The Secret Night
Rebecca York
HE WAS WRAPPED IN A CLOAK OF SECRECY…But Nicholas Vickers was Emma Birmingham's only hope to rescue her sister from a maniac. She'd met the charismatic P.I. in her unusual, erotic dreams, and in person Nick was every bit as strong, steady, sexy. But as they planned their attack on The Master's isolated, wooded Maryland estate, Emma realized Nick was a man of mystery…if a man at all. His mesmerizing touch, hypnotic eyes, undeniable appeal hid a century-old secret. Emma knew more than her sister's life was at risk, because she'd run straight into the arms of a vampire….
There was no mistaking who she was….
Small and delicate and very beautiful, she was the woman from his dreams.
Her blue gaze was focused on him, full of astonishment and confusion. “It was you,” she whispered. “In my dreams. But how…?”
How indeed? How had they connected in such an intimate way without ever having met? Nick couldn’t focus on that now, not with her in his arms, the feminine scent of her body drawing him to her, as it had in his dreams.
She skittered her fingers across his chest, her touch raising a shiver that raced across his skin. He knew he should put her down, break the contact, yank himself out from under her spell.
That thought confused him. He was the one who wove spells, who bent mortals to his will. But with her in his arms he only reacted.
He wanted more of her. He felt the fang slits at the sides of his mouth throb with need, and he clenched his fists and teeth to keep from doing something he’d regret. But there was another powerful aroma about this woman now—the undeniable, irresistible scent of her blood.
Dear Reader,
I’m delighted to be writing another ECLIPSE book for Harlequin Intrigue. If you know my writing, you know I love the dark and spooky. Nicholas Vickers, the hero of The Secret Night, storms out of the night to hook up with Emma Birmingham, a woman in deep trouble. She’s just escaped from a commune on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Her sister, Margaret, is still there, and her life depends on Emma’s rescuing her.
Emma and Nick are attracted to each other from the first. But can Nick trust her? Or has she been sent by the cult’s sinister leader to trap him? Nick is one of my classic wounded heroes—with an edge that makes him more dangerous than most.
I’ve also brought in some of my favorite characters from previous Light Street books. Chief among them is Alex Shane, who runs the Eastern Shore office of the Light Street Detective Agency.
Next up for me is another paranormal story in an exciting Harlequin Intrigue miniseries called SECURITY BREACH. (Books two and three are by Ann Voss Peterson and Patricia Rosemoor, respectively.) Reality twists and turns, then twists again, in this exciting three-book series. The action begins after an accident in a chemical weapons plant where four men end up with paranormal powers.
Enjoy,
Ruth Glick writing as Rebecca York
The Secret Night
Rebecca York
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Award-winning, bestselling novelist Ruth Glick, who writes as Rebecca York, is the author of close to eighty books, including her popular 43 Light Street series for Harlequin Intrigue. Ruth says she has the best job in the world. Not only does she get paid for telling stories, she’s also the author of twelve cookbooks. Ruth and her husband, Norman, travel frequently, researching locales for her novels and searching out new dishes for her cookbooks.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Nicholas Vickers—He had secrets to hide.
Emma Birmingham—She was desperate to save her sister’s life.
Damien Caldwell—He used people for his own ends.
Henry Briggs—Damien Caldwell trusted him, but only so far.
Trailblazer—Why was he following Nicholas Vickers?
Margaret Birmingham—She’d gotten into a bad situation, and she couldn’t get herself out.
Butch McCard—He made no secret of his hatred for Nicholas Vickers.
Alex Shane—Could Emma and Nick count on the Light Street detective?
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter One
Nicholas Vickers, private investigator, was as comfortable in a graveyard as he was in his own game room. That the graveyard hadn’t seen a new grave dug in a very long time only enhanced his sense of belonging.
Wrapping the night’s shadows around himself like a cloak, he stood beneath a large maple tree and watched a biker gang enjoying the ambiance of Ten Oaks Cemetery. Their idea of fun did not include showing respect for the dead.
Eight of them had roared up on bikes half an hour ago. The two who’d brought girls with them had made use of the scant privacy afforded by a pair of chipped and listing headstones to satisfy their sexual needs. They were now relaxing with their friends, lounging among the tall grass and weeds.
A scruffy blonde in a leather jacket finished off his beer, tossed the can over his shoulder and opened another. He took a swig just as one of his cohorts leaned over to deliver the punch line of a joke. The blonde laughed uproariously, spraying beer all over the headstone next to the fallen one on which his butt was perched. Another partygoer clambered to his feet and wandered off into the shadows only to return a minute later, zipping his fly.
Nick watched the goings-on with disgust. These animals had no respect for sacred ground. Or any other ground, as far as he could tell.
Over the past several weeks, he’d learned that the repulsive crew had ridden down from Baltimore, about twenty miles north, to enjoy the rural atmosphere of Howard County. School playgrounds, local parks, old cow pastures—they’d put their unique stamp on a number of spots. But Ten Oaks Cemetery seemed to be their favorite. Unfortunately for them.
The small burial ground was a stark contrast to Dayton Acres, a new development of two-story colonials that stood only a cornfield away. Not surprisingly, the owners weren’t eager to share their costly locale with a bunch of crude invaders. They’d complained to the cops, who had come out a few times but, failing to catch the bikers in any illegal acts, had more or less washed their hands of the problem.
Frustrated but determined, the homeowners’ association had taken matters into its own hands and hired Nick.
As Nick watched, two of the big lugs pushed over a gravestone. It fell to the ground with a thud and cracked in half.
“Oops!”
The witticism drew a burst of laughter from the leather-clad crowd.
“Okay, gentlemen, it’s time,” Nick muttered. He was going to enjoy scaring the spit out of these worthless jerks.
He was wearing one of his favorite outfits, a reproduction of an eighteenth-century highwayman’s costume—black shirt, black britches and high black boots. In his machine shop, he’d made two flintlock replicas, except instead of holding a single shot, they each held a sixteen-shot clip filled with blanks. He stuck the weapons into his belt, then donned the other props he’d brought—a hood and vest, both black. The hood was painted like a skull, while the vest was adorned with ribs and vertebrae, all in white fluorescent paint.
He hated to resort to cheap tricks, but he figured it was the fastest, cleanest way to get rid of these brainless slobs. And, really, he couldn’t suppress an evil grin as he imagined his quarries’ reactions to the surprise he had in store for them.
Halloween costume in place, he drew one of the pistols and stepped from under the shadows of the maple. In the next instant, he charged.
Moving with superhuman speed, feet barely touching the ground, he zoomed toward the gang. At the last second, just before reaching the blonde, he veered off, whipping past the little cemetery like a creature who had clawed his way up from one of the graves.
“Wha’ the hell was that?” one of the bikers gasped.
“Dunno,” his companion replied.
Nick changed his angle of attack. Weaving among the headstones, using the moves he’d learned in one of the video games he liked to play, he fired off a couple of blanks. Like a wraith out of “Phantom Combat,” he reached out with his free hand to knock over a couple of the revelers as he sped past.
The two guys cried out as they hit the ground. The women who’d come for fun and games screamed like banshees. Nick let loose with his best Tales from the Crypt cackle, then fired off a couple more shots.
By the time he wheeled around for another pass, the bikers and their lady friends were scrambling for their hogs. Only one of them was dumb enough to stay and challenge the supernatural intruder who had interrupted their party.
Nick recognized the moron as Butch McCard, the unofficial leader of the group. Reaching into his boot, McCard pulled out a small pistol and fired in Nick’s general direction. The bullet took a chunk off the top of a headstone five or six feet away.
“Big mistake,” Nick growled, zooming toward the shooter like a monster escaped from a horror movie, firing blanks from the pistols as he went.
The guy stumbled backward a few paces. “No! Please! Don’t kill me!”
“Be gone!” Nick roared. Suiting action to words, he shoved his pistol into his belt and jammed his hands into McCard’s armpits. Lifting the two-hundred-plus-pound man as if he were a bag of lemons, Nick tossed him so hard that he landed twenty feet away, in the cornfield beside the burial ground.
The jerk lay still for a moment, gasping for breath. Then he scrambled up and dashed toward his bike.
The engine wouldn’t start, and he desperately cranked the ignition, cursing like a sailor. When his bike roared to life, he didn’t even look back as he raced away into the night.
Nick stood at the edge of the cemetery, watching the departing figure and fighting a vague feeling of disappointment. The bikers hadn’t been much of a challenge.
Turning, he surveyed the beer cans and fast-food wrappers littering the ground. Cleanup wasn’t part of his job, but he returned to his hiding place, shucked his skeleton costume and pulled out the plastic garbage bag he’d brought along. He left the trash neatly at the side of the access road. Then, finished with the night’s work, he walked across the field to the car he’d hidden behind a tangle of honeysuckle vines, and headed for home.
He’d purchased the Victorian farmhouse and surrounding twenty-five acres when prices were still reasonable. From the outside, none of the eccentric renovations he’d made showed, changes made to bring the place up to his specifications—along with a few ideas borrowed from Batman.
