by Brenda Joyce
He didn’t hesitate. Garage doors which obviously led to the street outside were to his right, but a single steel door was to his left at that far end of the corridor. Ian strode to it.
It was unlocked.
The moment he stepped into the next small hallway, he froze again.
It was the back of the entry hall of a Victorian-era home. The space was small and cramped. Ten feet away, a handsome, antique wood door with glass pane windows faced him. To his right were narrow stairs with a hand-carved wooden banister, leading to the bedrooms.
He knew a parlor was to his left, a kitchen behind that.
He reeled, dizzy and sick.
This was where they’d kept him.
He faced the back door he’d just come through and cried out.
An inscription glowed there—the same inscription he’d seen in Hemmer’s vault. The same inscription he’d lived with as a nine-year-old boy.
Evil rose up, behind him.
NICK BREATHED A SIGH of relief as the steel doors of the armored transport vehicle were closed and locked by two U.S. Army soldiers. Behind him, the military jet he’d taken to and from Glasgow was on the runway of a private airstrip on western Long Island. The soldiers nodded at him, clad in their khakis, wearing the insignia of the Rangers. They leapt into the cab and started the ignition.
His gut tensed as the engine came to life. He’d had nothing but a sense of dread since leaving Loch Awe. But the vehicle did not explode.
Nick walked over to the black sedan awaiting him. Kit was behind the wheel. Her gaze locked with his as he opened her door and said, “Move over.”
She had to get out on his side to do so. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.” He slid behind the wheel and put the Lincoln into Drive as Kit hopped into the passenger seat. The words didn’t feel right. It had been too easy—one of the easiest cases of his life. He reminded himself that a very evil entity had Maclean. His gut churned.
He pulled out onto the barely lit drive, following the armored transport. Kit sat beside him, seething. “Spit it out,” he said, not really in the mood for her opinion. He needed a drink. He wouldn’t mind some sex.
“Why didn’t you give Sam a ride back home?” she demanded, turning to look at him. She was pale. There were circles under her eyes.
“Sam is on suspension while I decide whether to fire her or not.” He spoke calmly, turning onto a country road that would take them to 495 and the city. He meant it. She’d gone renegade on him. That made her a bad—and dangerous—agent. It made her a rival.
“Great,” Kit grumbled. “What about Maclean? Are we hanging him out to dry?”
“Find him and we’ll save his unlucky ass,” Nick said, glancing at her.
He saw the other vehicles at the same time that Kit did.
They came headlong at them. Nick knew what they intended—to separate him from the page. He clung to the wheel, determined not to be forced off the road.
“Nick!” Kit shouted at him.
It was a form of playing chicken, he thought, as the two big black SUVs came right at them, probably at eighty or ninety miles an hour.
At the last possible moment, he swerved aside. There was no choice, because he knew either demons, mutts or subs were at the wheel, and they’d commit suicide to stop him.
Kit held on to her seat as the sedan roared over an embankment, hit the woods and kept going. Nick braked, steering through the trees wildly, swiping one with his left front fender. It caught the sedan and hooked it, spinning it around. He pressed harder on the brake and the damned car stopped.
He looked at Kit.
She looked back. “I’m okay.”
He cursed, launching himself from the car, running for the embankment. When he got to it, the road was empty. The armored transport was gone.
His cell phone rang.
He seized it.
“Hello, Nick.” Rupert Hemmer laughed at him. “I think I have something that you want.”
IT WAS THREE IN THE MORNING. Sam paced Nick’s office, as furious as she’d been at Loch Awe, when he’d stolen the page of illusion from her. She’d received some incredulous looks when she’d arrived at HCU. She wasn’t sure what those looks meant. Did it mean that everyone knew she’d betrayed Nick—and the agency?
Having Macleod parade around HCU was not a good idea, not from anyone’s point of view. Only those cleared to higher levels of file access knew about the Brotherhood, much less time travel. Because the monk expected to make contact with her at Maclean’s apartment, it had seemed like a good idea to send Tabby and Macleod there.
Sam wanted to throttle Nick with her bare hands.
