Eternally. Maureen Child

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      Kieran pulled a satellite phone from the inner pocket of his coat and flipped it open. Stabbing the speed dial, he waited while on the other end of the line, a phone rang and rang. Finally…

      “Santos.”

      “What took you so bloody long?”

      A laugh rippled across the line. “Kieran. Should have known I’d be hearing from you. I heard it escaped again.”

      Kieran scowled, glanced down the darkened street and crossed it hurriedly, moving toward the black Lexus he’d left just beyond the reach of streetlights. “There’s been a kill. This morning.”

      “Didn’t take it long.”

      No, it hadn’t. But then, the demon had been locked safely away for more than a hundred years. Of course it would want to revel in a fresh kill right away. The trick would be to keep it from doing any more damage.

      Kieran punched a button on his key ring and unlocked the car as he approached. He opened the driver’s side door, but before getting in, he paused, concentrating, focusing his energies toward the beast he must find.

      “You have its trail?” Santos asked.

      “Had it,” Kieran admitted, glancing back over his shoulder toward the house where he’d left Julie Carpenter. He’d allowed himself to become distracted by her. He’d filled his mind with her scent and forgotten about the other. About his mission. Hard to believe. “Gone again now.”

      “So you are calling for reinforcements?” The Spaniard’s voice was tinged with amusement.

      “No,” he said, confident in his hunting abilities. He’d never needed help before. He wouldn’t this time, either. At least not with the actual hunt. As a Guardian, he’d done his duty over the centuries, accomplished whatever task was set in front of him.

      This time, he swore, would be no different.

      Even though, it already was.

      “Look,” he said, taking off his sword and tossing it onto the passenger seat before sliding into the car and buckling his seat belt, “what do you know about Mates?”

      A deep chuckle rumbled into Kieran’s ear and he glowered even while he fired up the engine and threw the car into gear. “What the bloody hell is so damned funny?”

      “Ah, my friend,” Santos said, his Castilian accent flavoring every word, “it was only a matter of time before you would come to me with such questions.”

      The Spaniard’s sense of humor could strike at any moment, usually when it was least appreciated. But they’d been friends for five hundred years. Ever since that night in old Madrid when the two of them had held off a crowd trying to burn another Guardian, Adrienne Marcel, as a witch. Not that the Immortal would have died in the fire, but recovery from severe burns could have taken her years.

      Tonight Kieran was in no mood to play games. “Meaning…?”

      “Meaning, that an English knight will never be the lover a Spaniard is.” He laughed again. “I will be happy to give you any tips you require.”

      Kieran rolled his eyes, steered his car around a corner and headed down the hill toward Hollywood Boulevard. If nothing else, he’d go back to the scene of the first kill. Look around. Try to pick up the trail again.

      “I’m not English,” he growled, “as I’ve told you a thousand times and more. I’m a Scot and the day I need help screwing a woman is the day you can bury me.”

      “Ah,” Santos said with only a twinge of regret, “but burial is not for the likes of us, my friend. One only buries the dead, yes?”

      “We are dead, Santos. We just don’t know enough to lie down.” He stared at the twin slashes of his headlights, slicing through the darkness, spearing into the bushes and trees crowding the edges of the narrow road. A flash of red eyes as the lights crossed them but Kieran didn’t slow. It wasn’t the demon. Only another nocturnal animal.

      “This is true, Mac. But I think it was not the point of this call to discuss the sad state of our too long lives.”

      “No.” Too long? He didn’t know anymore. He looked at mortals and sometimes wondered how they could be satisfied with eighty or so short years. But he’d had centuries to fight and sometimes he thought perhaps the mortals had the better deal.

      He took another sharp turn as his thoughts splintered. He glanced at the speedometer and slowed down a fraction. One thing he didn’t need was one of L.A.’s finest giving him a ticket. “I want to know what you know about Mates. The Guardian legend.”

      The legend Kieran had never put much stock in, despite the few Guardians he’d known over the years who had actually found women to bind themselves to. Perhaps, then, it wasn’t that he couldn’t believe in the legend itself, but that it held no truth for him.

      “Ah.” Curiosity colored Santos’s voice as he asked, “You have met…”

      “A woman.”

      “Always a good place to start.”

      “She’s…different.” Stupid word. Incomplete. Julie Carpenter was more than different. She was a flame to his dry tinder. The heat to his cold. And just thinking of her now tightened his body until the ache of it nagged at him like a rotten tooth.

      “What do you wish to know?”

      “Everything that isn’t common knowledge,” Kieran said flatly as the Lexus finally reached the bottom of the hill. He took a hard right, weaving in and out of traffic like a man with a death wish—or a man to whom death meant nothing. “I’ve never bothered to find out more than the basics before. Now I want to know. So discover whatever you can and get back to me.”

      “And the beast?”

      “I can handle it.”

      “If you change your mind, I’m near.” He paused, took a drink of what Kieran knew was probably Napoleon brandy, “I followed my quarry to San Francisco.”

      “You get it?”

      “Was there any doubt?” Santos chuckled.

      “No,” Kieran said, smiling now. As a warrior, he could appreciate the talents of another. “I’ve never known you to fail.”