by Jade Kerrion
Xin shook her head. “I’m not making myself clear. I’ve never met anyone with a greater need to be loved than Danyael. He may not act on it, but that means nothing. It doesn’t make the need go away. That need can be exploited, turned against him. It’s his one gaping vulnerability.”
“You don’t know Danyael.”
“I know people like him.”
Lucien pushed to his feet. “Danyael is nothing like anyone you know. I have a dinner appointment in town. I need to get going. Feel free to stay for as long as you want.”
Xin sighed as Lucien walked away. Damn it, she had offended him. Lucien was never abrupt, except when he was pissed. She set down her glass of wine and stared at the lush tangle of foliage. What a mess. As if it were not complicated enough, the perfect human being and an alpha empath were on the run in the highly questionable company of an alpha telepath and a human mercenary, respectively. Who knew what they were up to?
Now she had to add Lucien to the list of complications. Xin scowled. Damn it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The next attempt to capture Galahad took place that night, three hours after the accident. Too many curious passersby had stopped to view the accident. Too many witnesses wielded handy cellphone cameras. Danyael’s image had been captured digitally, ready to be mistaken for Galahad.
From the parking lot of a nondescript strip mall anchored by a grocery store, a blond woman, her short hair coiffed in a perfect bob, watched in silence as several police cars pulled into the parking lot of a hotel across the street. Uniformed cops poured out of the cars. Several police officers swarmed briefly around an empty white SUV before changing directions to join their colleagues converging on the hotel.
Zara did not need to see more. She spun around, unlocked the door of the red BMW, and slid into the driver’s seat. Startled awake by the sound, Danyael turned to look at her. “Everything all right?” he asked. His quiet voice was pitched low to conceal the fact that he was exhausted. She could at last see past all of the tricks he employed to hide his fatigue. It irked her that he still tried to keep it from her.
With an impatient gesture, Zara tugged the blond wig off her head. “It’s under control. I’d rather talk about what you did.” Even so, she did not begin immediately. Instead, she waited until they were on the highway headed south. She spared him a glance. His profile was as flawless as it was remote. The left side of his face was unscarred and indistinguishable from Galahad’s. “How many times have you done that?” she asked.
He did not pretend to misunderstand. “Twice.”
“When was the other time?”
“Today.”
“Today? The woman?”
He shook his head. “Her baby. The one she was carrying.”
“You saved her children? Both of them?”
His shoulders moved slightly. A shrug. Dismissive.
“They were strangers to you, yet you saved them and not Carlos. Why?” God, was that a quiver she heard in her own voice?
He tensed. She could feel it. He glanced at her before averting his gaze. “I don’t remember. I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
She inhaled. It was a shaky sound. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you bring them back?”
He was silent for a long time. “Because she loved them.”
“All mothers love their children.”
“I guess,” he said. His voice was quiet. He turned his face away from her.
“What do you know about your parents?” she asked, choosing her words carefully.
Danyael released his breath in a soft sigh. “It seems you know more about my parents than I do.” Quiet resignation lurked behind the guarded tone.
Damn. She had not been as careful as she should have been. Empathy was not as precise as telepathy, but Danyael was obviously quite practiced at extrapolating the thoughts behind emotions. “What do you know?” she persisted.
She had not expected him to answer, but he did. “I don’t know my parents.”
“Any siblings?”
“I don’t know.”
“How did you get the scar on your face? How did you damage your left hand?”
He looked at his misshapen hand, an injury older than his memories. “I don’t know.”
“How old are you?”
“I don’t know. What is your damned point?” He snapped the words in a rare display of anger.
She pulled over, killed the engine, and met his dark gaze. “I know the answers to all those questions. I even know your real name, the name you were given at birth.”
“Why are you doing this?”
She decided not to answer his question. Instead she said, “Tell me what you do know.”
