Harnessed Angels: The Quickening Read online

  “I promise that it won’t,” she said. “But I need to know that my dad will be safe.”

  He drew a deep breath and glanced at Sara for an instant while he pulled the car onto the highway’s entrance ramp.

  “Jefferson has been investigating the League for years,” Mathias said.

  Sara began to proclaim the impossibility of his statement but he silenced her with a quick shake of his head.

  “He doesn’t realize what he’s been investigating,” he explained. “But he’s been searching for our relics for longer than you’ve been alive.”

  “No,” she protested, but her mind cast around for signs that what Mathias said was true. Unlike most archaeologists, her father visited many different sites that seemed to have no unifying theme to them. As a child, she and her mother had traveled the world with him while he excavated sites in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America. It was this lack of specialization that had consigned him to teaching at a second-rate school like Holbrook.

  “Why will the League protect him, then?” Sara whispered the question, uncertainty clouding her mind.

  “For many reasons,” Mathias answered. “Because I won’t allow your father to be left to Athos and Colm, because we don’t know what information he has gathered or what will happen to that information if he goes missing, because the League needs his help—and yours—in deciphering the rest of the tablet.”

  Sara raised her eyebrows in disbelief at the suggestion that she could solve the mystery of the tablet.

  “You’ve helped your father since you were a child, Sara,” he reminded her. “Seen those symbols—our symbols—hundreds of times on the artifacts your father has pulled from the excavation sites. You even, as do I, bear one of those symbols!”

  Sara blinked back a tear and raised a hand to touch her shoulder. “My father…”

  “Knows,” Mathias confirmed. “He has to know—it’s why he married your mother. Or, at least, why he was attracted to her initially.”

  Sara threw another confused stare in his direction. How could her mother possibly have anything to do with this? Her mother had been a college freshman in Belfast when she had met the more senior Jefferson Xavier while he was on a dig in Ireland.

  “Your mother didn’t tell you about her family, did she?” he asked. Tender concern edged his voice, as if he feared dredging up emotions too powerful for Sara to face while everything else swirled around her in chaos.

  “She hated her father!” She spit the words out, remembered the coldness that had entered her mother’s voice whenever she spoke of the man. She swiped her hand at her cheek and brushed away a tear. It was no time to start crying over her dead mother, when her father was in such danger.

  “It was her mother that counts,” Mathias said. “And her mother’s mother, and so on.”

  Mathias slipped the silver chain from his neck, the one that held the locket he had stolen from Sara almost half a decade before. She turned the locket over in her hand, saw the small symbol of three broken circles lightly etched in the back panel.

  “She had it engraved when I was born,” Sara said and started to hand the locket back to him. As much as she had mourned its loss, she didn’t want to see the locket anywhere but around his neck.

  “You know better,” Mathias said and made her look at it a second time. “Your mother told you that and you believed her, but you know better.”

  Sara nodded, watched the chain slide around his head and the locket settle against his chest. She had never been able to understand why her mother would have lied to her and so she had always accepted it as the truth, even as she grew more experienced in examining artifacts, in knowing at a glance whether a mark on an amulet or breastplate was a hundred, or a thousand, years old.

  “Did my mother have the same mark?” she asked. She had seen the other woman in various states of undress, had cared for her cancer-ridden body in her mother’s final days of life. Had she somehow missed noticing it?

  Mathias shrugged. “As far as I know, you and I are the only two people to ever bear the mark.”

  “You were born with it, too?” She still knew so little about this man who had so easily captured her, body and soul.

  “Reborn with it,” Mathias answered. “I was turned by a first born, one of the nine that we know of. Before them, there is only darkness to our history. Their origins are unknown. After I was turned, the mark appeared.”

  Sara started to ask him another question, but he reached up and caressed her cheek. “We are almost to a private landing strip,” he said. “Once I have you safely out of the country, as far away from Athos as possible, I’ll tell you everything.”

