Read Awakened Online

Authors: Virna Depaul

Tags: #Romance, #Fantasy, #Suspense, #Paranormal, #Fiction

Awakened (5 page)

BOOK: Awakened
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CHAPTER
THREE

Barrett regained consciousness with agonizing slowness
. She was lying down. Her head banged like someone was hitting it. Hard. Over and over. She willed the pain down but it didn’t go away, interrupting her awareness of the rest of her body and her surroundings. Bit by bit she got it back.

Her wrists were loosely bound. She was alive but she wasn’t sure why.

The decaying smell of the unseen creature that had nearly killed her still hovered in the air. It could be near. Watching her. Its captive.

Waiting to kill.

Vaguely she thought of working her hands free and running for her life … but … she was someplace inside now, no longer surrounded by stunted trees. It seemed to be night. The air coming in through a reinforced window was cool. She forced raw breaths in and out of her swollen throat.

A face swam into view. A man was leaning over her. He smelled nice. Like the outdoors. The sun. Trees.

She took in a few details. The shadowy light in the room didn’t help much. Dark brown hair, messed up. There was a leaf in it. He had rugged features that were somehow familiar and a strong jaw. Dark eyes, serious. He was strongly built with broad shoulders, wearing faded jeans and a camo shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Brawny arms lightly dusted with dark hair reached out to her. He drew back when he saw her flinch.

She blinked, forcing herself to focus. Who was he?

“You got a hell of a knock on the head.” He reached out a hand and brushed his fingertips over an aching lump on her temple. The gentleness of his touch made her even more confused.

“Huh?”

He shook his head. “You fell. Do you remember?”

The effort of thinking made her head throb painfully again. Automatically, she tried pulling herself to a sitting position.

“Stay still,” he commanded. Something hidden in his other hand gave off a steely glint and Barrett cringed. “I’m not going to hurt you. Let’s get these off.” He clipped through plastic zip ties, by the sound of it, and released her hands.

She didn’t have the strength to hit him.

“Did you—why—?” Barrett was just barely able to think that maybe it was better not to ask.

She had no idea who’d attacked her, but as the man got closer to the light and memory returned, she knew with absolute conviction that it hadn’t been him.

She didn’t know how and she didn’t know from what, but Nick Maltese had saved her. More fleeting memories came back to her. He’d drawn back the mechanism of a crossbow and aimed. The arrow flew. She’d heard it sing. After that, nothing.

“Sorry,” he said. “Had to tie you to get you across my shoulders and run back here. It was two miles, uphill.”

Barrett blinked, summoning up a memory of stunted trees and scattered rocks. Seemed to her she’d been closer to the top than that. Nick was just as strong as she remembered. Maybe stronger.

“I didn’t know when you’d come to or how you’d react.” He sat on the bed—she realized that she was on one—and examined her wrists. Then he let her go.

“You carried me here?”

“Like a little lost lamb.”

He’d said that about her once before. During one of their arguments about whether she was suited to military life and working with refugees. He’d never said it again, probably because she’d ripped him a new one and then hadn’t spoken to him for over a week.

Despite everything, Barrett managed a weary half smile. “I wasn’t lost. And I’m not that little. But thanks.” She touched her neck.

“You could have called or texted.” He held up her smartphone.

“Yeah, well, you never were reachable unless you wanted to be.”

She hadn’t meant the words to sound accusatory but they did. Nick stared at her for a second before grinning and handing her the phone. “So shoot me.” He reached into a pocket and came up with her gun. She noticed that the holster was lying on the bed next to her sheathed knife.

“Would that get your attention?” she asked, falling into the easy, teasing banter that had come so naturally to them. “I did think about calling you when I was driving up, decided not to at the gate.”

A minor lie. She hadn’t wanted to give him the chance to tell her to go away, that was all. She’d just wanted to knock on his door and see his face when he opened it.

Hello, Nick. Imagine finding you here all alone
.

Stupid fantasy. He didn’t seem inclined to pursue the subject.

Barrett’s sigh hitched roughly in her throat. “So who or what tried to strangle me?”

