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“Convince me,” he said.
He was hard already—clearly, it didn’t take much. Not that she should criticize, he had a similar effect on her. “Love to,” Sam said softly.
She moved. He held her hand and she ducked under his arm and twisted it behind his back, at lightning speed. It was a move she’d performed hundreds of times, always with the same results—it incapacitated a man, because if she didn’t stop, she’d break his arm. But he moved with her.
As if he knew what she meant to do, he went with her, preventing her from twisting his arm, and they wound up in their starting positions, face-to-face, holding hands, breathing hard.
He grinned. “I was hopin’ fer a different kind of persuasion, Sam.”
She went for his solar plexus. He dodged the attack and lightly blasted her with power, sending her backward, into her car. “Sorry,” he taunted.
She cursed.
He hurried into the street, raising his hand to flag down a taxi. Brakes screeched. Sam launched herself upright as he waved the parcel containing the page at her. Then he opened the driver’s door, pushed the driver out and got in, taking over the wheel.
Sam leapt into her car, turned the ignition on, jammed it into Drive and peeled out after him. Horns blared at her. She ignored the outrage. A Honda crashed into a parked car to avoid hitting her as she barreled through the traffic.
She hit the gas. She was not going to lose him, but there were half a dozen yellow cabs ahead, each identical at this distance. She was careful to keep him in her sights.
His yellow cab suddenly veered away from the group, turning abruptly onto a side street.
Sam cursed, weaving past two taxis to follow him. But a woman and a child were already stepping into the street and she had to slam on the brakes. Maclean was almost at the end of the block and she saw that he was going to run the changing light. “Shit!”
She leaned out of her window. “Move!” she screamed at the woman. She turned her siren on.
The woman leapt across the street, the boy in tow. Sam slammed down the accelerator. Maclean was entering the next intersection, and the light between them had turned red. She cursed and hit the gas harder, using the horn. Miraculously, the New Yorkers about to cross the street actually stopped and she drove furiously forward, into the uptown traffic.
Horns blared, tires screeched. An SUV hit her passenger side door. Sam kept going. The Lexus leapt into the next street, only a half a block between them now.
He was laughing—she just knew it.
Ahead, she saw the cab veer left, heading back downtown.
Sam drove faster, the light ahead still green. Not that it mattered—she was on Broadway now and dozens of pedestrians were jaywalking. She held down the horn, the blare incessant, her sirens still screaming, but the pedestrians ignored her. She braked hard to avoid vehicular manslaughter.
The crowd streamed across the street, blocking her way.
She leaned out of her window, firing her gun into the air. “Get out of my way!”
The men and women walking past her car ran for the safety of the sidewalk.
Sam shot through the intersection.
About twenty yellow cabs were ahead of her.
She slowed, her heart racing, scanning the mass of taxicabs. From behind, most of them looked alike. “Shit.”
The light changed. The traffic moved on. She followed the pack of yellow cabs, now trying to feel him. “Where are you, you sonuvabitch? Which one are you?”
She didn’t expect an answer. But she focused as never before.
And she felt his hot male power. Oh yeah, she did.
Her gaze slammed onto a cab on the right side of the mass. “Gotcha,” she snarled. She turned the wheel hard, cutting off a delivery van, ignoring the driver, who hit the brakes, cursing her through his window. She slammed down the gas and drove her vehicle right into his rear fender.
The cab bounced hard at the contact, the fender crumpling. Then Maclean turned and looked over his shoulder at her.
He was laughing.
“I’m having the last laugh, Maclean,” she said. “And I am staying right here, glued to your shiny yellow ass.” She smiled, wondering what he would do next.
She found out two blocks later. Suddenly he swerved toward the sidewalk and she followed him, determined to stay with him. Maclean looked like he was going to hit the patrons of a sidewalk café, and the masses screamed, people diving away from their tables and chairs. He swerved again. Sam followed as he drove into the exit ramp of a parking garage—at full speed.
He was testing her, she thought grimly, her hands clamped on the steering wheel. But she did not have a death wish. The exit ramp spiraled tightly upward—making it impossible to see who was coming down.
Sam slowed fractionally.
And as she turned the corner, she saw a car swerving away from the down ramp to avoid a head-on collision with Maclean.
Maclean swerved between two pillars to avoid the next descending car and Sam came hood to hood with it. She swerved, hard, bouncing into the ramp’s concrete wall, metal screaming. The oncoming Volkswagen hit the ramp wall dead on.
