Phantom Series Boxed Set (53 page)

Her undeniable yearning for safety and security canceled out every bit of street smarts she’d ever learned. Years of depending on an undependable mother, squatting in abandoned buildings and foraging for food had broken her down to utter desperation. When his limo had popped a tire a few feet from where she was hanging on a street corner, she’d seen him as just another hotshot she could grift for lunch money.

But he’d found her act charming. Long after a second car had come to rescue him from the unwashed masses and return him to the golden vistas of the California coastline, he’d stayed with her, grunging his Armani slacks on the curb, asking her questions and listening to her bullshit answers.

And even after his wise-ass butler had coaxed him into leaving that day, he’d come back. Sometimes alone. Sometimes with Donna. His wife had blown Lauren away with her stylish smarts and fearless attitude. Lauren had never met a woman like her before. She wanted to be her. How could she not?

At the time, Lauren hadn’t known what to make of these aliens from her own hometown. At first she’d figured they were just slumming, bringing her little gifts of gourmet cheese and imported crackers to appease their consciences for living such lives of excess. But after her mother lit out on some drug run to Tijuana, Lauren decided to screw her hand-to-mouth life and go with the Marchands back to the Hills. A couple of days turned into a week. Then a month. Then three years.

They taught her to dress properly and speak with correct pronunciation. They found her roles in the community theater they ran in West Hollywood, then had her audition for the parts in indie films. She earned her chops and, little by little, she transformed from a streetwise punk to a sleek, sophisticated actress who could believably spout lines from
Medea
as easily as the lyrics from the latest top-ten ballad.

But then Donna left, just days before Lauren turned eighteen. Ross’s interest suddenly became personal—intimate. He had never, to her knowledge, looked at her that way, no matter how beautiful he’d told her she was or how handsome she’d found him.

How powerful.

How perfect.

Suddenly terrified by emotions and an attraction she’d never expected, Lauren had run back to the streets. She’d learned that her mother had OD’d, and the only friends she could remember had either gone to lockup or had moved on. She remembered meeting a guy—a runaway like her—and buying him dinner with the twenty dollars Ross had given her earlier in the day to tip her masseuse. Later that night she’d been jumped by five gang girls trolling for drug money. With each punch, kick and cut, she learned how much she no longer belonged in the hood. If not for the runaway who’d called the cops, she would have died in a stinking alleyway.

The kid had waited with her until the ambulance arrived, and then had abandoned her when she’d needed him most.

“Lauren, are you okay? Do you need more pain meds? I can get the doctor,” Ross offered now.

Her own eyes filled with moisture. She took a chance at raising her arm, which still felt as if she were being pricked by a thousand pins and needles, and swiped the tears away. The desperation of that moment all those years ago came flooding back. If only the kid had dragged her away instead of calling for help. If only he’d helped her escape, rather than leave her to fall once again under Ross’s spell.

“What do you want, Ross? You can see I’m fine. The film will go on. I haven’t talked to any doctors yet, but I’m sure the movie won’t be delayed for more than a few days. The insurance—”

He cut her off with a hand over hers. She wanted to recoil, but didn’t have the strength.

“I’m not worried about the movie.”

No matter the pain, this time she couldn’t prevent the laughter.

His grin was small and disarming, reminding her of how she’d once fallen so hard for him.

“Okay,” he admitted. “I’m worried about the movie. But I’m more worried about you. First you break into my house and take something that isn’t yours—”

It took all of her feeble strength, but she managed to yank her hand away. Beside her, one of the monitors beeped more quickly. It must be gauging her heart rate.

“Is that why you’re here? Because of the sword? It’s mine, Ross. You know it is. Your lawyer will tell you, or hasn’t he already?”

“You can’t prove it was a gift.”

Any sentimental thoughts lingering in her brain burst into nothingness.

“Can’t I?” she countered, trying to stretch so she at least looked as if she were sitting up taller in the damned bed. “Want me to produce the guy who owns the antiques shop? He’s still there. He remembers us. He remembers the sword. Want to know how I know that?”

His spray-tan face paled. “The guy was a hundred years old,” he claimed, but his voice quavered—just the tiniest bit, but enough to know she’d won this battle. At least for today.

