Sweat beaded his flushed face and she noticed he held his left arm protectively against his chest. Dark stubble covered his chin, framing lips that had to have been fashioned by Eros—or Satan. He had the most erotically seductive mouth she’d ever seen, the only soft spot amid his warrior’s features—chiseled nose, sharp cheeks, and brooding brow. His dark hair flowed past his shoulders, layered back from his face like the wings of a predator. He looked like a deadly warrior, an odd gold-colored pagan amulet hanging on a chunky chain about his neck.
If she had hit him with her car, he didn’t appear to have suffered any injuries. She shook her head. No. If she’d hit him, there would be evidence of it on him and on her car besides the windshield. This just wasn’t real. He resembled an actor she’d once seen in a mini-series on Attila the Hun. This had to be a dream. A woman would have to be out of her mind to imagine waking up in a cow pasture with a naked man.
She managed a weak smile. “Hello, Attila the hunk,” she said, her voice scratchy and unsure. What else could it be but a dream?
“You can see me?” the man asked in a deep voice. “You are mistaken. Attila the Hun died well over a millennium ago and I bear no resemblance to that cursed scourge. I am Jared.”
She narrowed her eyes and a pang cut through her temple. That wasn’t a very romantic, dreamlike response. At least none that she could imagine fantasizing, which meant this was real. What did he mean, could she see him? How could she not?
Shaking her head, she wondered if she could just start over again. Last night’s creature battle never happened. Yesterday’s hell in the Sno-Med lab didn’t exist. In just a moment, she would wake to her alarm clock in her apartment after the wildest dream/nightmare of her life. All she had to do was open her eyes, throw back her leopard-print spread, and flip on her Victorian feather lamp. Better yet, why not tuck her new hood ornament into bed with her?
“Jared what?” she asked, giving the dream option one last try. Hopefully the man would now speak in a Scottish accent, fulfilling her fantasy.
He stared at her another moment, scowled, then looked around him as if she hadn’t spoken. Too typically male to ever be a dream.
Erin set her hands on her hips, wishing that at least one thing in a million could go right. “If you won’t tell me who you are, can you at least tell me how in the hell you ended up on my car? And where are your clothes?”
He flexed the fingers of his left hand as if to see how it worked. When he moved his left arm, he groaned and pulled it tighter against himself.
She winced at her own insensitivity and softened her voice as she touched his arm lightly. “Hey, you’re hurt and fevered. Let me help.”
“I’m damned,” he said harshly; his eyes were stark and desolated.
He was delirious. “Jared,” she said softly. “Let me see your wound. I’m a nurse—I can help.” She moved closer to him. Oddly, she grew warmer inside, as if his nearness affected her. The heat, she told herself. She had to be feeling the heat of his fever.
“Nothing can cure a Tsara infection.” Still, he unfolded his arm and shifted it to the side.
She moved his hair back and sucked in a sharp breath at the sight of the deep burn that slashed his chest just above his left breast. Charred and angry his wound oozed, looking as though someone had burned him badly only minutes ago.
“How in God’s name did that happen?” she asked, forcing back a shudder.
“You say much to know so little,” he said cryptically, then slid off the hood. From the sudden clenching of his arm and the deep furrowing of his brow as he tentatively gained his balance, she knew he was in great pain. Yet he stoically braced himself and straightened to his full height.
She stepped back, shocked. He towered over her five-foot-ten by a foot, a rare event.
Without glancing at her, he moved closer to the creek, staring up at the sky and clutching the amulet to his chest. “Aragon!” he screamed. “Why! You’ve betrayed me!”
His voice reverberated like thunder and the marrow of her bones shook from the agony vibrating in it. Maybe she wasn’t the one having a hallucination. Who was Aragon?
“Mister, uh, Jared. We need to get you to help.”
His head bowed as if shamed. “There is no help.”
