Vanished

Just the thought of the man’s name had Aly rubbing her arm again. She could swear she still felt his touch on her skin. Which was just weird.

Her heartbeat quickened a bit as she remembered the cold gleam in his clear green eyes as he touched her. He’d felt that buzz of something molten between them as well as she had. And he hadn’t looked any happier about it than she was. Small consolation.

Sighing, she eased her suitcase off the bed, then stretched out atop the quilt. Not bothering to change into her pajamas, she lay in the soft glow of lamplight and stared up at the sloping ceiling. But she wasn’t seeing the clean, white paint over the eaves of what had once been the attic of the working farmhouse.

Instead, she was seeing Rogan Butler, frowning at her. She heard the rolling music of his accent and the deep reverberation of his voice as it sizzled along her spine. She remembered every moment with him so clearly it was as if it had been etched into her brain.

“Now, isn’t that a lovely thought?” No. It wasn’t. She didn’t want to think about him. Didn’t want to consider what that hum of electric charge between them might have meant. And surely didn’t want to see him again.

And yet…

His face filled her mind as her eyes closed and her body surrendered to the jet lag tugging at her.

Casey still hadn’t returned by morning.

Aly fought down a cold lump of fear in her belly and told herself there would be an explanation. Car trouble, maybe. No. She was going to catch a cab. Then perhaps an accident. Oh, God. That wasn’t a good thought.

She went downstairs at the crack of dawn, but since the B and B was situated on a working sheep farm, her hostess was already up and busy. Aly accepted a cup of coffee, got directions on how to get to the city of Westport, then climbed into her car and took off.

The bucolic Irish countryside did nothing to dispel the sense of urgency bubbling inside her. Something was desperately wrong. She felt it. Aly knew her sister, and though Casey liked to have a good time, she wasn’t stupid. And she wasn’t the kind of woman who would have gone home with a man she’d just met.

Which left only one possibility.

Casey was in some kind of trouble.

The owner of the B and B had made a couple of phone calls for her, checking in with the local hospitals, but there was no record of an American woman being treated or admitted. So fine. She wasn’t in the hospital. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t be lying in a ditch somewhere and…

“Stop it,” she told herself. She wasn’t going to let her imagination take over. There would be a reasonable explanation for this. Maybe Casey hadn’t been able to get a cab back and had stayed at a hotel in town. “But if she’d done that, she would have called to let me know.”

The narrow road unwound in front of her like a black ribbon snaking through lush fields of green. On either side of the road, gorse bushes sprouted tiny yellow flowers in clusters so rich and thick that you couldn’t see through them to the farms beyond. On her right, Lough Mask lay spread out into the distance, a watery sun splotching the gray surface with flashes of brilliance.

When a car headed toward her, Aly gulped in a breath and held it, steering her car as far over to the left as she could. The gorse bushes scraped at the car, and as the other driver passed, he lifted a hand in greeting and drove on.

Aly blew out that breath and took another. She couldn’t imagine driving these roads all the time. It was terrifying. But at the moment, she had more to frighten her than tiny roads, careless drivers and the sheep that suddenly wandered out in front of her.

Stomping on the brake, Aly jerked to a stop and waited while the white-and-black sheep stared at her as if she were an intruder. And, hell, she was. She should never have come here, Society or not. And she certainly shouldn’t have brought Casey with her.

Casey.

Honking her horn, Aly eased off the brake and crept up on the sheep as slowly as she could. But she didn’t have the time to simply sit parked while the damn animal decided where it wanted to go. Clearly irritated, the sheep glared at her, then bounded across the road and Aly was once more flying down a narrow strip of asphalt, muttering unintelligible prayers as she went.

The local police, the Garda, weren’t too concerned when Aly faced them down with tales of a missing sister. But she’d been all over Westport. She’d visited dozens of pubs, talked to whoever would listen and, nearly frantic, had finally discovered the place her sister had last been seen, a pub called the Sidhe, which sat on the corner of the main street, just across from the river that snaked alongside the bustling city.

And the waitress at the Sidhe remembered serving Casey. Even remembered her leaving. Alone. About twelve o’clock the night before. Then, it was as if she’d slipped into a hole in the earth.

“If you don’t mind my sayin’ so, miss,” the sergeant at the broad wood desk said with a smile, “you’re worrying for naught. I’m sure your sister is simply enjoying her first trip to Ireland.”

Aly bit down on her frustration. The man was trying to be nice, after all. “The question, Sergeant, is where is she enjoying herself?”

He gave her another smile that flashed briefly in his clear blue eyes. “Ah, well, now. She’s an adult, isn’t she? There’s no sign of foul play. You’ve said yourself, the waitress at the Sidhe says she left under her own power, none the worse for wear.”

Around her, the police station hummed with activity. Somewhere down the long, narrow hallway a woman was crying, and Aly hoped to heaven that wasn’t an omen. She heard snatches of English mixed in with the musical sound of Gaelic. Burned coffee stained the air, and the sergeant in front of her had bread crumbs on his uniform jacket. It was as if she were outside herself, noticing all the little details of the room in a blind effort to keep calm. To keep from screaming that her sister was in trouble and no one was listening.

