by Alyssa Day
Destined mate. Destined to reach the soul-meld? But the Atlanteans’ most prized tenet was free will. Even lovers who had achieved the rare and precious state of being known as the soul-meld could choose to part, though it stunned Brennan to think that any would give up such a precious gift.
No matter, though. If the curse were coming to the fruition of its terms, he would need to be very, very careful indeed around Tiernan Butler, although an almost primal need drove him to see her again. To test his hypothesis.
Perhaps, after all these long, long years, to finally feel again. Even if just for a very short time.
He realized everyone was staring at him. “I am aware of the seriousness of the dilemma and will take all precautions,” he said. “But the members of the Seven are spread precariously thin these days. Lord Justice has gone to England with Dr. McDermott, Bastien is busy with Kat and the tripartite alliance building with the humans and panther shifters in Miami, and Christophe and Denal—”
“They’ve gone on a mission for me,” Ven interrupted. “Yes, you’re right. I never thought to see so many of the Seven gone away on so many different tasks, but the world is changing, and we must keep up with it. Perhaps Conlan should appoint some of you as official ambassadors and select new warriors to become part of his personal guard.”
Conlan was shaking his head before Ven even finished his sentence. “No, I won’t break up this team. You’re right about the need for ambassadorial roles, but—”
“But this is something we can consider at another time, maybe?” Riley asked. “For now, your son and I would like to have dinner with his daddy.”
Prince Aidan’s tiny mouth opened and he let out a loud wail as if in vehement agreement, and Conlan laughed. “You’re right,” he said. “For now, Brennan and Alexios will go to Yellowstone, discover what they can, and report back as soon as they learn anything.”
“And Grace,” Grace added, raising her chin.
“And Grace,” Conlan conceded.
Alexios opened his mouth as if to argue, but subsided after Grace shot a narrow-eyed glare his way.
“The world is changing, and this is only a discover-and-report mission. No danger,” Grace reminded him. Alexios scowled down at her, but the heat in his eyes belied the ferocity of his expression.
Again, something inside Brennan twisted—just the smallest of twinges, but enough to drive him to conclude the meeting. “Shall we reconvene at the portal in an hour?”
“One hour,” Alexios said.
Brennan gestured for everyone to precede him out of the room. Riley glanced back at Brennan over her shoulder as Conlan took the baby and walked ahead, laughing. She hesitated for a moment, biting her lip, but then she offered a brief smile and followed her husband and child as they left the room.
When the last of them had gone through the door, Brennan picked up the folded paper and carefully tore out Tiernan’s photograph and put it in his pocket. For recognition purposes, of course. He’d need to recognize her when he saw her.
Or at least that’s what he tried to convince himself.
It had nothing at all to do with needing to see her face.
Chapter 2
Yellowstone National Park, the road to Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel
“I don’t like it.”
Tiernan, lost again in the memory that had resulted in far too many nights of frustrated arousal and tangled sheets, rolled her eyes as if the man at the other end of the phone could see her. She tightened her fingers on the steering wheel of the midsized piece-of-crap rental and sighed. Driving down unknown roads in the middle of the wilderness—in the dark—was just not the time or place to get into fights with her boss.
“Tiernan, ignoring me is not going to get you what you want this time,” he warned, his voice in her earpiece little more than a growl. “There is no way this shindig is going to be just like a party. Security is bound to be on high alert after they find out we hacked into their database.”
Tiernan counted to twenty-four beats under her breath, one for each month she’d worked with Rick Lawrence.
“Are you doing the counting thing again? You know I hate it when you do the counting thing.”
She sighed again, but figured she’d better answer him before he did something drastic like pull the plug on the whole thing because he sensed danger to her. He’d done it before.
“Rick, I am an investigative reporter. I was an investigative reporter long before you appeared from nowhere and joined the Boston Herald as my editor,” she said, her voice calm in spite of the fact that this was the tenth time they’d had this discussion, at least. “I do not need babysitting, or a big brother, or a bodyguard. This is my story, and unless you plan to hire someone to tie me up and stuff me in the trunk, I am going to this party, and I am staying for the conference.”