“I’m not sure,” he said after a fractional pause. “Whoever he was, he was big.” His gaze moved to the crossbow he’d left leaning against the wall, then back to her. “I took aim the second before you moved. Threw me off.”

“Sorry about that,” she murmured. “I was only fighting for my life.”

He gave a curt shake of his head. “No shit. Good thing I got there in time.”

“Yeah.” She cleared her throat. It hurt inside and out.

“Anyway, not a total miss. The arrow took a chunk of his ear. He let you go and ran. I thought it best to stay with you rather than give chase.”

“I appreciate that,” she said softly.

With more determination this time, she once again tried to sit up, bracing herself on wobbly arms. With an impatient sigh, Nick helped her until her back was braced against the wooden headboard. Other than that, the whole room seemed to be made of stone and furnished in steel. Taking shallow breaths to keep the dizziness at bay, she asked, “Are we in a safe location?”

“For now. I’ve got satellite tracking. It’s how I knew someone was heading up. But I had no idea it was you until the last second.”

“Oh.”

“I think the video feed from the gate cam broke down or got whacked. Did you park down there?”

“I was looking for a camera. Didn’t see one. And yes, I left my car.”

“The camera’s hidden in the poison ivy. Low maintenance and no one goes near it.”

“Kind of low tech for you.” Tiredly, she closed her eyes, then jerked them open again when she feared she was dozing off. What had she been talking about? Oh right. His gizmos. “So you’re currently doing the type of research and development that requires you live on a mountain?”

“For some projects, yeah.”

She watched him carefully. “Projects designed to identify vampires for the FBI?” she asked.

Given Mahone’s report to Carly, that was Barrett’s best guess at the moment. Why dance around the subject? Granted, she had no idea how he’d react. He might know more about vampires than she did and volunteer nothing. She hoped he would simply tell her the truth.

Rather than appearing confused or denying what she’d said, he narrowed his eyes at her. “So this isn’t a social call. And you still haven’t learned to stay out of trouble, I see. What happened to going back to your privileged life and taking up drawing again? Wasn’t that part of the plan?”

“Maybe in your mind. Never in mine.” And he’d effectively avoided her question.

For the next few minutes, the tense silence pulsed between them, but she refused to go any further into their past, what he’d encouraged her to do, and what she’d known immediately upon stepping back onto U.S. soil was never going to happen. She also wasn’t going to bring up the mistakes she’d made and would make again if she had to, even knowing it would end the same way. She prayed he wouldn’t bring them up, either.

Nick finally sighed, then said, “So I guess you’re working for the feds, too.”

Thankful he wasn’t going where she didn’t want him to, she relaxed slightly. So Mahone had been right. Nick knew about vampires and freely admitted he was working with the FBI. And he didn’t seem overly surprised by the fact she did, as well. “In a manner of speaking.”

He cocked a brow. “Meaning?”

“Like you, I’m an independent contractor. I like my freedom.”

“I remember.”

Her gaze flew to his. Had that been bitterness in his tone?

He hadn’t seemed terribly upset when she’d ended things between them, even if he had protested a little. She’d assumed it was a token effort so he wouldn’t hurt her feelings. Yet his next words seemed like another dig. “You never liked following orders, even if they were there for a reason.”

So she’d been wrong. He had no intention of letting sleeping dogs lie, but he couldn’t force her to talk about it. “Let’s not get into all that. It’s in the past, Nick.”

Clenching his jaw, he stood again. For a moment he seemed to be listening to something outside that she couldn’t hear. Then he returned his dark gaze to her. “Okay. Then let’s get into something new: Why you’re here, how you knew to find me, and whether anyone knew you were coming.”

The last part of the question confused her, but only for a second. Then she realized why he was asking it. Her attacker …

It hadn’t been some random assault by a maniac wandering in the woods. He’d been inhumanly strong. What if he was a vampire who’d been instructed to follow her and kill her? If so, who had sent him? Jane’s captors? The FBI? And why had he smelled like a rotting corpse, unlike every other vampire she’d ever met or heard of?

She looked sideways at Nick.

Was it totally crazy to wonder if he’d sent that thing after her? Or to speculate whether he’d only pretended to save her?

