Night Unbound(23)

Lowering his hand, Zach looked at Ethan. “Yes.”
Ethan sighed. “Okay. I’m liking you a little more now,” he grudgingly admitted.
Zach’s expression didn’t change as he studied the younger immortal.
“You should be home, Zach,” Lisette admonished gently. “You haven’t healed. You should be resting.”
He abandoned his scrutiny of Ethan and fastened those penetrating brown eyes on her. “Your home?” A golden spark entered his gaze. “Your bed? That’s where I was when I awoke, wasn’t it? Your bed? It carried your scent.”
For some reason, heat rushed to her face. “Yes.”
“How did I get there?”
“You don’t remember?” She avoided looking at Ethan, who drank in every word, every nuance in tone.
“No.”
“I’ll tell you later,” she promised, unwilling to say too much in front of their avid audience. She glanced over Zach’s shoulder at the wings Bastien had splinted and bandaged so carefully. “How did you get here? You couldn’t have flown.”
“I teleported.”
The fact that he had retained the strength to do so despite his severe injuries indicated just how powerful this immortal was.
“Then teleport back. To my home, I mean. Go back to bed. Get some rest. I’ll be there shortly.”
“It isn’t safe.”
“Yes, it is,” she assured him. “My Second is staying at David’s home and won’t return until I call her. No one else will be there.”
“I meant it isn’t safe for you. If the Others come looking for me—”
“What others?” Ethan interrupted.
Irritation flickered across Zach’s handsome face.
Lisette hastened to speak up. “Do you mean the ones who did this to you?”
“Yes.”
“Wouldn’t they have already found you if they could?”
“I’ve only been gone a couple of hours. Given a little more time, they should—”
“Zach,” she corrected gently, “you’ve been at my place for almost twenty-four hours.”
He stared at her. “What?”
“It’s been twenty-four hours, give or take a couple. If they’re as powerful as you are, wouldn’t they have found you by now?”
His brows drew down in a frown. “Perhaps it’s become second nature,” he murmured.
“What has?”
“Eluding them.”
Ethan leaned forward. “You still haven’t told us who them is.”
“Nor do I intend to,” Zach responded darkly.
He didn’t intend to tell Ethan? Or he didn’t intend to tell either of them?
Lisette decided she would react to that later. “As I said, my place is safe. Ethan, Bastien, and I are the only ones who know you’re there. Why don’t you go get some rest and give your wings time to finish healing? I’ll—”
“Bastien—the immortal black sheep—knows?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll have to locate him and erase his memory of me first.”
“Erase?” Ethan spoke up, his voice reflecting the alarm she felt herself. “Or bury?”
“Erase.” Something odd flickered in Zach’s eyes. “Buried memories tend to resurface when you least expect them to.”
Merde. Seth had said he and David usually opted to bury memories instead of erasing them because erasing them could cause brain damage.
“Please, don’t do that,” she said. “Bastien is the one who bandaged your wounds and set your broken bones. I didn’t know how to do it myself and asked him to tend your wounds as a favor to me.”
Zach looked to Ethan. “What about you? What did you do?”
“Ate a sandwich and cracked some jokes.”
“No, he didn’t,” Lisette hastened to deny.
Ethan raised an eyebrow.
“Okay, he did have a sandwich, but not until most of your wounds had been tended and he’d helped Bastien with your wings.”
“And cracked some jokes,” Ethan repeated.
Lisette resisted the urge to strangle him. Was he trying to antagonize Zach?
“Seth will read all this in their thoughts and turn his wrath upon you for helping me. I can’t allow that.”
“The chances of that are slimmer than you think. Seth rarely intrudes upon Bastien’s thoughts anymore because Melanie is keeping him in line. And Ethan is very hard to read.”
Zach stared at Ethan.
“What?” Ethan asked. A few seconds later, his face contorted with pain. “Ahh!” Dropping his weapons, he clutched his head and staggered to one side.
Lisette gripped his shoulder to steady him. “Ethan?”
A trickle of blood emerged from one nostril and trailed down over his lips and chin.