by Tina Folsom
A sob worked its way up from her chest and past the lump in her throat that prevented her from speaking. She’d seen dead bodies before: in medical school, and during her time as a medical resident. But this was different. This wasn’t clinical, this wasn’t expected. This was a brutal crime.
All this so somebody could get to her research? Didn’t that make it her fault?
Sounds from the corridor made her lift her head. Aiden’s eyes bounced to the door, then back to her.
“Somebody’s coming. Not a word, promise me, don’t say a single word,” he ordered.
She nodded automatically. As if she could say anything while she fought the bout of nausea that developed in her stomach as the metallic scent of blood drifted into her nostrils.
Aiden pulled her aside, away from the body, and she didn’t have the strength to fight him this time. By now, somehow, her brain had figured out that he wouldn’t hurt her, even though she knew she couldn’t fully trust him—and could never tell him that a last copy of her research data still existed.
He pulled her closer to him as suddenly several people trampled into the room. The first one, she recognized instantly: Max. Behind him three other men barged in.
“Right here, officer,” Max pointed at Patten’s body. “I was doing my rounds when I found him.”
Police, she registered instantly, relieved that they had finally arrived.
As two of the men knelt down next to the body, the heavy set one Max had addressed, spoke. “Are you the only one in the building, Mr. Flanagan?”
Max shook his head. “No, Dr. Cruickshank is still working too, actually ... I should check on her in her lab, make sure she’s all right.”
Why would Max need to check in her lab when she was right here? Leila opened her mouth, wanting to speak up, but Aiden’s hand clamped over her mouth to prevent her from talking. Before she could protest, his mouth was at her ear, his warm breath caressing her skin as he whispered to her so low she barely heard him.
“Don’t make a sound. I’ll explain later.”
Confusion made her vocal cords constrict. Why didn’t Max or the other people acknowledge her presence or the fact that Aiden was holding his hand over her mouth? Wouldn’t that look suspicious to them? What kind of detectives were these people that they couldn’t see what was right in front of them?
“Kowalski,” one of the officers next to the body called out. “Looks like a clean cut through the throat. He was probably dead instantly.”
“The forensics team should be here in a moment.” Officer Kowalski’s gaze swept the room, never pausing on the spot where Leila and Aiden stood, as if he didn’t see them at all.
“Holy shit!” the other officer suddenly exclaimed. “Look at that.” He pointed to Patten’s hand.
Kowalski stepped closer. “Christ, the murderer cut off his thumb. What the—?” Then he turned to grace Max with a questioning look. “Do you know what that could mean?”
Max’s face turned almost as white as a sheet as he clutched his stomach. Oh, God, if he started to puke, Leila wasn’t sure she could tamp down her own nausea any longer.
“Oh, God, the safe. There’s a safe in Dr. Cruickshank’s o-o-office ...” Max’s voice stuttered, then came to a halt.
Aiden’s mouth was at her ear again. “Let’s go. Now.”
He yanked her toward the door, the brusque movement making her stumble over her feet.
“Did you hear that?” Kowalski asked.
“Hear what?” one of the officers replied.
Kowalski rubbed the back of his neck. “Nothing. So, you were saying something about a safe ...”
Aiden guided her outside, the voices behind her drifting into the distance as they walked along the corridor.
“The stairs?” he whispered.
She motioned her head toward them. When they reached the door, he opened it and pushed her through, closing it silently behind them.
Numb with confusion, horror and nausea, she allowed him to drag her down the endless flights of stairs, the sound of her tennis shoes echoing in the stairwell. The sound was eerie and only added to her sense of devastation.
In the span of a few hours, her entire life had turned upside down: her apartment burned, her belief in the order of this world shaken, her research nearly destroyed, and her boss murdered. She didn’t know if she could take any more. But somehow she knew this wasn’t the end of it.
And why hadn’t the police or Max seen her when she was right there in the same room with them? Why had they talked about her as if she wasn’t even there? Something was wrong. Was she dreaming all this? Was she hallucinating?
Aiden pulled her toward the exit, pushing a door open, then another one, until the cold night air hit her.
Outside, police sirens blared and several police cars screeched to a halt, stopping next to the one that was already there. More police officers, some in plain clothes, some in uniform jumped from their cars and headed for the building.
They all ignored her and Aiden and allowed them to pass when they should have stopped them, questioning them what they were doing there in the middle of the night.
“Why?” she mumbled.
Aiden dragged her around the next corner, then finally stopped walking and pulled her into the entrance to a coffeehouse.
She stared up at him. “Why didn’t they stop us? Didn’t ... didn’t they see us?”
He brushed a strand of hair from her face and pushed it behind her ear, a gesture so gentle, she must have dreamed it.
“I cloaked us. We were invisible to them.”
“Invisible?” That was impossible. It was against the laws of physics. It couldn’t be. “But—”
“It’s one of the powers of Cloak Warriors. With our touch, we can make humans invisible to others. We use it to hide our charges from the demons. That’s why they didn’t see us. But they could still hear us. That’s why I had to stop you from talking.”
