Darkness Rises (Immortal Guardians) (12 page)

“Who are you and why are you sniffing after Ami?”

Zach raised an eyebrow at the question and fought back a smile when Roland’s wife grimaced.

“Really, sweetie? You couldn’t have worded that a little less . . .”

“Offensively?” Lisette suggested.

“Thank you.”

“No,” Roland grumbled, scowling. “Answer the question. What do you want from Ami?”

Zach arched a brow. “Lollipops?”

Sarah grabbed Roland’s arm and stopped him as he drew back a foot to level a powerful kick Zach’s way. “Honey, you know Seth doesn’t like fighting amongst the ranks. What’s he going to do if this one shows up bloodied?”

Roland glared at Zach. “He’s immortal. As long as I don’t remove a limb, he’ll heal before Seth sees him.”

Zach felt Lisette’s gaze. She had been quiet since he had awakened. The second time. He had awoken this morning, but, upon realizing she had gone, had feigned unconsciousness all day until sheer boredom had coaxed him into sleeping for real. When he had opened his eyes the second time, she had been standing nearby, talking to her brother on the phone.

Her pulse had picked up a bit when she had noticed he was awake. Unfortunately, the only words she had spoken before her friends’ arrival had been into the phone to Roland, alerting him to Zach’s return to consciousness. The rest of the time she had merely studied Zach silently with those piercing, light brown eyes.

And, much to his confusion, Zach had found studying
her
as entertaining as engaging in conversation.

“Are
you immortal?” she asked, finally speaking to him directly.

“Yes.” It was an honest answer, he told himself.

“I can’t smell the virus on you,” she stated.

He shrugged, rattling the heavy chains. “Can you smell it on Seth?”

“No.”

“You don’t have to answer his questions, Lisette,” Roland uttered. “This isn’t a free exchange of information. It’s a demand for it.”

Lisette’s brow furrowed.

Sarah tilted her head. “How old are you?”

Zach looked at Roland. “Old enough to make
him
seem young.”

“What’s your name?” Roland demanded.

Zach was curious to learn the source of that one’s hostility. Lisette seemed curious. Sarah seemed worried. Roland seemed as furious as though he had caught Zach trying to catch a glimpse of Sarah naked.

“Zach.” May as well tell him the truth. If Seth read their minds and thought one of the Others had been snooping around, all hell would break loose. Best to let him know who it was, though Zach doubted Seth would be pleased. “If you’re worried that I’m pursuing Ami romantically—”

“She’s married, asshole!” Roland shouted.

“I know,
asshole.”

Roland’s face mottled with anger a second before he slammed his fist into Zach’s temple. And Roland didn’t pull the punch since he knew Zach was immortal.

Ouch. Despite the pain, this was actually turning out to be very entertaining.

“Stay away from her,” Roland warned as the women looked on anxiously. They seemed more inclined to reason with Zach and coax him rather than take Roland’s hot-tempered—

Wait. Wasn’t there an infidelity in Roland’s past?

Zach sneaked into Roland’s mind and gave his past a quick look.

Yes. His first wife had cheated on him with his brother. That clarified things a bit. Roland loved Marcus like a brother and didn’t want to see him go through the same pain of being cuckolded. Roland didn’t want to believe Ami would deceive Marcus like that, but had learned the hard way not to trust his instincts.

“First, don’t do that again,” Zach warned. He’d give the guy one shot, but that was it. Any more and all bets would be off. “Second, Ami is a friend,” Zach said. And damned if something didn’t shift inside him at the admission.

Had he ever had a friend before?

“We know you’ve been meeting her regularly. If you’re hoping she’ll be a friend with benefits,” Roland warned, “think again.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

Sarah’s eyebrows rose.

Lisette continued to study him somberly.

“What kind of benefits?” Did they think he thought rubbing elbows with Ami would help him score points with Seth? That was a joke.

“Sexual,” Roland snapped.

Zach scowled. Sex had never even occurred to him. “A friend you sleep with isn’t a friend. It’s a lover. I told you, Ami is a friend.”

