by Julie Miller
She backed to the door, putting the desk between her and Rick's body when she heard the door click shut behind her. Tough, sinewy arms closed around her before she could turn, and a leather-gloved hand clamped over her mouth, muffling her scream.
She twisted and tried to bite her way to freedom, recognizing familiar scents of hair tonic and cologne. The arms jerked her off her feet, tightening like a vise and strangling the breath in her chest.
Smooth, cool lips teased the back of her ear. “Bridget. It's nothing.”
BJ screamed against the leather, turning dizzy from her effort. Or maybe the stealth of shadows creeping in made her light-headed. Tears stung her eyes. She squeezed them shut and hot waterfalls spilled over and ran down her cheeks.
The darkness rushed in, crowding out coherent thought. Where was Brodie? What had she done? What terrible mistake had she made?
Her muscles turned to gelatin while her mind struggled to break free.
“Come with me quietly. No one knows I'm here. Drive me to the lab. I can help you forget all this. I can bring you peace again. Trust me.”
No! I trust Brodie!
Help her forget… BJ's head lolled to one side, too groggy to support. She wanted to forget. Wait. She had to remember. Rick, dead. Brodie, right. Damon… responsible.
Damon.
She fought her way back toward consciousness.
“Bridget. It's nothing.”
Blackness consumed her and she knew no more.
Brodie's internal radar alerted him even before the passage of time made him wary. BJ was gone. Damon had her.
He slammed through the offices upstairs, searching for her, knowing where she was, but hoping…
At the end of the hall he found Rick Chambers's body. Out of a sense of duty, he checked for a pulse, confirming what he already knew. There were no marks on the man, no sign of a struggle. Just fear. A terror so intense, it killed a man—from the inside out.
He remembered the peasants who had died beside him in Damon's dungeon. Terror had killed them. Damon planted the thought, twisted his ring, and the men died.
With the same compassion that had allied him with those peasants, Damon closed Rick's eyes. He might hate the man for his part in hurting BJ, but no one, not a misguided peasant who threatened murder nor a greedy technician who stole BJ's ideas, deserved to die so horribly. So helplessly.
No one deserved a sorcerer's vengeance.
Brodie felt for his dagger at the back of his belt. He didn't know what he could do to fight the black magic, but there had to be a way. One way or another he'd free BJ. One way or another.
When he climbed into his Explorer and drove toward the Morrisey Institute, he knew it was the beginning of the final, most important battle of his immortal life.
“You killed Rick.”
BJ's voice filled with accusation. It was the only mode of attack open to her. Damon had muttered something and flashed his ring, binding her to the chair as securely as a set of ropes and handcuffs.
Yet for some reason, he had freed her mind of the shadows. He wanted her to hear this. He wanted her to know how utterly under his spell she had been—and how helpless she would be to escape from his control again.
When Damon laughed, she heard a hollow, ancient sound she had never noticed before. The evil in it chilled her to the bone.
Brodie had been right. Damon was insane. The rules of logic she had clung to so desperately wouldn't help her. So while Damon talked, she listened with half an ear. She pretended rapt attention while she turned her brain to more abstract thought. She sized up each piece of equipment in the lab, the empty cubicles, the power grid, the death chambers.
And she watched Damon. She watched his curious movements as he worked on a computer. She watched the eerie fire that gleamed in his black eyes.
“Chambers served his purpose. But he got greedy. Careless. He thought he could learn from a master. He was a fool, an easy, gullible fool. I needed someone to give me access to you without arousing your partners' suspicions. He tried taking things into his own hands. I knew Brodie Maxwell wasn't a threat, but Chambers got scared. He thought he could persuade you to kill him. Imagine, trying to murder an immortal.” He clicked his tongue and looked at BJ with the once familiar, indulgent smile that now looked condescending and controlling. “He betrayed me.”
