Edge of Danger (32 page)

 
Not possible. He’d cast a protective spell around Eden,
and
sealed all the windows and doors just as a precaution.
Nobody
could have gotten in or out without him knowing it.

 
“Nobody here,” Sebastian said, puzzled.

 
Gabriel pointed across the room at the faint glimmer of two figures entwined over near the sofa. They were little more than a transparent shimmer.

 
Eden’s feet were dangling a foot off the floor as Dixon, his hands wrapped about her throat, strangled her limp form.

 
Gabriel’s heart slammed into his throat, and for a nanosecond fear held him immobile. Then fourteen years of T-FLAC training kicked in.

 
Channeling his anger, he released a powerful electrical current from his fingertips. No warning. No shouts. Just let the son of a bitch have it with all he had.

 
Jagged shards of lightning-like energy, icy green and serrated, shot from his hands toward the opaque figures. The energy stream hit hard, slamming into the man from the side and making him stagger. He screamed a curse, jerking with the impact from the next bolt, and the next.

 
“Let her go,” Gabriel snarled, advancing even as he fired off yet another salvo. His aim was dead on target, and the man screamed as each flash hit him in the head.

 
Gabriel wasn’t dicking around.

 
The image was now as faint as a memory.

 
Fucking bastard was going to shimmer her out. God—

 
Between one heartbeat and the next Gabriel shimmered between Eden and Dixon, transformed just his right arm to that of a panther, and raked razor sharp claws down Dixon’s face.

 
Without fanfare the man disappeared.

 
Gabriel spun around, just in time to catch Eden as she rematerialized and fell into his arms.

 
“Tremayne.”

 
When Sebastian came to his side Gabriel reluctantly handed Eden to him. “Check her out. MacBain?”

 
“Aye. We have her. Go.”

 
Everything in him wanted to stay to make sure that Eden was unharmed. But neither Tremayne nor MacBain were capable of dealing with this kind of intruder. The fact that a wizard had managed to pierce the shield Gabriel had erected over Eden and the castle was cause for grave concern. He did a lightning-fast recon of every room, every floor of the castle. All one hundred and ninety-five thousand square feet, in under five minutes.

 
Nothing.

 
No sign. No residue. No hint that a powerful wizard had been inside Edridge Castle at all.

 
Returning to the library he saw that the two men had placed Eden on one of the sofas and covered her with a light throw.

 
Sebastian looked up. “Anything?”

 
“Not a damn thing.” Gabriel had eyes for no one but Eden. “How is she?” He strode across the room, then dropped to one knee beside her to press two fingers to the pulse at her throat. Thready and weak, but there. With his touch her heart rate immediately sped up.

 
“Better with you around, apparently,” Sebastian said from his position sitting on the coffee table facing Eden. “Look at that, you touch her and her cheeks pinked up. Cool trick.” He rose. “I’ll go make some calls at HQ.”

 
“Yeah. Do that.”

 
“I took the liberty of placing a container on the floor just in case, aye?” MacBain moved out of the way for Tremayne as he left the room. “The lass doesna fare well with reentry.”

 
Gabriel glanced at his watch. She’d been unconscious for a good five minutes. He tapped her cheek lightly. “Wake up, sweetheart. Did she need it?” he asked MacBain. The sensation in his chest was so unfamiliar that for a moment he thought he might be experiencing a heart attack.

 
It was fear.

 
A fear that had almost debilitated him earlier.

 
Not fear for himself. Fear for Eden.

 
“No, no’ yet at any rate. She hasna opened her wee eyes. Something’s no’ right aboot this havy-cavy business, ye mark my words.”

 
An understatement.

 
Gabriel peeled aside the throw, and carefully ran his hands over her body to check for injuries. Thank God there didn’t appear to be any. He undid the top button on her jeans and eased the zipper down a few inches, then pulled the soft velvet blanket back over her.

 
“Yer protection spell hasna failed before, has it now?”

 
It worried the hell out of him that he hadn’t felt the presence of the other wizard. And he
should
have. Even the weakest, most inexperienced wizard emitted an energy. Yet he’d felt
nothing.
Not even so much as a damn, fucking glimmer.

 
“Clearly he’s more powerful,” Gabriel said grimly, resting his hand on the steady beat of Eden’s heart, and willing her to open her eyes. Who was this wizard, and where the hell had he come from? More important right now—why had he tried to take Eden? Or had his intention been to kill her? Or had she just presented the easiest target? Not knowing scared the shit out of him.

 
“That isna the only reason the spell didna work, aye?”

 
“He couldn’t have bypassed my spell if he wasn’t stronger.”