“It can’t be. That’s not possible. Physics ... there’s no such law ... nobody can make ...” This was too crazy, but it had to be true: neither Max nor the police had seen her. In fact, they’d looked through her as if she were indeed invisible. Besides, she’d seen Aiden walk through walls. Turning invisible wasn’t any stranger than walking through solid objects.
“I was invisible,” she whispered to herself.
He nodded. “Yes, that was the only way to get us out of there. We can’t afford to get involved with the police. They won’t be able to keep you safe. I will.”
“They killed Patten.”
“We have to leave, now.” He cast a look in the direction they’d come from. “We’re not safe here. The demons might still be in the vicinity.”
For once, she had to agree with him. If these creatures were capable of killing Patten in cold blood and cutting off his thumb, they could do the same to her if they found her. Clearly, the security in the building wasn’t enough to keep them out. Somehow they had gotten around Max, maybe the same way Aiden had. Now that she knew that he could both walk through walls and make himself invisible, there was no question how he’d gotten in. The demons could have done it the same way. She was better off going with him now. He was the only one who could keep her safe from the demons.
“Are you going to hurt me?”
His eyes widened and his lips parted. His breath ghosted against her skin. “Never.”
FIFTEEN
Aiden’s stomach twisted as he led Leila back to where he’d parked the car. Two lies he’d dished up within five minutes. First he’d told her that his touch had made her invisible. Well, at least that wasn’t an outright lie. He’d simply omitted that he could do the same thing just with the power of his mind. No touching would be necessary. He let her believe that if she wanted to remain invisible to the demons, she would have to allow him to touch her. And he didn’t want to correct his omission, hoping that at least it would prevent her from running away from him a second time.
How else could he m
ake her comply? She had really not left him much of a choice, even though he felt like a complete ass for lying about this. The least he could do was not take advantage of the situation. He would force himself not to enjoy her touch. He owed her that much. He would treat this as simply business.
His second lie was worse: he’d told her that he would never hurt her. What a crock that was, coming from him! If his mission demanded it, he would have to kill her. Should the council alter their votes and decide at a later time that Leila needed to be eliminated to keep humankind safe, he would have to follow their orders, knowing that if he didn’t, two things would happen: he’d be punished for disobedience, and humans would be in a hell lot of trouble. The first consequence he could handle; the second one was unacceptable.
However, would he really do it? Would he be capable of driving his knife into her sweet body and draining the life from her, when what he really wanted was to see her live, laugh, breathe, and most of all, love? Would he waver in his duty in the end because she meant something to him?
“Where are we going?” Her voice trembled as she rushed to keep up with his long strides.
“A safe house.”
There were several in the city: inconspicuous and staffed with humans loyal to their cause, humans who owed them something.
Aiden pulled his smartphone from his jacket pocket and punched in a code. A moment later, an App loaded. He entered another code and allowed the system to calculate. While he knew each safe house in this city, since this was his home base, he didn’t know if any of them were already taken. It would be against protocol to go to a safe house when another Cloak Warrior had already taken one of his charges there. It would only endanger others.
When a map pulled up, only one red dot blinked: the only safe house available to them. He swiped his finger over it to claim it and thus alert them to his imminent arrival. A bubble appeared on the screen, reading Notify second?. He pressed yes, then switched off the phone, so nobody else would be able to track him.
“Let’s go.”
He ushered Leila into the car, and she complied without protest. Maybe seeing her boss’s dead body had finally driven reality home and made her understand that she had to trust him if she didn’t want to meet with the same fate. Aiden turned on the engine and hit the gas, leaving Inter Pharma and the police in his rear view mirror.
“Tell me about the demons.”
He tossed her a sideways glance, surprised at her question. He’d thought she would want to block out everything she’d seen and not talk about it. Apparently he’d been wrong about her. Maybe she was stronger than he suspected.
Easing the car into traffic, he thought briefly about where to start. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything: what they look like; their motivation, strengths, weaknesses, where they hide, how they operate—”
“Whoa, whoa, that’s quite enough to start with. Besides, I don’t have answers to all of your questions.”
“How can you still hide things from me after all that ...” She tossed her head toward the window, indicating what they’d left behind. “... that happened there?”
He graced her with a sharp look, his heart rate spiking at her accusation. Why the fuck did he even care what she thought of him? Yet he did.
“I’m not. I don’t have all the answers. Do you really think we wouldn’t have taken the demons out if we knew where they were hiding?”
“Oh.” She wrapped her arms around her torso and looked straight ahead. “Then how about all the other stuff?”
He lifted a hand from the steering wheel and ran it through his hair. “They’ve been around since the Dark Days. Nobody knows how—”
“What are the Dark Days?” she interrupted.
