“I did.”
“You thought I wanted to kill you.”
“I did.” And Aidan’s stomach knotted up when he thought about it.
Seth offered his hand. When Aidan clasped it, Seth pulled him into a rough hug. “I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t you.” But damned if it didn’t make him feel better to have Seth reinforce that fact. He had known Seth longer than he had known anyone else still living. They had been through a hell of a lot together. The knowledge that Gershom had nearly fucked all that up…
Releasing him, Seth stepped back. “Tell me what happened.”
Aidan nodded. Picking up the large storage ottoman at the foot of the bed, he placed it against the wall and sat down.
Seth sank down beside him.
“He got into my head, Seth.”
Seth shot him a sharp glance. “Literally or figuratively?”
“Both,” Aidan confessed with a touch of despair. “He knew just what to say to make me think he was you. Knew what to do, how to behave, what I would expect. He even mimicked your temper perfectly. When I said he was very convincing earlier, I meant he was terrifyingly convincing.”
Seth’s eyes began to glow with renewed anger. “Tell me everything.”
Aidan shook his head. “I want you to see it for yourself. I’m afraid I’ll leave something out if I do the telling.” And he wanted Seth to have every tiny shred of information in his arsenal. So Aidan tapped his temple. “Go ahead and have a look.”
Seth shifted his gaze to Aidan’s forehead.
Quiet engulfed them, broken only by the faint sounds of Dana’s breathing that Aidan’s preternatural hearing caught as she slumbered on, oblivious to their presence. This bedroom, like many others here at David’s place, was soundproofed. David had enlisted the network’s aid in accomplishing such when immortals began to marry, wishing to afford the couples more privacy so they could spend the night whenever they wanted to without worrying about the other immortals hearing them make love.
Seth’s eyes grew brighter as he reviewed the confrontation with Gershom, the gold light a sharp contrast to the darkness of the bedroom.
The floor beneath Aidan’s feet began to vibrate ever so slightly as Seth’s fury rose in response to the memories he scoured.
If Aidan were to open the door of the soundproof bedroom, he likely would hear thunder rumbling outside as rain beat the grass and trees.
The rumbling vibrations increased.
Dana shifted beneath the covers, the quaking luring her toward consciousness.
Aidan touched a hand to Seth’s arm and tried to infuse him with calm. Seth blinked, and the ground stopped shaking.
Dana stilled, sighing in her sleep.
But the bright golden light in Seth’s eyes was slow to fade as they met Aidan’s.
“What did you see?” Aidan asked.
“Everything that transpired in your backyard.”
“Just that? Nothing else?”
“Yes.” Rising, Seth paced away, his movements the same as those Gershom had demonstrated earlier.
It was eerie how identical the two appeared.
“The bastard made you doubt yourself,” Seth growled in fury.
Aidan tried to shrug it off but couldn’t. “I’m still doubting myself,” he admitted softly.
Seth ceased his restless movements. “He was lying, Aidan.”
“You don’t know that. Not for sure. You only read my memories of the confrontation.”
“As strong as your mental barriers are, I’m convinced he could not possibly topple them without your knowing.”
“I’ve known you for three thousand years, Seth. Until yesterday, I was convinced no one could possibly trick me into believing he was you. And yet Gershom succeeded.”
Silence.
“I need you to be sure,” Aidan continued. “I need to be sure that Gershom isn’t mind-controlling me.”
“Aidan—”
“I know you don’t want to. I know that, contrary to popular opinion, you don’t like sneaking into people’s minds and nosing about in their private business. But I need you to do it. I need you to comb every nook and cranny of my mind and tell me with absolute certainty that Gershom hasn’t planted any commands up there.”
Seth hesitated.
“Please,” Aidan added as he glanced at the bed. “I need to know I’m not a danger to Dana and the others. That I’m not a danger to you,” he said, meeting his friend’s gaze. “I need to know that Gershom is full of shite.”
A long sigh escaped Seth.
Aidan smiled. “Thank you.”
Seth reclaimed his seat beside Aidan. “You’ve lowered the rest of your barriers?”
“Yes.”
“As you will.” Seth closed his eyes.
Aidan sat quietly, watching Dana slumber.
Minutes passed.
Many long minutes. The brain’s capacity for storing information seemed limitless. And a brain could accrue a hell of a lot of information over the course of three thousand years. Since the virus that infected immortals protected their minds from the degeneration often caused by aging, Aidan had retained much of what he had experienced over time.
Not as much as Ethan, of course. Ethan’s memory was phenomenal.
But there was enough crammed up inside Aidan’s brain that it took Seth a good long while to sort through it all.
When Seth opened his eyes, the golden glow had left them, returning them to a brown so dark it was almost black.
“Well?” Aidan asked, almost afraid of the answer Seth would give.
“You’re good,” Seth said. “Gershom was bullshitting you.”
Aidan let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “You don’t know how happy I am to hear it.”
Seth offered him a wry smile. “Yes, I do.”
Aidan laughed.
Seth glanced at the bed. “I can’t believe Dana was more worried that you might think she was too young for you than she was about you being too old for her.”
