Edge of Danger (46 page)

 
“I’ll put that on your tombstone.” Sweat poured into Gabriel’s eyes as he tightened the noose in small increments. Not because he didn’t want to get the job done, but because Verdine’s magic was fighting him for control every inch of the way.

 
He knew to the second when Verdine’s life force started winking out. The small electrical charges became fewer and fewer as the wizard’s power weakened. The fire ants left Gabriel’s body so suddenly, he staggered.

 
Eden’s apparition vanished.

 
Shaken by just how damn close this fight had been, Gabriel walked over to where Verdine had fallen. As he approached he continued to wind the whip around and around his hand, keeping it taut. And watched the life seep out of those evil black eyes.

 
Holding the garrote in one hand, he held out the other hand, palm up. His sword materialized, and he felt the comfortable weight of it across his palm. He raised it high, then brought it down across Verdine’s neck.

 
The blade made a high-pitched whine as the cold steel severed Verdine’s head from his shoulders as cleanly as a hot knife through butter.

 
Suddenly, the room exploded into brilliant white shooting lights more intense than a lifetime of Chinese New Year fireworks displays. The floor shook and rocked beneath Gabriel’s bare feet, until he couldn’t keep his balance and staggered before falling to his knees. His heart kicked in like a sledgehammer, and his eyes and nose burned as the pure white light danced around him, and then poured through his body hard enough to knock him back on his ass.

 
Several minutes, or hours, later he opened his eyes to see Duncan, Tremayne, and Stone surrounding him.

 
“I should kick your lazy ass for napping on the job,” Alex Stone said with a grin, giving Gabriel a hand up. “Jesus. You look like hell.”

 
“You should see the other guy,” Duncan muttered. His eyes met Gabriel’s. “Scared the crap out of me when nobody could get into the room. You okay?”

 
“It was an…interesting experience. Is he dead?”

 
“Hell yes,” Tremayne assured him. “Simon went off to do some hocus-pocus with the bastard’s head. Lark and Upton took the body off for some kind of wizardly cremation.”

 
So it was done then.

 
Duncan grabbed his arm as he lurched. “You okay?”

 
Gabriel gave a negligent half shrug. Okay was relative. He felt…
different.
Lighter. Heavier. Hell. He didn’t know. Just…different. He could hear the faint burble of muted voices in his mind, and realized that he was hearing Verdine’s past. Jesus. As if he didn’t have enough crap going on right now.

 
Duncan released his arm, but he gave Gabriel a lift of his eyebrow, a look that demanded explanations. Details. A look most people found hard to resist. Gabriel knew, because he’d taught that look to both of his brothers himself.

 
He gave a slight not-now shake of his head. Explanations would have to wait.

 
“I don’t know how the hell you pulled that off, big brother,” Duncan acknowledged the delay nonverbally, but he was studying him like a bug under a microscope. “The odds were stacked against you. Big time.” He gave Gabriel a sharp, penetrating look. “How do you account for that?”

 
Good question. This was a fight he shouldn’t have been able to win. Verdine had been far too strong, his powers considerably more potent than Gabriel’s.

 
Until that last minute when the balance of power had somehow changed.

 
“He was twice as strong as I was. I shouldn’t have been able to get anywhere near the son of a bitch.” Eden’s ring glinted on his hand as he indicated the room. He narrowed his eyes. The ring…? Nah. Gabriel rubbed the back of his neck as he glanced around the chaos of the dining room. “Shouldn’t have been able to best him. Yet here I am.”

 
“You’ve been holding out on me, bro.” Duncan gave him a measured glance.

 
Gabriel scrubbed a hand over his face. He’d rather face fifty Verdine’s than do what he was about to do. “I’m sending her away.”

 
“Not
Eden,
” Duncan said impatiently. “Your powers.”

 
He gave his brother a startled look. “What I felt was
visible
?”

 
“Hell, yeah. You moved faster than the human eye could see. Not your everyday invisible, mind you. Almost faster than the speed of light. Damn cool. That’s something new, isn’t it?”

 
Gabriel nodded. “I was…supercharged.”

 
“Really?” Intrigued, Duncan’s eyes lit up. “Why? How?”

 
“You were right outside the door for most of it. Maybe our powers
aren’t
canceled o—”

 
“Nope. Not it. Leave it for now. You can give me details later. But we
are
going to have to analyze this business with Verdine. I’ve never encountered that much power from a wizard before. Where the hell did he come from? Where’d he get
his
powers?”

 
“There’s someone higher than Verdine,” Gabriel’s blood ran cold as Verdine’s memories flooded through his mind in a toxic wash. He’d never felt anything as evil. “A whole fucking lot higher, and more powerful.”

 
“You sure—Yeah. I see that you are. Who is it?”

 
“Don’t know his name, but I’d know him if I saw him.”

 
“You read Verdine’s mind?”

