IAN SAT on the hardwood floor in nothing but a pair of jeans—his back propped against the wall, long legs bent at the knee—and stared through the dingy living-room window. Though the humidity was climbing, the floor was still cold on his ass as he watched the depressingly gray cut of sky bleeding orange, the sun rising in the distance like a Phoenix soaring from the flames. It struck him as a strange, ill-fitting analogy, considering nothing was being reborn here. No second chance at life. This was an ending, a conclusion, the final act in a macabre nightmare that had, looking back, no doubt been a long time coming.
A cold beer was perched on his abs, the bottle icy against his hand—and yet, a thick layer of frustration covered his body, sticky and damp against his skin. No matter how many beers he downed, reality was still a blunt, dull blade hacking its way through his gut, relentless and without mercy.
He knew he’d done the right thing by coming here—coming home to the house he’d grown up in—but he still felt bad over the way he’d done it. He should have told Molly goodbye rather than leaving Scott to deliver that lame-ass, cop-out message. But, God, he didn’t think he could have handled facing her. Not when he knew it probably would’ve been the last time he’d ever see her.
Crazy, that after spending so many years feeling nothing, a riot of fractured emotions now stormed through his system, as ruthless as they were cruel, leaving him sucking wind while he struggled to deal with them. No, he knew he couldn’t have told her goodbye—because if he’d tried, he never would have done it. He’d have grabbed hold of her, and that would have been it. He’d have ended up taking her…and no matter how much he cared about her—and he knew that he did care about her—he still didn’t trust the seething darkness inside of him. So he’d taken off like a thief in the night, just like his old man.
And now you’ll never see little Miss Molly Stratton again. Happy, jackass?
A sharp curse hissed past his lips, and Ian hurled the beer bottle against the far wall, the violent shattering of broken glass the perfect complement to his foul mood.
Leaning his head back against the wall, he pushed his hands into his hair. Gripping the sweat-damp strands, Ian closed his eyes, but instead of peaceful nothingness, visions of Molly’s soft, radiant smiles kept screwing with his mind. Of that luminous look of longing in her big brown eyes every time she’d glanced at him. He hadn’t wanted to hurt her, dammit, but he hadn’t had a choice.
Still, he hated that it felt like a betrayal—the heavy, sour feeling of guilt sitting in his gut like something rancid, making him ill. Scrubbing his hands down his battered face, as if the simple action could wipe away his bitter frustration, Ian accepted that he didn’t know what the future would bring, but he had to face the fact that he’d thrown away the best damn thing that had ever happened to him.
Not that it mattered. Hell, he probably wasn’t going to survive the weekend, so what difference did it make that he wasn’t ever going to see her again? Even if he did make it through alive, he wouldn’t know where to look for her. Like the stubborn bastard he was, he’d made it a point, once he’d realized she actually meant something to him, not to ask where she lived. He hadn’t even looked in her purse and glanced at her driver’s license.
No, he’d known, right from the start, that this woman was dangerous to his peace of mind—that it was best not to tempt fate and ensure that when they cut their ties, whether it was her or him, he wouldn’t be able to go crawling after her later on.
Sitting on the floor a few feet from his hip, his cell phone suddenly vibrated with a low buzzing noise that grated on his already frayed nerves, but Ian ignored it, same as he’d been doing since he’d left Colorado. It would be another message from Riley, ranting and raving, wanting to know why he hadn’t been in touch. He could deal with that later.
He’d been listening to the radio on his way to the airport on Thursday night, and had heard the breaking news story about another victim in Henning. With a sick feeling in his gut, Ian had called the Sheriff’s Department for information, and though Riley was at the crime scene, he’d talked to the dispatch operator, who told him that the woman’s name was Aubrey Rodgers. Barely able to speak over his rage, he’d left a message for Riley with the operator, saying that if he didn’t hear from him by the end of the weekend, to contact a man named Kierland Scott. He knew, if something happened to him, that Scott would be able to give his brother the answers he needed.
