Then, the man facing Vance and Julia began to get hairy. Holy Teenwolf Batman…
“Janie meets a werewolf.” Frank sounded positively ecstatic.
Great, exactly what I needed. More supernatural freaks. Like there weren’t enough monsters out tonight. I stalked closer and Chance mirrored me. Which of course was how I tripped over the body.
I gaped at it and then up at Chance. “A clue, Shaggy.”
“Yeah, well, you know where I was.” His brow quirked at me. “Can you say the same about your vampire?”
I opened my mouth to say something snarky, but before I got it out, the werecritter leapt at Vance.
“Well, crap.” I made a leap of my own.
Julia tried to cast and, behind me, Mia was probably trying to do something, too. White magic in battle has its limits, though, as I have discovered. Julia had not cast a circle around Vance and herself, so the creature began to pummel Vance.
My powers did not care about circles or species. My powers cared only about eating the electricity that wired the brain of anything. So as I leapt, I sang.
I made a simple humming noise. Lyrics were sort of beyond me then. The werething and Vance grappled in battle then both froze and gaped at me. Actually, the entire tableau froze and stared at me, which is kind of how my power works. Except Chance, of course. He just pried the werebeastie off Vance and pitched him to the sidewalk.
I landed on the stranger and stopped the sound. I smiled and allowed him to come back to himself enough to gaze up at me. I sensed him see me. I smiled down at him. Then I grabbed onto his essence and pulled.
His energy was like nothing I had ever tasted. Humans tasted weak. Vampires tasted of the grave, like cool nights and dew. Chance tasted like a spring storm. The shifting creature tasted like animal. He tasted like wolf, like running through the night on four paws and howling at a full moon. I tilted my head back and let it run up my arms in a liquid flow.
Chance laid a hand on my arm and bent behind me. “Enough.”
I glared back at him. I did not want to stop. I gave him a shot of what I pulled from the creature on the ground and he stiffened. He absorbed it and breathed deeply, savoring the taste of the werewolf’s power.
“You’re the one who claims we are not monsters.” His gentle reprimand blew warm against my throat. “You’re scaring your friends.”
I stopped the flow of energy as quickly as I had started draining it and shoved away from the creature. Chance pulled me to my feet, but I pushed away from him as well. He bowed his head in apparent acceptance, but I could almost taste his amusement.
He wasn’t feeling rejected. I had not tried to shut him out. We had worked together, and I had remained open to him. I spared a moment to search his features and he tried to hide his pleasure. It did not work anymore than I could hide from him. The damn path had worn too wide between us.
He kept his head ducked though, and didn’t come closer to me. If it made me happy, he would play nice…for the moment.
Vance stood pretty much where he had started. What I had missed, though, was that Julia pressed a shirt, which had to be Avery’s since he no longer had one, to a wound on Vance’s chest.
Seeing her hands on him made power crackle down my skin. Chance’s hand snapped out and caught my arm before I could do more than that.
Frank’s laughter distracted me from whatever would have happened next. “Priceless.” The stupid muse chuckled then grew somber as he stared at the ground. “Who killed the human?”
“Well, hell.” I had forgotten about the body I’d tripped over.
Julia pressed harder against the makeshift bandage. “I was trying to figure that out myself. I saw Vance and I came to see what he was doing. He was kneeling over that body and then we got attacked by the werewolf.”
“Vance was with the body when you got here?” I hoped Julia would tell me no, take the words back and with them the guilt they suggested.
Julia only had eyes for Vance and a cord shimmered between them. I could see it, but I was not sure if either of them noticed it. I could see it. Chance could. I knew from Frank’s amusement that he could. Vance and Julia could, even if they ignored it.
I was not a happy girl.
I stalked over and took the shirt from Julia and applied pressure. Vance smiled up at me. Chance’s voice in my head said, Hold him close. He may be a murderer. You may not have much longer to hold him before I have to destroy him.
My head snapped toward him. He had not moved but his glass green eyes focused on mine. We stayed like that for a moment. I held Vance, with Julia behind me.
