Chapter Six—The Search Begins
Lucas paced the floor of the bedroom in his host’s home, feeling as confined as the wolf would be in a cage.
He hadn’t wanted to leave Sara alone, but her friend, Michael, had insisted on driving him back here.
Damned honorable of him. Lucas hadn’t missed the guy’s attraction to her.
He’d found Sara’s car keys in his pocket and he’d gone back to return them. At least the guy wasn’t there.
Not that he could blame McCain. It had taken every bit of centuries-old will power to convince himself that he was just being supportive, massaging her neck.
What he really wanted to do was slide his hands down her arms and around her waist and pull her up against him.
He’d cup and knead her breasts while he nuzzled her neck and kissed that vulnerable spot just below and behind the earlobe and then let his hands slide down her ribs to her belly and press her back…
The wolf growled menacingly and he shook his head in agitation.
Better not to think about Sara. The beast wanted out, hungry for the blood of the person who’d murdered the old man.
Enraged, the wolf could easily mistake the powerful emotion of lust for something else.
And lust is what he felt, he told himself.
Nothing else. Certainly not anything like love.
There was no room in his long life for love, not when he had to recreate himself every fifty years and his lover grew old and withered away.
Besides, he had allowed himself to love once—in only a worshipful way as a knight to his sworn lady—but the results had been disastrous on a whole fledgling nation.
He became a hermit for a long time after that. And then he found the Templars.
Still, Sara was powerfully alluring. Her body was soft curves that he wanted pressed against him while he ran his hands through the cloud of silken hair.
With the wolf’s keen nose, he could pick up her unique womanly scent from across the room.
And yesterday had been nearly overpowering.
Grief did that, he supposed. Her shields had been down.
And that surprised him too. He’d blocked McCain’s mind probe, but it had channeled through her.
There was something a little bit mysterious about Sara.
The herbs he’d found—he hadn’t seen crushed mistletoe since the Druids worshipped in oak groves.
The symbols of the Sacred Feminine—as the goddess Brighid was referred to in these times—scattered around her apartment suggested something that ran deep below the surface of personality and beautiful looks.
He’d known the faerie, Nimue, since Arthur’s time.
She didn’t attach herself to anyone unless they had a Gift.
He paused in his pacing and thought of his sister, Brighid, the bestower of Avalon’s Gifts.
The painting on Sara’s wall had startled him, for it was a rendering of Avalon, a place he didn’t know if he would ever see again.
He had lost his own sun-god divinity when he came to Earth, so only Brighid could part the mists for him now.
And with the Christians, Muslims and Jews at each other’s throats around the world, the gentler teachings of the Goddess path were receding deeper into shrouded veils of secrecy.
It was a bloodthirsty world, this twenty-first century.
The Mongols, Romans, Huns, and Saxons had been brutal.
The World Wars and Vietnam had taken lives, but this…
This was Balor’s triumph. He had finally gotten the perfect combination.
Suicidal terrorists in countries that had the capabilities for weapons of mass destruction.
And Balor was close. First the wolf attack and now the murder.
He doubted that Sara had gotten ill on one drink.
He suspected that Caldwell had slipped something into it, although he couldn’t prove it, since Sara had refused to go a doctor.
Drugging women to make them compliant disgusted him.
Strike One, as the Americans said. If Caldwell were somehow linked to his grandfather, that would be Strike Two.
Gavin was still working on that. If Lucas ever found out that Caldwell was behind the slaying of that old man, he would release the wolf with pleasure.
But first the Hallows must be found. After the murder and whatever had transpired at lunch with Caldwell, he didn’t want to leave Sara alone. He knew she had a gun, she’d showed it to him before they left, but a gun wouldn’t stop Balor.
He’d have to take her with him. But how he was going to manage to keep things platonic, when even now he grew hard thinking of her, he didn’t know.
****
“So it was going to be a little ‘afternoon delight’, yes?” Baylor asked Caldwell from the recesses of the hot tub in the private men’s club of his hotel.
Caldwell fidgeted with the jacket he’d taken off, the steam from the water forming beads of perspiration on his forehead. “The drugs were working. She’d agreed to let me take her home.”
“And you let Ramsey get in your way.” Again. He was getting tired of the Templar. Something would have to be done about him.
“I didn’t have much choice.”
