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Burnings were creeping up on the proportion of murders committed both in the city and globally. A recent study released by Interpol showed that almost 20% of all the murders committed last year had been burnings. Burning the Innocent alive had become a huge “gang” sport. The perpetrators weren’t entirely human—they were possessed by evil, and commonly referred to as subs. The press had dubbed the crimes witch burnings, because the subs wore cloaks and the burnings were so medieval in nature.
Five cloaked teens chasing a couple meant one thing. Sam was already running across the street, holding the short stiletto that had been hidden in her right high heel.
Running in high heels sucked, but she wasn’t about to be deterred. Sam caught one boy from behind, who screamed as he was seized. He tried to stab her with his knife and she cut his throat just as two of his friends leapt at her.
Sam dropped her messenger bag and used the side of her hand to deliver a fatal blow to boy number two’s throat. He dropped like a rock. At the same time, his buddy stabbed her, the blade of his knife grazing her arm and then cutting across her rib cage.
It hurt. And she didn’t like being hurt. Pissed, she gave him a flying front kick, which sent him backward across the street. She knelt, taking her .38 from the bag. As she did, the boy got up, his face a mask of possessed fury. She glimpsed Ian standing on the street corner. He was calmly watching her take on a pack of evil kids.
Her fury knew no bounds. Couldn’t he get rid of one of the subs for her, at least?
She felt someone behind her. Sam whirled, firing as the girl landed on her, her face hairy. Wolflike claws dug into her body. Sam fired again and again. It took a while to kill the shape-shifting girl. The half woman finally fell dead to the ground at her feet.
“Arrgh!”
Sam turned but before she could shoot the fourth possessed teen, he had kicked the gun from her hand. His rage, combined with the evil, made him terribly powerful. Off balance, she landed hard on her ass as he tackled her, his hands going around her throat. He started choking her, intent on strangling her to death.
This would be a great time for Maclean to butt in, she somehow thought. But he didn’t. Sam jammed her knuckle into the boy’s carotid artery; as he choked, she took the dagger from the garter on her thigh and imbedded it in his chest. Instantly he collapsed on her. She shoved him off, and then knelt over him to see if he was alive.
He was. She dug her cell phone out of her tiny purse and dialed not 911, but CDA. Their medical center was as clandestine as the rest of the agency. Known as Five, it was in constant use. Bringing subs into a regular E.R. was a bad idea. The non-ordinary—and many at CDA were NO—could not seek treatment in a public hospital, either. The press would start to figure things out. Full-blooded demons disintegrated if left untouched within moments of their destruction, so they were rarely an issue. Five was for the very special.
That done, she closed her phone and looked at the bodies on the street. Four dead kids, all of whom had once been normal. It was routine by now. These possessed kids were mostly runaways, and they were easy prey for evil.
She looked at the boy who was still alive. “Try not to die. With a little help from the gods, we might get you back to your family.” She spoke without emotion. Compassion was a bad idea, she’d learned that long ago. If she started caring about who lived and who died, she’d be the one winding up dead, really soon.
He spat at her, mostly blood.
“Are you all right?” It was the woman who had been fleeing the subs.
The man with her knelt beside Sam. “Jesus, are you a cop? I’ve never seen anything like what you did! You saved me and my wife!”
Sam smiled grimly. She looked past the couple at Maclean.
He stood on the corner, hands in his tuxedo pockets, regarding her thoughtfully. Their gazes locked. He hadn’t lifted a single finger to help her. The anger burned.
“Should we call 911?” the woman asked worriedly.
“I’m fine,” Sam said. As she started to stand, the woman’s husband grasped her arm to steady her.
“You’re hurt,” he said with concern.
Sam looked at her bloody arm and the slashes in the bodice of her red dress. She’d been nicked on her bicep and her rib cage. It burned a lot, but she was almost certain the cuts were superficial. “Par for the course. Why don’t you two go home? Have a brandy on me. I’m a Fed.” The Bureau was her cover. “I’ll take care of this.”
“We can’t possibly leave you,” the man said firmly.
His wife nodded in agreement, beginning to cry. “She’s so brave,” she said to her husband. “I was so scared.”
He put his arm around her and turned away, whispering to her. They were in their forties, Sam thought, and it crossed her mind that they really loved each other. Sweet. She looked at Maclean again. What a frigging selfish jerk.
The sirens from CDA’s mismarked ambulance could be heard. Maclean sauntered toward her. Sam glanced at Hemmer’s house and saw that his two dates had vanished. Of course they had. Bimbos were usually chickens.
“Impressive,” he said, his glance going to the tattered bodice of her dress.
