Rhyannon Byrd - Primal Instinct 04 by Touch of Seduction

those
simple words. “Will you at least tell me why?”
    He worked his jaw, managing to scrape out a gruff
refusal. “The why isn’t important, so just drop it.”
    She nodded, as if that was the response she’d been
expecting. “So, uh, whose brilliant idea was it to send you after us, then?”
    “Kellan and I have been in Kentucky searching for the
Marker that Jamie’s wearing. Noah joined up with us two days ago. Since we were
closest, it made sense that we come after you.” Aiden kept to himself the part
about Molly insisting that he be the one to personally watch over them, unsure
why the little psychic had done it.
    “And Molly was the one who told you about us?” she
asked, rubbing her palms along the tops of her thighs.
    “That’s right.”
    “You mentioned that Molly was…contacted.” She cast a
quick look into the backseat, then shifted her gaze back to his face. “Since
Jamie’s asleep now, I’d like you to explain what that means.”
    Lifting his left hand, Aiden rubbed at the tight knots
in the back of his neck that seemed to be growing more painful by the minute.
“Molly’s human, but she has certain…powers,” he explained. “I’m not real clear
on all the details, but when she sleeps, ghosts are sometimes able to
communicate with her.”
    Her breath sucked in on a sharp, shaky gasp, and she
turned her face to the side, staring out the window again. Softly she said, “So
Monica made contact with her? Did she tell her where Chloe is?”
    “Yeah, Monica contacted her,” he rasped, uncomfortable
with the topic, wishing he knew how to handle this kind of crap. A certain
level of compassion would probably have helped, but that just wasn’t him. He’d
spent so many years honing his cynical, smart-ass attitude, he’d forgotten how
to be…easy. If he’d ever even known in the first place. “But she, uh, wasn’t
able to tell her where Chloe is. All we know is that she’s been taken.”
    “And Monica told Molly that the Casus were coming for
me and Jamie?”
    Aiden nodded, saying, “After seeing how ruthless those
bastards can be when they go after a target, we knew we didn’t have any time to
lose. So we headed to Lennox and tracked you down as quickly as we could.”
    She took a deep breath, obviously working to take it
all in. “You make it sound as if there have been a lot of Merrick losses
already. Is it really that bad out there?”
    “It’s gone from bad to worse,” he admitted in a hard
voice, “and things are moving faster every day. Saige Buchanan, who’s an
anthropologist, managed to get possession of some encrypted maps that give the
locations of the Markers, and has been able to decode a few of them. We’ve
already got four of the crosses in our possession, but there are still too many
that need to be found before the Casus, along with their Kraven buddies, get
hold of them.”
    She turned toward him, her gaze settling back on his
profile, making him burn. “What’s a Kraven?”
    “The Kraven are a species that’s half Casus, half
vampire, but who can pass damn easily for a human. There’s one named Westmore
who seems to be orchestrating this whole thing, pulling the strings from this
side of Meridian, which is what they call the Casus holding ground where the
shades are imprisoned.”
    “Shades?”
    “Because of their immortality,” he explained, “the
Casus can’t die in Meridian. They’ve simply wasted away to ‘shades’ of the
creatures they once were, which is why they’re forced to take human hosts when
they return to this world. We think Westmore has partnered up with a Casus
shade named Calder, but we don’t know much about him. What we do know is that
the Kraven are a nasty piece of work, and seeing as how they have the backing
of the Collective, as well—”
    “They what?” she gasped, cutting him off. “The
Collective? But I thought the Collective was some kind of army of humans who
tracked down clan members and executed