Night Unbound

by Dianne Duvall

  She frowned. “How would Étienne even know what buried memories look like? Neither of us has ever seen them.”

  He studied her. “You’ve never read the mind of a mortal after David or I buried his memories?”

  “No. Neither has Étienne.”

  “Yes, he has. He was there when I buried the memories of the military veteran Chris recruited from Donald’s army.” He looked thoughtful. “That explains why Étienne said you claimed you had seen nothing out of the ordinary when you scanned the vamps’ minds.”

  “I didn’t claim it. I—” She stiffened. “Wait. When you brought me here tonight and told me to tell you I didn’t do it, you weren’t actually . . .” Hurt stabbed her in the chest. “Did you think I had done it? That I had altered the vampires’ memories? That I was in league with them?”

  Arms at his sides, Seth spread his fingers in a What else could I think? gesture. “Coupled with your long absences and odd behavior of late—the discomfort that bordered on fear you exhibited whenever you were in my presence or David’s—I didn’t know what to think,” he said.

  “So, this wasn’t about Zach at all,” she pressed, needing to clarify it in her own mind before she went ballistic. “You thought I had taken up the sword Bastien dropped and was secretly raising a vampire army?” Her voice rose with each word.

  Seth’s face tightened. “I didn’t know what else to think.”

  “You didn’t think at all!” she yelled, then gasped at her temerity.

  “I know!” he shouted and gave her his back. “I know I didn’t! I don’t know what the fuck is happening!” Dragging a hand through his long wet hair, he paced away from her. “I can’t think straight anymore!” he growled with such frustration, such anguish.

  Lisette stared.

  He stopped and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, seeming infinitely weary all of a sudden. “I can’t think straight anymore,” he repeated softly.

  And all of the anger building inside her—or most of it anyway—fled.

  Lisette approached him with care. “Seth . . . how long has it been since you slept?”

  “I don’t know.” He lowered his hands. “Weeks, I think.”

  “Because you’re worried about Ami?”

  The drizzle stopped, but heavy clouds lingered.

  “Because I’m worried about Ami. Because keeping her from losing this babe has been a constant struggle. Because her babe is dreaming of torture.”

  “What?” Horror filled Lisette. “Is the babe dreaming of her mother’s torture?” Lisette had been pulled into Ami’s dreams often enough to know that the torture Ami had endured sometimes returned to haunt her in nightmares.

  Seth shook his head. “That’s the puzzle. Ami isn’t the one being tortured in the dreams.”

  “The baby is dreaming of her own torture?” That was even worse! Was Ami’s daughter precognitive? Was she seeing her future? A future in which she would be tortured like her mother?

  “No. The one being tortured is a man. And, before you ask if it’s Marcus, I don’t know. I can’t see his face because the dreams seem to be from his perspective.”

  “No wonder you aren’t sleeping.”

  A sad laugh escaped him. “Those are just the highlights. I’ve also seen the future.” He studied the puddles forming around his big boots. “More specifically, I saw Ami and Marcus in the future. Two years hence.”

  “Then you know Ami will survive childbirth.” That was a good thing, right?

  “Yes. Ami will,” he whispered. He said nothing of the babe.

  Dread soured Lisette’s stomach. “Was the baby with them? In your vision of the future?”

  His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “No.”

  She could think of no response.

  “I know it doesn’t necessarily mean . . .”

  “Of course not.” Lisette tried to sound confident, but failed miserably.

  “Now this new vampire army is rising. And . . .” He turned to face her. “I thought Zach was out of the picture, and it tore me up inside to think you had betrayed me.”

  “I would never betray you,” she responded automatically, then bit her lip.

  He raised one eyebrow.

  “Okay, other than boinking your enemy, I would never betray you,” she qualified.

  He huffed a laugh. “Boinking?”

  “I believe that’s one of Sheldon’s terms.”

