The Secret Night

“That’ll teach you to mess with us,” the shooter called out, advancing on her.

He was going to kill her—Emma knew it as surely as she knew her name. Gritting her teeth, she tried to stagger away.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he taunted. “You think I can’t follow you into the bushes? Come to think of it, that would be kind of fun.”

She didn’t bother to answer. Then she saw something strange behind the biker.

Chapter Four

Bloody hell! What was she doing here?

No mistaking who she was—he recognized her immediately. The woman from his dreams.

But this was no dream. He was wide awake, and from his vantage point on the porch, Nick saw one of the bikers advancing on the woman, gun in hand, ready to finish the job he’d started. The rest of the low-life animals were watching with wicked grins on their ugly faces.

Roaring like a lion, Nick leaped from the porch and zoomed toward the gunman so fast that he was only a blur in the darkness. Lightning flashed, providing perfect horror-movie effects as he swooped down on the guy. Knocking the weapon from his hand, Nick took him down, slamming him to the ground. For good measure, he stomped on the man’s grimy fingers with his boot heel, wringing a scream of pain from him.

He heard the woman gasp, and he looked over to see her staring at him with a mixture of shock and bewilderment. She was sitting propped against a tree, and he could see she’d been shot in the side. Quickly, he gave her a closer inspection. Seeing no arterial blood gushing, he figured her life wasn’t in immediate danger.

Which left him free to terrorize the rest of the criminals who had come to burn him out of house and home.

Wheeling, Nick flew at the gang, scattering them like ants. As they fled, screaming, he went after them one by one. He threw them to the ground, trampled over them with his boots, kicked them in the ribs and back and gut, and ground their faces into the dirt and gravel.

He could easily have killed them. He ached to squash the guy with the gas can. But he kept a tight leash on his anger and settled for scaring the piss out of the burn master, watching the dark stain that spread across the front of the guy’s jeans.

Ordinarily, Nick would have pursued the fleeing bikers and wiped the knowledge of the fight—and of the whereabouts of his home—out of their tiny minds. But he had more urgent business. For now, he was confident that they wouldn’t be back anytime soon. He could clean up the details later.

When he heard the roar of their motorcycles retreating down his road, he turned to the woman and hunkered down beside her.

She was small and delicate and very beautiful, with blue eyes and shoulder-length blond hair framing her face. Exactly as she’d been in his dreams, to the smallest detail.

Her gaze focused on him, still full of astonishment and confusion. “It was you,” she whispered. “In my dreams. But how…?”

It was his turn to stare in shock. How, indeed? How had they connected in such an intimate way without ever having met? He knew enough about his powers, and the potential he might someday reach if he worked at it, to know it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that he could bond mentally as he had with her—but not without his conscious decision to do so. And certainly not without knowing if she was even real.

But she was real. And she was here, on his doorstep, having arrived at the same time the Ten Oaks gang was in the act of torching his house.

Coincidence? He’d stopped believing in coincidence a long time ago.

Her pained grimace reminded him that, regardless of how she’d gotten here, she was wounded because she’d tried to prevent McCard and his buddies from carrying out their plan.

She glanced over his shoulder, in the direction the bikers had gone. “How did you do that? How could you be in five places at once?”

“Superhero powers,” he answered lightly, knowing she wouldn’t take him seriously.

She winced. “My side hurts.”

“I’m sorry.” He sent her thoughts to ease the pain, feeling her anxiety fade as he worked his magic on her.

Despite the circumstances, the feminine scent of her body drew him to her, as it had in the dreams. But now there was another powerful aroma about her, too—the coppery scent of her blood.

He wanted to taste it. Drink it. He felt the fang slits at the sides of his mouth begin to throb, and he clenched both his fists and his teeth to keep from doing something he would regret.

“Why did you come here?”

She looked up at him with glazed eyes, and he knew she was in shock. “I…”

Instead of finishing the sentence, she raised a hand and touched his bare chest. “The dream was nice, but…this is real,” she whispered, combing her fingers through the hair on his chest, her touch raising a shiver that raced across his skin.

The next instant, though, what he felt were raindrops. He’d completely forgotten about the oncoming storm.

“Come on. We have to get you inside,” he said, scooping her up effortlessly in his arms, being careful not to hurt her.

Closing her eyes, she nestled against his bare chest. “Nice,” she whispered again.

Ordering himself not to react to her touch or her scent, he hurried to the front porch, then stepped through the open door, kicking it closed behind him.

Her heartbeat seemed to shudder through his own body, and he felt his mind tuning itself to hers. He should put her down, break the contact, yank himself out from under her spell.

That thought confounded him. He was the one who wove spells, the one who bent mortals to his will.

Disconcerted and more than a little worried, Nick stood in the hallway, debating where to take her. The rooms upstairs were furnished like bedrooms because he had enjoyed collecting the antiques and using them to create what amounted to stage sets. But they were bound to be dusty. He kept the ground floor in better shape, since he sometimes met with clients here. But there were no bedrooms on this level of the house.

Still undecided, he carried her into the living room and laid her on the Victorian sofa, then perched on the edge of it, beside her. Her eyes were closed, but when he said, “We should get you to the hospital,” they flew open.

“No!” she insisted, panic coloring her tone.

“You’re hurt. You need medical attention.”

“If you take me to the hospital…he’ll find me! He already sent a man to my hotel.” She tried to drag in a deep breath, then winced at the pain.

“Just lie still,” he said.

“You have to listen to me,” she begged, clutching at his hand. “Please. I barely…got away.”

“From whom?”

“Damien Caldwell.”

“Bloody hell!” Nick shot off the sofa, heart pounding as he glared down at her. “Did he send you here?”

“Huh? No.” He could see her fighting to speak. “My sister is…one of his…zombies,” she managed.

A good way to put it, he thought.

“I went to the Refuge…to get Margaret away from him. Then I heard him…talking to…one of his men. He was…going to kill me.” Her face contorted, and she paused again before going on. “Margaret wouldn’t leave, and when I tried to get her into a boat…”

Her voice trailed off. Then her eyes fluttered closed, and she lay very still.