by Dianna Love
“I was,” Eli confirmed.
Her eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute … I don’t like this language. I’m moving out? You found a safe house for me? Aren’t you coming, too? I mean, if it’s not safe for me, it’s not safe for you.”
He shrugged. “My lab is here. I can hardly move all this equipment without Janecek noticing.”
“But you have other labs, don’t you? I’m sure you mentioned others in the west. Since the clinic has to be shut down anyway, why don’t we just fall back to one of them?”
“The lab in Vancouver has been trashed.”
“Trashed?”
“The equipment was destroyed. There’s nothing left that’s of any use to me. And the one in Calgary remains intact, but we’re not sure if it’s still undetected. We’ve put it under surveillance to see if his operatives show up there.”
“No.”
He frowned. “What do you mean, no?”
“I won’t go without you.”
His gut twisted. “But you must. If anything happens to you, then this is all for naught. You’re the key, Ainsley.”
“And you’re the only one who can use that key, Delano. As I think you once told me, you’re literally alone in your field. Who could take up your research? Or even if they could, who would?”
“You’re suggesting there are safer things to investigate.”
Her eyes blazed. “Yeah, like Ebola. Come on, Delano, this guy isn’t going to quit until he sees you dead.”
“Or until we see him dead,” interjected Eli. “We’re not without our own resources in this war. But in the meantime, Delano’s right, Ainsley. We have to stash you someplace safe.”
Ainsley rounded on Eli fiercely, and Delano braced, knowing what was coming.
“And Delano is always right, is that what you’re saying?”
Eli being Eli, he didn’t take a step backward at her tone, but he did shoot Delano a quick look before turning back to face her.
“I’m not sure about that, but he is always the boss.”
“Was he right when he asked you to pay attention to me? To flirt with me? Was he right when he asked you to do that, Eli?”
He turned to Delano accusingly. “You told her?”
“I did no such thing. She figured it out.”
“Wonderful.” Eli lifted a hand to rub his temple. “I don’t want to know the circumstances under which that happened, do I?”
“Good call.”
“Then I take it she knows why we felt that course of action was necessary?”
“Correct again.”
“Hey! Don’t stand there talking about me as though I’m not here.” If anything, she sounded more furious than before.
They both muttered an apology at the same time, but she looked anything but impressed. Hands on hips, she turned on Eli again.
“So, how far would you have gone to oblige the boss, hmm? What if I’d decided to take you up on those bedroom eyes, that aw-shucks-ma’am, Matthew-McConaughey grin and all those muscles on your muscles? Huh? What then? Would you have obliged? Would you have let me drag you into my bedroom? Would you have sacrificed your body to the greater good of Delano’s master plan?”
“Whoa right there, babe. First of all, it wouldn’t have come to that. You might have salved your pride and amused yourself by flirting with me, but we both know it wouldn’t have gone further than that. And secondly, even if it did, how in God’s name can you imagine I’d qualify that as a sacrifice?”
“But—”
“Silence!” Delano roared.
Ainsley and Eli broke off, turning surprised eyes on him.
“It was a very poor idea, okay? My poor idea, so if you want to take your anger out on someone, Ainsley, take it out on me. Later. Right now, I don’t want to hear any more about it. Not one damned word. Are we clear?”
“Perfectly,” said Ainsley.
Except she was far from clear, because right now he looked like he could kill. Literally. Over the weeks, she’d grown used to his darkly ominous looks. So much so that she’d all but forgotten just how dangerous he could be. No one looking at his face at this moment could mistake either his power or his capacity for violence.
Dear God, could he be jealous? A thrill forked through her at the thought, followed quickly by dismay at her own reaction. Jealous men were dangerous men.
“Eli? Are we clear?” Delano’s voice was as flat and hard as the planes of his face.
“Clear.”
“Excellent. Now, this safe house you spoke of…”
“I’m not going anywhere without you.”
Delano pinned her with blazing eyes, and her mouth went dry. It was almost enough to make her reconsider her stance. Almost.
“I’m part of this now, whether you like it or not. Hell, whether I like it or not. And I’m not going anywhere. The sooner you get that through your head, the sooner we can start making a plan—”
“Eli, would you leave us for a moment?”
Eli shot Ainsley a look.
“Now, Eli. This is not a democracy.”
Delano’s tone made her gut tighten, but she smiled for Eli. “It’s okay.”
Eli searched her face briefly, as though to gauge whether her reassurance was genuine. “Of course. I have some calls to make anyway, to get the Mexico team off.”
The door barely closed behind him before Delano pounced.
“You can’t stay here, Ainsley. When Eli comes back, he’s going to take you to the new location.”
She squared her chin. “I don’t think so.”
“For pity’s sake, I’m only trying to preserve your safety.” His face darkened. “Why do you persist in resisting my efforts?”
“I’ve already told you. I’m just one piece of the solution. I accept that my blood is key to your vaccine, but if anything happened to you… Without you, without your knowledge, my blood is … well, just blood.”
“Devil take it, Ainsley, I can’t leave my lab. I’m so close.” He thrust a hand savagely through his hair. “I can’t leave.”
