Memory of an Immortal Heart (Immortal Hearts) (16 page)

A
tranquilizer. They were trying to use one on him. Like they had used on his
amati. On Eva.

The
Sakai hadn’t come to kill, they had come to
capture
.

Rage
exploded through Brand, short-circuiting his brain. He slashed through chests and
blood sprayed. A second tranquilizer hit his side, and he shook it off.

When
Eva screamed, everything disappeared behind a haze of dark, killing red.

“
Brand
,”
Eva repeated, and he realized she was gripping his head and he was in tiger
form. “Brand, come
back
,” and he heard both the strain in her voice and
a fine-held line of fear. “Joshua’s hurt, I don’t know how to fix him.
Someone’s going to come and I don’t know what to do…”

Brand
shook her fingers away and Changed.

The
places where they’d shot him spasmed, not wanting to alter back to human form.
Those areas were close to dead flesh, unwilling to move, unwilling to
cooperate. Brand bore down on them with his will, forcing his body to alter,
and the deadened areas woke like acid in his chest and leg as if someone were
burning him from the inside out.

Brand
snarled, but he had been Changing for too many years not to have his body obey.

He
pulled back into human form, shaking away the rebellion of his muscles.
Fuck
,
that hurt. And not in the good way. There was a sharp breath behind Brand and
he turned.

Eva
stared. Her silver eyes travelled over his face, his neck, down his chest and
lodged on his cock. They widened. Brand was already semi-hard, but he stiffened
further under Eva’s notice, need rising in him like a tidal wave.

Instinct
raged at his control, trying to rip it away.

“Christ,
Eva.” Brand shifted away. “Look somewhere else. I can’t think when you’re doing
that.”

She bit
her lip, averting her eyes, and Brand stared at the room.
Not one of my
finer moments
.

Blood
splattered the walls, flicking off the blade of the ceiling fan in soft, gentle
splats
. A shredded head lay before the fireplace, the Sakai’s teeth
sharply elongated, dead eyes wide in horror. A body clad in combat clothes lay
limply to the far side of the dark carpet, blood soaking into the thick weave.
A headless torso lay beneath the windows, another along the east wall, and a
third beside the table.

Brand
ran a hand through his hair, saw the blood between his fingertips. He touched a
tongue to his lips and tasted the
zing
of Sakai blood on his tongue,
down his throat, like fucking elixir.

He
tightened his fist, and took a careful breath in. He released it. Then Brand
methodically blocked the taste of that blood in his mouth, his mind, his entire
consciousness.

Oftentimes,
his heritage was more curse than blessing.

“Here,”
Eva said behind him, and Brand took the blanket she offered to wiped his face
before wrapping it around his waist. Then Brand wondered that she had been able
to look at him like
that
when he had blood in his mouth…but, Brand
supposed, Eva could come to him drenched in blood and he’d still want her.

She was
his amati, and they were both Kaspian.

“What
did you say about Joshua?”

Eva
pulled Brand back toward the couch. “Over here. I don’t know what’s wrong with
him, he wouldn’t tell me…”

“Got
shot with one of those fucking tranquilizers,” Joshua gritted, sitting rigidly
upright. “Didn’t even see the bastard, then he shot me. Slashed his throat
though,” Joshua added with a smirk.

“Knife
or claws, Joshua?” Brand demanded, and watched his cousin’s satisfaction fade.

“
Fuck
,”
Joshua swore, and leaned his forehead into his fist. “How the hell could I have
forgotten? I
know
how to fight Sakai. Use my good hand next time.”

“It’s
been a few years,” Brand muttered, rising again to glance around the destroyed
room. The place was a security nightmare, near-impossible to fix. “Can you
walk?”

“Just
lead the way,” Joshua muttered. “Though I might need your girlfriend to keep me
steady.”