“Now, if you’d like to leave the number of where you’re staying, I’ll be sure to let you know if I learn anything.”

“Sergeant,” Aly tried again, desperate to make him do something to help her. “My sister and I are traveling together. Casey wouldn’t simply disappear without telling me. She would know that I’d be worried.” Calm. Collected. In control. Hysteria would only make him dismiss her entirely. “Something’s happened to her, and I need you to help me look for her.”

Sighing, he pulled a piece of paper in front of him, picked up a pen and, giving her a look that clearly said she was wasting his precious time, asked, “Will you tell me again what she looks like?”

“Yes.” Aly didn’t care if he didn’t believe her. Didn’t care if he was patronizing her. All that mattered was that he was filling out an official report. She dug out her wallet, produced a picture of her sister and handed it over.

“I can’t promise you much, miss.” He studied the photo of a smiling Casey for a long moment, then made notes in a tidy hand. “Your sister’s a grown woman. She’s been gone only overnight. For all you know, she’s hunkered down in a hotel with one of the local lads, I’m sorry for saying so.”

Aly bit down hard on her bottom lip, then said, “Casey’s not like that. I’m telling you, something is wrong. I know it.”

“Ah, well, then, we’ll see what we can do.”

While he wrote down everything she said, Aly looked around the station again. And this time, she noticed the pages tacked up to a bulletin board in the entrance. Missing notices. With pictures and descriptions of young men and women. They dotted the entire surface of the corkboard and filled Aly with trepidation.

If the Garda hadn’t found any of those people…how would they find Casey?

Chapter 3

Rogan slipped through the countryside and made no more than a whisper of sound. A young moon gave fitful light as it slipped in and out of thick clouds rolling in from the sea. He moved with the stealthy grace he had learned over the long centuries of solitary battles. His gaze swept the darkness as he made his way across the open field, searching, always searching for the telltale energy traces that would lead him to a demon.

The wind was icy and tossed the branches of the trees into a tangle of limbs. But he hardly noticed. The night was home to him, the open land more easy on his soul than four walls could ever be. He belonged here, hunting. The scent of peat smoke from a nearby chimney came to him, and for one brief moment, memories crowded Rogan’s mind. Memories of other times, when he’d roamed these very hills in the company of his brother warriors. Before he’d died. Before he’d begun his eternity on the hunt.

As a Guardian, Rogan was one of many. Chosen at the moment of their death to defend humanity from the demon threat, Guardians were immortal. And with the gift of long life came other gifts. All of them were telepathic, able to read the minds of the humans they protected. Some of the Guardians had other gifts, as well, gifts that had been with them in life and were, over the course of eternity, strengthened, made more powerful.

Rogan, though, was only what he appeared to be—a warrior. A man who had known little else in life beyond the camaraderie of a battlefield and the company of others like himself. He’d served the last hereditary high king of Ireland, Brian Boru, and his last act on Earth had been to avenge his king’s death. He valued loyalty. Honor.

And told himself that the vow he’d made so long ago was enough for him.

Then Alison Blair had walked into his home and short-circuited every nerve in his body. Just remembering her now brought back the flash of…knowing that had filled him with a simple touch. He’d dipped into her mind and felt her confusion. Felt her reaction to him and had had to fight to maintain the cold distance he preferred between himself and humankind.

She was…unexpected. He’d thought only to be irritated with the intrusion of the Society. But with a single touch, that had changed. And he wasn’t pleased with the knowledge.

Scowling, he cleared his mind and concentrated instead on the here and now. Thoughts of a woman he didn’t want had no business on the hunt. He was needed. He did a job that few others could do, and this night he would track whatever demons thought to prey on his island.

While he moved through the darkness, becoming a part of the night itself, he thought of the seer’s prediction. And again, despite his best intentions, of Alison Blair. He didn’t want to think of her. He’d found and lost his Destined Mate centuries ago. There would be no other for him, and Rogan knew it was as well there wouldn’t be. A hunter had no need for anything in his life but the next hunt. The next challenge. The next demon.

And as that thought rose up in his mind, he turned over the seer’s warnings again. He had little patience with those who claimed to see the future. But since Alison’s visit the night before, he’d done some research himself. True, he was more at home with a sword in his hand than he was sitting at a computer. But he’d long ago learned that to move with a changing world, he had to first keep abreast of those changes.

He’d taught himself how to use the state-of-the-art computer system installed in his home, and his satellite Internet connection afforded him the luxury of researching anything he wished with the click of a button. And he’d found enough to make him wary, to make him consider using the Society’s seer.

He seldom watched television and rarely read a newspaper, since the mortal world’s interests had little to do with him. So it was with surprise that he found people were disappearing all over County Mayo. One or two at first, but in the past several weeks more and more were simply vanishing. The missing were generally young—in their twenties. And most of them were tourists, as though someone or something was endeavoring to keep the local population from becoming too suspicious.

Rogan moved out onto the road and stared up at the B and B where Alison Blair was staying. A farmhouse, the tidy white building fairly sparkled in the spare moonlight. Alongside the B and B was a stone-faced, thatched cottage used for self-catering vacationers. With the Lough behind him, Rogan stared at the B and B, shifting his gaze from one lamplit window to the next, focusing his mind and listening for the thoughts of those inside.