Guardian of the Night

In spite of the blood pounding in her brain and the occasional crashing sounds made by her plunge through the dense vegetation, every now and then she heard a snap or a rustle of underbrush behind her.

He was coming.

Harder, faster she surged forward, low-lying branches snagged at her clothes, her skin, like long bony fingers from the stone-cold hand of death.

Her shoe snagged on a root. She pitched forward and barely caught herself before she hit the ground.

He was almost on top of her now.

She pushed onward. Her lungs were beginning to burn for more oxygen. She couldn’t control her breathing anymore. Had to breathe deeper, faster. Had to have more air. What the hell? She was already making more than enough noise to give herself away.

She burst into a clearing, thigh-deep weeds and brush slapping at her jeans.

A shaft of moonlight glinted off something large…a building.

Blue lunged for it and took cover inside. A dank, musty odor immediately shrouded her. She crouched down, her weapon clenched in one hand as she braced the other on the floor for support while she caught her breath. She didn’t even want to know what the furry stuff under her fingers was. Moss maybe. She could hope.

She held her breath, released it slowly. Willed her heart rate to decrease. Forced her mind to focus on the impending threat…to pinpoint the direction and proximity. He couldn’t be far away.

Listening intently, analyzing each sound, she heard nothing but the resonance of the night bearing down on her.

The constant cry of cicadas.

The wind stirring the leaves.

Damn, it was dark.

She made herself as small as possible, hunkering in the blackness just inside the open doorway, her weapon leveled steadily in her right hand, her left hand now flattened against her chest, feeling for the small light stick beneath her shirt and drawing comfort as her fingers closed around it.

He moved.

She didn’t hear him and certainly didn’t see him, but she sensed the movement.

To her right…five yards away maybe.

She squinted in that direction and saw nothing. He couldn’t be that close. If he’d left the cover of the trees, she should have seen at least a glimpse of him or a glimmer of movement in the moonlight.

…roams around all hours of the night like some kindda vampire… Chester’s words echoed.

Glass jangled, jerking her gaze to the left.

Spirit bottles like the ones back at the house hung from the lowest limb of a nearby live oak. The bottles swayed, banging against each other from time to time, the moonlight glinting from their surfaces. A new kind of uneasiness slid through her and she called herself every kind of fool. She was not superstitious. And she damn sure didn’t believe in vampires.

The deep weeds rustled, yielding beneath a heavy footstep.

She looked right again, her heart jolting back into top speed.

Nothing.

There was nothing there.

Dammit.

There had to be.

“It’s safe to come out now, Maggie Callahan.”

Her heart skidded to a near-stop at the sound of the deep, male voice splitting the darkness, drowning out all other sound with its richness…its seeming oneness with the night.

“Whoever was shooting is gone now. You don’t have to be afraid.”

She blinked, peered as hard as she could in the direction of the voice, but saw nothing. She swore silently.

“Come out, Maggie Callahan,” he said, an underlying amusement in his silky tone now. She could almost see him smiling. “Let me show you the way back to the house before you stumble over something that bites.”

She gritted her teeth against a shudder. Who the hell was this guy? It wasn’t Lowell or Chester. There was a slight, ever so slight, drawl, but the voice was too deep and smooth to belong to either of them. It could be Drake, she considered, but she couldn’t imagine him running out into the darkness like this since his life was in danger already.

Not unless he’d lost his mind anyway.

“Who are you?” she demanded, giving away her position but seeing no way around it. She darted to the other side of the open doorway just to be safe, thankful that the ancient floor didn’t creak under her weight and the suddenness of her move.

“Maybe you’d prefer that I call you Blue.”

She tensed. He hadn’t given her a straightforward answer, but he’d narrowed the possibilities. Besides her family, only her close friends and the people with whom she worked knew the nickname she’d been called all her life—bestowed because of the unusual deep color of her eyes.

She’d told Lowell. This had to be Drake. Or someone he’d hired to scare her off.

“I asked you to identify yourself,” she demanded, impatience and anger searing away any lingering fear. If this guy was yanking her around—

“I’m the man you came all this way to protect.” He laughed softly, the sound shivering across her frazzled nerve endings. “Ironic, isn’t it?”

She shook off the effect his voice had on her and issued yet another demand. “Prove it. Show yourself.”

She didn’t know how much he’d changed in the past five years or what physical scars he’d suffered, but she would surely recognize him to a degree from the picture in the mission profile. The Noah Drake of five years ago had thick, dark hair and even darker brown eyes. He’d been a hell of a good-looking guy with an athletic body to match.

But that had all likely changed.

“You’ll just have to trust me,” he said, that smooth voice containing a challenge now. “Besides, I don’t think you want to risk further exposure to the curse.”

Curse? She wanted to throttle whoever he was. “Just show yourself or some ID and everything will be cool,” she told him flatly. No way was she stepping out into the open until she knew who this guy was. Curse. Yeah, right.

“There’s a small cemetery behind this old chapel,” he went on as if she hadn’t said a word. “They say there’s a voodoo witch buried there and anyone who comes near her grave will die a terrible death. Now you don’t want that, do you, Specialist Callahan?”

It was Drake. He had the kind of high-level clearance to know the organization that had actually sent her. Lowell only knew that Rothman had hired her. She kept to herself the litany of adjectives that tumbled into her mind. Very descriptive adjectives she was certain Drake wouldn’t want to hear since they all accurately expressed what she thought about him at the moment.

“I’m not afraid of any curse.” Blue stepped out into the open, but didn’t put her gun away. She turned slowly, peering into the darkness for any manifestation of Drake. “Nor am I the one receiving the death threats.”

“No one has actually threatened my life,” he argued pointedly and without conviction.