Night Unbound

by Dianne Duvall

  The body that had formerly housed it collapsed.

  Lisette stared down at the vamps, heart racing, body aching from the beating she had just taken, cuts stinging. What the hell?

  “Okay,” Ethan said, breath coming in gasps. “I’m not going to lie to you. That is the freakiest shit I’ve ever seen.” He looked from one vampire to the other, his blood-splattered face stunned. “And I’ve seen some freaky shit.”

  She nodded. As had she.

  “What the hell just happened?”

  “I don’t know,” she murmured.

  Their hearts had just . . . burst from their chests.

  “Have you ever seen anything like that before?” he asked.

  She started to shake her head, then froze.

  “What?” Ethan prodded. “What is it?”

  Zach. Zach had once instantly and simultaneously killed over a dozen mortal men, who would have captured her otherwise, by giving them ruptured brain aneurisms.

  She looked around.

  “Lisette?” Ethan raised his weapons. He probably thought she had heard something or that more vampires lurked nearby.

  But Lisette sought someone far more dangerous . . .

  She sucked in a sharp breath as her gaze landed upon him.

  There. Leaning against the corner of the building, a shadow among shadows, the darkness broken only by the bright white bandages that covered his many wounds.

  “Zach,” she breathed.

  Ethan’s head snapped around. His brows drew down. “What?”

  Sheathing her weapons, she strode forward.

  Ethan’s boots pounded the pavement behind her, then crunched in the dry grass as she left the path.

  Zach didn’t straighten as they approached. Lisette wondered if he even could. He looked no better than he had when she had left him earlier tonight.

  Tilting her head back, she met his gaze. “What are you doing here?” she asked softly.

  Perspiration dotted his brow. “I sensed you were in danger.”

  “I’m fine. I fight vampires every night.”

  He lifted a hand and brushed his index finger down her bruised cheek, sending tingles of excitement dancing through her. “He hurt you.”

  Beside her, Ethan raised an eyebrow. “And so you telekinetically ripped his heart from his chest?”

  Lowering his hand, Zach looked at Ethan. “Yes.”

  Ethan sighed. “Okay. I’m liking you a little more now,” he grudgingly admitted.

  Zach’s expression didn’t change as he studied the younger immortal.

  “You should be home, Zach,” Lisette admonished gently. “You haven’t healed. You should be resting.”

  He abandoned his scrutiny of Ethan and fastened those penetrating brown eyes on her. “Your home?” A golden spark entered his gaze. “Your bed? That’s where I was when I awoke, wasn’t it? Your bed? It carried your scent.”

  For some reason, heat rushed to her face. “Yes.”

  “How did I get there?”

  “You don’t remember?” She avoided looking at Ethan, who drank in every word, every nuance in tone.

  “No.”

  “I’ll tell you later,” she promised, unwilling to say too much in front of their avid audience. She glanced over Zach’s shoulder at the wings Bastien had splinted and bandaged so carefully. “How did you get here? You couldn’t have flown.”

  “I teleported.”

  The fact that he had retained the strength to do so despite his severe injuries indicated just how powerful this immortal was.

  “Then teleport back. To my home, I mean. Go back to bed. Get some rest. I’ll be there shortly.”

  “It isn’t safe.”

  “Yes, it is,” she assured him. “My Second is staying at David’s home and won’t return until I call her. No one else will be there.”

  “I meant it isn’t safe for you. If the Others come looking for me—”

  “What others?” Ethan interrupted.

  Irritation flickered across Zach’s handsome face.

  Lisette hastened to speak up. “Do you mean the ones who did this to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wouldn’t they have already found you if they could?”

  “I’ve only been gone a couple of hours. Given a little more time, they should—”

  “Zach,” she corrected gently, “you’ve been at my place for almost twenty-four hours.”

  He stared at her. “What?”

  “It’s been twenty-four hours, give or take a couple. If they’re as powerful as you are, wouldn’t they have found you by now?”

