Darkest Caress (8 page)

His mind went blank for a split second. Then pictures began flashing through his brain, one after the other, like a high-speed PowerPoint presentation.

His sister’s sixth birthday when he’d pulled the head off her new doll and made her cry. Bullying kids during middle school. Backhanding a girlfriend across the face during their first fight. Screaming and threatening another one. Shoving his wife down the stairs the day they’d come home from their honeymoon. Years later, wrapping his hands around her throat as he pinned her to the bedroom wall, liking the terror in her eyes as he squeezed.

A flicker of shame curled somewhere deep inside him, but it was quickly extinguished by another, more disturbing image: the stricken look on his little girl’s face when she’d come around the corner and seen him choking her mother.

His soul flinched as he physically experienced her reaction. Fear and hurt flooded his body, turned his knees to jelly. It clawed at him, ripping at his insides. She was afraid of him. His own daughter.

Then, as suddenly as they’d appeared, the sensations died away, leaving him shaken. He’d lost his daughter that day. Revulsion rose up, so thick he almost choked on it. God, how had he done those things?

“Look at me.”

His head snapped up at the raspy command. He squinted at the man in front of him. Judge, jury and executioner all in one. He felt so confused, disoriented.

I see evil in you.
The harsh words whispered through his mind, dark and insidious.
I destroy evil beings.

He recoiled from the accusation. Him, evil? No. He couldn’t be. He had a bad temper sure, but… God, that image of him choking his wife and liking it. Getting off on the helpless terror in her expression. The pleading in her tear-bright eyes. The hair on his arms stood up. Maybe he
was
a monster.

The snapshot of his daughter’s stricken face stayed on his mind’s screen, her terror and devastation crushing him. He used to be her hero, before he’d ruined everything. More than anything he wanted her to look up to him. So far he’d only given her reason to hate and fear him. No more, he vowed.

“I’m not evil,” he wheezed. He wasn’t. Not really. He was just so angry at the world. Sick of feeling that way.

Change now, or die.

Change. Was it possible? He wanted to believe it was. Did this mean he could? He wished he could wipe the slate clean and start over fresh. His life would be so different. But the anger had always gotten in the way. He didn’t know how to let it go.

Choose.

He started to shake.
Yes.
He wanted to change. Had to, for his daughter’s sake. He’d lose her forever if he didn’t.

Something shifted deep inside him. Like a mechanism was turning. Unlocking. A surge of hope rose in his chest as he stared into those creepy, swirling eyes.

A heartbeat later something split open under his ribs. He jumped under the sharp jolt of pain then watched transfixed as thick black vapor escaped from his nose. It rose above him to form a small cloud over his head, slowly dissipating in the clear morning air. In its wake a beautiful warmth spread through his veins. He closed his eyes as it filled him up, bringing a wondrous sense of calm. Of peace.

He breathed in deeply, gave a startled smile. He felt light. Whole.

What just happened?
He’d been thinking about something. Something upsetting. He winced as a sharp pain speared through his head.

When he opened his eyes, he was kneeling on the damp grass of his lawn. A stranger was standing on the front walk, watching him. “You okay?”

Aaron blinked at the man. Climbed to his feet. Damn, his face hurt, he realized, gingerly placing his fingertips against it. “Yes. Sorry. Can I help you?” Why was he outside on the grass in his bare feet?

The man’s pale blue eyes assessed him for a moment. “Quite a shiner you’ve got there.”

Aaron nodded, then frowned as a sudden vision came to him. Last night at that big house. He was screaming through the car window at Olivia, Melissa’s piano teacher. Pounding on the glass and ripping at the door, like he was bent on breaking through it to get to her.

Guilt and remorse seared him. Christ, that hadn’t actually happened, had it? He didn’t remember the incident or what happened afterward, but she must have hit him to get away.

His stomach seized at the thought of what he’d done. He didn’t blame her for smashing in his face. He deserved that and more for his behavior. What if she’d called the police? How was he ever going to face her again?

The stranger was still standing on the walkway. Aaron cleared his throat. “Do you need something from me?”

“Not a thing,” the man replied, staring for another moment before he walked down the path to the black Porsche parked at the curb.

