The man gave Ashtoreth a glance that both dismissed him as unimportant and warned him to leave. Immediately.
Something Ash had no intention of doing.
Ash narrowed his eyes at the interruption.
“I need to speak to Miss, uh, Dr., Reynolds in private,” the man said. “Dr. Reynolds, you very much need to speak with me. Now. Alone.”
Ash restrained a snarl, his posture both possessive and defensive as he struggled to keep his betraying fangs retracted and his eyes normal.
He hadn’t missed Miri’s look of displeasure when she’d looked at this man earlier. Her body had stiffened noticeably then as it did at this moment. Although the man’s words seemed benign enough, Ash sensed an air of threat to them.
Miri straightened warily and her hand tightened on his arm for a moment before releasing it.
Still, Ash didn’t know what his place was here.
He looked at Miri.
“Dr. Reynolds, would you like me to leave?”
Ash very much did not want to go, his instincts clamored in alarm at the very idea.
Unless he was very much mistaken, the men currently standing at the side doors waiting were also with this man.
That wasn’t good.
Something was going on here that he didn’t understand but it didn’t bode well for Miri Reynolds.
Miri knew the interloper’s oddly high voice all too well. Hargrove. The man was a plague on her.
She turned to face him.
It was jarring going from the visions to that brief moment where Ashtoreth had very nearly kissed her. And she him. Her body ached with need.
And now this.
Still, however unsettling, she was used to dealing with the transition from vision to reality, to hiding what her visions revealed and how they affected her.
“No, Ashtoreth,” Miri said quietly in response to his request. “Please stay.”
Whatever else, she didn’t want him to leave, not yet, not until she understood more. More about him, more about the feelings he roused so strongly in her, the need, the longing that still moved through her.
And those visions…
She shivered a little.
Unconsciously, she laid a hand on Ashtoreth’s arm, gripped the strong muscles of his forearm tightly.
Without a second thought, Ashtoreth nodded, ranging himself beside her to eye the interloper narrowly.
Glancing up at Ashtoreth’s face, Miri could see small shots of fire glimmer in his dark eyes.
A wiser man, meeting that fire-sparked gaze, would’ve left.
Hargrove wasn’t wise.
He’d also made several critical mistakes.
The first was his insistence on talking to her when Miri had made it quite clear she had nothing else to say to him. The second had been to trip over her title in a professional environment.
In this room despite all else, despite her youth, her sex, she was Dr. Reynolds.
Few knew of the long hours of work it had taken to achieve those honors. She’d worked for each and every one of them, put in long hours in the various libraries, had done the research, served under others, wrote papers, proven her theories.
The third mistake had been interrupting her, Ashtoreth, and whatever was happening between them.
“No, Mr. Hargrove, you’re mistaken,” Miri said, her tone sharp, “I don’t need to speak with you. I’ve already given you my answer. I said no. You need to leave.”
“It’s you who are mistaken, Dr. Reynolds,” Hargrove said. “My employer is very powerful…”
“Bully for him or them,” Miri interrupted, shortly, narrowing her eyes at him. “I’m sure that employer of yours won’t appreciate the kind of attention and negative publicity that will come from you being arrested by campus police for harassing me. There are a number of people in this room who can stand as witness to that fact.”
Hargrove visibly paled.
“Be certain I mean everything I say, Mr. Hargrove,” Miri said, flatly. “I don’t make idle threats.”
His expression went still and flat, his eyes as black and impassive as a shark’s.
That look chilled her to the bone.
Miri went very still.
It was the look in his eyes that did it, they were so inhumanly cold. Something was very wrong about Jonathan Hargrove. She had the sudden sense of being in the presence of more than one predator. Ash, and this man.
Had she seen him in her Vision, too? The memory of it teased at her. He hadn’t been in the forefront but in the background, perhaps?
As hard as she tried, though, she couldn’t bring the vision back.
“You’ll regret this, Dr. Reynolds. My employer doesn’t take no for an answer very well.”
Miri faced the man down, sensing danger if she flinched, if she exposed even one sign of weakness. She was very grateful for Ashtoreth beside her, his solid presence at her side reassuring.
Every instinct in Ashtoreth shrilled in warning.
There were too many people, too many innocents who could be caught in the cross-fire and hurt. He took in every one of them but primarily Miri Reynolds. She was his mission and far more than a mission to him now.
As much as he wished to deny it, it was for Miri herself that he would fight at this moment, not his duty, his responsibility. He needed her too much, wanted her with a fire and passion he knew he would feel for no other.
Knowing what he knew of her it seemed more and more likely his people also needed her as much if not more than as he did, if they were to survive.
