Her Warrior for Eternity (7 page)

“You got your memory back?” The words were out before he could control his tongue.

“A-ha!”

Fuck. “I don’t understand how that could’ve happened.” He truly didn’t. He was good at wiping memories. What he erased stayed erased, no matter what his fellow warriors feared.

She deflated. After her animated anger, he found it a heart-breaking sight. He wanted to draw her close, but he sensed her anger wasn’t completely gone yet. She wouldn’t welcome the gesture.

“I didn’t get it back. I’d written it all to my journal.”

Double fuck.

She sighed. “Do you have any idea how violated I feel?”

“Yes.”

“Yet you did it anyway?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He made a helpless gesture towards her, willing her to understand. “It’s for your own protection.”

“My protection? Wouldn’t I be better protected if I knew about the danger?”

Since he agreed with her, he could only shrug. “Those are the rules. We can’t let anyone know what the Crimson Circle does.”

“Everyone at the club knows about Crimson Circle.”

He brushed the claim aside. “They think we’re glorified vampires, playboys and thugs. They don’t know the truth. No one should, so I’m afraid I’ll have to destroy your notes.” Not what he had imagined he would be doing on their date.

A slow sneer spread on her face. Under different circumstances he would have taken it as an exciting challenge, but she wasn’t inviting him to play. “Good luck with that, ‘mister I’m not good with computers’. I encrypted it.”

Jeremy rubbed his face with both hands. “Could you please delete it?”

“No.”

“I could make you.” Fear flashed in her eyes, making him feel like a cad. He was not the villain of this play, dammit.

Except that he was.

“You are a piece.”

“I have my people to protect.”

“And what about me?”

“You’re mine to protect too.”

“Like hell I am. I can take care of myself.”

“Not against this enemy.”

“Why not? Tell me why they’re so special.” But he only shook his head. She wouldn’t believe him. He could tell her she was a potential target for a serial killer, but then he would have to tell her about her
promise
. And that wasn’t a topic for a casual conversation.

“It’s best you forget all about them. Please, destroy your notes.”

Anger flashed in her eyes. She crossed the small room in a few steps to her desk, grabbed the laptop with both hands, and hurled it with considerable force across the room, where it smashed with a loud cracking noise into the wall.

“There. Happy now?”

Jeremy shook his head in awe. “I’ll get you a new computer.” He picked up the laptop from the floor. He might not understand much about computers, but they had people who did.

“I don’t need it.”

“You’re getting one nonetheless.”

“Fine. Now get out!”

He wanted to explain himself, apologise, but he did neither. He just nodded and left. She threw the door closed behind him and he heard her lean heavily against it. A moment later she started to cry.

He had never felt more wretched in his long life.

Corynn didn’t cry for long. She wasn’t the type and it didn’t help anyway. The agony of betrayal and violation remained. She wanted to tear something apart, tear
him
apart. Throwing the computer at the wall had felt good, but it hadn’t been enough.

She should go public with what she knew. That would teach him. Social media would gladly pick up her story. This morning, she had discovered thousands of webpages and accounts dedicated to two-natureds of every flavour, the Circle warriors especially, all maintained by humans with little or no first-hand knowledge about the topic. But it didn’t feel satisfying enough. They would probably believe her, but what about the others? People would call her mad. Worse yet, it might attract the attention of the wrong people. These renegades, whoever they were. Only an idiot would draw the attention of the enemy.

Of course, the enemy now included one vampire warrior. How could she have been so stupid as to believe a word he said to her? When something appeared too good to be true, it always was. Hadn’t she learned that by now?

The angry energy inside her required release or it would make her explode, and only one thing would help. Running. And she knew exactly who she would run to. Toby. He was her only friend who would understand the two-natured side of things. With any luck, she would have calmed down and could relate everything to him by the time she reached Greenwich.

