by Lisa Hughey
“Much.” She hesitated, her gaze cutting to the fireplace mantel decorated with a cluster of framed photos and a large oil painting of an angry sea. “But she refuses to accept her power.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t have time to waste. I need a strong Dowser now.”
“She’s already on her way.”
“Where does she live?”
“The desert.”
A Dowser who didn’t live near water at all? That was unthinkable.
Anna wouldn’t let go of Zach’s hands. The extended contact was unnerving. He didn’t touch people. And no one touched him. Ever.
Since Port Royal, he stayed away from humans, away from their fragility, protecting them from afar. He kept his distance because it was the only way to keep his sanity. He stayed away from Angels too, preferring solitude and penance to the company of others.
The only person who had gotten close to him in the last three hundred years was Jed’s Luci. And that was only because she had seen below the surface to the anguish he kept buried.
He abruptly tore his hands away from the woman’s. “I have to go.”
“She’ll be here any moment.”
The key turned in the lock and the front door swung open. “Mama?”
“In here. I have a surprise for you.” Anna teased from her spot on the sofa. Her voice had gained strength in the last few minutes as if just the thought of Zach training her daughter infused her with energy.
Zach wanted to translocate out of this house, but something about the husky voice of Anna’s daughter held him rooted to the floor.
“What’s that?” The daughter rushed into the dark, wood-paneled living room and stopped cold, staring at Zach as if she’d seen a ghost.
She was in her late twenties. Caramel skin, wide-set violet eyes tilted coquettishly, and high elegant cheekbones accented her stunning face. A cap of tight dark brown curls hugged her skull.
His heart thundered in his chest. His vision grew dim and he couldn’t breathe. As soon as he’d seen her, more than her voice held him rooted to the floor. Shock froze him into place. She wasn’t just a phantom. She was his biggest mistake and his deepest regret in one thousand years of living. She looked nothing like the woman from centuries ago, but he’d recognize her soul even if he’d gone deaf, dumb, and blind.
Shasa.
Zach hadn’t thought he’d see her ever again. The love of his life. The woman he’d killed.
Three
Shasa stared at the stranger standing in her mother’s living room.
Except he wasn’t a stranger. He was the man from her dreams. The dream. White spots danced in her vision, and her breath grew short, the thunder of her heartbeat pulsed in her ears so loudly that she couldn’t hear a thing.
The low-level nausea churning in her stomach upgraded to a squall, pitching the acid around like a rowboat in the tempest. The tides of imbalance in her head ebbed and swelled like an angry ocean.
Horror froze his features into a mask of complete disbelief and some other emotion she couldn’t quite place.
All the blood dropped from her head in a rush. Her knees gave way and then she was falling.
She didn’t even blink and he was there to catch her. The hard, muscled strength of his arms cradled her as he clasped her against his chest. She tilted her head back to stare into his familiar rum brown eyes. The same eyes from her dream, intense, sexy, and heavy-lidded as if he were concealing the secrets of the Universe. His breath feathered across her lips, bringing attention to the fact that their mouths were mere inches apart.
Love, so pure and blindingly beautiful, poured through her.
With an unsteady hand she lifted her hand to cup his jaw. The hard supple warmth of his skin and bone underneath her fingers was real, not a dream. He was an actual person, not a figment of her imagination. As he held her in his arms an incandescent joy overwhelmed her. Zach.
“Is it you?” she whispered unsteadily. Was that possible?
The tender, adoring look in his eyes disintegrated. His body stiffened instantly and he glanced away from her before his gaze came back to rest impersonally on her face.
“Are you steady now?” Even his voice was the same as her dream. The rumble invaded her body and twined through her with an easy familiarity. But as she looked at him, the love and joy she’d experienced turned to doubt.
He couldn’t possibly be the man from her dream.
It was a dream. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.
She didn’t believe in the supernatural. She left that to her mother who lived and breathed the woo-woo, crazy ass, nutso stuff.
She was embarrassing herself.
“Are you okay, baby?” Her mother’s slurred words from the nearby sofa rocked her back to reality. What the hell had just happened to her?
“I’m fine.” She pushed out of the stranger’s hold and straightened.
God, she must be more messed up than she thought. When she glanced back at the man’s face, his jaw and cheeks were carved from granite. A dark stubble dusted his chin and upper lip emphasizing his kissable lips. Don’t go there, Shasa.
The cold impersonality in his gaze completed the picture of a surly, aloof man. His shoulders curved in on his collarbone and he crossed his arms over his chest, his body sending a clear and compelling, get the fuck away from me, message. Now he looked like her dream man’s older, harder, angrier cousin.
She was losing her freaking mind.
She stepped away from him feeling the need to put physical distance between their bodies.
The nausea that was ever present these days came roaring back, her stomach even more disturbed than before. Oddly when she’d been in his arms the feeling had dissipated. Shasa pressed a trembling hand to her belly.
“What’s wrong?” the man asked harshly.
He looked like he was about to step closer to her again.
Shasa put more distance between them, needing to be away from his dominating physical presence. He towered above her, his shoulders wide and muscled, his aura harsh and overwhelming.
