Shadows Strike(70)

A tense moment passed. “Fine,” Jared grumbled. “Just do it. My barriers are down.”

Ethan caught Heather’s eye and nodded slightly toward Jared.

Really? He wanted her to read Jared’s thoughts?

She hesitated. Jared had been in her head often enough. She supposed it was only fair that she return the favor.

Heather closed her eyes, focused on the Other’s thoughts . . . and found herself caught up in the search Seth performed. Year after year of thoughts and memories and events flew past as though someone had pressed rewind. Decades passed, flowing backward. Centuries. Millennia.

A hand gripped her arm none too gently.

Eyes flying open, she looked up at Zach.

“You’ve seen enough,” he told her. “Seth alone should see the rest.”

Her stomach jumping with nerves, Heather nodded.

Ethan scowled. “Leave her alone.”

Zach released her arm. “I’m doing her a favor, Ethan. There are things about the Others she can’t know. If she sees any more than she already has, Seth will have to erase her memory of it.”

“It’s okay,” Heather assured Ethan. “I’ve seen enough.” She had seen that, like Zach, Jared questioned the path the Others had chosen. She had seen the dismay that had stricken Jared when she had been run through in the second battle with vampires he had instigated. She had seen the fear he had felt for the delicate mortal baby Seth loved when the battles had raged earlier today.

And she had felt how much Jared wished to find for himself, after thousands of years of loneliness, what Zach had found.

Seth abruptly strode forward and offered Jared his hand. “Thank you for protecting Adira. You are welcome to join us.”

A faint smile curling his lips, Jared shook Seth’s hand. “The Others aren’t going to like this. Three defections in as many years?”

Zach joined Seth and offered his own hand. “The Others need to follow your example and choose sides. Preferably ours.”

Jared nodded.

As soon as Zach released Jared’s hand, he drew back his arm and slammed his fist into the other man’s face.

Heather heard bone crack as Jared flew backward a good twenty yards and hit the ground, skidding several feet and leaving a wide path in the grass.

Seth sighed and sent Zach a withering look. “Really?”

Zach shrugged. “The bastard tortured me. What did you expect?”

Somewhere in the grass and the darkness that eclipsed him, Jared groaned. “Yeah. Sorry about that, Zach.”

Ethan laughed.

Heather did, too, her tense muscles relaxing.

As the words spoken in that clearing finally began to sink in, joy filled her.

She wasn’t being used as a pawn by Gershom. Gershom had never even been in her head. Her dreams and thoughts weren’t being manipulated with the intention of harming Seth and his Immortal Guardians. She was free to love Ethan now. Free to be with him without fearing she would hurt him. Free to be with him always, if she so chose.

Her heart began to pound.

She really could be with Ethan always. She could transform now and spend hundreds, if not thousands, of years with him, laughing and loving.

Yes, his was a dangerous world. But whose wasn’t with Gershom out there plotting Armageddon?

Ethan glanced down at her, a frown marring his handsome features. “What’s wrong? Your heart is racing.”

Grinning big, she reached up, curled her free hand around his neck, and drew him down for a long, passionate kiss.

Ethan could be hers now.

All hers.

Rising onto her toes, she leaned into him.

Ethan hummed his approval and wrapped his arms around her, locking her against his hard body as the kiss went on and on.

At last, Heather broke the heated contact. Excitement filled her near to bursting. “I love you, Ethan,” she professed, breathless from the kiss.

“I love you, too,” he said, his eyes glowing vibrant amber.

“Enough to make me immortal?” she asked.

Grass rustled as Jared dragged himself to his feet, but Heather kept her eyes on Ethan.

He sucked in a breath. His eyes brightened. “You would do that? You would let me transform you? You would spend forever with me?” His look turned wry. “Even if Gershom succeeds and forever only ends up being a few years?”

She nodded. “However long forever lasts, Ethan, I want to spend it with you.”

Ethan hugged her tight, picking her up so her feet dangled above the ground. “Thank you,” he murmured, his voice hoarse. “I love you, Heather. More than I knew I could love another. I’m sorry so much bad shit had to happen to bring us together, but I am so glad we’re together.”