“Eva,”
Brand picked up the shreds of his ruined clothes, searching through the pockets
until he extricated his cell phone and the key card, “You have thirty seconds.
Pack your clothes, get your bags, do whatever you need, but then we have to
leave.”

“I
don’t have bags,” Eva said softly, and Brand turned to look at her. She was
pale and blood splattered, shaking and obviously terrified. Brand wanted
nothing more than to pull her into his arms and comfort her. Her gaze dipped
toward his waist, then returned firmly to his face as she licked her lips. “I
mean, I don’t have bags to pack my things in.”

“Use
mine.” Brand walked over to his luggage, grabbed a pair of pants from the bag
and let the towel fall. He heard Eva gasp behind him, smelled the arousal in
the air.

“Twenty
seconds now, Eva,” Brand said gently, pulling on his pants and
carefully
navigating
the zipper. He reached for a shirt. “
Hurry
.”

She
left the room at a run.

Eva
wavered as she slid across the seat and into the cab, praying that soon, this
horrible day would end. They had ditched the car and cut through multiple
subway stations, taken two trains, eleven cabs, and wandered three times
through various airports. Brand claimed he was making them untrackable; he was
also making Eva crazy.

She
slanted a look at Brand from the corner of her eye as he settled beside her,
and – as she had done for the past eight hours of hell – tried to
puzzle out how old he was.

Perhaps
she should have asked that question earlier, before her libido became involved.

Oh wait
, she
thought ironically.
My libido was always involved
. Right from the
beginning.

But it
was better than thinking about the blood-drenched room Brand had left behind,
or what could have happened to them if the Sakai had caught them. Eva
shuddered, turning her thoughts away again.

It was
simple tranquilizer math: Eva was twenty-six, and if one tranquilizer knocked
her out cold for an entire night but that same dosage made Joshua act like a
hung-over drunk (Joshua seemed older, perhaps sixty?) – then Brand should
be older yet.
A hundred,
maybe?

Well
, Eva
decided, studying the tilt of Brand’s shoulders as he spoke to Seth on the
phone,
maybe a little older than that. I’ll give him one-ten
. Brand
spoke French, and – Eva learned, when he gave directions to a cabbie
– he also spoke Spanish. So maybe it took a bit longer to learn those
languages.
Maybe one-fifteen
.

Eva
could live with that. Most of the Kaspian in her Gens were around one hundred.
She could deal with the fact that Brand might be, what, five times older than
her and probably did
remember when the
actually
Casablanca
came out?

Eva
winced and turned to elbow Joshua. “The tranquilizers. I was shot with one, and
blacked out. You were shot with the same dose and can hardly walk. When you
speak, you slur like a…”

“
Hey
,”
Joshua growled, huddling down in the seat as the cab accelerated.

“…but,”
Eva continued, “Brand was shot three times, and he’s just fine.” She narrowed
her gaze as Brand closed the phone and turned toward her. He arched his
eyebrows, looking puzzled, and Joshua shrugged.

“Age
and genetics,” Joshua said, as if it were obvious. Brand frowned, and Joshua
explained, “She wanted to know why the tranqs didn’t turn you into a drooling
idiot. Did I hear you promising samples to Seth?”

“He’ll
start testing as soon as I get the recovered vials back to Stronghold,” Brand
hefted the suitcase he had kept with them rather than put in the trunk. “For
both the guns and the darts. If Seth can’t figure out what the hell is in them,
he’ll know someone who can. At the least he can get a line on the
manufacturers. That’s somewhere to start.”

“Good,”
Joshua said, and Eva nodded in agreement.

The cab
sped forward, skidded around the corner, and Brand steadied Eva. The feel of
his strength, the warm sunlit scent of him, was like a drug to her. All she
wanted to do was close her eyes and breathe him in – and maybe, pick up
where they had left off.

The
memory of Brand’s fingers on her coursed through Eva’s blood, hot and
dangerous. Then, after the attack, the sight of his body, the size of his
erection…

Eva
shivered.

