Page 110 of Dark Embrace

Brie blinked. “Pizza. If I see red meat again, I’ll be sick.”

Sam smiled and lifted the phone.

Brie looked at the file and saw Aidan of Awe typed neatly on the index tab. Her heart lurched with dread. She opened it and her disbelief began.

The file was twenty-seven pages long. There were eighteen Sightings, all reported by CDA agents. Brie began to tremble. In 1942 an agent had sighted Aidan in 1428 in London, where he’d destroyed a handful of demons; in 1818 an agent had sighted him in the northwestern Highlands in 1488, during a terrible clan war infested with demons and subs. Aidan’s role had been unclear. Brie began to breathe hard. He’d been a Master in the first Sighting, but she was pretty sure he’d been in his dark, angry-at-the-gods mode for the second one. Her heart racing, she found another Sighting prior to 1502, and it was equally ambiguous. There were six more Sightings, and in several, he had reportedly turned his back on the Innocent.

One fact was clear. CDA agents had been traveling through time for the past two hundred years. Nick was hardly the only one who could leap into the past.

She looked up at Sam. “This isn’t helpful.”

“Keep going.”

She had reached the second half of the file. He’d been sighted—and photographed—in Rome in 2007, Madrid in 2005 and London in 2004. There were Sightings in Milan, London, New York and Beverly Hills. Every single one was after the millennium. Photos were clipped to each report. Brie stared at Aidan, clad in the Gucci leather jacket she had found in his chamber and tight, faded Levi’s. He had never looked so good. She ignored the fact that there was a woman hanging on his arm in every photo. There were a dozen in all.

She thought she would die from the heartbreak of their separation and her fear for his life. But didn’t this mean he’d survived?

She realized Sam was watching her. A box of Kleenex appeared by her right hand. Brie took a tissue and wiped her tearing eyes, then looked up. “He makes it, doesn’t he? Look at these photos of him in the twenty-first century!” But she looked again and saw how carefree his face was.

She was looking at Aidan before his fall.

“You didn’t read the reports, or you didn’t read them carefully,” Sam said quietly.

Brie flinched and met her serious gaze.

“All the Highland Sightings end in 1502. After that year, he is never seen in the Highlands again.”

Brie was afraid. “What are you trying to tell me?”

Sam was grim. “In those reports, the agents are clear. Aidan is dressed in modern clothes, but he is a medieval man visiting the future, having come from the past. I think in every postmillennium Sighting, he came from a period within several years of his induction into the Brotherhood—which we think was in 1421.”

Brie’s hands began to shake. Aidan had brought Allie home last year and they’d traveled from 1430. Allie had told them so.

That had been before Ian’s murder, before his fall.

Brie threw the files at Sam, standing. “So he is hanged in 1502? That’s what you think?”

“It’s what I think, Brie. I mean, there’s a tomb at Awe with his effigy on it. That’s in the case file, too. It’s a big deal for the locals. He is a huge local myth—the Wolf of Awe, a man who ruthlessly destroyed his enemies and met an equally ruthless end.”

“He isn’t ruthless,” Brie said.

“If this is his Fate, it is not fair,” Sam said. “I can see how much you’ve changed. I hardly recognize you. But you cannot change the execution, no matter what you want to think or plan, not if it is written.”

Brie stared furiously at her.

Sam looked at her watch as a buzzer on her phone went off. “Pizza’s here, and you have twenty-six minutes.”

“And what if it’s not written? What if I am meant to stop this?”

“Then we need to get our asses in gear.”

BRIE STUMBLED OUT OF CDA AFTER dark, with armed escorts that included Sam and two HCU field agents. It was really late, and she was sick with exhaustion. The debriefing had taken eight and a half hours. Not only did Nick know every detail of her time in the past, he knew everything she had learned about the Masters, the Brotherhood and demons in the Middle Ages.

They slid into Sam’s car, a black Lexus sedan, and Sam waved the agents off. As she drove the few blocks to Brie’s loft, Brie stared out of the window listlessly. She finally said, “I am going to find a way to get back. I intend to go to work tomorrow and start looking for an agent who can time-travel. If Nick won’t send me, I’ll bribe, extort, threaten or seduce an agent who can.”

“Wow,” Sam said. “I still can’t believe how tough you’ve become. Hey, if you start working out and get in shape, the leaps will be easier.” She flashed a smile. “I learned that during my CDA physical.”

“I don’t intend to stick around here long enough to get in shape,” Brie said, and she thought about the way Aidan had made love to her. He had liked her body just the way it was. Grief ripped at her heart.