The garage was underground, the ramp hidden by a door that looked like a wooden retaining wall. Behind the garage were his workshop and laboratory. He’d made certain that the contractor who had done the work would never tell anyone about it.
As far as the interior of the house went, Nick had done most of the work himself, utilizing some of the useful skills he’d acquired over the years. As he walked through the lower level to the restored first floor and looked around, he felt a familiar sense of satisfaction. His home was a showplace decorated with eighteenth-and nineteenth-century antiques. He’d made a satisfying life for himself here, and he intended to hang on to it as long as he could. Which was why he kept to himself. None of his neighbors and only a few of his clients had ever set foot inside the house, and he meant to keep it that way.
And yet…
His gut was telling him that change was coming. It had overtaken him too often in the past for him not to feel the vibrations. He wasn’t ready for it—he never was—but if time had taught him anything, it was that change was inevitable. It would come whether or not he was ready and, good or bad, he would have to face it.
Something else he’d learned—worrying about the future was energy wasted.
Moving quickly, he strode down the hall to his office, where his computer appeared as a strangely modern addition to the Winthrop desk on which it sat. Pulling up his chair, he typed a report on the evening’s activities for the Dayton Acres Community Association, attached a bill and e-mailed it to the organization’s president.
Not that he needed the money. He could have lived very nicely on his investments. But having once “enjoyed” a life of leisure, he knew he’d be bored witless inside a week if he didn’t keep busy.
He checked his e-mail for the next chess move from his opponent in Quito, Ecuador. Juan had moved his knight into a position that would prove vulnerable six moves down the line. In the library he moved the piece to its new position.
Work and play finished for the night, he went downstairs to the basement to set the alarm system—not a conventional alarm but something a lot more creative that he’d invented in his spare time. After crossing the unfinished section of the basement, he stepped through a doorway that led into a completely different environment: his private living quarters, with its comfortable lounge and bedroom, and an admittedly sybaritic bathroom.
Sleep tugged at him. Yet he sat for an hour on the wide leather couch in the lounge, surfing the hundreds of television channels beamed in through his satellite dish. He used all six screens, flicking through multiple images in four languages—English, Spanish, French and Arabic.
He knew why he was avoiding the inevitability of sleep, and in the privacy of his own thoughts, he could acknowledge the cowardice involved. He didn’t want to face the dreams that had been disturbing his slumber for the past few weeks.
Sometimes they were scenes from long ago, scenes that he had struggled to banish from his mind. He saw Jeanette again. He saw himself, bound and helpless. He saw a monster—a monster he recognized—leading Jeanette off to her death.
Then, as his dreaming self watched in confusion, Jeanette was transformed. Her sophisticated French upsweep had become straight, shoulder-length and blond. Her large brown eyes changed to blue, her small rosebud mouth widened into full, sensual lips and her complexion paled.
He was dreaming about another woman. He was certain he’d never met her, yet she returned again and again to haunt his sleep. At first, the dreams had all been nightmares of her death. Lately, though, things had taken a very different turn.
He’d be holding Jeanette in his arms, kissing her, making sweet love to her with all the tender emotions he had felt so long ago. And then, suddenly, it was the other woman he was holding, and all the passion he’d learned to keep tightly in check was unleashed. Their clothing vanished, and they were skin-to-skin close, chest to breasts, legs tangling together amid silky-soft sheets. His mouth devoured hers as he caressed her breast with one hand and, with the other, searched to find the slick heat between her legs. She lay back on the bed and held out her arms, and he came down on top of her…then awoke, blood pounding, breathing ragged, body covered with sweat.
He squeezed his eyes shut, struggling to banish the heated scene from his mind. He didn’t want to dream. Not of the few sweetly tender moments of love he’d shared with Jeanette, nor of her death or the fiend who had caused it. And certainly not of wildly erotic lovemaking with a woman who, if she even existed, he’d never met and could never hope to have.
Finally, when his body dictated that sleep was his only option, Nick wearily undressed and lay down on his bed. His last conscious thought was to hope that the dreams would leave him be.
“DAMIEN WANTS to speak to you.” The message was delivered with a verbal smirk that set Emma Birmingham’s teeth on edge.
Without glancing over her shoulder, she finished tucking in the sheet at the side of her narrow bed, one of eight in the crowded room where she’d been sleeping for the past couple of weeks. Shoulders tensed, she turned inquiringly toward Henry Briggs, the man who had shattered the relative tranquility of her morning—if anyone could be tranquil after so many nights of the same highly erotic but still unnerving dream she’d been having.
“Don’t keep him waiting,” Briggs added in a silky voice that carried more than a hint of warning.
Emma kept her own tone calm. “I’ll be right there. Just let me comb my hair and put on a little lipstick.”
“The Master will like you well enough without the primping.”
She started to offer a stinging retort, then clamped her mouth closed. Briggs was one of the men in Caldwell’s inner circle, and it was dangerous to anger him.
Quickly, before she could get herself into trouble, she grabbed her brown suede purse from the nightstand and slipped into the adjoining communal bathroom. Thankfully, her roommates had already gone to breakfast, so she had the bathroom to herself.
The face that peered back at her from the mirror was taut with anxiety, and Emma struggled to coax a dreamy look into her blue eyes. She’d seen that look often enough among the women, her sister, Margaret, included, who drifted like Stepford wives around the Refuge.
Her own mind was still functioning independently, but the place was getting to her in insidious ways. Not a night went by now that she wasn’t waking from the same shockingly vivid dream. At first, she’d had only nightmares, most of them about her own death—at the hands of Damien Caldwell.
In the past week, though, a new dream had replaced the nightmares. A dream about a darkly handsome man she had never met, yet he knew her, mind, body and soul, as no one else ever had. Her dream lover came to her out of a misty darkness, taking her into his arms, kissing and caressing her and soothing away all her fears—until he vanished, leaving her hot and frustrated.
She dragged in a breath and let it out slowly and evenly, reminding herself why she was staying in this scary little community.
A month ago she’d gotten a letter from her twin sister burbling about how she’d come to the Refuge for a self-actualization seminar and decided to stay. Emma knew it shouldn’t have surprised her. Their own mother had been a dud at raising a family, and Margaret was always searching for a sense of stability, of security, of home. Joanie Patterson had been married four times and had lived with more than a dozen guys. Luckily for her, only one of the marriages had resulted in offspring—twins—so she’d only had two daughters to neglect while she focused on the series of men in her life.
With the uncanny intuitive bond identical twins often shared, Margaret and she had taken turns mothering each other, with Margaret far more likely than Emma to get the laundry done or a hot dinner on the table when Mom failed to show.
The lack of actual parenting had made Emma independent, self-reliant, freewheeling. She’d been in and out of so many brief relationships that Margaret had warned her she’d end up like their mother if she wasn’t careful. The warning had brought her up short, and she’d been cautious—and unsatisfied—ever since.
She and her twin might look alike, but their personalities were very different. In fact, their home life had had just the opposite effect on her sister. Margaret was always solicitous and caring, but introverted and a bit insecure. While Emma had pursued her dream of becoming an artist who created beautiful pieces of silver jewelry, her sister had worked summers and afternoons in the quiet of a health food store and, later, as an accountant. And she had never stopped looking—unsuccessfully—for a father figure in the men she dated.
So at first Emma had been delighted to find out that Margaret was attending a self-actualization seminar in Maryland. It sounded as if her twin was branching out, and her latest enthusiasm wasn’t simply another inappropriate older man.
Yet something about her sister’s letter, saying she was staying indefinitely at the Refuge, had triggered Emma’s “twin intuition.” She had sensed that not all was well with her sister, so she had looked up Damien Caldwell on the Internet.
What she’d learned about him had made her stomach clench, starting with the title he’d made up for himself—the Master. She wanted to know where he had come from and how he’d become so successful so quickly, but there was no information about him prior to two years ago, when he’d bought the Refuge after the millionaire who owned it had died.
Since then, it appeared that Caldwell had run the estate—really, more like an entire enterprise—as a cult or a commune, using his self-help seminars as a lure to rope in converts. Apparently if the people who attended the seminars were susceptible to his…his what? Charisma? Mind control? then he would invite them to stay on.
Unfortunately, Margaret had turned out to be one of them. No surprise, really, given that the Master exuded “paternal” authority.
Worried about her sister, Emma had signed up for Caldwell’s weekend-long seminar. She’d hoped that, face-to-face, Margaret would respond to her, as she always had. But their former connection seemed to be lost, replaced by her twin’s devotion to Caldwell.
Worried sick and unable to abandon her sister, Emma had managed to come across as “worshipful” enough to be asked to stay at the Refuge—at least on a trial basis.
But this was the second time in the past few days that the Master had asked to see her alone. Why?