There was a long silence over the increasingly staticky connection. Then he swore softly, a long stream of fairly inventive invective. She smiled grimly at the phrase. Inventive invective. Nice. Had a headline kind of ring.
“Look, the new intel says that one of the most dangerous vamps in the country is planning to make an appearance. If we’d known that when we set this up, you damn sure wouldn’t be going on your own,” he said, his frustration coming clearly through the line.
But nothing was going to stop her now. People were dying, and it was only going to get worse if somebody didn’t stand up. Somebody like her. Like the Atlanteans. She hoped.
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men and women do nothing,” she countered, editing a little as she scanned the road and her surroundings. The moon filtering through the trees looming on either side gave the drive a Stephen King-like quality, and her overactive imagination half expected monsters to jump out at her at any moment.
Bet King was surprised when all those monsters he’d written about for all those years turned out to really exist. Or was he? Maybe he’d always known . . .
“Don’t quote Burke to me,” Rick snapped, cutting off her mental wanderings. “You’re on your way to a weekend that you’re hoping will be filled with the worst kind of evil—vamps, possibly enthralled shifters, and sick and twisted scientists and neurosurgeons who love nothing better than to dissect brains while the brains’ owners are still alive. This is dangerous, Tiernan. You are not Lois Lane.”
“I don’t want to be Lois Lane,” she snapped right back at him, slowing to negotiate a tight turn. “I want to be Superman. I want to send the vampires involved in this plot back to hell, where they came from. I want to be able to sleep at night without nightmares of how Susannah died, and I want to be able to face myself in the mirror knowing that I did something about it.”
She lifted a hand to brush the angry tears from her cheeks.
When Rick finally spoke again, his voice was much calmer. “I know. I know. I just can’t take it if you wind up like Susannah, or worse. They’re not just enthralling shifters, you know.”
“I know. That’s why we set up this investigation into the International Association of Preternatural Neuroscience in the first place. We need to know how they’re doing it, so we can stop it,” she said flatly. “Why would any human scientist do such a thing? I mean, I get that the vamps have no souls. But these are human beings.”
“If you use the term loosely,” Rick said.
She rounded a curve and recognized her destination, sighing in relief. “Reporter Lost in Wilderness” didn’t have quite the headline ring to it that she was going for.
“That’s the North Entrance station, Rick. I’ve got to let you go and put on my ditzy reporter face while I talk to this guy and pay the entrance fee.”
“You’re not even blond.”
“Funny. I’ve found that being underestimated gets me way more info than showing off my brains. Gotta go. Will call you later.”
She tapped the button on her wireless earbud and slowed to a stop at the gatehouse, flashing a dazzling smile at the square-jawed ranger who sa
untered out to talk to her. He blinked and then smiled eagerly back at her, all blue eyes, buzz cut, and Boy Scout sincerity.
“You here for the IAPN conference?” He glanced down at a clipboard he held, not waiting for her response. “Name?”
“Tracy Baum,” she lied smoothly. Her cover credentials would survive quite a bit of checking. “Neuroscience Quarterly .”
The ranger made a check mark on his clipboard. “You’re all set, Ms. Baum.” A broad smile spread over his face. “You know, the—”
“Thank you so much,” she interrupted, putting the car in gear again as she recognized the sign of a man wanting to chat. “Much to do, the science news waits for no woman. Thanks, Officer.”
Tiernan settled back in her seat and pulled away from the guard, heading toward the hotel. If only she’d arrived in the daytime, she could have appreciated what she’d heard was an absolutely spectacular view. Electric Peak was reported to be amazing, and the bridge just ahead crossed the Gardner River, another must-see in the tourist guides.
