Читать книгу Immortal Redeemed - Linda Thomas-Sundstrom - Страница 9

Chapter 2

Kellan got off the bike. His heart rate spiked as he eyed the woman on the corner. He waited out several more beats of time before breathing, each of those beats measured by the tick of the clock in the tower above him.

She was looking at him. Staring openly. Was she answering his call? If not, why the sudden interest?

The strange stirring sensations inside his chest didn’t have to be meaningful since the odds of finding her just ten minutes after entering town were a million to one, or more like twice that.

Shaking off his disappointment, Kellan turned away.

Then he turned back.

The wind carried a trace of perfume—faintly floral, fresh, rich. He detected no hint of death in it, such as a Reaper might possess.

Tamping down the rise of anticipation, Kellan observed the woman closely. He had the advantage, of course. She would have no idea how effortlessly he could see every detail at this distance. She wouldn’t know about the hunger behind his scan.

Her hair was fair, long, and hung past her shoulders. Although there was no rain tonight, the golden strands appeared to be wet. She had big eyes in a small face, high cheekbones and delicate features. She was tall and lean, her overall shape narrow. Faded blue jeans peeked out from beneath the knee-length tweed coat that didn’t seem to warm her. Both of her arms were crossed over her stomach, as if that would help.

She was attractive, but not perfect. The eyes were a bit too large and her skin too pale. While she looked young, she possessed a worldly gaze. To anyone else, her bold stare might have been unnerving.

As their gazes connected across the distance, Kellan’s nerves bristled. His muscles twitched. Strange as it was, after just seconds of scrutiny, he had an uncanny and urgent physical need for this woman.

Still, though she smelled delicious and stared back, she could be the wrong soul. Because he was immortal and a loner by necessity didn’t mean he was immune to every temptation that came his way.

Under the scrutiny of his unwavering gaze, the woman turned from him with a small object clasped tightly in her hand. Cell phone for emergencies? Her steps stuttered on the sidewalk before she whirled again. Unbelievably, she wasn’t running away. She didn’t make any calls. After pausing to consider her next move, she walked straight toward him.

He hadn’t used his power to influence her decision, so the move was all hers. Why, though? He was a stranger. Danger lurked on every street corner these days. Case in point, he caught a whiff of one lone werewolf to the south, potentially only half as deadly without a full moon overhead. And something dark-hearted with fangs perched on a rooftop halfway down the block.

Those things should have made him move. They should have been the center of this focus. He’d been blessed—or cursed, as he often thought—to feel the presence of these kinds of anomalies. He not only smelled them but saw into the shadows where they hid. He did his best to keep the monsters in check.

This time they weren’t drawing his attention from the woman coming his way. They had nothing to do with his sudden sense of elation.

She was his focus.

His attention was riveted.

As she approached, Kellan’s heart began to pound. Streaks of adrenaline created tension in muscles designed for fighting, as if she might pose a threat to those old vows. But the only fight here was for him to remain calm, because waiting for her wasn’t easy. Meeting this woman could turn out to be a distraction he didn’t need if she wasn’t the woman he sought.

She stopped several feet away with a question.

“Do I know you?”

The huskiness of her voice made Kellan’s nerves dance. Her tone was low and sexy. Her lips were full and slightly parted.

“I don’t think so,” he replied, economizing his comeback so that he could take in more details, like the dark crescents of sleeplessness under her eyes and the lovely lines of her long, graceful neck.

For the first time in a while, Kellan praised his special abilities for reasons other than ferreting out bad guys. He also amended his earlier conclusion. She actually was quite beautiful.

And if...

Well, if she was the one he sought...

All the better.

“Are you waiting for something?” she asked without backing away from the intensity of his keen observation.

Beyond Kellan’s sigils, other parts of his body were catching the fire of interest. Was this due to her, though, or did he just want it to be?

He had anticipated a more direct acknowledgment of being on the right track than an instantaneous craving for a woman. Then again, what did he really know about what his Makers had so carefully hidden?

Certainly he hadn’t expected to meet a female who was the equivalent of a Grim Reaper, but also perfectly fit his personal preferences physically, when it could just as easily have been otherwise.

“I’m meeting someone,” Kellan said.

“Oh. Sorry. I thought...”

“Yes? You thought?” he encouraged when she didn’t finish the remark.

“I thought I might have known you from someplace. Guess I was mistaken.”

She didn’t leave. She stood her ground boldly, as if she wanted to add something, or else wanted him to.

Kellan purposefully kept his voice steady. “Do you work in the hospital?”

He stayed close to the bike so he wouldn’t frighten her. Restraining himself from taking the few steps needed to reach her was hard. He wanted to press his mouth to hers in a kiss that might open Pandora’s box. A kiss that might let him know if nearly overwhelming odds against him finding the one person he was after in Seattle meant nothing when it came to the magic of ancient souls and secrets connecting.

