Darkest Caress (18 page)

Her car hurtled down the hill into the forest. She drew a breath to scream but it was torn out of her when she plowed into a stand of trees. The airbag punched her in the face, knocking her head back. Her vision spotted.

In the sudden silence, all she could hear was her own sawing breaths, the pounding of her heart. Liv forced her eyes open, struggling to see through the blaze of pain in her head.

She was pinned in her seat, wedged between the airbag and the damaged door frame. The entire left side of it had crumpled during the impact, making it impossible for her to get out through the back of the open convertible. She had to get out through a door.

Her hands fumbled with the seatbelt buckle. With each movement the migraine increased, sharp, cruel spikes that blurred her vision. Hitting that airbag had probably saved her life, but her face was already swelling. A trickle of blood dripped down her chin from her split lower lip, her ears ringing.

That crazy asshole had just run her off the road. Could have killed her.

Was he still coming after her?

The thought galvanized her into action. She grasped the door handle and yanked. The door didn’t budge. It was either too badly twisted or pinned against something outside. Shaking, she wriggled down in her seat then crawled across the console into the passenger seat to try that door. It moved a few inches but didn’t open enough for her to get out.

Liv gritted her teeth and twisted around to kick it with both feet. The metal groaned in protest as it gave way, inch by inch. As soon as she had enough room to get through, she squeezed her way out of the vehicle, fell to the ground on her hands and knees.

The earth was slightly damp beneath her palms, smelled of the forest. Liv craned her head back. Above her, the towering evergreen trees seemed to sway in her blurry vision. She risked a quick glance over her shoulder to see if anyone had followed her. Didn’t see anything.

My purse,
she thought hazily. She needed to get her phone. With one hand she reached in, found the bag lying in the passenger side foot well. She fished her cell out but didn’t stop to dial.
Run.
Liv pushed to her feet and staggered a few steps away from the wreck.

A twig snapped behind her.

She whirled around, setting a hand on a tree trunk to steady herself while the world spun crazily. Blinking in the glare of her headlights, she scanned the area. Nothing but shadows. The pain in her head didn’t let up, telling her everything she needed to know. She had to get the hell away from here. Had to get back up to the road if she was going to have any chance of finding help.

But she wasn’t going back the way she’d come. The Pathfinder’s driver might be back there, waiting for her.

She headed up the slope instead. The throbbing in her head intensified with each uneven step and her mind began to grow fuzzy. She shook her head to clear it, but the pain became worse.

Another branch broke behind her.

Run.

She couldn’t. The vise around her skull tightened until she could barely move. Her legs gave out from beneath her. Her knees hit the ground hard.

Shaking, panting, Liv forced herself to crawl. She could see the edge of the road now, just there beyond the screen of trees. Right there, only a few dozen yards away. Someone would see her. Had to.

Measured footsteps sounded behind her. Coming closer.

Whoever it was wasn’t coming to help her.

Swallowing a scream, she scrambled on, forcing her shaky limbs to propel her forward. She clawed at the ground, dragging her forward with her phone still clutched tightly in one fist. She managed to bring up the display. Find the 9 then press it.

A deep, menacing chuckle broke the stillness. The pure malice in it sent shivers down her spine.

No!
She crawled faster, too afraid to look behind her.
Have to get to the road. Have to.

A scream built in her lungs. She could practically feel him behind her, the cruel hands grabbing for her.

With a final burst of strength she shoved to her feet and staggered a few running steps. Her thumb pressed the 1.

Her assailant laughed again. As though her desperate attempt at escape amused him.

While pressing the number 1 again, her trembling legs gave way. She fell face-first onto the fir needle-covered ground, still holding her phone. A booted foot caught her in the ribs and flipped her over.

“Get away from me!” she shrieked, lashing out blindly with her hands and feet. She had to hit send. That was the only way to get help. Her thumb found it, pressed.

The man kicked her wrist, sending the phone flying. Before she could lunge for it he caught her easily, pinning her wrists to the ground as he straddled her. In the faint glare of the distant headlights she squinted up into his clean-shaven face. A gasp tore out of her aching lungs.

Writhing around his body like a huge snake, his aura pulsed in waves of pure, pitch black.

Her vision spotted, stomach pitching violently under the agonizing burst in her head. It was numbing, debilitating. Squeezing her eyes shut under the onslaught, she grabbed her head and wrenched to the side, gagging. Her weakened legs kicked uselessly against his while she tore at his wrists.

