The Secret Night Read online

  Things like whether or not he’d ever join forces again with Damien Caldwell?

  The two hated each other now. But by his own admission, Nick had once been in the Master’s thrall. She had seen firsthand what Caldwell could do to a person’s mind. Could Nick truly promise that he’d never again succumb to his former Master’s power?

  She had no idea, none at all. And here she was, trapped in a boat with him, heading straight for Caldwell’s lair.

  Looking up, she caught him staring at her.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, his tone concerned, as if he truly cared about her.

  “Yes,” she replied, even though she felt as if she were in the midst of the worst possible nightmare.

  About fifteen feet from the shore, Nick hopped over the side into the knee-deep water, took hold of the bowline and hauled the rowboat onto the beach. The hull scraping against the sand was the only sound in the still, dark night.

  After grabbing his knapsack, he helped her out. She waited on the narrow strip of sand as he pushed the rowboat back into the water and guided it a few yards away into a clump of tall grass. When he returned to her, he handed her the laser gun again.

  This time, she took it.

  “Stuff it into your waistband,” he said, “until you need it.”

  She did as he asked, but she also pulled out the handgun she’d taken from his pantry. It might take a laser to kill Caldwell, but his guards weren’t immune to bullets.

  “Ready?” he whispered.

  She nodded. “Let’s go.”

  ALEX SHANE sat in his home office in the dark. When the door behind him opened, he saw Sara slip into the room.

  “You should be sleeping,” he murmured.

  “I heard you come in. When you didn’t come up to bed, I knew there must be something on your mind.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What happened with that woman who called?”

  “I let her go off to the Refuge.”

  She gave him a startled look. “Alone?”

  “No. With Nicholas Vickers.”

  “And you think they’re going to get into trouble?” When he didn’t answer, she added, “Maybe you’d better call in the troops.”

  “If I do, our people could get hurt.”

  “And if you don’t, other people could get killed.”

  “Yeah.”

  EMMA CLIMBED the short bank from the beach and started to follow Nick across the lawn, toward the mansion. They hadn’t gone more than five yards when a sharp command stopped them.

  “Drop your weapons. Put your hands in the air and turn around slowly.”

  With her heart pounding in her throat, Emma dropped the handgun immediately, but before she raised her arms, she managed to shove the laser down inside the front of her pants. Then, hands in the air, she started to turn.

  She didn’t even see Nick fly past her. One instant he was in front of her, and the next instant, he was behind the guard, the side of his hand chopping down hard on the goon’s neck.

  The man went down, sprawled on the crabgrass.

  “The safest thing would be to drown this guy,” Nick muttered. “But once Caldwell is dead, the cretin may revert to a reasonable human being, depending on what he was like before the Master took over his mind.” As he spoke, he got more cord from his knapsack and a gag. In a couple of minutes, their captive was stowed beside the rowboat, hidden by the tall grass.

  “We’ll circle around and approach the house from the side,” Nick whispered. Then, suddenly, he stopped and pressed his hand to his forehead.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I…” He never finished the sentence.

  Emma watched in horror as he sank to his knees. “Nick!”

  She dropped down beside him as he doubled over, then fell to his side, still holding his head, gasping in pain.

  “Nick! What is it? Tell me how to help you!”

  “That’s quite beyond your powers,” a deep voice said from out of the darkness.

  She recognized that voice. It was Damien Caldwell.

  He continued in a conversational tone. “I’m afraid he’s suffering from a touch of mind control. He’s been practicing techniques to repel me, but they’ll do him no good.” Caldwell shook his head. “No good at all.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Nick couldn’t move. He lay on his side, horrible images flashing through his mind. His worst nightmares. Caldwell dragging Jeanette off to her death. Emma lying pale and lifeless on the beach.

  He gasped and tried to reach toward her. But his muscles wouldn’t work.

