The Watcher (Crossing Realms Book 2)

by Rebecca E. Neely

  Time to move the pieces on the board.

  A risk. An action he hadn’t dared take as of late, given the brood’s circumstances. It’d require all of the precious energy he’d consumed and then some. But emergency protocol demanded it.

  As did so many of his brood who’d gone before him.

  As did he.

  A master of opportunity.

  Around them, waves of dark energy dissipated, putrid corpses of human emotion demanding to be picked clean.

  Like a vulture he circled, waited. Summoned his every strength.

  Magpie gasped, and with one look he commanded her.

  He scavenged. Gorged. Regurgitated. Hatred. Fear. Misery. Anger. Over and over. He leeched, ratcheted, fueled, all in the space of minutes.

  The policeman, the woman, and the mugger stopped. Stared, glassy eyed, at one another.

  Pawns. Abel breathed. Wait for it.

  Shrieking, the woman snatched the policeman’s gun from his holster and fired two rounds into the mugger’s face. Blood and brains spattered a parked car. The man crumpled to the ground, cracking open what was left of his skull on the sidewalk.

  Screams erupted. People swarmed and collided like ants, trampling one another to escape. Traffic snarled. Sirens wailed. Panic and confusion spread like a cancer.

  Ripples in a pond. And I just dropped a bomb.

  Hellfire for humans.

  A boon for the brood. And one he would mete out, at his discretion.

  Torpid, Abel steadied himself against a nearby building. “Magpie,” he mouthed.

  Quickly, she lent him energy, restoring a measure of balance. For now. He would need more. And soon. Magpie would take care of that.

  Like ghosts, they slid into the recesses of the city, their every step distancing them from the unfolding chaos.

  It took only fifteen minutes to reach their destination. To him, it felt like hours. Exhausted, Abel descended the crumbling cement stairs wedged into the hillside and helped Magpie down the last step. Here, along the orphaned edges of the city where humans couldn’t give the real estate away, he cracked open the hatch of a fallout shelter—one of many they utilized throughout the city—and tipped his hat to a previous generation’s paranoia.

  His eyes hardened. He’d devised a plan of attack, and put it in motion.

  He’d had to go slowly. Or risk raising suspicions.

  Dev crossing realms signaled to him the end of a holding pattern.

  He closed the hatch behind them.

  It was time to kill.

  Again.

  CHAPTER 7

  With the bar wiped clean and closed for another night, Meda shooed Musko off to see his girlfriend. On the ground floor of MJ’s, she let Tan outside to do his business.

  “We’ll be fine here by ourselves, won’t we? That’s why Musko got you for me.”

  Looking up at her with his sweet dark eyes, he favored his right back leg. “You’ll be better once this humidity is gone,” she murmured. Despite the predictions for a storm, the rain held off. The air clung, suffocated. Panting, Tan hobbled to her. She knelt, cradled his head next to hers.

  Back inside, the cool of the basement was a welcome respite. Once Tan settled himself in his bed in the corner of her makeshift gym, she plugged in a heating pad and placed it over his bum leg, stroked his ears. Unblinking, he settled his head between his front paws.

  For the better part of the evening, Meda had expected to see Dev every time the bar door opened. Each time she didn’t, she told herself she was relieved.

  Not disappointed.

  She traded her jeans and boots for shorts and sneakers, and drew on a pair of boxing gloves. For the next half hour, she hooked, jabbed and uppercut her frustrations out on the punching bag she’d helped Musko install on the doorjamb. Meditation was one way for her to find calm. This was another.

  Half an hour later, a sheen of sweat coated her limbs, her scalp. Adequately spent, she removed her gloves and padded upstairs to her efficiency, grateful Tan followed close behind. Nestling himself in the corner of her bedroom, she knew he’d sleep soon, and envied him that.

  Quickly, she peeled off her clothes, showered, and after towel drying her hair, slipped on an ancient Yankees tee. From the jeans she’d worn earlier, she withdrew the stone Dev left for her, studied it, held it to the light, and finally, set it on her nightstand. She had no answers, only questions. She needed to sleep, prayed she could.