Did he know that in the middle of the day, when everyone was busy, she’d been sneaking around the mansion, looking through his private papers? Lord, if someone had seen her and told Caldwell, she was a dead woman. And she feared that was no exaggeration. People had disappeared from the Refuge. Usually it happened in the middle of the night, when everyone was sleeping. The next day, it was as if the person had never even existed, as far as the zombies living here were concerned.
Knowing she couldn’t keep Caldwell waiting any longer, she splashed cold water on her face and dried off with a paper towel. Then she hurried down the hall to the stairs.
The Master’s study was at the back of the mansion. As she stood before the closed door, she ordered her heart to stop pounding. It failed to cooperate.
“Come in,” his deep voice called out in response to her knock. “And close the door.”
As she stepped into the room, her gaze focused immediately on the man’s broad shoulders and shaggy dark hair, which he wore at shoulder length. That and his black coat made him look a little like a taller version of Johnny Cash in his prime. But there was nothing folksy about Damien Caldwell. He radiated a malevolent power. At least that was how he came across to her. A lot of other people, including her sister, obviously saw him differently.
He was standing by the French doors, gazing out across the manicured lawn that sloped down to the Miles River, but he turned from the window, fixing her with his penetrating gaze—more intense than the eyes of any other man she had met. She knew many people—both men and women—had lost themselves in their fathomless depths.
To distract herself, she focused on a tree outside the window.
“Thank you for coming, my dear. I know you must be eager to get to breakfast,” he said in the gravelly voice that grated on her nerve endings. His accent was strange—not anything she could identify except to know that it wasn’t American.
“I’m always glad to see you,” she answered.
“But you’re nervous,” he countered.
“Yes. Your personality is so…magnetic. When I’m with you, it’s hard for me to think.”
“Just relax. I wanted to compliment you on your work. How are you getting on with the other silversmiths?” he asked.
“Very well,” she answered, hoping it was true, now that she had tamped down her creative flair for design.
Caldwell had a genius for discovering people’s talents and putting them to work for the good of the commune. Some Refuge residents traveled to Baltimore every day to work in offices and bring their paychecks “home.” Some ran his e-mail-based publications business. Others did publicity for his seminars. Margaret was kept busy doing his bookkeeping. And still other residents, like her, had special talents that Caldwell could exploit.
Emma had learned her craft from Betty Blanchard, a master silversmith in Manitou Springs, Colorado. Two years after starting to work with Betty, she’d begun supporting herself on the sales from her original jewelry, first as an employee, then as a partner. Thank God Betty had been okay with her rushing off to Maryland. She understood the twin thing.
Caldwell moved from his place beside the window, gliding toward her almost as if his feet didn’t need to touch the floor. He stopped directly in front of her.
When he reached out a hand, she looked down at it. To her surprise, his nails were yellow and brittle, with grooves running from the nail beds to the tips. Even though his skin was smooth, those nails made him look a hundred years old.
She stood very still while he stroked her shoulder-length hair, her cheek, the side of her neck, her back.
Closing her eyes, she endured his touch. But when his hand drifted to the top of her breast, she took a quick step away.
“Don’t,” she said softly.
“You don’t enjoy intimacy?”
She had heard the women talking about their sexual experiences with Caldwell and had considered what to say if he put the moves on her. “I’ve had some bad experiences with men. That makes me cautious—even with you.”
He tipped his head to one side, studying her. “Speaking your mind is one of the qualities that makes you stand out.”
“Thank you,” she whispered. “If you meant it as a compliment.”
“I’m thinking about how I mean it,” he said with a chuckle.
But she wasn’t fooled. He truly was weighing her merits, and she was sure her very life hung in the balance.
“You should go on, before you miss breakfast.”
“Thank you,” she murmured, and she exited the room.
She had to get out of here. But how could she leave Margaret at this place?
She couldn’t. Not alone.
It was extremely hard for Emma to admit she needed help. If her mother’s example had taught her anything, it was that the only person she could rely on—besides Margaret—was herself. Now Margaret was lost to her. And every day she spent at the Refuge had driven her closer to the conclusion that this was a situation she couldn’t handle on her own.
So she had come up with Plan B.
The star of the not-fully-formulated plan was a man named Nicholas Vickers. She didn’t know him, but she thought he might help her. During her snooping in Caldwell’s office, she’d found a thick folder on Vickers, containing a lot of notes about his job as a private detective, as well as his personal life.
Reading between the lines, she’d gathered that Vickers and Caldwell were mortal enemies. She didn’t know why, exactly, but she had the feeling the animosity had something to do with a woman. Maybe someone Vickers had loved had come to the Refuge for a weekend seminar and had been brainwashed into staying. Whatever the case, she knew something bad had happened between the two men in the past. And she knew that Caldwell considered Nicholas Vickers a threat. Coming from the Master, that was a powerful endorsement.
She’d begun thinking of Vickers as a possible ally. As her own sense of helplessness had grown, she’d started pinning her hopes on him, praying he could help her get Margaret out of here. Maybe because she was stuck in such an untenable situation, she’d actually started daydreaming about his charging in here on a white horse and sweeping her and Margaret to safety.
Caldwell hadn’t included a picture of the man in his files, but she’d made up a persona for Nicholas Vickers. And she was pretty sure she had started dreaming about him, too. He was totally appealing with his dark good looks, quick mind and muscular body. A dangerous opponent, yet a man with compassion. An expert lover, knowing and strong, able to bring her both intense fulfillment and complete contentment. Not a bad man to have around to help her forget, for a little while, about this horrible place she so desperately needed to escape.
There was a flaw in her scenario, of course. She always awoke from the dreams sweaty, tangled in her sheet and unsatisfied.
And then she’d tell herself sex wasn’t the important issue. The important thing was convincing him to help her rescue Margaret. Was that crazy? Pinning her hopes on a man she didn’t know? Maybe she was just as wacky as everyone else here. She was sane enough, however, to realize that Nicholas Vickers could never live up to her fantasies about him, either as a lover or a rescuer of deluded women like Margaret. But he was the only hope Emma had, so she’d memorized his name, address and phone number.
A man passed her in the hall, giving her a speculative look, and she realized she was standing like a statue in the corridor.
Ducking her head away from him, she hurried to the communal dining room. Relieved to find it almost empty, she grabbed a piece of toast from the buffet—then hurried out to the workshop.
Chapter Two
At the end of the day, Damien Caldwell stood at the open French doors, watching the sun set across the river, admiring the glorious pinks and oranges of the sky. The sunset was a gift of nature, as were the green lawns and the flower beds his workers tended so diligently.
Long ago, he had thought he would never see the daylight again. But his skills and endurance had given it back to him, and it had never shone on a more lovely, bucolic setting than the one where he’d founded his latest commune.
There had been many such enclaves over the years—in France, Germany, Corsica, Italy, Turkey. He had lived in many lands. And he had amassed great wealth and power.
He chuckled. For a boy who had been born a slave, he’d done very well for himself. That long-ago boy had dreamed of changing the rules, of being the one to crack the whip and make the life-and-death decisions. Fate had given him the chance to realize the dream. Of course, his methods weren’t exactly politically correct by modern standards. He lived by rules he’d learned centuries ago. His hero was still that shining example of despotism, Machiavelli. And nobody had ever given him a reason to change his philosophy.
He’d come to the United States—the land of opportunity—early in the nineteen hundreds and settled in Pennsylvania. From there, he’d moved to northern California, then to southern Georgia. He always kept his eye out for property that suited his needs. As it happened, he’d heard the Refuge was for sale at a time when Georgia had become…uncomfortable for him. And so he’d become a resident of Maryland’s quaint, easy-paced eastern shore.
The fifty-acre estate was very private, yet close enough to both the Baltimore and Washington metro areas that his followers could keep their jobs while they served him.
A deferential tap on the door brought Damien out of his musings. “Come in,” he called.
Henry Briggs entered, closing the door behind him. Briggs was one of his most trusted lieutenants—trust being a relative term.
“What about Emma Birmingham?” Damien asked.
“She did her work all right,” Briggs replied. “But all day she was jumpy as a bullfrog on a griddle.”
“I was afraid of that. She’s been pretending to fit in, but she’s not really one of the chosen.”
“No.”
“Doubtless, she’s here to try to convince her sister to leave.”
Henry made a sound of agreement. He was the perfect yes man.
“I’m going to hold one of my special ceremonies tomorrow night. The lovely Emma Birmingham will be the sacrifice.”
“You want me to scoop her up and put her in a holding cell?”
Damien shook his head. “Not yet. Let her make her beautiful jewelry one more day.” He waited a beat, then added, “And, Henry, make certain you get the right woman. Emma looks very much like Margaret.”
“I know which is which. Emma’s the one with the crafty eyes.”
“Yes.” Damien nodded toward the door. “Leave me, now.”
After Briggs left, Damien moved restlessly around the room. He would take Emma Birmingham’s life. First, though, he wanted to take her sexually. She would never come willingly to his bed, so he would wait until she was in the holding cell. Then he could do anything he wanted.
