Dark Secrets: A Paranormal Romance Anthology

by Colleen Gleason

  Bile rose in Logan’s throat. “What have you done with her?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  A sharp pain exploded at the back of Logan’s skull and then everything went black.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  A Light in the Darkness

  It must have been a terrible nightmare. As Logan slowly came awake, he was aware that the room was all too dark but that Polina’s fingers were stroking his face. He could smell her too, that spicy sweet scent that was distinctly her own. Only, the pain at the back of his head was real, and whatever he was laying on was terribly uncomfortable.

  “Logan? Logan, wake up,” Polina said, her voice raw and broken.

  Logan blinked in the darkness, then pushed himself up. “Where are we?”

  She hesitated. “We’re prisoners inside a cavern on my mountain. Alex took my wand.” She spread her hands. “Witches manipulate the elements. The only thing here is air, and that isn’t my element.”

  “Do all supernaturals underestimate humans?”

  “I hardly think this is the time for barbs or trick questions.”

  Logan exhaled. “I just mean, he left my backpack on.” He pulled the pack from his shoulders, felt his way to unzip the zipper, and retrieved his flashlight. Click. The bulb blazed to life.

  Polina’s face was a mask of pain, pale and streaked with mascara. Her arms were covered in bruises and her hair was a tangled mess. Logan didn’t say a word; he pulled her into his arms as a fresh burst of sobs bubbled up her throat.

  “Shhh. Shhh,” Logan cooed in her ear. “This is bad, but we can figure it out. I have more things in my bag. Maybe there’s something we can use.” He’d never seen her like this. Distraught and beaten down. If he hadn’t known better, he’d think she’d lost weight. She felt like a skeleton in his arms, all poking joints and frail bones. But that was impossible. He’d been with her only hours ago.

  With a long, rattling inhale, she steadied herself. “Hildegard.” The word was hardly audible but the sense of dread she communicated with it came across clearly.

  Logan moved his flashlight along the floor of their cell. The light caught on a tiny, naked body. He could only tell it was once the snowy owl by the talons on its feet and the tufts of feathers still clinging erratically to its hide.

  “What happened to her?”

  Polina shook her head. “Some kind of magic or poison. The amulet Alex is wearing is very powerful. He means for this to be my torture. He hurt her to hurt me.”

  Pressing two fingers against Hildegard’s chest, Logan felt a faint heartbeat. “She’s still alive,” he said.

  “She can’t die as long as she’s bound to my life force.”

  Logan looked back at Polina. “You’re keeping her alive?” he asked, eyebrows pinching above his nose. He hadn’t been mistaken. She was definitely thinner, her complexion sallow.

  “I have for hours. But I have no elements to draw on here, so I can only feed her on myself… the magic that makes up my body. Alex knows I will eventually run out of power. Once I’m drained, our connection will fade. She’ll be cut off and I’ll be forced to watch her die. He put you here so that I’d have to watch you die too. And then I’ll spend eternity in this box with both of your decaying corpses.”

  Logan’s mouth dropped open. “Fuck. That. This asshole does not get to win. I’m going to get us out of here, and you are going to find a way to save Hildegard.”

  Polina’s eyes flicked to the floor.

  “Do you think I’m weak?” Logan asked.

  “No,” she whispered.

  “Helpless?”

  “No.”

  “When I say I’m going to get you out of here, I mean it. Tell me you believe in me.”

  She nodded weakly in the light of his flashlight.

  Logan dumped out the contents of his backpack. The water bottle was empty. “Plastic,” he said disappointedly. “I should have switched to aluminum.” He put on the hooded jacket. “Aha!” Out of the pocket, he pulled a small Swiss army knife, holding it out to her in his outstretched palm like it was a great prize.

  She took the knife, weighing it in her palm. “Let me see the flashlight.”

  He handed it over.

