by Lynsay Sands
“Yes,” she said her tone solemn. “I’ll go order us both a cappuccino and see you when you get here.”
“I love you,” Thomas said and then hung up before she could respond. Inez wasn’t sure if she was glad or not. It suddenly occurred to her that she hadn’t yet actually told him that she loved him. She’d nodded when Rachel had asked if she loved Thomas, but had never got the chance to actually say the words to him. She would do so the minute he got here, Inez decided…and then maybe she’d suggest they put off turning her until after Marguerite was found, or maybe longer. She loved him, but was not a great fan of pain.
“Inez? I’m going down to get another tea while I wait for the men to get here. Do you want anything?”
Glancing up, Inez smiled as she peered over at Terri in her wig and dress. She looked totally different in the outfit. Standing, she said, “I’ll come with you, I have to order Thomas a cappuccino too.”
“Okay. Don’t forget your purse,” Terri said easily.
Inez picked up her purse and was putting the book in her bag when Rachel joined them to descend the stairs.
“I swear, Terri, you look like a Stepford wife in that getup,” Etienne’s wife said with a light laugh and then added, “A gorgeous Stepford Wife, but still a Stepford wife. Did Bastien ask you to keep the wig for later?”
Inez laughed at the way Rachel was wiggling her eyebrows as she asked the question, but laughed harder when Terri blushed and nodded her head.
“Do they have a bathroom in this place?” Terri asked as they stepped off the stairs.
“Yes. Just there,” Inez said helpfully, pointing out the door to the left of the stairs.
“Oh, thanks. I’ll be right back.”
Inez trailed Rachel to the counter as Terri moved off toward the door to the bathrooms.
“I wonder what their lemon muffins are like,” Rachel murmured as they waited for an older woman to give and collect her order.
“They’re quite good. Thomas and I had them the other day.”
“Hmm, maybe I’ll have one of those and a latte, then,” Rachel murmured.
Nodding, Inez glanced over the board herself, trying to decide what she wanted. She was still looking when the woman at the counter claimed her order and moved on, When Rachel gestured for her to go first, Inez shook her head and waved her on. “I’m still looking.”
Nodding, Rachel stepped up to the counter to give her order, and Inez turned to peer back to the board, but found herself continuing to turn until she faced the door, and then she was walking out of the café.
A silent scream immediately went off inside her head as Inez realized what was happening and that Rachel would be too distracted to notice until it was too late.
Inez had been so relaxed just then. Thinking it was over she’d dropped all her guards and hadn’t been prepared for this sudden hijacking of her mind and body. Her memories of being controlled last night had been fuzzy and fractured when she’d woken up on the couch and heard Thomas, Etienne, and Rachel talking. Little bits and pieces and flashes of fuzzy scenes and faint feelings were all she’d been able to grasp at, but as the terror of it all struck her anew, Inez recalled last night’s events with stunning clarity.
The terror of being controlled and made to do someone else’s bidding, the endless walk along dark streets in the cool night breeze, all the while wondering what her controller planned to do with her. The inability to do a single thing to stop what was happening or protect or defend herself in any way as he’d stopped and made her turn to face the river while knowing with every fiber of her being that he was about to kill her.
It was like that again now as she was made to walk once more up dark York streets to what she feared might, this time, be her death. As that thought struck her, Inez felt herself giving up and shrinking under the terror claiming her.
“Inez!”
Rachel’s voice was like a lifeline in the middle of an ocean. Relief pouring through her, Inez immediately began to fight, trying to regain control and battle the mind controlling hers. It didn’t work. There was no sudden stutter in her step, not even a miniscule movement of her mouth as she tried to cry out to Rachel. Instead, her body began to move more quickly, bursting into a run that sent her flying down the street at a speed Inez had never realized she had in her.