Breathing hard, Maclean no longer in sight, she took the next corner. She swerved to avoid another descending car and sideswiped some parked vehicles, while the passing vehicle hit the garage posts. The next car coming down the ramp swerved to avoid a head-on collision, as did Sam. She drove her Lexus hard up the ramp, against the concrete wall, sparks shooting off her car. She heard the car she had just passed collide with either the ramp wall or a pillar.
And when she turned the next corner, she was on the garage’s top level. Maclean was racing the taxicab through the rows of parked cars.
Sam hit the brakes. The top level was mostly unoccupied, and she could see that the roof of the garage was a rectangle. The buildings on three sides were taller; she did not know what was on the fourth side.
Where was he going?
The only place for him to go was down, but he’d sped by the entrance ramp, and he was far from where she sat at the top of the exit ramp.
Sam realized he was heading for the open side of the garage. She shifted into gear and drove toward it.
Maclean didn’t stop.
Sam was close enough now to realize that the roof of the adjacent building was about two stories below the garage’s top floor. And she realized what he was going to do.
She braked hard. “Are you crazy?” she cried.
And as she spoke, the cab hit the low barrier wall, went through it and was briefly suspended in the air.
Then it fell.
And it landed hard on the lower roof.
Sam leapt from her Lexus and ran across the garage to the barrier wall. Below, she saw the cab on the asphalt roof, looking somewhat mangled. The driver side door opened and Ian Maclean got out.
He waved at her and, holding the parcel, started across the roof. A moment later he’d entered the building, disappearing from her view.
Sam dialed 911.
He was crazy. Either that, or he didn’t care if he lived or died.
CHAPTER FIVE (#u5497b82a-db68-50f9-980b-8b99e441769e)
IAN WANTED TO WAKE UP.
So much dread began that he could not breathe.
But the scene was so innocent, his reaction made no sense—except that he knew something terrible was going to happen.
He watched the children milling down the front steps of the Brooklyn public school, from a distance. Laughing and chattering, they were being met by their parents and care-givers. He did not want to watch, but his focus zoomed in closer. One boy wasn’t laughing or speaking. His heart sank as he recognized the thin, sullen, dark-haired boy.
It was himself.
The focus shifted and he was that boy now, his heart hammering with fear. He liked school but he hated going home. He was always careful to never think about what might happen when he got there—until the last bell of the day rang, and there was no other choice.
A dark shadow fell into step beside him.
His fear increased. He ignored the fingertips sliding along his cheek. They walked the three blocks home in silence.
At the door of the house, he said, “Your grandfather has returned, Ian. He has special plans for you.”
Ian choked, closing his eyes. Months and sometimes even a year would go by without Moray returning. Ian knew he preferred Scotland to New York. He would dream about his never coming back—that he would finally be allowed to go home.
He stood on the threshold of the dark, narrow, turn-of-the-century house, afraid.
Inside that house was his worst nightmare. He knew pain and fear and shame would greet him if he went in there. He knew he’d find his various captors in there, demons who changed over the years, and he also knew that he’d find Moray, too.
The Innocent wept and begged for mercy from the cellar.
God, he’d forgotten about them. He’d forgotten how he’d try to bring them food and water, only to be tortured and beaten to within an inch of his life for it.
He became sick. He couldn’t go inside.
And the door slowly opened. Black evil poured out onto the street, cloaking him. He tensed, aware of the evil worming its way into him.
“Stop cowering and come inside.” His grandfather smiled. “I have a use for you, my boy.”
Ian sat up, gasping. Fear and panic clawed through him, the talons knifelike. It took him an instant to realize that he had been dreaming. He cursed.
The dreams were as bad as the flashbacks.
In that first waking moment, there was nothing but fear. He launched himself from the plush chaise where he’d fallen asleep. He was still trembling, wet with sweat. He refused to think about the dream—he did not want to go there, not now, not ever. He took a breath and saw that it was early evening. He’d arrived home a few hours ago and sat down to savor his triumph over Sam Rose. He’d thought about her reckless courage, unable to quell his admiration. He’d had three or four drinks. And he must have fallen asleep.
He glanced at the unfinished drink and sandwich by the chair. He feared sleep almost as much as he feared pain and evil, which was why he avoided it at all costs. Sleep always brought nightmares, and waking up brought horrific, vivid and recycled memories.
Sometimes he went days without sleeping. But in the end, the past always triumphed. Eventually he would fall asleep for a few moments, the way he’d just done now.
