The Lost Night (15 page)

After a time Harry spoke again.

“There are some experts who claim that people with my kind of talent are the original source of a lot of the old horror stories,” he said.

“Your talent is so rare that no one has ever been able to study it. If you can’t study something, you can’t explain it. The unexplained is frequently the source of myths and legends.”

“More HE philosophy?”

“Yes.”

“I scared the daylights out of you, didn’t I?”

“Only for a couple of seconds. Don’t take it personally. After all, you didn’t give me any advance warning.”

“Would that have made a difference?”

“Sure.” She smiled. “You got away with the scare factor once but you won’t be able to pull off that stunt again.”

“Why not?”

“Because I know your frequencies now. Try it and I’ll dampen your energy field until it feels like a wet blanket.”

Harry gave an unexpected bark of laughter. “Can you really do that?”

“Yep, provided I can get physical contact. My ability is one of the reasons the matchmakers—both the agency that handles members of the HE community and the one I registered with in Frequency City—labeled me unmatchable.”

“You, too?”

“Turns out no one wants to sleep with a wife who can suppress a man’s aura if she gets seriously ticked off. You may be the source of the monster-under-the-bed myth, but women with my kind of talent are the source of the legends of the black widow—the bride who murders husbands in a serial fashion in order to inherit their fortunes.”

“Some guys don’t like a challenge.”

For a heartbeat she didn’t think she had heard correctly. Then she started to giggle. The giggle turned into laughter.
Over-the-top laughter,
she realized. Very unharmonic. But she couldn’t seem to stop. There were tears in her eyes before she regained her control.

“Guess not,” she finally managed. She used the corner of the blanket to blot her eyes.

“So, why aren’t you afraid of me?” Harry asked.

“I told you, you’ve got a powerful talent but you’re not a monster.”

“When you look at me now, what do you see?”

“I see you,” she said. She frowned. “Or at least I would see you if there were more light. What kind of question is that?”

“People who have been exposed to my talent never look at me the same way again. They see the monster.”

“What do you care if the bad guys find you very scary? You’re in the security business. I would think being considered scary by criminals would be an asset.”

There was another tense silence from the front seat.

“It’s not just the bad guys who think I’m scary,” Harry said eventually. “Other people who get too close to me when I’m in the zone find me terrifying.”

The hard, flat edge in his voice told her that he was thinking of one other person in particular.

She was not at all sure she wanted to pursue the conversation down this particular road but she could not stop herself.

“Girlfriend?” she ventured.

“Wife.”

She cleared her throat. “I believe I did hear something about a divorce.”

“Figured you had. Slade would have done a background check.”

Rachel wasn’t sure where to go next. “Must have been expensive.”

“You have no idea.”

She knew that he was not referring to the financial aspects of the divorce. Harry had paid
a high price in other ways as well.

She abandoned the attempt to be subtle. “Why did she marry you in the first place if she thought you were a scary guy?”

“She was an aura talent. She thought she could handle it.”

“She was probably not as strong as me.”

“No. What happened was my fault. I had allowed her to experience some of my talent while we were dating but I never went all the way into the zone before the marriage.”

“So she never knew the real you?”

“Something like that,” Harry said. “In any event, I do some regular psychic exercises to make sure that I’m always in control of my senses. At home I have a special room paneled in glass. I lock the door when I work out to make sure that no one walks in on me unexpectedly.”

“But something went wrong?”

“Laura got the code for the door,” Harry said. “I had warned her never to interrupt me during a session. I told her that I wanted to protect her from the full force of my talent when I was running hot. She respected that line before the wedding but afterward—”

“Eventually she had to know your secret.”

“I think that’s what it came down to, yes.”

“Any woman would want to know the truth,” Rachel explained gently.

“The truth was that the man she thought she loved was suddenly her worst nightmare. I was running hot—very, very hot—that day.”

“She got hit with the full
blast of your talent.”

“I shut down as fast as I could, but Laura started screaming and then she was running away from me. I went after her, tried to calm her down, but she kept on screaming.”