“I know.” Aidan smiled. “It’s kind of nice that people can still surprise us after all this time.”
Seth rose. “I only wish Gershom weren’t one of those people.”
Aidan stood. “We’ll stop him, Seth. I know we will.”
Seth drew out a pocket watch out and consulted it. “Yes, but he’s been up to more than you know.”
That was unsettling. “What do you mean?”
“You’ll hear it all at the meeting.” Seth tucked the watch away and headed for the door. “Darnell, Tracy, and Sheldon have cooked dinner. You should probably wake Dana and partake before the meeting.”
“Okay.” When Seth opened the door, Aidan stopped him. “Seth?”
Seth paused and glanced over at him. “Yes?”
“We’re good, right?”
Seth smiled. “We’re good.”
Aidan motioned to his head. “You didn’t find anything up there that was as weird as the shite I find in Sheldon’s mind, did you?”
Seth laughed. “No, I didn’t.”
Aidan grinned, happy to have made his friend laugh after such a stressful day. “Happy to hear it.”
“I’ll see you at the meeting.” Stepping out into the hallway, Seth closed the door.
Aidan lost his smile.
What more had Gershom been up to?
He almost dreaded finding out.
Dana stood beside Aidan, her hand tucked in his while they watched Darnell and Sheldon add two new leaves to the already long table in David’s dining room. The house had a fairly open floor plan with a huge living room—sporting a surprisingly modern décor, multiple sofas, love seats, scuffed-up coffee tables, and chairs—blending into a dining room. A bar separated the dining room from a kitchen that boasted two gargantuan refrigerators and so much cooking equipment that Dana didn’t even know how to use half of it.
She thought it was very sweet of David to open his homes (apparently this was just one of many) to immort
als and their Seconds and provide them with a gathering place. They really did seem like a family. She wasn’t sure why that continued to surprise her, but it did.
Cheers erupted when the table slid back together.
She smiled.
The table must have sat at least twenty beforehand. Now she watched as they produced extra chairs and slid them up to the table, enabling—wow—thirty-one people to sit at it under Darnell’s direction.
Dana was an only child. Both parents had also been only children, so she’d had no aunts or uncles and no cousins to play with when she was growing up. Her grandparents had passed away so early that she barely remembered them. And now her parents were gone.
What must it be like, she wondered as she watched the men and women around her smile and chat despite the gravity of recent events, to have a family this large? To have this many people you loved and cared about?
I guess I’m about to find out, she thought.
David claimed the seat at the head of the table with Darnell sitting to his left.
Exiting the kitchen, Seth strode over and seated himself at the foot of the table.
Ami smiled and said something to Seth as she sat down catercorner to him. Taking the seat next to her, Marcus scooted it back so his daughter, whom Dana hadn’t noticed until then, could climb up onto his lap.
Roland leaned over Marcus’s shoulder and held a thick coloring book boasting colorful cartoon animals in front of Adira. As her eyes lit up, he seated himself beside Marcus, then opened the book on the table while Sarah produced a box of crayons.
As the other immortals and Seconds converged on the table, Aidan guided Dana to a couple of seats on the side opposite Roland and Sarah.
Wood scuffed across wood as chairs were claimed and bodies filled seats.
As Dana scooted her own chair closer to the table, her gaze touched upon David.
He smiled. “Are you settling in okay?” he asked, raising his voice a bit so she could hear him over the rumblings of the rest.
“Yes, thank you,” she said with a smile. After Aidan had disclosed his age, the two of them had taken a shower together, devoured Sheldon’s sandwiches, then slept deeply. They’d been so tired that they hadn’t even made love. As soon as their heads had hit the pillow, both had fallen into an exhausted slumber.
David nodded, then turned to speak with Darnell.
The seat beside Darnell was empty. Two very imposing immortals claimed the next two seats.
Dana squeezed Aidan’s hand. “Read my thoughts,” she whispered.
Okay.
Who are those two?
Imhotep and Chaak. They are elders like me who have been brought in as backup.
The front door opened and closed. Chris Reordon headed for the table and plunked a battered briefcase down on the seat to David’s right. After returning the greetings offered him, he nodded to Seth.
Seth rose and vanished.
Dana smiled up at Aidan. “I still think that’s cool.”
Across the table, Tracy leaned forward with a smile. “I know, right? When I first started serving as Lisette’s Second, she almost ditched me because every time Richart would come over, I’d pester him into teleporting me to foreign countries.”
Richart grinned. “You still try to pester me into teleporting you to other countries.”
Tracy wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, but you stopped taking me because I started making you take Sheldon, too, and you’re afraid he’s going to spark an international incident.”
“Oh, come on, guys,” Sheldon protested with a grin. “I’m not that bad.”
Everyone laughed.
Seth reappeared with two companions.
One was a slender woman with long, silky black hair and light brown skin, clad in a black business suit that showcased every curve and managed to appear both alluring and all business at the same time.
The other was a man with sandy brown hair who was dressed similarly to Chris in dark slacks and a white dress shirt that was open at the collar and had the sleeves rolled up almost to his elbows.
Both carried battered briefcases similar to Chris’s.