EMMA STOOD in the darkness outside Caldwell’s office, her heart pounding wildly in her chest. She had to struggle not to sprint away like a frightened cat. If she did, Caldwell was sure to hear her.
When she’d seen where Henry Briggs was going, she’d ducked around the side of the house and crept up to the open French doors, praying that Caldwell wouldn’t step outside and catch her.
The conversation she overheard confirmed her worst fears. She hadn’t been fooling anybody. Caldwell knew her devotion to him was faked, and he’d made up his mind what to do about it. Unless she got out of here before tomorrow night, she was a dead woman.
She’d never been to one of his special ceremonies. They were attended only by his inner circle of followers. Once, when she was standing on the dock by the river, she had heard an eerie chanting coming from the grove in the woods where everyone knew the ceremonies took place. The sound had raised the hairs on the back of her neck. Something dark and ugly went on at those so-called ceremonies—she was sure of it. Now she knew it for a fact.
And she was slated to be the main attraction for the next one.
She had to get out of here. Now.
But how? How would she get past the guards and the electric fence? The chances were slim, and with Margaret in tow, they plummeted to near zero.
Emma’s fingers knitted together until they hurt as she tried to figure out what to do. Fantasies of being rescued by her dream lover, Nicholas Vickers, were just that—fantasies. She had to get herself and Margaret away from here on her own. And while she stood there in the gathering darkness, hidden by the shrubbery, a desperate plan began to form in her mind.
The question of whether it was hopeless to try to convince Margaret to leave had become irrelevant. She’d run out of time. Somehow she’d have to trick Margaret into leaving. The alternative—escaping alone—was…well, she just wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she abandoned her sister.
At dinner, Emma slipped away early, pretending she had to go to the bathroom. Then she hurried to her room and grabbed her purse.
Downstairs again, she waited for Margaret to come out of the dining room with the rest of the crowd.
Her sister spotted her immediately. “You were gone a long time.”
Forcing a little smile, Emma replied, “Yes, I stepped outside to admire the view.”
“It’s getting dark.”
“And it’s a lovely night. Let’s go down by the river, Marg.”
Margaret looked over her shoulder at the people headed for the common rooms inside the mansion. In the evening, they usually listened to music or played games like checkers and Monopoly, or they went to lectures given by Caldwell.
“Are you sure it’s okay to go out?” Margaret asked.
“Perfectly.” Emma took her sister’s arm. “It’s a step toward self-actualization, a merging of your spirit with the cosmos.”
The platitude came straight from a Caldwell lecture, and, thank God, Margaret seemed to recognize it. After a little resistance, she allowed herself to be led from the mansion and down the path toward the water.
Emma knew the way quite well. She had explored the grounds as much as possible, while being careful not to attract attention, looking for quick exits. Caldwell had a cabin cruiser moored at the end of the dock, but even if she had the key, the cruiser was beyond her navigational abilities.
The rowboat she’d spotted yesterday, however, was not. She was relieved to see that it was still pulled up on the beach near the pier, small waves lapping gently at its hull.
Emma looked out over the water. The Miles River wasn’t all that wide—less than a mile, she guessed, at the point where she stood—and she was in good shape. She could row the small boat to the opposite shore. Once she got Margaret that far…
Well, one step at a time. She’d worry later about how she’d convince her brainwashed sister to keep traveling away from the Refuge.
Of course, they’d be leaving behind everything they’d brought with them, including the car she’d rented at the airport. But that was nothing compared to their lives.
Fighting to keep her tone light and casual, she said, “Remember when we were kids, when Mom was married to Larry?”
“He was a jerk,” Margaret huffed.
“Yeah, but a rich jerk.”
Margaret chuckled—an encouraging sound given her near-robotic state. If she could still laugh, maybe she was still capable of thinking about something besides the crap Damien Caldwell had drummed into her head.
“Remember Larry had that cottage up at Moonlight Lake?” Emma said. “We’d go swimming there.”
After a brief pause, Margaret replied, “That was fun.”
“Yeah, it was. And sometimes we’d take his boat out.”
“We were too young to be doing that unsupervised,” Margaret said in a tone that echoed her old, ultraresponsible persona.
“Well, we’re not too young to do it now.” Emma gestured toward the rowboat. “Let’s go for a ride. You can be captain—just like the old days.”
Her sister eyed the small craft. “I don’t think we’re supposed to go for boat rides. We’d better ask first.”
Emma felt her desperation rising. “If you ask and they say no, I’ll be really disappointed. Come on.” She tugged on her sister’s arm. “Let’s just do it. Do it for me, Marg.”
Margaret dug her heels into the sand and eyed the water. “It’s getting dark and…sort of spooky.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s beautiful. Look at the stars. You used to love the night sky, remember? We’d lie on our backs and you’d point out constellations. I’ve forgotten them, though, so you could show them to me again.”
“No!” Suddenly Margaret let out a high-pitched yelp and shoved her away.
“Quiet! Someone will hear you,” Emma ordered, reaching for her sister.
But Margaret kept backing away. “I know what you’re trying to do, Emma. You’re trying to kidnap me. They warned me that you might.”
“Shhh!” She tried to cover Margaret’s mouth—and felt her sister’s teeth sink into her finger. “Ow! Margaret, stop it! Someone’s going to hear us.”
“Good! I want them to hear me. I’m going to find the men and tell them what you’re doing. You never really embraced Damien’s lessons—his wisdom and kindness. I know you, Emma. I know you’re too independent to be a follower of any philosophy, no matter how good and true it is. You’ve been lying to me—and, worse, to the Master—saying you believe. But you don’t and you never will.” Margaret wrenched herself from Emma’s grasp and started running.
As she watched her sister’s retreating back, Emma felt her throat clog with tears. Now what? Knock her sister out and drag her onto the damned boat?
When she started to follow Margaret, Emma heard her sister shouting, “It’s my sister! She’s trying to kidnap me! I need help!” And in that instant, Emma saw her choices swept away.
She had to leave. Now.
Before they could catch her, she pushed the little boat into the water. Then she climbed in, sat on the center seat and grabbed the oars, conveniently left ready in the oarlocks. It had been a long time since she’d rowed a boat, but it came back to her. She maneuvered the craft around, pointing the bow at the opposite bank, then began rowing in earnest, the oar tips digging deep into the dark water. As she pulled swiftly away from the shore, she glanced over her shoulder and saw Margaret running down the path—followed by two of the guards.
“Come back!” one of them shouted.
It was fully dark now, but the pole light at the end of the dock provided all the illumination necessary for her to see the man taking off his shoes and slacks. Oh, God, he was coming after her.
In the next instant, a volley of bullets sprayed the water, missing the boat by inches.
Emma cursed, wishing she had a weapon to defend herself. Ted, another of her stepfathers, had been big into self-protection, and he’d dragged them all, her mother included, to the shooting range on a regular basis. At the time she’d hated any suggestions that came from the creep, but she’d since come to appreciate knowing her way around firearms.
Not that the knowledge was doing her a bit of good right now. She’d been afraid to bring a gun with her to the Refuge. Which meant her only option was to row like hell until she was out of range—and hope the gunman’s aim didn’t improve.
She thought she must have succeeded when the shooting stopped. She breathed out a sigh of relief—then heard a splash that told her the guy who’d been stripping on the dock had plunged into the river.
In quick over-the-shoulder glances, she saw him swimming toward her—and catching up. Groaning, she forced her burning arm muscles to row faster until, finally, she was outpacing him. By the time she was three quarters of the way across the river, he gave up and turned around.
She muttered a prayer of thanks, knowing she wasn’t home free. For all she knew, Caldwell had people stationed on the other side of the river. All it would take was a call to a cell phone, and his goons could be waiting to snatch her when she landed. Even if the guards weren’t already in place, they could drive over the bridge a few miles upstream and still be there to catch her.
In all of her life, Emma had never been so frightened. With the palms of her hands blistering and her muscles screaming under the strain of pulling the oars, she rowed for her life—and for Margaret’s. She had come this far, had escaped Caldwell’s horribly misnamed Refuge, and she could damn well make it the rest of the way.
She had to make it. For herself and for Margaret.
A speedboat came racing up the river. It seemed to be heading directly toward her, and her whole body went rigid. What if it was full of Caldwell’s men? Or what if it rammed into her in the darkness? Either way, she’d be dead. As the speedboat came closer, she prepared to leap over the side of the rowboat.
When the larger craft sped by, she sagged in relief. She could hear people laughing and talking—vacationers, probably, or local residents out having fun on the river. For a minute or two, she slumped over the oars, breathing hard.
She wanted to curse at her sister for turning her in—for getting them both into this mess in the first place. But she knew it wasn’t Margaret’s fault. Her mind was like a sponge for Caldwell’s orders, and she was behaving as he had trained her to act. How long did Margaret have before her brain turned completely to mush? Was there a point beyond which she would be irrevocably lost?
Or would something even worse happen? Would Caldwell punish Margaret for her sister’s disobedience?