“Me, too.” Over his shoulder, she saw Seth and Zach watching them. “We have an audience,” she whispered in his ear.

Ethan lowered Heather until her feet touched the ground, then turned to face the elders, his arm around her shoulders, keeping her close. “She wants to be transformed,” he announced.

Seth smiled. “So I heard. You may do so at your convenience. However, I ask that you do it at David’s place so he can help her through the transformation.”

Ethan nodded.

Heather’s belly filled with butterflies, but it didn’t dampen her happiness.

Jared trudged into the lantern’s light, his nose and chin bloody, and stood on Zach’s other side. Scowling at Zach, he said, “I take it we’re even now?”

Zach’s fist shot out and struck him in the jaw. “Not quite.”

Jared flew sideways out of Heather’s line of sight and hit the ground with a thud.

A groan floated on the night.

Seth’s face darkened with displeasure. “Damn it, Zach!”

A wicked smile curved Zach’s lips. “This is going to be fun.”





Aidan stared down at the list of names he had compiled. Beside it, spread out on Cliff’s coffee table, was a building schematic of network headquarters.

“This one,” Cliff said, pointing to a name, “you can cross off your list. She’s in love with a professor at UNC and just found out she’s pregnant.”

“Are they married?” Aidan asked.

“No. But based on the lovey-dovey crap I hear when they call each other, they’ll probably get married as soon as she tells him about the baby.”

Aidan drew a line through the woman’s name.

“Now, Angela might be a good fit for you.” Cliff sorted through several sheaves of paper until he found the map of sublevel three. “Her office is here, just up the hallway from the cafeteria. She’s single. She’s pretty. She’s . . . I don’t know . . . maybe thirty-five. I think she might have a little girl. Is that a deal breaker?”

“No,” Aidan said. “I can’t give her children myself and have long wondered what it would be like to be a father.”

“Well, since you’re so old you can go out in daylight, you could take the kid to the park and everything.”

How normal it sounded. How wonderfully beyond-his-reach normal.

“And,” Cliff added, “she doesn’t freak out when she runs into me in the cafeteria. A very good sign. If she doesn’t freak out when she sees me, then she may not be nervous around you the way many of the employees here are around immortals.”

Aidan smiled at the vampire. He hadn’t known Cliff long, but already considered him a friend. Yet another first he had experienced since Seth had transferred him to North Carolina. Aidan would’ve never thought he would befriend a vampire.

He hadn’t liked how solemn and restrained, though, the young man had become after his psychotic break—which Aidan had trouble thinking of as a psychotic break since Cliff had been trying to save Linda. So Aidan had decided to enlist the vampire’s aid in his quest to find a gifted one who might love Aidan enough to transform for him and spend the rest of eternity ridding him of this aching loneliness that plagued him.

The distraction seemed to be working, at least in part. Cliff had behaved much more like his old self these last few days.

“What does she do?” Aidan asked of the woman. “Is she smart?” If he had to choose between the two, Aidan would take brains over beauty any day.

Cliff snorted. “Everyone who works for the network is smart. I think . . .” He considered it a moment. “I think she might be one of the financial geniuses that manages the network’s money. I can ask Linda, if you want.”

Aidan shook his head. “I’ll ask this Angela myself when I bump into her. Do you know what hours she works?”

“Yeah. She—”

A knock sounded on Cliff’s apartment door. A moment later, a loud thunk sounded as it swung inward.

Ethan and Heather stood in the doorway.

“Hi,” Heather greeted them with a tentative smile. “Are we interrupting anything?”

“No,” Cliff said and turned one of the maps upside down on the coffee table to hide what they were doing. “Come on in.”

The couple entered and closed the door behind them.

“How’s it going?” Cliff asked, rising.

Aidan rose as well. Ethan was staring holes in him, so Aidan suspected they weren’t just dropping by to shoot the breeze.

Heather smiled at Cliff. “Good. How are the voices today?” She frowned and bit her lip. “I’m sorry. Was that insensitive? Am I not supposed to ask about that?”