“She did. I’m sure of it.”
She looked up at him. “How?”
He smiled. “I told you I was born with special gifts.”
“Yes.”
“Those gifts were passed down to me from my mother, who had similar gifts. My father had none. When my mother died, he remarried and my stepmother bore him Edward and three girls, none of whom were gifted ones.” His smile softened. “My son was born a healer, my daughter with telekinetic abilities. Edward could not possibly have fathered them.”
Clearly he had loved his children. Sarah could almost picture them. A smaller version of Roland, marching around in imitation of the proud papa his pretty sister had wrapped around her tiny finger. She smiled. “What were their names?”
“Thomas and Emma.”
“What happened after …? Did you stay?”
“Yes. I didn’t know where else to go, so I buried Beatrice and Edward in secret and let everyone believe they had run away together. It was very difficult. I was still adjusting to the changes and feared what others would think. I explained my photosensitivity away as an exotic illness I had contracted when my captors shipped me off to the Holy Land.”
She pursed her lips. “Did it work?”
“Some accepted it. Others did not and feared me. Superstition had a stranglehold on many back then.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“I frightened myself at times. After what happened with Beatrice, I worried I might inadvertently hurt the children and was almost afraid to be around them. Then Seth arrived and helped me understand everything better.”
“How did he know who and what you were? That you needed help?”
“I don’t know. He’s so much older than I am, his powers unimaginable. He always seems to sense when gifted ones have been transformed and makes his way to them to help them, teach them, and eventually train them in ways to protect themselves and hunt vampires. If he can’t do it himself, he assigns another immortal to train them.”
She frowned. “Why didn’t he come to you when the vampire first took you? Why didn’t he free you? You were down there for months.”
“Gifted ones are harder for him to pin down than immortals and I didn’t transform completely until right before I escaped. He had sensed I was turning and begun to search for me. But, you have to understand, there were fewer of us back then. So if he passed through an area with a vampire problem, he had to pause long enough to take care of it before moving on.”
“Oh.” Wrapping her arms around him, she hugged him tighter. “I just hate the idea of you suffering the way you did.”
Roland pressed a kiss to the soft hair atop her head and rolled them to their sides. He felt … strange. Lighter, perhaps. As if sharing with Sarah the pain and anger that had pressed down upon him for so long had finally liberated him from it.
Was this contentment he felt, seeping into his very marrow as he twined his legs through hers? It had been so long, he barely recognized it.
With a wondrous sense of peace, he realized he could finally think of his children without their memory being overshadowed by Edward and Beatrice’s betrayal.
“I presided over my home for a decade and was able to watch my children grow to adulthood before people began to notice I wasn’t aging.” He smiled. “Emma became a beautiful young woman, sweet-natured and generous. Thomas was nearly as tall as I am and so handsome the girls all fought over him. Both of them were incredibly bright. I could not have been more proud. Thomas was an immensely powerful knight and earned his spurs a year younger than I did,” he boasted. “He had such honor within him, was so like my father.”
“No,” Sarah correctly softly. “He was so like you.”
Tipping his chin down, he found her smiling up at him.
She drew a finger along his jawline in a light caress that made his skin tingle. “Handsome, smart, and honorable? It sounds like he was a carbon copy of his father.”
Roland’s throat thickened and he was shocked to feel moisture well in his eyes. Abashed, he buried his face in her hair.
“Did you tell them what you were?” she asked, stroking his back.
He had to swallow hard before he could speak. “No, I stayed as long as I dared. Long enough to see Emma happily married to an earl who adored her and to ensure Thomas was ready to assume the title. Then I said my goodbyes, left, and had one of my immortal colleagues send them word of my supposed death.”
Sarah pressed a kiss to his neck. “Did you ever see them again?”
“From a distance. I watched over both of them until they died, then watched over my grandchildren until they died, and their children as well.”
“Immortality must be difficult at times.”
“It can be. I’m not the only Guardian who has isolated himself from others. Forming attachments with humans and having to watch them grow old and die generation after generation can become unbearable as the centuries accumulate.”
It would be no different with Sarah. When she was stooped with age, her hair a snowy-white complement to the wrinkles mapping her sweet face, he would be the same as he was now, unchanged by the decades that had passed.
The thought was an unwelcome one he hastily pushed aside, unwilling to let reality intrude just yet and rob him of the happiness she inspired.
“I hate to ask this,” she said, “but you said two women tried to kill you. Who was the other?”
“My betrothed.”
She muttered something into his chest he couldn’t make out. “Was her name Mary?”
He frowned. “Yes. What do you know of her?”
“Only what you and Marcus said about her while he was trying to talk you out of healing me.”
Oh. “Well, it’s a much shorter story. I met her in the seventeenth century, lost my head over her, asked her to marry me, and when she said yes, told her what I was. She freaked out, but I managed to calm her down, or so I thought. She said she needed time to think. I gave it to her. The next afternoon, she stormed into my home with half a dozen humans bearing knives, stakes, and torches and tried to kill me.”
