Even in death, she was beautiful.
Morning mist shimmered on her pale skin, a bloom of radiance at odds with her tragic fate. Set amid the burgundy turbulence of her hair, her face was an oval carving rendered unforgettable by a strong nose and regal chin. With her eyes closed, she looked peaceful and perfect, save for the small chicken pox scar in the corner of her mouth.
Lachlan MacGregor ran a finger along the curve of her jaw and grimaced. The outer serenity was a lie. Dark bruises would soon fan across her neck, a vivid and gruesome portrayal of her last moments.
Lying in the reeds at the water’s edge, shadowed by the arch of the concrete bridge, the body was barely noticeable in the thin light of an emerging fall day. Only a damp heap of green jogging shorts discarded on the gravel marked the spot. Her attacker had leapt from the bushes and dragged her down to the secluded shoreline, making her the city’s fifth fatal rape victim in a fortnight. Grim proof that all was not as it should be in quiet San Jose.
Gentle waves stirred the woman’s dark red hair, and with it, his thoughts. Did a man wait for her at home, eyeing the clock, growing steadily more troubled over her delay? Was an ugly sense of failure beginning to knot his gut? Would he soon regret sleeping through her departure, missing out on his chance to say good-bye and forfeiting their last kiss?
Lachlan scrubbed his face.
Vehicle traffic over the bridge was thickening with every passing minute and rail commuters would soon clog the pedestrian undercrossing on the other side of the water. Lingering was foolish.
His gaze fell to the pearly white mark upon the dead woman’s cheek—a fine, three-ring spiral visible only to a Gatherer—visible only to him. Tucking the hem of his frock coat back to keep it out of the water, he leaned over the woman and placed a hand upon her cool, wet throat.
Instantly, his fingers tingled and feathery tendrils traced up the flesh of his inner arm—the familiar sensation of a soul leaving a defunct body. Airy, benevolent warmth accompanied the soul as it wrapped around his heart, and Lachlan’s chest eased. God, not Satan, had claimed this soul. His duty was the same either way, but if he had a choice . . .
With the woman’s soul now under his protection, he flipped open his cell phone, dialed 9-1-1, and waited for the dispatcher to respond. He ignored the prompts for specific information and said only, “Almaden Lake. There’s a body under the Coleman Road Bridge.”
Then he stood. The timing was unfortunate. Emily Lewis’s school bus would cross this very bridge in ten minutes, offering the school-bound teens an unpleasant view of the crime scene. But it couldn’t be helped.
As he slid the phone into his pocket and turned toward the park exit, a short snap of electricity flashed in the air before him. Lachlan paused. Normally, a visitation this close on the heels of a gather was a good thing. It meant he could go home, relax, and finish the Sunday crossword.
But that flash had been red, not blue.
The air in the shadowy alcove crackled and hummed, and in quick succession three more brilliant forks shot from the ground at his feet to the cement bridge. He felt, rather than saw, the transparent shield form around him, blocking a forty-foot dome from human view. Anyone peering over the bridge to catch the light show would spy nothing but a quiet emptiness.
Lachlan reached behind his neck and tugged his sword from the leather baldric buckled under his suit jacket. The blade made a reassuring zing as it cleared the metal ring at the top, a familiar prelude to battle that injected adrenaline straight into his veins. No sooner had his sword completed its carefully controlled arc than the air around him suddenly blazed with unbearable intensity. His nose burned with the sharp odor of brimstone and his ears made a soft popping noise.
He blinked . . . and found himself staring at five sturdy young men wearing the unofficial high-tech uniform: jeans, golf shirt, and sneakers. The nearest fellow, a clean-cut congenial blond, grinned and pointed to Lachlan’s black suit and distinctive white collar.
“Nice duds. Not many folks would question you hovering around dead bodies in that outfit.”
Lachlan didn’t return the smile. “The human authorities are already on their way.”
“Then we’ll have to make this quick, won’t we?”
“Bugger off.”
“Sorry, bro, not going to happen.”
“This soul is no’ yours.”
