PS02 - Without Regret (3 page)

“Oh shit!” The man holding her shoved her away into the other man who shoved her right back. Great, they were playing keep

away. Nice. Between that and blood loss she was seriously ready to puke.

“Kill her!” the man on the ground roared.

The two men stopped shoving her and pulled out guns.

Isabella squeaked as she covered her head and dropped onto the ground in the fetal position. From her position she watched in

horror as the man who’d been drinking from her started to smoke. Seconds later he was on fire.

“Sentinels!” one of the men yelled.

“You bitch! You tricked us!” the other man yelled.

Isabella squeezed her eyes tightly shut as the sounds of flesh hitting flesh, gunshots, and blood curdling screams tore through the

night. Something heavy landed on her legs, earning another frightened scream from her. A few seconds later it rolled off.

“Grab her!” a new voice said.

She gasped as she was hauled to her feet. A man with spiky blonde hair pressed a cross to her forehead. A freakin’ cross! He

pulled her collar down and ran a finger over her bite marks.

“Hmmm,” the man said. Intense blue eyes met hers.

She squirmed under the rather unnerving observation.

He was looking at her like he could see her, really see her. Without a word, and much to her embarrassment, he yanked up her

tee shirt and pointed a flashlight at her navel.

“Hey!” she said as she tried to shove her shirt back down.

He ignored her as he ran a finger over the birthmark below her belly button. “You’re unmated,” he said.

Okay…….This night was just getting weirder and weirder. What next? Would he check the bottom of her foot to see if she was

a chocoholic?

She finally managed to shove her shirt down and took several steps back and nearly tripped over her bag.

Keeping her eyes on the four new people, two men and two women dressed in black fatigues, she bent down and quickly

reloaded her bag with shaky hands. They made no move to stop her, but just watched her as if they were waiting patiently for

her to finish.

When she was done she stepped back, too afraid to take her eyes off them. She didn’t feel like being anyone else’s late night

snack again and she had no idea if these people were like whatever the hell those three guys were.

“Well, um, thanks. I’ll just be going now,” she said, taking several more steps back.

The man who helped himself to her navel took a careful step forward. “We need to talk to you,” he said slowly as if he was

afraid of frightening her off.

She cleared her throat nervously, taking another step back. “Sure. Yeah, that sounds like great fun, but right now I have

somewhere to be.”

“I’m afraid that I must insist that you stay,” he said more firmly the same moment his three friends broke off and started moving

towards her.

“Okay, I guess I could-,” she suddenly pointed behind them, “Look! Behind you!”

The four of them shared a bored look before looking back at her. She smiled sheepishly.

The leader of the group folded his arms over his chest and tilted his head to the side to study her. “You really didn’t think that

would work, did you?”

She made a pinching motion with her thumb and index finger. “Maybe just a little?” It had worked on Angela Briggs in the

fourth grade when the much larger girl cornered her against the building and demanded her lunch money and her shoes.

He sighed wearily as he pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Grab her.”

Chapter 2

“Wake up.”

Chris muttered a few choice words and rolled over onto his stomach. He opened one eye and groaned when he saw the time. It

was barely one in the afternoon. What the hell was wrong with people that they couldn’t let a man sleep?

“You’ve left me no choice,” his brother warned.

“Fuck off, Josh,” Chris mumbled into his pillow.

Joshua sighed heavily as if interrupting Chris’ sleep somewhat pained him when they both knew he got a kick out of messing

with his older brother.

“I must do this for the good of the family,” Joshua announced, sounding as if he were fighting back laughter seconds before ice

cold water was poured over Chris’ head and back.

Chris came fully awake in less than a second. Two seconds later he was off the bed and chasing Joshua out of his room,

uncaring that he was only wearing a pair of soaking wet boxers and that their grandmother would most likely slap him upside

his head. He was going to kick the shit out of his brother this time.

Laughing and unconcerned about his impeding ass whooping, Joshua ran down the long hallway taunting Chris as he went.

“Aw, did Chris get wet?” Joshua asked in a syrupy sweet voice as he easily sprinted down the long hallway.

“What’s going on?” Marc, their little nine year old brother, asked from the safety of his doorway.

“I woke the bear!” Joshua happily announced as he easily ducked Chris’ mad grab.

Chris was pissed, beyond pissed actually. For the past two weeks he’d been stuck in Chicago helping take down several large

nests of vampires who got their rocks off by draining kids. After two weeks of planning, fighting, and living off adrenaline he

desperately needed his sleep. Everyone in the family knew that after a long mission he wasn’t to be bothered until he got at

least twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep. Just like everyone knew not to bother Dad until after he got in a long shower and four

hours with Madison.

They weren’t rules to be fucked with.

The last time someone came between their father and a shower and Madison was three years ago. They’d just pulled up to the

house after four long weeks of hell in Mexico. During the entire two hour ride home from the airport Ephraim absently

scratched at the phantom crud he felt all over his body. The time he’d spent locked up in a dudgeon still haunted him even two

hundred years later. His father required three long hot showers a day or he was one cranky Pyte.

Chris had barely thrown the Jeep into park when his father jumped out of the car and bee lined for the shower and Madison,

who was probably already in the shower waiting for him, when a Jehovah’s Witness made the mistake of picking that moment

to approach him with a handful of pamphlets. Chris still cringed to this day when he thought about what his father did with

those pamphlets.

Still laughing, Joshua headed downstairs using six years as the state’s top high school and college Cross Country runner to his

advantage by making it down to the foyer before Chris could blink and headed towards the dining room and probably safety.

