by Kym Grosso
What is the Hematilly Periapt? An amulet, he pondered. Ilsbeth had said nothing to him about her owning it. Could Samantha have such an object? Did she know what it was? And if existed, what did it do? Who would want something so badly they’d be willing to kill for it in broad daylight? Deciding not to tell Samantha about the writing, he smeared the fluid across the sole of his shoe, blurring the words. He wiped his finger on his jeans, looked up into the flames and sighed. They needed to get out of there.
Samantha’s eyes pricked with tears as she watched her rental cabin burn. She looked up to the surrounding trees, which had begun to catch fire. Anger burned deep within her soul. She’d had enough of the evil and destruction. Luca was right about one thing; she was strong, and she would find a way through this. Not only that; in that moment, she resolved to be part of the solution and not idly stand by while life happened to her. She remembered what Ilsbeth had told her about how she had magic within her but she was the only one who could call it to be. It was her decision, her power.
Closing her eyes, Samantha reached out her hands, palms up toward the heavens and focused on her need to put the fire out. She called to the elements as if they were servants; instinctually, she knew that they were within her control. She felt the tingle in her fingertips as her eyes flew open. The clouds had already drawn close, and lightning flashed in the distance. “Rain, come,” she commanded.
Nothing happened, and she looked up again as if readying to scold an insolent child. Anger surging, she encouraged the tendrils of magic to dance over her skin until she was within a mystic trance. Unconsciously, she chanted over and over as the words came to her from within, “Aqua Dei tui eu nunc. Aqua Dei tui eu nunc. Aqua Dei tui eu nunc!” She shook with power as the water began to fall from the sky.
Luca stood back as a bright aura surrounded Samantha. Although he’d known her magic existed, she had doubted its existence. As streams of light pushed from her palms, he knew she’d found it. He blessed the rain as it poured down in droves, putting the fire out within minutes. When it was clear all the embers were drowned, he called out to Samantha, “It’s done Samantha. You can let go, darlin’. You did it.”
Samantha barely registered Luca’s words as the power within her died. She slumped over, holding herself up by propping her hands on her knees. It felt as if she’d run a marathon. Colors danced in the whites of her eyes as she fell into blackness.
“You did it!” Luca exclaimed. “You put out the fire.” As he turned to smile at her, he panicked; she’d collapsed into the muddy mixture of dirt and ash. He rushed over, fell to his knees and gently cradled her in his arms. “It’s okay, you did it. Come on now, wake up, Samantha.” He kissed her head and pulled away, realizing they needed to get out of there. He traced his fingers from her temple down around her chin.
Her eyes fluttered, “What?”
“You scared me. You’re okay now, let’s get going.” He stood up with her cradled in his arms. She pressed her face into his chest, afraid to look at the cabin.
He walked with her over to his SUV, opened the door and carefully sat her in the front seat.
“Stay here, Samantha,” he told her. “I need to get my keys. Is there anything you need out of this rubble?” Luca knew full well there wasn’t much left worth salvaging. But after all she’d been through, he would’ve tried to save anything important to her.
She silently shook her head no and stared out the car’s front windshield, not wanting to face what had happened. Denial could be quite a peaceful state if she only embraced it; alas, she could not tear her eyes from the debris. A dazed veil fell over her face as she silently contemplated the fire, her magic. It was as if her inner light dimmed as the cold splash of reality dowsed her. She was still in danger, and if she’d had a doubt before, her magic, while unpredictable, was intact. It was a wicked blow to the fragile sense of balance she’d worked hard to build over the past week.
Samantha, still in shock from creating the rain, shook her head silently. She hadn’t brought anything of importance with her to the cabin. She hadn’t had a chance to replace all her credit cards since New Orleans. The only thing she’d replaced was her smartphone, which had all her financial information on it via the apps. And luckily, she'd worn it on her walk so she could listen to music.
