Sarah stroked his chest, wishing she could ease his pain, regretting stirring up such bad memories.
“She took me upstairs, bathed me, fed me, made love to me oh so tenderly”—that was hard to hear—“and tucked me into bed. I awoke an hour later to the feel of her plunging a dagger into my chest.”
Shock pierced Sarah. His wife had
stabbed
him?
Roland met her gaze, his brown eyes full of self-mockery. “She didn’t know what I had become—that I could live through such a wound—and, thinking I was dying, told me all.
“When my brother had returned home shortly after we married, she had fallen in love with him.”
Inside, Sarah cringed.
“Edward loved her as well and the two of them secretly cuckolded me from then on. The son and daughter I adored, she swore, were my brother’s offspring, not my own.”
“Oh, Roland.”
“And it was she who had heard rumors of the vampire and talked my brother into arranging for me to be taken and killed so Edward could have both the title and Beatrice. By returning, apparently hale and hearty, I had ruined everything.”
“So she
stabbed
you?” Sarah asked incredulously.
“That didn’t work out quite the way she thought it would.”
“I should hope not!” Sitting up, unable to contain the outrage she felt on his behalf, she settled back on her heels, facing him. “I can’t believe she did that to you! That she would even
cheat
on you, let alone try to kill you! Your brother was clearly an asshole. And even if he wasn’t, why the hell would she want
him
when she could have
you?
Was she friggin’ crazy?”
His eyebrows flew up.
“What did you do?”
His gaze turned watchful. “I killed them.”
“Oh.” That took some of the wind out of her sails. “Well. Good then.”
“You don’t think me a monster for doing so?”
“No, I’m a firm believer in an eye for an eye. They tried to kill you … twice … and would have succeeded if you weren’t different. If you had let them live, they probably would’ve tried a third time. As far as I’m concerned, it was self-defense.”
He rested a hand on her thigh. “To be honest, it was an accident. I was newly turned and unused to my increased strength and hungers. The craving for blood is strong in the beginning and I was losing a lot from the hole in my chest. In my rage and pain, I drained her dry before I even realized what I was doing.”
That must have made him feel even worse. “And your brother?”
“When he came to collect my body after she supposedly finished me off, I hit him too hard and fractured his skull. Badly. Because the wound in my chest had not had sufficient time to mend itself completely, healing him would have left me weak and at his mercy, so … I did nothing. I let him die.”
There was guilt there, despite all that his brother had purposely done to him.
Lying down again, Sarah slid over and stretched out on top of him like a blanket. “I’m sorry, Roland.”
His arms came around her and held her tightly. “It was a long time ago.”
“But I can tell it still hurts.”
“Yes,” he reluctantly acknowledged.
“Maybe she lied about the children.” That had probably hurt more than anything else.
“She did. I’m sure of it.”
She looked up at him. “How?”
He smiled. “I told you I was born with special gifts.”
“Yes.”
“Those gifts were passed down to me from my mother, who had similar gifts. My father had none. When my mother died, he remarried and my stepmother bore him Edward and three girls, none of whom were
gifted ones.
” His smile softened. “My son was born a healer, my daughter with telekinetic abilities. Edward could not possibly have fathered them.”
Clearly he had loved his children. Sarah could almost picture them. A smaller version of Roland, marching around in imitation of the proud papa his pretty sister had wrapped around her tiny finger. She smiled. “What were their names?”
“Thomas and Emma.”
“What happened after …? Did you stay?”
“Yes. I didn’t know where else to go, so I buried Beatrice and Edward in secret and let everyone believe they had run away together. It was very difficult. I was still adjusting to the changes and feared what others would think. I explained my
photosensitivity away as an exotic illness I had contracted when my captors
shipped me off to the Holy Land.
”
She pursed her lips. “Did it work?”
“Some accepted it. Others did not and feared me. Superstition had a stranglehold on many back then.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“I frightened myself at times. After what happened with Beatrice, I worried I might inadvertently hurt the children and was almost afraid to be around them. Then Seth arrived and helped me understand everything better.”
