Darkest Caress (9 page)

He tilted his head. Calm, but emanating that undeniable authority he held. “Want to talk in here, or outside so we have some privacy?”

“Fine.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder and marched over to the heavy bronze French door that led out to the granite patio, then down the few steps to where the lawn began. Without waiting to see if he’d followed, she continued past the formal courtyard garden and down the slope to the rose garden.

Fragrant blooms of crimson, pale yellow and apricot nodded in the gentle breeze. Bees hummed in the summer sunshine. Below the cliff, the tide was out, leaving dozens of tidal pools shimmering among the glistening sand. A few gulls circled the shoreline, their faint cries carrying on the salty breeze.

The beautiful setting should have relaxed her, but instead she felt only a crushing sense of confusion. Her stomach was in knots. What was she supposed to do about all this? How could she actually believe what had happened last night?

Daegan came up next to her, put his hands in his jeans pockets. “Are you all right?”

She scoffed. “What the hell do you think?”

“I think you’re beautiful even though you’re scared and angry.”

Under the circumstances, his compliment was pathetic. “I’d be stupid not to be scared, even if it was just because of what Aaron did last night.”

Daegan’s eyes changed, glittering dangerously. “He won’t ever bother you again. You have my word on it.”

His grim expression and tone alarmed her. “Why, what did you do to him? Is he in jail?” She’d been too upset and distracted by everything else to follow up with the police.

“No, but I took care of it.”

The deadly look in his eyes made the blood drain from her face. “Oh my God, you killed him?” She took a quick step back.

“No,” he said quickly. “Other than a busted face he’s fine. But I swear to you, he won’t bother you again.”

Liv blinked at him, trying to read between the lines. What had Daegan done? What else was he keeping from her about his “capabilities”?

Stop it. It’s not real. It can’t be real.

She felt like clapping her hands over her ears.

“You’re upset,” he began, searching her eyes.

“Of course I’m upset! Last night I felt like I was losing my mind. Then you go behind my back and pull I don’t know how many strings to get this deal closed without me having a frigging clue. Do I even get my commission, by the way? Or did you go through my boss instead to get this deal done so fast?”

A muscle clenched in his jaw. “You’ll get your commission.”

The thought of all that money should have taken the edge off her temper, but it didn’t. Part of her didn’t even want it, on principle. “I have no idea how in hell you got the kind of funding to pay for this place up front. What is it you do exactly? Are you some kind of arms dealer or drug lord the law hasn’t caught up to yet?”

“It’s not like that.” His jaw tightened.

She raised an accusatory brow. “No? Then how is it? Tell me—I’m dying to know. Because on top of all of this, since I met you my life has become a roller coaster and I’m perpetually horny. I have every right to be upset!”

Rather than rise to the anger in her tone, Daegan remained irritatingly calm. “I told you, I’m a business man and a military contractor. A legitimate one.”

A shiver sped up her spine. He seemed sincere, but she couldn’t discount the dangerous vibe that clung to him. He’d done time in the military. Was trained to kill. She swallowed. “And what about arranging all of this so fast?” She waved a hand around to encompass the estate, the move.

He exhaled slowly. “Sometimes I can predict things. I get flashes of images, things that are about to happen.”

“Uh-huh,” she replied. “Like when a real estate deal will close and how far in advance you have to book moving and installation services.” Her tone dripped with annoyance.

“In this case, yes.”

If he was playing some sort of elaborate prank on her, she’d kill him. Pure and simple. “Did you do something to make all this happen? Put a spell on someone? Change the time continuum, what?”

“I can use mental persuasion on most people. Like a mental push.”

“Have you done that to me?” she asked, horrified.

“No. Never, I swear.”

God, she’d lost it to even be thinking those things were possible. She ran her hands over her face, trying to decide if she should seek professional help. Medication at the very least.

“You’re not crazy, Liv.”

She jerked her head up. “Did you just read my mind?”

“No,” he said, holding up his hands. “I could see it in your face.”

