Bound by Darkness Read online

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “To talk.”

  “I doubt that’s all you want.”

  Hell, no. His blood was howling at him to exchange a lot more than words. But talk was the only acceptable item on the agenda. “You’re right. I want something else.”

  Brian released her, and they both got to their feet, eyeing each other as they adjusted their clothes. He pointed to the open door and, after a moment’s silent debate, she entered the hotel room. Inside, she seated herself on the big double bed, legs crossed at the ankles, back straight. Very Princess Diana.

  He arched a brow at Murdoch, who shrugged. Apparently the big warrior had no objection to him doing the interrogation.

  Brian closed the door. “The coins you stole from Duverger. Hand ’em over.”

  Lena shook her head. “You’re not who you profess to be.” Her gaze drifted over Carlos and Murdoch, then returned to him. “If you were, you’d know Gatherers work alone, not in groups.”

  “Soul collecting is generally a one-on-one gig,” he agreed. Her face was a shade too thin. It gave her a delicate appearance completely at odds with the don’t-fuckwith-me tilt of her head. “But Satan-pummeling tends to be more of a team sport, so we work together when it makes sense.”

  She snorted. “You’re trying to tell me you take on the devil himself?”

  “No,” he admitted with a smile. “We leave that to the guy upstairs. We just do our best to keep Big Red from getting a serious leg up on the middle plane. Which brings us back to the coins. Where are they?”

  “Why would I give them up? What’s in it for me?”

  “That’s easy. You’ll be doing your bit to save the world from evil.”

  A frown wrinkled her brow. “The coins are evil?”

  “A dark relic,” he confirmed with a nod. “In the wrong hands they’ll create a financial and political shitstorm. I can’t let that happen. No way, no how.”

  “Admirable of you. But I’m not interested in saving the world, just my payout.”

  Both the other men stiffened at her cool words, but Brian broadened his smile. “Please spare me the greedy-bitch routine. We’re in purgatory, too, remember? You’ve been offered a second chance to make it upstairs, and there’s no way you’d blow that for money. Not when you’ve seen what’s in the basement. This is not a negotiation. Just cut to the chase and give me the coins.”

  “I don’t have them.”

  No twitch, no hesitation, no hard, unwavering stare. She wasn’t lying. But she hadn’t sold them yet, either. Not if she was still looking for her payout. “Then you stashed them before coming back to the hotel. Where?”

  She said nothing.

  He closed the gap between them, crowding her, bumping her knees. “I’m a very determined guy. I will get those coins—believe that. Make things a little easier on yourself. Tell me where they are.”

  “I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

  As she lifted her chin in defiance, he spotted the pulse beating at the base of her throat. Faster than average. Worried? One would never guess by the look in those iced-coffee peepers. He snatched her purse off the bed and tossed it at Carlos. “Search it.”

  Then he turned back to Lena. “Why’d you take them?”

  She shrugged. “I had a million very good reasons.”

  “You stole them for money? I find that hard to believe.”

  She didn’t bother to answer. Just returned his stare with a faint sneer that suggested he was naive.

  “It can’t have been just for the money,” he argued. “If you’re really as hard-core as you make out, you’d have gone straight to hell instead of passing through purgatory. God thinks you’re redeemable. How come?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Christ. She was serious. No way could she fake that open stare. Brian was still debating how to respond when Carlos pulled a piece of paper from the large pile he’d emptied onto the desk and held it up.

  “Got something. FedEx receipt, one of those forms you fill out at a drop box.”

  “Is it dated?” Brian asked.

  The young man shook his head. “But the weight is marked as three pounds. That’d be about right.”

  Brian studied Lena’s impassive face. It’d take balls of brass to send something that valuable by regular courier. “Where’s the package headed?”

  “Los Angeles.” Carlos kept sifting. He found an envelope and opened it, scanning the contents. “There’s also a plane ticket in her name for an eleven a.m. flight tomorrow to ... Oh, here’s a big surprise—L.A.”

