“Something’s wrong here,” he finally said, though he looked as though he wanted to say more.
“I’ll say,” Alicia muttered and gave him one last dismissive glance before turning her attention to Julie. “Come on, Jules. Let’s go.”
“No,” Julie said, still looking at Kieran. She didn’t know why, but for some reason, she wasn’t ready to walk away from her sword-wielding mystery kisser. “I’ll be fine.”
Alicia turned a glare of her own on Kieran. “If he bugs you at all, call the cops.”
“Don’t worry.”
“Honey, I never worry,” Alicia said with a wink, still ignoring the man watching both of them. “Makes wrinkles.”
She never looked at Kieran again when she left the room.
“You won’t leave?” he asked when they were alone again.
“No.”
He nodded. “I can’t promise to protect you.”
“Who asked you to?” Her spine stiffened even as a tiny curl of worry unwound in the pit of her stomach.
Funny, but in the six months she’d been in Hollywood, she hadn’t felt the need for protection. Until tonight. This moment.
“It’s my duty,” he said, crossing the room to her in a few long strides.
“You just met me and I’m suddenly your duty?” How she’d managed to speak past the huge knot in the middle of her throat was a mystery. Almost as big a mystery as the man crowding in way too close to her. He backed her up against the counter until she felt the cold tile pressing into the small of her back. She shivered, but she knew damn well it wasn’t the cold causing it. No, it was the heat pouring off of him to surround her, to invade her, to make her want…oh, boy.
How was it possible that her normal, everyday life had taken such a completely weird turn in the span of about twenty minutes? And how could she be more interested in feeling him hold her again, kiss her again, than in figuring out what the hell was going on around there?
“You won’t leave. I accept that.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Stay in your room. Lock the door.”
“Trust me,” she whispered. “First thing on my agenda.”
“I’ll be back.”
“Great,” she said, “movie quotes.”
“I don’t know what to do about you,” he admitted, lifting one hand to trail his fingertips along her cheek, then slowly, softly, down the length of her throat.
Julie sucked in air through gritted teeth and tried to ignore the feeling that her blood was bubbling in her veins. His fingertips strayed to the scoop-neck collar of her shirt and she held a shaky breath, waiting…hoping he wouldn’t stop. But he did and she wanted to grab at him. God.
She’d never felt anything like this. Hadn’t known she could feel this. Sex with Evan hadn’t exactly been the stuff romance novels talked about and her one other lover, a guy in college, hadn’t been much better. But this guy made her think that maybe there was more to discover. And how crazy was she? Standing in a kitchen fantasizing about a mindreading gazillionaire with a sword? He grabbed her when she would have slipped away, then keeping a tight grip on her arm, he lifted his head, closed his eyes and concentrated. Seconds ticked past, marching in time with Julie’s heartbeat. She stared up at his face, studying his sharply defined features, noting the strength in his profile.
Finally he opened his eyes and looked at her. “It’s gone.”
“It?” She shook her head, more confused than ever. “What it?”
“I have to leave.”
“Right,” she whispered, nodding jerkily. Probably better all the way around if he left. Quickly. “Good idea. You go. I stay. But first tell me what this
‘it’ is.”
“Doesn’t matter now. You may be safe, but there’s no way to be sure.” He stepped back and away from her as if desperate to put a little space between them. His gaze moved over her face with a touch as sure as his fingertips had been only a moment before. “I shouldn’t have met you tonight. There’s no room in my life for you.”
Julie inhaled quickly. “I don’t have room for someone like you, either.”
“Wanted or not, we are connected,” he muttered, more to himself than to her. “I don’t yet know what it means.”
“Be sure to let me know when you find out,” she murmured, still shaken. He stalked to the back door, yanked it open and started outside. Then he paused, caught between the dark and the light and turned to spear her with a hard look. “Lock your door.”
