Immortal Trust Read online

  Lucan slid back inside. “I would have walked you to the car.”

  “That’s really not necessary.” The light extinguished as she pulled the door shut. Huddling into her coat, she shivered. “You’d think with March around the corner it’d be getting warmer.”

  Easing onto the gas, Lucan navigated out of the parking space. “’Twill be another month or so. Have you not worked much in France?”

  “No. I’ve spent most of my time in Egypt. I did a dig three years ago in China, but politics took a downturn and forced us out. Otherwise, I’ve been working on mummies and tombs.”

  He glanced sideways as he turned onto the narrow country lane. Though he knew the Almighty brought her to France, he sought casual conversation. “Why did you choose Ornes and the le Goix castle?”

  “Le Goix?” Interest sparked behind her eyes. “I didn’t know the castle had a name.”

  “Aye, indeed. ’Twas erected centuries ago by Alaric le Goix. He was a servant of the Holy Order of the Knights Templar. What you are removing from the earth are the sacred relics he was charged to guard after the Inquisition condemned him as a heretic.”

  * * *

  Chloe’s thoughts skidded to a halt. Silently, she repeated Lucan’s words. Charged to guard after he was condemned. Wide-eyed, she stared at Lucan’s shadowed profile as the contradiction thundered in her head.

  The Church had eradicated the Order. And yet, if Lucan was here, the Church had known all along Alaric le Goix harbored sacred objects. Her words came out in a rush. “You mean to tell me you knew?”

  Lucan nodded. “Aye.”

  She blinked, dumbfounded. “How is that possible? Why would the Church bury or hide things they could keep safe? You’ve got a whole Vatican to hide them in.”

  On a heavy sigh, Lucan shook his head. “Not the Church as you know it. Members within. Leaders.”

  Suspicious, Chloe squinted at him. “That’s insane.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “You object when you have spent your career focused on Egypt?”

  The superiority of his tone made her grit her teeth. “My early schooling was in medieval France, thank you. I left Egypt when the regime changed and it became unsafe.” Not exactly true—she’d left when it became unsafe, but for entirely different reasons than political instability.

  She frowned at Lucan again. “How would you know the Church’s motives anyway? You’re not a cardinal privy to the Vatican’s secrets. You might be an expert in religious antiquities, but no more so than I’m an expert in Egyptian artifacts.”

  Lucan reached a hand into the collar of his heavy long-sleeved shirt and pulled out a medallion. In the dim glow from the dash, a half-dollar-sized silver disk dangled from his fingers. She leaned closer to inspect the object. Her fingers brushed against his, and his gaze skipped down to hers for a heartbeat before he let go and fastened his attention on the empty road.

  Still warm from his skin, the medallion rested on her fingertips. What had once been scalloped edges were now worn smooth with only a few hills and valleys to reveal its former design. She brushed her thumb over a crudely engraved cross. Equal in size, the four beams flared on the ends in classic Templar fashion. Above and below the vertical bar read the Latin words Milites Templi.

  “What is this?”

  Lucan’s hand wrapped around hers. There was something profoundly intimate about the press of his fingers. The way his large palm enveloped the back of her hand. A foreign spark of excitement rushed up her shoulder, rocketed down her spine, and lodged in her womb.

  “’Tis a story meant for another day.” He tucked her hand against the center console, guiding her back to her seat. “We have arrived.”

  Chloe looked up to find the sweeping facade of the Château des Monthairons and its four towering fairy-tale turrets, aglow against the night sky. She stared at the nineteenth-century castle, spellbound by both the majestic appearance and Lucan’s mysterious medallion. Her heart tripped faster as supposition crept into her thoughts. Quite possibly she sat beside a descendant of the fabled Order. Perhaps even a member. Though she had never been swept away by the mystery of the Knights Templar, the link to history he might possess gave her chills.

  But why, if he were associated with a society intent on staying secret, why would he reveal this to her? Because she dug among the remains of one of the members? Did that somehow make her worthy to share their knowledge?

  As the Mercedes rolled to a halt, she furrowed her brow. Her mind prickled with the awareness Lucan had tried to tell her something. Something important that he expected her to understand. Something between the Church and the Knights Templar.

