The Renegade Hunter (23 page)

"A rogue is an immortal who has broken our

laws."

"You have laws?" she asked with surprise.

Nicholas smiled faintly. "Of course. No society exists without laws."

"Of course," Jo murmured, and then sighed and asked. "Tell me your laws."

Nicholas hesitated and then said, "We can turn only one in a life time."

She nodded.

"Couples are allowed to have only one child every hundred years."

"One?" Jo asked with surprise. "How do you manage that? I mean what do you do if one of your females finds herself pregnant sooner than a hundred years?"

Nicholas shrugged. "It's easily managed. Actually, getting pregnant and carrying to term have usually been the problem in the past."

"The nanos?" she asked.

Nicholas nodded and reminded her, "They are to keep the host healthy and at their peak. They see a baby as a parasite, using up the blood and nutrients the host needs. For one of our women to get pregnant, she has to double up on blood to keep the nanos busy and continue to double up on it until the baby is born.

Otherwise the host's nanos will abort the

fetus."

"I see," she murmured, frowning. "Is that what happened to Lucian's wife?"

"Lucian?" Nicholas asked with surprise.

"I heard Mortimer say that Lucian and Leigh had been traveling a lot since she lost her baby," Jo explained, and then

added, "I assume they're both immortals too?"

"Yes," Nicholas said quietly. He hadn't realized that his uncle's life mate was with child. The man must have been over the moon about it, and had probably fallen just as far when she'd lost the child.

"So did she lose the baby because she didn't feed enough?" Jo asked.

Nicholas shook his head with certainty. "No. I'm sure that's not what happened. Lucian would have made sure she'd fed enough."

"Then how could she have lost the baby?" Jo asked with confusion. "The nanos should have-"

"The nanos repair illness and injuries, but they don't fix genetic problems, so I'd imagine there was a genetic flaw and she had a natural miscarriage," he said, and then thought that probably explained why the triple wedding with Lucian, Leigh, and two other couples had been delayed yet again. On the run and rogue though he might be, Nicholas had still managed to keep up with things in his family's life. While he'd had to avoid other immortals, there were mortals who worked for his cousin's company, Argeneau Enterprises, and he'd occasionally looked one or another up and read their minds and then blanked their memories of his presence.

It was in this way Nicholas had found out about the triple wedding. It had started out as a single wedding for his cousin Bastien and his life mate, Terri. But then Lucian had found Leigh and the two couples had decided to have a double ceremony. And then his uncle Victor and Elvi had been added to the roster and it was to be a triple wedding. However, the original date had been changed and the wedding delayed when his aunt Marguerite had gone missing, and then he'd recently learned it was to be delayed again, but the secretary he'd read hadn't known why. Nicholas suspected Leigh's losing the baby had been the cause of the last delay and wondered if the triple wedding would ever take place at this rate.

"So," Jo said, drawing him from his thoughts. "You can turn only one, can have only one child every hundred years..."

She raised her eyebrows. "What else?"

"We aren't allowed to bite or kill mortals," Nicholas said.

"And?" she asked.

Nicholas shrugged. "That's about it, other than we just aren't supposed to do anything that would make our presence known to mortals."

Jo nodded, was silent for a moment, and then asked, "So did you bite or kill a mortal? Or did you do something that would make the presence of immortals known to mortals?"

Nicholas looked away, but reluctantly forced himself to say, "I guess I bit and killed a mortal."

There was a long silence this time, and Nicholas wanted to look at her and see her expression, but didn't have the courage to do so. When Jo spoke, he wasn't surprised to hear anger in her voice.

"You guess you did?" she asked, finally. "What do you mean you guess?

Did you or didn't you?"

"Apparently I did," he admitted on a sigh and finally turned to look at her to see her blinking and shaking her head.

"Nicholas, this is one of those yes or no questions again. You seem to have a problem with those. Did you or did you not kill a mortal?"

Nicholas frowned and shook his head with irritation. "Yes, I guess I killed a mortal."

Jo blew her breath out with exasperation and flopped back against the bed frame. "No, you didn't."

