Deliver Me from Darkness: A Novel of the Paladin Warriors (5 page)

Roland cleared his throat, setting his coffee aside. “Do I need to remind you of the exact day when the last female Paladin died?”

Calhoun looked up at him sharply. No wonder. Roland never brought up that day unless he was forced to. His coffee turned to a pool of acid in his stomach as memories flooded him. The blood. God. All the blood. It had been a massacre, and he’d been helpless to stop it.

“You know as well as I,” Calhoun said, drawing Roland out of his true nightmare, “that a Paladin could be two hundred and look like they’re twenty.”

Roland shook his head. “She doesn’t feel that old. She feels…”

“What?”

“Young, innocent.”

Calhoun leaned against the back of the love seat, a scowl on his face. Roland could tell Calhoun wanted to argue, but he knew Roland’s gift would give him this kind of insight.

“Possibly a half then,” Calhoun said after a long moment of consideration.

Roland skewered his friend with a look. “Then who’s the father? Unless he died before he knew he’d sired a child…” He trailed off, knowing Calhoun would understand the implications. For whatever reason, there had always been more male Paladin. With nine out of ten births being boys, a female Paladin, even a half, would have been protected and cosseted by the entire council. Not left to flounder in a world full of dangerous creatures bent on her destruction.

Calhoun pounded the arm of the chair. “She’s not a merker.”

Roland remained silent. That she might be a merker didn’t sit right with him either. Merkers were the Paladin’s dark brothers. Fathered by Ganelon the betrayer and born of demon mothers, they were a mix of all things evil. Yet they could blend in perfectly with the human race. The only good merker was a dead merker. Which meant that if she was a merker, Calhoun would be required to kill her. There was no way Roland could allow that. No one would touch her.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. He needed to focus on the matter at hand. The woman’s heritage was all that mattered now. As soon as they knew who her parents were, they could figure out why she was being hunted and what would happen to her next.

It didn’t make sense that she was so damn powerful. There were very few full-blooded Paladin anymore. That’s what happened when the pickings were slim. There were fewer offspring in general, and the rest became less powerful as more and more of their blood was diluted by human mothers.

Calhoun tugged at his lip thoughtfully with his thumb and forefinger. “You think her mother could have been a merker-human cross, her father Paladin?”

Now Calhoun was really grasping at straws. A Paladin male would never mate with a creature that held demon blood, no matter how diluted the bloodline. Besides, “Would that matter?”

“Shit, no.” Calhoun sighed, running his hands over his face and through his hair. Light played off the paler strands, reminiscent of the otherworldly glow he summoned with his power. Good. Clean. There were other words that could be used to describe Roland’s friend, not all of them flattering, but that was Calhoun’s essence. Calhoun deserved someone like that too. He deserved a mate who would make him happy. One who could erode the corrosive mantle of responsibility he’d donned in response to the ever-increasing demands upon him as son of the Paladin leader.

The dark part in Roland considered letting his friend struggle with the issue—maybe if Calhoun thought the woman part merker he’d lose interest in her—but the issue of her origin couldn’t be ignored. Maybe she could never be Roland’s woman, but that didn’t change his instinctive urge to protect her. And he didn’t relish the idea of killing a friend.

“Her essence is bright,” Roland said. “Clean. Pure. And when she teleports, she’s traveling through His planes.”

Calhoun sat up straighter, his eyes widening. “How do you know?”

“She, uh, kind of dragged me along for the ride.”

Calhoun’s gaze sharpened. “How was that possible?”

Roland shook his head, still bemused. “I don’t know. I had a hold of her at the time, and…”

Calhoun’s eyes turned steely, his grip tightening around his mug.

Roland lifted an appeasing hand. “Hey, she was trying to set me on fire. I was just trying to stop her.”

“Huh.” Calhoun’s fingers drummed on the ceramic mug. “And you were able to tolerate it?”

Roland shrugged. “We weren’t there long.”

“Still…”

Calhoun didn’t finish the statement, but Roland knew what he was thinking. It was amazing Roland hadn’t been fried on the spot. Only those with pure souls could linger in His planes without discomfort. And since Roland no longer had one…Perhaps that was it. He no longer had a soul.

“So.” Roland cleared his throat. “What are you going to do with her?”

Calhoun took his time in answering. “I don’t know. She’s obviously in trouble. I
should
bring her to Haven.”

It was clear the thought of doing so was distasteful to Calhoun. Roland saw it in the rolling muscle of Calhoun’s jaw, the tension in his hand as he raised his mug and took a slow, methodic sip.

“Do you think that’s such a good idea?” Roland had thought it a good idea before, back when Calhoun was tucking a dirty urchin in his clean sheets, but now?

He brushed aside any thoughts of “mine” before they could rear their ugly head. The presence of her gift was enough cause for concern without factoring in his possessive instincts. The creatures of the underworld wouldn’t be the only ones hunting her for her power, though for far different reasons.

“Do you have a better one?” Calhoun asked.

Roland was quiet for a moment before finally saying what they both were thinking. “They’ll want her for themselves.”

A prize to be possessed. A power to be controlled. Just because the Paladin had once been angels before being commissioned by God didn’t mean their tenure on earth hadn’t affected them.

“Damn it, I know.” Calhoun slapped his cup down so hard that it sloshed, the dark liquid running across the table to seep into the remnants of the Tolstoy.

“You could mark her.” Roland’s aversion to the thought formed a taste far more bitter than the coffee in his mouth.