Even that memory lacked its usual bite with Sarah’s soft form snuggled up against him. Marcus was right. Mary had been a twit. She had seemed to accept him by the time he had finished talking. So she had probably told her sister, then been swayed by her reaction.
Sarah’s small hands came up to cup his cheeks, drawing his gaze to hers. “Roland?”
“Yes?” She was so adorable, with her mussed hair and kiss-swollen lips.
“I promise I will never betray you or try to kill you.”
Another piece of the shield he had erected around his heart fell away.
He touched his lips to hers. “I believe you.” It was true. He did. “And I have to tell you … that scares the hell out of me.”
“I know. If I were in your shoes, it would scare me, too. But I would never intentionally harm you.” The somber promise in her eyes, more brown than green today, morphed into amusement. “Notice I said ‘intentionally.’ Occasionally, I have what I call clumsy days when I just can’t seem to do anything right, which tends to result in bruises, cuts, or burns. So if you hang around me long enough, you might unwittingly become a victim and acquire a few yourself.”
If you hang around me long enough.
Was it a backhanded invitation?
Could she be implying she wouldn’t be averse to spending more time with him when this was all over? That she might be interested in pursuing a relationship with him?
Is that what he wanted?
Hell, yes!
Rolling her to her back, Roland took her lips in a deep, devouring kiss and whispered, “I’ll risk it.”
The bleating of his cell phone woke Roland from a sound sleep. Cursing himself for leaving it upstairs, he carefully extricated himself from Sarah’s tangled limbs—damn, he didn’t want to leave her—then raced up to the living room in a blur of motion.
“What?” he growled, answering on the sec
ond ring.
“You must be Roland,” a cheerful male voice said.
“Who the hell is this and how did you get my number?”
The man laughed. “Oh yeah. You’re definitely Roland. This is Chris Reordon. I’m this region’s Cleaner. Seth gave me your number.”
Reordon. Roland had heard of him. He was rumored to be one of the best, though Roland had never felt the need to call upon his services.
Concealing the existence of both the vampiric virus and the gifted ones from the rest of society was a full-time job that required constant vigilance and connections in various law enforcement and government agencies that immortals had difficulty cultivating due to their aversion to sunlight and the time they spent hunting vampires and reducing the threat they posed. The computer age and advent of video cameras, cell phones that took pictures, and the Internet made it all even more complicated.
Fortunately, Seth had long ago begun ferreting out trustworthy humans to build a support network that helped immortals with everything from investing their capital and multiplying their wealth to supplying weapons, providing new identities every few decades, studying the disease that transformed them, researching a cure, performing daytime surveillance when necessary, and running interference with humans who became too curious for their own good. The network had been in place and steadily expanding for centuries now.
Many of the humans employed by the network were descendants of previous members who had passed the torch to their sons or daughters. Absolute loyalty was imperative. Rules and guidelines were strictly implemented. Those who strayed and broke faith with the network—and there had been very few—were swiftly tracked down and punished by the network’s human enforcers with no immortal interference.
The role of Cleaners was fairly self-explanatory: They cleaned up the messes immortals sometimes left behind.
“How did it go?” Roland asked, tamping down his irritation at being ranked on by a human he didn’t even know.
“Just fine,” the man responded in more businesslike tones.
“I’m sorry to say your house is a total loss. We managed to get there before anyone else did. Society’s apathy really works in our favor sometimes. Most of the people who saw the smoke must have assumed someone else had already called 911 and not bothered to call it themselves, because we had plenty of time to stage it before the fire department arrived.”
“Stage it as what?”
“A drug deal gone bad at a meth lab. You did a hell of a job covering your tracks, by the way. Even I couldn’t find anything to link you to that house. Or the car in the garage, which was also destroyed.”
“And the Geo Prism?”
“We got it out of there before the authorities arrived.”
“Who exactly did the authorities think you were?”
“DEA, arrived too late to rescue an agent whose cover was blown and who subsequently died in the fire.”
How did everyone else pass themselves off as federal agents so easily when Roland couldn’t make it fly worth a crap?
“Do you want us to bring you a replacement car? We can have it there by sunset.”
“What happened to the Prism?”
“Nothing. I just assumed it was stolen.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Really? You should have put that hunk of junk out of its misery a long time ago.”
“It isn’t mine. It belongs to a woman who was caught in the crossfire.” Sarah no doubt would have already replaced it if she could have. “She’s here with me and, I’m sure, would appreciate getting it back.”
“A human woman?” Chris asked, his voice deadly serious.
Roland stiffened. Having never called upon Cleaners, he wasn’t sure how they dealt with humans who had been exposed to the truth. “Yes.”
“I’ll be there within an hour to pick her up.”
“The hell you will.”
“You know the rules, Roland. Any human who—”
“Fuck the rules.”
“Her knowledge puts us all at risk,” Chris reminded him. “At the very least I need to sit her down, have her sign a confidentiality agreement, and impress upon her what will happen if she ever violates it.”