He carried such an aura of authority about him that her heart sank, almost believing him, before she shook it off. She almost said “bullshit” to his doomed nonsense, but instinct told her she wouldn’t be able to convince him he wasn’t damned, and rather than get lost in a quagmire of verbal hopelessness she pulled her professional wits back into line.
“There is help,” she said firmly. “First, you’re going to sit in the car before you fall down. I hate to tell you, but if you faint, you’ll lie where you fall since I can’t move you alone. And the cows will graze on whatever is exposed—which is everything, in case you haven’t noticed.”
He didn’t move or react. He just stood there, staring up at the sky, pain etched deeply on his face.
Grumbling, she marched to him and slid her hand over his right wrist, touching the burning heat of his skin. She pressed her fingers to his radial pulse, measuring the pace of his racing heart. She had to get his fever down quickly and dress his wound.
He’d started at her touch and stared at her, confused.
“Please,” she said softly. “Let me help you.” She put her other hand on his arm.
His gaze moved to her hand, as if her touch bewildered him.
“This weakness of the flesh, this pain, is unknown to me,” he said. “Why does it ease with your touch?”
A slight smile tugged at the corners of her mouth even as she puzzled over his odd phrasing. “Nurses always make things better. Come with me.” She tugged on his wrist, and after a moment he followed her to the car. Opening the back door, she patted the seat. “Sit here and I’ll get my first aid kit.” And something to cover you with.
Armed with a yellow towel, sports bra, med kit, and cool water from the creek, she joined Jared in the back seat, squeezing in to kneel on the floor at his side. He was so big there wasn’t room for anything but that. Dousing her bra in the water, she placed the soft cotton on his forehead and flung the towel over his groin.
He stared at her as if he wasn’t sure what she would do next. The blueness of his eyes struck a familiar cord inside her again, as if she should know him. She held up a tube of antibiotic ointment. “This is medicine. I’m going to put it on your burn. Then I will try and cool you down before we go look for help.”
“There is no reason to care for me. The path to the Fallen cannot be changed.”
“I have to help you,” she said, refusing to respond to his delirious words of doom.
He gazed intently at her, as if trying to see her soul. The vulnerable sensations he evoked left her as disturbed as her encounter with Dr. Cinatas had after discovering the murders in his lab. She shivered, edging back a little from Jared before she realized it was the sheer power of his presence getting to her and not what had happened in the Sno-Med lab.
He brushed his finger along her cheek, his eyes widening with surprise. “I see you must. This ill is not of your doing, Chosen, and you cannot change fate, but do as you will for now.”
The man was delusional, more so than a high fever would account for. He wasn’t in tune with the real world, which meant he could very well be mentally ill. There didn’t seem to be another explanation. But he wasn’t threatening her in any way and he needed her help.
Still, her hands trembled as she worked, her awareness of him and the raw power of his appeal grew, as did her curiosity. He was a puzzle. She moved the amulet aside to apply more ointment and found it was as hot as his fevered skin. Other than the unusual geometric design on it, she didn’t see any identifying information. No engravings or symbols she recognized to help her connect him to a national group or club.
She kept glancing back at the amulet as she tended to him. It was unusual, as was his speech and the circumstan
ces of his appearance on the hood of her car. If this were fiction and not real life she’d be tempted to wonder who Aragon was, and what a Tsara infection was. But right now he needed help and she needed to do what she could to get him to it. Then she could get back to finding a way to expose Cinatas.
Chapter Four
Jared had known little but war as he’d searched for and guarded the Chosen from the Vladarian Order. He wasn’t sure how to respond to the woman with him. He studied her curiously, realizing that over time he’d forgotten much of what he’d been told about the flesh and being mortal.
She had a tender touch, a caring to her nature that he admired. He could sense her own pain and see the fear in her eyes, yet she still wanted to help him. Did she know that he already hungered for her Chosen blood? It was the first thing he sensed upon awakening, before other sensations intruded.
