“You know you can ask Millie and me to do anything for you. I’m not just your doctor; I’m your friend. You can talk to me about anything.”
Caroline fixed her gaze on the dust bunnies in the corner of her two-room hideout. “No, I can’t.”
He sighed and kissed her forehead. “Okay, almost anything. Take that pill and get a good night’s sleep. I’ll go find the guy. He’s probably a lost hiker.”
“You won’t find him without my help. He’s…I don’t know…hidden. Covered up. Something. Give me a few minutes to get dressed.”
She was perfect for Grabian.
Neshi watched Caroline Bengal and her companion rumble away from the cabin. This time it might work. Grabian might live long enough. He could take his place among these humans as if he were one of them and feed in a way that was natural and harmless to his prey. And the woman, the empath, would know his needs and respond to them in a way that would ensure Meical’s survival.
Neshi allowed himself a moment of self-satisfaction. If he could do this, literally rebuild Grabian, reconstitute and enliven human tissue that had lain dormant beneath vampire flesh for two hundred years, what else might he eventually accomplish? And not just for vampires, but for preternatural beings of all kinds. He could allow them to live in perfect symbiosis with humanity.
If Grabian survived the next few hours. Nothing must come between him and his prey tonight. Caroline Bengal must take Meical home with her. He’d make sure she did.
Neshi wrapped himself in a gust of wind and followed the humans.
Storing her slalom behind her seat, Caroline shoved her foot into her ski boot and fixed her entire focus on the lost man. A rivulet of hunger, power and misery seized her. It was as if somebody’s rejected god had crash-landed in her forest. No way was she walking away from this one.
“Found him,” she murmured to John. “South of here.”
But what could she do for him? A need like his would turn her inside out. She couldn’t afford to help strangers. He could be anyone. For all she knew, he was one of the men Rivera had sent to kill her. Maybe even Burke himself.
She gripped the handles of her crutches until her hands tingled. No, no, no. Burke couldn’t find her in a little one-store town in the Poconos. She had to believe that. She’d had enough practice picking up on his presence to know he wasn’t around. He couldn’t find her here. Not yet.
Still, just to be on the safe side, she expanded her senses to take in the surrounding woods. Lots of life out there. Lots of emotion. But the only trace of humanity she encountered was the man they were trying to rescue, and even though his life force had a peculiar vibration, it wasn’t the throb of psychopathic hatred and fanaticism that made her nemesis stand out in a crowd of thousands. Burke was just like Rivera. He couldn’t hide his presence from her. No one could. He wasn’t here. He hadn’t found her yet.
Caroline breathed a sigh of relief and fixed her concentration on the woods ahead. She tried to hold on to the object of their search. But an anomaly of some kind kept getting in the way. She held her breath, tracing the pulsing aura to its source. It fractured and dissipated suddenly.
The anomaly was human-like but not human. Nor was it pure spirit. Spirits felt more like a mix of quicksilver and cotton candy, swift and sweet. This being was physically present and much more powerful spiritually than any spirit she’d encountered.
Caroline focused on the silent presence with her whole being, tuning out the Suburban’s noisy heater and jostling, squeaking seat, until nothing existed in her world but the being who scrutinized her.
There was an absence of light in him, yet his soul lit up the cosmic river. There was no death in him, yet she couldn’t feel his presence as she could a living soul. He was all intelligence and cunning. The only thing that made him seem to belong on this plane was his connection to the man she was trying to help.
What do you want with him? she asked the being.
He didn’t answer her. Instead, he penetrated her shield with an ease that sent Caroline surfacing as fast as she could.
Words formed in her mind from nowhere. If you think that’s something, wait until you see what he can do.
“Hey, are you all right?” John asked.
“Fine,” she gulped.
She’d come across a lot of different entities in her time, but this—whatever he was—was as unique as the man she was trying to rescue. What was their story?
She fixed her concentration on the lost stranger again. She’d find him, help him out and that would be it. Whatever his situation was, she didn’t need his baggage—or his cosmic companion.