“Shut up and keep still,” he snarled, his hot breath washing over her cheek.

The terrible pressure in her skull continued to grow until she couldn’t take it anymore. Overload hit. Her body convulsed in a series of hard, sharp jerks. Waves of them, like someone had electrocuted her. She barely felt him roll her over and tape her hands together behind her. When he rolled her onto her back she could hardly see.

Liv strained to see his face, fighting to stay above the pain and loosen the tape around her wrists. “Let me go!” Her voice was a weak, desperate rasp. The nausea roiled in her stomach, filling her throat and making it hard to breathe. He would kill her. She saw it in his face. Felt it in his intent.

Daegan!
her mind screamed. He was the only one who could save her, but now he’d never know what had happened to her.

The man grabbed a handful of hair with one hand to hold her still then slapped a piece of wide tape across her mouth. Blind terror sliced through her.

Daegan!

Above her, the man smiled. In that last moment before the blackness took her, she saw the unrepentant malevolence shining in his empty gray eyes.

Daegan had no clue how he was going to fix this without his cock winding up buried deep inside Liv, but he had to give it a shot.

The moment he stepped outside into the fresh evening air, his lungs seemed to expand. It was like his body understood he was going to Liv and was as relieved as him.

Two steps away from his Porsche, Daegan stopped dead. The keys jangled in his hand as an overwhelming feeling of fear swept over him. His heart began to race. Cold sweat bloomed on his forehead. All the symptoms of a full-blown panic attack. Over this? Couldn’t be. He hadn’t had one since he was a kid.

But no matter how hard he tried to ignore the feeling, it intensified.

For fuck’s sake, pull yourself together.

Thank God no one was around to see him bent over, pulling in slow, deliberate breaths to calm his heart rate. It didn’t help. His heart continued to pound until his guts twisted.

What the
hell
? This was crazy. He’d faced enemy machine gun fire and Dark Army members in hand-to-hand combat with barely a rise in his pulse, and here he was, panic-stricken at the thought of confronting Liv?

But the emotion wasn’t coming from him, he slowly realized. It was coming from someone else, being transmitted to him. And it wasn’t a mild sort of fear. It was powerful, vivid, the kind that paralyzed a man and made his flesh prickle.

It was coming from his mate.

Terror coiled inside him, turning his tight muscles to lead.

Then he heard her voice, loud as a scream, crystal clear in his head.

Daegan!

The raw panic in her voice buckled his legs. His knees hit the gravel driveway, the keys falling from his nerveless fingers.

“Liv,” he rasped, fighting to quell the rising panic inside him. What the hell had happened? Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

His heart beat a staccato rhythm as he struggled to his feet and dug out his phone. While his guts clenched he dialed her number with an unsteady hand, moving back toward the house. It seemed to take forever for the call to connect, then it finally began to ring. He tensed as the seconds ticked by.

Come on, pick up.

Four rings.

Five.

The sixth one echoed hollowly in his ears before her voicemail picked up.

Her panic was tangible, putting pressure on his lungs like his chest was slowly being crushed.
Fuck!

Ignoring his weakened state, Daegan ran for the front door, wrenched it open. It slammed against the foyer wall as he flew through it and headed for the staircase to the lower floor. His feet skidded on the wooden steps. He hit the bottom in a crouch. The equipment room. He needed his weapons.

In the midst of yanking open one of the gun lockers, he sensed Vaughn entering the room.

“What’s wrong?”

“Someone took Liv,” he managed without looking back, blindly grabbing ammunition from the shelf, tossing it onto the steel table nearby. Everything was happening too slowly. He wanted to scream in frustration.

“Where?”

“Don’t know.” Vaughn would never be able to find her, only Daegan could because of his connection with her. And that ripped him to pieces. His bond with her made it impossible to stay cool and collected. All his years of military experience meant shit right now. How was he going to find her? Help her?

Vaughn went into another locker then shoved a ballistic vest at him. “Here. Put this on.”

God, he couldn’t slow his breathing down. Felt like he was going to hyperventilate. Throwing off his jacket, he pulled the vest over his head and quickly fastened the Velcro straps. When he looked back at the table, Vaughn was ready with a pistol in a thigh holster and an amber-embedded blade tucked into a sheath.