  Laying down, she kicked the sheet off. Minutes clicked by. Drifting, she listened to Tan breathing. Snoring.

  Banging.

  Banging?

  She jolted in bed. Had she dreamt it? The clock read 9:39 PM. She’d been asleep for a little over an hour.

  No. There it was again.

  Not banging. Knocking.

  Someone knocking on the hall door. Sighing, she got out of bed and Tan unfolded himself from his, growling low in his throat. “It’s okay,” she assured him, and maybe herself. It wasn’t Musko. If he’d forgotten his key, he wouldn’t have been able to get inside the building. Crossing to the door, she willed herself to peer through the peephole.

  “Butchy.” Relieved, she unlocked the door. “For God’s sake. You scared me to death. I thought you went home hours ago.”

  He sagged in the doorway and fell against her. Catching him under the arms, she staggered back a few steps.

  “I’s sorry, Miss Mia.” Butchy hiccupped. “Karen threw me out ‘gain.”

  “Butchy.” Meda waved away the stench of bourbon. His anger as well as his love for Karen, came through loud and clear. If he hadn’t been one of Musko’s oldest friends, and one of their frequent customers, she’d have sent him packing. He and his girlfriend Karen had a tumultuous relationship at best, and Meda had lost track of the times she’d thrown him out. Musko had finally given him a key after he’d found him sleeping in the alley one night. Any friend of Musko’s was a friend of hers. She’d even paid the fines he’d racked up for being drunk and disorderly a few months back.

  “Fell asleep in my car.” His lopsided smile revealed teeth to match. “Then I remembered I had . . .”

  She whirled at a whoosh of sound, as charged as the atmosphere outside. A punch of energy swarmed her, socked her with all the force of one of her jabs, intoxicating. Potent and familiar, she realized, staggered.

  Dev.

  He dove through the air, tackled Butchy around the waist. Both men crashed to the floor.

  Gaping, the air left Meda’s lungs.

  Dev pinned him to the floor with a knee, his fist raised.

  She found her voice. And her feet. “No! Stop!” Hurling forward, she clawed at Dev’s T-shirt. “Get off him! He’s my friend!”

  Dev whipped his head around, an edge of steel in his eyes. Glaring, he removed his knee from Butchy’s chest and stood, straddling him. Then offered a hand to help him up.

  Butchy groaned, rolled over, and passed out.

  “I thought you were in trouble,” he said to her, his voice deadly calm.

  Oh, she was in trouble all right. “What the hell are you doing here? How did you get in?” Even as she said it, her brain registered the open window. Unbelievable. “You made it up the fire escape?”

  “Put my foot through a few of the steps. Rusty. You really ought to get that fixed.”

  Meda threw a hand in the air. “I’ll be sure to do that.”

  Toenails clicked on linoleum. Growling low in his throat, the German Shepard barked once.

  “Tan!”

  In the instant she shouted his name, her dog lunged at Dev, his bum leg wobbling, and knocked him to the floor.

  “Jesus!” Skidding across the bare floor, she flipped the light on, shaking. She’d seen Tan react this way once befo
re, about a year ago, when a customer was hassling her. Tan was a rescue and they hadn’t known a lot about his background. They’d soon discovered he had a set of skills. He’d taken a shine to Meda, and she to him.

  Tan stood on Dev’s chest, his jaws open and neatly tucked around his throat with just enough pressure to immobilize.

  Meda heaved a breath. “Good boy.” She scowled at Dev. “He won’t bite. Unless I tell him to.” She didn’t know if Tan would or not. But Dev didn’t need to know that.

  She never took her eyes from Dev or Tan, which was easy to do in this efficiency space. Grunting, she dragged Butchy across the kitchen into the living room. Propping him next to the couch, she covered him with a blanket.

  One down. One to go.

