Chapter Eighteen
I woke screaming, drenched in sweat. My heart hammered out its rhythm double-time as I huddled against the headboard, afraid of the dark but just as afraid of drawing attention to myself by flipping on the lights. A soft, wounded sound reminded me that I wasn’t alone and brought me a step or two closer to reality. The nightmare had been vivid, intense, but it had been just that—a nightmare. Nothing in it could hurt me now. I knew that on some level, but the knowledge wasn’t quite enough to chase away the fear.
The details were already fuzzy, but I knew the dream had something to do with Julia. I thought, but wasn’t sure, that she’d hurt London, tortured him. She hadn’t been using her mystical cattle-prod on him, but something more sinister. A knife maybe? Or, no—a dagger or an athame.
Someone pounded on the door, and I jumped, a whimper escaping before I could clamp down on it. I could hear a muffled voice through the door, but couldn’t place it. Everything seems alien and strange in the dark even at the best of times, which this certainly was not. I pulled the blankets up around me, clinging to the childish believe that the thick duvet would somehow hide or protect me from the things that go bump in the night.
The door opened, and I whimpered again, curling up into the smallest ball possible.
“Forgot I had a damn key,” a familiar voice said as someone flipped on the lights.
I blinked against the sudden brightness, my terror easing as I recognized Ashe. Adrian came into the room behind him, disheveled from sleep. Ashe moved to kneel on one side of the bed, and only then did I realize that London was not beside me. Glancing around, I saw no sign of him; I could only assume that he lay out of my line-of-sight, near where Ashe was now kneeling.
Adrian stumbled across the room, rubbing his eyes. He glanced toward Ashe—or London—and then over at me, hesitating for only a moment before crossing to the bed. With slow, exaggerated movements like you’d use with a wounded animal, he crawled onto the mattress to sit beside me. He stroked my arm, my hair, anything within reach, with those same slow, calm movements, and began to sing to me, his voice hushed and soothing.
By the time that Ashe had London calm and on his feet, Adrian had worked his own brand of magic, bringing me the rest of the way out of the nightmare and back into myself. London crawled onto the bed to sit with his back against the headboard and reached for me. I shied away from his touch, and tried not to feel guilty about it. The gesture probably made London feel worse than he already must, but I couldn’t help it. It was pure instinct.
I forced instinct to take a backseat to logic and moved to curl against London’s side. Ashe still had a hand on London’s shoulder, so it would be safe, I knew. London’s arm tightened around my shoulders, and he turned to face me. His eyes were wide and tear bright. I couldn’t read the emotion in them, and for once I wished there were no shields to keep his feelings from me.
“What happened?” Adrian asked, dragging one of the straight-backed chairs up beside the bed.
“Nightmare,” I muttered.
“That was no nightmare, little bit,” Ashe said. “It was a psychic attack. I felt it, too.”
“Julia,” I said.
“Maybe. Maybe not. There’s nothing in her dossier that makes me think she’s capable of something like this, and the agency is pretty damn thorough.”
“You think it was someone else?” Adrian asked.
“I don’t know what I think,” Ashe admitted. “I’ll talk it over with Quinn. Later. Right now, we all need to try to get a little more sleep.”
“I don’t think I’ll be sleeping again tonight,” I said.
“You need rest,” Ashe insisted. “We all do, if we’re going to have enough wits about us to stay safe.”
I couldn’t argue with the logic. Still, I knew sleep would be hard to find now.
“Do you think it’ll happen again?” London wanted to know.
“I just don’t know, Stretch.”
“What can we do?”
“Not much,” Ashe replied. “Whoever attacked you was damn strong—strong enough that I felt the projection through my shields. I’ve been in this business a long time. Shielding is second nature to me. I can even do it in my sleep. You’re a long way from that still.”
“What about that whole third party thing?” I asked.
“I can’t do that in my sleep,” Ashe said, “And I can’t stay up all night keeping watch.”
“And we wouldn’t ask you to,” London said.
I nodded in agreement. “Of course not. So, we just hope we don’t keep getting ambushed while we sleep?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
Sighing, I looked over at Adrian. “I so wish I were you right now. That whole immune to magic thing would be pretty awesome.”
Adrian half-smiled. “Kind of. Not sure that nightmares would have been worse than waking up to the sound of you screaming. You scared the hell out of me.”
“You could hear me through the walls?” I asked, embarrassed.
“I’m surprised you didn’t wake the whole floor,” Ashe chimed in.