  Deep in his brain, he knew what was happening to him, but he simply couldn’t block the Master’s far more powerful thoughts from taking control of him. The endless years of practice had been wasted. He’d been a fool to think he’d ever be able to beat Caldwell at his own game.

  Six guards came out of the woods, and it filled him with despair and rage when two of them rolled Emma over and cuffed her hands behind her back. The sight of her lying helpless at Caldwell’s feet made his stomach roil. The only consolation was that he knew she wasn’t dead. Growling, he tried to push himself up, but Caldwell kicked him back to the ground.

  Powerless to prevent it, he lay on the sand as a guard cuffed him. The bond shouldn’t have held him for two seconds, but with Caldwell neutralizing his vampiric powers, he couldn’t summon the strength to get free.

  The guards hauled him to his feet.

  “Take the man to my office and the woman to a holding cell,” Caldwell ordered.

  “No!” Shouting that one word took every ounce of effort Nick could summon. His knees buckled, and he would have fallen to the ground again if the two guards hadn’t been holding him.

  “Bind the man to the metal chair in my office,” Caldwell directed. “Use the heaviest restraints. I’ll take care of him later.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The two guards hustled him off. The last sight he had of Emma was Caldwell leaning over her, grinning.

  He felt sick and weak as the guards dragged him to the Master’s office, then used massive iron shackles around his ankles and a chain running between them, which they ran through the legs of the chair. Once his legs were secure, they replaced the handcuffs with wrist manacles, which they chained to steel bolts built into the chair arms. Then they searched him and found nothing, because Emma had the laser gun. Not for long, though; they were bound to search her, too.

  The guards left him, and he sat manacled to the chair, cursing his stupidity. He should have known his efforts to improve his mental defenses would be worthless without an enemy against whom he could practice. Still, it had shocked him how easily Caldwell had disarmed him and scrambled his thoughts. When Emma had come to him, pleading for help, he’d been worried that he wasn’t entirely ready—but not so worried that he hadn’t let her persuade him to bring her here. His naiveté—no, his arrogance—had sealed her fate, as well as his own.

  He listened for footsteps outside the door, but he was utterly alone for a long time, thinking about what Caldwell was doing, trying futilely to block the images from his mind.

  At least he didn’t feel quite so ill. As he felt his strength slowly returning, he tested his recovery by pulling against his chains. They were strong, too strong for him in his current state. Caldwell had cut him off at the knees, and he didn’t think he stood a chance of summoning the necessary mental energy to change the molecules of the metal in time to do any good.

  Finally, after what felt like centuries, the Master stepped into the room. He stood for a long moment, staring at his prisoner, a small satisfied smile flickering around his lips.

  “At last, we meet again,” he said.

  Nick didn’t bother to return the greeting.

  “Clever little Emma Birmingham brought you to me.”

  He pressed his lips together, unwilling to dignify the boast with a reply. “You think I meant that I used the sister as bait to draw her—and you—to me, don’t you
? Well, you’re wrong. Emma has been working for me.”

  Nick’s gaze snapped upward, focusing on Caldwell’s face.

  “She’s a good actress, don’t you think? All sweet and innocent like your precious Jeanette. I imagine she convinced you that she cared about your worthless hide.”

  Nick spoke through gritted teeth. “Is there a point to your lies?”

  The Master chuckled. “It was all a carefully orchestrated plan, starting with that gang of repellent bikers and ending with the little drama at the crack house.”

  Nick snorted, unwilling to let Caldwell know that he was the least disconcerted by the extent of the Master’s information about him.

  “My man arranged for Miss Birmingham to arrive at your quaint home at just the right time.”

  “In time to get shot. Oh, certainly. She’d have agreed to that.”

  Caldwell grinned nastily. “I didn’t say that she knew she would be shot or that she had agreed to anything. Not in the conscious sense, at any rate.”

