He walked out of the house, whistling a soft tune. This time I wasn’t fooling around. I needed a plan. Even if I made it to the front door, I knew I couldn’t run very far tied up like this. If I could make it to the trails, I’d probably be able to find a boat moored to a dock. I could head across the lake and he wouldn’t be able to follow me. But first I had to get out of these ropes.
Using the couch as leverage, I managed to get to my feet and stumble into the kitchen. I cantilevered my arms until I was able to knock over the knife block. Knife in hand, I positioned the blade against the rope and inched it up and down.
My heart raced as I glanced to the door looking for any sign of Black. I had no way of knowing when he’d be back, and I tried to hurry, only to have the knife slip from my sweaty hands. The falling blade sounded like a cannon to my ears. I wrangled another one off the counter and tried again.
I had cut nearly halfway through the rope when I heard a car pull up the gravel drive. I glanced at the clock. It was possible Rick had found me, but he had no way of locating me. I raced to the kitchen window. Disappointment crushed any hope I had of rescue when I saw Brad get out of his squad car. I backed away, looking for a place to hide. The front closet seemed the logical choice, but that would be the first place he would look. So I ran around the sofa to check the back of the house--and tripped.
Without the use of my hands to brace my fall, my face slammed into the floor. I tasted copper. Pulling out the last of my strength, I managed to untangle my feet from the blankets I’d tripped over and stood up just as the back door opened.
“Olivia, are you okay?” The concern in his voice sounded genuine, but I wasn’t about to trust him.
Miracle of all miracles, the knife I’d been holding was still in my hand. I took several steps back, and I continued to work on my bindings. If I managed to get free, I’d have a weapon.
He started to walk toward me, and I shouted, “Don’t come near me, Brad! I know you’re working with the sheriff.”
He stopped just inches in front of me, ignoring my warning. A handkerchief appeared, and he wiped the blood from my face as if trying to soothe me. I took another step back, attempting to put distance between us, but he followed me.
“I’m sorry. He wasn’t supposed to hurt you, Liv. If you’d just listened to me, it wouldn’t have happened like this. I wanted you to meet me at Armstrong’s. I could have brought you here without any trouble.”
“Like a lamb to the slaughter?” I spat at him. “Brad, even though we’re not together anymore, you loved me once. That should still mean something. Why? Why do this to me? Do you really hate me that much?”
“I don’t hate you. Olivia, I love you. I can’t stop loving you. That’s why I’m doing this,” Brad said, edging closer. He caressed my cheek, his eyes closing as if savoring the contact.
His desperation and heartache hit me like a bus, and I fought to push them away. I couldn’t lose myself in his misery. I focused on isolating his feelings and separating them from my own, just like I’d practiced the other night. While I was working on blocking him, Brad went on.
“I want to be with you,” he said. “I want to marry you, but not like this. I can’t live with your powers. We were good once.” Brad reached around to the back of my neck and pulled me in for a rough kiss. “Don’t you remember? Back before you started working with Ian. Back before you started using your magic again. But Black can fix that. He can cure you.”
I twisted out of his grip and backed away, angling myself behind the sofa. I needed to put a physical barrier between us.
“You can’t fix me. I’m not sick. Being a witch is in my DNA. It’s who I am. We’ve talked about this.” I was pleading now, hoping to appeal to his logic. “Brad, please just let me go. It’s not too late. This is crazy. Mike is crazy if he thinks he can fix something that’s not broken.”
He was halfway around the sofa when he stopped, confused by my words. “It’s not crazy. It’s the only way we can be together.”
The knife finally made it through the ropes, and I was thinking about making a break for the door when Black entered the room.
“What is wrong with the people in this town? Can no one follow the simplest of directions? You are useless, Brad. You were supposed to bring her out here sedated, and when that fell through I told you I was going to handle it. Why are you here?”