“And I won’t leave.”
“But I don’t know if I can keep you safe!”
Anguish, she realized with a start. Not anger. Not fury at her defiance.
“Del, do you really think I’ll be safe if he destroys you while I’m tucked away in a safe house? Don’t you think he’ll eventually hunt me down and kill me, too? Think about it — you and Eli obviously believe he can find Lucy, even after all the care we took to cover her tracks. If he can do that, then I haven’t a hope in hell of eluding him on my own.”
“You won’t be alone,” he countered. “I’ll send Eli with you. With his help, you can stay two steps ahead of Janecek.”
“You need Eli here.”
He swung away from her, cursing. “Why are you being so bloody stubborn about this?”
She chewed her lip. “You really want to know the truth?”
“Yes.” He strode back to stand before her, not stopping until he was well within her personal space, his gaze locked with hers. “Yes, by God, I want the truth.”
A moment ago, she might have stepped back from all that leashed violence, but not now. She felt the heat pouring off his body, and it was all she could do not to touch him.
“I don’t think I can leave.”
Chapter 18
“OF COURSE you can leave.”
She wet her lips. “Not unless you knock me out with mega-doses of sedative. When you mentioned the idea earlier, I thought I would vomit. I mean, I was literally, physically nauseous.”
“What?”
“I know, it sounds stupid. I can’t believe it myself, but I just have to think about leaving, and suddenly there’s this big wall of … I don’t know … panic in my mind that won’t let me even consider it. Truly, I’m not phobic. You know that, right?” She bit the inside of her lip. “Of course you do. You investigated me. But I swear to you, I just can’t stand to think about it.”
“You needn’t be af
raid, Ainsley. I’m sure Eli has a plan for your safe transport. No doubt he’ll send out a decoy or two first. And all our cars are armored. There’s no way—”
Argh! “You’re not getting it! I’m not afraid of leaving here. I’m afraid of leaving you. If you’d come with me, I’d leave this place right now. “
He took a step back. “No.”
She laughed. “Told you it would sound idiotic. I’m still pissed with you, for one thing, over that Eli-as-escort thing, not to mention—”
“Give me your hand.”
“What?” She’d heard him, but his words didn’t instantly compute, perhaps because he’d closed the distance between them again and was now towering over her.
“Your hand, dammit.” Without waiting for her compliance, he seized her hand and pushed the sleeve of her shirt roughly up her arm until it bunched above her elbow.
“Del, what are you doing?”
He rotated her arm to expose the delicate white skin at the crook of her elbow. With a hiss of indrawn breath, he released her and stepped back. “Impossible.”
She held her arm up to inspect it herself, seeing nothing but three raised reddish dots, aligned in a perfect equilateral triangle. They could be heat rash bumps, but for the fact there were so few of them, and the symmetry was unlikely.
“What?” She looked up to see Delano regarding her with an unreadable expression. She tried reaching out to catch his thoughts as she was sometimes able to do, but his mind was closed. Anxiety beat in her breast like the wings of a frantic bird. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“That mark on your arm…”
“Omigod, I’m infected.”
“No, nothing like that.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Then what it is? What does it mean?”
He lifted a hand to rub the back of his neck. “You appear to be blood-bonded. To me. But it can’t be.”
“Blood-bonded?”
“Enthralled, if you prefer to use a Hollywood term. A condition characterized by a profound infatuation, coupled with an intractable reluctance to be parted from the object of your infatuation.”
Oh no oh no oh no. “You enthralled me? It wasn’t enough that you dragged me into this mess, you had to go and do a number on my head, too?”
His dark brows beetled in a fierce frown. “I did no such thing.”
“But you said—”
“I also said it was impossible,” he interjected. “There must be some other explanation. For one thing, blood-bonding can happen only between vampires. If, in fact, the phenomenon really exists. I’m not entirely convinced it does.”
Infatuation between vampires? “I thought you said vampires didn’t desire other vampires?”
“Vampire couplings are rare,” he confirmed, “but they do occasionally happen. The exception that proves the rule, I suppose. And rarer still is the vampire union that gives rise to a blood-bond. In fact, I have seen only one such instance in all my years. Or I should say, possible instance. I wasn’t in a position to subject it to scientific scrutiny. But as I said, it just doesn’t happen between vampires and unmutated humans, no matter how much blood is taken.”
“Thank God.” The bird thrashing in her chest subsided to a mere fluttering. If it was strictly a vamp-on-vamp thing, there had to be another explanation. “I thought the whole enthralling thing was a feeding strategy. You know, so vamps could compel donors to bare their throats.”
He snorted. “Another product of Hollywood. Which is not to say vampires don’t have an impressive arsenal of tools to gain a potential donor’s compliance. But like the glamour we use to obscure our — how shall I say? — vitality, seduction requires a certain willingness on the part of the subject to be seduced. Any human with a strong will and a dash of charisma can learn the skill, if they’re taught how to focus their…”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. But why am I feeling like this if it’s so freaking impossible?” She thrust her arm at him. “And why do I have these damned dots?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then speculate.”
He sighed. “It could be psychosomatic.”
