Dark and Dangerous: Six-in-One Hot Paranormal Romances

by Jennifer Ashley

“Where’s Spencer?” Adam asked, his voice barking over the nervous chattering of the group in the hall.

  “We haven’t seen him,” Jim answered.

  The sweat on Adam’s back chilled, goose bumps racing across his back, up his neck, to bristle his hair.

  The weapons and packs were gone. The stuff was there a week ago—Adam had checked himself on a routine security pass—but now they were gone. All gone. How could that be?

  “What is it?” Custo asked, coming up to stand beside him, Talia’s arm in his grip. Talia let herself be pulled along, uncomplaining.

  A beat passed as his friend took in the light-washed, empty room. “Spencer.”

  “Had to be,” Adam agreed, his voice sounding soft and strange to his own ears. “Only the three of us have the master codes.”

  “But why?”

  “Hell if I know. But if he got to this stuff...” The image of the military helicopter overhead appeared in his mind. The soldiers taking up offensive positions on the lawn. Firing at Custo.

  “...then he got to the tunnel, too,” Custo finished. Their escape route was lost.

  A misunderstanding? Not on this scale.

  Someone in SPCI had made a decision. What it was, Adam could not fathom. What sane person—what human being—would work in collusion with The Collective?

  Obviously, Spencer. Adam remembered that Talia had tried to warn him, and he’d dismissed her concerns. She didn’t know Spencer well enough to get his twisted humor. Turns out she knew Spencer better than he.

  Adam had no weapons but the ones he and Custo carried. The tunnel escape plan, coauthored by Spencer, was lost as well. The implications were staggering. Any resource Spencer was privy to was now compromised, including the safe houses.

  Adam ran a hand through his hair to pinch the tension contracting at the back of his neck.

  “I don’t get it,” Custo said, defeat dulling his eyes as he came to the same conclusions. “Why don’t they just drop a bomb on us? Level the building and kill us all in one hit.”

  “My guess?”

  Custo shrugged, as if nothing much mattered anymore.

  “Talia. They’re taking no chances with her life or they would have fired on the car. They want to extract her alive. They hunted her for months, lost her in Phoenix, and traced her to Segue. Hell, Spencer probably told them she was here. That was six days ago. More than enough time to clean out the supply room and mobilize an assault.”

  Adam glanced at Talia. This was about her. There was no point in hiding the fact.

  “You should trade me for safe passage,” she said. Her voice was remarkably even, curiously lacking emotion.

  “No,” Adam ground out. Custo shook his head, too, but his jaw was tight.

  “You said it yourself,” Talia insisted. “They probably won’t kill me or they would have by now.”

  “Don’t you understand?” Adam said through his teeth. “This is The Collective—they will kill us anyway. They will control you. All hope whatsoever will be lost.” This should not be difficult for her, a woman of considerable intellect, to understand.

  Adam had to think—to regroup. There had to be a way overlooked by Spencer. Spencer was good, but not creative. Overconfident. There were things he would have missed. The ducts, perhaps, or—

  The floor buzzed beneath Adam’s feet. The vibration moved over his skin with a sudden terror. He knew the source: a great machine was retracting as a safety measure released.

  A distant shriek echoed through the walls of Segue.

  From below. From hell.

  From Jacob.

  The floor shook. Talia saw the lines of Adam’s face tighten, his color turn ashy, and she knew what it meant. There were monsters outside, and now a very motivated one inside. Jacob.

  Adam’s expression focused, as if a line of thought were developing in his mind. He abruptly turned and coded into his office. Custo followed, pulling her with him and propped open the door with a chair, but blocked the others as they crowded beyond the door. Adam dropped his rifle on the small leather sofa to his right and typed madly into his computer.

  Talia glanced at the monitor to the right of Adam’s desk. Jacob’s guards were strung up like macabre marionettes inside the cell they once guarded. Adam switched the image immediately to view a long, empty corridor. He looked over his shoulder at her, concern in his eyes.

  Not necessary. Talia’s fear was still tightly packed into a knot of horror in the back of her mind. It wouldn’t bother her anymore. Patty had taken care of that.

