EdgeofEcstasy (14 page)

“Well, if Ben is following Melissa, where has he taken her?”
Daniel insisted.

Hayden looked at him as if he were a raving lunatic and
Daniel twisted in the lock to glare at the scruffy-looking wizard.

“I’m telling you, she is
gone
. I want her back
now
.
Call your fucking partner and get him to tell you where he is. Then I’ll get
out of your face and you can go back to tailing me,” Daniel insisted
ferociously.

Hayden’s black gaze showed curiosity as he seemed to ponder
Daniel’s words. Slowly, Hayden started to release him. The move was cautious
enough that Daniel knew if he made a wrong twist right then he’d end up
struggling once again with the tall but slender wizard. They would probably
both leave the scene with a few more bruises than the ones they’d already
delivered and received.

Hayden pulled a slender cell from the pocket of his jacket
and dialed a number from memory. His black eyes remained on Daniel.

Simmering, barely able to conceal his impatience, Daniel
waited while the phone rang, until after what felt like an eon he heard someone
pick up on the other end.

“Ben, it’s me—where are you?” Hayden asked.

Daniel could hear a muffled voice speaking on the other line
but couldn’t make out the words. Hayden, however, frowned at whatever was being
said.

“But Melissa—?” he queried, sounding confused.

Daniel felt his heartbeat accelerate and his fingers
clenched, preparing for battle with his bare hands if necessary.

“But man, if you lost her then you shouldn’t have gone home—you
should have called me!” Hayden was insisting.

Daniel growled incoherently and turned to stalk away, his
steps thundering, his blood pounding in his ears as his world seemed to shatter
and disintegrate. As if from a great distance he heard Hayden stammer, “I have
to go!” into his phone. He snapped the cell closed and raced after Daniel.

“You have
got
to fucking calm down, man,” Hayden
insisted as he caught up with him. “You are not in any way rational just now
and if you don’t get a grip I will lock you up in a cell until you
do
chill and can act with at least a modicum of sanity.”

“Where does Ben live?” Daniel insisted vehemently.

It seemed to throw Hayden for yet another loop.

“Huh? What the hell does that have to do with anything?” he
asked, nonplussed.

“Ben was following Melissa, she mysteriously disappears and
he heads home to cool his heels? I don’t think so. We know this killer is a
government agent of some kind, working a job, and a trained Assassin with
forensic knowledge. Ben fits the bill and is acting strangely. I’m going to see
him,” Daniel pointed out semi-logically.

Hayden snorted. “I don’t fucking think so,” he insisted.
“Ben is my
partner
. We’ve worked together for more than five years. I
think I’d know if he was some raving lunatic murdering innocent people and stealing
their magic by draining them dry. Try another thought, pal.”

“I don’t need your permission to visit his home,” Daniel
pointed out coolly, his icy-calm exterior creeping back as a clear plan formed
in his mind. Deadly professionalism slid over him. He knew it would act like a
mask over his features. He entered the bare, clear section of his mind that
helped him to notice a million minutiae of detail when he killed. Almost on
automatic, he mentally rifled through the list of possibilities he might
encounter and how he could react to them satisfactorily.

When Hayden grabbed his shoulder it was almost a surprise.
He had forgotten the agent still was with him.

“My partner is
not
some sicko freak killer,” he
insisted. Daniel shrugged, supremely unconcerned.

“There are two possibilities here. One is that you’re right—that
Ben is just a fool of a Special Op agent who somehow lost track of Melissa and
has gone home. I’ll reach his place, search it, find her not there and move on
to another option. No harm, no foul. The other possible outcome is that you’re
a blind idiot and Ben
is
responsible for these killings. When I search
his place, Melissa will be there, or some other tangible evidence of what’s
occurred will be found, and I will tear the fucking place apart until I either
find her or beat her location out of Ben. I can live quite easily with that—how
about you, Hayden?”

Daniel watched icily as Hayden visibly swallowed. Reining in
his impatience, he didn’t tap his foot or outwardly show any other signs of
annoyance as Hayden thought it through. After what seemed an eternity, the dark
head jerked once in a crisp nod, hair sticking up at odd angles from their
fight and the vehemence of the nod.

“Right.” Daniel nodded in return. “So at least we’re now on
the same page. My car is just around this corner. You can give me directions.”