She shook her head emphatically. “Un-uh.”
“Don’t be so quick to dismiss the idea. I’m not suggesting you’re neurotic by any stretch of the imagination. But think about it, Ainsley. You’ve been under a degree of stress no one should have to endure, not to mention—”
“Not to mention the series of psychic shocks I’ve been subjected to. Yada, yada, yada. I won’t argue that. And for the record, I’m as neurotic as the next woman. But answer me this — how can I possibly manifest weird symptoms I’ve never even heard of? Huh?”
Something flickered in his eyes, so quick she couldn’t read the expression.
“Perhaps you plucked the details from my mind.”
“No.”
“No?” He lifted an eyebrow. “It hasn’t escaped my notice over these past weeks that you have a certain talent for divining what’s in my thoughts.”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s because all men think about that, all the time.”
To her satisfaction, he blushed.
“I was referring to other situations.”
“I know.” It was her turn to sigh. “Unfortunately, it’s a pitifully weak and sporadic talent. I can only catch fragments, and only when you let me. In fact, it’s probably your doing, not mine. I’m probably just catching what you’re projecting.” As soon as she said it, she realized that was by far the likeliest scenario. Hadn’t he said any strong mind could be trained to project suggestions? The idea was oddly deflating. “Which begs the question: have you recently thought about the vamp-on-vamp blood-bond and its triangle-producing side effects?”
“Not that I am aware of.”
“Then I guess we can eliminate any possible psychic plundering on my part.”
“Not necessarily.”
His brows drew together again in that frown that made him look so fiercely intent. And sexy, dammit. It was all she could do not to put a hand to his forehead to smooth that crease away. A sweet ache filled her heart at the idea of soothing away his cares.
She blinked the image away. “What do you mean?”
“I can’t guard my dreams. Nor can I necessarily remember them.”
Oh, shit. “And I crawled into your bed and possibly into your head, even though I was sleeping myself?”
“It seems the most likely explanation available to us.”
He was right. Dammit, why hadn’t the possibility occurred to her? “Ah, I see we subscribe to Charles Peirce’s theory of abduction.”
If he detected her sarcasm, he must have recognized it for the defensive mechanism it was.
He smiled. “I would not be much of a scientist if I did not reason to the best explanation, would I?”
“So this isn’t real? It’s just something I plucked from your head while we were sleeping?”
His lips firmed into a straight line. “It has to be. We exchanged no blood, and you are not a vampire.”
Dear God, she wanted to disappear into a crack in the floor. She’d stripped the symptoms of blood-bonding from his mind, then recreated them. How pathetic was that? Was she that far gone on him?
Yes. God help her, yes.
She’d been deeply attracted to him from first sight — okay, second sight, since he was just a blur in the alley on first sight. And her reliance on him had naturally grown after having been stranded in his alien world. And it was more than just reliance that had grown in the last weeks. Somehow, he’d slid right in under her radar, old world values and all.
But, dammit, he clearly did not return the sentiment. She’d joked about not needing to read his mind because all men shared the same thoughts, but hadn’t she read those very thoughts in his mind? Pure, simple, sexual lust, coupled with a blood lust.
She drew a deep breath, expelled it. Inhaled again. God, give me strength.
“Okay,
then I change my mind. I’ll go to this safe house Eli found for me. And I want to go as soon as possible.”
Delano stood abruptly, sending his chair rocketing across the room. He should be starting the delicate task of inserting the Merzetti Effect gene — or what he was 85 percent sure was the ME gene — into the plasmids, where they would multiply happily. But dammit all to hell, he couldn’t do it. His hands shook, his palms were damp, and his mind refused to focus.
It was the thirst, of course. How could he be expected to concentrate when the need to feed swelled relentlessly every hour? It had been years — decades, probably — since he’d gone more than a day without at least a modest infusion. He just wasn’t used to this kind of deprivation.
Yeah, right, that was it. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that upstairs, Ainsley was preparing to take her leave.
Leaving him, dammit!
No, leaving here, not leaving him.
With Eli.
Per my orders. So Eli could keep her safe.
Eli with the aw-shucks-Matthew-McConaughey smile, whatever the hell that was.
His right hand tightened around the positive displacement pipette he held until the instrument snapped. He opened his fist to see the microsyringe tip had embedded itself in his palm. Cursing, he strode to a nearby sink. Dropping the ruined pipette on the counter, he removed the micro tip from his flesh, hit the taps and shoved his hand under the flowing water.
Idiot.
He peeled off the latex glove and let the water flow over his bare hand. Good thing he’d conceded he was too distracted tonight to do the transfer as he’d planned, or he’d have a serious needlestick incident to worry about. Belatedly, he noticed the slight pink tinge to the water circling the drain, and cursed again. That’s all he needed, to lose even a few drops of blood while he was forced to fast.
Shutting off the tap with his elbow, he grabbed a clean towel and wrapped it around his hand.
Please!
Delano’s head jerked up, nostrils flaring.
Ainsley!
His gaze swept the room, even as he realized she couldn’t possibly have gotten into the lab without his knowing. No, she was upstairs still, in the foyer. Poised to leave, not wanting to go…