Soul Deep: Dark Souls, Book 2 (37 page)

Going rogue had always been Marcus’s greatest fear, and now she understood why. He’d experienced the darkness firsthand, had felt it run rampant through his veins, consuming him. He bore the guilt of countless deaths on his conscience and couldn’t bear the thought of another innocent dying at his hand.

She inhaled a deep, tremulous breath. “This little suicide pact is a total waste of time,” she grumbled, angry that he’d even broached the subject. “If we go rogue, you can bet your cutlass Cal will hunt us both down and kill us.”

He fingered his sword with a wry grin. “It’s not a cutlass. It’s a broadsword.”

“Whatever.”

His crooked smile sliced through her more effectively than any of the blades in this room could have. He had the face of a saint, the dark irresistible appeal of sin itself. It was a potent and sexy contradiction.

Sheathing the dagger he’d handed her, she edged in closer, until only a breath of air separated them. She tilted her chin, waited for his arms to slide around her. The need to be kissed burned like a wildfire through her system. She wanted to hold him, to go into battle with the taste of him on her tongue and the feel of his hard body imprinted on her flesh. Especially after all this depressing talk of death.

For once, Marcus didn’t disappoint. His gorgeous mouth swooped down and covered hers as he yanked her to him. He crushed her against his powerful body, as though he couldn’t hold her tight enough, close enough. She wrapped her arms around his neck, teased him with her tongue, clung to him with a yearning that frightened her.

She’d nearly lost him today, and now the idiot was asking her to kill him. How the hell did he expect her to do that, when the thought of going on without him stole the air from her lungs and left her broken inside?

She was feeling vulnerable again, weak and pathetic, and she hated it. The future was a big ugly blur, as frail as it was uncertain.

When Marcus broke the kiss, she didn’t stop him. Time was slipping through their fingers like sand.

“What happens once we save Ben?” She refused to entertain the notion that they might fail. “To us?”

Maybe this wasn’t the time or place, but something elemental and totally feminine within her was looking for a promise, for some kind of commitment. A commitment Marcus was unable or unwilling to make.

The scar on her wrist suddenly throbbed, alerting her to the Watchers’ presence. The last time she’d experienced this, Jace and Lia had been hot on their trail.

“They’re coming.” Marcus linked his fingers with hers, her question forgotten. “It’s time to go.”

Cal burst into the armory, cursed when he found it empty. He should’ve been more vigilant, should’ve kept Regan shackled, but he’d needed her to use her regenerative powers to help Marcus recover, and he’d feared exposure to copper would’ve lessened her ability to do so.

“We’re too late,” he told Jace, who shuffled in after him. “They’re gone.”

Jace walked over to the metal rack that housed the weapons, took a quick inventory of the blades. “The Scottish broadsword is missing. So is the Italian long sword. I think they grabbed a couple of daggers, too.” Exasperation tinged his voice. “Great. After all the trouble I went through to get them back here.” He turned an accusing glare Cal’s way. “If you hadn’t gone after the kid with such single-minded focus—”

“You’re right,” he admitted. “I’m to blame for this. If only I hadn’t taken Lillith at her word.” His old lieutenant had played him like a fiddle. She’d banked on his fears, had known exactly what to say to get him to do her bidding. He thought of Lillith’s erratic behavior lately, of her frantic sense of desperation. “I should’ve seen through her charade.”

Jace filled his lungs with air. “Well, we can’t just stand around doing nothing. Regan and Marcus have gone off on another suicide mission. They can’t face Kyros and his troops on their own, especially since they haven’t got a clue what they’re up against. We have to help them.”

“I agree, but how do you propose we find them? With Thomas dead, Marcus is our only tracker.” Cal had lost all his tracking abilities, along with his power to fold space, when he’d been stripped of his wings—one of the conditions of being allowed to remain here on earth instead of being imprisoned in heaven like Lillith and the others. He sometimes wondered if a lifetime of imprisonment would’ve been preferable to this.

