“My parents have been gone a long time,” she told him. “I only lived in New Orleans for a little while. I went to L.A. once for a client and wound up spending a lot of time there, so I moved.”
“Where did you grow up? Besides ‘in the States,’ I mean.”
“Here and there.”
“A military family?” he asked her.
“Something like that.”
Staring at her, he shook his head. “You’re certainly full of secrets.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So tell me more about this Alliance of yours. Is it like a neighborhood crime watch? No, wait—can’t be. You’re not all in the same neighborhood.”
“When something happens and our help is needed, we get together.”
“Expensive,” Scott noted. “All those airfares.”
“Well, you asked before—rather rudely,” she pointed out, “but Lucien is rich. Anyway, I thought we were trying to enjoy Rome?”
“We are,” he said, and his voice had a deep, husky note that created flutters and a rise of desire within her. It had been a long time, a very long time, since she’d been with anyone, cared about anyone. Dating rules changed; she wasn’t sure she knew how to flirt anymore, or what was right or wrong, or even whether any of that mattered when desire ran deep enough. She was aware that he was drawing a line along her hand with the tip of his finger, that it felt like a whisper of air and a slow-burning fire all in one, and she couldn’t seem to help herself, she just wanted to get away from the world, to be alone with him somewhere. She longed to touch his hair and find out if it was possible to feel the blackness of it, explore his face, lie next to him, naked, and feel the heat of his body against her.
“You really are stunning, and so much more.”
“Thank you. Unless that’s a line?” she asked him.
He laughed easily. “No line, just an indisputable fact.”
“Then you’re very kind.”
“Facts aren’t necessarily a kindness,” he told her. “Just take the compliment.”
“Okay. Then…you’re actually very beautiful, too.”
“Ouch.”
“What?”
“Men are supposed to be…manly,” he said, grinning. “Handsome.”
“You’re very beautiful in a handsome, manly way. How’s that?”
“Much better. Thanks.”
“And very macho,” she told him.
“In a good way, I hope,” he replied. “I meant that whole Viking comment in a good way, too.”
“Right. Vikings were sea raiders who raped, pillaged and murdered.”
“And founded settlements all over the world, created beautiful jewelry and believed in valor. Lots of them stayed where they raped, pillaged and murdered, and became upstanding citizens.”
She laughed. “If that’s a pickup line, it’s certainly a different one.”
He looked down for a moment, out the window for another moment, and then he finally looked at her again, as if he had made a decision. “I’m serious. I admire you very much. I wouldn’t dream of giving you a pick-up line.”
“You wouldn’t pick me up?” she asked, surprised by how badly the thought hurt. Almost like a stake to the heart.
He leaned toward her. “Only a dead man wouldn’t want to sleep with you, and I think maybe, given the chance, even the dead would rise to the occasion. I don’t want to look like a fool, so I really shouldn’t say this, but…every second with you, all I want is another second with you.”
She stared at him, stunned.
The earlier flutter became a whirlwind inside her, and she wondered if they were flirting, if this was the beginning of something wild and abandoned, if his thoughts were running in tandem with her own. It was crazy, of course. Can’t shake him, might as well sleep with him…. She mocked herself. The world might be ending, or they might meet their demise in the process of averting that end, so they might as well indulge?
Except that she could feel herself starting to care about him, and she didn’t want to just go wild and crazy with him. She wanted more.
She knew that she was smiling, that they were leaning closer to one another, touching, flirting, as if this were an actual first date. She knew that he was honest, and that he had been so all his life. She knew that he wanted the night, this night, to follow through on every fantasy she’d begun to indulge. She was glad of the meal, the wine, and the walk they would take in the piazza before returning to the hotel on this night in which exhaustion seemed to have faded with the light of day.
His fingers curled around hers. “No pressure,” he said very softly. “Honest to God, no pressure. We’re in this together. I don’t want you running from me again.”
Running…
She’d been running for years, and it had never mattered. Until now.
Until him.
She raised her head to smile at him, to speak. To tell him that she was equally drawn to him, that she didn’t know what it meant, because she normally didn’t fall head over heels or give in to seduction, or even loneliness.
But she never spoke.
Her smile faded.
A tall blond man was standing just outside the window, staring in.
Straight at her.
8
For the life of him, at first Scott had no clue as to what had happened.
They had been getting close. Not so much in the words that were being said, though they had actually exchanged a bit of personal information. It had been in her smiles, in the fall of her eyelashes, in the laughter in her eyes.
It might have been a normal date.
Then something about her changed. And it had to do with the man in the window.
When he had seen her face go pale—and she was as pale as alabaster as it was—he had turned and seen him. The man was tall and blond—another Viking? He wore his hair longer than the customary current cut, and it was the gold of sheaves of wheat. He had a rugged face, though he wasn’t old, perhaps in his mid to late thirties. He wore a long-sleeved tailored shirt and jeans, nothing out of the ordinary, so he should have blended in with the crowd. But he didn’t.
As Scott was assessing the blond man, with his peripheral vision he caught Melanie shaking her head in a barely perceptible movement.