She relaxed, closed her eyes for a moment and thought about Aiden. God, where was he? Where was the sword? If what Helen said was true, her trailer was probably swarming with people by now. Guys from the set. From the studio. From the insurance company. Anyone who took one look at the brilliant artistry of the sword wouldn’t hesitate to steal it.

Maybe even Ross himself.

But he didn’t have the weapon back yet or he wouldn’t have come here to harass her. Nevertheless, for all she knew, Aiden Forsyth and the sword she’d coveted could be gone.

“I’m tired,” she said. Her entire body ached, though she guessed that the liquid dripping into her arm was numbing the true brunt of her pain. She needed sleep. She needed to heal. She needed Ross to get the hell out. Even if she did have the sword, there was no way she was going to give it back.

He patted her hand, then let his palm sit atop her hand for a few minutes. A subtle shake vibrated from his fingers to hers…or was that just the aftereffect of her own injury? She opened her eyes and noticed, in this unguarded moment, that Ross’s irises had a dark curtain drawn across them—a look she’d seen too often during their life together for her not to know that something was seriously wrong.

“Okay,” she said with a sigh. “I’ll bite. What’s wrong?”

“I did this,” he said.

She tensed, but did not move. “You tried to kill me?”

He blinked rapidly, as if he’d just realized what he’d said. “No, of course not. Damn it, Lauren. I’m pissed off at you for taking the sword, but I would never…You know I’d—”

“Then what are you talking about?”

He pressed his lips together, and the eyes she’d once gazed into with such admiration and trust blinked with uncertainty. “You need to watch yourself. You need a bodyguard. What was the name of that guy you used two years ago when you started getting those creepy letters?”

“The letters weren’t creepy,” Lauren said, her last words punctuated by an uncontrollable yawn. “And I don’t need a bodyguard. This was an accident.”

“You don’t know that,” he countered.

“And you don’t know that it wasn’t.”

Ross moved away from the side of the bed, and Lauren was too tired to follow him, even with her eyes. She allowed her lids to drift closed and concentrated only on the sound of his shoes. Step. Step. Step. Step. Pacing. He always paced when he had a problem to work out. Step. Step.

Shuffle?

She forced her eyes open, blinking. Ross stood, eyes wide, frozen in place.

“Ross?”

He jumped. “What was that?”

Terror flashed in his eyes, but Lauren was too close to unconsciousness to care.

Fourteen

“Leave.”

Aiden whispered the command into Ross’s ear at such close range, the man’s arms flailed through him in surprise. Aiden felt nothing. He wasn’t exactly in one place, was he? He was…everywhere. He’d suspected that he could concentrate his spirit into a semblance of a translucent body if he so desired, but for now he existed everywhere and nowhere all at once, contained only by the walls of the sterile room.

The sword called to him. Helen had tucked the bag containing the weapon beneath the spare bed, and while he was grateful to be near the woman who’d awoken his soul, he wanted nothing more than to be separated from the forged metal, imbued as it was with Rogan’s vile magic. While Ross was in the room he resisted the pull. Ross, who had kept Lauren from freeing Aiden for years. Ross, who had belittled her to his friends when she was not within earshot and had placated her with words of love he did not mean. Ross, who had had a most amazing woman as his wife, and yet had squandered her affections.

And now he sought to torment her when she should be recovering?

Not bloody likely.

The man had no honor. Had he still been in his own century, Aiden would have called him out. Instead he concentrated, drawing all the power and strength he possessed in this transitional state against Ross. The man jumped again when Aiden’s invisible flesh pressed nearer.

“What the…?”

Aiden focused on his fist, drawing all of his energy into the place where his hand and fingers and knuckles curled into one ball of pressure. But before he could betray his upbringing by striking a man without warning, a woman dressed completely in blue shot into the room.

She bypassed Ross and immediately attended to Lauren, who had fallen asleep again. After ensuring that her charge was unharmed, she tossed a suspicious glare at Ross, tempered only by her soft voice.

“Sir, are you all right?”

Aiden stood down. He supposed the man did look rather ridiculous, scrunched up against the presence of someone he could not see.