It was less than ten miles and she had run the distance before, so she didn’t hesitate. The straightest route went south towards the Thames, across it over the Waterloo Bridge, and then through Southwark. But the streets were filled with cars, making running unpleasant, so once she had crossed the bridge, she turned to the footpath that ran along the river. It was a longer way, but she didn’t care.

She didn’t notice the scenery and wasn’t calmed by the gently flowing river. She tried to reach the flow of running, but her mind kept churning in anger. She was furious at Jeremy for deceiving her, and at herself for being so gullible. The latter was especially annoying because it wasn’t the first time she had allowed a man to mess with her mind. Pretty much all her so called boyfriends had done that. She had eventually stopped dating completely, convinced that she was unable to judge a man’s character accurately.

She had been proven right, once again.

Toby lived in an honest-to-god castle on Maze Hill, right by Greenwich Park. In addition to the brown brick baroque monstrosity, the estate consisted of many large houses and a park, bordered by a tall brick fence that provided enough space for his entire clan. She hadn’t wondered about the arrangement before – London was an expensive place to live alone and who wouldn’t want to live in a castle – but now that she knew how old he was, she had to wonder how they could pull it off.

He smiled when she brought it up. “It would be more difficult to live alone. Shifters are pack creatures.” He led her to the garden, judging correctly that she was too wound-up to stay indoors. She told him the sordid story and he was exactly as sympathetic as she had hoped.

“That’s vampires for you. And what I know of the warriors, which isn’t much, they’re even worse. They’re completely ruthless when they’re working for their own ends.”

“And what about those renegades?”

“I’ve never heard about them.”

“You mean he was lying about that too?” But she hadn’t imagined how that man in the club made her feel.

Toby shrugged. “Or it’s their name for them.”

“So you wouldn’t know how to avoid them?”

“Well, if they’re the enemy of the Crimson Circle, I suggest you stay away from the warriors.” He smiled, but she knew he meant it.

Her heart fell. “Bugger. Do you think I’ll have to quit at Sudden Death? I really like it there.”

“No. If the warriors are troublesome, just tell Grant. He can deal with them.” She didn’t doubt it. Her first impression of him hadn’t faded in two weeks. He was scary. But he was a fair boss too.

Toby clapped his hands together, changing the topic. “And now, dinner. Mom should have something ready.”

“I can’t sit down to your family table all sweaty.” But he just smiled, ignoring her protests, and led her back in. She ended up having a wonderful meal with his parents and brother and sister. They all looked pretty much the same age, but to her bafflement she was able to sense differences in them, the greater strength of Toby’s parents and the relative weakness of his younger sister. As a group, they felt warm and vibrant, their effect on her exactly as soothing as Toby had intended.

The evening was already growing late before she was ready to head home. She promised Toby she’d take the train, but running felt so good that when she reached the Greenwich station, she didn’t board the DLR after all but took the pedestrian tunnel to the other side of the river. Taking the north side would be a longer route home, as she would have to make her way around the northward bend in the river, but the route was beautiful and the evening weather was nice.

The only blemish in her otherwise perfect evening was when she ran too close to the Nightingale Club. It hadn’t opened for the night yet, but it still managed to mar her good mood. Putting it resolutely out of her mind, she headed for the City. She would be home soon.

Chapter Eight

Keeping on the tail of a woman who evidently could run a marathon without tiring wasn’t easy for a man with Jeremy’s build, but he wouldn’t let her out of his sight. He did what he had to in order to keep her safe. Even if it meant running through the entirety of London.

Her pace was conserving, like with long-distance runners, and he had no trouble keeping up. But doing so without her noticing him was another matter. He was a large man and didn’t run with the effortless grace she did. And he was dressed in jeans, a button-up shirt and handmade leather shoes. People noticed him as he swerved by them.

One jogger wasn’t a peculiarity: a jogger with a tail was.

It was only a matter of time before someone would alert Cora to his presence. He could camouflage himself with magic, but there was only so much Might he could spare without tiring. He needed to conserve energy in case she decided to actually run a marathon.