His agony filled the night, condensing into a choking mass of despair that lay just yards away from them now. Caroline tapped John’s arm and pointed. “There. See where the ground dips into a hollow?”
The doctor drove up the rise and stopped on the perimeter of a snow-filled knoll. He helped Caroline out of the Suburban, fetched her slalom and helped her put it on.
She stood in the icy stillness, feeling for her quarry. Snow fell like dandelions cast to the wind. His pain filled her with pain that penetrated her to the marrow of her bones, but she felt his life force tremble inside of him and a sense of alertness in him that startled her. Unconscious or not, on some level, he knew they’d found him.
Was he an empath, too?
He knew he was alone. He didn’t know what he’d done to be abandoned like this. He wanted relief from his pain, the comfort of the human touch, a place to be safe. Who had done this to him, left him alone like this to die? No one deserved this.
She hadn’t deserved it.
Caroline’s head pounded in time with her racing heart. Night, snow and trees faded, suddenly eclipsed by a pungent basement illuminated by a single naked bulb. She lay on the filthy floor, bound, gagged, bleeding and feverish. No one would come for her. Her only companions were pain, thirst and terror.
Dash’s bark brought her back to the present. The dog had found something. John was already plowing after Dash through the snow. Caroline licked the beads of sweat and melting snow from her upper lip and glided along after them, stabbing her crutches into the snow and pushing herself along on her slalom.
Panic bloomed inside of her. The stranger’s or hers? She couldn’t tell. Their emotions merged too well, which wasn’t good. She breathed deeply, fighting the stark terror that consumed her self-control, and followed John toward a motionless mound of snow at the bottom of the knoll.
Dash was already there, standing stiff-legged with her head down and her ears up. The closer Caroline got to the stranger, the more his hunger devoured her. He was emotionally emaciated.
She set her flashlight on the ground so that it shone on him, sat down and whipped off her slalom. John knelt beside the man with a pile of blankets they’d brought along and swept the snow off him. He felt for a pulse, then slipped a penlight out of his pocket. Drawing the man’s left lower eyelid down with his thumb, he flicked the light back and forth across a pewter gray eye and returned the flashlight to his pocket.
“He’s only unconscious. Probably working on a good case of hypothermia. Wrap him up. I’ll bring the car closer.”
While John returned to the Suburban, Caroline covered the man with the blankets and tucked them close around him. She reached her hand underneath the covers and laid it over his heart. He was icy all over, right through his clothes. She felt an abundance of hard muscle everywhere she touched him. He was a really big guy, long and well-built but on the lean side, like he’d gone without eating for too long. His relief reached her from deep inside him. It flowed over her inner barriers as though she hadn’t any.
The hunger she’d sensed in the man receded a little, and his skin began to warm. Incredible. He was nursing the warmth and energy out of her, emotionally and physically, but it wasn’t the hard drain she’d feared. She made herself still inside, allowing him to draw on her strength. Another gulp of relief flowed out of him into her. Had he just thanked her?<
br />
He had to be an empath.
By the time the headlights of John’s Suburban cut through the darkness, the stranger’s temperature had risen to match hers. She watched John exit his vehicle like a bull elephant. He plowed through the snow to her, reached down with one hand to pull her up on her foot, hoisted the man over his shoulder and stood up.
“He won’t need a hospital. He just needs somewhere to warm up and come to. I’ll drop you off at your cabin and take him to the clinic where I can examine him. He’ll probably be fine in the morning.”
An impulse shot through Caroline like an electric shock. The idea of the man going anywhere but her place was out of the question. “We have to take him to my cabin.”
John halted on the way to the Suburban, turned and gaped at her. “Excuse me?”
What was she thinking? But the words popped out of her mouth as though she had no control over them. “He needs to warm up fast, doesn’t he? My cabin’s closer.”
John blinked. “You’re not making sense. What happened to your absolutely-no-strangers rule?”