  Adam returned his attention to his computer monitor. “Elevators are still locked down. Coded security measures are still active.”

  He stepped over to a tall cabinet on the other side of the room, jerked it open, and rummaged through long rolls of papers. He selected one, flicked off the rubber band, and unfurled it.

  A strong wipe of his arm cleared the adjacent work space. Files, papers, a laptop, and assorted flotsam fell to the floor, replaced with the curling page. Detailed plans of the building in delicate blue lines filled the white space, though the shapes of the rooms and corridors were not familiar to her.

  “This is a blueprint of the hotel, not Segue. Spencer and SPCI were not part of the initial renovation of the building, so I’m hoping we can all slip by them and get to the garage. There are three cars left in there, though it will be a tight fit for all of us. The access road might not be blocked.”

  Adam traced his finger along a set of narrow lines. “There is a God.”

  Apparently the green parlor had an old, concealed service passage, now covered with drywall, from which it was possible to get out the west side of the building. Then they’d cut across the terrace, climb onto the roof of the garage, enter through a vent, and pack into Adam’s cars like circus clowns to make a speedy getaway.

  Ridiculous. Her plan was better.

  “Trading you is not an option,” Adam said, as if he could read her mind. He was back at his computer, concentrating on a detailed list of files, selecting and copying those he wanted.

  “It’s the only way,” Talia insisted. “I can see it. Everyone else can surely see it. That leaves just you. No one else has to die.”

  From the corridor, Armand shouted, “If the wraiths want her so bad, just give them to her. One life for twelve.”

  Talia caught the quick, cutting look Adam shot Custo.

  Custo turned to the crowd in the doorway. “Let’s move back and let the man think. We’re not trading anyone to the wraiths today.”

  Arms spread wide, gun across his chest, Custo herded Gillian and the others down the hallway toward the stairs.

  As soon as they were out of sight, Adam said, “Martyring yourself won’t bring Pat back. The Collective wants you bad enough to go public before they’re ready.” A bar slowly made its way across the computer screen as files were downloaded. “They don’t have the numbers yet to sustain a full-on war, which means they are embracing years of being hunted just to capture you. You’re that important. If we give you up now, the wraith war will be over. They’ll have won.”

  He turned back to the cabinet, pulled out a fire ax, and laid it next to his rifle.

  He just didn’t seem to understand. “Adam. Maybe in an alternate universe, I am actually helpful against the wraiths, instead of a liability. But here and now, I don’t know how I could possibly stop them.”

  If, however, she went to The Collective, negotiated safety for the Segue staff and Adam, then maybe she could do something worthwhile with her life.

  He shook his head, no. “We need to buy you the time to figure your role out. No matter what happens today, you find out why you are so important, and then end this.”

  The man was insane.

  He pressed a flash drive into her hand. “You’ve got all my Segue files here, as well as locations of global safe houses. Actually, ignore those. Find somewhere populated, but anonymous. A big city, but don’t tell me which one. You’ll have access to money, resources
. Names of people who will help you.”

  Talia tried to give it back. “I’m not taking this.”

  “I don’t want to have to give it to you, but there’s nothing left to do. No, I take that back. Just one thing left...” His mouth descended on hers, his hand cradling the back of her head, fingers lacing into her hair. He seared her with his regret.

  She didn’t want to feel this. Feel what might have been.

  He shifted, kicking the desk chair out of the way to mold her body to his, showing her—cruelly—just how perfectly they would have fit together had things been different. A wild surge of his emotion overwhelmed her—too many feelings to parse individually, but all wracked with guilt.

  He pulled back, but the sensation of his mouth still lingered on hers.

  “I’m sorry for how I did it before,” he said. “I was feeling sorry for myself. Still am, but what the hell.”

  She gripped his arms. “What? So now I’m supposed to run away and leave you to—”

  He nodded. “Yep. Far and fast.”

  Across their touch, his determination surged, washing out all other emotion.

  “No. I’ve seen what the wraiths do to people.”

  “We all have to die someday.” He grabbed her around the waist and shoved her into the corridor.