He turned back to stare at her. “A friend?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. Um…who?”
He offered her a grim smile. “The big Viking guy standing just outside.”
“I didn’t really notice him,” she said blithely, reaching for her wine glass.
“Like hell you didn’t.”
“Let’s go. I’m getting tired,” she said, standing.
He rose, as well. She was leaving, and he didn’t want her wandering around without him. “Il conto, per favore,” he said to the waitress. She nodded, looking surprised. Dining was supposed to be slow and relaxing. Such haste was unusual.
“I can get it—” Melanie began.
“Macho, remember?” he said, offering the waitress his credit card.
Melanie let him pay, but she seemed fidgety while she waited for the card to be run through. Even when the Fiorellis hurried out from the kitchen to say goodbye to her, she was in a rush. She was warm and polite, but Scott could sense her eagerness to get going.
Out on the street, she headed straight for a taxi stand down the road. He almost had to run to keep up with her.
In the cab, after providing their address on the Via Veneto, she sat back, silent.
“Melanie, who is he?” Scott persisted. He didn’t yell, but his tone was determined.
She shook her head. “Look, I’m just tired, all right? Do you realize that we haven’t slept in a real bed in about…almost forty-eight hours, I think. Aren’t you tired? It must be the food and the wine. It just hit me like a ton of bricks. I’m exhausted.”
“Melanie, I can’t make you tell me anything,” Scott said, turning to her in the cab. “But don’t take me for a fool.”
&
nbsp; “All right, I won’t,” she said.
“So who is he?”
“You can’t make me tell you anything—but I won’t treat you like a fool by lying to you. That’s it. Done. Over. All right?”
They reached the hotel. She didn’t even seem to notice as he paid the driver, just breezed ahead of him and headed down the hall for their suite. She opened the door and paused only long enough for him to follow her in. “Thank you. That was a really nice evening,” she said stiffly, then turned for her room.
He caught her arm. He didn’t care if she protested or not as he drew her back and into his arms. He was suddenly and eternally glad of his height when she looked up at him, blue eyes as magic as crystal with their golden inner gleam, her expression surprised and perhaps fascinated. He gave her a split second to protest, but she didn’t.
He cupped her face gently with his hand, his fingers stroking her cheek, marveling at the silken softness of her flesh. He kissed her. His mouth light on hers at first, then with a greater fervor and passion. He savored the feel of her lips beneath his as he pressed on. He felt the instant when she surrendered. Felt the liquid flow of her blood as she leaned against him, her lips parting. He suddenly felt as seduced as he had meant for her to be, mesmerized by the feel of his tongue in her mouth, the explosive warmth that seemed to combust between them. She kissed him back, the tip of her tongue rimming his lips, plunging between. Her body seemed to mold to his naturally, sensual and sleek, igniting a fire so exotic he felt it tear through him unchecked. Her arms went around him, her hands tangling in his hair. They kissed and parted, and kissed again, and he had never known it was possible to kiss so deeply, to feel as if he could merge into a woman’s very being.
They broke apart at last, and she stepped away, staring at him. Then she smiled slowly, though it seemed as if a look of pain flamed into her eyes at the same time.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for a really wonderful night.”
Then she turned and left him standing there, and he found he wasn’t thinking of his own sense of loss as it tore through his body, he was thinking of that look in her eyes.
He didn’t want to lose her. And at that moment, he was certain that the only way to keep her was to let her go.
That morning he had appreciated the hotel’s steaming hot water.
Now he appreciated the fact that he could step into the shower and have it run as cold as ice.
And as he stood under the pulsing spray of cold water, he wondered who the hell the blond man could be. Brother? Ex-lover?
Maybe he was going insane. Maybe he had hallucinated the other man? Maybe all this was nothing but a dream.
But it wasn’t. The walk with the corpses had been a dream. This was real.
He was still speculating when he heard his phone ringing.
He stepped out of the shower, grabbed a towel and rummaged in the pocket of his discarded jeans until he found his phone.
“Hello?”
“Scott?”
“Yes?”
“It’s Lucien.”
Lucien. He’d given the man his cell number, but still…Why call him—and not Melanie?
“What’s up?” he asked.
“You’ve found her, right? Sister Maria Elizabeta.”
“Yes. She told us to come back tomorrow.”
“You need to ask her about Bael. It’s a long story, but I’ve been talking to Blake Reynaldo, and he and I are on the way to the jail right now. Those toughs you and Melanie took on the night of the quake turned out to be a strange mix. They included a professor, a Hollywood bit player, a cabinetmaker, and—get this—an ex-priest, along with two actual street toughs.”
“What? They were a bunch of gangbangers,” Scott protested.
“No, they’d never met each other until that night.”
“They knew each other’s names. Well, some of them did.”
“Doesn’t matter. Tell Sister Maria Elizabeta that you need to know everything you can about Bael. We’re looking up what we can at this end, but she may know more than we’ll ever be able to find out.”
“All right. Is everything else back there fine?” Scott asked.
“As of now.”
As of now. Not a good answer.
