Or maybe the guy would open the front door and level a Sig Sauer at Duke’s chest.
Duke immediately put up his hands. “Hey, man. I’m not here to hurt you.” But he would if the guy didn’t put the gun down. Duke had no intention of getting shot or letting him shoot anyone else, for that matter. “Why would I do that considering I’m the one who pulled your ass out of that house a few days ago?”
Green eyes stared at him, no hint of confusion or anxiety. “Who the hell are you people and what do you want?”
“We’re friends. We didn’t save your ass just to put it back in a sling.”
“Then why’d you follow me and why wouldn’t you let me leave? Seems like I traded one prison for another.”
“Look, you wanna be out here on your own so whoever took you can get at you again? No skin off my nose. Just don’t take Kaine down with you.”
The guy’s eyes narrowed but the gun never wavered. “She followed me. I didn’t take her. Hell, I told her to stay but that damn dog doesn’t listen worth a damn.”
Duke nodded, breathing a silent sigh of relief that Kaine hadn’t revealed her true nature. “Yeah, she certainly does have a mind of her own. Let me get her and we’ll leave and you’ll never see us again.”
Duke meant what he said, even if Kyle would kick his ass. This guy was the only link they had to the woman who was kidnapping eteri. Still, Duke didn’t give a shit if he got himself killed but he wasn’t willing to risk Kaine.
The guy’s eyes narrowed. “Is the dog yours?”
Kaine would have his head for this one later. “Yeah, you could say that.”
The guy nodded. “She’s beautiful. What is she?”
Wouldn’t you really like to know. “She’s a wolf.”
The guy’s brows raised just the slightest bit. “If she’s yours, why’d she follow me?”
Duke sighed. “No idea. Look, man, I’m not here to jack you up. I’m here to get Kaine.”
After a second, the guy whistled, a short, sharp blast that made Duke cringe.
Duke looked into the room behind the guy, expecting to see Kaine’s small gray wolf trot out.
Instead, Kaine walked up behind him in her skin, wearing a hoodie three sizes too big for her and nothing else. She must have just shifted and grabbed the sweatshirt.
Duke never broke their stare but the guy realized someone had snuck up behind him. Someone who wasn’t a small gray wolf.
With unconscious ease and almost scary speed, the guy moved to put his back against the nearest wall, keeping both of them in sight.
Military training. The guy definitely had military training.
Kaine moved slowly, her hands held where he could see them. “John, please. No one will hurt you.”
“Who the hell are you? And how the fuck did you get in my house?”
Kaine never took her eyes off the man she’d called John. She kept her voice low and soft and stopped several feet away from him on the porch. “I’m a friend. We want to help. I know about your sister. I know you’re worried about her. We can help you get her back. You just have to trust us.”
Vaffanculo. Duke wanted to spit out curses and maybe bang his head against the nearest wall.
If the guy really was missing a sister, that changed everything.
Not one expression betrayed John’s surprise that Kaine knew about his sister, but Duke smelled it on him. He couldn’t hide that.
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. You all need to leave right now.”
“Listen, man.” Duke continued to hold out his hands as he listened for any hint of where the hell Nic had gotten to. “Why don’t you tell us what’s going on and we’ll help you get your sister back?”
“I don’t need any help.”
“Yes, you do,” Kaine said. “You don’t have any idea what’s going on. You need us.” She held out her hand, palm up, silently asking for the gun. “Please.”
“I have no idea who you are or what the fuck you want—”
“We only want to help.”
“No.” His green eyes grew even colder. “Go now.”
Duke sighed. He didn’t like having a gun waved at him and he especially didn’t like eteri waving guns at him or his partners. Kaine made it obvious she didn’t want him hurt but he’d had enough.
He knew Nic was just waiting for a signal from him to pounce, probably from inside the house.
Time to end this now.
With a flick of his fingers, he signaled to Nic. And in his peripheral vision, he saw the shadows flicker inside the doorway.
He moved his gaze to Kaine, warning her to be prepared.
In the split second before Nic attacked, Kaine tensed.
And tipped off John.
And everything went to hell from there.
* * * * *
“You’re sure this is what you want?”
Nortia leaned against the counter in Margie’s kitchen, arms crossed over her chest. Her expression held absolutely no hint of what she was thinking.
Tira stared straight back, her gaze never wavering. Even though her heart pounded so loudly the Lady of the Hammer could probably hear it in the silence hanging over the house and she could barely breathe around the knot of fear in her chest.
“Yes. I know this is the right thing to do.”
“You know your Gift isn’t like any other.” Nortia continued to hold her in place with her intent gaze. “This isn’t merely agreeing to take your mother’s place in the boschetta. You need to be absolutely positive. Downloading centuries of memories and the bulk of your mother’s powers could cause your brain to overload if you’re not fully committed.”
Tira nodded for what had to be the hundredth time. She knew all of this. For years her mom had been preparing her for this moment.
The Gift of praenuntio was different from all other Goddess Gifts in the fact that it was cumulative. When Tira accepted the mantle of praenuntio, she agreed to accept the collective memories of the boschetta back to ancient times. Though she may never have need to use them, Tira would have access to almost three thousand years of thoughts, emotions and memories of the streghe who had come before.
