Midnight Rising (Midnight Breed 4)

He didn't offer any such thing, but when he reached out and placed his palm to her brow, his touch was gentle, incredibly warm. God, it felt so good.

"Sleep," he said.

The firm command filtered through her mind like the soft rasp of velvet over bare skin. He wrapped his other arm around the back of her, just as her knees began to sway. His hold on her was strong, comforting. She could melt into that strength, she thought, as her eyes drifted closed.

"Sleep now, Dylan," he whispered against her ear. "Sleep."

And she did.

Chapter Thirteen

One of the Order's black SUVs was waiting inside a private hangar as the small jet out of Berlin taxied in from a corporate runway at Boston's Logan Airport.

Rio and Dylan were the only passengers aboard the sleek Gulfstream twin engine. The jet and its human pilots were on round-the-clock retainer for the Order, although as far as the two flyboys knew, they pocketed their sizable cash salaries on behalf of a very private, very wealthy corporation that demanded - and received - complete loyalty and discretion.

They were paid extremely well to not so much as lift an eyebrow when Rio had carried a dead-to-the-world, psychically tranced woman into the aircraft in Berlin, nor when he took her off the jet in the same condition some nine hours later in Boston. With Dylan resting soundly in his arms, her backpack and messenger bag slung over his shoulder, Rio headed down the brief flight of steps to the concrete below.

As he crossed the short distance to the Range Rover idling in the hangar, Dante got out of the driver's side, jacking one elbow up on the open door. He was dressed in night patrol gear - long-sleeved tee-shirt, fatigues, and combat boots - all of it as black as his thick, shoulder-length hair. A black semiauto pistol was holstered under his left arm, another gun strapped to his thigh, but it was the two curved titanium blades sheathed at his hips that Dante never left home without.

One of the Order's newer members was with Dante too, riding shotgun. Ex - Darkhaven Enforcement Agent Sterling Chase, also garbed in combat gear and loaded for bear, gave Rio a nod of greeting from inside the vehicle. Chase looked as hard-ass as any warrior, his razor-cut golden hair covered in a black skullcap, steel blue eyes hard and steady in his lean face, the shrewd gaze a little emptier than Rio recalled it from a few months ago. Now there was hardly any trace of the uptight, holier-than-thou bureaucrat who'd showed up last summer asking the Order for help and then laying down his own rules of how he expected the warriors to work with him. Dante had not-so-affectionately dubbed the Darkhaven Agent "Harvard," a nickname that stuck even after Chase left his old civilian life and joined up with the Order.

"Jay-zus," Dante said, cracking a broad smile as Rio approached with Dylan lying slack in his arms. "Talk about going off grid, man. Five months is a helluva vacay." The warrior chuckled as he opened the SUV's back door and helped Rio get Dylan and her gear situated inside. When they were settled, Dante shut them in, then hopped back behind the wheel. He pivoted around to face Rio. "At least you came home with a nice souvenir, eh?">"But was he a killer?" Rio asked soberly.

"I thought so, even though all the evidence was circumstantial. But in my gut, I was sure of his guilt. I didn't like him, and I knew if I looked hard enough I'd find something that pointed to his guilt. After a few false leads, I ran across a girl who'd babysat for the kids. When I questioned her for my story, she told me she'd seen bruises on the boy. She said the guy beat his kid, that she'd even witnessed it personally." Dylan sighed. "I ran with all of it. I was so eager to get the story out there that I didn't fully check my source."

"What happened?"

"Turns out the babysitter had slept with the guy and had some personal axe to grind. He was no Father of the Year, but he never laid a hand on his son, and he sure as hell didn't kill him. After I was fired from the newspaper, the case blew apart when DNA evidence linked the boy's death to a man who lived next door to him. The father was innocent, and I took an extended leave from journalism."

Rio's dark brows arched. "And from there you ended up writing about Elvis sightings and alien abductions."

Dylan shrugged. "Yeah, well, it was a slippery slope."

He was staring again, watching her with that same thoughtful silence as before. She couldn't think when he was looking at her like that. It made her feel exposed somehow, vulnerable. She didn't like the feeling one bit.

"We'll be leaving tonight, as I mentioned yesterday," he said, breaking the awkward silence. "You'll have an early dinner, if you like, then, at dusk, I'll come back to prepare you for travel."

That didn't sound good. "Prepare me...how?"

"You can't be allowed to identify this location, or the one we're traveling to. So tonight before we leave, I will have to place you in a light trance."

"A trance. As in, hypnotize me?" She had to laugh. "Get real. Anyway, that kind of stuff never works on me. I'm immune to the power of suggestion, just ask my mother or my boss."

"This is different. And it will work on you. It already has."

"What're you talking about, it already has?"

He gave a vague shrug of his shoulder. "How much do you recall of the trip from Prague to here?"

Dylan frowned. There wasn't much, actually. She remembered Rio pushing her into the back of the truck, then darkness as the vehicle started rolling. She remembered being very frightened, demanding to know where he was taking her and what he intended to do with her. Then...nothing.

"I tried to stay awake, but I was so tired," she murmured, trying to recall even another minute of what had to have been several hours of travel and coming up blank. "I fell asleep on the way here. When I woke up I was in this room..."

The small curve of his lips seemed a bit too self-satisfied. "And you'll sleep again this time until I want you awake. It has to be this way, Dylan. I'm sorry."

She wanted to make some crack about how ludicrous this whole situation was sounding - from the vampire bullshit he'd tried to feed her yesterday, to this nonsense about trances and traveling to secret locations - but suddenly it didn't seem very funny to her. It seemed impossibly serious.

It suddenly seemed all too real.