As it drove away, Aaron’s only thought was that he needed to call his daughter, see if she’d let him take her out for breakfast. His legs weren’t quite steady when he climbed to his feet, headed for the front door. He had to make things right again between them. Starting now, he was going to be the kind of man she’d be proud to call her father.

Xavier strolled through the rundown Barcelona neighborhood, his senses alive with all the energy spewing at him. The air was permeated with the usual suffering one would expect to find in an area like this. Poverty, and all the effects that came with it. Crime. Drugs. Alcohol. Prostitution. Abuse, both physical and sexual. Murder.

His skin tingled with excitement as he walked deeper into the slum. The emotions came at him almost too fast for him to decipher. Anger. Betrayal. Jealousy. Bitterness. Despair. Hatred. He soaked them up like a dehydrated sponge, every ounce of him absorbing the emotional toll of human suffering. He could almost feel his cells expanding with the constant supply of power.

A thirtyish prostitute gave him a sloe-eyed look as he passed, but he ignored her. She was too far gone with drugs to be of any use to him, numbed out and not registering any emotion at all. A half block down he heard a couple fighting. The man screamed obscenities while the woman cried and pleaded, her squeals turning shrill between the sounds of fists thudding into flesh. Xavier breathed in deeply and let it fuel him, drawing from the man’s mindless rage and the woman’s pain.

He was practically shaking with sensory overload when he neared the edge of the slum. His body hummed with raw strength. The power felt so good. Maybe if he walked this same neighborhood each day, the last change would finally come upon him. He was tired of waiting for his body to come to full strength.

Crossing the street to step over a gutter streaming with garbage and human waste, he spotted a woman in his peripheral vision. He paused, something about her making him take a closer look. Then she turned and he saw her face. He froze in startled recognition.

The woman from the hotel. The one with Marie’s eyes.

She lifted her head, gazing back at him mournfully. An unwanted surge of pity welled up inside him. Whatever burdens she carried, they had all but killed her. Her back was hunched, stooped from age and a lifetime of backbreaking labor. Her dark eyes were dull. The spirit was gone, the empty shell of her body merely going through the motions of living.

Xavier knew all too well how that felt.

His feet began moving on their own. He crossed the street and followed her. She cast a nervous glance behind her then slowed, as though accepting death if he caught up to her and tried to kill her. She’d let him. Might even welcome the release from her earthly suffering. Xavier knew it to the marrow of his bones.

It disturbed him greatly. That surprised him.

Pulled toward her by some invisible force, he followed her through the crowded row of hovels constructed of cardboard and corrugated iron sheets. Mostly Rom families lived here, bedraggled gypsy refugees without the means to support themselves. Filthy, ragged children stopped what they were doing to watch him pass. The few adults he saw watched him with unease and distrust. Stained and threadbare laundry hung from the dilapidated structures, many of them half-buried in refuse. The sickly stench of rotting garbage rose up in the thick, humid air. He pulled his shirt up over his nose and mouth to block it, but it didn’t help.

The woman turned and disappeared into a tiny shack. Unlike the rest of the filthy hovels lining the alley, hers was almost painfully clean. The front stoop had been swept clean and no garbage lay around it.

He stepped up to the plywood door, knocked sharply.

The woman stepped out of the shadows, her expression at once wary and resigned. But he hadn’t come to harm her. As he reached into his pocket, his eyes adjusted enough to see into the tiny dwelling. His gaze fell on the young boy sitting cross-legged on the dirt floor, playing with a stick and a piece of twine. No older than eight or nine, his facial features were sharp with the terrible mark of hunger. The bones in his shoulders and face stood out too prominently.

Xavier’s heart throbbed hard in his chest. He moved toward the child, a sense of anticipation shivering through him.

The old woman suddenly blocked his way, putting herself between him and the boy. Her dull eyes flared to life, radiating a fierce resolve to protect him or die trying.

Xavier held up a hand. “It’s all right. I’m not here to hurt you.” There was something about this boy that called to him. Some reason he’d been led here. He felt it.

The woman moved aside hesitantly, never taking her eyes off him.

Xavier stepped toward the boy, peering at his thin face. The black eyes were strange. Unfocused.