  Painfully aware she wore nothing beneath her T-shirt, she inched past Dev and Tan and yanked on a pair of jeans hanging on the back of her closet door.

  Drawing on her breathing skills to work through the onslaught of energy Dev commanded, she approached man and dog. If he’d been outside her apartment building, on her fire escape, how could she not have known? Just one more question.

  Her gaze flicked over the stone at the base of his throat. Kneeling, she patted down his legs, arms, and the portion of his waist not occupied by Tan. No weapons.

  That gave her a measure of relief. Even without aid of her ability, oddly enough, she knew with absolute certainty Dev wasn’t here to hurt her or she’d have considered calling the police.

  She stood and paced. The low-profile life she’d adopted in recent years, coupled with her childhood aversion to authority, had her second-guessing herself. She didn’t want anyone poking into her business. Plus, there’d be no keeping it from Musko, and she didn’t want to worry him any more than she already had.

  Dev watched her with laser focus, his expression unblinking, unreadable.

  She’d been right about the man, and his energy. Both were hell bent.

  So, what now?

  As if in answer to her silent question, Dev slowly lifted his hands and placed them on Tan’s hindquarters.

  She gasped. “What are you doing?”

  The stone around his neck glowed.

  Tan grunted.

  Not in pain. Like he did when she rubbed his belly.

  Tan released his jaws from around Dev’s neck, slid off his chest, and bounded across the apartment, his tail wagging.

  The way he’d done two years ago. When Musko first brought him home.

  The whole thing happened in less than ten seconds. Meda clapped a hand over her mouth, ignored the sheen of sweat slicking her limbs. She stared. At Tan. At Dev. “Oh my God.”

  Dev rose, adjusted the stone around his neck, which no longer glowed, she noted. He took a step toward her. She took a step back. Without her three-inch heels, he stood a head taller than her five-eight. He strode forward, crowding her. His eyes hot and green and intent on hers, his presence filled the room with zero charm and one hundred percent defiance.

  He spoke, danger skirting the edge of his voice. “Do you have time to talk to me now?”

  CHAPTER 8

  Meda felt her head pump up and down. “Holy shit,” she managed. “You healed my dog.”

  “It’s more like I gave him a big dose of ibuprofen. It’ll last for a while. Not forever.”

  His energy hammered her system. “Thank you,” she breathed, her response sounding more like a question. “Dear God. Who the hell are you?”

  “I told you,” he said calmly. “I’m Dev. Dev Geary. I need to talk to you because I need your help. And I think you might be the only one who can help me.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Why? Because of my father’s research?”

  “Yes.”

  “I should’ve known. It always comes back to that. Years later. What if I refuse?”

  He crossed his arms, planted his feet. “I’m not going to take no for an answer. Lives depend on it.”

  She’d seen and experienced strange things in her life. On her own, and as the daughter of Jon Gabriel, aka mad scientist. She ordered herself to focus, to not be astonished. And succeeded. Barely. “Lives depend on it.” She shook her head and folded her arms across her body. “You don’t even know me. What makes you think I care?”

  His eyes raked along the length of her and she felt herself flush.

  “People who don’t care don’t let their drunk customers spend the night in their apartment.” He raised an eyebrow. “Or pay their fines.”

  Shock and fury hit her full force. She huffed. “How the hell do you know that?”

  “I have friends,” he said shortly. “And uncaring people don’t put heating pads on their dogs when their legs ache,” he continued. “By the way, you’ve got a helluva right hook.”

  Her mouth fell open.

  Leaning in, he snagged a finger in one of her belt loops and pulled her close. “Mia. Or should I call you Meda?” he asked softly, his breath warm on her cheeks. “Still think I don’t know you?”

  Her hands trembled, a war between anger and fear. His male, musky scent surrounded her. “You’ve been watching me! Spying on me.”

  He held up a hand. “Only since tonight. I promise.”

