Love Beyond Sight (14 page)

"So," Kal stepped forward. With Leonardo out of the picture, he always stepped into the leadership role. "I hear you had a successful vision."

"Yes." She nodded. "I didn't fall apart or lose consciousness. Thanks to Samuel here."

He grinned, turning his head to glance at Isabelle. "Amazing how that soul mate thing works."

Eden looked at the group formed before her. Loraine and Gabriel. It had been less than a few months since they'd found each other and formed their Unit. She couldn't imagine either one of them without the other. Isabelle and Kal had been together almost a year. They made such a perfect union. Inside the room, Jason and Charma were the same way.

Yet there she stood with Samuel and she knew that because of their physical problem they would never be able to have that kind of connection. No matter how much she wished for it.

She imagined there would be lots of time to obsess about this later and the soft brush in her mind told her Samuel was probably visiting her thoughts anyway. He didn't need to exist in her insecurities. Eden was perfectly happy to wallow in there all by herself.

"I saw the place where mister-demon has been supplying himself with the nasties to fight us. See the truth is that while he's still in his human form, he's bound here. His magic is limited. Right, Gabriel?"

She looked for his agreement because she was so uncomfortable with everyone's eyes on her.

You're doing fine
.

Samuel spoke telepathically to her, confirming what she suspected—that he was in her mind.

"That's right. He needed Alexa to find the Outsiders. He can't do it unless he's very close to us, within a certain distance. I'm not even sure how far that is. But if we're here and he's in another city, he can't spot us without her. Then, as Kal experienced, I moved whoever he found to wherever he wanted them."

"There's so much we don't know about him." Loraine took Gabriel's hand. "I wish Alexa would talk to us. Gabriel told me he never saw Sebastian eat so what is he subsisting on?"

"I have no idea but one thing I do know now is where he is getting all of the equipment he keeps using against us." Eden was so glad she could finally contribute something. "There's a club. Here in this city. The electrical device he used to zap the hell out of Leonardo and Marina, it was made there. To fix what he did we have to go there."

Isabelle clapped her hands together. "That must be where he got all of the dungeon equipment he used to keep us locked up the last time we were here."

"Right. So, Samuel is going to take on Sebastian's form…"

Samuel interrupted her. "Samuel is going to try."

"And he's going to go in there and get us what we need to bring back Leonardo and Marina."

Kal nodded. "How is he going to do that?"

Samuel snickered, walking closer to the others. "Good question."

"He's going to bring them a distraction, something for them to focus on other than the fact that Kal and Gabriel are stealing from them."

"What's the distraction?" Eden stared at Samuel. Leave it to him to cut straight to the heart of the matter. She'd known she wouldn't be able to keep it from him for very long.

"Me."

Samuel roared. "What?"

"You're going to bring me in like I'm a captive. They'll be very interested in me. It'll work."

"No, it won't."

She put her hands on her hips. "Yes, Samuel, it will."

Her soul mate shook his head. "It won't because I'm not doing it."

"Samuel." Eden wasn't used to shouting and doing it made her heart pound hard against her ribs. "I've already seen it happen."

"Eden," Isabelle interrupted the argument she was having with Samuel. "Your visions have been wrong before. Remember you saw Loraine and Gabriel in mortal danger in Sebastian's home? That never happened. It was from a future that didn't happen."

"I know but this one is real. This one I had with Samuel. I can't describe it to you except to say that with him anchoring me, it feels completely different. It's real."

"I do believe you, Eden." Isabelle took her hands. "But maybe it should be me or Loraine brought with Samuel. Taking you seems so risky."

"It can't be. Gabriel or Kal may need the two of you if, and I didn't see this happen, anything went awry. And furthermore, why is it more risky to bring me than to bring any of you?"

"You might have a vision in the middle of it. You'd be totally at risk."

Eden shook her head. That was a legitimate concern. Or at least it had been before. But now that she had Samuel, she felt stronger. "I haven't had one since I got here. I think Samuel is keeping me from having that happen."