  He nodded, amusement gradually receding and leaving his handsome face pensive as he searched the horizon. “I can’t seem to keep you all safe anymore,” he murmured. “It weighs heavily on me.”

  “You keep us safe.”

  “Lisette, I’ve left you more vulnerable than anyone. Zach is toying with you. I don’t know why, and I don’t know what his endgame is or even how he escaped the Others, but . . . surely you realize now that, having betrayed us once before, he must be the one who has raised this new army. He’s burying their memories so we can’t identify him.”

  “It can’t be Zach, Seth,” she said, determined to convince him. “This army didn’t spring up overnight. Someone has been raising and training it for months. If you read my memories, then you know that Zach was imprisoned and tortured by the Others and didn’t escape until the night before Ethan and I encountered the two new vamps.”

  “I also know,” he responded, “that Zach communicated with you through dreams while he was imprisoned. He could have done the same with the vampires.”

  “Communicated? Possibly. Turned them and trained them? I don’t think so.”

  “Zach is more powerful than you know.”

  “Is he that powerful?”

  His brow furrowed. “If not Zach, then who?”

  There must be some other explanation. “Could you have . . .” She trailed off. “Could you have missed another gifted one’s transformation? Like you did with Bastien?”

  He didn’t flinch. Nor did hurt cross his features as she had feared it might. “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I didn’t want to believe you had betrayed me. And I thought Zach well in hand. So I assumed it must be another Bastien. David gave Chris the names of every gifted one ever born, and Chris put his research team on it. Every gifted one has been accounted for. Bastien was the only one I missed.”

  “If you missed the transformation of a gifted one, could you not have also missed the birth of one? Could there be one not on your list? One who has transformed?”

  “No. Of that, I’m certain.”

  Then there seemed to be no explanation.

  “Exactly,” he said.

  “It wasn’t Zach.”

  “You would have me believe Immortal Guardians are rising up against their own kind?”

  “Immortal Guardians plural?”

  “A teleporter would have to carry the betrayer in and out of the area for the telepath’s movements to remain undetected.”

  “Honestly, the idea that at least two of our own may have betrayed us is as unpalatable to me as your belief that Zach has,” she said.

  “Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate,” he uttered.

  “Occam’s razor?”

  He nodded. “The simplest explanation is usually the better one. Zach can teleport, bury memories, and has been closely surveilling Immortal Guardians for some time now.”

  “The same could be said of the Others.”

  He stared at her for a moment. “What has Zach told you about the Others?”

  “That they’re hunting him, intent on recapturing him and punishing him.”

  “Because he interfered in mortal affairs?”

  “Is that why he was being punished?” she asked. Zach had never told her.

  Seth swore, as if he had said too much and regretted it. “You didn’t know?”

  She shook her head.

  He sighed and seemed to weigh his speech carefully. “The Others don’t interact with humans, Lisette. They observe humans. They sure as hell wouldn’t transfo
rm humans and raise an army of insane vampires.”

  “Well, I don’t know who is responsible, Seth, but Zach didn’t do it.” Reaching out, she touched his arm. “Couldn’t you just talk to him? And by talk I mean talk, not”—she motioned to the waterlogged landscape and overcast sky—“confront.”

  He glanced around with a grimace. “This was not well done of me. I apologize for frightening you.”

  Now that she no longer feared he would punish her, Lisette noticed the lines of fatigue that creased his face. Seth looked exhausted. She hadn’t even known an immortal could look exhausted and wondered just how much sleep one would have to miss for such to occur.

  She squeezed his arm. “You’re forgiven. Just, please, don’t ask me to stop seeing Zach.”

  “Lisette—”

  “He makes me happy, Seth.”

  Lifting a hand, Seth gently stroked her face with the backs of his fingers. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you.” He lowered his hand with a sigh. “Why couldn’t it have been Ethan?”

  She stopped breathing. “Why would you say that?”

  He arched a brow.

  “You knew about Ethan?”