Rather than be alarmed at this, Inez took it as a sign that she might yet have a chance. Rachel must be in pursuit, and there was no way she could outrun her. The woman was an immortal and Thomas had said immortals had increased strength and speed. Inez was confident the woman would catch up to her quickly and she would be saved…so long as she didn’t have a heart attack and die first by the effort being forced on her, Inez thought with reawakened alarm as her body began to move even faster. Her arms and legs were pumping at an unnatural speed that she was sure her body alone could never manage and would not be able to sustain long. Her heart was already racing in a way she’d never before experienced as it tried desperately to supply the oxygen this race required.
A man suddenly stepped out on the sidewalk in front of her, and Inez’s eyes widened in horror as she recognized him. Tall, blond, bearded, and dressed all in black, he had a cold face without a drop of humanity or mercy in it. He had stepped out much like this last night, Inez recalled, though she hadn’t been running then. He suddenly reached out with one arm and snatched her up.
Inez would have grunted in pain as her stomach crashed into his arm if she could have, but the blond man was now running, moving faster than her body had been able to accomplish. She was being carried along, her upper body leaning slightly forward over his arm, her head turned by the impetus so that she could just see Rachel out of the corner of her eye.
The woman was racing down the street behind them, grim determination on her face and Inez could have wept with relief to know she wasn’t yet lost. A quick rage soon followed as Inez mentally balked at the unfairness of it all. Were the blond man not controlling her, she’d be kicking and screaming and clawing the skin off his arm. She’d have fought him with her last breath, but she wasn’t being given that opportunity. Despite being bigger and stronger and faster, despite the fact that he was an immortal, impossible to kill since she had no idea how to, he was even now controlling her body and preventing her from defending herself. The man was a bloody coward, she decided, afraid to risk her puny struggles.
Much to her amazement, her captor suddenly stumbled in his step and she was sure his control on her slipped briefly, long enough for her to instinctively clench her fists in rage.
Realizing the man was still in her mind in order to control her, Inez thought she might have a weapon after all.
You really are a coward. I suspected as much when you cut and ran last night the minute Thomas showed up. But I just thought you were afraid to take on someone your own size, I never expected you to be afraid of little mortal me. What’s wrong? When you were a little boy immortal did a little mortal girl punch or scratch you? I bet that’s what happened, and I bet you cried like a baby.
“Keep it up. I shall kill you slowly and painfully and enjoy the doing.”
Inez stiffened unsure if he’d actually spoken the words aloud as he ran, or if he’d somehow communicated them to her with his mind. Thomas had never said they could talk in your head, but they could alter memories in a mortal’s mind, why not a thought?
I’m sure you will. And no doubt you’ll control me the entire time so I’m completely defenseless. The big superior immortal, torturing a defenseless mortal female to death. Woo-woo! You should be proud. But then I bet that’s how you get off. It’s probably the only way you get off. Are you impotent? Inez asked in her head with interest.
I bet you are, she added. I bet you have a really small penis too. I mean, I know nanos put you at your peak physical condition and all that, but some of you peak a little smaller than others, huh? And, I suppose, nanos can only do so much.
Inez felt his control falter. Excited, she persisted, Seriou
sly, I want to know. Are you hung like a horse and just mean or did fate stick you with a mini tootsie roll between your legs that women stare at in horror and then say the dreaded, “size doesn’t matter?”
She’d definitely hit a sore point there, because a wave of rage poured through her mind and then died abruptly as the immortal’s control over her suddenly collapsed. Knowing it wouldn’t last long, Inez immediately kicked back one leg with all her force. She’d hoped to break his knee or something. Instead, she jammed her leg back as he was midstep, sticking it between one leg and the other like a wrench between the spokes of a fast-moving bicycle tire. Unfortunately, her leg wasn’t as hard and solid as a metal wrench.
Still free of his control, Inez screamed in agony as her leg was mulched between both of his, one pushing forward against her calf bone, while his other leg swung back, snapping the bone with a thick cracking sound. She was still screaming as he pitched to the side and the ground rushed up toward her. While her leg had broken, it had also tripped him up. He was falling, some part of her mind realized and Inez had just enough time to hope she hadn’t just killed herself before her head slammed into concrete. Stars exploded behind her eyes, along with the pain in her head and then they were rolling, the immortal still clutching her in the crook of his arm as they tumbled down what she thought were stairs.
