And he was wrong; she wasn’t weakening. As nice as it would be to share the burdens of being an assassin master, she couldn’t bond herself to anyone, especially not a pisshead like Lycus. Dammit. Between her own assassins wanting her head on a platter and the Carceris wanting her strung up in a cell, she was starting to feel like a deer during hunting season. So when her cell phone began to ring incessantly—calls and texts from Lore, Eidolon, Shade, and even one from Wraith—her last nerve frayed like the end of a snapped rope and she turned the phone off.
“They’re worried about you.” Con slid a glance at the BlackBerry. “You should answer.” “I don’t need their concern.”
His reply was sharp. “Selfish much?”
Okay, yeah, she was selfish. Since the day she and Lore had gone through the transition that had
given them tattoos, uncontrollable sexual needs, and killing abilities, she’d been forced to leave the human world behind. Which meant leaving softness, compassion, and love in a place where it wouldn’t hurt her. The world she’d been whisked into by a demon slave trader just days after Lore abandoned her had toughened her up, real fast.
She’d spent a century with demons who breathed cruelty like air, and the buildup of scar tissue, both physical and emotional, had been the only reason she’d survived. Then, thirty years ago, she’d found Lore, and his devotion had chipped away, just a little, at her shield. And now, her reason for not responding to her brothers wasn’t because she didn’t need their concern—though she didn’t. It was because no matter how much she hated it, she found herself worrying about Wraith and Eidolon’s punishment for helping her.
But she wasn’t going to tell Con that. Voicing it made it real and invited pity and useless phrases like “I’m sorry.” And “It’ll be okay.” Goose bumps prickled her skin. Her grandma, who had raised Sin and Lore from the day they were born, used to say that a lot. “It’ll be okay, Sinead. Your mama loves you. She’s troubled, that’s all.” And “It’ll be okay. People can be cruel, but you’ll always have me.”
Grandma had lied. Mama hadn’t loved her, Sin hadn’t always had Grandma, and it had definitely not been okay. The ambulance’s radio squawked, and Eidolon’s strained voice pierced the silence. “Con. Pick up.” Con punched a button on the dash. “E. We’re safe.”
“Thank gods.” Eidolon’s relief transmitted over the airwaves. “Don’t tell me where you’re going. This frequency might be monitored. Sin, stay away from every place you’ve ever been.” “Yeah. Will do.” An unfamiliar flare of guilt sparked in her belly, and she cleared her throat. “Hey, uh… are you and Wraith… I mean… did you—”
“Don’t worry about us,” Eidolon said. “Just get where you’re going and we’ll talk later.” He disconnected, leaving Sin and Con in tense silence again. For another long-ass hour. She spent the time gazing out the window at the passing cars, wishing she could be in one of them, behind the wheel and driving to a destiny of her choosing instead of being chauffeured to one she didn’t want by an arrogant dhampire.
An arrogant dhampire whose long, muscular legs flexed as he worked the gas and brake pedals. Whose thick biceps rolled and bunched as he steered. Broad shoulders filled the driver’s space, and images of her hands clinging to them as he pumped between her thighs filled her head. She was so acutely aware of him, so hypersensitive to his heat, his scent, even the sound of his breathing, that no matter how many times she averted her gaze back to the outside world, she found her eyes drifting back to him. Felt her body leaning toward him.
He was such a pain in the ass.
Finally, as the suburbs turned into pastures and farmland, Con pulled the ambulance off the main road and onto a gravel one lined by rows of trees.
“I’m guessing you don’t drive to work very often,” she mused.
“There’s a Harrowgate less than a quarter mile away in the woods, so no, I don’t drive often. A twohour commute would be a killer.” The ambulance crunched over gravel for maybe half a mile before Con pulled into the driveway of an old but well-kept ranch-style house set against a hill and cut deeply into a forest that appeared to have been cultivated for privacy. She got out and did a sweep of the perimeter while he moved his black GTO out of the garage to make room for the ambulance. He also had a motorcycle, a snowmobile, and an ATV. The guy liked his toys with engines.
Con eased the ambulance inside—the big rig barely fit, and she thought she heard the scrape of metal at some point. Shade was going to pop his cork at the scratches the vehicle had gotten today.
“Nice ride,” she said, as she trailed a finger along the GTO’s sleek fender. The thing still had dealer plates on it. Con shrugged. “It’ll do until next year.”
“Next year?”
“I get a new one every spring.”
She peeked through the tinted glass at the leather interior. “Like the new-car smell, huh?”
“Nah,” he said, as he punched the garage door button. “I get tired of driving the same thing over and over.” “Maybe you should get a plane,” she muttered, and he nodded as if she’d been serious. “I’m working on it. I already have my pilot’s license.”
