Two Knights of Indulgence (7 page)

Love got a man killed, especially a man like him.
 
Death’s right hand didn’t need a weakness,
let alone a woman like her.
 
She was an
unknown entity; with a power unlike anything he’d seen in the seven hundred
years he’d been alive.
 
In that time,
he’d met all sorts of paranormal
types,
things he
hadn’t thought were real before he’d been made immortal.
 
They all paled in comparison to what he’d
seen her do.
 
She held life and death in
her hands.
 
Was she even human?
 

How long would it be before she turned that power on
him?

Matthias had killed multitudes of men in his quests
over the years.
 
Perhaps he’d done it for
the sake of the church and then for the sake of good, but blood stained his
hands by the bucketful.
 
He gazed at
those hands.
 
They looked too big, too
clumsy,
to have been able to do the things they did to
others.
 
They certainly looked too big
and clumsy to caress Britt in the way he wanted to touch her now.
 
He wanted to pick her up and carry her away
to a secluded spot where he could undress her and stare at her body for days,
to touch her with whisper soft strokes that would make her suck in a breath,
needing him as much as he needed her.

His fingers itched to brush through her fine blonde
hair.
 
It looked like silk strands
blazing gold in the bright overhead lights.
 
Long, graceful limbs had settled about her when she’d fallen.
 
Her unmarred porcelain skin shone with
life.
 
He wondered how red her ass would
get when he slapped his opened palm along it as he plunged deep within her
core.

He shook himself to get the errant thoughts out of his
mind.
 
The next time Nicolas suggested he
go out with him looking for tail, he needed to go.
 
Two decades was much too long to not have
release.
 
That had to be it.
 
It wasn’t this woman doing this to him, just
need speaking to him.

His gaze moved back to her prone form.
 
Who was he kidding?
 
She’d be the death of him.

“We can’t leave her here,” Nicolas spoke and shattered
the silence.

“We shouldn’t bring her with us and get her involved
any more than we already have.”

“Matthias, they’ll track us down, retracing our
steps.
 
What if the Illuminati find
her?
 
Do you want her in
their
hands?”

Mine.
 

Oh for the love
of the goddess, I didn’t just think that, did I?
 
Matthias glanced once again over the woman’s
supine form.
 
“I suppose she goes with
us?”

Nicolas smiled, victory stamped on his
expression.
 
“That was much too easy for
me to win.”

Matthias felt blood rush into his face, so he quickly
turned away and lifted Britt over his shoulder.
 
“Whatever you say, pretty boy.”

****

Nicolas was still reeling from the events he’d
witnessed, but all he knew was they needed to get the hell out of there.
 
Another Illuminati assassin could easily come
for them, and they needed to get the female to safety before trying to
determine what the hell she was.
 

Power had vibrated through him once she touched him,
and he still felt the swell of her energy within.
 
His mind hadn’t yet processed the other
emotions, the lust and the desire that he’d also felt at her caress, but he’d
not dismissed it either.
 
Being brought
back from the brink of death and then staring down his murderer had been at the
forefront of his mind, not his baser instincts.
 
Her touch had amped his strength ten-fold, and he hadn’t felt this alert
and refreshed in eons.
 
The infinite days
had begun to wear on him, and he’d nearly become as jaded and cynical as
Matthias as they hunted and killed their foe.
 
He’d held close that there had to be more to their purpose than killing
the thousands of Illuminati zombies that roamed the earth because Gaia had to
have a better reason for keeping them around so long.

He knew the importance of his mission, understood and
held it as dear today as he had seven hundred years before when Gaia had saved
them from the Templar massacre.
 
The
Illuminati couldn’t thrive; their chaos had to be challenged.
 
The war between good and evil ran amok across
the planet.
 
Gaia had gathered him and
his remaining Templar brothers to help her balance the power and save the
inhabitants of this world in the process.

His gaze moved to the woman once more.
 
How did she fit into the scheme?
 
Which side was she on?

Nicolas watched his friend and mentor throw the woman
casually over his shoulder and begin trudging toward the door.
 
Luckily, Matthias hadn’t started a fight, as
they needed to get out of the hospital as soon as possible.
 
The fact it was so quiet and there had been
no one around to witness any of the events thus far had been pure providence.

“Wait!
 
Where
are you going?”

Nicolas turned to see a wide-eyed African American
woman eyeing them and realized he’d spoken too soon.
 
He twisted, screaming at Matthias.
 
“Run!”

****

Britt awoke in a bed that wasn’t hers, a soft white
light filling the large window beside her.
 
Soft curtains filtered the radiance, muting it and diffusing it around
the room.
 
Grayness peeked in through the
slit, and the sky looked like snow.

It was early spring and shouldn’t be ready for a
snowstorm.
 
She rose from the bed and
stepped carefully on the floor.
 
Her bare
feet touched ice-cold wooden slats, and she quickly peeled her toe from the
frozen surface before pressing down once more.
 
A shiver rushed through her, and she looked down to see she was wearing
her thin scrubs.
 