"Yes, I apparently did," he said at once.

"Oh?" She snorted. "You can't even say it without a qualifier. I guess I did, apparently I did..." Jo shook her head. "You couldn't have done it. You can't even say it."

Nicholas scowled with irritation. He'd been loathing making this confession, afraid to see the fear and hatred cross Jo's face as she realized what he'd done. However, he'd never once imagined her reaction would be disbelief. Mouth compressing, he said firmly, "Jo, I killed a woman, a pregnant woman. I ripped her throat out and fed on her."

"Right," Jo said with disbelief, and then suggested, "So tell me about it."

"What?" he asked with amazement.

"Tell me what happened," she insisted.

"I'm not going to-"

"Because you didn't kill anyone," Jo interrupted with a certainty that was almost defiant.

Nicholas stared at her with amazement. Truly, she was something else; beautiful, funny, sweet, sexy, surprising... and frustrating as hell. Sighing, he said, "Jo, I wish it weren't true too, but-"

"It's simple, Nicholas. If you did it, tell me about it," she insisted. "Who was the woman?"

"I don't know," he admitted uncomfortably. Nicholas had fled the Toronto area, and Canada itself, that fateful day fifty years ago and not returned... At least, not until the start of this summer when he'd trailed a particularly nasty nest of rogues from the northern states and all

the way up into Canada and Ontario's cottage country. That being the case, Nicholas had never had the chance to find out who the woman was. He suspected that was a good thing. Her face already haunted his nightmares. Knowing her name would only make it worse.

"You don't know?" Jo asked dryly. "Well, okay, so how did you meet this woman you didn't know but for some reason killed?"

Nicholas grimaced at her sarcasm, and then leaned his head back against the bed's headboard and closed his eyes. "It was after Annie died. I was... I didn't take it well. I shut out family and friends and basically wallowed in my grief," he admitted with self-disgust.

"I think that's probably natural," Jo said softly. . "Yes, well..." He licked his lips and opened his eyes to stare up at the ceiling overhead as the events played out in his mind. "That day I found a birthday gift Annie had got for a friend of hers at work. She'd bought and wrapped it ahead of time and it had been sitting on her craft table."

"Craft table," Jo murmured in a disbelieving voice, and when he glanced at her, she flushed and shrugged and muttered, "It just seems odd to think of a vampiress doing crafts. That's so...

mundane," she finished finally.

"We're just people, Jo," he said quietly.

"Yeah, I suppose. People with fangs, who drink blood, live a long time, and apparently do crafts." She shook her head.

Nicholas smiled faintly, but tilted his head back again and continued. "I probably wouldn't have taken the gift to Carol if-"

"Carol?" Jo interrupted in question.

"Annie's friend at the hospital," he explained. "They worked the night shift together."

"What did Annie do at the hospital?" Jo asked curiously.

"She was a nurse in the critical care unit," he said, smiling faintly at the memory. "Annie was... She was special. She liked to help people and-" Nicholas paused abruptly as he realized it was probably bad form to go on about the wonders of a past life mate to a present life mate... even if he couldn't claim her.

"Anyway," he muttered, "as I was saying, I probably wouldn't have taken the gift to Carol, but I wanted to ask her if she knew what Annie..." Nicholas paused as he realized he'd left something out.

"I should tell you that the night before Annie died, she called me in Detroit and said-"

"What were you doing in Detroit?" Jo interrupted.

"I was hunting a rogue," he explained. "It was going to be my last case.

Annie was nearly due and I didn't like being

away from her when she was so close to delivery."

"You were hunting a rogue?" Jo asked slowly, and then, "You were a rogue hunter too?"

"We're actually called enforcers. I mean they are," Nicholas corrected himself with a frown.

"But you were one?" she insisted.

"Yes," he admitted.

"Better and better," Jo muttered. "Go on. Annie called you in Detroit and said... ?"

"She said she had something to tell me when I got back. She was excited and I was curious, but she wouldn't tell me what it was over the phone. She said she wanted to see my face when she told me."

"But she died," Jo prompted.

