“Much better,” he grumbled.
Rachel never forgot how deep his voice was or the way it vibrated in her chest. He’s vampire; never forget that.
“Rachel.” He smiled and held out his hands.
She ran down the three steps and into his arms. He lifted her off the ground and spun her around like she was eighteen again. Giggling, she braced her hands on his shoulders, and like the years apart had never happened, she was light inside. He lowered her down and kissed the back of her hand. Tears glistened on her cheeks.
“Sweet, Rachel, don’t cry,” Wolf soothed, tucking his knuckles under her chin and tilting her face up so he could wipe the tears away with his thumbs.
“I’m just. . .happy. . .sad. . . oh, hell.” She jerked away. “I missed you, okay?”
“I missed you too, sweet Rachel.”
“Oh stop with the ‘sweet Rachel’.” She rubbed her cheek. “It’s corny.”
Wolf burst out laughing. “Good to see you haven’t lost your spark.” He grabbed the fleshy part of her arms and crushed her to his chest. “It’s good to see you.”
And as many times as she’d rehearsed their first meeting over the years—reprimanding him for taking advantage of her when she was so young, for staying away so long, extracting a promise from him that he would never do anything like it again—she couldn’t follow the script. It all was unexpectedly moot because now that he returned she was acutely aware there was still a bond between them. Not of blood, but one they had forged with the little and big life moments they shared. Like when her high school boyfriend broke up with her before the prom, and Wolf had taken her to Paris to show her there was a much bigger world. He was her protector, her rock when the rest of the world fell apart. At least he had been until he left.
“Why did you stay away so long?” she murmured into his chest.
Wolf held her a moment before unwrapping his arms, the leather jacket creaking. “I’m sorry about that.” He rubbed the side of his nose, his eyes contrite. “I lost track of time.”
Rachel punched him in the sternum.
“Ow.” He rubbed the spot, flinching as he stepped back, trying to look wounded. “You’ve gotten stronger.” It was almost endearing.
“Have you been to see Nan? She’s missed you too. You didn’t have to stay away from her.” Rachel stuck out her bottom lip, very aware she was acting childish but not able to stop.
“Yes, I did have to stay away from her. She was pretty pissed.” His eyes twinkled, and he threw her over his shoulder and strode toward the house with Rachel kicking and protesting the entire time.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Loti groaned in her sleep. She was hiking through the dark woods, on a trail too dark to see.
“David?” she called. He couldn’t have gotten far. They’d miscalculated how long it would take to get to the campsite and the sun had set an hour ago. They were getting close, but he hiked on ahead, and now she couldn’t see or hear him.
“David,” she hissed, afraid to raise her voice in the eerie, still night. Resentful that his long legs ate up the trail miles so much faster than hers, she hustled to catch up, but the damn rocks and roots kept grabbing the toes of her boots. She tripped outright over a rock, almost falling, but she caught herself with a hiking pole. Footsteps crunched behind her, and she whirled around, exasperated and relieved.
“How did you get behind me?”
But nobody was there. She spun around, peering down the trail, but even with the big moon above, she couldn’t make anything out. Alone at night in a hundred miles of wilderness, she was less and less certain where she was. Her neck tensed as she strained to hear the footsteps behind her. Despite the frigid air, her hair stuck to the back of her neck in warm clumps. Her calves ached. They’d been hiking all day toward the grove at Mast Hollow where the every eastern white pines towered over the perfect grassy tent site next to the burbling stream.
She stopped at the sound of running water. Thank god, she thought, and her shoulders eased. Queen’s Creek wasn’t far, and soon she’d be putting her feet up to a warm fire. That’s what David is doing right now, building a fire and cooking dinner. She dug her pole tips into the hard-packed trail. No wind, not a sound. It was the wrong time of year for crickets, but there should’ve been something besides the utter stillness ringing in her ears. Stiff knees creaked as she hiked on, but instead of crossing Queen’s Creek, the trail devolved into ruts and rocks. The skeletons of last year’s undergrowth clutched at her gaiters and boot laces.
