Deciding that the battle had come to a critical point, Vincent moved forward to interrupt and terminate the fight. It was a dark violence which had overcome Pax and allowed her to conquer a fighter who was more experienced and much stronger than she. Her energy had always been greatly tied to her emotions, and Thornton had certainly evoked the wrong ones. It wasn’t until she had her father’s arms protectively around her did the fires within subside into tranquility.
Although Raymond’s arms were powerful, he didn’t restrain her forcefully as Thornton had done to try to make her listen to his sorry excuses. Instead, Raymond held her gently, with understanding and love, in the tender way that only a father can hold his child. Even when that child has murder in her eyes. This peaceful, caring approach melted through her wrath and exposed her hurt.
She collapsed against Raymond sobbing. She clung to him tightly, inwardly begging to be taken back in time to when she was a little girl and crying in her father’s arms wasn’t humiliating. And to cry in front of Vincent! She begged to be taken back in time to before she’d fallen in love with Thornton and apparently kissed goodbye to her sanity. Maybe she could manage to travel back… but no, it was too difficult. Since she couldn't be taken back in time, she would have to settle for being taken home. Will you come home with me, papa? Just for a little while?
I will, Paxie. But you can't keep your old man in the dark. I need to know what's going on with you. Promise you'll tell me?
Yes, papa… everything's just gone horribly wrong.
After using his mind to dig his son out of the debris, Vincent sighed. He tossed the trashed boy over his shoulder for the second time that month, and bid goodbye to the Burnsons. After a moment’s hesitation he turned around to address Pax directly.
“A word of advice, girl. Thorn is my son I am well aware of his flaws. He wronged you, and you have every right to be infuriated. That is righteous deva rage.” Vincent's brow creased as he continued. “You can’t keep letting this anger consume you. I’ve been down that path and it doesn’t end well. He is not worth your time, energy, or suffering. Find a stronger and more honorable warrior to be your mate.”
Pax and Raymond looked at Vincent in speechless surprise. It was rare to see him exhibiting such concern. Rarer still to see him belittle his own offspring in favor of a Burnson. Vincent turned to fly away but Raymond shouted to stop him.
“Vince!” Raymond yelled. “You’re wrong. Thorn is a good man, I know he is! He may be misguided at times, and he may screw up… but we all do. I’m sure that there's a reasonable explanation for these unpleasant incidents.”
“I know my son better than you do. I can give you the reasonable explanation: he is, quite simply, what you humans call a ‘dickwad.’”
Pax felt a small laugh bubble up in her throat, which was still rather sore from screaming. She felt suddenly very blessed to have two such men as her father and Vincent in her life. She realized that part of the pain in losing Thornton had been losing the hope of officially belonging to his amazing family. It had been a treasured dream of hers to someday call his parents and sister in-laws. Now she realized that she hadn’t lost them. She still could sit with the Kalgrens at the breakfast table on any given day, just like she had earlier that morning. They always had been and always would be her family, regardless of her connection to Thornton. This thought gave her great strength.
"I will take your words to heart, Vince," said Pax, releasing her father and wiping the blood and tears from her face in attempt at dignity before the Prince of Devas. "Thank you for your advice. Could you please give Thorn a message for me when he wakes up? Tell him we already had a thumbtack on Antarctica anyway."
Chapter 11: What Raymond Knew
Pax had passed out from exhaustion somewhere between Panama and Belize.
Now Raymond, having carefully removed the torn pieces of fabric which had clung to her body, gently swabbed the bruises with antiseptic. He had carried her home to the family manor in Burnson Grove. It was a quiet house tucked away in a secluded clearing in the middle of a massive redwood forest. His small mother stood in the doorframe, with her fingers interlocked near her lips in a prayerful position.
“She was using Ruby Form?” Amelia Burnson asked with a furrowed brow. “Good heavens. She swore she wouldn’t…”
“It was like she was possessed. I’ve never seen her like that,” Raymond admitted. “Has she seemed troubled? Did you try speaking with her?”
