“Hey, I don’t need ass-saving,” I called after, too late to recall when I realised my front door had just swung open.
“I’ve wasted my morning waiting for the window company to show up so you could go shopping.” Kial stood there, a lazy grin kicking in, the ice in his blue eyes melting with humour. “I’d call that ass-saving.”
How much had he heard?
Beth shot her eyes skyward, apparently done with this conversation, and pushed past him to go inside.
“Have you heard from them?” I asked Kial.
“They’re on their way,” he said. “But don’t hold your breath, that was an hour ago.”
I touched his arm as I passed, thanking him with a smile. “I really appreciate you hanging around here.”
“No problem.”
I paused in the hallway, preparing to broach the subject of Demor panthers while he closed the door, my gaze unintentionally searching for the details Beth insisted I’d missed.
Kial was tall, a couple of inches over six feet, toned with lean muscle that graced deadly skill. I’ve watched him fight; hand-to-hand combat with a Demor. His white T-Shirt rippled down the lines of his torso to just below the hip, his jeans worn-through to fit his thighs without being too snug.
Long fingers pushed through his dark blonde hair as he turned to me, his eyes still warm, friendly, his narrow face sculpted with the kind of symmetry that knocked handsome into the ballpark of devastatingly, hauntingly sexy.
I don’t know; maybe if he weren’t my cousin, however many times removed, I’d burn into his touch instead of using those broad shoulders for comfort.
But he was.
Maybe if he ever turned an ounce of charm on me, my knees would buckle and I’d be lost.
But he hadn’t.
A smile tipped his mouth, teasing, challenging. “What?”
Not a flirtatious innuendo on the horizon.
I shook my head, returning the smile for a moment, then grew serious. “Have you heard anything about Demors shape shifting again?”
“Panther form?” He prodded me in the back to start walking. “They were stripped—”
“—after The Terror, yes I know.” The perfect opportunity for his hand to linger in a sensual caress, or just linger, But no, he prodded. Beth was so wrong, it was laughable. “But have there been any rumours, reported sightings, anything like that?”
He looked at me, his eyes creasing. “What’s going on?”
I guess that meant no.
“I have to show you something. Beth…?” I called out.
“In here!” Her voice led us to the kitchen.
She was bent over the sink, sleeve pushed up, her arm under the running water.
I didn’t think the scars would scrub away, but I’d be doing the same in her position.
Tossing my bag near Beth’s pile on the pine table, I slumped onto one of the rickety chairs around the table and waved Kial in her direction. “Take a look at Beth’s arm.”
He crossed the kitchen in slow strides.
When he reached her, Beth turned off the faucet and flipped her arm over under his nose.
He grabbed her wrist, pushing her arm back to a distance he could look at without going cross-eyed. “A cat?”
As soon as the words left his mouth, he put two and two together. It was there in the sudden tension at his jaw. The grit underlying his tone. “How long ago?”
“Fifteen…twenty minutes,” I said, although I wasn’t sure why it mattered. Beth’s arm had healed. The problem was the scars.
Kial took another close look before dropping Beth’s arm.
His gaze shot to me. “You saw it?”
“We both did.” I watched his face register the unthinkable, cold hard truth. But not that unthinkable or unimaginable, clearly, since we were all thinking it, imagining the worst.
I wondered, briefly, at how fluidly we’d all accepted a possibility that was fact impossible, but then Kial was talking again and I was listening.
“The scratches will fade and then disappear as your body fights off the residual poison,” he told Beth. “Panther claws don’t just cut, they infect.”
I stared at him. “How can you know all that?”
“How can you not?” he countered. “Why do you think Demors can’t procreate without drawing from their panther power? It is the essence of their being, the core of their strength. Take another look at your history books, Raine, read between the propaganda.”
I met Beth’s eyes. Neither of us were about to admit we’d scarcely taken a first look.
“Angeons weren’t always superior, mightier.” His gaze rested on me, and I couldn’t be sure, but was there a touch of judgement there? “There’d never have been an ageless war if Demoran could have been defeated as easily as you take down Demors. When they were stripped of their panther form, they were also stripped of nine-tenths of their power.”
