Blood Moons (37 page)

This apartment was ridiculous. It had a warped triangle layout, and the kitchen opened into the living room on one side and the bedroom on the other. Sitting at the kitchen table, Tristan had a clear view of every corner of the place.

He'd barely noticed when he'd come in, but now as he looked around, he wanted to smile. Only Dara would try to turn this bleak shell into a treasure box.

The walls were painted a drab gray, but she'd hung colorful pictures everywhere. He saw nature scenes, animals, even mythical beasts. There was no theme or design in her choices, just a mad attempt to fill the place with colors. Lots and lots of colors.

She had shelves of knickknacks, glittering jeweled boxes, picture frames, and crystal statues that reflected the light like diamonds. The plates and glasses in her kitchen were the 336

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colors of a rainbow, and there were vases everywhere, but no flowers. If she'd been living here, those vases would have been stuffed to cracking with blooms.

There was an electronic reader on her nightstand. Curious, Tristan picked it up and turned it on to see what she liked to read. He rolled his eyes. She'd added extra memory to the device and it held over two thousand books. The thing stored statistics about the contents. The books had ratings, kept count of how many times they'd been read, the number of bookmarks ... The one with the highest rating had been read over a hundred times, and had seventy-nine book marks. If it were a physical book, it would have fallen apart several times by now.

Why would she do that—read the same thing over and over again, when she already knew how the story would end?

Tristan had never been one to pick up a book just for the hell of it. But he'd been in others' minds when they'd read, marveling at how those stories came to life for them. To him, they'd always been just pages and pages of words. He read the story, but his imagination had to be lacking, because he never once saw the face of a character beyond the written description.

For people like Dara, those characters might as well be neighbors, walking down the street and living their stories, as real as they became for her.

Years ago, after he'd finished with the soldier and had hated himself so much he'd had a knife to his wrists every day, Tristan had been frantic to escape what he'd become. He had gone to museums and libraries, searching out people with 337

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the most vibrant imaginations. Books took too long. He'd needed a quick fix, to lose himself in what others saw in their minds and escape his own. The worlds he'd seen...

One of those people had been an elderly scholar of languages so old hardly anyone studied them anymore. The woman read ancient texts as if they were the morning newspaper and Tristan had been baffled to realize that, not only could he understand the language while he was in her mind, he still remembered it after he left. The hours he'd spent in her mind, part of one epic tale or another, had given him a modicum of peace he'd never thought to feel again.

When she'd died at the age of ninety-seven, and taken away his sanctuary, Tristan had had two options: kill himself, or turn himself in. Ultimately, death had seemed too easy a way out.

Dragging his mind back to the present, Tristan memorized the title of Dara's favorite book and made a mental note to read it in the future.

He checked all the windows and locks before going to bed.

Even in sleep Dara snuggled up to his side and laid her head on his shoulder. It was an amazing, terrifying feeling—

suddenly having so much to lose. Tristan closed his eyes and passed through his own shields to settle into her mind. The tightness in his chest eased and he was finally able to take a deep breath, but he didn't get too comfortable yet. Making sure she was deep inside her dreams, he formed an empty room with a single door. It opened onto her path with this Brendon Z. Tristan couldn't get into his head, but he could draw him out here.

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The killer had just begun to take down his guards, moments away from falling asleep. Tristan sent him a lure: an invitation in Dara's name. Brendon Z was just relaxed enough to accept and his presence poured into the room like thick fog. There were things the killer was eager to say to Dara, but he soon realized she wasn't there and his presence looked around in confusion, finding nothing that would normally be in a mind. Like thoughts.

But he found Tristan.
"Who are you?"
His voice was echoed by the desperate cries of his victims. Tristan didn't flinch. He had more than a few of those himself—and his were worse.

"Your death,"
he answered, making his voice echo from all around. Then, because he didn't feel like talking to what amounted to the guy's back, he gave him a direction to focus on.
"I thought it was time we met."

Brendon Z chuckled, a scornful sound that came out shaky with unease.
"Right. Who are you really?"

"It'd be great if you could keep up. I don't want to have to
go over the same thing again."

Brendon Z bristled with anger, insulted.
"What do you
want from me?"

"When tomorrow dawns, I will already be on your trail. You
won't know who I am, or where I'm coming from, but you will
know when I find you."

"And then I'll be shaking in my boots. You don't scare me."

Tristan smiled. He was muting his own presence, making it small and nonthreatening. And still, Brendon Z was shivering.

"Yes, I do,"
he said, growing slightly bigger and darker. To make things worse for the maggot, he hit the prick where it 339

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would hurt the most—his sense of purpose.
"You had a job to
do. You failed, and innocents have suffered through your
actions. The powers that gave you this assignment are not
happy."

"Y-you're bluffing! This is all a trick. That bitch is trying to
scare me. Well, it won't work!"

The shadow Tristan had been until now grew and stretched into an enormous thundercloud. It rumbled with shouts and pleas of men he'd reduced to weeping balls of terror. He added things he'd seen in others' minds, gave the memories teeth and claws to sink into his prey. With flashing glimpses of glowing eyes and sharp white fangs, he surrounded Brendon Z, drowned him in the thundercloud.
"Feeeeeel
meeee,"
he commanded on a hiss of air.

The killer screamed. Clawed at eyes that weren't there.

Fled from the room to the safety of his own mind, but the nightmares followed him. He would dream them all through the night and wake up as scared as he'd made others feel.

Satisfied for the moment, Tristan brought his shields back up and dismantled the room. He sought Dara in her dream world, found her standing on the battlements, looking out over the lands. The gates were open to him and he went inside and met her in the courtyard.