  He gave her no time to consider the matter. Before she could realize he’d left the driver’s seat, her door opened. He offered his hand.

  Chloe stared at his palm, wanting nothing more than to slide her fingers into his and let this handsome man possess her thoughts. She lifted her gaze, her blood warming when her eyes locked with steely grays. The interest there was unmistakable. Compelling. It had been so long since a man had looked at her as if he had one thing, and only one thing, on his mind. And the heat behind his gaze left no misinterpretation to his meaning. If she’d let him, he’d be more than willing to help her remember what a man felt like.

  Which would only open her to vulnerabilities she didn’t have the strength to overcome. She’d never been able to distance herself from sex, and as long as she had to work with this man, she wouldn’t get attached to him. Wouldn’t let him have that much power over her and blind her to his intentions. Blake had done enough damage. To her heart and to her career. When he’d taken her findings, claimed them as his own, and climbed over her to rise to the top of their field, she’d vowed she’d never again tangle business with pleasure.

  Never again.

  She ignored Lucan’s offered aid and pulled herself out of the car. As she approached the front steps, he walked at her side, a comforting presence she hated to admit. But it settled into her awareness that for the first time in too many years to count, she hadn’t thought of the dark presence as she drove through the forest. Hadn’t felt it.

  In fact, for the first time since she’d set foot in France, she’d felt safe.

  He opened the front door, held it while she entered. Silently, he walked beside her to the elegantly carved winding staircase. There he defied her deliberate attempt at distance and captured her hand. Lifting it to his mouth, he pressed a warm kiss to her knuckles. She grabbed at the smooth rail to steady the sudden weakness in her knees.

  “You are certain you will not dine with me?”

  Chloe swallowed hard. “N-no.” She took a breath to steady her voice and covered her nervousness with a smile. “I really need to rest.”

  “Very well, milady.” Slowly, Lucan lowered her hand. “I will see you on the morrow.”

  As he released her, his thumb again grazed the back of her wrist and set off the same stuttering racket behind her ribs. She held her breath, prayed he would turn around and leave before she did something foolish like trip up the stairs.

  To her frustration, he refused to budge.

  With no other option but to make her departure in front of him, she grabbed the rail and forced her feet to move. As the staircase curved, she made the mistake of looking over her shoulder. When he smiled, her toe caught the edge of the next tread. Barely catching herself before she toppled face first onto the flowery carpet runner, she cursed beneath her breath. Good lord, she was thirty—not fifteen. He was just a guy, just a colleague she neither wanted nor cared about. Getting dizzy because he smiled at her was nothing short of foolishness. Worse, now he knew he affected her.

  She expelled the breath she’d been holding and ran the rest of the way to her room.

  CHAPTER 3

  Lucan’s quest to cease the rumbling of his belly yielded three bags of chips and a Coke from a vending machine. Not precisely what he had envisioned, but the restaurant’s wait list exceeded his patience tenfold and orde
ring dinner to his room was a luxury he could not justify. Breakfast would arrive soon enough.

  He mounted the stairs snacks in hand, let himself inside his room, and sank into the overstuffed couch. Thoughts of Chloe ran rampant through his mind. Tonight he confided secrets he had told no one before. Though she had not made the immediate connection between the Templar Knights and the Church, he provided her the means to do so. He showed her the medallion he wore next to his heart that marked him as a servant of the Almighty. That he had done so left him uneasy.

  ’Twas her right to know, but nonetheless, entrusting a stranger with the Order’s sacred history disturbed him. Mayhap ’twas the suspicion that plagued him; the constant war in his head between what he knew as fact and what the stain on his soul tried to make him believe. If he did not suffer Azazel’s taint, mayhap confiding what he had tonight would hold a degree of comfort. Saints knew the burden weighed heavily at times.

  And yet he could not escape the nagging sense of warning. The voice he could hear but could not name that cautioned the dark presence he had sensed directly tied Chloe to Azazel. It had followed them to the château, clung heavily even once they stepped within. She could not be ignorant to such a strong manifestation. The couple they had passed in the lobby visibly shied away. And ’twas Chloe’s ambivalence that concerned him, not the demons in pursuit.

