Blade of Darkness

by Dianne Duvall

  But Chris considered all that par for the course and went even further.

  Chris didn’t just want the immortals to maintain anonymity and be comfortable. He wanted them to be happy and have as close to a normal life as possible, even though they spent their nights in the very abnormal pursuit of hunting vampires.

  So Reordon built restaurants like this one that served humans in the main dining area and immortals and their Seconds in a smaller room boasting a VIP label that led humans to assume the men and women guided back there were simply wealthy individuals who wanted special treatment. That way Seconds could enjoy a meal they didn’t have to cook themselves and talk about the job without worrying about being overheard. And immortals could use their gifts without ending up in videos posted online.

  Aidan had, of course, called ahead to let Sergio—the manager—know that he would be dining with a human woman, so Sergio wouldn’t slip and mention Aidan’s occupation.

  Pocketing his keys, Aidan strode around the back of the car.

  Dana stepped out before he could reach her.

  “Aren’t men supposed to open car doors for women?” he asked.

  She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know. It always felt weird to me to sit there and expect someone else to do something I was perfectly capable of doing myself. So I never waited to see if the man would do it.”

  He closed the door for her. “When I look at it from that perspective, I suppose I would feel the same way.” Placing a hand on the small of her back, Aidan tried to keep his eyes from fastening on the lovely hint of cleavage the neckline of her dress exposed as he escorted her to the door. “I trust you’ll let me open this door for you?” he teased, reaching for the handle.

  She laughed. “Yes, thank you.”

  The interior of the restaurant was nice. White tablecloths. Candles and warm lighting. A plethora of plants that added color and provided privacy for couples who wanted such.

  A man in a suit as expensive and finely tailored as Aidan’s greeted them with a smile. “Good evening. Aidan O’Byrne?” he asked, tilting his head back to look up at Aidan.

  “Yes.”

  “Excellent. I’m Sergio, the manager of this establishment. Would you and your guest please follow me? I’ve had a table prepared for you in our VIP section.” Sergio turned and started toward a door on the far side of the restaurant.

  As Aidan and Dana followed, she leaned in close and whispered, “VIP section. Ooh la la.”

  Aidan laughed.

  The restaurant seemed to do a bustling business. The tables they passed were full of human couples and families.

  Sergio opened the door to the VIP area and stood back to let them enter. Closing the door behind them, he guided them down a short hallway that opened into a smaller dining room.

  For some reason, Aidan had expected the dining room to be empty. But it wasn’t. Three Immortal Guardians—Étienne, his wife Krysta, and her brother Sean—dined with an older couple Aidan had come to know as Krysta’s mortal parents. Both parents were gifted ones, but Aidan couldn’t remember the nature of their gifts.

  All turned at Aidan and Dana’s entrance and smiled, issuing a chorus of greetings.

  Aidan paused by their table.

  “Who’s this?” Krysta’s mother, Evie, asked cheerfully.

  The Immortal Guardians in the area all adored Evie because she fussed over them and treated them all like sons and daughters, something most hadn’t experienced in hundreds—if not thousands—of years.

  “This is Dana Pembroke,” he said. “Dana, this is Étienne, his wife Krysta, her brother Sean, and their parents Evelyn and Martin.”

  Dana smiled and nodded. “Nice to meet you all.”

  Each offered a “Nice to meet you, too.”

  “Call me Evie,” Krysta’s mother said, then smiled up at Aidan with twinkling eyes. “I’d ask you if you’d like to join us, but I can tell you’d rather have Dana all to yourself.”

  Krysta groaned. “Mom, don’t embarrass him.”

  Dana laughed and sent Aidan a flirtatious glance that made his heart do a funny little leap in his chest. “You want me all to yourself, do you?”

  He grinned. “Absolutely.”

  Murmuring goodbyes, they left the group and followed Sergio to the other side of the room.