The pressure of his need to know about this woman was like a fist to his gut. Her presence was curious and captivating for a man who not only had searched for such a connection, but also had forgone serious female companionship in favor of more pressing pursuits.

She stood across from him as if he had conjured her.

Maybe he had.

Still, what was she seeing? She was telegraphing her interest in him by remaining close. His senses were loud and clear about that. Some sort of combustible chemical reaction was taking place between them. The air was heavy with it, and warmer than before.

Animal magnetism at work? Lust at first sight? An instantaneous attraction between strangers on a street corner was possible, Kellan supposed, though unlikely—which surely meant that the odds against this being a benign chance meeting were in his favor.

Are you her?

With his heart misbehaving, it was impossible for him to remain inert for much longer. In order to place her importance to his cause, he’d have to get a peek at this woman’s soul. To do that, she’d have to be unwrapped. She’d have to meet him skin to skin for him to see what secrets, if any, lay hidden beneath those fragile feminine bones. And he was all for that skin-to-skin business.

“Do you recognize me?” he silently sent to her, hoping something deep inside her might rise to the surface and provide a clue.

“Yes,” she said, giving him a start.

She waved at the hospital across the street, reminding him of the other question he’d posed. “I work there, at Seattle General. Possibly that’s where I’ve seen you? Are you waiting for someone to be released?”

“Nope,” he said, unable to lie about even the simplest things. None of the Blood Knights could.

Nor was he good at small talk, especially when trying to reason things out. He kept wondering how an ancient soul could survive by being passed along from body to body in a long line of new recipients, without those recipients knowing about it. Same soul, different housing, in a special type of reincarnation. Not a myth. Absolutely real.

If this woman didn’t know what she carried inside her, though, how would she recognize him? In any case, why didn’t she run?

Did she like his looks as much as he liked hers? His appearance had once been legendary, but he was much leaner and more chiseled now. Time had done that. Time and the efforts of his quest. He’d been frozen in the body of a twenty-eight-year-old, but Kellan knew he looked older, and that he had always projected a dangerous edge. The leather and the bike helped that image along.

“I stopped for a breath and to get my bearings,” he told her.

As she continued to study him, his nerves burned. Seconds flew by in silence before she put a hand to her temple as if to ease an ache there. The brief flutter of her lashes gave Kellan the first hint that she wasn’t all right. Not just tired. Possibly she was ill. Small quakes ran through her, suggesting that her strength had ebbed.

“You couldn’t have called to me, I suppose,” she finally said. “And I guess I’m way too tired to be making sense.”

Her voice wasn’t just sexy. It was flammable.

Was that also a sign?

“Do you need help?” he asked politely, carefully managing his excitement and his reaction to her. “An escort to your car, or a ride somewhere?”

The busy street wasn’t the right place to hold an important meeting of any kind. The damn werewolf had got closer, as well as too many other people who hadn’t received the memo about their lives being safer indoors after dark.

Kellan had to pay some attention to the monsters prowling the darkness because if he hit the road, this woman, in her weakened state, would be easy prey.

Her lashes fluttered again before she briefly closed her eyes, leaving Kellan certain that the ashen pallor of her face wasn’t due entirely to Seattle’s sunless climate. The bold blonde was no longer steady on her feet. She looked as if she could have been a patient at the hospital across from them.

“Do you need a ride somewhere?” he repeated in a soft, clear tone. “Help of any kind?”

“No.” Her head shake displaced a few damp dark-golden strands that were starting to curl. “I don’t need help. Thanks for the offer.”

She inched backward without turning from him and ran into a post. After issuing a short bark of uncomfortable laughter, she muttered, “Hell, what a night,” and looked up to apologize a second time. “Sorry.”

It could have been the way she issued the apology—the rather forlorn enunciation of two drawn-out syllables—that caused Kellan to stir. He was beside her in an instant, utilizing the extraordinary speed and superior reflexes that had been built into him.

Chances were that not many others on the sidewalk had been paying attention to what might appear little more than a street-side tête-à-tête. Odds were also good that no one had noticed how frail this woman appeared to be, and how menacing he looked by comparison. He was two heads taller than she was and twice as broad. She tilted her head back to look up at him and met his eyes.

Her eyes were blue.

“I had a long shift, that’s all. I need to get home and rest,” she explained. “I used to be a cop, and that’s my excuse for confronting you, as lame as it sounds.”

Kellan’s hand hovered less than an inch from hers. She was in some kind of trouble and trying to make the best of it. He zeroed in on the thin white scar that ran from her right temple to beneath her ear, noting how the fingers of her other hand kept returning to that spot.

