Instinctively, I cleared my throat and brushed away from him. He might always come back, but in three days, who knew if I was going to be able to say the same?
“What happened last night?” I asked, fixing my strap back in place.
Hurt flashed through his eyes, but he steeled himself just as quickly. “I’d rather not discuss last night. No one was hurt, but I…” He stared at the floor. “I’d rather not think about it. Let’s just say the beast got the better of me and leave it at that.” He shook his head hard. “I need you to get dressed. I’ve cleared it with King Archibald, and we’ll be going out again today. And, because of the guards embarrassing ineptitude yesterday, we have the added boon of going unaccompanied.”
“You mean Archibald didn’t decide to assign more apt guards instead?”
“I think he’s worried how it will look if the second round of guards proved as useless as the first. I told him we wanted some privacy, and he seemed relieved.”
“Yeah, right,” I said. “He sent those first guards to keep us out of trouble, not to protect us.”
“I know that, Char. I’m not defending him. But he wants us to believe the guards were for our sake, not his, and he’s not going to show his hand that easily. This is all about appearances. We have to pretend to buy into his charade, just as he’s pretending to buy into ours.”
“You know, I don’t even care anymore. I’m just glad we can get out of here without any stalkers.” I flung the covers off and stood. “Where are we going anyway?”
“To get to the bottom of this,” Abram said, standing to meet me. “We have a lot of information and nothing to piece it together.”
“So…?” I asked, leading him to what I assumed would be the next logical thought.
“So we’re going to have drinks,” he answered.
“Oh, great!” I chirped, brightening up. “But how is that going to help things?”
“Because of who we’re having the drinks with,” he said evenly. “Satina.”
“Oh,” I said, less enthusiastically. “Great.”
* * *
It was nice to get outside again, especially this early in the day. Sundown was far enough away that I didn’t have to worry about Abram losing control, and the island was bustling with people.
Still, everything looked different now. What was once a Mediterranean paradise was now a dry, desolate place strangling against the chokehold of repeated magical attacks. The tanned people looked tired and burned. The stretches of beach looked empty and fruitless. This wasn’t the vacation I had been hoping for. In fact, it turned out this wasn’t much of a vacation at all.
That didn’t seem to bother Satina, though. When we found her, she was stretched across a beach towel, sipping gingerly from a drink with an umbrella in it and wearing a barely there bikini that I was sure the original owner of that body wouldn’t have been too happy about. You know, if she wasn’t dead.
Abram scoffed, settling in front of her. “Good to see you’re not taking yesterday’s failures too hard.”
“Who said they were failures?” She looked at him from over the top of a pair of heart shaped sunglasses. “Knowing where not to go is just as important as knowing the right place. Now will you move? You’re blocking my sun.”
“This is serious, Satina,” Abram said, not budging an inch.
“Oh, I know that,” she said, setting her drink on the sand with two fingers. “I’m not sure you’re going to share that sentiment once you hear what I’ve got to say, though.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, catching a glimpse of Satina’s stylish sandals and actually envying her taste. Damn her.
“Desperate measures, Supplicant,” she smiled, standing and brushing a bit of sand from her sun-kissed skin. “Let me ask you, how much do you know about your Conduit abilities?”
“No!” Abram growled, moving closer to Satina menacingly.
“Let the girl answer the question, Abram.” Satina clicked her tongue. “Or has the dom/sub aspect of your relationship extended outside the bedroom now?”
“Nothing,” I said quickly, hoping the hot flush in my cheeks wasn’t noticeable. “I don’t know a damn thing about it.”
“And it’s going to stay that way,” Abram cut in.
There was a hint of the commandeering nature he displayed the other night at the dinner table: strength, stubbornness, undeniable masculinity. And though I would never admit it in front of Satina, I sort of liked it.
“Well, that’s stupid,” Satina said, smoothing her hair with her fingertips. “Seeing as how her latent abilities are the best chance you have at defending yourselves.”
