never needed that after walking the surface of this planet for hundreds of years, he wasn’t like the people he’d meet in an hour.
Not even remotely like them.
It wasn’t as if he hadn’t known that from day one. Sporting fangs and living forever made differences hard to forget. As did the oaths he’d taken that dictated his life’s direction.
Tonight, he might have given half his considerable fortune to be completely free of the discomfort of the grooves on his back, if just for one day. He supposed the other six immortals in his Blood Knights brotherhood felt the same way by now.
Pain in the ass, though.
Chanting in a low-pitched murmur, Kellan willed the burn between his shoulder blades to ease, without much success. The magic woven into their creation continued to pulse with a steady beat the way it always did when he drew near the chaos of civilization. He considered cities to be a universal plague.
He didn’t relish the thought of crowds. He never bothered with trying to fit in. Centuries ago he’d begun to agree with the freakish classification people would give him if they knew the truth of his origins. Luckily, very few mortals nowadays were in on the secrets surrounding his kind.
Most mortals were also ignorant of the part he played in protecting them—no easy task with humans occupying every corner of the planet. Add to those numbers the equally aggressive expansion of monsters that preyed on humans, and this modern world had developed its own recipe for disaster.
True, he just happened to be one of only seven immortals consistently going out of their way to do something about that. He was needed behind the scenes.
But he was tired.
Running a hand over his head made him miss the riot of shoulder-length auburn locks that had been his trademark for as long as he could remember. The new, shorter cut might make him appear more modern, but he couldn’t actually outdistance reality. Short hair or long, he was the same immortal. Something he might not have to think about for much longer. Because...
She would help with that. She, her, it, or whatever the hell kind of spirit had ensnared his soul from afar with the promise of ending what had always been endless.
Kellan sensed her presence somewhere ahead. Not too far away. Well within reach. Someone unique awaited him in the rain-soaked West Coast city—a feminine soul with the ability to end his immortal servitude once and for all.
Maybe it wasn’t actually a woman he’d find, yet he had a gut feeling it might be, and an uncanny sense of rightness about the perception. She had been invading his thoughts and his dreams for as long as Kellan could remember. From the beginning, actually, when he’d left his mortality behind.
So he was here in the States, heading toward one particular American city. Seattle, Washington, was ground zero for his private, personal agenda.
Finding her might be tough, though, since the whereabouts of his counterpart had always been a secret. The rare being he sought was a shadow, a dream. She was vagueness on the periphery of a memory he couldn’t forget or completely recall. Yet she was there in his mind, buried deep.
Closing in on her true image might be like trying to catch hold of smoke. But he felt her.
He hungered for her and what she had to offer an immortal who had grown world-weary. She alone had the power to ease his restlessness. Only she would recognize his true identity and all that he had endured.
Hell, she might walk up to him on long, shapely legs and whisper her secrets in his ear.
Shots of white-hot anticipation streaked through him with that thought...before the chill returned.
“Damn sigils.”
Kellan rolled his shoulders, cautious about lingering too long on treacherous thoughts. The brotherhood couldn’t know about his mission or what he was after. All seven Blood Knights shared a special connection fostered by the type of blood in their veins. Tapping into the thoughts of the other six was possible, just as they were able to tap into his if he let them. Extra care was needed now to keep them out.
In truth, he was owed this trip, having stretched well beyond the concept of duty. Fulfilling his obligations had occupied the endless march of months, years, decades, that comprised his past. But having one of his brothers standing guard over the holy relic that lay at the heart of the Knights’ creation meant that Kellan had plenty of time off.
An endless supply of time.
Ceaseless and unending.
The sound of the engine and the faint ting of the bike’s spirit bell brought Kellan back from his thoughts. His speed was pushing ninety, and that just wasn’t fast enough for an immortal with an important personal objective to ignore the disturbing feelings that lately had cropped up. Feelings of loss for parts of himself long ago left behind. Emotions dealing with an unforeseeable future and the mysterious her he could almost reach out and touch.
And there she was again, this mysterious soul at the heart of his search. Kellan imagined her scent floating in the wind. In the dark night he could almost see her eyes.
Those eyes would be blue.
His tattoos now stung with the force of a hundred scorpions. Each link of the inky scrollwork tied him to vows that made it a sacrilege for him to seek what he was after in Seattle. He had been created to exist forever, as long as he remained true to his pledge. It was too bad that forever had become too damn long.
Dangerous thoughts, bro.
Kellan reinforced his mental barriers against unwanted intrusion. He could shoulder the burden of all sorts of knowledge...if he could just deal with the damn tattoos.
“Might for right.”
He spoke the old credo that he had once taken as his own, hoping the sentiment would offer comfort, even if false, to the blood-etched marks on his back. Those marks that now worked to keep him chained to an ideal that had long ago lost its shine.
Staring at the distant city lights, Kellan opened up the bike full throttle. Wearing the legend Blood Knights stitched on the back of his jacket as if he were merely part of an American motorcycle gang would either help his cause in finding the being he sought, or turn out to be the equivalent of painting a bull’s-eye on his back.
Either way, this hunt had been a long time coming...and hunting just happened to be what he did best.
* * *
As the surgeon backed away from the operating table, McKenna Randall, RN, wiped her wet hands on a bloody white towel. They had saved this patient, and for that she felt immense relief, though saving only one out of three severely wounded people in a row wasn’t great odds.
Nodding to the rest of the staff in the operating room, she headed for the door. Someone else would take over now. She’d been on her feet for twenty hours, and though at twenty-six years old she was the youngest nurse in the ER, a break was long overdue. She needed a shower, fresh clothes, food.
She was bone-tired. Her teeth hurt from grinding them together. Her shoulders quaked with spasms. She felt light-headed and a little dizzy from the kind of fatigue that brought back the long days of her past. Though she liked helping people, part of her still yearned for the excitement of her former profession. Nurse Randall tried to fix things that were broken, but Officer McKenna Randall had gone after the cause, hoping to keep things like slashed throats and stabbings from happening in the first place.
The injuries to the patients on the operating table tonight had been grisly. She’d had to keep a tight rein on her emotions in order to curb the desire to head out to the streets for a look at the crime scenes where her patients’ wounds had been inflicted. Her old partner would be at those scenes, plus a lot of other guys she missed on a daily basis—guys who placed their lives on the line every damn day in the name of the law.
But that was then.
This was now.
The tickle at the base of her neck was a