Vision of Darkness (32 page)

Still, he trusted that Jacob wouldn’t put Alex in danger with wishful thinking. “All right.”

“Watch for signs from him.”

Nick pressed his lips together and hung up the phone. Waited until his skin started to itch with the urge to do something. No signs.

“Well?” Mischa asked.

“I think we’re on our own.”

Mischa nodded and hoisted a ratty backpack up on his shoulder, jerked his chin to the left. “I’ll start over here. We’ll meet in the middle. Good luck.”

Nick jogged to the right, reading each stone, feeling each precious second as it slipped from present to past. Running out of time. Even if they found Lovie True’s grave in the next few minutes, it was going to take forever to dig her up. Providing she was buried. Above ground tombs were in style when she died. If they were lucky, she’d be in one of them instead of six feet under.

The wind picked up a candy wrapper and flung it across his path. He brushed it aside, and bent down to scrape a pile of leaves away from a gravestone. No go.

“Dammit.”

The candy wrapper floated up again and smacked him on the nose. He peeled it off, looked at it, and his heart bungeed.

Cherry Tootsie Pop.

K.C.’s favorite snack when he’d been alive. Holy hell.

“Case, that you?” Holding his breath with a mix of dread and anticipation, Nick let the wrapper go and followed as it twirled and dipped in the air as if it was dancing. It plastered itself on the backside of a mausoleum and Nick moved around to the front, looked up at the name engraved over the door. TRUE.

“God, K.C.” His voice cracked. “You really are still here.”

A cold breeze brushed by him and for a second he thought he felt the pressure of a hand on his shoulder. Then it was gone. He shook his head and whistled through his teeth, signaling Mischa.

***

Pru watched the life seep out of Alex and screamed. And screamed. And screamed. But no sound came from her throat.

“Now it’s your turn,” she heard her own voice say instead. Lovie dug into her mind with long, icy talons, forcing her to let go of the tower’s wall and balance on the railing.

Did Alex know she hadn’t killed him? He had to know she loved him back and would never voluntarily hurt him.

Oh God, please let him know.

Lovie turned her body toward the ocean. Her heart thundered as a gust of cold air whipped rain-sleet into her face. Goosebumps prickled over her skin. The railing was so cold it burned under her bare feet like a hot iron.

How could she feel her body so keenly and not have control over it? She struggled with the other presence inside her head and felt the pain of a headache as Lovie silenced her again. No use. Eighty-nine years of anger and jealousy had made her far too strong.

Her feet moved, slipped on the railing. She wanted to squeeze her eyes shut but was unable to make them obey.

***

“Great.” Mischa dropped his bag on the ground and circled the tomb. “But how do we get in?”

Nick tried the door, found it sealed shut. Standing on his toes, he peeked through the stained glass window at the top of the door and made out the vague outline of one coffin, though there was space for two. Made sense. Silas’s body burned up in the fire.

Running out of time.

“I don’t—” He turned to see Mischa on his knees, digging though the bag, coming up with a regular supernatural arsenal. Economy sized can of salt, lighter fluid, small ax, hammer, a glass bottle of water….

Ah. Perfect.

Inspired, Nick grabbed the bottle and started to dump it.

“Wait!” Mischa said. “Shit, dude, you know how hard it is to get holy water?”

“Holy water?”

Mischa snatched the bottle back and tucked it safely inside his bag. “You never know.”

“You’ve done this before.”

He snorted. “A couple times. Run into lotsa shit as a P.I.”

“Got another glass bottle in that bag of tricks?” Nick asked.

He shifted things around, came up with an empty forty. “Don’t know, uh, how that got in there. This work for what you have in mind?”

Oh yeah. Perfect size, easily breakable. Nick jerked his chin toward the crypt. “Think tossin’ in some salt and a Molotov cocktail will do the trick?”

Mischa eyed the stained glass window. “Might. But it’ll take longer than salt-barbecuing just the bones.”

Running out of time.

