Possessed by An Immortal

by Sharon Ashwood

  “No!” Bree forgot the pain snaking up her arm.

  Jonathan kicked the doctor’s ankle. With a curse, Mark released her, stepping back and removing the clip from the pistol in a single move. Then he ejected the cartridge from the chamber with practiced ease. “Enough!”

  Bree fell to her knees and grabbed her son, who was ready to relaunch his attack. “No, baby.”

  Jonathan threw his arms around her neck. With a mother’s instinct, she knew he was offering protection and needing comfort at the same time. She closed her eyes, her heart squeezed with dread for whatever was going to happen next.

  Her arm and shoulder throbbed. “I’m sorry. Please, please don’t take it out on him.” She looked up at the doctor, putting her soul into her eyes. “Let us go.”

  His gaze narrowed, his expression unreadable. “I’m going to ask questions, and you’re going to answer me. I’ll know if you’re lying.”

  Bree balked, but she had no cards left to play and everything to lose. “Okay.”

  She stood, setting Jonathan in the big, stuffed chair. The boy slumped into the cushions, his face still red and wet with tears. She kissed his cheeks dry. Then Bree turned to face the man she’d held at gunpoint moments ago.

  “Why are you running?” he asked.

  “I witnessed a murder.” It wasn’t the whole answer, but it wasn’t a lie.

  “When?”

  “A year ago.”

  “You’ve been running all that time?”

  “And hiding. I was safe for a while, until—”

  He interrupted with an impatient gesture of his hand. “A doctor ran your insurance card, and somehow that let the bad guys find you.”

  She nodded, and that perfect mouth of his twitched down at the corners.

  “I get it.” He paused a moment, and she could almost see thoughts chasing through his head. After drawing a long breath, he thrust the empty gun into his waistband. The gesture was slow and reluctant, as if he wasn’t sure he’d made the right choice. “You’re lucky I came along. That cougar wasn’t going to back off because you asked nicely.”

  Frowning, he looked at the clip in his hand. “If you’re on the run, how come you don’t have your own weapon?”

  Bree stiffened. He had a point. She could have used something like the Browning when Bob had forced her out of the boat. “I’m doing the best I can, but it’s not easy. I can’t travel with a four-year-old boy and a loaded gun. That’s just bad parenting.”

  He didn’t answer, but made a noise that sounded as though he was choking back a laugh. Heat flared across her cheeks.

  The doctor closed his fingers over the clip. The gesture mesmerized her. She remembered the hard strength of his hands, and the delicate touch he’d used when examining Jonathan. With unbidden clarity, she imagined them skimming her limbs with the caress of a lover. Desire simmered under her skin, and it shocked her to realize that she wanted that touch with an ache so sharp it stung.

  She’d been alone too long.

  His voice snapped her back to reality. The menace had gone out of it, but it wasn’t warm. “Why are you here, in these woods?”

  “I hired a boat to take me to the mainland. When my ride found out we were being followed, he dumped me on your beach.”

  He took a step forward. “Who’s following you?”

  Bree suddenly realized she’d brought danger to his door. She’d been so focused on getting Jonathan to shelter, she’d missed that point. “I don’t have names, but they’re bad news. If they catch up with Bob, he won’t play the hero. He’ll sell me for gas money.”

  “Knights in shining armor are few and far between.”

  She folded her arms. “No kidding.”

  He shrugged. His expression was stone, hard and unwelcoming. “Knights were overrated, if you ask me. If you want to protect a treasure, ask a dragon.”

  * * *

  Mark had spoken without thinking, but the look she gave him was significant. He was the fierce predator, the dragon; her son was the treasure. Even if she didn’t realize it yet, Bree was counting on him to get Jonathan someplace safe.

  No. No women and children, not ever again. I’m not that man. Mark recoiled. He understood the primitive instincts of pack and cave. He knew why Bree looked to him for protection. He was three-quarters beast, only a shred of humanity still tying him to the civilized world.