Until that day, she’d liked, respected and even admired him. That had all gone up in smoke. She would never look at her boss again the same way. And he wasn’t her boss anymore. They were done.
The door opened and Nick came in, looking disheveled, his right eye bruised. Sam didn’t hesitate. His eyes widened and he halted as she strode over to him, slamming her fist in that damaged right eye.
“Jesus,” he said.
“You answer to me now,” Sam snarled.
He gave her a long look, as if she hadn’t just clocked him, and walked over to the minibar in his office. He put an ice cube on his eye and said, “Must be love, huh?”
“I’ve been here for seven hours, Nick, waiting for you to get back!”
“Some of us like to travel the old-fashioned way.”
“Where’s the page?”
Nick sobered, tossing the cube of ice into the waste basket beside his desk. “I’m sorry, kid. It’s gone.”
Sam stared coldly at him. “You mean it’s at the Pentagon? Or do the Feds have it? Or maybe it’s downstairs in those vaults CDA controls—the vaults no one knows anything about?”
“I need a drink,” he said. He walked over to the built-in bookcase on one wall, mostly crammed with books, and started pouring scotch. He filled two highball glasses and offered her one.
Sam shook her head. “Where is the page?”
“You’re really in a twist.”
“Don’t get sexist with me.”
“Hemmer has it.”
She choked.
“He fucking ambushed us. He stole the transport. How he intends to open it, well, your guess is as good as mine. I suppose he’ll torture those Rangers. Don’t worry.” His smile was grim as he tossed back half the scotch. “Every Fed, every cop and half the U.S. Army is looking for him. The Rangers won’t give it up easily.”
Her mind raced. “Then go ambush him at his penthouse!”
“Arresting him won’t get us the page. Killing him won’t get us the page. If he has the power, he’ll control us.”
Sam didn’t care about Hemmer. “Ian has been captured. The monk has him in a warehouse in Brooklyn. I have to find him. Help me.”
He touched his right eye. “Gee, can you ask nicely?”
“I am begging, not asking.”
“Sam, I don’t want Maclean to suffer any more than he already has. I’m sorry about what I had to do. I have Kit and a team trying to locate Ian. We’ll bust him out when we do.”
She whirled away, pacing, frantic. “If it’s not too late.”
The light on his intercom blinked. Nick walked over to his desk. “Don’t tell me you found something?”
“A trucker found four dead men, a few hours ago,” Kit Mars said. “The NYPD is on the scene and the call just came in. This one is ours.”
“And?”
“It’s a warehouse in Brooklyn, 2145 West Elm. I threw the addy at Big Mama. Nick, Robert Moran owned it. Guess who’s the landlord now?” Excitement filled her tone. “Rupert Hemmer.”
Nick looked up. “Let’s go.”
Sam was already out the door.
IAN STOOD VERY STILL, staring at the monk.
The monk slowly smiled at him. “Alone at last.”
He gave himself a moment. He recalled the worst moments of his life, inflicted by t
his demon.
“You were very creative, Ian, escaping as you did. But did you really think I wouldn’t be watching your every move?”
He smiled slowly, coldly. The anger was gone now. There was only killing intent. “Did ye get off on watching me beaten?”
“Beating is too tame for my tastes, and you know it.” When Ian simply stared, the monk’s gaze narrowed. “You’re really not afraid. I will have to change that. You do realize you’re weak, that the drugs are still in your system? Your powers are compromised.”
“I don’t care.” He started toward him.
Alarm flitted through the monk’s eyes. “I could change my mind. And you’ll die today.”
“With pleasure,” Ian said softly. “Because I will take ye with me.”
The monk lifted his hand. Ian saw the blow coming, a black energy force, and he braced for it. It drove him back across the small entryway and he hit the wall, hard. He fell.
The monk laughed.
Ian started for him again.
The monk smiled, enjoying himself, and struck him again.
Ian slammed into the wall behind the stairs. It hurt more this time. He slowly got up and smiled. He started forward again.
“You might not care if you die,” the monk said softly. “But I don’t want you dead.” His power blazed.
