Possessed by An Immortal

by Sharon Ashwood

  He flushed, easy to see beneath his fair skin. “I, uh— No. I got a D-minus in the Valentine category.”

  She grinned. “That’s a shame.”

  “Well, this kind of national treasure—” he swept his hands from head to foot “—should not be monopolized by one person. It’s only fair that I keep myself available.”

  * * *

  She stayed at Jonathan’s bedside until the medical staff chased her away. It was well into the afternoon when she walked down the long hallway that ran through the medical facility and toward her suite. Doors stood open here and there. Drowning in other problems, Bree paid little attention. She nearly walked past an occupied room before the features of the patient clicked in her memory. Backing up three steps, she took a second look.

  It was Larson, the pilot. She’d forgotten he’d been moved to Los Angeles.

  He was alone. She slipped into the room.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, pushing himself up on his pillows.

  “Just making sure I didn’t kill you back there on the plane.” She squeezed his hand.

  “Not quite.” He managed a smile. It looked as if it cost him. Although she couldn’t see beneath the covers, it looked as if one leg was immobilized. The bullet to his thigh must have done more damage than she had known.

  “I’m glad you made it okay,” he said.

  She felt a flash of anger. He’d betrayed them. True, he’d fought on their side in the end, but he’d put them all at risk. “What happened back there?”

  He winced, looking away. “Aw, miss. I got caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.”

  “I heard there were threats against your family.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are they all right?”

  “Yes. The Company’s keeping an eye on them. Keeping a lookout for the Knights.” He sagged back against the pillows. His complexion was naturally ruddy, sunburned from long hours outdoors, but he turned gray at the mention of Ferrel’s men. “I’m so sorry.”

  “You helped us in the end.”

  “I should never have doubted Winspear. I should have gone to him straightaway, but I couldn’t leave anything to chance.”

  She agreed, but that was easy for her to say. From what Mark said, Larson had grandchildren. Would she have done anything different?

  She decided to be forgiving. “If it had been Jonathan, I might have done the same thing.”

  He took her hand, pressing it. “Thank you. All I know is that when my granddaughter looks at me, she sees a giant. Foolish or not, I couldn’t trust her safety to anyone else.”

  Bree left him after that, meandering slowly back to her room. Larson had left her unsettled, thinking about families. It was true, a lot of how a person felt about themselves came from family—they became the clown or the darling, the smart one or the hopeless case. Who could blame a man for wanting to be the avenging giant?

  The discussion made an interesting counterpart to Kenyon’s observation about vampires. They responded to people who stood their ground—hard to do without a positive self-image. Her history left her on shaky ground there. She hadn’t even wanted to come near her old hometown.

  Bree unlocked the door to her suite and stepped inside. Custard lay on the floor in a tired heap of creamy fur. Kenyon must have worn him out. The dog turned big brown eyes on her, ears lifting. Suddenly, she was hugely grateful that he was there.

  She knelt, tickling the soft, warm belly. He wriggled, his tail moving most of his back end as it wagged. Suddenly exhausted herself, she lay down on the floor, mock-wrestling with Custard and letting him lick her face. It felt good to make somebody happy, even if they only came up to her shin.

  She held the dog inches from her nose. Here was the one person she could talk to, the one who would never judge her. Bree ached to unburden herself, and the words spilled out in a burst of heartfelt frustration. “What do I do about Mark?”

  Custard drooled. She couldn’t have said it better herself.

  “I’ve never believed in love at first sight,” she began. “Never.”

  Not even with Mark. The first time she’d met him, she’d pointed a gun. Protecting a child and running from the Knights robbed her of any luxury she might have for instant romance.

  Custard whined, and she set him down on her stomach. He curled up, snuggling under her chin. Okay, maybe there’s love at first sight for dogs. I’m just not such a pushover for guys.