“Honey, I haven’t seen Pax in over a month. She has a condo in the city where she stays most of the time with Thorn. Either there or at the Kalgren Compound. She did come home really upset a while ago… but before I could find out what was wrong, she took off.” Amelia pulled her lips into a thin line as she stared at her son. “I knew something was wrong when I found all her hair in the trash—I knew it was serious, but what could I do? I don’t have your father’s talents—I’m just a regular woman. I tried calling but she wouldn’t answer her phone.”
“I’m sorry. I should have been here.” Raymond closed his eyes and shook his head.
“Is she going to be okay?” Amelia asked, her eyes quickly scanning the comatose girl on the bed.
“Pax is made of tough stuff, mom. A few scrapes and bruises could never break a Burnson.”
“Oh, Ray,” Amelia said, turning around swiftly so that her son could not see the emotion on her face. He still heard it in her wavering voice. “Couldn’t you have come home to visit without someone needing to be mortally wounded?”
“I can’t stand being in this house,” Raymond said quietly. “It reminds me too much of her.”
“It’s been over ten years.”
“It feels like just yesterday. How can I stay in the Grove, knowing this is where Bridget lived and died?”
“I have the same pain of loss for your father,” Amelia said, her back still turned. “But did it ever stop me from taking care of you and your brother? Sakra knows I still take care of Ash even though he’s 37. Pax may act tough and independent, but she needs us. Specifically, she needs you. You’re her father, and you’re the son of a deva. She needs to be closer to her roots than her human grandmother can provide.”
“But Ash is…”
“…a pathetic replacement for you,” Amelia finished, leaving the doorway. “I’m going to prepare dinner.”
As Amelia’s footsteps creaked on the old stairs, Raymond turned to gaze at his daughter. “I thought things were fine, Paxie. I wish you would have told me before it got to this point.” He sighed. “I know I’ve been distant in many ways. It’s my fault that you feel you can’t talk to me… but you’re still my little girl.”
* * *
Amara glanced up at the imposing old house as she parked in the driveway of Burnson Grove. The isolated Victorian mansion contrasted sharply with the modern style and congested urban setting of the Kalgren Compound. She used to love this house and look forward to tasting Grandma Amelia’s cooking when she visited with her mother. Now, she could not help hating the beautiful building a little because of its association with Asher. She had called ahead, and she knew that he was not at home, but she still felt queasy as she pushed open her car door and took a deep breath.
Shaking out her hands and shoulders, and leaning her head back to arrange her layered blonde hair, she marched forward to climb the steps. She pressed her French-manicured index finger down on the doorbell. Hearing no response in a few seconds, she pressed it again.
Raymond answered the door a moment later, and quickly ushered her inside. “Thanks for coming over, Amara.”
“Is she okay?” The blonde woman played with the hem of her blouse anxiously.
“She’s going to be fine,” Raymond said with a reassuring smile. “What about your brother?”
“He’s awful. He looks like a train hit him, followed by a plane, and then a steamroller.”
“He probably would have been better off if they had.”
Amara sighed, reaching up to fidd
le with her earrings. “It hurts me to see things like this between them. Thanksgiving and Christmas were really lovely—it’s too bad you missed it. Just a few months ago, we were all really happy.”
“I know,” Raymond said, moving over to the sofa. He lowered himself slowly, and allowed his eyes to settle on a random point on the wall. He stared at it thoughtfully for several moments. “It was only about three months ago that Thorn came to speak to me.”
Amara glanced at the wall to see if there was something of interest there. Seeing nothing, she turned back to Pax’s father. “He visited you in India? What did my doofus brother want? Raymond?”
Raymond looked at her in surprise. He had drifted off into his own world and had almost forgotten Amara’s presence. “Yes. I probably shouldn’t be sharing this information, as obviously things didn’t go as planned. Thorn asked for my daughter’s hand in marriage.”
“What?” Amara shrieked, stumbling backwards as if she had been struck. “You’ve got to be kidding!”