"Yes. She died and I forgot all about it for a while."

"But then you saw the gift and you thought you'd deliver it as an excuse to ask this Carol if she knew what it was Annie was going to tell you when you got home."

Nicholas. nodded, releasing his breath on a slow sigh. Jo was making this as easy as she could for him. She was also very quick at putting things together.

"Did this friend Carol know?" Jo asked curiously.

Nicholas shook his head. "I never found out. I put the gift in the car and drove to the hospital, but as I was crossing the

parking lot to go inside a woman came out. She was petite and blond like my Annie. She even looked like her a little...

and she was very pregnant."

"Like your Annie," Jo suggested.

"Yes," he said wearily, closing his eyes. "I remember being really angry, furious even that this mortal woman lived while my Annie, an immortal who should have lived for centuries, was..."

"That's normal too, Nicholas," Jo said softly, slipping her hand into his and squeezing gently. When he glanced at her with obvious disbelief, she nodded solemnly. "Shortly after my parents died, I met my friends at this restaurant for lunch where there was this older couple seated at a table across from us. They were ancient. White hair, wrinkled, they had to be in their eighties or nineties..." She paused and shook her head. "I don't know what it was about them. Perhaps it was how they smiled at each other, or the way she shared her food with him, but for some reason it made me think of my parents, and for one moment I was absolutely furious that these two old codgers were alive and happy while my parents, so much younger, were dead." Jo sighed unhappily at the memory and then shrugged. "I think it's probably a natural part of grieving."

"Did you take the old couple home and slaughter them?" Nicholas asked grimly.

Jo's eyes shifted to meet his, sharp and hard. "Is that what you did?"

Nicholas looked away and shrugged. "Apparently."

"There's that word again," she said dryly. "I don't want to hear apparently.

Tell me what happened. You saw her and

were angry and..."

Nicholas frowned as he sifted through his memories trying to find the ones that covered what happened next. Finally, he just said, "I ripped her throat out and fed on her."

"Right there in the parking lot?" Jo asked with shock.

"I-No..." He reached up to rub his forehead unhappily. "At my home. In my basement."

Jo was silent for a long time again, and when he finally glanced to her, she was peering at him as if sorting out a puzzle.

Finally she shook her head and said, "How did you get her there? Did she say something to really piss you off? What happened?"

"I don't know," he snapped with frustration. "I just remember looking at her, and being really angry. The next thing I knew Decker was shouting my name and I opened my eyes to see that I was sitting on the floor of my basement with the pregnant woman, dead in my arms. There was blood everywhere, including in my mouth. I killed her, Jo."

Much to his amazement, Jo suddenly smiled and leaned back against the headboard. Her voice was satisfied as she said, "You didn't kill her."

For some reason her calm certainty infuriated him. "Goddammit, Jo, I did."

"Then why don't you remember it?" she asked calmly.

"I must have been in a blinding rage," he said at once. It was the only explanation he'd been able to come up with after all these years. Not that he'd thought about it often. He'd been so horrified by what he'd done that Nicholas had done his best not to think about it at all until the night he'd met Jo. Since then it was constantly in the back of his mind. What he'd done, why he'd done it, how he'd ruined his chances to be with her.

"Nope, you weren't in a blinding rage," Jo said with certainty, snapping his attention back to her with disbelief of his own.

"Well I sure as shit wouldn't have killed her if I hadn't been in a blinding rage," he snarled.

"Nicholas," she said patiently, shifting to kneel beside him on the bed.

"Think about what you're saying. You saw her and were angry because she looked like your Annie, was pregnant like your Annie, but was alive when your Annie wasn't.

Your anger was natural, and if you'd told me you'd struck out at her right there in the parking lot, one angry shot that had killed the woman, I might have believed you'd killed her in a blinding rage. But that's not what happened.

Supposedly, in this blinding rage, you transported her to your car, got inside, drove her to your place, and took her down into your basement and killed her... without ever coming out of your blinding rage. Without remembering a thing about it until you opened your eyes and peered down to find her dead in your lap?"

She shook her head. "Nope. Didn't happen