The Order Boxed Set (23 page)

“I think we need to approach the fae, but I go alone for that one. I’m not letting you anywhere near them.”

Tara shivered. “I’d thought of the fae as the good guys and demons as the bad. Now I find it’s the good guys who want me dead. Or maybe they both do. Then again, I suppose I am one of the bad guys. At least half.” She tried a smile, but it was a pathetic attempt. “Maybe they cancel each other out, and I’m just sort of average.”

Christian took hold of her hand. “There is nothing average about you, you’re unique, and I’ve told you, it’s not so simple to say the fae are good and demons are bad. Ask Piers—he’d take a demon over a fae any day.”

“You’re not making me feel any better here.”

“We’ll sort it all out, I promise. Now, let’s go home.”

“Can we go to my place first? I’m worried about Smokey. I don’t think he’ll let your people near him, and I don’t want to leave him there on his own.”

“Okay, then home.”

The apartment was in darkness when they arrived. Which was as expected. Tara let them in and switched on the light. She was about to enter when Christian put a hand on her arm.

“There’s someone here,” he whispered.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Tara stopped in her tracks. She hated the fear that ripped through her but couldn’t deny it. An image of Chloe’s abused body flashed across her mind, and she gripped Christian’s arm.

“Is it demons?”

He shook his head, but reached inside his coat and drew his pistol. He held it loosely in his hand and pushed Tara behind him.

“Wait here,” he said.

“Not likely.” She wouldn’t stay anywhere alone. She was sticking close by Christian.

“Okay, just don’t cling to my gun arm.”

She dropped her hand but kept close as he entered the apartment. He pushed open the door to the kitchen but nothing moved. Backing out, he entered the living room, flicked on the light, and Tara gasped.

“Jamie!”

Jamie was on the sofa, unconscious, his left side drenched in crimson. Blood soaked the fabric beneath him, and as Christian sniffed the air, a strange expression flickered across his face.

“Is that your friend?” he asked.

Tara nodded. Pushing past Christian, she sank to her knees beside Jamie. His eyes were closed, his face pale. She touched his cheek. It felt warm beneath her fingertips, and she released her breath—at least he was alive.

Christian came to stand behind her.

“Is he going to be all right?” she asked.

“I should think so. Why don’t you go look for your cat, and let me see to him?”

“Please don’t let him die.”

Christian picked up one of Jamie’s limp hands and ran his thumb over the pulse point.

“He’s not dying. He’s lost a lot of blood, but that’s not why he’s unconscious.” He lifted the hair back from Jamie’s forehead. A large purple bruise marred the skin. “Go on. I’ll get him bandaged up, and we’ll take him with us. I don’t want to stay around here too long.”

He ripped Jamie’s T-shirt down one side. What appeared to be claw marks ran across his left shoulder and chest. The bleeding had stopped but the wounds still seeped. Tara watched as Christian probed the wounds, then she scrambled to her feet. Her legs trembled, and she closed her eyes for a moment. She couldn’t begin to imagine what she would have done if Jamie had been dead.

“You will save him, won’t you, Christian?”

“He’ll be fine, but you could get me a clean towel or something to use as a bandage.”

In the bathroom, she grabbed a couple of towels from the cupboard and hurried back.

“Here, I don’t have any antiseptic or anything—I never need it.”

Christian took the towels from her. “No problem, but I want to stop the bleeding before we move him. We can sort it out once we get to CR.”

She gave Jamie one last lingering look. “Good. I’ll go find Smokey.”

At the door, she glanced back in time to see Christian raise his bloody fingers to his mouth and lick them clean. His eyes narrowed on Jamie and a small smile curved his lips. Tara opened her mouth to question him, then clamped it shut and turned away.

She searched the house but she could find no trace of her cat. Maybe he was hiding from Jamie or Christian. Standing at the kitchen window, she peered down onto the heath but it was too dark to see anything. She opened the window and called. Nothing answered, and after a few minutes, she gave up. She got some fresh food from the freezer and set it on a dish to defrost. Christian came in as while she filled the water bowl.

“He’s not here,” she said.

“Don’t worry, we can come back another time. I’m sure he’ll be fine. Cats have a way of looking after themselves.”

