CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
brIE HAD NEVER BEEN more shaken. She stood alone in the library, staring at the empty fireplace, urging Aidan to come back to her.
She hadn’t been afraid in so long—not with Aidan as her lover, her husband and her best friend. Not with Moray vanquished.
Sam poked her head into the room. “We’re heading out,” she said tersely, clearly in her warrior mode. She was wearing jeans and heavy biker boots; she held a steel baton in her hand. “I’ll see you in the city. Do you remember the key code to the loft?”
Brie smiled weakly at her. “Of course I do.” On the surface Sam hadn’t changed. She was so stunning and so fierce. She was so brave.
But she was different now. Brie felt it. Sam had opened up her heart again, after almost two decades, and was feeling compassion, empathy and love. Brie had always known this day would come.
“Gotta go, my ride’s waiting.” She started to leave, then paused. “Are you sure Aidan will hear you? He’s on the other side of the ocean.”
“We can communicate across centuries,” she said softly.
It was true. She wasn’t a warrior and she would never be one.
But her gifts were meant to be used to help him and the Brethren.
Brie was honing her abilities to feel and to see.
It was a rare day that went by that she did not sense a child’s pain or have a vision of such suffering.
Aidan would respond as if it were a 911 call.
He’d become adept at searching through the sands of time to find and defend the children she’d seen—there were always clues in her visions.
He preferred that she stay at Awe while he did what a Master was meant to do.
It was chauvinistic but she knew he was terrified to endanger her—to lose her. He loved her that much.
He never left for long, but they were apart quite often. Centuries could separate them. It didn’t matter. They were always in contact with one another.
Sam nodded and strode away. Macleod and Tabby were waiting in the other room to take her back to New York City.
Brie paced. Aidan, where are you? Come back!
She told herself not to panic. Aidan had so much power now.
She had complete faith in him. No man or Master was as strong, as good, as brave.
But she was scared. Their life together was almost too good to be true.
Once, he’d been her secret fantasy. Now, she had found her other half, and she didn’t want to ever lose him.
He materialized in swirling currents of energy and air, sparking white and gold. He landed standing, breathing hard, his face set against the pain of the leap through time. But it was also set against the pain of losing his son another time.
Brie ran to him and put her arm around him as his hard, muscular body trembled. She waited for the physical pain to recede. When he looked at her, she wanted to cry.
He was the most beautiful man she had ever laid eyes on. But his perfect features were ravaged with grief and fear. She’d hoped to never see him so anguished again.
They were reliving the past.
He pulled away from her. “Lookin’ fer him in the city is like tryin’ to find a needle in the hay.”
She touched his cheek. “Ian is a grown man now.”
“Who hates me.”
She fought her own tears. “But we can forgive him, because we know what he’s endured.”
“Of course I forgive him! I love my son. An’ now that evil bastard has imprisoned him again. Ye ken what they did to him!”
Her husband knew because he’d lurked in Ian’s mind without shame, a father desperate to know the truth. Brie could only guess at the horrors Ian had suffered. “He’s a grown man now, with power—and he has Sam.”
Aidan looked at her. “The Slayer? He’s only usin’ her fer sex.”
“No, darling, you’re wrong. She’s freeing him from his past, the way I freed you.”
Aidan hugged her, hard. “I’m afraid for him.”
“I know.”
“I willna let him suffer again. This time, I will find him, free him an’ kill the bastard monk.” He pulled abruptly away, blue eyes ablaze now.
Brie just looked at him, her heart slamming.
His eyes widened. “What is it? What secret do ye have?”
She opened up her mind completely to his.
“Moray is back?” he cried. And Aidan, the Wolf of Awe, turned white.
“HE’S PASSED OUT again,” the guard said, laughing.
Ian lay very still, naked on the cement floor, swimming in pain, not moving. He’d been counting the minutes until his tormentors would return.
This time, he was going to have his revenge.
This time, he was going to destroy Carlisle.
He was careful not to smile as he lay on his stomach as they approached, his eyes closed. He’d endured their torture for one reason only: revenge.
He didn’t know if hours had gone by since Sam had left, or days.
They’d beaten him several times, and not just with their fists.
He’d heard them talking. They had orders to keep him weak and helpless but alive.
The monk had gone back to Carlisle in the sixteenth century.
