Unspeakable (Beyond Human)

by Nina Croft

  Rose was about to open the door, but Sadie stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s do a check first.”

  Quickly, she did a scan of the minds approaching, searching for key words—the Conclave, the Tribe—but found nothing unexpected. “Okay, we’re good to go,” she told Rose.

  She opened the door and they stood waiting while four police officers, three in uniform, one in plain clothes at the back of the group, walked up the drive. Max nudged at her ass, whining, and she put a soothing hand on his head, whispered calming words through his mind, and he pressed up close.

  “Ma’am,” the first officer said. “We had a call that there had been a murder at this property.”

  “Oh, my Lord, thank God you’re here.” Rose’s voice was filled with panic. “It’s horrible. He’s in there, and he’s dead, shot and…dead and there’s blood and—”

  “Calm down, ma’am.” He nodded to one of the other officers who slipped past Sadie and into the house.

  He came back a moment later. “They’re right. There’s definitely a dead body. Looks like a burglary, the place has been ransacked.”

  “I’ll call it in,” the plainclothes guy said. “Get homicide out here. You lot set up a perimeter. No one gets through.”

  “Can we go?” Sadie asked. The man turned to her with a narrow-eyed stare. He was handsome in a tough sort of way, tall, with dark messy hair and gray eyes.

  “Sorry?” he asked.

  “I said, can we go? You know, time is money.”

  His gaze dropped down over her short dress, the long length of her stocking-clad legs, the four-inch scarlet stilettos, and then back to her face. She dipped into his mind; he thought she was sex on legs and what a pity he could never afford her on a cop’s salary.

  He shoved his hands into the pockets of his battered black leather jacket. “I’m afraid you’re witnesses to a murder, so we’ll need to take a statement from you.”

  “We weren’t actually here,” she said. “The guy was already dead when we arrived.”

  “Do you live here?”

  “No, we were just…visiting.”

  “You knew the owner?”

  “Not exactly. Let’s just say we had plans to get to know him…” Sadie licked her lips “…very well.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  She dug around in his mind a little more, but got nothing worth following up. The wave of anger pulsed through her again. All for nothing. They were back to the beginning.

  He held out a hand and she shook it. “I’m Detective Sergeant Bennett…Steve.”

  “I’m…” Hell, what was her cover name?

  “Suzi,” Rose whispered in her mind.

  “Suzi,” she said, “and this is Ruby.” She waved a hand to Rose, and he shook hers as well. Very polite. His gaze dropped to Max, who was glued to her side, slight tremors running through his big body.

  “Your dog?”

  Hell, no.

  She peered down at Max, and he gazed back longingly.

  She really did not need a dog, and after Josie, she’d sworn never to care for, or be responsible for, anyone or anything ever again. But she had a feeling she and Max were destined to be together. Somehow the words fell out of her mouth. “Yeah, Steve. You have a problem with that?”

  He hunkered down and stroked the dog’s head. Max liked him. “You always take dogs on…jobs with you?”

  Did he sound disapproving? “Not always.” Something flickered across his mind, and a giggle escaped her. “And no, he does not join in.”

  He cleared his throat. “Good…I think. Look, why don’t you take me through what happened. Then, as soon as the homicide guys get here, we’ll head to the station, take your official statement, fingerprints—”

  “Fingerprints,” Rose said. “Are we suspects?” “Are we?” she asked silently in Sadie’s head.

  “I don’t think so. He thinks we’re exactly what we appear to be.”

  “You do make a good hooker.”

  “Aw, thanks. So do you. An alternative career if everything goes to shit.”

  “Not at the moment,” Steve said. “It’s standard procedure so we can eliminate your prints from the scene. Once that’s done, hopefully, you can get back to…work.”

  “That would be nice. But actually, Mr. Dead Guy had us booked for the night, and he paid in advance, so no worries. Lead the way.”

  It was an hour later before they were hustled into the back of a police car—Max between them—and on their way to the station. Sadie was pretty sure their story had been accepted, and if the paperwork held up, then they’d be free and clear. And the paperwork had better hold up, or she was going to be pissed.

  As they drove through the silent streets, she closed her eyes. Instantly, her mind flooded with images of a man. A beautiful man, with golden eyes and midnight hair, who kissed her in her dreams. She thought back to that last glimpse into his mind as he’d driven away. Ethan, his name was Ethan Weiland.

  Who are you, Ethan?

  And am I going to have to kill you?

  …

  The shrill ring of his cell phone woke Ethan. He’d been dozing on the sofa, waiting for a call. He glanced at the ID—his contact at Scotland Yard—not the call he was expecting, but he pressed the button to accept. “What have you got?” he asked.

  “The background checks were clean. They were just a pair of hookers. Apparently, Forrester was a regular user.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “They just left the station.”

  “Alone?”

  “No. A man picked them up.”

  “Send me his details along with the background checks.”

  After the call ended, he sat staring into space. Something didn’t feel right. He tapped a button on his phone, and the photo he’d taken outside Forrester’s house came up. The two women were both beautiful, but his gaze was drawn to the blonde. Her hair was short, spiky, and revealed her face, with its sharp cheekbones, big dark eyes, and a wide mouth.