Chance considered me as I held Vance. Then Chance popped out.
It was as if we were all able to move again, as if we had been locked in place until Chance had left and released some pressure valve. Mia and Julia began to speak at once. Who was the were, why had he attacked, and who was the body?
I held Vance and our eyes seemed to speak as silent questions ricocheted between us.
What was with Chance?
What was with Julia? Why were you found near the body? You left so suddenly, did you do it? Could you be the one doing it? You’re old enough, you could have.
And for the first time in over a week, I think he tried to read my mind. Before I would not have known he tried, but my mind was no longer only my own. I shared the space with Chance, like it or not. More power ran through me than I had ever held before. So when the gentle sliver of thought tried to breach the edge of my consciousness like a tendril of smoke or the caress of a finger, I sensed it. We felt it because Chance now shared my space in such a way that a breach to my power was a breach of his as well. And we, as one, attacked the intrusion.
“Janie, no!” Julia jumped forward into my line of vision, terror on her face.
But it was too late.
CHAPTER Twelve
Vance had intruded in our space and an electrified wall circled around our combined minds and power. An automatic defense, which could no more be withdrawn than an electric fence can avoid shocking someone who had grabbed it while power hummed through it. A line of the kind of energy that healed us, the very stuff that was erotic to me, shot into Vance. Suddenly, I understood that to him it would have the destructive power of a moth hitting a bug zapper. But even as I knew and didn’t want to hurt him, I couldn’t stop it. Chance, to give him credit, had no more ability than I did.
It came through me and into him like a backwash. It followed that tendril of seeking thought back to its source like a heat seeking missile. Julia must have sensed it through her connection to Vance. The bolt of energy hit him, and he jerked in my arms and screamed. I held onto him, powerless to let go. Julia tried to pull me away, but I was no more attacking him than I was attacking her. I simply sat there. My power attacked him. I simply sat, trying to figure out how to stop it all.
I never did do anything other than hold him and hear the sound of a vampire’s scream, which by the way, is not the most pleasant of sounds. I discovered that Julia had some nails on her. Mia finally stopped the flow of my energy, and Chance’s for that matter, into Vance.
She froze us like she’d done before. Julia was frozen, claws buried in my arm. Vance was frozen, spine arched, head thrown back in agony, teeth bared to the night. I was frozen. I wasn’t sure what I looked like. Probably dumbstruck. I sat there, completely useless, as something in me that I had no off switch for attacked my boyfriend.
Chance, in typical Chance-fashion, chose then to pop back into the area. He took in the scene, his expression grim. His eyes searched my face. I gazed back at him, my eyes the only thing I had control over until Mia unfroze us.
The cold hit me for the first time in a while. The breeze off the lake burned my lips and my cheeks felt terribly dry. My hands had that funny almost burning feeling that comes right before they go numb. How long had we been outside?
I didn’t know if the freeze spell made Vance stop trying to invade my head or stopped my power from attacking him.
But as he no longer touched the barriers of my mind, the power no longer shoved from me into him. Which stopped first was a chicken and egg sort of question. I was not sure it mattered, since it worked.
Mia and Frank also watched Chance and no one spoke.
Chance stared at me. I wished I could move at least my hand. Vance’s hair tickled my face and, in combination with the burning cold sensation, it hurt.
Mia breathed deeply. She unfroze Vance first and he collapsed onto me. His weight hit my lap and I still could not move. He curled into me, wrapped himself around me and Julia made choked noises.
“I’m sorry.” His voice was gravelly, but sincere.
The wind blew his hair into my face again. I blinked at the pain of it. I blinked and thought. He is sorry? For what? I had attacked him, somehow. Oh. He was sorry because he had tried to read my mind. He had not trusted me. He tried to read me, to find out what I was hiding. And he had gotten zapped.