“I was worried when you didn’t call back. I wanted to make sure everything worked out.” Brad looked at me and back to Black. “You said you wouldn’t hurt her. You said that your charm could take away her magic, and she’d be normal again.” He pointed at me, anger in his voice. “I could have brought her here without hurting her.”
“Well you know, sometimes plans change.” Without warning, Black raised a revolver and shot Brad twice in the chest.
An expression of shock flashed across Brad’s face before he crumpled to the ground, dark red heart’s blood pooling around his body. Then I saw what was on the floor next to him, and my stomach lurched.
Peeking out from the pile of blankets I’d tripped over was Charlie, unconscious and impossibly pale. From here, I couldn’t tell if she was breathing or not, and I had to fight back the urge to run to her. Instead, I pried my gaze away and watched Black. He walked over to the kitchen and set down the gun.
“This is going to work out even better. I knew there was a chance, even with the planted evidence, your friend from the Order would suspect something. But it’s hard to dismiss a dead police officer. Good thing I grabbed your gun.”
Black proceeded to wash his hands in the kitchen sink. While he was busy, I crept toward the kitchen. This would probably be my only opportunity to escape. I wasn’t going to sit back and just let him shoot me.
“What do you have against me? Why did you take Charlie? And why was Brad going on about curing me?”
I tucked the rope into the back of my jeans and gripped the knife, inching a few more feet.
He laughed and turned around, drying his hands. “God, that boy wouldn’t shut up about you. It was driving me crazy. Finally, I decided to tell him the truth. Well, most of it. I told him all about my family and how we were famed witch hunters back in the day. I even told him about how my great-granddad helped hunt down the notorious slave trader Thaddeus Harmon. He was really interested in learning about the charm we used to remove magic powers.” He shrugged and tossed the towel back to the sink. “What I didn’t tell him was that I planned to wipe the last Harmon off the planet. You can’t imagine my surprise when I was going through the registry and came across your name. We thought when your father died that he was the last Harmon, since you were never registered. But lo and behold, a Black will get the honor of ending your line.”
A cold lump formed in my chest as the pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place. “Witch hunting was banned in the fifties. And even if that’s what you were here to do, Brad would never sell me out like that.” But after this last month I wasn’t sure anymore.
“Damn politicians. They’re going to destroy us. What were they thinking, giving witches protection under the Constitution?” His round face was bright red as he grabbed the pistol and pointed it at my head. “They’re blind to how dangerous you people are.”
I gripped my knife. I had to catch him off guard, get him talking again. “What makes you think you can cure magic?”
“He was the one who decided it was a cure,” Black said and waved the gun toward Brad’s body. “I just told him I had a charm that could drain all your magic. Which is true. It’s what I was planning to do all along.”
He set the gun down again and pulled out his necklace. That malicious smile was back, and I wanted to wipe it off his face with my fist. “That’s how I make my shields. Hunters need protection, and what better way than to use a witch’s own magic against them. It has a certain justice to it, don’t you think? If that incompetent lowlife Malone hadn’t gotten himself killed, I would have been able to take you and that freak you call
a friend without issue. But that inspector had to start poking around, so I came up with a new plan.”
I was probably in shock. My brain completely shut down, and all sense of self-preservation fled me in that moment. “Really? ‘Darn you meddling kids?’ So you’re going with the Scooby Doo reveal?” I looked around, surveying the carnage, and choked back a hysterical laugh. “I was expecting so much more after the months of buildup. Hell. At minimum, I deserve a Bond villain speech.”
He frowned, and the tension in the room became palpable. “Enough talking. I need to finish before anything else goes wrong. I won’t be able to drain you completely, but I’m going to get one pull. With your powers, I think that will be more than enough.”
I was still a few feet away, but I knew this was my last chance. I lunged, knife drawn, catching him by surprise. But despite my effort, Black shifted and the blade barely grazed his left arm.
“Bitch,” he snarled and caught my hand in a viselike hold, bending it backward until the knife tumbled from my grip. There was a sickening snap, and I felt the bones in my wrist break. Fighting back the pain and nausea, I kicked him hard, but that only enraged him more.
