Darkest Caress (25 page)

“You’re killing me,” Liv told her and knocked again. Was he still sleeping? She doubted it, and didn’t think he’d avoid her. He might be antisocial, but he wasn’t the sort of man who hid from anyone. Or anything.

Ebony sat staring at the door with her ears perked, as though she expected it to open at any moment. But after another minute when Liv didn’t hear him coming to the door, she gave up. “C’mon,” she said to the dog, bending to scratch her fluffy ears. “Back to the house.”

In the kitchen she started the coffee and sliced some strawberries into bowls while the toast browned. She was just loading everything onto a tray to take upstairs when she heard someone coming. She caught his rich, spicy scent and smiled as warmth chased along her skin.

Daegan stepped into the kitchen, stopping short when he saw the dog. “Who’s this?”

“Ebony. Vaughn gave her to me,” she explained, handing Daegan the note. He looked great, considering he’d nearly died just a few nights ago.

His mouth quirked as he read the slip of paper. “Isn’t he just full of surprises.”

Stroking Ebony’s head, she chewed at her bottom lip. “Is it all right? I mean, are you okay with a dog living here? She’s super friendly.” The words blurted out before she could stop them.

He raised a brow. “Why, you think I’d make you take her back?”

“So it’s okay?”

His chuckle warmed her to her toes. “If she makes you happy,
mo ghrá
, then of course we’ll keep her.”

Her heart swelled at the love in his eyes. “Thank you.” She bent to scratch Ebony’s ear. “I think we’re already attached to each other.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” he said dryly.

Liv shook her head. “I can’t believe he did this for me. I went to thank him, but he’s not home. Think he’ll be back soon?”

“Maybe.”

His tone seemed doubtful. She cast him a funny look. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing. Just sometimes he goes away for awhile.”

Now? It didn’t seem like the right time for him to take off. With Daegan still recovering and the DA member on the loose, they needed all the manpower they could get. “Away where? Where else would he go?”

Daegan exhaled, coming over to draw her into his arms. His movements were almost normal, didn’t seem to cause him any discomfort. While she loved the show of affection, his avoidance of the question alarmed her. “Is he all right?”

“As all right as Vaughn will ever be again.” He stroked one hand over the length of her spine, pulled her tighter against him.

She raised her head. “What do you mean?”

Daegan smoothed a lock of hair away from her cheek with the side of his hand. “He just needs some time to himself.”

“Why?”

“To visit his mate.”

Her eyes widened. “He’s mated?” She couldn’t imagine him being mated to anyone, but if he was, how come he lived alone if mates couldn’t stand to be apart?

“He was.”

The words filled her with an awful sense of dread. “What happened?” But she was afraid she already knew the answer.

For a moment, Daegan only stared at her. When he finally responded, his eyes were shadowed with distant memories. “She was murdered back in World War Two.”

The faint cry of gulls followed Nairne as she moved deeper into the thin band of forest edging the village. Shadow and light played across the ground in changing patterns, the leaves overhead sighing and rustling in the evening breeze. Adjusting her grip on her camera, she approached her quarry, a two-hundred-year-old cemetery at the edge of the forest she’d spotted the day before during her walk.

When she cleared the trees, she saw the man standing there with his back to her. Nairne faltered. He was huge. His wide shoulders blocked the sunlight beating down on his black leather jacket as he stared down at the weathered grave marker. Something about his posture, the way he bowed his head, made her think he was no ordinary tourist. It almost looked like he was grieving.

Backing up a step, her foot landed on a twig. She drew up short, wincing at the quiet crack it made.

The man whipped his head around, his gaze freezing her. The breath caught in her throat. He was young, maybe in his early thirties, and terribly scarred down one side of his face and neck. But that wasn’t what gave her pause. Just before he’d masked it, she’d seen an aching, terrible loneliness in his expression that twisted her heart.

She quickly broke eye contact and looked down, feeling awful for intruding on his privacy. He’d obviously come here to visit someone, but she didn’t understand how that could be. He wasn’t old enough to have known someone in here. The people buried in this woodland cemetery had died over a century ago. Unless they’d allowed someone to be buried here recently?

Nairne took another step backward, risked a quick glance up to see the man again.

He was gone.

Like he’d just disappeared into thin air.

She blinked.

Nairne looked left, right. Walked forward to get a better look around. No sign of him. When she approached the grave, there wasn’t so much as a single track in the sandy soil, other than the two big footprints he’d left at the marker.

Jesus. That was impossible.