“I can track them.” A guilty look crossed Jace’s face. “You were right. I
did
follow them to the Rivershore Hospital yesterday. Lately, Lia and I have been feeling our scars throb whenever Marcus and Regan are near. It’s like we’re connected on a whole different level.”

Cal sensed there was yet another piece of the puzzle he was missing. The Watchers did forge a connection through the blood bond, but it was nothing like Jace had just described. He didn’t have time to solve this latest mystery, however, nor did he have time to reprimand Jace for his willful deception.

So he did the next best thing. He started barking out orders. “Get a team together. I want them ready to move in a matter of minutes.”

With a conceding nod, Jace hastened out of the armory, for once eager to do as he was told.

Chapter Forty-Five

Marcus’s instincts led them deep into the mountains, where rugged beauty mingled with unforgiving terrain, making it more and more difficult to penetrate into the woods. Clusters of evergreens flanked rocky paths carpeted by thick tangles of undergrowth.

After the armory, Regan had teleported them to the garage. There, they’d climbed into a Land Rover, coaxed the motor to life, and peeled out of the Watchers’ complex. They’d driven for nearly an hour, until the road had dwindled down to a strip of dirt, then disappeared altogether, at which point they’d been forced to continue on foot.

“I think we’re getting closer,” Regan said as she carved her way through a snare of branches. “I feel Ben’s energy guiding me, which is totally nuts because I’m not a tracker.”

Marcus plowed forward, kicking his booted foot free of the relentless underbrush. “It’s not nuts at all. Remember how Jace was able to track Lia? He managed to break through both Cal’s and Athanatos’s shields. A Hybrid is naturally attracted to his or her old soul. Once the connection is forged, it’s pretty hard to break. Unless something happens to compromise it.” Like a firstborn ingesting the damn thing.

Dusk had come and gone. As the night deepened so did the shadows, casting a tenebrous veil over the land that perfectly matched Marcus’s bleak mood. There wasn’t much on earth he feared, save for going rogue. The idea of losing control had always been a black seed dwelling within him. Now it had sprouted roots.

“That’s not going to happen,” Regan insisted. “We won’t let it.”

Her optimism should’ve been a comfort. Instead, it served to exacerbate his fears, maybe because he was terrified of failing her again. He’d watched her die twice—once at the Rivershore Hospital and then again in his dream. The only thing worse than seeing death claim her would be to see the humanity leave her eyes. The most beautiful thing about Regan had always been the depth of her compassion. To see her lose that now…

“I know that look.” Her voice snapped him out of his morbid thoughts. “You’re doing the Marcus thing again.”

His mouth couldn’t help but twitch at the corners. “And what, I’m afraid to ask, is
the
Marcus thing
?”

“You get real quiet and moody, start thinking the world’s about to end. I’m guessing it’s ’cause you’ve been around Cal too long.”

“I’m not a fan of blind optimism.” Something rustled up ahead, probably a deer. From one of the distant treetops, an owl hooted.

“Neither am I. Though a little positive thinking couldn’t hurt.”

He angled a questioning glance her way. “Fine, I’ll bite. How do you see this situation turning out? Go ahead. Give me your positive slant on things.”

She ran her fingers through her waterfall of hair, pushing the red strands off her face. “We’ll track Ben, and hopefully he’ll lead us straight to Kyros. When we take the bastard out, Cal will realize that Ben isn’t a threat and back off. Easy as pie.”

She made it sound so simple.

As much as Marcus hated to be the voice of opposition, he felt a little perspective was sorely needed. “Assuming we can get past Kyros’s army, which by the way is armed with angel’s blood, and cut down a firstborn whose been evading us for hundreds of years and who is now being protected by the angel of fate. Not only that, but we have to accomplish all this before the links to our lost souls are severed and we go rogue.”

Regan released an exasperated sigh. “You’re a real killjoy, you know that?”

“Just stating the facts.”

