Okay. She relaxed and put both hands out in front of her as though holding the world at bay. She breathed.
She heard a siren in the distance, not unusual around such a large medical complex. The hospital was just a mile down the road.
Her heart rate slowed down. She could breathe better.
So she wasn’t normal, who was? So her soul had this strange new gaping wound because her sister was having her second child? So she had a problem she would never be able to solve in this lifetime, on this planet? So did millions of people. Why should she be any different even if she was so very different? She wasn’t starving. She had a good profession and a house she owned. She had a family who loved her with a capital L. Yeah, she had some serious losses she was grappling with, but who didn’t in this hard-edged, unfair, and at times brutal world?
She nodded to herself several times and shored up her determination. She sealed up the deep wound then set her mind on her future, a most excellent future.
She nodded.
Okay.
* * *
When his phone buzzed against his abdomen through the pocket in his kilt, Kerrick finally rose from the cement floor in his basement. This was just the first wave of fighting. He needed to get cleaned up and moving. Unless, of course, Endelle still wanted him on guard-dog duty.
He extended his senses, as he had in the bar, and reached for the caller’s identity. Thorne was on the com but the hell he was going to answer his phone right now. Endelle was going to have to find someone else to serve as the woman’s guardian. Thorne could do it himself, or any of the other warrior brothers. Serving as a guardian to a female would make him vulnerable and he took pains never to be in that position, so yeah, his brothers could pick up the slack.
As he headed to the shower, he folded off his blood-spattered kilt and weapons harness, his heavy warrior sandals, leather wrist guards, and sweat-soaked briefs. He let the garments drop to the cold cement floor in a trail behind him.
Once in the bathroom he turned the lever on full force and let the water heat up.
He reached both hands to the back of his neck, popped the leather cadroen, the ritual clasp worn by all the warriors, and released his hair. He set the clasp on the sink, the last of several that his wife of many decades ago had worked with her own hands. He touched the intricate, embroidered strap, rolling it over to look at the attached miniature carved dagger made from rhinoceros tusk, which secured the piece together.
Memories of his wife flew through his mind, of her small nimble hands, her love of the needle and colorful silk floss. She had made several cadroen for him during the ten short years they were together. This was the last of them. Decades of making war would wear out even the toughest pieces of leather.
He turned around then stepped inside what was essentially a car wash of a shower. He moved in a slow circle, letting all eight powerful heads wash away the remnants of the recent battle.
His phone buzzed again, stupid fucking preternatural hearing.
As before, he extended his senses. Thorne again. He sighed. He needed one more minute to clear his head before he engaged the next round.
He ended up in front of the main nozzle, set at seven and a half feet with a punishing angled spray. He planted both hands on the smooth cold tile and let the hot water pound the back of his neck and work the muscles all across his shoulders. His long hair separated and slid forward to form a wall on either side of his face. Blood and sweat swirled down the drain. He didn’t usually come apart after a kill, but Christ, those kids.
Something had changed in his world. Children had been off limits for centuries. Now the death vamps sucked as they pleased, inflicted pain as they pleased, took innocence as they pleased.
His brain cramped. The muscles around his eyes squeezed tight. He breathed in the damp air, flared his nostrils, then tried to shut his brain down. He failed.
Goddammit. He had reached an impasse, this no-man’s-land of vows and vengeance from which he could not retreat. His chest felt like he’d strapped on a boulder then carried the damn thing around day and night.
He concentrated on the water beating against his skin. He sucked in air and forced himself to breathe, in and out, in and out. He calmed himself the hell down. He rubbed his left pec and winced at the agony burning beneath that had nothing to do with musculature.
Unfortunately his hearing was too evolved and the phone buzzed again, a relentless fly in his warrior’s world.
Thorne again.
Too. Fucking. Bad.