Nairne put a hand to her suddenly drumming heart, turned in a slow circle. She felt like she’d just seen a damn ghost. Had she? Granted, some odd and inexplicable things had happened to her over the years, but she’d never suffered a hallucination before. God, maybe she was going crazy. Maybe her obsessive research about the Empowered was making her see things that weren’t really there.

After a moment, her curiosity got the better of her. She had to see for herself if there was anything on the marker.

Drawn toward it by some invisible force, she neared the old, silent grave. A warning tingle slid down her spine. The weathered gray wooden marker sat tilted in the soft ground. Like all the others here it bore no name, no date of birth or death. Just the carved bird at the top, marking the grave as a woman’s.

But when she got close enough, she saw it.

Resting against its base lay an oval cameo brooch. Its rose quartz backing gleamed in the sunlight, making the intricately carved ivory woman’s head and shoulders glow with an unearthly light. Beautiful. And obviously of great sentimental value. Had the man left it there?

Idiot. There was no man. You were imagining him.

Well she sure as hell wasn’t imagining the large footprints in the soil, or the brooch. How did she explain that?

It looked like a vintage piece, maybe from the twenties or thirties. Her grandmother had owned something similar, had sometimes let Nairne pin it on to play dress-up when she’d gone to Edinburgh for a visit.

Taking a final glance around to make sure no one was watching, Nairne bent and tentatively picked up the delicate piece.

Instant fear crashed through her. Frantic and sharp. Horrific. Her lungs constricted as she felt the former owner’s terror and despair. It twisted hard inside her, turning into pure, blind panic. So vivid she could almost see it, like an image on a movie screen.

They’re going to kill me. Oh God, Vaughn, they’re going to kill me.

Liv dropped it with a gasp and jerked back, shaking all over. Dear God. A dying woman, facing an end so hideous it had left an echo imprinted on the jewelry. She couldn’t get that woman’s panic out of her mind, off her crawling skin. It had been so real, so fresh. Like it had just happened.

She backed away from the grave, nearly stumbled on a tree root in her haste to put some distance between herself and the marker. Her arms were covered in goose bumps despite the warm summer air. She wanted to clap her hands over her ears, somehow block or better yet, erase the memory of what she’d just felt. It reverberated through her while it faded away, but she knew she’d never be free of it. Not entirely. That poor woman’s death, her dying thoughts, would forever haunt her now. She didn’t know who Vaughn was, but she knew he hadn’t been able to save the woman.

The brooch lay on the sparse blades of grass poking up from the sand. Looking completely harmless. Jesus, she wished she’d never picked the bloody thing up. Why did she always let her curiosity get the better of her? She’d pay for it this time.

Using a stick, she gingerly lifted the fragile piece and put it back against the marker. Trying to shake off the shivers skating down her spine, Nairne hurried back the way she’d come, through the forest, up the slope toward the paved road. Halfway to it her phone rang. She checked the call display, frowned.

The number had a Vancouver area code, but it wasn’t her lab. Her phone rang for the third time and she almost let it go to voicemail, then a faint stirring of excitement made her change her mind. It could be Dr. Mackintosh returning her call about the DNA results.

What he didn’t know was that she had a lot of questions for him. Ones she’d bet he knew the answers to.

Right, then.
Drawing a steadying breath, she answered it. “Hello?” She waited a second to account for any delay in the line, but no one replied. Her frown turned into a scowl. Hell, if someone was trying to scare her, they’d picked a good time. That’s all she needed right now—a prank call after what she’d just experienced in the cemetery.

“Hello?” She didn’t bother to disguise her annoyance. “Bloody well say something or I’m hanging up.”

Then a smooth, rich baritone voice came over the line. “Dr. Roberts? This is Cade Mackintosh.”

* * *

Cade almost strangled on the words.

Holy shit.

His hand grew damp, his fingers clenching around his phone. He almost hadn’t responded when she’d answered. Because he’d damn near swallowed his tongue.

Her voice. It did something to him. Deep inside him there’d been a leap of primal recognition. Which was insane. Worse, the moment her Scottish burr had registered in his brain he’d gone rock-hard in his jeans.

A first for him. He’d never gotten hard just at the sound of a woman’s voice before.

It scared the living shit out of him.

“Dr. Mackintosh, hi. I’ve been expecting your call.”

Well he sure as hell hadn’t expected this reaction to her. He shoved aside the niggling worry, got down to business. “I received your report on the latest DNA samples I sent you. They were very thorough.”

“Thank you. I trust it gave you what you needed?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“The individual is from the same haplogroup as the others in your sample group. The lab ran the standard mitochondrial DNA sequencing, but I also ordered an SNP Backbone Panel—that means single nucleotide polymorphism—”

“I know what it means,” he growled, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. While he appreciated the woman’s enthusiasm for her work, he wished she’d just get to the damn point so he could find out what he needed to know and end the conversation.

