“You were supposed to wait with him.” I heard Ian’s voice and turned toward him.
“Raven isn’t in any condition to take care of himself.” I lifted my chin defiantly. “If they wanted me, they could find me alone.”
“Admirable, but not smart,” Ian chided.
“I would have done the same thing.” The other car door had opened and Leah stepped out. “Let’s just get you two out of here.” Her smile was warm and reassuring.
Leah was barely five feet tall with her long hair pulled back into a band. She was armed to the hilt. She had a large, black gun strapped to her thigh, one in a shoulder holster, and another in the ankle of her boot. A short, silvery blade was tucked into a sheath on each wrist, and her stomach was enormously swollen with the impending birth of her children. Beaming a welcoming smile at me, she walked, well, waddled, over to me and put a comforting arm on my shoulder.
A fifth man exited the SUV with a backpack in hand. “This is Lucas, he’s our resident doctor,” Leah said. “You know Cougar, and the other man is Falcon.”
Falcon gave me a smile and a nod, extending his hand to me.
“Let the guys go take care of Raven and Lucas will have a look at you,” Leah said.
Shaking Falcon’s hand, I said, “I’m okay. Send the doctor with them. Raven needs him.” The words came out shaky, my voice high-pitched with near panic.
“Raven will heal, Zen. I promise,” Leah said as she and Falcon, my hand still in his, tried to guide me to the car.
“But I think his neck is broken,” I screeched.
Leah gave a short nod to Falcon. “It’s going to be okay, Zen.”
“Falcon lifted his hand to my face, touched my cheek gently and said, “Sleep.”
* * * *
I jerked awake with perfect clarity of what had happened and began struggling against the arms that held me. A low rumbling voice spoke consoling words to me that I ignored until my vision cleared enough for me see who was speaking. Cougar cradled me in his arms.
“Where’s Raven?” I demanded weakly. “And what the hell did you do to me?” I struggled to get out of his arms, but he simply smiled.
“Raven is being taken to the next room. Lucas is with him.”
“Put me down!” I ordered and was gently set on an examining table.
“Lucas says you’re to stay here until he gets a better look at the bump on your head.”
I jumped to my feet as the room took one violent spin. Reaching for the edge of the table to steady myself, I said, “Like hell I will.” I took a deep breath and staggered to the door.
“I’m gonna get my ass chewed for this.” Cougar sighed and then gripped my arm and helped me into the next room.
Raven lay on a matching examining table, his neck still bent at an awkward angle as a woman poked an IV into his arm. I followed the tube up to a bag of blood that seemed to flow into him at an alarming rate.
“She’s supposed to be sleeping,” Lucas growled.
“Tell her that,” Cougar mumbled. “You want me to get Falcon again?”
I glared at Cougar, making a mental note to ask what exactly Falcon had done to knock me out. “How’s Raven?” I asked.
The woman working on Raven turned to me. “He’s getting blood, and we’ll clean up his wounds. By dusk, he’ll be just fine.” She smiled. “I’m Alli, Leah’s mom and resident nurse around here. C’mon, let’s have a look at you.”
“But his neck?” I persisted. I knew vampires could heal, but his neck looked broken. Could he heal that?
Alli exchanged a brief look with Cougar before saying, “Raven’s neck isn’t broken, just a little…displaced. He will be fine, I assure you.”
“Cougar, take Zen back to the examining room, and we will be with her in a moment.”
Blowing out a sigh, and knowing that I’d been unceremoniously dismissed, I let Cougar lead me back to the original room I’d been put in. Moments later, the doctor scurried into the room.
He introduced himself as Dr. Jeremiah Lucas and told me to call him Luke. He seemed too young to have been a doctor for long. Hair the color of mocha swept over his brow, just skimming his hazel eyes. Obviously a man who liked to keep fit, his button-down shirt fit snugly over his chest and arms, and he looked more suited to be behind the wheel of a sports car than behind an examining table.