“And now at least one of them has got it back,” Beth said dully, “and it wants me dead.”
Kial shifted, propped himself against the counter, folding his arms as his gaze shifted from me to Beth. “If he’d wanted you dead, you’d be dead.”
The finality of that statement sent a shudder down my spine. I was complacent—although not reckless, I wasn’t admitting to that—when it came to taking on Demors. But the way Kial spoke, all the vigilance, diligence, preparedness and training in the world wouldn’t make a jot of difference. If he’d wanted you dead, you’d be dead.
“Thanks,” Beth grumbled. “I feel so much better now.”
I pulled myself together. Demors had already taken my mom and dad; they weren’t getting anyone else. If a Demor wanted me or mine dead, they were out of luck. This wasn’t arrogance speaking; this wasn’t me feeling superior, mightier or complacent. This was simply about what I could and could not accept. I refused to curl into a ball and accept a blanket statement like that. If a Demor wanted anyone I loved dead, they’d have to go through a hundred miles of serious crap, and me, before the sentence ended.
“Is there anything in those history books about reversing the curses and restoring what the Guardians stripped from us?” I asked, promising myself then and there a rigid study session. When the ancient past bleeds into the present, it’s time to dust off the leather-bound volumes. “Or about the Guardians changing their minds?”
“The Guardians never change their minds,” Kial said, his tone flat and definitive.
“Naturally.” Beth left his side to join me, pulling out a chair and propping her elbows on the table. She smirked. “That would mean admitting they were wrong.”
“Well, someone did something somewhere,” I pointed out grimly, seriously rethinking my ardent support of the Guardians.
Kial’s brow furrowed as he gave that some thought. “The Graces break the rules all the time.” He shrugged, as if it wasn’t a big deal. “Why should the Fates be any different?”
If I had a Grace or Fate in front of me right now, I’d smack their smug face. Actually, make that a Guardian, too. Maybe they didn’t have a direct hand in this catastrophe, but they’d already proved they didn’t mind stepping down when they felt the urge. Now would be an excellent time to have another urge.
“Wow,” Beth said to Kial, “aren’t you just the fountain of ethereal knowledge.” Her cheeks squeezed between her palms, she looked as grumpy as she sounded. “Where do we toss our coin in and grab a proper answer?”
Kial looked at me. “What’s eating her today?”
I went with, “A three-hundred pound black cat with really big claws?”
Snarky, but I wouldn’t mind a straight answer or two, either.
“What kind of rules do the Graces break?” I grilled him. “And seriously, where do you learn this stuff?”
These weren’t the mocking, rhetorical questions of Beth’s variety. This wasn’t the first time Kial had mentioned the Graces. I had my suspicions, but they were watery vague. Normally, I didn’t press Kial when he let the
occasional oddball comment drop. But today was different. If my world was going to upend, I needed a freshly minted map.
He cocked a brow at my demand for him to show and tell. The smirk grazing in his expression told me, ‘Not today, perhaps tomorrow, probably never.’
The doorbell chimed, limiting my come-back options to, “That’d better be the window company.”
“I’ll get it.” Kial pushed away from the counter, knuckling the underneath of my chin as he passed me on the way out. “That face will only chase them away.”
I cleared my scowl. Yeah, he’s totally smitten with me. I twisted my head to get another look at Beth’s arm. “Are you feeling okay?”
“Besides my insides shrivelling at the thought of bits of Demor crawling inside me…?” She brought her gaze back from the doorway, and Kial’s departing back, as she spoke. “I’m fine, really.”
“Beth, I’m sorry, if you hadn’t been with me—”
“Don’t you dare make this your fight.” Her eyes glittered with stubbornness (as physically weak as Beth was, she was no coward). “Demors are shape shifting again and that has nothing to do with your vendetta.”
Yeah, I didn’t buy that. “I’m the one who’s been poking them, stirring up the hornet’s nest.”