A twig snapped. Heart thumping, she didn’t dare look back as she scuttled up the rocky incline. Her legs screamed to stop, but the foot crunches behind her drove her into a jumble of rocks. When she dared to look up, the tall trees were gone. In their place was a macabre sculpture garden of talus and twisted krummholz. How had she gotten above tree line? She turned in circles, but it was all wrong. There wasn’t an “above tree line” in Virginia. In the Whites, yes. New Hampshire, yes. Definitely in Maine, but not here.
Holding her breath, she strained to hear the footsteps over her hammering heart. Jumping at the sound of boots scuffing on rocks, she bolted. The scree rolled under her panicked feet and her heavy pack wrenched her backwards. The hiking poles dangled and banged from the wrist straps as she snatched at a scrubby bush clinging to a rock. The roots ripped free. For an instant, she hung in space, and then sizzling adrenalin exploded under her ribs as she crossed the tipping point and plunged.
A hand shot out, grabbing her wrist and Loti screamed. Another hand clamped around her other wrist and lifted her up and over the loose rock. Loti’s scream died away as a black face filled her vision. A mouth full of large, yellow teeth surrounded by a scraggy beard and mustache grinned down at her. A broad, flat nose hunkered over thick, rubbery lips.
“Who are you?” she managed.
She stumbled as the hands released her and the grin relaxed into a knowing smile. Motioning for her to follow, the tall stranger turned and picked up a walking stick. Never making a sound, he negotiated the rocks, climbing higher. Trembling all over, Loti followed in anxious silence to the top, where the black man threw both arms wide, raising a palm and his stick to the sky.
“Do you know where we are, girl?” His booming voice shattered the silent night.
Clutching herself, Loti peered around at the star-studded blackness blanketing the never-ending forest that hugged the bare mountain. Off in the distance a lake glittered in the moonlight. And the full moon wore a prism-like halo.
“On a mountain?” she whispered.
“Good” he yelled and she winced.
He plopped down in a cross-legged position, gazing up at the moon with its crown of refracted light. The cold air bit Loti’s cheek, but all the black man wore was a loose pair of cargo shorts. His bare chest and arms, all lean muscle and gristle, were exposed. A head, too big for his spindle of a neck, sprouted gray tendrils. They splayed out in wavy strands, reminding Loti of a used Brillo pad. In an apparent effort to hold the mass of black and gray in place, he wrapped a brown leather thong several times around his forehead, tying it in a knot above his right ear. His bright eyes turned from the moon to Loti. In the iridescent moonlight the whites were tinted blue.
“Actually, you’re at the center of the universe,” he spoke, his tone grave.
Then he laughed, slapping his thigh, his voice like a chorus of laughing men. Loti stiffened, warning bells clanging in her ears. He cut himself off, forcing a serious frown as he said, “Man, fae, vampire, shape-shifter, dryad—” he waved his arms in a dramatic gesture, “—all kinds of creatures have been searching for this place, and we’ve stumbled upon it.” His narrowed eyes and puckered brow held for a second, and then he dissolved into a laughing fit. His belly shook as tears seeped out of the corners of his eyes. He wiped them away with thick, calloused fingers, blowing out a breath between hissing giggles.
“Whooooo, boy,” he gasped. “It really is funny when you think about it.” He snorted. �
�It’s been here waiting all this time and everyone’s running around like crazy, tripping over themselves to find it.” The amusement left his voice. “Even fighting over who was going to get here first.” He snorted again. With eyes fixed on the moon he leaned forward, patting the ground.
Her face frozen in permanent surprise, Loti hesitantly kneeled on the bare dirt beside him.
He patted her knee and pointed a wide finger at the moon. “But we’ve found it, haven’t we?” He smiled as if he and Loti were in on the secret. With an ache in the back of her throat, Loti nodded as she followed his finger to the unusual moon. When she looked back, her bizarre companion was upside down, standing on his head. She leaned away from him, tucking her chin, eyes wide, because he wasn’t just doing a headstand. He was in the exact same cross-legged position he’d been in earlier, only turned on his head. With his hands relaxed on his knees, he seemed unaware of his predicament.