“Awesome,” I said, turning to hide my flushed face against London’s shoulder. He cuddled me closer and stroked my hair, and I felt a little better.
Everyone was silent for a moment or two, and then London said, “I don’t want you to have to go through that again.”
“I don’t want either of us to have to go through it again,” I replied.
“If I understand this whole distance projection thing right, then only the target or another empath is actually affected by it. Am I right?”
“Most of the time, yes,” Ashe confirmed.
“So Elizabeth’s nightmares were because I was bleeding magic and not because of the attack itself.”
Ashe nodded. “Yeah, but she’s not gonna want to hear what you have to say on the subject.”
“Hello. I’m right here,” I said. I hate when people talk about me like I’m not even in the room.
“Sorry, Elizabeth,” Ashe said with a slight inclination of his head. “But I figured I oughta warn your boy here to keep his trap shut before he pisses you off again.”
“Probably a good plan,” I said. I stretched up to kiss London on the temple and said, “I’m not going anywhere, so forget it.”
London laughed. The unexpected sound startled all of us, London included, but it also chased away a few more of the emotional shadows.
“Now who’s making things difficult?”
“Queen of Complicated,” I said. “I warned you.”
The laughter faded from London’s eyes, but a slight smile stayed on his lips. “Please don’t fight me on this, Em,” he said, brushing my hair back from my face.
The concern in his eyes melted something in me, and I couldn’t fight him. Dammit. “Fine.”
London winced. “It’s never good when a woman says, ‘fine’.”
“It really is fine. I promise.”
“You sure?” I glared up at him, and he smiled back. “Okay, okay, you’re sure.” He looked up at Adrian, who answered London’s unasked question.
“Elizabeth can have my room. I’ll stay in here with you, just in case.”
“I don’t want her alone,” London argued.
Winking at me, Ashe put on his best leering lecher voice and said, “I’ll be glad to keep her company.”
“I bet you would,” London replied. He sounded a little jealous, a little possessive, and he held me just a bit tighter. “Adrian, do you mind staying with Em tonight?”
“It’ll be torture,” Adrian teased, “but I think I can handle it.”
We all said our goodnights, London and I kissed, and then I followed Adrian back to his room, wishing I had taken the time to put on something more substantial than boxer shorts and a camisole. Even the t-shirt and shorts ensemble I’d been favoring the past few days would have been a little better. There was something disturbing about crawling into bed half-naked with a similarly half-clothed married m
an, even though there was no attraction between us.
I lay curled with my back to him, trying to relax enough to sleep. I failed. There were too many thoughts whirling through my mind.
After what seemed like ages but couldn’t have been more than half an hour, Adrian sat up with a sigh. I guess sleep wasn’t working for him either. The bed shifted as he climbed out of it, and I could hear him pad, catlike, across the room. I heard some sounds I couldn’t put a name to, and then music pushed away the silence. These boys and their guitars. Not that I minded.
Unlike the other guys, Adrian chose to sing along with the songs he played, his voice low and dreamlike in the dim closeness of the room. Just like earlier, his singing soothed and comforted me, and the next thing I knew, I woke to daylight filling the room. I’d slept, and slept well, with no more nightmares. I wondered if London had fared as well.
Leaving Adrian to whatever dreams were making him smile in his sleep, I crept out of the room, willing to take a chance on waking London. I needed to see him.
I wasn’t expecting anyone to be up and about, but Kent stood in the hallway, leaning against the wall with his luggage piled around him. He looked up as the door closed behind me, his eyebrows shooting up.
“Not a word,” I said.
He mimicked zipping his lips shut and gave me a little smile. I answered it with a scowl and turned toward London’s room, only to turn around again at the sound of a door opening. Brian stepped into the hallway, flashing me a broad smile. I scowled at him, too, and he moved to hug me.
“What are you doing awake this early?” he asked me.
“Sneaking out of Adrian’s room,” Kenny answered.
“You and London fighting again?”
I shook my head. “It’s a long story.”
“You can fill me in later,” Brian said, shouldering one of Kenny’s bags. “We’ve got to get going.”
“You’re not going alone are you?” I asked.
“Quinn’s meeting us in the lobby,” Kenny explained. “He’s bringing a friend, someone who’s agreed to play bodyguard for me. I was planning to go back with the rest of our crew, but everyone thinks I’m too much of a target. They wanted Jimmy to go with me, but he left earlier. He had the sudden urge to get the hell out of the country.”