As she moved closer to
the window, she saw a frozen, snow-covered landscape.
 
Mountain peaks were barely visible in the
distance, behind the thick spread of evergreens.

Britt glanced around the room, taking in the rustic
charm of what appeared to be a log cabin.
 
The soft bed was situated in a relatively sparse, large room.
 
A fire was dying in a massive stone
fireplace.
 
She walked toward it and
warmed her hands and body before turning to march to the closed door.

Testing the knob, she let out a soft sigh after it
gave.
 
She inched the door open slightly
and peeked from the gap.
 
The two large
men from the hospital sat at a large wooden table near the door.
 
If she moved from there, they would see her.
Britt closed the door as quietly as she could and went back to the window.
 
She tested that latch and was able to slide
the glass up, a burst of cold air striking her in the face and chest.
 
Before leaving, she drew the quilt from the
bed to wrap around her and began looking for her socks and shoes.
 
She had no idea where she was, but it
couldn’t be far from relative safety.

Her shoes were nowhere in sight.
 
She looked all over, to no avail, so she
dropped to her knees at the side of the bed, seeing nothing underneath.

“Going somewhere?”

Britt halted at the deep voice above her.
 
She scrambled to her feet and stood,
attempting to not look guilty.
 
The one
the brute had called Nicolas stood leaning on one of the posters of the bed
watching her with a smirk on his face.
 
His eyes drifted to the opened window.
  

“I was … warm.”

“Warm?”

A breeze blew in that
moment,
and she did everything in her power not to shudder.
 
She failed.
 
He snickered as he closed the window and locked the latch.
 
Britt’s chest constricted as she felt
trapped, but she took a deep breath and tried to stop her whole body from
trembling.
 
A case of the crazies wasn’t
going to help her in this situation.
 
She
needed a clear and level head.

“We weren’t properly introduced.
 
I’m Nicolas.”

She looked at the proffered hand and didn’t take
it.
 
“I suppose it’s hard to be properly
introduced as one is planning
an abduction
.”

“An abduction
?”
 
He laughed as he lowered
his hand.
 
“We brought you here for your
protection.”

“I think it would be better if I were protected
from
you two.”

He lowered his chin and gazed deeply into her
eyes.
 
Lust swam in the depths, and she
felt herself warming from his stare alone, the trembling stopping.
 
Or rather turning into a
different kind of trembling.
 
“Do
you recall the gunman?”

“I remember him approaching—” She went back to that
event and considered it a moment.
 
There
was just … nothing.
 
“—and then
everything is just blank.”

“You don’t recall …
healing
… him?”

Britt froze.
 
“No, I don’t.”

Nicolas smiled warily, and her gut clenched.
 
She thought back to the night before again,
and she could still only draw a blank.
 
“What happened?”

“Just know he can’t hurt you now.
 
But if we’d left you there, men like him
would have come, and you may not have been safe.”

“I would’ve only been in danger with you there.
 
Once you were gone, I would’ve been
fine.
 
Take me back.”

“You have a gift, one we can’t allow to get into our
enemy’s hands.
 
So, here we stay until
this blows over.”

Their enemy?
 
Great, here she was plopped
into some gangland or mob fight and she wanted no part of it.
 
They were more dangerous than she
realized.
 
“You have no right.”

“Perhaps not, but for now, you’re our guest here.
 
You’re free to move about the house.”

“But I can’t leave.
 
I’m not your guest, I’m your prisoner.
 
I expected this from the brute, not from you.”

“The brute?”
 
Nicolas laughed, the rich
sound vibrating through her.
 
Need
flooded her from the deep resonance alone.
 
“Matthias will appreciate his new nickname, I’m sure.
 
Will you at least give us a name so we can
stop calling you
the female
?”

The rebellious part of her didn’t want to answer him,
but she knew it was pointless not to give him the one small detail.
 
“Britt.”

He smiled, his dazzling white teeth showing in his
wide, expressive mouth.
 
“That wasn’t so
hard, now was it?”

Nicolas stepped closer and tucked a few errant strands
of hair behind her ear, and she shivered as his fingers grazed her lobe.
 

The need returned, times a million. She clutched the
post; it was a lifeline that prevented her from jumping his bones the same way
she envisioned in her mind.
 
She shook
herself, trying to release the desire from her, focusing instead on something
else he’d said.
 
“What happened to the
man?
 
The one from the
hallway.
 
How did I heal him?”

“I’m not sure you’re ready to hear that.”

She nodded her head, unsure her voice would work.
 
“Yes, I am.
 
There are too many questions here.
 
I need answers.”

Nicolas caught her stare and observed her for long
minutes before speaking.
 
“You left him
on the floor, dead.
 
He was a shell of
what he’d been.”

Fear filled her, her gut realizing the truth, but she
couldn’t accept it.
 
“No, no.
 
I don’t kill, I
heal
.
 
It goes against
everything I do to harm someone.
 
It
isn’t who I am.”