  “Almost nothing. The batteries might help but not enough to make a difference. Not worth losing the light.” She stood with the knife and limped closer to him, touching the zipper of his coat. At once, the metal teeth and slider melted from the cloth and soaked into her hand. Logan might have been mistaken, but he thought he saw some color come back to her cheeks. “Anything else in there?”

  “Money, bandages.”

  She shook her head. “The zipper on the bag?”

  He held it up to her. She made short work of it, then turned toward the wall of the container. “Shine the light over here.”

  He pointed the flashlight in the direction of her voice. “The magic sealed itself once he moved you inside, but maybe, if I can find a crack or seam, I can get us out of here.”

  She ran her hands along the wall, twirling the pocketknife between her fingers. The metal morphed into a living thing and inched its way along with her. A small river of liquid silver.

  “Well?” he asked as she arrived at the place she’d begun.

  “There’s no seam,” she murmured. “Not even an area of weakness, as far as I can tell.”

  Logan balanced the flashlight on its end to evenly spread light across the small area. He stood up and started running his hands along the invisible barrier. He was six feet two inches tall and could easily reach the ceiling. The box they were in was barely longer than it was tall. In minutes they had searched every square inch.

  “It’s sealed,” Polina said. She turned toward Logan, the upward-facing light giving her face a ghoulish appearance. The blob of metal re-formed into his pocketknife and she handed it back to him.

  “What else can we try? If you absorb this, can you blast us out of here?”

  She shook her head. “I couldn’t blast us out of here when I was at my strongest.”

  Logan slid down the wall, digging in the empty pockets of the backpack and flipping the bottle and knife over in his hands. He refused to accept that there was no way out.

  “They’re going to kill Silas,” Logan said.

  “Alex has him?” Polina asked.

  Logan nodded.

  “Then perhaps it’s best we die in here. If Alex takes control of all werewolf packs and has the dragon fae amulet, no witch or supernatural being, short of Hecate herself, will rival his power. And humans…” She shook her head.

  “Grateful and Rick will come. Silas called them for help.”

  “Silas spoke with Grateful Knight?”

  “Well, no, he left her a message.”

  Polina licked her lips and paced the cell. “Poe will notice Hildegard is missing. They’ll come, but it will be too late for Silas. If they have him, he’s probably already dead.”

  “No. Alex said there was some ritual. He had to wait for the pack to shift and then they would… eat Silas.”

  “I’d forgotten about that ritual.”

  Logan shrugged. “When is sunset? Alex did not leave me my phone, and I don’t have a watch.”

  “We have less than an hour,” she murmured. “I can feel the coming of night, even in here.” She folded her hands against her heart and stared at the wall.

  Panic rose in Logan’s chest. The sight of Hildegard dying on the floor, Polina wasting away before his eyes, and the thought that he would die in here, in this box, was so unfair. For the first time in his life, he loved someone and felt loved in return and before he could even enjoy it, it was over. Everything was over.

  He rubbed his chest, his heart beating so hard it ached. His mind wandered to Rick, to that scar on his chest, and to Polina, kneeling on the floor in the room of reflections, admitting that she’d prepped him to become her caretaker, just in case, in order to save his life if she’d had to.

  A chill calm
came over Logan. Flashes of suffering and scenes of elation coursed through his brain, the faces of friends, past lovers, people he knew through the restaurant. Everything he was, had been, would be, washed into him all at once. The tide had come in on the edge of a storm. In the eye of the hurricane, in the center of the swirl of emotions as he considered the end of his life, all he could see was Polina. All he could feel was dread at the thought that he would die but she would go on and on, an eternity of suffering. He couldn’t have it. He wouldn’t.

  “Change me,” he said.

  “What?” Polina asked, turning from the wall, her eyes wide in the dim light.

  “Make me your caretaker.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Changes

  “You don’t mean that,” Polina said. She wasn’t sure what she feared more, that he might be serious or that he wasn’t.