“How did he know who and what you were? That you needed help?”
“I don’t know. He’s so much older than I am, his powers unimaginable. He always seems to sense when
gifted ones
have been transformed and makes his way to them to help them, teach them, and eventually train them in ways to protect themselves and hunt vampires. If he can’t do it himself, he assigns another immortal to train them.”
She frowned. “Why didn’t he come to you when the vampire first took you? Why didn’t he free you? You were down there for months.”
“
Gifted ones
are harder for him to pin down than immortals and I didn’t transform completely until right before I escaped. He had sensed I was turning and begun to search for me. But, you have to understand, there were fewer of us back then. So if he passed through an area with a vampire problem, he had to pause long enough to take care of it before moving on.”
“Oh.” Wrapping her arms around him, she hugged him tighter. “I just hate the idea of you suffering the way you did.”
Roland pressed a kiss to the soft hair atop her head and rolled them to their sides. He felt … strange. Lighter, perhaps. As if sharing with Sarah the pain and anger that had
pressed down upon him for so long had finally liberated him from it.
Was this
contentment
he felt, seeping into his very marrow as he twined his legs through hers? It had been so long, he barely recognized it.
With a wondrous sense of peace, he realized he could finally think of his children without their memory being overshadowed by Edward and Beatrice’s betrayal.
“I presided over my home for a decade and was able to watch my children grow to adulthood before people began to notice I wasn’t aging.” He smiled. “Emma became a beautiful young woman, sweet-natured and generous. Thomas was nearly as tall as I am and so handsome the girls all fought over him. Both of them were incredibly bright. I could not have been more proud. Thomas was an immensely powerful knight and earned his spurs a year younger than I did,” he boasted. “He had such honor within him, was so like my father.”
“No,” Sarah correctly softly. “He was so like
you.
”
Tipping his chin down, he found her smiling up at him.
She drew a finger along his jawline in a light caress that made his skin tingle. “Handsome, smart, and honorable? It sounds like he was a carbon copy of his father.”
Roland’s throat thickened and he was shocked to feel moisture well in his eyes. Abashed, he buried his face in her hair.
“Did you tell them what you were?” she asked, stroking his back.
He had to swallow hard before he could speak. “No, I stayed as long as I dared. Long enough to see Emma happily married to an earl who adored her and to ensure Thomas was ready to assume the title. Then I said my goodbyes, left, and had one of my immortal colleagues send them word of my supposed death.”
Sarah pressed a kiss to his neck. “Did you ever see them again?”
“From a distance. I watched over both of them until they
died, then watched over my grandchildren until they died, and their children as well.”
“Immortality must be difficult at times.”
“It can be. I’m not the only Guardian who has isolated himself from others. Forming attachments with humans and having to watch them grow old and die generation after generation can become unbearable as the centuries accumulate.”
It would be no different with Sarah. When she was stooped with age, her hair a snowy-white complement to the wrinkles mapping her sweet face, he would be the same as he was now, unchanged by the decades that had passed.
The thought was an unwelcome one he hastily pushed aside, unwilling to let reality intrude just yet and rob him of the happiness she inspired.
“I hate to ask this,” she said, “but you said
two
women tried to kill you. Who was the other?”
“My betrothed.”
She muttered something into his chest he couldn’t make out. “Was her name Mary?”
He frowned. “Yes. What do you know of her?”
“Only what you and Marcus said about her while he was trying to talk you out of healing me.”
Oh. “Well, it’s a much shorter story. I met her in the seventeenth century, lost my head over her, asked her to marry me, and when she said yes, told her what I was. She freaked out, but I managed to calm her down, or so I thought. She said she needed time to think. I gave it to her. The next afternoon, she stormed into my home with half a dozen humans bearing knives, stakes, and torches and tried to kill me.”