  But then had come those long hours she’d spent with Mark in the car. They had given her the time she needed to unwind and take a closer look. It had felt like months of dating telescoped into a few days—fast, but thorough. Mark had proven himself, over and over.

  He wasn’t perfect. He was set in his ways, a bit pushy and a little too prone to spoiling Jonathan. But how many guys would—or could—have gotten them safely to L.A.? How many would have remembered pancakes and dinosaurs and condoms and even rescued a puppy?

  And biting aside... Her stomach knotted, her entire body nearly jittering in confusion. The whole supernatural element was a lot to deal with.

  “Who believes in vampires, anyway?” she muttered. “I lived in L.A. and New York. You’d think I’d have seen it all.”

  Custard snuffled a reply.

  “But believing isn’t the biggest problem. I mean, I saw the knife wound almost healed. I saw the fangs. He’s the whole deal. Old. Powerful. Deadly.”

  Custard lifted his head. From this angle, with him sitting on her chest, it made his black button nose look enormous.

  “So tell me, little guy, what does he want with me? I’m just a single mom.”

  And that was the crux of the matter. What had happened on the road had been like a hothouse flower, protected from the cold wind of reality. It was like summer camp, or a cruise, or Las Vegas—a time-out. Once Jonathan was better and the crisis was over—well, any man prone to rescuing others would be off finding his next project, right? Why the blazes did she think she could hold Mark’s interest?

  She had to know because, against her better judgment, she was falling in love with him.

  Chapter 27

  It was always the cold Mark remembered first, back in those bad old days. People born in the time of central heating had no idea how cold stone buildings could be. It was especially frigid below ground, with a trickle of water creeping over the lintel and dripping down the stairs to pool inches from his feet. He recalled shaking, hands clasped around his knees. Someone had taken his cloak and doublet. All he had was his fine silk shirt, useless for keeping warm.

  The iron fetters on his wrists clanked as he gripped his legs more tightly. He needed blood. He hadn’t had any in days.

  Somewhere in the back of his mind he grasped the fact that this was a dream more than a memory. Most of the details were right, though—he didn’t need fantasy to make a nightmare. He had looked down at his hands, noticing just how pale they were. The gentry prided themselves on their white skin, untouched by the sun. He’d started to laugh at the ridiculousness of it. He’d finally attained the height of fashion by the simple fact of being dead.

  “You laugh,” said a voice. It was funny how Mark forgot that voice when he was awake, but it always came back in a dream. He hated it with all the fury of an avenging ghost—except no one had shown enough courtesy to kill him. Instead, they’d turned him into this thing.

  “You laugh,” the voice repeated. “What do you find so amusing?”

  Mark was crouched by the wall, his head bent. A pair of boots appeared in his field of vision, soft and fitted like a glove. Buffed to a shine, one toe twitching impatiently. With a Herculean effort, Mark lifted his head.

  Nicholas Ferrel. The first one. Commander General of the Knights of Vidon.

  “You slight me, Marco Farnese,” said Ferrel.
Like all his Ferrel breed, he was fair-haired and handsome, but had the morals of a serpent.

  “You murdered my wife and children.” Mark didn’t bother to raise his voice. Bluster was a sign of weakness. “I will kill you for that.”

  “Do you really think so?” Ferrel gave a bark of laughter. “You are weak, barely turned and wasting away with hunger. What makes you think you could so much as scratch me?”

  “It was your soldiers who dragged me from my bed and took me to the devils. You know what they made me.”

  “The town has an agreement with Agremont.”

  Agremont was master of the marauding nest of vampires. He was the one who had drained Mark’s life.

  “Yes, you were the price for the city’s safety!” Ferrel snapped. “A noble child to buy a year of peace! But you returned. The bargain was that you would stay willingly and be their chore boy. The notion of one of the illustrious Farnese scrubbing their floors amused them.”

  A sacrifice so that many could live. The ghastly bargain had been Ferrel’s idea—not that anyone knew that now. That was the thing about history. It got rewritten as time went on. Ferrel was remembered as a hero, Marco Farnese as the monster.