“Unless you got a better plan,” Nick said, “it’s our only option. Hand me that hammer and put a Molotov together.”

Mischa slapped the hammer handle-first into his hand and he climbed the two shallow steps to the crypt’s door. Shielding his face with one arm, he smashed the business end into the stained glass window. It barely chipped. Reinforced. Damn.

And they were running out of time.

***

“Lovie, don’t do it. Don’t jump off there again.”

Pru felt her body turn. The words came from Alex’s bloodstained lips, but he wasn’t moving, wasn’t breathing. It was Alex’s voice, but…not his Boston accent. Not him.

“Silas?” Lovie whispered.

Maybe with Lovie distracted….

Spurred by a fleeting hope, Pru locked onto the spirit’s confusion and held, fighting for control of her own body. Lovie squelched her efforts with one mighty act of will, like a wet blanket tossed on a sputtering flame. She again fell helplessly silent, locked inside her own mind. Aware but not in control. Oh God.

“Don’t condemn yourself to living this horror again and again,” Alex’s unaccented voice said. “I betrayed you. I hurt you and I’m sorry.”

“Silas, is that really you?” Lovie climbed down from the railing and knelt beside the man that looked like Silas True. But it wasn’t…couldn’t be…

“This has to stop.” His words were soft, urgent, compelling. Velvet chocolate. His bedroom voice. “I loved you so much, but I made a mistake. Please don’t jump off there again.”

“You think I jumped? That bitch Olivia Mae shoved me! She killed me.”

“I’m sorry, baby. I made a mistake, but it’s over. It’s been over for a long time. You need to forgive her. Forgive me.”

She shook her head. “I can’t—I don’t know how.”

“Take my hand. I’ll show you.”

Alex’s hand didn’t move, but Lovie compelled Pru to reach out. Cold, deep and elemental, flooded into Pru’s veins as her warm skin touched his cold hand. A force slammed into Pru with so much power she was dizzy with it, then it ripped away, leaving her breathless, weak, and completely in control of her body again.

You tricked me!

The wail sounded like ocean wind. Pru gazed up from where she’d caught herself on her hands and knees. Silas True stood on the railing, his coat whipping about his legs, his hat blown away in the wind. He really did look like Alex, so much that her heart clenched.

Maybe Silas and Alex were one in the same? But that meant if Silas’s spirit was free….

Pru scrambled to his side and felt for a pulse. “No! No, no, no.” Frantic, she fisted her hands and began CPR.

Silas grimaced as the first compression broke a rib in Alex’s chest.
Wait. Not yet.

“No! I won’t lose him—you. I can’t.”

Wait.
His eyes turned hard and cold as he stared down at his wife squirming in his arms.
This has to stop now.

You bastard! You tricked me!
Lovie screamed, slamming her hands against his chest. He caught her fists and pinned her body with one thick arm around her waist.

Tough, babe. You’ve killed too many members of my family as it is. I’m sure as hell not letting you kill my great-granddaughter too.

You can’t stop me!

No, but I can stall you.

A flame hissed to life inside Lovie’s vaporous body.
Wha—what’s happening?
She clawed at it, but he held her tighter, pinning her arms to her sides.
Stop it, Silas! What are you doing?

Ending this.

He flashed Pru a disarming smile—Alex’s slightly crooked, disarming smile—then winked, leaned backward, and pitched himself and Lovie off the railing. Lovie’s horrified shriek continued for several gut-wrenching seconds, then faded into the howl of autumn storm winds.

Pru lurched to her feet and peered over. Violent waves white-capped against serrated rocks below. A twist of smoke lingered in the air for a heartbeat before the wind whipped it away.

No, no, no. Where was Silas? She needed him to stay. Without him, Alex—

Gasped for breath.

Pru whirled and her knees gave out as his eyelids fluttered. He stared at her for a long second, his pupils working to focus. That crooked half-smile ticked up the corner of his mouth.

“Pru.” His voice was so soft, she had to read his lips to know he’d said her name.