  “My father—”

  “Will be brought to you,” Mathias assured her. His hand returned to the wheel and he pulled onto a dirt road. “The League has you now. He will follow and they will keep him safe.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  A pilot already waited for them at the landing strip and he flew Sara and Mathias to another private landing strip a few miles from Maine’s border with New Brunswick. From there, they crossed the border into Canada on foot. In St. Stephen, Mathias rented a car, keeping their final destination a secret from her.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to ride in the trunk?” she snapped as she slid into the passenger’s seat.

  “No, but it would help if you don’t pay any attention to place names along the route,” he answered.

  His tone had become worn at the edges and she could sense the hunger that twisted through his body. She touched his arm, massaged it.

  “I’m sorry,” she said at last. “It’s just that, I would know if he was still lingering inside my thoughts.” Her stomach convulsed at the remembered cold of Athos coiled around her mind and body. Not recognizing his presence would be impossible.

  “Just trust me a little while longer,” Mathias said. He glanced at her, his look pleading with her to ask no more.

  Sara blinked her understanding, leaned her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. She wrapped her arm around his waist. “You’re hungry,” she whispered. “Let me feed you.”

  “We can’t...” His voice broke with regret. “We can’t share that for now, love, I told you. It’s as if our blood creates an invisible network. He’s already hacked into your mind and can use you as a portal to hack into mine—especially if I’m feeding from you.”

  She withdrew and curled against the passenger-side door. Anger welled inside her until she had to blink back her tears. Twice he had denied her, given her no choice in her ability to offer herself to him. She felt his hand on her back and she shrugged it away, wound tighter into herself. She watched the trees along the road, careful to avoid looking at any of the road signs or mile markers. Soon, the trees turned to farmhouses and the farmhouses into subdivisions. Then the subdivisions were replaced by empty fields and the sounds of jets flying overhead.

  “One last flight,” Mathias promised as he coaxed her from the car. On the tarmac, a small private jet waited, its engines running. A tall blonde woman hurriedly waved them on board.

  As they entered the plane, Sara scented the woman. She was human, as were the three male crewmembers in the cockpit. Mathias grabbed the woman by the elbow. He nodded at the open cockpit door. “Close that and tell them I’ll have the heart of anyone who mentions where we are flying.”

  The woman nodded numbly and headed into the cockpit. Sara’s glance caught the curve of the woman’s shapely ass as she bent to whisper in the captain’s ear. The pilot looked nervously back at Mathias, offered an uneasy smile that disappeared behind the closing door. The woman took a seat next to the door.

  “Once we’re in the air, bring me something,” Mathias snapped.

  Seeing the woman blanch, Sara put a calming hand on Mathias’s arm. He freed his arm and wrapped her in his embrace. His lips nuzzled her neck and jaw line.

  “Just a little while longer, my love,” he said, his lips drawing on her ear lobe. �
�Then this cloak and dagger bullshit will be done with and you’ll be able to see your father.”

  He was still holding Sara when the flight attendant left her seat. Her walk was unsteady as she approached them and Mathias flashed the woman an angry glance. “I told you to bring me something.”

  The last word came out as a hiss, his need to feed winning out against his self-control.

  “W--we weren’t ready for you,” the flight attendant stammered.

  As distressed as the woman was, Sara could still sense the excitement that raced through her body. The scent of the woman’s sexual heat made Sara’s nostrils flare. The woman’s gaze flicked to Sara and Sara realized that she was the one frightening the woman. Fear of Sara’s retribution made the woman hesitate to offer what she was obviously ready to give.

  “Then go back to your seat,” Mathias growled.

  The woman turned to leave but Sara called her back. “Wait, you’ll feed him,” Sara said and moved away from Mathias’s embrace.

  “Sara, no,” he protested.

  “You won’t let me do it,” she hissed and reached across his body to pull the woman closer. She could smell the fluids coating the woman’s pussy and she had to release the woman’s hand before she lost control of her anger. “Do not continue denying me, Mathias,” she warned.