“Can you tell me what happened?” Lucas produced a penlight and began checking my eyes.
I told him about being forced into the ravine, but I didn’t remember the car that did it, wincing when he removed a bandage I didn’t know was there and began to clean the cut on my forehead. Cougar pushed a bed into the room, and Lucas picked me up and placed me on it. “I want you to lie here. I want to get some fluids into you.”
“But I’m fine,” I insisted.
“You’re trembling, dear.” Alli coaxed me to lie down.
“I’m—”I became aware of the shaking as well as pain lancing through my skull. “Okay.” I lay back. “I guess I am a little shaken up.” Suddenly I was very cold.
“You’re in shock, so you need to stop worrying about Raven and let us take care of you. I’d like to give you something for pain now; we’ll stitch you up once you’re asleep.”
The word sleep triggered the memory of Falcon just before I passed out. “What did Falcon do to me?” I asked groggily.
Alli smiled. “It is his gift. When you’re feeling better, he can explain it to you. Now just a little pinch.” She inserted a needle attached to a tube into my arm that I didn’t feel. “And now for some meds.” Suddenly, my eyelids felt like they’d been glued together. I tried to pry them open, only to wince them closed again as light assaulted me. Moments later the golden blast on my closed eyes subsided, and I realized that someone had turned off the light. Testing the theory, I squinted them open once again and was relieved to find it much darker in the room.
Raven sat beside the bed. “Hi,” I started to say, and then swallowed hard and tried it again. “Hi,” I repeated, a little louder.
“Hello yourself.” Raven grinned.
“You’re better?” I croaked, relieved to see his neck was once again straight.
“I’m told you were worried.” His face still held his smile, and I couldn’t help but return it.
I pulled myself upright and stretched the kinks out of my back, I said, “You did look like shit.”
“You really know how to stroke a guy’s ego, Zen.”
That made me chuckle. “Your ego doesn’t need stroking. It’s plenty big on its own.”
“Are we still talking about my self-esteem?”
I tossed my pillow at him. “My point exactly. Hand me that water, will ya?”
Passing me the glass he asked, “What do you remember?”
I swallowed half the glass in one drink, savoring the cool water as it soothed away the last dregs of sleep. “Everything. The initial crash, going over the cliff.” I lifted my gaze to his. “You surrounding me with your body and absorbing all of the impact.”
“I knew I’d heal,” Raven said simply.
I cupped his cheek in the palm of my hand I said, “Thank you,” and then leaned in and kissed his unresponsive lips.
“You’re most welcome.” But both the kiss and the comment seemed a little distant.
Leah came in the room, effectively stopping me from asking Raven any more questions.
“Glad to see you’re awake. Can I have a word with you? Alone,” she added with a pointed look at Raven, who nodded and left without another look at me. My disappointment was soon forgotten as Leah jumped right to the heart of the matter at hand.
“We think they may be testing abilities on more children.”
“What?” I sat bolt upright in bed, the horror of the possibilities setting my blood boiling.
“We want you to go back in, let yourself be kidnapped, and get information we can use to get an official warrant.”
Leaning back and pushing back my fear I said, “I’m go
ing to do it, you know that, don’t you?”
“We will have you wired and be with you every step of the way.”
“I know. I just can’t bear the thought of some other kid going through what I did and not doing anything about it. I know it’s a risk but I have to do it.”
“Raven’s not going to be happy about it.”
“He doesn’t have a say in the matter.”
“You want me to tell him?” she asked.
“Nah, I’ll do it.” I grinned devilishly at her. “It’ll be fun.”
Leah laughed loud and long at that. “Come on, I’ll show you to your room.”
Leah led me down a wide, brightly lit corridor decorated with a Mediterranean flair. “Your home is beautiful.”
Leah chuckled. “Not the damp, cobweb-filled castle depicted in the movies, is it?”
“Nothing is as I would have expected it,” I replied, thinking of Raven. “Yeah, I guess that’d be the impression I’d get from Raven too.” I joined in her infectious laughter. Leah seemed like a very easy person to like.