“I’m here.” She crawled over and gathered up his shivering body, shielding him as best she could from the cold rain that was thickening to a wet snow. He wrapped his arms around her, curling into her like a small animal burrowing for warmth. She pressed a hand over the wound in his side. Blood, the precious little he still had, oozed between her fingers.

God, was he pale. His eyelids and bloodless lips had a blue tint. Tears blurred her vision as bile rose in a horrible, all-too-familiar way, but she blinked and swallowed hard. This wasn’t a repeat of Portland and she wasn’t going to let anyone else die of a gunshot wound in front of her.

Especially not Alex.

She pressed her hand harder to his side, eliciting a half-conscious moan of pain. “Alex, you stay awake, okay?” 

“Ghosts…” he whispered.

“Shh. She’s gone. Lovie’s gone.”

His head lolled, his eyes fluttering as he drifted away. Distantly, a siren started its lonely wail. Nearby, Triton barked and feet pounded up the iron steps within the tower. Two men. She could feel the vibration of each footfall.

“Alex! Pru!” Nick’s voice.

“Here,” she shouted and gave Alex’s face a light smack. “Hey, stay with me. Help’s coming.”

He struggled back to consciousness and raised a shaking, bloody hand to her cheek. She clasped it there, held onto him tight. Warned herself not to cry, but tears slipped out anyway.

“Y-you were right.” Through chattering teeth, he smiled again—Silas’s smile. “Ghosts…do exist.”        

CHAPTER 34

A luxurious château tucked deep in the snow-frosted mountains of middle-of-nowhere Montana wasn’t what Pru had in mind for a “safe house”. She always figured such establishments were clapboard houses that barely passed as a lean-to on their best day, located in shabby neighborhoods where nobody knew or cared what their neighbors were up to. Never in her wildest dreams in which she went into some sort of witness protection program had she pictured a gorgeous five-story house at the end of a secluded cul-de-sac.

“Alex is here?” she asked as Nick’s truck came to a halt in the paved driveway in front of an underground garage. The stonework making up the face of the garage was breath taking alone, and Pru couldn’t even find words to describe the rest of the house. Ribs of dark, textured wood supported pale, stone walls and decoratively cased each tall, crystal-clear window. Bronze-finished sconces partially hidden under the eaves of the roof gave the mansion a soft yellow blush that beckoned like a seductive finger.

Nick nodded. “Sully, paranoid bastard that he is, built this house as neutral ground. There’s a suite for each of us—and a fully functional medical center in the basement. Nobody but the guys of D.I.E. Squadron know of the house’s existence. It’s the best place for Alex now that he’s stabilized.”

From the backseat, Triton bumped his head into her shoulder. She patted his nose and reassured herself that Nick was right. He’d explained all about the group of fanatics hunting down people like Alex and his friends, which shone a disturbing light on Jones’s crazed ramblings. She understood the need for caution—especially after the news that Theo had disappeared without a trace the day after Sully, Nick, Kai and several of their other friends sneaked Alex out of the hospital’s ICU in Portland. Sully suspected the Sierra Group hoped to get info on Alex’s whereabouts from Theo. They were going to be sorely disappointed when they discovered he didn’t know anything, and that boded badly for Theo’s health.

Better to keep Alex safe and hidden while he recovered. Still, having him out of a hospital, miles away from lifesaving equipment and medical professionals, gave her a serious case of the jitters.

Nick hit a button on the control clipped to his overhead visor and the garage door slid up without a sound, revealing a room big enough for twenty vehicles. There were only three inside: a low-slung sports car, a Hummer, and a subdued but expensive sedan. Nick guided his beat-up Silverado next to the sedan and jabbed the button again. The garage door slid shut behind them.

After parking, he turned to her. “You understand that you won’t have contact with your friends and family from now until this is over.”

Pru thought of Grandma Mae’s dismayed expression when she said she was going away for a while. It had cut straight to her soul. She had no intention of leaving her grandmother, and planned to go head-to-head about it with Sullivan Nathanson as soon as the opportunity presented itself. But now was not the time to argue. She’d had a hard enough time talking him into letting her see Alex. She needed to see Alex.