  Family would be his nightmare reborn, history mercilessly repeating itself. Sure, he could play doctor, whether it was with one small boy or a country ravaged by flood and fire. But as a medical man, he could come and go at will, getting involved on his own terms.

  A family man had no escape from their needs and his failures. I am not your dragon. Still, he had to do something for her, if only to get her out of his cabin—and maybe after centuries of woe and slaughter, he was ready to see someone like her win.

  Nevertheless, this would only work if he set limits. He was a vampire, and far, far from a saint. “I’ll take you as far as Redwood. I have hospital privileges there. I can run tests off the grid.”

  She stared at him with something like wonder. “Why are you doing this for us?”

  “After you threatened to shoot me?” And, as the most ferocious creature in the room, he would just skip past the fact that she’d got the drop on him with his own weapon.

  “Well, yeah.” She had the decency to look abashed.

  “I’m a doctor. You seem to need help. It’s what we do.”

  “You’re very kind.”

  “Not so much. Getting to Redwood is the matter of a phone call.” And if she was being followed, it made sense for them all to leave. He folded his arms. “Where did you learn to pick a lock like that?”

  “My dad’s liquor cabinet. All it takes is a paper clip.”

  He remembered she’d said she didn’t drink—but obviously she had once. “Very resourceful.”

  “I have to use what I’ve got.”

  Don’t I know it? She was beautiful. He might be a monster, but he was still male, moved by her grace and her courage. Despite himself, Bree’s desperate protectiveness had made him care. A dangerous woman.

  “Stay here,” he said, removing the rifle from the cupboard where he had—emphasis on the word had—locked his weapons. He began mounting the stairs to the second floor. “I don’t have any other firearms sitting around, so don’t bother looking for another gun to finish me off.”

  “I would never...”

  Turning on the staircase, he gave her a look that made the words fade from her lips, reminding her that he was the dragon, not the knight.

  Still, the anger between them had eased. Jonathan had grown comfortable—and tired enough—to have fallen fast asleep in the tattered armchair. Mark turned before Bree could see him smile.

  Once upstairs, he found his cell phone and the spot by the window that caught a signal. This far out in the country, cell coverage was spotty and he exhaled with relief when the call connected. It was the middle of the night, but in the supernatural community, that was business hours.

  “Fred Larson.”

  “It’s Mark Winspear.”

  “I didn’t expect you to call for weeks yet. You’ve barely been out there a month.”

  “Something came up.”

  “Business?”

  “Yes and no.” It wasn’t Company business, but Larson didn’t need to know.

  “Must be serious to call you back to civilization early.”

  “My bad nature precedes me.”

  “Just a bit. What can I do for you?”

  Mark studied the horizon. The rain outside had slowed, now pattering instead of pounding on the roof. Light was already turning the horizon to pearl-gray. Bree’s pursuers were probably lying in wait, biding their time for sunrise t
o make a search of the island easy. “I need to get into Redwood as soon as possible.”

  “Today?”

  “I’m talking hours. There will be passengers besides me. A woman and child.”

  The ensuing silence vibrated with curiosity, but Larson knew better than to ask. Mark wasn’t just Company, he was one of the Horsemen, a small team of elite operatives. As a doctor, they’d nicknamed him Plague, his two friends War and Famine. Death, ironically, was dead. A pang of sadness caught Mark. He treasured the few friends he had. Losing Death—whose real name had been Jack Anderson—had cut deep.

  “I can have the plane in the air at first light,” Larson replied, mercifully breaking into his thoughts.

  “Be careful. There’s a good chance we have hostiles in the water nearby.”

  “I’ll keep my eyes open and my powder dry.”

  “Good. See you then.” Mark thumbed the phone off.

  And then winced. First light. By the fiery pit.

  Larson worked for the Company, but he was human. Daylight flights were no problem. Vampires could function during sunlight hours, but only under protest. It felt like stumbling around in the blare of a zillion-watt floodlight. Bloody hell.

  Mark pocketed his phone and started for the stairs.