  She planted her palms on his chest, as unyielding as granite, and shoved. Still getting nothing. “Your promise means very little to me.” Pacing, her bare feet slapped the linoleum. This was worse, much worse than she could ever have imagined. And apparently, there’d be no dealing with this man on her terms. It was his way or else. He hadn’t knocked down her walls. He’d blown them up.

  But finally, something made sense.

  “Regular people don’t go around breaking into other people’s apartments.” She glanced at the open window facing the city street. “The fire escape,” she muttered, wondering how long he’d been out there, wondering if he’d seen her naked. “And regular people don’t heal dogs by touching them.”

  Stopping, she stood in front of him as she processed a new reality, one that had forever been out of her father’s reach, and that she might now hold in the palm of her hand. “But you’re not regular, are you.” It wasn’t a question.

  Butchy snored. Tan sniffed Dev. Thunder rumbled, drowning out the hum of the city, just outside their walls.

  He spoke, and his voice seemed to merge with the night. “I’m a guardian of humans. I used to be a Keeper. Now I’m what’s known as a Watcher.”

  She huffed out a breath. “Keepers. Watchers. Guardians. You’re not, uh . . .”

  “Not human,” he finished for her. “I’m as close to human as you can get. But not from this realm.”

  “Realm?”

  “The human realm. Earth. The Watchers’ realm is parallel to this one. I’ve recently crossed realms. I’m kind of here on loan. We work hand in hand with the Keepers. We’re like their guiding force. And we’re all guardians of humans. Keepers are more hands-on. They keep humans, through missions called Compulsions,” he explained, air quoting the word ‘keep.’ “A lot of Keepers eventually become Watchers. If that makes sense.”

  “Believe it or not, I think it does,” she murmured. In a strange way, she found some sort of comfort from these revelations. No human; rather, someone from this realm—Earth—would be capable of generating his level or intensity of energy. And still the possibilities, the implications careened toward her, brutal as pavement to a ledge-jumper.

  Dev, his very existence, the stone, the energy she’d been feeling since this morning—all of it could prove what her father had chased after for years was real. True. She rubbed her temples, fear and exhilaration warring for her attention.

  Unfortunately for her, the truth came in the form of one Dev Geary, as sexy with eighty pounds of dog splayed on top of him, as he’d been when he’d swaggered into her bar.

 
He cocked his head. “You don’t seem that surprised, or shocked as another human might be. That cuts through a lot of the red tape for me.”

  She laughed mirthlessly. “How convenient.”

  “I’m just saying, you seem to have more of a comfort level than someone else might. I’m glad, for your sake and mine.” Dev touched the stone around his neck. “This is Vitality stone. It’s the source of all of our energy and our abilities. It’s how I connected to your energy. How I knew Tan was in pain. How I, as you say, healed him. Animals have Vistas too.”

  “Vistas?”

  “In a nutshell, it’s all of your memories, past and present. Your emotions.” He paused. “I can’t read yours.”

  So you ran into a wall. What a shame. “Is that so?”

  “Yes. If I’d been able to, I would have tried to earn your trust by showing you one of your memories. I couldn’t. So I had to come up with something else.”

  She tapped a foot. “Tan.”

  “Yes.”

  “Playing dirty.”

  “Pretty much. That, and I like dogs.”

  “Good for you. So you just go around snooping into anyone’s Vista you feel like?”

  “No, there are rules against it. I figure all’s fair in this war. Or not, depending on how you want to look at it.” He planted his feet, crossed his arms. “I’m not sure why I can’t, and I want to know why.” A muscle worked along the line of his jaw. “And I usually get what I want.”

  She turned away to restrain herself from slapping him. “We’ll see about that,” she muttered.

  He glanced around the apartment. “Do you have the Vitality stone I left for you?”

  Since when did she answer to anyone? “What makes you think I still have it?”

  “Come on, Meda. I don’t have time for games.” He strode into her bedroom.

  “Hey!” She ran after him.

  “Where is it?” Surveying the space, he located it on the nightstand and grabbed it. “Good. You’re going to need to put this on.”