by Tina Folsom
“I know it’s against procedure, but there were circumstances that prevented me ...” Ah, hell, who was he kidding? He’d forgotten to send his position to central command. He’d been too preoccupied with Leila. A great Cloak Warrior that made him.
“So that confirms it,” Hamish agreed. “The only one who knew you were at the Thai massage parlor was Manus. That means he’s the one who sent the dogs after you.”
“Shit!” Aiden cursed.
“No!” Leila’s voice came from the corridor as she stepped into the living area. “It’s not Manus’s fault. It’s mine.”
***
Leila collected all her courage and stared past Aiden, unable to look him in the eye right now. Yet she couldn’t keep silent about this and let an innocent take the blame for what she’d done. It had bugged her ever since Hamish had shown up at the safe house and said that a phone call could have been traced back to it.
“I’m sorry, I just meant to ... my parents, I didn’t want them to worry when they heard the news about what happened to me. I had to tell them I was okay.” She pulled the belt of the bathrobe she’d found in one of the closets tighter around her waist.
“You what?” Aiden thundered, leaping up from the couch.
“I called them from the safe house.”
Aiden closed his eyes for a moment and clenched his jaw together. She noticed how his hand curled into a fist as if he wanted to punch somebody, presumably her.
When he opened his eyes again, they blazed with anger. “Do you want to die? Do you? Because you’re making it damn hard for me to protect you.”
“But they needed to know. I couldn’t—”
“You couldn’t what? So you’d rather put yourself and everybody else in danger because of what? Sentiments? I’m afraid you don’t have that luxury.” He marched toward her, his steps slow like a tiger ready to attack.
“That’s not fair!” she bit back. Maybe he had no parents to care about, but she did.
“Fair?” he yelled. “Life isn’t fair! Those demons aren’t fair, and neither is that Cloak Warrior who’s after you to eliminate you!”
“What?” she echoed. Had she heard correctly? “The Cloak Warriors want to kill me?” Instinctively, she took several steps back and hit the wall behind her.
Aiden slammed his fist into the wall beside her head, jolting her. She’d never seen him so angry.
“Fuck, yes! Everybody is after you.”
“Stop it, Aiden!” Hamish jumped up and went to his side.
Aiden ignored him. “Not only are the demons after you. Whoever tried to attack you today, or last night for that matter is one of our own. And you worry about what your parents think?”
Leila shivered, not understanding why he still blamed his colleague. “I’m sorry, but I told you it wasn’t Manus’s fault.”
“I’m not talking about Manus!”
Hamish put a hand on Aiden’s shoulder, then looked straight at her. “It appears that somebody on our governing council would rather see you dead and your research die with you than risk that you fall into the demons’ hands.”
Her mouth fell open and her heart pounded into her throat. “But those are the same people who sent you, aren’t they?”
Both nodded.
Her voice shook, when she continued, “Then did they order you to kill me now?”
Aiden let out a breath, sounding somewhat calmer as he continued, “No. If they had, you’d have been dead long ago. Whoever wants you dead is a rogue and is working against the council’s orders.”
Leila swallowed away the rising bile. She felt all power drain from her. She wasn’t safe anywhere, not even with him. “So not only do I have the demons after me, your own people want me dead.”
“Only one of them,” Aiden answered.
“You can’t know that. How many voted to eliminate me?”
“We don’t know.”
Hamish ran his hand through his hair. “But most likely only one of them is actually doing anything about it. And we’ll find him.”
“He’ll use anything to get to you, I can promise you that,” Aiden added.
At his words, she instantly realized where she was most vulnerable. “My parents. You have to make sure they’re okay. They have to be protected. If anything happens to them ...” She would never forgive herself for it.
“We don’t have the manpower to protect your parents. Not when we don’t know who we can trust.”
“Please,” she pleaded and took a step closer to Aiden, tears threatening to overwhelm her. “I need to know that they’re all right. Please.”
She looked at Aiden, then at Hamish, hoping that one of them would give in to her.
“Don’t you have parents? Don’t you know how much this hurts not to know if they are okay?”
“Okay, I’ll go,” Hamish relented.
Instantly Aiden slapped his palm on his friend’s arm. “No, I’ll go.” Then he stared back at her. “I need some air.”
He turned away from her, but she caught his resigned look nevertheless.
She didn’t know what suddenly made her want to know, but she couldn’t stop the words leaving her lips. “If you were on the council, how would you have voted?”
He hesitated, his voice shaking slightly when he finally answered, “I’m not sure about that answer anymore.”
TWENTY-FOUR
It took Aiden an hour to reach her parents’ house. Hamish had explained to him that the portals outside the compounds worked the same way as those inside: he only had to concentrate on his destination and the portal would carry him to whatever portal was closest to his desired location. Simple as that. The reason nobody using the portals within the compounds had accidentally stumbled upon the portals that Hamish now called lost portals, was probably because nobody had ever tried to concentrate on a location other than the known portals. However, he was nevertheless baffled how their existence could have remained a secret for so long.
