Immortal Duty

by J. K. Coi

  Rhys had taken a controlling role in this matter of finding the Nina, since it involved Duncan, who’d been his friend, but Doyle would normally have been the one to make the kinds of decisions Rhys was proposing, which was why he intended to make sure the elder was kept firmly in the loop.

  “Also, I’ve been training Duncan’s replacement,” Rhys said. “To give him credit, the kid’s good and he learns quickly, but he’s still green. He’ll need a lot of backup and support from us all—if he even survives the week.”

  * * * * *

  Amy drifted through her shift at the hospital. It was a slow day, or at least, that’s the excuse she gave herself for being so restless and unfocussed. She wasn’t fooling anyone, though, and didn’t have to dig very deep for the obvious reason her mind wasn’t on her work—a six-foot-eight walking brick wall with a gun just happened to be the cause of her daydreams.

  When her shift finally ended, she drove home in her terminally ill Civic, which clunked and rattled all the way, but there was no way she was going to walk home again. Not even if Ben and Jerry themselves called her up on the phone and begged her to come get some Chunky Monkey from the Seven-Eleven.

  No way. No how. No matter what time of day or night.

  Amy unlocked the door of her cozy little apartment. She’d gotten a new set of keys from the building manager that morning, cancelled her credit cards, and then had to take a taxi to the license bureau and explain that she lost her purse in order for them to agree to give her a temporary card. She’d gotten home just in time to get ready for her shift at the hospital, and was dead tired.

  Dropping the keys in a dish on the table by the door, she was hit by an acute sense of loneliness, the same feeling of isolation that had plagued her even before the strange encounter with Rhys. Her home was as it had always been. She loved it. It was her first real place, one without a maddening brother prying into her business or roommates partying until the wee hours of the morning. And she had taken great pleasure decorating it and making it her own when she’d moved in four years ago. She had chosen a few stylish, comfortable pieces of furniture covered in soothing neutral tones designed to ease her frazzled nerves after a long shift in the OR. She liked art and had also selected a few special paintings in a natural, flowing Chinese style, which were placed strategically on the otherwise bare walls.

  In direct contrast to the comforting and tranquil environment she had created here, her mind was jagged and jittery. She no longer found comfort in her serene space, no solace in her books, her music or her work.

  She felt lost, like she’d been set loose to wander aimlessly until the day when she would come across a live wire sitting on the ground. The feeling wasn’t new to her. When her parents died, she’d felt the same way. Gideon had helped her then, but now she didn’t know what to do. Maybe this live wire would be good for her. Maybe once she made contact with it, her spark would ignite and she’d finally be brought to life. Until then, she was quiet and still. Waiting.

  Until then, something was missing and her entire being felt it, but Amy hadn’t a clue what to do about it. She’d thought of taking some of her savings and going away for a while. Maybe she should take that trip to Italy she’d been talking about for the last few years.

  Whatever she decided, there would have to be some kind of change soon.

  After a quiet dinner consisting of frozen pizza that tasted disturbingly of cardboard and a Bud Light to wash it down, she snuggled up in her favorite chair in front of the big bay window, a novel sitting open in her lap.

  She jerked awake an hour later and the book had fallen to the floor.

  Her mind was a twister of thoughts and emotions, going over the events of the night before. She was still trying to convince herself it had all been a crazy dream, but her mind knew differently. Her mind knew what she’d seen, even if she couldn’t reconcile the bizarre images with what she understood to be the universal truth of the real world—that men who healed faster than a speeding bullet and monsters that disappeared into thin air did not exist.

  And why hadn’t she questioned Rhys more about that? About any of it? At the time there had been a lot to take in, but still.

  Thinking about last night only made her more confused. She tried to remember whether she could have met him somehow before, to explain why he’d known her name, but nothing clicked.