"Wow, I'm getting a lot of credit for doing things I have no idea that I'm doing."

Eden rolled her eyes. "Stop being petulant, Samuel. This is happening. I've seen it. This is how we do it, it's how we save them."

"Tell me something, Eden sweetheart." Samuel took her hands in his. "If you don't think it's too
petulant
for me to ask. Did you actually see us getting out of this plan? Nowhere have you mentioned how we get back? Do we?"

Eden blinked. Damn it. No, she hadn't.

Chapter Eleven

Samuel couldn't believe he'd agreed to this crap. Or, rather, he could because Eden had asked it of him and it was becoming increasingly clear to him that he would never deny his woman anything. Ever. He loved her and apparently that meant agreeing to her crazy plan just to prove to the others she could have a true vision.

He closed his eyes. Truth was—he'd never used his power like this before. Maybe this was the way he was supposed to use it. Storing and keeping identities and then pulling them out to use them when he needed to. That wasn't how it had ultimately worked for him but that was probably how it should have happened.

The problem? Since he'd never done it this way before he hadn't a clue how to go about making the transformation. Usually he just tapped someone, got their face, and then scrubbed off his old skin until he had his new face.

But, Eden was telling him he was actually capable of storing faces over time and aging the features when he took on the look. He closed his eyes and laid his head back against the bedframe. This was impossible.

Is it?
He jumped at the sound of Eden's voice in his mind. Samuel looked right and left. The woman wasn't anywhere near him. A grin spread across his face. She'd done it. She'd been in his mind and he'd had no idea.

Now, see. If I can do that then you can become the demon
.

He shook his head. Where was she?

I'm not telling you until you shift into that demon form so we can get this behind us
.

Now that was motivation. Not seeing Eden wasn't something he could live with anymore. In the brief time they'd been together he'd become addicted to the woman that he would always love and who would never be able to love him exactly the same way.

I do love you, Samuel
.

I know you do
. He closed his eyes.
Now get the fuck out of my head
.

He'd wanted her to learn how to do it, so they could be mentally close, at least. But now he was going to have to pay attention to his musings. There would be drawbacks to her knowing his every thought.

Samuel closed his eyes and reached out in front of him with his arms. He didn't know if this pose would work or not but it seemed as good a position as any. Maybe if he reached out to the universe, the Fates would help him. Or not. He had no idea what was going to happen.

He took a deep breath and tried to picture the demon as he'd seen him that day. They'd been young. Or at least they'd both looked young. He didn't know exactly how the demon aged.

Samuel's parents had placed him in a summer program that brought together kids from all over the country to work in community projects. They'd thought it would be a good socialization project for him. He'd known they'd thought he'd gotten weird. As much as it pained him he couldn't really explain to them that he'd been contacted by the ghost of an Outsider who explained to him who he was and what was expected of him.

Hearing that news, in his bedroom at midnight when he was eleven years old, had thrown him off his game. However, nothing would ever sideline him like the fire did that day.

It might be fair to say he was still trying to come back from that experience. Sebastian, as he'd called himself, had been at the conference too. Was that just coincidence? Samuel didn't believe in such things anymore. Whether it was Fate or some kind of maneuverings by Sebastian himself, they'd both been at the same place at the same time.

He'd looked up and known that Sebastian—the boy garnering so much praise from the directors of the program—was an evil son-of-a-bitch and no human.
Demon
. For one minute, he'd had the unbelievable urge to rush forward and strangle the creature.

But no one there would have understood and he'd have been pulled off him. How would he have explained what he did to anyone in a way that a sane person would understand?

Then Sebastian had turned and regarded him. That's when his body had gone on full alert. The already handsome, slender, high-cheekboned, aristocratic features of the boy in front of him had screamed evil from every pore on the other boy's body.