Breaking into a quick jog, Daniel ran the rest of the
distance to the car, not even bothering to check that Hayden was behind him. He
could feel the trickle of seconds ticking past like an icy hand trickling down
his spine. Daniel didn’t need to be a telepath to realize it was his intuition
screaming at him that time was quickly running out.

The wizards hardly exchanged more than a dozen words as
Hayden gave terse directions and they drove to Ben’s loft apartment. Daniel
parked in a residents-only parking bay, not even bothering to pull out the card
to reduce the chance of getting a ticket should someone recognize his car as
not local.

Barely had he pulled on the hand-brake before he unsnapped
his seat belt and climbed from the car. Hayden had pointed out which loft was
Ben’s and he wasted no time in stalking toward it. Even as the tall, slender,
dark-haired wizard raced to catch up with him, Daniel surveyed the loft and
tried to gauge the quickest way of entering it without tipping Ben off about
their entrance.

“I still want to say this is insane,” Hayden huffed. “You’ve
come unhinged, Cranston. Utterly deranged.”

“Utterly,” Daniel repeated sarcastically. In truth he was
barely paying attention, his mind fully focused on getting Melissa back safely
and nothing else. The two wizards circled the loft and at the back Daniel
noticed that what he assumed was the bathroom window, judging from its size and
the sewer pipes leading out of the wall, was all steamed up.

“Looks like your partner is in the shower,” Daniel
commented. “I bet if we sneak in the front we can have a quick look around
without disturbing him.”

“Breaking and entering is
not
—” Hayden began, but Daniel
didn’t even bother to wait for him to finish. “Dammit!” Hayden cursed, and ran
to catch up with Daniel.

Even as he strode purposefully toward the sliding, factory-style
door, Daniel pulled a bunch of lock-picks from his jacket pocket. Hayden hissed
out a breath but refrained from giving their presence away by yelling.

Daniel heard a few muttered words under Hayden’s breath—“batshit
crazy fuckwit” and what he thought might have been “must be losing my mind” as
well, but he couldn’t be certain as he focused on the large, industrial-sized
lock. A minute and a half later, Daniel heard the final
click
that meant
the lock had opened, and stood up. Leaning his weight backward, he carefully
swung the door open to reveal the inside of the large, open-plan room.

Not wanting to waste even a moment, he strode inside and
cast his eyes around, assessing. As he stealthily circled the room, he took
everything in. When he had circled halfway around the room, he noticed Hayden
finally entering the loft. He remained in front of the door, obviously
reluctant to enter farther without an invitation.

Daniel couldn’t have cared less. A growing anger and heat
built inside his chest as his opened senses discovered the abomination of an
essence within the walls. He saw a half-open door that he presumed led to the
bathroom, judging from the steam and the sound of running water. It was then that
he noticed a semicircular alcove partially hidden away in one corner of the
room, not immediately visible to someone entering the main section of the loft.

Something struck Daniel instantly about the semi-private
alcove and chimed with his instincts. Striding toward it with his senses open, he
physically recoiled from the waves of sickness and evil intent washing over
him, temporarily paralyzing him.

Daniel took in the disgusting scene in one quick glance, his
heart hammering hard in his chest as he saw Melissa seemingly unconscious,
naked and bound to an altar, a couple of incense sticks burning near her head.

“I’m here, Mel,” he said through the waves of nausea that
racked his body. He believed she could only hear him subconsciously, but wanted
her to know even if she didn’t fully understand that things would be all right
now—that she didn’t have to think he had left or deserted her. “I’ll get you
out, I promise.”

He heard running footsteps behind him and, still half-blind
from the onslaught on his senses, Daniel pulled out his gun and came
uncomfortably close to shooting Hayden.

“What in the world—?” Hayden cried out, disgust, anger and
dismay showing equally on his face.

Those feelings were hastily replaced by grief. Daniel felt
his heart twinge slightly at the naked emotion. Despite Daniel’s anger with the
wizard, any fool could see that the emotions were real, raw and utterly
genuine. In that moment Daniel realized that Hayden hadn’t had the faintest
idea what Ben had been up to. No one, Daniel knew, could possibly be that good
an actor.