Baylor contemplated him with his good eye while he took a slow sip of cognac. Waited long enough until he could see sweat rolling off Caldwell’s face and staining the armpits of his shirt.
“Warm?” he asked impassively.
“Yeah. It’s…it’s hot in here.” Caldwell stammered.
They keep the room at a friggin’ sixty-eight degrees because of the tub. He knew damn well why Caldwell was sweating. He had failed him. And men paid for that. Caldwell knew it.
“Then take off your clothes and join me,” he said.
“Ah…no, thanks. Maybe I could just wait for you outside?” Caldwell took a step backward toward the door.
“It wasn’t a request.”
Caldwell stared at him and, for a moment, Baylor actually thought he might refuse.
Adrenaline surged through him. None of his quarries ever got away.
By the demons he commanded, was his prey going to give him cause for chase?
He needed to be brought to heel. He lifted the patch over his eye slightly and turned toward the man.
Caldwell doubled over in pain, clutching his belly. “My god, I feel like a knife has been run through me,” he gasped.
Baylor smiled benignly and settled the patch back over his eye. “Sorry. It must have slipped.”
Caldwell wasn’t stupid. It didn’t take him long to figure it out. He hung the jacket on the back of the chair and took off his shirt and pants. Pulling off his socks, he started to step into the tub.
“Alan. You know the rules. All your clothes.” He took another sip of brandy while he watched the man’s emotions play over his face. Surprise. Shock. A flash of anger. Resentment. Caldwell had never been disciplined before. This might be even more enjoyable that he had thought.
“If I refuse?”
Baylor touched his eye patch. “How much pain can you take?”
Caldwell took a deep breath. “I know you can cause harm when you lift that eye patch. I also know you like making the victim suffer slowly. But what good am I to you dead or totally incapacitated?”
Baylor’s adrenaline surged again. By the Unseelie Court!
The man had balls. He hadn’t had anyone stand up to him—really stand up to him—since Hitler.
And Adolph had truly considered himself a god of equal stature.
Pity. Ultimately, it cost him the war. Baylor refused to consider anyone an equal.
But still, he enjoyed a game of cat-and-mouse with someone who had guts.
“What good are you to me now?”
“I can still get the copy.”
“How? If she gets sick again, she won’t blame it on a drink.”
“I have a key to her place.”
Baylor raised an eyebrow. “How did you get that?”
Caldwell allowed himself a small smile. “I didn’t know if I’d need it at some other time so I decided to take the precaution of making an indention when I put her keys in my pocket. A little modeling clay is a good thing to carry.”
“Hmmm.” Yes, his friend Adolf would have liked this man. “Perhaps I can reserve judgment for a bit.”
“I can get it tonight if you want,” Caldwell said.
“No. Not so soon. That damnable Ramsey will be hovering over her for a day or two. And if she goes to Nova Scotia, the copy will no doubt go with her. See what you can find out at Smith’s first. No sense in taking the risk of getting caught for nothing.
I don’t tolerate mistakes well, as you know.
Don’t fail me this time.” His hand just barely touched his patch.
Caldwell went just a shade pale. “I won’t fail.”
****
Sara was more determined than ever the next morning that Lucas would take her with him. Professor MacDonald wasn’t going to have died for nothing. She stomped down the hall to the library and opened the door.
Lucas stood by the window, looking out at the carefully tended gardens.
The sunlight filtering in cast him in golden shadow, making him look like a bronzed Celtic god.
She caught her breath at the broad expanse of his naked shoulders, and then realized he was wearing a tan polo shirt drawn tight over hard muscles.
Better not think about Lucas nude. She had a mission to accomplish.
“If you think I’m going to stay here in Texas while you chase down the Hallows, you’re wrong,” she said a little too loudly.
Lucas turned away from the window, his amber eyes seeming to glow in the sunlight. “Good morn to ye, too, lass.”
Did he have to look so devastatingly irresistible? Mission, remember? “Sorry,” she said in a softer tone. “It’s just that I have to do something to avenge the professor. And I can’t stay home while—”
“You may come.”
Come? Did he have to put it like that? Muscles clenched deep in her belly at the thought of his shaft inside her, thrusting hard. She felt herself blush. Stop it! “What made you change your mind?”
He gave her a slow, lopsided grin. “Maybe I just thought I was fighting a losing battle and decided to surrender.”