When he was gone, Julie slumped against the counter and blindly reached for the now melting carton of ice cream. She lifted it and drank down what she could, before grabbing a fresh spoon and heading for the back door. She turned the dead bolt, hooked the chain and swept the yellow curtain aside to look out into the darkness.
Kieran was already gone.
Swallowed by the shadows.
And standing in the brightly lit kitchen, she felt a tremor of unease slip through her. Throat tight, heart pounding, she headed for the dark hall and her rooms beyond.
With every step, she felt unseen eyes watching her. The fine hairs at the back of her neck lifted and a chill swept along her spine. Her steps quickened, her breath shortened. Fear walked with her when she stepped into her room and slammed the door closed. Leaning against it, she turned the cold, brass dead bolt, then the antique key in the doorknob and waited for her heartbeat to return to normal.
Kieran pulled a satellite phone from the inner pocket of his coat and flipped it open. Stabbing the speed dial, he waited while on the other end of the line, a phone rang and rang. Finally…
“Santos.”
“What took you so bloody long?”
A laugh rippled across the line. “Kieran. Should have known I’d be hearing from you. I heard it escaped again.”
Kieran scowled, glanced down the darkened street and crossed it hurriedly, moving toward the black Lexus he’d left just beyond the reach of streetlights. “There’s been a kill. This morning.”
“Didn’t take it long.”
No, it hadn’t. But then, the demon had been locked safely away for more than a hundred years. Of course it would want to revel in a fresh kill right away. The trick would be to keep it from doing any more damage. Kieran punched a button on his key ring and unlocked the car as he approached. He opened the driver’s side door, but before getting in, he paused, concentrating, focusing his energies toward the beast he must find.
“You have its trail?” Santos asked.
“Had it,” Kieran admitted, glancing back over his shoulder toward the house where he’d left Julie Carpenter. He’d allowed himself to become distracted by her. He’d filled his mind with her scent and forgotten about the other. About his mission. Hard to believe. “Gone again now.”
“So you are calling for reinforcements?” The Spaniard’s voice was tinged with amusement.
“No,” he said, confident in his hunting abilities. He’d never needed help before. He wouldn’t this time, either. At least not with the actual hunt. As a Guardian, he’d done his duty over the centuries, accomplished whatever task was set in front of him.
This time, he swore, would be no different.
Even though, it already was.
“Look,” he said, taking off his sword and tossing it onto the passenger seat before sliding into the car and buckling his seat belt, “what do you know about Mates?”
A deep chuckle rumbled into Kieran’s ear and he glowered even while he fired up the engine and threw the car into gear. “What the bloody hell is so damned funny?”
“Ah, my friend,” Santos said, his Castilian accent flavoring every word, “it was only a matter of time before you would come to me with such questions.”
The Spaniard’s sense of humor could strike at any moment, usually when it was least appreciated. But they’d been friends for five hundred years. Ever since that night in old Madrid when the two of them had held off a crowd trying to burn another Guardian, Adrienne Marcel, as a witch
. Not that the Immortal would have died in the fire, but recovery from severe burns could have taken her years.
Tonight Kieran was in no mood to play games. “Meaning…?”
“Meaning, that an English knight will never be the lover a Spaniard is.” He laughed again. “I will be happy to give you any tips you require.”
Kieran rolled his eyes, steered his car around a corner and headed down the hill toward Hollywood Boulevard. If nothing else, he’d go back to the scene of the first kill. Look around. Try to pick up the trail again.
“I’m not English,” he growled, “as I’ve told you a thousand times and more. I’m a Scot and the day I need help screwing a woman is the day you can bury me.”
“Ah,” Santos said with only a twinge of regret, “but burial is not for the likes of us, my friend. One only buries the dead, yes?”
“We are dead, Santos. We just don’t know enough to lie down.” He stared at the twin slashes of his headlights, slicing through the darkness, spearing into the bushes and trees crowding the edges of the narrow road. A flash of red eyes as the lights crossed them but Kieran didn’t slow. It wasn’t the demon. Only another nocturnal animal.