“Don’t open your senses,” Daniel commanded firmly. “Not
unless you want to lose your breakfast. The stench is almost overpowering. You
go in and release Melissa, Hayden—I need to close myself down carefully, or I’m
going to pass out.”

There was a stone altar, almost crude in its simplicity.
Blood and what Daniel distressingly thought might be semen stained the surface,
though it had obviously been scrubbed many times. The rituals he could imagine
Ben having committed upon the altar, however, were dark, permanent and life-changing
enough that no amount of cleaning would remove the stain another wizard or
witch could sense upon it.

Hayden took a deep breath and entered the alcove. It could
barely be two dozen feet deep—small, cramped and obviously meant for only one
person to worship comfortably in. Daniel didn’t even want to think about the
sacrifices that had occurred there from the look of it.

His conscience could deal quite well with death, with the
terrible things humans and wizards alike could do to each other. But he could
never fully understand the appeal of slaughter. He killed to protect and save,
to defend. There was purpose in that. There was never any true or honest
purpose in killing those unable to protect themselves, or for personal gain.
Daniel never had—and never would, he knew—understand the depravity that could
lead one to kill willingly for any of those reasons. It left such a stain on
the soul, created such an addictive monster inside a wizard or witch that the
real self became lost and only a beast remained.

Once again, instinct saved Daniel’s life. As he slowly
closed his magic down, something intangible warned him of the danger. Mere
seconds before a lead pipe came crashing onto his head, he sensed the change in
the air around him and dodged. The pipe crashed into his shoulder instead of his
skull, painfully dislocating the joint from its socket. Daniel screamed, more as
a warning to Melissa and Hayden than unconsciously releasing the pent-up rage
and pain as they exploded within him.

Daniel whirled around, his right arm a dead weight, and tackled
a wet, naked Ben to the ground. As they grappled together, pain screamed
through Daniel’s body, but he closed it off, shut it out entirely. Melissa lay
naked, bound, unconscious and helpless on the altar. He
had
to get her
out of there, protect her. There was no other option in his mind.

Roaring in pain as Ben punched him in his already damaged
shoulder, Daniel kneed Ben hard in the groin before rolling out of range.
Panting, he crawled to his hands and knees, searching for some way to press his
shoulder back into its socket so he could fight. Hayden—a little late to the
party, but better late than in fierce denial, Daniel decided—jumped into the
fray and hit his ex-partner, rage flickering across his face.

“I defended you!” he screamed at Ben. “I covered for you
when you were off on those meditative retreats, when you snapped at people and
disappeared at odd hours. Even when Daniel here pointed it out to me, I
believed
in you. You were my partner. What the
fuck
, Ben?”

Daniel closed his eyes as he stood and the room swam before
him. Hayden straddled Ben and restrained him, and Daniel took a long, deep
breath of clear air before slamming himself against the wall and ramming his
dislocated shoulder back into its socket.

Blinding pain burned through his body and his vision swam
for a moment as he came very close to passing out. Steady, deep breaths kept
him on his feet, although his body shook like a leaf and he felt as weak as a
newborn babe drenched in blood.

A sickening thud had Daniel’s eyes snapping open again and
he turned to find that Ben had thrown Hayden into a wall. He was bleeding
copiously from his skull, what appeared to be a deep gash over his forehead
where he had met the wall.

“You evil son of a bitch—just fucking die already!” Daniel shouted,
readying himself for a fight, probably to the death.

Daniel pulled a sharp, wicked-looking knife from his boot
and held it in his left hand. All Assassins were trained to be ambidextrous,
though most preferred their dominant hand. Daniel had always blessed the fact that
he was naturally dominant with both hands, born ambidextrous and not simply trained
to be so. He was as good with a knife or gun left-handed as he was right.

Ben rushed him in a footballers’ tackle and instead of
dodging Daniel moved forward to meet him and slash down with the knife. He knew
he only had a few good hits in him before the pain from the pipe dislocating
his shoulder as well as his earlier struggles with Hayden caught up with him.
There would be no drawing this fight out or having a pissing contest to see who
was the tougher bastard. Daniel would fight as dirty and as quickly as he could
manage and still be victorious.