“Aye, well, the mutations I found revealed some fascinating evidence. All your individuals belong to haplogroup H, and more importantly, subclade H-one. That group originated in Egypt, spread out over the Caucasus then up to Eastern Europe, eventually settling there and further north. Including the Baltic region and even the UK.”

His scalp prickled. Something in her tone sent off warning bells. An emphasis she’d placed on the last sentence. “I’m guessing that’s an important detail for you.”

“Aye, I’ve been working on a special project for several years, Doctor.”

Special project. His free hand balled into a fist. Exactly what sort of project? Linking his subject’s DNA to the haplogroup settling in the Baltics and UK was a pretty goddamn narrow field of interest.

Easy. It might be nothing.

His gut said otherwise. “And?”

“And I found it most interesting that this latest sample was so closely linked to several others I’ve analyzed in the past. Including yours.”

Cade bit back a curse. He hadn’t known she’d been the one to analyze his sample, and it seemed like she’d looked into his files. It wasn’t illegal or unethical, but she must have had a reason for doing it. Now she seemed to know too much. Way too much for his peace of mind.

“And I also find it remarkable that you’re so keen on researching the Baltic-Celtic connections, as I am. What’s your interest in it?”

“Just a hobby.” His ears began to ring.

“For me too. Well, people tell me it’s more of an obsession,” she said with a laugh. “Even your company’s name—Trident Group—I assume it’s in reference to Neringa’s Trident? And the legend of the Empowered?”

Cade blanched. Actually felt the blood drain from his face. He swallowed once, leaning back in his chair for support while his pulse pounded dully in his ears. “What?” The word was guttural, almost strangled.

“The ancient Lithuanian legend of Neringa, the giantess born of the sea. Do you not know of it? I only recently found evidence linking the legend of the Empowered to her, with the mention of Neringa’s Trident. Supposedly they’re a triad of male Empowered warriors. According to prophecy, anyway.”

Cade rose from his chair very slowly, fighting back the fear beginning to eat at him. Every muscle in his body was pulled tight, ready to snap. Her pleasant voice continued to float over the line, but he didn’t hear a word she said. Holy fuck. No way should she know all this. How the hell could she know? Either she’d managed to somehow unearth the secrets they’d all thought were long since destroyed…

Or she was somehow linked to the Dark Army and the Obsidian Lord.

Either way, she was a threat to their very existence.

Scrub her. Scrub her
now.

“Are you still there?” The impatience in her voice was unmistakable.

“Yes,” he managed. Gripping the edge of the desk, he called all his considerable mental concentration to bear. He’d scrubbed the memory of countless people over the decades, scores of them women over the phone. He projected the mental commands to her, focusing with all the force of his will.

Hang up. You’ve never heard of me or anything about the Empowered. This conversation never happened. You won’t remember anything about it, or anything about the DNA samples I sent you.
He’d worry about the possibility of her rediscovering everything in her research later.

He forced the thoughts into her brain, straining with all his might until sweat beaded his forehead and upper lip.

Hang up now and go back to your hotel. Fly back to Vancouver, go back to your lab and forget all about your research. Go home and start a new project.

It was a tall order, but he was confident the gist of it would register with her.

Hang up and go home.

An indelicate snort shattered his concentration. “Dr. Mackintosh, are you there or not?”

Cade jerked upright, blinking in surprise, his thoughts splintered like a pane of glass shattered by a rock. “I’m here.”

“If this is the kind of awkward conversation you normally conduct, then I’d prefer not to speak with you over the phone from now on. I have work to do, and can’t afford to waste my time filling in the gaps while you decide whether to answer me or not. If you want to contact me in the future, send me a bloody e-mail.”

Click.

Cade jerked the phone from his ear, staring at it in a kind of detached horror. His efforts to scrub her hadn’t worked. Not even a little. And now she was well and truly pissed at him. Might not answer again if he called to make another attempt at erasing her memory. He couldn’t understand it. What the hell had gone wrong?

He ran an unsteady hand through his hair, trying to figure out what the fuck to do next. Was it possible it hadn’t worked because she was too far away?

Because there was only one other reason he knew of why scrubbing her memory wouldn’t work.

Dr. Roberts wasn’t a mere mortal.

And if she wasn’t a mortal, plus the way his body had reacted to the sound of her voice like that…

No. No fucking way.

Chilled to the bone at the implications of it all, he threw open his office door and tore up the stairs to find his cousin.