A four-poster mahogany bed dominated the space. It was draped with sheer fabric that billowed with the breeze coming in through the open window that created one entire wall of the room.
“You’ll find that Raven had your clothes sent over, they’re in the closet.”
“They’re not my clothes.”
Leah arched a brow at that.
“He paid a personal shopper to buy a wardrobe for me. It was at his house when I arrived.”
Both of her brows shot up. “Raven bought you clothes? Before he took you to his house?”
“I didn’t want them,” I said defensively, “but it wasn’t like he was going to take me home to pack a suitcase.”
Leah seemed to ponder this for a moment before saying, “Well, the bathroom is stocked, and if there is anything else you need, just let me know. Raven’s room is right down the hall if you need him.”
“He has a separate room?” I cringed as soon as the words left my mouth. Of course he had his own room, hadn’t he made his position clear in the car? He didn’t want me. Trying not to let my disappointment show, I thanked Leah.
“I mean it, Zen. If you need anything at all,” her tone suggested I’d hid nothing from her, “just let me know.”
* * * *
Rested and with the pain down to a quiet roar, I sat at the dining room table at the Nightwalker house surrounded by Raven and the entire Nightwalker clan. A large screen television played soundlessly in the next room showing video of a terrorist attack in a country I’d never heard of. Raven’s attention was divided between the conversation around the table and the images on the screen, right up until Ian got to the point.
“I’ll do it,” I said without reservation. How could I not help someone get out of the terror that had been my childhood?
“Absolutely not!” Raven bellowed. “I will not have you use Zen as a target.”
“I think it’s my decision to make,” I said quietly to offset his rage.
“She is the only one who is going to able to get inside the compound to see if there are any more children involved,” Ian persisted.
“I still think it’s my decision.” I said a little louder.
“If there are children, Raven—” Leah began.
“Then you’ll find another way.” Raven slapped his hand on the table.
“Look, she’ll have to be in better health,” Alli chimed in.
“And the department can have no official standing on this without concrete evidence,” her husband police captain, Charles Wilson, added.
“We’ll wire her and monitor her every move,” Falcon added with Cougar’s agreement.
Raven stood, his chair skittering across the floor. “I forbid it!”
Unable to withstand their debate over what I would or wouldn’t do any longer, I yelled, “It’s my goddamned decision to make!”
The room fell silent for a few awkward moments until Leah said, “Welcome to my world. They can be a bit overwhelming sometimes.” She spoke as if we were the only two in the room, ignoring the sounds of indignation coming from them.
“Are they always so…”
“Domineering?” She finished for me. “Yeah.”
I laughed at her candor.
“We are still in the room,” Falcon protested half-heartedly.
Alli interrupted us by saying, “Of course it’s your decision, dear…”
“The hell it is!” Raven stood before Alli flashed him the withering look only a mother could pull off, causing him to sit back down in his chair, albeit stiffly.
Cougar held out a small box to me. “This is for you.”
“Wow, Coug, this is rather sudden. I mean, you know what it means when a man gives a woman jewelry?” I feigned, trying to lighten the mood.
Cougar grinned and winked as Raven growled. His phone rang then. “I have to take this.”
Ian nodded slightly and Raven stood, leaving the room while he answered the phone.
Alli shrugged. “They all care. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t show any emotion at all.”
“You know…” I sighed. “That makes sense in a screwed up sort of way.”
“Look,” Ian said, “We don’t need to make any decisions tonight.”
“If there are kids stuck in there—” I began.
“You won’t do them any good without some food and decent sleep,” Alli persisted, in a tone that let me know I would not win this argument.
“I have to leave,” Raven announced as he came back into the dining room.
I gaped at him. How the hell could he leave right now? “What?”
His gaze only flicked my way before he answered, looking directly at Ian. “It can’t be helped.”
“Safe travels, then,” Ian replied.
Raven pointed a finger at me. “I expect you to be here when I get back!”
