Devil at Midnight (18 page)

Her hands were fisted as she forced her overextended eyeteeth back into her gums. She would control herself by force of will if she must.

As she calmed, a wisp of awareness brushed her thoughts. Nim Wei was an excellent mind reader, a prodigy even among
upyr.
The awareness she felt was not human but equine. Her horses—those simple, loyal beasts—were calling out to her for reassurance. She had ordered them to be cared for, but clearly someone had disturbed them.

In a twinkling, she was down the stairs and at the stable to check on them. Built of stone like the house, the stable was large enough for a pair of oxen and a family of sheep. The oxen had been displaced by Nim Wei’s horses, but she doubted the bandits’ neighbors would be long in adopting them. Nim Wei stepped past the hulking creatures in the outer yard, aware of their sleepy eyes tracking her.

Her strides slowed to a human pace by the time she entered the hay-scented building. She stopped when she heard a voice.

It was Christian’s voice, low and troubled. Her horses nickered before she made out his words.

He was standing by the stable’s far wall, where her horses’ saddles rested and the oxen’s harnesses hung. She had a moment to absorb the beauty of his body: tall, lean, narrow of hip and very broad of shoulder, with muscles that wrapped his frame in both grace and power. His legs were long, his strong, tight ass more than worthy of a bite or two. His profile, turned slightly downward now, was an arresting combination of the cleanly cut and the viciously masculine. By any race’s standards he was an attractive man. He made Nim Wei glad she was the only member of hers around.

At the sound of her horses’ greeting, he turned to her. His expression was startled and then displeased. A moment later, he covered both reactions with a mask of polite calm.

Nim Wei could hardly have done better—just one of the reasons she found Christian compelling. Despite her irritation over his stubbornness, she sauntered toward him with a sense of anticipation, her hips moving with the roll and swing that had hypnotized many before him. A little chase before a capture never hurt anyone. She could not doubt he would be worth it.

“Talking to the sheep?” she asked, for no one else kept him company.

A tiny muscle ticked beside his eye. “A thousand pardons if I disturbed your mounts, Mistress Wei.”

Her lips curved with enjoyment. She would parry with him if he wished. “Strangers sometimes make them uneasy, but I can see they are well enough. I notice you did not answer my question.”

He stiffened, his answer clipped. “On occasion, I talk to myself.”

He was lying, and she had no idea why. The realization tugged her hand back from reaching playfully for his cheek. He was alone here. She did not need to search the shadows to be convinced of that. When she was a girl—a peasant, to be precise—living her ignorant human life in the Yangtze Valley, she had been considered a sorceress. Born with a touch of Sight, she had told fortunes and conveyed requests, most of them idiotic, to deceased ancestors. Those gifts had followed her through the change. Had there been a whisper of another soul in this stable, she would have perceived it.

Then she remembered the shadow she thought she saw beside him back in the tavern. Had that been a trick of the light, as he claimed, or was Christian somehow cloaking secrets from her?

She peered up into his eyes, pushing forcibly into his mind. He was not as easy to read as some, but she sensed his wariness of her and his worry for his friends. Beyond that was an unexpected blank region: a literal gray mist where thoughts should have been. She pressed harder, and a picture flicked across her inner vision. She saw a golden-haired man in odd black-and-white garments. An equally odd white glow rayed around his head. His arms were crossed in the universal gesture for refusal.

Nim Wei jerked her head back, blinking in surprise. Though the image lasted but a moment, she knew she had not imagined it. Unlikely though it sounded, the golden-haired man seemed to have been barring her intrusion.

“What are you hiding?” she demanded, which was unconscionably direct for her. “Who taught you these mental tricks?”

“I do not know what you mean,” Christian prevaricated—or so she assumed. He bowed to her, and she lost her view of his handsome face. “If you will excuse me, I have duties to attend.”

She caught his arm as he moved past her, his mail an extra hardness beneath his sleeve. “I could ask your father to change your duties to pleasing me.”

He met her gaze without flinching. His eyes were every bit as dark as his father’s. They were more beautiful—more vulnerable, if you looked deep enough, though in that moment, they threatened to snap with anger.
A cold anger,
Nim Wei thought. Whether Christian realized it or not, he shared his father’s talent for iciness. When he spoke, his voice held just the right touch of scorn.

“I would not have thought you needed to order men to your bed.”

“You have my word you would not regret being there.”

He looked down at the fingers that held his arm: lovely, enticing fingers, as it happened. Nim Wei did not remove them.

“I cannot doubt you are correct,” he said with no sincerity whatsoever. “But there is another who has earned your favors tonight.”

“Your pulse has quickened,” she said, her own picking up. “I know your member is thickening.”

He did not blush, only gritted his teeth briefly. “One’s body does what it does. You are a beautiful woman.”

She snorted softly and released him, his diplomacy defeating her. She both minded and relished his cleverness. He was correct that she would not force him. Others perhaps, but not him. It would have violated her personal ethics to treat one of her chosen with disrespect.

On the other hand, pride demanded that she leave him with food for thought. She walked her slender fingers up the tense muscles of his chest.

“Your friend will reap the reward I am offering you.”

“William is a good man. I am certain he deserves to be treated well.”

Of all things, he had infused a hint of warning into his tone—as if he had the ability to prevent her from doing just as she pleased! Amused beyond her expectations, she threw back her head and laughed.

“For you,” she said, “I shall make a vow: that your friend shall leave my bower with more gifts than he came to it with.”

Christian’s mouth tightened, the flat, disapproving line obscuring the unusual delicacy of his lips. He did not like her promise, not even a little bit. A thrill ran down Nim Wei’s spine. How she savored matching wits with him!