His grandfather Moray had been one of the greatest demons to ever walk the earth. Rumor had it he had ruled his evil empire for almost a thousand years. His one failure had been his inability to completely turn his son Aidan, Ian’s father, to the dark side. Moray was not only accustomed to power, he was obsessed with it. Every demon lusted for power—it was the reason for their pleasure crimes. But Moray wanted to rule the world. Aidan was his worst enemy—his own son, refusing his wishes, his commands. Moray had abducted Ian in 1436, when he was nine years old, in order to use him against Aidan, intending to destroy him.
He hadn’t. In the end, Aidan had vanquished Moray, and Ian had been freed.
He’d been released exactly twenty-five years ago, just before Moray was destroyed once and for all by Aidan and Brie. Although Ian had been born in the fifteenth century, he’d spent most of his life in modern times, in New York City, where he’d been kept captive. Ian would never forget the day he had been freed. His father had found him and there had been so much relief. It had been his wildest dream coming true. There had even been joy. But the joy had been so brief.
Because Moray had returned him to Scotland in 1502. The moment he’d stepped outside of Elgin’s tower, he’d been in the medieval world. It should have been familiar to him, but instead, it had been strange and confusing, upsetting. He could barely remember his earlier childhood years there. Instead, he began to wonder why his father hadn’t come to his rescue sooner. He kept looking over his shoulder, expecting Moray or one of his captors to be there, waiting to hurt him. And he couldn’t sleep. When he slept, he dreamed.
And he had still been nine years old.
His grandfather had deprived him of every aspect of a normal childhood by putting a spell on him, one which had kept him nine years old for the duration of his captivity—emotionally as well as physically. But upon being released, he’d rapidly aged, becoming an adult man within months. Biologically he was one hundred years old, but he’d only been an adult for twenty-five years. None of it mattered. He felt a thousand years old.
Ian drained the rest of his scotch whiskey. No one knew better than Ian how sadistic, cruel and evil the son of a bitch had been. Even though he was vanquished, Ian still feared him. He could think of nothing worse than dreaming of his grandfather—other than actually coming face-to-face with him again.
Moray had once told him that he was Satan.
Ian believed it.
Moray had said, laughing, “Haven’t you grasped the truth yet? I am Satan.”
His heart had exploded with fear and disbelief. He choked, hugging the bars of the cage he’d been put in—his current punishment. “Ye canna be Satan. Satan is the father of all evil.”
Moray had reached for the door, smiling cruelly. “But I have so many faces, my son. Now will you do as I command?”
Ian reached for his drink and realized it was empty. He cursed. Satan had imbued Moray’s very existence and all that he had done. Satan surely had a thousand faces. Moray had been one.
How else would Moray have survived for over a thousand years? The Brotherhood and other great men had hunted him across time. They’d all failed, until Aidan and Brie had destroyed him.
And now his father, who had left him alone with evil for so long, had gone down in history as a great Master. Ian laughed. He knew the sound was bitter. He didn’t care. Hooray for the great Wolf of Awe, he thought caustically.
He had almost all the powers his father had, and a few he didn’t have. But Ian knew they’d never ask him to join the Brotherhood. The gods knew the truth about the years of captivity. They knew how defiled he was, how deficient, how insane. Not that he cared. If they were ever crazy enough to ask him to join, he’d refuse, because he was too different to ever be one of them. How could he ever be trusted to protect Innocence?
Hanging in the cage, the Innocent sobbed in fear.
“Do it.”
He held the knife, starting to cry.
“Do it, Ian, or suffer as they will suffer.”
He knew what he had to do. But he couldn’t do it, not to the little girl and not to her mother. He looked up at the monk, who stood beside him with his grandfather.
“Punish him,” Moray snarled.
Suddenly Ian grunted in pain. He realized that he had been holding his glass so tightly he had broken it. His hand was bleeding now. He cursed and let the cracked glass fall.
Sometimes he hated everyone—the gods, his father, the world.
At the end, when they knew he’d never try to escape—when he knew he’d never be freed—Moray had tried to turn him. It was another ploy meant to destroy his father. But in spite of his fear of them, and his fear of what the punishment for refusal would be, he hadn’t ever been able to hurt anyone innocent. The boy had been heroic, but the man flirted with pain. Sometimes he had such an intense urge to hurt others, even the women he slept with. But it was nothing like the urge he so often had to hurt himself.