“Do you know why everyone’s killing themselves to find this place, Loti?” His voice was quiet and subdued.
With a tingling in her chest, she shook her head. “No, sir.” She swallowed.
The black man blinked in surprise and laughed out loud. “Sir? Oh, that’s precious.” He slapped his knee a few more times, and when he’d caught his breath, he let out a happy huff. “Ahhhh, you make an old man feel good, girl.” He shook his head. “Sir, indeed.”
He rested a gentle, reassuring hand on her knee—a neat trick for someone hanging upside down in mid-air—and in an instant, all of Loti’s fears dissipated in the warmth of his touch. She felt like she should know him, but his name was out of reach. Had she and David met him on a trail somewhere? Hadn’t he told them a story about a little bird offering unwanted advice to a bitter monkey in the rain? And about thinking three times before deciding? Hadn’t he shown them how to make bread from sprouted grains and how to gather the dew from the leaves in the morning? She shook her head, and for a split second recognized she was dreaming, but then lost it, again.
Edging closer to him, she asked, “Why is everyone trying to find this place?”
“Because, child, they want to know the secret of the universe.” He closed his eyes and his chest heaved. “And because they think if they know the secret of the universe, they will have their greedy, little heart’s desire.” He patted her knee. “Which is true, of a sort.”
Loti’s heart picked up its pace and she tingled all over—but it wasn’t from fear. In an eager voice, she asked, “What is the secret of the universe?”
He chuckled. “Oh, girl, you already know it. We didn’t have to come here to figure it out.” His lips tightened. “Hell, everyone already knows it. They just don’t believe it.”
Shaking off his irritation, he turned an expectant smile on Loti. She shifted her hips to the side and crossed her ankles into an easy, seated position. Rubbing the toe of her boot, she rooted around in her cluttered mind, but couldn’t unbury the secret to the universe. She’d pondered the meaning of life, her life, but never the secret of the universe. Taking her time, she untangled the pole straps from her wrists and arranged the hiking poles on the dirt in front of her. Giving up, she flicked her gaze up at him.
“Would you tell me, please?”
Without a second’s pause, the black man answered, “Be thyself, know thyself, trust thyself.”
His laughter rang out across the mountain side, somehow was the mountain side, and set the rocks to trembling. His voice was not one voice, but many voices in a chorus laughing, laughing, laughing. All around them rocks shook themselves loose and tumbled like an avalanche. The roar filled the spaces between, shook the stars, and vibrated inside Loti’s head until she screamed. Then she was falling. The rocks pummeled and pounded her until she was sure every bone in her body was broken. The fantastic pain gathered in her chest. Her heart pumped liquid fire and ice. A vivid light coursed through her body, rupturing the vessel walls and piercing her sternum. Brilliant beams exploded in random directions.
“Wake up, Loti!”
Loti bolted upright in bed, screaming into the blackness. Throwing off the covers, she staggered into the living room where she collapsed in front of the fireplace, wheezing. The full moon poured an eerie blue light over everything. She crawled on her hands and knees to the fireplace and leaned against the river rocks. Despite their radiating warmth, she shook as fear twisted her insides. Her home vibrated with a sinister energy, and she hugged bare arms around trembling knees. With a foul taste in her mouth, she jerked at the creak of a settling board. Her whole body tensed as she got the unshakeable feeling that someone was watching her.
Hmmmm, hmmmm, hmmmmmmm
She froze at the sound of a man humming an off-handed tune, the hair on her arms and the back of her neck standing on end.
Mmmmm mmmmm hmmmm hmmm
Dizzy and sick to her stomach, she thought, Call Rachel. Her frozen muscles thawed, and she dove for the phone on the writing desk tucked in the corner of the dining room. Fumbling with the receiver, her fingers shook as she dialed. While the other end rang, she counted her breaths—inhale one, two, three, four—
Hmmmm hmmmmm hmmmm
Holding her breath, she cowered in the corner between the desk and French glass doors, trying to make herself small and invisible. There was a click on the other end.