He turned away from her. It was easier on her when he did not look at her. She suspected he felt the same way. “I don’t know anything about my family. My earliest memories are of foster homes. The likely reality is probably what you know for a fact. They didn’t want me.”
“And you’ve come to terms with that?”
“I know they still don’t want me. There would have been no other reason to rip my memories other than to keep me from going home.” He breathed in deeply, his voice steady. “I’ve had several years to come to terms with it. Please don’t dig up the past.”
“Fine.”
“And Zara?” He reached out and touched her hand gently.
Surprised, she turned to look at him. It was rare for him to initiate physical contact. Given that the last time he had, she had accused him of screwing with her emotions and her thoughts, it was no surprise that he was as restrained physically as he was emotionally.
“I am sorry about Carlos. I wish I could explain it, but without memories, I can’t explain, let alone justify what I did to him. I can’t bring him back, but if there’s anything I can do to make up for it, please tell me. Let me try.”
She swallowed hard to get past the lump in her throat. “Fine, I…” She glanced distractedly over her shoulder at the soft tap on the door.
A fresh-faced teenager, huddled in a heavy overcoat as a defense against the chill night wind, peered in at her, an expression of concern on his face. He mouthed exaggeratedly, “Are you all right?”
Her mind still wrapped around Danyael, Zara lowered the window to reply. Danyael shouted a warning, but it was too late. In that same instant, she saw the young man jerk his hand up and spray a thin canister of gas into the car.
Reflexes and instinct took over. Zara pushed the door open, slamming the young man back. She was vaguely aware that Danyael had also exited the car, but the fumes were already getting to her. Her vision wavered and noises fluctuated, dropping to the merest whisper of sound before expanding to boom like thunder through her skull. Her legs crumpled beneath her, unable to support her weight.
Hulking, moving shadows closed in around her, but mere moments before they enshrouded her, the most terrifying sensation seized her—a nameless fear that churned self-revulsion into the pit of her stomach. Harmless pools of moonlight morphed into faceless creatures from hell, reaching out with greedy, grasping claws to tear her apart. She would have fled, but her legs no longer worked. She did the only thing she could, screaming herself unconscious, her voice joining in a chorus of terror-stricken screams, a cacophony of madness rending the night.
~*~
The threat was neutralized, but the damage had been done. The men who attacked Danyael and Zara—all ten of them—had retreated so quickly that they had left skid marks. Three black SUVs swerved down the highway away from Danyael.
He leaned against the car and cursed under his breath as his external psychic shields clamped down. The resulting fissure of pain sizzling along the length of his spine barely registered against the surge of adrenaline pumping through his body. He knelt beside Zara, who had collapsed on the road, and placed a hand against her chest. She was unconscious, but stable. What had they used on her? Chloroform? Isoflurane and halothane?
Wha
t had been worse? The fumes that knocked her out, or the emotional onslaught that would have made death seem like a blessing? His mind churned in frustration, reworking the options. Dropping his psychic shields and unleashing a wave of pure terror was akin to using a chainsaw, when a surgeon’s scalpel might have worked better. What else could he have done that would not have put her at risk?
A minute passed in silence as his mind worked itself around to the same answer. Nothing, he realized helplessly. Nothing at all.
How could that possibly be the right answer? Others hunted him. He endangered her by being around her. Surely there was something else he could do.
Like leave.
He shrank from the thought and the ache it stirred in him. Deliberately pushing it out of his mind, he refocused on the situation at hand. The night breeze cleared the residual fumes by the time he carried Zara to the car and laid her gently in the passenger seat. A wave of exhaustion slammed into him. He could not keep going; he had to rest.
He pulled off the highway and drove along a rural road, the scenery occasionally pockmarked by the light of a home in the distance. Mere chance brought them to the door of a bed and breakfast. Wearied beyond belief and out of options, Danyael parked the car and walked to the door. He waited several moments while the doorbell chimed a tuneful little song. Quiet footsteps padded toward him. A white-haired woman garbed in a woolen robe opened the door. “Yes?” she asked, her blue eyes coolly indifferent.