  She turned to find him armed with his rifle and the ax. “But they won’t feed on your ‘life energy.’ They feed on your soul.”

  Adam glanced down at her briefly in the office doorway, mouth twisting a little. “My soul’s half eaten already.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s...” There were no words to describe what she felt in him. “I could make it so dark that we could all slip out to safety.”

  “I assure you that we will be using that trick of yours, but your range isn’t wide enough to blind them all. To save us all. Just you.” He pushed her down the hall to the rest of the Segue group. Custo already had the stairwell door open.

  “And I can do things in the dark, too. I disabled one wraith on the street...” she argued as she hurried alongside Adam.

  “But not the one that got Patty. We have an entire army outside those doors.”

  Then it was hopeless. “You’re not going to fight to live at all?”

  “The green parlor,” Adam said to Custo, who ushered the others into the stairwell. Adam turned back to her, looked her straight in the eyes. “Talia, I am going to fight to the death. Please understand. I have to see to my brother.” Dark, bloody anger coursed through him, as if the word brother had a death grip on his heart. “You find the thing that did this to him.”

  She pulled back. No. I don’t want to.

  This was not the Adam that had just kissed her. This Adam was a stranger. Unyielding, implacable. Bent on fighting a creature ten times his strength. Out of his mind.

  “Promise me. You’re the key. You find the source of the wraiths and you end this.” They exited into the hotel’s front foyer. Adam speared her with a look over his shoulder. “Promise me.”

  “I don’t know how,” she repeated. His urgency was so strong, so intent, that it overrode every other feeling.

  “You find out.” He shifted his grasp to hold her upper arm. “For Patty.”

  The name gripped her and took her objections away. “For Patty.”

  Talia glanced down the hallway. The group ahead had stirred the air so that dust motes spun in the flood of sunlight. Outside the percussive slices of the helicopter’s rotors battered the sky.

  Adam followed Custo through a series of connecting doors—her arm and shoulder would never be the same—then handed her off with a push that sent her tripping into Custo’s grasp. The brief touch of Custo’s skin told her he was full of urgency and ready for a good fight. Behind him, Gillian’s face was pinched and red. Armand cursed. And Jim Remy was restlessly shifting.

  Talia looked around. The room had no windows and was gray with shadows. She could darken a room this size completely. In Middleton, she had propelled a bullet to its target—she could do that again. Take the wraiths and soldiers out one by one. She could—

  A loud crack snapped her into reality—Adam hitting the wall with the ax. His arms lifted, his shoulders bunched and tightened, and then the ax came down, splintering the wall. He reached into the black hole and pulled back with the weight of his body. A large piece of drywall came away. Armand stepped up and yanked more drywall. Others grabbed at the breach to create a big enough opening to move through.

  “Adam,” Jim said. “Give me a gun. I’ll take up the rear.”

  “Custo can do that.”

  “You need Custo, and I want to stay here. Forever. I want to be with her.” Jim shrugged. Talia knew he meant Lady Amunsdale, the ghost he’d lost track of this past week. He had to be out of his mind.

  Adam hesitated, then held out his handgun to Jim. A couple magazines followed.

  Thick dust rose from the hole in the wall in a great gasping cloud. Beyond it, blackness stretched. Crawly things in there.

  “You first,” Adam said in her direction.

  Custo grimly nodded, and with a soft shove started Talia’s unwilling feet moving toward the black yawn. She stepped over the boards at her feet and into a narrow, musty hallway, time-drenched with webs hanging like specters to snag at her hair and brush against her arms.

  “Here.” A spotlight pierced the darkness as Custo nudged her hand with a flashlight. “Move fast now. The others are waiting.”

  She held up her arm to shield her eyes and face, then forged ahead. The corridor was long, broken at rotting steps that she descended with Custo’s support, should the wood give way. This passage must have been intended for servants, bustling unseen throughout the hotel at work or on errands.

  An old door was propped at the exit, its decaying hinges broken away from the wood of the frame. The room beyond was small and dour, but light shined though a graying porthole. The group crowded into the space.