“Thanks,” he muttered distractedly, reaching for it. But Vaughn surprised him by shooing his hands away, bending down to strap the gun to Daegan’s thigh. Grabbing a rifle, Daegan didn’t protest because he was too freaked out about what had happened to Liv. He had to get to her. Every second counted.

And when he found the person responsible he’d take him apart.

“We’ll bring more firepower to you,” Vaughn said as he straightened.

Daegan was already headed for the door. “Get Cade. I’ll call you once I’m in position.”

“You’d better.”

The emotional echo continued to roll through him in a blinding haze of fear. Then, just as suddenly as it began, it stopped.

Daegan froze near the bottom step, sucked in a breath as his adrenaline levels plummeted. He swayed on his feet. For a moment he convinced himself he had to be wrong. That his own fear had somehow blocked his emotional link with her. But no, there was nothing. Nothing but silence from her.

His blood ran cold as a sickening thought took hold. Jesus, she couldn’t be dead.

“What?”

Daegan whirled to face Vaughn while his blood pressure nosedived. The Reaper’s scarred face was a study of concern. Likely because he’d never seen Daegan so close to coming unglued in the one hundred-plus years they’d known each other. “She’s gone.” He could barely get the words out of his constricted throat. Refused to accept what it probably meant.

Vaughn blanched. “You mean…”

“I can’t feel her anymore,” he blurted. It scared the living shit out of him. If she was dead, he couldn’t deal with it. Just couldn’t.

She’d been entrusted to him. His first responsibility was to protect her. Take care of her. And now someone had attacked her. Maybe even—

“Maybe she’s unconscious.”

Daegan couldn’t look at him. His stomach lurched, bile rising up his throat, hot and acidic. He wanted to howl like a wounded animal, tear the place apart. He didn’t know where she was or how to locate her. The terrible helplessness washed through him, filling him until he thought he’d explode. There was nothing he could do now except wait. And pray.

Don’t do this to me, Liv. Help me find you. Please come back to me.

* * *

Pulling the unfinished bedroom door shut behind him, Rick looked at the four men seated around the plywood table. All Dark Army members, all ready for a showdown with the Coven Leader. He couldn’t be far away. No way would he leave his mate unprotected.

Rick couldn’t believe she’d been such an easy target. If not for the Celtic design on her neck, he might have believed the Obsidian Lord was wrong about the bonding. It made no sense.

“What’s the plan?” one of the others asked.

“She’s still out.” Her pulse was steady though, and her pupils responded evenly when he’d checked them with a pen light. She’d scared him when she’d gone into convulsions. For a minute there he thought she’d been having a stroke. It was possible she’d hit her head on something during the crash, but he didn’t think that was the reason. She’d been conscious and scared out her mind when she’d tried to run from him, so those convulsions had to be some sort of a reaction to him. He swore she’d recognized him. Or at least, what he was.

Whatever had happened, her being unconscious made carrying her here much easier. He hadn’t even needed the syringe he’d brought with him. She’d better wake up soon though, or he was screwed. He needed her alert and aware of what was going on so he could extract the information he needed. Just how he extracted it depended entirely on her.

“Well then, let’s wake her up,” another said, and the men around the table all snickered.

“Not yet.”

“When?”

“When I say so.” Crossing the room, he dug his phone out of his coat pocket and typed in a text message to the OL. Old bugger probably didn’t know how to text back though. So much the better.

Have the mate.

Less than three minutes later, his phone rang. Rick raised a sardonic brow but didn’t bother picking it up. It was only five in the morning in Spain, yet the OL was already up. Did the man really think he was going to answer this call? Not likely. Rick wasn’t about to give him an opportunity to torture him into changing his mind about this. Or kill him for disobeying a direct order.

He eyed the buzzing phone with derision. Answering it would result in enough pain to make him writhe and scream. To him the noise from the phone seemed frustrated, full of impotent rage.
How’s it feel, asshole?
he silently taunted the man on the other end.

Rick was running this operation, not him. And that’s the way it would stay until it was over and he had what he needed to either get his soul back, or blackmail it out of the OL.

Ignoring the ringing phone, he gathered the last of his equipment, stuffing it into his huge duffel in the corner before pulling out the last item from another bag. The others chatted amongst themselves while he pulled it on, but after a moment they all fell silent. He could feel the weight of their stares as he meticulously pulled up the zipper.

“What is that?” one of them asked.

“Exactly what it looks like.”

“A ghillie suit? Are you shitting me?”