The threat was obvious.
Anger welled within Roland as he listened. After all Sarah had been through since finding him in that field, there was no way he was going to let Chris intimidate and frighten her.
“I said fuck the rules and fuck you,” Roland snarled. “You stay the hell away from her.”
“Your ass isn’t the only one on the line here,” Chris said, his own irritation beginning to show. “Do you have any idea how many laws my team and I broke today cleaning up your shit? This is standard procedure, put in place to protect us all. If she wigs out and decides to tell—”
“She isn’t going to wig out, and my ass isn’t on the line. I know that because she saved it. Now if you have any interest in keeping yours intact, you’ll damned well steer clear of her!”
A long silence ensued.
Roland sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaustion beating at him. He really shouldn’t alienate this man after the help he had rendered them earlier.
“Look, Reordon. I don’t mean to bust your balls. It’s been a long two days. I’m tired. I’m irritable. And I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for Sarah. She saved my life—twice—and has been through hell. I’m not going to repay her by letting you strong-arm her and threaten her. She has enough on her plate now that she’s become as much of a target as I am.”
“A target,” Chris repeated, the antagonism in his voice melting away. “Why don’t you clue me in to what’s going on? I know you usually work solo, but if you’ve got humans attacking you by the dozen, I can probably be of some assistance. Were those at your house minions or independents?”
“Minions.” Though disclosing information to a perfect stranger made him uneasy, Roland filled Chris in on what had been happening.
“What’s the name of the vamp?”
“I only have a first name. Bastien.”
“Country of origin?”
“England.”
“Physical description?”
Roland gave him one.
“Vamps don’t have our resources, so they usually leave a money trail. If this one is lucid enough to organize and control an army, he can’t be too old. He also must live in the area. I’ve already got a guy tracing the license plate and VIN numbers on the SUVs the minions drove to your place. We took them before the fire department arrived and replaced them with a couple of crap cars. We’ll check them for prints and other forensic evidence, then let me see what I can come up with and I’ll get back to you.”
“Thanks, man.”
“No problem. Call me if anything else comes up.”
“I will.”
“Do you want me to send out a team to guard you and Sarah while you sleep?”
“No thanks.” He couldn’t extend his already shaky trust to anyone else.
At least, not yet.
“Okay. Let me know if you change your mind.”
“I will.”
After hanging up, Roland put Chris’s number on speed dial.
“Roland?”
He turned, warmth invading him as Sarah shuffled into the room.
Her long hair was tousled from their lovemaking and framed her face in tangled waves. Her eyelids were heavy, her lips still swollen from his kisses.
Only his black T-shirt, which he silently admitted had never looked so good, covered her nudity. The sleeves that were short on him covered her elbows. The hem fell a third of the way down her pale, faintly muscled thighs.
Seeing her in the too-big plain cotton shirt stirred him more swiftly than the sexiest lingerie would. He was filled with such tenderness and affection. Such possessiveness.
Mine.
He wanted to shout it to the world, place his mark on her so everyone would know she was his.
Hell.
&nb
sp; If he wasn’t careful, he was going to find himself falling in love with her.
And that way lay heartache and disaster.
It never ended well when an immortal fell in love with a human.
Only gifted ones could be successfully transformed. Those rare individuals with the extra DNA memo groups that bestowed upon them special abilities and enabled their bodies to mutate the virus so they would become immortal rather than vampire. So many gifted ones had been killed before they could procreate in centuries past by fools egged on by superstition, fear, or envy, that their descendants today were very few. The chances of an immortal finding and falling in love with one were astronomically low. Roland could number on one hand the times such had happened during his long existence (word tended to get around when it did) and those love affairs had ended badly when the gifted ones chose not to be transformed.
The fact that an individual could safely be transformed didn’t necessarily mean he or she would want to be transformed.
But even that hope had been denied him here. Sarah had none of the special gifts that would have indicated she was different. She lacked the black hair and dark brown eyes characteristic of all those who possessed the bloodline that would prevent her from turning vampire. A relationship with her could only end one of two ways.
At best, he would have fifty or sixty years with her before she died in his arms of old age. His ability to heal may extend that a decade or so if he were lucky.
At worst, they would have … maybe twenty years of happiness before the signs of her aging could no longer be staved off. And those signs would gradually increase. The first time someone mistook her for his mother rather than his wife or lover would devastate her. She would feel self-conscious about the changes taking place in her body (while his remained youthful) and insist they only make love in the dark under the covers, where she thought she could hide from his preternatural vision.
As various parts of her continued to wrinkle and sag, she would begin to question his love for her. His attempts to reassure her by pointing out that if he were human and aging alongside her, he would feel no different—his devotion unfaltering—would fall on deaf ears. Each night, when he left to hunt, she would suspect he was seeing a younger woman on the side. She would grow increasingly bitter. He would become weary of her distrust and constant accusations, her lack of faith in him.
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