  She guessed it was possible that she’d treated him at the hospital one night and not remembered. No, she definitely would have remembered seeing that hard body somewhere other than in her fantasies, and for the life of her she couldn’t place his face on any of the people she’d been introduced to the last little while. He was too memorable to have forgotten, too—

  A hard knock sounded on her door. Amy jolted as if she’d been caught doing something naughty, a shrill squeak bursting from her lips. She chuckled, shaking her head at her foolishness, then rose to answer the door.

  “Hey, gorgeous, whatcha doin’?”

  “Gideon!” Amy cried, throwing her arms around her brother’s neck. His casual scruffiness was a welcome sight and her mood immediately lightened, “I wanted to call you yesterday. I was hoping you would be back from your trip.”

  “Really. Because I tried calling you last night. I even telephoned the hospital to see if you were working the red-eye, but you were nowhere to be found. Let me guess. You were crying so hard from missing me that you didn’t hear the phone?”

  “Gideon—”

  “No? You mean you didn’t miss me?”

  “You’re an ass. Of course I didn’t miss you,” she teased. “Not even a bit.”

  “Oh. So heartless. How could someone so heartless come from the same womb as me, the most caring and sensitive of males?”

  “Oh, cut it out. I’m gonna gag.” Amy laughed, but her cheeks warmed under her brother’s shrewd stare. She knew he could tell just from looking at her that something happened last night.

  They had never been able to keep anything from each other. It was probably the twin thing. Macho protectiveness aside, Gideon always knew when to show up at her door with chocolate chip ice cream because she was down in the dumps, or when to force her out into the land of the living because she’d been spending too much time at the hospital. And Amy always knew when Gideon’d had a hard week at work, and she went to his apartment to cook dinner for him.

  Neither one of them could lie without the other knowing immediately. Amy didn’t bother to try, although what he got would be a slightly amended version of the truth. He was going to freak when she told him she’d almost been mugged while walking home from work last night, but the alternative… she’d surely be dragged into the loony bin and fitted for a straitjacket if she ever told anyone what she had really seen…or at least, what she thought she’d seen.

  Here in the safety of her home, it seemed pretty ridiculous—and she hadn’t even said it out loud. And she wouldn’t. She had promised Rhys. It might seem idiotic that she intended to keep a promise made to a perfect stranger who had abducted her in a back alley, but she would keep it—although she wasn’t ready to explore the reasons why.

  Gideon was still standing outside her door, waiting to be let in. “Gideon, get in here,” she said, moving aside to let him through.

  As she was closing the door behind him, she glimpsed the tail end of a long black leather jacket turning the corner of the hallway.

  Could it be?

  But no, Amy doubted Rhys would hide in the shadows…if he was going to bother watching her apartment building in the first place. She turned the lock.

  “So where were you last night? Hot date? I’m surprised Neil kept you out so late on a Thursday evening. He’s not usually that daring and adventurous.”

  “Be nice,” Amy warned, but with an indulgent smile. Gideon had never warmed up to Neil.

  “Yeah, yeah. Come on, how can I be the overprotective brotherly type if you won’t tell me where you are twenty-four hours of the day?”

  He seemed to be
joking, but if Gideon had his way he would know what Amy was doing all the time. His protective streak would make anyone believe he was years older, when in fact Gideon had been born only about four minutes before her.

  He hadn’t let that stop him from interrogating Amy’s boyfriends when they came to pick her up for a date, or from routinely showing up at the hospital just in time to give her a lift home so she didn’t have to walk alone in the dark. And the one time I did need a ride home, he’s nowhere to be found.Her lip curled at the irony.

  Gideon had even tried to tell her where to attend college, wanting her to stay near him. Amy had drawn a line in the sand that day, and the argument that had gone down between them—which she won—was permanently recorded in the history books for posterity.

  Nowadays, he rarely tried to throw his weight around like he had when they were teens. She’d become quite adept at knowing when to put her foot down with him if he tried and when to let him express his inner Neanderthal. She’d also learned how to work her way around him while trying not to hurt his feelings and understanding his need to keep her close, since she felt the same way.