The marking was one of the most sacred traditions among the Paladin. It was said that for every Paladin that He created He also created a soul that would perfectly match. It was something every Paladin dreamed of: finding his soul mate. The marking was a signal to all that the mate had been found, accepted, and the irreversible bonding of their souls complete. As time had passed and fewer Paladin females were born, the finding of a true bond mate became rare. Desperation modified the marking, enhancing it with ceremonies and spells to form a bond that was not naturally there. That ceremony was now both a test to see if a pairing was compatible and then, if it was, a seal of intentions. If so, a pair-bond was formed, creating a link between the couple that would grow with time. The strongest of these would eventually mimic that of a true mate-bond in that what one felt, the other felt, what one desired, so did the other. Their minds would be linked, their hearts for one another. But one thing it could never do was link their souls. A pair-bond was a powerful thing, and though it would never be as strong as a true mate-bond, if allowed to form completely, it was irreversible…except in death.

Roland glanced over at his friend, his blood simmering at the thought of another male bonding with the woman that should have been his. It didn’t help that Calhoun’s eyes had brightened, his finger tapping like a runaway metronome against his lip. Before the urge to leap across the room and claw at the throat of his friend overtook Roland’s control, Calhoun shook his head.

“No. Right now she’s scared. She doesn’t trust me, and I don’t doubt that she hates me a little bit. She wouldn’t agree to a marking, and I would never do so without her consent.”

“They will.”
I
would
, he added to himself.

Calhoun got up to pace the room, his strides jerky and filled with tension. Roland’s own tension burned like a ball of iron in his gut. She couldn’t go to Haven. The sense of disaster accompanying the thought was enough to convince him. The question was why did he feel this way? Was this another case of knowing? Or was this another facet of the unwanted pull she had over him?

Didn’t matter. Her going to Haven was unacceptable. Some other option would have to be worked out.

“She can stay here,” Roland found himself saying, even as his body involuntarily stiffened in the plush leather chair. What the hell was he thinking? He could barely keep his hands, let alone his fangs, off her. And here he was offering to look after her?

Calhoun looked at him carefully, his puzzlement obvious. No wonder, considering Roland had been wanting her gone since the moment she’d arrived. “You think that’s wise?”

Roland shrugged. “I sleep during the day. I doubt we’ll interact much.”

Calhoun stood and nodded. “I have to attend my father’s council and see if I can’t gather some information of my own, but I will be back by this evening.”

Roland followed Calhoun to the door. “Sounds good. We shall breathlessly await your return.”

Calhoun shot him a decidedly unamused glare.

Roland smiled, giving the command to open the door. Calhoun paused on its threshold, giving Roland one last measuring look. “You are sure about this?”

“I’m sure.”

Calhoun left, and the door gave a deceptively soft snick as it closed and locked behind him. The sound should have been something more ominous, a clang or a creak at least.

Roland turned to stare blankly at the door to his sleeping chambers, but all he could see was the remembered image of what all those mahogany curls looked like spread out over his pillow.

Yes, he was sure. He was sure as hell that none of the bastards at Haven were going to get a chance to claim her. Now he just had to dig in for the duration…and hope that he wasn’t making the biggest mistake of his—or her—life.

***

“You have got to be kidding me.” Karissa glowered down at the bright yellow walkie-talkie that held down an equally innocuous-looking note:
call me if you wish anything.

Ha, as if. What she wished was to find a time machine, go back a week, and smack herself in the head for taking the path that had led her to this moment. Barring that, she’d settle for getting out of here. Somehow she didn’t think her kidnappers were going to go for that.

She looked around the room: same four walls, same bed—
really
starting
to
hate
that
bed
—same dresser, same nightstand with its bedside lamp that spilled light onto the tease of civility and the lie. The walkie-talkie and the note—as if she weren’t a prisoner. As if the door weren’t barred and locked. Okay. Maybe not barred, but certainly locked. Bastard.

The walkie-talkie crackled to life. “You ready to talk?”

Karissa hissed in a breath through her teeth. Heck no, she didn’t want to talk to that thing. She didn’t want anything to do with it. He was a vampire. A killer.

She pointedly turned her back on the walkie-talkie, not that he’d know, but it made her feel better. Like ignoring the tingle that raced through her body at the rolling rumble of his voice made her feel better.

What was with her? She should be scared shitless. No, she
was
scared shitless. She distinctly remembered being scared shitless when he’d been lying on top of her grinding his erection into her butt.

For a second. A very
brief
second before her body had betrayed her, fear melting into a delicious tingle across her skin. God! What was wrong with her? Twenty-four years and never had she had any serious lust pangs. Yet one glance from this vampire and she was practically hyperventilating.

Huh…Maybe he really did enthrall me.

Well, she was aware now, could throw the enthrallment off as easily as she cast off clothes. She’d do her damndest to resist any further attempts too. It was only a matter of willpower, after all.

The thing crackled again. “Fine. You can listen then. But you know…you should really cut me a break. It’s not every day I agree to having a guest.”

Guest? She snorted. “Prisoner more like,” she muttered.

The walkie-talkie hummed to life again. “At least cut Logan a break. He’s only trying to help.”

Yup. Logan was helping, all right. The aiding-and-abetting kind of “helping” that the police would charge a criminal with.

The little yellow Motorola was quiet for a while. She thought perhaps her “host” had decided to give up, but then it crackled again. “Don’t suppose you want to tell me your name.”

Nope. She remained silent.

“So…I guess I’ll call you Freckles.”

Freckles? Her hand flew up to the bridge of her nose. She hated being teased about her freckles. Another point against him as far as she was concerned.

“What were you doing on Logan’s doorstep?”

Running—duh—from the likes of you.
And didn’t that prove what an idiot she was. Trusting Logan had to be up there with all-time stupidest moves of the century. But she’d needed help, and she’d clung to her papa’s belief that Logan would help her, with a desperation born of need. Too bad Papa hadn’t known about the “friends” Logan Calhoun kept.