Emma straightened, her gaze fixed on the moonlit shoreline ahead. In her effort to save Margaret, had she, in fact, signed her twin’s death warrant?
Should she go back?
The rowboat had lost its forward momentum and was drifting with the current. She let it drift, while she sat caught in a storm of emotions more intense and painful than anything she’d experienced in a very long time.
She might have gone on sitting there, trapped by indecision, if a single thought hadn’t finally bubbled to the surface of the turmoil inside her head: Nicholas Vickers.
He would know what to do. He could help her save Margaret. She just had to find him and…and what? Tell him to don his armor, saddle his white charger and come to her rescue?
Emma snorted in self-disgust. How stupid could she be, pinning all her hopes on a stranger? She had no control over her subconscious, the irrational part of her that had turned Vickers into her ideal man—Sir Galahad and the perfect lover rolled into one. But common sense and experience told her that he would turn out to be just a regular, ordinary guy, nothing special. If she was lucky—and it was a big “if”—he wouldn’t be a complete jerk. And he would help her.
She needed help. That much was crystal clear. Desire and determination weren’t enough. She lacked the skills and training necessary to free Margaret, willing or not, from Caldwell and his guards. If Nicholas Vickers wouldn’t lend his expertise to her cause, she’d have to find someone else who would.
Meanwhile, she could only pray that Margaret had bought herself some favorable treatment by trying to abort her sister’s escape attempt and by refusing to go with her.
Feeling marginally better for having come to a decision, Emma took note of the rowboat’s position. The shore was only a couple of hundred yards away—a good thing, since her arms and shoulders felt like rubber. It occurred to her, though, that enough time had passed that Caldwell’s goons could well be waiting to pick her up when she landed.
She allowed the boat to drift past several docks belonging to large estates. Finally, when she thought she’d gone far enough downstream, she gathered what was left of her strength, rowed the rest of the way to shore and climbed out.
She started to pull the boat onto the beach, then hesitated, realizing she might as well post a sign that read This is Where Emma Birmingham Landed. She should probably sink the boat. Or she could use it as a decoy.
Giving the boat a shove, she pushed it into the water again, wading in to give it another good shove, then watching as the current grabbed it and took it away. With a little luck, it would serve to throw the Refuge guards off her trail. They might even think she’d drowned.
Exhausted and bedraggled, she looked around to get her bearings.
In front of her was a scraggly wood, full of underbrush, but a little way to the right lay a wide expanse of well-tended lawn. And on that lawn, set well back from the river, was a very large house with lights showing in many of its windows. Maybe the people inside would help her.
Or shoot her as an intruder. Or set the family Rottweilers on her. That, she thought, would really be the final straw.
Yet if she walked to the road, Caldwell’s men could be waiting to scoop her up.
She swiped a hand through her hair and sighed. Given the choices, she decided, the house was the lesser of the evils. She started toward it, but she hadn’t trudged more than twenty feet when a large, masculine hand clamped down on her shoulder.
She opened her mouth to scream—but she didn’t have the chance. The man’s other hand clamped itself firmly over her mouth.
Chapter Three
Emma twisted in her captor’s arms. Shooting out a foot, she caught him in the shin and was gratified to hear him grunt. But he didn’t let her go. She managed another kick, and he muttered a curse.
“Take it easy,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Like hell. She kept struggling and pounding him with all her strength, determined to go down fighting.
“If you’ve escaped from Caldwell’s estate, I’m on your side,” he puffed. “So stop trying to do me bodily harm.”
When she kept fighting, his voice took on an urgent note. “I’ll trust you, if you trust me. I’ll take my hand off your mouth if you promise not to scream. Nod if you agree.”
She could always change her mind later.
She nodded, and when he took his hand away, she spun around to face him. “Who are you?” she demanded.
“Alex Shane. With the Light Street Detective Agency. I was hired to investigate the disappearance of a woman named Anabel Lewis. I have reason to think she’s at the Refuge. Do you know her?”
Feeling light-headed, as if she might actually faint, Emma tried to gather her wits. “Anabel. Yes. I do know her. She sleeps in the room next to mine.”
“So she’s okay?”
“As okay as you can be at the Refuge.”
“Tell me about it.” He looked around. “Let’s get out of here.”
“How did you find me?”
“I was doing some surveillance, and I saw you on Caldwell’s dock—fighting with some woman. Then I heard shouting, and I saw you take off in the rowboat.”
Emma sighed. “The woman is my sister. She ratted me out to Caldwell’s guards. She’s… This isn’t going to make any sense to you, I know, but she’s under some kind of mind control—brainwashed, or something. That’s what Caldwell does to people. Your Anabel Lewis is in the same shape.”
“It does make sense. But come on, we’d better get out of here.” As he spoke, he ushered her along the shore.
Suddenly, from the darkness of the woods, she heard the crackle and tromping of feet running through the underbrush. Then came men’s voices, low and urgent.
“This way. I saw her land a few minutes ago.”
“But the boat’s—”
“I don’t give a damn about the boat. I tell you, I saw her land. She’s got to be around here somewhere.”
Swift as a hawk in the night, Alex Shane grabbed Emma and pulled her into the woods, behind a clump of tall, straight pine trees. A few seconds later, two men rushed past.
She heard the rustle of fabric. Then moonlight glinted off a gun in Shane’s hand. Neither one of them spoke as more men moved toward them, their voices lower now.
She felt Shane tense. Lord, would he really shoot these guys? Her knees weakened as the men moved past them.
Shane waited to make sure nobody else was coming, then he took her hand, whispering, “Come on.”
Without any urging, she followed as he led her through the woods to the lawn surrounding the well-lit mansion. They skirted the house, then walked through another stand of trees to the edge of the road, where an SUV was parked beneath a tangle of vines. In the darkness, the sweet smell of honeysuckle drifted toward her.
She collapsed into the front seat as Shane started the engine, pulled onto the road and drove away. He didn’t turn on his lights, though, until they’d traveled at least a couple of miles.
“So how did you end up at the Refuge?” he asked.
Emma drew a couple of steadying breaths before answering. “My sister took a self-actualization course from Damien Caldwell and decided to burrow in. I came to try to dig her out. That was two weeks ago. I’ve been pretending to be a believer, but…well, I’m not much of an actress. Caldwell knew I was faking it, and…and I heard him tell one of his henchmen he was going to kill me.”
He whistled through his teeth. “Lucky you got away.”
“They probably would have snagged me over here if you hadn’t come along. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. The Refuge is a scary place these days. I’ve been over by boat, at night, a couple of times.” He looked regretful. “If this were the bad old days, I would have stayed and tried to forcibly collect Ms. Lewis. But I’ve got a wife and two kids now, so risking life and limb is no longer part of the job description.”
“You risked your neck just spying over there.”
He snorted. “Those odds were acceptable. I worked for the previous owner of the estate,” Shane continued. “I know what the layout used to be. Tell me what you think has been changed since Caldwell took over—things that look new or like they might have been altered.”
“It probably looks like it always did, except that the bedrooms on the upper floors have been divided up and turned into dormitories, with communal bathrooms added.”
“So what are you going to do about your sister?”
She hesitated a moment, questioning the wisdom of sharing her plans with a stranger. But then, the stranger had saved her butt. Besides, she knew intuitively that Alex Shane was on the side of the angels.
“As a matter of fact,” she said, “I had another detective in mind.”
“Who?” he inquired.
“A man named Nicholas Vickers.”
“Don’t know him.”
Well, so much for recommendations. “Apparently he had a run-in with Caldwell. I’m hoping that puts him on my side.”
Shane was quiet for a minute or two. Then, seeming to come to a decision, he said, “If I know an operation is going down, I might be able to get some guys from our agency to act as backup.” He reached into his pocket and handed her a card. “As I said, I’m with the Light Street Detective Agency. The main office is in Baltimore, but I hold down the fort on the eastern shore.”
“Thanks,” Emma said, taking the card and shoving it into her handbag. They had reached the center of St. Stephens.
“Do you live around here?” Shane asked.
“No, I’m from Manitou Springs, Colorado.”
“You’re a long way from home.” He was silent for a moment, chewing his bottom lip. “It’d be easier for you to evade Caldwell in a city—some place big enough to get lost and stay lost. What if I drive you into Baltimore?”
Again, she had to fight off the tears clogging her throat. “You’d do that for me?”
“Sure.” He tossed her a crooked grin. “I admire your grit. Besides, you could turn out to be a valuable witness against Caldwell.”
She sighed. “Yeah, but he’s careful. And his worshippers are loyal. Even if the cops raided the place tonight, I bet they wouldn’t come up with any evidence that would lead to an arrest.”
“Caldwell may be careful, but nobody’s perfect,” Shane said. “He’ll have slipped up somewhere. Until we find his Achilles heel, we need to keep you safe. So let me tell my wife I’m driving you across the Bay Bridge.”
He pulled the SUV onto the shoulder and picked up his cell phone. Emma listened to his conversation with his wife—she could hardly have avoided it—and was impressed with how warm and close their relationship obviously was.