She ducked and squeezed through a canopy of redwoods behind him. “Well, if I thought the way you do, I’d always be brooding, too.” She caught up to him and grabbed him by the arm, looking up at him expectantly. “You never told me how you figured it out. What tipped you off that Ben is the carrier of our souls?”

He stood still for a second, hesitated. “Remember the dream I had after—”
We made love.
The words hovered on the tip of his tongue, but for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to voice them. Now that they were back in the real world, the concept of love seemed no more tangible than the dream he spoke of. “I told Adrian about it, and he had a theory. He said the only way a Hybrid can dream is if he finds his old soul. Seeing as Ben’s was the only soul around, it didn’t take a genius to connect the dots.”

She let go of his arm, and they resumed their trek through the woods. “So are you ever gonna tell me what the dream was about?” He opened his mouth to protest, but she silenced him with a quelling look. “And don’t give me some bogus excuse like you did last night. I saw the expression on your face, Marcus. Whatever you saw freaked you out real bad.”

The last thing he wanted was to relive the nightmare, but she had a right to hear about it, especially since he now knew what he’d seen had been an actual memory. “I was at the back of a crowd, pushing my way through. I wasn’t sure why I was so desperate to get to the front. I just had a feeling that it was a matter of life and death.” For a moment the trees parted, and a slash of moonlight cut a wedge in their path. “I got there just in time to see a woman hanged.” He met her honeyed gaze, felt an echo of the agony he’d experienced in the dream. “That woman was you.”

Silence thickened between them, as deep as the night. “It was only a dream,” she whispered. “You’d just finished bringing me back to life. Your subconscious was probably in overdrive.”
 

“You don’t understand. The place where the dream was set, I’ve been there before. That’s where I first turned—in Boston back in 1742.”

Surprise slackened her mouth. “Are you saying you think the dream was actually a memory?”

“I don’t think. I
know
. Back at the complex, when I was out cold, I remembered. Remembered everything that happened before I turned.” His gaze briefly latched on to her face. “We were married. Neither of us knew I was a Hybrid, or what a Hybrid was, for that matter. All we knew was that I was born with a gift. I could find anyone. I also had the nasty habit of bringing out the worst in people.” Emotion softened his voice. “Except you.”

He squeezed through a bristly clasp of Douglas firs, inhaling a lungful of air that smelled of moist earth, peppered with a hint of pine and mulch. “We lived in seclusion, far removed from everyone. Until a Rogue decided to pay our town a visit and started snatching kids. I had no choice. I had to get involved. So I tracked the children and brought them back home. At first I got a hero’s welcome. Then the town turned on me. I was arrested for kidnapping and sentenced to death.”

Sadness tugged at her lush mouth. “That’s how you died.”

“No. You decided to save me by confessing to a crime you didn’t commit. I tried to return the favor, but I got there too late.” A thick lump of bile rose to block his windpipe. “I stood in the rain and watched you die, all because you couldn’t leave well enough alone, even then.”

She bit her lower lip, shrugged uncomfortably. “Sounds like something I would do, but you’re forgetting one small detail. I was only born about sixty years ago. I didn’t exist back in 1742.”

“
You
didn’t, but your soul did. Souls are constantly being reborn. It’s not much of a stretch to assume that yours once lived in my wife, just as it now lives in Ben.”

“I guess so.” She didn’t look entirely convinced. Still, something hot and gripping flickered in her gaze. “So you actually married me, huh?”

He averted his eyes. He had to. “Yeah, and look what good it did you.”

“If what you’re telling me is true, I was responsible for my own actions. Sounds like I was desperate to save you. I obviously didn’t know you were immortal.” Regan grew unnaturally silent. When she finally spoke, her voice was thin and feather soft. “You never did tell me how you turned.”

He remembered the brutal rage that had seized him after his wife died, the hunger for violence that had overtaken him, how he’d whipped out the dagger he’d wrestled from the prison guard before escaping from the jailhouse that morning. “I started one hell of a fight. I was determined to slice open everyone who conspired to take you from me. Unfortunately, someone ran me through before I could finish the job. They tried to burn my body along with yours.”