Memory of an Immortal Heart (Immortal Hearts)

by Kita Bell

  When the Kaspian finally stopped moving, Corin King stepped forward to crouch over his prey.

  “I thought you would fight more,” he said thoughtfully, meeting that furious gray gaze. A vague disappointment moved through him. “Rohe is always speaking of the legendary strength of the Kaspians. And yet,” he shook his head, “when I finally face a warrior, you fall so easily.”

  He leaned forward, breathed in the scent of his prey to fix it in his memory.

  The Kaspian’s gloved hand flexed. It was fast – and when it rose, it was not claws that found King’s throat, but the long end of a seven-inch blade.

  Corin King felt the bite of the knife into his flesh and pulled back just enough to salvage his windpipe and major blood vessels. He stood, holding his neck and regulating his blood flow while he watched the Kaspian rise and stagger – at a still-impressive speed – back around the corner of the hall.

  King approved. Most warriors were too proud to feign weakness. And this Kaspian hadn’t fully succumbed to Rohe’s venom.

  “He must be older than I thought,” King murmured, intrigued, then removed his hand from the cut across his throat, “And much more foolish.” The Kaspian’s claws could have hurt him, but the knife, no. King’s will alone would keep the blood flowing smoothly through his body while his flesh re-knit.

  It was always annoying when they cut him.

  Corin King sighed and carefully shook his head, then unsheathed a sword from his back.

  He may as well follow. Likely, the tiger would pass out in the hall.

  The movie had ended. “I should go to bed,” Eva yawned, her head falling back to reveal the enticing slope of her throat, her gaze so lovely that Brand leaned forward to kiss her eyelids. She blinked, waking slightly as she smiled up at him. “Or,” she murmured huskily, “you could do that again. Except, perhaps, to my cheeks…and my lips…and my throat… Finish what you started the other night…”

  Brand smiled and nipped Eva’s ear; she laughed as he slanted his lips across her own. The low purr Eva made electrified him, so that Brand pressed forward, deepening the kiss – and then the air changed. A shadow flitted across the skylight…

  The huge window over the dining area crashed inwards.

  The sound of shattering glass, the splintering of crystal on the dining area table, and the scent of Sakai filled the room. The crackle of coms and rough boots and the crash of wood furniture.

  Brand snarled, “Stay down,” and shoved Eva below the protective curve of the couch. He didn’t think: he Changed.

  It was like coming itself, but Brand didn’t have time to glory in the sensation. A moment after the fur settled on his shoulders, he was over the couch, claws unsheathed, and ripping out the throat of the first intruder he saw.

  A protective metal collar grated between his jaws, and Brand roared before ripping off the Sakai’s head instead. He turned and eviscerated a second attacker, tasting the rich deep flavor of blood. Silver winked through the air, buried into his side, and deadness spread a path into Brand’s flesh, trying to dull his muscles, trying to dull his thoughts and reactions.

  A tranquilizer. They were trying to use one on him. Like they had used on his amati. On Eva.

  The Sakai hadn’t come to kill, they had come to capture.

  Rage exploded through Brand, short-circuiting his brain. He slashed through chests and blood sprayed. A second tranquilizer hit his side, and he shook it off.

  When Eva screamed, everything disappeared behind a haze of dark, killing red.

  “Brand,” Eva repeated, and he realized she was gripping his head and he was in tiger form. “Brand, come back,” and he heard both the strain in her voice and a fine-held line of fear. “Joshua’s hurt, I don’t know how to fix him. Someone’s going to come and I don’t know what to do…”

  Brand shook her fingers away and Changed.

  The places where they’d shot him spasmed, not wanting to alter back to human form. Those areas were close to dead flesh, unwilling to move, unwilling to cooperate. Brand bore down on them with his will, forcing his body to alter, and the deadened areas woke like acid in his chest and leg as if someone were burning him from the inside out.

  Brand snarled, but he had been Changing for too many years not to have his body obey.

  He pulled back into human form, shaking away the rebellion of his muscles. Fuck, that hurt. And not in the good way. There was a sharp breath behind Brand and he turned.

