When Temptation Burns: A Shadow Keepers Novel (Shadow Keepers 6) (30 page)

She licked her lips, wanting to say something, but everything that came to mind sounded hollow.

“I went wild for a century. Did horrible things I don’t want to think about. Things I don’t even remember. And things I sure as hell don’t want to tell you about.”

“But you stopped.” It wasn’t a question. She knew him—dammit, she
did
—and at his core, he wasn’t evil. He might have been lost, afraid and alone. Might have wanted the darkness to destroy him. But at his heart he was good. More than that, he was a fighter. A warrior.

He was the man she saw now. “You stopped,” she repeated. “Tell me how. Because I see the man you are today, and nothing you did back then erases him. The deeper you fell, the more impressed I’ll be, because that just means you had to claw and fight harder to change yourself.”

He reached out and stroked her hair. “If you believe in them half as much as you believe in me, the teens at that center are lucky to have you.”

“I believe in what I see. Will you tell me what happened? How you found your way back?”

He nodded. “I sank low—horribly low—and I set out across Europe. Those were dark years, and I met many others who were like me. Other shadowers—vampires, werewolves, jinns. Some were wild—they had no moral code and they hunted humans. I clung to them, sinking deeper and deeper, letting myself truly be the man my mother had always believed me to be.”

“Eventually you stopped.”

“I met a group of vampires who had learned to control their daemons.”

“
Their
daemons?”

He nodded. “When a human changes into a vampire, it releases a dark malevolence. The daemon. It’s similar to what’s buried inside of me—a dark force that needs to be controlled. The vampires I met had gone a little wild, too. But they’d reined it in, and though their daemons still fought for release, they were winning the battle to keep the darkness suppressed. They helped me. We helped each other, and together we learned to control our darker urges. For years, they were my closest friends.”

She expected him to go on, and when he didn’t, she remembered what CeeCee had told her about how he and Luke had had a falling-out. “Was one of them Luke Dragos?”

He looked at her, startled. “Good guess.”

“I’m a kick-ass reporter, remember?”

“You truly are amazing. Yes,” he said, “Luke was one of them. For many years, he was my closest friend.”

“CeeCee said you two had a fight. Actually, she said that was an understatement. But now you’re telling me
he helped you. What happened? I mean, unless you’d rather not tell me.”

“No,” he said. “I want to tell you everything.” He stood up and held his hand out for her. He led her to the couch and pulled her against him, so that she was tucked in under his shoulder. It felt so natural to be sitting curled up like that, even though everything they were talking about was completely unnatural.

“There was a woman,” he said. “Kathryn. When I first saw you, I thought of her. Your eyes are similar. Pale and beautiful. I loved her, and no, I didn’t feed off of her. But I wanted to. I wanted to share it with her. I wanted to share everything with her.”

“What happened?”

“It was during the French Revolution. Luke and Sergius and I were living in Paris. Despite the bloodshed, it was an exciting place to be. And for vampires and paradaemons it wasn’t nearly as dangerous as it was for mortals. While we were there, I met Kathryn. She lived outside the city but she had come into town to have a dress made. I saw her and I was smitten.

“I hadn’t ever dated a human woman, but I decided to court her. She was flattered and flirtatious and I was swept up by the romance of it. Looking back, I think it was more the situation than it was the woman. At her core, she was a trivial girl. But that was a different time, and I was completely under her spell.”

“What happened?”

“I urged Luke to go with me to her chateau one day. I was determined that Kathryn would need to learn the truth about me if we were to have a life together, and I wanted my friend to be there for moral support. It was a mistake. Those were hard years for Luke. His daemon
has always lived close to the surface, and being around the revolution only stirred the beast up.”

She dreaded the question she had to ask. “Did he kill Kathryn?”

“No,” Doyle said, his words laced with cold amusement. “Though I blamed him for it for centuries.”

“I don’t understand.”

“While I was in another part of the chateau, Luke lost control of his daemon. He fed upon one of the housemaids, and Kathryn saw him do it.”

Andy shifted on the couch so she could face him. She didn’t know where the story was going, but she knew it wasn’t over, and she stayed silent, letting Doyle finish in his own time.

“She was horrified. She believed the devil himself had entered her house—that she’d invited him in by having impure thoughts about me. By letting me touch her outside of wedlock. She set fire to the house, hoping to burn out the demons.”

“Oh my God.”

“When I realized the chateau was on fire, I searched frantically for her. I finally found her upstairs, behind a wall of flames. I was able to get to her, but I had to reveal my nature in order to manipulate the flames. She realized what I was—another daemon that had invaded her house—and threw herself from the window, taking her own life to escape from me.”

“Doyle.” She clutched her necklace, her heart twisting for him and for that poor, confused woman. “It wasn’t your fault.”

He made a snorting sound. “For years, I’ve blamed Luke for Kathryn’s death. It destroyed our friendship. I let it destroy our friendship.”

“You were distraught.”

“I was,” he agreed. “I was also an idiot.”

“Have you told Luke?”

A hint of a smile touched Doyle’s lips. “No.”

“You should.”

“I know. I was young then—less than a century, whereas he’d already been walking the earth for millennia. I think I expected him to be stronger. And when he lost his grip on himself—despite knowing how important it was to me that our time at the chateau go smoothly—it reminded me of how fragile my own self-control was. I knew how much I owed him for helping me, but I didn’t want a reconciliation because then I’d be living with that reminder every moment of every day.”

“That’s quite a feat of psychoanalysis.”

His mouth pulled down in a considering frown. “Well, I could be wrong. It’s possible I was just being an ass.”

She laughed, relieved that he’d dispelled some of the tension. “What did you owe him for?”

“I have a true gift,” he said. “And I discovered it because of Luke.”

