Whatever it was, she hoped he found it.
Rising, he reached down and took her hand. “Let’s go have a shower.”
Nick stepped onto Kayla’s back patio. With a burst of preternatural speed, he vaulted the fence and ducked into the shade of his own, suffering nary a burn from the sun that had not yet set.
Upon finding his back door unlocked, he opened it and stepped inside. A snick sounded as someone flicked the safety off a handgun.
“Oliver?” he called.
Snick. The safety went back on. “In here.”
Nick followed his Second’s voice to the study Oliver used as an office and Nick used as a home library.
Seated behind his desk, Oliver set his weapon aside. “Just making sure it was you.”
Nick nodded and sank into the cushy chair that faced the desk.
“How’s Kayla?”
Sighing, he drew a hand down his face. “She’s okay.” He sent his friend a wry smile. “She hasn’t kicked me to the curb yet, as you would say.”
Oliver nodded. “I figured she was made of sterner stuff.” He studied him a moment. “She did well last night. Even Roland commented on it.”
“He did?” That surprised him. Most immortals and Seconds weren’t kidding when they deemed Roland antisocial. Before he met Sarah, he’d been a total recluse.
“Yeah. He said when they arrived, she shielded you with her body and would’ve shot them if I hadn’t assured her they were friends.”
That… actually scared the hell out of him, chilling him to the bone. He admired Kayla’s strength. He really did. And he hadn’t been lying when he’d told her he found her strength sexy. But if Roland and Marcus had instead been one of his attackers…
He sure as hell didn’t want her to take a bullet for him.
Oliver leaned forward and studied him. “Your face has gone pale.”
Not surprising.
“You really love her, don’t you?”
Nick nodded. “I do.”
“Clearly she feels the same way about you.” But Oliver’s expression remained sober. “Does she know it all now?”
“Yes. I even told her about the virus and vampires.”
“Good.”
Nick nodded to Oliver’s laptop. “What has the network found?”
“They’re still tracing the identities of the men you killed. So far they’ve managed to link one to a weapons manufacturer.”
“Shit. They aren’t linked to the military, are they? Could this have something to do with what went down at the base Gershom commandeered?”
“We don’t know yet.”
Nick pondered that. All loose ends tied to blitzing the base and liberating their brethren were supposed to have been taken care of. If they had slipped up and left a thread dangling, he would’ve thought that thread would lead to the North Carolinian contingent of immortals, not to him.
His frown deepened. And wouldn’t Heather’s father have given them a heads-up? He was a general in the United States Army and had become a close ally after Seth and the North Carolinian immortals had gone to the rescue of a highly classified military base when a small army of vampires besieged it. Nick’s immortal brethren had slain the vampires and saved the lives of a lot of soldiers that night. And, of course, the general’s daughter had wed an immortal. So he had a vested interest in warning them about possible threats.
“What about the men I didn’t kill?” Nick asked. “What was Seth able to discover when he read their minds?”
Oliver sent him an exasperated look. “There weren’t any minds for him to read. You killed them all.”
“No, I didn’t. Two of them I only punched.” It had happened so fast that it might’ve been three. He couldn’t remember for sure.
Oliver shook his head. “You hit them too hard. By the time we arrived on the scene, they had all died from brain injuries.”
Nick swore. “I thought I just knocked them unconscious.”
Oliver shrugged, his expression saying What can you do? Shit happens. “It’s a common problem, believe it or not. When you have preternatural strength and are accustomed to fighting vampires to the death on a nightly basis, it makes it difficult for you to gauge how hard you can hit humans without scrambling their brains. It’s one of the reasons the Immortal Guardians in North Carolina had such a hard time gathering information on the mercenary groups they fought. They were so used to fighting vampires with preternatural strength and healing capabilities that they kept hitting the human mercenaries too hard.”
That didn’t make him feel better. They needed the information those men’s minds could’ve provided. “Is Seth pissed?”
“No. He just asked Chris Reordon to help Henderson and his crew do some digging. Reordon has become a real pro at this kind of thing in recent years.”
“With everything that’s happened in North Carolina, I’m not surprised.” Nick slumped back against the chair. “So what do we do now?”
“You’re supposed to hunt as usual tonight—”
“Hell no. One of those bastards nearly made it into Kayla’s home. I’m not leaving her unguarded.”
“You won’t be,” Oliver said, unfazed by his outburst. “Seth asked Aidan and Dana to come stay with us until this is all sorted out, so you’ll have backup.”
Aidan and Dana? Really?
Aidan was such a powerful Immortal Guardian that his age and his strength made Nick seem a virtual toddler. The ancient Celtic immortal had lived three thousand years, give or take. And because his DNA had been diluted less by ordinary human DNA, he boasted multiple gifts instead of just one. Teleportation. Telekinesis. Telepathy. Healing with his hands. There could be others, but those were the ones Nick had seen Aidan wield firsthand. And his strength and speed were so superior that he could even give Seth a run for his money when they sparred.
If Aidan had been here last night when those men attacked, he could’ve easily used telekinesis to freeze them all in place and then searched their minds to discover who had given them their orders.
He would be a worthy ally in this. And rumor had it his wife, Dana, was as strong and fast as Aidan.
Almost every Immortal Guardian Nick knew had been forcibly transformed by a vampire. And usually when gifted ones transformed, they were not as strong as immortals who had transformed in previous centuries or millennia. Elder immortals had always been stronger and faster than younger immortals. But recent years had birthed a fascinating revelation: if an immortal healer transformed a gifted one—something that had never occurred until Sarah asked Roland to make her immortal so the two of them could spend eternity together—that gifted one ended up becoming as powerful as the immortal who transformed her.
So even though Dana had only been an immortal for a year or so, she could kick Nick’s ass with one hand tied behind her back.
Hell, she could probably do it with both hands tied behind her back.
By choosing Aidan and Dana, Seth was sending in the big guns.
“Marcus wanted to come, too,” Oliver added. “He has close ties in the neighborhood and was furious when he heard what happened.”
Nick nodded. Marcus had lived here for several years before he’d sold the house to Nick and moved to North Carolina. “He and Josh are still good friends. He’s probably worried this might spill over onto him.”