  Eva stared. Her silver eyes travelled over his face, his neck, down his chest and lodged on his cock. They widened. Brand was already semi-hard, but he stiffened further under Eva’s notice, need rising in him like a tidal wave.

  Instinct raged at his control, trying to rip it away.

  “Christ, Eva.” Brand shifted away. “Look somewhere else. I can’t think when you’re doing that.”

  She bit her lip, averting her eyes, and Brand stared at the room. Not one of my finer moments.

  Blood splattered the walls, flicking off the blade of the ceiling fan in soft, gentle splats. A shredded head lay before the fireplace, the Sakai’s teeth sharply elongated, dead eyes wide in horror. A body clad in combat clothes lay limply to the far side of the dark carpet, blood soaking into the thick weave. A headless torso lay beneath the windows, another along the east wall, and a third beside the table.

  Brand ran a hand through his hair, saw the blood between his fingertips. He touched a tongue to his lips and tasted the zing of Sakai blood on his tongue, down his throat, like fucking elixir.

  He tightened his fist, and took a careful breath in. He released it. Then Brand methodically blocked the taste of that blood in his mouth, his mind, his entire consciousness.

  Oftentimes, his heritage was more curse than blessing.

  “Here,” Eva said behind him, and Brand took the blanket she offered to wiped his face before wrapping it around his waist. Then Brand wondered that she had been able to look at him like that when he had blood in his mouth…but, Brand supposed, Eva could come to him drenched in blood and he’d still want her.

  She was his amati, and they were both Kaspian.

  “What did you say about Joshua?”

  Eva pulled Brand back toward the couch. “Over here. I don’t know what’s wrong with him, he wouldn’t tell me…”

  “Got shot with one of those fucking tranquilizers,” Joshua gritted, sitting rigidly upright. “Didn’t even see the bastard, then he shot me. Slashed his throat though,” Joshua added with a smirk.

  “Knife or claws, Joshua?” Brand demanded, and watched his cousin’s satisfaction fade.

  “Fuck,” Joshua swore, and leaned his forehead into his fist. “How the hell could I have forgotten? I know how to fight Sakai. Use my good hand next time.”

  “It’s been a few years,” Brand muttered, rising again to glance around the destroyed room. The place was a security nightmare, near-impossible to fix. “Can you walk?”

  “Just lead the way,” Joshua muttered. “Though I might need your girlfriend to keep me steady.”

  “Eva,” Brand picked up the shreds of his ruined clothes, searching through the pockets until he extricated his cell phone and the key card, “You have thirty seconds. Pack your clothes, get your bags, do whatever you need, but then we have to leave.”

  “I don’t have bags,” Eva said softly, and Brand turned to look at her. She was pale and blood splattered, shaking and obviously terrified. Brand wanted nothing more than to pull her into his arms and comfort her. Her gaze dipped toward his waist, then returned firmly to his face as she licked her lips. “I mean, I don’t have bags to pack my things in.”

  “Use mine.” Brand walked over to his luggage, grabbed a pair of pants from the bag and let the towel fall. He heard Eva gasp behind him, smelled the arousal in the air.

  “Twenty seconds now, Eva,” Brand said gently, pulling on his pants and carefully navigating the zipper. He reached for a shirt. “Hurry.”

  She left the room at a run.


  Eva wavered as she slid across the seat and into the cab, praying that soon, this horrible day would end. They had ditched the car and cut through multiple subway stations, taken two trains, eleven cabs, and wandered three times through various airports. Brand claimed he was making them untrackable; he was also making Eva crazy.

  She slanted a look at Brand from the corner of her eye as he settled beside her, and – as she had done for the past eight hours of hell – tried to puzzle out how old he was.

  Perhaps she should have asked that question earlier, before her libido became involved.

  Oh wait, she thought ironically. My libido was always involved. Right from the beginning.

  But it was better than thinking about the blood-drenched room Brand had left behind, or what could have happened to them if the Sakai had caught them. Eva shuddered, turning her thoughts away again.

  It was simple tranquilizer math: Eva was twenty-six, and if one tranquilizer knocked her out cold for an entire night but that same dosage made Joshua act like a hung-over drunk (Joshua seemed older, perhaps sixty?) – then Brand should be older yet. A hundred, maybe?

