Dark Embrace

Brie hung up, slipped on her jeans and sat down to seriously go over the cases she’d pulled. She was immersed in files when the doorbell rang twenty minutes later. She’d found nothing, and she supposed that was a relief. What she didn’t want to find was a dead victim with Aidan’s description. For all she knew, though, he was immortal. She hoped so.

Maybe the worst was over, she thought as she went to let the girls in. Maybe he’d gone back in time, where he belonged.

Tabby entered first, a willowy blonde in slacks and a silk tank top who always looked as if she were on her way to or from the country club. No one would ever guess from looking at her that Tabby was an earth mother. Sam followed, shockingly gorgeous even with her short-cropped platinum hair—but then, she had a Lara Croft from Tomb Raider body. Brie admired her immensely because she was so fearless and so open about her sexuality. She happened to know that Sam’s messenger bag was loaded with weapons, and she carried a stiletto strapped to her thigh beneath the denim miniskirt she wore. On anybody else it might be corny, but on Sam it was darned serious.

Tabby took one look at Brie and rushed to hug her. “You are so worried!”

Sam closed and locked the door. “Did you find anything?” she asked, nodding at the computer.

“He’s probably gone back to his time,” Brie said. She wet her lips, aware of an absurd disappointment.

“Don’t look so happy about it,” Sam said wryly, striding across the loft to the computer and peering at the screen. “I don’t think a man like that is easily hurt.”

“I think he was tortured. I have never felt so much pain,” Brie said.

Sam didn’t look up from the screen, scrolling through files she had no right to view.

Tabby put her arm around Brie. “You’re so pale. Are you all right?”

“I’ll survive,” Brie said, forcing a smile.

“Are you sure it was Aidan?” Tabby asked, rather unnecessarily, as Sam sat down at the desk. Tabby glanced at the poster from the movie The Highlander, which Brie had framed and hung on her living-room wall, her amber gaze narrowing.

“One hundred percent. I saw him as clear as day. It wasn’t a vision, but it wasn’t my imagination, either. I can’t empathize across time. I certainly can’t hear someone cry out from far away. He was here, close by. He was hurt. Really, really hurt.” Brie trembled, feeling sick again.

“If he’s hurt and in the city, we’ll find him,” Sam said firmly.

Brie felt reassured. Sam always got what she wanted.

“When did you put that poster up?” Tabby asked.

Brie blinked at her. “I don’t remember,” she lied, flushing.

Tabby stared. Then she moved toward the living area. “Well, this looks to be an all-nighter,” she said cheerfully. “It’s almost three in the morning, and I don’t think any of us will make it back to bed.” She began laying out her mother’s crystals on the coffee table.

And the roar of anguish began again, deafening Brie. She gasped, stunned by the bellow of rage. Her hands flew automatically to her ears. His pain sent her down to the floor, where she doubled over, crushed by it, consumed by it…imprisoned by it. This time, the sensation was unbearable.

Oh my God, what’s happening to Aidan? Is he being tortured?

“Brie!” Tabby screamed.

Vaguely, she was aware of Tabby holding her, but it didn’t matter.

Brie knew they were ripping his heart out now. They were ripping her heart out. She wept in Tabby’s arms, her world spinning with shocking force and then going black.

Aidan, she somehow thought. He was dying from the torture, and she was dying, too.

NICK FORRESTER sat at his computer in his night-darkened living room, clad only in his jeans. He’d completely forgotten about the leggy blonde who lay asleep in his bed. In fact, he couldn’t recall her name. He’d picked her up outside the Korean grocery, and maybe he hadn’t ever known the name. It was late, but he didn’t need more than a few hours of sleep—especially not after a long round of sex, which he found energizing. Sex always empowered him.

He was working again. The “witch” burnings in the city were on the rise. His latest intelligence debriefing had indicated that Bloomberg was seriously considering calling in the National Guard, and he thought it was about time. Pleasure crimes still dominated the murder rate, but those random demonic acts were almost unpreventable—like suicide bombers. The “witch” burnings were another matter. He knew in his gut that the gang leader of these medieval crimes was a great demon from the past. His gut was always dead-on.

