“This is your third act of disobedience,” the man announced in a booming voice. “The decision has been made. You will be banished.”
“No!”
The anguish in her voice was more than Connor could bear. Bloody hell. He would save her.
He slid the dagger from his knee sock. As far as he could tell, there were only the two Malcontents: the male called Zack and the female, Marielle. He’d take the male by surprise, turn him to dust, then grab the female and teleport her to Romatech where he could thoroughly question her.
A dagger in one hand, a stake in the other, he zoomed toward their voices.
An intense flash of light stunned him, and he halted, his eyes squeezed shut against the pain. Bugger, how could he save her when he couldn’t see?
Her scream tore through him.
“Nay,” he growled. He fought through the pain and forced his eyes open. His vision sparkled with stars so badly, he stumbled over a fallen branch and bumped against a tree trunk. Still, he could discern a glowing fire ahead, and he headed toward it. The scent of burnt flesh wafted toward him, and a sick feeling coiled in his gut. Had the bastard set her on fire?
She screamed again. To hell with this. He ran toward her, shoving branches out of the way.
A ball of fire exploded with another searing, blinding light. He turned his head, eyes squeezed shut.
Boom. A blast of air whooshed against him, tossing him through the air and slamming him against a tree. His head hit hard, and he collapsed onto the ground.
He lay there dazed, pain thrumming in his head. What the hell was that? Some kind of bomb? Even with his eyes shut, stars twinkled with painful brilliance against his closed eyelids. He rubbed his eyes, willing the stars and pain to go away. Somewhere in his confused mind, he realized his weapons were gone. And the rain had stopped. How much time had passed while he lay there helpless?
He pried his eyes open. The glimmering lights faded away, and he was once again surrounded by a dark forest. The scent of charred wood and scorched earth tainted his nostrils. In the distance, he spotted the red glow of dying embers.
Could she still be alive?
A memory flitted across his mind. His beloved’s dead body. And their wee babe. He’d cradled them in his arms and cried. The last tears he’d ever shed.
He shoved that mental picture away and looked instead for his weapons. His dagger glinted a dull gray in the moonlight. He grasped it and rose wearily to his feet.
Please let her be alive.
He stumbled toward the glowing ember. It was a branch, hit by a fire that was dying instead of spreading. Strange. There was a line of trees, alive and green on one side, and charred black on the other. The half-burnt trees formed a circle around a large clearing that was void of vegetation. A foot of smoke hovered just above the ground. The air stank with charred earth and flesh. The two Malcontents appeared to be gone.
He walked into the clearing, the smoke thick around his ankles. Burned grass crunched beneath his shoes.
A roll of thunder rumbled overhead, and a strong wind blew into the clearing. The smoke began to move, agitated by the wind, whirling around the circumference of the circle like a hurricane, dark clouds spinning around a black center. The smoke rose higher, past his knees, up to his waist.
He covered his mouth and nose till the smoke rose above his head and dissipated into the night sky. And then he saw it—the black, scorched pit in the middle of the clearing.
He ventured toward it, afraid of what he might see. Sure enough, there was a soot-covered body in the bottom of the pit. He was too late. Again.
A gentle rain began, as if to make up for the tears he no longer cried. The raindrops sank into the black earth and formed little rivulets that serpentined into the pit.
Memories of his beloved wife returned to torture him. This is no’ her. He knew that, and yet he still felt a terrible sense of loss. Over a Malcontent.
He blinked. Maybe not. Like any vampire, a Malcontent would turn to dust with death. This woman must be human. Or she was a vampire who was still alive.
He skidded down into the pit for a closer look. She was curled into a ball like a newborn babe. Rainwater sluiced off her body, washing away the soot and revealing white, supple flesh.
“My lady?” he called to her. “Lass?”
She moaned.
She was alive. The rain continued to wash away soot and dirt. She seemed remarkably unharmed, even beautiful. His gaze drifted over her bare white arms, folded over her chest. Her legs were bent, drawn close to her core, but they appeared long and smooth, the skin beautifully luminescent.