This time, he saw stars as he hit the wall. Eyes closed, he made no move to get up.
The monk came forward. He bent over him and stroked his cheek, the caress sensual. “Try it again,” he whispered.
Ian opened his eyes and looked at him. And he thrust the scalpel into his chest.
The monk jerked back, enraged, the scalpel protruding. He ripped it out. “That will hardly stop me!”
But Ian was blasting him with all the power he had left. The monk grunted, hurled backward across the entire entry, into the small table by the front door.
Ian ran toward him, straining to find more power. It blazed weakly. The monk got to his knees, his face a mask of rage, and a black cyclone struck Ian, driving him backward.
The monk had always had more power. He was not going to defeat him this way; he would die, and the monk would remain alive.
Ian suddenly thought of all the children that this man would continue to torture and abuse, all the women, all the men. A new rage began.
It was quiet and deep.
It was no longer about the years of captivity. It was about the Innocent.
As Ian prepared to get up, a gust of wind seemed to go through the entry hall. He hesitated, confused, as the swirling air seemed to form into a hundred shapes and forms. He glimpsed features, wide, livid eyes, open, gaping mouths. A wisp of bright blond hair. A teardrop, spatters of blood.
Fear and fury came into the entryway.
The monk saw it, too. He stood up, alarm on his face.
Ian heard their cries and realized he was face-to-face with the souls of the monk’s victims—the men, women and children he’d destroyed.
“For them,” he said harshly.
The lost souls stood between the door and the monk. Ian knew, in that moment, that the monk intended to flee.
“Coward!” he raged. “Ye have twice the power that I do! Will a few ghosts chase ye from this fight?”
The monk faced him and the mass of souls formed a tight circle around him.
Ian blasted him.
The monk raised his hand to send his own power back at him. Ian started to duck when he realized that the ghosts were restraining Carlisle. He could not lift his hand. Ian blasted him again.
The monk fell, crying out. The shadows engulfed him. He screamed.
Ian couldn’t see what was happening, but the monk thrashed as if he were covered with snakes and spiders. Those lost souls wanted revenge. He did not blame them. He hoped that they were torturing him.
Ian ran forward, seized the standing lamp and broke it. He knelt over him, holding a long section of brass over his chest. Terror covered the monk’s face. Their gazes met.
“No,” the monk whispered.
The front door burst open.
He glanced up, too intent to be incredulous. Sam rushed in with his father, Brie, Macleod, Tabby and Nick Forrester. No one was going to take this moment away from him. Now the monk would pay—and he would suffer, first.
“Vanquish him,” Sam said, drawing a gun out of the back of her jeans. “Or I will.”
It was the noble thing to do. He didn’t feel noble now. “I won’t let ye pass out,” he said softly, and he drove the brass stake through his chest and out the other side of his body. There was triumph. There was satisfaction.
The monk screamed. He tried to get up and started thrashing again, as if fighting off the ghosts.
Brie seized Aidan, to prevent him from going forward. “It’s Ian’s war.”
“He’ll leap,” Sam cried. She pointed the gun at the monk’s forehead.
Ian looked up at her and their eyes met. He wanted to torture the monk the way he’d been tortured. He wanted him to live for days, weeks, months, years, in pain, suffering and fear. He wanted payback. Sam knew it. She shook her head. “You’re not one of them.”
And the savage need to inflict pain, to do to the monk what had been done to him, receded. He got up and nodded at her, suddenly exhausted. Sam walked over and put a bullet in the monk’s head, dead center, and another in his heart.
The monk’s eyes were filled with pain and wide with disbelief as he looked at Ian. Ian stared at him as he lay there, dying.
Sam touched him. “Ian?”
He did not take his gaze from the monk. Ignoring her, he watched him bleeding out. The life faded from his eyes. And then the glowing red color there changed, turning blue and sightless.
