No women and children, not ever again. I’m not that man. Mark recoiled. He understood the primitive instincts of pack and cave. He knew why Bree looked to him for protection. He was three-quarters beast, only a shred of humanity still tying him to the civilized world.
Family would be his nightmare reborn, history mercilessly repeating itself. Sure, he could play doctor, whether it was with one small boy or a country ravaged by flood and fire. But as a medical man, he could come and go at will, getting involved on his own terms.
A family man had no escape from their needs and his failures. I am not your dragon. Still, he had to do something for her, if only to get her out of his cabin—and maybe after centuries of woe and slaughter, he was ready to see someone like her win.
Nevertheless, this would only work if he set limits. He was a vampire, and far, far from a saint. “I’ll take you as far as Redwood. I have hospital privileges there. I can run tests off the grid.”
She stared at him with something like wonder. “Why are you doing this for us?”
“After you threatened to shoot me?” And, as the most ferocious creature in the room, he would just skip past the fact that she’d got the drop on him with his own weapon.
“Well, yeah.” She had the decency to look abashed.
“I’m a doctor. You seem to need help. It’s what we do.”
“You’re very kind.”
“Not so much. Getting to Redwood is the matter of a phone call.” And if she was being followed, it made sense for them all to leave. He folded his arms. “Where did you learn to pick a lock like that?”
“My dad’s liquor cabinet. All it takes is a paper clip.”
He remembered she’d said she didn’t drink—but obviously she had once. “Very resourceful.”
“I have to use what I’ve got.”
Don’t I know it? She was beautiful. He might be a monster, but he was still male, moved by her grace and her courage. Despite himself, Bree’s desperate protectiveness had made him care. A dangerous woman.
“Stay here,” he said, removing the rifle from the cupboard where he had—emphasis on the word had—locked his weapons. He began mounting the stairs to the second floor. “I don’t have any other firearms sitting around, so don’t bother looking for another gun to finish me off.”
“I would never...”
Turning on the staircase, he gave her a look that made the words fade from her lips, reminding her that he was the dragon, not the knight.
Still, the anger between them had eased. Jonathan had grown comfortable—and tired enough—to have fallen fast asleep in the tattered armchair. Mark turned before Bree could see him smile.
Once upstairs, he found his cell phone and the spot by the window that caught a signal. This far out in the country, cell coverage was spotty and he exhaled with relief when the call connected. It was the middle of the night, but in the supernatural community, that was business hours.
“Fred Larson.”
“It’s Mark Winspear.”
“I didn’t expect you to call for weeks yet. You’ve barely been out there a month.”
“Something came up.”
“Business?”
“Yes and no.” It wasn’t Company business, but Larson didn’t need to know.
“Must be serious to call you back to civilization early.”
“My bad nature precedes me.”
“Just a bit. What can I do for you?”
Mark studied the horizon. The rain outside had slowed, now pattering instead of pounding on the roof. Light was already turning the horizon to pearl-gray. Bree’s pursuers were probably lying in wait, biding their time for sunrise to make a search of the island easy. “I need to get into Redwood as soon as possible.”
“Today?”
“I’m talking hours. There will be passengers besides me. A woman and child.”
The ensuing silence vibrated with curiosity, but Larson knew better than to ask. Mark wasn’t just Company, he was one of the Horsemen, a small team of elite operatives. As a doctor, they’d nicknamed him Plague, his two friends War and Famine. Death, ironically, was dead. A pang of sadness caught Mark. He treasured the few friends he had. Losing Death—whose real name had been Jack Anderson—had cut deep.
“I can have the plane in the air at first light,” Larson replied, mercifully breaking into his thoughts.
“Be careful. There’s a good chance we have hostiles in the water nearby.”
“I’ll keep my eyes open and my powder dry.”
“Good. See you then.” Mark thumbed the phone off.
And then winced. First light. By the fiery pit.
Larson worked for the Company, but he was human. Daylight flights were no problem. Vampires could function during sunlight hours, but only under protest. It felt like stumbling around in the blare of a zillion-watt floodlight. Bloody hell.
Mark pocketed his phone and started for the stairs.
A square of white paper lay on the floor. As he stooped to pick it up, he saw it was an envelope. He had obviously passed by it on the way up.
The cabin didn’t have a mailbox, much less delivery straight to his bedroom. He tilted the envelope to the faint light falling through the window. The handwriting read Dr. Mark Winspear.
Curious, he ripped it open and slid out a folded letter. The salutation inside used his real name: to my Lord Marco Farnese.
He sucked in a breath. No one had called him that in hundreds of years. Seeing that name written in modern ballpoint pen gave him an odd sense of dislocation, as if he were neither in the present day nor the past.
He clicked on the bedside lamp, welcoming the puddle of light. The message was only a single line: I haven’t forgotten you.
He flipped the paper over, studying the blank side, then turned the page print-side-up again. He was annoyed more than disturbed. Except...there was a human woman and child downstairs. Whoever came for him would kill them first. They were easy targets.
Just like before. He’d played this game long ago, and lost.
A second thought crowded in. While he had been out playing pat-a-cake with cougars, his enemies had been in his house. Standing over his bed. Territorial rage swept through him, leaving his fingers shaking.
The signature on the letter was a crest, the inky impression of a signet ring used like a rubber stamp. It hadn’t worked very well—the ink had run, making the whole thing look smudged—but Mark could make out the serpent and crossed daggers of the Knights of Vidon. Below the