And yet, he could still smell burnt flesh and spilled blood. The blood’s aroma was strong, heady, so much richer than the synthetic blood he was used to drinking. Against his will, his body reacted. His gums tingled as his fangs sought release.
He clenched his jaw. The poor woman had just been attacked, and he was tempted to bite her? What a coldhearted bastard he was. He ventured closer, circling around to examine her from the back.
He gasped. Holy Christ Almighty. Burn marks crossed her lower back, red and ugly welts. Higher up, across her shoulder blades, blood oozed from gaping wounds. She must have run, and the bastard had attacked her from behind.
“My lady.” He leaned over her. “I’ll take you to a healer.” Roman could help her.
No response. He couldn’t see her face. Her long hair was a tangled mass, covering her face and shoulders. The ends were singed and dark with blood, but he detected a glint of gold in the curls that tumbled over her face.
“Lass?” he whispered, and brushed the hair back from her face. The locks felt silken against his hand. As fine as the hair on a newborn babe.
His chest tightened at the sight of her face. In five hundred years, he’d never seen such loveliness. Such fragile elegance. There was a pearlescent luster to her skin as if she was glowing with beauty from the inside out.
Raindrops fell on her face, and she flinched.
“Doona fret,” he said softly. “I’ll take you somewhere safe.”
She moaned and shook her head.
He unpinned the length of tartan that he wore over a shoulder, then draped it over her hips.
Her eyes flickered open, then widened with horror. “No!”
He straightened. “Lass, I willna harm you.”
She shook with a sudden tremor. “Don’t touch me!” She kicked her legs, attempting to scramble away from him. When she rolled onto her back, she cried out in pain.
She collapsed, her eyes falling shut. “Don’t touch me,” she whispered, then lost consciousness.
Chapter Three
Connor approached the side entrance of Roma-tech with the woman wrapped in his tartan and cradled against his chest. Teleporting straight into the facility would have caused an alarm to go off and incited panic, so he’d arrived in the side parking lot. Whoever was in the security office should have noticed him on the monitors, so hopefully they would let him in. With his arms full, he couldn’t reach his ID card.
He paused outside the glass door and spotted Angus’s wife, Emma MacKay, zooming down the hallway at vampire speed.
She opened the door, and her gaze shifted to the woman in his arms. “You found a survivor.”
“Aye.” Connor stepped into the hall. “I’m taking her to the clinic. Can ye alert Roman?”
“Of course.” Emma touched the unconscious woman’s shoulder. “Poor thing. She smells of blood and burnt flesh. They must have tortured her like Robby. Did you find her in the caves?”
“Nay. She was attacked a few miles south of there.”
Emma gave him a confused look. “Did you see Angus? He teleported to the campground about five minutes ago.”
“Must have missed him.” Connor hurried down the hallway. “Tell Roman I’ll be in the clinic.”
Behind him, Emma let out an exasperated sigh. “You didn’t follow Angus’s orders, did you?”
He kept walking. No time t
o explain his decisions when the woman was bleeding in his arms. Not that he usually bothered to explain himself.
“Is Angus right, then?” Emma called after him. “Do you have a death wish?”
“Nay.” He reached the foyer and turned left. Why would he want to die when he’d go straight to hell?
He strode through some double doors and into a hallway lined with glass on one side. Through the glass, he could see the garden and basketball court, illuminated by bright outdoor lights. The children, Constantine and Sofia, were bouncing basketballs while their mother, Shanna, sat on a nearby bench, chatting with her sister.
Down the hallway, Roman emerged from his office. His eyes widened at the sight of the injured woman. “She barely has a heartbeat. What happened?”
“She was attacked. Nasty wounds on her back.”
Roman glanced out the window at his wife and children. “We’ll get Laszlo to help.” He banged on the office door next to his and called out to the short chemist.
“Yes, sir?” Laszlo peered out, then gasped. “Oh dear.” He rushed along beside them as they headed through a waiting room into the dark clinic.
