A face loomed suddenly out of the darkness. My skin crawled in horror for a moment, my body giving in to the flight instinct. I stepped backward and plummeted down the staircase into the inky blackness below.
CHAPTER 13
The pain caught my attention first. It was sharp and hot, radiating out from a spot on the side of my head, dull waves of agony that brought the rest of my awareness to me.
“Unh?” I said, my tongue seemingly made of lead as I blinked my eyes, trying to shake off the last shreds of oblivion that clung to the edges of my mind. “Hrng?”
“Are you awake? How do you feel?”
I blinked a couple more times. Light and shadows flashed on my face, blurred into fleeting shapes that seemed to rush past me.
“Boo?” I asked, trying to adjust my position, and wincing at the pain in my head that followed the movement. “Ow. What the hell?”
The man’s voice was a pleasant baritone with a slight German accent, sophisticated and sexy. “You hit your head on the banister when you fell. I caught you before you tumbled down the stairs, so you should be fine. Immortality is just one of the perks of being a Beloved.”
Carefully I turned my head to look in the direction of the voice, my eyes still not focusing too well. Slowly, a face resolved itself, dimly lit, but recognizable. “Alec?” I asked, the memory of him emerging from the darkness of his house returning with an impact that had me struggling upright.
Something bound me, holding me back. I struggled with the thing, realizing as a metallic click sounded that it was a seat belt. I was in a car.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, pushing myself up from where I’d been slumped in the passenger seat. Pain bit hard and deep in my head for a few seconds, slowly ebbing away to a dull throb. “Oh, God. I remember now. You loomed up out of the darkness and scared the crap out of me.”
“I’m sorry for that, love.” Alec caught himself, making a little face. “I suppose I shouldn’t call you that anymore. Not since . . . Well. What’s done can’t be undone.”
“If you’re talking about Kristoff . . . ,” I began slowly, rebuckling my seat belt. With extreme caution, I felt the side of my head. There was a good-sized lump there. “No, it can’t be undone. Not that I would want to even if I could change it. Ouch. I don’t suppose you have an ice pack handy?”
He shook his head, glancing briefly at me before returning his eyes to the road. “You are happy with Kristoff? I had thought that you and I had a great future before us. It seemed to me that you thought so, too.”
“I don’t think we were ever really meant to be,” I said uncomfortably, and not just due to the headache. “I will always cherish our time together, though. And I can’t believe I’m saying something so predictable and trite, but I hope that you won’t allow my relationship with Kristoff to come between our friendship, or your friendship with Kristoff. Assuming, that is, that you are not really working for the Brotherhood and about to turn me over to them so they can perform insanely evil acts against my person.”
Alec’s lips thinned. He was, as I had had occasion to note at some length, an exceedingly handsome man. He was dark haired, like Kristoff, but where Kristoff had dark auburn curls, Alec’s hair was a rich, deep, dark chocolate, straight and silky, pulled back in a ponytail. His eyes were green like a cat’s, and although our physical relationship hadn’t gone beyond one night together, he had enough raw magnetism that even in my somewhat muddled state I felt the impact of his nearness.
“That you can even think such a thing about me pains me deeply,” Alec said, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.
“Well, you have to admit that you haven’t done much for making people think you’re a knight in shining armor. Where have you been? What have you been doing? And why have you kidnapped me?”
“I haven’t kidnapped you; I’ve saved you,” he said, shooting me an irritated glance. “There were reapers all around my house. I sneaked in through the attic and was going to retrieve a valuable when I heard people.”
I suddenly remembered the old diary Magda and I found. I slid my hand toward my stomach, relieved to feel the stiff vellum-and-goatskin journal resting against it. Alec must have seen the movement.
“Yes, my reaper journal. It would appear I need to find a new hiding place for it. Oh, don’t distress yourself, love. I didn’t take it from you. In fact, you will find it most interesting reading, although I would like it back when you are through with it. You might ask Kristoff to translate parts for you.”