She crossed her arms, but made no attempt to cover her breasts. “Just why do you think I'm a whore?" He rose and dusted the hay from his butt. “Because the only women in this town are whores, and because no decent woman allows a complete stranger to undress her." One dark blond eyebrow winged upwards. “What if that woman knows the man in question will play a major role in her future?"
He laughed again. Maybe he should keep this woman around, just so her inane comments could lighten the darkness of his life. “I do not need, nor do I want, a woman in my life. Not as a partner, not as a lover, not even as a short-term bedmate.” Not until he'd avenged Christine's death, anyway. He owed her that much.
Her gaze skated down his body, and a smile tugged her lush lips. “Sections of your body are denying that statement."
"Something no decent woman would say out loud."
Her smile grew. “I never claimed to be decent, just that I wasn't a whore."
"Then, Miss Whatever-you-are, I suggest you return to your house and lock your doors. Night is coming on, and this town can get mighty unpleasant."
"I told you before. I need to rescue the two men."
"Then do it on your own.” He half turned away, then stopped. He couldn't let her go without tasting her again, even if every instinct said it was wrong. Wrapping a hand around the back of her neck, he pulled her roughly into his arms and claimed her mouth as fiercely as he wished he could claim her body. Then he released her, spun and walked away.
Nikki wasn't sure whether to throw something at Michael's back or run after him. Damn it, every inch of her thrummed with desire, a desire that was obviously shared, and yet he was walking away. She took a deep breath and released it slowly, but it did little to ease the ache. Seline had warned her this would happen—not so much the frustration, but Michael refusing her help. Apparently, he'd done much the same one hundred years ago. Which meant she was following the chain of events rather than breaking them.
But, damn it, she hadn't really expected him to refuse to help her. She had expected the love they shared to transcend the spell and make wanting her seem as natural as night following day. Yet he was resisting even that. Obviously, the spell that held him was strong, and she was going to have to work a lot harder to get him to accept her in any way.
She sighed and buttoned her shirt. Now what? Part of her wanted to follow Michael, but she sensed this would only anger him and make him even more reluctant to help her. Somehow, she had to prove she could be useful to him. Hard to do when the shield around this town had put a dampener on most of her psychic gifts.
Or had it?
Frowning, she glanced at the nearby pitchfork and reached for her kinetic energy. There was zip in the way of a response, and the fork stubbornly remained where it was. Yet, some of her gifts were working. She'd been able to sense that Kinnard wasn't human, had known where Michael was without looking. Maybe the shield around this town resembled the magic that had been in the Circle's testing room—and if that were the case, it meant she at least had her flames for protection. She hoped so, because the only weapons she'd dared to sneak in were two sets of knives—one set strapped to her wrists, the other currently strapped to her thighs. She hadn't dared risk anything else, just in case her packs had been searched. But as good as she was with her knives, she really didn't want to depend on them. Nor did she want to depend on the maneuvers she'd learned in self-defense. She had a feeling Weylin Dunleavy would be able to counter either of them easily enough. She tucked the ends of her shirt back into her skirt and walked to the rear door. Dusk was settling in across the sky, painting the clouds a vibrant red. No rain tomorrow, at least. She let her gaze slide across the houses that remained in the small back street, but she couldn't sense life in any of them. That didn't mean there wasn't life, just that there was no no-longer-human life, such as vampires. Given Kinnard's earlier warning, there could be shapeshifters and God only knew what else in the half dozen, sad-looking buildings dotting the street, and she wouldn't sense those until she got closer to them. Michael wasn't anywhere close, but that didn't surprise her. He was here for one reason—to reenact past events. She was here to disrupt them and stop Weylin—if she could. She thrust that thought away. Of course she'd stop him. She had a damn wedding half-planned, and she had every intention of finally going out to buy her wedding dress. Her gaze roamed beyond the buildings. The night crept shadowy fingers across the hills, and nothing seemed to be moving.
Where would Dunleavy sacrifice the two rangers?