She reached out, her hand folding over mine on top of the table. “Don’t take offence, sweetie, but that panther faded in and out lightening quick. To use Kial’s words, if he’d wanted you dead, you’d be dead. This one was after me.”
I still wasn’t convinced. But this was my guilt to bear, and I wouldn’t offload it onto Beth. I thought of my parents, of their mangled bodies, and my throat closed tight.
“He can’t have you,” I said, my voice gruff, hitching. I leaned in, our foreheads almost touching. “I won’t allow it.”
She met the determined, resolute look in my eyes, and gave a slow nod. “I know.”
Beth was good that way. She knew when an argument would make things worse rather than better.
The muted sounds of soft-soled footfalls on hardwood drew my head back.
Beth’s gaze flashed over my shoulder. A second later, an, “Oh,” rolled off her lips.
“Raine,” came Kial’s curt announcement, “you have a visitor.”
I swung around as I pushed to my feet, expecting trouble. It had been that kind of day. What I got was Roman La Mar, standing in my kitchen.
If he’d shaved, it was not evident. A shadow darkened his jaw and stretched into the hollows. Dark grey, designer-cut trousers shaped sleek, muscled thigh. The cotton-thin, navy sweater he wore as a shirt crept up a chest carved in rippled stone to end in a high V at his throat.
“I’m interrupting,” he said in that deep, honey blended rumble, jade eyes boring into me without a hint of apology.
“No, not at— We were just—” Why had he…? I couldn’t complete a sentence, could scarcely complete a thought. What was he doing here? I was guessing it wasn’t for the coffee he’d run out on this morning.
Instead of helping me out, a grin cracked that granite jaw.
Kial put his shoulder to the wall, legs crossed loosely at the ankle, his thumbs hooked into the belt of his jeans. “I tried to tell him now wasn’t convenient for a social call,” he drawled, ice flowing over a hot stream. “Apparently I was too nice about it.”
I couldn’t decide whom to be more irritated with. Roman for being here, Kial for his rudeness, or myself for seriously still managing to be surprised at the random crap this day kept spitting out.
Beth, clearly not suffering from any of my indecisions, inserted herself between us with a high-wattage smile.
“Please forgive my friends. This one—” She aimed her smile at Kial “—is a moron. And as for Raine...” She spun her heels in a slow circle on the spot, giving me about two seconds of face-time. Her eyes popped at me, her chin jutted, her neck preened. “We narrowly missed a head-on collision on the way back from town and she’s still unnerved.”
That’s what her mouth said.
Her rooster impersonation was more verbal: Oh my gods he is so gorgeous where did you find this sexy beast if you screw this up just because you’re tongue-tied I will haunt you to the grave now get on it woman.
I played dumb with a blank stare. I wasn’t tongue-tied. Not in the way Beth assumed, anyway.
Her wattage smile wiped away the rooster before she spun on toward Roman and initiated an introduction for herself while I silently freaked out.
Best-case scenario, Roman La Mar had returned to claim answers he had no right to. Worst-case, he’d brought threats to expose us sky-wide in some extortion scheme. His clothes had that billion-dollar look about them and someone had to pay for it, right? Okay, maybe that wasn’t exactly fair, but the theme remained solid. Whatever had brought him here; I wasn’t going to like it. No matter how good he looked.
“C’mon,” Beth said to Kial, gesturing for him to follow her out. “We have that…thing to do.”
My cheeks heated. Could she be any more obvious? I’d zoned out on most of the introductory small talk, and now I wondered what I’d missed. Knowing Beth, she wouldn’t have hesitated to push a poor, unsuspecting Adonis on her socially and romantically deprived friend.
Poor, unsuspecting…? Adonis? Okay, it was official. I’d finally flipped off the deep end.
Kial, bless his hardened heart, didn’t budge. His eyes barricaded in distrust and dislike, he glared at our visitor. “No,” he told Beth firmly, “we don’t.”
“Kial!” she snapped.
“What?” His wrenched his scowl Beth’s way.
She took one look at the stubborn determination hunkering down in his expression and swiped the back of her hand over her forehead.
