Brand lifted Addy to her feet and stepped in front of her. “What brings you here, Ansgar?”
His calm, detached tone hit Addy like a bucket of ice water, cooling her ardor in an instant. He spoke without inflection, no trace of his earlier passion discernible in his deep voice. She’d been on the verge of doing the horizontal mambo with a stranger, and the guy in question was, from all appearances, unaffected. Cool as a cucumber, a regular the-ice-man-cometh not!
How. Humiliating.
Seething with mortification, she stepped around Brand. “Look here, Mr. Ansgar, I don’t know who you are or how you got in here, but I want you to get out of this ho—”
She froze, her eyes widening. Dooley hung suspended a few inches off the floor, caught in mid-pounce. The dog’s ears were perked, and her tongue lolled out of her mouth like a big pink snail.
“Dooley, baby,” Addy cried.
She stumbled over to the dog on wobbly legs and ran her fingers through Dooley’s thick yellow fur. The Lab felt warm but stiff as a board to the touch. Addy found a heartbeat and breathed a sigh of relief. She stroked Dooley’s head. No response. The dog wore the same frozen look of surprise as the deer her brother Shep shot and had mounted on his den wall.
Addy glared at the two Adonises who’d invaded her living room. Anger sizzled through her veins. She rose to her feet, her earlier dizziness forgotten. “What the hell did you do to my dog?”
The man called Ansgar flicked a look of cool disinterest in her direction. “I silenced it. Such creatures are annoying and invariably noisy.”
Addy pointed a shaking finger at the front door. “Out. Both of you.”
“The djegrali—” Brand said.
“I don’t give a rat’s behind about your demonic little buddy.” Outrage seethed in Addy’s veins, making her feel stronger. “I want you two bozos out of this house. Now.”
“Bozo?” The blond hunk looked thoughtful. “This appellation is unfamiliar to me. Is this a term used to signify hunters in this realm?”
“It’s a term signifying I’m going to get my gun if you don’t leave, and pronto.”
Ansgar raised a brow. “You refer, I assume, to the metal tube you grasp?”
Addy looked down. She balanced a shotgun in her hands. The wooden stock felt cool against her palm. She broke open the gun. It was loaded with bird shot.
“Yeah, that would be the one.” She closed the shotgun with a snap and pointed it at the two men. “Get out.”
Brand and Ansgar exchanged glances and strode toward the door.
“Hold your horses, Blondy!” The big blond turned, and Addy jerked a thumb in Dooley’s direction. “What about my dog?”
“I would advise against releasing the creature,” he said. “It is bound to create a disturbance.”
“And I would advise you to un-whammy my dog.” Addy swung the barrel of the shotgun toward him. “Or else. It’s been a long night, and I’m starting to get a little cranky.”
He looked at her without blinking for a long moment and waved his hand at Dooley. Dooley landed on the carpet and erupted in a frenzy of barking.
“Obnoxious, is it not?” Ansgar’s expression was pained. “You cannot say I did not warn you.”
“Yeah, yeah, you told me.” Addy waved the shotgun in the general direction of the door. “Beat it, both of you.”
The two men walked out of the house without a word. With a final triumphant woof, Dooley ran to the door and sniffed. Satisfied she had done her duty, the dog trotted up and nudged Addy’s leg with her nose.
Addy dropped the gun. It hit the floor with a dull thud.
“That’s telling ’em, Dooley,” she said, staring at the door with a pang of regret.
Brand left, without saying good-bye. Waggle a shotgun in a guy’s face, threaten him with a little mayhem, and he ran fast enough to make a girl’s head spin. Well, who needed him?
Staggering to the door, Addy flipped the dead bolt and made her way through the living room. What a night. She felt drained and exhausted. She needed a hot shower followed by the bed. She got all the way to the bedroom before it hit her.
She didn’t own a shotgun.
Brand stood in the shadows watching the house. Long minutes passed, the night quiet but for the rustle of the wind in the leaves and the soft chirruping of insects.
“The human interests you?” Ansgar asked, breaking the silence.
“Yes.”
“You have lived a hundred of her lifetimes. She is but a child.”
Brand thought of Addy’s soft lips moving beneath his, the feel of her smooth skin against his palms. He itched to touch her again. Adara Jean Corwin might be many things, but she was no child.
“If it is emptiness you seek, why not avail yourself of a thrall?” Ansgar persisted. “Is that not their purpose?”
Brand’s gaze moved to the back of the house. A shapely form passed briefly in front of the curtained window and disappeared. “Perhaps it is not emptiness I seek.”
“The emptiness serves its purpose, our purpose. We can ill afford distractions . . . no matter how tempting the distraction might be.”
Ah, so Ansgar found the human enticing also.
Something hot and unfamiliar unfurled inside Brand.
He gave the other warrior a cold look. “You have not answered my question, Ansgar. Why are you here?”
Ansgar ran a loving hand along the curve of his bow. “I tracked my quarry to this place and lost it. I sensed the presence of another hunter and sought you out. What brings you to this place?”
“I followed two of the djegrali to this realm. One I slew, the other escaped, wounding the female human in the doing of it.”
Ansgar grunted. “Three djegrali in one locus—odd, is it not? What do you think it means?”
“I do not know.”
“You mean to linger here?”
“I do.”
“Is that wise?”
Brand shifted his gaze to the other man. “The djegrali marked the female. It will return. When it does, I will be waiting.”
“So, you mean to use the human as bait.” Ansgar nodded in understanding.
Brand turned back to the house. “What else?”
“For a moment, I thought . . .” Ansgar shrugged. “No matter. It is a good plan. I will leave you to it then. To the hunt.”
He raised a hand in farewell and vanished.
Brand studied the house for a long moment. “To the hunt,” he said softly.
Addy made her way to the bathroom. Her chest still ached, but some of the dizziness was gone and she felt stronger. She took out her contacts and got into the shower, letting the warm water ease the tension from her muscles. It had been a hell of a night, and her nerves were worked. There was a rational explanation for what happened tonight—what she thought had happened tonight—wasn’t there?
Uninvited, an image rose in her mind of the