Sarah stepped in and asked in her soft, lilting voice, “Then why do you meet with her in secret? Why not talk with her inside?”

“What makes you think we talk? Have you ever heard us?”

Lisette shook her head. “I’m telepathic. I know the signs of unspoken conversation.”

“Could you
hear
a conversation?” he asked curiously. How powerful was this young immortal?

“No,” she admitted.

“Can you read my thoughts?” That would be an impressive feat.

He felt her probing, trying to enter his mind. He had thought it would annoy him. It sure as hell annoyed him when Seth tried to read his thoughts. Yet, for some reason, it didn’t. He actually found himself rooting for her to succeed, which made no sense at all. He really didn’t want her to see what was in there.

“No,” she blurted, her lovely features dark with frustration.

“Then perhaps we were merely sharing lollipops as you no doubt observed.” Which raised the question . . . “How did you learn of our meetings?” Even Seth and David had not noticed his comings and goings.

“I followed Ami outside and saw the two of you together,” Lisette answered.

“Is Ami aware you’re surveilling her?”

“No.”

“Why are you doing it?”

Had she guessed what Ami is and didn’t trust her? Did she fear Ami? Did she wish her ill?

“I worry about her,” Lisette answered hesitantly.

“You barely know each other,” he pointed out. An intense fear of strangers had been instilled in Ami by her torturers, making it difficult for her to get to know others. So, while she cared about
all
of her immortal family, she was only personally close to a handful of them.

And Lisette was not one of them.

Roland and Sarah eyed Lisette curiously.

Lisette looked increasingly uneasy. “All right. What I say does not leave this room.”

Both immortals nodded, then looked at him.

“You trust my word?” he asked with some surprise.

“If you repeat whatever Lisette tells us, next time we won’t drug you while you aren’t paying attention, we’ll decapitate you,” Roland warned.

Zach shrugged. “All right.” He didn’t mention that there wouldn’t
be
a next time. They wouldn’t be able to sneak up on him again. He was shocked that they had done it
this
time.

Lisette shifted. Clearly she didn’t want to talk about whatever it was that had driven her to follow Ami. “Ever since we found out that Ami was the primary target of Emrys’s mercenaries, Richart, Étienne, and I have been spending more time at David’s place. As have you two.”

Roland nodded. “Bastien breeched my home and took Sarah. I learned from that mistake and, despite my solitary nature, wanted to be there in case the mercenaries breeched David’s defenses and tried to take Ami.”

Lisette nodded. “Exactly. And often I would spend the day there, as would you two.”

They nodded expectantly.

She sighed. “My gift isn’t like Seth’s and David’s. Or rather it is, but I don’t have the control over it they do. Seth and David only hear other people’s thoughts when they wish to. Étienne and I, on the other hand,
always
hear other people’s thoughts unless we consciously block them.”

“That sucks,” Roland said.

“Yes, it does. And, when I sleep, I lose the ability to block others’ thoughts. So, their dreams often become mine.”

Zach began to dread where this was going.

“In all these years, I’ve come to understand that there are three kinds of dreams. The first kind is a whimsical collection or rehashing of things that happened to us or things we thought about during recent days. If you watch the movie
The Birds
, for instance, you might dream about birds. If you’re a student, you might dream about school. The second kind is like yours, Sarah. The dreams foretell the future or tell us something about the present that we may not know. And the third kind . . . In those dreams, we revisit the past.”

That’s what he had been afraid of. And what Seth probably hadn’t realized or he would’ve found a way to convince the telepaths they didn’t need to sleep at David’s.

“Dreams that revisit the past usually don’t reflect it precisely. There will be elements of the past there, but whatever the event was won’t just replay itself exactly as it happened. Ami’s . . .” She looked away. “Ami’s reflect her past exactly. They don’t deviate at all.”

Roland frowned. “How do you know? I thought you didn’t meet Ami until Seth brought her to North Carolina.”

“She has the same dreams over and over again and they are more detailed than any dreams I have ever been in. Only pure memory could spawn those.”