Luca trod into what was left of the home, watching carefully where he stepped. The crunch of the charred wood beneath his feet resounded in Samantha’s ears as she watched the smoke-filled sky dissipate from gray to blue. The smell of burnt wood engrained itself in the surrounding woods and grass; there was no direction either of them could turn where they could not detect the evidence of what had happened.
Luca came out of the house with nothing more than a single set of keys. “Got the keys!” he grumbled. He quickly strode over to her, got in the car and started it. “Let’s go. You’re in shock and we’ve got to get out of here before whoever did this comes back. It’s odd. I can’t smell a vampire or a wolf, no magic either.” Smells undeniably human. He didn’t want to tell Samantha that wolves, shifters, vampires and those of the magic persuasion could all use human minions to do their dirty work. “Samantha, this may not be the best time to discuss this, but your magic back there…the rain. Do you wanna talk about it?”
“No. Yes. I mean, not right now. I don’t even know what I did, those words I spoke. I just was so upset about the cabin. Something just happened in me. Let’s just drop it, Luca. I’ll call Ilsbeth when we get to New Orleans. I’m just so upset right now that someone would burn down the cabin.” Samantha just wanted to crawl into a hole. Some good her so-called magic was. She didn’t really even know what she’d done to bring the rain. She needed to talk to Ilsbeth about what had happened, but right now she wanted to hide, sleep and forget. She hadn’t asked for this life, and felt a great sense of loss; she’d never be normal again.
Looking over at Samantha, Luca realized how small and fragile she appeared curled into the seat, leaning her forehead against the passenger side window. He wondered what thoughts swirled behind her pale blue eyes; she looked a million miles away, silently considering what had happened perhaps. Luca swore silently for indulging himself with her in the lake. He’d been foolish to allow himself the pleasure of holding her soft pliant body: kissing her swollen pink lips: tasting her sweet honey-like essence. What was I thinking? I’ve been thinking with my dick. God, he needed to get it together. She was defenseless, innocent to his ways. No matter how much he wanted to make love to her, he couldn’t allow himself to do it. He could not allow himself to kiss her again. Even though she was technically a witch, he wasn’t sure if she’d ever accept her circumstances. And what of her life expectancy? Would she do what she needed to do to become immortal?
He knew that Kade had resolved that issue with Sydney, giving her his blood to keep her youthful and healthy. But Sydney was a toughened cop who’d fought side by side with him and Kade. She’d faced death time and time again. And while he’d initially hated that Kade had let a human go after Asgear, Sydney had proved her worth. Kade was determined to marry Sydney, and Luca respected their special connection, knowing Sydney could hold her own in the supernatural world.
But Samantha? No, she was like most humans. She was delectably, wonderfully normal: a computer analyst, for Christ’s sake. Her only experience with supernaturals was being bespelled, possibly raped, beaten and now being turned into a witch. And now she could add ‘passionately kissed by a vampire’ to her done list. He reckoned that she could find a much better mate than him. He rolled his eyes even thinking of the word: mate. In over two hundred years, he had never even considered marrying, mating, bonding or any other supernatural or human word that meant commitment. Never again.
Raised in Australia, Luca had known that loving someone brought nothing but heartache. In the late seventeen hundreds, his father, Jonathon Macquarie, a marine, had taken his family to the colony of New South Wales so that he could work on the development of the penal colonies bein
g set up by the British. It was a rough life for the soldiers and their families as well as the prisoners; life in a strange new world was not kind, and often inhumane. During the summer of his twenty-fifth birthday, he’d found comfort in the arms of a lovely woman, Eliza Hutchinson. She was the abandoned daughter of a prisoner who’d been brought to the island ten years earlier, caught pickpocketing on the streets of London.
When he’d turned eighteen, Luca’s father had secured a guard position for him. A few years into the position, he was stationed to guard the factory where Eliza’s mother had worked. One day, he’d caught Eliza sneaking in food for her mother, but hadn’t had the heart to turn her into the authorities. Instead, he’d courted her every chance he got at her farm stand in the market, where she sold fresh honey and wool.