“Hey, we ran into a tall blond guy over here,” Scott said. “A…friend of Melanie’s. Do you know him? Is he safe?” Scott tried.
“Rainier?” Lucien asked.
“Yeah, I think that was his name.”
Lucien was quiet for a long moment. “Yes, he’s safe. I don’t know if he’s any part of this, but he’s…safe. Look, is Melanie all right? I tried to reach her, but she’s not answering her room phone. I left a message, but…”
“She’ll probably call you right back. We just got in a few minutes ago—she’s probably in the shower, just like I was.”
“Sorry I got you out, then, but so long as you two are all right and on the right path…”
“Yes to both. Assuming this is the right path, anyway.”
“When it’s where you have to go, it’s the right path,” Lucien said. “Just follow your instincts.”
“Sure.”
Lucien was quiet for so long that Scott thought he had hung up, until the other man said, “I can’t imagine how bizarre this must…seem to you. But I think it’s real.”
“Me, too. And I’ll tell the sister what you told me.”
“Ciao,” Lucien said, and hung up.
Bael. Wasn’t he some kind of ancient middle-east demon? Or was that Baal?
He didn’t know. Great. The world was ending, he was in a fabulous hotel in Rome, and he was totally frustrated. He stretched out on the bed, fighting the urge to make sure Melanie was all right—or even still there—and stared up at the ceiling.
Cherubs.
Dozens of little cherubs decorated the high canopy above the bed.
Great.
He stared at their chubby little bodies, and prayed for sleep.
It was after general visiting hours at the Men’s Central Facility, but Lucien and Sean were with Blake Reynaldo, which meant they were allowed to meet with the man named Bo Ridley. In person, even in a prison uniform, Bo was tall and dignified, with finely chiseled features. Despite his black skin, he looked ashen. He sat across a table from Blake, Lucien and Sean.
“Thank you for seeing us,” Sean said easily, ever the cop.
Bo nodded, then shook his head in confusion.
“I don’t know what got into me that night. I teach physics,” he said.
“Yes, Officer Reynaldo told us that,” Sean said. “He said you told him that you’d never met those other men until that night, and that when you woke up—in a holding cell—you were aware of everything that had happened but certain that you couldn’t really have done any of it.”
Blake was there simply to watch, Lucien realized. He’d already talked to Ridley. Now he wanted to see what they could get from the man.
“Physics. You’re a scientist. So what do you think happened?” Sean asked.
The man shook his head. “I have no idea, no explanation,” he said quietly. “I was on the street when the quake hit. I was right by a fissure, and it seemed like some kind of black smoke rose from it, and then it…it was as if—as if it entered into me.” He looked down for a moment. “I was feeling pretty bad when it happened. I—”
Lucien leaned forward and interrupted, speaking as quietly as Sean had been. “Mr. Ridley, were you feeling as if you had done something bad already?”
The man looked up instantly, meeting Lucien’s eyes, his own expression despairing. “I’d had an affair, and I was afraid that my marriage was about to end. I was completely disgusted with myself.”
He fell silent.
Sean prompted him. “And then what?”
“Have you ever heard of those near-death experiences where people say they’re floating above themselves, watching their bodies lying on a bed or an operating table? It was…like that. Except I wasn??
?t near death. I was just suddenly watching myself as I joined a group of men, as if we were old friends. I even knew their names. And I knew that we had a chance to be totally savage, and it was exactly what I wanted. But it wasn’t me,” he said desperately, as if he didn’t really believe it himself and therefore didn’t expect them to believe him. “Then…well, you know. We broke into the store, robbed it, beat up the old man…and I abducted that poor woman. Then that guy showed up and knocked me out. I remember, as the world went black, hearing someone whispering to me, telling me that all I wanted in life was to do the bidding of Bael, that I was a failure and deserved whatever misery came my way. And then it was like that dark smoky thing rose from my body, and the cops came and…It wasn’t me, I swear. I don’t hurt people. I—I teach physics,” he finished lamely. “Or I did.”
The man’s life was probably ruined, Lucien thought. He was never going to be able to go into a courtroom and convince twelve of his peers that he had been possessed by an evil demon. Maybe temporary insanity?
Sean was apparently thinking along the same line. “Perhaps you were exposed to poison gas. You need to get a good attorney and plead temporary insanity from gas poisoning,” he recommended.
Bo looked at them with a small spark of hope in his eyes, then shook his head. “It must have been my imagination. Or maybe I really am…evil at heart.”
“I don’t think so,” Lucien told him. “Have you spoken with the others?”
Bo looked from Blake to Sean to Lucien. “They didn’t tell you yet?”
“Tell us what?”
“One of the other guys—Hank Serle—used to be a priest. He hanged himself in his cell. He was clutching his prayer book, and he left a note saying that he refused to be a vessel for a fallen angel.” Bo leaned forward, groaning, running his fingers through his hair. “A fallen angel…? Good God. I’m a physics teacher. I was a physics teacher. Anyway, I don’t think you’ll get anything from the others. Two of them really are street toughs—gang members. Isn’t that right, Officer Reynaldo? That’s what you told me.”