“Did you hear that?” Ross asked.

Aiden floated nearer to Lauren, who was now sleeping peacefully in the bed. Though she was still connected by various tubes and wires to machines, Aiden had learned that the soft, consistent beeps meant she was on the mend.

“Hear what?” the nurse asked, eyeing Ross suspiciously. “Ms. Cole is just fine. The doctor will be in—”

Aiden couldn’t resist. He returned to Ross and used the energy he’d built around his hand to give the man a violent shove. Ross screamed like a lunatic, but when the nurse rushed to him, he shot out the door and disappeared. The nurse followed, shouting for him to stop, and then the door swung closed and the noise from outside faded away, leaving only Aiden’s chuckle to compete with the sounds of the medical apparatus buzzing and beeping throughout the otherwise quiet room.

Soon after, the nurse returned, accompanied by a doctor who had treated Lauren earlier. Fit and tall and dressed in a crisp white coat, the man engendered in Aiden confidence in the doctor’s healing abilities. He’d taken good care of Lauren so far. From what he’d overheard, she’d come close to death and had escaped that fate only because of something called “CPR.”

“Who was that you were chasing?” the doctor asked.

The nurse’s brow furrowed even as she hovered over Lauren, efficiently tending to her in ways that did not wake her. “The husband.”

Former husband
, Aiden thought.

The doctor picked up a chart dangling from the end of the bed and perused the information, then examined Lauren himself. She stirred this time, and Aiden started at the jolt of pleasure he received when she opened her eyes again.

“You’re going to be fine, Ms. Cole.”

The doctor explained the various procedures that had been performed on her as a result of her injury. He outlined the treatment, which, at this point, consisted mainly of rest.

“When can I leave?” she asked.

“Not for a few days, I’m afraid.”

“I have a movie to shoot,” she argued.

The doctor smirked. “You are the star, aren’t you? And you were injured on the set. I’m thinking no one is going to complain if you take a few days to recover.”

She opened her mouth as if she wished to comment or ask more questions, but the doctor assured her he’d return later, so she closed her eyes and drifted back to sleep. Aiden felt his hold on his consciousness slipping. Lauren lived. She would recover from the strange accident. He could no longer fight the pull of the sword.

***

Luckily, hours later, when the darkness descended on the room like a veil, power drew back into Aiden’s soul and spread like lifeblood through his body. A not wholly unpleasant tingle spread into his fingers and toes, and a thrumming in his ears pumped in time with his heart. In the same rush of life, magic burbled from the center of his chest and rushed into his veins, hot and thick and scented with metal, like polished steel.

Cold. Hard. Deadly.

The magic no longer belonged to Rogan, but the shadows of his influence remained. At the dawn of his reawakening, Aiden had sensed the crazed sorcerer’s presence. Rogan had yoked him to a weapon he’d imbued with evil, and the vile blackness seemed wrought into his soul like the gold in the handle of the sword.

Shadows pulsed within him. He could feel them, just as he could feel the powerful weapon tucked into a bag beneath him.

From the other side of a curtain he heard a feminine mewl. Aiden swung off the spare bed, tore the fabric aside and then instantly stilled.

A white-coated man leaned over Lauren’s bed. Instinctively Aiden stepped back, not wanting to reveal his presence to the doctor. But after a second he realized the lights in the room remained dim—too dim for a physician to examine a patient. Lauren made another noise, but this time, the sound was strangled. Through clenched teeth, the doctor hissed directly into Lauren’s face, “Where is the sword?”

He was clutching her shoulder with one hand while a knife glinted in the other.

Aiden gave her no time to reply. He grabbed the man’s wrist and twisted the joint until the slim knife flew from his grip, clattering to the floor.

The man wailed in pain and spun, his face hidden behind a mask, though his dark eyes flashed with rage. “What the—”

Aiden heaved the man away from Lauren. The intruder sailed over a wheeled tray and tumbled to the ground with a metallic crash.

“Who are you?” Aiden demanded, positioning himself between Lauren and her attacker. He glanced over his shoulder. Her eyes were open, but unfocused. One hand grasped at her throat, but she did not speak.