“Yep. Vanished. Is that a good thing?”
“Very. That was Commander Greaves.”
Jeannie whistled. “Holy shit.”
“Ditto. Now tell me, is the other signature still marking your screen?”
“Yep, though the reading is a little skewed.”
“I’m not surprised. I think the second signature belongs to a mortal.”
“Are you shitting me?”
“Nope.”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Me, neither.”
“So have we got a vampire-in-the-making or what? Can you see what’s in her head, see if she’s been called to sport a pair of fangs?”
“Give me a second.”
Kerrick reached out toward her with his senses and tried to drive into the female’s mind, but damn she had shields, like walls of granite.
He stared at the woman and frowned. Who the hell was this female? She was tall for a mortal and wore her hair pulled back in a severe twist at the back of her head—she kept herself in control. He got that. She was in fact beautiful, with large blue eyes, full sensual lips, a straight nose, and in that split second as he looked at her, a third strange kind of recognition rocketed though his body and his hormones shot into outer space. Goddammit, he was attracted to her like falling apples to gravity. His groin burned. What the hell?
His wings rippled in anticipation, tightened and shimmied as though the future had suddenly reached back and grabbed the present by the balls. His groin lit on fire again and his eyelids felt weighted and heavy. The muscles of his thighs jumped and his biceps flexed. The woman had power. Shit, that was such a turn-on. Making love to this woman would be like entering a hurricane of sensation.
He wanted her. Now. He wanted her beneath him. He wanted inside her and pumping hard.
What the f**k?
For a moment he drew his wings to half-mount, bent over at the waist, planted his hands on his knees, and forced himself to take one deep breath after another. For all his vows, he suddenly knew temptation, deep, soul-searing temptation. A hyphenate from the ancient language came to mind, breh-hedden. Mate-bonding. The kind he believed was just a myth, yet here he was out of his mind with need and desire. Was it possible?
He closed his eyes and shut his brain down in a hurry. This shit was so not going to happen. Besides, with a death vamp still hanging in the air, he needed to focus. He had a job to do. He sucked more air into his lungs.
When he calmed down, he rose up then did a quick scan. He profiled the female’s powers—so many—telepathy, empathy, hand-pulse, and she could dematerialize. No mortal had ever ascended with the ability to fold … except one … Endelle. No wonder the Commander seemed to have staked some kind of claim on her. Holy, holy shit.
Endelle must have known, and right now he felt like he’d been suckered into something. He shook his head, back and forth, a strong negation. None of this mattered, not what he was experiencing, not Endelle’s scheming, nothing. He had a vow to keep and he would keep it.
A little calmer, he brought his phone to his ear. “I can’t tell what’s going on with the female because I can’t punch into her head.”
“What?” she cried. “You can get into anybody’s head.”
“Not hers.” His voice was rough, like he’d swallowed a box of tacks. “At least not from this position.”
“Then what do we do with her?” Jeannie asked. She sounded as shocked out as he felt.
“You know the rules.”
“Yeah, yeah. No interference. Blah-blah-blah.”
“Amen to that. I’ll just have to get rid of the death vamp and we’ll see what happens over the next forty-eight hours. You’d better let Endelle know what’s doing. Tell her Greaves was here as well and tell her about the strength of the woman’s signature. I’ll know more later.”
“I’m on it.”
He thumbed his phone and once more returned it to the tight narrow pocket of his kilt.
He summoned a different kind of deep breath and shifted his gaze to the pretty-boy.
Time to take care of business.
Who can comprehend the lure of the breh-hedden,
except those caught in its teeth?
—Collected Proverbs, Beatrice of Fourth
Chapter 3
Alison released a deep sigh that Darian had finally left since she couldn’t comprehend what she was seeing. A hallucination, maybe?
A winged creature drifted slowly in a circle about ten feet away from her. He was very beautiful, extraordinarily so. His dark brown hair was long, well past his shoulders. He was muscled like a bodybuilder and wore only black cargoes, no shoes, no shirt. He sported a massive pair of glossy black wings, the feathers barely moving but keeping him both aloft and spinning very slowly. His chin and chest were streaked with blood, his feet—oh, God—at least two yards off the ground. His eyes were closed and he looked euphoric, like a drug addict who’d just taken a hit of his favorite supply.
His strange twirling reminded her of something from a film heavy on the CGI side. In fact, the whole courtyard had the appearance of a movie set, dozens of people crammed at the far end of the catwalk and down the stairs, all chattering quietly, hands covering mouths, and a host of emergency vehicles and corresponding personnel. The center of attention was a body stretched out on the cement, surrounded by yellow tape, the view blocked by several officers, thank God. Given the blood on the creature’s body, she could only presume he’d killed her, the way a fictional vampire would kill his prey.
So what exactly was this thing with the porcelain skin that hung in the air without any apparent cable support? Was she really seeing him? Did he exist? A psychopath who had somehow strapped wings onto his back—without straps? And how did he pull off the float-and-spin?
She shook her head in complete disbelief. She blinked several times. She glanced at the spectators to see their reactions to this strange creature, but no one—not one person—was looking at him, thus confirming her suspicion that she was hallucinating.
She moved close to the railing and stared down at him. A familiar gripping sensation pulled at her heart, a longing she couldn’t explain, a yearning that had tormented her for the past few weeks, but surely not for this monster?
“Al-is-on” emerged in a singsong cadence from the creature’s mouth. “I’m ready for you.”
He spoke her name?
She formed a thought and let it fly from her mind: Why can no one see you?
The fanged freak stopped twirling, plunged toward the cement, then stopped to float suspended in the air just inches above the ground. His wings undulated slowly. He turned his back to her as he looked around at the spectators then came into profile as his gaze skipped from face to face all up the stairs. Yet no one looked at him. So yeah, maybe he existed only in her head. She’d seen A Beautiful Mind and she’d read a number of case histories on schizophrenia during the course of her studies.