A car horn bleated as a truck rumbled along the road overhead, signaling the start of morning rush hour. Lachlan’s heartbeat, already thumping heavily, sped up. All it would take was one human to wander into this dome and there’d be difficult explanations to make. Discovery wasn’t an issue for the demons—they could escape in a blink of an eye—but he was trapped.
“Maybe,” the blond demon responded, “but we’re here and the other team isn’t, so give it up.”
“Sorry, bro, no’ going to happen.”
The demon’s eyes narrowed at the parroting of his words. As his hellmates spread out, circling their prey like the craven scavengers they were, he shrugged. “Your funeral.”
Lachlan rolled his shoulders, loosening the muscles in his neck. This week his gathers had been very disagreeable, including two blood-soaked murders and a horrific Friday night pile-up on the freeway. Today’s death of an innocent woman only spurred the primitive howl in his blood. A fight suited him fine—as long as it was short.
Reaching deep, finding the cool, white power that pulsed at the very center of his being, he stoked it. An icy flare radiated from his chest to his forearms and down to the lethal edge of his blade. The sword responded with a low, eager hum. Although medieval in design, the weapon had been forged by a modern-day master . . . who was also a mage.
“Very unsporting, lads.”
Blondie smiled and responded, “What can I say? Ambush 101 is a prerequisite for the demon merit bad—”
The demon’s head toppled off, landing on the gravel with a dull thud and a splat of steaming blood. Lachlan’s sword brightened with eerie luminescence as demon gore ran along its fine edge, and he displayed the glowing green blade to the other four with a grim smile.
For one advantageous moment, they simply stared.
Hastily positioning the concrete bridge at his back, he invoked a shield charm. When the demons regained their aplomb, snarling their rage and strafing him with red-hot flame balls, he was ready. The charm kept most of the bombs from burning through to his skin, but not all. A few fireballs breached the shield, forcing him to twist and parry with exhausting regularity. Not normally a problem, given his heightened senses and seasoned battle skills. But one of the demons, standing back from the others, was repeatedly using a dissolve primal to eat away at his shield.
Taking the bastard out became a priority.
Thirty seconds later, he got his chance. The demon lifted both arms to deliver another wave of energy, and Lachlan stepped in with a swift, decisive slice. A choked gurgle, a spurt of vivid crimson, and the demon fell to his knees.
But the damage to his shield was already done.
He found himself on the receiving end of a fiery strike that seared through the tattered remnants of his protective charm, ate away his sleeve, and wormed its way down to the bone.
Pain exploded inside his bicep, radiating through every nerve ending and snatching his breath. But he refused to succumb, refused to drop his arm. Instead, shunting the agony to the back of his mind, he focused on finding weaknesses in his attackers’ defenses. Parry, shift, parry, twist, parry.
There.
A judicious downward cut, and the odds improved again. Two to one. Bolstered by an exultant dose of adrenaline, Lachlan’s arm strengthened. He dispatched the smaller of his two remaining foes with a carefully-aimed thrust between the ribs, then ducked and spun to the right.
Only one demon remained—a steroid junkie with tree limbs for arms. Unfazed by the demise of his cohorts, the hulking creature continued to pitch fireballs. Lachlan’s feint to the right proved ineffective and another hellish orb slipped past his defenses, this one blasting him in the chest.
Pain clawed into him, wriggled, and dug deeper.
If not for the beaten-silver cross around his neck, which absorbed the brunt of the strike, the blow might well have been lethal. Sweat beaded on his brow and his fingers clenched around his sword hilt, but Lachlan parried the next bomb, and the next. Falling back on his defensive skills, he rode out the agony and regained his momentum.
That’s when he heard the screams.
High-pitched, youthful screams accompanied by the harsh grind of something huge punching through a barrier, a brief rumble, and then a heavy splash.
On the opposite side of the bridge, out of view, a vehicle had plunged into the lake.
His beefy opponent halted his attack, grinning broadly. Then, in a wink of garish red light, he vanished. The dome collapsed along with him, all evidence of the demons’ presence sucked back into the lower plane. Gone. As if the battle had never been.
Lachlan’s heart dropped into his belly.