She followed him into the living room. “You go first,” he said. “I doubt we’ll meet any neighbors at this time, but just in case.”

“Do you want something to wrap him in, so you don’t get blood all over you?”

His lips twitched. “I’m hardly likely to be bothered by a little blood.” He looked at Jamie. “On second thought, it will save the car. Go get a blanket.”

Tara got one from the bedroom and watched Christian wrap Jamie carefully. Jamie groaned and a wave of relief washed over her at the sign of life. He wasn’t small, but Christian picked him up easily and held him against his chest. “Lead the way.”

It was quiet on the way to the car. Tara scrambled into the back and Christian handed Jamie in after her so he lay across the seat, his head cradled in her lap.

Halfway back to CR, his eyes opened. “Tara?”

She stroked the hair back from his forehead. “Hi,” she said softly.

He blinked up at her, his eyes dazed. “Where am I?”

Christian snorted from the front seat. “Very original line.”

Jamie tried to sit up, but Tara pushed him back down. “You’re in a car. We’re taking you to Christian’s place. We found you at the apartment, Jamie—what happened?”

“Chloe’s dead,” he said.

“I know.”

“I wanted to…” He trailed off. “I wanted to kill them all, but there were too many and in the end I ran away.”

Tara frowned. “Who did you want to kill?”

“Demons.”

“You know about demons?”

Jamie buried his head in her stomach, and she could feel him shaking. She ran her hands through his hair, trying to make sense of what he’d told her.

After a few minutes silence, he rolled his head around to face her. “I wanted to warn you, to tell you everything. I went back to your apartment, but I must have blacked out before I could phone.”

“We found you there, unconscious.”

“Why did they have to take Chloe? She was nothing to do with all this.”

“It was a mistake, a horrible mistake. It should have been me. It’s my fault, but Jamie, please don’t do anything stupid. I couldn’t bear it if I lost you as well.”

His eyes were haunted. “It’s not your fault, it’s mine. I should have done something sooner.”

“What could you have done?”

“It doesn’t matter now, she’s dead, and it’s too late to make any difference.”

He turned his face away, and Tara stared out of the window watching as the streets flashed by.

None of this made any sense. She’d met Jamie on her first day in London when she’d felt lost and alone. Homesick for Yorkshire—something totally unexpected. Jamie had bumped into her outside the apartment building. They’d started talking, and she’d felt an immediate connection. Had it been a set up? But why? Who was he?

The car stopped. They were back in the underground garage at CR International. Christian glanced at her through the mirror, and she tried a weak smile.

He climbed out and opened the back door.

“Jamie.” Tara touched him gently on the shoulder then looked up as Christian hovered in the doorway. “I think he’s unconscious again.”

Christian reached in and picked him up. Jamie groaned but settled back in the other man’s arms. His eyes remained closed all the way up to the thirteenth floor.

Christian carried him into the office and lowered him to the back leather sofa. Jamie was still very pale, his eyes closed, his damaged arm held tight against his side.

Tara sat beside him, took his uninjured hand in hers, and squeezed. Jamie opened his eyes; they were filled with pain.

“Can you do anything to help him?” she asked Christian. “Please, he’s lost so much blood.”

Christian studied the other man, a slight frown on his face. “Oh, I think you’ll find he’s quite capable of healing himself.”

“What do you mean?”

Jamie stared at Christian with something close to horror stamped on his features. “Are you going to tell her?”

“Don’t you think it’s about time?” Christian said.

Jamie struggled into a sitting position, wincing at the pain. “Look, I didn’t want to deceive her, but I didn’t have a choice at first. I promised Kathryn. Later, after Kathryn went, we moved here and—” He shrugged. “She wanted a normal life, and for a while I thought maybe it would be okay. How could I tell her and spoil everything?”

Tara heard the words but they didn’t make any sense.

“Everything started to go wrong—demons popping up all over the place, and her wanting to break all the rules. I knew I couldn’t cope on my own, and I couldn’t tell her the truth about what I really was.”

“So you sent her to me?”

Jamie nodded. “I recognized your name. I couldn’t believe it. Christian Roth, a private investigator, but you had a reputation for being fair, and she was going to need somebody on her side.”