  Amy and Gideon had lost their parents in a car wreck when they were twelve. The couple had been coming home late on a snowy night after a romantic evening out. Of course, the drunk hadn’t slowed down, hadn’t seen the red light or the car stopped in front of him. The driver had plowed into the little Volvo, sending it right into the slippery intersection and oncoming traffic. Their mother had died before reaching the hospital. Their dad hung on a few hours more but never regained consciousness, following his wife to the hereafter before morning’s light had touched the sky.

  The twins had gone to live with a relative, but Aunt Sally got sick with cancer and died only six years later.

  “So why didn’t you call me earlier? I was home early enough, we could have gone out to a movie.” She walked into the kitchen and reached for the coffee pot.

  “I didn’t really feel like going out, Ames. I just want to bask in the warmth and comfort of my loving family, hangin’ here where it’s cozy and peaceful.” Gideon sighed and flopped onto her couch.

  “You’re just saying that because you’ve been away for two weeks, your apartment is a disaster area and you have no food because you were probably too lazy to go shopping this afternoon.”

  Gideon at least had the decency to look mildly embarrassed. “Well, that may be true…but you have to have mercy on me. I’ve spent the last two weeks at conferences, dinners and schmoozing with some truly scary CEO types. I don’t know how your friend Neil does it. I was ready to jump from the top of the Tower of London after the first day.” Gideon stretched out full length, arms folded casually behind his head.

  “Lately I’ve had to take on a lot more responsibility, and unfortunately that has meant more traveling. This project I’ve been asked to head up is seriously important to the big guys.”

  “You mean the project you refuse to tell me about?” Amy said, leaning her hip against the edge of the couch. “You want something to eat?”

  “Sure, a sandwich would be heaven.” Gideon nodded. “You know it’s totally top secret, Ames. This corporate hush-hush stuff is very major. I would be out of a job in a heartbeat if I breathed a word to anyone. They’d know. They have ways, I tell you. I’ve even been wondering if my girlfriend is a plant designed to pull secrets from me.”

  “Your girlfriend is a red neon sign on the building outside your bedroom window advertising the peep show place, you goofball,” Amy joked. “Don’t you know yet that no real woman would date you?”

  Gideon laughed, a warm vibrant sound that Amy loved to hear. “Hah. That goes to show what you know. You’re only my lowly sister and therefore sexless, so you can’t possibly appreciate the awesome power of my appeal with women.”

  “Oh, gross. Thank God for small favors.” Amy shook her head, chuckling, and headed back into the kitchen.

  Gideon really was forbidden to say anything about the projects that he worked on—even to other employees within the company. He’d learned some very interesting things about his bosses in the last little while that could definitely end in his untimely and permanent disappearance if he ever told another living person, not that he thought they would do something to him. Well, not really.

  Gideon was a natural-born science geek, passionate about his work. He’d been a research scientist for IMO Labs the last eight years, since earning his doctorate from NYU. The company had come to recruit him the day after he presented his doctoral dissertation. Gideon had accepted the job, in part because of the amazing possibilities for his career, but also because he would be able to live in Chandler, close to Amy.

  His bosses had devoted an enormous amount of money and resources to investigating what was essentially a personal medical problem. They’d needed someone with Gideon’s abilities to assist in their research. He’d been surprised when he learned he had been surreptitiously investigated and monitored for as many years as he’d been with the company—but apparently they’d been satisfied he was trustworthy enough to share their secret with.

  And they were right. Gideon wouldn’t even think of betraying their trust, if for no other reason than he was fascinated by the work he was doing. He may not understand why it was such a huge secret, since many people suffer from fertility problems, but it wasn’t his place to ask those kinds of questions.