She shivered at her thoughts and shook her head. She hated this. Being suspicious of everyone around her, including the man she’d once trusted enough to welcome inside her body. She’d come here for a reason; she had no choice but to trust Nick again. It shouldn’t be such a difficult task.

She answered him slowly. “There’s a lot I need to fill you in on.”

“Including what you know about vampires and what you need from me.”

At her slight nod, his mouth twisted. Something disapproving radiated from him and he didn’t even bother to hide it.

“What’s on your mind?” she asked him. The Nick Maltese she’d known hadn’t gone in for displays of emotion. But he was older now. His eyes showed it—and revealed more than he probably wanted to.

“I wish you were here for a whole different reason, Barrett. A personal one. But I wished for a lot of things over the past year that never came true, and something tells me nothing’s changed.”

Memories were in his eyes and in his voice, forcing her to relive what she’d sought to forget. Again, Nick’s hint that their split had wounded him in some way surprised her.

Back then she’d told herself to be practical—their brief affair hadn’t been the romantic kind, but one driven by powerful and mutual desire to connect on a purely physical level. Craving intense sensation. The stress of being far from home, picking up the pieces of random wars and trying to put someone else’s country back together, was overwhelming without some form of release.

Some drank to blot out the chaos and the violence, some did drugs. They had fucked. A lot.

Nick was skilled and ultra macho but he never rushed it. He knew just when to be tender and he knew exactly how to take her to climax again and again until she screamed his name. Naked in his arms, blissed out underneath his big body or riding him hard, she was a different woman. Too open. Too vulnerable. Needing him way too much.

She didn’t want to love him, damn it. Loving someone just opened you to hurt. To loss.

So she’d always planned to end things with Nick before she returned stateside. If not for Jane Small, Barrett hadn’t planned on ever seeing him again.

Nonetheless, the fact that he might have truly cared for her and mourned the end of their relationship filled her with a wave of pleasure. One she immediately tamped down.

“Never mind.” The bluff command snapped her back to the moment. “So what security clearance do you have?” he asked. “Six-Vee?”

“Six—what?”

He stared at her. “V as in vampire. You contract with the FBI. You mentioned vampires. And given what attacked you—I mean, I assumed you worked in the Bureau’s Turning Program before it was shut down. That you’d know the lingo.”

Something he’d said bothered her, but she was still foggy, distracted by her memories; she couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was so she just shrugged. “I obviously haven’t done all my homework. Guess nothing’s changed.” She shrugged again, trying to make light of the topic even though she could tell by the immediate flare in his eyes that he didn’t think it was funny.

“Get up to speed. You nearly fucking died out there, Barrett.”

“I remember,” she whispered. “Being strangled is not fun.” She didn’t want to think about what would have happened if he hadn’t gotten to her in time.

“So don’t joke about this. Ever.”

“Okay.”

He took advantage of her weak reply. “How about if we don’t discuss it, either?”

She cleared her throat. It was still painful. “Won’t work. On a need-to-know basis … well, I really need to know a few things.”

“Is that right.” His tone was suddenly wary. He’d never liked conversations where he wasn’t in charge. The words
we have to talk
had always made him pace the room and eye the door. But he stayed where he was. “Fire when ready.”

“The thing that attacked me? I’m sort of remembering more now. I’m guessing you’ve seen something like it before.”

“Why is that?”

“You didn’t blink when you drew the bow. You didn’t seem shocked by what was happening. And you missed.”

Nick just stared at her again. “You moved.”

She ignored that and persisted. “Was it a vampire? And why the hell did he stink like that?”

“Some do.”

It was an answer but it didn’t tell her much of anything. He was better than ever at calmly deflecting questions.

“Why did you assume I work for the Turning Program, Nick? And what exactly do you do for the FBI?”

He didn’t answer right away. Wondering if she’d gone too far, she almost jumped when he finally did. “You sure have lots of questions for someone who just dropped back into my life with no warning, Barrett. And you haven’t told me a thing.”

“Maybe I have my reasons. Good ones.”

“C’mon,” he said coaxingly. “Share. I used to love it when you shared. Your eyes got all misty.”

BOOK: Awakened
5.91Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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