He shut the water off and toweled himself dry. He wrapped the towel around his waist. He brushed out his hair in hard pulls with a stiff-bristled brush. He’d take these few minutes, goddammit. He looked at the cadroen but refused to pick it up. He’d go unbound the rest of the night, a little piece of rebellion, to hell with rules and tradition.
He moved to his weapons locker and mentally opened the steel reinforced cabinet. He drew the double doors wide. His blooded sword and dagger lay parallel and waiting, right where he’d sent them from the alley. Using soft cloths, he wiped both weapons clean of the blood then folded the cloths to the laundry. By morning, after the night’s work was over, he’d oil and tend his weapons.
He lived in the basement of his mansion on Scottsdale Two. He’d shaped loose living quarters from the long narrow underground room: a place for his bed, workout equipment, a locked weapons locker. He’d even spent a fortune building an after-the-fact expansive bathroom, one that fit his large warrior body and occasionally even his wings.
His phone buzzed yet again. Not Thorne this time. He crossed to his kilt still heaped on the cement floor then retrieved the phone. “Yeah, Jeannie.”
“Thank God,” she whispered. “We’re in deep shit. Endelle has been yelling at Carla for the last ten minutes because Thorne couldn’t reach you. We have a sitch in Paradise Valley and she wants you on it. Now. You with me?”
Kerrick drew in a deep breath. “Is Thorne with Endelle?” This couldn’t be happening.
“Yep. He said to say you didn’t have a choice on this one.”
Kerrick pulled his phone away from his ear and released a violent string of obscenities. When he could speak in a normal voice again, he said, “Give me the deets.”
“Thorne wants to patch in.”
“Fine.”
Thorne’s deep, rough voice hit his ears. “We don’t really know what’s going on. You may or may not have to guard the woman. Right now there’s just a pretty-boy off the grid.”
“So why does Endelle have her panties in a wad?”
“She said we’ll know more once you take care of our off-campus head case.”
Kerrick breathed hard through his nose. Okay. He could take care of the death vamp. After which, if there happened to be a mortal woman in need of protection, Thorne could work that out. “I’m on it.”
He could sense his brother’s relief. Endelle must have had him by the nuts on this one, but why?
“I’m going to hand you back to Jeannie. She’ll give you the whats and wheres.”
“Hey, Kerrick,” Jeannie began, “you’ll be going to a medical complex in Paradise Valley. The pretty-boy’s at full-mount. Call when you’re ready.”
“Thanks, Jeannie.” He thumbed his phone.
He dropped the towel, folded on clean battle gear, then tucked his phone into the pocket at the waist of the kilt. With a dismissive wave of his hand, he sent the old gear directly to the laundry room.
And the war against the death vamps just kept on rolling.
Whatever.
As he adjusted his harness, he brought his dagger into his hand then secured it once more into the front slot. He hated the fact that his personal weakness, his inability to dematerialize, would force him to call Jeannie so that Central could do a fold to Paradise Valley One.
Goddammit.
Aw, hell. He’d been a caged beast for at least the past two centuries, a lion roaring for some kind of release.
And tonight … well, tonight, for whatever reason, every nerve in his body was on fire. After he took care of the off-campus head case, he’d head back to the Blood and Bite. He needed to suck back a few Maker’s, maybe get laid. Yeah, a few fingers of whiskey and he definitely could use a little horizontal R&R with some jugular action thrown in.
Maybe then … Christ, maybe then he’d feel normal.
* * *
Alison opened her eyes as yet another siren sounded down the street, drew closer, then ceased, which made at least three in the past ten minutes or so. Apparently, someone’s patient required serious emergency medical care.
She still sat in her wing chair, drawing in one breath after another, trying to calm down, trying to let her rational brain make sense of recent events. A walk might help, even just around her office.
She was about to get up and stretch her legs when she heard the door open. She shifted in the chair to look over her shoulder. Her last client had arrived, Darian Greaves.
“Alison,” he said. “Our last appointment. I must say I feel quite sad.”