Funny how it still surprised her that there were people who could make marriage work. She found it reassuring, even if she herself hadn’t yet managed the feat. She’d long since stopped getting involved with complete jerks and losers, but it occurred to her that she’d gone to the opposite extreme by dating men so dull and lacking in passion that they bored her to tears.
Maybe, someday, she’d find a middle ground….
“All set.” Shane dropped his cell phone into a cup holder, pulled back onto the road and headed out of town.
Exhausted, Emma slumped in her seat and, without meaning to, fell asleep. When she woke, Shane had pulled up in front of a Days Inn.
“You’re about three blocks from the inner harbor,” he said. “There are lots of places there to shop, if you need to replace your clothes and stuff.”
“Thanks, yes, I will have to,” Emma replied.
“This hotel isn’t the most expensive around, but it isn’t cheap.” He cleared his throat. “Do you have enough money for the bill?”
“I have a credit card.”
He shook his head. “Don’t use it. Caldwell could track you if you do.”
She checked her wallet. “I’ve got two hundred in cash.”
“That ought to do it.”
She turned in her seat to look at him directly. “I don’t know how to thank you. I’d never have—”
Shane shook his head. “We’re square. You helped me out by sharing your information about the Refuge.”
They weren’t square. He’d saved her life. “I’m truly grateful.”
Emma watched him drive away, then staggered into the hotel lobby.
She wondered if they were going to let her in looking like a refugee from a third-world country.
THE ROUGH-LOOKING MAN had been sitting in the corner of the biker bar for the past hour, nursing a beer and trying not to breathe too deeply. The place smelled like a men’s room, with an overlay of booze and cigarette smoke.
Not his kind of scene. But in his two days’ growth of beard, uncombed hair and leather jacket, he figured he blended in okay—except for his lack of tattoos and piercings.
A biker with a picture of a cobra decorating his arm swaggered by and propped himself against the bar, allowing room for his beer belly.
“Hey, Snake,” one of his buddies called out.
“Yo,” the cobra guy answered.
That’s what I need, the observer thought. A colorful name. A handle. He could call himself…Trailblazer. Yeah, Trailblazer would do just fine.
Scanning the crowd at the bar, he shook his head in disgust. It wasn’t yet noon, but the place was already full of guys who drank their breakfast. Finally, when he’d had enough of the toxic gas that passed for air, he decided it was time to make his move.
Bellying up to the bar, he ordered another beer. When it came, he took a sip, then turned to the man next to him—a young punk named Butch McCard, the leader of the biker gang and a regular patron of the bar.
“I hear you ran into a little trouble last night,” he said to McCard.
McCard’s eyes sharpened on him momentarily. “What’re you talkin’ about?”
“Trouble in Ten Oaks Cemetery,” Trailblazer clarified.
McCard’s head snapped around. “Keep your nose out of that.”
“What if I can help you?”
“How?”
“How about the name of the bastard who broke up your private party?”
Trailblazer kept his face impassive when McCard grabbed his shirt and demanded, “What the hell do you know about it?”
Trailblazer cautiously shrugged off the offending hand. “We’ve been keeping an eye on Nicholas Vickers.”
“Who is he?”
Jeez, McCard really was a moron. Patiently, he explained, “He’s the guy who crashed your party.”
“Oh yeah?”
“He sleeps during the day. He sleeps real sound, so you should be able to fix him good without him ever knowing.” Seeing the look of interest in McCard’s eyes, Trailblazer held out a slip of paper. “You want his address?”
A hammy hand snatched the paper from him. It was almost comical watching the bleary-eyed McCard try to read the address.
“Hey, dude, thanks,” the biker said. “What’s your name?”
“Trailblazer.”
“You want to come with us, Blaze?”
“Naw. Just get him for me.”
As McCard strode over to one of his buddies, Trail-blazer slipped from the bar and into the morning sunshine, whistling.
NICK STIRRED in his sleep. He was dreaming about a time long ago, when the wife of the Duke of Monmouth had given the cut direct to the wife of the Baron of Bridgewater. The little drama had been the talk of the ton for half the social season. He had shaken his head at the gossip, at a society that had nothing more important to focus on than who was snubbing whom.
Suddenly, in the way of dreams, he was somewhere else. It was 1850, and he had taken up residence at a castle outside St.-Paul-de-Vence. He had traveled all through Europe, trying to escape the boredom of his life, looking for some purpose and meaning. Finally, he thought he’d found it—a man who called himself the Master and who promised his followers untold wisdom. He was captivated by the Master’s charisma and his idealism so he joined his enclave.
One night, peasants from the region attacked the castle. Without wondering why they would do such a thing, Nick joined in the defense—and got shot in the stomach.
The pain was excruciating, and he knew the wound meant certain death.
“Kill me now. Put an end to it,” he begged the Master.
“I may be able to save you,” his mentor replied.
“How?”
“How is not important. What matters is, if you survive the process, you will no longer be human. You will be like me. You will live forever. I believe it to be an excellent trade-off, but you must make the decision for yourself.”
Barely coherent, in agony from the pain in his gut, his reply came in gasped bursts. “Yes. Do it, please.”
The Master sat on the side of the bed and bent toward him, and he felt the first shiver of fear. He had no idea what was about to happen, only a vague sense that, afterward, nothing would ever be the same again. Yet any protest he might have uttered stayed locked in his throat. He did not want to die.
He cried out as he felt the Master’s sharp teeth fasten on his neck. And he cried out again as he felt the blood being drawn out of him. Terror shuddered through him but was quickly dispelled by an overwhelming sense of peace and well-being that seemed to invade his mind. The feeling was accompanied by the Master’s voice, though he heard no one speaking aloud.
“Rest,” the voice said to him. “You will be well soon. Just rest….”
Again, Nick tossed in his sleep, shaking his head against the pillow and muttering, “No…don’t… God, no…”
As if he had been granted temporary mercy, the scene changed. And suddenly he was in another place, another time.
A pine forest, deep and dark and shrouded in mist. Through the mist, a woman walked toward him, holding out her arms. A wind blew through the trees, and her hair and her white gown billowed out behind her. Jeanette, he thought at first. Then he saw the blond hair and knew it was not she but another woman. The woman whose name he didn’t know but who had been haunting his sleep for so many nights.
“Who are you?” he asked her.
She smiled. “We’ll meet soon.”
“No,” he said. “Leave me while you can.”
“Let me be with you.”
“No!” He gave a near-violent shake of his head. “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”
For a charged moment, neither of them moved. Then, before he could back away, she closed the distance between them and wrapped him in her embrace. Her female scent enveloped him, and the contact of her body pressed to his set up an unbearable ache inside him. When she raised her lips to his, he was lost.
The first touch of his mouth on hers set off sparks that should have set the pine forest ablaze. Heat crackled through him, heat and longing such as he hadn’t felt in decades, almost unbearable in its intensity. He knew it was the same for her because she made a small, shocked sound deep in her throat.
That sound was his undoing. That and the soft caress of her lips against his. They were so sweet and yielding, and at the same time so charged with wild, unvarnished need. Her need kindled his own. He forgot the rules he’d set to govern his life. Forgot about morality and honor. His only reality was the yielding woman he held in his arms.
Gathering her closer, he moved his lips over hers, then sighed in relief as she opened for him. Her mouth was the sweetest thing he had ever tasted. And as he pressed her breasts against his chest, he felt the frantic beating of her heart. Or maybe it was his own heartbeat that he felt. He could no longer tell.
Some rational part of his mind was still issuing warnings. This must stop. He must break away from her before it was too late. But his mouth continued to devour hers, and instead of letting her go, he shifted her in his arms so that he could cup one soft breast. His fingers stroked the hardened tip, wringing a sob of pleasure from her. She pressed against him, silently demanding more, and he gladly gave it.
Picking her up in his arms, he carried her to a table that had materialized out of the mist. He lay her upon it, then began unbuttoning the front of her gown, his shaking fingers clumsy as he undid each button.
Pushing the fabric aside, he looked at her breasts. They were lovely and rounded, the nipples a soft pink and beautifully puckered for him. He slid his fingers back and forth across those tight buds, feeling his whole body go rigid.
He wanted to plunge deep inside her again and again until he found release. And he wanted more—the ultimate joining for the creature he had become. The slits at the sides of his mouth ached with an intensity he had rarely felt. Even when his fangs slid out, the pain didn’t go away.
He wanted her blood with a shattering urgency. He felt he would go mad if he didn’t taste that part of her.
Tipping her head back, he stroked his tongue against the slender column of her throat. Then he pressed his fangs against her pale skin.
“I want you inside me,” she said. “And I want the rest of it, too.”
He raised his head and stared down at her. “How do you know about the rest of it?”
She only smiled at him.
Her willingness seemed to bring him partially to his senses. “No, I can’t…”
“Do it,” she whispered.
“No.”
“Are you afraid?” she challenged.
He didn’t know the answer. And while he hesitated, the woman evaporated, leaving his arms empty—and his body hot and heavy with unfulfilled need.