  “He wants me to be his assassin.” Mark slowly rose to his feet, sliding his back up the wall. The chains clanked, dragging at his wrists. He was so weak from thirst. “I didn’t want that. I was a good man. I had a family.”

  “And now you don’t. That’s your fault.”

  “I never touched them.”

  “Impossible. They say loved ones taste the sweetest.”

  “I never bit them.” It had been hard, so hard. Newly made as he was, their blood had sung to him, but he had never, ever wavered. Vampires five hundred times his age could not have done it, but Mark had never lacked for will.

  “I don’t believe you,” Ferrel spat. “They consorted with a demon.”

  With me. Mark trembled, but it was no longer the cold and lack of blood that troubled him. This time he shook with rage. Ferrel had sold him, sacrificed him, and then murdered his beloved and their sons. “You call me a demon?”

  “I call you hell-spawn,” Ferrel’s eyes mocked him. “Do you think your Anna opened the door because she loved you? Think again. It was fear. It was your seduction.” He hissed the word.

  Mark’s jaw clenched, but he forced out a reply. “No.”

  “Once you were done, the only means to save their eternal soul was to burn them on a pyre of flame. It was your pollution that made it necessary.”

  Fury ripped through Mark, opening a chasm where his reason had been moments before. He snarled, lunging and snapping fangs inches from Ferrel’s face. The man jerked away.

  “I rest my case,” said the commander general. “Demon.”

  “Then kill me.”

  “Perhaps.” Ferrel was holding a pair of gloves as soft and finely made as the boots. He slapped the gloves across his palm, making a sharp noise. “Or, since you so loathe your new master, perhaps I have more interesting uses for you. Even a rabid dog might have its purpose. If you won’t kill for Agremont, perhaps you shall kill for me. Sooner or later you’ll be hungry enough to bite anybody.”

  Mark wrenched against the chains that were bolted into the stone with huge, iron staples.

  “Don’t bother. Only an ancient could break those bonds.”

  An avalanche of helplessness slammed down on Mark, driving him to his knees. Ferrel’s truth bit deep. He wasn’t the human he had been. There was mad thirst and madder instincts to stalk and kill.

  And he had seen the look in his wife’s eyes when she thought he wasn’t looking. She loved the man he had been, not the creature he was now—yet he had refused to notice. Maybe her affection had been a lie, but he had desperately needed it. Needed some anchor before what remained of his humanity slipped away.

  But now his family was dead. Burned at the stake. There was no humanity left.

  He wrapped the chains around his wrists, gripping them with cold, desperate fingers. He pulled, straining every muscle but hearing only the futile scrape of metal against stone.

  Ferrel watched his efforts, a laugh bubbling up from somewhere deep in his gut. The laugh became a guffaw.

  Something inside Mark snapped.

  In the seconds that followed, he proved even a young vampire could break the chains. He hadn’t taken a life before then, but what happened next changed everything.

  Agremont had trained him to become an assassin, but it was Nicholas Ferrel who’d truly made him a monster.

  * * *

  “Winspear!”

  Mark jerked awake. Sam was poking him. “What?”

  “Nightmare?” Sam asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Mark scrubbed his eyes, slowly coming back to the present. He was at the break room table, head down on his arms. It was the twenty-first century, and he was a doctor now. Thank the stars for that much. Anyone who wanted to live in the time of doublets and sword fights—and mud and pox and public executions—was an idiot.

  Sitting up slowly, he scowled at Sam. “What time is it?”

  “Four o’clock.”

  Mark tried to figure out how long he’d been asleep. He didn’t need much downtime, but he’d been awake since—had it been his cabin? Surely he must have grabbed at least a few hours since then? But he never slept in hotels—not when he was guarding someone. They just weren’t safe enough.

