by Lynsay Sands
"I thought you said he raised you," Beth said finally.
"I said he took me in," Odilia snapped. "I did not say he adopted me."
"Well then . . ." She stared at her with confusion.
"His house in London is huge," Odilia said with a shrug. "I was given a wing along with Mrs. McCurdy, the woman who was brought in to take care of me as a child. Scotty had his own wing. But he wasn't there often," she added irritably. "I saw him maybe a handful of times before I reached the age of majority and then mostly at a distance. But he wrote letters. I wrote letters. He kept tabs on me through Mrs. McCurdy. He was always out traveling, hunting, chasing down rogues. And then of course I had to leave London or risk exposure, because I wasn't aging. I traveled the Continent for a while, went to see the Americas, returned to the Continent . . . and then I heard that Jamieson was back in London. Scotty, of course, was hard on his trail almost immediately. It took me some time, however, to get back to England. The night I got there was the night they caught and killed him."
"The night I was rescued," Beth murmured.
Odilia nodded resentfully.
"I didn't see you there," Beth said quietly.
"I had gone to Scotty's house, but he had already left. It took me some time to find out where he was and follow. It was all over when I got there. The carriage taking you and Alexandrina Argenis to the docks was leaving just as I finally arrived. I could not find Scotty at first, though, so went into the house. I . . ." She closed her eyes, and Beth knew exactly what she'd found. Blood everywhere, Jamieson's remains, the bodies of the other women she and Dree had been going to save, the rotting corpses of men, women, and children strewn about and left to rot, and a stench so foul . . .
Beth lowered her head and closed her eyes briefly, trying to clear the smell and images from her mind. Just thinking about it put her right back in that house, in the middle of the madness and horror and--
"It was so like my home when I woke up after I turned," Odilia said unhappily. "Worse, really. I think I would have gone mad if Scotty hadn't come in when he did and ushered me out. He put me right into a carriage and sent me back to his house, promising he'd return as soon as he could."
Odilia's face twitched and she admitted, "Everything is kind of a blur after that until he came home. I remember getting to the house and going in, but everything felt . . . separate from me somehow . . . and I was suddenly so exhausted. The housekeeper tried to convince me to go to bed, but I wanted to wait for Scotty. I wanted to hear what happened. I needed to. I felt like . . . I was desperate to hear it, so she brought me a cinnamon bun and let me be. I was not hungry--I was still feeling unconnected--so just sat there, not doing anything or even thinking really, until Scotty got home and came to find me.
"He told me what had happened, but kept sniffing the air as he did," Odilia said with remembered amusement. "And then he finally asked what that cinnamon scent was and I said it was the bun the housekeeper had left out, but I did not want it. He picked it up, gave it a sniff and then took a bite, and seemed quite surprised that it was good. He just gobbled it up."
Beth didn't comment. She wasn't surprised. It made sense. She and Scotty had met earlier in the evening. They were life mates. His hungers would have been reawakened by that meeting. All of his hungers.
"I was shocked and just stared at him," Odilia continued. "I knew how old he was and that he didn't eat anymore. Yet he was eating. When I pointed it out to him, he kind of froze, and just sat there for a minute, and then he turned and stared at me for the longest time. I was about to ask him if he was all right when the butler came to inform him that Magnus had arrived.
"Scotty excused himself and left to speak to Magnus, but he hadn't quite pulled the door closed, and I heard them out in the hall by the front door. Magnus had come to inform him that a couple of the younger hunters had told him they'd been able to read Scotty's thoughts after the raid on the charnel house. He wanted to know why Scotty hadn't told him that he'd met his life mate. Scotty said he hadn't realized it until just now himself. That he'd come home and eaten a bun, and when he realized what he was doing, had tried to read me and could not."
Beth stiffened. "What?"
"He could not read me," Odilia said slowly and clearly as if speaking to someone hard of hearing. She followed it up with a triumphant smile.