Nick clawed his way out of sleep and lay panting on the bed. Bloody hell. It had all been so vivid…so real. Was the woman a fantasy—something his mind had conjured because he’d been so long abstinent?
Or was she real? And if she was…where was she?
EMMA WOKE disoriented. She had been in the arms of her fantasy lover, Nicholas Vickers. And then he had vanished into thin air. His face was so clear in her mind. Dark, brooding, his eyes deep set, his nose a Roman blade, his jaw square and firm. And his mouth…
Dear Lord, his mouth… It was positively wicked—those deliciously sensual lips tantalizing her skin, that expert tongue exploring her mouth and drawing trails down her neck and across her breasts, and those fine, white teeth, nipping and gently biting and…and something else. Something more about his teeth. Something she didn’t want to think about.
She reached out with one hand, sliding it over the cool sheet beside her. She was alone.
Well, of course she was. The man had appeared in her dreams only because she had been focused on him when she went to sleep.
She stretched, still slightly disoriented. The mattress beneath her was soft, the sheets crisp. They gave off a clean, fresh smell as she moved, rustling them. The blackout blinds at the windows kept all but a slim shaft of light around the edges from filtering through the window.
Without lifting her head from the pillow, she turned to the right and focused on the lighted face of the clock on the bedside table. Ten-thirty! She’d thought she would toss and turn all night and get up early, but she’d slept for a good ten hours.
She had work to do. Every moment she left her sister at the Refuge was a moment too long. She’d debated briefly with herself last night about calling the cops, but she’d quickly decided against it. Margaret hadn’t been kidnapped. If she were questioned, she’d say she was at the Refuge of her own free will, as would anyone else the police might ask.
Emma took a hot shower, then got dressed, glad that she’d washed her underwear the night before. It was still a little damp, so she used the hair dryer on it. Dressed in last night’s clothes, she took the elevator down to see what she could do about supplementing her wardrobe in the gift shop.
She had just purchased a Charm City T-shirt and was about to step into the lobby when she saw a man approach the front desk. Her blood ran cold when she realized who he was—Mort Frazier, one of the guys from Damien Caldwell’s inner circle.
As she stood behind a display rack of scarves near the shop entrance, she watched Frazier approach the desk, which was only a short distance away.
“Can you give me Ms. Birmingham’s room number?” he asked the desk clerk politely.
The clerk pulled an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, sir. I’m not allowed to give out that information. You can call her on the house phone.”
Frazier grimaced. “I know you’re following the rules, but I’m her brother. I don’t want to call ahead. She doesn’t know I’m in town, and I was hoping to surprise her.”
The clerk hesitated.
“Please. She’ll love opening her door and seeing me.”
Emma waited with her heart pounding.
The clerk looked over her shoulder to make sure nobody on the staff was watching her, then she leaned forward and whispered the room number.
So much for privacy rules. Emma clenched her fists, wishing she had the time to get the woman fired. But then, as Frazier strode to the elevator, she realized that the clerk might have done her a favor. Without her room number, Frazier probably would have waited in the lobby for her to appear. This way, she had a chance to escape before he figured out that she wasn’t in her room.
As soon as the elevator doors closed behind him, Emma slipped out the hotel’s front entrance and walked rapidly in the direction Alex Shane had said led toward the inner harbor.
She had followed Shane’s advice and not used her credit card when she’d booked the room the previous night, but it hadn’t occurred to her to use a false name. Had Caldwell’s men called a bunch of hotels looking for her? Or did they have some other, secret source of information?
No matter how they’d found her, she’d made a lucky escape. Still, she kept looking over her shoulder as she walked to Light Street, where she found the harbor, restaurants and all kinds of attractions for tourists. At an ATM in a shopping pavilion, she withdrew the daily maximum allowable amount from her account, then she made for the exit. Thinking hard, planning her next move, she crossed the street to the Ramada Renaissance hotel, where she booked a shuttle to BWI Airport, alternating between the lobby and the ladies’ room until it arrived.
At the airport, she went to the first rental car company she came to and used her credit card to pay for a vehicle. She had no choice; car rental companies required the use of a credit card, and she required the use of a car. Still, her nerves were jumping until she was on the road again.
She watched the rearview mirror as much as the road ahead until she was well away from BWI.
At a drugstore in a little town called Elkridge, she consulted a phone book, then called the closest gun shop and found out that, in Maryland, since she wasn’t under twenty-one or suffering from a mental disorder, she could walk in and buy a gun without a waiting period. An hour later, she had a Sig Sauer P210 tucked into the compartment of her driver’s door. Again she used her credit card. Then she cleared out of the area, heading south, toward D.C.
The risk was worth it. With the weapon beside her, she felt a lot more secure.
Her next stop was at a Wal-Mart. She didn’t want to show up at Nicholas Vickers’s house to ask for help with her clothes looking as if they’d been run through a boot camp obstacle course. She bought clean jeans, a couple of T-shirts, tennis shoes, and a toothbrush and toothpaste. After changing in the ladies’ room and brushing her teeth, she felt more like herself. And much more secure about making a decent impression.
Storm clouds were gathering in the west as she consulted the detailed street map she’d picked up in Wal-Mart. With Vickers’s address still imprinted on her brain, she quickly saw that she’d been closer to his place in Elkridge. She plotted a circuitous route that would take her northwest, and headed for the private detective’s home.
It was a long drive, over an hour, and as the sky grew darker and more ominous, so did Emma’s thoughts. An odd sense of fate seemed to be drawing her forward, toward Nicholas Vickers. As if she were seeking him out not merely because he was a private investigator and Damien Caldwell loathed him, but because of her dreams and fantasies as well. As if she and Vickers really did have some intuitive connection, the way she and Marg did—or used to before Damien Caldwell sucked all the autonomy out of Margaret’s brain.
All day she’d been focused on getting away from Caldwell’s goons and getting to Nicholas Vickers. As her thoughts turned to her twin, she held back tears. Gritting her teeth, she blinked to clear her vision.
She had no time for tears. She had to help her sister. And finding Nicholas Vickers was her best option. She hoped.
When she finally turned onto the rural road where Vickers lived, the clouds hanging low in the sky had turned the afternoon as dark as midnight. Lightning crackled, making her feel as if she were an actor in a horror movie.
The map showed no other access to the narrow, poorly maintained country lane, and no houses peeked through the trees as she drove by. It appeared that Vickers had no close neighbors. Yet when she had gone a few hundred yards, Emma saw a bunch of motorcycles parked on the gravel shoulder beside the crumbling blacktop. Was Mr. Vickers hosting a biker convention?
She slowed the car, craning her neck, looking for the riders, but she saw no one.
The wind began to blow, and a shaft of lightning split the sky, followed a few seconds later by a long roll of thunder. It was followed almost immediately by another flash and, within a shorter interval, another rumble. The storm was going to break soon. Emma sped up, trying to beat the rain.
A little farther along the lane, she rounded a curve and saw a beautiful, large Victorian farmhouse, complete with gingerbread and a wraparound porch. She felt a flood of relief at the sight. It looked so very nice and normal.
Her relief was short-lived, dying as soon as she spotted a cluster of tough-looking young men on the left side of the house. Clad in dirty jeans and leather jackets, they were sneaking along, hugging the foundation. One of them was carrying something red. Something that looked suspiciously like a can of gasoline.
NICK WOKE WITH A START. He glanced at the clock and saw that it was just after seven—still well before sunset at this time of year. Unless something unusual happened, he normally slept until dark.
Wondering what was going on outside his private lair, he sat up and reached for the controls that activated the security cameras, which were set to show exterior views of the house. Pressing the remote, he opened the floor-to-ceiling drapes along the wall opposite his bed, uncovering the eight screens that displayed what the cameras were picking up.
Seven of the screens showed nothing out of the ordinary except that the sky was already as black as night. But the eighth riveted his attention.
There, on the east side of his house, he saw the Ten Oaks graveyard gang.
Bloody hell! How the devil had they found him?
As he watched the screen, Nick saw lightning fork through the storm-gathered clouds. A second or two later, he heard a massive clap of thunder. And in the next second, a car pulled into view.
Now what?
Hitting the remote again, he switched on the sound and heard the bikers speaking.
“Hurry up. If it starts to rain, the fire will go out.”
“Not with gasoline, man. This old place will go up like an oil refinery.” He punctuated the comment with an evil laugh.
Nick muttered another curse as he leaped out of bed and reached for the black highwayman’s britches he’d draped over a chair the night before. Pulling them on and jamming his feet into the high boots, he paused only long enough to turn off the basement alarm system. Then, throwing open the bolt on the door into the storage area, he raced for the stairs.
WIDE-EYED, Emma stared at the man with the gas can as he took off the cap and doused the foundation of Nicholas Vickers’s clapboard house. When he pulled a cigarette lighter from his pocket, she grabbed her new gun and jumped out of the car.
“Hold it right there!” she shouted, pointing the automatic at the would-be arsonists.