  Safe. Bree. His body tightened, remembering their encounter. I bit her. A wave of shame and pride and a fierce need to dominate flooded through him. In a building full of vampires, the instinct to put his brand on her had been too strong to resist. The taste of her blood still lingered faintly, like nothing he’d ever encountered before.

  He wanted more. On a deep and slightly terrified level, he knew he would never want anyone else. Bree was everything he needed, the happiness he had lost and all the hopes he had ever dreamed of. His mate.

  But once she was back among her own people, would she want him? His soul had been twisted by Agremont and Ferrel and centuries of darkness. His vampire DNA held the beast—surely, as a doctor, he should know what that meant: predator. How could she love that?

  Mark swore under his breath. Impossible. No sane woman wanted a guy who sucked her blood. Okay, Sam’s wife-to-be did, but she was— Well, Chloe worked in the service industry. She put up with a lot from people.

  Sam poured himself a coffee, the sound homey and familiar. He poured another for Mark and held it out. “That looked like some nightmare.”

  “Maybe it was someone I ate,” he quipped, accepting the mug. The joke made him uncomfortable. His nightmare, and all those sharp feelings of shame and defeat, was too close to the surface.

  Sam sipped the coffee experimentally. “Schiller wants to talk to you. He’s in his office. He says he has an idea how to cure your young patient.”

  Mark’s mug barely hit the table, sloshing coffee, before he was out the door.

  * * *

  Bree managed to stay away from Jonathan’s bedside an entire two hours. Another minute would have made her go mad.

  She stepped into the quiet hospital room, and then froze, alarm surging through her. There was a strange woman standing over Jonathan’s bed. She wasn’t wearing scrubs, but a linen dress Bree recognized as one of Jessica’s designs. The cut, the drape, the very essence of it evoked sharp memories of her time at the atelier. The sting of that lost happiness brought an ache to her throat. Bree held her breath for a moment, forcing the sadness down. The dress was nothing. She needed to know what this woman wanted with her son.

  The look on the woman’s face was puzzled, as if staring at Jonathan would make her understand a difficult equation. As curiosity hardened into protectiveness, Bree detached herself from the door and marched forward. “M
ay I help you?”

  The stranger started at Bree’s tone. “Pardon me. Are you the boy’s mother?”

  Bree’s lips parted in astonishment as she studied the woman’s face. She’d seen a thousand pictures of those large, thick-lashed violet eyes and those perfect cheekbones. The woman’s hair was thick and dark, touched with mahogany lights. Princess Amelie.

  “Your Highness,” Bree stammered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize...”

  Her words dribbled to a stop. She’d hoped she might meet Amelie one day, but maybe when she was accepting the princess’s praise for her beautiful wedding clothes, not when Bree was tossing her out of her son’s hospital room.

  “It is I who intrude. Forgive me.” The words were tinged with a charming accent, but it was the smile that caught Bree’s attention. It was brittle, sad and lost.

  “What can I do for you?” Bree said again, but this time she meant it.

  Amelie cast a glance at Jonathan. “When I heard he was here, I wanted to see him. I wanted to know if he truly was—”

  She wants to know if Kyle is the father.

  “No.” Bree knew she probably shouldn’t interrupt royalty, but she couldn’t stand the hurt on Amelie’s face. “No, he isn’t. Don’t listen to the gossip. A man named Adam Swift was Jonathan’s father. Kyle was—is—my friend, but we were never lovers. Not once. I am sure the doctors here could provide a paternity test to prove what I say.”

  Amelie visibly relaxed. “I am so sorry, but I had to know. There was so much talk.”

  “I know.” Bree had to smile. “Don’t get me wrong, Prince Kyle appreciates a pretty woman and he likes the attention but—no. When I knew him, he already had you in his sights.”

  Amelie lowered her eyes. Bree got the impression that behind the public mask, she was actually shy.

  “You have a beautiful child,” said the princess. “I am sorry he is not well.”

  “I’m sorry all those rumors caused you distress. I tried to put a stop to them.”