Not that Ian planned to go down without a fight. He’d brought his knife, the one he’d carried with him in L.A.—in the circles he’d moved in while out there, you didn’t tread without a weapon—and he was good with a blade. If the cross didn’t work and he couldn’t send the bastard to hell, he at least planned on gutting it, returning its sadistic ass back to the Casus holding ground. But even then, even if he survived the weekend and managed to take down the Casus, he didn’t know what the future would hold. He hadn’t fed, didn’t plan on feeding, so where did that leave him? Would his hunger eventually drain him to the point that he just faded away? Or would it overtake him completely, turning him into something as ugly and vile as the monster he’d come there to kill?
The craving hadn’t lessened with the distance he’d put between himself and Molly. If anything, he craved her even more. It was always there, at the back of his mind, like an ulcer in his mouth that he couldn’t stop prodding with his tongue. A constant, grating reminder.
He shut his eyes again, but not to sleep. He hadn’t slept all night, too worried that he might dream, though he hadn’t shared a dream with Molly in almost a week. He could only thank God that he’d taken the time in that second dream to make love to her.
The stunning words stumbled into his brain, making him tense, but he kept his eyes closed, determined to ignore the unsettling realization that he’d never used that particular term before when referring to sex. And the hell of it was, he couldn’t deny it. If he didn’t care about Molly Stratton, he’d have fed from Morgan, let the Merrick face the Casus with the Dark Marker, and maybe had a chance of surviving. But he hadn’t. He’d chosen to face it as a man.
And it’s too late now to look at why you did, idiot.
“Shut up,” he muttered, convinced he’d really gone off the deep end, if he could sit in a lonely old house and talk to himself. He forced his mind to go blank, existing in that hazy state between pure, numb exhaustion and wired alertness, when a sound from outside caught his attention. Scowling, he opened his eyes and rolled to his feet, the lingering bruises from his days training with the Watchmen pulling a graveled groan from his throat.
He cut a sharp glance out the window but the front yard was clear. The house sat in the middle of what had once been local farmland, with nothing but fields and shade trees for neighbors. The road came up the back, and he could hear an engine as a car came closer. Scowling, Ian wondered who the hell would be coming out there. He doubted the Casus was just going to drive up to the front door in broad daylight, but then with the week he’d been having, he supposed stranger things could happen. He was about to turn back and get the knife he’d brought, as well as the cross, just to be safe, when the car pulled to a stop. He heard a door slam, and a second later, he caught sight of pale blond curls coming around the side of the house.
No. Hell no.
Ripping open the front door so hard he about pulled it off the bloody hinges, Ian stepped out onto the rickety front porch, his heart all but pounding its way out of his chest as he watched Molly make her way toward him. Her eyes were hidden behind a dark pair of glasses, mouth set in a hard, firm line that looked delicious, despite its obvious anger.
Crossing his arms over his chest to keep from reaching for her, he growled, “How did you find me?”
“I’ll be happy to answer your questions,” she told him, her soft voice edged with a low, simmering rage, “but can we go inside first? I’m not comfortable being out here in the open. The Casus…Kierland said it would follow you.”
He didn’t commen
t on the news, but he stepped aside, saying, “Get inside.”
She moved past him, and he had to grit his teeth to keep from leaning down and capturing that beautiful, angry mouth. Her scent filled his head as he shut the door, threw the flimsy lock, and turned back to face her. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he asked again, “How did you find me, Molly? Did Elaina tell you?” he snarled, furious that his mother would have put her in the path of danger not once, but twice.
“She didn’t have to.”
“Then explain it. Now!”