  Demons he could justify to the Veronica, to Chloe’s status as a seraph. But no mortal being accepted the closeness of darkness. Chloe, however, seemed immune.

  Lucan dropped his head to the back of the couch and stared at the ceiling. Nay, he must be wrong. Mayhap she was so pure of soul she truly could not sense Azazel’s nearness. Mayhap the Almighty shielded her.

  Or mayhap he had become so accustomed to the unholy beings that he created their appearance in his head. ’Twas possible. When only a handful of nights, out of centuries of time, passed without an encounter, the expectation became ingrained. ’Twould not be a far cry from logic that he envisioned shadows in the corners.

  Two heavy thumps on his door brought him upright and out of his thoughts. “Aye?”

  “’Tis I.” Caradoc’s voice carried through the heavy barrier. As Lucan cracked the door open, Caradoc asked, “Am I interrupting?”

  “Nay. Come in.” On seeing the jagged cut beneath Caradoc’s eye, Lucan frowned. “What befell you?”

  With a noticeable wince, Caradoc took a seat in the armchair near the window. “Where is Chloe?”

  The underlying urgency in his brother’s voice set Lucan’s instincts on high alert. He crumpled the empty bag of chips in his hand and tossed it onto the entry table. Returning to his place on the couch, he propped his elbows on his knees and frowned at Caradoc. “She is in her room. Why?”

  “Azazel is here. His beasts, at least.”

  Horns of warning blared inside Lucan’s head. He had not imagined the evil. And if it had made its presence known to Caradoc, ’twould not be long before its purpose with Chloe became clear. “When did you encounter them?”

  Caradoc raked a hand through his hair. “As we left the site. Five miles down the lane, at the forest’s edge. Three demons came upon the vehicle.” His brows pulled toward the bridge of his nose. “They know we are here. And there are more in the forest.”

  “Aye,” Lucan murmured. “I sensed them tonight.” And they are here as well. He kept the thought to himself, unwilling to draw suspicion on Chloe. She was his responsibility. Until he knew her association with the darkness, he would not give his brothers reason to cast her aside.

  Lucan picked at a mismatched thread in his jeans. “She will uncover the Veronica tomorrow.”

  “Aye, and when she does I fear what may happen. Gareth will not accompany us come morn. He sustained a significant injury to his calf.”

  “Gareth?” Lucan blinked. “Have you sent for Zerachiel?”

  Caradoc shook his head. “Nay, he shall heal.” A touch of wistful quiet slipped into his voice. “Like the rest of the European members, his soul is full of vigor.” Caradoc sat forward and grabbed a bag of chips from the center table. He jerked it open. “He will heal in a day’s time. But he is too weak to be of use on the morrow.”

  The perfect combination for Azazel to move for the Veronica. Or Chloe. Lucan’s gut clamped into a fierce knot. “This makes no sense, Caradoc. If ’tis the Veronica he desires, why has he made no move for it on his own? ’Twould not be difficult. He did so with the Sudarium.”

  “And made the world aware of his presence by destroying the cathedral. Azazel knows no limitations. Were he to attempt the Veronica on his own, he would find himself before Raphael’s sword. He needs more power, more relics, to confront either Raphael or Mikhail.”

  Power he would attain when he united the Veronica and the Sudarium. Still, Lucan could not leave off the feeling Chloe played a role in this. That Azazel’s delay had little to do with Raphael’s formidable wrath and indeed revolved around the seraphs. Chloe in specific. Azazel was no idiot. He must know by now she who digs in dust was the woman who would unearth the sacred relic he coveted. Possessing her …

  A rush of anger flooded through Lucan, surprising him with its fierceness. He had known her but a few hours.

  But the story of what had happened to Iain’s seraph lingered in all their minds. As well as the knowledge of all the other foul things Azazel could accomplish with a seraph as his slave.

  A smile crept over Caradoc’s face. “Enough of this. We shall see what the morrow brings when it comes. Tell me, do you find Chloe to your liking?”