He had no clue that the reason he had gotten smacked down like a fly was that Chance was so closely tied to me. Over Vance’s head, my gaze met Chance’s again. He hung out in my head so I knew he knew, out of everyone there, what I was thinking. I hate you. Vance is sorry because he thinks he violated me, but he got hurt because I betrayed him with you. Damn you.
Damn us both, he answered.
Chance walked to me and Mia freed Julia and me at the same time. As I thawed, Chance pulled me to my feet in one lurch. I gasped at the shock of it. Chance pulling me away dragged Vance free from me, and Julia hurled herself at him.
We betrayed him, but it takes two to do it right, and we do it so very right. He grinned fiercely at me.
I frowned at him and then turned my gaze back to Vance.
“This is so much fun!” Frank beamed at us all as if we were clever and doing everything right. He did not appear to care that we hovered in the middle of a catastrophe.
I really can’t say Frank was my favorite person. I pulled away from Chance, but he didn’t pop out. He stayed behind me and his fingers, hidden behind my back, remained linked with mine. I spared him a glance and tried to tug free without drawing attention. He responded by stroking a finger across my knuckles. Comfort washed over me. It wasn’t his comfort I wanted, but I felt terribly monstrous and fragile, and awfully near tears. That one stroke felt oddly…nice. My fingers wrapped around his, and I bent my arm to rest unobtrusively at my waist. No one needed to know I drew reassurance from him. Otherwise he backed off. Fight the small battles. And lose the war. I sighed and faced Vance, who was, much to my surprise, standing beside Mia, well away from Julia. He looked at me…not her.
I wanted to cross the distance. I wanted everything to rewind and be okay. But it wasn’t okay. We had to talk.
“I think we should all talk about this tomorrow after we have a chance to cool off.” Mia’s voice stopped my advance.
I opened my mouth. So did Vance. Our gazes locked across the space between us. His vivid blue eyes had that strange glow. I loved it when his eyes did that, like a blue security light. I wanted to run forward, not back. But Mia was right. If I talked to him, what would I say? I closed my mouth and, as I did, his closed as if on cue. I stepped back against Chance, and I heard a popping noise. Avery rushed out of the darkness to catch us. The scene disappeared and I arrived back in Odd Stuff.
I leaned into Chance. No one would see us in the darkened store. I could hear my mother and daughter’s movement from above, but our non-traditional entrance ensured they wouldn’t know we’d returned. The others wouldn’t arrive for a while, as no one else had a mode of transport as expedient as Chance’s.
For a moment, we were alone. I could be weak. I could take comfort, even if I took it from the root of the problem.
Chance’s arms closed around me in a reassuring hug, but we remained linked. I had not shielded that last thought at all. He sighed as he rested his chin on my head. “I am not trying to make your life harder.”
“You don’t care if it’s harder. You just want it to go your way.” I turned, wrapped my arms around his waist and buried my face in the hollow by his collarbone. I breathed deeply of his summer storm scent and used his heat to warm my face.
He snuggled me closer, and he was happy to hold me. This was not some deep psychic knowledge that floated down our link. I had physical evidence. But discussing that was probably a bad idea.
“What do I do about the body in the street?”
He ran his warm fingers along my neck. They slid to my spine and worked the muscles of my neck. “I’ll handle it.”
I believed him and was too emotionally empty to think of a solution anyway. “I want you to leave.”
“I know.” He held me a moment longer then stepped away and studied my face with those glittering eyes, their emerald washed to black in the semidarkness. The streetlights illuminated him, but left me mostly in shadows. He tugged me close again and I stood still, a live Janie doll in his arms. “Are you not going to react to me because you’re angry?”
“No. I’m not going to react because I’m tired and I’m running out of reactions.”
He curled his lips and I saw some plan forming in his mind, but was too numb to worry about it. “I think you underestimate yourself.”
I should have taken that as a warning, but the scene with Vance had left me shaken and numb. The cold had frozen my outside, and my own monstrosity left me cold inside. Maybe part of me desperately needed him to warm me up…again. Still, I did not respond in the least when his fingers dug into my scalp, tilting my head back. His lips closed over mine.