She slipped off the glasses, hooking them over the top button of her blouse. Ian could tell she’d been crying, and guilt curled like a viper in his belly, ready to strike. “You wanna hear something funny, Ian? No one, this entire week, has ever bothered to ask me where I live. Not you. Not Kierland. And then I come downstairs for dinner on Thursday and find out that you’re gone. Just like that.” She snapped her fingers with a sharp, angry movement. “Not a word from you, or even a note. Not anything. And all Kierland can say is that you want me to go home. I’ll be safe if I go home. Everything will be fine if I just go home!” She was shouting, the anger pouring out of her in a raging, molten rush that had her trembling from her head down to her toes. “Well, guess what, Ian? I know this is going to come as a great bloody shock to you, but I am home! ”
He stared at her as understanding slowly dawned, and shook his head. “You’re kidding me.”
She closed her eyes, pulling a deep breath into her lungs, her skin so pale she looked like a ghost. When she lifted the thick weight of her golden lashes, she said, in a soft, throaty voice, “I moved to Laurente three years ago.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“It’s true. I work in a local bookstore. That’s where I met Elaina.”
“You knew her!” he ground out through his clenched teeth, his fury like a dark, blistering heat burning him from the inside out. “You knew her before she died and you never told me!”
Her smile was small and infinitely sad as she sniffed, and then began to explain. “I didn’t know her well. Just as a customer. She would come in and buy books. Sometimes I’d suggest titles. We’d chat, but never…never about any of this. I didn’t even know she had children. Then, a few weeks after I heard that she’d died, she visited me for the first time in my dreams.”
“Christ,” he hissed, unable to get his head around it. When he’d told himself to expect the unexpected, this sure as hell wasn’t what he’d had in mind.
“I don’t know how she knew about my dreams. We never talked about them, I swear. I just thought she was this sweet, kinda quirky woman who was lonely.”
Molly might have been clueless about Elaina, but Ian would’ve bet his right arm that his mother had known about Molly’s…talent or power or whatever the hell it was. Was that why she’d sought Molly out? Had she known he wouldn’t be able to resist her? That he’d fall completely under her spell?
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, slowly shaking her head, her hurt revealed in her liquid gaze. “You never asked, for one. Not after that first night, when I was still trying to convince you to believe me. And I thought if I told you that I’d known her, then you’d believe I really was trying to scam you. But then later, I still kept it to myself, because deep down, I think I always knew you were going to run,” she said unsteadily, looking around the living room. “And I guess I hoped, that when you did, that maybe…just maybe, you’d come here.” She paused, then lifted her chin, saying, “Have you fed yet?”
“No,” he muttered, wondering if Scott had told her about Morgan.
“For what’s it worth, not that I expect it to mean much to you, I’m glad.”
She was wearing her heart on her sleeve, standing before him, so strong and so damn vulnerable. Ian wanted to run to her, sink to his knees, and beg her to give him another chance. But he couldn’t. Even if he wasn’t terrified of hurting her, he wouldn’t have known how…how to give her what she needed. What she wanted. Something inside of him had been locked up, seized, shut down, for too long, and now he couldn’t open up. Couldn’t access that part of himself that would show her warmth, tenderness. That would enable him to treat her the way she deserved to be treated. Instead, he snapped, “There’s nothing to be glad about, Molly. If I had been able to go to another woman, things would be a lot simpler now.”
“Why? Because you trust yourself with one of them but not with me?” she demanded. “That doesn’t make any sense, Ian.”
“Because I wouldn’t want them the way that I want you,” he admitted in a shaky rasp. “Trust me, Molly. That makes a hell of a difference.”
She looked around the small, Spartan living room again, the sofa and end table the only furniture that remained. When her gaze landed on the shattered beer bottle, she shook her head, wrapping her arms around herself. “And so you came here to do what? Sacrifice yourself?”
“I don’t plan on going down without a fight. I’m going to do everything I can to make the Marker work, even though I still don’t have a clue what to do with it. If I can’t, then I’m going to gut the bastard and send him back to wherever the hell he came from.”
“When I told Shrader to tell you about the Marker working when near the Casus, I didn’t think you were going to do something this stupid!”
“This is the only thing to do. People are dying. You’re in danger. This needs to come to an end.”
“Then you should have fed from me and dealt with it back in Colorado.”
His jaw worked, and he muttered, “You know I can’t do that.”