Caroline clenched her hands together. She couldn’t explain it, couldn’t even try. The compulsion struck again. “Let’s hurry it up, okay? Don’t worry. You’ll be there. And I’ve got Dash. I’ll be okay.”
He shook his head. “We don’t know this guy. It’s not safe. There’s no way I’m going to—”
His face suddenly went blank, and his mouth hung open.
Caroline narrowed her eyes and looked him up and down. He seemed to have blanked out completely. A warble of energy surrounded them for a moment, and their patient’s invisible companion loomed closer.
She edged closer to John. “John? John. Hey. Are you okay?”
He blinked again and suddenly seemed to remember himself. “Fine. Just fine. You’re right. This man needs to go straight home with you where he’ll be warm and…and safe…and I’m sure you’ll be okay. Yeah, you’ll be fine.”
As though there were nothing left to discuss, the doctor turned and carried his near-lifeless burden to the Suburban. Caroline stuck her foot back into her slalom, balanced on her crutches so she could fasten it, and followed him.
Her mind told her this was insane. Her instincts did, too. But inside her, the compulsion to shelter this man rode her hard. She turned and eyed the quiet forest again. His friend out there returned her gaze with a smug satisfaction that made her want to hit someone.
What had she gotten herself into this time?
Once they had reached her cabin, Caroline carried John’s medical bag in for him and sat down in the armchair by her bed to watch him work on her Sleeping Beauty. Dash crept close to her and kept a wary eye on the stranger.
There was an unearthly beauty about him, except for the ruggedness in his face that hardship had made. His thick, dark gold hair curled with moisture from the melted snow. His square jaw suggested he’d be intractable in an argument.
Caroline let her gaze wander over the powerful torso and arms John revealed during his examination. The man’s chest was covered with the same chestnut-golden hair that made his stubbly chin glisten in the firelight. She swallowed hard and raked her hand through her hair. “I’ll go fix some coffee.”
“Can’t hurt,” John mumbled over his stethoscope.
Caroline plucked up her crutches and, with a backward glance at the man in her bed, hobbled out of her room. What was his story? His intensity scared her to death, but she was relieved she’d rescued him. Relieved? No, overjoyed. In fact, it was the first joy she’d felt in weeks.
Ducking behind the curtain that served as a makeshift wall between her tiny living room and her kitchenette, she made the coffee mechanically. Her focus seemed tethered to the guy. She could feel his hunger eating away at him.
When the coffee was ready, she poured two mugs. “Hey, it’s ready.”
John came and carried their coffee back to her bedroom. He had removed the rest of their patient’s wet clothing and bundled him up to the chin in blankets. Caroline eyed the long jeans, white Oxford shirt and spotless T-shirt John had draped over the back of a chair to dry. No coat or shoes? Who dressed like that in this weather?
With a shake of her head, she curled herself up in her bedside armchair and took her coffee from John. She stared at Sleeping Beauty over her cup. There seemed to be no sunshine in him whatsoever. He was all darkness inside, darkness and misery. Poor guy.
No, no, no, she chided herself. Hadn’t she learned her lesson with Rivera’s son? Don’t get involved on a personal level. It didn’t matter if it was a seven-year-old boy traumatized by his father’s secrets or an unconscious guy she’d pulled out of a snowdrift. Her empathy would always lead her right into trouble.
John put his stethoscope away and sighed. “Very strange. Very lucky for him, but strange all the same.”
She cast a glance at the doctor. “What’s that?”
“He exhibits symptoms of severe malnutrition, but I know he isn’t starving. He’s perfect.”
Caroline grinned. “You can say that again.”
John chuckled, stood up and drained his coffee. He took the mug to the kitchen. When he returned, he regarded his patient with a furrowed brow.
Caroline caught the snag of exasperation and in decision in her friend and shrugged. “Look, you’ve got your rounds to do at the hospital in less than an hour. He’s comfortable where he is. Leave him here. It’s okay.”
John met her gaze with a scowl. “We don’t know this guy.”