  “I can wait,” he said. His hands were shaking as he tried to clasp her to him. “You’re not ready for this facet of our existence. To see the reaction my feeding will produce in a willing person.”

  She jerked her hands free and pushed at him. “And are you ready,” she demanded to know, “if we land and find Athos waiting for us?”

  He looked down at the floor of the cabin, his shoulders sagging from fatigue and hunger. His upper lip twitched in angry displeasure but he rose from his seat and gestured for the woman to walk toward the back of the cabin. As he followed behind the woman’s softly swaying ass, he shot a warning at Sara. “I’m far from being an invalid.”

  Sara forced her gaze to the center of the cockpit door. Her hands were clenched together on her lap, her nails digging into her palm. She heard the brush of fabric as Mathias unbuttoned the top of the woman’s blouse and pushed the collar aside. The woman’s moan of sexual ecstasy pierced Sara’s ears at the same time Sara could hear the wet slide of Mathias’s teeth piercing the woman’s throat. The heavy pant of feminine breathing reached her, as did the squeak of the jet’s leather seats as the woman ground against the cushions. The woman whimpered excitedly, begged Mathias to go on in a voice that bordered on hysteria. The woman’s pulse seemed to multiply until Sara was hearing each throb as blood raced from her legs, past her throbbing clit, up through her heart to pour into Mathias’s mouth. There was a final moan as the woman climaxed, and then Mathias withdrew.

  “I would rather you sit elsewhere,” Sara said when he returned to his seat.

  Mathias ignored her, stretched his legs out and reclined the seat. “I only did as you demanded, Sara,” he reminded her.

  She rose and stepped over his outstretched legs, glancing as she did so to where the woman still rested at the back of cabin with splayed legs and heaving breasts. Sara looked at Mathias, but he refused to meet her angry stare. She picked the only seat that was at an equal distance between Mathias and the woman and gazed out the window. She didn’t know what altitude they were flying at but the glass was cold and chilled the air next to her. The cold wrapped itself around her and she began to shiver.

  How unfair of him to deny you like this.

  The words whispered through her mind. She tensed, ready to call Mathias to her.

  And prove to him that he was right? The voice chuckled inside her head. Go on, Sara, run to Mathias for protection.

  She relaxed, leaned back against the tufted headrest.

  Where are you? she asked and cast about inside her mind to find him.

  Right here, with you.

  Another cold chuckle sent a shudder through her body. She glanced at Mathias and saw that, although he was turned away from her, he watched her through the window’s reflection. She closed her eyes and tried to relax further.

  Where are they taking you, Sara?

  Don’t you know? She returned the question. Her brows knitted at the pressure that was building between her eyes. She focused on the spot, tried to hold it but it slipped away.

  I have my guesses. How dreadful, though, that he is treating you like a small child.

  And you would treat me better? Like you treated Patrick?

  The Roman’s wet chuckle clogged her ears. With the cold caress of a phantom finger against her frontal lobe, images strobed inside Sara’s mind. Patrick at the student union, his body tight with agitation as he waited for Colm. A long black limousine pulling up, the window slowly sliding down, revealing Athos’s face in a striptease of terror, one inch at a time. “Do you want her?” Athos asks Patrick, his lips never moving. With no more effort than switching on a light, Athos pours erotic images of Sara into Patrick’s mind, brings Patrick, throbbing with his desire, to kneel before the Roman. “I can give her to you.” This time the Roman’s lips move to shape the offer. Patrick, crippled with the sensation of Sara wrapped around his cock, is pulled into the limousine. The knife comes out, but only bites once into Patrick’s chest. The Roman’s mouth descends, drinks, and then Athos offers his own blood in return.

  He lives! Sara gasped silently.

  I’m not sure it could be called living, Athos toyed. He showed her the blade again, this time as it plunged over and over into Patrick’s chest. A beatific smile spreads across Patrick’s face as he whispers her name.

  But why? Why kill him…why let him live?

  He has his uses.