Yeah, well, could he see that she was an inch from bawling too? She’d be damned if she’d let
that
happen again. “Did you know we were going to meet before I showed you the property?”

“No. Meeting you was as much a surprise for me as it was for you.”

“I highly doubt that.” Her voice was bitter, full of anger. She despised that she couldn’t help it. “I hate feeling like this—this isn’t me. I’m a nice person. A calm person. I have a quiet, normal life and I like it that way.” Sure, besides Catherine she didn’t have a lot of friends and she got lonely sometimes, but she’d been thinking about getting a dog to fix that. “Everything was fine. Then you come along and
bang
, it’s all chaos.”

She shook her head, letting him see the torment inside her. “I don’t know what to think, what to believe right now. I’m not even close to ready to face something like this. I can hardly process what happened last night, let alone everything else.” Daegan shook his head and reached out a hand, but she flinched, jerked back. “Don’t touch me. I can’t think straight when you touch me.”

“All right.” His voice was rife with frustration but he dropped his hand.

She resented feeling so angry and out of control. Hated speaking to him that way. “My whole life I’ve struggled to fit in. I’ve never felt like I belonged anywhere, and just when I’m starting to make peace with what I have, you show up and blow it all to hell in less than a day.”

“I’m sorry. I know it’s been hard. But there’s a reason for all those things you just described.”

Cold seeped into her, despite the warmth of the sun on her bare shoulders. “Like what?”

“We don’t have many close relationships, especially with mortals, because we age so much slower than they do.”

Mortals. Like they—he—wasn’t quite human. She lifted her chin and tightened her arms under her breasts. “I’ve aged at a perfectly normal rate.”

“Up ’til now, yes. But it will slow down to synch with mine.”

God, that was so weird. “So how old
are
you?”

He looked her dead in the eye. “Two hundred and three.”

She gaped at him. After Cade’s parting comment last night that’s what she suspected he’d say, but it was still hard to hear. She put a hand to her throat. “How is that even possible?”

“Our race usually lives to about four hundred or so. Sometimes longer.”

Our
race. Meaning she was part of this, too, whether she wanted to be or not. The words sent a shiver skittering over her skin. She rubbed her arms to warm them. “What else?”

“We tend to keep to our own kind because it protects us from suffering the constant grief we’d experience if we befriend mortals. And because it makes it easier for us to fulfill our purpose.”

“And that is?” She braced herself, convinced she wasn’t going to like the answer.

Daegan sighed, and for the first time she noticed the lines of fatigue around his eyes, his mouth. He must not have slept much either the past two nights. “There’s so much I have to tell you. It’s going to take time to sort everything out.”

“No, I want to know what’s happening to me. Who are you, really?
What
are you?”

“I’m an Empowered, same as you.”

“But what does that mean?” She was ready to scream.

“Our ancestors have mixed Celtic and Baltic blood. Legend holds we descended from the Lithuanian sea goddess, Neringa. Have you heard of her?”

Liv shook her head.

“Folklore says Neringa was a giantess with many powers. She formed the Curonian Spit with sand thrown from her apron, to protect the fishermen of the area from the powerful storms of the Baltic.”

“A giantess from a Lithuanian fairytale,” she repeated blandly.

He nodded, his expression all too serious. “No one can prove she existed or that we came from her, but then, no one can disprove it, either. Every one of us who’s ever existed has both Celtic and Baltic heritage, and each of us has different abilities that aren’t necessarily passed on from ancestors. Cade’s found that the genes required to create the Empowered can skip several generations, but I guarantee that if you could trace your family tree back far enough, you’d find stories about strange abilities some of your ancestors held.”

Right now she’d give anything to know more about her family history. “And you’re saying mine is to see these auras, to tell if someone is dangerous.”

“No. I think your gift is to recognize specific people who are evil and pose a direct threat to us.”

Her brain struggled to keep up. “Why now? How did I not know about this sooner?”

“Because the Empowered don’t usually start developing their abilities until their mid-twenties.”

That was true in her case. It was weird to be having this discussion, but there was no way to refute the auras she’d seen, or that Daegan had healed her. “Is that how old you were?”