  “I do mean it. I’ve seen what Rick becomes, and he could bust out of this place just by shifting. You’ll change me, I’ll shift, and we’ll be free.”

  “You don’t know what you’re asking. This isn’t like a marriage, Logan. It’s not till death do us part. We will be bound for eternity. Mountains will fall and rivers will turn to dust and still we will be bound.”

  “I’m willing.”

  “But you’re not ready. How could you be? I’ve lived almost five hundred years and I’ve only begun to wrap my head around what forever means. It’s as much a curse as a blessing.”

  “I choose this. I have the right to choose.”

  “You’re a chef, Logan. You won’t want to eat anymore. Food will give you little joy. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  That gave him pause. Food was his livelihood, his passion. After a moment, Logan stood to approach her. “But I do know what I’m saying. When I met you, I thought the last thing I needed was another witch in my life. I wanted a normal relationship. A house, two kids, a dog in the yard. But you know what? I recently had a chance to adopt a dog and I found out I’m a cat person.”

  “What does any of this have to do with you adopting a cat?” Polina asked in frustration.

  “A three-legged cat with no tail. See, I didn’t know what I wanted until it was right there in front of me. If you had asked me if I’d wanted a three-legged cat before I met her, I would’ve said no. But I knew the moment I saw her. See, I’m damaged—”

  “You are not damaged.”

  “I am damaged. I’ve been dead. Do you think any human woman is ever going to understand and accept that not only do I live with my mother, she happens to be dead and visits me occasionally with warnings about the future? No. They’re going to run from me like I’m Norman Bates. I’ve been a ghost, Polina. I’ve slipped under someone’s skin and seen them from the inside out. I’m not normal. I’ll never survive a normal life.”

  “You could. It is possible.”

  “It’s not possible, because I love you. I risked my life to come here tonight to save you. That plan went completely and totally wrong, as wrong as it could go, actually. But I knew the risks, and even if I knew then what I know now, that I’d end up in this box with you, I would have tried anyway. My life may have worked before you, Polina, but there was no magic in it. I was dead on the side of the road. You resurrected me. My second life was yours from the beginning.”

  She was crying now, chest aching. “There’s no going back from this.”

  He stepped into her, placed his hands on her shoulders. “All those years, all my life, I’ve struggled to fill the hole my parents made. I worked for security, to create some semblance of family among my friends and my occupation. I’ve been hungry and lonely, loose in the world. I built Valentine’s as a kind of home. A security blanket. Fuck, I’m not making any sense, I know, but just listen. Then there was you. For the first time I felt safe, not because of your power but because of your love. Your love feels endless. It feels true. It fills me. I wouldn’t dream of going back.” He cupped her face and lowered his forehead to hers.

  “Come on, Polina. I’m as good as dead. Do what you do best. Save me. Change me. I’m not asking; I’m demanding. Change me now.”

  Polina closed her eyes. It was his choice and, goddess help her, she wasn’t strong enough to turn him away. She needed him too much. Putting space between them, she nodded. “Last chance to change your mind.”

  “I want this.”

  She pointed one hand at his chest and, gathering what power she had left, uttered the incantation, “Akmut ghut rae mud ed tyn.” Caretaker of the light, always.

  A forked tongue of lightning flew from her hand, plowing into his chest and sizzling as it wormed into his heart. For a moment, he looked wounded. His face begged her for relief from the pain. She cried out his name, desperate to help him, but there was nothing she could do. The spell had to run its course.

  Logan collapsed on the floor seizing, his muscles rigid. Polina knelt by his side. A lock of her hair dropped from her head and fell across his chest as she leaned over him. Her bones ached from the power draining from her.

  The immortality she was giving Logan had to come from somewhere. She doubted Logan had realized the implications and was glad her fate didn’t play into his decision. This way, his choice to become her caretaker was about him, not her. Still, as the life force bled out of her like the release of a deeply held breath, her eyes and shoulders drooped. She couldn’t give in to the fatigue. There was one last step. One last part of the spell. She had to give him an element.