Seline had told her that the sacrifices on the night of the new moon would be performed in a side shaft in the main mine, but Nikki doubted Dunleavy would risk using that site for these minor sacrifices, if only because some ritual sites needed purifying before reuse, and he wouldn't want to be doing that every night.
So, where else?
In its prime, Hartwell had had close to one hundred and fifty working mines. She'd never be able to search all of them, but then, many of them would undoubtedly be sealed up. This place was a State Park, and neither the rangers nor the local authorities would want people wandering at will into unsafe or unsound mines.
Which meant that, maybe, all she had to do was look for signs of recent use around the mine entrances. But where to start?
She bit her lip for a moment, then swung left. Dust stirred under her boots, swirling through the air. She sneezed.
"Bless you,” a cold voice said to her right.
Nikki jumped and swung around, but she resisted the impulse to flick a knife into her palm simply because she recognized the voice.
"You spying, Kinnard?” She eyed the old man warily as he walked from the shadows of a small lane alongside the barn.
"Of course.” He hawked and spat. Nikki quickly shifted her boot to avoid the blob, and suspected he did it purely to piss her off. Kinnard grinned. “The emotion of sexual awareness is almost as drink-worthy as anger. You and that vampire of yours fairly set the air alight."
"I'm happy for you,” she muttered. “What do you want?"
"I came to remind you that dinner is now being served." He came to spy, more likely. Obviously, he was Dunleavy's eyes and ears, and he had probably followed her simply to see if she was playing the game or not.
And maybe following Kinnard should be her plan of attack once she'd rescued the rangers. It might be the only way she was going to figure out where Dunleavy was. If he was a vampire, as Seline had said, then she should be able to sense him the minute she got near him. But he was also an adept of magic and would probably be wearing some form of concealment—if he hadn't totally changed shape. After all, his twin had been a shapeshifter. There was every chance that Weylin was one, too.
"I'm not eating tonight, thanks,” she said.
"Ain't much but beans in the store, you know. And they're worth a King's ransom.” His gaze skated down her. “Of course, for a pretty thing like you, I'll do a special price." Revulsion stirred. “No, thanks."
Kinnard raised an eyebrow. “Too good for me, huh? Well, that'll change. It did last time." Meaning Seline had slept with this wizened old maggot? Somehow, Nikki doubted it. She stepped back.
“If you'll excuse me, I have rangers to find."
"Ah, yes.” Humor lit his pale eyes. “That reminds me—I've been sent to give you a hint and a warning. Wolves prowl the eastern rim. Get past them, and you might just find your rangers." Might not, too, she suspected. “And when I free the rangers, Weylin promises to release them?"
"Gotta like a woman with confidence.” He gave her a stained smile. “They can join the miners in the bar, but they can't go free."
No one can. The unsaid words hung in the air between them. Nikki swallowed to ease the dryness in her throat. “He'd better keep his promises, Kinnard."
He snorted, “And what are you going to do if he doesn't, girlie? This is our game, and you're playing by our rules."
"Rules can change.” Would change, if she had anything to say about it. “And remember, old man, neither you nor your master know as much about me as you think you do." Chew on that, she thought, spinning around and walking away. His gaze burned a hole into her back long after she'd turned a corner and headed for the nearby hills. Once she'd passed the last of the old buildings, she stopped. The hills rose above her, dark and silent expanses of dirt and sage bush. To her left, halfway up the hill, stood the Standard Mill, which had once processed ore from the Standard Mine, the largest and most profitable of all the mines in the area. A series of wooden poles led from the mill to the hilltop, the remains of a gondola system that had once carted the ore from the mine to the mill. She couldn't see the mine entrance from where she stood, and she had no intention of going there tonight. But that was where she'd have to go come the night of the new moon.
Her gaze came back to the mill. Kinnard had suggested that the rangers were being held in the eastern section, but she didn't believe him. The mill was certainly far enough away from town to hold prisoners, but as one of the few, almost whole, structures that remained outside of the town, it was also a very obvious hiding spot.