Chris headed down the table with a smile. “Nice to see you again, Alena.” He shook her hand, then shook the man’s. “Scott, good to see you.”
“Good to see you, too, Chris.”
“If you’ll both have a seat, we’ll go ahead and get started.”
Scott followed Chris to David’s end of the table where they sank into the last two chairs on David’s right.
Alena headed for the empty chair across from them, between Darnell and Imhotep. Darnell rose and drew the chair out as she approached. Smiling, she thanked him and set her briefcase on the table as she sat down.
Once Seth reclaimed his seat at the foot of the table, all conversation ceased and everyone looked to him to begin the meeting.
“Thank you all for joining us,” Seth began. “I assume you’ve all heard by now that Gershom escaped us once again.”
Somber nods all around.
“Then you also know that the only reason we had this latest chance to play cat and mouse with him is because he posed as me and attacked Aidan.”
The Immortal Guardians all exchanged uncomfortable looks.
“Gershom has upped his game,” Seth began. “Even more so than we first believed. He is telling the vampires in our area to increase their numbers and travel in larger packs. And he poses as Aidan when he directs them. Apparently he has become very adept at shape-shifting and is using that talent to once more try to pit us against each other and sow dissent amongst our ranks.”
“He’s doing a hell of a job,” Roland murmured.
Seth dipped his chin in acknowledgment. “There’s more. Chris?”
Leaning forward, Chris braced his elbows on the table. “I’d like to begin by introducing our guests.” He gestured to the woman. “This is Alena Moreno, the head of the West Coast division of the network here in the United States.”
Dana nodded a greeting with the others.
He motioned to the man beside him. “And this is Scott Henderson, head of the Midwest division of the network.”
More nods and greetings.
“Once you all not so subtly pointed out that I had my head up my ass and was fixating on proving that Aidan was the guilty party instead of proving him innocent,” Chris said, “I took my investigation in a different direction.”
Rising, he picked up a large stack of manila file folders and slowly circled the table, handing one to each person he passed. “The gifted ones Gershom abducted failed to come to my attention immediately because the abductions were all readily explainable. They were sick with the flu. Or on cruise. There had been a death in the family. You get the picture.”
Nods all around.
“We had what appeared to be Aidan on video absconding with three of the six women who went missing here in North Carolina. Then I discovered three men had also gone missing. I had my team at the network check up on every other gifted one who resides in North Carolina, as well as the rest of the East Coast that falls under my purview. Just to make sure all bases were covered, I also contacted Alena and Scott to inform them of recent events and ask them if they had encountered similar disappearances. They had not, but agreed to conduct their own investigations to be certain.”
Dana’s eyebrows shot up when Chris came abreast of her and handed Aidan a folder, then held one out to her, too. They really were treating her as if she were one of them.
Releasing Aidan’s hand, she took the folder and set it on the table in front of her.
“What did you learn?” Aidan asked.
Chris distributed the rest of the folders, then retook his seat. “Seth and I both received calls from Alena. Alena did, in fact, come across a gifted one who was missing, a man who was supposed to be on a cruise. Seth met with her. Several hours later, after doing more investigating, Alena called him back. I also got a call from Scott about the same time.”
&nbs
p; When Aidan opened his file, Dana opened hers. The first in a stack of loose pages boasted a black-and-white map of the United States. Little red dots decorated the map like confetti, the largest group of them in North Carolina.
“When my East Coast team dug deeper,” Chris announced, his face grim, “we discovered that a dozen more gifted ones who were believed to be on sick leave or on vacation, et cetera, have in fact gone missing in other states in my domain.”
Dana stared at the map. Was that what the red dots represented? Missing gifted ones?
“Alena and Scott discovered that some of the gifted ones whose absences had previously been accounted for in the rest of the states were likewise not where they were supposed to be. All told, almost a hundred gifted ones have gone missing across the country in less than a month.”
Exclamations of disbelief erupted.
Dana set the map aside. On the second page in the stack, a black-and-white picture of a woman stared up at her. The woman’s name, age, and physical description were printed beneath the photo, as were her occupation and the details of her disappearance. According to her employer, she had contracted pneumonia and was supposed to have been home recovering. But the network was unable to locate her.
Dana turned the page. A man stared up at her. When his father had died, he had told his employer that he needed to fly to Dallas for the burial and would have to stay for a time to handle estate business. The network had confirmed that his father had indeed died and the man had flown to Dallas, but he had disappeared shortly after attending the funeral.
“Gershom was clever,” Chris told them, answering the question that Dana thought must be hovering on a lot of lips: How could all of these abductions have gone unnoticed? “Except for here in North Carolina, he only took one or two gifted ones from each state.”
Aidan looked at Scott and Alena. “Was I implicated in any of the other disappearances?”
Alena nodded. “We have video footage, taken from security cameras, of you”—frowning, she shook her head—“or someone who looks exactly like you, conversing with the women who went missing, getting into cars with them, then driving away. No one has seen them since.”
“What about the men who went missing?” Ethan asked.
Alena shook her head. “We only saw Aidan with the women. We found no video record of the men’s abductions.”
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