Page 132 of Dark Lover

He glanced up, too intent to be incredulous. Sam rushed in with his father, Brie, Macleod, Tabby and Nick Forrester. No one was going to take this moment away from him. Now the monk would pay—and he would suffer, first.

“Vanquish him,” Sam said, drawing a gun out of the back of her jeans. “Or I will.”

It was the noble thing to do. He didn’t feel noble now. “I won’t let ye pass out,” he said softly, and he drove the brass stake through his chest and out the other side of his body. There was triumph. There was satisfaction.

The monk screamed. He tried to get up and started thrashing again, as if fighting off the ghosts.

Brie seized Aidan, to prevent him from going forward. “It’s Ian’s war.”

“He’ll leap,” Sam cried. She pointed the gun at the monk’s forehead.

Ian looked up at her and their eyes met. He wanted to torture the monk the way he’d been tortured. He wanted him to live for days, weeks, months, years, in pain, suffering and fear. He wanted payback. Sam knew it. She shook her head. “You’re not one of them.”

And the savage need to inflict pain, to do to the monk what had been done to him, receded. He got up and nodded at her, suddenly exhausted. Sam walked over and put a bullet in the monk’s head, dead center, and another in his heart.

The monk’s eyes were filled with pain and wide with disbelief as he looked at Ian. Ian stared at him as he lay there, dying.

Sam touched him. “Ian?”

He did not take his gaze from the monk. Ignoring her, he watched him bleeding out. The life faded from his eyes. And then the glowing red color there changed, turning blue and sightless.

It was over.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

SAM KNEW Ian was exhausted in every possible way, especially emotionally. He seemed off balance as he used the keypad outside his door to open the locks, his movements slow and sluggish. He hadn’t said a word during the car ride to Manhattan; he’d stared out of the window the entire time. Now he walked into his Park Avenue home ahead of her, not looking at her or even acknowledging her. Sam followed him inside, somber. Clearly he was lost entirely in his thoughts. Sam knew he was thinking about Carlisle and what had just happened, and maybe his past. She wanted to put her arm around him, but she didn’t.

He was so grim. The monk was vanquished at his hand. It felt good. There was some justice after all. But she was worried about him.

He looked like a man who’d been through hell, more than once.

The lights were on as they walked into the grand foyer, Brie and Aidan behind them. Nick had stayed in Brooklyn. 2145 Elm Street was now a CDA crime scene, as was the adjoining warehouse. Sam hadn’t offered to stay behind to help him out—as far as she was concerned, she was no longer his employee. Tabby and Macleod had gone to her loft. Something was up with her sister, but Sam was too relieved about vanquishing Carlisle and too concerned for Ian to have had a chance to ask Tabby what was bothering her. She’d sensed a terrible urgency in her before they’d parted in Brooklyn. However, Sam knew Tabby wasn’t leaving, not yet.

Because it wasn’t entirely over, not if Brie was right about Moray.

Sam shuddered. She hadn’t been there when Brie and Aidan had vanquished him in 1502, with Tabby’s help, but she had heard all about him—and read hundreds of pages about his near-thousand-year reign of terror in Scotland.

She glanced at Ian as he paused before a console table, rubbing his temples slowly. She did not want to tell him about Brie’s vision. She wanted Brie to have made a mistake, when her cousin rarely misinterpreted her visions.

She turned and looked at Brie. Her cousin smiled grimly back, apparently in tune with her.

Ian suddenly leaned on the table, as if he were dizzy. As he did, Gerard hurried into the entry hall. “Sir, what can I get you?” he said, approaching. His tone was calm, but his gaze was sharp and anxious.

“Whiskey,” Ian said harshly.

Aidan walked up to him and laid his hand on his shoulder.

Ian flinched and stared coolly at him. “I don’t need to be healed, not by ye.”

“I willna stand down,” Aidan said, placing his other hand on his other shoulder.

Sam saw white light pouring from his hands.

Ian twisted away. “I don’t recall inviting you here.”

“Ian,” Sam said harshly. “That’s not fair.” She couldn’t believe that he would still reject his father.

He turned to look at her with some disbelief. He was so pale.