  His phone rang and this time it was the call he had put in. He pressed the scrambler, heard the clicks as the call was relayed.

  “Ethan.”

  “Father.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “I want to know why Eric Forrester is dead when I didn’t kill him.”

  “Give me the details.”

  He relayed what had happened that night.

  “Coincidences do happen.”

  “Really?”

  “No, probably not.”

  Ethan heard the amusement in his father’s voice.

  His father was the only person with access to all the Conclave’s ongoing projects and even he only accessed that information in the event of discrepancies in the protocols. Such as the unexplained death of an asset.

  “I’ll find out what I can and get back to you,” his father said, then ended the call.

  Ethan’s gaze wandered back to the picture still on his screen.

  Maybe he’d look her up. He didn’t normally pay for sex, but perhaps, in this case, he would make an exception.

  Chapter Three

  Slipping her hand around the back of his neck, she drew him down toward her. His lips parted as their mouths fused, and his tongue pushed inside, saturating her with the familiar hot, spicy taste of him.

  She sank into the sensation, her nostrils filling with the warm musky scent of sex; they’d been making love for endless hours. She would never get enough. She ran her palm along the rough skin of his jawline, kissed the silky spot where his shoulder met his neck, trailed her fingers over the scar from the bullet wound that had nearly killed him, pressed her lips to it. She’d come so close to losing him. Now, he was hers, and she would never let him go. She would protect him with everything she had, because he was her entire existence.

  She couldn’t envisage life without him.

  He pushed up on his elbows and stared into her eyes, so close she could see the flecks of black in his golden irises. Then
he drove inside her with one smooth thrust of his hips, filling her, making them one.

  “Tell me you love me,” she murmured.

  “I—”

  A knock sounded in her head.

  No!

  She needed to hear those words, but the knock sounded again, and all around her the dream—if that’s what it was—faded.

  She blinked open her eyes.

  “I knocked, but there was no answer.” Jake stood over the bed, hands on his hips, a frown on his face. “I need to talk to you. Kitchen. Ten minutes.”

  It had been after midnight when the police had finally released them last night. Dave, Rose’s biker boyfriend, had come to pick them up, but Sadie had needed some fresh air, and time to think. She and Max had walked for hours, and she’d got home not long before dawn. Now she glanced at the clock, it was three in the afternoon. She’d slept for nearly eight hours, dreamed for most of them, and her body felt heavy, lethargic, as though she’d really spent those hours making love.

  “Are you okay?” Jake asked, his frown deepening.

  She pushed herself up, dragging the sheet with her. Was she okay? Her mind was still saturated with that feeling. Love? No way.

  She’d already lost the one person closest to her, her twin sister. Even four years later, just the thought of Josie sent a stab of pain to her heart. They’d been so close.

  Never again.

  If that made her a coward, so be it.

  “I was late to bed,” she said.

  “So I heard.”

  At that moment, the door behind him pushed open and Max appeared. He stalked into the room, put his front paws on the bed, and licked her face.

  “A new friend?” Jake didn’t sound impressed. “He’s been howling for you. I’m surprised you could sleep through it.”

  “Down, Max.”

  The dog gave her one last lick and backed away.

  “Ten minutes,” Jake said and turned and left the room.

  Sadie closed her eyes for a few seconds, but the dream was gone, and a sense of loss washed through her mind. Followed by a wave of foreboding. Who was her dream lover? She had a name: Ethan Weiland, but little else.

  While she’d considered him a figment of her imagination, she’d enjoyed the dreams; they’d been a safe way to let herself go, let herself feel. With a start of shock, she realized she hadn’t actually slept with anyone real since the dreams had started months ago.

  But he’d not been a dream last night; he’d been all too real.

  After dressing quickly in jeans, a black sweater, and flat boots, she combed her fingers through her hair but couldn’t be bothered with anything else. She wandered down the stairs with Max at her heels. This place was a big old mansion close to Hampstead Heath, not too far from their first safe house that had been blown up. She liked the area, liked to walk on the Heath with its illusion of fresh air and being out of the city.

  Jake was sitting at the big wooden table in the kitchen, a mug of coffee in front of him. She poured herself one from the machine, and dropped down into the chair across from him. Max sprawled at her feet. She lowered her head and breathed in the fumes from the coffee, took a sip, and sat back.

  “Where is everyone?” she asked. Not that there were many of them in London right now, most of the group were either in Uganda or the States.

  “Christa has gone to confer with her old professor at Cambridge. Something she wanted a second opinion on. The colonel went with her.”

  Christa was Jake’s wife and a brilliant genetic scientist who had been unknowingly working on the Tribe’s DNA for years. The colonel was her father and their old government controller from back in the day when they had been a covert operations group. That was before they had realized that their members lived or died depending on whatever goal was deemed necessary at that moment. Sadie’s twin sister, Josie, had been one of the ones who had died. And while the colonel hadn’t given the order—that had come from the Conclave—Sadie would always hold him responsible.

  He was working with them now, but Sadie would never trust him again, and she would never, ever forgive him for his part in Josie’s death.

  “And Rose?”