Of course he did.
Once the garage door had rolled down, he disarmed the security system and led her into the house, which was a true bachelor pad. The furniture was old but well-kept. There were clothes draped over the chairs and couch, and she wondered if the windows had ever been cleaned. It looked like Lore’s place, only newer. And bigger. Definitely more personal.
His shelves and walls were loaded with stuff that appeared to be ancient—pottery, framed sketches of stone cathedrals, weapons. She drifted toward one magnificent piece, a longbow hanging between a halberd and a Japanese katana.
“Impressive.” She trailed a finger over the smooth yew surface. “I wouldn’t have taken you for a house kind of person, though.”
“Where did you think I’d live?” he asked, amusement in his voice. “A tent?”
Shrugging, she turned back to him. “Most single guys are apartment dwellers. And most single wargs live a little more rustically.”
It was his turn to shrug. “Born wargs prefer the outdoors and wilderness, but a lot of turned wargs are human enough to like living with other humans.” “Until they realize that humans are food and that chaining yourself up in an apartment gets noisy.” “True.” He tossed the ambulance keys onto the dining room table.
“What about dhampires? You’re sort of born that way… and then turned.”
His hands went to his shirt buttons as he pinned her with a cool, remote gaze. Man, she wished she could read him better. “What’s your point?”
There was a strange avoidance vibe in his answer, but she couldn’t determine what, exactly, he was skirting. “Where do you fall on the warg scale? What do you do? About the full moon, I mean.” He peeled out of his paramedic shirt, and her tongue nearly rolled out of her mouth at the sight of his sharply defined muscles and honed, hard flesh. She was used to males who kept themselves in top form—no assassin let himself go flabby—but Con had a lean, powerful runner’s body, the kind that was used well and often. He was made for marathons.
I spend hours on foreplay.
Oh, yeah. Marathons.
“I sure as hell don’t chain myself.” He tossed the shirt over the back of a chair. “I go home. To where I was born.”
She had to force her eyes away from his chest to meet his. “Where’s that?”
“Scotland. It’s where dhampires originated. The Dearghuls—the only clan that’s left—have a sanctuary there. Acres of property where we can hunt during the moon fever.”
Eyes level… eyes level… “How many of you are there?”
“Our numbers are pathetically few. So few that during the mating season, all unmated males and females must participate.”
Sin bit her cheek to keep from moaning at the “mating” word. “So you don’t mate like other wargs? I mean, getting a female pregnant during her heat doesn’t bind you to her forever?” “No,” he said huskily, and she wondered if the subject had affected him the way it had her. “In fact, the males very rarely take permanent mates.” His skin was so tan. “Why not?”
“Because we tend to kill the females.”
Ah, well, okay. That wasn’t cool.
She wandered around the living room and down the hall to check out the bedrooms. Yep, she was a Nosy Nellie, but Con didn’t seem to mind. “What do you do with all this space? You have parties and stuff?”
He looked up from checking the answering machine. “Nope. A lot of my friends are human. They’d ask too many questions.”
“Human? You’re tight with humans?” “Not recently.” He moved to the window and yanked the curtains closed. “Just had to let go of my last group of buds. When they start mentioning how you never get older, it’s time to take a “permanent job” in some remote place with no communications. Right now, I’m studying nematodes in Antarctica.”
“Well, aren’t you a dork.” But seriously… how odd that he hung with humans. He seemed like an underworld-purist kind of guy.
His cell phone rang, and he dug it out of the lower side leg pocket of his BDU pants. “E. Yeah. You’re where?” Con hung up, strode to the front door, and standing there, still in his scrubs, was Eidolon. Shade was next to him, clad from boot to neck in black leather, from his biker boots to his jacket, sunglasses hiding his dark eyes. He looked like the freaking Terminator.
“How’d you know where we were?” Sin asked.
“I’m a good guesser,” Eidolon said as he and Shade stepped inside. He tossed a duffel bag at Sin. “Clothes. Figured you might need them after getting nailed by the dart.”
Con closed the door, but not before scanning the area outside. “Is Runa doing better?” “Not good enough.” Shade tucked his sunglasses into his pocket. “She made me leave. Said I was driving her crazy. Besides, I needed to do some grocery shopping.” Sin nearly laughed at the image of the big, bad leather-clad demon pushing a grocery cart through the vegetable and diaper aisles at a supermarket. “I have a hard time believing you left her alone, not feeling well, with three babies.”