Mother of God. Emily’s school bus.
Even as fear splintered his thoughts, he instinctively began muttering a series of complicated, barely-remembered verses. Drawing upon the very limits of his abilities, he conjured twin puffs of vapor to his palms, whipped them into dazzling plumes, then flung the effluvium into the air. Blinding shards of primal power danced away in all directions, spinning, curling, weaving through the atmosphere . . .
. . . briefly halting human time.
Intended only to allow a Gatherer opportunity to rescue a soul before the body was lost to disaster, the time-halt had a very short life: two minutes, no more. It would have to be enough. He dashed across the short stretch of land that separated him from Lake Almaden, tossing his coat, sword, and shoes helter-skelter into the bushes that lined the shore. Without pause, he dove in.
Ice formed in his veins even before he hit the algae-clouded water; the last thing he saw before he plunged in was the tail end of the yellow bus sticking out of the water, its journey to the depths of the lake momentarily suspended.
Humans died every day, a painful reality he’d finally learned to cease resisting. Death visited everyone, placing her glowing white spiral upon cheek after cheek, caring not one whit for the importance of human lives or the fate of those left behind. No one escaped her ruthless mark.
But the teens aboard the school bus wore no such mark. They were not slated to die this day. Satan, not Death, had rolled the dice today, entwining their fates with that of Emily Lewis.
Emily.
Lachlan plowed through the water, his route straight and sure. But the battle with the demons had taken a huge toll. His wretched immortal body kept stealing his energy, redirecting it into the healing process and away from the steady cleaves of his arms through the water. He was still thirty feet from his target, his muscles numb and sapped, when the bus resumed its perilous drive to the bottom.
The water churned and roiled. Terrified screams rent the air. One courageous student flung open the rear door and panicked teens scrambled out, falling atop one another in their hysterical haste to reach safety.
Lachlan summoned a last flurry of desperate strokes, took a deep breath, and dove deep. The children most at risk were at the front, not the back.
Through the murky water, the bright yellow paint acted as a beacon, and he found the windows with little effort. Inside, the water level was rising quickly. Six teens struggled to keep their heads above the bubbling, seething water, while two others hovered beneath the surface, unable to breach the kicking and flailing of their bus mates.
No sign of Emily.
He latched on to a partially open window and yanked. Nothing happened. The bus continued to slowly roll down the lake wall, the tail end about to submerge, and panic gnawed at him. He gripped the window with stiff fingers and slammed a knee into the glass, breaking it. The safety glass crumbled, water sluiced in, and he squeezed through the hole. In the moiling water, he searched for Emily, diving between the seats at the front of the bus. But she was nowhere to be found. Time was running out. He grabbed the shirts of the two submerged teens, whose struggles were weakening, and kicked up toward the rear exit.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw her: A crumpled heap of black clothes and blond hair streaked with black highlights . . . floating between two bench seats closer to the back of the bus. Eyes closed, face slack.
Lachlan’s fingers clenched around the boys’ clothing
. With a heavy metallic groan, the last few inches of the bus finally sank below the surface, and a powerful gush of water poured in through the open exit door, thrusting him and the two thrashing teens down toward the bottom. Limp and unconscious, Emily tumbled along with them.
The faces of his two panicky teens were turning purple, but Lachlan had no choice. He had to rescue Emily, and only one solution came to mind. He pressed his lips to each of the boys and blew into their mouths, sacrificing what little oxygen remained in his lungs.
After all, what does an immortal man need with air?
Squeezed by the absence, his chest ached and strained. His heart pounded in protest. Despite his every effort not to give in, primitive impulse took control. His mouth opened and he sucked in the green-brown water of Lake Almaden. Pain tore at his throat, seared the lining of his lungs, and ripped at his guts as he drowned.
Except he couldn’t die.
All he could do was absorb the insufferable pain. Weather it, survive it, and keep going.
Blinking hard to clear his vision, Lachlan reached down, grabbed Emily’s black leather vest, and then kicked toward the exit door. He pushed two other trapped teens out before him, thrusting them toward the ever-dimming surface. Then he wriggled his unwieldy group through the aperture, and from there, shot toward the surface.