Not that she was a tourist. Tourists didn’t usually try to discover secrets that could get them killed. She hadn’t admitted it on the phone, but Rick had had a good point. Of course, he usually did—the man was honest to a fault.
If there could even be such a thing as honest to a fault when it came to her. Honesty was a gift of grace in a world filled with deceptions, secrets, and lies. Every one of which caused her actual physical pain, if her shielding wasn’t strong enough.
But not Rick. He’d insult the heck out of her before he’d lie. He was definitely a “your story sucks, fix it” kind of guy. The thought made her laugh a little, as a blaze of lights came into view.
She’d made it. The Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel. She pulled into the driveway and edged the car into a space between a ginormous white limo and a flashy red sports car.
“Holy Italian deliciousness,” she murmured reverently. “That’s the Lamborghini.”
No valets or bellmen were in sight, so she hit speed dial. Rick answered on the first ring.
“We’ve got confirmation. I’m looking at the vampmobile. A 2009 Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4, to be exact.” She scanned the driveway for the driver of that very distinctive car, which, as she knew very well, had been made to spec for one very important customer. Its windows were made of black glass, which had been engineered so that not a single ray of sunshine could penetrate.
Rick’s voice barked in her ear. “Which means what, Butler?”
“It’s the ultimate vamp car. Belongs to Devon, last name unknown, rumored to be the regional head of all things vampire in this part of the country. He likes to wear disguises and dark glasses, so nobody is really sure what he looks like.”
“After what your Atlantean buddies have done to the vamp leaders they’ve encountered recently, it’s no wonder he’s in hiding,” Rick said.
Tiernan’s heart did an odd stutter at the mention of the Atlanteans. She’d never told Rick, or anybody else, the full story. That she’d passed out at that awful party in Boston and woken up under the dome of the lost continent itself.
Atlantis.
Brennan. The star, for far too many nights lately, of the most blatantly sexual dreams she’d ever had.
The image of his wild, almost feral, ice-green eyes staring down at her, while his muscular arms held her to his hard, hot body, burned through her memory, making her shiver. That face that belonged on a magazine cover—beautifully sculpted masculine features framed by thick waves of long black hair. He’d been crazed, with power or passion or . . . something. He’d been crazed, and then he’d been gone.
She still wondered about that. About him.
“You still there?”
She blinked. She’d almost forgotten Rick was still on the line. “You’re right. Speaking of which, I’d better get out of this car before I look suspicious. Later.”
Tiernan grabbed her leather backpack and fake press credentials, put on her slightly ditzy “Tracy Baum” smile, and stepped out of the car. She took a deep breath and raised her mental shields as she straightened up to her full height, keeping the ditzy smile pasted on her face.
The smile was part of her cover. The shields were part of her sanity. The last thing she needed was to be overwhelmed by crashing pain from a hotel full of lying neuroscientists. Her job was simple: all she had to do was work her way through one lying neuroscientist at a time.
All that could matter was the job. The mission. The facts that had to come out—the story that had to come out. The truth, as they said, would set her free.
Pulitzer.
Pulitzer.
Save the damn world and earn a Pulitzer.
If she repeated it often enough, like a litany, maybe the truth would be forced out. For Susannah’s sake.
As she pulled her single carry-on bag from the backseat, she tried to create a visual focus in her mind. The headline. Front page, above the fold:
SCIENTISTS’ EVIL PLOT FOILED: SHAPE-SHIFTERS AND HUMANS SAVED
But the image of her success kept fading. Wavering. Replaced by a pair of ice-green eyes.
Slamming the car door shut, she wondered where in the hell the valet was. Maybe hiding behind the long hedge that bordered the hotel, sneaking a smoke. Maybe grabbing a quick bite to eat. She shot a considering glance at the vampmobile again, and felt the edges of her lips quirk up into a twisted grimace of a smile.
Maybe becoming a quick bite to eat.
She never saw the knife until it was taut against her throat.