Those memories would be stored in her brain, as they were in her mom’s, until she had need of them or she passed them on to the next generation.
She’d also accept a huge portion of her mom’s ability with the transfer of memory because it could be done no other way.
Tira knew all the pros and the cons. She’d been debating them for years and her fear had always won out over her sense of duty.
But these past few hours with Nic and Duke had made her realize she’d let that fear dictate her life for too long. She’d been weak. If she’d been stronger, she could have spent the last several years living her life with the men she loved instead of living only half a life without them while waiting for Nic’s death.
Weak and stupid.
She could have saved her mother some of the anguish of the past year, slowly losing her mind to the visions.
No more.
“I know everything, Lady. And I’m ready. Now.”
Nortia didn’t hesitate. “Kotev, Margie,” she called to the streghe waiting in the front room. “Let’s do this.”
* * * * *
“Kaine, gods damn it, shift!”
Duke had his hand over the wound on Kaine’s stomach as it pumped blood through his fingers.
“No.” Kaine shook her head as she lay on the porch where she’d fallen after John’s gun had gone off. “Can’t.”
“Yes, you fucking can! I’m ordering you to do it now. Right now!”
Behind him, Duke heard the labored breathing of the eteri who Nic held with one arm around his neck restricting his breathing and using his other hand to crush the guy’s wrists together.
Duke didn’t care if Nic killed the fucker.
If Kaine died, he’d tear the guy limb from limb.
Her pain-filled brown eyes slid to where Nic stoo
d with the eteri.
A minute ago, Nic had jumped the guy from behind but Kaine had tipped off John to the imminent attack.
Duke had reached for the gun, the gun had gone off…and Kaine had cried out in pain.
“Kaine, you’re going to die if you don’t shift.”
Once more she looked at the eteri and Duke automatically followed her gaze. The guy continued to struggle against Nic’s hold, his eyes glued to Kaine. To the wound in her stomach.
“Medic,” he finally breathed the word, “I’m a medic. Let me—”
“Shut the fuck up,” Nic growled in the guy’s ear. “She doesn’t need any more of your help.”
No, Kaine needed to shift. The change would knit her body back together. But she was holding back and Duke finally realized why. Greek fucking tragedy.
“Shit, Kaine, I promise. I promise he won’t remember. We’ll wipe his memories clean.”
The eteri wouldn’t remember what she was. Duke instinctively knew that was the reason she was holding back. She didn’t want the guy to see her shift.
And she was willing to die for it.
Well, Duke wasn’t willing to give her up. He’d promise her anything. He refused to lose the woman who’d become more than a partner. She was the sister he’d never had. Sarcastic and bitterly funny when she wasn’t quiet and thoughtful, Kaine had to listen. She had to obey.
“You swear?” she finally said, her eyes wide and filled with so much agony.
“On my pelt, I swear. He won’t remember. Just do it.”
After another glance at the eteri, still struggling against Nic’s hold, she rolled into a ball and let the magic take her.
As he moved away to give her room, Duke heard the eteri gasp, though probably not his last. If Kaine didn’t make it, Nic would make sure he didn’t breathe too many more.
Though most lucani considered it bad manners, Duke watched as Kaine called forth her pelt. He didn’t look away until she lay, panting, on the porch. No wound marred her fur and Duke finally released the breath he’d been holding.
Standing on her paws, she shook her entire body from snout to tail then sat back on her haunches, staring at Duke.
“No pain? Everything okay?” he asked.
He knew if she was in her skin, she’d give him a smart-ass salute and when he turned his back, she’d probably give him the finger. Now she settled for baring her teeth at him.
But he could tell even that was halfhearted. And the reason for that stood behind him struggling for breath in Nic’s hold.
Rising, Duke stepped forward, his hand shooting out to grab the eteri’s throat. Nic released him a split second before Duke made contact. With his hand on his neck, Duke walked him back against the wall of the house and held him there, pinned like a bug under a microscope.
The guy’s wide, dilated eyes were the only sign that he was freaked out.
Definitely Special Ops, Duke thought before getting down to business.
“We’re done screwing around. Tell us everything or I will kill you.”
* * * * *
Tira had expected the pain.
Agonizing, as if she’d plugged her fingers into a live electrical socket.
Her body jolted against Margie, who held her tight in her arms to keep her upright. Her hands tightened around Kotev’s. The eldest member of the boschetta and the most powerful, Kotev possessed magic that allowed for the absence of Tira’s mom, serving as a conduit for the information to be passed.
The pain seemed to last forever but just as abruptly as it started, it stopped, cut off as if by a switch.
Distantly she heard Nortia tell Margie to step away though Kotev continued to hold her hands. The connection grounded her in some way she couldn’t explain. As if the seventy-year-old with short, steel-gray hair and a body a forty-year-old would envy eased the throbbing pain remaining in her head.
It actually felt as if someone had taken a crowbar, pried open her head and dumped a million tiny little men with jackhammers in her skull.
And each of those jackhammers implanted a memory. Or twenty.