“This is true, Mac. But I think it was not the point of this call to discuss the sad state of our too long lives.”
“No.” Too long? He didn’t know anymore. He looked at mortals and sometimes wondered how they could be satisfied with eighty or so short years. But he’d had centuries to fight and sometimes he thought perhaps the mortals had the better deal.
He took another sharp turn as his thoughts splintered. He glanced at the speedometer and slowed down a fraction. One thing he didn’t need was one of L.A.’s finest giving him a ticket. “I want to know what you know about Mates. The Guardian legend.”
The legend Kieran had never put much stock in, despite the few Guardians he’d known over the years who had actually found women to bind themselves to. Perhaps, then, it wasn’t that he couldn’t believe in the legend itself, but that it held no truth for him.
“Ah.” Curiosity colored Santos’s voice as he asked, “You have met…”
“A woman.”
“Always a good place to start.”
“She’s…different.” Stupid word. Incomplete. Julie Carpenter was more than different. She was a flame to his dry tinder. The heat to his cold. And just thinking of her now tightened his body until the ache of it nagged at him like a rotten tooth.
“What do you wish to know?”
“Everything that isn’t common knowledge,” Kieran said flatly as the Lexus finally reached the bottom of the hill. He took a hard right, weaving in and out of traffic like a man with a death wish—or a man to whom death meant nothing. “I’ve never bothered to find out more than the basics before. Now I want to know. So discover whatever you can and get back to me.”
“And the beast?”
“I can handle it.”
“If you change your mind, I’m near.” He paused, took a drink of what Kieran knew was probably Napoleon brandy, “I followed my quarry to San Francisco.”
“You get it?”
“Was there any doubt?” Santos chuckled.
“No,” Kieran said, smiling now. As a warrior, he could appreciate the talents of another. “I’ve never known you to fail.”
“Nor you, my friend. After all, we have reputations to protect,” Santos mused. “Now, I find I am enjoying the view from my hotel of the bridge on the bay. I will be in the city for a while yet.”
“Thanks. I’ll let you know if I need assistance.” He hung up and tossed the phone onto the passenger seat beside him.
Though he wasn’t interested in asking for help, Kieran admitted to being glad for the knowledge that Santos was close by. Still, thanks to satellite phones and private jets, no Guardian was isolated anymore. So many things had changed over the centuries, he thought, drawing to a stop at a red light. His gaze moved over the crowded sidewalks. Hookers, dressed for business, lounged against the sides of buildings and waved desperately at passing drivers. Homeless men and women crouched in dirty doorways and teenagers looking for trouble strutted in packs. Kieran looked at them all as the beast would. As potential victims. Wandering from light to shadow, the people moved, separate and apart. And he realized that no matter how much had changed, death remained the same.
3
T he crime scene tape was long gone. As a reminder of what had happened, though, dark splotches of dried blood muddied the sidewalk under the pale yellow wash of a nearby streetlight.
Nicole Kidman, movie star, had deserved better. But then, so had the young woman whose life had ended on a dirty city street. Moving about the scene, Kieran searched for the faint energy trace left in the wake of all demons. Not much more than a smudge on the air, it was a key weapon in fighting the beasts. But the scent of it had already dissipated enough that tracking in the usual way would be unfeasible. So, he took a chance.
Kieran stood on the sidewalk star and opened his mind, reaching blindly for a connection to the demon. Not that a telepathic connection was always possible. Every demon was different—though all provided that faint trace element—each of them had different abilities and weaknesses. This particular demon was slightly telepathic—something that just might help Kieran find it.
He frowned as he concentrated. Snatches of malevolence slapped at him, but nothing complete. Nothing substantial enough to help him in his hunt. But the demon was even older than Kieran, so its ability to evade pursuers wasn’t really surprising.
Just frustrating.