“Scream and die,” a low voice murmured against her ear, and then suddenly she was flying or leaping, moving with a speed and at a height mere humans couldn’t attain, over the hedge and into the inky darkness behind it. The lights from the hotel barely shimmered through the tall thickness of the hedge. When their feet hit the ground and her captor released her, Tiernan stumbled, disoriented, and the edge of the blade cut sharply into the side of her neck. She hissed at the biting pain, and the knife wielder yanked the weapon away, swearing viciously under his breath.
“I am sorry to have hurt you, but speed and discretion were needed.”
She put her hand to her wounded neck, felt the wetness, knew she’d see the blood if there were any light. “Great. Sure. What’s a little bleeding neck wound between friends?”
Maybe sarcasm wasn’t the best idea, considering the guy had superspeed and a very sharp knife. But a dangerous combination of fear and anger boiled out of her as defiance. “I’m guessing you’re not the valet. So who the hell are you, and what do you want with me?”
He inhaled deeply, so close to her that she felt the rush of his breath when he exhaled. “What I want at the moment has more to do with that bleeding wound and my desire to lick it clean than my actual objective. Perhaps you would agree to a temporary truce so that your anger and my hunger do not force me into sucking on your lovely little neck until I drain you dry.”
It wasn’t a question, more of a command, and one she wasn’t in the slightest bit interested in defying. Bravado had to give way to intelligent self-preservation sometimes, even for crack investigative reporters. His voice was oddly musical, nearly mesmerizing, but not like he was trying to enthrall her. She’d heard that tone before, in other vamps, but this wasn’t that. This was his actual voice: deep, confident, and just the tiniest hint of an accent. She thought she’d recognize it if she heard it again.
“Vampire, then?” Her words came out shakier than she’d hoped.
“Those must be the brilliant journalistic instincts I’ve heard so much about, Tiernan Butler,” he said, amusement and something darker underscoring the words.
Fear snaked through her at the sound of her real name, but she didn’t let a hint of it show on her face. “Tiernan who? Look, you’ve got me confused—”
“Do not insult me,” he snapped. “I don’t have time to play. You’re going to need allies on the inside, but you can trust no one. Expect deception and malice from the least l
ikely sources. Accuse Devon of nothing; he is not yet powerful enough. Those around him will force his hand, and you will die. The greater good outweighs the lives of one unimportant reporter, no matter how lovely she may be.”
He fell silent, and Tiernan wondered if she’d just fallen through the rabbit hole. A very dark, confusing rabbit hole, where vampires kidnapped then complimented her.
“Yeah. Malice and deception are my specialties,” she snapped. “Um, look, I’m very grateful that you didn’t exsanguinate me, but what in the world are you talking about?”
“Redemption must be sought, even if there can never be such for one like me,” he said so quietly that she wondered if she’d been meant to hear.
“Redemption.” The word tasted bitter in her mouth. “Some acts can never be redeemed.”
It was several long seconds before the vampire replied. “Is that aimed at me or at yourself? Either way, does it matter?”
Only a whisper of his breath served to warn her before she felt a strong, cool hand grasp her chin and tilt it to the side, as his mouth settled on her neck. As he licked her neck, then pulled deeply at the wound, she felt an answering pressure low in her body and realized she suddenly knew why the vamp groupies kept going back for more. She raised her fists to shove him away, but he was gone before she could touch him.
“Forgive me,” he said, his rough voice nearly a growl. “It has been a long time. Beyond mere hunger, I have reason to believe I will need to be able to find you.”
Tiernan blinked, her fury at his attack fizzling in the wake of utter confusion. “Forgive you? Did you just apologize to me?”
“Even monsters can apologize,” he said dryly.
“I didn’t—”
“You did. And I deserved it, but again, no time for pretty speeches. Be warned and be prepared. I will send you an ally if I can, but even if not, these experiments need to stop. You and the Atlanteans may have to work alone, but know that I’ll be working toward you from the other side of this. Remember that not all of the shape-shifters who wear the faces of friends are true.”