  “Of course I knew about Ethan.”

  “You never said anything.”

  He shrugged. “Neither did David.”

  “David knew?”

  “Of course.”

  “Does anyone else know?”

  “Do you really want me to answer that?”

  “No.”

  “Well, there you have it.”

  “Back to the subject at hand,” she said, eager to abandon that of her affair with Ethan. “Would you please talk to Zach? Maybe he can help you figure out who is working against us.”

  His look told her he knew who was working against them: Zach.

  “Have you no faith in my judgment?” she pressed.

  “Love can make us blind to the obvious. Love can make us trust where we should not.”

  “Did you not see, in my memories, how he treats me? How loving he is? Zach wouldn’t endanger me by waging war with you. He wouldn’t endanger Ami either. He considers Ami his friend. And . . . I don’t think Zach has had many friends during his long existence.”

  Seth mumbled something that sounded like with good reason.

  “If Zach truly were your enemy, Seth, would he not have exposed all your secrets? Would he not have told me what you are? What you both are?”

  His gaze sharpened. “I’m immortal.”

  “I think we both know you’re more than that, that you’re different from the rest of us. I know Zach is like you. Yet, when I asked him what he is, if you have wings like his, what the source of gifted ones’ and immortals’ advanced DNA is, he wouldn’t tell me. He didn’t want to expose your secrets to me and to anyone who could read my mind. And, when he told me you were responsible for his capture and torture, he even offered an excuse. He said sometimes the truth is too harsh to bear even for someone your age. That it’s easier, sometimes, to believe a lie.”

  Minutes passed. Did Seth search her memories again?

  “I’ll consider it,” he said at last. Disturbed’s “Down With The Sickness” rose on the night. Seth took out his cell phone and gave it a glance. “Duty calls. I must go.”

  “You aren’t going to insist I stop seeing Zach?”

  “Would it do any good?”

  “No.”

  “I assumed it wouldn’t.”

  Lisette hugged him again. “Get some sleep, Seth.”

  He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Be careful.”

  “I will.”

  When he released her, they were atop Davis Library once more.

  Seth vanished without another word.

  Fury thrummed through Zach.

  Beside him, Lisette sighed as they strolled through Duke’s quiet campus. “It’s been days, Zach. I wish you would just let it go.”

  If Lisette hadn’t all but begged him not to, Zach would have confronted Seth and done his damnedest to beat the shit out of him after she had mentioned the little conversation the two of them had shared. “He accused you of betraying your brethren.”

  “Well, you have to admit I have been behaving suspiciously of late.”

  “He frightened you.” That fueled his temper more than anything—that she had experienced even one millisecond of fear because of that bastard.

  “I hate to break it to you, but you aren’t exactly making me feel all warm and fuzzy yourself right now.”

  He looked down at her in surprise. “You fear me?”

  “No. Not really. But your eyes are glowing and you look like you really want to kill something.”

  “Not something. Someone.”

  “Well, let’s put those violent urges to good use. About a dozen vampires are headed our way.”

  Shocked, Zach realized he had been so distracted he hadn’t even smelled them coming.

  A smile slid across Lisette’s pretty face. “Oh, you’re going to love this. They’re all the new breed.”

  He followed her gaze to the figures making their way through the shadows. Indeed they were. Strange. “I don’t suppose I could talk you into letting me handle this on my own,” he said, palming two daggers.

  She drew her shoto swords. “Don’t start treating me with kid gloves, Zach. My brothers do it, and it drives me crazy.”

  As soon as the vampires spotted them and the weapons they held, the vamps attacked. There was no talking. No boasting. No bullshit. Just what appeared to be a single-minded determination to capture Lisette. Zach, too, once they realized that—despite his lack of hunting garb—he bore the speed and strength of an immortal.

  Planting his back to Lisette’s, Zach started carving the vamps up with the weapons she had insisted he carry. Oh yeah. This was just what he’d needed.