“I didn’t. Gem and Tay are with her.” Tayla, Eidolon’s mate, and her twin sister, Gem, were both half-Soulshredder demon—the worst of the worst—but they were gooey marshmallows when it came to caring for their nephews. Gem was pregnant, and Sin figured it wouldn’t be long before Tayla hopped that crazy train, too.
Shade moved to Sin. “You okay? E said you were hit with a lock-dart.”
“I’ll live.” She dropped the bag and marched back to the kitchen, talking as she went. “Con patched me up before the assassins attacked.”
Both Shade and E focused on her, dark lasers of pissed-off-ness, and she knew she’d made a huge mistake by saying anything. “Assassins?” they both growled. “Yeah.” Con took a six-pack of beer out of the fridge and tossed a bottle at each of them. Sin fumbled hers. She’d been too busy admiring his six-pack. “Your sister can’t take a freaking step without causing some sort of disaster.”
Shade popped the cap off his bottle and flung the top into the sink. “Who were they?” “They were mine. I’m walking around with a bull’s-eye on my ass.” She held up her left hand and wiggled her fingers, where Detharu’s silver ring glinted in the light. “Any assassin who kills me and takes my ring inherits my job. I’m pretty much the underworld’s most wanted right now.”
“Hell’s bells,” Shade muttered. “What kind of defense do you have against them?” She waggled her brows. “Besides my uber-incredible fighting and self-defense skills?” “Yeah,” Shade said flatly, and sheesh, the guy had no sense of humor. “Besides those.”
I could bind myself to Lycus for the rest of my life. She shrugged. “All I can do is stay ahead of them. Most won’t be able to find me, but a few can sense me. It’s even possible that they’ve put out the word to every hired blade in the underworld. I need to keep moving.”
“You’ll have to do that to keep ahead of the Carceris, too,” Eidolon added.
“You’ll stay at the cave with Runa,” Shade announced, as if he’d made the decision and Sin would have to accept it. “The entrance is hidden, and even if they track you to it, they’ll never get in.” “You don’t know my assassins. Trust me, they’ll find a way. I’m not putting your mate and children at risk.” Eidolon raked his hand through his hair. “Then we’ll take turns with you.”
“Turns?”
“There are four of us,” Eidolon pointed out, as if she couldn’t count. “One of us will always be with you.” “No way.” She twisted the cap off her beer bottle. “I can take care of myself. I don’t need you guys being all big brother. Besides,” she said jauntily, as she linked arms with Con, “I have this studly dhampire to keep me safe.”
Con went taut, his arm and chest muscles turning to iron against her. For a second she thought he’d argue, but he shocked her by saying, “I don’t have a choice. I need her blood to eliminate the virus inside me.”
“They’re worried about you.” Con slid a glance at the BlackBerry. “You should answer.” “I don’t need their concern.”
His reply was sharp. “Selfish much?”
Okay, yeah, she was selfish. Since the day she and Lore had gone through the transition that had
given them tattoos, uncontrollable sexual needs, and killing abilities, she’d been forced to leave the human world behind. Which meant leaving softness, compassion, and love in a place where it wouldn’t hurt her. The world she’d been whisked into by a demon slave trader just days after Lore abandoned her had toughened her up, real fast.
She’d spent a century with demons who breathed cruelty like air, and the buildup of scar tissue, both physical and emotional, had been the only reason she’d survived. Then, thirty years ago, she’d found Lore, and his devotion had chipped away, just a little, at her shield. And now, her reason for not responding to her brothers wasn’t because she didn’t need their concern—though she didn’t. It was because no matter how much she hated it, she found herself worrying about Wraith and Eidolon’s punishment for helping her.
But she wasn’t going to tell Con that. Voicing it made it real and invited pity and useless phrases like “I’m sorry.” And “It’ll be okay.” Goose bumps prickled her skin. Her grandma, who had raised Sin and Lore from the day they were born, used to say that a lot. “It’ll be okay, Sinead. Your mama loves you. She’s troubled, that’s all.” And “It’ll be okay. People can be cruel, but you’ll always have me.”
Grandma had lied. Mama hadn’t loved her, Sin hadn’t always had Grandma, and it had definitely not been okay. The ambulance’s radio squawked, and Eidolon’s strained voice pierced the silence. “Con. Pick up.” Con punched a button on the dash. “E. We’re safe.”
“Thank gods.” Eidolon’s relief transmitted over the airwaves. “Don’t tell me where you’re going. This frequency might be monitored. Sin, stay away from every place you’ve ever been.” “Yeah. Will do.” An unfamiliar flare of guilt sparked in her belly, and she cleared her throat. “Hey, uh… are you and Wraith… I mean… did you—”
“Don’t worry about us,” Eidolon said. “Just get where you’re going and we’ll talk later.” He disconnected, leaving Sin and Con in tense silence again. For another long-ass hour. She spent the time gazing out the window at the passing cars, wishing she could be in one of them, behind the wheel and driving to a destiny of her choosing instead of being chauffeured to one she didn’t want by an arrogant dhampire.
