Sharon Ashwood - Possessed by an Immortal

He tried to see Prince Kyle in the boy’s face. The dark hair and brown eyes were similar, but that was inconclusive. Maybe the shape of the eyes was the same, or the way his hair fell across his face, but he didn’t exactly have a poster of the Crown Prince of Vidon taped to his locker door. He couldn’t remember every feature.

Mark made himself smile at the boy and turned his attention back to the road. The sun was up but it was still early, the world fresh and tipped by frost. The rolling land was a rumpled blanket of evergreens patched with gold. The sky was a rich autumn-blue. It was going to be one of those fall days that seemed a parting gift from summer—and all that sun was giving him a splitting headache.

Mark had used the night to get Larson ready for his flight to Los Angeles and to attend to the files on his desk. Larson would be fine—at least from the bullet wound—but the hospital administration might perish from shock when they saw the completed paperwork the next morning.

The wait had served two other purposes. It gave Bree and Jonathan a real night’s sleep, and surveillance teams were less likely to see them leave during the morning shift change. Mark had remained on the alert, but had seen nothing suspicious. If their pursuers were watching the hospital, hopefully they’d given them the slip.

Bree opened her eyes, stifling a yawn. She was still pale with fatigue, the freckles across her nose standing out. “Where are we?”

“We just passed through Sequim.” He focused his attention on the ribbon of highway, ignoring her soft, female smell. Or trying to. He was getting horny and hungry, and wasn’t sure which impulse was in the lead.

She turned around in her seat, checking on her son. “We should find a drive-through for breakfast.”

The scent of woman was one thing. Tantalizing, dangerous, but good. Mark imagined the stench of human food trapped inside the car, and nearly shuddered. “No.”

“Kids need to eat.”

“Kids are sticky.”

“He’ll be hungry.”

“I’m the driver.”

Bree gave him a sharp glance that reproached him and acknowledged his position of power at the same time. “Fine. It’s your car.”

It was. With a dove-gray leather interior. And she’d managed to make him, a centuries-old monster, feel bad about it. He winced. “We can stop at the Gleeford Ferry. There’s better food in town than just drive-through.”

She sank back, turning her face to the side window until all he could see was her long, waving hair. Even it looked disgruntled. “This road we’re on is barely a highway. Wouldn’t it be faster to pick up the I-5?”

“Someone put Puget Sound in the way.”

She made a small noise of impatience. “I guess we’re farther out than I expected.”

“We’ve only been driving an hour.”

“It feels longer.”

He realized she was nervous, but it was coming across as demanding. He stifled a growl. Being alone on his island was much easier. “There are fewer cars here. I can spot someone following us on this route.”

With no further comments, Bree pulled a magazine out of her backpack and started flipping through it. From the corner of his eye, he saw it was one of those thick fashion rags. Each page turn was a sigh of impatience.

Flip. Flip. Flip.

Mark gripped the steering wheel, trying to ignore the sound. To make matters worse, Jonathan was humming tunelessly, thumping his stuffed duck against the car door. He clenched his teeth, summoning inner strength. You are the lion. The hunter that strikes in the night. You have the patience of the leopard in the tree.

Thump. Thump. Flip. La-la-la.

I’m not a thrice-damned cab driver. Another few hours, and he’d be alone again. Breathe deeply. No, then he smelled tasty woman. Open a window. Yeah, that was it.

This was his nightmare. Once before, he had been responsible for a woman and her young. The Knights of Vidon had destroyed them. And I tore the first Nicholas Ferrel and his animals to pieces in retribution. The centuries that followed had been a bloodbath, an endless feud of vampire against slayer as one act of violence demanded payback, then another.

But Mark had taken a different path since then, one of healing instead of death. He desperately wanted to stay on it.

Bree stopped turning pages, gazing out the window again. Her long fingers gripped the magazine so hard the tendons stood out along the backs of her hands. “You don’t think anyone’s following us now, do you?”

Mark cleared his throat. “Not that I’ve seen.”

“What have you seen?”

“Two logging trucks and a pickup full of produce. Unless the gunmen are disguised as squash, we’re safe for the time being.”

“Good.” The word was as packed full of meaning as her glance had been. “It’s been a while since I had a few hours.”

He looked over at her. He was wearing dark glasses despite the tinted windshield, and they washed the color out of her, leaving her in shades of gray. “You mean a few hours to not worry?”

She gave a quick, rueful smile. “To worry about one thing at a time. To focus on normal mom things, like breakfast. Clean clothes. I’ve been carrying this magazine around for weeks and haven’t got past the first ten pages. Getting to read it feels like a scandalous luxury.”

Something made Mark glance in the rearview mirror. Jonathan was watching his mother, picking up every word. Mark wondered how much of it he understood. Probably everything. Kids in trouble grew up fast. Maybe princelings on the lam grew even faster.

“Where’s Jonathan’s father in all this?” he asked.

“Nowhere.” Bree said it quickly, opening up the magazine again. The word was the next best thing to a slamming door.

Mark watched the road, keeping his face turned straight ahead. They were getting near the ferry that would take them to Seattle. He should start laying a little groundwork to prepare Bree for the safe house. “It’s a lot, raising a child on your own.”

“Sure it is. But you do it, whether you’re ready or not.” Her voice was quietly matter-of-fact.

“The guy’s a prince. He can afford child support.”

Her hands froze midflip. “You know who I am.”

Got you. Mark shifted his hands on the steering wheel, as if closing his grip on more than the car. “I figured it out.”

“How?” She pulled herself straighter in the seat. “How did you know?”

“I have a good memory for faces.” Which was true, though he’d made no connection between this woman and the celebutante who’d graced Crown Prince Kyle’s arm four years ago. But now that he’d met Bree, there was no chance he’d ever forget her.

She slumped. “Sue me. I had my fifteen minutes of fame.”

“You weren’t the last girl Kyle showed a good time.” There had been others, including the infamous Brandi Snap, who had nearly wrecked Prince Kyle’s engagement to the much-beloved Princess Amelie of Marcari. “Does Kyle know about Jonathan?”

She gave him a dirty look. “They’ve never met.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“Oh, but everyone knows about him, don’t they?” Her tone was steely enough to draw blood. “I worked hard to keep a low profile for a long time. Lived my life, raised my son. Then one day the paparazzi must have been having a slow week, because all of a sudden it was all over the papers—the prince’s bimbo had a baby.”

“Is that who you think is after you?”

“Photographers shoot with cameras, not guns.” She toyed with the edges of the magazine, riffling the pages. “And Kyle isn’t the one giving the order to chase us. He’s a good guy, prince or not.”

Mark was inclined to agree. As one of the Horsemen, he had crossed paths with the crowned heads of several kingdoms, including Prince Kyle. He’d seemed pretty levelheaded—but the fact that he’d had this woman and then let her get away—well, that was just foolish.