CONCEPTION (The Others) (2 page)

“Oh God!” That hurt. Her voice was a slight gasp of air,
barely sound, but it was enough to immediately make her the focus of a pair of
golden eyes.

“Shit.”

She must look as good as she felt.

The hard-faced man spoke into the mike on his shoulder.
“We’ve got life here.”

She waited for the man to help her down. Shoot the chains.
Pick the lock. Any number of the things she’d seen on TV. Instead, he grasped
her chin in his gloved fingers and tilted her gaze to meet his. “Where is he?”

Oh Lord. Not another one. If she’d had the strength, she
would have jerked her chin away. Instead, she settled on the tried and true
method of resistance. She sought her cloud.

It failed to come. Violence hummed beneath the skin of the
golden man holding her. His grip on her chin tightened. His strange gold eyes
narrowed. “I’m only going to ask you one more time, lady. Where is he?”

Or he’d do what? Beat her? She closed her eyes and didn’t
dignify his threat with a response.

“Nick,” the golden man barked. “Can you smell him?”

“Hell, there’s so much blood here, I’d be lucky to pick out
anything but her.”

“Try.”

“It’d be easier if the Chosen weren’t so elusive.”

“It’d be easier if the humans would just leave us alone.”

“No argument there.”

Humans? Did that mean the man holding her wasn’t human?

Eden forced her eyes open again. Only one would open enough
to see through clearly. The man wasn’t looking at her. He held her chin almost
absentmindedly, his attention on a dark-haired man across the room. He
certainly looked human, but there was a certain cast to his profile, the way
his hair swept off his forehead that lent him an otherworldly aura. Was it
possible?

“Who are you?” The clear demand she meant to speak came out
as a hoarse, dried-up croak of sound.

The golden man turned back to her. “I’m the man looking for
Deuce.”

“Why?”

His right eyebrow went up. “Because his brother asked me
to.”

“You’re not human.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Something you said.”

He exchanged a look with the others in the room. With a curt
“Secure the area” he turned back to her. His demeanor was noticeably softer.
His grip on her chin gentled.

“Deuce’s family is very worried about him.”

He was going to have to do better than that. “What are you?”

“What do you think I am?”

Her left eye throbbed and her back burned. She was
dangerously close to losing consciousness, and he wanted to play games? Was she
cursed? “Are you one of them?”

His gaze sharpened. “I’m one of the Lyons’. Dak Lyons, to be
precise.”

“You’re on his list,” she breathed, weighing the information
and what it might mean.

“Whose list?”

“My grandfather’s.”

She ignored his small start at that piece of information. It
didn’t necessarily follow that just because Dak Lyons was on the same list as
Deuce that he was a friend, but it was the only hedge she had in what was a
pretty dismal situation. Bottom line, trusting Dak Lyons was the only chance
Deuce had.

“You’ve got to get him out of here,” she told him.

“Where is he?”

She stared into his golden eyes for a minute, looking for
something, anything that would tell her if she was doing the right thing. There
was nothing for her to see, however, except the level assessment he was making
of her in return.

Across the room, the little green light on the alarm panel
started to flash. Oh God, they were out of time. “Under the floor.”

“Where?”

She closed her eyes on a brief prayer and said, “Under my
feet.”

All eyes fell to the blood-spattered wood.

“Hell. Get a crowbar over here!” She sensed, more than saw,
movement at the edge of the room.

“You’ve got to hurry,” she whispered. “He activated the
defenses.”

Dak whipped around. “Who did?”

“My grandfather. He’s always been worried about someone
stealing his research.”

Dak’s lips twisted, derision clearly evident. “I’ll just
bet.”

Two of the heavily armed, heavily muscled men made short
work of the nails she’d pounded so deep to keep Deuce safe. Nails squealed as
they were dragged free, wood groaned and thud after thud, two beats slower than
her heart, built into a clatter as the floorboards were tossed aside. No one
made a move toward her. They weren’t even going to get her down, Eden realized.
Not until they were sure. And maybe not even then. She was the granddaughter of
the head of the Coalition. She was the enemy. Though she’d been late coming to that
understanding, she had it now. The minutes stretched like hours as the men
worked beneath her. Then with a “Got him”, the agony of wondering if she’d done
the right thing was over.