Using his influence within the marines, he’d worked hard to secure a ‘ticket of leave’ for her mother, ensuring her freedom as long as she stayed out of trouble. Within months, Luca and Eliza fell very much in love, and she agreed to marry him. Then one night on their way home from dinner, a drunken group of soldiers had cornered them in an alley. They’d taunted Luca and Eliza, as they expressed interest in sexually assaulting her. While Luca was a trained guard, he was outnumbered five to one. In a brutal fight, he’d lost consciousness as a bottle smashed upon the back of his head.
Luca had woken in his parents’ home to find that Eliza had been raped and killed. His legs had been broken and his skull fractured, but somehow he’d survived the attack. During the months he’d spent under his mother’s care, convalescing, Luca was despondent, determined to leave Australia. He’d grown up in the brutal colony watching soldiers punish convicts. Sometimes they were beaten, humiliated or hanged for the smallest infraction. He’d planned to leave someday with Eliza and take them back to London where they’d escape the constant stress associated with forging the path to civilization in the settlement. After her murder, he’d had nothing: no love, no desire to live, and no faith in humanity.
As soon as he could walk again, he’d spent his savings on a passage back to Mother England. Upon arrival Luca immediately ‘took the King’s shilling’, and enlisted as a soldier for the War of 1812. Because of his experience as a guard and his father’s service in the marines, he entered as an officer.
Hopeless and wrathful, Luca had wanted to kill and looked forward to each battle, seeing the face of Eliza’s murderers in every opponent. There would never be enough blood shed to satisfy his need for vengeance against a faceless nameless enemy who’d never seen the shore of Australia. But it hadn’t mattered to Luca. He’d heard that Eliza’s true murderers had been hanged. However it would never be enough to quench his rage and the burning loss he’d experienced. Battle after battle, he’d fought with the utmost intensity, earning the respect of his fellow officers. One fateful night, however, it was his blood that had been shed.
On January 8, 1815, Luca had pushed out with his unit into the darkness of night as the fog clouded his vision. As chaos erupted in the field along the Mississippi, Luca had fallen to the ground in a barrage of musket fire, as had many other officers of the British army.
The next day, as he was saying his last prayers, a stranger had happened upon him. Sensing his impending death, Kade had offered him immortality in exchange for his loyalty. Luca, no stranger to adventure, had accepted his proposal and thus began his life as vampire.
Luca shook his thoughts free of his troubled past. Eliza was merely a distant memory, albeit an everlasting reminder of how fragile mortality was. Since turning vampire, he’d pledged his loyalty and friendship to Kade. Over the years, they’d done almost everything together including fighting, feeding and fucking. Yes, they’d shared quite a few women over the years, but those days were over now that Kade was getting married. And while Luca was glad of Kade’s new-found happiness, he had no plans to follow in his friend’s footsteps.
No, he’d been perfectly content over the past two hundred years with his non-committed sexual escapades. The closest he’d ever come to commitment was with women he’d considered to be ‘friends with benefits’, long before the saying was popular. He was devastatingly handsome, so finding women who’d throw a night of passion his way was never an issue. If they acted as though they were in love, he could just enthrall them to think otherwise.
As vampire, he was as physically strong as anyone could be, yet emotionally he’d never be strong. The death of Eliza had brought him to his knees, and he’d never forgive or forget what humans could do. Nor would he forget how it felt to have his heart ripped from his chest, to lose someone he loved with all his heart. He’d rather stake himself than go through the pain of loving and losing a mate again.
Whatever he was feeling for Samantha needed to be squelched. The seed that had been planted inside his heart had to be crushed and the best way he knew to do that was to find another woman who could sate his needs for blood and sex. Perhaps then, he’d lose interest in the red-headed witch seated next to him.
Chapter Six
Samantha startled as she woke; driving rain and booming thunder seemed to shake the large SUV as it sped down Broad Street. She looked over to Luca, who was distracted by the city traffic. How long had she been sleeping? If they were in center city, it must’ve been for hours, she thought. Sitting up and combing her hand through her dried frizzy curls, she tried to get a bearing on where she was. “Hey, Luca, where are we? South Philadelphia?” She’d answered her own question.