  Well, Eva decided, studying the tilt of Brand’s shoulders as he spoke to Seth on the phone, maybe a little older than that. I’ll give him one-ten. Brand spoke French, and – Eva learned, when he gave directions to a cabbie – he also spoke Spanish. So maybe it took a bit longer to learn those languages. Maybe one-fifteen.

  Eva could live with that. Most of the Kaspian in her Gens were around one hundred. She could deal with the fact that Brand might be, what, five times older than her and probably did remember when the actually Casablanca came out?

  Eva winced and turned to elbow Joshua. “The tranquilizers. I was shot with one, and blacked out. You were shot with the same dose and can hardly walk. When you speak, you slur like a…”

  “Hey,” Joshua growled, huddling down in the seat as the cab accelerated.

  “…but,” Eva continued, “Brand was shot three times, and he’s just fine.” She narrowed her gaze as Brand closed the phone and turned toward her. He arched his eyebrows, looking puzzled, and Joshua shrugged.

  “Age and genetics,” Joshua said, as if it were obvious. Brand frowned, and Joshua explained, “She wanted to know why the tranqs didn’t turn you into a drooling idiot. Did I hear you promising samples to Seth?”

  “He’ll start testing as soon as I get the recovered vials back to Stronghold,” Brand hefted the suitcase he had kept with them rather than put in the trunk. “For both the guns and the darts. If Seth can’t figure out what the hell is in them, he’ll know someone who can. At the least he can get a line on the manufacturers. That’s somewhere to start.”

  “Good,” Joshua said, and Eva nodded in agreement.

  The cab sped forward, skidded around the corner, and Brand steadied Eva. The feel of his strength, the warm sunlit scent of him, was like a drug to her. All she wanted to do was close her eyes and breathe him in – and maybe, pick up where they had left off.

  The memory of Brand’s fingers on her coursed through Eva’s blood, hot and dangerous. Then, after the attack, the sight of his body, the size of his erection…

  Eva shivered.

  Everything had happened so fast. She hadn’t known a Kaspian could Change so quickly. One instant, Brand had been human and kissing her…then the next, he shoved her behind the couch and Changed. Pure, lethal blood tiger. And so gorgeous.

  He had killed them all.

  Brand had killed the Sakai who captured her, the same Sakai who had held her down as if she were nothing. They had shot Brand with the same tranquilizers they used to kidnap her with, and those tranquilizers…had no effect.

  Eva studied her fingers – the fingers that couldn’t grow claws. Either she was an incredibly weak blood tiger, or Brand was very strong one.

  Likely both were true.

  Still. The thought made her a bit…defensive.

  After they exited the cab, Brand muttered a terse “Wait here,” and left Eva and Joshua standing beside each other beneath the columns of a huge, structured blocklike building. Eva pulled her coat more tightly about herself as she ducked back into the shadows to stand beside Joshua. He was leaning wearily against a pillar. None of them had gotten any sleep.

  “Where are we?”

  “Union Station,” Joshua gestured at the building. He glanced around, assessing the streets, the architecture, then shook his head as he turned back to Eva. “Brand will be back soon.”

  “Do you think we’ve lost them?” Eva asked, then shook her head. She wasn’t sure if she wanted an answer. “I’m sorry,” she said softly, staring out at the street, at the masses of humans and vehicles. “Both you and Brand are in danger because of me. Because Rohe wants me back.”

  This was her fault.

  Joshua’s eyebrows rose. The he looked down at his gloved hand – the one Eva had seen ridged scars over, scars Joshua tried to hide. She could have sworn the shadows around the two of them darkened. Joshua looked up. “This situation is dangerous,” he said bluntly. “It concerns us all. Brand is afraid the Strategoi will trace us to Stronghold, and I’m afraid he’s right. But,” Joshua added as Eva winced, “we are also worried about what happened to you. The last time Sakai captured Kaspian and poked at us with knives was during the witch trials.”

  Eva flinched. “Didn’t they burn…”

  “We do make fearsome devils,” Joshua said dryly, turning back to the street. “The humans hunted ‘witches,’ and the Sakai hunted us. Everyone wanted to find the unnatural. My point is, is that you have nothing to apologize for. You’re alive, and you’re helping. That’s what matters.”