  A shadow darkened Lena’s eyes—a brief flicker of emotion that might have escaped notice if Brian hadn’t been studying her. Los Angeles meant something to her. Switching tactics, he crouched beside her, caging her on the bed with his arms. Her exotic floral perfume, already becoming familiar, enveloped him. “The coins are dangerous, Lena. If Satan gets his hands on them, he’ll cause upheaval around the globe. He’ll pitch normally peaceful cities into chaos. People will get hurt.”

  The shadow deepened.

  “Don’t do it, Lena,” he said softly. “Don’t risk the lives of people you know and love. Tell me where they are.”

  Her lids abruptly dropped to cover her eyes, and he bit back a curse.

  He’d said the wrong thing.

  Ducking adroitly under his arm, Lena rose from the bed. She made no attempt to bypass Murdoch at the door, but crossed to the beveled mirror hanging above the small chest of drawers. She stared into the glass, her fingers wrapped around the gold pendant she wore. Her expression was calm, almost contemplative, giving Brian hope. But in the end, cynicism tugged the corners of her mouth down.

  “A million dollars buys you their location.”

  “No fucking way. This is not about money. You’ll never convince me that it is.”

  “If you have access to Death’s records, as you say you do, then you already know the truth. I’m a thief. I steal valuable objects for a living.” Her eyes met his in the mirror. “Believe me, I don’t do it for fun. I do it for the money.”

  Brian returned her stare. If he took her at face value, Lena held a first-class ticket on the cruise ship to hell. It looked bad. He could see that. But for some reason—maybe that brief suggestion of vulnerability, or maybe the undue influence his dick was exerting—he didn’t buy it.

  Either way, though, he was stuck. His only lead on the coins was a rather weak trail to Los Angeles and he had to follow it. Unfortunately, Lena wasn’t likely to play nice and let them tag along. He flicked a meaningful glance at Murdoch, who had edged closer and now stood just behind and to the left of the female Gatherer.

  The big Scot happily took charge. Without further ado, he thumped Lena soundly on the head with a wrought-iron table lamp.

  She jerked. Confusion softened her face and her hands fluttered briefly in the air. Then the dark wave of oblivion rolled in. With a gentle sigh and amazing grace, she slipped into Brian’s open and available arms.

  Add kidnapping to his long list of crimes.

  The lights were dimmed and the aircraft cabin was quiet, but as comfortable as the mammoth first-class seats were, Lena couldn’t sleep. The reason was couched next to her, all six feet and two hundred pounds of him. Brian Webster. The well-meaning wretch was both the bane of her existence and the answer to her prayers.

  A tingle of awareness interrupted her thoughts, and she glanced to her left. Sure enough, he was watching her, his silver eyes steady.

  Lena did her best to quell the wave of sultry heat that rolled over her body. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  The long hours she’d spent in his company should have dulled the impact of his good looks. But it hadn’t. She suffered a fresh jolt every time she looked at the man. The lazy smile, the strong line of his jaw, even the sun-kissed tips of his loosely styled brown hair—all set her pulse aflutter, time and time again. Completely unfair. “Then stop staring.”

  “A
m I staring?”

  “You know you are.” In an attempt to distract him, she pointed to the issue of GQ spread across his lap. The one splashed with hot male models Brian Webster could easily have replaced, were he not so broad of shoulder. “Do you truly wear clothes like that?”

  He offered her a slow smile that told her he saw through her diversion, then obediently glanced down at the photo of a fluorescent pink jacket. “Nope. My taste runs a little on the dull side.” He flipped back a few pages, halting when he found a brooding man sporting a dark gray suit. “This is more me.”

  Studying the picture, she agreed. The modern cut could be carried off only by someone with buckets of self-confidence, and the slight sheen of the anthracite-colored material matched the color of his eyes. But the price tag made her choke. “Three thousand dollars? For a suit?”

  “Price you pay for sartorial excellence,” he said, shrugging. “I’ve spent more.”

