Night Unbound(59)

Seth shook his head. “I thought . . .” Turning, he walked away.
“I don’t know what bad blood is between you,” she went on, desperate to make Seth understand. “He tried to warn me. Zach tried to push me away. He said you didn’t want him anywhere near me. And I know you told me to stay away from him. But . . . I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t walk away. I wanted to feel again. I wanted to have what Richart and Étienne have found. I wanted to experience love again. To find just a few moments of happiness after two hundred years of . . .” She shook her head. “I couldn’t let that fall through my fingertips. Even knowing how angry you would be, how disappointed. Even knowing I’d be punished. And, even if Zach is right and the punishment is death, it will have been worth it.” Thinking of the long day they had shared—making love, laughing and teasing each other—she nodded and again swiped at her cheeks. “It was worth it.”
When Seth said nothing and stood with his back to her, she broke down and began to sob.
“I’m so sorry I hurt you, Seth. I never wanted—”
He returned so fast she didn’t even see him move. One moment he stood several yards away. The next, he wrapped his arms around her and gathered her against him in a tight hug. “Shhhh.” The thunder ceased. The wind abated. The rain slackened, turning to a slow drizzle.
As Lisette buried her face in his chest, Seth cupped the back of her head in one large hand.
Would he kill her now? Snap her neck?
His hold tightened. “I’m not going to kill you, Lisette.”
She relaxed against him, fisting her hands in his wet coat.
“This is my fault, not yours,” he said. “I should have killed Zach when I had the chance.”
She stiffened. “What?” Lisette pushed him away. “No.”
Seth shook his head. “Zach isn’t what you think he is.”
“Yes, he is,” she insisted. “He’s like you.”
“He isn’t like me. Never say that he is. If he were like me, I wouldn’t have told him to stay the fuck away from you.”
Lisette wiped the tears and rainwater from her eyelashes so she could see Seth better. “Why are you so angry with him?”
“Because he betrayed us,” he announced with a bitterness she had never heard him express before. “He betrayed us all.”
“How?” she asked, needing to know the source of their animosity.
“Chris’s tech team didn’t miss anything when they cleaned up after we defeated Donald and Nelson and their mercenary army the first time.”
Confusion eradicated the last of her fear. “I thought they missed a backup server.”
“They didn’t. I lied. I didn’t want to have to explain . . .” He shook his head. “I read Donald’s and Nelson’s minds before David and I dispatched them. Zach restored the memories we had wiped. Zach helped them remember us and resume their war with us.”
Her heart stopped. “No,” she denied. “He didn’t. You’re wrong. He wouldn’t do that.”
“He did.”
“You actually saw him do it in the mercenaries’ memories?”
“No,” Seth admitted, “but he didn’t deny it when I confronted him about it.”
Why would Zach let Seth think he had betrayed them in such a way? Lisette didn’t for a minute believe Zach guilty of the deed. “If for no other reason, Zach wouldn’t have done it because it put Ami in danger.”
“He put all of you in danger,” Seth corrected.
“Seth, I’m telling you, he didn’t do it.”
“There were only five telepaths in North Carolina at the time: you, Étienne, David, Zach, and me. Who—of those five—do you think is responsible?”
Okay. That was pretty damning. “Could there be a telepath in the area you aren’t aware of?” she asked, grasping at straws.
“No. I checked.”
“Perhaps a telepathic gifted one?” She knew it was a stretch even as she suggested it.
“No mortal gifted one would possess a telepathic gift strong enough to alter memories. At best, he or she would be able to read thoughts.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what the explanation is, but it couldn’t have been Zach.”
“It was,” Seth insisted, utterly implacable. “And he has betrayed us again.”
“What do you mean?”
“Étienne told me he found blank spots in the memories of the vampires the two of you fought last week.”
“All vampires have blank spots. The brain damage the virus causes—”
“Étienne said those vamps hadn’t been infected long enough to produce that kind of damage. He said the blank spots indicated that some of their memories had been buried.”