The voices in his head had started talking to him then. The only time they had ever done that—most of the time if they spoke at all it was to sing. That day they'd been clear: they wanted him to run.

So he had. He'd turned and run like his life depended on it. He should have continued until he'd run clear across the state and back to Seattle. Except he hadn't. For reasons he couldn't understand even as an adult, he'd hightailed it into the closet and closed the door. The demon hadn't been anywhere around. He'd assumed he could hide.

He'd been wrong. Nearly dead wrong. Sebastian had locked him inside by somehow jamming the door shut from the outside. The details were fuzzy to Samuel. All he could see were the red flames coming at him as they melted the door, the smell of the smoke, and the pain he thought would never stop tearing into his skin, burning the flesh from his body.

Then blessed nothingness until the beeping of the hospital machines had awoken him to the truth of true agony.

He'd been luckier than most. For five years he'd watched his parent's pity turn silently into pain every time they regarded him. Finally, at seventeen he'd left home to spare them his presence. Although he could never again go back to his parents—how could he explain his new faces?—He hadn't had to live with the stares and the quick looks of horror on the expressions of strangers. Samuel could change his appearance any time he wanted to.

But could he become the demon?

He held the image of Sebastian's young face in his mind even as he kept his hands out in front of him. What was he hoping? That the universe would somehow fill him up with the ability he needed. A slight weight on his upturned palms jarred him and he opened his eyes. To his utter surprise, a glowing ball of light sat in his hands. While it weighed just enough to garner his attention, it didn't feel like anything at all. The ball didn't burn, didn't hurt, it simply sat there in his open hands waiting for him to do something with it.

"All right."

He spoke aloud because it seemed like the thing to do and, maybe, because he needed to hear his own voice in order to steady himself. The slight sound of chanting began in his ears and he looked upward at the ceiling.

"I take it you guys approve of whatever this is."

The chanting continued and Samuel decided to take that as a nod that they did, indeed, want him to use that shiny ball of light in some manner.

Drawing his hands closer to himself, he placed the ball in front of his face; he closed his eyes once more before he brought the shiny ball to himself. Going on instinct alone, he drew the ball into himself covering his face with it.

For one second, nothing happened and Samuel wondered if he'd made a terrible mistake. Was he not supposed to do that? Had he wasted the ball of light?

Then his face started to tingle. It felt different from the throb that usually accompanied his change. This one didn't hurt. It felt downright pleasant. He laughed aloud as the image of thousands of little fairies dancing on his face appeared in his imagination. He pushed away the thought. If he kept that up he might become downright deranged.

His face got tight and then the pain started. He'd been foolish to think there wouldn't be any. Only it wasn't his features that hurt. No, they'd taken the shift remarkable well. It was the rest of his body.

Flung back on the bed by a force he couldn't see or control, his muscles and bones began to reshape. He screamed, unable to bear the wrenching and tearing going on inside of his body. Samuel hadn't known pain like this since he'd been burned. Stars floated in front of his eyes and then blackness.

* * * *

Samuel came to all at once. The light in the room was bright and he groaned as it assaulted his vision. How much time had passed? He forced himself to sit up. After a moment, when the room stopped spinning and life seemed to have righted itself, he noticed something strange.

Raising his arms for further inspection, he saw that his initial reaction had been correct. The hair on his arms was a darker shade of brown. His hands looked different. Whereas, Samuel always had large knuckles, thanks in part to breaking a few of his fingers over the years, the hands he regarded were smooth and unbroken. Male hands, certainly, but not the tools of a man whose work depended on their use. Maybe they were even regularly manicured.

He jumped to his feet, his heart pounding like he'd run a marathon, and rushed to the mirror. The face that stared back at him was that of a total stranger. Except that he knew him—he was the boy, Sebastian, nearly two decades later. Dark haired, he had aristocratic features that included a long nose and high cheekbones. His dark eyes stared out, seemingly dead to any true emotion, even as Samuel could feel himself beginning to panic.