  “Then you should be ashamed.”

  His gaze lifted. “Pardon?”

  “There are better uses for your money than wrapping yourself in expensive cloth.”

  Dark humor glittered in his eyes. “Excuse me? Do I have this right? The woman who would rather pocket a million dollars than save the world is calling me selfish?”

  Embarrassment boiled up Lena’s neck and into her cheeks before she could stop it. Still, she did her best to save the moment. “Clothing wears quickly and is all too soon out of style. Not a wise investment. Jewels, precious metals, and real estate. That’s where I put my money.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Really.” Lord. The man was too perceptive by half. He scrutinized her as if she were a mystery that required solving, and eventually he’d ferret out the truth. Which made remaining with him a risky option. But she had no choice. The amulet had confirmed he was the Gatherer who’d defeated the martial demon in the church and taken the fourteenth coin. The Gatherer who had collected Amanda’s soul. Her fingers fumbled with the seat belt clip, finally getting it open. “Step aside, please. I need to use the lavatory.”

  “No.”

  She blinked. “Surely you’re not denying me the right to attend to my needs?”

  “Of course not. But if you need to use the can, I’m coming with you.”

  “You mean inside?”

  “Yup.”

  The thought of the two of them pressed into that tiny space didn’t bear imagining. “Are you mad?”

  “You brought this on yourself,” Brian said, turning a page of his magazine. “If you hadn’t tried to jump out of the cab on the way to the airport, I might’ve given you some leeway.”

  The escape had been only a show. He’d been expecting her to make some kind of run for it, so she obliged. As long as he thought her main goal was to get away, he was unlikely to discover her real objective—the coin. Which, unfortunately, was no longer on his person. The amulet had trilled weakly back at the hotel. Enough to tell her he’d once held the coin, but not enough to point to its location.

  Lena sighed. “What are you afraid of? We’re on an aircraft, thirty-six thousand feet up. Where do you think I’m going to go?”

  The amusement in his eyes faded away. “Come on, Lena. We both know you could jump from the plane, hit the ocean at terminal velocity, and swim away. You’ve already proven willing to risk injury. There’s no way I’m going to leave you alone in that bathroom.”

  She bit her lip. For a Soul Gatherer, peeling back the floor and punching through the cargo hold would be relatively easy. But jump from the plane? Into wide-open space? Not likely. Air travel was the one modern convenience with which she struggled. Even after she’d taken numerous uneventful flights between the continents, her steamship-era mentality remained uneasy with the concept of hurtling through the air.

  That didn’t mean she should let him intimidate her.

  Her gaze slipped from his, traveling down his lean throat to the wide expanse of his chest and shoulders—a purely analytical exploration of the terrain she’d have to navigate to get free. Elegant cashmere embraced his body, leaving just a suggestion of the hard, powerful muscles beneath. Muscles she knew intimately after having every solid inch of him pressed against her on the hotel floor.

  “We’d fit,” he said.

  Her gaze flew back up. Fit? As in together? “Pardon?”

  “In the bathroom, the two of us. I’ve done it before.”

  Of course he had. And it didn’t take much imagination to figure out what he’d done in there. She could think of only one reason a man and a woman might squeeze into the same aircraft lavatory.

  He peered at her. “Are you blushing?”

  “Stop it.” Was that an admonishment to him or to her wayward imagination? “This is beyond ridiculous. I’m going to the lavatory whether you like it or not.”

  Lena reached above her head and pushed the button to summon the attendant.

  “One step ahead of you, babe,” Brian said mildly.

  She tossed him a confused glance.

  “I deadened the call button.”

  She glanced around for the flight attendant, trying to verify his claim. The woman was chatting with a man in the front row, offering him a bottle of Evian, seemingly unaware that Lena had requested her aid.

  “And before you decide to do something stupid, like scream,” he added quietly, “I should tell you I know an excellent Romany voice hex. It would make for a nice quiet trip for me, but I’m told the side effects include some wicked bouts of nausea, so I’d prefer not to zap you if I don’t have to.”