Now he was immersed in medieval history, looking for any references to such burnings in past times. HCU had software to look for coincidental data, but he didn’t trust the damn programs and he never would. The program wasn’t that sophisticated, only matching words and phrases. A single isolated burning of a heretic, a traitor or a witch didn’t interest him, nor did the burning of a thirteenth-century peasant’s home or a baron’s castle. He was looking for a series of the violent crimes, probably committed by a group of adolescents but run by a single, very clever entity.

His cell buzzed.

Nick picked up at the first ring. A woman he did not know spoke. “Brie Rose needs medical attention, ASAP!”

“Who the hell is this?” he demanded, alert but annoyed at her commanding tone. He was wary, too. She could be a crank or even something else.

“Her cousin Sam Rose, and if you don’t want her going to Emergency, you need to send your people in. Hurry—she may be dying.” The phone went dead.

Nick was already speed-dialing his own medevac people while pulling up Brie Rose’s file on his HCU screen. In thirty seconds, he had sent his medical team to her loft and was pulling on a T-shirt, seizing his Beretta, car keys and shoes. He ignored the sleeping blonde as he left his condo, stepping into his shoes in the elevator. A minute later he was peeling out of the building’s underground garage in his black Expedition; eight minutes later he was leaping out of the vehicle, an ambulance marked Cornell Presbyterian already in front of Brie’s building. The ambulance belonged to CDA, and was deliberately mismarked.

He went up with the paramedics, growing aware of Brie’s struggle. He could feel her fighting for her life, and her fear of dying. Alarmed, he searched the perimeter but did not sense evil nearby. He couldn’t discern what had put her on the brink of death.

A beautiful blonde who looked like a rock star met him at the door. he felt her power and instantly knew she was a vigilante warrior. Glancing past her, he saw Brie, unconscious on the floor, in another beautiful woman’s arms. That one had power, too, but it was not that of a Slayer’s. He didn’t have time to try to identify it.

Although he knew the gossips nailed him as cold and uncaring, it wasn’t true. He’d hand-selected every single employee at HCU and considered them all his personal responsibility, especially mousy Brie. He was even a bit fond of her—and not because she was brilliant. He felt sorry for her. She was a recluse, with no life outside of work. He had sensed her powers before he’d hired her. It had taken him a moment to decide what they were but he could read minds whenever he chose and he was fairly conscienceless about it if it was in the line of duty. He didn’t expect her to come clean. He knew that her unusual perceptions were often used on the cases he sent to her and that worked fine for him.

As the medics went to take her vitals, he said grimly, “What happened?”

The woman holding Brie in her arms looked up at him. He felt his interest quicken. She was elegance and beauty personified. She said hoarsely, “She’s empathic, and someone we know was being tortured. She felt everything they did to him. She’s hurt.”

“No kidding.” He was wary. These women were outsiders. How much did they know? And vigilantes always messed up his investigations. He looked at his watch. It was 3:24 a.m. “When did it start?”

“Eight minutes ago,” the blonde with the body said. From her voice, he knew she was Sam Rose.

“Frank?” he asked.

“Her pulse is weak and her blood pressure is low,” the medic said, administering oxygen.

Brie’s eyes fluttered. Nick knelt beside her, smiling. “Hey, kiddo. We’ll take care of you. Tell me about your friend.”

She gasped weakly, “I think they’re slowly killing him, Nick.” Tears fell. “Please help him. He’s one of us.”

He stared at her, lurking. His eyes widened; Brie had met one of the Highland warriors? He was her friend? His agents had been hoping to bring in a Master for a long, long time.

“She had an episode earlier,” Sam said tersely. “That was when she called us.”

Nick absorbed that. “What do you know about the Highlander?”

Sam Rose was good, he had to hand it to her. Her eyes didn’t even widen, not a drop. “I’m worried,” she said. “If this person is being tortured, Brie might go through this again when they start in on him.”

“She won’t make it,” the other blonde cried. “I’ve never seen her like this.”

“Take her to Five,” Nick said. Because the agency was covert, CDA had its own medical facilities known simply a Five. But as Brie was loaded onto a stretcher, he pulled Frank aside. “Can an extreme empathic reaction kill her?”

“I don’t know.”