to a person.
He returned to the couch with a quilt, which he tucked around her. Cocooned in the fleece, the warm, woody scent, and the thick fabric, Jane’s tension seeped away for the first time in as long as she could remember.
Unfortunately, she slept.
Chapter 12
Typically, when he visited his mountain retreat, Barnaby relished the lack of connection with humanity.
Now? It scared the hell out of him.
Nothing, not disease, not pestilence, not war, and not even death itself, scared Barnaby. Until now.
Sure, he had his uncanny instinct for danger, but it meant nothing if an army stormed the cabin.
Fear, foreign and unsettling, churned in his gut. He paced from the kitchen to the porch, peering out over the once-peaceful mountains and saw nothing but opportunities for danger to hide.
At least he’d fed the knife, albeit unwittingly, with Thompson’s crony. That meant Barnaby wouldn’t have to leave Jane and travel to a large population center to find a criminal for about a week.
If he weren’t an Indebted, he’d be free to consider a normal life with Jane. They could do mundane things like go out on a date. As it stood, the longer he and Jane were together, the danger increased.
However, if he weren’t an Indebted, he wouldn’t have had the preternatural strength to save her.
Criminy.
Even if she could heal to the point where she might trust someone with her heart and soul, why would a woman like Jane choose an eternal killer?
No woman would want his name on her dance card.
Barnaby was intrinsically corrupted by the evil he had performed over hundreds of years. He didn’t care about the people he killed. It didn’t faze him to take a meal after a kill, even with the scent of blood filling his nostrils. No amount of atonement could ever purge the taint on his soul.
The worst part of his existence? He no longer felt the modicum of justice or remorse when he stabbed a criminal. It just didn’t matter.
Barnaby’s connection with humanity had come undone.
Save one last tiny tether to this mortal world. One last trigger for his sixth sense. His damned power kept sitting up and pointing when it came to Jane. Maybe his extra ability was trying to tell him something.
Without Jane, he’d be adrift. Lost.
With Jane, her life would be forfeit.
He’d do anything to protect her. Even it if meant breaking the last ties he had to his humanity. Even if it meant leaving her alone. He rubbed his fists over his eyes.
Because ...
No.
He eyed the darkening skies and breathed in the cool evening air that drifted through the open windows. Shaking his head, he returned to stand over Jane’s sleeping form.
When he checked the clock, he did a quick calculation. Jane had slept for more than eight hours.
She needed her rest. Needed to recover.
Only, once she recovered her strength, then she’d leave.
A nasty jealousy for her health flashed by him, like a blast of flame, singeing his good sense as it blew past. He gritted his teeth against the unnatural emotion and tamped it down, like batting out a fire with his bare hands.
The radio faded in and out with the strains from Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle.”
The quilt rose and fell with Jane’s slight breaths, and the evening shadows gave her face an eerie, skeletal appearance.
Because that’s what she would be at the end of her natural life: a skeleton, in the ground like every other mortal.
And Barnaby would continue unto eternity his maudlin existence, numb to his kills, driven only by the knife’s impulse until ... what? Until nothing. He had no end to the evil.
Jane shifted and frowned, as if sensing his unsettled mood. Cursing himself as a selfish fool, he eased away from her, taking his black thoughts with him, and stood on the porch, gripping the rail. The only light in the cabin came from a single lantern on the mantel.
He had lived for more than 400 years. What had he done with his time to make this world better?
Nothing.
He had immense
He returned to the couch with a quilt, which he tucked around her. Cocooned in the fleece, the warm, woody scent, and the thick fabric, Jane’s tension seeped away for the first time in as long as she could remember.
Unfortunately, she slept.
Chapter 12
Typically, when he visited his mountain retreat, Barnaby relished the lack of connection with humanity.
Now? It scared the hell out of him.
Nothing, not disease, not pestilence, not war, and not even death itself, scared Barnaby. Until now.
Sure, he had his uncanny instinct for danger, but it meant nothing if an army stormed the cabin.
Fear, foreign and unsettling, churned in his gut. He paced from the kitchen to the porch, peering out over the once-peaceful mountains and saw nothing but opportunities for danger to hide.
At least he’d fed the knife, albeit unwittingly, with Thompson’s crony. That meant Barnaby wouldn’t have to leave Jane and travel to a large population center to find a criminal for about a week.
If he weren’t an Indebted, he’d be free to consider a normal life with Jane. They could do mundane things like go out on a date. As it stood, the longer he and Jane were together, the danger increased.
However, if he weren’t an Indebted, he wouldn’t have had the preternatural strength to save her.
Criminy.
Even if she could heal to the point where she might trust someone with her heart and soul, why would a woman like Jane choose an eternal killer?
No woman would want his name on her dance card.
Barnaby was intrinsically corrupted by the evil he had performed over hundreds of years. He didn’t care about the people he killed. It didn’t faze him to take a meal after a kill, even with the scent of blood filling his nostrils. No amount of atonement could ever purge the taint on his soul.
The worst part of his existence? He no longer felt the modicum of justice or remorse when he stabbed a criminal. It just didn’t matter.
Barnaby’s connection with humanity had come undone.
Save one last tiny tether to this mortal world. One last trigger for his sixth sense. His damned power kept sitting up and pointing when it came to Jane. Maybe his extra ability was trying to tell him something.
Without Jane, he’d be adrift. Lost.
With Jane, her life would be forfeit.
He’d do anything to protect her. Even it if meant breaking the last ties he had to his humanity. Even if it meant leaving her alone. He rubbed his fists over his eyes.
Because ...
No.
He eyed the darkening skies and breathed in the cool evening air that drifted through the open windows. Shaking his head, he returned to stand over Jane’s sleeping form.
When he checked the clock, he did a quick calculation. Jane had slept for more than eight hours.
She needed her rest. Needed to recover.
Only, once she recovered her strength, then she’d leave.
A nasty jealousy for her health flashed by him, like a blast of flame, singeing his good sense as it blew past. He gritted his teeth against the unnatural emotion and tamped it down, like batting out a fire with his bare hands.
The radio faded in and out with the strains from Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle.”
The quilt rose and fell with Jane’s slight breaths, and the evening shadows gave her face an eerie, skeletal appearance.
Because that’s what she would be at the end of her natural life: a skeleton, in the ground like every other mortal.
And Barnaby would continue unto eternity his maudlin existence, numb to his kills, driven only by the knife’s impulse until ... what? Until nothing. He had no end to the evil.
Jane shifted and frowned, as if sensing his unsettled mood. Cursing himself as a selfish fool, he eased away from her, taking his black thoughts with him, and stood on the porch, gripping the rail. The only light in the cabin came from a single lantern on the mantel.
He had lived for more than 400 years. What had he done with his time to make this world better?
Nothing.
He had immense
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