 
“Unfortunately.” A vortex of darkness that had almost sucked Gabriel in. As it was he was going to have a few fucking sleepless nights coming to terms with Verdine’s recollections of his life.

 
“Clues as to who or where?”

 
“I’ll have to sort through the swill.”

 
“Make it quick, bro.”

 
“Yeah. I hear you.”

 
“What I don’t understand,” Duncan glanced around, “is why he didn’t kill Eden instead of Dr. Kirchner in the first place. Owning the company she worked for, he had access to the bot from the start. And ample opportunity to kill or kidnap her. Why murder Kirchner and wait until now to try to bend her to his will?”

 
“Power. Control. The thrill of the hunt.” And mixed with those emotions were lust, envy, and greed. In his own sick way, Verdine had loved Eden. “He killed Kirchner to scare her. Believing that in the end, he’d be the only one she trusted. That she’d change her mind about making the bot to his precise specifications, and agree to use her expertise to help him amass the robot army he wanted.”

 
“Instead she trusted you.”

 
Gabriel’s jaw hurt from clenching his teeth. “Sometimes,” he said bitterly. “Even a genius makes bad choices.”

 
“
You’re
going to have his powers now, you know,” his brother told him.

 
“Christ—” He hadn’t thought about that. Hadn’t had time.

 
“Don’t think about it now,” Duncan told him with perfect understanding. “You have another situation to deal with.”

 
“Eden.”

 
His brother smiled. “Actually I meant MacBain. He’s on his way. I’ll run interference. Go.”

 
Gabriel glanced across the room at the portrait where Eden’s eyes glowed proudly back at him. He started walking purposefully toward her.

 
“Immediate debriefing at HQ,” Sebastian said behind him, at the same time that Stone yelled, “Yo! Where are you going? The Council wants to talk to you right a—Where’s he going?”

 
“In the morning,” he said without turning.

 
“What about the bots?” Fitzgerald demanded.

 
“Safe where they are for now,” Gabriel answered, still moving. His chest felt tight with suppressed emotion. He’d rather face, alone and barehanded, fifty heavily armed tangos, than do what he was about to do. “We’ll need to run analysis and probability studies before they’re destroyed.” He had to raise his voice as he crossed to the other end of the long room.

 
There’d be a debriefing, reports to file, meetings to take, questions to answer.

 
But first things first.

 
He stood beneath the painting and brought Eden down to his side. The moment she realized where she was she launched herself into his arms. Standing on her toes she wrapped her arms around his neck in a stranglehold. Nuzzling her face into his throat she managed to choke out, “I was scared to death for you.”

 
That made two of them. He held her just as tightly, burying his face in her floral-scented hair. “I’m okay.” Okay, but feeling decidedly shaky. He’d never experienced anything like that last little bit with the fireworks. That would take some processing.

 
She lifted her face, and Gabriel, ignoring the gathering of men in the room with them, took her mouth like a man taking his last gulp of air before drowning. When they eventually parted they were both breathless. Still holding on, she smiled up at him, her eyes wary. Beneath her almost euphoric happiness was an undercurrent that he was feeling too. It hurt just looking at her. Knowing he had to store each feature in his memory for the long barren years ahead.

 
Her smile trembled a little before she righted it. “
Told
you Grandma Rose’s lucky ring would work.”

 
Gabriel forced himself to return her smile, knowing that like Eden’s, it didn’t come close to reaching his eyes. “I felt like Dumbo holding the feather.”

 
“But it worked, didn’t it?”

 
He rested his forehead on hers, breathing in her clean, flowery fragrance. For the last time. “Yeah. It did,” he told her with forced lightness. “Good for Grandma Rose.” But he knew the ring had nothing to do with it. It was Eden who had given him the strength and power to vanquish Jason Verdine. Eden who had made survival essential. Eden whose heart he was about to rip apart and stomp on.

 
He squeezed his eyes shut, holding her tightly against him, rocking them both as the events of the last hours drifted like smoke around them.

 
“Take me upstairs and make love to me,” she whispered softly, as she combed her fingers lightly through the hair at his temple. He saw the rapid pulse of her heart beating like a trapped bird beneath the thin skin at the base of her throat. Everything she was feeling showed clearly in the dark velvety depths of her eyes. But her gaze was steady.

 
Gabriel hesitated.

 
Band-Aid quick?

 
Or one last time?

 
Surely a condemned man deserved at least that.

 
She rose to brush the corner of his mouth with hers. Her lips clung for an extra second, before she broke the contact. “Take me upstairs, my love. Oh, no!” she said on a teasing laugh that ripped open a fresh wound in his heart. “No shimmering. I want you to carry me.”

 
He groaned, willing to pretend, as she was, that they could be lighthearted lovers. Willing to pretend, for just a little longer, that this wasn’t their last good-bye. “Up all those stairs?”