“Excuse me, ma’am. Do you have any rooms available for the night?”
“I’m sorry, but we’re a reservation-only B and B. If you head north for about two hours, you’ll get to New Lenox. There are several hotels there.”
Damn shields. Deliberately, Danyael reached out with his empathic powers to reverse the apathy generated by his psychic shields. He found compassion, a wealth of it. “We’ve come from New Lenox. We’re heading south, and I thought we’d be able to cover more ground before stopping to rest.”
“We?”
“Yes, my friend. She’s asleep in the car, and I can’t go much farther. I realize you don’t accept people without reservations, but would you be able to make an exception? It’ll be for one night and—”
The innkeeper stared at him and something in her blue eyes softened imperceptibly. “Well, get your friend and come on in,” she said briskly. “You look like you’re about to fall asleep on your feet too.” She waited by the door, holding it open as Danyael carried Zara from the car. “Poor dear,” she murmured, shaking her head as she glanced at Zara’s countenance, sweetly serene in sleep. “I’m Margaret Wynn,” she said, the briskly efficient energy returning to her voice as she shut and locked the door behind Danyael. “The room’s this way.”
She scurried along the narrow hallway and flung open the door at the far end of the corridor. The room was large, dominated by a four-poster bed and an unlit fireplace. A matching set of wicker chairs overlooked the bay windows. The room decor was pristinely white except for the bright rugs scattered on the polished wooden floor. “The bathroom is across the hallway. We like to keep the house cool at night, but you’re welcome to light the fire, of course. Do you know how to do that?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“It’s just Maggie, dear boy.” She patted his arm gently. “You look chilled. Go ahead and light that fire. I’ll get you hot chocolate from the kitchen, and then you can turn in for the night.”
The kindness of strangers—usually rendered impossible because of his psychic shields—always caught him off guard. For a long time, exhausted but unable to relax enough to sleep, Danyael sat by the fireplace, warming his hands as he clasped them around a mug of hot chocolate. He kept watch on Zara as she slept away the effects of the drug.
Narcotic drugs had once been part of his nightly routine, the only way he had been able to get any sleep through the nightmares that tormented him. He had woken alone too many times, confused and bewildered, struggling to separate fiction from reality as the drugs continued to plow through his system.
Likewise, for Zara, the potent combination of the drug and the aftereffects of the empathic backlash would result in severe disorientation once she awoke. It would be difficult for her.
He did not want her to wake alone.
CHAPTER TWELVE
From the comfort of his massive office at the Mutant Assault Group headquarters in Washington, D.C., General Kieran Howard stared at Tim Brown’s fuzzy image on the screen.
“We found Danyael,” Tim Brown, an alpha telepath, reported.
“And?”
Tim smiled without humor. “It went about as well as we’d expected. He spanked them soundly and sent them home, wailing like babies. Unshielded humans don’t stand a chance against an alpha.”
“I want you to push Danyael over the edge in a presumed case of mistaken identity, not necessarily allow him to suspect that we’re actively targeting him.”
“That’s why I’m sending in unshielded humans—mercenaries—who can’t be traced back to us. I’ll keep the pressure on him. It could take a while. Danyael’s resilience is amazing. He should have been exhausted from the stunt he pulled outside Chicago, but even so, he demonstrated a level of control I hadn’t expected and drove the mercenaries back without inflicting any permanent damage, other than to their self-respect.”
Danyael’s rare and perfect combination of mind-blowing power wielded with flawless precision was why the general and the Mutant Assault Group needed Danyael. Nevertheless Danyael had weaknesses, and they could be summed up in a single name: Lucien Edward Winter. “He probably won’t make mistakes if he continues to stay on the defensive, but if we raise the stakes and force him to take the offensive, he very likely will.”
“Sir?”