“Inez!”
She barely heard Rachel’s shriek as the lights behind her eyes began to fade and blessed unconscious took her away from the pain.
“What do you think warned him off?” Etienne asked with a frown as he, Bastien, and Thomas descended the stairs down from the roof of the building they’d chosen to watch the coffee shop.
“I’m not sure,” Bastien said, sounding weary. “Inez may not have been able to keep all thoughts of what we were up to out of her mind.”
“Don’t blame Inez for this,” Thomas said through gritted teeth as they stepped off the stairs and headed out the door into the alley between the rows of buildings. “I’m sure she did everything she could. She agreed to help, didn’t she? Putting herself at risk for your stupid plan.”
“It wasn’t a criticism,” Bastien assured him, soothingly. “And we do appreciate it. We also know how hard this has been on you, Thomas, and I’m sorry about that. We were just hoping to catch the bastard and find Mother.”
“Well, I want to find her too, but…” Thomas paused in the alley, frustrated that he couldn’t find the words to say what he felt. He was terrified of losing either woman, but Marguerite might already be lost to them, and he didn’t want to lose Inez to find that out. Hell, he didn’t want to lose her at all. Given a choice between saving one woman or the other, Thomas would rather die himself.
“But Marguerite is your aunt and Inez is your lifemate and you’d rather not lose either of them,” Etienne said quietly, saying what he thought Thomas was trying and failing to verbalize.
“Marguerite is my mother too,” Thomas snapped bitterly. “She’s the only mother I know.”
“You called her Mother as a child,” Bastien said quietly.
“Yeah, well, Jean Claude soon put a stop to that,” he muttered wearily, and then shook his head and turned away to continue up the alley. “Let’s go. The women are waiting.”
Bastien and Etienne hesitated and then fell into step on either side of him to walk out of the alley. They walked the rest of the way in silence, coming around the corner half a short block up from the coffee shop in time to see Terri come rushing out of the café, panic on her face.
“Something’s wrong,” Bastien growled and burst into a run.
His heart lurching with alarm because Inez was nowhere to be seen, Thomas raced past his cousin.
“Where is she?” he demanded, grabbing Terri roughly by the arms.
“I don’t know,” Terri cried with distress. “We all went down to get coffees for everyone and I went into the bathroom. But when I came out, Rachel and Inez were gone.”
“Rachel’s gone too?” Etienne asked with alarm as he reached them.
“Where did they go?” Thomas asked, ignoring him.
“Someone must have seen. Did you read the guy behind the counter? He had an eye for Inez and would have noticed her leaving.”
“I tried, but…” She shook her head helplessly, guilt filling her eyes.
“It’s all right,” Bastien said as he caught up. Slipping his arm around her, he gave her a quick hug as he explained to Thomas. “She hasn’t finished her training Thomas. Terri can’t read mortals well yet. I’ll do it now,” he added, giving his fiancée a quick squeeze and then releasing her to hurry into the café.
Thomas whirled away from the woman, not angry at her but just plain angry as he peered up the road one way and then the other. There was no sign of either woman.
“Maybe we should split up, you go one way and I go the other,” Etienne suggested anxiously.
Thomas turned cold eyes on his cousin. “The plan doesn’t look so good when your own lifemate gets caught in it, does it?”
Etienne winced and briefly closed his eyes, then blinked them open and said, “I’m sorry, Thomas. I deserve that. We thought we had all the bases covered.”
“The fact is, Etienne, that you can cover all the bases you want, but if you put a ball into the game, it’s going to get hit by the bat at some point,” he snarled.
“That way!” Bastien yelled, rushing out of the café.
Thomas glanced toward the man, and then burst into a run in the direction his cousin was pointing. The others were immediately on his heels.