  Two Seconds monopolized another table, laptops open amidst platters of more food than Aidan thought two humans should be able to consume. Sheldon served as the French immortal Richart’s Second or human guard. Tracy served as Richart’s sister Lisette’s Second.

  Aidan nodded to them. “Sheldon. Tracy.”

  Sheldon nodded. “Hey, man.” His eyes shifted to Dana and widened. “Dude, are you on a date?”

  He didn’t have to look so damned surprised. “Yes. And I’m trying to impress her, so don’t be”—he waved a hand in a circle in front of Sheldon—“you.”

  Tracy laughed. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep him in check.”

  Sheldon gave Dana a friendly smile and held out his hand. “Hi. I’m Sheldon.”

  Dana returned his smile and shook his hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Dana.”

  “Nice to meet you, Dana. This is Tracy.”

  Dana shook Tracy’s hand. “Nice to meet you, Tracy.”

  “Nice to meet you, too.”

  Dana looked up at Aidan. “Is Sheldon one of your adopted brothers?”

  Aidan chuckled. “No. Sheldon is more of a… weird cousin to us all.”

  Sheldon grinned. “Proud of it!” Then he frowned. “Hey. Wait a minute.”

  Everyone laughed.

  As Aidan and Dana moved away, Sergio waved them over to a table in the corner with romantic lighting and plants that partially hid them from the others’ view.

  Aidan held Dana’s chair for her, then seated himself across from her.

  Sergio handed them each a menu and vowed to return in a moment.

  Dana’s eyes twinkled with amusement as she opened her menu and studied him above it.

  Aidan offered her a sheepish smile. “Apparently surrogate family members can embarrass one as much as blood relatives can.”

  Étienne, Krysta, and Sean laughed, their preternatural hearing allowing them to catch the comment.

  Dana smiled. “I take it some of the others were the brothers you mentioned you work with?”

  He nodded. “Étienne, Krysta, and her brother Sean are part of the private security group I work with. Out of the lot of us, I think Krysta and Sean are the only ones amongst us with family still living. So Evie and Martin have sort of adopted the rest of us. They treat us all like kin, mothering and fathering us every chance they can get.”

  Dana smiled. “And you all love it.”

  “We eat it up like candy,” Aidan admitted with a grin.

  “I envy you that. I lost my parents in a car accident several years ago and really miss all the worrying and butting in—the telling me not to waste my time with this guy or that one—that drove me crazy when I was in high school and college.” Her eyes darkened with sadness, then lit up again. “Ooh. I bet my mom would’ve been able to answer all your questions. Her psychic gift was much stronger than mine.”

  “Your mother was psychic, too?” Aidan asked with interest. One of the oddities he’d come to understand about gifted ones was that they didn’t always share the same gift their mother or father possessed.

  Dana nodded. “So was my dad, if you can believe it. They used to joke that they never bothered to date anyone else because they knew years before they met that they would end up together.”

  Both parents had been psychic gifted ones? No wonder her gift was stronger than he had expected. Many gifted ones born in recent decades possessed gifts that were so muted by thousands of years of gifted ones DNA being diluted with ordinary human DNA that they didn’t even realize they were different.

  Aidan opened his menu and perused the offerings. “Anything look good to you?”

  Dana eyed the menu. “Are you kidding? Ev
erything looks good to me.”

  He set his menu aside. “In the movies, the man sometimes orders for the woman, but I’d much rather you choose what you want yourself. If that’s everything”—he smiled—“then I’ll have Sergio bring us a little bit of everything.”

  She stared at him a moment, then lowered her menu. “May I ask you something personal?”

  “Of course.”

  “How long has it been since your last date?”

  He laughed. “Longer than I care to admit. It shows, does it?”

  Her slender shoulders lifted in a slight shrug. “Maybe a little.”

  “And here I was hoping to make a good impression.”

  “You are. A very good impression. But more than once you’ve referenced what you thought men were supposed to do on a date instead of just sort of going with what you’ve always done, so I thought maybe it had been a while.”

