“How can you be sure that this is the right thing for us?” she asked, cupping his face in her hands. Before he could push her hands away she was leaning over him and brushing her lips against his.
“For all you know, Tristan, taking yourself out of the game will trigger the curse and me and the baby will suffer,” she said, hitting on something that he’d forced himself not to think about, but now that she’d said it, that’s all he could think about.
What if leaving triggered something seriously fucked up happening to her and their baby?
“Fuck,” he groaned.
He could feel her smiling against his lips. She was a smug little thing, he noted as he thought over what she’d said, trying to find an argument that would support his plan and admittedly not trying very hard. He didn’t want to leave her, but he also didn’t want her or the baby to suffer because of him.
“What’s your plan?” he asked, sighing heavily as he opened his eyes and raised his head, already knowing that she had one.
“I thought that you’d never ask,” she said, smiling as she readjusted herself on his lap, careful of his shoulder. “We interrogate your brothers,” Marty said, smiling as she easily said the word and making him want to roll his eyes, “and find out absolutely everything we can about the curse and the events that led up to the curse getting activated. That way we know what to watch out for and we can make plans.”
He reached up with his good hand and pushed a loose strand of her hair back as he gently cupped her face. “What if this plan doesn’t work?”
“Then we’ll learn from our mistakes and the next time-“
“I don’t want to put you or the baby through this again,” he said quietly.
She turned her face and pressed a kiss against his palm. “I would rather free the baby than to take the chance of sending him back to wherever he’s been, Tristan. If that means that we keep coming back until we get this thing right, then that’s what we’ll have to do.”
“I don’t think that I could keep putting you through this, Marty.”
“We don’t have a choice,” she said with a sad smile that made him want to take her in his arms and never let her go.
“Because it’s the only way that we’re going to get our happily ever after.”
He pulled her closer so that he could kiss her, praying that he didn’t fuck this up.
*-*-*-*
“What’s the verdict then?” Finn asked as Shayne materialized in the kitchen.
“She talked him out of it.” Just as he knew she would.
“Thank fucking God for that,” Fergus muttered as he leaned back in his chair.
He’d never seen his brothers look so relieved before. Then again, they’d never been asked to remove their little brother’s soul before. It wasn’t as though they were really killing him. Tristan was one of them. He was a cursed soul and removing him from the body that he currently occupied would have only been returning him to his true form. Reminding themselves of that fact certainly hadn’t helped.
As pissed off as the brothers had been, none of them had been able to do it. He was their youngest brother, their responsibility and they hadn’t been able to overlook that, even if it meant saving Marty and the baby any more heartache or pain. Tristan was right.
They were fucking wimps.
Now they had to make a few choices. Did they make another attempt or did they go along with Marty’s plan and try to destroy this curse once and for all?
“What do we do now, Liam?” Declean asked as he frowned down at the apple pastries on the counter that he’d finally managed to steal for Marty.
“Other than wait for the curse to take them?” Liam asked, shaking his head slightly. “I’m afraid there’s really not much we can do.”
Unfortunately for them, they didn’t have to wait very long for the curse to demand its due.
Chapter 36
“What are ye doing, lass?” Shayne asked as he appeared right next to her, startling a small scream out of her and making her drop her cell phone.
“What’s wrong?” Declean demanded as he appeared on the other side, earning another scream from her and had her stumbling back.
“What’s all this screaming for, lass?” Fergus asked as she banged into him.
“Stop doing that!” she snapped, placing a hand over her pounding heart as she struggled to calm her breathing. Honestly, they were going to give her a heart attack.
“Doing what?” Finn asked as he suddenly appeared, sitting in the black leather chair that the brothers seemed to favor.
“Scaring the hell out of me!” she snapped, taking a deep breath as she bent down and picked up her phone.
“Ye didn’t have to yell it, lass,” Fergus said with a touch of a pout as he took a seat on the couch.
Shayne let out a long-suffering sigh that had her torn between rolling her eyes and smiling. “She always was a violent little thing.”
“Aye,” Finn readily agreed, giving her a pointed look.
“Remember the beatings?” Declean asked conversationally as he sat on the couch near Finn.
“I doubt any of us will ever be able to forget the beatings,” Fergus said in a harsh whisper that had the others nodding enthusiastically.
“Are you done yet?” she asked, refusing to be amused by this. She had something that she needed to do and she couldn’t do it with an audience.
“Why?” Shayne asked, his eyes twinkling with amusement, “are ye gonna beat us?”
“You really are related to Tristan,” she muttered, shaking her head in disgust as she turned around and walked out of the room.
“What are we doing?” Declean asked as he appeared on her right side, startling another scream out of her and causing her to stumble forward.
“Anything that we can help with, lass?” Quinn asked, appearing to her left and catching her by the elbow and steadying her before she fell flat on her face just as the rather frightening screams started from what sounded like the kitchen.
Instead of answering him, because at that moment she was pretty sure that she’d lost the ability to talk, she blindly reached out and grabbed his hand. She squeezed the hell out of it while she watched a half naked man with shaggy dirty blonde hair run out of the staircase wall, across the small hallway, and through the opposite wall.