  Cries of pain sounded behind him. All male.

  Zach smiled. He loved that Lisette could fight and found her strength a fascinating complement to her vulnerability.

  Crimson liquid slapped him in the face as he opened arteries. These vamps bordered on expert warriors. They fought as a team with order and a cold calculation that the vampires he had seen Seth and his immortals fight in the past had lacked. Even those led by Bastien had not achieved this expertise.

  Nevertheless, three vampires soon lay on the ground at their feet, shriveling up as the others stumbled over them.

  Lisette’s back left his.

  Lisette? he asked.

  I’m fine, she assured him. I just needed a little more swinging room so I could—

  Her presence in his thoughts abruptly vanished.

  Spinning around, Zach saw her shoto swords fall from limp fingers.

  Eyes closed, knees buckling, she crumpled where she stood.

  “Lisette!”

  Hurling his daggers into the throats of the vampires in front of her, he lunged forward and caught her before she could hit the ground. “Lisette?” He gave her a little shake.

  No response.

  Lisette? he thought desperately and delved into her mind.

  Dead silence.

  Fear struck with frightening force as he sank to his knees and waited for her to dissolve in his arms, certain she was dead.

  But she didn’t. Beneath Zach’s ragged, panicked breaths, he detected the faintest beat of a heart.

  Not dead. Not yet.

  Like sharks scenting blood, the vampires moved in for the kill. Or the capture.

  Rage so raw it seemed to scald his skin rose within Zach. Clutching Lisette to him with one arm, he thrust the other toward the vampires in front of him. All five fell to the ground and began to rapidly shrivel up.

  He turned to the last two, who regarded him with wide, terror-filled eyes.

  When they started to flee, he froze them in place.

  The tendons in their necks stood out as they stiffened and strained to break his telekinetic hold.

  “I don’t know what you’ve done to her,” Zach spoke a
s he rose, Lisette cradled in his arms, “but you’re going to pay for it in blood.”

  In a rare moment of tranquility, Immortal Guardians and their Seconds kicked back and relaxed in David’s large, cozy home. There used to be far more of these moments. The insurgencies and enemies who had risen up against the Immortal Guardians in recent years, however, had stolen them away.

  Most of the usual frequent visitors were present, lounging on the sofas and in the chairs that filled the huge room. Roland and Sarah occupied a love seat near Marcus and Ami, who shared a sofa with Seth. David relaxed in a wingback chair across from them, feet propped on the coffee table, the latest Stephen King novel in his lap. Bastien and Melanie chatted with Richart and Jenna near the fireplace. Seconds Sheldon, Tanner, and Nichole laughed on another sofa as they viewed something on Sheldon’s laptop. Tracy surreptitiously peered over their shoulders and smiled. Darnell joined the trio and laughed.

  Ethan was almost curious enough to get up and go see for himself, but really didn’t want to leave the comfy leather chair in which he slouched.

  Étienne called something to his brother, who flipped him the bird. Beside Étienne, Krysta and her brother Sean laughed. Jenna did, too, as she leaned into Richart’s side. Edward smiled as he studied the chessboard on the table between him and his Second, Desmond, over in the corner.

  Yuri and Stanislav carried on a conversation in Russian while they raided the refrigerator, out of sight. Their Seconds, Dmitry and Alexei, headed in there to comment and filch some food.

  It had been a good night, Ethan thought. An uneventful night.

  He used to think uneventful nights boring. Now he preferred them. No one suffered any injuries on uneventful nights. Tense faces relaxed with smiles on uneventful nights. Laughter flowed freely on uneventful nights.

  As it did now.

  The immortals had all gotten their hunting over with early, each encountering only a slacker vamp here or there. Tracy and Tanner had prepared a delicious meal for the group. Everyone had enjoyed it so much that not a crumb had remained.

  For once . . . for this moment . . . all was right in the world. All were safe. All were happy.