“I understand,” she said.

“All right. Let’s get you inside.” Nick got out of the truck and hurried around the hood to open her door before she could do it herself.

With a running commentary of the building’s security attributes, he led her to an elevator on the far wall of the garage, up one floor into a white and blue tiled hallway that looked like a hospital corridor. A handful of doors stretched the length of the hall. As they passed, she peeked inside each room. X-ray machine, cat scan, and other state-of-the-art equipment, plus exam rooms and what looked to be a stainless steel surgical suite.

“Wow. You weren’t kidding about the fully functional medical center.”

Nick grinned. “What can I say? We’re an accident prone group obsessed with secrecy.”

Her nerves settled a bit. She’d known Alex’s friends wouldn’t put him in harm’s way by taking him out of the hospital if they weren’t capable of caring for him themselves. Even so, until now, she hadn’t fully believed they were capable.

At the end of the hall, the corridor T-ed. Nick took her left, and she spotted two men deep in conversation. Kai and Malcolm—“D.I.E. Squadron’s medicine men,” Nick had called them since Mal had a medical degree and Kai was apparently a psychic healer. Kai was frowning, which he didn’t do often, Mal was shaking his head, and for a moment she forgot how to breathe.

“Is Alex okay?”

Kai looked her way and his frown morphed back into his usual grin. “Hiya, Pru. He’s fine. Actually, he’s awake and asking for you.”

Her knees wobbled, but she didn’t realize it until Nick’s hand reached out to steady her. “He’s awake?”

“For a couple days now,” Mal said.

“Awake, hungry, and grumpy as a wet cat.” Kai motioned to the closed door he and Mal stood in front of. “Go in and see for yourself. Maybe you can improve his mood.”

That got her legs working again. She shot forward and turned the knob, but Mal caught her arm before she entered.

“Just…don’t mention anything about Theo. We haven’t told him yet. Why torture him with it when he can’t do anything about it right now? It’ll drive him crazy with worry and he doesn’t need that.”

She swallowed and nodded, then pushed open the door. The room looked like it belonged in an upscale hotel. Warm, cream colored walls. Subdued, recessed lighting. A huge flat-screen, mounted on the wall, flipped through channels at lightning speed. Alex lay in the queen-sized bed with the remote, a scowl lining his pale face.

He was awake. After a long three weeks, he was awake.

Her knees threatened to pull their gelatin routine again. She braced herself on the door frame and just stared, drinking him in with her eyes. He looked a billion times better than the last time she’d seen him in the ICU a week and a half ago.

After his brush with death on the lighthouse’s catwalk, he’d flatlined a second time on the way to the hospital. The paramedics restarted his heart with a portable defibrillator, but a respirator had breathed for him ever since and his doctors hadn’t been hopeful.

Now the tube was gone. He’d lost weight and muscle mass, and the angles of his face looked sharper, the flesh hollowed out underneath his bloodshot eyes. A cast encased his left leg and someone—probably Kai, being the goofball that he was—had drawn hearts, flowers, and cartoon stick figures on the white plaster.

Pru suddenly wanted to hear his voice more than anything else in the world. “Alex?”

The channels stopped changing. He looked over at her and his scowl faded. Emotions battled over his features for a moment before he got them under control and gave a little smile. “Hi, baby.”

His accent, the velvet tone raw with feeling as he uttered those two beautiful words—that was all it took. She flew to his bed and snuggled in beside him, hugging him as tightly as she dared, afraid of hurting him.

Oh God, he’d lost so much weight he felt like nothing in her arms. Her tears soaked the blue hospital gown draping his thin body. The smell of sterilizers and antibiotics masked his natural spice and underlined how close he’d been to death. “I thought I lost you.”