  Gideon endured months of rigorous study to bring himself up to date on the massive amount of research already conducted, which he was surprised to find went back several decades, long before he’d thought fertility would have been an issue for the IMO corporate tycoons, who looked young enough to be Gideon’s age. Those studies had revealed serious abnormalities in both Kane and Roland’s DNA that he felt sure was the cause of their reproductive issues—and maybe their insistence on secrecy—but so far he hadn’t been able to determine the cause of the mutation.

  “You know I would tell you if I could, Ames,” Gideon called out over the edge of the couch.

  “That’s okay, Gideon. I don’t want to know. Unless it’s illegal, then…well I still don’t want to know. I’ll just trust that you’re very careful. So case closed. Why don’t you check the tube for a movie while I finish making you dinner, you freeloader?”

  Chapter Six

  Rhys merged with the shadows in the trees beneath Amy’s apartment window. There were three stories and a universe of differences between them, and that should have been motivation enough to get his ass out of there.

  So why couldn’t he do it?

  She was in there with a man.

  Against his better judgment, his mind conjured up her image and her scent—that haunting blend of exotic and innocence wrapped up in a subtle perfume that had nothing to do with chemicals. His fists clenched within the folds of his coat.

  He’d been doing a perfectly innocent drive-by when he saw the guy enter the building, and so he’d followed, but hadn’t been able to get a close enough look.

  Who the hell was he? And why do I even give a damn?

  He was acting like an ass, or worse…a jealous boyfriend.

  Telling himself that his only motive for hanging around was to make sure Amy wasn’t in any danger would have been a lie—or at least not the whole truth—and he was smart enough to know when not to bullshit himself.

  He wanted her.

  He needed to stay as far away from her as possible.

  The two reactions were still battling it out, with no clear winner on the horizon.

  The woman had a life before last night, he knew it. He knew it was better for them both if he let her get back to it. She didn’t belong in his crazy fucked-up world, and God knew he didn’t want her there.

  He stared hard at her window and couldn’t help the pang of envy, couldn’t help but wonder how it might feel to walk up to her door and have Amy welcome him into her home, invite him inside.

  What would it be like to wake up in the morning with her legs twined around h
is as she lay beside him? Would he be the one to kiss her to wakefulness, or would she move over him, caressing and stroking him awake until he rolled her over and thrust his hard length deep into her body?

  “Shit.” He shook his head, despising himself for such weak, wistful thoughts.

  The sleek muscles of her naked thighs would tense as she raised her body up along his cock, then slowly lowered herself down again.

  “Damn it.” His cock was hard just thinking about it. Why had he let himself get sucked into this distraction?

  He’d be damned if he’d continue to lurk in shadows and darkened hallways, or beneath bedroom windows like some sicko stalker, and he sure as shit couldn’t afford to waste any more time being preoccupied by this woman.

  For the life of him Rhys couldn’t see anything about Amy’s lifestyle that would put her in the kind of danger that he dealt in. But damn. The dream had come again last night and it had left him feeling uneasy all day. He interpreted it as a warning that he needed to continue to be cautious, so he’d made note of when Amy left home this morning—at least the woman had had enough sense to drive her car. When her shift had ended, he’d been relieved when she returned straight home.

  Hers was a long day. She shouldn’t work so much. If she worked like that every day, it was a wonder she bothered to pay rent for an apartment.

  Then again, how one human woman lived her life was no concern of his. Why the hell did he even care?

  Because she was real to him now. Real flesh. Real blood…which had made last night’s dream even more vivid and disturbing.

  In his dream, her face was bruised and bloodied. More blood stained her hands and clothes. She cradled her arm close to her body. He couldn’t see her attacker but knew she was being threatened by a powerful evil. She was fading, but faced her enemy bravely, her expression showing only resolve. She seemed to be protecting someone and had placed herself in front of whoever it was, but he couldn’t see anyone but her. He could, however, sense the malevolence that enveloped her. The fatal blow was descending. Rhys wouldn’t be fast enough. He was never fast enough.