Damon walked around the console to where BJ sat. With gentle, creepy, fatherlike fingers, he caressed her cheek. BJ steeled herself and tried not to flinch. She didn't want to inflame the unnatural light in his eyes. But when he touched her again, she jerked her head to the side.
He grabbed her chin and forced it upward, twisting her neck at a sharp angle. “You betrayed me.”
He released her with the same violence with which he had gripped her, then returned to the console and began typing again. BJ worked her jaw back and forth, wishing she could use her hands to massage away the cramp in her neck.
This was not her Damon. This was Brodie's sorcerer. BJ tried to formulate some plan of escape. But what did she know about magic? How could she pit her skills against Damon's? She had no other option than to try.
She clenched her throat muscles to keep the quavering fear out of her voice. “How did I betray you?”
Damon looked at her. “You left me.”
He straightened and threw his hands out to either side, indicating the vast complex surrounding them. “I gave you everything.” His hands dropped to his sides. “And you left me.”
“I wanted to start my own company. I never abandoned you. I always thought of you as the father I had lost.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Jas and Emma provided me with the opportunity to grow up and branch out on my own.”
“No. No. No!” He shook his index finger at her as if she were a confused child. “I gave you every opportunity you needed.”
He pulled the chair from behind the console and dragged it over so he could sit right in front of BJ, facing her, his knees touching hers. BJ's leg wouldn't respond to her desire to break the contact.
“You were nothing when I discovered you.” She tried to look meek, nonthreatening. But she didn't allow herself to look away. “You were floundering in a graduate program, confined by the strictures of academia. I saw the potential in you. I gave you an outlet for your creativity. I set you free.”
“I'll always be grateful for what you did for me.”
“You have an odd way of showing your gratitude.”
A protesting bite worked its way into her voice. “I never left you. I left my job at the Institute. I still—”
He cut off the rest of her words with a wave of his hand. BJ tried to speak, but she could only make a gurgling sound in her throat.
“Combining my power to control minds with your power to design and manipulate artificial intelligence made us an unbeatable pair. With you to channel my power, I could influence companies, countries, maybe the entire planet.”
His skin turned gray, his eyes swallowed the light. BJ sank back in her chair.
“Since you would not stay and join forces willingly, I ensured your cooperation by other means.”
He stared at her, accusing her of terrible crimes with his eyes. BJ had no choice but to sit there and absorb the invisible assault. Her soul ruptured, spilling out every fond memory of their past together.
It had all been a lie. Everything that had grounded her, everything that had given her hope and comfort, had been a lie.
When Damon got up and returned to his work, BJ's throat unknotted. She could speak again.
“You never loved me.” He didn't respond. “You were a father to me. I was an… opportunity… to you.”
Damon smiled at something on his computer screen. “And you will be again.”
He walked over to BJ, grabbed her by the upper arm and drew her to her feet. Somehow, her inert body responded to his touch. “How do--?”
Ego blended with the madness in Damon's eyes. He waved his hand in front of her face with all the flou
rish of a practiced illusionist. A stripe of silver flashed before her eyes.
“Your ring.”
Keeping his hand in front of her face, he slowly turned his knuckles toward her until she could see the round face of the signet ring on his third finger. Hammered out of an ancient silvery metal, the icon mocked her. The jagged slash of a lightning bolt, encircled in silver, glowed on his finger with a greenish, unearthly light.
“And with this ring,” he paused to let the traditional words of bonding sink in, “you will be mine forever. I will make you be like me.”
She jerked her chin up. “Immortal?”
She thought of Brodie. Of his ugly exterior, hideous reminders of endless torture and suffering. She remembered his eyes, icy gray shutters that tried to shield the outside world from the horrors of his immortal existence. She thought of his love, and how he had sacrificed his own happiness to protect her from the endless pain that followed him through eternity.
“You can't.” Remembering Brodie gave her the strength to fight. “I don't want your curse. I'd rather die now than live forever as a pawn in your world.”
His fingers tightened on her arm until she cried out in pain. “I'm not giving you a choice.”