  A caretaker couldn’t have the same element as his witch, although using the pocketknife would have been the natural solution for her. No. The rules of making a caretaker required sacrifice at every turn. Using another element would further drain her, a demanding price. But which to use? The dirt on the bottom of Logan’s shoes might work for earth or she might be able to shake a drop of water from the bottom of the water bottle. Both of those options would have required her to move, a feat becoming more and more improbable. There wasn’t a sliver of wood to be found. But there was one element close at hand. She pinched Logan’s nose, tipped his head back. Eyes closed, she took a deep breath and blew into his mouth.

  As the air filled his lungs, Polina felt the last of her immortality leave her along with a tiny piece of her soul. A twinkle of light exited her mouth and entered his. Her death seemed probable now. The only other person she knew who had done this was Grateful and her first incarnation had died, burned at the stake the day she changed Rick. Polina figured her fate was sealed, but she trusted Logan would find a way to bring her back, eventually.

  Logan was quiet now, lying perfectly still on his back. Why wasn’t it working? She didn’t have the energy to consider the question. Instead, she lay down beside him and slipped away.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Awakening

  Logan had underestimated the pain. When the lightning bolt from Polina’s hand plowed into his chest, fire spread from his heart to his toes, searing his veins, frying his internal organs. His brain boiled inside his skull, and his skin bore the excruciating agony of being stripped from his body without actually going anywhere. His muscles seized and his body thrashed on the floor.

  Kneeling by his side, Polina hunched over him as if she carried a sandbag on her shoulders. Something was wrong with her. Maybe the spell wasn’t working. Maybe he was dying.

  And then she kissed him. His lungs filled with her air and right at the end of the breath, a warm glowing thing advanced down his throat. It tasted of light and life with the spicy sweetness he’d come to associate with Polina. Whatever she had given him chased away the pain. It did something else, as well. It killed him.

  Logan stopped breathing. His cells blinked off one by one. Those little workshops that kept his body running simply went out of business. His heart stopped beating. His stomach stopped growling. A stillness he’d never experienced came over him. And then the flashlight burned out, or maybe his vision stopped working, although his eyes were still open.

  He’d
been cold a moment ago. Now there was no cold. But there was a warm spot where Polina’s shallow breath hit his cheek. He focused on that, in and out, in and out, the shallow flow of air that gave her life. His own lungs gave it a try. He could do it. He could breathe.

  But, with marked curiosity, he realized he didn’t need to.

  He flexed one hand, then the other. With each blink, his vision washed in, a red wave that adjusted to his surroundings. The flashlight hadn’t burned out; it had fallen over and rolled against the wall. In its current position, it gave off only a sliver of light, but Logan could see clearly.

  Hinging at the hips, he sat up without the assistance of his arms and stood in a way that defied gravity, with only the slightest flexion of his knees. This was new. He’d never moved like that. Once on his feet, he noticed something else. The muscle of his bicep strained against the fabric of the jacket he was wearing. It hadn’t before. Not that he needed the jacket anyway. He stripped out of the hoody and looked down at himself.

  “Holy shit! Move aside, Captain America; there’s a new Avenger in town.” He turned toward Polina. “Hey, look at this. I think it worked.”

  She didn’t move. A heavy ache started deep within his chest. She was still breathing, but when he lifted her in his arms, clumps of her hair fell out and drifted to the floor. “Polina? Polina?” She wouldn’t rouse.

  Dread turned to anger and the skin of his forearm began to bubble ominously. He’d seen that happen to Rick. “Oh shit.”

  Carefully, he set her down at the far side of their prison and placed Hildegard in her arms. He backed as far away from them as he could. The pain was back, this time radiating from his bones. Boils swelled and popped along his back, and his stomach strained. He pitched forward to try to vomit and watched his jaw extend instead. His hands hit the floor, talons sprouting from the knuckles and red scales climbing up and over his arms.