An arrogant dhampire whose long, muscular legs flexed as he worked the gas and brake pedals. Whose thick biceps rolled and bunched as he steered. Broad shoulders filled the driver’s space, and images of her hands clinging to them as he pumped between her thighs filled her head. She was so acutely aware of him, so hypersensitive to his heat, his scent, even the sound of his breathing, that no matter how many times she averted her gaze back to the outside world, she found her eyes drifting back to him. Felt her body leaning toward him.
He was such a pain in the ass.
Finally, as the suburbs turned into pastures and farmland, Con pulled the ambulance off the main road and onto a gravel one lined by rows of trees.
“I’m guessing you don’t drive to work very often,” she mused.
“There’s a Harrowgate less than a quarter mile away in the woods, so no, I don’t drive often. A twohour commute would be a killer.” The ambulance crunched over gravel for maybe half a mile before Con pulled into the driveway of an old but well-kept ranch-style house set against a hill and cut deeply into a forest that appeared to have been cultivated for privacy. She got out and did a sweep of the perimeter while he moved his black GTO out of the garage to make room for the ambulance. He also had a motorcycle, a snowmobile, and an ATV. The guy liked his toys with engines.
Con eased the ambulance inside—the big rig barely fit, and she thought she heard the scrape of metal at some point. Shade was going to pop his cork at the scratches the vehicle had gotten today.
“Nice ride,” she said, as she trailed a finger along the GTO’s sleek fender. The thing still had dealer plates on it. Con shrugged. “It’ll do until next year.”
“Next year?”
“I get a new one every spring.”
She peeked through the tinted glass at the leather interior. “Like the new-car smell, huh?”
“Nah,” he said, as he punched the garage door button. “I get tired of driving the same thing over and over.” “Maybe you should get a plane,” she muttered, and he nodded as if she’d been serious. “I’m working on it. I already have my pilot’s license.”
Of course he did.
Once the garage door had rolled down, he disarmed the security system and led her into the house, which was a true bachelor pad. The furniture was old but well-kept. There were clothes draped over the chairs and couch, and she wondered if the windows had ever been cleaned. It looked like Lore’s place, only newer. And bigger. Definitely more personal.
His shelves and walls were loaded with stuff that appeared to be ancient—pottery, framed sketches of stone cathedrals, weapons. She drifted toward one magnificent piece, a longbow hanging between a halberd and a Japanese katana.
“Impressive.” She trailed a finger over the smooth yew surface. “I wouldn’t have taken you for a house kind of person, though.”
“Where did you think I’d live?” he asked, amusement in his voice. “A tent?”
Shrugging, she turned back to him. “Most single guys are apartment dwellers. And most single wargs live a little more rustically.”
It was his turn to shrug. “Born wargs prefer the outdoors and wilderness, but a lot of turned wargs are human enough to like living with other humans.” “Until they realize that humans are food and that chaining yourself up in an apartment gets noisy.” “True.” He tossed the ambulance keys onto the dining room table.
“What about dhampires? You’re sort of born that way… and then turned.”
His hands went to his shirt buttons as he pinned her with a cool, remote gaze. Man, she wished she could read him better. “What’s your point?”
There was a strange avoidance vibe in his answer, but she couldn’t determine what, exactly, he was skirting. “Where do you fall on the warg scale? What do you do? About the full moon, I mean.” He peeled out of his paramedic shirt, and her tongue nearly rolled out of her mouth at the sight of his sharply defined muscles and honed, hard flesh. She was used to males who kept themselves in top form—no assassin let himself go flabby—but Con had a lean, powerful runner’s body, the kind that was used well and often. He was made for marathons.
I spend hours on foreplay.
Oh, yeah. Marathons.
“I sure as hell don’t chain myself.” He tossed the shirt over the back of a chair. “I go home. To where I was born.”
She had to force her eyes away from his chest to meet his. “Where’s that?”
“Scotland. It’s where dhampires originated. The Dearghuls—the only clan that’s left—have a sanctuary there. Acres of property where we can hunt during the moon fever.”
Eyes level… eyes level… “How many of you are there?”
“Our numbers are pathetically few. So few that during the mating season, all unmated males and females must participate.”
Sin bit her cheek to keep from moaning at the “mating” word. “So you don’t mate like other wargs? I mean, getting a female pregnant during her heat doesn’t bind you to her forever?” “No,” he said huskily, and she wondered if the subject had affected him the way it had her. “In fact, the males very rarely take permanent mates.” His skin was so tan. “Why not?”