“Okay,” Tara said. “Is one of you going to tell me what’s going on?”

She looked from one man to the other, and Jamie nodded. A moment later, he disappeared, and in his place sat a large gray cat.

Tara blinked. Christian raised an eyebrow but said nothing. She turned back to the cat. “Smokey?”

The cat strolled across the leather toward her. It rubbed its soft head against her hand. Tara reacted instinctively, as she had so many thousands of times before, and scratched behind his ears. He purred loudly then rolled onto his back, paws in the air. She rubbed his silky tummy, an activity that had so often given her comfort. She tried not to think, did her best to keep her mind blank until a slow, trickling growl sounded behind her.

She turned to see Christian standing over them. He was staring at the exact spot where her hand met the gray fur, and he didn’t look happy.

“That’s enough,” he snarled.

It took her a moment to realize that he wasn’t talking to her but to the cat. Smokey rolled onto his feet, blinked his yellow eyes, and sauntered to the far end of the sofa. A moment later, Jamie returned.

She stared at him, her eyes moving over his body. Reaching up, he unwrapped the towel from his shoulder. The wound was still visible, but the healing process had started and the bleeding stopped. His expression was apologetic, and he shrugged.

“You’re a cat?”

He nodded.

“My cat?”

“I would have told you.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

She stared at him through narrowed eyes. “You slept next to me. You watched me in the shower.”

Christian growled again behind her, and Jamie threw up his hands defensively. “Hey, I was a cat. It did absolutely nothing for me.”

Tara stood up, her legs trembling slightly. Her cat was actually a man. Or was it the other way round? Was Jamie actually a cat? All this time, and she’d had absolutely no idea.
Well, you wouldn’t, would you?

Moving away, she stared out the window at the dark city below. Were there no real, honest to goodness human beings in the world? Maybe the whole notion of normality was a complete impossibility. Maybe normality didn’t exist.

When she turned back to them, Christian had moved away from the sofa. He was half-sitting, half-leaning against the desk, arms crossed over his chest. Jamie was still seated; he kept casting quick glances at the vampire.

Tara crossed back and stood looking down at him. “So what are you exactly?”

“I’m a shapeshifter.”

“What does that mean? You can shift into anything?”

“No, not anything.”

“Have you always been a shapeshifter?”

He nodded.

She remembered the man in the pub telling her that her mother had a cat. A big gray cat. “You knew my mother, didn’t you?”

He nodded again. All the time, the answers to all her questions had been there, right at her side. Tara sank down onto the sofa. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I told you why, at first I promised, and then you wanted so much to be normal.”

“You must have known that wasn’t going to happen.”

“It might have, if you hadn’t been so keen on breaking the rules. I did try to stop you.” He frowned. “I promised your mother I’d be your friend. She thought you’d be so alone, and she wanted you to have some chance at a normal existence.”

“So you’ve been watching out for me since I got to London?”

He nodded.

“That night you’d been fighting. Was that protecting me?”

“A demon. Luckily only one.”

“And later, in the bar—” She looked at him suspiciously. “Did you put something in my drink?”

“I drugged your wine.”

Christian chuckled. “You know,” he said. “I almost feel sorry for him.”

“How can you feel sorry for him? He drugged me.”

“‘What was I supposed to do?” Jamie asked. “Let you go on a drunken demon rampage through London? Have you ever seen a demon on an alcohol high?”

“Funny enough—no!”

“I have,” Christian said. “He did the right thing.”

“No he didn’t.” Tara almost shouted the words. “He should have told me. Explained.”

“Perhaps, but it’s too late now. Get over it.”

Jamie reached out a hand and touched her lightly. “I’m sorry. I did what I thought was best.”

“Don’t be too hard on him,” Christian said. “Shifters don’t think too well for themselves, and they don’t do conflict.”

Jamie shot him a look of dislike. “We’re not usually given much of a chance.”

“What do you mean?” Tara asked.

“Shifters are usually tied to one of the other supernatural races, demons or fae.”

“Or vampires,” Jamie said, and Tara could hear a faint thread of bitterness in his voice.

She looked at Christian. “Like when you mark a human, like what you wanted to do to me?”