Broken Heart 07 Cross Your Heart (17 page)

I wrapped my arms around his neck, and kissed him softly. “Mmm. I don’t mind a bit. Too bad I will be, quite literally, dead to the world.”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “That is a problem.”

He went into the bathroom, and I got tucked into bed, plumping the pillows. I waited for him to join me; I hoped for snuggling. It had been a long time since I’d shared a bed with someone else.

Tez crawled into bed and gathered me into his arms as if it was the most natural action in the world. Despite his earlier teasing, he was wearing boxer shorts, which I admit I was disappointed to see.

Pressed against Tez’s delectable chest, listening to the comforting sound of his heartbeat, I surrendered to vampire slumber.

In the attic, in the secret room, he accuses me of greed.

I have never asked for trinkets. His petty words wound me, and I want to hurt him back. I hold my tongue, though, because I owe him, and he knows it. It’s why he can be so cruel, and why I do nothing.

Candlelight flickers across his handsome face. Here was a man I had thought I might love. Why does he want to torment me? He stares at me, and the look in his eyes is so strange, I feel my heart skip a fearful beat.

“You’re mine,” he whispers. “Mine.”

Desperation tinges his words, that and some other emotion I cannot define.

I shouldn’t have followed him upstairs to this terrible room. I shouldn’t have kept his secret. It was wrong.

It seems I am doomed to make the wrong choices.

I look at the floor, at the odd symbols that float like coal dust above the wood planks. It smells like rotten eggs, and I hold my gloved hand up to my nose. “What have you done?”

His eyes are wild, and I’m frightened.

Downstairs in my beautiful home, the party is in full swing, and I am the hostess. I am wearing my pretty brown velveteen dress, the one with the copper roses. I have removed my hat. It, too, has copper roses. I’m very pleased with my outfit, but I suppose he would accuse me of vanity should I say so.

“We should go,” I say, and I back up a step. “The guests.”

“You were with him.”

I shake my head because I cannot trust my voice. I try to be brave. I think of my children, and I know that no matter what harm I might’ve caused, they were worth the price. The choice.

“You betrayed me!”

Panic wells. I don’t like the way he’s looking at me, and I know he wants to hurt me.

“I have done everything right,” he says. “You’re mine. I won’t share you.” He rips the hat out of my hand and tosses it to the floor. “You think I don’t know where you got that necklace? Give it to me.”

I put my hand on the sapphire that dangles from my neck. “No.”

He grabs the chain and pulls so hard, it cuts into my neck. It does not break, and that infuriates him. I cry out, and back away, but he’s worked up now. His rage is palpable.

He cocks his fist—and hits me.

The pain is immediate and intense. I slam into the wall and hit my head. Then I fall, fall, fall into darkness.

When I woke up, I found Tez already out of bed and awake. He was pacing, shoving his fingers through his already ruffled hair. His worried expression had me sitting up and tossing off the covers.

“What’s happened?”

“Elizabeth.” He pulled me out of bed and wrapped his arms around me. “I’m sorry, princess. I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

He pulled back and stared down at me. “I’ve been waiting for you to wake up. Lenette came down about an hour ago. Your friend Eva tried to commit suicide.”

I went cold.

“No. Never.”

“I’m only telling you what Lenette said. With everything else going on in this place, I don’t really believe it, either.”

“Where is she?”

“The hospital.”

“And Lorcan?”

Tez hesitated. “He’s disappeared.”

“He would never abandon Eva. So, either he’s hurt or stuck somewhere.” Horror slicked through me. “The shadow.”

Tez’s expression confirmed my fears. “No one’s said so, but, yeah, I think he took Lorcan’s form and did the same thing to Eva that he did to Patsy.”

“Why?” I cried. Frustration and fury wound through me. “What purpose does it have? To destroy love?”

Shocked by my own revelation, I sank to the bed and fisted my hands in the covers. “Is that what he’s doing? Replaying the scenario over and over?”

“What scenario?”

I explained about my most recent vision and, in it, the confirmation that I had seen the necklace around Elizabeth’s neck. “She betrayed him by taking a lover. He killed her.” I frowned. “But he’d only called on Mammon’s shadow. I saw the symbols on the floor.”

“It’s a good theory,” said Tez. “But I feel like there’s a deeper purpose. We don’t know what the end game is yet.”