  “She’s taken the day off.”

  “Good for her. Can I have the day off, boss?”

  “No. I’ve got a call scheduled with Kane in an hour, and we need to decide on our next move before then.”

  “He’s going to be so pissed.” The thought almost cheered her up. She still wasn’t convinced allying themselves with Kane was the right thing to do. Kane had been their enemy, and she was finding the transition to ally a little hard to take.

  When they had broken away from their government controllers nine months ago, they’d gone looking for the origins of the Tribe—Jake had believed that only by understanding who they were, could they work out a strategy to protect themselves. None of them knew where they came from. They’d all been fostered as children, had no clue who their real families were.

  The truth had turned out to be far crazier than Sadie had ever anticipated. It turned out they were connected to a group discovered in the Mountains of the Moon, in Uganda, over a hundred years ago. All black haired and blue eyed, all long-lived and all telepathic. While most of that group had left Africa and moved to Scotland, a small number had secretly remained. The “Guardians,” led by Kane Revilla. According to Kane, his people had spent the last ten thousand years guarding an honest-to-God time machine and preparing for some mysterious mission that was going to save mankind. Delusions of grandeur or what?

  Sadie wasn’t buying it. Not the mission and certainly not the time travel crap. But Kane believed, and he’d seen the Tribe’s existence as a threat to his precious mission. He’d infiltrated the Conclave and set in motion a plan to eliminate the Tribe and everyone associated with them.

  They’d now resolved their differences, were on the same side, and in pursuit of a common enemy—the Conclave. But Sadie was reserving her judgment.

  “Tell me exactly what happened last night,” Jake said.

  She went through it quickly, telling everything except the little part about where she’d seen both the man in the car and Max before. In her dreams. She’d build up to that one slowly.

  “So we’re back where we started.” Jake sighed and ran a hand through his messy hair. She could sense the frustration radiating out from him.

  “I’ll get working on a list of Forrester’s contacts,” she said. “Rose can help when she gets back.”

  Jake sighed. “Christ, we could do with a break.”

  An image flashed up in Sadie’s mind. A man with midnight dark hair and golden eyes. The man in the car outside Forrester’s last night. The man who haunted her dreams.

  She pursed her lips. “I might have that break. The guy who was hanging around last night. I only got a few snippets from his mind. But I’ll see if I can find anything.”

  “You think he’s involved?”

  “Maybe.”

  Jake gave her a narrowed-eyed stare. He knew her too well, was no doubt aware she wasn’t sharing everything. “You got anything to go on?”

  “I told you—snippets. I’ll tell you as soon as I have more. There’s also the fact that the police showed up so quickly. The alarms weren’t tripped—they were off. I think someone saw us and wanted us picked up, so they used their police contacts, which screams Conclave. We know they have people within the Met.”

  “You think this guy you saw called in?”

  “Yeah. He was probably just being thorough, otherwise we wouldn’t have got out so easily. But I’ll see if I can find out anything from that end.”

  “What are you hiding?”

  She grinned. He definitely knew her too well, even without delving into her mind. “I’ll let you know when I’m ready.”

  Jake got up and poured them both another coffee. “Well, try and be ready quick. This waiting around is driving me crazy.”

  “Is the plan still to destroy the Conclave?” />
  “Yes,” Jake replied. “If there was any hope the hostages were alive, our priority would be finding them, and freeing them. But Kaitlin and the others are dead. They have to be.”

  For a second Sadie’s breath constricted in her lungs as a sharp pain wrapped around her chest. Kaitlin and her twin brother, Sam, had been the youngest members of the Tribe, only seventeen, and everyone’s favorites. It seemed inconceivable that they were both dead.

  It had been Sam’s death, nine months ago, that had precipitated their escape from their government controllers. Three months later, five of their members, including Kaitlin, had been taken hostage. The colonel, who’d been working with the Conclave back then, had tried to use those hostages as leverage to bring the rest of them in. That was when Jake had taken drastic measures and kidnapped Christa, to give them some leverage of their own.

  One of the hostages, Teagan, had been killed as a ploy to force their hands. The others hadn’t been heard from in six months.

  It had been too long, and there had been no hint of them. Kaitlin was the strongest of them all. If she was alive, she would have gotten some sort of message out. They were dead. Sadie had to accept that. However much it hurt.

  Max must have sensed her mood. He sat up, nudged her knee, and she stroked his glossy head. There was something else she wanted to ask Jake, though she was still trying to formulate it in her mind.

  She peered into his face. He looked tired but relaxed, the dark shadows gone from beneath his eyes. At ease. It made her realize how stressed out he had been until Christa had come into his life. Despite the tragedies of the past months, and finally accepting that the others were dead, he’d been strong enough to come through, to not take the whole blame on his head as he would have before. Jake felt responsible for them. He always had.

  Now he returned her scrutiny. “Are you okay?”

  She gave a quick nod, though it wasn’t entirely the truth.

  “Nothing you want to share?”

  “Maybe. I’m working myself up to it.”

  He shook his head. “You were always a loner, even before Josie died.”

  Had she been? Maybe. At least, as much as it was possible, in a group like theirs.