In retaliation, he slammed his fist into my already battered face. My vision dimmed, and I reached out, grasping a handful of his shirt. I couldn’t black out. Not now. This was my last chance to make it through this alive. If I blacked out now, I knew I would die.
I pulled hard on the shirt, hoping I could pull him off balance and trip him somehow. But he outweighed me by close to a hundred pounds. In my injured state, I might as well have been trying to move a mountain.
During our struggle, his charm brushed the back of my hand, shooting searing heat up my arm. I let go, but only for a moment. This was the opportunity I needed. I fisted the charm and yanked hard. The magic from it sparked and popped like a loose power line, and the flesh of my palm burned. The pain was excruciating, but I didn’t let go until I felt the chain give. The charm fell free, and I had to fight the urge just to drop it. Instead, I tossed it as far as I could, praying there was enough distance for what I had planned.
“No!” He screamed and applied pressure to my broken wrist. The pain blurred my vision, but I refused to let go.
With my blistered palm directly on Black's chest now, I gathered the last shreds of my power and surged it toward him. Tightly coiling the energy around his aura, I pulled back, just as I did when removing the slave charm. The pulsing life force poured into me, and I concentrated on isolating it. But like a parasite, his tainted aura tried to latch on to mine and it took everything I had to keep it from mingling with my own. The dark ball of energy settled in my chest, and I pushed it down and out through my feet.
Without warning, Black dropped. With my wrist still in his grip, I fell with him. Pain shot up my arm as it buckled under the pain. It was more than my body could take. I slumped down next to Black’s lifeless form, finally able to free my hand, and took slow, deep breaths, trying to keep the nausea at bay.
The break was excruciating, and my vision swam with every move I made. But I had to keep going. I couldn’t be sure Black wasn’t working with someone else. He had gotten Brad on board with this whole hostage-taking thing. Who’s to say the entire sheriff’s department wasn’t in on it?
Holding my broken arm close to my body, I rushed over to Charlie. Seeing her pale face was the last straw, and I wasn’t able to hold back my tears any longer. I crumpled to my knees beside her, and started yanking the blankets away. I placed a hand on her neck and closed my eyes, pulling on what little reserves I had left and channeling them through my caduceus.
She was hurt. Nothing broken, no wounds, but her aura was dim. I would expect to see that on someone who was on the verge of death, but I couldn’t find a thing wrong with her. I pulled more energy, stretching my limits, and examined every organ and system, searching for something. But there was nothing I could fix.
I opened my eyes and grabbed her shoulder with my uninjured hand, shaking her. “Charlie! Wake up.” She let out a low moan, and I was encouraged. “Charlie, God damn it. You have to wake up. We have to get out of here.” Her eyes fluttered this time, and I nearly wept in relief. “Please, open your eyes. If you don’t wake up, I’m going to drag you out of here by your heels.”
“Don’t you dare,” she croaked. “They’re vintage.”
Her eyes were still closed, but I yanked her small frame into a hasty embrace as my arm screamed in protest. I didn’t care. “Don’t ever scare me like that again,” I blubbered.
“Olive,” Charlie gasped. “You need to let me go, so I can breathe.”
I did and tried to wipe the tears from my face. “Are you hurt? I thought you were dead.” I pressed my hand to her cheek, noting her sallow complexion.
“Dead? Honey, I’m too sexy to die.” Her laugh quickly turned into a coughing fit that left her gasping for air. When she caught her breath, she smiled. “Are you sure I’m not dead?”
“We need to get out of here. Can you get up? Run?”
“I’m going to need some help. I’m not…” She stopped, and her eyes fluttered closed again. I thought she’d passed out, and was about ready to try dragging her from the room, before she finally continued. “I don’t have the strength to go anywhere on my own.”
After a few precious seconds of negotiation with my broken arm, I managed to prop her against my left side, and we made our way to the door just as a dark sedan pulled into the drive.