  Walking to a large cabinet on the wall opposite Nick’s chair, Caldwell opened the doors to reveal a television screen and a combo DVD/VCR player. Slotting a tape into the machine, he turned, giving Nick another nasty grin.

  “I apologize for the poor tape quality,” he said. “It was made by a surveillance camera. But, well, I believe you’ll get the picture.” Then he punched the Play button.

  The TV screen came to life. The setting, Nick observed, was this room—Caldwell’s office. A man and a woman were standing by the window, talking. The man was Caldwell, and the woman was…Emma.

  Caldwell spoke first. “You’re going to help me trap Nicholas Vickers.”

  She wrung her hands together nervously. “But, Master, I don’t want to leave the Refuge. I don’t want to leave you.”

  It was Emma’s voice. Nick had heard that voice too often not to recognize it. Nor could he have failed to recognize the silky blond hair and nicely rounded figure, clothed in linen slacks and a soft pink blouse.

  But then…maybe it wasn’t Emma. She and her sister were twins. She’d never said they were identical twins, but they could be—and even if they weren’t, they could look very much alike.

  “Don’t worry, my dear,” Caldwell said to her in his most charming tone. “You won’t be gone for long. Like others I send out to work for our greater cause, you, too, will serve and be rewarded.”

  “I understand, Master.”

  His insides in turmoil, Nick told himself, It’s Margaret, not Emma. It can’t be Emma….

  But then Caldwell turned the woman toward him, raising her face to his with a finger under her chin. “Now look at me and listen carefully,” he ordered. And Nick’s heart sank like a stone.

  “You want to rescue your sister Margaret,” the Master told his servant. “And you need Nicholas Vickers’s help. You searched my office and found a file all about Vickers, and the papers in the file make it clear that he’s my enemy.”

  He was planting the message in her mind. The spoken words were merely for show. Nick had seen the Master in action too often—had been his victim too often—not to know that as he spoke, Caldwell was programming Emma’s mind to do his bidding.

  And, yes, it must be Emma. Exactly as he had feared when she arrived on his doorstep, she had been acting on Caldwell’s orders. Everything she’d said and done, everything that had passed between them had been a sham.

  “You tried to get Margaret to leave with you,” Caldwell continued. “But she refused to go. You desperately need Nicholas Vickers to help you rescue your poor deluded sister.”

  “Yes, Master. I need his help.”

  “Yes, and you will do whatever is necessary to secure it. You will charm him, as I know you can. You will make love with him, if it serves the cause. You will do anything—anything at all—to persuade him to come with you to the Refuge. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Master.”

  “Good.”

  If he had been human, Nick thought he might have thrown up; he felt that sick. Then Caldwell drew Emma into his arms and made everything much, much worse.

  He bent to kiss her slender neck, his hand lifting to stroke her breast. She arched into the caress, moaning in a way that said she welcomed her Master’s touch.

  “Do you want to make love with me again?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes. The last time was so wonderful.”

  When Caldwell began unbuttoning her blouse, Nick knew he’d have to close his eyes. He couldn’t continue to sit here, stony-faced, pretending indifference, when every cell in his body was howling in pain and fury.

  Then the screen turned to fuzz, the scene over. But any relief he might have felt was blotted out by the look of triumph on Caldwell’s face. The bastard knew he had hated every torturing second of the tape.

  He turned his head away, thinking it was too much to hope that Caldwell might leave him alone now.

  He was right not to hope. The Master wasn’t finished with him.

  “Sit here and contemplate that for a while. I’m going to get Emma ready. She thinks she’s going to be rewarded for having fulfilled my wishes. She doesn’t know that her reward will be to star in one of my ceremonies.”

  Nick’s head jerked up, his gaze fastening on Caldwell’s.

  “And you, Nicholas, will have a front-row seat, just as in the good old days. So, you see, you’ll get your revenge. You’ll watch Emma die. After that I’ll tie you to a table and let the sun burn you to cinders. Then, at last, I’ll be rid of you.”