“Jeez, Deuce,” a big man with a bandanna tied around his
head asked, no small amount of horror in his voice, “what the hell did they do
to you?”

That horror in his voice dug deeply into her fear. Had she
been too late? Had something happened while he was down there? “Is he all
right?”

No one spared her a glance, let alone an answer.

A hammer went flying past her field of vision before landing
with a bang in the pile of discarded floorboards. “He’s not moving, Dak.”

Dak turned her face to his. “Why isn’t he moving?”

“It’s a drug,” she whispered. “He can’t move or talk. It’ll
wear off in a couple hours, but you’ve got to get him out of here now.”

Not a flicker of expression touched his face. “Nick, bring
the body bag.”

“He’s not dead!” she gasped, struggling in a futile effort
to see for herself. He couldn’t be dead. All she got a glimpse of was her chest
and a set of wide male shoulders.

Dak’s hands on her hips put paid to her efforts to see. His
“He needs protection from the light” was almost gentle. There was a faint
stiffening in his arms as he stepped aside for the men to work. He took a
breath, paused, and lifted her weight off her arms. “You’re hurting yourself.”

Her struggles had reopened the wounds in her wrists. It
didn’t matter. She craned her neck to see. “Is Dusan okay?”

His gaze held hers, puzzlement pushing aside the anger. “I
can’t tell.”

There was a snap that had her flinching before she realized
it was the heavy vinyl bag snaking out, and not the whip.

Nick reached down for Deuce, bumping her legs as he did.
“Damn,” he muttered as he hauled him out, grunting with the effort. “He’s going
to be pissed at someone when he wakes up.”

Dak got a better grip on the sides of her hips and lifted
her out of the way. The agony wrenched the scream from her throat against her
will. Hard curses from Dak and Nick swayed in tandem beneath the echo.

The urge to succumb to the haze that immediately appeared
was almost overwhelming, but she couldn’t take advantage of it yet. Not now.
They had to understand.

“Get her down,” Dak barked again, his grip on her hips
tightening.

“Who the hell did this to them?” bandanna man growled,
stepping forward.

She had, with her blind stupidity. But she wasn’t admitting
that now, to these men. Eden forced her right eye open. The left lid refused to
move. Across the room the lights on the panel started flashing in ever
increasing patterns. The time for atonement was at hand. She met Nick’s gaze
through his sunglasses as he zipped Deuce’s bloody body into the bag. She
redirected his gaze to the panel on the wall. She forced her ravaged lungs to
fill with air. With everything she had, she ordered, “Run!”

She saw realization dawn in the men’s eyes as the last
consonant faded.

Nick threw Deuce over his shoulder. “Get the hell out of
here. The whole damn place is going to go.”

As one, the sea of khaki made for the exit. Eden was only
concerned with Nick’s progress.

Her body was jerked relentlessly as Dak and the other man
tested the metal restraints holding her in place. Bandanna man pulled out his
gun and fired. The agony of the percussion tore through her wrists and down her
arms, so intense she could no longer scream. Dak’s curses came as fast as her
heartbeat, just as frantic and just as useless. The chains held.

Her gaze followed Nick as he cleared the door, his image blurring
out of clarity. As he passed through with his burden, she turned her attention
to Dak and the other man. She knew the instant he recognized what she’d known
from the moment she’d chosen to save Deuce. She wasn’t getting out of here
alive.

“Get out of here,” Dak ordered bandanna man.

“Just as soon as you do.”

“You’re in charge of getting Deuce to Bohdan.”

Bandanna man glanced at her, at the chains, and finally at
Dak. With a sharp nod, he sprinted for the door, long hair whipping behind him.

“You
need to go, too,” Eden told Dak. She couldn’t have any more lives on her
conscience.

“Just as soon as I have you down, I’ll do that very thing.”

“There’s no time!”

