The elevator hissed downward, doors opening into the outer atrium to Jacob’s cell. Two guards stood sentry at the cell entrance, Ben and Thomas. Both had powerful, broad shoulders, thick necks, and muscular legs in command of quick reflexes. Except for their facial features and their coloring, one black and the other olive, they could have come from the same gene pool.
Takes two smart, strong, and trained men working in con-cert to bring down a wraith.
“I don’t want to be here. I want you to know that this is against my will.” Talia’s voice shook and she gripped the arms of the wheelchair.
While second nature to Adam, the security had to be overwhelming from Talia’s perspective. Adam had personally selected the guards, pored over the blueprint to Jacob’s cell, and debugged the security program that ran the system. These guards and the coded, locked doors weren’t just security, they were the wraith reality. The sooner she got used to it, the better.
“I don’t want to be here either.” Jacob made Adam’s skin crawl and his chest ache, but the time for reservations was over. If he asked it of her, he could give her no less himself.
Adam nodded to the guards and coded the outer door to Jacob’s cell open. He angled Talia’s wheelchair inside and up to the main console, a white arc of work space fitted with security monitors, control panel, computer oversight, and speakers.
Adam tapped on a screen, set front and center. “That’s Jacob.” He swallowed hard. “My brother.”
Jacob lifted bonelessly to his feet, his movement a subtle and graceful contradiction of nature. White and clean, his junk waggling between his legs, he stepped up to his favorite camera.
“D’you bring me a treat, Adam?”
Talia recoiled from the console. She pushed out of her chair and backed to the wall.
Adam didn’t blame her. He didn’t even try to keep up a pretense of Jacob’s humanity anymore.
“He’s a wraith,” she said.
The room darkened perceptibly. Talia dissolved into a mottled haze of shadow. Jacob’s smiling face was in the monitor, seemingly unperturbed or unaware of the darkness falling on this side of the cell wall.
The guard’s hand went to his weapon, but Adam waved him down. “Just stay put and do nothing until I say otherwise.”
Adam knew this drill. The flight from Arizona had made him a quick study.
“Smells like a woman, Adam. You finally get yourself a girl?”
“Talia. Dr. O’Brien. Jacob can’t get out. You’re safe.” Adam kept his voice calm and sure. “You saw my security measures. Each has a minimum of three redundant systems. I haven’t overlooked anything. I swear it to you.”
“You can live and work here? With that in your basement?” Her voice was breathy and uneven.
“You will, too.” He moved slowly forward.
The trick was to approach without confrontation. To reach her skin to skin. Then bring her out.
“Adam,” Jacob sang, making things worse. “Give her to me. I know just how to handle her. I have something very particular in mind.”
Adam took her by the shoulders and turned her body toward him. He slid his hands over her collar to her neck, then higher to cup her face, his hands on her bare skin.
His vision grew sharper, his senses more acute. Her skin was taut silk, the contrast of her bright hair and pale skin against half shadow, otherworldly.
He peered into her dark eyes and made damn sure that his were in her own line of sight, capturing her full attention. He didn’t expect the pull of physical connection that made him want to draw her closer. To cover her soft form with his body. To protect her.
She was so weak already. If he could have spared her all of this, he would have. But he had no choice.
She was already shaking her head. “Please let me go. I don’t want to feel…”
“Afraid? It’s natural to be afraid. Just don’t let yourself be overtaken by it.”
Talia’s gaze hardened. “My fear has kept me alive.”
“No. Your fear just prolonged the inevitable.” A hard truth. “You would’ve died in that alley.” A couple more hours in the heat would’ve done it, even if she’d managed to stay hidden from the wraith.
“So what? Now I owe you my life?” Her pulse raced under his fingertips. Patty was going to kill him.
He kept his voice steady, full of calm reason. He knew of all things she responded to reason. “I want you to hear me out. Come out of your fear and get a good look at what you’re afraid of.”
“Oh, come on, Adam.” Jacob leered into the camera. “You forgot my birthday. Just one little cupcake?”
“Take a good look, Talia. He is trapped in there. Starved for years and mad with it. And with your help, we are going to find a way to undo him.”
“She’d have to do me first, eh?” Jacob jeered.
“Talia, there’s no other place to go. Wraiths cover the country from coast to coast. I don’t know where you think you could hide. Here at least you could study them…”
“…like you want to study me?”
The accusation hit home, smart woman, but he knew that to confirm her suspicions was to lose her.
Talia shuddered under Adam’s hands. “I don’t know what you think I can do.”
“Near-death, Talia. And Shadowman.” He stroked her check again with his thumb. Had to. Would have drawn her into his arms if she’d let him.
Jacob screeched, high and shrill. He thamp-thumped on the cell wall.
Adam’s heart lurched at the sound, but he controlled himself. The cell would hold. It’d been designed to hold against anything. “You see, Talia? My brother fears one thing, and one thing only. All I have to do is say the name to terrorize him. The first time I tried to kill him—” the horrible memory slipped from the strongbox in Adam’s mind “—he said, no, taunted, that Shadowman couldn’t get him.” There’d been a lot of blood that day. And the smell—Adam packed the memory away and concentrated on how it felt to hold Talia. Concentrated on hope to replace the misery. “Who is the source who met Shadowman?”
Jacob keened, high-pitched and pitiful.
Talia sobbed. “I don’t want to be part of this.”
“I’ll keep you safe. I swear it,” Adam pleaded. “Just tell me what you know so we can find out how to kill the wraiths.”
“I saw what that one did to Melanie.”
“And I saw what Jacob did to my parents.” The memory came anyway. The pain of their loss and the burgeoning horror of what Jacob had become.
“Please, I don’t want to feel this,” Talia said. She groaned and twisted to disengage him, but he would not let go. He had to make her understand.
“Jacob got to my…” Adam broke off. Pain sucked the air from his lungs. He took a deep breath. In and out, forcing himself to do what should be automatic. Just like the old days.
Adam tried again. “He got to my mom first. Killed her before we even knew what was happening. When Jacob went after my dad, I grabbed the fireplace poker. I was too late.”
Talia whimpered.
“But when he came after me, I hit him across the eyes. I was lucky. Wraiths still need their eyes to see. Once I blinded him, I trapped him in a concrete cellar on our property. Then I shot him.”
The gut-twisting, almost hysterical, fear of the time washed over Adam. The first time he’d turned the gun on his brother, the abrupt report, the smoking hole just left of center in Jacob’s forehead. If Adam’d had darkness to hide in, he would’ve very likely stayed there, too.
“I can still hear Jacob, Shadowman can’t get me. He killed our parents and made a game of it.”
“Must have been horrible. You loved them,” she said, her face lined with grief. She’d stopped fighting and instead bowed her head, her forehead just grazing his chin. “The pain of their loss never goes away, does it? It’s always there, behind what you do. You keep going for them.”