Embrace of the Damned (19 page)

“What?” Broder boomed out. “The hell you’re taking Jessa to them.”

Erik tore his hungry gaze away from Jessa and focused it on him, narrowing his eyes at Broder with a violent intensity. “They want her back. It’s time.”

“I won’t do anything that endangers Jessamine. I won’t let you endanger her, either.”

“I am the leader of the Brotherhood. I make the decisions. I’m not asking for your permission.”

Broder snapped his jaw shut, but it wasn’t because he was backing down; it was because he was surprised. In all the
centuries he’d known Erik, he’d never once known the man to use his position as leverage. Erik had never needed to—his very presence was leverage. He appeared and men fell in line.

Erik addressed Jessa, who was looking between Broder and Erik and chewing her lower lip thoughtfully. “Don’t you want to know your people? Train your magick?”

She took a moment to answer. “Of course I do.” Her gaze traveled over Broder. “But, frankly, I trust him and … well, I don’t trust you.”

Broder blinked. She trusted him? Even after all those times he’d tried to get her into his bed?

“Sorry.” She winced, glancing at Erik. “But if Broder thinks we should wait until we know more, then I want to wait.”

A muscle worked in Erik’s jaw. “All right. I see I have to win your faith.”

Jessa lingered in the doorway, watching Erik carefully. She didn’t respond. That meant yes.

“I need to get my bag out of the rental car,” said Erik. “Will you come with me, Jessa? I want to talk to you.” He gave Broder a pointed look. “Alone.” He strode out of the room toward the front door.

Jessa met Broder’s eyes for a long moment before going after Erik.

Broder watched her leave, a tingle at the base of his spine. There was something off about Erik today, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

Jessa followed Erik out of the house and to his rented SUV. Ever since she’d first walked into the living room and seen the man, he’d been setting the hair on the nape of her neck on end. Something about him made her uneasy. It was strange. She hadn’t had this reaction to him back in D.C. He’d intimidated her with his strength and size, with his mere presence, but he hadn’t creeped her out.

Erik looked the same as he had back in the States, though
he wore a pair of jeans and a sweater now, instead of jeans and a T-shirt, and appeared more relaxed than he had at the house in D.C. He acted the same—commanding, overbearing, and forbidding. Just like Broder. Just like all the men of the Brotherhood, she was beginning to suspect.

So why was the man setting off her spidey sense?

There was definitely something odd going on, but maybe it was just her emotional state. Maybe she was just disturbed by the fact that she’d needed to go into hiding from deadly supernatural forces. That was enough to put anyone on edge, right?

“I don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to do,” said Erik, falling into step beside her. “But I don’t understand your unwillingness to join your people.”

She stopped walking. Erik halted by the side of the fountain and turned toward her. “I think Broder makes a good point, Erik. We have no idea why I was separated from them in the first place. They could mean me harm.”

“Mean you harm?” Erik gave a little laugh as though what she’d said was preposterous. “That’s what you think?”

She frowned at him, screwing her face up in an expression of disbelief. “Back in D.C. you
agreed
with Broder.” There was definitely something up. Erik didn’t strike her as flighty or forgetful. “What’s wrong with you?”

Erik began walking to the SUV again. “Long trip.”

“I guess. It gave you amnesia.”

“Look, I don’t think the seidhr mean you harm.”

“How do you
know
? We don’t know anything about why I was separated from them. Maybe there was a reason.”

They reached the SUV and Erik opened the back door. He glanced back at the house … a little furtively, in Jessa’s opinion. What the hell was that? Erik,
furtive
?

All her alarm bells went off.

“You’re not—” She bit off her sentence and yelped as “Erik” grabbed her and tried to push her into the backseat.

She kicked, fought, and scratched, but he had her up against the car and was about three times her size. She
managed to work one hand free and popped it up fast and hard, fingers bent back, and took him in the nose with the heel of her palm. Bone snapped and cartilage gave way. Blood gushed. He yelped and swore, and she was able to free herself.

Jessa bolted, but he grabbed her by the upper arm.

Then Broder was there, yanking Erik away from her. She stumbled and fell to her hands and knees. Turning over, she crab-walked out of the way, watching the two men, her stomach in a knot. She expected a clash of the titans, a battle of behemoths, but Broder swung Erik around and punched him in the face once.
That was it
. That one punch sent Erik flying backward to slide along the gravel-strewn courtyard and then collide with the concrete wall of the fountain and go still.

Jessa watched as the illusion of Erik faded to the form of a tousled, dark-haired man with a lean, muscular build, wearing a pair of black jeans and a blue shirt.

She pointed at the prone figure, thick blood leaking from his nose where she’d hit him. She hoped she’d broken his nose. “Who is that?”

Broder stood staring at the man as if in shock. “Shaman,” he whispered roughly. “He’s a shaman using magick to try and kidnap you. He must have waylaid Erik from the airport, used one of Erik’s hairs or something to shape-shift into his form.”

“Wait.” The words soaked through the befuddlement that had overtaken her brain. “That man is seidhr?”

“Yes.”

“And he tried to kidnap me?”

“Yes. They know you’re here and they want you.”

The words went unspoken—
for some reason
. That was the big question.
Why
did they want her?

Inexplicably, tears rose to prick her eyes. She’d been hoping that her situation wasn’t the worst-case scenario, that, somehow, impossibly, her people wanted her back—that she was important to them.

Apparently she
was
important to them, but maybe not in the way she’d been hoping.

She swallowed hard and hugged herself, pushing away the ridiculous sense that she’d been betrayed. “Where do you think Erik is?”