Dak’s
expression turned to stone and his eyes glowed with defiant determination. She shook
her head as he picked at the locks with a piece of metal. With the last bit of
strength she had, she pulled up her leg, placed her foot on his chest and
pushed him away. He stared at her, fangs showing, face morphing as she swung in
the chains, past pain. Past everything.

Explosions began in the outer compound, the impending
violence vibrating down the chains straight to her soul. She was going to die,
but he didn’t need to.

“You can’t save me.” The gold of his eyes changed to deep
amber with uncertainty, and then regret. His fingers brushed her cheek with the
lightest of touches. She closed her eyes against the reality and found the
strength to do one last thing right. “Get out of here.”

Chapter Two

“This had better be good,” Deuce growled, tossing his
battered backpack on the chair in the main security room. “If I do not leave
soon, Dak will have all the fun rousting those spies by himself.”

“Oh, it’s good.” Nick leaned back in his chair and folded
his arms across his chest. “And I don’t know what the hell to do about it.”

“Do what we always do with journalists.” He shrugged. “Scare
them off.”

“Tried that.”

“And?”

Nick fiddled with the camera controls. “She didn’t scare.”

She? Deuce’s curiosity piqued. Not many women came this far
into the wilderness. Let alone in the bitter cold following a raging storm.
“Who did you send?”

“Harley.”

He moved toward the screen. Harley was a big nightmare of a
werewolf and one of his top security experts. “Hell-bent-for-leather Harley
didn’t send her screaming?”

Nick’s chair creaked beneath his shifting weight. “Nope.”

“Did he forget his biker regalia?”

“Nope. He even took along Luke and Shiva.”

Which meant the three had been hanging around waiting for
him to get back, and boredom had driven them out to scare off the pretty little
journalist.

He looked at the monitor. In the darkening twilight, there
was only a faint stir of movement. At times, the limits of human technology
frustrated him.

“She’s between cameras,” Nick apologized.

Deuce scanned with his senses. The only people on the
mountain, according to his senses, were those who were supposed to be there.
Which was impossible. He was staring at evidence to the contrary. A prickle of
unease went down his spine.

“What happened when Harley performed his badass biker routine?”

Nick’s smile was full of admiration. “She shot him.”

“What?”

“She warned him to get out of her way, and kept on walking.”
Nick laughed.

“What did he do?” Deuce leaned his hip against the desk and
watched the screen as the woman trudged closer.

“Harley went full testosterone and dared her to make him.”

“And she shot him?”

Nick tilted his head to the side, his long brown hair
falling between Deuce and his view of the screen. “Didn’t even break stride.”

Deuce
stepped to the side, keeping the woman in view. “Was he hurt?”

Nick
snorted. “It’d take more than a flesh wound to the thigh to slow Harley down.”

That
was true. Deuce studied the screen more closely. There was a familiarity in the
way the woman moved. A bone-deep determination in the way she held her body
that he recognized. He touched the screen, his fangs surging into his mouth,
fury summoning his power. “Did Harley retaliate?”

“Hell no.” Nick fiddled with the zoom, sharpening the focus.
“But Luke and Shiva hightailed it down her back trail to make sure she wasn’t
being followed.

“Good.” He would hate to have to kill the Pack leader. Deuce
fought back the darkness beating at his calm.

“Said he wasn’t having any part of scaring a momma and her
baby,” Nick added with a flick of his brow.

“What?”

He motioned to the screen. “She’s got a baby under that
coat.”

Anger mixed with hope. She’d betrayed him. That he could
deal with. But she’d let another touch her. That he would not be forgiving.
“Where is Harley now?”

“Keeping an eye on her.”

“Tell him to wait on my arrival.”

Nick murmured into the transmitter. Deuce did not need to
wait for a reply to be relayed. Harley’s “If she falls one more time, I’m just
carrying her and to hell with the rules and that peashooter she’s packing”
reached his ears just fine.

Nick arched a brow at him. “You get that?”

“He will not touch her,” Deuce stated calmly, as he left the
room.

No one but he would ever touch her for as long as it took
for his demons to exhaust themselves.

* * * * *

Deuce dropped silently to the ground beside Harley. As if
part of the increasing storm he slid between the flakes. To anyone but an
Other, he would have been invisible.