The strong smell of antiseptic cleansers assaulted Connor’s nostrils. He laid the woman gently on her side on a sheet-covered gurney, then made sure his tartan covered up the essential areas while leaving the wounds on her back exposed.
“So what’s the story?” Roman asked as he hit the light switch.
Connor winced at the sight of the woman’s injuries so clearly illuminated. “I discovered her being attacked a few miles south of the campground at Mount Rushmore.”
“You witnessed the attack?” Roman asked as he and Laszlo washed their hands in a large stainless steel sink.
“I heard it. There was an angry man named Zack, a Malcontent, I believe, and he was yelling at her for no’ killing all the humans. She was—”
“Is she a Malcontent, too?” Roman interrupted, drying his hands.
“Perhaps. She was clearly rebelling, and then the man attacked her.”
“Does she have fangs?” Laszlo asked as he snapped on some synthetic gloves.
Connor felt a momentary cringe of embarrassment. Such a simple thing, but he’d forgotten to check her teeth. Although he’d certainly looked over the rest of her. Thoroughly. But only to determine her injuries. A man would have to be dead not to notice a beautifully shaped female with a lovely face and dewy soft, lustrous skin. And he wasn’t dead. At least, some of the time.
He leaned over her and whispered, “Doona fash. I willna harm you.” He pressed a fingertip against the woman’s upper lip and gently prodded it up. Dainty white teeth. No fangs.
She must be human.
But what about Zack? He’d referred to people as “humans,” and he’d said something about the master ordering their deaths. He definitely sounded like a Malcontent. Had he attempted to use vampire mind control on this woman to force her to kill? But what vampire could cause the flashes of light and the blast of air that had thrown Connor forty feet through the air? What had burned the trees and scorched the earth? How had Marielle survived such an attack?
He straightened slowly. Roman was watching him curiously while Laszlo readied a tray of surgical instruments.
“Well?” Roman tugged on his gloves. “Is she a vampire?”
“Nay.” Connor took a deep breath. “I doona know what to make of her.”
“How dramatic.” Laszlo gave him an amused look as he set a stack of towels on a table close to the gurney. “She’s definitely female. She doesn’t have the scent of a shifter, so I think we can safely assume she’s human.”
“Ye doona think her blood smells a wee bit odd?” Connor asked. “ ’Tis verra rich.”
Laszlo tilted his head, sniffing. “True. I can’t quite detect her blood type, and I usually can.”
“Enough talk.” Roman marched up to the gurney. “Let’s take a look at her before she bleeds to death.” He whisked the bloody tartan away and tossed it on the floor.
“Nay!” Connor quickly pushed her onto her stomach and shot Roman an annoyed look. “I’ve already checked her for injuries.” With vampire speed, he nabbed a towel off the nearby table, flipped it open, and covered the woman’s rump. “ ’Tis only her back that needs tending.”
She moaned a few mumbled words.
“ ’Twill be all right, lass,” he answered as he carefully tucked the towel around her hips. Did the sound of her voice affect the other men like it did him? Perhaps not, since Laszlo possessed the same politely helpful expression he usually had.
“Did she just say, ‘Don’t touch me’?” Laszlo asked.
“Aye. She said that when I first found her. She may be afraid her nudity will incite men to abuse her.” Connor noticed that her hair had fallen over her face when he’d shoved her onto her stomach. He brushed her hair back to make sure she could breathe. “Doona fash, lass, we willna harm you.”
“Don’t . . .” Her eyelids flickered, then closed.
“Och, she’s out again.” Connor straightened and discovered Roman regarding him again with a curious look. His cheeks grew warm. So he was displaying some normal human kindness. Was that so strange? He lifted his chin. “So do ye plan on helping this woman or letting her bleed to death?”
Roman’s eyes glinted with amusement. “Let’s get her cleaned up, Laszlo.”
The short chemist passed Roman a bottle of antiseptic cleanser and some gauze pads. When Roman doused her burns with antiseptic, the woman moaned.
“Ye’re hurting her,” Connor protested.
“We have to protect her from infection.” Laszlo smoothed some ointment over the burns. “This will help with the pain and promote healing.”