The two men came together with a sickening thud of solid
bodies and bones crunching together. Daniel aimed to puncture Ben’s
kidney—wanting to disable him but not actually kill him as yet—and missed,
sinking instead into the soft flesh of his side.

“Hayden!” Daniel heard Melissa cry before choking on the
smoke and coughing as if she were losing a lung. “Wake up, damn you—let me out
so I can help Daniel!”

Too busy fighting to be able to spare a breath for her,
Daniel instead focused on keeping Ben busy and away from Melissa.

“I’m going to fuck her a dozen different ways and then cut
her to pieces,” Ben taunted him, clearly trying to make him strike and give Ben
an opening he could use. Daniel tried to filter out the words, having heard
them and thousands of others like them in his years of fighting. This time was
different, however. This time they were about Melissa, and he couldn’t keep his
emotions out of it. It was personal.

“I’m not going to drain her dry quickly,” Ben insisted
cruelly. “I’m going to use her, fuck her, make her beg and plead and cut a
piece of her off each time I’m finished with it. I might even bring some
friends over, let them have a go or three at her and watch. Hell, I can tape it
all to relive later on. And then—”

Having heard more than enough, Daniel silently and lethally
rushed Ben. The other wizard was partially ready but Daniel had given no
indication of his movements, so he still had the element of surprise on his
side. He managed to use his momentum to carry Ben back against the wall, a
spine-crushing hit against the hard plaster causing the other wizard to moan.

The maneuver caused Daniel to use much of his good left hand
and his grip on the knife loosened. Ben seized this opportunity and twisted the
knife around, thrusting it back into Daniel’s side and barely missing his
diaphragm and stomach. Daniel groaned, a deep, tortured sound he at first
thought was a wounded animal.

A shrill, high-pitched scream cut through the air and the
next thing Daniel knew he was being pushed behind a slender woman, blonde hair
brushing past his face as Melissa inserted her body between his and Ben’s.

He watched, amazed, as quick as lightning she kneed Ben in
the balls, used the flat palm of her left hand to break his nose back into his
face, then used the edge of her hand to chop the side of his neck. In a swift
gesture Daniel recalled from his own training, she compressed Ben’s pressure
point and caused him to crumple unconscious to the ground in a dead faint.

Daniel swayed on his feet, his shoulder in brutal agony.

“I had him,” he insisted, his macho ego the first thing to
be regained. He didn’t have enough blood in his brain to think of anything more
cohesive to say. Melissa cradled her right hand in what looked like a
defensive, instinctive movement that caused Daniel to reach out and tenderly
touch her.

“What did he do to you?” he asked gruffly, part of him
wishing Ben was not unconscious so he could kick him in the ribs, maybe even
break a few just for good measure.

“I did it myself,” Melissa replied, her skin unhealthily
pale, clammy and sweating somewhat. “I finally realized Hayden wouldn’t get me
free and you were…well,
busy
. I was scared for you, so I broke my hand
to get it free and forced it to untie my other wrist. It rather hurts.”

Daniel looked at himself—bruised, bleeding, his shoulder six
different colors and already swelling badly and sweating. His shirt and pants
were ripped and torn. Melissa stood as naked as the day she was born, her hand
black and swelling as well, her hair disheveled, curls spiking all over the
place, her skin as white as a sheet, sweating lightly from the physical and
emotional strain.

Without conscious thought, Daniel laughed. Whether it was
the release of fear, tension or just morbid humor, the situation suddenly
seemed hysterically funny. Tenderly, as gently as if they were both made of
glass, he held out his good arm and brought Melissa to him and held her as if
they might be broken by a strong wind.

“I love you,” he said. “I nearly went mad when I realized
you were gone. Poor Hayden is going to arrest me for what I did and said to
him. I think he nearly had a coronary when I broke into here on nothing more
than a gut instinct.”

“I think your gut instinct is golden,” Melissa replied. “I
will
never
ignore it again and I am so very sorry I didn’t insist we
look more into your concern earlier. I promise you, I will never make that
mistake again.”

“I could have pressed harder. I thought my instinct was as
weird as you did. Besides, the blame also lies with me. I wandered around while
you and Kiera were talking. I do believe I will keep you close to make sure
your back is never unguarded again,” Daniel insisted as he pressed a soft kiss
to her lips. Melissa kissed him back just as gently.