He flexed his hand, disgusted by the limitation of this physical body that was so different from his spirit form. He had had such fluidity of movement. Being in mortal flesh now made him feel as if he were bound in chains. Trapped in a prison and tortured as the good within him fought its inevitable death to the evil of the Tsara’s poison.
He reached down to the yellow towel across his groin and frowned at the sensation of having something against his skin. She had covered him for some reason, though he’d not expressed a desire for that and would prefer to be uncovered.
“What does this mean?” she asked, touching his amulet.
“Everything and nothing. It’s Logos’s symbol. All those within the Guardian Forces wear it.” To Jared the symbol represented everything he knew, everything he believed in, everything that was lost now. He was a prisoner of this mortal flesh for a time and then . . . damnation. Why had his brethren condemned him to hell?
How long did he have before the poison consumed him? He didn’t know. A lot depended on the potency of the Tsara’s poison. Pathos had been in the mortal world less than a week before he began hunting and feeding on the Chosen. Soon after that he began using his Blood Hunter skills for evil by leading the Vladarians on hunting trips and adeptly finding the Chosen for their feeding frenzies.
Few Blood Hunters had ever been bitten by a Tsara. Jared knew of two—Pathos and another who had been able to redeem his soul with mortal love. But that was before the world had become so evil and the Tsara’s poison so vile.
The Chosen studied him with warm golden eyes like liquid sunshine. Her skin and features were so perfectly formed, so soft and inviting, that she compelled his touch. And the scent of her blood was so sweet that she stirred hungers stronger than he’d ever known before. It was almost consuming him, and he’d just been poisoned.
“Who are the Guardian Forces? Who is Logos?” she asked, touching his amulet again.
The question was almost as painful as the evil venom within him, for the answer was everything he was and could never be again. “All that is good, honest, and pure,” he replied. He saw it all there in the depths of her eyes, the goodness and honesty and purity of her spirit. He’d always protected and defended the Chosen, but had never given any thought to their spirits—only their purpose for Logos. The beauty in her eyes, her strength, her vulnerability, and her caring, tugged at something unfamiliar inside of him; something that stirred his spirit as well as his mortal body.
Before she had begun ministering to him, he’d noted the soul-biting edge of his pain had lessened the closer they were to each other. When she touched him or he touched her, the pain would disappear completely, only to rage back with a vengeance the moment their contact stopped. Her touch didn’t heal him or ease the strength of the Tsara’s poison spreading through him. It only delayed the inevitable, which made it all even worse.
Her hands shook as she worked, and he slid his hand over hers. “Do I frighten you?”
“No,” she whispered, glancing up at him.
He sighed and brushed his fingers gently over her wrist. If she eased his pain with her touch, did that mean she was absorbing his pain into herself?
“Does touching me cause you pain?” He meant to release her, but the warm throb of her blood beneath his fingertips was too alluring to let go of just yet. He sucked in air through gritted teeth as a desire to taste her, in a way that was different from his hunger for her blood, surged through him. At least, he thought he felt that way. He wasn’t sure. The growing sensations and the depths of his hungers confused him.
The Chosen shook her head. “No. Now lie back and let me help.”
He could see that helping him was important to her. It wasn’t the way of the warrior. He shouldn’t give in to the weakness of his pain and allow her to bring him ease. But he grunted and closed his eyes, deciding to accept her help for a moment more. It felt good.
Erin shook her head. Why had he thought touching him would hurt her? What was he referring to when he spoke of the Guardian Forces and Logos? They sounded like names from a video or role-playing game; games she’d heard some people took so seriously they were attempting to live them out in real life.
She kept looking for reason amid the confusion he caused, searching for an explanation for him being here as well as her reaction to him. Her hands shook, not from fear, but because of the sensations touching him evoked. Telling herself the man was delusional did little to dampen his effect. A sensuality mingled with the heat pouring off him that no amount of sponging with water could cool.