He always looked like he’d walked straight out of Goodfellas. Despite the fact that he lived in warm, casual Phoenix, he never wore anything but a very fine wool suit to her office, all in black today, including the tailored shirt. For contrast, a yellow silk tie slashed a perfect line down his muscular chest. He looked like an oversized stinging insect covered in Hugo Boss.
He was quite beautiful, his bald head perfectly shaped, smooth and tan, his black eyebrows thick and manicured, his dark eyes large, round in appearance, almost child-like. On his right pinkie he wore a black onyx ring. He had only one flaw—his left hand was misshapen, and because of the way the fingers curved, she thought there might have been some nerve damage along the way.
Over the past year of his therapy, his first and only year as far as she knew, he’d remained a locked-down mystery, especially since he was the only client whose mind she’d been unable to penetrate no matter how hard she tried. An anomaly. She didn’t often reach into a client’s mind. With Darian, however, she could not even skim the surface of his thoughts, let alone penetrate the depth of his psyche. Why had been the question she had been unable to answer.
He was the victim of monstrous childhood abuse, physical and sexual, all at the hands of a foster father. Even though he had been candid about his troubled past, there had been no significant progress, almost as though he recited his woes from behind a twelve-foot-thick cement wall. If he were at all serious about recovery, he would require a decade or two of therapy, nothing less. One thing she knew for certain: She could not be that therapist. In her opinion, he needed a hard-core psychiatrist and a lot of medication.
She glanced at the clock again. As always, he had arrived precisely on time, not a minute past six thirty. He couldn’t leave his corporation—his army as he liked to call the rank and file of Greaves Enterprises—one second sooner. He was very fond of punctuality.
“I don’t suppose I can talk you out of graduate school,” he said, rounding her chair and heading to the soft green chenille couch. She held her breath. He smelled so strangely of lemons tinged with … what? Turpentine? Now, that was also an anomaly. With his sophisticated appearance, he should have smelled, at the very least, of Obsession.
“How sad to see all the empty shelves,” he observed, as he paused in front of the wall unit. He shook his head slightly. After a moment, he turned then headed the rest of the distance to the couch. He sat down, smoothing his coat as he went. He crossed his legs at the knee, so formal, so gentleman-like.
He settled his gaze on her, but she found she had nothing to say to him. After the conversation with Joy and after holding a piece of time in her hand, somehow her mind had become a complete blank.
“Are you unwell?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.
Alison once again took deep breaths. Thoughts of Joy drifted through her mind as well as the shattered window and reversal of time. Everything seemed to be changing. Even her dreams in the last two weeks had become charged with strange and unusual images, some frightening, some intriguing.
Joy, a reversal of time, strange dreams.
Darian with finely tailored wool suits, a psychotic mind, and no Obsession.
She leaned back. “Why did you ever seek me out, Darian? To be quite honest, I don’t believe I’ve helped you at all this last year.”
He lifted an arched brow and smiled. He even chuckled. “Straight to the point. I always liked that about you. As for the past twelve months, you are right, I wasn’t interested in therapy, just in you. I wanted to get to know you. As it happens, I’d like you to forget all about graduate school and come to work for me.”
What was wrong with his voice? It sounded strange, as though his resonance had split not once but several times. She felt an odd pressure within her head. She squeezed her eyes shut and blocked the sensation. The pressure eased as quickly as it had begun. She opened her eyes.
“Incredible,” he murmured, his gaze fixed on her.
“What is incredible?”
“You, of course. I want you to tell me you will consider working for me.”
She shook her head. The suggestion stunned her. “I hope I don’t offend you, but I’m fully committed to therapy as a profession. I simply have no desire to enter the business world.” She so didn’t want him to press her further.
“Working for me would involve much more than the usual exchange of goods and services. I believe I could keep you challenged, content, and I would certainly make it worth your while.”
How could she tell him she would never in a million years work for him, not for all the money in the world. “I’m sorry,” she said firmly. “The answer must be no.”
