Читать книгу: «Immortal Redeemed»

To my family, those here and those gone, who always believed I had a story to tell.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Extract

Copyright

Chapter 1

It wasn’t hard being an immortal. And it certainly wasn’t boring. But living out an extended life span could be lonely as hell, and that loneliness lasted forever.

Kellan Ladd pushed the black custom Harley to eighty miles per hour on the open road, inhaling the wind, appreciating what might be his last moments on earth.

The purr of the bike’s engine was the only sound in the dark fall night. His next stop was already a dim glow on the horizon. Out here he could breathe and see the stars. Disturbing thoughts were traded for the intricacies of pure sensation.

He liked the pungent scent of damp greenery and the faint odor of engine oil. Those things mixed well with the fragrance of his signature black leather pants and jacket.

In fact, the back of his neck tingled in honor of those things. But the pleasure didn’t last. The dampness of the wind welcoming him to Seattle slipped beneath his collar to go head-to-head with the fiery burn of the intricate sigils carved into his shoulder blades...and the result wasn’t pretty.

The sizzling sound of heat versus cold was imaginary. Discomfort wasn’t. The marks on his back were as painful tonight as when he’d first received them. It was as if the scrolling tattoos were in on the secret part of his secret agenda. The temperature tug-of-war was a reminder he had never needed that after walking the surface of this planet for hundreds of years, he wasn’t like the people he’d meet in an hour.

Not even remotely like them.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t known that from day one. Sporting fangs and living forever made differences hard to forget. As did the oaths he’d taken that dictated his life’s direction.

Tonight, he might have given half his considerable fortune to be completely free of the discomfort of the grooves on his back, if just for one day. He supposed the other six immortals in his Blood Knights brotherhood felt the same way by now.

Pain in the ass, though.

Chanting in a low-pitched murmur, Kellan willed the burn between his shoulder blades to ease, without much success. The magic woven into their creation continued to pulse with a steady beat the way it always did when he drew near the chaos of civilization. He considered cities to be a universal plague.

He didn’t relish the thought of crowds. He never bothered with trying to fit in. Centuries ago he’d begun to agree with the freakish classification people would give him if they knew the truth of his origins. Luckily, very few mortals nowadays were in on the secrets surrounding his kind.

Most mortals were also ignorant of the part he played in protecting them—no easy task with humans occupying every corner of the planet. Add to those numbers the equally aggressive expansion of monsters that preyed on humans, and this modern world had developed its own recipe for disaster.

True, he just happened to be one of only seven immortals consistently going out of their way to do something about that. He was needed behind the scenes.

But he was tired.

Running a hand over his head made him miss the riot of shoulder-length auburn locks that had been his trademark for as long as he could remember. The new, shorter cut might make him appear more modern, but he couldn’t actually outdistance reality. Short hair or long, he was the same immortal. Something he might not have to think about for much longer. Because...

She would help with that. She, her, it, or whatever the hell kind of spirit had ensnared his soul from afar with the promise of ending what had always been endless.

Kellan sensed her presence somewhere ahead. Not too far away. Well within reach. Someone unique awaited him in the rain-soaked West Coast city—a feminine soul with the ability to end his immortal servitude once and for all.

Maybe it wasn’t actually a woman he’d find, yet he had a gut feeling it might be, and an uncanny sense of rightness about the perception. She had been invading his thoughts and his dreams for as long as Kellan could remember. From the beginning, actually, when he’d left his mortality behind.

So he was here in the States, heading toward one particular American city. Seattle, Washington, was ground zero for his private, personal agenda.

Finding her might be tough, though, since the whereabouts of his counterpart had always been a secret. The rare being he sought was a shadow, a dream. She was vagueness on the periphery of a memory he couldn’t forget or completely recall. Yet she was there in his mind, buried deep.

Closing in on her true image might be like trying to catch hold of smoke. But he felt her.

He hungered for her and what she had to offer an immortal who had grown world-weary. She alone had the power to ease his restlessness. Only she would recognize his true identity and all that he had endured.

Hell, she might walk up to him on long, shapely legs and whisper her secrets in his ear.

Shots of white-hot anticipation streaked through him with that thought...before the chill returned.

“Damn sigils.”

Kellan rolled his shoulders, cautious about lingering too long on treacherous thoughts. The brotherhood couldn’t know about his mission or what he was after. All seven Blood Knights shared a special connection fostered by the type of blood in their veins. Tapping into the thoughts of the other six was possible, just as they were able to tap into his if he let them. Extra care was needed now to keep them out.