Despite the open doors, the car had become a humid, window-fogging sauna. Sandwiched between him and the steamy sun beating down, she felt seconds away from spontaneously combusting by the time she’d dressed his wound and sponged him down. Sweat trickled between her breasts and glued her white stockings to her skin, making everything that couldn’t be politely reached itch. At least, that was the explanation she accepted for how she felt in certain places. Anything else was unreasonable.
She’d forced her ministrations to be quick and perfunctory, but the hard, chiseled planes of his commanding body had put a dent in her professionalism. Dent? The way her pulse raced, he’d wrecked it.
She didn’t understand the effect he had on her, or her growing curiosity about him and the odd amulet he wore. The gold wasn’t fourteen or more carat; it was too brass-bronze-like in color, with an odd opalescent sheen. Whatever the composition of the two-inch disk, it was a beautiful mixture of metals. But the jewels, randomly set amid an intricately woven star, were so small it made her question why the designer had ruined the perfection of the metal by using them. Who was he? Who was Logos? Who were the Shadow-men and the Guardian Forces?
Hell. She needed to get a grip. She had more important things to worry about, like a murdering doctor and her life. Inching away, she backed out of the car.
“MOOO.”
Startled, she twisted toward the sound and a cow butted her as if she were manna or momma. Yelping, she scrambled to sit on the edge of the seat, next to Jared’s head, as she faced the cow and pushed the beast’s wet muzzle away with her foot. It wasn’t alone. Distorted by foggy patches on the windows were a dozen bleating monstrosities surrounding her navy Tahoe. Moos on a slo-mo warpath.
“I eat chicken and fish! Honest.” Had she thought the cows a spot of normalcy in her surroundings?
The cow pressed harder against her shoe, its slimy, pinkish tongue swiping as it played king of the hill with her one-inch Dr. Scholl’s. Where were her stilettos when she needed them?
With one foot still battling the cow in front of her, she twisted around to her left at a sound from behind her. A cud-chewing monster was licking Jared’s feet. “Shoo!” she shouted. Leaning over him, she flung her hand out. The cow butted her foot again, and she lost her precarious balance, landing half on top of Jared, her nose to his chest and her breasts to his face.
He groaned, pressing a hot hand to her breast as he suddenly pushed upright, knocking her onto the floor. The cows bleated loudly. From her dazed position, she saw Jared narrow his eyes and growl, a feral, almost chilling wolf-lik
e sound from deep in his throat. Then he reclined on the seat and shut his eyes.
Erin sat up and stared at him in exasperation. They were under attack, and all he could manage to do was growl? “Some help you are,” she muttered, looking to battle her bovine nemeses again. But they were gone.
The cows had retreated, running up the hill in a group as if the hunting forces of Wendy’s, McDonalds, and Longhorns were hot on their hooves. An eerie feeling crept over her that had nothing to do with the feel of his hand on her breast. She wanted to call the cows back, anything but be sitting next to a man who’d just . . . growled, and . . . what? Sent a herd of cows fleeing?
Coincidence. Something else had spooked them. She shivered and cautiously ran her gaze over Jared, assuring herself of his normalcy, then gave up. A six-foot-something hunk of power thighs, pumped pecs, and piercing blue eyes didn’t walk by every day—and surely never posed as a naked hood ornament.
Okay, so, Attila the Hunk growled at cows. So what?
Refusing to plant another foot outside her SUV until she’d left hostile bovine territory, she shut the door and crawled across the car. Jared’s feet hung out the other side.
“Let’s get you all the way inside,” she told him, then winced. That just sounded so wrong.
He opened those too blue eyes. “They’ll not return. Do not worry, Chosen.”
Chosen? Odd thing to call her. The man really was ill, and the troubled, pained look in his eyes had deepened, making her want to brush his dark hair back from his fevered brow and soothe the tension clenching his jaw.
“Erin,” she said softly. “My name is Erin Morgan. What is yours?”
“I am Jared.”
“I know, but what is the rest? Your full name?”
“Rest?”
“Yes, Jared, what?”
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