“Rache—”
“Hi, this is Rachel. You’ve missed me, but I’d hate to miss your call. Please leave me a message and a number, and I’ll get back to you. I promise.” Beep.
“Rachel, are you there? Pick up.”
Silence.
“I have no idea what time it is, but I’m coming over. Something’s going on. I’ll explain when I get there.”
She hung up and surveyed the open space of the great room. It was like a fishbowl. Four years ago, she and David fell in love with the house because it was the closest thing to living in the outdoors without setting their living room up in the yard. Now it felt like a stupid idea. There was nowhere to hide. With the lights out, she could see the naked dogwood tree through the front door.
The dense air caught in her throat and her blood roared in her ears as her eyes fixed on a dark blob on a branch. With quivering legs, she slid her back up the wall and took a tentative step forward, squinting. The shape was like a cardboard cutout or something not living. Tense with the effort to be quiet, she crept across the room, but the thing turned around and looked straight at her. A raven? She took off like a shot, diving into the bedroom and slamming the door behind her.
Shaking uncontrollably, she grabbed a pair of gray sweat pants and an old pink pullover from the closet floor, tucking them under her arm. She tugged a boot on, hopping across the floor on one foot. Cracking the door open less than an inch, she peered through the little space. The raven was still perched in the dogwood. She bolted for the closet by the front door. Yanking her shearling jacket off the hanger, she felt for her purse and keys on the top shelf. She paused.
Hmmmm hmmmm hmmmm
Clothes and purse dangling from her arms, she burst out the front door, sprinting across the circular driveway to her Jeep. Leaping in, her hands shook so bad it took several attempts to fit the key into the ignition. The car roared to life, and she threw it into reverse. Flipping on the headlights, she wrenched the gearshift into drive and stole a glance at the dogwood—yep, still there—then spun the wheel, spraying gravel. The raven flapped fitfully and took off as she careened down the driveway, leaving long divots in her wake.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Loti screeched to a halt in front of her friend’s farmhouse in five minutes flat–a ten minute drive under normal circumstances. White-knuckling the steering wheel, she peered into the rearview mirror, half-expecting a pair of glowing eyes or the raven. When nothing manifested, she turned her wide eyes to the front porch, a loud rushing in her ears. It took a minute, but the blue porch light penetrated her voided mind, and she realized she was holding her breath. But when she tried to breathe, her constricted lungs fought
back. Grimacing, she pried her stiff hands from the wheel and fumbled around in the glove box for her inhaler. The screen door flew open, and Rachel ran down the porch steps, flinging the Jeep’s door wide as Loti took a hit off the inhaler.
“What the hell’s going on, Loti? I got your message.” She yanked at Loti, who sat motionless behind the wheel, inhaler held mid-air. They stared at each other, Loti’s eyes glassy and wild, until she let her breath out in a harsh huff. She took her first deep breath since she woke from the nightmare.
“What are you still doing up?” she rasped, blinking rapidly.
Rachel gawked. “Are you serious? What. The. Hell?”
A toxic mix of adrenalin, cortisol, and albuterol raced through Loti’s bloodstream. Nauseous, she tasted copper and her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She tried licking her lips, but she couldn’t make enough spit. Dropping the inhaler in her lap, she groped around for her stuff.
“You’re in your nightgown. Its freezing,” Rachel yelped as she leaned into the car to turn off the engine and retrieve the keys.
“Put this on.” Rachel draped her coat over Loti’s shoulders as she helped her walk.
“I don’t know what happened.” Loti laid a tremulous hand on her clammy forehead. A tingling frothed up her spine and she bent over, barfing on the brick walkway. The screen door slammed shut. She snapped her head up, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. A dark figure stood on the porch, hands in his pockets. The porch light cast a blue halo around him, so that it was impossible to make out any features. Straightening, her heart pounded as she clutched the wad of clothes tighter.
“Nice outfit.” He chuckled.
She rubbed at the strange vibration in her chest as she looked down at her nightgown and Uggs, her cheeks and ears burning, cold sweat dripping down her back.
Enlightened (Love and Light Series) Page 4