  A light finger of fear slid down Lena’s spine. Maybe she’d been too quick to believe his out-to-save-the-world story. “You consort with a Romany mage?”

  “Sure. Stefan’s a great guy. A little odd maybe, but he comes in pretty handy. He forges our swords and augments our primal spells with serious stuff that actually works.”

  “Like the dimensional shift he puts on your scabbard.”

  He frowned. “It’s a perception ward.”

  “Is that what he told you?” No perception ward could actually make an object vanish. How typical of a Roma mage to hide the depths of his skills even from those who benefited. “Romany magic is very effective. But you’re a fool to trust a mage when so many have—”

  “Is there a problem here?” asked a cool female voice.

  Lena’s eyes lifted. A flight attendant had appeared over Brian’s shoulder. Ha! His stupid deaden spell hadn’t worked after all. “Yes, I—”

  “Hello, boss.” Brian glanced at the slim woman. He smiled faintly, then returned to his magazine. “Nice to see you.”

  The attendant studied his face with frosty interest, folding her arms over her chest. “When I gave MacGregor access to the database, it was with the understanding that he would use it to identify candidates for training, not to track and waylay my Gatherers.”

  Lena’s heart hiccupped. My Gatherers? Her gaze raked the woman a second time. A black uniform, not serge blue like the others... neatly coiffed white hair... a long white nail on her right index finger. The evidence was indisputable.

  Death.

  Lena slumped in her seat. All around her, the passengers had been frozen in midaction, midsentence. No one moved. Not even Webster’s two friends, seated one row behind her. The goddess hadn’t paid her a visit in over one hundred years—not since those first gathering lessons following her demise. The memories were still vivid. There’d been no coddling or comforting over the dramatic change in her circumstances. No allowance for the losses she had suffered. Just a terse explanation of her new role, a few short trials, and a mockingly delivered assessment of her survival odds. Which, fortunately, she’d beaten.

  “Training,” Brian said smoothly, “is exactly what motivated us to seek Miss Sharpe out.”

  Death continued speaking as if she hadn’t heard him. “And taking three of my Gatherers off the roster to send them on a mission of his own making is nothing short of abuse of my good nature.” />
  Brian tucked his magazine in the seat pouch. “Actually, the mission was my idea, not MacGregor’s. Satan is messing around on our turf again, stealing dark relics and trying to disrupt the flow of souls.” He shrugged with amazing nonchalance. “I’m just doing my part to make sure your business runs smoothly.”

  “Your concern for the ease of my affairs is duly noted,” the goddess said. The rigid lines of her body softened, just a little. “But as of this moment, MacGregor no longer has access to the database. Nor, for that matter, do you. Any and all demands for the services of my Gatherers will come through me. As it was before MacGregor took on the role of Trainer.”

  “You don’t need to do that.”

  “Yes, I do.” Death glared. “Skunk Works projects undermine my authority.”

  “You could sanction the work and make it official,” Brian suggested nicely. “Then we’d all be happy.”

  “I don’t need you to be happy. I need you to be gathering.”

  “Look,” he said, sighing. “Satan is collecting these relics for a reason, and you can bet your bottomless box of souls that his plans don’t include making sure you get a piece of the afterlife pie. We need to stay on top of him.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Satan and his machinations are my concern. Not yours.”

  “I work for you,” Brian pointed out. “I’m an extension of your reach. It’s in your best interest to keep Satan contained to the lower plane, so why not have us do both—gather souls and kick ass?”

  Death’s thin lips curved. “By the gods, I swear you could coax a flea from a dog’s body, Webster. But you need to direct your wiles elsewhere or risk my wrath. I am no pawn to be moved about the board at your whim.”

  “I get the message,” he said.

  “I’m not sure that you do. I have my own plans to smite Satan, and your ham-fisted efforts will only cause me grief. Cease your plotting and concentrate on the simple task you’ve been assigned—gathering souls.”