Even that memory lacked its usual bite with Sarah’s soft form snuggled up against him. Marcus was right. Mary
had
been a twit. She had seemed to accept him by the time he had finished talking. So she had probably told her sister, then been swayed by
her
reaction.
Sarah’s small hands came up to cup his cheeks, drawing his gaze to hers. “Roland?”
“Yes?” She was so adorable, with her mussed hair and kiss-swollen lips.
“I promise I will
never
betray you or try to kill you.”
Another piece of the shield he had erected around his heart fell away.
He touched his lips to hers. “I believe you.” It was true. He did. “And I have to tell you … that scares the hell out of me.”
“I know. If I were in your shoes, it would scare me, too. But I would never intentionally harm you.” The somber promise in her eyes, more brown than green today, morphed into amusement. “Notice I said ‘intentionally.’ Occasionally, I have what I call clumsy days when I just can’t seem to do anything right, which tends to result in bruises, cuts, or burns. So if you hang around me long enough, you might unwittingly become a victim and acquire a few yourself.”
If you hang around me long enough.
Was it a backhanded invitation?
Could she be implying she wouldn’t be averse to spending more time with him when this was all over? That she might be interested in pursuing a relationship with him?
Is that what
he
wanted?
Hell, yes!
Rolling her to her back, Roland took her lips in a deep, devouring kiss and whispered, “I’ll risk it.”
The bleating of his cell phone woke Roland from a sound sleep. Cursing himself for leaving it upstairs, he carefully extricated himself from Sarah’s tangled limbs—damn, he didn’t want to leave her—then raced up to the living room in a blur of motion.
“What?” he growled, answering on the second ring.
“You must be Roland,” a cheerful male voice said.
“Who the hell is this and how did you get my number?”
The man laughed. “Oh yeah. You’re definitely Roland. This
is Chris Reordon. I’m this region’s Cleaner. Seth gave me your number.”
Reordon. Roland had heard of him. He was rumored to be one of the best, though Roland had never felt the need to call upon his services.
Concealing the existence of both the vampiric virus and the
gifted ones
from the rest of society was a full-time job that required constant vigilance and connections in various law enforcement and government agencies that immortals had difficulty cultivating due to their aversion to sunlight and the time they spent hunting vampires and reducing the threat they posed. The computer age and advent of video cameras, cell phones that took pictures, and the Internet made it all even more complicated.
Fortunately, Seth had long ago begun ferreting out trustworthy humans to build a support network that helped immortals with everything from investing their capital and multiplying their wealth to supplying weapons, providing new identities every few decades, studying the disease that transformed them, researching a cure, performing daytime surveillance when necessary, and running interference with humans who became too curious for their own good. The network had been in place and steadily expanding for centuries now.
Many of the humans employed by the network were descendants of previous members who had passed the torch to their sons or daughters. Absolute loyalty was imperative. Rules and guidelines were strictly implemented. Those who strayed and broke faith with the network—and there had been very few—were swiftly tracked down and punished by the network’s human enforcers with no immortal interference.
The role of Cleaners was fairly self-explanatory: They cleaned up the messes immortals sometimes left behind.
“How did it go?” Roland asked, tamping down his irritation at being ranked on by a human he didn’t even know.
“Just fine,” the man responded in more businesslike tones.
“I’m sorry to say your house is a total loss. We managed to get there before anyone else did. Society’s apathy really works in our favor sometimes. Most of the people who saw the smoke must have assumed someone else had already called 911 and not bothered to call it themselves, because we had plenty of time to stage it before the fire department arrived.”
“Stage it as what?”
“A drug deal gone bad at a meth lab. You did a hell of a job covering your tracks, by the way. Even I couldn’t find anything to link you to that house. Or the car in the garage, which was also destroyed.”
“And the Geo Prism?”
“We got it out of there before the authorities arrived.”
“Who exactly did the authorities think you were?”
“DEA, arrived too late to rescue an agent whose cover was blown and who subsequently died in the fire.”