The man’s heels hit the floor with a thud. Staggering to one side, he drew in several deep breaths as his face filled with triumph. “You won’t regret this.” The idiot thought Seth had changed his mind and intended to make him immortal.
“No. I’m afraid I won’t.” Seth focused on the man’s chest.
Benford paled as what felt like a fist tightened around his heart. Eyes wide, he grabbed his left arm. His face contorted with pain as his breath shortened. Bending forward, he gazed up at Seth. “Wh-Wha—?”
“You’re having a heart attack,” Seth informed him.
The man’s lips moved, but no more sound emerged. In his chaotic mind, however, he shouted, bargained, and struggled to get the words out.
David shook his head. “He still thinks he can buy us off.”
Benford’s face reflected utter astonishment that he couldn’t as he breathed his last breath.
Seth and David watched him fall.
“Roubal sent that video after we defeated Gershom,” David commented.
“Yes.” Roubal hadn’t encountered Nick until a few weeks after the final battle.
“So, how did Reed connect with him? All arrows point to Gershom having sent him.”
A troubling thought. “And yet, I didn’t see Gershom’s name or likeness anywhere in Benford’s memories.”
“Nor did I.”
Seth sighed. “I wish we could’ve read Reed’s thoughts. TJ was never part of Gershom’s army.” Seth’s perusal of TJ’s memories had revealed as much. “He met Reed after the latter lost contact with Gershom.”
“So,” David posed after a moment’s thought, “did Gershom play a role in this?”
“I don’t know. But if he did, that role ended when we defeated him.”
“Are you sure? Zach communicated with Lisette through dreams while he was imprisoned. Could Gershom do the same?”
Seth shook his head. “He’s too weak and buried too deep. I learned from Zach’s trespasses and ensured Gershom could not do the same. He can take no more action against us.”
“Perhaps he merely asked Reed to do a little research and find someone like Benford who would have the resources, desire, and lack of a moral compass to do whatever he could to create an immortality serum.”
“And he just happened to choose Benford, who had a history with Roubal?”
David shrugged. “Benford owns one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the country.”
“And the largest Reed would find in North Carolina.”
David considered the quandary. “Coincidence?”
Seth found a smile. “This wouldn’t be the first time coincidence has wrought havoc in our world.”
Chuckling, David shook his head. “No, it wouldn’t.”
Since Seth had appointed himself the leader of the Immortal Guardians, the chaos that simple happenstance could spawn had sometimes astounded him.
“If Gershom was involved,” David asked as they strolled from the lab, “do you think this was the extent of his backup plan?”
Seth sighed. “I certainly hope so.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Nicole grinned as she raced through the trees. Somewhere up ahead, Sean attempted to elude her, but she now had a nose as powerful as an elephant’s. And she loved Sean’s scent. Even more now that she was immortal.
They had wasted no time in asking Aidan to transform her. Nicole would’ve preferred that Sean do it, but practicality overruled that. Aidan was roughly three thousand years old and a healer. That magical combination would make Nicole faster, stronger, and more resilient than she would be if an immortal as young as Sean transformed her. It would also give her a greater tolerance for sunlight.
And it had. She couldn’t go out and sunbathe for hours on end. But it took longer for Nicole’s skin to pinken and burn than it did for Sean’s.
Nicole remembered little about her transformation. According to Sean, once Aidan bit her, she got pretty loopy and said some things Sean admitted he wished he could’ve caught on video. Nicole vaguely recalled not feeling well the next day. She developed a high fever and vomited up everything Sean coaxed her into eating or drinking. Even water.
Sean had been a real sweetheart, staying by her side, comforting her, distracting her, and making her laugh. All she remembered after that was waking up with a haggard Sean leaning over her and discovering—much to her shock—that three days had passed.
Poor Sean. As soon as he’d realized she was lucid, he had crawled into bed, curled his big body around hers, and held her almost painfully tight for at least an hour, mumbling something about an ice bath and her scaring the crap out of him.
Then he’d fed her lots of pizza.
She grinned.
Though there wasn’t much of a breeze, the wind generated by her exceptional speed yanked Nicole’s hair back from her face. Running this fast wasn’t as easy as she’d expected. Nicole had nearly crashed into a tree the first time she’d raced through the forest. But she had since learned how to process visuals of her surroundings as quickly as she could run.
Tonight, Sean was helping her learn how to use her enhanced senses to track targets as part of her new vampire-hunter training.
Since she could run as fast as a three-thousand-year-old immortal, Nicole had given him a head start. But she was gaining on him and would soon—
She skidded to a halt. The thick trunks of towering evergreens rose around her.
Peering between them, she sniffed.
Sean’s scent had abruptly grown fainter, not stronger as it would have if she were about to catch him.
Frowning, she turned in a slow circle.
That was odd. It seemed stronger behind her than it was in front of her. Had he doubled back?
She pondered it.
He couldn’t have. She would’ve run into him if he had. And if he’d veered off and taken a circuitous route to bypass her, she would’ve smelled it and heard it.
Wouldn’t she?
Swearing, Nicole sprinted back the way she’d come. Every half mile or so, she paused to sniff and listen.
Run. Pause. Sniff. Listen. Run. Pause. Sniff. Listen.
At no point did she unearth anything that suggested Sean had struck off in a different direction.
When she could barely detect his scent, she reluctantly conceded defeat and returned to the point at which she’d lost it. Frowning, she propped her hands on her hips. “Sean,” she called, “where are you?”
“Up here.” A smile tinged the deep voice that came from above.
Tilting her head back, she looked up.
Fifty or sixty feet up in the branches of a nearby tree, Sean grinned down at her as he hugged the trunk. “Hi there.”
She smiled back. “Hi yourself.”
As agile as a monkey, he began to climb down. “Did you know your eyes glow when you get frustrated?”
No, she didn’t. She’d have to keep that in mind on future hunts. “How do you know it’s frustration and not your gorilla-like prowess turning me on?” she countered. Sean was no longer the only one in this relationship whose eyes glowed when he became aroused. He had proven that shortly after her transformation by ardently making love with her in front of a mirror.