The kiss was nothing like earlier ones. I marveled at the variety of ways he kissed, as if it were an entirely new language he was teaching me. This one woke me up. It coaxed me to come out and play. It teased and challenged all at once, the kiss of a man who knew how to ignite a game to fire in a heartbeat.
My fingers slid under his shirt and sought the warm skin of his stomach. He shivered, but not entirely from the coldness of my touch. Our tongues tangled, and he pressed me against the counter with his hips. He demanded I participate, and I swirled into his heat, lost in the magic feel of him. I squeezed my eyelids closed and my body clenched, wanting more of it.
Of him.
I slid one knee up in automatic response, almost acceptance, of his embrace and he used it to hike me to a position that allowed him to push tighter against me. He deepened the kiss. And then, he slowed it.
I breathed harshly into his ear, my hand clutching his curls at the nape. I could swear I smelled lightning.
“Told you, you had a reaction left.” His steady breath whispered into my ear. He nipped my throat gently and rubbed his solid heat against me, pressing impossibly closer, demanding I forget why I wanted him gone.
I sucked in a breath. I burrowed into him. “I still don’t want this.” I lied but my hips rocked against his to betray the lie. The barrier of clothes added to my frustration.
“You keep saying that.” His voice was another layer, another level of the seduction.
“Yup.” I pulled his hair, demanding the response I verbally declined. I had the satisfaction of hearing his breath catch.
“Kind of giving off mixed signals just now, if you don’t mind me pointing it out.” He caught my breast in one hand expertly.
“Then stop doing that.”
This? He had resorted to mind-to-mind conversation. While his hand was on my breast, his mouth ventured lower, but only in my head. Physically his mouth closed over mine.
I whimpered in response but he caught the sound, so there was no sound. This has to stop. This is not what I want. I’m not sure who I intended to convince of that.
Stop me. His voice slid through my mind in challenge while his hands roamed my skin. His mouth devoured mine and, using our connection, he assaulted the greediest part of me in exactly the way I needed him to.
I tried to concentrate on stopping his assault. The sweet, sensual assault that felt really, really good. I pulled his
head back by the hair and his glittering eyes met mine, which of course did nothing to stop the mental assault on my senses. Even though his mouth was not on my body, he closed it over the part of me that throbbed in need.
I wanted to let him continue, but I had to shut him out somewhere. I tried to shield against him. I stared into his eyes and tried hard.
A brick wall came down. The sensations stopped. I gasped at the suddenness of it. I had jerked his head away as he was licking and swirling his tongue over that sensitive nub, which just then was not a loss I relished. Actually, I really needed him not to stop. But, in reality nothing had changed. Okay, points for me. I could stop him when he was doing that. On the downside, when someone chose to do that, stopping them was a huge bummer.
I concentrated on the fact that I wanted him out of my head. After a moment, I had myself mostly under control. I continued to hold him by the hair, to ensure he did not convince me to change my mind. Then I realized his hand, although still, rested on my breast, and he stood between my legs, which clamped around him. I shoved him back and moved again. “You are not great for my sanity.”
“But, you aren’t feeling small and broken anymore.” He appeared remarkably unashamed, arrogant even. “Invite me to stay.” I tossed him a glare and he took it with a shrug. “Worth a shot. You aren’t the only one whose sanity is being destroyed here.”
“Aren’t you supposed to pop out? You always leave about now.” I waited.
He stood, still.
“Well?”
“Nah, I always leave when it’s inconvenient and with a good exit line. I’m waiting for something.”
“What?” I tilted my head at him, curious. “I asked you to leave. What are you waiting for?”
“This.” He caught me against him and dipped me dramatically. This time he kissed me until my head spun. He kissed me, only kissed me, until my knees went weak and I clung to his shirtfront. He kissed me until there was nothing beyond his mouth. I wanted nothing, and I sensed nothing except his lips.
Odd Melody (Odd Series Book 2) Page 16
