Edge of Danger (34 page)

 
“Where’s Peter?” Lark asked, moving to sit on the arm of Simon’s chair. Drifts of black fabric fluttered around her as she crossed her long legs. “And Duncan? And Yancy—Oh. There
you
are. You’re late!”

 
“Yancy” had his right arm in a black sling, and his left foot in a walking cast. He was struggling to pull a shirt on over his bare, blood-smeared chest. “Want a doctor’s note?” he asked, glaring at her with the eye that wasn’t swollen shut and colored a deep, painful purple. He hobbled to sit down heavily on the end of the sofa where Eden was watching them all as if she were observing a fast-paced tennis match.

 
“Hey,” he mumbled through a split lip by way of greeting.

 
“Hey.” Eden smiled sympathetically, wondering what the other guy looked like. It was obvious Yancy had been interrupted while he’d been getting medical attention. He smelled faintly of antiseptic and apparently only some of his wounds had been dressed because he took out a handkerchief and dabbed at a seeping cut on his jaw.

 
Absently cataloging the poor guy’s numerous wounds, Eden was distracted by the flash and flair of flames out of the corner of her eye. She turned her head to see yet another new arrival. This guy was sitting in the chair opposite the fireplace. Like the others, he’d arrived with no fanfare.

 
Wearing black pants and an open-necked white shirt, he somehow managed to look more elegant than the guy in the tux. He had a lean, clever face that was vaguely familiar, and watched everyone with the darkest eyes Eden had ever seen.

 
Interestingly enough, while he was indolently seated fairly near a floor lamp, he was almost completely in shadow. He was absently juggling three tennis-ball-sized spheres of fire between lean, nimble fingers.

 
“Duncan,” Gabriel’s expression eased when he spotted the guy, and he strode across the room, winding his way through the knot of people in its center.

 
Duncan rose, and the two men did that slapping-on-the-back-hard-enough-to-stagger-a-horse thing.

 
“Caleb?” Gabriel asked.

 
Duncan shook his head. “He’s gone back. I’m sure he’s fine.”

 
“I’d feel better if I was sure of that.”

 
“Ditto. I’ll see what I can find out when we’re done here.”

 
Seeing the two men side by side Eden knew immediately that they were brothers. The same dark hair, the same lean face, the same sensual mouth, the same dark, penetrating eyes. They could almost be twins. But Gabriel was better looking, she decided, fascinated by the obvious love the two men shared.

 
Not that their greeting was effusive. Almost immediately Gabriel stepped away from his brother, and went to stand with his back to the massive stone fireplace. “Blaine can catch up when he gets here.” He glanced from one to the other. “In the past thirty-seven days, three wizards have been killed.”

 
“Three?”
Simon asked, sitting forward.

 
“Thom Lindley’s body was discovered early this morning. The sweepers confirmed ID. Vaporized. Same MO as Townsend and Jamison.” Gabriel searched the faces of the people in the room. “We have a rogue wizard. Either one of ours, or an outsider.”

 
“Man,” Alex said softly but with heat. “What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is a major clusterfuck. And, Jesus. Look at the timing. Isn’t the council sitting right now to install a new Master Wizard as leader?”

 
“They are. I’ll go talk to them,” Duncan said, now juggling five larger balls of naked flame. They were moving so fast Eden saw only a constantly shifting arc of orange, red, and yellow.

 
“Can’t get anywhere near them until a new leader has been chosen. Caleb first,” Gabriel instructed his brother.

 
Eden caught the look that passed between the two men. Duncan shook his head. Once. Gabriel’s jaw locked. “Jesus.” He closed his eyes for a second, and when he opened them again, they were as dark as onyx. “Surely to God it doesn’t apply to
brothers
?”

 
Duncan didn’t pause his juggling, didn’t even glance at Gabriel as he said softly. “Want to test that theory, bro?”

 
She frowned. What did
that
mean? Was there some wizardly law that prevented them from trying to find their brother?

 
“One more thing—” Gabriel said grimly. “Tremayne and I are currently working on replicating a robot stolen from Dr. Cahill’s lab. Until half an hour ago we didn’t connect the deaths of three wizards to our current op. That changed when a man morphing as the Homeland Security agent tried to kill Eden while shimmering.”

 
“Impossible!” Lark slid off the arm of the chair. “If there’d been anyone but us in this house, palace, castle,
whatever,
in the last twenty-four hours, I would have
felt
him. There’s not a particle of residue indicating the presence of an unfamiliar wizard.”

 
Eden was tempted to put up her hand and direct their collective attention to her throat, which felt as though it were black and blue. Like a good piece of furniture, she kept quiet.

 
“Cloaked,” Duncan murmured, adding a gleaming silver dagger to his fireballs; it caught and reflected both the eclectic lights and the orange of the fire as it flipped and wheeled high in the air above his head.

 
“Impossible,” Simon inserted. “Okay. Not impossible with the right device, but pretty damn improbable.”

 
“Improbable or not,” Gabriel told him, “it’s fact. He was here. Which means he wants what we want. Intel on this bot.”