“No, Ian. No one knows that. You’re the only one who believes it. Everyone else understands exactly what needs to happen here.”
“I want you to leave, Molly.”
“Yeah, well, guess what? I’m learning pretty quickly that we can’t always get what we want.”
WONDERING HOW she managed to hold herself together, Molly stared at the man who’d reduced her to this shaky, trembling state of emotional chaos. He looked tired, haggard, the rugged lines of his face stark with strain. And yet, he still took her breath away, he was so impossibly beautiful. But there was a haunted quality to him that hadn’t been there before, and she knew it was the hunger wearing him down. She was so angry at him, but she hurt for him, too.
The hot, salty burn of tears on her cheeks had her gritting her teeth. She swiped at the wet trails, wishing she could control the emotion tearing her up inside, stripping her raw—but it was impossible. Looking back, it was hard to believe how strongly she’d reacted after Kierland had told her Ian was gone. She’d screamed, hysterical, throwing things and hitting him when he’d tried to pull her into his arms and calm her down. She’d battered him with her fists—hoarse, choking sobs breaking out of her that had sounded like a wild, wounded animal—until she’d finally collapsed against him, exhausted. But the tears hadn’t stopped, and she’d continued to cry for what felt like hours.
When she’d finally managed to pull herself together, Scott had delivered Ian’s message to her. Then he’d told her that Ian said he was going back to the beginning, never suspecting she’d understand what that meant. The dry burst of laughter that had broken out of her chest had startled him, but she’d been too weary to explain. She’d simply asked him to book her a cab for the airport first thing in the morning. Then she’d gone upstairs, curled up in her bed and gone to sleep.
When she woke up at six, she’d found Quinn ready to act as her chauffeur. Her rental car had already been picked up at Ian’s apartment during the week, so it was either Quinn or a cab, and she’d been too wrung out to argue. Before they’d left, she’d tried talking to Kierland, begging him to go to Ian, to help him, but the Watchman remained as stubborn as ever, giving her the old “interference is not our way” speech again. She’d been so furious she’d slapped him—something she’d never done before and then she’d called him an asshole and walked out of the room, leaving with Quin
n. They’d made the long drive down from Ravenswing in stilted silence, and she’d flown home on an early afternoon flight, then caught a taxi from the airport to her apartment.
Back to the beginning. She’d have known exactly what it meant, even if Elaina hadn’t come to her in her sleep and told her that Ian was going home. His mother was terrified for him, not that Molly blamed her. She was terrified herself.
But she was also angry. Her pride wanted her to march past him, get back in her car and leave him to deal with this nightmare on his own. It was what he deserved for being such a blind, stupid fool.
But her heart wouldn’t let her, and her anger was bleeding into something more powerful…impossible to deny.
“So did you and Kierland have an emotional parting?” he asked, slanting her a dark look.
“Why would you even care?” she responded with a shaky laugh. “You left me there with him, Ian. You hardly have the right to be jealous. This whole attitude of yours sucks.”
“Yeah, well, just remember that you went looking for me, Molls—not the other way around. You could have ignored those crazy little voices in your head and said to hell with it. Could have never set foot in Colorado, but you didn’t.”
Her temper flared, white-hot and raging. “I should have known you were going to act like a total ass.”
He took a step forward, and she could tell by his expression that he was going to try and intimidate her into leaving. “I’m not going to stand here and argue with you. I don’t want your help, and I don’t need it. All I want is for you to turn around, get back in your car and find somewhere safe to stay until this over.”
“As much as you deserve it,” she told him, “I’m afraid it isn’t going to happen like that.”
“I can make you go, Molly,” he warned in a low, gritty rasp. “Trust me. It won’t be pretty and you won’t like it.”
She forced a slow smile onto her lips, knowing that if she let him push her away now, she was going to lose him. Forever. “Go ahead, Ian,” she whispered, standing her ground as he came closer. “Do your best to be big and bad and scare me away. But I could save you the trouble and warn you right now that it isn’t going to work.”
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