  When Adam joined them, the room stilled as everyone strained to hear what was to come next. “This will put us on the western curve of the terrace. We’re heading to the roof of the garage. Custo and Talia are going to go first. Then the rest of you.”

  He tossed a key ring to Gillian. And another to Armand. “Pack as many people as you can in the vehicles.”

  “Shhhhh!” Custo turned his head to listen.

  The room quieted. Behind them, from the mouth of the corridor, hard footsteps sounded. Pounded. Cracked wood.

  Jacob?

  “Damn it,” Adam said. “Go now. Custo...”

  Everyone jammed the window, each trying to get through to safety first.

  “Now or never,” Jim said, sweat rolling off his forehead. He dived back into the blackness. A loud pop echoed into the room. Pop. Pop. A strangled scream. Then silence.

  No one moved for an agonizing moment.

  Then Custo elbowed Armand in the face to get through the crowd. He dragged another from the porthole and levered himself up and out smoothly.

  Rough hands—Adam’s—lifted Talia’s hips. She ducked through the hole and fell onto Custo, who hefted her up, locked an arm around her chest, and put a gun to her head.

  Her heart leaped in momentary panic, but then she understood. He didn’t want to shoot her, he was sending a message.

  The sun blared overhead, hot on her face, but after a moment, her vision adjusted and she caught movement on the grass below the balustrade. Guns aimed, but not firing. It was as Adam said—they wanted to take her alive.

  One by one, people emerged from the portal. Old Philip hefted, purple-faced, through the hole. The lab tech, Priya, followed. They staggered in the light and slowly came to attention as weapons from the grass leveled at them like a firing squad.

  Adam climbed through last, though he stopped to call over his shoulder. “Jim!”

  No one answered.

  Custo dragged Talia backward toward Adam. “We’ve got to go before they call our bluff.”

  Adam nodded sharply.
His gaze rested on her momentarily, and then he signaled for everyone to move out. The rifles below followed them as they raced to the garage, the helicopter dipping, chin down, some distance away to head in their direction.

  The group climbed a service ladder to the roof of the garage, Custo and Talia first. All they had to do was get into the garage and to the cars. There was no way anyone could know which vehicle Talia was in. Perhaps they could escape, after all.

  “Oh, Adam,” a voice called. The tone was light, playful, flirtatious, though masculine, and it carried across the terrace in spite of the helicopter.

  Talia turned.

  Jacob strolled toward them. Jim, still alive, shielded his body. Blood streaked in a vivid brushstroke up Jacob’s forearm, as if he’d just wiped his mouth. Talia thought of the guards in the cell below Segue and shuddered.

  “Jacob,” a magnified voice from the helicopter called. “Do not attack the group.”

  “Why not?” Jacob called gleefully, still approaching. Jim whined in his grasp.

  “The Collective commands you to halt!”

  “The Collective left me to rot,” Jacob said.

  “Shoot him,” Talia said to Custo.

  Custo raised his gun, but it was too late. Jacob was hungry for one person, and one person only.

  Jacob darted, throwing Jim to the side.

  Adam dodged, bringing up his assault rifle. Jacob smacked it down—the volley of shots clipped the flagstones as the gun went awry. Jacob grasped the strap that secured the weapon to Adam’s body, wrenching him backward.

  Adam heaved, jabbed a leg back, and caught Jacob in the knee. Even Talia, from her position on the roof, could hear the crack. But Adam couldn’t escape.

  Custo raised his shotgun again, grim conviction on his face.

  “No! You’ll hit Adam.”

  Jacob brought Adam roughly up by the shoulders in a twisted lover’s embrace.

  “There’s no other way.” Custo focused down the barrel.

  “Brother mine,” Jacob said, grinning. He kissed Adam once, a teasing peck on the nose, then drew back, mouth widening, teeth extending.

  Horror surged in Talia. Revulsion burst all of the floodgates she’d meticulously erected around her heart. All reservations dissolved in its wake. All care for life, and hope, and love evaporated in the anticipation of Adam’s death. If the wraiths and humanity wanted a massacre, she’d bloody well give them one.