"But--" Beth shook her head with bewilderment. That couldn't be. He was her life mate, not Odilia's. How could he not read her either? The only time you couldn't read another immortal was if they were older, insane, or your life ma--
Oh, she thought suddenly. Beth had already deduced that the woman was off her rocker. She should have realized this wasn't a new status. But why hadn't Scotty known that back then? He'd . . . not raised the girl, she realized. Had seen her only a handful of times. Mrs. McCurdy had raised her and apparently never bothered to mention to her employer that the girl he'd put in her charge was a nutter. Great. But why hadn't he sorted out since then that the woman was insane?
"Magnus, of course, congratulated him," Odilia continued, drawing Beth's attention back to her story. "And told him he'd leave us be to enjoy our discovery of each other, and then he departed. I rushed out into the hall the moment he was gone and hurried to Scotty, and he took me in his arms and kissed me so sweetly."
Beth's eyebrows rose. She would not describe any of her own kisses with Scotty as sweet. Hot, passionate, hungry, devouring, frenzied, consuming, vigorous, even almost violent, yes. But sweet? Nope. Poor thing, she thought, eyeing Odilia with pity. The woman had no idea what she was missing.
"And then he swept me up in his arms, carried me to my room, and made gentle, tender love to me," Odilia said on a sigh.
"Sounds like a bad romance novel," Beth said dryly.
"It was beautiful!" Odilia shrieked. "The best night of my life."
"Lame life, then," she said with a shrug.
Odilia's face was purple, her eyes narrowed to slits, and Beth truly thought she'd pushed her too far. But then the woman suddenly relaxed and even gave a snort of laughter. "You are jealous."
Beth didn't deny that. Why bother? It was probably true. Oh, not of the night Odilia had just described. That might be a nice change in maybe five or six hundred years, but she preferred the passionate lover Scotty was with her. She was jealous that he'd slept with Odilia at all, though, which was silly. She'd had lovers over the last hundred years. Okay, so in her mind they'd unknowingly had his face in her bed, but still . . .
"It was so lovely," Odilia remembered softly. "And I was so happy. I worshiped Scotty. He was so handsome, so smart, so kind, and he'd taken care of me. He was wonderful, gentle, and caring. I had never had a lover who made me feel the way he did. For three months, every day was a sweet revelation."
Three months? Beth closed her eyes and hung her head. Man, had she gotten it wrong. What a mess. And what had Scotty been thinking?
"He was thinking I was his life mate," Odilia said with pleasure.
"But he wasn't, was he?" she said sharply.
"He should have been!" Odilia shrieked with frustration. "Look at you. You are nothing but a whore, and a common whore at that, while he is a laird! You are not good enough for him. I am a lady! My father was a baron. I have money. I was raised properly, and I would never sell myself for a couple of coins."
"No, I'm sure you wouldn't," Beth agreed. "But apparently you'll blow people up, cut them into pieces with wire traps and--Oh my God, you were willing to blow up Rickart and Magnus," she said suddenly.
Odilia shrugged her shoulders. "Collateral damage."
"But they're friends of Scotty's," she pointed out with disbelief. "And yours. You work with them."
"Collateral damage," she said again.
"Oh, wow," Beth said with disgust. "You're a complete and utter sociopath."
Odilia raised one eyebrow. "Really? You are going to say something like that to the woman who is going to kill you?"
Beth considered the question and then sh
rugged. "You can only kill me once. It's not like you can kill me for every insult I give you."
"No. But I can make it extremely painful and last a really long time to pay you back for every word you say that I do not like," she pointed out.
"Somehow I don't think you have the time," Beth said with certainty. "We won't be alone out here long enough for that."
"Oh, I am sorry. Did you think I was going to kill you here?" Odilia asked tauntingly. "No, no, no. You will only stay here for another half an hour, and then my shift is over and I am going to put you in the back of one of the vans and take you to my place, where I can kill you quickly . . . or slowly. The choice will be yours. Oh, wait," she added. "Actually the choice would be mine, so maybe you had better start being nicer to me."
Beth shook her head. "This isn't going to work at all, Odilia. Scotty will never love you. You're not his life mate and you don't really want him anyway," she added with exasperation. "If you knew what it was like to have a life mate, you wouldn't look twice at Scotty. Didn't Magnus and Scotty tell you that? Didn't they explain what it was like to have a life mate?" Beth closed her eyes even as she finished asking the question and then muttered, "What am I thinking? They're men. Men don't talk about stuff like that." Sighing, she raised her head and asked, "What about this Mrs. McCurdy? Surely she told you something?"