“He was on business in the area. He came to visit me at Sakra’s Point and he spent the day training and meditating with me. I spent the day teasing him about how weak he’d gotten from sitting behind a desk all day.” Raymond shook his head, looking up at Amara with confusion. “Finally, at the end of the day he revealed the real reason he had come. He showed me the ring—he’d had it custom made for Pax. He told me he intended to do it sometime before her twenty-seventh birthday. He was just waiting for the right moment.”
“I can’t believe that,” Amara said. She had reached out to place her palm against the nearest piece of furniture for support. “My brother really asked you… I didn’t know!”
“He didn’t tell anyone except for me,” Raymond said with a weak smile. “He said he wanted for it to be a surprise.”
“Then how could he do this to her?” Amara asked, her voice rising in volume.
“I don’t know, Amara. But I do know that he was serious about Pax, and he has always been serious about her. Hell, I trusted him to babysit her when…” Raymond hesitated, returning his eyes to the wall. “When Bridget and I needed a date night away from our screaming, troublemaking toddler, Thorn was the one person I trusted to keep Pax from burning our house down. Literally. I trusted him more than my own brother—and I still do! He loves Pax just as much as I loved my wife, and I can see it in his eyes…”
“Raymond, you have no clue what you’re saying. You haven’t been around. You haven’t seen…”
“I don’t need to see your little squabbles to know the truth of the matter. Something is wrong here, Amara. Possibly supernaturally wrong. I would appreciate it if you spoke to your brother and tried to find out exactly what happened, and exactly why he did whatever Pax thinks he did.”
“She doesn’t think he did it, she saw him!” Amara moved forward in frustration. She was gesturing wildly to emphasize her every word. “I cannot believe you’re defending Thorn in this! If my angelic brother does something wrong, why must it mean there is some kind of evil influencing him?”
“I just believe that…”
“Raymond, I don’t want to talk about Thorn anymore. I’m not responsible for my brother’s actions. In fact, after what he has done I would like to disown him. I’m here to see Paxie.”
Raymond nodded numbly, and continued staring at the wall. “She’s upstairs.”
Amara turned to leave the room, and immediately saw that in the adjacent corridor there was a family portrait. The beautiful actress Bridget Burnson was smiling a true Hollywood smile as she held her young daughter and stood proudly beside her handsome husband. Amara turned back to see Raymond still staring in an almost catatonic state—he had been looking directly through the wall. The flesh-and-blood man looked sad and broken; he was nothing like the animated fellow in the briarwood frame. Amara’s grim expression softened as she was suffused with guilt for being upset with Raymond.
“I’m sorry,” Amara said to her friend’s father. “I just don’t think that anything I say to my brother will help this situation. Please don’t worry about Paxie. She has an amazing father—she hardly has any use for a husband. Especially one as mediocre as my brother would have been.”
“Will you keep an eye on her for me?” Raymond asked quietly.
Amara’s lips curled. Her own father had asked the same thing of Pax. “Of course I will, Ray.” Suddenly disturbed by how much Raymond looked like his younger brother, she had to turn away. She swallowed her saliva. “In fact, Pax and I were thinking of taking a… vacation of sorts.”
“Vacation?”
“Yes. One of those all-inclusive things, you know.” Amara declined to mention that the vacation destination was in another dimension. “Just to blow off some steam and get away.”
“Sure, Mara. That sounds like a good idea.”
It was obvious that Raymond was upset and hardly paying attention. He was so distracted that she probably could have asked for permission for Pax to become a porn star and he would have agreed. This thought plastered a complete smile on her face as she left the room. Heading up the stairs, Amara found it strange that she still remembered which steps to skip because they creaked. How many thousands of times had she climbed these stairs in her life? How many hundreds of times had she climbed them specifically to sneak into Asher’s room in the middle of the night?
Shuddering at the memory, she rebelliously stepped on the creaky step before the landing. She did this to demonstrate to herself that she didn’t care anymore. Crossing the hallway to Pax’s room, she let herself in without knocking and closed the door behind her. Amara observed the dark-haired woman lying unconscious on her old bed, clad only in her beige underclothes and beige bandages. A mischievous glint made its way into the blonde woman’s pale blue irises.