It was over.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
SAM KNEW Ian was exhausted in every possible way, especially emotionally. He seemed off balance as he used the keypad outside his door to open the locks, his movements slow and sluggish. He hadn’t said a word during the car ride to Manhattan; he’d stared out of the window the entire time. Now he walked into his Park Avenue home ahead of her, not looking at her or even acknowledging her. Sam followed him inside, somber. Clearly he was lost entirely in his thoughts. Sam knew he was thinking about Carlisle and what had just happened, and maybe his past. She wanted to put her arm around him, but she didn’t.
He was so grim. The monk was vanquished at his hand. It felt good. There was some justice after all. But she was worried about him.
He looked like a man who’d been through hell, more than once.
The lights were on as they walked into the grand foyer, Brie and Aidan behind them. Nick had stayed in Brooklyn. 2145 Elm Street was now a CDA crime scene, as was the adjoining warehouse. Sam hadn’t offered to stay behind to help him out—as far as she was concerned, she was no longer his employee. Tabby and Macleod had gone to her loft. Something was up with her sister, but Sam was too relieved about vanquishing Carlisle and too concerned for Ian to have had a chance to ask Tabby what was bothering her. She’d sensed a terrible urgency in her before they’d parted in Brooklyn. However, Sam knew Tabby wasn’t leaving, not yet.
Because it wasn’t entirely over, not if Brie was right about Moray.
Sam shuddered. She hadn’t been there when Brie and Aidan had vanquished him in 1502, with Tabby’s help, but she had heard all about him—and read hundreds of pages about his near-thousand-year reign of terror in Scotland.
She glanced at Ian as he paused before a console table, rubbing his temples slowly. She did not want to tell him about Brie’s vision. She wanted Brie to have made a mistake, when her cousin rarely misinterpreted her visions.
She turned and looked at Brie. Her cousin smiled grimly back, apparently in tune with her.
Ian suddenly leaned on the table, as if he were dizzy. As he did, Gerard hurried into the entry hall. “Sir, what can I get you?” he said, approaching. His tone was calm, but his gaze was sharp and anxious.
“Whiske
y,” Ian said harshly.
Aidan walked up to him and laid his hand on his shoulder.
Ian flinched and stared coolly at him. “I don’t need to be healed, not by ye.”
“I willna stand down,” Aidan said, placing his other hand on his other shoulder.
Sam saw white light pouring from his hands.
Ian twisted away. “I don’t recall inviting you here.”
“Ian,” Sam said harshly. “That’s not fair.” She couldn’t believe that he would still reject his father.
He turned to look at her with some disbelief. He was so pale.
He was about to collapse, she thought. But he’d been tortured, drugged, beaten up. “Aidan, please heal him.”
Aidan clasped his shoulders tightly. Ian grimaced but this time stood still and let him. Sam knew he was too exhausted to fight Aidan off.
“I’ll bring everyone drinks and refreshment,” Gerard said, his tone grimmer now.
Sam walked over to him. “The monk is vanquished.”
“Thank God.” His brows lifted.
“You’d be proud. Ian did it, all by his lonesome.” But she trembled, unable to sound flip. He’d been in Carlisle’s captivity for twenty-four hours. She wished she could read Ian’s mind, because he should be triumphant, not somber. The one thing she did know was that he was at his limit. He needed to rest and put this crisis behind him.
Sam didn’t know how they’d do that if Moray had really returned from the vanquished.
Aidan finally released his son, gazing closely at him. His smile was tenuous. “Ye must feel better now.”
Ian didn’t smile back. “I do.”
“Ye won’t welcome me, will ye?”
Ian did not respond.
Aidan’s expression became even more sorrowful. “Then we’ll go.”
“Good,” Ian said brusquely. He shrugged as if he didn’t give a damn but Sam saw a flicker in his eyes. Somehow, she just knew he cared. He simply couldn’t let go of the past, not even with the monk dead.
Brie walked up to Ian. “We love you, no matter what happens, and no matter what you say or do.”
Ian turned away.
Aidan said to his rigid shoulders, “I’m proud of ye. Ye faced yer worst fears. Ye destroyed yer worst enemy, against all odds. Ye’ve made a good life here an’ ye have a good woman now.” He hesitated. “Ye ken where to find us. Yer always welcome at Awe. ’Twill always be yer home.”