“Yes.”

That would have been back in the eighteen-thirties, she realized with a sickening sense of unreality. She forced down the panic trying to bubble up. “How many of you are there?” She refused to say
us
. There was still a chance he was wrong about her. A slim one maybe, but she wasn’t willing to entirely give that up yet.

“Including you, there are only me, Cade and Vaughn left that we know of.”

Only four known Empowered in existence. The tiny number took her off guard for a moment.

“But there are more, Liv, out there somewhere. Empowered just like you who don’t realize what they are because there’s been no one to guide them. We call them The Lost, and we have to find as many of them as we can. You’re the first we’ve found since the end of the Second World War.”

“What if I still don’t believe it includes me?”

He raised a challenging brow. “You need more proof?”

“What if I do?” She needed something more. Something empirical to provide the logic missing from this whole equation.

“Then get Cade to collect a DNA sample,” he said.

“Yeah, and what will that prove?”

“Your heritage. Your lineage. That you’re linked to the rest of us through your maternal DNA.”

She stared at him, wondering if the answer could really be so simple. What if it
did
prove it? Hell, at this point anything scientific was worth a shot. “Fine, I’ll ask him to take a sample next time I see him.” She shifted her feet. “So there’s only four, plus any of these ‘Lost’ you might find.” It didn’t seem possible.

He shrugged, the motion stiff, almost defiant. “In the early days there were hundreds of us, but the Dark Army has hunted us near to extinction. We’ve lived off the radar ever since.”

God, they’d been all but exterminated. A chill spread through her body. “Who?”

He shifted uncomfortably and jammed his hands deeper into his pockets. “Look, I don’t want to scare you, but you have a right to know.”

That didn’t sound good, and it didn’t help the churning in her stomach.

He exhaled, and she caught the regret embedded in his crystalline eyes. “There’s a war coming, Liv.”

Her eyes widened. “What do you mean? Here?” As in, fighting and killing? The thought horrified her.

“Between us and the Obsidian Lord’s Dark Army. Your arrival as Seeker is a sign it’s about to begin again.”

Begin again, meaning it had happened before. The unfamiliar names he’d just used were as frightening as the rest of it. “So there’s a bad guy out there somewhere with an army, and he’s coming after us. You,” she corrected quickly.

Daegan nodded, a muscle clenching in his jaw. “The Obsidian Lord is an Empowered male who lost his mate. Usually a former Coven Leader. When he turns to the darkness inside him he becomes the embodiment of evil, intent on destroying the Empowered to enslave human kind. The last one was killed at the end of World War II, but another will take his place soon. There’s a prophecy that’s been handed down verbally through the generations, telling of the final battle between us. We think this is it, we just don’t know when it will start, or who he is.”

Before her knees could buckle, she reached behind her and felt the hard edge of the garden bench. She dropped onto it, her body rigid. “That’s why you need all that equipment in there,” she said hoarsely, waving a hand toward the house. “The gym, and that…awful room with all the surgical stuff in it.” She hadn’t liked that place at all. The simple memory of it made her feel cold. On a shaky breath, Liv turned her gaze on him. Those tall lockers must be holding weapons. “Because you’re training for battle and you know there will be casualties.” The word made her gorge rise.

Daegan took a step toward her, his eyes full of torment. “Liv, just—”

“No,” she said sharply, holding out a hand to ward him off. Right now the numbness was preferable to the heat his touch brought.

He stopped, released a frustrated breath.

She ignored it and continued. “So, let’s just say I believe you for a minute—that means there’s four of us and whatever Lost you can find against an entire army created by some evil magical person called the Obsidian Lord.”

A reluctant nod, his gaze squarely on hers. “We have to find the Lost before he does.”

“And I’m…I’m going to be part of this war?” Her stomach felt queasy. She was a realtor. A piano teacher. Just two days ago she’d been comfortably ensconced in a safe, sane world, savoring her peaceful evenings curled up with a book, or sharing a bottle of wine with Catherine. Now that was all over.