“What is it?”

“When I touch a body, I can see into the mind of the dead person or shadower.”

“What?” Never in a million years would she have expected him to say that.

“That’s how I felt when I first realized what I’m capable of.”

“
How
did you realize that? Does it work on any body?”

“Only the newly dead,” he said. “The images fade quickly. As for how I discovered it, like I said, I have Luke to thank.”

“I’m listening.”

“This was before Kathryn’s death. He was helping a woman who’d been abandoned by her husband and was raising her young daughter alone. There was nothing romantic between them, but he cared for her and the girl. He’d bring them food, check on their needs. Almost as if he were their patron. At the time, I didn’t understand his motivations. I later realized that he saw his own wife and daughter—the family that had been destroyed when he turned into a vampire—reflected in them.”

“Something horrible happened to them, didn’t it?” She could feel the dread twisting in her stomach.

“They were murdered.”

“Oh, God.”

“Luke was devastated, of course. It was summer, and we knew the bodies would begin to stink quickly. He asked me to help move them—to give them a proper burial. I agreed, and as I bent to pick up the little girl, I touched her head. There was so much fear in her that the images almost reached out and sucked me in. I thought it was a fluke, but I tried it on the mother and I was able to gain access to her thoughts, too.”

“Did you see who killed them?”

“That was the beauty of it,” he said. “In those days, the authorities paid little attention to the deaths of poor people. They weren’t even going to investigate. But I saw everything, and I told Luke. We found the killers—and Luke meted out his own brand of justice.”

“Good,” she said. “And you?”

He shrugged. “I started to explore my gift, using it to help people. Just in my own travels at first, but eventually I joined the PEC.”

“The PEC?”

“The Preternatural Enforcement Coalition. It’s an ancient organization, and it’s changed over the centuries.”

“So you’re not really a part of Homeland.”

“No, actually I am. Right now, in the United States, the PEC operates as a secret branch of Homeland Security called Division Six.”

“So you’re saying that the government really does know about all of this? Vampires and werewolves and daemons like you?”

“Not everyone in the government, but certain highly placed individuals, yes.”

“Okay, but what do you do? The PEC, I mean. What’s its purpose?”

“We police our own,” he said. “Investigate, apprehend, adjudicate. We’re law enforcement for shadowers. We have detectives, attorneys, judges, secretaries, medical examiners, forensics. It’s not that different from your world. We even have protective custody.”

She frowned. “You mean Kevin?”

“He’s been a guest at Division Six. I understand he’s been having a fascinating time. One of the staff attorneys is a poltergeist, and apparently they’re getting along famously.”

“Really?” A couple of days ago, her cousin was all about killing werewolves. Now he was befriending ghosts. Things were changing so fast around her it was hard to keep up. “But this means that Paul’s looking for Division Six, right? That’s the centralized location that he thinks is the holy grail.”

Doyle nodded. “And eventually he’ll find it. My job is to stop him and as many of his lieutenants as possible. Bryce. Travis.”

“My father?”

“I’m sorry, Andy.”

She pressed her lips together. “He doesn’t understand.”

“What?”

“Evil,” she said. “He thinks he understands evil, but he doesn’t.”

He took her hand and squeezed it. “Whatever happens, I’ll try to help him.”

“Why? That’s more than he’d do for you.” She blinked, and felt hot tears in her eyes.

“Because you love him.”

She felt her chin quiver and knew that she’d start to cry if she wasn’t careful. “Thank you.”

“I haven’t done anything yet.”

“Thank you for telling me about all of this.” She held both of his hands and looked into his face, into those dark eyes that held two hundred years of secrets. Secrets he’d shared with her. “Doyle,” she said, and heard the need in her voice.

His eyes flashed with heat, and she felt a hot wire of desire that curled all the way through her and made her feel more alive than she ever had.

“Doyle,” she repeated before she could chicken out. “Kiss me.”

“Kiss me.”

Her words seemed to hang in the air like a cartoon bubble, and for a moment she feared that he’d just sit there, and she’d either have to repeat herself or beg or force herself on him.

Thank God he saved her from all of that.

“Andy …” He said her name like a prayer, and then—in an instant—his lips were pressed against hers.

She hooked her arms around his neck and pressed her body close to his as she deepened their kiss. Everything seemed to be spinning out of control—it was like she was living in some sort of surrealist painting where everything was beautiful, yet not quite what it seemed.

Doyle’s touch was perfect, though. It grounded her. Made her feel alive. And right now, that was what she wanted more than anything.

She shifted so that she was lying down on the couch, the hard, strong length of him pressed against her. Her T-shirt had ridden up a bit, and he pressed his hand to the bare skin above the waist of her jeans. That simple touch was almost more than she could stand, and pleasure swirled through her like a demanding tide until all she could think about was how she wanted more. Just more.

“Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?” he asked.

“Feel free to tell me in extreme detail. Better yet, just show me.”

“Close your eyes,” he ordered, before taking the hem of her T-shirt and pulling it gently over her head.

Cool air stroked her body, and she sighed, then gasped as his fingertips stroked her bare stomach. The touch was featherlight, and yet it sent an explosion of sensation rocketing though her, and she arched up, her body craving more. She had on a thin lace bra and her nipples were painfully tight against it, getting more so as his palms pressed and stroked, fingertips sliding up and under the material—teasing, but never quite touching.

She squirmed, silently demanding, and he complied, slipping his hand under the cup of her bra, pushing it up so that he could palm the curve of her breast, then making her jump as he stroked her very hard, very aroused nipple.

She moaned with delight, the pleasure from his touch shooting through her like starlight. He unclipped the bra from the front and let it fall open, and the sensation of the cool air against her skin aroused her even more.