Reaching into her purse, Amara fished out what appeared to be a tube of lipstick. Cautiously approaching the sleeping Pax, she pressed a button on the cylinder before holding it above her friend’s swollen purplish eyelids. Amara waited for a moment, gently waving the small gadget back and forth over the unconscious woman’s face. She smiled when she saw the rows of eyelashes parting to reveal puzzled dark eyes.
Pax batted her friend’s hand away from her face before sitting up and clutching her head. She groaned and rubbed her eyes, only to find that her eyes were ultra-sensitive. “What is this? A hangover? How many gallons did I drink?”
“I'm a genius,” exclaimed Amara, flipping the cylindrical device off. “No drinking, silly. You were fighting with my brother. Maybe more than fighting considering you’re just in your bra and panties. Cute matching set, by the way.”
Pax’s hands moved over her body and she glanced down to assess the multitude of bruises and scrapes. Did I...? No. She remembered the morning’s events and cringed. “Thorn said he had something he wanted to tell me, but then… ah, forget it. What’s that in your hand?”
“This is my newest invention!” Amara said proudly. “It releases constant waves of a synthetic stimulant which causes your body to produce certain hormones. When I noticed the guys using energy and warmth to seduce women, it gave me an idea—what if I made a device which specifically targeted receptors in the brain? So I did some research, and came up with this gadget which could emulate the sensations of…”
“It looks like a tube of lipstick.”
“I wanted it to be portable so we could take it on our dates. Speaking of which, we have a date with Ash in a few hours and you need to get yourself healed up.”
“Why?” Pax had returned her face to her pillow, adding to the brownish bloodstains which marred the white fabric. “Do I have to?”
“Yes. You promised,” Amara said with a pout. “I really want to experiment with my new toy. It should make us give off pheromones as if we’re ovulating, which is supposed to be subliminally irresistible to a…”
“I don’t feel very fertile right now,” Pax mumbled.
“Aw, come on! In preliminary tests my simulator heightens
oxytocin (the ‘cuddle hormone’) along with vasopressin and some other stuff—I have no clue what they all do, but I’m hoping they do good, sexy things."
“So what effect do you think it will it have on the guys?”
“It should… well, I'm not sure exactly. The idea is that it will cause their bodies to physiologically respond in a way that makes them feel as though they are madly in love with Para. It’s my version of revenge for their energy tricks, with an effective scientific twist. I'm not even sure whether to call it the ‘simulator’ since it emits synthetic hormones, or the ‘stimulator’ since that’s what it does to the body.”
“You're crazy,” said Pax, opening one bruised eye, "but it could be fun. Let’s give it a shot.”
“It works at least in a general way, trust me. I am such a genius. Do you think that if I gave the prototype to my mom and brother, they would consider selling it? I could make a fortune from this invention if it works.”
“You really are Rose’s daughter. Capitalism is in your blood.” Pax’s lips stretched in a small sardonic smile. “Just don’t go telling your brother all our secrets yet.”
“Good point. Well, enough about my job. I know it bores you.” Amara frowned, placing her hands on her hips. “Pax Burnson! You get a vial of Sakra’s water right now and heal that face of yours. Para is not going on a date with Asher looking like a trailer park whore!”
Pax recoiled from the insult and reached up to run her hands over her face. “Is it really that bad?”
“Worse! It looks like your abusive drunk husband just got bailed out of prison, and he took a baseball bat to your nose,” scolded Amara. When she saw that this description had coaxed a smile out of her friend, she relaxed. "Fix yourself up. I’ll be downstairs in the car waiting.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Pax tossed the covers off her legs and stood up, moving to the mirror to check out the damage. She groaned as she fingered a gash on her temple. She wasn’t kidding about the baseball bat. ‘Crowbar’ might have been more accurate. Definitely not sexy.
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