She’d been damaged, and she seemed to him like a real woman made of flesh and bone. Up close, he found nothing to suggest she might be a vessel housing an immortal knight’s off switch. She looked nothing at all like a Reaper in disguise.

He eyed her thoughtfully. Are you what my Makers tried so hard to hide so that my life would go endlessly on? Or are you merely a woman who appeals to my baser side?

It was conceivable that she was just a woman, but how could a mistake in identity happen between two souls intricately tied to each other for centuries, or when the termination of his life might be in her hands?

Each Blood Knight had a counterpart soul, though no one expected the two to find each other. They weren’t supposed to meet. Weren’t designed to meet. The Makers at Castle Broceliande had seen to it that the seven Knights could be taken down if they veered too far off track. This had been accomplished by planting fail-safe switches in seven other souls ultimately responsible for turning each Knight off, dealing a final death blow if called into action.

The way they’d do this was top secret. None of the Knights knew what their counterparts might have in store, or where in the world they were. It had taken Kellan years of research to pinpoint Seattle as the hometown of his, plus a lot of underground bargaining with his considerable fortune. Then there was the call he had felt all the way to his bones.

Was it this woman, then?

Is it you?

Will your touch end my existence? As simply as that? I show up and awaken what’s supposed to be off-limits, and you destroy me?

Her closeness produced feverish warmth in him. Yet he was minus the guidebook for unlocking secrets tucked inside someone composed by magical design, so he was on his own. And honestly, he now began to think that exploring this female’s hidden assets, no matter what she turned out to be, would be extremely pleasurable. He might even die a final death with a smile on his lips.

As he stood there, the urge to touch her was becoming an outright necessity. He wanted to trace her facial scar with his fingers and feel firsthand the lushness of her lips. Burying his face in her damp hair would be a luxury. She smelled damn good, and it had been a while since he’d taken the time to enjoy anything of a personal nature.

“I’m willing to help,” he said, gauging her reaction to his closeness. She shook so hard, his hand connected to hers automatically, sending shocking currents of electricity buzzing through him.

His excitement doubled. But was this a further sign?

Kellan smiled. While his sigils seared his skin and his heart beat wildly in his chest, raw physical need was trumping his internal warnings about having to use caution. Hell, he wanted this woman so badly, it was possible that sex held the answer to unlocking the Reaper, and all he had to do was insert a throbbing key into her lock.

“Let me help you...”

Had she heard that silent suggestion, too? She hadn’t pulled her hand away. He watched her lips part.

“Are you a good guy?” she asked.

“Trick question,” he replied. “Would I tell you if I wasn’t?”

“Probably not.”

“Everyone says I’m one of the good guys. Well, most people would, I guess, if they knew me.”

She nodded warily, sighed softly, allowing these moments to linger because of his silent influence on her.

“Where are you headed?” Kellan asked.

“To my car. It’s behind me, in that garage.”

“Do you think you can drive?”

“I’m pretty sure I can’t, but I’m going to try. My legs won’t hold me up much longer, and I’d rather not be seen like this by anyone I work with. Besides, I doubt if I could make it back to the hospital’s front door.”

“If I carry you to your car, will I be responsible for the accident waiting to happen between here and your home?”

She stared at him mutely.

“How about if I take you home and we avoid all those other potential problems?” Kellan suggested.

“You can’t take me anywhere, because I don’t know you.”

“Then I’m not sure what kind of help you need.”

She shook her head, spreading more of her subtle perfume in the wind. That scent was like honey.

“This is seriously embarrassing,” she said. “There’s no need to worry about me. I’ll call my partner for help. I’d be grateful if you’ll just stay here until I do, so that no other...”

“Stranger?” he supplied when her sentence dangled. “So that no other Harley-riding yahoo might approach you on the street?”

“So that no other person dares to come to my aid, and I have to start over, behaving like an idiot,” she clarified, looking up at him. “And so that no one looking out of a hospital window might assume I’m not up to the tasks assigned to me there.”

Currents of electricity continued to slam Kellan through his grip on her fingers. He had to monitor his reaction to each physical jolt.

The woman had palmed her cell phone but hadn’t used it. Kellan wanted to know what she might be thinking. When would she realize that a stranger was holding her hand? This unplanned touch had to be unusual behavior for her. It certainly was unusual for him. He never made physical contact with mortals unless absolutely necessary, and he kept clear of them whenever possible. Too much contact, too much exposure to another beating heart’s welcoming warmth, and a Knight’s blood oath might be called into question.

This woman’s fingers were cold, proving that she should have known better than to walk around with wet hair. Yet he sensed heat radiating off her, beneath her coat, and he wondered how long it would take before his desire to possess this mortal got the better of him, despite what she’d just said about having a partner to call. Another person in the picture could muddy things up quite a bit.