  So you can kidnap me? Asking him the question, she visualized a wide net that she tossed and then began to draw in tightly. She felt the net snag, knew she had him and opened her eyes. Before her stood a young Asian woman in an Air Japan uniform who leaned over the sleeping form of Colm to hand Athos a can of tomato juice.

  The vision snapped back and she felt Athos retreat. But he could not resist one last taunt. No, my dear, now that I know what you are, I plan on killing you.

  Sara felt a sharp spike at the base of her head and let out a high scream that instantly drew Mathias to her. He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her once, her body limp as a rag doll.

  “What is it?” he asked. “Is he with you?”

  “No, he’s gone now…Patrick may still be alive,” she shook the words out. “Athos is on his way to Japan.” She looked at Mathias. Fear filled her eyes and she allowed him to carry her to her original seat where he tucked blankets around her trembling body. Her breathing hitched as she demanded to know whether they were flying to Japan.

  “I’m not going to let him play a game of elimination,” Mathias warned as he refused to answer her question.

  “He said that he was going to kill me, now that he knew what I was…” Sara said and hugged the blankets tighter. The chill that marked the Roman’s presence refused to leave her body and sent a shiver of fear through her at the thought that he might still be in possession of her. Her voice dropped to a teary whisper. “What am I, Mathias?”

  “Whatever it is, Sara, we’ll find out together,” Mathias assured her. “Our destinies are linked, as are our souls.” His lips grazed Sara’s mouth in a tender kiss.

  “Then don’t deny me,” she begged, her body shaking against his with her need to share blood with him. “Please, Mathias.”

  The flight attendant, her senses finally recovered, hovered near them.

  “Go to the cockpit,” Mathias growled at the woman. “And don’t come out until we’re ready to land.”

  When they were alone, he turned to Sara and pressed her to his chest. She could feel him slowly shaking his head in dissent. “I almost lost you once today, Sara, because I was too confident that I could protect you. We risk too much if we share blood now.”

  She would have pushed him from her but his s
trong arms were wound around her and he refused to let go. He kissed the top of her head, brushed his lips across her forehead. “We can share everything else,” he told her in husky tones. “Just not that, not yet.”

  Her body slowly awakened to his caresses. Warmth returned to her limbs as he ran his hands down her arms, across her stomach and over her thighs. His mouth followed his hands, stopping to tease her nipples before moving on to press a kiss against her navel. She unwound her body to him, welcomed the hot fire of his lips against her pubic mound as he eased her pants over her hips and down her legs.

  She reached for him but he kissed her hands away and parted her legs. His head dipped to taste her, his tongue laving the inside folds of her pussy and clit. While he feathered her thighs with sharp kisses, he shed his pants and boxers. His cock throbbed against his stomach, the tip beaded with pre-cum to aid in penetrating Sara’s already wet pussy.

  “Let me drive these worries from your mind,” Mathias said and entered her in one swift stroke that sent her senses reeling.

  She wrapped her legs around him, squeezed his cock deeper as her ass balanced on the edge of her seat. Already, her sight threatened to abandon her and she tightened her muscles a second time, her pleasured groans joining his. He grasped her breasts and his thumbs traced the outline of her areolas.

  Yes, she consented and thrust against him. His cock wedged tightly inside her as her hips began to gyrate in wider, deeper circles. Her ass rose from the seat and Mathias gripped it with both hands. His fingers ran along the outside of her hips, his thumbs pressing against the smaller pink hole below her pulsing cunt.

  She screamed his name as she wrapped her arms around the back of her seat and thrust her body higher. Her muscles locked him to her, the slow tease of his thumbs against the exterior of the tight hole driving her mad. She wanted him to fill her like this forever and tried to slow herself as her body raced toward climax.

  “Just go with it,” he moaned, his head flung back as her body bounced along the length of his shaft. Her juices coated him, made the dark organ glisten like polished wood. She wanted to taste his cock again and her tongue darted out, licked at her lips. Through the unshuttered window of the plane, she could see the night sky and she jerked against his body, feeling his seed shoot into her as the stars blinked on.