“Get back here, ye little bastard!” Aidan shouted as he ran out of the wall, across the small hallway and through the opposite wall after the shaggy haired man who wouldn’t stop screeching.
“Are ye hungry, lass?” Declean asked, giving her hand a gentle tug that had her automatically following him. A few seconds later he pulled her back when the shaggy haired man, still screeching, suddenly jumped out of the wall and ran back the way he’d come.
“We could get ye some bread or fruit,” Quinn offered.
She couldn’t do more than shake her head as she watched Aidan come running through the wall, looking really pissed as he ran across the hall and into the wall.
“Ye really should eat, lass,” Declean said, giving her another nudge that had her once again walking towards the kitchen.
“Stop trying to touch me, you pervert!” the shaggy haired man screeched as he once again made an appearance, but this time she’d heard him coming and managed to stop on her own without having to be prompted. They watched as he ran back through the wall and then as one, they turned their heads and watched as Aidan stumbled out of the wall after him.
“Will ye be needing some help with this one?” Quinn asked, sounding thoughtful.
Without sparing them a look, Aidan flipped him off as he took off after the shaggy haired ghost who couldn’t seem to stop screeching. Quinn and Declean chuckled as they once again started to lead her towards the kitchen, but between the screeching, the men scaring the hell out of her by popping in and out of the room, and watching the two men run back and forth, she had the start of what promised to be a really fun headache.
“I’m going back to bed,” she anno
unced, turning around and heading for the stairs, deciding that she could make her call upstairs before she crashed for the day.
“Are ye sure, lass?” Quinn asked, joining her on the stairs.
“Yes,” she said, pressing her fingertips to her temple that was already starting to throb.
Instead of disappearing like she’d expected him to, he continued to walk with her up the stairs. When he took a right turn at the top of the stairs to walk towards her bedroom she said, “You don’t have to follow me.”
“I’m afraid that I do, lass,” Quinn answered with a careless shrug and a gesture for her to keep walking when she stopped to frown up at him.
“No, you don’t.”
“Aye, I do.”
“No, you really don’t,” she stressed, feeling her patience begin to fray.
He leaned down until his face was only a few inches away from hers and with a devilish grin said, “Aye, I really do.”
“And why is that?”
“Because it’s my watch,” he said with a wink as he stepped back and gestured for her to continue.
“There really isn’t any point in arguing with you, is there?” she asked, too exhausted to put up much of an argument and not dumb enough to even try for two very important reasons.
They were dealing with spirits and as stubborn as she was, she had to admit that she was out of her league on this one. She didn’t know how to protect herself against them and doubted that it was even possible since their touch seemed to paralyze her with fear and dread. It was an experience that she never wanted to repeat again if she could help it.
The other reason that she didn’t even bother to argue with Quinn was very simple, he was Tristan’s brother and obviously just as stubborn as her husband. Any other day or situation and she’d probably argue with him just to wipe that smug smile off his face, but today she was exhausted, cranky and wanted nothing more than to crawl back in bed with her husband and sleep the rest of the day away.
“Ye won’t even know we’re here,” Quinn explained with a touch of arrogance that had her rethinking her decision not to argue.
“Fine,” she sighed, resigning herself to the fact that she just didn’t have the energy to do anything more than send her father a text message letting him know that they were both going to be out sick for the day. Once that was done she shut the phone off and placed it on Tristan’s bureau as she walked by it. She’d wait until after they got a little sleep before she worried about how she was going to drag Tristan to see a doctor for his shoulder.
It was probably going to take a lot of threatening, pleading, and manipulation on her part to get him to a doctor, but this time he was definitely going. Last night she’d been overwhelmed, stressed, and trying to get over the scare that Tristan gave her to put up much of a fight when he’d refused to go to the emergency room. His arm and shoulder were covered with bruises, slightly swollen and obviously causing him a great deal of pain. He needed to go to the doctor and if she had to, she would drag his stubborn ass all the way there. First however, she really needed some sleep before she dropped dead from exhaustion.
She nearly wept with relief when she pulled back the covers and crawled in bed with Tristan, who was still sound asleep. The half hour of sleep she’d managed to get last night, or rather this morning hadn’t been enough to wipe away a month’s worth of exhaustion. A day of rest should take care of that problem, she’d decided an hour ago when she’d forced herself to get up and go hunt down her cell phone so that she could call in sick.
Tristan wasn’t going to be happy and he’d probably bitch and glare at her when he woke up, but she didn’t care. He was just as exhausted as she was, if not more. He needed some rest and if this was the only way to make sure that he got it, then-
Why was the bed so hot? It felt like she’d crawled into a sauna. In a matter of seconds, she was sweating and shoving the covers away.
“Is everything alright, lass?” Quinn asked, stepping away from the wall, disappearing a split second later and reappearing by the bed before she could tell him that everything was fine, but one look at Tristan’s still body had her questioning that assumption.
“Tristan?”