Everything
had happened so fast. She hadn’t
known
a Kaspian could Change so
quickly. One instant, Brand had been human and kissing her…then the next, he
shoved her behind the couch and Changed.
Pure, lethal blood tiger.
And
so gorgeous.

He had
killed them all.

Brand
had killed the Sakai who captured her, the same Sakai who had held her down as
if she were nothing. They had shot Brand with the same tranquilizers they used
to kidnap her with, and those tranquilizers…had no effect.

Eva
studied her fingers – the fingers that couldn’t grow claws. Either she
was an incredibly weak blood tiger, or Brand was very strong one.

Likely
both were true.

Still.
The thought made her a bit…defensive.

After
they exited the cab, Brand muttered a terse “Wait here,” and left Eva and
Joshua standing beside each other beneath the columns of a huge, structured
blocklike building. Eva pulled her coat more tightly about herself as she
ducked back into the shadows to stand beside Joshua. He was leaning wearily
against a pillar. None of them had gotten any sleep.

“Where
are we?”

“Union
Station,” Joshua gestured at the building. He glanced around, assessing the
streets, the architecture, then shook his head as he turned back to Eva. “Brand
will be back soon.”

“Do you
think we’ve lost them?” Eva asked, then shook her head. She wasn’t sure if she
wanted an answer. “I’m sorry,” she said softly, staring out at the street, at
the masses of humans and vehicles. “Both you and Brand are in danger because of
me. Because Rohe wants me back.”

This
was her fault.

Joshua’s
eyebrows rose. The he looked down at his gloved hand – the one Eva had
seen ridged scars over, scars Joshua tried to hide. She could have sworn the
shadows around the two of them darkened. Joshua looked up. “This situation
is
dangerous,” he said bluntly. “It concerns us all. Brand is afraid the Strategoi
will trace us to Stronghold, and I’m afraid he’s right.
But
,” Joshua
added as Eva winced, “we are also worried about what happened to you. The last
time Sakai captured Kaspian and poked at us with knives was during the witch
trials.”

Eva
flinched. “Didn’t they burn…”

“We do
make fearsome devils,” Joshua said dryly, turning back to the street. “The
humans hunted ‘witches,’ and the Sakai hunted us. Everyone wanted to find the
unnatural. My point is, is that you have nothing to apologize for. You’re
alive, and you’re helping. That’s what matters.”

Eva
blinked, perilously close to tears.

“…I’m
with them now,” a deep voice rumbled behind her, and a large hand caught Eva’s
elbow as she jumped.
Brand
. He extended a ticket to Joshua, then Eva.

Joshua
began to collect their bags. He tossed one to Brand, who caught it deftly,
continuing to speak into his phone. Eva shook her head, then glanced at the
ticket: Whitefish, Montana. Via train.

Montana
. She
had never been so far from North Carolina. From Rainey.

If
Joshua hadn’t told her what he had, Eva might have changed her mind. Called it
all off.

“Eva.”

Brand.
She looked up. “Stand still,” he directed, raising his phone, “and don’t
smile.”

Before
she knew what he was doing, Brand snapped a picture of her and put the device
back to his ear. “I’m sending it now. Remember to fix the background. Yes
– yes. Good. I’ll expect them there.”

Brand’s
deep blue eyes settled on her as he closed the phone. “There was only one cabin
left. I’m afraid we have to share.”

“One
bedroom?”

“Yes.”

A rush
of heat flowed through Eva’s body and wrapped delicious tendrils beneath her
skin, counteracting the cold of Chicago. Brand’s gaze flickered with gold. Her
and Brand – one bedroom.

Behind
them Joshua cursed. “You mean all of us. As in, me too.” He snarled low in his
throat, less than happy. “Couldn’t you have found something
else
,
Brand?”

Eva’s
mind clicked into focus.

One
bedroom
. Brand with her, in one bedroom. Together. The two of them. But then
Joshua
would be there also.