“Bull,” Abram said through gritted teeth. “The castle is enchanted. No magic will pierce it. As long as we’re in there, we’re safe.”
“Unless the people in there decide to slit you from neck to navel, which just might happen if they learn you’ve been lying to them. And without that oh-so-special magic of mine that makes you all fearsome and sexy, you’d be about as useful as a mountaintop outhouse. Besides, who placed the enchantment there if not a Conduit? Which means we’ll need Charisse’s Conduit abilities to undo it.”
“Then you should be able to undo it, seeing as you are one yourself,” Abram said, standing his ground.
“I’d have to bleed your girlfriend dry to power something like that. But her, she’s her own never-ending energy source. If she’d just learn to tap into it—”
“I said no!” Abram’s shouting garnered the stares of passersby on the beach, but none stopped to intervene. Maybe this place wasn’t as unlike New York as I thought. “You would have me train her? To what end?”
“You couldn’t train anyone, Beast!” Satina was shouting herself now, and the conversation was surely seeming stranger and stranger to anyone who heard it. They would need to reign it in soon. “But if she did get a sense of what she was capable of, you might be able to—”
“To put her in the path of a much stronger Conduit?” Abram’s voice was heavy with disgust, but quieter. “Whoever has set this up has immense power. You said so yourself. We would be signing her death warrant.”
“And whose are you signing now?” Satina asked with arched brows. “There’s always the next. Sleeping Beauty will visit someone again, and my guess is that will be sooner rather than later, if she hasn’t already. And when she does, the poor soul will have—”
“Three days,” I murmured, careful not to give any outward sign that the person in question was me.
I didn’t know what I was going to do about all of this yet, but with Satina and Abram at each other’s throats, I knew they couldn’t handle this new twist of fate.
“Exactly,” Satina answered triumphantly, “and you’ve no way to help them.”
Abram shook his head. “It’s not necessary. I have a plan.”
“Hallelujah.” Satina scoffed, crossing her arms over her chest.
I put a steadying hand on Abram’s forearm. “What is it?”
“Briar’s husband, Ramsey Duldridge.”
“The one who very likely tried to kill Briar in the first place?” Satina asked.
“We don’t know that. We don’t know anything. But he might,” Abram said, turning to me. “I used the phone to look up some of his information, including his address.”
“Do you think we can trust him?” I asked, ready to accept whatever answer he gave me as fact.
“Probably not, but we don’t have to. He’s still in police custody, awaiting trial. All we have to do is get into their home. There has to be a clue to what’s going on with Briar somewhere.”
“That’s your plan?” Satina threw up her hands. “You want to go mucking around his house like…like...”
“The Hardy Boys?” I suggested.
“Who?” she asked.
“Nancy Drew?”
“What?”
“Veronica Mars?”
“Is that a car? You know what?” Satina shook her head. “Do whatever you want.
If it’s your intention to go searching for needles in haystacks, then I suppose I can’t stop you. But you, Charisse…sooner or later, you’re going to have to be who you are. Whether you want to or not.”
* * *
Turned out Briar and her husband Ramsey lived in a really posh house right on the beach. Seemed like the bitch had done well for herself, if you discounted the fact she was in a magical coma.
I thought when I left my modeling career, she would finally be out of my life. Instead, she somehow ended up living on the mystical island I had chosen for my vacation. The same island that now had some kind of supernatural suicide curse. This had to be connected somehow, and damned if I wasn’t going to get to the bottom of it.
Abram and I moved like shadows toward the back door.
“Even her backyard is immaculate,” I said distastefully. “She’s in a coma, and he’s in jail. How good would this place look if everything was going well?”
“Hopefully we’ll get to find out,” Abram said, crouching beside the door. Reaching into my hair, he quickly pulled a pin from it, sending my dark locks spoiling around my shoulders. “May I?”
“It’s a little late for me to say no,” I quipped. “But why not just pull the damn thing off the hinges. You have your strength out here.”