"Mrs. McCurdy was very old-fashioned," Odilia said primly. "She told me to wait for the right man. Scotty is the right man."
"No he's not," Beth assured her, and then suggested, "Read my mind. Since I'm a new life mate, I know you can. Look into my memories and see what I'm talking about."
"No," Odilia growled.
"Just read my mind," Beth insisted. "Or are you afraid to see I'm right?"
"Shut up!" Odilia snapped. "I hate you. I hate you so much. Everything was perfect, and then he went to Spain and had those damned shared dreams . . . Until then, he thought I was his life mate."
"I don't know how," Beth said with exasperation. "He should have known that lame-ass sex you two had wasn't life mate sex. Gentle and caring!" She snorted. "Did he ever want to be inside you so bad he ripped your knickers wide open just to get to you? Did he ever make you scream with pleasure so all-encompassing you passed out from the strength of it? That is life mate sex, not this insipid childish nonsense you keep prattling on about."
Beth shut up then, mostly because she'd become aware that Odilia was pale and quivering, her eyes stricken as she concentrated on Beth's forehead. The woman was reading her memories as she'd suggested, and Beth gave them to her with both barrels, remembering every encounter she'd had with Scotty and letting it replay inside her mind like a porno. Every position in the garage in Vancouver, the heated moments on the plane, the two days they'd spent in bed while he healed and after. Even the dream sex they'd shared that had started in the market and ended in the forest-green bedroom.
"That's why he changed the color of his room?" Odilia breathed, sounding beyond hurt. "For you? For a hundred years he has not allowed anyone to change it. He has it repainted the same color, has the sheets custom-made if he cannot find them in that color, and it was all for you?"
Beth's eyebrows rose. Odilia had seen all he'd done to her in that bedroom and that was what she was upset about? The color of the room. Scotty had said he'd decorated it that color because he'd known it would suit her. That she was--
"Fire and ice in a forest of green," Odilia breathed, and then rage filled her face again and she withdrew the dart gun from her weapons belt and shot her again.
"Maybe she and Donny went for a walk," Mortimer suggested, and then cursed and said, "This was a hell of a time for the cameras to go down."
"Somehow I do no' think that is a coincidence," Scotty growled.
"No," Mortimer agreed. He shook his head, looking frustrated. "They must have gone for a walk."
"I do no' think so," Scotty countered, shaking his head. "They have no' left the grounds, and we've been out in the yard and they were no' there. 'Sides, surely they'd have returned by now if they'd just gone fer a walk?"
He and Mortimer had been running around in circles trying to figure out where the pair could be since Scotty had returned and passed on what he'd realized while talking to Odilia--that Donny was missing.
Mortimer seemed to think that was a good thing. That it probably meant they were both fine. Scotty didn't agree. It made him more anxious.
"We did not check the airstrip. That is quite a hike. They would take longer to walk that," Mortimer pointed out.
Scotty stared at him in stunned silence for a moment, shocked that he hadn't thought of it himself.
"Come on," Mortimer said, leading him out of his office. "We can take the van. It is in the attached garage."
Scotty followed him through the kitchen to the door to the attached garage and headed for the passenger side, but paused when Mortimer threw him the keys to the vehicle. Scotty caught them instinctively and then glanced to him with surprise.
"I noticed that you like to drive," the man said dryly as he passed him to take the passenger seat himself.
Fingers tightening around the keys, Scotty hurried around to the driver's side. Mortimer had hit the remote on the visor to open the garage door before Scotty was inside. By the time he started the engine, it was already halfway up, and he had to wait barely a moment before he could slam on the gas and squeal out of the garage. He turned the wheel sharply the moment they were clear of the building, sending the van shooting around the house and along the lane toward the back of the property.
He spotted the door of the outbuilding opening, but didn't slow when he saw Odilia step out and glance around with curiosity. He was busy concentrating on the way the lane ahead narrowed as they surged into the trees. Mortimer's phone began to ring as the trees closed in on either side.