“When it was all over, you knew the marriage was doomed.”

“A few years ago we would have been trapped. There would have been no option but to live separate lives. But we were able to take advantage of the new legislation that allows for grounds of intolerable psychical incompatibility.”

“But that meant that you had to declare yourself psychically deranged and dangerous,” she said.

“Figured it was the least I could do for Laura. And it’s not like it wasn’t the truth.”

“It isn’t the truth. You’re not deranged.”

“I hear a but,” Harry said.

“Okay, you may be dangerous. But only to the bad guys, not to everyone else.”

“You may be the exception,” he said dryly.

“You tried to protect Laura. When that didn’t work, you behaved like a true gentleman. You took the hit.”

“Like I said, it was my fault.”

There was a short silence.

“Big wedding, I’ll bet,” Rachel said after a while. “Covenant weddings are always very big affairs, especially for a wealthy family like yours.”

“It was big enough.”

“Must have been a
lot of very expensive gifts to return.”

There was another short silence from the front seat. And then it was Harry who was roaring with laughter. It was a deep, hearty, healing laughter, she thought. She raised her talent a little. Her charms clashed musically as she observed Harry’s aura. The powerful energy looked strong and well balanced. She smiled and lowered her senses.

When Harry’s laughter had subsided, he looked back at her.

“It’s been a tough night,” he said. “You’ve got to be exhausted. Why don’t you get some sleep?”

“Are you kidding?” She gave a tiny sniff. “After what happened? I won’t be able to sleep a wink.”

“You might as well try. Not like there’s anything better to do.”

There was something better to do, she thought. She wanted to go on talking to him. It was so easy being with him here in the darkness. The danger they had been through together had created a bond, at least from her end. She was quite sure she could go on chatting with him until dawn.

But she was getting the distinct impression that he wanted to shut down for a while, go into his own head to do some serious thinking. She had to respect that. Besides, the sense of intimacy generated by the brush with death and reinforced by the close confines of the SUV was potentially misleading. This kind of situation could make a woman say
and do things she might seriously regret come dawn. When you got right down to it, Harry Sebastian was still very much a stranger.

“Okay,” she said, “I’ll try to sleep.”

She turned on her side in the seat, tucked her legs under her, and pulled the blanket more securely around herself. She couldn’t be certain, but it seemed to her that the rain wasn’t falling quite as hard now. The thunder was fainter and the lightning strikes were not as powerful. The storm was starting to dissipate. She hoped Darwina was somewhere safe and warm and dry.

The human monster was waiting deep in the shadows, his ice-blue eyes glittering with anticipation and lust. The rainstone in his ear stud glowed darkly.

“You are mine,” he whispered.

“No,” she said.

He came toward her. “My bride. My destiny.”

She whirled and ran through the sea. Sensing prey, the creatures swarmed around her. Their tentacles writhed in their desperation to get to her.

She saw the frozen waterfall of energy that sealed both ends of the crystal chamber, and somehow she knew it was her only hope. The human monster could not follow her through the solid cascade of stone.

“Why do you run from me?” the human monster said. “You were meant for me.”

“No.” She tried to scream the word but she could barely manage a whisper.

She forced herself to keep
moving through the strangely illuminated sea. She had to get through the frozen waterfall.…

“Rachel, wake up. You’re dreaming.”

She recognized the voice. Harry was calling her out of the glowing sea. She struggled up through the depths, riding a wave of shivering panic. For a couple of heartbeats the real world and the dreamscape merged. She sensed the human monster closing in on her but now she could see Harry in the shadows. He was in danger.

“Run,” she gasped. She was breathing as hard as if she had been fleeing for her life. Her pulse pounded. “He’s here.
Run
.”

“It’s all right,” Harry said. His arms closed around her, crushing her against his chest. “I’ve got you. He can’t touch you.”

Harry’s heat and energy enveloped her. She was safe. She opened her eyes, trying to catch her breath. It was still dark, but the storm had dissipated into a gentle, steady rain.