Plunging the reshaped pin into the door handle, he said, “Because this is someone else’s property and, regardless of what’s happening around us, that’s something that should be respected.”
Before I could point out that breaking and entering wasn’t exactly respecting someone else’s property, the door sprung open.
“Impressive,” I said coyly. Damn, that was faster than Charlie Prince ever made that happen. Abram really had him beat in every way.
“Skills of a misspent youth, paired with years of evolving practice, I suppose.”
As beautiful as the outside was, it couldn’t hold a candle to the interior. As we crossed into the house, covered in classic art and décor that made me wince with jealousy, it was clear that what Briar lacked in personal warmth, she made up for in taste.
“What are we looking for?” I asked, sticking close to Abram.
“Whatever doesn’t belong.” He pointed to a bookcase in the far corner of the foyer. “Like that.”
“Good eye,” I said. “Briar could barely read the nutrition facts on a Special K bar. She’s way too stupid for actual books.”
“Not that,” he said, moving over to the oak structure. “This.”
He pulled a weathered book from the shelf. In the smallest print I had ever seen, it said Hidden Truths: Cornerstones of the Majestic.
“You think they’re in a cult?” I asked, crinkling my nose.
“This is a rather famous manual,” Abram said, flipping through the pages. “It details Conduits, Supplicants, and the entire magical realm.”
“But Satina said Briar wasn’t a Supplicant. She said she was just a human. Why would a human have a book like this?”
“Briar’s a human,” Abram said, still inspecting the bookcase. “The question is, what is her husband?”
“I could ask the same thing of the people who just broke into my home.” A gravelly voice, followed by a loud clicking sound, startled me.
I turned to find a man standing right next to me. He was tall and thin, but his features were striking. He looked a lot like Charlie Prince, actually. Which was to say, he was just Briar’s type.
His hand was outstretched. In it was a pistol, cocked, ready, and pressed to my temple.
My entire body turned to stone. My heart fell through my feet, and a shock of fear threatened to tear me apart. “Ramsey Duldridge, I presume?”
Chapter 15
The cold metal of the gun barrel pressed against my temple. It seemed strange after all the times I had cheated some mystical and fantastic death that this was how I would go…in such a normal and mundane way.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Only I would think of being shot to death after breaking into a house as mundane.
“I would drop the gun if I were you,” Abram said. I could hear the growl in his voice. Even now, in broad daylight, he was doing his best to keep the beast at bay. What sort of island was this?
“But you’re not me. And if you were, you would know that I’m the one with the upper hand, and you are in no place to make idle threats.” Ramsey Duldridge pressed the gun’s barrel even harder against my head. “So unless you’d like to see your accomplice’s brains splattered across my brand new rug, I’d stop giving orders and answer the question. What are you?”
“Thieves,” Abram said. “And if you let her go, we’ll be on our way.”
I opened my eyes to see him nudging ever closer. A few more feet, and he would snatch the gun from Ramsey. Hell, given the look on his face, he would probably take the hand with it.
“Bullshit,” Ramsey said. “You passed by three antique vases and a dresser full of Waterford crystal so you could peruse my bookshelf? What sort of piss poor thieves would do that?”
“Briar has Waterford?” I bemoaned instinctively.
“You know my wife,” he said. From the corner of my eye, I saw Ramsey’s finger graze the trigger.
“Or she’s seen the news,” Abram said. “You and your wife aren’t exactly low key these days. We saw what happened to you, knew you would be in jail, and figured this would be an easy hoist.” Abram edged even closer. “The fact that I like books is just an added fold.”
“Books that detail the secret history of magic?” Ramsey asked with raised eyebrows. “I’m not buying it. Also, I suggest you stop closing in on me. Judging by your height, weight, and the general nonchalance with which you carry yourself, I’m guessing that whatever you are, you have both enhanced speed and a resistance to bodily harm. But judging by the way your girl here is shaking like leaf in a thunderstorm, my guess is that the same cannot be said of her. Like me, she knows that however fast you are, it won’t be quick enough to stop a bullet.”