“If you would permit,” he said with another bow, “I shall take my leave from you now.”

G
race had fled through the wall of the stable before Nim Wei’s dark aura could do whatever it did to her. She hadn’t waited for Christian to urge her to save herself. Before he’d had a chance to notice the woman’s arrival, her self-protective instincts had kicked in.

“My cowardly instincts,” Grace muttered as—from a safe distance—she pinned her gaze to the stable’s small, lantern-lit windows. Neither Nim Wei nor Christian moved into view. Because of this, squinting at the openings hard enough to give her ghostly head a headache was undeniably stupid.

Willing to be that way as long as it took, she stood beneath the only tree in the empty pasture, its branches twisted by the harsh mountain winds. Some sort of seed pods prickled but did not crack underneath her feet, reminding Grace—as if she needed reminding—that she no longer had the weight to break anything.

She wished she could have broken something. Christian and the minstrel had been in there a long time.

“It doesn’t matter that she’s pretty,” Grace told herself.

Actually, the minstrel was beautiful. Sophisticated. Seductive. Probably expert in a thousand methods to please a man. But none of that mattered, because Christian wasn’t an idiot. Christian knew the woman was dangerous.

A figure left the stable: Christian’s—his tall, taut body backlit by the lantern. He turned and began to stride straight to her across the pasture. Though he had not looked around, he must have spotted her shadow beneath the tree. Grace’s blood pumped faster, thicker. Something about watching him approach her excited her. His walk was slightly jerky, as if he were very determined to reach her.

Grace ran the final steps to him.

“Are you all right?” she asked at the same time he said her name.

His voice was rougher than she expected, his face twisted with fury. “If she had hurt you ...”

His temper took her aback: the willingness to do violence his words implied. She supposed a man like Christian, a trained soldier, would do whatever it took to protect the people he cared about. The thought that he would leap to
her
defense flattered her—which stirred a little storm of shame. She shouldn’t be pleased that he would be reckless with his safety. Nim Wei had advantages they didn’t yet understand.

“She didn’t hurt me,” Grace reminded him. Christian stood a foot before her, his fists clenched tight at his sides. “She might not even know she’s doing it. I might just have an allergy to her energy.”

“I do not believe I care what you mean by that.”

His manner was too haughty not to inspire a laugh. He’d worn the same expression when he hadn’t understood her reference to Christopher Columbus.

“I mean whatever witchy magic she’s using might be inimical to ghosts.”

“You are more than a ghost,” he said passionately.

Maybe she was. When he reached for her, a plea twisting through the anger that lit his eyes, she felt like a woman. His palms buzzed on her shoulders, almost solid and real.

Sadly,
almost
wasn’t good enough.

“St. Sebastian’s arrows,” he cursed, releasing his hold. “I hoped—”

She knew what he hoped. She tried to hide how her own heart sank. “Come sit with me.”

He dropped down beside her beneath the twisted tree, both their backs resting on its trunk. Christian’s breath heaved in a sigh she seconded. Just sitting there, with the freedom to watch his face, felt like a privilege.

“You were brave tonight,” he said. “During the battle.”

“Me?” Grace’s eyes widened. “I was terrified. And for no good reason.
I
couldn’t have been injured.”

“You did not scream, and you did not flee. I have seen men do both at their first sight of real bloodshed.”

“I’ve seen—”
Movie battles,
she began to say, but the
Sands of Iwo Jima
wasn’t the same. More to the point, she didn’t want to make Christian think she was crazy by explaining where she’d come from. Maybe she would someday, but for now they had enough to deal with. “I’ve seen pictures of battles, and I’ve heard stories.”

“Your father taught you what violence was.” Christian’s gaze was steady as it searched hers. Grace read the invitation to share her burdens, but she didn’t want to dwell on the shadows of her old life. Christian knew her father had hurt her. That was enough.

“I wanted to help,” she said, one shoulder hunching awkwardly in a shrug. “To be an extra pair of eyes to watch for trouble. I’m afraid I wasn’t very good at that.”

“You warned us the bandits were there. My father himself admitted that may have saved lives.”

He had turned on his hip to face her. Though she couldn’t touch him, Grace loved how close they were. He had energy, too. She couldn’t see it the way she saw the minstrel’s, but she felt it. It was like a cloud of invisible sparkles lapping over the edges of her body. Grace hugged her knees at a delicious inward shiver. She could have sat with him like this all night.

“I had this idea,” she said, finding it oddly easy to bring it up. “Maybe it’s silly, but I thought my angel might have sent me here to do something. Like, if I saved your life, my soul would be yanked back to heaven.”

“If that is the reason for your presence, God forgive me, but I pray you never fulfill it.”

Grace caught her breath at his declaration. Come to that, Christian looked surprised himself.

“I don’t want to leave, either,” she confessed. “I know I should, but when I saw that blood on your face, all I could think was that I didn’t want to lose you.”

His lips tightened, his eyes gone bright. Heat moved through Grace’s body at the ray-gun intensity of his stare. He seemed to be looking all the way inside her, to be seeing everything she felt, including things she wasn’t ready to admit to herself. He was older than she was, and loads more experienced—the medieval equivalent of a good-looking college man. What would happen if he knew how deeply she cared for him? Could he be as sweet on her as she was on him? Did he really think she mattered?

It was almost a relief when he turned his profile away. He bent one leg up and hugged it, an unthinking echo of her posture. The little scar that cut through his left eyebrow was facing her. When he filled his lungs to speak, Grace wondered what was coming.