Memory of an Immortal Heart (Immortal Hearts) by Kita Bell Page A

at the handful of cops who had moved to cross the lot, forming a safe human wall between them – then gave a mocking salute with two gloved fingers.
    He
turned and disappeared into the trees.
    Brand
picked Eva up, ran with her to the car, and shoved her into the passenger seat
through the driver’s door. Then he got in, started the engine, and pulled out
of the parking lot.
    “Put
your seatbelt on,” he snarled.
    Eva
stared at him, trying to process what had happened. He had moved fast .
    “ Seatbelt ,”
Brand snarled again. Eva swallowed, and pulled the buckle around herself as
they sped out onto a highway. Not wearing a seatbelt was how her uncle had
died. That, and a broken neck.
    And
then Eva started to shake. She felt tears pushing at her eyes, and pushed back.
Somehow, she kept them away. She felt miserable.
    “He is
Rohe’s,” Eva whispered, turning to look at Brand, searching out his face in the
darkness. She needed to see his face. And she wished, suddenly, that he didn’t
look so tense. So angry. She needed something from him, but she wasn’t sure
what. All she knew was that she couldn’t stop shaking. “He was at the Asylum.
With me. And the man from 113. And Rohe,” she repeated again. “He was always
with Rohe.”
    “I
guessed.” Brand’s voice was taut. “He was a fucking Winterbourne. That’s the
only thing that saved us from a fight. That and the witnesses.”
    Eva
blinked at him, not understanding. “Saved us…Winterbournes don’t fight? They
aren’t very…” she searched for right word, finally came up with “Powerful?” But
somehow, that didn’t seem correct. It didn’t fit with the man beneath
the tree.
    “No.
Winterbourne Sakai are very powerful. Most of them are fucked up in the
head. And they like to play with their prey.” Brand’s words were a low, grim
rumble. “And Eva, this Winterbourne has decided to play.”
    Her
hands started shaking again. “He’s…from somewhere in Europe,” she said,
scrambling to remember anything she had ever heard, or witnessed, about this
particular Sakai. “I don’t know – I don’t think he ever drank my blood.
His name is Corin King.”
    “Never
heard of him,” Brand snapped. But somehow, he seemed relieved by that.
    Eva
relaxed a little into the warmth of the leather seat. “Rohe called him her
personal Strategoi.”
    “A Strategoi? ”
Brand’s whole body tightened.
    He
slammed his fist through the dash.

 

Chapter 4
    After
dropping Joshua’s package off on the doorstep of an obscure address in the
downtown district, they went through a drive-thru, then Brand stopped to switch
out the car’s license plates on one of the dark side streets. Eva stayed in the
interior, watching Brand with wide eyes as she devoured her fourth hamburger.
She had already cleaned the dried dirt off her face with water and napkins from
the drive through. When Brand got back behind the wheel and started the car,
she seemed drowsy.
    “The
drive-thru lady really didn’t like you,” she murmured, looking sleepy and
adorable and as if she was trying not to laugh at him. “I think she thought you
beat me.” She lightly touched a healing bruise on her cheek. Brand shifted in
the seat, trying to ignore a growing – and seeming perpetual –
hardness as he passed her his coat for warmth.
    “Corin
King didn’t like me much either. He would have noted the plates at the park,”
Brand responded, pulling out onto the road again, then cursed himself as he
watched the smile disappear from Eva’s eyes.
    “I need
to go back to North Carolina,” she said quietly, looking down at the drink in
her hand. “To my own Gens. But every time I think of that, I wonder –
what if they follow me there? What if they find Rainey?” Then, much more
quietly, “I don’t even know why they took me. I was…one moment I was jogging
and everything was fine – and then the next…I was…” she shuddered, then
looked up at Brand. “Why did Rohe take