 
“No,” Eden told Gabriel flatly. “He didn’t want anything to do with the robot. He wanted me
dead.
”

 
He searched her face. She would much rather he scoop her up and run like hell. Anywhere would be fine and dandy with her.

 
“He wanted to frighten you enough to lower your guard so he could extract the data for Rex,” he told her as casually as one would remark on the weather.

 
“Excuse me?
I
was the one struggling to breathe as he squeezed the life out of me. You didn’t see his eyes,” she rubbed her goose-bumpy upper arms. “He was…
shimmering
so
you
couldn’t catch him.”

 
“What
kind
of device?” Yancy asked. “What kind of device would be capable of cloaking him from
us
?”

 
“Something ancient,” Lark offered. “An amulet of some sort?” She looked at Eden, and Eden was surprised to see real intelligence beneath the garish makeup and multiple piercings.

 
“Was he wearing anything out of the ordinary? Jewelry of some kind?”

 
Eden took a moment to think about it. He’d worn no rings on his hands, she was sure of it. “Nothing I could see.”

 
“Something in his pocket?” A new man moved with unconscious grace to the center of the semicircle. Of medium height and muscle-bound, he was dressed in a slightly too tight dark suit and conservative tie that made the pale skin on his neck roll pink over his pale yellow collar. The late wizard Blaine, Eden thought.

 
“You’re late,” Lark snapped, sounding nothing like the Goth young woman she appeared to be.

 
“Sorry. I’ve been here long enough to get the gist.”

 
“The
gist,
” Gabriel said in a hard voice, “is that we now know that the missing bot and our mysterious visitor are inextricably linked. We know that this person is capable of cloaking himself and blending right in. We know that he’s capable of murder. And we know”—he looked from face to face—“We know,
unequivocally,
that he’s assimilating the powers of the wizards he kills.”

 
Eden didn’t need the murmur of alarm to feel deeply terrified. If these guys were nervous, she was a hundred times
more
so. “Assimilating?” she repeated, lips dry.

 
Lark jiggled a boot-clad foot beneath her long black gypsy skirt. “Under the right circumstances, powers transfer. That’s how Alex got his. Used to just be telepathic, but now he—”

 
“I’m…more,” Alex interrupted, giving Lark a charming smile. How interesting, Eden thought, watching the interplay between Gabriel’s coworkers. Alex, apparently, was modest about his…skills. Duncan sat there absently showing his ability. Not only to make fire, hell, Gabriel could do
that.
But Duncan seemed more at home with his talents. He was comfortable with them, almost nonchalant as he juggled a combination of unlikely objects. He’d added what looked like a boccie ball to the fire and a kni—
two
knives arcing over his head.

 
Eden got the distinct impression that Duncan was a little bit different from the others. But she wasn’t sure if it was a good different or a bad different.

 
Then she noticed Gabriel’s brother’s eyes and realized that far from showing off, far from being inattentive, he was watching everyone in the room with a sharply intelligent black gaze. He was using his juggling act as a blind to distract anyone from looking deeper than the arc of flames in front of him.

 
Distract them from what?

 
As if he could hear her, Duncan turned his head slightly and met her eyes through the orange striations. The corner of his mouth lifted in a small smile before he returned to concentrating on what was being said around him.

 
That powerful glance must be an Edge family trait, Eden decided, rubbing the chill from her upper arms. She wondered what wizardly skill each person in the room possessed, then decided she was probably better off not knowing.

 
“Lark,” Gabriel motioned the young woman forward. “Fill us in on Lindley, Jamison, and Townsend. What precisely were their special talents? We should all know what we’re up against.”

 
“Thom Lindley’s special skill was morphing into another person for extended lengths of time.”

 
Gabriel moved to sit on the arm of the sofa next to Eden. Her heartbeat went crazy as it always did, increasing its tempo the closer he got to her. As a woman she was powerfully attracted to him, there was no denying it.

 
She’d done something incredibly stupid, and out of character. Not only had she slept with him, not only did she crave his body like a drug, but somehow she had managed to fall in love with Gabriel Edge.

 
She was stunned.

 
She knew people liked to think of themselves as being in love; but by and large the emotion they interpreted as love was in reality some other emotion—often lust, fear, dependence, or a hunger for approval.

 
God only knew, at various times in her life she’d experienced most of those.

 
Despite everything, she wasn’t afraid of Gabriel Edge. Nor was she dependent upon him. Nor did she need his approval for anything. She
was
insanely physically attracted to him. But this feeling was more than garden-variety lust. More than the usual chemical release of endorphins. As a scientist she was intrigued with the phenomenon of how powerful compatible pheromones could set off such an intense physical reaction. It was fascinating. Perhaps one day she’d add that component to an AI project.

 
A watch or some other piece of jewelry that could silently alert one when a compatible person came within a few yards. Market it as The Date Mate 2010. Never approach another loser again.

 
God. Who was she kidding? She was sitting here, in a medieval castle, surrounded by wizards. Falling in love with her very own wizard kidnapper.