Sixteen
Inez woke to the sound of, well it sort of sounded like sex—with grunts and moans and sighs and—Realizing she was making the sounds and definitely wasn’t making them out of enjoyment, Inez forced her mouth closed and opened her eyes.
The good news was that she had control of herself again, or still, Inez supposed since she’d got it back just before the tumble they’d taken. The bad news was she was lying on a path at the bottom of a set of stone steps, bloody and broken…and she definitely felt broken. Pain was attacking her everywhere. Her leg, her back, her stomach, her head, one arm…
Gritting her teeth against the pain, Inez lifted her head and tried to peer at herself. She didn’t see much before her head began to swim and she fell back, and yet it was more than enough. She was on her back, her lower leg bent to the side mid-calf in a most unnatural way, her left shoulder looked funny and she thought it was either broken or dislocated, there was some kind of wound on her lower stomach that seemed to be bleeding copiously, and the minute she’d tipped her head up, blood had poured down over her face from a head wound. Oh yeah, she was broken all right.
A furious growl caught her attention, and Inez shifted her gaze to the side, eyes widening slightly as she saw Rachel fighting with the blond immortal some feet away.
Inez watched, and soon realized she hadn’t been the only one injured in the fall. The bearded blond was fighting with one broken arm hanging loose at his side. Rachel was taking every opportunity to boot or punch him in that injured arm, and when he cried out and grabbed it, she went for his groin or head.
Inez was truly impressed and wondered if the woman had taken self-defense classes before becoming an immortal. Although, there was nothing saying she couldn’t. Rachel could have taken them after becoming an immortal.
A furious roar rang in the air and Inez frowned because she hadn’t seen the blond immortal’s mouth move. And she was quite sure the sound hadn’t come from Rachel. That had definitely been a male sound…or perhaps the sound of a truck driving by, Inez thought vaguely and slowly turned her eyes to look up to the road.
A mild sense of surprised flowed through her when she saw Thomas frozen at the top of the stone steps. Inez could see his eyes glowing silver in the darkness and seriously hoped the man didn’t think he was getting any sex in her condition. She loved him dearly, but really this wasn’t the time for that sexy silver glow he always got when he was in the
mood, she thought a little fuzzily.
It was getting harder to think and she hadn’t really been all that clearheaded since the fall, but suspected the deteriorating state of her mind might have something to do with the blood gushing out of her from several spots.
The roar of fury and anguish that suddenly ripped from his throat caught Thomas completely by surprise. It pushed its way up from his chest and exploded from his lips when he saw Inez lying bloody and broken at the base of the stairs like a doll tossed from above. Launching himself forward, he scrambled down the stairs as if caught in a landslide, his body moving more quickly with each step until he leapt the last two to land on the ground beside Inez.
He was aware of Bastien and Etienne rushing past to chase after the blond immortal, but knew they wouldn’t catch him. His roar had made both Rachel and the bearded man glance his way. The minute Thomas had started down the stairs, the man had burst into action, giving a still-distracted Rachel a shove that sent her flying onto her back before whirling away to flee. It had given him all the head start he needed.
Eyes roving over Inez’s injuries, Thomas dropped to his knees and instinctively reached for her. Slipping his arms beneath her, he scooped her up against his chest, and then stilled when she moaned in pain. His heart began to beat again then. Thomas had been sure she was dead and had already begun to grieve, but as much as her pain-filled moan hurt his heart, it was also music to his ears.
“Inez,” he whispered into her hair, his eyes squeezing closed against the tears of relief that tried to fill them. “It’s all right, love. You’re all right.”
“No,” she mumbled weakly into his neck. “No sex, Thomas. I hurt.”
“She’s delirious.”
Thomas raised his eyes to see Terri at his side, concern clear on her face. He then glanced past her as the others now moved to join them. His eyes narrowed on his cousins and he opened his mouth to rip into them and then froze and glanced down at Inez with alarm.