Without slowing his pace, Chris put a hand on the second floor railing and propelled himself over, landing twenty feet bellow

and mere feet from his prey. Without any pause, he took off after Joshua who had the good sense to stop laughing.

“Oh fuck!” Joshua yelped as Chris gained on him.

Joshua might be one of the fastest long distance runners in the history of New Hampshire, but Chris was a Sentinel. He had

natural ability and years of honing his skills on his side.

“I was kidding! Oh, shit! Don’t kill me!” Joshua shrieked as Chris launched himself at his younger brother.

The two of them slammed into the double doors of the dining room, breaking at least one of the doors from the sounds of it.

Chris rolled midair so that he could protect his brother from the impact. They landed hard on the freshly polished hardwood

floor. Chris barely even registered the impact. He hit the floor with Joshua in his arms and in one smooth move had his brother

on his stomach, both arms pinned behind his back and the elastic of his boxer briefs yanked higher than should be humanly

possible.

“You bastard!” Joshua’s scream ended in a high pitch.

“Next time let me sleep,” Chris said, and just to make sure Joshua understood, he yanked on the underwear again, causing

Joshua to scream like a girl.

A throat cleared in front of him. “And this is the man I brought you to see, Isabella,” a familiar voice announced.

Oh…..shit.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he looked up and swallowed, hard. The first thing he saw was his grandmother glaring at him from her

spot at the head of the long oak dinner table. The two priests standing behind her looked more amused than anything. No doubt

living with the Williams was more entertaining than living in a rectory.

He frowned as his gaze landed on a small woman being held between two large Sentinel males who looked completely bored.

His eyes automatically continued further to the left to find Eric standing a few feet away from the trio with his arms folded over

his chest, looking really pissed off.

Eric opened his mouth to say something, but Chris wasn’t listening. His gaze for some reason shot back to the woman. Once

there he couldn’t look away. She was short, even shorter than his sister Jill. Her long wavy honey blonde hair made her look

even smaller. Intense green eyes matching his own openly glared in Eric’s direction. Beautiful didn’t describe her, cute in a

little sister kind of way was the best description he could come up with, but he wasn’t looking at her like she was his sister.

It didn’t matter that he was in a room with several priests, his grandmother, and his boss. He couldn’t stop devouring her with

his eyes. There was just something about her. Damn, he even liked her lips. They were so cute and kissable. His eyes dropped

to her little round chin down to her littleHe may have groaned. There was nothing little about that particular area. Holy shit, he

didn’t know if it was because they were on such a small woman or what, but they looked huge. Were those double D’s? He

frowned, how the hell did the woman stop herself from falling over? He gave himself a mental shake and forced his eyes to

move down.

Eric was saying something to him, but right now he couldn’t care less. Hell, this whole house could be on fire and he wouldn’t

be able to stop his perusal of her. His eyes dropped to a small waist, very generous hips and short legs he’d kill to see without

those baggy cargo pants. He’d be willing to bet everything he had that her legs were short, but very shapely.

She was so sexy and adorable. All he wanted to do was go over to her lick her entire body and bury his face betweenHe froze.

He wanted her. Holy shit, he wanted a woman! This was it. This was the moment he’d been waiting for. He needed to get the

hell out of here and calm down before he scared the shit out of her. Carefully he stood up, bringing a sputtering Joshua with him

as a shield and started to back up towards the door. He dragged Joshua with him since there was no need of giving everyone in

the room a view of the painful erection he was sporting.

“Let me go, you prick!” Joshua said, struggling to get away.

“Joshua!” Grandma chastised.

“He’s cutting off circulation to my balls! If you want great grandchildren, woman, do something!” Joshua sputtered as he tried

to free himself. Chris ignored his sad attempts to escape and dragged him towards the door.

He paused in the doorway, never taking his eyes off her and said, “I think we need to talk, Eric.”

***********

Isabella thought it over for a moment as she looked around the cozy, yet large dining room. There were two exits from the room

and both were blocked. Although she didn’t think it would make much of a difference if there were a dozen unguarded opened

doors in the room since she was handcuffed and standing between two human size boulders.

“Freedom?” she said, trying not to sound too hopeful.

The older woman simply gave her a warm smile.

“Sorry.”

Damn.

“I meant something along the lines of a drink or something to eat,” she said pleasantly.

Isabella was starving and really thirsty, but there was no way she would eat anything they gave her. It would probably be laced

with something. She was ninety-five percent sure that someone somehow spiked her food last night. It was the only sane

explanation as to what happened last night otherwise……

No, she would not think about last night because clearly last night, or rather early this morning, she’d had some seriously

frightening hallucinations. Just as soon as she escaped, or preferably when they released her, she was hauling her buns in for a

CAT scan, MRI, X-ray, drug testing and whatever other tests would explain the insanity of the last twelve hours.

“I’m fine, thanks,” she said at the same time her traitorous stomach betrayed her with an embarrassingly loud growl.

Eleanor smiled politely.

“I’m fine,” she said tightly.

“If you change your mind let me know,” she said before walking back to her spot near the priests, or rather the two crazy men

dressed like priests since she was pretty sure that she was in some kind of commune at the moment, who stood watching her

intently.

The two men by her side and their leader hadn’t moved away from her since they picked her up at a private airport two hours

ago. She wasn’t sure if they thought they were protecting her or preventing her escape.

Either way it was annoying, but not as annoying as their questions. Since she had no plans to answer them she decided to sit

back and buy her time until they finally got sick of asking questions that she wouldn’t answer.

It wasn’t that she had a particular problem with most of their questions. She didn’t. She’d just seen enough XFiles episodes and