Well damn if this sonofabitch didn’t have things down.
“I’ll kill you where you stand,” Abram said loudly.
“Probably,” Ramsey answered. “But it won’t matter by then, will it? Now what are you?”
I bit my lip, trying to work up the courage to speak. Finally I forced out the words, “It doesn’t matter what he is.”
I sensed Ramsey falter, likely surprised I had the gall to speak, and took advantage of his pause. I spun toward Ramsey, grabbed his pistol-holding hand, and wrenched him hard enough to twist him to the ground. The gun fell from his grip.
“Because every smart city girl has taken self-defense classes, and if you think this is the first time I’ve had a gun to my head, you’re stupider than I thought. Which says a lot given that you married Briar.”
As I gave his arm a twist, he grunted. “Get off me”!
“Soon. First tell us what you are.” I wrenched his arm a little harder. “I suggest you answer me before something snaps.”
“He’s a mage,” Abram said. He had picked the book back up and was flipping through it. A rush of pride shot through me. Not only had I disarmed this loser all by myself, but Abram felt secure enough in my abilities that he had taken his eyes off us. “You can let him go.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea. He did just try to kill me.”
“He was bluffing,” Abram said, slamming the book shut. “I didn’t know it before, but now that I know what he is, I know there’s no way he would have harmed you. Mages have strict codes against that. Isn’t that right, Mr. Duldridge?”
“What would you know?” he asked, still on the floor, still at my mercy.
“I’ve been alive for quite a long time,” Abram answered, his voice much calmer now. “You’re not the first mage I’ve run across. The crest I saw at the back of your book—it’s from the Appalachian Sect, is it not?”
Abram shot me another look and nodded. Hesitantly, I released Ramsey’s arm. He pulled it to himself and slowly got back to
his feet.
“It seems I’m at something of a disadvantage.” Ramsey coughed. “You know who I am, but I don’t know who—”
“This is Charisse Bellamy. She knew your wife several years ago in New York City. My name is Abram Canavar. I was, for lack of a better word, sired by the Conduit Satina over one hundred and fifty years ago.”
“You’re them,” Ramsey said, a curious smile spreading across his face. “The Beauty and her Beast. The Supplicant and the Wolf.”
Abram scowled. “I’m not a wolf.”
“So you say.”
“You’ve heard of us?” I asked, trying to keep the surprise out of my voice.
“Who hasn’t?” Ramsey shook his head. “You made quite a splash back in America. You’re on a lot of people’s radars now.”
Abram’s mouth tightened, and I could tell what Ramsey said wasn’t something he considered good news.
Ramsey tilted up his chin. “Well, now that we have that out of the way, do you care to tell me what you’re doing here?”
“I could ask you the same question.” Abram’s eyes narrowed. “You’re supposed to be in jail.”
“A Conduit owed me a favor,” he said, looking over at me. “He used some of his magic to coerce the judge into reconsidering my bail. Now would you please tell me why you broke into my home? The real reason, if you would be so kind.”
“To save your wife,” Abram said evenly.
Ramsey rocked back on his feet. “Sure. Yeah. You want to help me. Your girlfriend here hates her. But you want to save her. Of course.”
I folded my arms over my chest. “I may not be your wife’s biggest fan, but I don’t want her to die, and we need to stop whoever is using her to kill everyone else around her.”
“Ah, so the enemy of your enemy is your friend?”
“Not exactly,” I said evenly, thinking that applied to more than just Briar. King Archibald fit that bill, too, and frankly I didn’t give a crap about saving him. “Before you get all shitty with us, maybe you should consider the Conduit you made a deal with is the one responsible for all the craziness going on around here.”
Sleeping with the Beast: an Adult Paranormal Shifter Romance (The Conduit Series Book 2) Page 10