“Uh huh, we’re goin’ to Tristan’s club, Eden. It’s only three in the afternoon, so we should be able to get showered and have something to eat before leaving. The plane is cleared to take off at nine tonight, so we have a few hours to wait. I was hoping to leave earlier but they had to make some minor repairs to the jet,” he replied, glancing towards her. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay. You?”
She licked her lips, and Luca tried not to notice. He grew hard with arousal, dreaming that her soft pink lips were wrapped around a particular part of him. He shifted in his seat. Damn, even after nearly dying in a fire, the woman looked sexy.
“I’m vampire. As soon as I get a little blood, I’ll be more than fine,” Luca grumbled.
Samantha wondered what was making him so irritable, and assumed he was hungry. She had honestly never given a thought that he might need food or that she was considered a part of his food chain. Samantha pushed the thought to the back of her mind, knowing that regardless of her qualification as a meal, he’d never hurt her. And she needed his help to find whoever was after her so she could get her life back in order.
“I’m hungry too. And I smell like a fine combination of smoke and lake water.” She crinkled her nose in disgust.
As they pulled into a driveway, she noticed they had driven into a subterranean garage. After going down two levels, Luca pulled the car into a large parking spot next to a set of elevators.
“This is it. Let’s go,” he ordered as he turned off the car and got out. “Listen, this is a club for paranormals and humans. It’s pretty much a meat market in there.” He didn’t want to sugarcoat the situation. He also didn’t want her getting hit on or going off with strangers. “So when you go with me into the open part of the club, stay close to me. Or stay with Tristan. You never know who might be around. Not to mention someone just tried to turn us into French fries.”
“Yum. Fries,” she joked. She couldn’t stop thinking of food. She’d only eaten an apple all day. “I really am hungry.” She smiled up at him, hoping she could sway his foul mood.
Seeing her smile at him melted his anger, and he lifted the corners of his mouth in a wry smile. “Okay, hungry girl. Let’s see if we can go get cleaned up and find you something to eat.”
He flipped up a security pad located near the doors and punched in a code. The elevator opened, and he placed a hand on the small of her back, guiding her into a small, mahogany-lined lift. Samantha felt a flip in her stomach and couldn’t decide if it was from going up so
quickly or from Luca’s touch on her back. Following the commotion over the scorched cabin, she’d forgotten the desire she’d felt while kissing Luca in the lake. She blushed, thinking of how he’d tasted her mouth and caressed her breasts. She grew aroused at the thought of taking it further, touching his naked body once again, feeling him inside of her. She tried shaking the thought, knowing this wasn’t a good time to resume what they’d been doing. They hadn’t even spoken about what had happened between them, and she wasn’t sure if it was such a good idea to talk about it here, at Tristan’s.
Luca’s eyes flashed red and then back to green, sensing her thoughts. Scenting her arousal was hard to ignore in the tiny, private elevator. He balled his fists and then stretched his hands, as he caught a glimpse of her hard nipples poking through her exercise top. He considered kissing her against the wall but was prevented by the ding of the doors opening.
“Finally,” he muttered and strode across the room, hoping that putting some distance between them would help temper his rock hard erection that was begging to be set free.
“Where are we?” Samantha asked as she walked into a royal-blue room furnished with a large cherry desk and a black leather sofa. Very rich and masculine, she thought to herself as she admired a spectacular bronze wolf sculpture on the fireplace mantle. It was delicately balanced on a black marble base. Samantha recalled Tristan in his wolf form, black fur with amber eyes.
Luca walked over to a large wooden door and opened it. Pointing across the room, he addressed Samantha. “We’re in Tristan’s private office. Listen, there’s a shower over there across the room. Go ahead and shower, and I’ll send someone up with a fresh change of clothes once I talk to Tristan. After you’re done getting dressed, come downstairs. Just follow the long hallway out towards the staircase, and you’ll be downstairs.”