Blind, he realized with a start.

“You’re not from here,” the boy said, staring eerily past Xavier’s right shoulder.

“No, I’m not. What’s your name?”

“Miguel.” The boy smiled. Didn’t seem the least bit afraid of him. “Have you brought me a toy?”

“I’m afraid not, but perhaps I’ve brought something much better.” He fingered the roll of money in his pocket.

The smile disappeared. “You don’t have to pay me for what you want. I’ll still give you what you came for.”

Xavier’s stomach tightened. Did the boy think he wanted to have sex with him? He was sick at the thought of this young boy being forced to prostitute himself to survive. Felt physically ill that anyone could touch a child that way. It was why he enjoyed draining the pedophiles before he turned them into Dark Army soldiers. They disgusted him, deserved every moment of the torture he inflicted.

Xavier swallowed past the sudden constriction in his throat. “I don’t want anything from you.” He shot a lethal glare over his shoulder at the old woman. How could she allow this?

A startled pause met his words. “I’m not a whore,” the boy said in an offended tone.

The knot in Xavier’s gut eased.

“And you do want something from me. You’re the man from across the Channel.”

He jerked around to stare at him in surprise. The child couldn’t possibly know he was from Britain. His Spanish was perfect, without any trace of an accent. “How do you know that?”

The boy shrugged and fiddled with the twine wrapped around his fingers. “My sense of smell’s very good. I recognize your cologne. I smelled it in my dream last night.”

The hair on his nape stood up, goose bumps rising across his skin. Dear God, it was the prophecy. He stared at the boy with hollow, burning eyes as everything slid into place.
The all-seeing child shall point you to the key.

“There’s a lady,” the boy continued, his expression serious, “with the man you’re looking for. She’s his…not his wife,” he added with a frown. “Something different that means the same.”

“Mate,” Xavier whispered.

The boy grinned, nodded. “Yes. His mate. She’s the key.”

Xavier began to tremble. His heart raced, forcing him to breathe in choppy bursts. “I…” He didn’t know what to say.

Those black, sightless eyes seemed to focus on him for just an instant, then sought the woman, hovering nervously by the door. “I’m hungry, Grandmother. May I have something to eat?”

Xavier’s heart squeezed, a foreign sensation he hadn’t felt in decades. He rubbed a hand over his chest, thinking of the meager food supply these people must have. Probably some polenta, maybe some stale bread or rancid fruit. Not enough to fill in the terrible hollows beneath the boy’s cheekbones. Not even enough to ease the terrible grinding he must feel in that concave stomach. He looked too much like the children Xavier seen in the concentration camps. It made him want to weep.

His hand shook as he withdrew the wad of cash from his pocket. Crouching down, he took the boy’s hand and wrapped the bony little fingers around the money. Enough to feed him and his grandmother for a year. “Thank you,” Xavier said hoarsely.

The boy’s eyes widened, fingers investigating the roll of bills. “It was nothing.”

He barely heard the grandmother’s gasp of exclamation or the frantic thank yous she called after him. In a daze he walked back the way he’d come.

He finally knew what the key was. Now he just had to find her.

* * *

Already in a foul mood, Liv made a sound of disgust when she turned into the long cobblestone driveway late the next morning. A moving truck was parked out front of the mansion beside a cable company van and one from a furniture store. Daegan’s Porsche was there, too, along with a new black Shelby Mustang and a Silver Range Rover.

Apparently Daegan had not only taken possession without her knowledge, but he’d pulled off the impossible and arranged an entire move in less than two days. After the emotional and physical torture she’d endured last night, she was good and pissed off. She wanted answers. Right the hell now.

Her temper did a slow burn on her way to the front door. Her eyes still felt scratchy and swollen from crying on and off all night. When her body wasn’t caught in the grip of sexual frustration, that is. Despite her exhaustion today she’d done her usual Saturday morning schedule of piano lessons, then found a message on her phone from the estate’s lawyer saying the paperwork had been completed and the buyer had taken possession of the property. All within a matter of hours, and all without her having any clue. Liv had no idea how Daegan had managed to pull it all off, but she intended to find out.