  To his liking? Liking did not begin to describe the way his blood warmed when she stood too near. The way fire had lit in his veins when she leaned in close to inspect his medallion and her breath had caressed his cheek. Had he met her in the era of his birth, she would now be in his bed, and he would have had his fill of her, and then some. But he had also glimpsed her dedication to her profession, a devotion to duty he intimately related to. In the car, he caught a trace of insatiable curiosity that undoubtedly led her to the professional success she knew. Pride as well, and on her, the mortal vice ’twas more virtue. She wore it well. All of which made his inevitable pairing that much more appealing. She would not be a pretty object to set upon a shelf, but a respected mate he would be honored to share life with.

  As if Caradoc heard his thoughts in the brief hesitancy of Lucan’s response, he laughed softly. “Mayhap I shall find mine equally as pleasing.” Although humor touched his words, the light in Caradoc’s expression dimmed. He looked out the window, his thoughts retreating to the place and time Lucan knew he could not escape.

  The time that brought him physical pain now, aches that intensified in a span of years far shorter than the rest of the Templar who battled the taint in their souls.

  Lucan resisted the unfair supposition that Caradoc resented he had not been chosen for the next seraph. Though the question tugged at his mind, he refused to allow it to take root. Caradoc did not covet. Resentment did not reside in his true heart.

  “Mayhap yours will fill the ache of Isabelle,” Lucan murmured.

  “Nay.” Caradoc rose from the chair, his expression grim. As he did each time the subject of Isabelle arose, he sought escape. He abruptly crossed to the door. “I shall allow you to rest. Tomorrow, you must be prepared.”

  Lucan did not bother to respond. ’Twas no need to agree. The door pulled shut, and Lucan rested his feet atop the sturdy center table. Stretching, he reclined. Indeed, the morn would find him prepared to battle. But sunrise would bring more as well, for on the morrow he must attempt to draw Chloe closer. And whilst her eyes spoke words of interest, what tumbled off her lips forbade his efforts. Breaking through that invisible barrier required more strategic effort than any battle of swords.

  * * *

  In the quiet of her room, Chloe burrowed under the heavy layer of covers. The television emitted a soft light that helped ease her fear of the dark. She couldn’t remember when she’d last slept in c
omplete blackness. She’d tried once or twice, particularly when Blake complained. Even then, with his strength to blanket her, she’d shivered when the rattling on the windows began.

  Strange, he hadn’t ever noticed it. Now and then he commented on the wind, but he’d never been aware that the sound didn’t come from branches against glass. They were out there. They tapped to let her know she couldn’t escape.

  She pulled the blankets up to her chin and huddled deeper into the warm cocoon. Beyond the closed blinds, the racket took on more insistence. Chloe shot an arm from beneath the covers, grabbed the small dagger on her nightstand, and jerked her arm under the heavy canopy once more. She clutched the blessed weapon in both hands and lifted her gaze to the elaborate mural of angels on the ceiling. For this reason, this tiny bit of comfort, she’d chosen this room. Her gaze riveted on the archangel Gabriel who held a white lily in his hands.

  “Gabriel, I call upon you to keep me safe,” she whispered into the dark.

  Taught to her by a demonologist the first year she’d noticed the presence, the litany fell off Chloe’s lips. Each syllable unraveled the knot of fear around her heart. Tomorrow, she’d replace the sage and the bits of quartz in the windowsills. Julian would ridicule her, but she’d make some time this week to find a spiritual cleanser and pay to have her room washed free of negative energy.

  None of the measures would last long. But she might gain a full night’s sleep before the demons could regain strength enough to override her efforts.

  How she wished she’d listened to the native people of Bahariya who warned if she walked among the bones in the Valley of the Dead, she wouldn’t leave as she’d entered. But she’d been so young and naive then. So determined to make a name for herself within the Egyptology community. The remains she discovered, the artifacts she placed, all elevated her position among her peers. In hindsight, however, having her papers published internationally and her name recognized among her mentors didn’t justify the sacrifice.

  If she’d heeded the warnings, or even bothered to wear the natives’ gifts of warding, she could have climbed to the same heights professionally without the nightmares. She might not have accomplished all the things she took pride in, but at least she’d know peace.