Broder passed a hand over his face. “A shaman would need some type of genetic material to pull off an illusion like this. Like I said, they waylaid him. They’re probably holding him somewhere.”

She tried to imagine anyone being able to hold Erik against his will and failed. “How would they do that?”

He shrugged. “I’m guessing it’s with the help of a witch. She would have the ability to cloud his mind, confuse him for a time, with a skill they call
sjónhverfing
. I can’t believe they’d try this with a brother. It breaks the Brotherhood/seidhr alliance and is incredibly reckless.” He studied her. “They
really
want you.”

She swallowed hard. “Great. Everybody wants me.”

He stalked over to her, knelt, and held her face cupped between his strong hands. “Did he hurt you?”

She thought about that for a moment longer than she needed to, still sort of distracted and shaken up. “No. I hurt him first.”

His jaw locked as his eyes searched hers. He nodded. “Good.”

“There’s nothing good about this.” She shivered and gazed past him to the bleeding man. She felt betrayed, which was stupid … yet there it was.

“There is,” answered Broder roughly. He forced her to look at him, take her attention off the treacherous shaman. “And once that shaman wakes up, I’ll show you just how much good there can be.” His voice held a dark threat. “And I don’t mean good for him.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ll find out things you’ve wanted to know for a long time.”

She blinked, realization dawning. Oh, right, he would
make
him tell them everything. The man may have tried to kidnap her, but she couldn’t wish a pissed-off Broder on anyone. He would hurt that shaman for merely upsetting her.

“What happened?” asked Halla, running out into the courtyard. She stopped short when she caught sight of the shaman.

“Shaman broke in and tried to take Jessa.” Broder still hadn’t moved his hands from cupping her face or his gaze from hers. She stared into his eyes for a long, deep moment—it was as though she could see forever in there. Pain. So much of it. And fear. He’d been really worried about her.

Suddenly uncomfortable, she pulled away from him and stood.

The sound of a car engine starting up met their ears. A dark figure sat behind the wheel of the SUV. She looked to the prone shaman and saw the image of him—illusion, she guessed—was fading. He’d tricked them.
Again.

“He’s getting away!” yelled Halla, running after the SUV, which had gunned its engine for the closed and locked front gates, tires spitting up gravel.

All of them ran for the SUV—as if they could halt a moving vehicle with their bare hands … well, maybe Broder could. The SUV hit the gates with a horrible crash and an ear-splitting groan of twisting metal, forcing them open.

And then the SUV was gone, along with all of Jessa’s answers.

She stopped running at the mouth of the twisted gates, watching the dust rise in the wake of the fleeing automobile.

A motorcycle roared out of a nearby garage and went flying past her a moment later.

Halla came up to stand beside her. “We should pray.”

“What?”

Halla jerked her chin in the direction of the SUV and the cycle in pursuit. “We should pray for that shaman if Broder catches up to him.”

Broder raced after the SUV along the narrow, curving roads near his keep. He couldn’t let the shaman get away. This was his one chance to figure out what they wanted with Jessa. The problem was that a motorcycle didn’t have much of a shot against an SUV when you compared mass, and he had a feeling they’d soon be dueling for road space.

Luckily he had a really fast bike.

He sidled up alongside the SUV, keeping his eye on the twisting road in front of them. The shaman veered to the left and Broder moved with the vehicle to avoid being bumped off the road, driving in the ditch for a moment. He had a plan for getting the SUV to stop, but it wasn’t time yet to make his move.

He knew these roads like the back of his hand and he would bet anything the shaman didn’t.

Regaining speed, he sidled up again, only to be almost run off the road once more. He moved to the other side and the SUV swerved right. Back and forth he baited the shaman, doing his best to distract him from the road and push him into driving faster.

There was a particularly hellacious curve coming up. Broder just hoped the shaman survived it.

The shaman headed into the curve way too fast and Broder hung back, letting the road do his work for him. The SUV swerved from side to side as the driver tried to regain control, but it was a lost cause. The vehicle headed into the
ditch and hit an embankment, nearly rolling over, but came to a rest on all four tires. Smoke curled from under the hood.

Broder came to a skidding halt by the side of the road and leapt from the back of the bike. The shaman sat stunned behind the wheel.

He yanked the door open, breaking the locks, and hauled the man out. “What the hell do you want with Jessa?” Broder bellowed into the man’s face.

Blood trickled from a cut in the shaman’s forehead where he’d bashed himself against the steering wheel. His head lolled and his eyes were unfocused.

Broder shook him. “You can die after you answer my question.” The man groaned.

“Kill me. I don’t care,” the man slurred. “Once Thorgest finds out I failed, I’m a dead man anyway.”

So the order to kidnap Jessa had come from Thorgest Egilson, the head of the seidhr enclave. Broder snarled into his face. “What do you want with her?”

“She’s a powerful witch. She’s kin.”

“So why try to kidnap her?”

The shaman made an angry hissing sound. “Because she’s with
you
, Calderson.”

“Do you mean her harm?” It seemed a stupid question. He’d tried to stuff her into the back of a vehicle.

Something emotional moved through the man’s eyes and Broder wondered what it could mean. Then the shaman yelled into his face with a surprising amount of anger, “I’m not answering any more of your questions,
brother
.”

“Answer my questions and I’ll show you mercy.”

He smiled. Blood stained his teeth. “My sister died trying to put her entrails back into her stomach. Don’t talk to me about compassion or mercy. You know nothing about that, Broder Calderson.”