“Sorry,” she whispered, mortified. A woman who had grown up in the Harmonic Enlightenment community and trained at the Academy was supposed to have better control of her dreamscapes.

“It’s okay.” Harry held her close. “It’s okay.”

For a moment or two she allowed herself the luxury of being cradled against his chest, her head resting on his shoulder. Gradually the remnants of the dreamscape faded and the real world closed around her. She listened to the light drumming of the rain on the roof of the SUV.

After a while she forced herself to
stir in Harry’s grasp even though she would have preferred to remain right where she was for whatever was left of the night.

“Well, that was embarrassing,” she said.

“You’re embarrassed by a bad dream?” Harry asked.

“Of course. I’ve studied dream theory, lucid dreaming, and focused dreaming techniques since I was a kid. I control my dreams; they don’t control me.”

“Sounds like a slogan or a bumper sticker.”

“It is for a member of the Community. When I was five, my mother embroidered those words on a pillow for me. I’ve also got them engraved on the inside of my bracelet.”

Automatically she raised her hand to show him the band of silvery metal that she wore around one wrist. The charms tinkled lightly, but the action caused the edge of the blanket to fall away. Belatedly she remembered that the blanket was all she was wearing unless you counted the panties, which, she concluded, were hardly worth mentioning. At least the darkness inside the vehicle offered a semblance of modesty. Then she remembered Harry’s excellent night vision.

“Oh, geez.” Hastily she grabbed the edge of the blanket and clutched it to her throat. “This is getting more and more awkward by the second.”

“Take it easy.” He released her, allowing her to sit up. “I’m not going to assault your virtue.”

“I know.” Now she had offended him. Chagrined, she tried to wriggle off his thighs and into the other seat. In the process her hand came in contact with his bare shoulder.
She froze, fascinated by the compelling heat and the sleek, masculine power of muscle beneath skin. “You’re all wet.”

“I couldn’t squeeze over the front seat to get to you. It was easier to get out on my side and climb in beside you. That meant a couple of seconds in the rain. I’ll live.”

“Yes, I know.” She did not take her hand off his shoulder. She was keenly aware of his scent, an exciting blend of the rain, the wild woods, and the essence of all that was male and Harry. She was enthralled. “But, still, it’s my fault. I’m sorry you had to get out in the rain again because of me.”

In the shadows his eyes heated a little. Mostly with irritation she thought. But there was something else, there, as well, a hard, edgy flicker of arousal. It did not take a psychic’s intuition to recognize sexual desire in a man. She was suddenly very conscious of the hard muscles of his thighs beneath her hips.

“You can stop apologizing anytime,” Harry said.

“Okay. Right. No more apologies.”

She should move. Now. But she did not want to move. Her hand was still on Harry’s rain-dampened shoulder. She tightened her fingers ever so gently and opened her senses to savor the full spectrum of sensation.

Energy danced and shivered in the atmosphere.
Her own,
she thought.
And his, too.
She was well aware that her sexual experience was quite limited by the standards of most people her age. Nevertheless, her intuition assured her that whatever was happening tonight was not the norm. True, physical contact between two people of talent sometimes had unpredictable
effects on the auras of both parties, but this flashing, sparkling excitement effervescing through her senses was unlike anything she had ever known. She did not need to see the paranormal heat in Harry’s eyes to know that he was aroused. She could feel it the old-fashioned way—through the fabric of the blanket and Harry’s jeans. His erection was pressing against her bottom.

“It would probably be a really good idea to get off my lap,” he said. He sounded as if he was speaking through tightly clamped teeth.

She raised her hand from his shoulder and touched the side of his hard jaw. “You saved my life tonight.”

“You doused my after-burn fever. That makes us even.”

“No.” She thrust her fingers through his hair. “It doesn’t.”

“Damn it, Rachel—”

“Would you mind very much if I kissed you?”

For the first time he seemed to be caught off-guard.