He detected something else. Silver. She carried a pocketknife. The folded blade produced an additional buzz on the periphery of his senses.

“Are you ill?” he asked, releasing her hand.

Only then did she look at her fingers. “Tired,” she replied. “Too damn tired.”

“Okay. I’ll wait for you to use that phone. Go ahead and dial.”

She raised the cell phone, pushed several tiny buttons and held the phone to her right ear. “Officer Randall...” she started to say, then paused to clear her throat. “Ex-officer Randall on the line for Detective Miller.”

As she listened to the response on the line, Kellan filed that information away. She had mentioned being a cop in the past, and had mistakenly used that old title now. Possibly her training was the reason she had spoken to him in the first place. The cop in her might assume at first glance that a guy on a tricked-out bike could potentially mean trouble, whether or not she was in any condition or position right now to address that kind of trouble.

Then again, maybe she had responded to his call.

Was she a doctor? Nurse?

“I see,” she said to the phone. “No. Don’t patch me through. I have Miller’s cell number, and this isn’t important. I’ll get back to him later. Thanks.”

Her arm dropped. Kellan caught the phone before it hit the ground, lamenting that there would be no lusty night ahead with warm sheets and warmer bodies, given this woman’s current condition. If she wasn’t sick, she was close to it.

She needed help. More than she knew. The damn werewolf was fifty feet away and closing in, drawn to weakness like a moth to a flame and unaware of what kind of fate awaited if it attempted anything monstrous here tonight. Blood Knights weren’t known for mercy when it came to dealing with predators.

Since he couldn’t tackle that problem at the moment, however, and in public, Kellan had to handle things another way. He’d see this woman safely off the street. Even if his hopes were dashed and she proved not to house a special spirit, the pretty blonde would be another in a long line of people he’d protected.

“No one else coming to the rescue?” he asked.

She didn’t reply.

“All right. I guess that leaves me.”

Kellan peeled her from the post and pulled her into his arms before any remark she might care to make was possible. The momentum of his action caused her head to rest against his chest. Her body molded to his from her shoulders to her hips.

Whips of fire licked at Kellan’s bones, sending good-size shudders through him. These sensations were new. They were unique. But were they enough?

Her next words were muffled. Her hand closed on the knife in her pocket. “That was not an invitation, and if you don’t back off, I’m going to scream.”

“You asked for help,” he reminded her with his mouth edging her damp hair.

“Not that kind of help.”

“I’m not sure there’s another kind at the moment. Can you walk?”

“Let me help you.”

Her reply took some time. “Not far.”

“Ten feet, to the curb? Should I actually carry you there, ignoring your protests?”

“Don’t you dare,” she said. “I’m not a child. I can...”

Kellan didn’t wait for her to finish the argument. It was obvious to both of them that her legs wouldn’t hold her up for much longer. It was far less obvious to anyone but him that if the werewolf came any closer with thoughts of pushing its luck, Kellan would be forced to deal with the beast for safety’s sake, no matter who might be looking.

To avoid all that, there was only one thing to do—push his influence over her a little bit more.

“You must let me help you. Trust me to do that.”

He waited until she blinked. Then he swung the blue-eyed enigma into his arms and headed for the bike instead of the garage. He set her gently on the Harley’s seat and climbed on in front of her.

“Put your arms around me,” he directed.

She did as she was told.

Although she shivered, her body heat penetrated his leather jacket, reaching his skin as easily as if no barrier stood in the way. Kellan closed his eyes to absorb the impact.

Women didn’t have a place in the oaths he’d taken. He’d known a few of them more than casually over the centuries, but had loved only once, long ago.

He was supposed to have turned out angelic. History painted him that way. Poets sang of his life. Some said he was a saint. He was one-seventh of a brotherhood designed to protect one of the world’s most treasured holy relics. The Grail. Christ’s chalice. But in truth, he had always been a rebel, and the gift of immortality hadn’t changed that.

He might have desired this woman if they’d met in any century. He liked the mixture of strength and vulnerability she showed. He admired her looks, and had been mesmerized by those large blue eyes that somehow seemed so familiar.

Kellan ignored the soft click of his fangs extending in honor of his passenger. The razor-sharp canines rarely presented themselves and were a throwback to drinking the blood of his Maker in order to execute their plans. The outlandish teeth weren’t for biting or hurting. He had never used them on anyone, for any reason, and never would, since he considered them an abomination.

Those fangs extending now were a complete surprise. They were also proof positive that though he was a monster hunter, by physical definition he was also one of those monsters.

Smiling sadly, Kellan kicked the bike to life. “Now,” he called over his shoulder, ignoring the sparks of protest shooting from one of his shoulder blades to the other. “Where am I taking you?”