“No way.” He squeezed her tight and, burying his face in her hair, let out a shuddering breath. “I love you. I want to be with you and nothing’s gonna keep me away.” His lips dropped hard to hers as if he wanted to devour her taste.

“Why?” she sobbed against the seam of his mouth. “I shot you. Almost killed you!”

“Oh, baby, that wasn’t you. It was Lovie.”

She blinked in surprise. “You believe that?”

“I know it.” His grin was cocky and deliberate and slightly crooked—Silas True’s grin. “Marry me, Pru.”

Oh, how she wanted to say yes. It was on the tip of her tongue, begging her to open her mouth and let it out. But…something stopped her. Something she had to know first.

“I’m not Olivia,” she blurted, then dragged her lower lip through her teeth. “I know I look like her, but—I’m not. You need to realize that.”

Framing her face with his hands, he thumbed away her tears. “And I’m not Silas. I may have been—” He paused. “Ah, hell. We both know I
was
him at one time. But not now, in this life. I’m Alexander William Brennan now and I want you, Pru, to be Mrs. Brennan.”

She savored the words, the sound of his real name.
Alexander William Brennan.
Nothing he said would ever sound more beautiful. She nodded. “And I want to be Mrs. Brennan.”

Outside in the hallway, Kai let out a whoop. “Hah. Told you they were gonna get hitched. Mal, you owe me twenty!” He stuck his head in the room, gave them a grin and two thumbs up, then disappeared down the hall, calling, “Hey, guys, break into the liqueur cabinet. We got a bachelor party to plan!”

Pru laughed. “Someone needs to teach your friends eavesdropping is impolite.”

“Oh, babe,” he sighed and squeezed her hand. “You have much to learn about my friends. Teaching Kai manners is telling a zebra to change its stripes. But, as annoying as he is, he’s family. They all are and marrying me is a package deal. I’ll give you one chance to back out.”

“And I won’t take it.” She leaned in to kiss him, but he placed a palm over her mouth, creating a barrier between their lips. She pulled back and frowned. “What?”

“I do have two conditions, though.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “You’re not really in the position to be adding conditions, pal. I could just walk out that door and—”

“You won’t.”

The arrogant jerk. She was half-tempted to walk out, but took one long look into his storm cloud eyes. Still the same shape and the same color, although a little bloodshot, there was something different about them now. Then it dawned on her: there was no darkness left in them, none of that old remoteness. All she saw there as he gazed up at her was love, and knew she’d never be able to walk away from him. Not even to prove him wrong.

She held up two fingers. “Two conditions. That’s it.”

“Okay. Number one,” he said and ticked her nose with the tip of his finger. “We move far, far away from that lighthouse.”

She nodded. “I’ve already put it up for sale. Like you said, sometimes it’s best to let sleeping ghosts lie.”

Alex let out his breath in an explosion. “Thank God. That places gives me the creeps.”

Pru smiled and pressed her lips to his. She meant it only as a quick kiss but it turned into something more as he angled his head, slid a hand into her hair, and rubbed his tongue along her bottom lip. Long, slow, and drugging, the kiss had her nerve endings singing when she pulled away. She felt his erection prod her hip through the thin fabric of his hospital gown, looking for attention, and reached between them to give him a light stroke. He was still too injured for sex, but as soon as he healed up a bit more, she planned to lock him in her room and let her wildcat libido have her way with him—this time, with no ghostly audience to break mirrors or inflict scratches.

“You said two conditions,” she prompted. She watched him blink and try to wrangle his thoughts back to the conversation even as she continued to stroke him.

“Right.” His voice came out rough. He cleared his throat. “Number two’s the most important.”

“All ears.”

Alex removed her hand from his erection and gripped it in both of his. Stared into her eyes like a man begging forgiveness. “Please, please,
please
make me something to eat before Kai’s cooking gives me food poisoning.”

Pru laughed. “How about some pie? We’re in Montana, but I bet I still make the best in the county.”

“Hey, I’m not gonna say no. It’s an addiction.” Grinning, he lifted his mouth to hers again. “And so are you.”