Sarah frowned. “What did you see?”

Lisette swallowed hard. Moisture welled in her eyes. “They tortured her,” she choked out. “I mean they really tortured her. They . . . dissected her . . . and experimented on her over and over again while she was conscious. She felt every incision. Every burn. Every electrical shock. And, because she heals even more swiftly than Roland, she didn’t die.”

Sarah touched a hand to her mouth, horror filling her features.

Roland’s face tightened with fury.

“Why?” Sarah whispered. “Why would they do that?”

Zach held his breath.

Lisette shook her head. “They must have found out she was a
gifted one.
”

Relief rushed through him.

“Seth was right to protect us all this time,” she continued. “If you saw the things they did to her . . .” She wiped her tears away impatiently. “After only two or three days, I began to fear falling asleep.”

Zach had the oddest urge to comfort her.

“I had to start sleeping at home every few days just so I could get some rest without being locked into those nightmares.” She turned her attention to Zach. “There was no way in hell I was going to let mercenaries get their hands on her again. I guess I became a little obsessed with her safety. And, even though Emrys is dead and rotting in hell, his colleagues Donald and Nelson are not. I know they should pose no further threat because Seth and David wiped their memories, but”—she shrugged and offered them all a sad smile—“I can’t seem to shake my fear for her. So I followed Ami when she would go out alone at night and saw
you
with her.”

“Has Étienne seen her dreams, too?” Zach asked.

Her eyes narrowed. “How do you know my brother?”

“I know all of you.” Not really. He knew their names and some of their backstories. Bits and pieces he had overheard during his visits and while listening to the Others grumble.

“Étienne has seen the same dreams I have,” she answered finally and looked at Roland. “That’s why he has softened toward Bastien, by the way. Something else the dreams revealed to us is how gentle Bastien was with Ami right after her rescue. How much he helped her overcome the paralyzing fear those monsters instilled in her.”

“He killed Ewen,” Roland reminded her.

“I know. But, if you could see how he is with her when no one else is around . . .”

“That’s all?” Zach persisted. “You saw nothing else in her dreams?”

She shrugged. “They weren’t all memory-based. Some were the usual whimsical variety in which she looked up at the night sky and saw three moons instead of one. That sort of thing.”

Which were likely just as memory-based as the others. Fortunately, neither Lisette nor her brother seemed to have figured that out.

“Anyway, when I saw you with her, I asked Roland who you were.”

“And I didn’t know,” Roland said, “so I began watching over Ami, too.”

“Me, too,” Sarah added.

“Does her husband know you’re spying on her?”

“No,” Roland admitted, “and we want to keep it that way.”

“Why?” Zach couldn’t resist asking, “because you’re afraid Marcus might think
you
are sniffing after her?”

Roland lashed out with his fist again, the force of the blow snapping Zach’s head back.

And there went the fun.

His own ire rising, Zach used a combination of telekinesis and brute strength increased by adrenaline to burst from his restraints. Restraints no one else in this room could have broken.

The others ducked as broken lengths of chain went flying.

The women’s eyes widened as he spread his wings, the tips brushing the walls on either side of the room.

Roland drew swords and stepped in front of the women.

“I’ve indulged you enough,” Zach said. “Hit me again and you will not survive my retaliation.”

“Who
are
you?” Lisette asked, her eyes straying to his wings as they had so often.

Did he have
her
to thank for the bedding that had protected them from the damaging chain links? He would peek into her thoughts, but generally disliked doing so. Most people were unaware of the ugly things that could reside in the darkest corners of their minds and he always seemed to find it.

“Call Marcus,” Roland ordered Sarah over his shoulder.

When she reached for her cell phone, Zach raised a hand to stop her. “Don’t. Marcus has enough on his plate. He doesn’t need the added worry of this, and it truly isn’t necessary. I mean Ami no harm.”

She hesitated.

As did Roland. He even straightened from his fighting stance and lowered his weapons. “Added worry? What’s going on with Marcus?”