman I heard crying."
Scotty turned and stepped to the side as he noted the woman huddled on the ground at their feet, still sobbing.
"She was hurting and weeping, and I followed her to see if I could help," Beth said and quickly explained what had followed.
"So, she was bait," Scotty murmured, peering at the woman.
They were both silent for a minute, both concentrating on the woman's thoughts, and then Beth gave up and admitted, "I'm not getting anything. You?"
Scotty shook his head. "She was obviously controlled, but her thoughts are so scrambled . . ."
"Yeah, it's like someone put an eggbeater in there," Beth said softly, and then sighed. "We can't leave her like this."
"Nay," Scotty agreed, running one hand wearily through his hair.
"I can't go back inside covered in blood," Beth pointed out. "You go on in and fetch the boys, and I'll take her to the SUV."
"Nay," Scotty said firmly. "I'll walk ye both to the SUV and call Matias and Donny on the way. Yer attacker might be hanging about, waiting for me to leave."
Beth opened her mouth to argue, and then shrugged and closed it again. He was right, of course. Her attacker might still be around, and she was in no shape to take him on now.
Scotty urged the woman to her feet with a hand on her arm. He must have taken control of her mind then because she accompanied them without protest or question.
"You'd best text rather than call," Beth murmured when he started to punch in numbers on the phone. "They won't be able to hear you over the music anyway."
"Right," Scotty grunted and quickly typed out a message. He'd finished sending them both texts by the time they reached the mouth of the alley. The men were swift to respond, and both Matias and Donny caught up to them before they'd reached the vehicle parked a block away from the dance club.
Beth left the explanations to Scotty, her own mind on the attack. It had obviously been planned, the girl used as bait for a direct attempt on her life, but that left the question of how this person had known she would be there to attack. Had she and the others been followed from the Enforcer house to the club? Or had she even been a specific target? It was possible her attacker had just been out to kill any immortal he came across, and came across her.
"Mortimer gave me an address to take the girl to. He says we have people there who can help her," Donny announced as they reached the SUV.
Beth glanced to him with surprise. She'd been so lost in thought, she hadn't realized Scotty had finished the explanations and the younger immortal had called Mortimer.
"We'll take you back to the house first," Donny assured her. "And then Matias and I can take the girl--"
"Don't be silly. I'm fine," Beth said quietly. "Besides, there's blood in the SUV. Isn't there?" she added, glancing to Matias in question.
Her cousin nodded solemnly. "Always."
"I'll grab a couple bags," Donny said, moving to the back of the vehicle.
"Make it four," Scotty ordered, ushering Beth and the girl into the back seat. The other man must have stopped and glanced to him in question, because he added, "The sword cut nearly through the bone. Two bags won't do."
"Right," Donny muttered weakly.
"The lad needs to toughen up if he really wants to be a Rogue Hunter," Scotty said quietly as he slid into the back seat next to Beth.
"He's fine. This is only his second day on the job," she pointed out. "Actually, technically this is still his first. At least, it's his first twenty-four hours."
Scotty grunted at that and lifted his arm to set it along the seat back behind her so that there was more room and he could turn to look at her. He asked, "How is your arm?"
Beth raised her eyebrows at the concern on his face, and admitted, "It hurts like a bugger, but I've had worse."
That made Scotty's mouth tighten, and then Donny closed the back door of the SUV and came around to give him the four bags of blood before getting into the front passenger seat.
"Where to?" Matias asked as he started the engine.
"The house," Scotty said firmly. "Beth needs to rest and heal."
"But what about the girl?" Donny asked with a frown. "Mortimer gave me an address to take her to. He said that they'd tend to her there, make sure there was no damage and retrieve any information they can."
Scotty scowled briefly, but then asked, "What's the address?"
Donny glanced down at his phone and rattled it off.
"That's on the way to the house," Matias said helpfully.
Scotty considered the matter briefly and then nodded as he handed one of the bags of blood to Beth. "Since it's on the way, we'll drop off the lass ere we go home. That way none o' us has to leave the house. I'd rather all three o' us were there to watch out for Elizabeth tonight. At least until we sort out how best to keep an eye on her from now on."
"What?" Beth had been about to pop the bag of blood he'd given her to her fangs, but instead turned on him with surprise as Matias steered the SUV into traffic. "Why? I'm fine. A couple of bags of blood and a bit of time and I'll be good as new. And what's with the Elizabeth thing? I'm Beth. Everyone calls me Beth."
"Beth," he said with emphasis, "someone has targeted ye. Ye were deliberately lured out into that alley, and 'tis an immortal."
"Yes, but--"
"And this is no' even the first attack," Scotty continued right over her.
"What are you talking about?" she asked with amazement.
"The car crash ere we left," Scotty reminded her sharply.
"That was an accident," she said at once.
"Nay," he assured her. "When I read his mind, the driver did no' remember a thing."
"Perhaps he--"
"He was controlled." Scotty's expression didn't hold a bit of doubt as he made that statement.
"What accident?" Matias asked, glancing at her in the rearview mirror.
"A semi hauling girders swerved in front of me on the highway," Beth admitted with a frown. "But I wasn't even hurt."
"Ye should ha'e been," Scotty said with certainty. "Ye should ha'e been beheaded, and then burned to death in an explosion. I still do no' understand how that Explorer o' yers did no' blow up. The weight of the girders landed on your engine when the semi's tires blew."
Beth glanced down at her injured arm, but her mind was on the accident back in Toronto. She'd just started to try to read the driver's mind when she'd heard Donny's and Scotty's voices and had stopped to look around. Still, in the brief glimpse she'd had into the driver's mind, she'd noted the blank spot where his memory of swerving should have been. She'd wondered about that herself, but had just assumed the man had been so traumatized he'd blocked it from his thoughts. But Scotty was saying there had been nothing to find, and suggesting it had also been a deliberate attack and the man had been controlled . . . like the girl tonight.
"My cousin is a wonderful woman. Who would want to kill her?" Matias asked with outrage.
Beth grimaced and admitted, "Probably a lot of people."
"What?" Matias met her gaze angrily in the rearview mirror. "Do not be ridiculous."
Beth offered his reflection a crooked smile. "I hunt down rogue immortals, Matias," she pointed out gently. "Most of them have families. Sometimes the family understands and knows it has to be done. But other times they're in denial, grief turns to anger, and they want revenge."
Scotty nodded solemnly. "Family members seeking revenge can be more dangerous than the rogues themselves. At least when ye're hunting a rogue ye ken ye're walking into a dangerous situation and are prepared for it. Revenge attacks are unexpected and can be deadly because o' that. I've lost good hunters to relatives seeking revenge."
