She bit her lower lip. “Donald…has always been good to me.”
Donald is a dead man walking. “My place,” he told her. “We’ll be safer there.”
He could see the hesitation in her eyes, but after a few moments, she nodded and slowly pulled her hand from his grasp.
The car accelerated smoothly, and they left the Para Unit behind.
***
From his office, Eric Pate watched the black vehicle drive away. “The game is in motion.”
Behind him, Holly sighed. “People’s lives aren’t part of a game. How many times do I have to tell you that?”
He turned toward her and decided to ignore her question. “You’re dead certain about the results of Dr. Maddox’s DNA analysis and her blood work?”
“Yes. I don’t make mistakes.” Now she sounded a bit disgruntled because he’d questioned her, but Holly rallied quickly. “One of her parents was human, I’d bet my life on it.”
Olivia Maddox wasn’t the first hybrid he’d come across. She wouldn’t be the last, either. And with the others, their paranormal sides had often been dormant, needing a trigger to emerge.
Blood and fire.
“He triggered her,” Eric said, certain now of the senator’s intent. “If you want to wake a beast, what better place to do it than in Purgatory?”
“But what is he going to do with her now?”
His fingers tapped against his chin. “That’s what Shane will find out for us.”
Hiding Olivia within the Para Unit would have done no good. Other agents—humans—would have just gotten caught in the crossfire when the attack came. Senator Quick had too many powerful friends and far too much pull in the FBI.
Hiding her wasn’t an option, but using her as bait…that certainly was.
Holly raised her brows. “I get that Shane felt like he owed you…but why was that? I mean, if he’s some all-powerful vamp—”
“He’s the strongest vampire I’ve ever met.” And he’d come across more than his share.
“Then how did you convince Shane that the guy actually owed you?”
He remembered a battle on sand that burned, and blood that formed the only river around them.
Before Eric had joined the FBI, he’d been an Army Ranger, working in the Middle East. “I met him on my second tour,” he said, voice soft. He didn’t usually talk about his Ranger days, not with anyone, even Holly. “Detonations were going off all around me. Screams were filling the air. And I thought I was going to die.”
Holly didn’t speak.
“There was a school up ahead. So small, right in the middle of that freaking desert. I could hear the children crying out from inside.”
She flinched.
And he kept remembering. “Shane went to help the children.” He could still hear the explosion. “I don’t even know how the hell he got there, or why he was there, but when the detonation went off, a detonation that should have killed those kids, that f**king insane vamp was right on top of it.” Absorbing the blast.
Nearly getting torn apart.
“Fire can kill a vamp.” And Shane had been willing to run into fire for Olivia. Don’t give her that much of yourself, man. “I helped him.” An exchange of blood in a place where he could feel the cold touch of death. “We both made it out of there.” And Eric …he was mostly alive now because of that change.
Mostly.
“You’re his friend.”
He was. “Yes.”
She walked toward him. Tipped back her head. The smile that crossed her face was sad. “What do you think your friend will do to you if Olivia Maddox dies?”
He already knew. Shane was protective of his allies, but his enemies…he showed them no mercy. “He’ll kill me.”
Chapter Ten
“This isn’t what I expected,” Olivia said as she walked into the lush apartment that overlooked the lights of Seattle. Night had just fallen, but the buildings all around them glowed with illumination.
Shane shut the door behind them. “Let me guess…were you picturing some kind of medieval castle, maybe a dungeon, some restraints?”
Her cheeks flushed.
“Been there, done that.” He stalked toward her. Brushed his hand over her cheek. “Would be willing to do it again in a heartbeat for you.”
She caught his hand. “I don’t understand you.”
His smile flashed, and it was a predatory grin. “That drives you crazy, doesn’t it? Your whole deal is that you have to understand the monsters. But maybe you can’t figure out what makes us all tick. Maybe there are some things you’ll never know.”
His body was so close to hers, and the sensual awareness that he sparked within her just wouldn’t lessen no matter how many times she tried to calm herself down.
Riding with him in the car had been close to torture. He’d filled that small space. Dominated it. Every time he’d shifted even a tiny bit, she’d been hyper aware of him.
“I want to know about you.” And she did. This man had left the FBI behind, and he’d come with her. He kept protecting her, looking out for her. No one had done that before. After she’d lost her mother at eighteen, Olivia had been on her own.
I don’t feel like I’m alone anymore.
He rolled his shoulders, but didn’t pull away from her. “What if you don’t like what you learn?”
“You’re the white knight, the guy who keeps rushing to the rescue.” Not the monster she’d thought. “What’s not to like there?”
He shook his head. “I’ve been feared, rightfully so, for centuries.”
She tightened her hold on him. “You were born a vampire.”
“Do you understand what that means? The bloodlust, the hunger—they were with me, always. I grew up thinking it was normal to track and hunt prey…prey that was human.”
She didn’t let go.
“My father thought it was great sport to hunt humans. Of course, it was more challenging to go after the werewolves. And they tasted better.”
“Shane…”
“That’s what my life was. Death and pain. I was a monster. I am a monster. There are sins on my soul that can never be erased, no matter what I do.”
Atonement. “That’s why you work for the FBI. You’re trying to make up for what you’ve done.”
Now he did pull away. He strode toward the window. Stared out at the night. “A part of me always knew…what I was doing, what I was…it was all wrong. But when someone calls you a f**king god, hell, the power rush you get is too strong to deny.”