Bits and pieces of memories flashed through her head with each millisecond. People and places she’d never seen, languages she didn’t understand, smells, thoughts, sounds…
“Breathe, Tira. You need to breathe or you’re going to pass out.”
Nortia’s voice somehow made it through the cacophony in her head and she took a deep breath, gulping in much-needed air.
“Now open your eyes,” Nortia continued. “You need to focus on something that isn’t in your head. All that information needs to settle and you need to let it.”
The effort it took to open her eyes was tremendous, like prying off the lid to a box that’d been nailed and glued shut.
With a strength she never would have thought she had, she opened her eyes.
Everything was blurry for seconds but she fought through that, focusing on the large, dark blob directly in front of her.
She blinked and the visions tried to pull her back under. Crimson blood flowed, almost the same color as the licks of flame licking at the feet of the woman on the stake.
No. Blessed Goddess, let me focus.
She fought them off, fought to keep from falling back under the horrified, fascinated spell of voyeurism.
The blob reappeared, slowly, slowly forming into the body.
Suddenly, it moved and she blinked, startled.
“Cat.” Nortia’s quiet voice held a sharp note that cut into her head like a knife. “Don’t move.”
The blob froze and, little by little, Cat came into focus. Panting like she’d just run a five-minute mile, Tira stared hard at the familiar features of Margie’s daughter.
“Tira, can you hear me?” Nortia asked.
She kept staring at Cat, afraid to move her head and risk even more of a headache. “Yes, Lady.”
“Good.” Nortia sighed, the soft sound the only indication the goddess had been at all worried about this process. “Now I’m going to take your hand and lead you over to the sofa.”
Nortia wrapped her hand around Tira’s and Tira registered the warmth of the goddess’ skin, a second before the vision hit.
Unlike her visions before, she felt disconnected from this one, as if she were watching it on a TV screen instead of experiencing it in person.
But there was no mistaking the images.
When she blinked again, they were gone and Nortia stood before her, an unusually worried expression on her beautiful features.
“Tira, what—”
“Margie, I need to talk to Dan. Right away.”
Chapter Twelve
“The woman who kidnapped you has your sister. Why the fuck didn’t you say that when you woke up?”
Nic scrubbed a hand through his hair as he paced John Simmons’ sparse front room.
The guy lived like a Spartan. Only a couch, TV and coffee table sat in the front room. There was no dining table, no kitchen table. In one of the bedrooms, there was a bed and a chest. In the other, piles of boxes. And a locked chest Nic knew held weapons. He could smell the metal and gunpowder.
John sat on the couch, his gaze taking in everything. He watched Nic pace for a while then he stared at Duke, silent and hulking against the wall.
But his gaze always came back to Kaine at the front window. He stared at her as if he was dissecting her and Nic knew it made her crazy because she liked this eteri. She wanted him, Nic could smell it on her and that was such a shock in and of itself that Nic tried not think about it. Kaine, who had so many reasons to hate eteri, had fallen for one.
And the guy couldn’t stop staring at her as if she were a freak in the carnival. Even when he would only talk about his sister.
“I need you to release me so I can go get my sister.”
“And how do you know where to look?”
John looked him straight in the eyes. “Because I overheard the man who took her out of the cell next to mine tell someone on the phone where
to meet him.”
“How do you know they weren’t just jacking your chain?”
“Because he didn’t say it loud enough to hear. I read his lips.”
Handy trick. “Tell us where and we’ll retrieve her.” Duke’s voice sounded like a feral dog’s growl but the guy did nothing more than stare at Nic steadily.
“No.” John’s voice held absolutely no inflection. “You have to take me with you.”
Nic sighed. “Look, man, we don’t have time to argue. And frankly, we don’t want to worry about you shooting us in the back the first chance you get. We’ll retrieve your sister. I know you don’t think you have any reason to trust us but we’re not the bad guys here.”
“Then exactly what are you?”
John’s gaze arrowed back to Kaine, standing next to the window, staring out at the dark night.
When they’d dragged John back into the house after he’d accidentally shot her and she had changed to save her life, John had told her where she could find a pair of sweatpants that might fit her and another sweatshirt. The old one had disintegrated when she’d used her magic.
“We’ll be your worst nightmare if you don’t help us out here.”
Nic rolled his eyes at Duke’s hard-assed comment. “Look, ignore Mr. Happy for the moment. You’re military, right? Special Ops? So are we. You have my word as a soldier that we’ll do everything we can to retrieve your sister and that we’ll return her to you. We want the bitch who took her. She’s ours.”
John looked him straight in the eyes. “Then I guess you better stop talking so we can leave.”
Nic looked at Duke, who made his thoughts clear without moving a muscle. Then he looked at Kaine, who turned to him with dead-cold eyes.
“I know where he parked his car. Bring him and let’s get this done so we can wipe him. The sooner the better.”
* * * * *
“You’re sure this is the right place?”
From their vantage point of a secluded parking lot overlooking a desolate-looking industrial park, Tira eyed the equally dilapidated warehouse just over the Reading city line. Only a mile or so from Albright College and the Hampton Park neighborhood, the cluster of buildings looked, for all intents and purposes, deserted.
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