“Because we tend to kill the females.”
Ah, well, okay. That wasn’t cool.
She wandered around the living room and down the hall to check out the bedrooms. Yep, she was a Nosy Nellie, but Con didn’t seem to mind. “What do you do with all this space? You have parties and stuff?”
He looked up from checking the answering machine. “Nope. A lot of my friends are human. They’d ask too many questions.”
“Human? You’re tight with humans?” “Not recently.” He moved to the window and yanked the curtains closed. “Just had to let go of my last group of buds. When they start mentioning how you never get older, it’s time to take a “permanent job” in some remote place with no communications. Right now, I’m studying nematodes in Antarctica.”
“Well, aren’t you a dork.” But seriously… how odd that he hung with humans. He seemed like an underworld-purist kind of guy.
His cell phone rang, and he dug it out of the lower side leg pocket of his BDU pants. “E. Yeah. You’re where?” Con hung up, strode to the front door, and standing there, still in his scrubs, was Eidolon. Shade was next to him, clad from boot to neck in black leather, from his biker boots to his jacket, sunglasses hiding his dark eyes. He looked like the freaking Terminator.
“How’d you know where we were?” Sin asked.
“I’m a good guesser,” Eidolon said as he and Shade stepped inside. He tossed a duffel bag at Sin. “Clothes. Figured you might need them after getting nailed by the dart.”
Con closed the door, but not before scanning the area outside. “Is Runa doing better?” “Not good enough.” Shade tucked his sunglasses into his pocket. “She made me leave. Said I was driving her crazy. Besides, I needed to do some grocery shopping.” Sin nearly laughed at the image of the big, bad leather-clad demon pushing a grocery cart through the vegetable and diaper aisles at a supermarket. “I have a hard time believing you left her alone, not feeling well, with three babies.”
“I didn’t. Gem and Tay are with her.” Tayla, Eidolon’s mate, and her twin sister, Gem, were both half-Soulshredder demon—the worst of the worst—but they were gooey marshmallows when it came to caring for their nephews. Gem was pregnant, and Sin figured it wouldn’t be long before Tayla hopped that crazy train, too.
Shade moved to Sin. “You okay? E said you were hit with a lock-dart.”
“I’ll live.” She dropped the bag and marched back to the kitchen, talking as she went. “Con patched me up before the assassins attacked.”
Both Shade and E focused on her, dark lasers of pissed-off-ness, and she knew she’d made a huge mistake by saying anything. “Assassins?” they both growled. “Yeah.” Con took a six-pack of beer out of the fridge and tossed a bottle at each of them. Sin fumbled hers. She’d been too busy admiring his six-pack. “Your sister can’t take a freaking step without causing some sort of disaster.”
Shade popped the cap off his bottle and flung the top into the sink. “Who were they?” “They were mine. I’m walking around with a bull’s-eye on my ass.” She held up her left hand and wiggled her fingers, where Detharu’s silver ring glinted in the light. “Any assassin who kills me and takes my ring inherits my job. I’m pretty much the underworld’s most wanted right now.”
“Hell’s bells,” Shade muttered. “What kind of defense do you have against them?” She waggled her brows. “Besides my uber-incredible fighting and self-defense skills?” “Yeah,” Shade said flatly, and sheesh, the guy had no sense of humor. “Besides those.”
I could bind myself to Lycus for the rest of my life. She shrugged. “All I can do is stay ahead of them. Most won’t be able to find me, but a few can sense me. It’s even possible that they’ve put out the word to every hired blade in the underworld. I need to keep moving.”
“You’ll have to do that to keep ahead of the Carceris, too,” Eidolon added.
“You’ll stay at the cave with Runa,” Shade announced, as if he’d made the decision and Sin would have to accept it. “The entrance is hidden, and even if they track you to it, they’ll never get in.” “You don’t know my assassins. Trust me, they’ll find a way. I’m not putting your mate and children at risk.” Eidolon raked his hand through his hair. “Then we’ll take turns with you.”
“Turns?”
“There are four of us,” Eidolon pointed out, as if she couldn’t count. “One of us will always be with you.” “No way.” She twisted the cap off her beer bottle. “I can take care of myself. I don’t need you guys being all big brother. Besides,” she said jauntily, as she linked arms with Con, “I have this studly dhampire to keep me safe.”
Con went taut, his arm and chest muscles turning to iron against her. For a second she thought he’d argue, but he shocked her by saying, “I don’t have a choice. I need her blood to eliminate the virus inside me.”
