Kiss The Night Goodbye (Nikki & Michael 4)

Or, perhaps, waiting for?

He couldn't have been spying on them—the pump house was in the way, and he wouldn't have seen them until they'd come around it.

So why stop here? There was nothing else here but the old reservoir and lots of weeds. He rose, scanning the ground for more prints. Kinnard had disappeared very shortly after Michael had spotted him, but he couldn't have disappeared without leaving some trace. Even vampires, who could move with the speed of the wind, left footprints.

But there was nothing. It was as if Kinnard had disappeared into thin air. Maybe he was a shape changer. The glow of his body's energy hadn't suggested any type of shape changer Michael had ever come across, but he knew better than to think that, even in all his years of existence, he'd come across every type of shifter there was.

Frowning, he followed the fall of the ground away from the pond. The weeds were still relatively thick here, providing ample protection for a rat like Kinnard. He pulled free a thick, long handful, holding them by the roots as he walked on.

The ground around him rose, until he was walking into a small valley. Hartwell had disappeared from sight, and the darkness here was deeper, though the sounds of drunken singing carried easily on the still night air. It was amazing anyone in that town was still in a fit enough state to look at a whore, let alone carouse with them.

He switched his sight to infrared, scanning the ground as he walked. After a few minutes, he saw a scuff in the soil that looked like half the heel of a boot. A few more steps and he saw two deep prints. Kinnard had not only stopped here, but if the odd impressions just in front of the boot prints were any indication, he'd knelt down.>"What game is this you play?"

"No game—or at least, it's not my game, but Dunleavy's."

"If Dunleavy had been near me, I'd have killed him. Or he would have killed me."

"Really? So how long have you been in Hartwell?"

"Four days?"

"And how did you get here?"

He frowned. He couldn't honestly say. Just as he couldn't say how he got the bullet wound. “What has this got to do—"

"Everything,” she cut in. “Dunleavy wants you here for the same reason he wants me here. You and I killed his brother. He wants his revenge, but he also wants to bring his brother back to life, and to do that, he needs a certain sequence of events and the main players in place. You and me." Her words were nonsense. Utter nonsense...

Yet, memories stirred. An image of this blonde, a knife held high above her head as lightning arced around her. An image of that knife plunging down, deep down, into Dunleavy's chest. The spew of blood that faded into the images of two men—one long and lanky, and the other bald and thick set, like a boxer. Men he'd seen here, in Hartwell, and somewhere else. Somewhere he should remember, but couldn't. Pain hit him then—searing, blinding pain—and suddenly he was falling to his knees as fire burned into his shoulder and blood pulsed down his arm and spread like a river across the pavement... Darkness surged, taking his sight, trying to take his mind. He hissed, closing his eyes, fighting the darkness, fighting the pain.

"Michael.” Her voice was soft, insistent. He couldn't see her, but the fire and the darkness weren't stopping her voice. Nor did it take the flame of her touch as her hands pressed into his shoulders, as if she tried to hold him down and hold him still. “You have to fight the spell. You have to remember."

"Remember what?” he ground out. “That Dunleavy killed the woman I loved? I remember that, and I will kill him for it."

"Did you truly love Christine?"

"Yes.” No . He'd cared, as much as he could care about anyone these days. But Dunleavy had taken her life, and for that, Dunleavy would pay. “What does it matter to you?"

"Christine has been dead for close to a century, Michael. It is not her death you mourn."

"No?” He laughed harshly. “Woman, you don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't I? What does Christine look like?"

"Brown hair, warm amber eyes, slender—"

"Really? And here I was thinking Christine had black hair and green eyes." He frowned, trying to shake off the darkness, the pain, the impact of her words. “No—"

"Yes."

" No.” He pushed her away violently, heard a thump and slight gasp of pain. Her pain hit him like a club, filling him with remorse, filling him with anger. But with her closeness gone and her words silenced, the blackness receded. He took a deep, shuddering breath and opened his eyes. She was in the hall, struggling to rise. Her gaze met his, amber eyes filled with wariness and anger. Yet, oddly enough, he sensed that her anger wasn't aimed at him.

She puffed out her cheeks, expelling air, and wiped a hand across her forehead. It was then he saw the lump, and the bruise already beginning to darken her fair skin. Cursing his own carelessness, he rose and walked over to her. “I'm sorry,” he said, offering her a hand.

“I did not mean to lash out at you."

"Yes,” she said, placing her hand in his, “you did." He grimaced and helped her rise. He didn't release her hand immediately, because he suddenly needed her touch like a drunk needed his next drink, and her hand was safer than anything else. “Well, yes, but it wasn't so much at you, as at the pain."

"That's the spell inked onto your back at work. He doesn't want you to remember anything more than what he's given you."