  A square of white paper lay on the floor. As he stooped to pick it up, he saw it was an envelope. He had obviously passed by it on the way up.

  The cabin didn’t have a mailbox, much less delivery straight to his bedroom. He tilted the envelope to the faint light falling through the window. The handwriting read Dr. Mark Winspear.

  Curious, he ripped it open and slid out a folded letter. The salutation inside used his real name: to my Lord Marco Farnese.

  He sucked in a breath. No one had called him that in hundreds of years. Seeing that name written in modern ballpoint pen gave him an odd sense of dislocation, as if he were neither in the present day nor the past.

  He clicked on the bedside lamp, welcoming the puddle of light. The message was only a single line: I haven’t forgotten you.

  He flipped the paper over, studying the blank side, then turned the page print-side-up again. He was annoyed more than disturbed. Except...there was a human woman and child downstairs. Whoever came for him would kill them first. They were easy targets.

  Just like before. He’d played this game long ago, and lost.

  A second thought crowded in. While he had been out playing pat-a-cake with cougars, his enemies had been in his house. Standing over his bed. Territorial rage swept through him, leaving his fingers shaking.

  The signature on the letter was a crest, the inky impression of a signet ring used like a rubber stamp. It hadn’t worked very well—the ink had run, making the whole thing look smudged—but Mark could make out the serpent and crossed daggers of the Knights of Vidon. Below the crest were the initials N.F.

  Nicholas Ferrel.

  Vile memories ripped through him, old but undiminished. He killed my wife. My children. He burned them alive.

  Mark had slaughtered Ferrel, Commander General of the Knights of Vidon, back in the fifteenth century. Then he’d torn every Knight he could find flesh from bone.

  Mark clenched his teeth. Vengeance had solved nothing. Ferrel’s sons had sworn a vendetta. They’d sworn their service to the vampire-slaying Knights, as had their sons after them. Back then, the Knights were a breed apart, stronger, faster and resistant to a vampire’s hypnotic powers. The Ferrels were the foremost among them.

  None had killed Mark, but a good many men, human and vampire, had paid for the feud with their lives. Was this new Nicholas a descendant eager to perpetuate the fight? Why leave a note and not just, say, drop a bomb on the cabin?

  Mark glanced at the horizon again, calculating how long it would take the plane to arrive. Two hours at most. He crumpled the letter in his hand.

  Assassins had come before, but this time was different. These had been in his bedroom. These had used Ferrel’s name.

  And that meant Mark had more than himself to protect. History was repeating itself. There was a woman and a boy, and they were depending on him for their lives.

  Bree’s enemies weren’t the only ones he had to fight. Now there were his, too.

  Suddenly two hours to dawn was a very long time.

  Chapter 4

  Dawn clawed its way into the sky. It came stealthily at first, a lighter shade of steel that threw the craggy trees into sharp relief. Then the sky erupted in streaks of crimson and orange, a flame that started low in the forest and slowly climbed as a rising wind shredded the clouds.

  To Bree, the light brought little comfort. Jonathan was asleep in the big chair, buried under blankets, but she was too restless to sit still. As the fire in the stove burned down, the circle of heat around them grew steadily smaller, as if the cold, wet forest pushed through the cabin walls.

  Mark moved about the small space with quiet efficiency, packing a large nylon knapsack with clothes, books, weapons and a whisper-thin laptop. He wrote a note and left it on the table for someone who was coming in to ready the cabin for winter. He spoke little and checked the window often, a sharp crease between his brows.

  “It’s time to go,” he said at last.

  His low voice startled her. She turned from staring out at the fiery sky. The light inside seemed a thick, pearly gray—neither day nor night. His scowl was deadly serious. Not the face of a healer, but of something far more dangerous. She prayed he would keep his word. She prayed he was really on her side. If she guessed wrong, it would be Jonathan who suffered.

  “Okay.” She pulled on her coat. It was still wet in the folds, but most of it was warm from the stove. “Is it far to the plane?”

  “About a ten-minute walk.”