He was glad to have had an excuse to leave. He was disappointed in Leila. How could she have been so careless as to make a phone call from the safe house? Didn’t she watch any crime dramas and realize that these calls could be traced back to her location? Had she never watched a thriller? Every school kid knew that much about surveillance. From an MD he had expected more common sense. But then again, she was human. Humans acted irrationally.
And lately so did he. Why hadn’t he taken better precautions and explained the ground rules to her? This could have been avoided if he’d used his brain instead of letting another part of his body inform his actions.
And maybe he wouldn’t even be so pissed about this fact if he wasn’t so emotionally involved. There, he’d admitted it to himself: he cared about her. When she’d pressed herself against him when they were in the portal and allowed him to kiss her, he’d thought for a moment that everything would turn out fine between them. Unfortunately this wasn’t to be. He was further away from understanding her than he’d ever been.
With a sigh, he perused his surroundings.
The house was a two-story Edwardian with a large front yard and an even larger garden in the back. Ivy grew on its façade, and the hedges around the grounds needed trimming. These were the suburbs, but the fancy ones. No doubt, the family had money.
Night had already fallen, and lights inside the home were ablaze. Aiden walked past the old station wagon that was parked in the driveway in front of the two-car garage. Did the Cruickshanks have visitors?
There was an easy way to find out. A familiar tingling went through his entire body as he dematerialized and passed through the front door, sneaking inside the cozy foyer a moment later. Remaining invisible, he walked along the wallpapered hallway with all the stealth he’d been taught.
The house smelled homey, the scent of freshly baked cookies drifting into his nose. He could almost picture Leila as a little girl, running down the stairs and toward the kitchen to collect her treat. Odd that she appeared in much softer terms to him
now, when in the environment he’d met her first—her lab and her apartment—none of that softness was evident. Maybe he was simply imagining it.
A female voice came from the back of the house. He followed it and reached an open door. Halting there, he peered into the kitchen. It was spacious, with a large island in the middle, and a dining nook near one of the large bay windows.
A middle aged woman, presumably the housekeeper, stood at the island and cut bread into slices. At the dining nook, an elderly couple sat, waiting silently. The woman was probably in her mid to late sixties, and the man possibly five to ten years her senior. Those two had to be Leila’s parents. In fact, now that he entered the kitchen to take a closer look, he recognized similarities.
Her father had the same ocean blue eyes as his daughter, yet they lacked the sparkle and passion he’d seen in Leila’s. There was a dull sheen over them as he stared past his wife, almost as if he was so preoccupied with his thoughts that he didn’t really see her. Well, maybe after being married for several decades, that was what relationships turned into, for his wife didn’t look at him either. She played with her napkin, folding it first that way, then the other.
Somehow, the scene didn’t look like the companionable silence he’d occasionally observed with his own parents. It felt awkward. Had they quarreled?
“The soup is coming,” the housekeeper said in a cheerful voice, the same one he’d heard from the corridor earlier. “Mmm, you’ll like it. I made you pumpkin soup today, fresh with lots of cream, just the way you like it.”
Aiden turned to the woman, surprised at her tone. She sounded as if she was talking to a child. He got out of her way and moved to the other side of the table when she carried two bowls with steaming hot soup and set them in front of the couple.
“There,” she said. “How about some fresh rosemary bread with that?”
Leila’s mother nodded. “And butter. Don’t forget the butter. You always forget the butter.”
Aiden caught how the housekeeper rolled her eyes. “I never forget the butter, Ellie. Don’t you remember how I put it on extra thick this morning?”
“You didn’t give me bread this morning,” Ellie protested.
Her husband shook his head. “I didn’t get bread this morning either.”
Ellie tossed him a chiding look and waved the housekeeper closer. In a whisper, she spoke to her. “Do I have to always eat with him? Nancy, why doesn’t he go home?”
Nancy sighed and sat down on the empty chair. “But, Ellie, that’s George. You know George, don’t you? Your husband?”
Ellie’s eyes darted toward him, looking him up and down. Then she bent closer to the housekeeper once more. “I don’t think that’s my husband. He’s old. I married a handsome young man named George.”
George only grunted and started eating his soup.
Aiden watched the exchange with surprise. Something wasn’t right here. Was there a chance that the demons had already gotten to Leila’s parents and somehow distorted their sense of reality?
“Why don’t you start your soup, Ellie, and I’ll get you your meds, huh? Maybe you’ll feel better afterwards.”
Nancy lifted herself from the chair and went over to the kitchen counter where an array of medicine bottles and containers took up an entire corner. She took two long plastic containers, which were embossed with the days of the week and Ellie and George, and went back to the dining table.
Aiden didn’t follow her. Instead, he stared at the medicine bottles and read the labels. Since he wasn’t a doctor, he didn’t know what any of them were for, however, he needed to find out. Something he couldn’t explain compelled him to. He pulled out his smartphone, switched it on in silent mode, and entered the name of the first medication. A few second later, search results were back. He clicked on the first, read it. A knot started forming in his chest.
He entered the next one, and more results came back. Again, he read the first, and again, he couldn’t believe his eyes. He perused the bottles, noticing that both Leila’s parents took almost identical medication.