“She may end up with some scars,” Roman commented as he began to clean the wounds across her shoulder blades.
She flinched, then moaned again.
Connor grimaced as he saw the two cuts now clearly defined on her back. Each one looked about six inches long. Fortunately, they had stopped bleeding.
Roman finished cleaning her wounds, then tossed the bloody strips of gauze into a metal pan. His eyes narrowed as he examined the cuts. “This is . . . odd. At first, I assumed the slashes were caused by a sharp instrument like a knife or sword, but if you look closer, you’ll see the skin is burned.”
“Perhaps she was cut by a laser?” Laszlo leaned over for a closer look. “It is odd.” He glanced up at Connor. “Are you sure this was an attack of violence?”
“Of course it was violent. She was bloody well wounded.”
Laszlo frowned as he fiddled with a button on his lab coat. “The two wounds are perfectly symmetrical. I would wager the lengths are exactly the same down to the millimeter. This sort of precision would not occur in a normal fight.”
“Laszlo makes a good point.” Roman selected two forceps off the surgical tray and gently examined one of the wounds.
“What are ye doing?” Connor asked. “Ye should be closing the wounds, no’ opening them.”
Roman drew in a sharp breath. “Laszlo, look at this.”
Laszlo nudged Connor aside so he could get closer. “What is that? Some sort of bone or cartilage?”
“Yes,” Roman whispered. “And it’s been severed.”
Laszlo straightened with a jerk and grabbed a button on his lab coat. “I’ve never seen anything like that on a human.” He turned to Connor, his eyes wide. “What have you brought here?”
Connor swallowed hard. She wasn’t human? He touched a lock of her hair. She felt so human.
“Is there anything else you know about her?” Roman asked. “Did you hear anything—”
“They were arguing.” Connor closed his eyes briefly, struggling to remember everything that had happened before he’d been blasted into a tree and had the sense knocked out of his head. “The man, Zack, was yelling at her. She had disobeyed three times. She was being banished.” He opened his eyes and gazed down on her beautiful face. “He called her Marielle
.”
Roman’s eyes widened, then his gaze dropped to her wounds. “God’s blood,” he whispered. “Surely it can’t be.”
“What?” Connor asked.
Roman stepped back, his face pale. “Gabriel, Michael, Rafael.”
Laszlo shook his head, nervously twirling the button on his lab coat. “No. Just because her name happens to rhyme, that doesn’t mean—”
The clinic doors swung open, and Shanna ran to the sink to wash her hands. “Why didn’t you call me? I just heard about the injured woman. Emma thought the Malcontents might have tortured her.”
Connor shot a worried look at Roman. The medieval monk appeared awestruck. Laszlo was clutching a button so hard his knuckles were white. If they were thinking what Connor suspected they were thinking, they had to be wrong.
Shanna dried her hands and grabbed a pair of synthetic gloves. “Why so quiet?” She gasped. “She hasn’t died, has she?”
“Nay,” Connor said. “She’s unconscious.”
Shanna snapped on the gloves as she approached. She grimaced at the sight of the wounds. “How terrible. Did you give her a local anesthetic?”
Roman shook his head. “No.”
“I think you should before you stitch up the wounds,” Shanna said.
“I’m not sure what to do,” Roman murmured. “I think we’d better call Father Andrew.”
“Why?” Shanna’s eyes widened. “You mean for Last Rites? Surely we can save her.” She placed her hand on Marielle’s head in a protective gesture. Her eyes rolled up, and she crumpled.
“Shanna!” Roman grabbed her as she fell.
“Oh my!” Laszlo rushed toward them.
“Shanna?” Roman patted her face. Her limp body sagged in his arms, and he settled her on the floor. “Shanna?”
Connor watched, his innards growing cold with horror. He didn’t want to believe his eyes. Or his ears, for no matter how hard he strained, he could barely hear a heartbeat. Laszlo had to be thinking the same thing, because he fell to his knees and grabbed Shanna’s wrist to feel for a pulse.
“Shanna!” Roman screamed and shook her.
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