More from Gina Drayer
I hope you enjoyed Lotus Petals. In addition to Paranormal, I also write Contemporary Romance. You can learn more at my website Ginadrayer.com or subscribe to my mailing list for updates, freebies, exclusive content, and giveaways:
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LOGAN: A KNIGHT WORLD NOVEL
by Genevieve Jack
* * *
Chapter One
Cash Bar
“Crazy-ass witches.” Logan Valentine leaned his elbows against the bar, swirling the ice and lime in his almost-empty cocktail. The vodka and tonic was doing its dirty work. His nose tingled with the numbing effect, and his mind teetered on the edge of a good solid buzz. He needed it. It wasn’t every day you attended a witch’s wedding, let alone one who had effectively saved your soul.
On the dance floor, said witch, Grateful Knight, was getting cozy with her new husband, Rick, the white lace of her wedding dress pressed against his black tux, her forehead tucked into the side of his neck. Logan couldn’t look away. Entranced, he barely registered his friend Silas Flynn hopping onto the barstool next to him.
“Attractive couple,” Silas said, his bushy hair and eyebrows giving his face a decidedly wolfish appearance. Fitting for someone who sprouted a snout and tail every full moon.
“Yup.” Logan sipped his drink.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
“How are you handling all this?”
“What do you mean?”
Silas glanced down into his bourbon, scratching behind his ear with suspiciously long fingernails. “I heard you and Grateful have a history.”
Logan shook his head. “Not really. I was in a car accident over a year ago. My soul was knocked out of my body. Grateful put me back in. While I was, shall we say, corporeally challenged, we had something, but it wasn’t real. She sorts lost souls; I was a lost soul. Our attraction was misdirected magic.”
“So that look on your face isn’t jealousy?”
Draining the rest of his cocktail, Logan contemplated the question. He wasn’t jealous exactly. He loved Grateful as a friend and nothing more. Although, there was a time when he’d thought he loved her in the romantic sense. Maybe that was the problem. He was another year older and no closer to having what she had, what he truly wanted. Not for lack of trying.
“It’s not her specifically,” he tried to explain. “I want this, Silas.”
“This.”
“The whole thing. A wife,
children, the house with the yard. To be in love with a flesh-and-blood human woman who can love me back.” He frowned into his empty drink. “I guess weddings make me sentimental.”
“I get it, man. I’d marry Soleil in a minute if she’d have me.”
With a snort, Logan turned toward his friend. “Are you saying she won’t have you? Have you asked her?”
He tipped his head from side to side. “Not in so many words. She’s fae and I’m a werewolf. There’s still a lot of prejudice in the supernatural community.” He chuckled. “To her kind, I’m one step up from hu—”
“Human,” Logan finished. “Like me.”
“Sorry, buddy. I didn’t mean it like that.”
Logan shrugged. He was used to it. As one of the few humans who were aware of the supernatural community living among them, he’d discovered quickly that humans were not respected as equals. He supposed he should be happy for relative benevolence considering any one of them could make his life a living hell if they were so inclined.
“Can I buy you another?” Silas asked, obviously wanting to make up for his earlier faux pas.
“Naw. I better get my human ass back to the restaurant. I’m training new kitchen staff. My assistant manager can hold down the fort, but he can’t cook worth a damn.”
“Aww, come on, Logan. Don’t go on my account. It was a slip of the tongue. You’re my best friend. I forget you’re human sometimes, you know?”
“I know. I’m just feeling a little… out of place.”
Silas slung an arm over his shoulder. “You belong here as much as I do. Plus, I’m sorry, but you can’t leave. As a member of the Carlton City police force, I can’t let you drive in your current inebriated state.”
Logan groaned. He had been drinking. Silas was right; he shouldn’t drive. He set his glass on the bar and shook his head when the bartender offered another.
“They just cut the cake. Have a slice and a cup of coffee with me. You should be good to go in an hour or two.”
Dark Secrets: A Paranormal Romance Anthology Page 202