He clenched his teeth. “I’m getting to it, but if you interrupt me, it’s going to take longer.” When he looked at her, he noticed how tightly she clamped her arms over each other. “What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong? Isn’t that pretty clear? Demons killed my boss, and now they’re after me. What if they catch up with us and see me? I’m not invisible anymore.”
A devilish thought crossed his mind, one he shouldn’t follow, but his mouth was faster than his brain. “Put your hand on my thigh, and you’ll be invisible to them again.”
And hell, if she didn’t do exactly that!
Her elegant hand slid onto his jeans, the warmth emanating from her palm searing his flesh beneath. It felt good, way too good to admit to her that she’d been cloaked all along, ever since he’d caught up with her at her lab. Shit, he should tell her right now. He should come clean right now and not leave her in this false belief. What would she do then? Use the next occasion to escape again? Or could he reason with her this time? He had to try.
“Leila ...”
“The demons ...” she prompted.
Aiden cleared his throat, trying hard not to show how her touch affected him, how it made his heart race and pump more blood to his cock in the hope she would soon touch him in other places. He tried to shake off the thought, knowing he had no right to enjoy this. Was it rasen that made him react like that when he should tell her the truth about cloaking instead?
“The demons ... they live in a place we call the Underworld for lack of a better term. They enter and exit it through portals, but we don’t know whether these so-called portals are stationary or not, or where they are. We’ve only seen them when fighting demons, but we’ve never been able to go through one, and it seems that they vanish when the demons disappear.”
He glanced at her, making sure he hadn’t lost her with his talk. “Have you ever watched Stargate?”
She nodded.
“It’s a little like that. The demons step through it, and they’re gone. Presumably to their lair in the Underworld.” He deliberately didn’t mention a word about the fact that he and his kind also had portals. It was better that she didn’t know about that. She would never get to see one, and there was such a thing as too much information.
“So they come out at will?”
“Pretty much.”
“How do you fight them?”
“They’re immune to human weapons,” he continued and heard her mutter softly.
“Figures.”
“However, the Cloak Warriors have weapons against them. Any weapon, blade, dagger, sword or the like that was forged in the Dark Days has the power to injure or kill a demon. It’s the only thing they are vulnerable to.”
From the corner of his eye he noticed her part her lips and instantly figured what she wanted to ask.
“The Dark Days? It was when Cloak Warriors came into existence. Our race is descended from a tribe in the Outer Hebrides, off the Scottish mainland. They were knights, warriors who protected their islands from intruders by shrouding them in a dense fog that no eyes could penetrate. Any would-be invaders simply sailed past them, never knowing there was any land in sight.”
Leila sucked in an audible breath. “Is that what you do? Hide people in a cloud of fog?”
Aiden cast her a quick smile. “No. Our powers have evolved over the centuries. We no longer need the fog to hide ourselves or the people around us. We simply render them invisible.”
And could do so selectively. If he chose, he could keep her cloaked from the demons, yet visible to humans.
“What do the demons want?”
He sighed. Leila was a veritable waterfall of questions. Knowing that she was a scientist, he should have guessed that would be the case. “What does anybody want? Power, domination, survival.”
She made an impatient hand movement, dismissing his answer. “No, what do they really want? They must have an agenda, a mission.”
“That is their mission: to gain power over humans, to seduce humans to do their bidding, to fuel the fear in this world, so they can feed off it.”
“They feed off fear?”
“That’s what makes them stronger. The more fear there is in this world, the stronger the demons. In times of
war and uncertainty, they grow more powerful. During the Cuban Missile Crisis we had our hands full. Only the actions of a decisive leader were able to turn the situation around.”
“The Cloak Warriors defused the crisis?” she asked.
“Only indirectly. We don’t interfere in your world directly. We’re only there to protect those humans who can in some way help their own race get stronger again. We protected several key figures in the US government, who were instrumental in reaching an agreement with the Russians to end the crisis. We made sure the demons had no influence over them.”
“You mean you can somehow stop them?”
Aiden shook his head. It wasn’t that easy. “All we can do is hide those humans who your race can’t do without and help them achieve their purpose in life, whether that is to act as a peace keeper, a brilliant inventor, or a scientist. But the rest is up to the humans. We can only guide them on the right way; we can’t force them to stay on it.”
He glanced at her. Their gazes clashed, and he noticed that realization had suddenly sunk in.
“What happens when the human you’re protecting can’t fight off the influence of the demons?”
Aiden pressed his lips together. He hadn’t expected her to ask him this question. And he wasn’t prepared to answer it.
“Tell me. What happens to those who do what the demons want?”
Her eyes drilled into him, and he knew she wouldn’t rest until he gave her an answer. And for once, he couldn’t lie.
“We are forced to eliminate them.”
Before they kill one of our own, he wanted to add. Like they’d killed his sister. But he couldn’t confide this in Leila. And he shouldn’t want to feel this need to explain his reasoning to her. But for some inexplicable reason, he wanted her to understand why he had to do what he had to do. And he didn’t like that feeling of vulnerability it evoked in him.
SIXTEEN