  “Did you send me the dreams, too?” Nick asked.

  “The dreams.” Caldwell looked momentarily startled. “Yes,” he answered. Then, with a final smirk, he left, closing the door solidly behind him.

  IN HER CELL, Emma remained silent, cringing inwardly, as a guard performed a rough body search on her. But when he started to investigate the front of her slacks, she figured she had nothing to lose by asserting her feminine modesty.

  Pushing his hand away, she whispered, “Please, not there. Besides,” she added, thinking a little reminder of his position wouldn’t hurt, “you know the Master doesn’t like another man touching what he considers his.”

  To her amazement, it worked. The guard hesitated, then apparently decided she was right and respected her privacy. So the laser gun stayed where she had concealed it, shoved into her underpants, beneath the loose-fitting slacks.

  The guard then threw her onto a bench and chained her hands, still cuffed behind her back, to a ring in the wall beside her. With a satisfied grunt, he left her.

  She huddled on the bench, her gaze taking in her very limited surroundings. The cell was in a cinder block building away from the main house. The one small window in the outer wall was secured by bars. So was the small window in the door. She could feel the laser gun pressing against her abdomen, but she couldn’t get to it.

  Overwhelmed by despair and fear, she tried to ease the pain in her arms by bending her elbows and leaning against the wall. Nick had warned her not to return. She hadn’t listened. And here she was, chained and helpless. Plus, in her ill-planned rush to get Margaret out of Caldwell’s clutches, she’d delivered Nick to him on the proverbial silver platter. Taken by surprise, Nick hadn’t even had a chance to fight back before Caldwell had laid him out like a beached fish.

  So now they would all die—she and Nick and, eventually, Margaret, whenever Caldwell decided he wanted her blood more than he wanted her accounting skills.

  “Great going, Em,” she muttered. “Really great.”

  When she heard the footsteps of a large man outside, she tensed. A key rattled in the lock, and Caldwell stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.

  As always, his sheer size was intimidating. He was at least six-four or-five, with a powerful chest and massive arms and legs. Her gaze flicked to his mouth, then away, but she couldn’t stop the pictures playing in her mind—pictures of scenes from vampire movies—with Caldwell standing in for the villain.
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  For a long moment, he simply stared at her. Then he took a few strolling steps toward her. “So, did Mr. Vickers tell you what I am?” he asked.

  “Wh-what do you mean?” she countered, unable to keep her voice steady.

  “Ah, Miss Birmingham, don’t insult my intelligence, and I won’t insult yours. You know what I mean. And I believe you know that I’m a vampire.” Closing the short distance between them in two quick strides, he grabbed her chin and tipped her face toward his. “A real vampire. Not one of those role players who hang out in Goth clubs.”

  He opened his mouth in a parody of a grin, and as she watched in sickened fascination, his teeth changed. Behind the canine teeth, two long white points emerged. He bent toward her, and she tried to wrench away. He easily held her fast, but he only pressed the sharp teeth to her neck before he straightened again.

  “You’re lucky. I drank my fill a short while ago. So you can live a few hours longer.”

  When he turned her loose, she flopped back against the wall, her whole body shaking uncontrollably.

  He pulled up a stool from the opposite corner and sat down beside her bench. “I see I have your attention. And your fear. I can feel it wafting off you. Very nice. If you’re afraid of me, you should be afraid of Nicholas Vickers, too. I saved his life. I treated him like a son, and look how he betrayed me.” He paused before delivering what he must have thought would be his most devastating line. “I’m sure he didn’t tell you that he’s a vampire, as well.”

  Mustering what courage she had left, Emma glared at him. “Actually, he did.”

  Caldwell’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe what you want.”

  He stood over her, and she forced herself to remain still. She was not going to give him the satisfaction of seeing how truly terrified she was. But when he again took her chin firmly in his hand, she couldn’t prevent him from feeling the involuntary trembling of her body.