The deep chime of the doorbell echoed in her ears. A minute later Cade pulled the door open, holding a drill and wearing a tool belt around his waist.

“Hey,” he said, looking surprised to see her. “How’s it going?”

She pasted on a smile. After last night how did he
think
she was doing? “I’m dealing. I see you guys are settling in fine?”
And that you’ve managed to coordinate a small army to help you do it.

“Um, yeah.” He took a step back, his expression a bit wary. “I’m guessing from the look on your face that Daegan didn’t tell you we got the place, huh.”

“No, actually. He hasn’t told me about
a lot
of things.” That was all about to change, however.

He seemed to smother a grin. “Wanna come in?”

“Yeah, thanks.” She glanced around the spacious living room where a crew from an electronics store was already installing a huge flat screen TV over the marble mantle. No way should all this be happening so smoothly. Anyone else would have suffered through the ordeal of trying to arrange all the various steps necessary for a move this size. Not Daegan. If she didn’t know better she’d swear he’d organized everything days ago, like he’d already known what day he’d get possession. Or maybe…maybe he’d used some sort of magic.

She almost laughed at herself for thinking that way but let out a sigh instead, not knowing what to think anymore. When she’d woken up this morning she’d wondered for a moment if it had all been nothing but a vivid, crazy, erotically charged dream. Unfortunately, last night’s bombshell of a conversation and the insistent pulsing ache between her legs the moment she thought of Daegan said it wasn’t.

The handful of orgasms she’d been forced to allow herself throughout the hellishly long night hadn’t done anything to take the edge off. She’d awakened incredibly horny and lonely. And sad. She’d actually missed him, and on a level that didn’t make any sense. Like she was irrevocably linked to him already in some way. It was slowly driving her mad.

“I was just down setting up the equipment area,” Cade said to her. “Do you want something to drink? Fridge is stocked.”

Shocking, she thought wryly. “I’m fine, thanks. Is Daegan in?”

“He was helping me a few minutes ago. Come on down with me.”

She followed him down the curving mahogany staircase, still trying to figure out how Daegan had managed everything. Cade led her through the fully equipped gym with weights and fitness machines already set up, then past a room they’d arranged with what looked like boxing stuff. They passed through a steel reinforced door into a brightly lit room.

She stopped cold. Stainless steel tables lined one wall, cabinets filled with medical supplies filled another. On the opposite side of the room, tall lockers covered the length of the wall. There were no windows. The overall effect was cold and a bit creepy.

Her eyes widened. Was that an operating table in the corner? She wrapped her arms around her waist. “What
is
this place, anyway?” It looked like a damned morgue.

“Medical area. Used to be an open storage room.”

She looked at him in surprise. “You’re going to see patients
here
? Out of your house?”

“Uh, not exactly.” Cade cleared his throat and looked around, as if trying to figure out how to explain it.

Liv frowned for a second, then put her hands on her hips. “Just—where’s Daegan?”

“I’m right here.”

She whipped around, completely unprepared for the shock to her heart when she saw him standing in the doorway. Despite herself, her body instantly warmed, her nipples tightening. The tips rubbed painfully against her bra, so sensitive she almost winced. “Hi,” she replied. Her voice was all breathy, and it annoyed her. She was here to get answers, not get sucked further under his spell, or whatever the hell was happening to her.

“How was your night?” he asked as he crossed the room, gaze locked on hers.

“I’m guessing it was about the same as yours,” she snapped. She hoped he’d been every bit as miserable as she had.

A flash of satisfaction lit his eyes. “You could’ve called me. I would have helped you.”

Liv folded her arms across her throbbing breasts and scowled. “Not going to happen.” She refused to give in to this ridiculous physical need and the bullshit story about mates and bonding. Whatever that meant. So she was horny all the time, and worse at night. So what? She’d cope. “I can handle whatever this is on my own.”

“Not for long.”

Her eyes narrowed, and they stared at each other in the expanding silence. She refused to be the first to look away.

“See you,” Cade suddenly blurted behind them then took off. She heard his rapid footsteps retreating down the hallway but didn’t take her eyes off Daegan.

She thrust her chin out. “You’ve gotten a lot done since I saw you last, considering it was only last night. At
midnight
.”