“Gee, I’m so glad you enjoyed the show.” She turned her back on him and knelt, gathering up her weapons and piling them into her messenger bag. She was bloody, bruised, stabbed and dirty, and he didn’t have one hair out of place! He had watched the entire attack. What kind of superpowered hero was he? It was unbelievable. Even an antihero would have cut in.
She stood up. “Thanks for all the help.”
He shrugged. “Yer a tough girl. Ye hardly needed my help.”
“Like you’d have bothered.”
“I want ye in my bed, not dead.”
“You have a great way of romancin’ a gal,” Sam snarled.
He smiled. “Every man likes to watch a good fight. Maybe I should help ye next time. Or maybe I’ll be your next target.” His eyes gleamed.
Sam had the instant notion that he’d love for her to fight him with everything she had. “Don’t worry. The day is rapidly approaching.”
His answer was to touch her.
Sam tensed as the back of his hand skimmed the bottom of her breast. He lifted the shreds of her red dress where it had been cut. She inhaled. In spite of the pain, desire was instantaneous and acute. She knew he kept his hand pressed against her breast on purpose.
His gaze was almost silver before he lowered his lashes and dropped the tatters of silk. “Ye need to take care of the cuts.”
“This isn’t the Middle Ages. No one dies from a few scrapes here,” she snapped, but she was trembling and rigid with tension. Damn his sex appeal.
His mouth curled, this time unpleasantly. “An’ I know it very well, Samantha. I live here, remember? Not in that barbaric time.”
She bristled. “It’s Sam. And don’t worry, no one would ever peg you as a medieval barbarian, Maclean. Just a selfish jerk.” Had he been defensive? She thought so, and she couldn’t imagine why.
The white ambulance from Five careened around the intersection, marked as Cornell Presbyterian. Sam dismissed her speculation about Maclean, watching as the agency paramedics leapt out. Then she glanced at Maclean again. He seemed to be noticing that his conquests for the evening were gone.
“You don’t need them,” Sam said. She stepped into the street, aware now that one of her spike heels was gone. Cursing, she flagged down a cab. She seized the door handle and looked at Ian as she opened it. “Get in, Maclean.”
His eyes widened.
She kept her mind blank. “I want to see your digs.”
A slow, hot smile began. He slid into the cab and Sam slid in with him. She shut the door. As he leaned forward to tell the driver where they were going, she reached into her bag. “1101 Park Avenue,” he said.
Sam snapped the handcuff on his wrist. He started, his gaze slamming to hers as she snapped its mate on her own wrist. She smiled at him. “This should be fun.”
SHE HAD JUSThandcuffed herself to him.
He started to laugh, amused. Did she think to dismay him? He’d been lusting for her since he’d first seen her. He would never get over her face. Those striking features, those amazing eyes and that cropped platinum-blond hair. He looked forward to the day she rubbed her face over every inch of his body…
He raised his wrist and said, “All ye had to do was tell me, Sam. I’d have brought the handcuffs myself.”
“We stay together tonight,” she said coolly.
But he didn’t hear. As he tugged gently on the handcuffs, his gut churned, the sensation sickening. They were speeding up Central Park West, but the old, stately apartment buildings started to swim in his vision. They became dark ominous shadows…
He could not have a flashback now.
But he recognized the shadows—the small, tight walls of a cellar. The iron on his wrist was attached to one wall. They’d left him in there, like that, for months. His only company had been the rats. He’d been nine years old.
“What’s wrong, Maclean?”
“What’s wrong, Ian? Are you afraid of the dark? The rats? Me?”
He stared up at the demon who had captured him. The demon who had killed him, and then brought him back to life so he could be tortured. Used.
Soft evil laughter sounded.
And although he hadn’t used his voice in months, not since the beginning when he’d screamed and screamed for help, he begged. “Please let me out. Please. I’ll do whatever ye wish.”
“Good, because I have so many uses for a pretty boy like you,” his grandfather said.
“Maclean?”
He’d lived with horror and pain—and abject fear—for sixty-six years. But he heard Sam Rose, and somehow, he looked at her.
He was sweating.
“What’s wrong with you?” Her vivid blue gaze moved over him. “Hot flash?”
Her mockery brought him firmly back to the present and the taxicab they shared. He looked back at her and shook his wrist, so the handcuff wriggled between them. “Of course I’m hot. We’re shackled together.”
For one more moment she stared. He was fairly certain she did not believe the excuse he’d just made. He didn’t care what she believed. He was aware that she thought him selfish and a user—and she was right. He had one and only one interest in her.
Pleasure was an escape. He never had flashbacks during sex.
The first time he had seen Sam Rose, she had been crossing the street in Oban, Scotland, causing male pedestrians to trip and stare. Traffic had come to a screeching stop. His mouth had gone dry and he’d become as hard as a two-by-four. He’d known then and there that he’d have her. No woman had ever denied him. He’d been honest when he said he always got what he wanted.