Would Weylin do the obvious? Probably not. But instinct was pressuring her to check out the mill, and right now, all she really had to go on was instinct.
Picking up her skirt, she walked toward the mill. The wind stirred, brushing cold fingers across her cheeks even as it teased long strands of hair away from her ponytail. It was still somewhat jolting to see blonde rather than brown, and she was damn glad there'd been no mirrors in the old house. It was an unreal sensation to look in the mirror and see someone else's reflection staring back. She wondered why Seline and Michael had never been intimate. While she knew, from comments that Camille had made, that Seline wasn't actually blonde but dark haired, Nikki very much suspected the rest of the image she wore was pretty much the real Seline. Put dark hair with the green eyes and voluptuous figure, and it was pretty damn amazing that any man, vampire or not, had resisted her. And from comments Michael had made in the past, she knew Seline was not one to shy away from intimate situations if the chance presented itself. So, why had the two of them never been more than friends? It was curious, to say the least. And though she'd asked Michael, she'd never got more than his standard
‘because'.
Maybe this was her chance to learn more about him and the past he was still reluctant to talk about. While she could hardly talk to him about Seline, there was lots of other information she could mine. Centuries of it, in fact. The Michael who'd been in the stable was the Michael she loved—and yet, at the same time, he wasn't. Seline had warned her that he'd be rougher, darker. Harder. And in some respects, he'd been all of those. But he'd also seemed a whole lot more talkative, too. Her Michael played his cards very close. Maybe it was something he'd learned from Seline. Maybe they'd had no other choice once the Circle had begun making serious dents in the fields of bad guys. The mill loomed. She slowed and swept her gaze across the nearest buildings. There were a good half dozen smaller buildings surrounding one larger cluster, which she guessed would probably be the main mill works. Most of the buildings were clad in sheets of corrugated steel, but there were a few that were all wood. It was to one of these she found herself walking towards. That fact bought her up short.
Was it instinct that had bought her here, or something else?
She stood still and listened. Sheets of metal rattled on the roof of a nearby building, and the wind whispered through shattered windows, a forlorn sound that chased goose bumps across her skin. A takeout container rolled along the well-worn path that ambled through the buildings, blown in from God knew where.
No one seemed to be here, and yet ... something was.
She licked her lips and took a step back.
A rumble of sound rose from the night behind her.
She froze, knowing she'd fallen into Weylin's trap.
The wolves weren't patrolling the eastern perimeter. They were right here in this mill. With her.
Chapter Six
Michael strode down the center of Main Street, scanning each hotel with the infrared of his vampire vision. For a town that only had a small number of inhabitants, there seemed to be an overabundance of drinking holes.
Unfortunately, Dunleavy didn't appear to be in any of them. Vampires had a slightly different glow under infrared, and all the people currently in the hotels were human. So, where was he? While the fiend was young in vampire years, dusk had settled across the hills, and it would be safe enough for Dunleavy to start moving around. Yet he was nowhere to be found. Again. Maybe he was hiding in one of the mines, though given Dunleavy's preference for all things fine, it was hard to imagine him putting up with living in the dark, dank tunnels for any length of time. The rat had to have a hole somewhere here in Hartwell. It was just a matter of finding it. His gaze went to the blonde's home, and he frowned when he saw the blur of life inside. There was no way she could have gotten past without him noticing, so it couldn't be her. And besides, the red blur was smaller, and it seemed to have an odd energy pattern. It wasn't a vampire. Wasn't anything he could remember seeing before. It was almost as if the creature in that house wasn't even something that lived and breathed, in the normal sense of the word.
Frowning, Michael quickened his pace, striding beside the old boardwalk rather than on it to keep down the noise of his steps. The red blur froze anyway, head cocked to one side, as if listening. Then it scurried towards the rear of the house. Michael smiled grimly and blurred into the night, racing around the buildings to the back of her home.