He went still, waiting. He met the other man’s hard gaze, let his own shift enough to show his awareness of the men by the doors.
More was going on here than either he or Miri knew. That would have to change and swiftly.
A muscle in Hargrove’s jaw twitched.
That flat black gaze cut from Ash to Miri, weighed and judged.
“Very well, Professor Reynolds,” Hargrove said, then turned on his heel and left.
Miri let out a breath. “Well, that was unpleasant.”
She looked up to see the fiery glow in Ashtoreth’s eyes. It was oddly reassuring after looking into Hargrove’s flat black gaze. Every part of her body seemed attuned to Ashtoreth, to the tension in him.
“More than unpleasant, Dr. Reynolds,” Ash said, deliberately using her title, although he wanted to say ‘my Miri’. She wasn’t truly his, not yet.
Those green eyes glowed softly as they looked up at him.
“Miri, Ashtoreth,” she said, gently.
“Then call me Ash,” he said and traced the line of her cheek before he could stop himself.
Her skin was like silk, soft, a pale rose-gold dusted with golden freckles, the color having returned to her cheeks in spades with the piquing of her temper. Her eyes glinted with frustrated fury. He admired that.
“So soft.” Restraining a smile, Ash said, with a shake of his head at the look in her eyes, “Remind me never to make you angry, Miri Reynolds.”
She gave him a look and then broke into a small smile.
With a nod of his head he directed her to Hargrove’s retreating back. He knew the moment Miri saw Hargrove gather his men before they departed through the distant doors.
She went still and gave Ash a questioning look.
“Who is he?” Ash asked.
Frowning a little at the doors as they closed, Miri replied, “His name is Hargrove. He’s from a corporation called Prometheus. They wanted to hire me. I turned them down.”
Almost unconsciously, Ash tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, relishing the feel of the silken strand running through his fingers. The need to touch her was now nearly ever-present.
“I came to talk to you about your theories on the planes of existence, on how space and time interact,” he said.
Even as he said it in his mind he pictured some of the slides she’d created for her lecture.
Until that moment Miri Reynolds had been merely a source of information.
A number of things suddenly fell together, those pictures, her talent, Hargrove and his mysterious corporation. Miri Reynolds abruptly became far more important to his mission than just a source of information. More even than his mate.
A chill went through him. “It can’t be a coincidence…”
Puzzled, Miri looked at him. “What can’t be a coincidence?”
“You’re one of those you spoke of who can see them, can’t you? The planes of existence? See them and manipulate them?”
Miri just looked at him. A shiver of precognition moved through her.
It was here. The time she’d waited for all her life was now. A nexus, a pivot point in time. The reason for her existence.
Slowly, she let out a breath, looked up into his eyes and nodded.
“Yes.”
Voices echoed as the lecture hall quickly emptied, as the students and the curious filed out. They talked, laughed, discussed and argued about what they’d heard, unaware of the events taking place in front of them.
It was all shockingly normal, given Ash’s current state of heightened alertness, awareness.
“It can’t be a coincidence that I’m here and so is Hargrove. That’s what brought me here, brought me to you,” he said, looking at Miri. “It’s a long story, too long for to tell but if I’m right we have to leave here, now.”
The threat Hargrove offered to Miri was undeniable. Ash needed to get her somewhere safe until they understood the situation better.
Miri looked at him. “I can’t. I have to get everyone out and shut the hall up, Ash, lock it down. Since the cutbacks maintenance doesn’t do jobs like that anymore.”
Thinking about it, Ash nodded. Perhaps it would be for the better. With the students gone, the parking lot empty, there would be fewer innocent bystanders to risk being hurt, fewer witnesses if he had to change, shift or use magic.
It was far too dangerous to his brothers to reveal that the Daemonae had returned.
The Church still regarded them as anathema. That attitude was ingrained in it and the culture to which it had given birth. Witness Miri’s inadvertent words when he’d told her his name and an endless number of movies. The Church remained a danger. While they saw themselves as heroes, his people knew better. Any who thought the Church didn’t still have hunters didn’t realize they also still did exorcisms – even though demons as they referenced them didn’t exist. Not in that manner.
Witness how many priests themselves found themselves involuntarily possessed because they simply hadn’t known what they were really dealing with.
If word got out… His brothers would be slaughtered.
Some things hadn’t changed, fear was a powerful motivator, if people knew what his were, what they could do?
He wouldn’t endanger them without good cause, even if she was his potential mate.
“All right,” Ash conceded.
Catching some of his sense of urgency, Miri clapped her hands and called to the stragglers. “All right, people, I have to close up here. If you have any questions, please stop by my office on Monday, I’ll be more than glad to answer them then.”