In truth, he was owed this trip, having stretched well beyond the concept of duty. Fulfilling his obligations had occupied the endless march of months, years, decades, that comprised his past. But having one of his brothers standing guard over the holy relic that lay at the heart of the Knights’ creation meant that Kellan had plenty of time off.

An endless supply of time.

Ceaseless and unending.

The sound of the engine and the faint ting of the bike’s spirit bell brought Kellan back from his thoughts. His speed was pushing ninety, and that just wasn’t fast enough for an immortal with an important personal objective to ignore the disturbing feelings that lately had cropped up. Feelings of loss for parts of himself long ago left behind. Emotions dealing with an unforeseeable future and the mysterious her he could almost reach out and touch.

And there she was again, this mysterious soul at the heart of his search. Kellan imagined her scent floating in the wind. In the dark night he could almost see her eyes.

Those eyes would be blue.

His tattoos now stung with the force of a hundred scorpions. Each link of the inky scrollwork tied him to vows that made it a sacrilege for him to seek what he was after in Seattle. He had been created to exist forever, as long as he remained true to his pledge. It was too bad that forever had become too damn long.

Dangerous thoughts, bro.

Kellan reinforced his mental barriers against unwanted intrusion. He could shoulder the burden of all sorts of knowledge...if he could just deal with the damn tattoos.

“Might for right.”

He spoke the old credo that he had once taken as his own, hoping the sentiment would offer comfort, even if false, to the blood-etched marks on his back. Those marks that now worked to keep him chained to an ideal that had long ago lost its shine.

Staring at the distant city lights, Kellan opened up the bike full throttle. Wearing the legend Blood Knights stitched on the back of his jacket as if he were merely part of an American motorcycle gang would either help his cause in finding the being he sought, or turn out to be the equivalent of painting a bull’s-eye on his back.

Either way, this hunt had been a long time coming...and hunting just happened to be what he did best.

* * *

As the surgeon backed away from the operating table, McKenna Randall, RN, wiped her wet hands on a bloody white towel. They had saved this patient, and for that she felt immense relief, though saving only one out of three severely wounded people in a row wasn’t great odds.

Nodding to the rest of the staff in the operating room, she headed for the door. Someone else would take over now. She’d been on her feet for twenty hours, and though at twenty-six years old she was the youngest nurse in the ER, a break was long overdue. She needed a shower, fresh clothes, food.

She was bone-tired. Her teeth hurt from grinding them together. Her shoulders quaked with spasms. She felt light-headed and a little dizzy from the kind of fatigue that brought back the long days of her past. Though she liked helping people, part of her still yearned for the excitement of her former profession. Nurse Randall tried to fix things that were broken, but Officer McKenna Randall had gone after the cause, hoping to keep things like slashed throats and stabbings from happening in the first place.

The injuries to the patients on the operating table tonight had been grisly. She’d had to keep a tight rein on her emotions in order to curb the desire to head out to the streets for a look at the crime scenes where her patients’ wounds had been inflicted. Her old partner would be at those scenes, plus a lot of other guys she missed on a daily basis—guys who placed their lives on the line every damn day in the name of the law.

But that was then.

This was now.

The tickle at the base of her neck was a telling sign of her inability to remain upright for much longer. Also telling was the insistent ringing in her ears. Another ten minutes on duty and she wouldn’t have been good for anything. Faintness had begun to hover like a big dark cloud. She was imagining things. Voices.

Hell of a thing.

In that operating room she’d been sure someone called to her. Lingering traces of that voice remained with her now, drifting like a breeze in her wake.

“Unacceptable,” she muttered. She’d have to be careful when driving home to keep from becoming a liability.

The hospital was large and filled near to capacity. At 10:00 p.m. the corridor was busy, but no one seemed to notice when she stopped to take in a lungful of air and lean a shoulder against the wall. Not one person, staff or otherwise, paused to ask if she needed help, a stiff cocktail or a chair.

After all, she was the caregiver here.

But for the first time since she’d landed this job, McKenna wasn’t sure she’d make it to the elevator. Weakness was overtaking her. Her nerves were dancing on thin ribbons of fire, as if her body were anticipating something she had no real knowledge of. As if the dizziness might be connected to some kind of premonition.

If she made it to that hot shower just one floor down, she’d get her core temperature back up and lose the shakes that came with too many hours spent in an icy operating room. She’d feel a whole hell of a lot better.

Just have to put one foot in front of the other.