  Far longer than a while.

  “Which I find very hard to believe,” she continued, “because—with your good looks and charm—I would think women would fall all over themselves to get your attention.”

  In the rare instances he followed vampires into bars or clubs, women could be quite bold in their pursuit of him. But Aidan wasn’t looking for an easy lay. He’d had his fill of women who could make him hard but otherwise bored the pants off him. He wanted someone who could hold his attention when they weren’t in bed. Someone with whom he enjoyed talking. Someone who made him laugh. Someone who challenged him intellectually. Someone who made him feel young again.

  Sergio returned with a waiter who placed two glasses of water and a basket full of bread on the table. The waiter took their order, then left.

  Sergio migrated over to Étienne’s table, asking if everything had met their expectations as the group prepared to leave.

  Aidan and Dana waved as the group exited.

  “I hope I didn’t make you feel self-conscious or anything,” Dana said, a question in her pretty hazel eyes. “I haven’t dated in a while either.”

  “Because of your gift?” he guessed.

  She nodded and toyed with the basket. “When guys find out what I do for a living, they tend to assume I’m nuts. The few who don’t usually consider me a tool they can use to win the lotto or get rich playing the stock market.”

  “Imbeciles, the lot of them,” Aidan declared.

  She smiled. “Thank you. But even those who accept it, or at least appear to…” She shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s hard for them, I guess, my knowing things about them that they would rather keep hidden. It makes them uneasy. Sometimes it makes them angry.”

  “Or afraid?”

  “That, too, though they would never admit it.”

  “And I’m guessing your gift often lets you see things you really wish you hadn’t.” He sure as hell saw a lot in people’s thoughts that he would rather not. But when he was tired he sometimes couldn’t block them.

  She grimaced. “That, too. Being psychic makes dating pretty hard.”

  “I understand.”

  She cast him an uncertain look. “It really doesn’t freak you out, even a little bit, knowing I can see things from your past, present, and future? Knowing that the more time we spend together, the more I’ll see and the more I’ll know about you that you may not want me to know? Because I will see stuff you don’t want me to, Aidan. I always do. And it always ruins things.”

  Leaning forward, Aidan crossed his arms and braced them on the table. What he contemplated was no doubt very unwise, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself from saying, “It doesn’t freak me out at all, Dana, because I’m in the same boat.”

  Chapter Four

  Dana frowned. “What?”

  Aidan took one of those pauses that made her think he questioned the wisdom of speaking. “I’m in the same boat,” he repeated. “I haven’t dated in a long time because I was born with gifts similar to yours that tend to make others uncomfortable.”

  Disappointment filled her. Seriously? He was mocking her?

  “You look a bit like you want to hit me over the head with the breadbasket,” he stated, brow creasing, “so—to keep you from thinking whatever it is that’s making your eyes flash with fury—I’ll tell you that I’m telepathic and can prove it if you’ll give me permission to read your thoughts.”

  Hell yes, she was furious. This was Jason all over again. That asshole had pretended he had psychic abilities like hers in a lame attempt to get into her pants. He hadn’t realized she actually was psychic and would see through his bullshit.

  Dana leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “You’re telepathic?”

  “Yes.”

  “Prove it.”

  “I can read your thoughts?”

  “You tell me,” she countered, a blatant dare. Read my thoughts, my ass, she mentally grumbled. She had thought Aidan was different, but to mock her like this by pretending he had a special gift, too? What a disappointment.

  “I am different,” he insisted. “And I’m not pretending. I do have a special gift. More than one, if you’re to know the truth of it.”

  She frowned. Had he just read her thoughts?

  “Yes,” he said.

  She narrowed her eyes. Yes, what? Yes, he had read her thoughts? Or was he just guessing the path they would naturally take?

  “Yes, I read your thoughts,” he said. “And yes, I could’ve guessed the path they would take, but I didn’t.”