  His brows drew down in a frown. “Perhaps it’s become second nature,” he murmured.

  “What has?”

  “Eluding them.”

  Ethan leaned forward. “You still haven’t told us who them is.”

  “Nor do I intend to,” Zach responded darkly.

  He didn’t intend to tell Ethan? Or he didn’t intend to tell either of them?

  Lisette decided she would react to that later. “As I said, my place is safe. Ethan, Bastien, and I are the only ones who know you’re there. Why don’t you go get some rest and give your wings time to finish healing? I’ll—”

  “Bastien—the immortal black sheep—knows?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll have to locate him and erase his memory of me first.”

  “Erase?” Ethan spoke up, his voice reflecting the alarm she felt herself. “Or bury?”

  “Erase.” Something odd flickered in Zach’s eyes. “Buried memories tend to resurface when you least expect them to.”

  Merde. Seth had said he and David usually opted to bury memories instead of erasing them because erasing them could cause brain damage.

  “Please, don’t do that,” she said. “Bastien is the one who bandaged your wounds and set your broken bones. I didn’t know how to do it myself and asked him to tend your wounds as a favor to me.”

  Zach looked to Ethan. “What about you? What did you do?”

  “Ate a sandwich and cracked some jokes.”

  “No, he didn’t,” Lisette hastened to deny.

  Ethan raised an eyebrow.

  “Okay, he did have a sandwich, but not until most of your wounds had been tended and he’d helped Bastien with your wings.”

  “And cracked some jokes,” Ethan repeated.

  Lisette resisted the urge to strangle him. Was he trying to antagonize Zach?

  “Seth will read all this in their thoughts and turn his wrath upon you for helping me. I can’t allow that.”

  “The chances of that are slimmer than you think. Seth rarely intrudes upon Bastien’s thoughts anymore because Melanie is keeping him in line. And Ethan is very hard to read.”

  Zach stared at Ethan.

  “What?” Ethan asked. A few seconds later, his face contorted with pain. “Ahh!” Dropping his weapons, he clutched his head and staggered to one side.

  Lisette gripped his shoulder to steady him. “Ethan?”

  A trickle of blood emerged from one nostril and trailed down over his lips and chin.

  “Zach, stop!” she cried as she realized he was trying to scan Ethan’s thoughts.

  A sigh escaped Ethan. His face smoothed out.

  “You’re right,” Zach said. “He is hard to read.”

  “Asshole,” Ethan growled as he wiped the blood from under his nose. “What the hell was that? What did you just do to me?”

  “Tried to access your memories.”

  “My memories are none of your fucking business.”

  And would reveal much about Ethan’s relationship with Lisette.

  Stomach twisting in knots, she forced herself to meet Zach’s gaze. “Were you able to see anything?”

  “No,” he conceded after a long silence. “I thought you might object to the pain it would cause him if I dug deeper.”

  “Asshole,” Ethan repeated.

  Lisette didn’t protest. It had been kind of an asshole-ish thing to do. �
�So now you see why Seth and David don’t read his mind?”

  “They wouldn’t have to if either man volunteered the information.”

  “Bastien won’t tell anyone, Zach. Neither will Ethan. Right?”

  Ethan scowled. “I hadn’t intended to. But if he pulls that shit again, all bets are off.”

  At last, Zach nodded. A muscle in his jaw jumped as he straightened and offered her his hand. “Come with me.”

  “I can’t.” She motioned to the disintegrating forms behind them. “I need to clean up our mess. I’ll be home soon, though.”

  Zach gave her a curt nod, then vanished.

  Drawing a deep breath, Lisette reluctantly faced Ethan. “Don’t say it.”

  “Don’t say what?”

  “What you’re thinking.”

  “That you’re in over your head? Way over your head? That you’re out of your fucking mind?”

  “Ethan—”

  “He was willing to give me brain damage to erase my memories, Lisette! Bastien, too. And he exhibited no regret over causing me pain when he tried to read my mind. Hell, the only reason he didn’t damage my brain then, trying to dig deeper, was because he thought it would upset you!”