Managing to push off the wall, McKenna headed for the elevator, forgoing her usual habit of taking the stairs. She avoided eye contact with the elevator’s other occupants and fled when the door opened. In the locker room, she stripped quickly and stepped under the showerhead.

Head bowed, eyes closed, she let the stream of water bring new life to her overworked muscles. Turning her face to the rising steam, she tried not to think backward, but couldn’t help it.

One bullet. One damn bullet with her name on it had ended her brief career as a cop. And that was just too frigging bad.

Fifteen minutes later she was dressed and out the hospital’s front door, face scrubbed, wet hair combed. Walking was doable now that the quakes had ceased. Her car wasn’t far away—just across the street in the new parking garage. The crisp fall air was bracing.

When the traffic light turned green, she almost stepped off the curb. Something stopped her.

McKenna spun around.

The sidewalk was fairly crowded with people heading in and out of the hospital. None of those people faced her, spoke to her or addressed her. Not one of them seemed to notice her at all.

Thinking that someone had called her name made McKenna reevaluate the current state of her health. Certainly her brain had been through a lot after being grazed by a bullet. Still, voices?

This time when the light changed, she made it halfway between the curbs before an odd sensation of being shadowed forced her to take a second look at her surroundings. Like most big cities, Seattle could be dangerous if people weren’t careful. Single women out alone at night were wise to be on guard. No one knew that better than a cop.

Former cop.

Another look around showed no one suspicious and gave her no cause for alarm. Yet the sensitive skin at the base of her neck tingled. Strange fluttering sensations deep down inside her body forced her to briefly shut her eyes.

If this weird shit kept up, she’d be better off calling a cab or taking a bus the couple of blocks home. Hearing imaginary voices was scary stuff. The psychiatrist who had cleared her at Seattle PD after her incident wouldn’t like this new turn of events any more than she did.

Not that clearing her had helped, since hopes of returning to the force had been lost with that damn bullet. The Seattle PD demanded retirement after an injury like that. Her next choice had been to finish the nursing degree she had started right out of school.

McKenna walked on. After hopping the next curb, she paused to search the street again. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. She saw the usual long line of parked cars and the vague outline of a guy on a motorcycle pulling over.

Her smile was a symptom of feeling silly, because there was nothing unusual here. Plus, she had options. She could turn around, go back to the hospital, find a bed and sleep this off. A short nap might put things into perspective.

The stubborn tingle on her neck was a persistent sucker, though. She muttered a choice four-letter word she’d picked up on the force and tried to convince herself she was making things up.

“Where are you?”

McKenna whirled, nerves prickling, sure she heard that voice. If she was making it up, she had one hell of an imagination. That voice seemed real, even when logic told her the question couldn’t have been addressed to her. No one waited for her or wondered where she was. She had no family left. The few people who mattered to her knew her schedule and were busy elsewhere at this time of night.

So why did the voice sound familiar?

Steadying herself with both hands on the nearest signpost, McKenna worked to calm herself down. This didn’t have to be a premonition or a warning sign of disaster about to strike...though she distinctly remembered how the bullet entering her skull two years ago had spoken to her just before taking her down. As if that bullet had her name on it. As if that shot had been meant for nobody else.

She had experienced the same flutter of nerves back then, too, seconds before the bullet struck. She hadn’t told anyone about those things. Cops weren’t supposed to be crazy. She’d kept her mouth shut about premonitions and perceptions, though the nightmares persisted to this day.

She looked around, reliving a moment of uncanny connection to her surroundings, wanting to duck, but standing tall to await whatever was to come.

Nothing did.

No bullet arrived, though her weakening knees defied the notion of an all clear.

Holding on to the post, McKenna again scanned the sidewalk, fighting the impulse to cover her ears and block any further sound.

“Who are you?”

The question came again from out of nowhere, so real that she almost replied. Determined to ignore this, McKenna headed for the garage with a retort on her lips. “Not talking to you today, my invisible friend. I won’t be admitting to the crazies anytime soon.”

Under her breath, she added, “Definitely not today.”

Before she finished the remark, her finely honed cop intuition set her teeth on edge. Someone was watching. Someone was there. She knew this.

Swaying slightly, shaking off the chills slipping under the collar of her thick wool coat, McKenna turned to stare at the guy on the motorcycle.

Chapter 2

Kellan got off the bike. His heart rate spiked as he eyed the woman on the corner. He waited out several more beats of time before breathing, each of those beats measured by the tick of the clock in the tower above him.