Shocked, Aiden stalked out of the kitchen and fled into the front of the house where he found the living room and let himself fall onto the couch.
Both Leila’s parents took medication for the treatment of Alzheimer’s.
Now everything suddenly made sense: the determination Leila showed in her research, the single-minded purpose that reflected in her private life or the lack thereof, her devastation when she’d found her research destroyed. She did all this for her parents. She wanted to save them.
She wasn’t looking for the recognition of her peers and humanity at large to become the inventor of the first Alzheimer’s drug that would halt the disease. All she wanted was to cure her parents and reverse some of the damage the disease had done to their minds.
Aiden felt shame radiate through him. He’d callously demanded that all copies of her research be destroyed, would have destroyed them himself had somebody else not beaten him to it. And all the while, her dreams destroyed, her hopes squashed, Leila had kept her true pain hidden from him.
No wonder she hated him and his kind. It was a miracle, she hadn’t tried to give him any more resistance, or tried to escape a second time. Now that he knew what was really at stake for her, he wouldn’t even blame her if she tried. Wouldn’t he do the same? Wouldn’t he try to do everything to save his parents if he had the means to do it? Would he care that by doing so, he would jeopardize the entire human race?
Could she be so selfless in the end to put humanity’s needs before her own? If she could do that, if she could look beyond her own desires, all he could do was admire her for it. Because it would mean she wasn’t weak. She was strong, stronger than any human or Cloak Warrior he’d ever met.
A woman he could fall on his knees for and wish for things he’d previously believed impossible.
If she ever forgave him.
TWENTY-FIVE
Leila accepted the cup of tea Hamish handed her as he joined her on the couch in the living room. He leaned back in his corner and saluted her with a glass of scotch, which he’d told her was the preferred drink among Cloak Warriors.
“Why whiskey?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I guess it’s our heritage. We’re descendents from an ancient tribe that lived in Scotland, or rather on an island off Scotland. It’s cold up there. And the scotch warms us.”
“Aiden mentioned something like that, the Outer Hebrides, I think he said. Well, I prefer tea.” At least it would keep her head clear.
Hamish smiled and took a swig. She watched as he savored the drink coating his throat. He was as tall as Aiden, but a little broader around the shoulders and the hips. His features were a little more worn, with more pronounced lines crisscrossing his face and dark shadows under his eyes as if he hadn’t slept in days. As if some big worry had kept him up.
“So, what else has he told you about us?”
Leila set her mug on the coffee table. “Not much, only what your powers are; that you can cloak humans, and walk through walls. Is there more?”
He quirked an eyebrow. “That’s about it.”
“How many of you are there?”
“Not enough.” He expelled a bitter laugh. “And at this point I’m not even sure which one of our people I can trust. It’s sad to see that even among our kind there are those who put their own profit before the good of the community. And we’re not immune to temptations, as you might have noticed.”
She felt herself blush under his suggestive gaze, knowing only too well what he was referring to: the fact that she and Aiden had kissed passionately when Hamish had transported them to the wine country. She could only blame her fear of dark spaces for having provoked this kiss. Otherwise, she was sure, she wouldn’t have allowed it, not after everything that had happened between her and Aiden previously. After all, he’d lied to her—repeatedly.
And so have you.
She tried to squash the little voice in her head
that reminded her that she hadn’t confessed that one copy of her research still existed. Instinctively, her hand went to her pendant that still hung inconspicuously around her neck.
“So,” she searched hastily for something to say, “how long have you and Aiden known each other?”
“Almost two hundred years, we grew—”
“Two hundred years?” Shock made her sit up straight. “You’re two hundred years old?” He didn’t look a day over thirty-five, and neither did Aiden.
A charming grin spread over Hamish’s lips. “Yeah, that always gets a reaction.” He winked at her. “But we’re only just hitting our prime. Unfortunately, rasen can be a pain in the butt.”
Her eyebrows snapped together in confusion. “Rasen? What’s that?”
“Mating season. The closer we get to our 200th Birthday, the more urgent the drive to find a mate becomes. It’s a bit like a human woman’s biological clock, only a lot more intense.”
“Oh.” She hadn’t really wanted to talk about anything related to relationships. Maybe it was best to change the subject. “That’s okay, I wasn’t really asking about that.”
But Hamish didn’t let her off the hook. “You wanted to know more about Aiden. I’m willing to talk. You might as well take the offer. Who knows whether I’ll feel this generous ever again.”
She reached for the mug, feeling the need to steady her hands with something to distract from the fact that she was nervous. “I’m really not interested in talking about him. He’s totally temperamental and unpredictable, and frankly, his outbursts are getting on my nerves. Besides, he’s threatened to kill me several times.”
Hamish smirked. “That about sums up my dear old friend. Of course, he has his reasons for being this way. But since you’re not interested in finding out more, I’ll just keep those to myself.”
Leila glared at him. She understood exactly what he was doing: he was baiting her. As if she was that easy to manipulate. Taking a quick sip from her tea, she told herself that she didn’t care what Aiden’s reasons for his outbursts were. It didn’t matter at all.