"It is Magnus," he said, and pushed the button to put the call on speakerphone.
"Mortimer?" Magnus's voice asked.
"And Scotty," Mortimer told him.
They heard Magnus grunt and then he said, "I thought you said the cameras at the apartment building were just empty casings? Fakes to deter criminal activity rather than working cameras to film it?"
"Yes," Mortimer agreed. "That is what I was told."
"Well, we were talking to the store clerk while waiting for the film to copy, and he asked us why we did not get the film footage from the apartment building. We told him what you had said about the cameras not being real and there not being footage, and he said sure the cameras are real. The manager of the apartment building drops in to the store all the time to buy cigarettes and is forever complaining about how he has to clean the camera lenses twice a week, or the picture on the film is so fuzzy you cannot see the faces of the kids who keep spraying graffiti on the walls."
"Did ye go talk to the manager yerselves?" Scotty asked at once.
"We are waiting for him now," Magnus said. "He--Just a minute. Here he comes."
Scotty frowned impatiently, but concentrated on not sideswiping one of the trees on either side of them. He now understood why they usually used the golf cart to drive people and luggage back and forth. The lane was crazy narrow.
They were just breaking out of the trees onto the airstrip and Scotty was scanning the empty tarmac when Magnus came back online. "The cameras are real and the manager says no one approached him about them."
Stiffening, Scotty glanced to Mortimer. "Who was supposed to check the cameras?"
"Odilia," Mortimer said quietly.
"Scotty," Magnus said, his voice full of concern.
"I know," he growled and, taking his foot off the gas, jerked the steering wheel of the van, sending the vehicle into a spin that ended with them facing the way they'd come. He hit the gas again at once, and they surged forward, rocketing back into the trees.
"Why would Odilia lie about that?" Mortimer asked quietly as he ended the call.
Scotty shook his head. He had an idea, but it wasn't a good one and he di
dn't want to talk about it. He just wanted to get back to the outbuilding. Beth had to be in the kennels. It was the only place he hadn't actually looked for himself. He'd just trusted Odilia when she'd said Beth wasn't there. Although she hadn't really said she wasn't there, he realized now. She'd just deflected the question with some comment about Beth still recovering.
This was all his fault, of course. He'd brought her here to Canada.
"But Odilia could not have caused the accident on the highway," Mortimer said suddenly. "She was not here before you flew to Vancouver."
"I wouldn't bet on that," Scotty said, his mouth tight.
"You think she was here even then?" Mortimer asked.
"She was supposed to be in Kirkwall, in Northern Scotland," he said grimly. "But she was on her own. She could have been here and said she was there. I know she insisted on flying straight to Vancouver from Scotland rather than fly back to London and travel from there with the men."
Mortimer merely grunted. They'd left the trees, and he and Scotty were both looking toward the outbuilding and Odilia's car. Scotty had started to steer toward it when Mortimer suddenly barked, "The van!"
Scotty followed his pointing finger toward the van presently pulling through the first gate. Even as he looked, Russell was closing the first gate and Francis was opening the second one.
"It has to be Odilia in the van. There's no one else here but Donny and Beth and they're both missing," Mortimer pointed out as Scotty took his foot off the gas, but hesitated to change direction.
Cursing, Scotty jerked the steering wheel again, this time steering straight up the driveway toward the gates. As he slammed his foot back on the gas pedal, he warned, "Ye'd best call and make sure the gates're open when we get there. I'm no' stopping. I'll drive right through the damned things."
"Lay on the horn," Mortimer said and quickly began tapping away on his phone. When a ding sounded, Scotty realized the man had texted rather than calling. Smart. Probably faster. Hopefully, Scotty thought, hesitating to hit the horn and give Odilia warning that they were giving chase.
Much to his relief, the first gate started opening almost at once and the second gate didn't close. Scotty shot through both and turned right, which was the direction Odilia had taken. Either she'd seen them careening down the driveway behind her, or she was just in a hurry, because she was already a good distance up the road. Scotty ground his teeth together and put his foot all the way down, but didn't expect the response he got. The van jumped and shot forward at a startling speed.