With every step away from him the nausea increased. That’s what was wrong with her.
But she sure wasn’t going to confess that weird fact to him. That was for sure. “Who are you?” And what was he doing in her mother’s house?
“He’s here to train you,” Mama said from the couch.
Good God, not this again. Clearly the pain medicine had caused her mother’s delusions to expand. Shasa didn’t want to deal with this in front of the stranger who still hadn’t answered her question. He continued to study her from across the room.
Shasa knelt down next to the sofa and clasped her mother’s hand. “Let’s talk about this after your friend has left.”
“But he’s not leaving now.” Her mother protested. “You just got here.”
What that had to do with the man’s disturbing presence, Shasa didn’t know and didn’t want to find out. She tilted her head to look at him, shifting her body as if to protect her mother. “It’s time for you to leave.”
“Honey, he’s got to train you.” Mother plucked at the crocheted afghan in burnt orange, cream, and brown earth tones.
Train her? Shasa didn’t want to deal with this now.
“I’m going to retire,” Mama said softly.
“Mama, not now.”
“It’s time for you to accept your destiny.” Her mother’s voice lost all the sweetness and blurriness from the drugs. Her tone was no nonsense and full of conviction.
“As you can see...this is a difficult time.” Shasa tried to play off her mother’s craziness. It would happen this way, she’d be fine and then with some trigger that was never apparent, Mama would start spouting gibberish about angels and destiny. Shasa really, really didn’t want this stranger to witness her mother’s delusions.
He continued to stare at her with a calculating expression in his eyes and fear washed through her.
What did he really want? And why was he just stand
ing there, staring at them both? And why did she feel like he was just drinking her in? Absorbing every little detail about her appearance.
His resemblance to dream man was uncanny but it wasn’t him. It couldn’t be.
“He’s going to train you in the ways of dowsing.” Her mother insisted, her fingers squeezing Shasa’s with surprising strength.
“Mama that’s the drugs talking.”
“Zachariel, tell her,” her mother demanded.
Shasa’s brain stalled on his name. Zachariel.
“What did you say your name was?” She trembled, the shaking beginning at her toes and working its way up her legs, into her torso, spreading out through to her fingertips and toes until her whole body buzzed with sensation. Cold spread through her overlaying the nausea present since she landed in this freaking nightmare of a place.
Shasa pressed her mouth together to hold in the scream trapped inside her.
Zachariel. Zach?
His mouth quirked in a parody of a smile. As if he knew what she was thinking. As if he felt like screaming too. “You can call me Zach.”
Oh. My. God. It was the man of her dreams.
Four
Zach had to get the hell out of here.
His Shasa was alive. He would recognize her soul anywhere. He hadn’t known. He’d avoided Earth never really thinking about the fact that she could be alive again. Reincarnated. New body, same soul.
How could he deal with this now?
As Zach tried to catalogue every little thing about her before he left, he realized she was looking at him like she knew him. Knew him. As if she’d known his name before her mother had spoken it. As if she recognized his face. That was impossible.
The soul might live on and transfer from vessel to vessel, but memories did not travel from one body to the next. She should not know him.
She could not recognize him.
He didn’t have time for this. He had to find another Dowser and the Grigori. Then he had to find Uri.
To do those things, he had to get out of this house. Get away from the biggest shame of his life. But before he left, he granted himself one final look, and then he would leave her, safe, forever.
Shasa. His Shasa.
All over again, she slayed him. The constant ache in his chest since the day she died opened and expanded until he was nothing but pain. He wanted to stay and just drink her in. Absorb her spirit into his skin like the life affirming and cleansing water that nourished his body. Her love had nurtured his soul. He wanted her essence to fill that gaping wound where his heart used to reside, and make him whole again. But he couldn’t do that to her.
To keep her safe he needed to get the hell away from her.
Even as his guilty heart soared, his stomach sank. It had been like this the first time they’d met too. Instantaneous and overwhelming connection and attraction.
That irresistible need to be with her, to spend time in her presence and drink in her vitality and her joy had dragged him under like a killer riptide. He’d been a goner from the first time she had spoken to him.
Then he’d gone back time after time, just to be in her company. Taunting himself with what he could never have. Until of course he took the forbidden. And he’d never been the same.
She still had that stunned look on her face. She was also whiter than her desert sand. With each step he’d taken toward the door, her face had gotten progressively more pale. The muscles in her throat worked as if she were keeping down bile. She sank into the large cushioned chair next to the sofa, and he wasn’t sure that she wouldn’t have fallen if not for the support of the chair.
What was going on? Her look of recognition and happiness had turned into one of pure agony.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Not a thing.” She’d turned her face away.
“She thinks water makes her sick,” her mother piped up from where she still reclined on the sofa.
Zach’s heart stopped. “That’s impossible.” A human Angel Dowser who was sick from water? Finding water was a Dowser’s gift. It should make her feel better, cleanse her body, cleanse her soul. Just like the mist and rain at Multnomah Falls had made him feel better. She should be blossoming from the healing effects of water, not getting sick.