True—and not true. If he was like her, she knew him in ways she’d never known anyone before. She eyed the man’s still face. “You know I can take care of myself.”
“I know you’re an excellent psychologist, but I don’t think you ran into many psychopaths during your internship.”
“He’s nothing of the sort.”
“You’d know, I’m sure, given your vast experience.”
She laughed. “Actually…”
“Right. But that’s another tale from Caroline Bengal’s adventures among the mentally infirm, right?” John buttoned up his coat and picked up his bag. “Seriously, Caroline, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you, if this guy felt dangerous to you?”
In fact he felt absolutely lethal, but not because of the darkness in him. “I’ll be fine. Go on now.”
“Okay. Not that he’s going to wake up anytime soon, I can promise you that, but swear on Dash’s squeaky cow you’ll call me the minute he even looks like he’s coming to. I mean it.”
She nodded. “Gotcha, Doc.”
He took his leave, locking the door for her on his way out.
Caroline grabbed one of her crutches and went to the fire to add more wood. She just couldn’t get warm. She fetched a blanket for herself from the closet behind her chair, sat down in her armchair again and wrapped herself up. The moments crept by, while she watched and waited for her Adonis to wake up.
His inner hunger kept gnawing at her. When she began to feel like one of Dash’s rawhide chews, she leaned forward in her chair and took his hand. The physical contact made her feel like a soda straw. Unconscious or not, he sucked her emotions right out of her. Hungry, hungry.
She held his hand only long enough to realize that his skin wasn’t warm anymore. What was wrong? Maybe wool blankets weren’t going to cut it. She one-crutched her way back to the closet again to get her electric blanket, wincing with every step. After her romp in the snow, her muscles and joints would probably scream all night.
Dragging the electric blanket off the shelf, she returned to Sleeping Beauty, set her crutch aside and stood on her aching leg while she covered him and turned on the blanket.
Dropping herself back into her chair, she caught her throbbing stump close to her and eyed the pain pill and glass of water, still where John had left them on the table beside her. It would be so good just to have a little relief. She took the pill quickly, settled back in her chair and gave it a few minutes to work.
The electric blanket ought
to be nice and warm by now. She felt the man’s hand again. If anything, he was colder. Alarm skittered along Caroline’s spine. When she opened herself up to him a little, his rush of despair took her breath away. He was suffering, and she could feel his need for relief as clearly as she felt her own.
She squeezed his hand. “Looks like we’re both in pain tonight. Only thing is, I can’t figure out what you need unless you wake up and tell me. I—”
An image swam through her mind like a lean, dark fish, in and out of shadow, first clear, then obscure. Her heart skipped a beat.
“Hey, Sleeping Beauty, are you trying to reach me?”
Closing her eyes, she squeezed his hand again and focused on the image until it was clear in her mind. He lay on a beautiful bed in a castle chamber. She stood poised over him, ready to wake him with a kiss.
With a hiccup of laughter, Caroline dropped his hand and leaned back in her chair. “Either you’re a wise guy, or that pain pill’s about to zonk me good.”
The image persisted. She couldn’t shake it from her mind. She could almost smell the tallow of the candles burning low beside the bed he lay in. Without warning, the vision exploded, sucking her into it.
She was there, bending over to kiss him. Closer. Closer. His lips were firm and dry and perfect. Warmth poured out of her into him. She felt him soak it up and send it rushing back into her, hotter than before. She gasped as it spread pleasure through her soul and body. Her pain became a shuddering beast that couldn’t reach her. She pressed her mouth to his and let the waterfall sweep her down into an ocean of euphoria.
Drifting into a bed of cotton that felt remarkably like her own bed, Caroline imagined she felt the stranger’s mouth move under hers. Delicious. Pure fantasy. She could count the kisses she’d had on one hand, and they’d never made her feel like this before.
She even thought she felt him close his arms around her and pull her closer. It felt so good to be held like that. He was definitely warm now. Long, strong fingers caressed the back of her head gently, rhythmically. It felt so real that she moaned.
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