Kieran Howard smiled. It was an unnatural motion; untrained muscles strained to curve his lips. The hazy outline of a plan took shape. “Where are they now?”
“They’re traveling south. Zara was unconscious when I left them; she’s no more shielded than the mercenaries were, though the halothane she inhaled before she passed out probably dulled her senses enough to take the edge off the full display of Danyael’s empathic powers. He’s taking the precaution of staying off highways and main roads—a fairly smart move, given that he’s desperately in need of some downtime.”
“You stay on Danyael. Escalate the pressure on him and the woman. Don’t give them time to catch their breath. If she’s in danger, he’s more likely to overreact.” He smiled again. Twice in a night. He would have to cut back tomorrow. “I’ll take care of everything else.”
~*~
A late dinner with some of Lucien’s father’s business associates had done little to take the edge off Lucien’s mood. Publicly he had talked, joked, and laughed with the flawless façade in place. Privately, he felt worry build up like a hard ball in the pit of his stomach. It wasn’t just Danyael who could act as if everything were normal when it wasn’t, Lucien reflected wryly as he walked out of the Ritz Carlton after midnight. He gave the valet a generous tip before sliding into the butter-soft leather seat of his silver Jaguar. As he drove past the black SUV lingering in the driveway, he nodded absent-mindedly to his waiting bodyguards. The headlights flashed on the SUV as it pulled out to follow him.
Typically he enjoyed driving on his own, even though being alone was largely an illusion. His parents had standing orders. He was always escorted by a team of bodyguards, unless he was with Danyael. It had taken months, years, actually, to convince his parents that he was safer with Danyael than with anyone else and that Danyael was far more effective than an army of bodyguards. Even then, his parents had not been convinced until Danyael singlehandedly foiled an attempted kidnapping six years earlier, saving Lucien as well as the lives of his bodyguards.
There was little Danyael could not handle when he was well. The only problem was that Danyael had not been well since he had started medical school, and most certainly not since he started his job at the free clinic at Brooklyn. L
ucien hated visiting Danyael in New York. He hated watching helplessly as Danyael sat by the usually cold radiator, too tired to speak, too sick to eat, and too hungry to sleep.
Why would Danyael not take his money? Why did Danyael insist on working to exhaustion at a job that paid barely anything at all?
Because if Danyael took Lucien’s money, Danyael would not be Danyael, Lucien acknowledged with a soft chuckle. In his quiet way, Danyael was stubborn. He wanted to be where his mutant powers were most needed, where he could be perceived as a blessing instead of a curse. He needed to prove that he could live his own life, that he could be normal, or as close to normal as a powerful alpha empath could ever pretend to be. And he had done it. In spite of the odds, Danyael had succeeded. Lucien could not be prouder of his friend.
Lucien eased his foot off the accelerator. McLean’s winding roads weren’t forgiving of mistakes. He was five minutes from home when his bodyguards in the black SUV accelerated and passed him. What was going on? Lucien braked when they did. Annoyance transformed to alarm when another dark SUV pulled into view behind him. He reached for his cell phone, but he had no signal. They were jamming him. Damn it.
The doors of the SUV in front of him opened, and he cursed again. The two men stepping out of the vehicle weren’t his bodyguards. His carelessness was going to cost him dearly. He glanced at the rearview mirror; four men stepped out of the SUV behind him. He triggered the silent alarm in his car, trusting it to transmit the emergency call by satellite to his home.
Even if it worked, he knew that help would not arrive in time. This time, Danyael was not around to save him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Zara woke slowly and languidly, a gradual rising to the surface, the layers of sleep separating and thinning as she drew closer to full awareness. Her eyes fluttered open, but she winced as a defense against the dim orange glow in the room. Soft sounds and scents permeated the room, weighing down the atmosphere with sensation. Flames crackled quietly. The familiar scent of aromatic cedar wafted past her. She turned her head and saw Danyael seated in a chair by the fireplace, staring thoughtfully into the dancing flames.