When he didn’t open his eyes or show any sign that he’d heard her, she placed her hand on his good arm to give him a little shake, but the instant that she touched him, she knew that she’d made a mistake in giving in last night.
“Tristan?” she said, trying not to panic as she shook him. “Tristan?”
“Lad?” Quinn grabbed Tristan by his good shoulder and rolled him over onto his back. “Ah, shit……”
“I-I need my phone,” she said, swallowing back the panic as her eyes locked on the large dark purple bruises covering his left shoulder and half of his arm. That alone would have been enough to terrify her, but the swollen angry red almost purple skin that surrounded the bruises was the real reason that she was suddenly terrified beyond words.
She was by no means an expert on injuries, but thanks to the summer first aid courses that Tom ran every year she knew enough to know that Tristan’s injury was very serious and definitely infected. They needed to get him to the hospital so that a doctor could have a look at the shoulder and fix it so that she could kill Tristan for scaring her like this.
“I’m verra sorry, lass,” Quinn sighed with a small shake of his head as he stepped back.
“You’re not the one that hurt him,” she pointed out as she pressed the back of her hand against Tristan’s damp forehead.
“That’s not what I’m sorry for.”
“Could you get my phone please?” He was definitely burning up. Maybe she should grab some ice packs and try to cool him down while they waited for help. She moved off the bed to go grab as much ice as she could carry when she remembered that she’d forgotten to make more earlier after she’d used the last ice cubes up.
Shit.
Wait, no this wasn’t a problem, she assured herself as she headed for the door. Beth always kept a couple of bags of ice in the chest freezer just in case they lost power. Hopefully Tom was home and could bring the ice over, because she didn’t like the idea of having to leave Tristan’s side right now. Before she did anything else she still needed to call 911, she realized when she saw that her phone still sitting on the top of the bureau.
“Lass,” Quinn said softly as he appeared in front of her. “There’s nothing that ye can do to stop this.”
“Of course there is,” she mumbled, only half listening as she reached around him to grab her phone as she debated whether she would be better off calling Tom first.
“There’s nothing to do now, but wait for the curse to finish.”
Chapter 37
“Everything’s going to be alright, Marty,” her father said, giving her a reassuring smile and for good reason.
He had absolutely no idea that Tristan was going to die.
“I know,” she lied, waiting for him to put the cruiser in park and shutdown the emergency lights before she opened her door and stepped out of the car as she tried to convince herself that this wasn’t the end.
It couldn’t be. Not for them and definitely not for Tristan. He was the most stubborn man that she’d ever known, but each time she reminded herself of that fact Quinn’s words would echo in her head, destroying what little hope she had left.
This had to be a dream, all of it.
Any second now she was going to wake up. She’d share this dream with Tristan when he asked her what was wrong. When she told him, he’d tease her and distract her with his wicked kisses until this dream was nothing more than a distant memory and all she could think about was the way that he felt when he moved against her.
All her hopes that this was a dream vanished when a man wearing a bloodied hospital gown stumbled through the brick wall of the hospital and headed her way. Numbly, she watched as Finn and Fergus suddenly appeared in front of the man. Seconds later the trio was engulfed in a beautiful white light that spread all around the
m. It didn’t quite reach her, which was probably the reason why she felt dread instead of any hope when she saw the ambulance transporting Tristan pull into the long driveway.
*-*-*-*
“Fuck! We need to get his fever down.”
“Did your mother have any more ice in the freezer?” Tom asked, trying to stay calm when Shayne could tell that the man was struggling to hold it together.
It was a familiar scene, one that he’d watched play out hundreds of times during his too long, fucked up existence. He’d even experienced this scenario, twice. The first time when Tadgh had died in his arms and the second time when his own mate, Aileen had died the one and only time he’d allowed himself to be born and taken a stab at breaking the curse.
He’d failed miserably. He hadn’t been able to protect her, which was the reason why he’d never tried again. She was better off without him and this bloody curse that tainted everything that it touched.
The last time he’d seen her, she’d been covered in blood, his and hers, and cursing him out for being a bastard. He’d taken it, held her tightly in his arms as he swore that he would never bother her again and unlike Tadgh, he’d kept his word.
Keeping his word hadn’t been difficult for him and probably for a very simple reason. While Tadgh was truly in love with his soul mate, Shayne was not. In fact, not strangling the woman with his bare hands had taken every ounce of energy that he’d had every time he’d seen her during that one lifetime that he’d foolishly tried to set them free.
She didn’t mean anything other than a means to an end. He didn’t hate her, but he couldn’t honestly say that he cared about her. He’d never met her when he’d been alive, truly alive before this curse had trapped them and during that one and only attempt he hadn’t developed any feelings beyond annoyance for her. She wasn’t his responsibility and he didn’t owe her a damn thing, which was the reason that he’d been able to turn his back on her. Tadgh, on the other hand…..
Tadgh was his brother, his blood and his responsibility. He would never be able to turn his back on him no matter how much his brother pissed him off. He was also the best person that Shayne had ever known.
Black Heart Page 29