  She stilled. Okay. That was a little spot-on.

  “And to prove it,” he continued, “I’ll tell you that, although I have not been listening to your thoughts on our date, I did give them a listen both times you gave me a reading and know that you’ve had two visions about me that you failed to mention.”

  Her heart began to pound. How did he know that?

  “In the first one,” he said, lowering his voice, “we were naked in bed and I was touching your—”

  “Holy crap,” she whispered, dropping her arms and gaping at him.

  His lips twitched. “I was going to say breast, but—”

  “How do you know about that?” she blurted.

  “The same way I know that in the second vision, you were cupping my face in your hands—as you did earlier—and I kissed you and pulled you up against me, sliding my hand down over your lovely bottom. I read your thoughts and saw it as clearly as you did.”

  Speech eluding her, Dana stared at him so long that her eyes began to burn.

  “Blink,” he instructed.

  She did.

  “I know it’s a bit of a shock,” he murmured, eyeing her with some concern.

  “A bit of a shock,” she parroted numbly.

  “I know it feels… intrusive. But I didn’t read your thoughts the whole time. Most of the time I can control what I hear and don’t hear and can block others’ thoughts fairly easily.” Younger telepathic immortals weren’t so lucky. “But when the visions struck you, I saw them as clearly as you did without even trying. I think because we’re both gifted.”

  She hadn’t told anyone about those visions. There was no way he could’ve known about them without reading her mind. “Holy. Crap.”

  His eyebrows rose.

  “Are you reading my thoughts right now?” she asked.

  “Yes. They’re a little chaotic. I’m sorry I’ve shaken you up so much. I just wanted you understand why I haven’t dated in so long and hoped you’d appreciate my honesty.”

  Honesty! He had read her thoughts! He had apparently been reading them all this time, saying exactly what he knew she wanted him to say and—

  His brows drew together. “Now wait a minute. That’s not true. I would never use what I saw in your thoughts to manipulate you. If that had been my intent, I never would’ve told you I’m telepathic.”

  “Dude,” a voice interrupted, “you told her you’re telepathic?”

  Aidan swung around and shot a glare at Sheldon.

  Dana guessed Sheldon was in his early twenties
. Tracy looked to be thirty or thereabouts. Both eyed her and Aidan with great interest as they gathered their laptops and gear and stopped by Dana and Aidan’s table on their way to the door.

  “Sheldon,” Aidan growled, definitely a warning.

  “You know he’s telepathic?” Dana asked his friend.

  “Yeah,” Sheldon responded simply. The woman at his side nodded. Neither seemed to view it as anything extraordinary, as if she had just asked them if they knew Aidan could play the piano.

  “It doesn’t bother you?” Dana pressed.

  Sheldon gave a dismissive shrug. “Nah. Aidan’s a good guy. He almost never reads my mind.”

  Aidan grimaced. “Because there’s too much porn and weird shite up there.”

  Tracy laughed and gave Sheldon’s shoulder a shove. “Freak.”

  Sheldon grinned. “You know it.” Then he caught Dana’s eye. “I’m surprised he told you. People don’t usually react well when they find out he’s different. I’d think you’d understand that since you’re different, too.”

  He knew she was a psychic? “How did you—?”

  “I heard a rumor that Aidan was smitten with a psychic.” He shrugged. “When I saw you two together, I assumed you were her.”

  Aidan frowned. “Where’d you hear that?”

  Sheldon hesitated. “Cliff let it slip while we were playing video games. You won’t hold it against him, will you? He didn’t mean to. He was just… more distracted than usual. And Tracy is the only person I’ve told.”

  Aidan shook his head. “It’s fine.”

  Tracy smiled. “We’d better go before Sheldon says anything else that will embarrass you.” Taking Sheldon’s arm, she urged him toward the door. “You two have a nice evening.”

  “What’d I say that embarrassed him?” Sheldon asked, puzzled.