“We better figure it out quickly,” I said. “Let’s go see Eva.”

I hurried into the bathroom and quickly completed my ablutions. As soon as I dressed and packed, Tez grabbed my suitcase and his duffel.

Lenette was waiting for us in the kitchen. She looked worried as she directed Tez toward the coffeepot. I declined a cup.

“I can’t believe Eva would intentionally harm herself,” said Lenette. “Mammon’s shadow must’ve affected her, the same he affected Patsy.”

“That was our thought, too,” said Tez.

Lenette sighed. “Dr. Clark seems to think she walked into the dawn of her own volition.”

“Oh, my God. She tried to go into the sunlight?” I asked, horrified. “Who found her?”

“Tamara hadn’t gone to bed yet,” said Lenette. “Thank the Goddess she was there. Tamara’s been out in the field, training with Durriken. She just got home yesterday.”

“Training?” asked Tez.

“Durriken is a Roma—a werewolf who only shifts during the full moon. He and his family are vampire hunters. He’s been training Tamara to fight and to hunt.”

“You live in a town with vampire hunters?”

“They have a pact with the Consortium,” clarified Lenette. “Anyway, Tamara heard her mom go outside. She said Eva was upset and telling her she couldn’t live with the heartache of Lorcan’s unfaithfulness.”

I wasn’t surprised that Lenette already knew most of the story. This was Broken Heart, after all, and small-town secrets were hard to keep—except the long-ago travesty that had set all we were experiencing now into tragic motion. That had been kept secret from all of us.

“How’d she manage to get her mom back inside?” asked Tez.

Lenette piled scones into a bakery box and closed the lid. “The Roma hunters are very good at what they do. She dropped Eva with some kind of crazy move and dragged her smoking body back into the house. Then she called Patrick and Jessica.”

“Where’s Lorcan?” I asked.

“Nobody knows.”

“If Eva was harmed, so was he. That’s how the mate bond works.”

“Well, he’s alive,” said Lenette practically. She eyed Tez, who’d already dipped into the scones she’d just packed, and started putting together another box. “Otherwise, Eva would be gone.”

“Let’s assume the shadow took Lorcan’s form,” said Tez. “Somewhere between the emergency room and finding Dr. Clark, the Gabriel doppelganger disappears. We think he’s crawled under a rock to heal.”

“But he took on a new form,” I said. “Lorcan.”

“Eva goes home and they start digging around in the archives. Maybe they find something, and he’s trying to hide it. He starts pulling the same crap with Eva that he did with Patsy.”

“He took three days to make Patsy nuts.”

Tez nodded. “She’s stronger, maybe harder to push toward a breakdown. Or maybe he needed access to the house and that room, and when he was done doing whatever, he pushed her buttons.”

“I can’t believe he meant for her to stab him to death.” I took the bakery boxes from Lenette; otherwise Tez would empty them before we even got to the car.

“Probably not.” Tez popped the last bit of his stolen scone into his mouth, and finished off his coffee. He looked longingly at the boxes in my hand and I scooted out of his reach. He sent me a doleful look, but I would not be swayed. Besides, I wanted one, too.

“If the shadow knows that killing a vampire means killing his mate, maybe he held off on hurting Lorcan until he figured out what Eva knew,” said Tez. “Or maybe he just didn’t have time to kill Lorcan. Could be he’s unconscious and locked up somewhere.”

“Somewhere a vampire couldn’t escape?” I asked. “Lorcan’s practically an Ancient, and he has shifter abilities. The only thing that could hold him is fairy gold or… or I don’t know what else.”

“Let’s get to the hospital,” said Tez. “Talk to Eva. If I know that security chief of yours, he’s already looking for Lorcan.”

“Is that grudging admiration I hear in your voice?” I teased.

“He’s good,” said Tez with a shrug. “I bet dollars to scones he’s turning the hospital upside down right now.”

“Then the best thing we can do is continue Eva’s research work.”

“I agree. Soon as we’re done visiting Eva, we’ll head to Tulsa.”

“I’ll head to Tulsa,” I said. “You’re going to the were-cat party.”

“Shit.” He looked at me, frowning. “Wait. You’re not going with me?”

“You didn’t invite me.”

“I didn’t…” He trailed off, obviously annoyed. “Are you kidding me?”