He dragged her over to the console and showed her the screen. BJ read the data and blanched, already suspecting his plan.
“I've programmed a series of explosions that will throw the power grid off line, forcing a meltdown of the Institute's nuclear reactor. We'll perish in the unfortunate incident, and be reborn somewhere else.”
“What about the people who work here?! And everyone else who'll die? You'd kill innocent people just to get me back? I’m not worth that.”
He looked at her with a resolve that told BJ her concerns were inconsequential. “He took you from me once. I won't let him take you again.”
With an insight that rocked her to the core, BJ finally, fully accepted every word Brodie had told her as the truth. Damon was pure evil, without conscience, without any value for human life.
She might well be one of the smartest people in the world, but she had spent most of her adult life living like a fool.
“Brodie will come after me. He'll know that I'm alive. He won't let you get away with this.”
Damon smiled, a cruel, demonic slash across his features. “I've kept Sir Brodie Maxwell in his place for more than eight hundred years. He'll never defeat me.”
Damon jerked her arm, dragging her toward a rear exit. BJ kicked at his legs, tried to claw at his skin. But he quickly subdued her attacking limbs by snapping his fingers. While her mind reeled in protest, her body dutifully fell into step beside him.
Glass shattered and wood splintered in a furious, thunderous maelstrom behind them. BJ thought the first explosion must have gone off. But Damon whirled around, more surprised than she.
“Let her go, sorcerer!”
That blessed voice, deep and rumbling and so full of rage told her that her knight in battered armor had found her. She couldn't turn, but she could well imagine the size and breadth and sheer intimidation of the unleashed warrior.
“Be gone, Maxwell.” Damon thrust out his hand. BJ heard a crash. But at the same moment Brodie distracted Damon, sensation returned to her arms and legs. With Damon's focus turned aside, she was in control of herself again.
In a free-fall of renewed vigor, BJ reached for the first object she could find. A clay pot filled with fake flowers, which someone had used to try and bring life to this sterile building. With all the force she could muster, she hurled the pot at Damon's back. The projectile glanced off his shoulder, doing nothing more than shift his attention back to her.
He turned, arcing his arm in a vicious swing. He never touched her, but a blow rang through BJ's skull and knocked her to the floor. She clutched at her temple, shaking her head and fighting dizziness.
When he turned his attention to her, Brodie hauled himself off the floor and charged Damon. Damon thrust out his hand and muttered. Brodie left his feet and went flying into a computer terminal, crashing with the equipment onto the floor, shattering glass and creating sparks with the discharge of electricity.
One at a time. He can only control us one at a time.
She pushed to her knees and then her feet. “Get his ring, Brodie! If we work together, we can get his ring!”
When she spoke, she succeeded in capturing Damon's attention. She backed away with every step he stalked toward her. “You fool. I can give you everything. We belong together. Forever. Our destiny is together.”
BJ backed into the fire door, shaking her head in denial as he advanced upon her. “I don't want what you're offering me. I never cared about anything like that. I only wanted you to love me.”
“I do, Arabella. You're everything to me. You're my future.”
BJ frowned. “Arabella?”
A massive shape loomed behind Damon. Brodie's arm snaked around his neck, cutting off Damon's windpipe.
“She's not your daughter, sorcerer! She's an innocent woman. You've killed enough innocent people!”
As Brodie twisted Damon backward, BJ lunged for Damon's hand. Her fingertips brushed across cold metal, but he jerked his fist into the air, eluding her. At the same time, he uttered a foreign word.
A shockwave drove the three of them to the floor as the ceiling blasted into a million pieces and buried them with debris from the floor above. BJ saw part of the upper floor collapse on the two men, crushing them.
Closer to the wall, fragments of ceiling tile and flooring showered over her, but she was protected from the heavier beams and machinery that crashed down on top of the two men. Rational thought flowed through her with cunning clarity.