It took an eternity.
A burning, agonizing eternity. His legs were jelly, his arms so heavy that they only awkwardly did his bidding. When the surface neared, bright and shining, he gave one last push, forcing the children’s heads above the water. They choked and gasped, and he kicked until they reached the shore. Someone—he couldn’t say who—freed the teens from his tightly curled fingers and began resuscitation efforts on Emily.
Lying half-in and half-out of the lake, Lachlan coughed up several cupfuls of brackish water. It should have been a blessing to breathe again; instead, he relived the agony of drowning as air slowly replaced the liquid in every miserable bronchiole.
Emily. He had to see to Emily.
Throat raw, droplets of water choking his lungs, he dragged his heavy body out of the water and over to her still figure.
“Is she . . . ?” he asked the Good Samaritan who was draping his shirt over her.
“Breathing,” the man responded, nodding. He tucked the cotton cloth around her shoulders. “Close call, though.”
Lachlan flopped on his back in the grass, unable to stand. He covered his face with his arm and worked to steady the staccato beat of his heart. The how and why of this insanity needed sorting out, but not this second.
Right now, he just wanted to rest and forget.
But it was not to be. Rescuers splashed about in the water nearby, searching, and sirens shrieked all around him as police and emergency vehicles descended on the scene. Voices called out, some calm, some not. Against the background clamor, the scuff of one set of footsteps gained amplitude.
“Excuse me, Father,” said a tentative female voice to his left. “Did you . . . ? Was there anyone left on the . . . ?”
Lachlan called up the last image he had of the bus before he swam for the surface: The blobs of algae, the sea of gritty silt, the fine, lacy edge of a pink sweater.
He sighed, heavy with regret. “The driver. I’m sorry, I couldn’t reach her.”
***
A light breeze swept across Lake Almaden, rippling the surface of the water and feathering his hair. Drusus smiled at the flashing lights on the opposite shore. His hunch about the girl had proven correct. MacGregor was indeed protecting her, which would please his liege to no end. A soldier of Death assigned to preserve a human life could only mean—
“Detective Roberts?”
Drusus spun around to face the crime scene investigator: An eager young pup who hadn’t a clue that he was speaking to a glamoured demon rather than a paunchy, middle-aged cop. A paunchy, despondent cop who, a mere forty minutes ago, had put the barrel of his service revolver in his mouth and pulled the trigger. With a little help, of course.
“Yes?”
“Coroner’s ready to take the body to the morgue. Wanna speak with him before he heads out?”
“Did he set a T.O.D.?”
“Around six a.m.”
Drusus nodded. Not a bad guess. He’d choked the life out of the jogger’s pretty green eyes at 6:07. It had been a thoroughly enjoyable experience—almost as enjoyable as seeing the look on MacGregor’s face when he spotted her body. The weeks spent searching for the right shade of red hair had definitely paid off. “Then don’t hold him up. I’ve got enough to go on for now.”
The investigator glanced at the bushes hugging the water’s edge. “Find anything useful?”
“No, I’m afraid not. You?”
“Coupla shoe prints, that’s about it.”
“Maybe you’ll find something on the body,” Drusus said, hiding a smile. Wouldn’t matter. He’d been wearing the guise of a local homeless man at the time. Any evidence would lead the police to a bewildered derelict who would pointlessly protest his innocence.
“We can hope, right?”
The young CSI walked away, and Drusus allowed his gaze to fall to the sword and coat lost beneath the arching branches of coyote brush. They lay twenty feet beyond the defined crime scene and hadn't been noted. As much as he wanted to cause MacGregor grief, the items would provide no viable fingerprints or DNA to the police, so there was no point in disturbing them.
Besides, there’d be no satisfaction in defeating the immortal warrior if the wretch could claim he’d been less than properly armed. No, this time MacGregor would not escape a proper end. This time he would die the way history had intended—hard.