She was looking at him. Staring openly. Was she answering his call? If not, why the sudden interest?

The strange stirring sensations inside his chest didn’t have to be meaningful since the odds of finding her just ten minutes after entering town were a million to one, or more like twice that.

Shaking off his disappointment, Kellan turned away.

Then he turned back.

The wind carried a trace of perfume—faintly floral, fresh, rich. He detected no hint of death in it, such as a Reaper might possess.

Tamping down the rise of anticipation, Kellan observed the woman closely. He had the advantage, of course. She would have no idea how effortlessly he could see every detail at this distance. She wouldn’t know about the hunger behind his scan.

Her hair was fair, long, and hung past her shoulders. Although there was no rain tonight, the golden strands appeared to be wet. She had big eyes in a small face, high cheekbones and delicate features. She was tall and lean, her overall shape narrow. Faded blue jeans peeked out from beneath the knee-length tweed coat that didn’t seem to warm her. Both of her arms were crossed over her stomach, as if that would help.

She was attractive, but not perfect. The eyes were a bit too large and her skin too pale. While she looked young, she possessed a worldly gaze. To anyone else, her bold stare might have been unnerving.

As their gazes connected across the distance, Kellan’s nerves bristled. His muscles twitched. Strange as it was, after just seconds of scrutiny, he had an uncanny and urgent physical need for this woman.

Still, though she smelled delicious and stared back, she could be the wrong soul. Because he was immortal and a loner by necessity didn’t mean he was immune to every temptation that came his way.

Under the scrutiny of his unwavering gaze, the woman turned from him with a small object clasped tightly in her hand. Cell phone for emergencies? Her steps stuttered on the sidewalk before she whirled again. Unbelievably, she wasn’t running away. She didn’t make any calls. After pausing to consider her next move, she walked straight toward him.

He hadn’t used his power to influence her decision, so the move was all hers. Why, though? He was a stranger. Danger lurked on every street corner these days. Case in point, he caught a whiff of one lone werewolf to the south, potentially only half as deadly without a full moon overhead. And something dark-hearted with fangs perched on a rooftop halfway down the block.

Those things should have made him move. They should have been the center of this focus. He’d been blessed—or cursed, as he often thought—to feel the presence of these kinds of anomalies. He not only smelled them but saw into the shadows where they hid. He did his best to keep the monsters in check.

This time they weren’t drawing his attention from the woman coming his way. They had nothing to do with his sudden sense of elation.

She was his focus.

His attention was riveted.

As she approached, Kellan’s heart began to pound. Streaks of adrenaline created tension in muscles designed for fighting, as if she might pose a threat to those old vows. But the only fight here was for him to remain calm, because waiting for her wasn’t easy. Meeting this woman could turn out to be a distraction he didn’t need if she wasn’t the woman he sought.

She stopped several feet away with a question.

“Do I know you?”

The huskiness of her voice made Kellan’s nerves dance. Her tone was low and sexy. Her lips were full and slightly parted.

“I don’t think so,” he replied, economizing his comeback so that he could take in more details, like the dark crescents of sleeplessness under her eyes and the lovely lines of her long, graceful neck.

For the first time in a while, Kellan praised his special abilities for reasons other than ferreting out bad guys. He also amended his earlier conclusion. She actually was quite beautiful.

And if...

Well, if she was the one he sought...

All the better.

“Are you waiting for something?” she asked without backing away from the intensity of his keen observation.

Beyond Kellan’s sigils, other parts of his body were catching the fire of interest. Was this due to her, though, or did he just want it to be?

He had anticipated a more direct acknowledgment of being on the right track than an instantaneous craving for a woman. Then again, what did he really know about what his Makers had so carefully hidden?

Certainly he hadn’t expected to meet a female who was the equivalent of a Grim Reaper, but also perfectly fit his personal preferences physically, when it could just as easily have been otherwise.

“I’m meeting someone,” Kellan said.

“Oh. Sorry. I thought...”

“Yes? You thought?” he encouraged when she didn’t finish the remark.

“I thought I might have known you from someplace. Guess I was mistaken.”

She didn’t leave. She stood her ground boldly, as if she wanted to add something, or else wanted him to.

Kellan purposefully kept his voice steady. “Do you work in the hospital?”

He stayed close to the bike so he wouldn’t frighten her. Restraining himself from taking the few steps needed to reach her was hard. He wanted to press his mouth to hers in a kiss that might open Pandora’s box. A kiss that might let him know if nearly overwhelming odds against him finding the one person he was after in Seattle meant nothing when it came to the magic of ancient souls and secrets connecting.

