Night Unbound(24)

“Zach, stop!” she cried as she realized he was trying to scan Ethan’s thoughts.
A sigh escaped Ethan. His face smoothed out.
“You’re right,” Zach said. “He is hard to read.”
“Asshole,” Ethan growled as he wiped the blood from under his nose. “What the hell was that? What did you just do to me?”
“Tried to access your memories.”
“My memories are none of your fucking business.”
And would reveal much about Ethan’s relationship with Lisette.
Stomach twisting in knots, she forced herself to meet Zach’s gaze. “Were you able to see anything?”
“No,” he conceded after a long silence. “I thought you might object to the pain it would cause him if I dug deeper.”
“Asshole,” Ethan repeated.
Lisette didn’t protest. It had been kind of an asshole-ish thing to do. “So now you see why Seth and David don’t read his mind?”#p#分页标题#e#
“They wouldn’t have to if either man volunteered the information.”
“Bastien won’t tell anyone, Zach. Neither will Ethan. Right?”
Ethan scowled. “I hadn’t intended to. But if he pulls that shit again, all bets are off.”
At last, Zach nodded. A muscle in his jaw jumped as he straightened and offered her his hand. “Come with me.”
“I can’t.” She motioned to the disintegrating forms behind them. “I need to clean up our mess. I’ll be home soon, though.”
Zach gave her a curt nod, then vanished.
Drawing a deep breath, Lisette reluctantly faced Ethan. “Don’t say it.”
“Don’t say what?”
“What you’re thinking.”
“That you’re in over your head? Way over your head? That you’re out of your fucking mind?”
“Ethan—”
“He was willing to give me brain damage to erase my memories, Lisette! Bastien, too. And he exhibited no regret over causing me pain when he tried to read my mind. Hell, the only reason he didn’t damage my brain then, trying to dig deeper, was because he thought it would upset you!”
She couldn’t deny it, and didn’t like it any more than Ethan did. She hoped like hell Zach had done it out of a genuine desire to protect her.
“Do you even know who this guy is?” Ethan demanded.
“Yes. Sort of.”
His look screamed that she had lost it. “Lisette, Zach”—the name dripped with scorn—“is bad news. Zach is Bastien times a thousand. He’s Bastien with David’s power. And you’re risking Seth’s wrath and, for all we know, severe punishment—if not execution—to help him. Why, for fuck’s sake? Because he’s easy on the eyes?”
“Because he saved my life!” she blurted, then cursed herself silently. Damned if she wasn’t about to betray Seth again.
Ethan stilled. “What?”
She paced away from him.
“Lisette?”
“I’m not supposed to talk about it. Seth told me not to tell anyone.”
“And Seth will never know.”
“He will if he reads my mind.”
He snorted. “What do you think will piss him off more if he reads your mind—that you told me whatever it is you’re hiding, or that you welcomed Zach into your home and gave him safe harbor?”
“I know. You’re right.” The marks against her were really adding up. She turned to Ethan with a sigh. “Remember the night I planted the tracking device on that mercenary?”
“Yeah. That was kick-ass.”
“Well, I didn’t do it. Zach did.”
He tilted his head to one side. “What do you mean? What happened?”
“I had just defeated some vampires—five or so, I forget how many—when a tranquilizer dart struck me. I barely had time to give myself the antidote before a couple dozen mercenaries closed in.”
“Shit!”
“I held my own against them at first.”
“Why the hell didn’t you just run?”
“You know how badly we needed to tag one with a tracking device. We had no idea who we were fighting, who our enemy was. And every night we spent guessing, the threat grew.”
He shook his head. “You could’ve been captured.”
“I would have been captured,” she corrected him, “had Zach not intervened.”
“What was he doing there?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t have a chance to ask. I did a good job of picking the mercenaries off, but took a lot of bullets in the process. Blood loss slowed me down and weakened me. I had nearly killed them all when the second wave moved in.”
Ethan swore. Another trickle of blood emerged from his nose.
Reaching into her back pocket, Lisette withdrew a handkerchief and approached him. “There was no way I could’ve stood against those numbers. And I was too weak to outrun them.” She took his stubbled chin in one hand and drew the soft white material across it, then dabbed beneath his nose. “I would have been captured, Ethan. I was bracing myself for it, intending to kill as many as I could before they took me, when Zach appeared and killed them all with a thought.”