***
Crossing the apartment lobby to the elevators, Rachel glanced at her daughter’s heart-shaped face and flashed back to the image of the waterlogged school bus being pulled from the depths of the lake. She squeezed Em’s hand. It could all have ended so differently. It could have been Em the paramedics laid on a gurney and zipped into a body bag, instead of that poor bus driver.
“I’m fine.” Em shook off Rachel’s hold.
“Why are we taking the elevator? It’s only one floor.”
“Because you’re in shock.”
“Gimme a break.”
“You almost died.”
“Exaggerate much?” She sighed dramatically. “Come on, Mom. The elevator’s too slow, and I’m soaking wet. Can we please just take the stairs?”
“Fine.”
Annoyed by how easily guilt chewed into her, Rachel tugged Em to the stairwell. She flung open the steel door and promptly rammed into a warm, solid barrier. A man, wearing a dark suit, bent over. If she hadn’t steadied herself with a hand on his backside, she might have flipped right over the fellow.
“Oh! I’m so sorry.”
He straightened. “My fault, I dropped my cell phone.”
Rachel blinked. Black suit, plus white collar, equaled . . . priest. She snatched her hand away. Not just any priest, but the very one the emergency workers had pointed to as her daughter’s saintly rescuer.
Those two facts alone should have placed him in the Untouchable category, but her flustered hormones didn’t seem to care. As she eyed all six-feet-plus of his muscular frame, her heartbeat skittered. Honestly, if more clergymen looked like this, the churches would be full.
He held her gaze for a brief moment, a strangely palpable moment, then shifted his attention to Emily, who slouched indifferently at her side, black streaks of mascara and eyeliner running down her face. “You okay?”
Em shrugged.
“Yes, she is,” Rachel jumped in, embarrassed by her daughter’s attitude-laden response. “Of course she is. Thanks to you. I wanted to come over and say something at the accident scene, but the police and the press had you cornered.”
Was it a sin to think a priest was a hunk? That classically handsome face, blunted by just a dash of weary experience, made her breath hitch. Even with his black suit wrinkled and stained, and his short brown hair a spiky mess, he looked absolutely amazing.
His gaze came back to her. Blue-gray eyes. Steady and very perceptive. “Glad I was there.”
Heat rushed into her cheeks. Hugging a stiff-shouldered Em, she said weakly, “Yes. We are, too.”
She ought to say more, but what? How do you really thank someone for saving your daughter’s life? Words just didn’t seem enough, so she settled on an introduction.
“I’m Rachel Lewis, and this is Emily.”
He stared at her extended hand for a moment, then took it in his. “Lachlan MacGregor.”
The warmth of his lean, square-tipped fingers sent an unexpected tingle up her arm, and Rachel had to focus to produce a level voice. “Are you Scottish, Father MacGregor?” When he didn’t answer right away, she added, “I mean, your name and that slight accent, I just assumed. . .”
“I haven’t lived there for many years, but aye, I’m originally from Glen Lyon.” He dropped her hand.
There was an awkward pause as Rachel debated what to say next. Tell him they were originally from Connecticut? Admit that they didn’t go to church? Invite him to dinner? No, she couldn’t invite him to dinner. What the hell could she possibly say to a priest for an hour?
“I’ve always wanted to visit Scotland,” she said lamely.
A faint glimmer of something shone in his eyes. Amusement? “It’s a fine country, well worth the trip. Especially in late August when the heather blooms.”
His gaze drifted to Em, who stood staring at the floor with her arms folded tight to her chest. Maybe he saw her shiver, because he waved a hand at the stairs. “I believe we could all use a hot shower right about now. After you, Mrs. Lewis.”
Mrs. Lewis. Ugh. Even when she and Grant had been starry-eyed newlyweds she’d hated being called that.
“Rachel, please. I’m divorced.” She flushed, suddenly recalling that most religions tended to frown upon divorce. “Em’s father and I married too young—”
“No need to explain.”
His smile was gentle, and her embarrassment receded. At least, it did until she realized her admission to being divorced might be interpreted as a come-on. Biting her lip, she hustled Em up the wide, tiled stairs. Having lascivious thoughts about a priest might not be a sin, but coming on to one. . .?
No doubt about it. She was going to hell.
- End -
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