The pressure of his need to know about this woman was like a fist to his gut. Her presence was curious and captivating for a man who not only had searched for such a connection, but also had forgone serious female companionship in favor of more pressing pursuits.

She stood across from him as if he had conjured her.

Maybe he had.

Still, what was she seeing? She was telegraphing her interest in him by remaining close. His senses were loud and clear about that. Some sort of combustible chemical reaction was taking place between them. The air was heavy with it, and warmer than before.

Animal magnetism at work? Lust at first sight? An instantaneous attraction between strangers on a street corner was possible, Kellan supposed, though unlikely—which surely meant that the odds against this being a benign chance meeting were in his favor.

Are you her?

With his heart misbehaving, it was impossible for him to remain inert for much longer. In order to place her importance to his cause, he’d have to get a peek at this woman’s soul. To do that, she’d have to be unwrapped. She’d have to meet him skin to skin for him to see what secrets, if any, lay hidden beneath those fragile feminine bones. And he was all for that skin-to-skin business.

“Do you recognize me?” he silently sent to her, hoping something deep inside her might rise to the surface and provide a clue.

“Yes,” she said, giving him a start.

She waved at the hospital across the street, reminding him of the other question he’d posed. “I work there, at Seattle General. Possibly that’s where I’ve seen you? Are you waiting for someone to be released?”

“Nope,” he said, unable to lie about even the simplest things. None of the Blood Knights could.

Nor was he good at small talk, especially when trying to reason things out. He kept wondering how an ancient soul could survive by being passed along from body to body in a long line of new recipients, without those recipients knowing about it. Same soul, different housing, in a special type of reincarnation. Not a myth. Absolutely real.

If this woman didn’t know what she carried inside her, though, how would she recognize him? In any case, why didn’t she run?

Did she like his looks as much as he liked hers? His appearance had once been legendary, but he was much leaner and more chiseled now. Time had done that. Time and the efforts of his quest. He’d been frozen in the body of a twenty-eight-year-old, but Kellan knew he looked older, and that he had always projected a dangerous edge. The leather and the bike helped that image along.

“I stopped for a breath and to get my bearings,” he told her.

As she continued to study him, his nerves burned. Seconds flew by in silence before she put a hand to her temple as if to ease an ache there. The brief flutter of her lashes gave Kellan the first hint that she wasn’t all right. Not just tired. Possibly she was ill. Small quakes ran through her, suggesting that her strength had ebbed.

“You couldn’t have called to me, I suppose,” she finally said. “And I guess I’m way too tired to be making sense.”

Her voice wasn’t just sexy. It was flammable.

Was that also a sign?

“Do you need help?” he asked politely, carefully managing his excitement and his reaction to her. “An escort to your car, or a ride somewhere?”

The busy street wasn’t the right place to hold an important meeting of any kind. The damn werewolf had got closer, as well as too many other people who hadn’t received the memo about their lives being safer indoors after dark.

Kellan had to pay some attention to the monsters prowling the darkness because if he hit the road, this woman, in her weakened state, would be easy prey.

Her lashes fluttered again before she briefly closed her eyes, leaving Kellan certain that the ashen pallor of her face wasn’t due entirely to Seattle’s sunless climate. The bold blonde was no longer steady on her feet. She looked as if she could have been a patient at the hospital across from them.

“Do you need a ride somewhere?” he repeated in a soft, clear tone. “Help of any kind?”

“No.” Her head shake displaced a few damp dark-golden strands that were starting to curl. “I don’t need help. Thanks for the offer.”

She inched backward without turning from him and ran into a post. After issuing a short bark of uncomfortable laughter, she muttered, “Hell, what a night,” and looked up to apologize a second time. “Sorry.”

It could have been the way she issued the apology—the rather forlorn enunciation of two drawn-out syllables—that caused Kellan to stir. He was beside her in an instant, utilizing the extraordinary speed and superior reflexes that had been built into him.

Chances were that not many others on the sidewalk had been paying attention to what might appear little more than a street-side tête-à-tête. Odds were also good that no one had noticed how frail this woman appeared to be, and how menacing he looked by comparison. He was two heads taller than she was and twice as broad. She tilted her head back to look up at him and met his eyes.

Her eyes were blue.

“I had a long shift, that’s all. I need to get home and rest,” she explained. “I used to be a cop, and that’s my excuse for confronting you, as lame as it sounds.”