Disgusted, he scanned the area, discounting the cluster of cars with irate drivers cursing at each other as they sat, locked in congestion. The traffic never changed here. Two in the morning or two in the afternoon, the cars would be stacked up bumper to bumper. Idly he thought that the time of horses had been much better. Though he’d been among the first to buy an automobile, he’d missed the companionship of a horse. A blond hooker walked slowly past him, shooting him a quick, appraising look, then scurried on, limping slightly on sky-high heels. A young man with wild eyes and a scraggly beard handed out flyers inviting passersby to one free drink at a local topless bar and the neon sign across the street from Kieran fluttered like a racing heartbeat.
The demon could be anywhere by now. Could have even left the city in an attempt to escape him. But Kieran didn’t think so.
This particular demon was a creature of habit. It preferred crowded areas, where people were practically stacked on top of one another. And usually, when it found a place, it locked in on it. The last time, in 1888, it had been London, the East End.
Whitechapel. A section of the city so crowded with back alleys and a twisting, sinuous layout of tenements and bolt holes that it had taken Kieran almost five months to track it down.
Just thinking about that time, brought it all back with a rush that filled his mind. The damp fog swirling through filthy, overcrowded streets like gnarled fingers of smoke, coiling around the unwary, holding them fast in the bowels of the city. He could almost smell the greasy stench of bad liquor and the nearby slaughterhouse. The layer of hopelessness and decay that had colored every square foot of Spitalfields. Five long months he’d spent in that miserable hellhole. He’d tracked the demon relentlessly—not an easy task since the damned thing had changed bodies too damned often. But Kieran had finally caught the vicious bastard. Just like he would this time.
Turning abruptly, Kieran started down Hollywood Boulevard. Even late at night, the sidewalks were crowded. Not so much with the tourists, who usually had enough sense to keep to their hotels, but with the local denizens who reclaimed the street every night.
Teenage runaways, caution in their eyes, grouping together for whatever protection they could find. Homeless men digging for food in trash cans, and the ever present hookers, masking their own fatigue with brittle smiles and halfhearted come-ons.
Here on the streets, no one expected anything from him. No one knew he was actually Kieran MacInt
yre, wealthy man with a mysterious background. Here, he was simply known as “Mac.” A solitary man with a hard eye and little patience. Kieran blended into the background, becoming a part of those who wandered in the darkness. Women watched him as he passed and, mostly, other men steered a wide path around him.
“Hey, Mac.”
He stopped, looked to the right and nodded at Howie Jenkins. A Gulf War vet, he kept his Purple Heart proudly attached to a stained gray overcoat he wore religiously, winter and summer. His salt-and-pepper beard hung to his narrow chest, and his blue eyes were filmy with an alcoholic haze. But despite what his life had come to, Howie still had a soldier’s soul. Making him an excellent fount of information from time to time.
“Howie. How is everything tonight?”
“You know,” the man said, keeping one fist tight on the shopping cart loaded with his worldly belongings. “Same ol’, same ol’.”
“Have you seen anyone new lately?”
Howie laughed, a raw, grating sound that rattled in his chest until he coughed hard enough to hack up a lung. When he finally caught his breath, twin flags of bright red shone on his sunken cheeks. “That’s a good one, Mac. Hell, there’s always somebody new around here. Don’t always last, but they always come.”
“True enough,” Kieran muttered, letting his narrowed gaze sweep the street again before shifting back to Howie. “This one would be different, though. He’d stick to the shadows. Watching women.”
There was no way to know what this demon would look like now. It could manifest in this dimension, but mostly, it chose to inhabit the body of a willing mortal. And God knew there were plenty of evil souls in L.A. for the demon to choose from. As in Whitechapel, the demon could slide from body to body, always changing its shape and appearance in an attempt to elude the Guardian assigned to track it.
One thing would not change, however—this demon’s lust for blood and its preference for killing women.
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