Rick ignored the man’s derisive snicker, re-checking his gear a final time. As a sniper, he had one shot at this. Literally. He intended not to fuck it up. And if that meant covering himself with cedar boughs until he looked like a tree, so be it. One single, tiny mistake and it would all be over. The others could laugh all they wanted. Obviously he was the only one who had a clue about what they were up against. The Empowered had abilities far beyond their comprehension. If he died tonight, it would be because the Leader was a better soldier, not because Rick hadn’t been prepared.

One of the others set down his bottle of beer on the piece of plywood suspended between two saw horses. “You sure he’ll come for her?”

“I’m sure.” Everything depended on it. “And when he does you’d better be ready, or you’ll be dead before you realize he’s here.”

The tallest of the three, a man in his early fifties, made a scoffing sound and folded his arms across his wide chest where the end of his beard brushed his breastbone. “You make it sound like we should be scared of him or something.”

“Nope,” Rick replied, checking the firing mechanism on his customized rifle one last time. “I’m saying you should be fucking terrified.”

The man’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What for? Even if he is the Coven Leader, he’s only one guy.”

The man’s appalling naiveté only reminded Rick of his dangerous predicament. These Dark Army recruits were new converts who couldn’t be relied upon for an operation like this. He could only depend on himself, his instincts and training from here on out. As far as the Leader being only one man, that didn’t mean shit. That was why he’d planned the operation this way. As soon as he set everything in motion he had to haul ass to his position, wait there to take the Leader out before he got to them or called in reinforcements. No telling how many more of the Empowered bastards he had waiting in the wings.

“Think whatever you want,” he finally answered. “It’s your funeral.”

The DA member’s brows drew together in a menacing scowl. “There are five of us, and you’re a trained sniper. He doesn’t stand a chance.”

Rick clenched his teeth, bit back a retort. During his exhaustive research he hadn’t been able to find out much about Daegan Blackwell, but he’d run across a nebulous security contracting business with ties to both the CIA and DIA, whose CEO bore a frighteningly similar profile to the Coven Leader. That was no coincidence. Rick knew in his gut it had to be the same mysterious man he’d never been able to find. He had a feeling that was about to change. What he’d seen in that profile was enough to raise the fine hairs on the back of his neck.

“Hello? I’m talking to you,” the man snapped.

Rick shot him a hard look over his shoulder. “He’s trained and been embedded with the SAS and the SEALs, asshole. And that was before he started working as a private contractor. He doesn’t need any help to take out this whole place, killing every last one of us in the process. And if he gets help…” He let his voice trail off suggestively. “Let’s just say we’d better hope he doesn’t.”

The man’s surly expression changed to one of wary consideration. Beside him, the informant Rick had met at the bar finally spoke. “You didn’t tell us that when you called us here.”

“Well I’m telling you now. Just be ready and do what I told you to.” Not that it mattered what they did. These DA members were expendable, and if necessary he could easily call in more reinforcements tomorrow. If he lived that long. Whatever happened, he could never forget that to the Obsidian Lord, he was equally expendable. They all were, because he owned them completely. Every last one of them.

Zipping the canvas bag shut, he stood and retrieved the sharp kitchen shears he’d placed on the unfinished island. In the end he’d get what he needed, but he didn’t have much time to get everything ready. If their hostage didn’t cooperate, he’d have to leave it to his men to extract the information.

Crossing to the makeshift table, he handed the scissors to the one in the middle. The quietest one, the one he sensed was the most intelligent. “Go see if Sleeping Beauty is up yet.”

* * *

Male voices drifted through the haze of pain around her skull. Several of them, speaking low and quietly.

Battling up through the layers of darkness, Liv tried to lick her lips but something covered her mouth. She couldn’t move her arms. A memory of the accident surfaced, the man with the cruel eyes and crueler smile as he slapped the tape over her lips.

Slitting her eyes open, she blinked warily and assessed her surroundings. She was on a chair with her hands taped to its arms, her ankles taped to the legs. The room was dim, small, with no windows and what appeared to be a bare concrete floor. The only illumination was the faint light that came in around the edges of the door. All the walls were plain studs covered with plastic.

Was she in some sort of an unfinished house? It wasn’t cold but her skin broke out in goose bumps. Shifting in the chair, she tried to twist her hands free or wriggle her fingers around to loosen the tape. It didn’t help. A clammy film of sweat covered her as the gravity of her situation hit home. She was trapped, immobilized here, and no one knew she was missing.