“Somehow, I’m not surprised.” I hugged Brian again. “Be careful. Both of you”
As they headed for the elevator, I knocked on London’s door. Ashe let me in, looking haggard. London sat with his back against the headboard, arms around his knees and head down. He forced his head up to look at me as I stepped into the room, and my heart did a backflip. He looked like ninety miles of bad road.
“Was there another attack?”
London nodded, the simple gesture seeming to take a great deal of effort.
“This one was worse than the first,” Ashe told me. “I don’t know what London got out of it, but even the second-hand effects were bad. It’s been a long night.”
I made a beeline for the bed, climbing up to kneel beside London and wrap my arms around him. He sagged against me, exhausted, and I stroked his tangled hair.
“You should try to rest,” I murmured, but he shook his head.
“Good luck,” Ashe said. “I’ve been trying to talk him down for the past hour. I’d say he’s stubborn as a mule, but that’d be an insult to the mule.”
A knock on the door saved me from having to conjure up a response. It was room service with a cart filled to bursting with an array of breakfast comfort foods: French toast, pancakes, eggs Benedict, bagels with cream cheese. The second the scent hit me, I was ravenous.
Between us, Ashe and I convinced London to eat. He seemed to think that if he shifted the tiniest bit of his concentration away from his shields that they would fall, making him vulnerable to another attack. I wasn’t sure what that bitch had done to him—and I was more and more certain that she was involved somehow—but it had him rattled good and proper.
When he’d finished his breakfast and was sipping on a second mug of coffee, Ashe informed us that we would be checking out of the hotel in a few hours.
“Quinn’s got connections everywhere,” he said, “and he’s found us a place to stay. When he gets back from his airport run, we’ll head ‘em up and move ‘em out.”
“That still gives you time for a cat nap,” I told London.
With all the heavy food in his system, he couldn’t fight the exhaustion any longer. I coaxed him into lying down with me, and he went right to sleep. I figured that Ashe had chosen the breakfast menu with that very result in mind. It backfired a bit, I noticed, making Ashe a little groggy, too. He fought back by staying busy and on the move, heading back to his own room to round things up for the move to our new digs.
I lay beside London for a while, just listening to his soft snores. Even in sleep he didn’t relax, twitching at every sound. After a while, I crept from the bed, changed into street clothes, and began packing up our room. I started with my own things, then moved on to London’s. It felt kind of weird picking up after a guy who wasn’t technically my boyfriend.
Did I want that? Even taking the magic stuff out of the equation, dating London Dahlbeck would be complicated, to say the least. I’d seen what Dylan had endured these last few months. Did I want a relationship that consisted of phone calls, text messages, and a few hours of face-time whenever our schedules aligned?
God help me, I did. I wanted it. I wanted him. The thought scared me almost as much as his creepy ex-girlfriend.
I pushed my doubts aside for now; there would be plenty of time for them later—if we didn’t get ourselves killed. I pushed that thought aside, too, and fished out my laptop, needing something to occupy my mind.
I immersed myself in housekeeping—catching up on email, firing off a note to let Alex know that things were okay here, paying a few bills. I was so caught up in what I was doing that when the door opened, I jumped like I’d been poked with a cattle prod. I pressed a hand over my racing heart and looked up, ready to tear into the culprit.
“We’ve got to move,” Ashe said before I could speak. “It’s not safe here.”
Without a single question, I shut the lid on my computer and shoved it into my backpack, tugged on my shoes, and grabbed my bags. Meanwhile, Ashe shook London awake. He didn’t even give London a chance to get dressed before he was urging us both out the door. We met the others in the hallway, and our herd moved toward the elevator. I noticed that Brian was ash-pale under his tan.
While we waited what seemed like years for the elevator, London tugged on a t-shirt and then asked the question no one else had voiced. “What happened?”
Brian shook his head, pulling Dylan closer and wrapping both arms around her. A look passed between him and Quinn, who said, “Not here.”
The elevator chimed its arrival at our floor, propelling the guys into protector mode. Brian turned so that he stood between Dylan and the elevator, and London took a step forward, half-shielding me in the same way. Ashe and Quinn pushed past all of us, Ashe with one hand extended, palm out, while Quinn’s hand slid to the holster that had been hidden at the small of his back. The doors began to glide open, and Quinn drew the gun, bringing it down to rest against his thigh.
The elevator was empty.
I breathed a sigh of relief, but the men stayed tense, caught in the adrenaline high of the fight-or-flight response. Or maybe, in this case, fight-and-flight.
The seven of us and our luggage filled the elevator like crayons crammed helter-skelter back into the box. We girls were pushed to the back. Ashe and Quinn took point near the doors, which was fine with me. Special agents for a secret agency had to be better in a fight than Dylan or me.