“If you’ll excuse me,” I said to everyone at the table and then rose without waiting for a response and stomped out of the door after Raven, following him up to his bedroom.
“Where the hell are you going?” Arms crossed over my chest and fury seething from every pore, I stood before Raven and demanded an answer.
“I don’t have time for this, Zen,” he growled.
“There could be children in there who need me, and I’ll be damned if I just turn my back on them.”
“It’s not your responsibility!” He stormed to the closet, returning with an assortment of weaponry.
“I’m not you, Raven. I actually have the capacity to care about people. You don’t.” He dropped the duffel bag he’d been packing on the bed and spun around to face me. “You couldn’t possibly understand the depth of what I’m doing.” He flipped on the television, and scenes of chaos filled the screen as a battle raged on. Women sheltered their children as explosions wracked an already battered city. “This is why I have to leave!”
Turning my attention back to him, I asked, “What does this have to do with you?”
“Do you remember when Leah discussed the implications of being able to ShadowWalk?”
“Of course I do.”
“This battle is the result of a single madman, intent on controlling everything in his path, with the sole purpose of obtaining weaponry that will allow him to move to the next country, where he will continue this path of destruction.”
I took a step back, my hands involuntarily going to my neck. “You’re going to kill him.” My voice was barely a breath of sound.
“You once asked how I make my living. I’m a killer, Zen, a hired assassin. I kill bad guys. Drug lords, dictators, terrorists, and the like. Governments hire me to do the work their citizens would not approve of. It is my gift. I can use the shadows to walk right into the home of a crime boss or terrorist, whoever the threat is, and kill him without anyone else ever seeing me. I don’t do it arbitrarily, Zen, but it is what I do.”
“And you’re going to go there, hiding in the shadows, and k
ill that man.”
“Yes,” he said simply, emotionlessly.
“And I’m going in to help those kids.”
“The hell you are.”
Jabbing a finger into his rock hard chest I said, “You don’t have any right to tell me what I can or cannot do.”
He grabbed me and then yanked me to his body, crushing his lips to mine. It took nearly everything I had not to let my body respond. I yearned to put my arms around him, dig my fingers into his silky black hair, and sink into his scent, his flavor, my need. But Raven didn’t need me. Hadn’t he shown me that? Didn’t he tell me he wasn’t a man to love?
Raven released me, pulling me away at arm’s length and looking down into my eyes.
I let all my anger glare in their depths for him to see. “Did you expect me to just swoon into your arms and do what you say?” I took a step back. “I’ve done that before, Raven. Time and time again you push me away. Love is a weakness, right?” Raven winced as my words hit home, but it gave me no satisfaction, only sorrow.
“There was a time when you cared,” he said softly.
Stiffening my chin and hoping like hell he couldn’t see it quiver, I said, “I was vulnerable. It’s a mistake I don’t plan on repeating.”
“Zen…”
“Well.” I swallowed hard, interrupting words I didn’t want to hear from him anymore. “You have things to do then, and so do I.” As Raven muttered a very creative string of curses, forbidding me to go, I walked out of the room, slamming the door behind me.
* * * *
“Raven’s going to be mad as hell,” Ian said despondently. “Are you sure you’re up for this?”
“The longer we wait, the longer those kids–”
“If there are any,” Ian interjected.
“Let’s just hope there aren’t,” I said. “So, what’s the plan?”
The plan was for me to be wired, literally have wires inserted into my veins similar to an IV tube that was completely concealed.
I won’t say it was a pleasant experience, but I did feel better knowing that no matter what, they would have a bead on where I was. They would be able to hear everything and monitor my vitals. The box that Cougar had given me was earrings and a small wire that was placed into the skin at the back of my ear. They would allow me to hear Leah talk to me in my head, like tiny earphones implanted in my brain. Leah had used them once before and warned me that it may come through a little sketchy and be somewhat tingly at first, but they would work. They’d also serve as a secondary GPS in case they needed to get me out of there quickly.
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