  She couldn’t deny it, and didn’t like it any more than Ethan did. She hoped like hell Zach had done it out of a genuine desire to protect her.

  “Do you even know who this guy is?” Ethan demanded.

  “Yes. Sort of.”

  His look screamed that she had lost it. “Lisette, Zach”—the name dripped with scorn—“is bad news. Zach is Bastien times a thousand. He’s Bastien with David’s power. And you’re risking Seth’s wrath and, for all we know, severe punishment—if not execution—to help him. Why, for fuck’s sake? Because he’s easy on the eyes?”

  “Because he saved my life!” she blurted, then cursed herself silently. Damned if she wasn’t about to betray Seth again.

  Ethan stilled. “What?”

  She paced away from him.

  “Lisette?”

  “I’m not supposed to talk about it. Seth told me not to tell anyone.”

  “And Seth will never know.”

  “He will if he reads my mind.”

  He snorted. “What do you think will piss him off more if he reads your mind—that you told me whatever it is you’re hiding, or that you welcomed Zach into your home and gave him safe harbor?”

  “I know. You’re right.” The marks against her were really adding up. She turned to Ethan with a sigh. “Remember the night I planted the tracking device on that mercenary?”

  “Yeah. That was kick-ass.”

  “Well, I didn’t do it. Zach did.”

  He tilted his head to one side. “What do you mean? What happened?”

  “I had just defeated some vampires—five or so, I forget how many—when a tranquilizer dart struck me. I barely had time to give myself the antidote before a couple dozen mercenaries closed in.”

  “Shit!”

  “I held my own against them at first.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you just run?”

  “You know how badly we needed to tag one with a tracking device. We had no idea who we were fighting, who our enemy was. And every night we spent guessing, the threat grew.”

  He shook his head. “You could’ve been captured.”

  “I would have been captured,” she corrected him, “had Zach not intervened.”

  “What was he doing there?”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t have a chance to ask. I did a good job of picking the mercenaries off, but took a lot of bullets in the process. Blood loss slowed me down and weakened me. I had nearly killed them all when the second wave moved in.”

  Ethan swore. Another trickle of blood emerged from his nose.

  Reaching into her back pocket, Lisette withdrew a handkerchief and approached him. “There was no way I could’ve stood against those numbers. And I was too weak to outrun them.” She took his stubbled chin in one hand and drew the soft white material across it, then dabbed beneath his nose. “I would have been captured, Ethan. I was bracing myself for it, intending to kill as many as I could before they took me, when Zach appeared and killed them all with a thought.”

  “He’s that powerful?”

  She nodded. “You saw what he did with the vampires’ hearts.”

  “Did he do that with the mercenaries?” A spark of malicious pleasure glinted in Ethan’s eyes at the notion. The mercenaries had been vicious men who had committed numerous atrocities, unconcerned by the innocents they killed in their quest to obtain the virus.

  “No. He gave them all ruptured aneurisms. All but one of them.”

  Ethan whistled beneath the handkerchief.

  “That one he tagged for me. Then he summoned Seth. He was gone when Seth arrived, but Seth saw all that had happened in my thoughts. He told me not to mention Zach to anyone and later told me to stay away from him, but didn’t say why or even how he knew Zach.”

  Brushing the handkerchief aside, Ethan drew her close and locked his strong arms around her in a tight hug. “I can’t believe I came so close to losing you and didn’t even know it.”

  She hugged him back.

  “Don’t ever do anything that stupid again,” he admonished, burying his face in her hair.

  They held each other for a long moment. “Do you understand now?” she asked.

  Withdrawing with some reluctance, he stared down at her. “Why you’re helping Zach?”

  She nodded.

  “Yes, damn it,” he grumbled, the battle he waged within obvious. “At least you aren’t doing it because you think he has a nice ass.”