  Eva blinked, perilously close to tears.

  “…I’m with them now,” a deep voice rumbled behind her, and a large hand caught Eva’s elbow as she jumped. Brand. He extended a ticket to Joshua, then Eva.

  Joshua began to collect their bags. He tossed one to Brand, who caught it deftly, continuing to speak into his phone. Eva shook her head, then glanced at the ticket: Whitefish, Montana. Via train.

  Montana. She had never been so far from North Carolina. From Rainey.

  If Joshua hadn’t told her what he had, Eva might have changed her mind. Called it all off.

  “Eva.”

  Brand. She looked up. “Stand still,” he directed, raising his phone, “and don’t smile.”

  Before she knew what he was doing, Brand snapped a picture of her and put the device back to his ear. “I’m sending it now. Remember to fix the background. Yes – yes. Good. I’ll expect them there.”

  Brand’s deep blue eyes settled on her as he closed the phone. “There was only one cabin left. I’m afraid we have to share.”

  “One bedroom?”

  “Yes.”

  A rush of heat flowed through Eva’s body and wrapped delicious tendrils beneath her skin, counteracting the cold of Chicago. Brand’s gaze flickered with gold. Her and Brand – one bedroom.

  Behind them Joshua cursed. “You mean all of us. As in, me too.” He snarled low in his throat, less than happy. “Couldn’t you have found something else, Brand?”

  Eva’s mind clicked into focus.

  One bedroom. Brand with her, in one bedroom. Together. The two of them. But then Joshua would be there also.

  The heat in Eva’s body felt miserably thwarted. And embarrassingly obvious. And all the space of Union Station was much too small to contain the strange growing cycle of Eva’s hunger where Brand Kade was concerned.

  Get a grip, Eva, she told herself. It was just for a week. Surely she could keep her hormones in check for a week.

  Brand flashed his teeth at Joshua, the gold embers in his gaze turning deadly. “I tried. No dice. One room. All of us. Deal with it, cousin.”

  Joshua muttered, “I think I’d rather walk.”

  As she stepped through the door to the tiny cramped train cabin they would be sharing, Eva’s stomach twisted painfully, her mouth filling with the acrid taste of barely contai
ned panic. Joshua moved past her down the hall.

  There was a window – a large window – but it was thick glass, and the metal of the train pushed in around Eva like the walls of Rohe’s cell, trying to cage her in.

  Eva hissed, freezing just inside the door – then came up against the warm bulk of Brand’s chest.

  “Eva.” Brand’s arm began to circle around, containing her even further. Even though she smelled his concern, even though Eva knew he was worried for her, she couldn’t help it – she jerked away, trying to find space.

  Brand stilled. “Eva,” he repeated carefully. “What is it?”

  This cabin was dark, small, cramped, it was…

  “I’m fine,” she said, trying to keep the discomfort from her voice. Brand’s fingers touched hers, and he tugged her back, toward his arms, but Eva resisted. “No. I need to see.”

  She needed to see the room. To see the space. To remind herself that this wasn’t her cell, and that Rohe wasn’t waiting for her, and that there was no man from 113 across the wall.

  Brand stepped back. Eva forced herself to breathe.

  The cabin was small. There was a double-seat that could fold out into a small bed, and – above that – a large flat pushed-up surface against the ceiling…a second bed, Eva realized. Across from the double-seat sat an armchair and a tiny bathroom.

  Eva raised her gaze to the window; it was night outside, but bright in the room. In the reflection, her face was pale, drawn. There were shadows under her eyes. Brand stood behind her. Even in the reflection, Brand’s eyes were deep sapphire, filled with concern – but his expression was tinged with wariness and – oddly enough – guilt. He was watching Eva as if debating whether to close the distance between them. He looks sad. And tired. And like he’s not quite sure of me.

  But Eva wasn’t even sure of herself.

  Eva reached back and wrapped her fingers around Brand’s. “I’ll be okay. I just need to sit by the window.”

  Brand nodded. As they sat in the double seat, Eva inhaled Brand’s scent into her lungs and fixed her gaze on his reflection.