“I don’t…” Her voice wavered. Her legs gave in a fraction, her body swaying. “I‘m not feeling all that well. I think I should lie down a while.”
Kial wasn’t that gullible, not even close, but there wasn’t much else he could do when Beth literally fell into his arms with a whimper of distress. Well, I guess he could have kept his thumbs hooked into his belt and let her fall flat on her face, but he wasn’t that kind of guy either.
Limp Beth tucked into his side, he led her out.
Just before she disappeared around the corner, she threw me an exaggerated wink over her shoulder. “Invite him to Club Zero on Friday,” she mouthed soundlessly.
She may as well have shouted it from the rafters, since Roman was looking directly at Beth and her big mouth.
I was beyond irritation, beyond embarrassment, beyond caring about anything other than how to make Roman go away. His presence filled the room, every dormant threat he’d brought with him crammed into the corners.
His eyes came to me. “Is your friend alright?”
“Delayed shock from our near-miss accident,” I said, shamelessly hijacking Beth’s performance.
I’d have to deal with Roman La Mar eventually, but not today. And if I was the ostrich, shoving my head in the sand, leaving my butt sticking up, exposed and vulnerable, so be it. I was one giant nerve ending shivering on a stalk, a breath away from breaking free of its protective casing. I had a strong suspicion that Roman might just be that breath.
I took a step toward him, my hand politely showing him the way. Out. “This really isn’t the best time, I’m afraid.”
To my utter amazement, he took the hint with grace, backing out into the adjoining dining room.
I relaxed a little, just a tiny inch, as I walked him back to the entrance hall.
“I wanted to thank you.” He slanted a look at me, his smile seemingly sincere. “Last night, you saved my life.”
That smile creased into his eyes, wrapped around all those harsh angles of his face. The effect hit behind my knees, butter soft. I inhaled sharply, grabbing back that inch and stiffening my shoulders. I didn’t trust that smile. Worse, I didn’t like it. I’m not sure why, I couldn’t explain it, but I’d rather have his threats than his gratitude. Maybe it w
as just my ego. I did not like to be proved wrong.
“I patched you up a little,” I corrected. “No one needed saving last night and I’m not Florence Nightingale. If your injury had been potentially fatal, you’d have been rushed to the closest hospital.”
“I appreciate the patching up.” His hand went to his shoulder, no longer bulked from any bandages. “But before that, you flung yourself on top of me, pushed me out of harm’s way.”
“That’s not the way I remember it,” I said, firmly crushing the prospect of him feeling indebted to me in the slightest.
That would be wrong on so many levels. I was the reason he’d been put into danger in the first place. And what was that old proverb? If you save someone’s life, you own it? Or do they own you? Either option horrified me. I knew it wasn’t fact, not to be taken literally, but there was some underlying truth in that ancient proverb. When you saved someone’s life, a connection formed, a bond. And since what I needed most was Roman gone from my sphere of crazy that seemed to fascinate him, gone far and good and forever, I had to rid him of this crazy notion.
“I didn’t save you,” I said. “I was diving under the line of fire and you just happened to be in the way.”
“If you insist,” he said, chuckling; a deep, husky timbre that rolled down my spine with the cadence of a bass cello.
He didn’t believe me. He wasn’t going to be gone anytime soon. Well, he might leave right now, since he hadn’t objected to me showing him to the door, but I did have some working instincts when it came to people and situations and this one was going to be sticky in both senses of the word.
It was the tenor of his chuckle as he basically told me to my face that he didn’t believe me for a second, but I somehow ended up feeling charmed about it instead of riled.
I realised that wasn’t a lot to go on, certainly not enough to map out our near future, but I felt it in my gut, in my bones.
Roman La Mar and I were far from done.
We’d reached the end of the hallway and he turned to me, a casual, innocent move, except it put his back flush against the door and barred me from sending him on his way. His gaze met mine, lingered, softening with every heartbeat.
Where Dark Collides: Part 1 (Shades of Dark) Page 4