  Lisette laughed and headed over to the area in which the vampires had fallen. Only their clothing, weapons, dental fillings, and watches remained. “I’m sorry he hurt you.”

  Ethan grunted. “At the time, I thought he was just being a dick. But, after what you just told me, I think he might have actually been watching out for you, making sure Seth wouldn’t find out about all of this.” He picked up a nice-looking dagger, wiped it on one of the empty shirts, and tucked it into an inner pocket of his coat. “Why do you suppose Seth dislikes him so much?”

  “I don’t know.” Lisette claimed the other dagger. “Zach mentioned once that they had chosen different paths a long time ago and disagreed over which was the right one.”

  “What, like path of life kind of paths?”

  “I don’t know.” She picked up a bloody pair of pants and started checking the pockets. “How’s your head?”

  “Better. Is my nose still bleeding?”

  She looked up. “No.”

  “What are you doing anyway?”

  “Trying to find some clue as to who the muscled vamps were. We’re going to have to call Chris about this.”

  “I thought you didn’t want anyone to know.” He picked up another pair of pants and searched the pockets.

  “Not about Zach. We’ll have to leave that part out of it.”

  “No humans saw us. The mess is quick and easy to clean up. Toss the clothes in a Dumpster. Confiscate the weapons. Let the sprinkler system wash away the blood. No big deal. Why call at all?”

  “Because Richart and I encountered a vampire like the big ones a couple of weeks ago.”

  “You did? He could fight like these two?”

  “Yes. I thought it a fluke at the time. You know how it goes. Not every vampire led a sedentary life before he was turned. Some actually trained in martial arts or boxed. But those are rare. To encounter three who matched us in skill in such a short time . . .”

  “Is no accident,” he finished for her, brow furrowing. “Do you think another Bastien is raising a vampire army?”

  Much to her surprise, Lisette found she disliked the comparison.

  Sure Bastien had once been a villain. But he had redeemed himself since Seth had pretty much forced him into the fold. He had fought by their sides countless times. He had always been kind to Ami. Hell, he had even tested on himse
lf the antidote Melanie had concocted to counteract the mercenaries’ sedative to ensure no other immortal would be harmed if it went really wrong. Without that antidote, the Immortal Guardians would have been screwed many times over.

  And he had done Lisette a huge favor last night.

  “Not another Bastien,” she corrected. “Bastien’s on our side now.”

  Ethan sent her a crooked smile. “Won you over last night, did he?”

  “He was already on his way to doing that before. I was just being stubborn because I liked Ewen.” The Scottish immortal Bastien had slain so long ago had been a friend to all.

  “You said yourself that Ewen attacked him.”

  She nodded. “I saw as much in Bastien’s thoughts. But I also saw Ewen die.”

  “That sucks.”

  She collected the lanky vampires’ flashy bowie knives. “Anyway, we may have another Dennis on our hands.”

  “Great. Just what we need: another self-proclaimed vampire king, raising and training an army of vampires and pitting them against us in a crazy-ass quest for world domination.”

  “This one isn’t crazy yet. He can’t be if he’s creating vampires so well-trained and disciplined.”

  “And things were just returning to normal.” Ethan dropped the pants and picked up a shirt. “I’m not finding anything. Are you?”

  “No. Let’s call Chris and see if his cleanup crew can discover something useful.”

  Chapter Four

  Bastien sprawled in his favorite chair in Melanie’s office at the network, indulging in his favorite pastime: watching his wife mutter to herself as she poured over test results and whatever other medical mumbo jumbo consumed her tonight. When she bent over her desk to search for a missing file, he tilted his head to one side and admired the trim thighs encased in formfitting faded blue jeans, followed them up to her tempting, shapely ass.

  She straightened, file in hand, and began to flip through it. Her mind on the mysterious pages within, she absently reached up and tucked her hair behind one ear, exposing her profile.

  Gorgeous.

  His gaze slid along her jaw, down her slender throat, and caressed the full breasts below.

  “Your eyes are glowing,” she murmured, a smile in her voice.