His dark gaze commanded her. She found she could not look away from him. What had he said? Would she consider working for him?
The next moment he was in front of her on his knees. On his knees. He had hold of her arm and rubbed the inside of her wrist, the tender place over her veins. He stroked her skin back and forth. “Say yes,” he whispered, his voice still carrying a strange resonance. Why didn’t she fear him? He was large and muscular, powerful, the sort of man you imagined on black op missions deep in some Third World jungle. She had felt this from the beginning, his complete and utter lethal presence.
She should have feared his proximity. Fear would have been normal, but all her instincts were held in some kind of stasis.
“I will give you anything you desire,” he said. “I have great wealth at my disposal. Say you will come to me, align with me, work side by side with me. Say it and I will give you the world.”
He would give her the world.
She didn’t want the world, she wanted what Joy had, and he most definitely could not give her that.
Yet somehow she leaned toward him, drawn in, unafraid. Her pulse sped up as he stroked her wrist. Desire of a distinct sexual nature descended on her, a gentle rain on her skin. Was he seducing her?
“You’re feeling it, aren’t you? Say yes, Alison. We would be magnificent together.” The split resonance drifted over her, beckoning her. She wanted to say yes.
Her breaths came in quick little puffs. Her eyelids felt heavy. This wasn’t right. But she couldn’t seem to help herself.
She breathed in, meaning to draw more of his heady seductiveness inside her, but the smell of him, lemons and turpentine, shocked her senses. She turned her face away and squeezed her eyes shut. Her mind cleared and she pressed her back and shoulders into the chair. “I’m sorry, Darian. I have no wish to work with you now or ever. You could offer half a dozen worlds and I would still refuse.”
She shivered then felt Darian’s breath on her neck. He chuckled softly. “Half a dozen,” he murmured. “You have no idea how poetic your choice of words is, how perfect, how portentous, and I feel in you, I sense in you, a complete negation of my proposal. Again, I feel very sad as though I am losing a friend, perhaps the only true friend I have ever had. What a pity
.” Did he just graze her throat with his teeth? Yet she couldn’t seem to move.
He released her wrist and, as though he had never been close to her at all, he once more sat on the sofa and again crossed his legs at the knee.
“I’m sorry, Darian.” Her mind felt a little strange. Had he just knelt in front of her? The memory seemed vague now, indistinct, like a dream.
“This is most unfortunate,” he said, “and I, too, am very sorry. I want you to understand and to remember my regret. I know we must go our separate ways, that much I believe was clear to me from the beginning, but I truly, truly wished it otherwise.”
For the smallest moment, her heart softened toward him. She believed he was sincere. She had never seen regret on his face before. However, she saw it now. Had she misjudged him in some way?
The front door of her office suite slammed open and a second later one of the dental hygienists from the group next door appeared in the doorway. She was a tall, lovely redhead, her skin freckled and fair, yet two clownish spots had popped out on her cheeks.
Alison stood up. “What is it?”
The young woman glanced from her to Darian then back. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but one of Kelsing’s dental patients has been killed right on the sidewalk.” She threw a shaking hand behind her.
“You mean in an accident? Hit by a car?”
She shook her head back and forth. “No. Her throat. Torn open. Mangled. Here in the courtyard. The police have already taped the area off and an ambulance just pulled up. Thought you should know. I’ve already told everyone else in this wing.”
“Thank you,” Alison whispered as the woman turned and ran out. She glanced at Darian. She had some obligation to finish the hour with him. On the other hand, what was the point? Still, she waited for him to choose.
He rose to his feet, a half smile on his lips, sadness in his eyes. He gestured with an arm extended toward the door. “Well, I think we ought to see what all the fuss is about, don’t you? Perhaps the report has been exaggerated.”
* * *
Kerrick felt the vibration as Central folded him to the outskirts of the medical complex in Paradise Valley.