She was smiling when she dismissed the guards. Tristan let his mind relax, let her lead him into her own fantasies.

It was the best dream he'd ever had.

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28th day of the 4th Blood Moon, 3028

They were going out to breakfast because Tristan had cleaned out the few supplies Dara had had. She took him to one of her favorite places. It was a rooftop restaurant with a view of the entire city and on clear days, it was well worth the two-hour waiting time and the sky-high prices. Lucky for them she'd made a reservation before they'd left the apartment, so the waiter seated them almost as soon as they came in.

"So how does it feel to be a hundred and eight stories up?"

she asked Tristan after they gave the waiter their selections.

He shrugged carelessly. "About the same it felt fifty stories below ground. But the view is better."

"You are a difficult man to impress," she grumbled, tearing off a piece of bread. She was still raw from the night before, but the worst of it had faded with the help of a good night's sleep and waking up in the arms of the most amazing, frustrating, incredibly intense and fantastically hot man on the planet.

He'd looked at her with those heart-stopping green eyes of his filled with ... something. He'd kissed her so tenderly she thought she might die. And then he'd made love to her, holding her gaze the entire time. It had been the most intense experience of her life.

Tristan made her forget the fear she'd hugged to her chest falling asleep the night before. He was here now, and left her 341

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no choice but to trust that he'd keep her safe. Just walking to the restaurant, he'd shielded her with his body the entire way. He'd even steered her away from strangers he seemed to have taken an instant dislike to. It gave Dara the confidence she needed to not fear for herself, which meant she could fully focus on the task of getting Katie back and stopping the madman in his tracks.

Now, if she could just get Tristan to cooperate and show the appropriate amount of awe...

"No, I'm not," he said. "I am amazed every time I look at you."

Dara blushed. She took a sip of her water to stall for time while she thought of something to say. She'd had boyfriends before who'd said romantic things to her. It had disillusioned her more and more every time she saw in their minds that they didn't mean it. Romance was a game to most men, one small step above full-on manipulation, and all so they could get into a woman's pants.

So often in the past, her life had felt like a book she read.

She knew the main characters' perspectives, their thoughts and feelings, their hopes and dreams. Only in real life, those thoughts never matched what came out of the characters'

mouths.

Tristan meant every word he said. If anything, his inner thoughts were even more powerful than he was able to express. Dara wanted to embrace it all, let the fates decide, and hope for a happy ending.

She thought ... she thought she and Tristan might be happy together. Not here, but somewhere else.

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Tristan took her hand and pressed a kiss into her palm. It throbbed with a heartbeat, not her own.
"We'll go wherever
you want."

Their food arrived a moment later—plates stacked with pancakes and waffles, eggs and toast. They ate in comfortable silence, enjoying the atmosphere so far above the dark streets. Soft music played all around them, taking her mind off other, more unpleasant things. For the time being, it was just the two of them, eating breakfast in a nice restaurant like a normal couple would do on a Saturday morning.

Dara asked for the check when her phone rang. She had a feeling it wouldn't be a pleasant call. She hadn't even said a greeting before MacMurphy demanded, "Where are you?"

"Eating breakfast," she replied. "Why?"

"Because I came to pick you up, and you're not home."

"Is something wrong?"

"Yeah, there's something wrong. You're meandering outside alone when there's a fucking serial killer on the loose!" She had to hold the phone away from her ear for that last part.

"One, I don't meander. Two, I'm not alone. A ... friend came to town last night. I'm with him."

There was a long pause. "Would this friend happen to be Tristan Hunt?"

"Wow, you can read minds over the phone?"

"Dara," MacMurphy said carefully, "say good-bye and leave. Meet me at HQ."

She frowned at Tristan. "What are you talking about?"

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"Jeremy returned this morning. He was on Niren Colony. I don't know what he's told you, but your
friend
is an escaped felon. He's dangerous, Dara."

"Is that true?" she asked Tristan without covering the mouthpiece. "Are you dangerous?"

"Terrifying," he said, green eyes sparkling briefly with flecks of gold.

She grinned. "Did ya hear that? I'm in good hands."

MacMurphy sputtered and she pulled the phone away from her ear just in time to protect her sensitive eardrums from his yelling.

"Do you want me to talk to him?" Tristan asked.

"You'd give him a heart attack." She gave him her wallet and the check to pay, then stood up from the table and went to the edge of the patio. "John, is Jeremy with you?"

"Why, yes, Dara, he is. They sent him to apprehend Hunt and drag his ass back to New Alaska."

"Put him on, please."

The phone was passed on and Calen's voice came through.

"Dara, you okay?"

"Perfectly fine. Now tell me what the hell is going on."

"There are a lot of people shitting their pants right about now. Your friend left a mess."

Dread settled in her stomach. "Any casualties?"

"Aside from a cage that looks like a tank came through it and a mangled security fence, thankfully no. He scared the shit out of some guards, but they'll live."

"And Dr. Chase?"

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"She's fine. She quit and no one has heard from her since she left the colony, but she was fine the last time someone saw her."

Dara was relieved, but more than that, she was so damn proud of Tristan. Even at his worst—and she knew it had to have been really bad for him to wreck a cage that strong—he hadn't hurt anybody. For all his huffing and puffing about how dangerous he was, even when he'd had no reason to hold back, Tristan's only crime was some property damage.

He was a good man.

"I wasn't always,"
he said in her mind.

Dara wanted to argue that, but Calen was waiting for her to say something and right now, she was too all over the place to keep track of two conversations at the same time.

"Well, if he didn't hurt anyone, then I don't understand," she told Calen. "What's the problem?"