 
MacBain came to stand beside him, and cleared his throat.
“ ‘When a Lifemate is chosen by the heart of a son. No protection can be given, again I have wo—’ ”

 
The tight clench in Gabriel’s chest intensified. Christ. This was all he needed to complicate things, he thought, wishing he could stick his damn fingers in his ears as he’d done as a kid, and sing lalalala so he couldn’t hear MacPain in the ass’s theory. “She is
not
my Lifemate.”

 
“Deny it all ye want, lad. It is what it is.”

 
“I haven’t even known her a week.”

 
“Aye. Sometimes that’s all the time a heart needs.”

 
“I am not in love with the woman, MacPain. Remember that.”

 
“Aye, I’ll no’ forget,” The old man said, droll as always. “I’ll be marking the date and time in me diary.”

 
“Don’t you have something better to do than breathe down my neck?”

 
MacBain held up the paring knife and radish, and cocked a hairy white brow.

 
Eden let out a raspy, painful cough as she came to, and all Gabriel’s attention was on her. Her lashes fluttered, then slowly opened, revealing scared, teary, chocolate-colored eyes. “W-what?”

 
Her fingers curled around his, trusting as a child’s. “Don’t try to talk,” he told her gruffly.

 
She struggled to get herself up onto her elbows. He should have expected it. The woman had a steely spirit and indomitable determination.

 
Seeing the red and purple bruises blooming around her throat flooded him with renewed anger. The anger and the fear he was feeling, particularly combined as they were, were something new to him.

 
He, goddamn it, didn’t like the feeling one fucking little bit. Too bad he’d dispatched the wizard so quickly. He would have preferred to explode him bit by painful bit. Preferably with Eden a thousand miles away.

 
“W-why did Dixon try to kill me?” she croaked, bringing her hand up to her throat. The phone rang and MacBain shuffled over to answer it. “I think he used a topical paralytic on me,” she said faintly.

 
Gabriel gave her a startled look. “Why do you think that?”

 
“He had to have drugged me or something. One minute we were talking, then everything suddenly got fuzzy and he was strangling me. What the hell was that about?”

 
“Because it wasna Dixon,” MacBain announced. “That was control on the phone. Dixon was in an automobile accident on his way to Sky Harbor Airport in Tempe. He was pronounced dead an hour ago. A bad business, this,” he scowled. “Can I go back to me kitchen now yer back?”

 
“Yeah.” Gabriel absently teleported the old man and his radish back to the kitchen.

 
“God, it creeps me out when you do that.” Eden gingerly rubbed her neck, then frowned. “I’ve met Special Agent Dixon several times. That was him in here with me. I’m sure of it.”

 
“No,” he said on an expelled breath. “I think we have a morpher.” A skill only one man he knew about was capable of. That man had been killed in Spain this morning.

 
“A what?”

 
“Morpher,” Gabriel repeated. “Some wizards can morph. They borrow a body or an identity. It’s rare, but it’s been known to happen.”

 
“You can do that.”

 
“Animal only. A morpher can replicate
someone.
Borrow a body or identity.” He frowned. “I know of only one person with that skill.”

 
“Good. Then you know who this guy is.”

 
“Lindley was killed this morning.”

 
“God. Do you have any idea how freaking
preposterous
that
sounds
? And the fact that I’m lying here,
talking
about it quite normally is—Never mind. Why would he want to kill me?”

 
A damn good question. And one Gabriel wanted his own answers to. “What did the two of you talk about?”

 
“Can I have some of that water?” she asked, and he handed her a half-filled glass sitting on the coffee table, then waited while she drained it. She handed him the empty glass. “Thanks.

 
“He mentioned that Jason Verdine was offering a ransom for my safe return. Then I told him about Rex and what it’s capable of doing. I mentioned that I was considering building another one for you as a way to make amends for building Rex in the first place. I asked about you. About T-FLAC.”

 
“And?”

 
“He said T-FLAC wasn’t real. Oh, yeah—and he mentioned you were a nut job, which frankly didn’t surprise me much.” She shot him a small smile, a smile that in no way mitigated the fear in her eyes. She shivered. “Then I got kind of in and out invisible. And then the son of a bitch
choked
me.”

 
He watched her with brooding eyes and an intensity that he could tell made her even more nervous than she was already. He couldn’t help it. He could smell the fear on her, mixed with flowers. An untenable combination, he thought, feeling feral. Rabid.

 
Her eyes seemed bigger, darker in the paleness of her face. He observed the bruises on her pale, slender throat. A pale slender throat that, if he’d been a second later, would be snapped like a twig right now. He might never have known if she was alive or dead if the wizard had managed to teleport her before he’d come into the room.

 
In the space of a breath he felt another surge of rage.

 
And fear. Bone deep, primordial terror.