Pushing first with her shoulder, then using her foot, she dislodged the bar across the fire door and kicked it open. The building automatically responded with the blaring repetition of a fire alarm. Sprinklers turned on overhead, dousing the sparking machine Brodie had broken and setting up an electrical charge that could blow out the rest of the equipment.
BJ climbed over the mountain of wreckage to the computer terminal Damon had used earlier. Quickly, she accessed the power grid and shut down the surrounding equipment. A flash of insight, a half-formed strategy, led her to type in a second command. One that transferred this console to auxiliary power, keeping it online, but free of any subsequent damage that the systems could incur.
Then she climbed back into the debris, pushing over a filing cabinet, knocking aside a broken monitor. She fell to her knees and started digging. When she reached the floor, she found what she was looking for.
Damon's still, dust-shrouded hand protruded from beneath a pile of ceiling beams and wires. BJ lifted the third finger and twisted the ring off. It caught once on the first joint, but with an insistent tug and a heartfelt prayer, it slipped off.
The evil circle burned in the palm of her hand, but the first glimmer of victory coursed through BJ. For the first time in months--or was it years?--BJ sensed the shadows fleeing from her mind. A weight lifted from her as the light rushed in, bathing the darkest corners of her consciousness with sunny understanding.
BJ savored her freedom all too briefly. While she knelt there, ignoring the inevitable, the deathly hand came back to life. BJ recognized the danger too late.
Damon's hand snatched her wrist, gripping with an intensity that could snap her bones.
She screamed a second time when the rubble rose before her like a mountain forming in the dawn before time. Equipment, steel and concrete fell by the wayside as Brodie emerged from the mountain, still clutching Damon by the neck and dragging the sorcerer to his feet.
BJ scrambled to safety as the two immortals resumed their struggle. Brodie, bigger and angrier, had the advantage of size and strength. But Damon was clever and quick. They each took their blows, staggered by injuries that would kill a mortal man. Explosions rocked a distant point of the complex. And still they fought.
Unable to help Brodie, BJ returned to the computer c
onsole and accessed the nuclear reactor. She breathed again when she saw that it was still intact. She pulled up the sequence that would start the reactor on its controlled shutdown. Maybe she couldn't do more here, but she could help save other innocent people. She could take that responsibility off Brodie's conscience, and hers.
A metallic crash and a crushing “oomph” sounded behind her. She turned to see Brodie stumbling toward her. He cried out hoarsely, “Give me the ring.”
She tried to catch him as he fell forward, but his weight carried them both to the floor. His shoulder was bleeding, and she could see a new cut above his eye. “Oh, God, Brodie.”
She touched his face, caressed his wounded shoulder, unable to say more, but communicating her love and concern.
Brodie kissed her on the forehead, understanding and returning her message to him. He pushed himself off her and repeated, “Give me the ring.”
BJ unclenched her fist and dropped Damon's ring into his palm. Then he closed his other massive hand over it and began to squeeze. BJ watched the incredible strength crushing, twisting. A vein popped out in his cheek as he poured every bit of strength he possessed into his hands. A silvery light glowed through his fingers, increasing in intensity, trying to break out of his grip.
A flash of movement behind Brodie caught BJ's eye. A bruised arm with the shreds of a silk shirt hanging from it emerged from beneath a twisted I-beam.
“Brodie.” She tried to warn him.
Damon rose like a phoenix from the ashes, his face battered and bloodied.
“Brodie!”
He ignored her repeated warning as Damon limped closer. He concentrated fully on squeezing the life out of the object in his hands. BJ cried out as Damon reached for the man she loved.
But she lost sight of him as the light from Brodie's hands exploded outward like a supernova, blinding them all for several moments.
The air in the room swirled and fumed in a frenzy. BJ ducked her head and shut her eyes against the evil, living force erupting from Brodie's hands. It could find no home, no outlet. It raged through the air, sucking up oxygen, searching for a dark place to dwell. A discordant cacophony thrummed in her ears, rising in maddening intensity.