After the last beating, there had been antibiotics and a blood transfusion.
He recalled a doctor attending him, setting broken bones and fractures.
It had been a mistake to bring a doctor to him. It had been a mistake to give him blood and meds. His body felt broken. His body was broken. But his mind wasn’t broken, not this time. The more blood they replaced, the longer he was on medication, the stronger he was inside, where it counted.
He had never been as clear as to what he had to do.
He lived with so much rage.
And the fear was somehow gone.
He didn’t know why the fear he’d lived with all of his life had vanished. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t a nine-year-old boy anymore. But he had drifted in and out of his past, out of the years of captivity, during the beatings and when the doctor had come. Sam had been with him through it all, too.
It was as if she refused to leave his side.
Even when they were torturing him, he’d been aware of her.
He knew she’d left—she was going to defy him, find the page and trade it for him—but it felt as if she was beside him.
When the pain was at its worst, he had reached for her and found real comfort.
He had tried once or twice to use his visual telepathy to find her, but he’d been too weak, too drugged to do so. He tried now, but only saw her face, haggard with concern. He knew it was his imagination.
Fearless Sam Rose…who was so worried about him…who loved him.
He knew he couldn’t have heard her correctly.
In the past hours—or days—he’d thought about her declaration again and again, stunned by it.
She couldn’t love a man like him. He was defiled and defective, the son of a Master who would never be a Master, a near-immortal who used his powers to steal art, not help others.
Worse, he’d been a coward for most of his life.
He’d heard her incorrectly. But did it matter?
Because she was his friend.
And she had his back.
He didn’t want her to trade the page for him, but she was going to do it, because of who and what she was to him now.
And if he were freed, he’d have her back, too.
Through the throbbing pain, a feeling he’d never had before surfaced. It was faint and weak and so unfamiliar, it was hard to identify. He wondered if it was joy.
“Shall we wake him up for the doc? Hey, Maclean, Doc’s gonna check on you so we can have some more fun.”
“Is he smiling?” The other guard was incredulous.
He tensed, careful to contain his smile. His mind had never been as clear as it was now. He could feel his otherworldly power inside him, seething and ready to be let out. Their drugs weren’t as effective as they’d first been. It was time.
“I’d rather tend him while he’s unconscious,” the doctor said, sounding nervous. “Can you carry him to the examining table, please?”
Ian kept still as he was roughly lifted and carried across the room to where a small examination area had been set up, but he moaned.
The broken bones hurt. His insides hurt. Hell, his skin hurt, too.
He bit back a cruel, cold smile. His fingers itched to inflict pain, to kill.
The doctor laid his stethoscope on his bare chest and began to listen to his heartbeat. Ian felt his surprise at the strength of his pulse.
He opened his eyes and smiled at the doctor.
The doctor’s eyes went wide in alarm.
Ian seized the stethoscope and twisted it around his throat so tightly and swiftly that the doctor’s eyes bulged as he began to choke. The guards ran for him. Ian sat and snapped his neck in half with his bare hands. As he did so, his power blazed.
The guards were possessed. That meant that they could withstand more than the average mortal. They staggered under the impact of Ian’s energy but kept coming, hands raised to seize him and subdue him.
Ian reached for a scalpel, one of the instruments they’d used on him. He dug it deep into the first guard’s heart. As the second guard caught his arm, beginning to wrestle him off the table, he blasted him again and again. He reeled over, finally dying.
Ian stood to face the third guard, who had a six millimeter pointed at him. Guard number one lay half on the table, and he pulled the scalpel from his chest. “Come an’ get it,” he snarled.
The guard smiled savagely at him, making no move to approach.
“Oh, I forgot. Yer orders are to let me live,” he said, starting forward. “I guess I’ll come an’ get ye, then.”
The guard fired.
Even as the bullet entered his side, he was launching himself onto the guard. They went down together. All Ian recalled was the poking and prodding, the cords and electric shocks, the misery and terror of the nine-year-old boy. Roaring, he plunged the scalpel, deep.
When he stopped, he was on his hands and knees, astride the dead guard, breathing hard, and still seeing red. He realized he’d hacked the guard a dozen times.
He rolled away and sat down hard on the floor, panting.
He was free.
And Carlisle was very much alive.