“You assumed I was going with you? Hmm. Interesting.” I might’ve gotten some satisfaction from Tez’s flummoxed expression, but I was also doing a little girly happy dance that he’d expected me to be his date. Still, he should’ve asked me.

The priority, however, was to get to Tulsa—although I did have that lovely red wrap dress I hadn’t worn yet. No, Elizabeth. Focus. We needed information more than ever, and it seemed like my great-grandfather’s heirlooms might hold the keys we needed to unlock the mystery and the motive of the shadow man.

“Good luck,” said Lenette. “I’ll pray that the God and the Goddess keep you protected during your journey.”

When we got outside, Tez loaded our bags into the Honda’s trunk. He slammed it shut. Then he rounded the car and looked pleadingly at me. “Please go to the party with me. We won’t stay long, I promise.”

“Well,” I sniffed. “I suppose. But only for a little while.”

“Cruel, cruel woman,” he muttered. Then he kissed me soundly. “Where’s the hospital?”

Tez managed to finish off half of one box of scones by the time we got to the hospital. He parked close to the main entrance, and shoved a final bite into his mouth. He looked at me, his expression tinged with guilt. “What? I have a high metabolism. Shifters eat a lot.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Just as Tez predicted, Damian was in the hospital lobby coordinating the search for Lorcan. He’d come to the same conclusion we had about the shadow taking Lorcan’s identity, and made the same assumption that the vampire was still alive somewhere.

“Is there anything we can do?” I asked.

“No, Liebling. Until we figure out how to stop him, no one is safe. We’re attempting to take precautions, but there’s not much we can do. We don’t know how he takes the form, or whom he might attack next.”

I told Damian about our theory, explaining how Tez and I believed that the founding families of Broken Heart might be involved with a conspiracy to cover up something terrible that happened—something that started with the murder of Elizabeth Silverstone.

“Started?” asked Damian. “You think there’s more than one victim?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Tez is right. This doesn’t feel finished. If the demon shadow is trying to fulfill some sort of purpose prevented more than a hundred years ago… there may be no stopping him.”

“If you’re right, Elizabeth, then we have much to fear.”

Damian’s admission ramped up my own worries about what was unfolding in Broken Heart. I only hoped we could stop it—him—before someone died.

“How’s Patsy doing?” asked Tez.

“Not well. When she awoke, she was immediately enraged. She’s not herself. Dr. Michaels issued a sedative—a knockout gas, if you will. Unfortunately, we must keep her unconscious for now.” Damian’s phone buzzed, and he turned away to answer it.

“Let’s go see Eva,” I said to Tez. We got the room number from the receptionist and took the elevator to the second floor.

When we arrived at Eva’s room, I saw Darrius, who was one of the royal lycan triplets and brother to Damian, standing guard outside the door. Usually he and his other brother, Drake, were the cutups, but his demeanor was all business. His jade green eyes didn’t even hold a glint of his usual humor.

“How is she?” I asked.

“Alive,” he said. “But not in her right mind.”

Trepidation filled me as I pushed through the door and into the dimly lit room. Tez followed me, his hand resting on the small of my back. I stopped near the bed and gazed down at Eva. Her eyes were closed; her wrists and ankles were strapped to the bed. I sensed the fairy gold interwoven through the restraints.

“Eva?”

Her eyes opened and within their brown depths I saw pain so deep, so jagged, I felt cut open by it. Surely no human was meant to suffer like this. Had Patsy felt the same way? Did it torment her still, and that was why she was enraged?

“Let me die,” she whispered. “Without him, I’m nothing. He broke my heart, Elizabeth. And I cannot bear it.”

“Lorcan would never hurt you. He lives for you.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, pressed her lips together, and turned her head. Her shoulders started to shake. Vampires could not cry, but that didn’t mean the urge to shed tears left us.

“He doesn’t love me,” she said in a wounded voice.

“Eva, shhh.” I reached out to touch her, to offer some small comfort, but Tez stilled my hand. He was right, of course. If she was as volatile as Patsy, she could well rip off my hand with just her fangs.

“Darling, can you tell us what you found out about Broken Heart?” I asked softly. “Do you know what happened a hundred years ago?”

She looked at me once again, her expression filled with anguish. “What?”

“You and—Well, you were looking in the archives for old newspapers, diaries, anything that could help us figure out how Elizabeth died.”