Dark Victory. Brenda Joyce

but he leaped onto that, and then onto another, and another, until the soldiers were far behind him.

      He began to become familiar with the strange sounds of the city night; he began to comprehend the city’s noisy rhythm. He slowed to a walk. There was no reason to run now; for the moment, he was safe.

      And he paused, listening to the night—feeling it.

      Awareness began.

      He opened a window and slipped into a dark vacant building, his pulse taking on a new rhythm. Aware that he was alone, he began to explore it, his eyes adjusting to the darkness. Within moments, he realized he was in a building meant to house children. The tables and chairs were tiny, and children’s toys and drawings were on the walls.

      He began to smile.

      Her presence was everywhere.

      Macleod settled down to wait.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      A HOLY HIGHLANDER WAS in the city, and he had just taken a demon down.

      Nick Forrester decided this might be a really interesting night.

      He was a tall, powerful man with rugged good looks, brilliantly blue eyes, and the kind of appeal no woman had ever refused. He was utterly devoted to his agents, the war on evil and HCU, in that precise order. Sitting in his corner office, on the phone with one of his contacts at the New York Times, he felt Sam Rose before he saw her. He turned to wave her into his office as Paul Anderson said, “They’re breaking the story even as we speak.”

      “Motherfucking shit,” Nick replied, slamming down the phone. He felt himself go into battle-ready mode. There was nothing he loved as much as a good battle, not even sex.

      Sam’s eyes were wide with interest, although a moment ago she’d been wearing a don’t-read-my-mind poker face. And even while speaking with Anderson, he’d instantly known she had a secret. He did not like his kids keeping secrets, not unless they were personal ones. And then they’d damn well better keep secrets, because he didn’t like his kids having personal lives.

      Either you were in this war or you were a bystander, it was that simple. And if you were in, love, romance, family and all that shit was out.

      He’d made a really smart move three months ago, when he’d lured Sam into HCU and his employ. She was a soldier in every way, right down to her kick-ass, martial soul.

      “Goddamn it,” he said, facing her. “There’s been a sighting.”

      He eyed her as he picked up the blue phone, a direct line to his agents in the field. “There’s a Blondie down on Thirteenth and Broadway,” he said. The highest level of demons were beautiful, blond, blue-eyed and almost angelic in appearance. They’d been given a slew of appropriate—and inappropriate—nick-names.

      “What’s going on?” Sam asked.

      “It’s almost impossible to believe, but a Highlander has surfaced in the city. He took out a cop. I’ve got Angus bringing the goods to Five.”

      “Okay.” Sam turned her back on him, walking over to a chair. She sat down. Even though she wore short skirts most of the time, and he’d seen her gorgeous and very strong legs hundreds of times, he stared at them while he thought about the night to come.

      Being clandestine meant keeping a low profile. The press still thought the war was with crime, not evil. CDA had its own medical center. Shot-up, maimed and dead agents were all brought to Emergency there. Five had a morgue, too, and some very serious labs. Those were mostly filled with vanquished demons—if the demon could be brought in before disintegration began—and occasionally, the surviving sub.

      She turned. “Do we know this one?”

      “I don’t think so,” Nick said.

      They exchanged a long and steady glance, and he didn’t have to read her mind to know she was thinking about the trip they’d made into the past.

      He turned and walked to the wall of windows that looked down on Hudson Street. Outside, it was dark, the streets icy and gleaming with patches of snow, sleet and slush. Winter in the city sucked for most people, but he actually liked it. His blood continued to rush.

      He did not like losing an agent in the vast expanse of time. Every agent at HCU had been handpicked by him for their respective jobs. He considered each and every one his responsibility, and when one went MIT, he went ballistic.

      And he also went back.

      The holy, time-traveling Masters of Time rarely surfaced in this city. They seemed to prefer medieval periods. CDA had sightings of them as early as the eleventh century, but the more contemporary the period got, the fewer the sightings.

      The Highlanders were not the only warrior society out there. CDA had evidence of two other secret sects dedicated to the war on evil, one ancient, one modern. From time to time he came across men who had some of the same extraordinary powers he had. These men lay low, revealing themselves only to vanquish the enemy, and then they vanished, like ghosts in the night. Pretty much the way he did.

      The Masters were an interesting bunch. They loved and warred like any other medieval Scot, but secretly worshipped pagan gods, most of whose names no historian had ever recorded. They defended a set of three holy books, and came out of the medieval woodwork to defend the good and the innocent and kick the ass of a demon honcho or two. Then they vanished back into the local population and their particular time. Only an experienced agent could identify a Master from the average Highlander, whether on paper in HCU’s immense database, or while in the field.

      He’d lost count long ago, but over the course of the two decades he’d been at HCU, he’d probably traveled into the past a dozen times, usually on the heels of a great demon. He’d had exactly three encounters with Masters in all that time. Maybe it wasn’t that odd—he’d chased demons into the past all over the world, as far back as the first century, when the Romans were about to rule the world. The closest he’d ever come to a Highlander was last September, right there in the city. The Highlander had been turned against the Masters, and he’d taken his own agent hostage, vanishing into the past with Brie Rose. Nick had gone back to find her because there was nothing worse than losing an agent in time.

      He’d found Sam’s cousin Brie and dragged her home before he could chat with her holy friends—and she’d gone back to her Highlander anyway. Her case file might have MIT stamped across it, but he knew she wasn’t really missing in time. She was just fine.

      He’d had the chance to debrief her extensively, and now he knew more about the Brotherhood than anyone at CDA had ever known. Of course, encounters between CDA agents and Masters—and civilians and Masters—were as old as the agency and maybe, for the latter, as old as time. But the Masters remained secretive. They refused to talk about what they did; they simply fought evil when they had to, and were devoted to the war on evil in Scotland.

      Except, a few hours ago, a Master had nailed a demon just a few blocks away from HCU.

      Were they coming out of the medieval closet? And if so, what did that mean?

      He refused to worry, but agency analysts were predicting the end of the world—literally. That was how dire the war had become. If it wasn’t turned around, every high government agency in the free world would be infiltrated by demons and controlled by evil within another decade.

      He’d taken Sam with him into the past to find her cousin. It was about the toughest test he could give any agent, new or not. She’d passed with flying colors.

      So why was she looking really tense? Why was she worried?

      He lurked and his concern vanished. He was not interested in a war of witches, although he knew her civilian sister was a witch.

      “Why would you think the Highlander is someone we know?”

      She shrugged. “No reason.”

      What wasn’t she telling him? “What’s wrong with you?