Or he had to defend her against the enemy.

On the Bankside footpath, there were fewer people around and it became easier to run, but she increased her pace only a little. Fearing she would detect him, he let the distance between them grow, but she never looked around, never even suspected he might be following her.

By the time they reached Greenwich, he had run more than he had in ages, even including regular exercising and the chases renegades provided him with. He wasn’t tiring, but he felt dismayed when he realised she would run atop Maze Hill. It was the leopard-shifters’ territory and he had to tread carefully. Worse, it meant she had run straight to her shifter.

His chest tightened and it had nothing to do with the steep climb.

He wanted to follow her into the clan grounds when she disappeared through the gate of the castle, but that would be foolish. Glancing around, he spotted a huge tree in the Greenwich Park across the street. It was far enough from the shifter estate that their guards wouldn’t immediately spot him, and close enough to keep an eye on the gate. He scaled the tall wrought-iron fence to the park and climbed up the tree, hiding behind the leaves. He was parched, but he couldn’t – wouldn’t – abandon his watch.

The sun was already setting when she finally emerged. He had begun to fear that she would stay the night, and the sight of her made his tension ease. Like before, she took off on an easy trot back the way she had come. Groaning, he got down from the tree and followed her. If his legs were a little stiff, it was because he had sat in the tree for so long.

He began to worry again when she didn’t head to the train station but to the pedestrian tunnel underneath the Thames. She meant to run home. Reckless woman.

The tunnel was a long, straight tube where their steps echoed, so he had to give her a good head start. By the time he emerged on the surface, she had disappeared, but a quick scan led him back on her trail again as she ran through the Isle of Dogs. He had to admire her strength. He was already feeling the effects of the run.

After the deep northward bend in the river, she turned west, keeping to the well-lit main streets. It was obvious she would run through the City, and her route would take her by the Nightingale Club too. If she hadn’t thrown him out so fast he would have told her to keep away from both. Now he could only hope that the renegades weren’t around yet.

She didn’t waver from her route and he contemplated his choices. He could stop her and put her into a cab so he could take her home. It would guarantee her safety, but it would make her hate him more than she already did. But the other option wasn’t much better: following her and hoping there weren’t any renegades around this early in the evening.

The streets were relatively quiet. They weren’t deserted though, and he felt quietly optimistic that the renegades wouldn’t notice her energy signature amongst all the humans. They might make it through.

They were in the heart of the City when a change in Might made his guts tighten. Renegades were near.

Renegades couldn’t interact with Might at all. They were completely detached from it, as if they weren’t even organic. They actually repelled Might, the only creatures to do so. When they moved, they furrowed through it, creating a temporary void in their wake that made ripples course through it.

Warriors had learned to keep their senses open for those ripples and determine how close the enemy was. The sensation was mildly unpleasant, more so if they hit the voids, but it was nothing compared to the foulness the renegades emanated when they were near enough. Jeremy grimaced when the foul sensation hit him. They were closer than he had thought.

Fuck.

He began to run faster, trying to catch up to Cora, having let the distance grow too wide. She must have heard him approach, because she sped up too. It was the sensible thing to do, but Jeremy wished she would at least glance back and see him there. Perhaps she would stop then.

He didn’t want to shout, as it would only alarm the renegades to their presence. The enemy was nearing Cora on an intercepting path, and would be on her before he could reach her. His only hope was that the bastards would be lousy runners. She might be able to flee.

Three men emerged from the alley behind the Cheapside entrance of the St Paul’s tube station just as she ran past it. “Cora! Run!” She paused and turned to look at him. Her face flashed with anger when she recognised him, but he didn’t care. “Run!”

She frowned, confused, but she must have sensed the renegades too. She glanced in their direction and took off at full speed without delay. Satisfied that she was getting away, he ran faster too, to catch the enemy before they could get their wits together and go after her.