Read Online Before Dawn by Ann Bruce - Free Book Online

your dreams.”
     
    “No, in a couple days, it might be in your dreams.” He paused a beat. “Well, maybe not, considering his plans for you.”
     
    She froze. “He agreed to turn you.”
     
    “Yes. The money was icing.” Savage leaned in closer, putting his lips too close to her ear, and she jerked her head away. He simply plowed his fingers into her hair and cupped her scalp, keeping her head still. His voice lowered conspiratorially. “Imagine what I can do with their power, their strength, their speed. Imagine what I can do with all the time in the world. The possibilities are endless.”
     
    She glared up at him, willing him to know the hatred and fury welling up inside her. “Burn. In. Hell.”
     
    He laughed again and drew back, straightening. “I suspect I will, but only after a few centuries, maybe even a millennium, of ruling my own little piece of this world.”
     
    “Are the bruises even real? Or did you paint them on yourself?”
     
    “They’re real enough,” said Savage, running a hand over the front of his chest. “But not nearly as bad as I said. No broken ribs, no knife wound. Since his healing powers currently are better than mine, Edmond donated the blood.”
     
    Savage’s gaze moved beyond her, and Mercy saw his muscles tense, his entire body stiffening, his shoulders bunching. Then she felt the presence too. Her stomach lurched then roiled, even as it collapsed on itself, and the fine hairs on the back of her neck stirred as if disturbed by unseen fingertips. She didn’t need to look to know who’d noiselessly entered the room. Her eyes remained steady on Savage’s still, wary form. He was in league with the devil, but he wasn’t foolish enough to turn his back on him.
     
    Mercy swallowed, but it was difficult with her mouth like the Gobi Desert. In stark contrast, the palms of her hands and the soles of her feet went hot and clammy. Fear was something solid in her throat. The cavalry wasn’t coming to save her because Savage was the cavalry.
     
    * * * * *
     
    Ryan knew Vanessa Helsen was damned good at blending into the shadows when she needed to do so. After all, his line of work had started with her ancestors. That he spotted her from three buildings away meant he needed to hurry. Not that his instincts weren’t already clamoring for him to do something, anything, to get Mercy back. Preferably something physical, something destructive. He smothered the urge, knowing Mercy couldn’t afford to have him make any more mistakes.
     
    He’d left the Volvo three blocks back and gone the rest of the way on foot. He located her in the dark, narrow gap between two warehouses, crouched behind a stack of cardboard boxes. She was tall and deceptively slender. Her dark brown hair was cut short enough to be hidden under a skull cap because, as she’d once explained to him, it gave the enemy less to grab onto. The cap was black, matching the rest of her outfit. Boots, pants, long-sleeved shirt, and in concession to the chilly weather, padded outer vest. She shifted, and he caught the tiny gleam of silver on her outer thigh. The blade strapped to her left thigh wasn’t fully hilted in its sheath. It was an uncharacteristic oversight. The rest of her weapons were hidden from view.
     
    One hand automatically going inside her vest, she spared him a quick backward glance when he deliberately made a small scuffling noise to alert her to his presence. He crouched next to her and tapped a finger on the sheathed blade strapped to his own thigh. She shoved her blade fully into its leather sheath, then handed him a wireless headset. Ryan separated the earpiece from the communication module. The former went in his ear canal and the latter clipped onto the collar of his shirt.
     
    Vanessa gestured to the darkened building across the road and spoke in a low voice that wouldn’t carry. “The tracer I put on Savage’s vehicle says it’s in there.”
     
    “Best point of