He’d felt her warrior power instantly and that had added to her allure and appeal. Most of the women he used were rich and bored, the highlight of their day a trip to Cartier. Now he knew even more about her. She was a powerful Slayer. The highlight of her day was a bloody fight with the devil. He would never forget the sight of her battling the possessed teens in her little red dress and spike heels just moments ago—fighting as he’d never seen a woman fight before. She’d taken down the five possessed teens effortlessly. And she had not been afraid. He’d have felt it. Evil did not frighten her.
It frightened everyone else.
It frightened him.
He hid beneath a pile of towels, trying to make himself as small as he could. His grandfather had returned and he had guests—and he was calling for him. Fear made him sick. He lost control of his bladder. He was throwing up. He knew what they’d do to him. They were bored and he’d be the evening’s sport—until they went to hunt the Innocent on the streets. There was nowhere to hide and they wouldn’t let him die. He’d heard Moray telling his captors that he must be kept alive—at all costs.
He prayed to his father, begging him to hear him, begging him to come rescue him.
The door opened and the lights in the bathroom came on.
He was sweating and sick now. His gut was so tight, he thought it might explode. He reminded himself that he was not a captive child now and that Sam Rose wasn’t evil. He wasn’t helplessly shackled and chained. Monsters weren’t waiting to devour him, his grandfather’s guests weren’t waiting to rip him apart. This was a game. And she was going to wind up in his bed, beneath his body, and he’d be the one pounding into her. He was not a prisoner now. He was a free man—wealthy, powerful and in control of his life.
She jerked hard on the handcuffs. “If you leap into that vault, you will be taking me with you.”
He had no idea if a pair of handcuffs would keep her with him during a leap. He didn’t need to use that power to get into Hemmer’s vault. He could open locks and dismantle alarms with his mind, but Sam already knew that. If he needed to leap to get inside, he didn’t think he’d have the courage to do so. Pain still terrified him.
Ian turned to stare out of the taxi’s window. He refused to go back into the past now.
“What is it? I happen to know firsthand that one person with the power to leap can bring another along. Handcuffs might do the trick.”
Somehow he smiled at her. “Really? An’ who gave ye the ride?”
Her gaze widened, focused on his. It was far too searching, too direct. He wasn’t good at reading minds. The power came and went. Sometimes it was sketchy, as if there was static in the telepathy. Sometimes it was perfect. But he didn’t need the power to know that she was determined to stop him from stealing the page.
“Nick brought me back with him. We were looking for Brie when your father took her hostage,” she finally said.
He was staring out of the window at Central Park now. So she’d gone back in time—good for her. Then she knew how excruciating leaping through time was.
“You do plan on leaping into the vault, don’t you?”
He wanted to tell her to shut up.
He turned to look at her instead. “Why leap when I can walk inside?”
She smiled. “Good point.”
He’d never let her know that he feared pain, much less the evil causing it. From the moment his demon grandfather had abducted him when he was nine years old, taking him from medieval Scotland to the modern world, he had learned what evil really was. Evil enjoyed fear and pain, and inflicted both at will. Evil lusted for sex, power and death. He’d been kept a prisoner for sixty-six years. And evil had been merciless with him.
At first, he’d thought to escape. At first, he’d thought he would be rescued. Within months, maybe a year, he’d lost hope and wanted to die.
“Do you have an ounce of courage, Ian? Oh, I forgot—your father is a coward, too.”
He tried to fight to free himself but it was impossible. Tears of rage and helplessness streamed. “He’s a hero—good, not evil—like ye!”
“He is evil now, as evil as I am!Yes, your father has fallen to the darkness, Ian.” He laughed. “You are the means I will use to destroy your father. You do remember that, don’t you? It’s the only reason I am bothering to keep you alive…”
He was released. “My father will kill you,” he cried.
“No, I will destroy him. Then you will be freed—and allowed to grow up. And you will live with the guilt, the pain and all these memories—until the gods let you die.”
He flinched as he was caressed…
To this day, he didn’t know how anyone, much less a boy, could have survived what they’d done to him: the rape, the torture, the sick games.
Ian turned to look out of the window, away from Sam, who was clearly trying to guess his thoughts. He had been powerless as a captive, but he had control now. He had wealth. He did as he chose, when he chose—and no one and nothing could or would ever stop him. Anyone who thought to get in his way would pay.
Control meant everything to him. It was a matter of life and death—it was a matter of survival. It was even a matter of sanity.
He had spent most of his life in submission. He would do as he damned pleased now.
He had spent most of his life in pain. He intended to spend the rest of his life in pleasure.