Without permission, he strode back toward her, until he reached her nearly prone form.
“You believe water does this to you?” Zach knelt beside her. The sweet scent of lavender and pinon trees lingered, wafting from her overly warm body. With the gentleness of a lover, he lifted his palm and pressed it carefully against her forehead.
Power zapped him, energy twisted, and that ephemeral connection twined them together. Inevitable and still forbidden. Her beautiful, shocked gaze shot to his. Her eyes widened with some emotion he didn’t recognize.
Electricity tingled along his nerve endings, sizzling through his body and holding him immobile.
Silently Zach looked at her, wondering if she could feel their bond too.
“Yes.” She nodded. Was she replying to his question or to the thoughts that zipped through his brain?
Shasa’s lips parted and her chest lifted and fell faster, a slight flush spread over her cheekbones as color returned to her face.
She swiped her pink tongue across her lips, pulling his attention back to her lush mouth.
He remembered the first time they’d kissed. In the ocean. The hot sun had beat down upon them. Fear had pounded in his heart and thrummed through his body because she had been alone in the sea, vulnerable to others.
He’d been sent to Earth to discover if the town of Port Royal and the island of Jamaica really was the debauched den of iniquity that had been rumored in the Angelic Realm. His divine task was forgiveness. But he had found very little to forgive in the raucous, irreverent inhabitants. The depravity of the criminals on the small Caribbean island had, if anything, been understated. He’d asked for more time to make sure that his findings were true and accurate after his initial report to the Realm stated that there was little on the island worth redeeming.
And then he met Shasa.
She had been like a soothing rain cleansing the wanton air. One of the few souls in Port Royal not tainted by greed, gluttony, or over-sexed lust. With one chaste kiss, he’d fallen for her. A forbidden human.
As soon as their lips had met, he’d been consumed with a profound illicit love for her. As if their souls had twined together and embedded in his heart, he couldn’t bear to stay away from her.
Zach leaned closer, remembering that kiss. Remembering the emotions and pure joy that had flooded his body every time he was in her company. His heart inched up into his throat. His breath shortened, the reminiscent feelings wrapped around his chest and squeezed him breathless.
As if a force field surrounded them, Zach was drawn to her.
“Wow. I feel much better now.” She shoved up out of the chair, bounding away from him with a surge of energy. “Must just be jet lag. Nice to meet you. But as you can see my mom is sick, so you’d best be going now.”
She babbled so quickly that her words ran together like a flash flood during a torrential downpour and she practically sprinted away from him.
“Buh-bye.” By the time she crossed the room, her face was pale again and a layer of sweat had bloomed on her face. She opened the heavy front door with the small rectangular windows at the top, and gestured for him to get out.
***
Zach, the dream man who couldn’t possibly be, stalked toward her, his body stiff with tension as he advanced with purpose. The scowl that seemed to be permanently etched on his face deepened.
Shasa gripped the brass door handle tightly. She hoped that he intended to stroll out of here, but based on his intense glower, she didn’t think so.
She had to admit that she was conflicted.
For those infinitesimal few moments, she’d felt better. Not just better but peace, relief, serenity—sensations that she hadn’t experienced in so long that she d
idn’t even realize how much she’d been hurting until he’d touched her—had blanketed her.
She didn’t understand why her constant nausea lessened when he was near, but she couldn’t afford to spend more time around him to find out. Because she was terrified she was going crazy like her mother. He couldn’t be from her dreams. She’d never met him before in real life. She would remember.
She was trying desperately for an unemotional poker face but inside she was freaking out.
Zach. She drank him in, his blunt masculine features, the blade of his nose, his dark deep set eyes, the tumbled fall of his black curls against his swarthy skin. Stubble dusted his jaw and framed his mouth, his lips full and sensual. The guy from her dreams. The intensity on his face a moment ago reminded her of the dream and in that instant she wanted to cry for what she had lost.
Because every time she awoke from that damn dream, she felt a pure yearning for the happiness and the joy that surrounded her when they’d played in the ocean. And every time she jerked awake, she was drowning in sadness. Regret at the loss of that happiness swelled over her like the waves from her dream, buffeting her from all sides.
That sense of loss, the intensity of that unexpected grief, hit her all over again.
As if he’d died. As if she’d lost him forever.
And that’s when she realized...she was going crazy. Clearly having some sort of episode. Her mother’s constant blathering about angels and destiny and duty had finally shoved her over the edge of sanity and she was losing it. Absolutely fucking crazy.
She hadn’t lost anything. The woman in her dream was not her. The man in the dream was not him. It was just a dream.
Her mother snuffled softly in the quiet air. She’d surrendered to the healing sleep of the drugs she’d taken. Thank goodness. One less thing to worry about right this minute. Shasa would get rid of this guy and then deal with her irrational feelings about dream man.
With every step he took toward her the pain in her body lessened.
“Look,” she said desperately, no longer caring that she sounded crazy. He needed to get out of here. “Please let me have a nervous breakdown in the privacy of my mother’s home without a witness.”
