He couldn’t deep-listen to her, he couldn’t compel her, but he suspected a deep-scan of the store would detect her presence. Hers was a unique imprint, a space of serenity and silence in an otherwise clamorous world.
He stretched his senses, casting a wide net, probing.
Something probed back so unexpectedly and with such ferocity that he flinched.
He immediately slammed up mental walls, one after the next, sealing himself off. Sealing out whatever the frigging hell that had been.
They were walls he’d never needed before.
No one had ever been able to probe him, not even Lucan with all his dark arts. It had been one of the things that had so infuriated his captor. Lucan still couldn’t probe him, even after a thousand years of continually gaining more power and knowledge, though he’d never stopped trying, convinced that Cian knew spells he was hiding (he did and was), determined to get them one way or another (never going to happen).
During none of Lucan’s attempted probings had Cian ever felt anything touch his mind. Trevayne hadn’t been able to get even that far inside his skull.
But just now he’d felt a distinct push against his mind. A distinct presence, though he hesitated to say a single presence, for what had pushed at him possessed such complexity of character, such ancientness—older even than he—that he was unable to call it . . . well . . . exactly human. Or if it was, ’twas unlike any human he’d ever encountered.
Focusing his mind, he pushed back in the general direction from which it had come, trying to isolate it.
The man at the counter suddenly whipped around, gaze seeking restlessly, scanning the store.
Unusual golden eyes met Cian’s and locked over racks of clothing and aisles of camping equipment. They were old eyes, aware eyes, eyes full of fierce intelligence.
They were the eyes of more than a mere Druid.
Cian shoved past the glassy-eyed salesman and stalked toward him, pushing racks of clothing out of his way. “Who the hell are you?”
“Who the hell are you?” the man flung back coolly. Softly. Arrogantly. The man moved toward him as swiftly and surely as Cian stalked the man; there wasn’t an ounce of hesitation in him.
They met in an aisle, stopped half a dozen paces apart, and began circling each other, sizing each other up, like two dark, wild beasts, preparing to battle over territory and mating rights.
Cian felt a rapid battery of hammer blows against the mental walls he’d erected. He permitted them, analyzing them, assessing his foe’s strength.
Then he lashed back savagely. Just once.
It should have nigh split the prick’s head.
If his opponent felt anything, he betrayed naught. Who was this man? “Where is my woman?” Cian snarled.
“I haven’t seen your woman.”
“If you’ve so much as touched a hair—”
“I have my own woman. Yours couldn’t hold a candle to her.”
“You have a death wish, Highlander.”
“Nay.” The man laughed. “Laid that to rest some time ago. On an icy ledge outside a Manhattan penthouse.”
The man spoke nonsense. “Leave now and I won’t kill you.”
“Can’t. I’m picking up hiking boots for my wife. She wants them today and ’tis her good graces that signify.” His tone was lightly mocking, his smile a hundred-proof testosterone, spiked with dark irreverence.
Just the kind of smile Cian usually wore.
Och, aye, the man had a death wish.
There was no telling what Cian might have done next had a hand not closed over his forearm at that moment. He glanced down, his muscles instantly sliding smoother beneath his skin. Jessica was gazing up at him, lovely as ever, and unharmed.
“Woman, where have you been? I instructed you not to move from that counter.”
“I stood there for half an hour,” she replied crossly. “I went to the bathroom. I’m starving. Can we eat soon? I need coffee. And I want a shower. I took a little towel bath in the ladies’ room, but I’m starting to feel like the wild animal that woman at the airport accused me of being. Cian, why is that man staring at you like that? Do you know him?”
“‘Cian’?” the man demanded. “Your name is ‘Cian’?”
“Aye. What of it?”
The man stared at him a long moment. Then he laughed, a darkly amused sound, and shook his head as if he’d been pondering an absurdity. “Nay. ’Tis not possible,” he murmured.
“What?” Cian snapped.
“Nothing. ’Tis nothing.”