The guys’ heads all jerked up, and to a man, their jaws dropped open in shock.
“Jeez! What’s a broad doing here?”
Emma felt her adrenaline pumping, but she managed to keep her voice steady as she replied, “Making sure you don’t do something stupid.”
“You’re the one acting stupid, honey, stickin’ your pretty little nose in where it doesn’t belong,” one of them called out tauntingly, taking a step toward her. “Put the gun down, and we won’t hurt you.”
In answer, she squeezed off a shot, aiming for the ground right in front of the thug’s feet. The bullet kicked up dirt, and the guy stopped in his tracks.
“If you don’t want me to aim for your crotch, get the hell out of here.”
Some of the gang looked ready to run. But she soon learned that a couple of them had come armed with more than a cigarette lighter. One pulled a small pistol from his boot and raised the weapon. Another pulled an automatic from the waistband of his pants.
Faced with the decision to shoot one of these guys, Emma hesitated a split second too long.
The bikers had no such compunctions. A bullet slammed into her body, and she staggered backward, dropping her gun to wrap her arm around her middle.
“That’ll teach you to mess with us,” the shooter called out, advancing on her.
He was going to kill her—Emma knew it as surely as she knew her name. Gritting her teeth, she tried to stagger away.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he taunted. “You think I can’t follow you into the bushes? Come to think of it, that would be kind of fun.”
She didn’t bother to answer. Then she saw something strange behind the biker.
Chapter Four
Bloody hell! What was she doing here?
No mistaking who she was—he recognized her immediately. The woman from his dreams.
But this was no dream. He was wide awake, and from his vantage point on the porch, Nick saw one of the bikers advancing on the woman, gun in hand, ready to finish the job he’d started. The rest of the low-life animals were watching with wicked grins on their ugly faces.
Roaring like a lion, Nick leaped from the porch and zoomed toward the gunman so fast that he was only a blur in the darkness. Lightning flashed, providing perfect horror-movie effects as he swooped down on the guy. Knocking the weapon from his hand, Nick took him down, slamming him to the ground. For good measure, he stomped on the man’s grimy fingers with his boot heel, wringing a scream of pain from him.
He heard the woman gasp, and he looked over to see her staring at him with a mixture of shock and bewilderment. She was sitting propped against a tree, and he could see she’d been shot in the side. Quickly, he gave her a closer inspection. Seeing no arterial blood gushing, he figured her life wasn’t in immediate danger.
Which left him free to terrorize the rest of the criminals who had come to burn him out of house and home.
Wheeling, Nick flew at the gang, scattering them like ants. As they fled, screaming, he went after them one by one. He threw them to the ground, trampled over them with his boots, kicked them in the ribs and back and gut, and ground their faces into the dirt and gravel.
He could easily have killed them. He ached to squash the guy with the gas can. But he kept a tight leash on his anger and settled for scaring the piss out of the burn master, watching the dark stain that spread across the front of the guy’s jeans.
Ordinarily, Nick would have pursued the fleeing bikers and wiped the knowledge of the fight—and of the whereabouts of his home—out of their tiny minds. But he had more urgent business. For now, he was confident that they wouldn’t be back anytime soon. He could clean up the details later.
When he heard the roar of their motorcycles retreating down his road, he turned to the woman and hunkered down beside her.
She was small and delicate and very beautiful, with blue eyes and shoulder-length blond hair framing her face. Exactly as she’d been in his dreams, to the smallest detail.
Her gaze focused on him, still full of astonishment and confusion. “It was you,” she whispered. “In my dreams. But how…?”
It was his turn to stare in shock. How, indeed? How had they connected in such an intimate way without ever having met? He knew enough about his powers, and the potential he might someday reach if he worked at it, to know it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that he could bond mentally as he had with her—but not without his conscious decision to do so. And certainly not without knowing if she was even real.
But she was real. And she was here, on his doorstep, having arrived at the same time the Ten Oaks gang was in the act of torching his house.
Coincidence? He’d stopped believing in coincidence a long time ago.
Her pained grimace reminded him that, regardless of how she’d gotten here, she was wounded because she’d tried to prevent McCard and his buddies from carrying out their plan.
She glanced over his shoulder, in the direction the bikers had gone. “How did you do that? How could you be in five places at once?”
“Superhero powers,” he answered lightly, knowing she wouldn’t take him seriously.
She winced. “My side hurts.”
“I’m sorry.” He sent her thoughts to ease the pain, feeling her anxiety fade as he worked his magic on her.
Despite the circumstances, the feminine scent of her body drew him to her, as it had in the dreams. But now there was another powerful aroma about her, too—the coppery scent of her blood.
He wanted to taste it. Drink it. He felt the fang slits at the sides of his mouth begin to throb, and he clenched both his fists and his teeth to keep from doing something he would regret.
“Why did you come here?”
She looked up at him with glazed eyes, and he knew she was in shock. “I…”
Instead of finishing the sentence, she raised a hand and touched his bare chest. “The dream was nice, but…this is real,” she whispered, combing her fingers through the hair on his chest, her touch raising a shiver that raced across his skin.
The next instant, though, what he felt were raindrops. He’d completely forgotten about the oncoming storm.
“Come on. We have to get you inside,” he said, scooping her up effortlessly in his arms, being careful not to hurt her.
Closing her eyes, she nestled against his bare chest. “Nice,” she whispered again.
Ordering himself not to react to her touch or her scent, he hurried to the front porch, then stepped through the open door, kicking it closed behind him.
Her heartbeat seemed to shudder through his own body, and he felt his mind tuning itself to hers. He should put her down, break the contact, yank himself out from under her spell.
That thought confounded him. He was the one who wove spells, the one who bent mortals to his will.
Disconcerted and more than a little worried, Nick stood in the hallway, debating where to take her. The rooms upstairs were furnished like bedrooms because he had enjoyed collecting the antiques and using them to create what amounted to stage sets. But they were bound to be dusty. He kept the ground floor in better shape, since he sometimes met with clients here. But there were no bedrooms on this level of the house.
Still undecided, he carried her into the living room and laid her on the Victorian sofa, then perched on the edge of it, beside her. Her eyes were closed, but when he said, “We should get you to the hospital,” they flew open.
“No!” she insisted, panic coloring her tone.
“You’re hurt. You need medical attention.”
“If you take me to the hospital…he’ll find me! He already sent a man to my hotel.” She tried to drag in a deep breath, then winced at the pain.
“Just lie still,” he said.
“You have to listen to me,” she begged, clutching at his hand. “Please. I barely…got away.”
“From whom?”
“Damien Caldwell.”
“Bloody hell!” Nick shot off the sofa, heart pounding as he glared down at her. “Did he send you here?”
“Huh? No.” He could see her fighting to speak. “My sister is…one of his…zombies,” she managed.
A good way to put it, he thought.
“I went to the Refuge…to get Margaret away from him. Then I heard him…talking to…one of his men. He was…going to kill me.” Her face contorted, and she paused again before going on. “Margaret wouldn’t leave, and when I tried to get her into a boat…”
Her voice trailed off. Then her eyes fluttered closed, and she lay very still.
“What’s your name?” Nick demanded.
A long pause. Then, in a barely audible voice she replied, “Emma Birmingham.”
“This is a trick,” he said flatly. “Caldwell sent you to…to what? Seduce me into trusting you?”
Her eyes blinked open again, and she focused on him, her brow furrowed. “In the dreams, you were always nice…very nice….”
“Yeah, well, that was just a dream, wasn’t it?” he muttered, knowing it wasn’t true. Something had already happened between them. Something he didn’t understand.
But Caldwell might very well understand it. Nick felt a wave of cold wash through him as he stared down at the woman lying on his couch. He had known Caldwell was getting stronger. Had that demon projected a vision of Emma Birmingham into his mind? Had Caldwell gained so much power that he could do such a thing—and do it without even being in proximity to his victim?
Emma—if that really was her name—tried to push herself to a sitting position but failed. As she fell back against the sofa, her features twisted in pain. Still, she forced her gaze to focus on his, and he knew she was trying to project her sincerity.
“Caldwell didn’t send me,” she insisted. “You have to believe that.”
“Do I?” He knew his voice was cold and harsh, but his thoughts were in turmoil. He should take her straight to the emergency room—and make sure she wouldn’t remember where she’d gotten shot. He could take away her memory and her identification, so nobody would know who she was. But even as he considered that plan, he rejected it.
He couldn’t forget the dream. Suppose he was wrong about Caldwell’s orchestrating it? Suppose Emma had somehow reached out to him on her own? Or, even more likely, because she had been at Caldwell’s enclave and in need of help, and because he himself spent a good deal of time making plans to bring down his old enemy, they had simply found each other. Two people, both isolated, both focused on a common foe—and one with the extrasensory powers that would make a bond between them possible. That the bond had taken such an erotic turn could have been the result of his own long abstinence and, to be completely honest, his loneliness. God knows, he’d been lonely….
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