  With Jonathan, it would take twice that. The boy was asleep and not ready to be disturbed. She started putting on his shoes. They were cold and damp to the touch, and must have felt awful. He woke up with a noise of protest.

  “Sorry, baby,” she said, crouching down before the chair so she could get a better angle.

  He jerked his foot back, his lower lip jutting and his eyes resentful.

  “C’mon, we’ve got to go.”

  Bree reached for his foot again. She was exhausted, with a numbness that came from no sleep all night. She felt as though she were moving underwater.

  But her fingers closed on air as Jonathan’s feet disappeared under his bottom like darting fish. As she reached under him, he curled into a ball, drawing the blanket into an impenetrable cocoon.

  “Jonathan!” Her voice held an edge she didn’t like.

  The wad of boy and blanket shrank tighter. She rested her forehead on the arm of the chair for a moment, summoning patience. Forcing the issue would simply start a struggle that would last half the morning. Her son—oh, bliss—had inherited her stubborn streak.

  She changed tactics. “If you’re good and put your shoes on right away, we’ll find waffles for breakfast.”

  There was no response.

  “With syrup and bacon.” Bree studied the blanket ball for signs of surrender. It was hard to read. “I’ll count to three. If I don’t see your feet, no waffles for you.”

  She poked the blanket with a finger. That got her a giggle. Good sign.

  “We have to go.” The doctor’s voice was urgent.

  “In one minute. I have to get his shoes on.”

  “Now.” Mark picked up the boy, blanket and all, as if he weighed no more than a stuffed toy, and braced him against his shoulder. Jonathan made a protesting noise, but not for long. Mark hushed him, one large hand ruffling the boy’s hair. He gave Bree a look made inscrutable by a pair of dark sunglasses. No hint of a smile.

  She tried not to notice how well the dark glasses showed off the fine sculpting of his lips
and chin. She wasn’t sure she wanted to like him, much less lust after him.

  “You bring his shoes and my medical bag,” he commanded.

  Bree obeyed, stuffing the shoes in her pack, but every instinct wanted to rip Jonathan out of the doctor’s arms. That was her son. He had interfered. Still, she followed Mark out of the cabin into the damp morning air.

  Jonathan seemed perfectly content loafing against the man’s shoulder. That stung, too. She had grown used to being her son’s only protector. Hot, tingling anger crept up her cheeks, barely cooled by the mist.

  Mark led the way beneath the trees, moving in a swinging stride that made her trot to keep up. The sun was up now, slanting across the dew-soaked greenery. Where autumn had kissed the leaves, golds and reds shone like scattered jewels. Her temper eased. It was hard to hold on to anger in the face of such beauty, and she was too tired to make the effort.

  Easier by far to watch the lithe movement of his body through the forest. It was like watching a panther on one of those nature shows. The play of his muscles against tight denim did something to her insides.

  As the path began to angle downward, she heard the distant purr of the plane’s motor beneath the incessant chatter of birds. The sound made her heart lift. On the mainland, they could get a decent meal, a bus to civilization, medical help, a new place to hide. Bree didn’t know what she would do after that, but there would be an after, thanks to that plane.

  And thanks to Mark. He stopped at the edge of the trees, Jonathan still propped against his shoulder. He held the boy one-handed, which impressed Bree. Her son was getting far too big for her to do that for long.

  She followed Mark’s gaze to the sky, now kissed a fading pink that reflected in the silvery water. Ropes of mist shrouded the end of a wooden pier. This spot was farther south than where she had landed last night.

  “Where’s the plane?” she asked.

  “There,” Mark said, nodding his head to the southeast.

  Bree drew a step closer, suddenly far too aware of being near a good-looking man. It wasn’t just his handsome face that unsettled her. It was the fact of his physical being: tall and broad enough to shelter her from the searching breeze; strong and alert enough to offer protection. And yet—that was a problem in itself. It felt like an ice age since she’d noticed a man, and it felt risky. She’d shut down that part of herself for far too long. How good was her judgment? You’re better off alone. You know that.