We reached the lobby level, and Ashe and Quinn both tensed, ready to deal with any threats. The doors slid open and someone small and fast darted toward the elevator, stopping short at the sight of us. A split-second later I heard a shrill, deafening shriek, and I realized that the
person I couldn’t see through the forest of tall men was a little girl. She turned tail and ran, screaming at the top of her lungs that “the man in the elevator has a gun!"
With his free hand, Quinn pulled out a badge, the other hand still gripping the gun low and tight against his leg. A woman in a skirt suit who I figured had to be the hotel manager came over to talk to Quinn. I could tell that she knew him, knew that it was okay for him to be carrying around a handgun. She flirted with him for a few seconds under the guise of investigating the situation, and then waved us on and went to talk to the startled guests.
We made our way out of the hotel to Quinn’s and Brian’s cars. Brian was still shaken, so Ashe took his keys. Brian let him, climbing into the back and sitting as near to Dylan as seatbelts would allow. London and I piled into the back of Quinn’s car, neither of us wanting to let the other out of our sight, and Adrian took the front passenger seat.
The four of us stayed silent until Quinn turned onto I-4 and headed north, his eyes going often to the rearview mirror.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Winter Park. The agency has a safe house on the lake up there.”
I nodded. “I know where that is. I used to live up in Winter Park. Nice place.”
“And on the outskirts of Orlando,” Quinn added. “It’ll put some distance between us and the bad guys. Should make it a little harder for them to screw with us.” He glanced into the rearview mirror and met my eyes for a second. “Ashe told me what happened last night.”
“What I want to know,” London said, “is what happened today.”
“Yeah, about that. I don’t really know what happened.” Before I could ask, Quinn continued, “At least not all of it.”
“What do you know?” Adrian asked.
Quinn took a deep breath. “I know I fucked up. When they left us alone during the show last night and then hit with a psychic attack instead of a face-to-face one, it threw me off. I wasn’t careful enough, and I could have gotten myself and Brian both killed.”
London sat up straighter and reached for my hand. “What...?” he began, but Quinn cut him off.
“We dropped Kent and Miranda—his bodyguard—off at the airport with no sign of trouble. We waited around to be sure they made it through security with no problems, and then we headed back here. Not a hint of anything wrong. And then we’re walking from my car to the hotel, talking about the playoffs next week, and all hell broke loose.” He executed a tricky lane change to get away from a batshit-crazy driver in the world’s ugliest sports car. “Fucking moron,” he mumbled.
“Quinn,” I said, my voice a warning.
“I’m getting there,” he promised. “One second we’re walking along bullshitting, the next this scary Amazonian redhead steps out of the shadows and grabs Brian. I’m a few steps ahead, right? So it took me a minute to realize something had happened. God, I’m such an idiot. Anyway, I don’t know what she said, but she was whispering in his ear, and then he just...crumpled.”
“The Taser thing?”
“No. He wasn’t hurt. Not physically. I don’t know what the hell she did, but it wasn’t that. Anyway, I couldn’t shoot her—I was afraid I’d hit Brian—so I used magic. Combat magic is not my strong suit, but I stunned her enough she let go of Brian. I drew on her, but I still didn’t have a clear shot. She ran, and I had a choice between going after her and making sure Brian was okay. Since I didn’t know what she’d done to him, I didn’t know if leaving him alone was a good idea. I let her get away.”
We were all quiet for a heartbeat. Adrian was the first to break the silence.
“You did what seemed right at the time. No one here is going to blame you for choosing Brian’s well-being over catching Julia.”
“It’s a choice I shouldn’t have had to make. I should have been more careful. I should have been prepared.” He sighed. “Maybe I’ve been out of the field too long.”
“You don’t chase bad guys?” I asked.
“I’m the brains behind the operations, these days. I plan and coordinate. Other agents follow my orders, and I try to avoid getting them killed.”
“So Brian’s not hurt?” London asked.
“No. Not hurt. He’s shaken. Bad. Bad enough he couldn’t tell me what happened. But not hurt.”
I leaned against London, offering what comfort I could. He wrapped his arm around me as best he could within the confines of the car. I felt tendrils of emotion seeping out from around his shields: worry, guilt, and grief. I hoped he couldn’t feel the flare of jealousy that his grief sparked in me. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want him mourning his ex—the death of his dreams or what-the-hell-ever—while he was holding me. I understood it, but I didn’t have to like it.