by Connie Hall
“It did. I smell the fear on you. I smelled it when you walked into the cabin.”
Boy, there was no concealing anything from that feline sniffer of his. It could be a problem. “I—I—” she floundered for a lie “—saw a bobcat.”
He stepped over to her, blocking her way. “And it frightened you?”
“Yes.” Nina noticed he had trapped her against the sink. Her head barely reached his chest, and all she could see was his burly upper torso, the golden hair there peeking out the top of the bandage.
“You said you can communicate with all creatures. Can’t you just send the bobcat away?” He stepped closer, inches from her. Heat radiated from his body felt like a luscious wood stove that had just been stoked.
She found herself wanting to crawl into that heat and let it warm her all over. “If they are alive, I have to touch them to control them. It could get tricky with a bobcat.” She heard the tremor in her own voice, even as adrenaline soared through her veins. It made her light-headed, and her breaths were hardly more than pants. The pull of his magnetism ran unhindered inside her.
“So, you can touch animals and control them?” His mouth lifted in a sneer of a grin.
“That’s right.” She nodded.
“But not me.”
“No, not you for some reason.” She flexed her fingers, wishing she could bend him to her will.
“Can you also kill an animal with your power?” His eyes took on a sadistic gleam as they sharpened on her face.
This was a touchy subject that she didn’t want to explore with him, so she said, “Why do you ask?”
“I need to know where we stand.”
“You needn’t worry that I’ll harm you.”
“Unless, of course, I stand in your way of something. Now answer my question, does your power kill?”
“Okay, okay.” She threw up her hands. “Yes, I have stopped animals’ hearts before, but only if they are near death and in pain. If it’s in my power to help, I can’t let them suffer. I can feel their anguish,” she said, feeling a dam of emotions break in her. Angry tears filled her eyes. “I just can’t drive by an animal hit by a car and left on the side of the road to suffer. So, yes, I end their torment. Is that what you wanted to hear? I don’t go around killing for the pleasure of it.” She felt tears streaming down her cheeks and couldn’t believe she’d grown so angry. She never yelled at anyone. But he had made her feel as if she had to justify her power to him. She’d never admit she remained depressed for days and stayed longer in the Quiet Place after a road stop.
“Thank you for being honest,” he said, his voice almost contrite. He raised a hand to touch her arm.
She leaped back and watched an indifferent veil fall over his expression. “Don’t touch me.” She swiped at the tears with her sleeve and said, “I have to be honest, but you’re not. Seems one-sided to me.”
“What do you want to know?” he asked, his harsh mask in place.
“Why are you protecting the gleaner?” Nina pressed him with unflinching eye contact. She wasn’t about to let him skirt the issue as he’d done last time.
His brows narrowed and he ran his hands through his golden hair, shoving it back from his face. Finally he said, “He’s my brother.”
She digested the information and asked, “That’s why you couldn’t kill him?”
Kane’s fists clenched in irritation. “Yes.”
“It’s nice you care for your brother, but surely you know he can’t go on killing innocents. A gleaner is the worst creature imaginable. Evil personified.”
“I know that, but we’re family. We share the same blood,” Kane said, his voice escalating. “I’ll send him to a place where he can’t hurt anyone.”
“He kills humans to survive. He’s a parasite.”
“Not to me. And there are sick humans who wish to die. They come to him for help.”
“Emma Baldoon didn’t wish to die.” Nina’s voice became as impassioned as his own.
“You should have stayed out of it. I would have handled it.”
“You had your chance, but you didn’t.”
“And I suppose you can. You don’t have a chance against a gleaner…or me.” He bent his head so their lips almost touched. His eyes narrowed and glistened with danger.
Nina held her breath. Her own pulse roared in her ears as she felt his hot exhalations on her face. His whole body was one large flame, burning her. Would he try to kiss her again? She didn’t know how she’d feel about it if he did. Part of her wondered what it would be like.
She managed to say, “Don’t bet on it.”
He eyed her critically for a full minute, then said, “Perhaps I’ve underestimated you. You’re as deadly as me, Nina Rainwater.” Bitter triumph rasped in his deep voice; then his eyes turned cold and cryptic, and he stepped back from her. He crossed his arms over his burly chest as if putting up a barrier against her.
She felt instantly deflated. Too late, she realized he’d been baiting her to find out more about her powers, and he was enjoying it way too much. He hadn’t wanted to kiss her at all. That was okay; she felt the same way, she told herself.
“That’s right, and don’t forget it.” She shook a finger at him. “And stay out of my way when I find him.”
“You will not harm my brother.” His gaze narrowed ominously.
“I’m sorry, but it’s inevitable. And if you had stopped him when you should have—”
“If you hadn’t interfered, I could have reasoned with him.” His words trailed off into silence, his eyes boring into her face.
“Looks like we’re both at fault,” Nina admitted.
Seconds of silence ticked by.
Her words seemed to calm his temper. After a moment, he said, “How did you know about the Baldoon killings, anyway?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“The animals’ dead spirits led me there.”
He watched her with that mercurial gaze of his. “What were you doing when I saw you near their bodies? You looked absorbed, as if you were doing something.”
“I was helping them find their path. They were distraught and lost by the violent way the gleaner destroyed them.” She bit her lower lip, and her frown deepened in an unpleasant memory.
“How did you track Ethan when he was cloaked? I need to know.”
“He couldn’t block out all the traces of his emotions from me in gleaner form. When he’s human, that’s a different story.”
“So you can help me find him.”
“I can locate him if he’s frightened or has killed animals.”
“He’ll have to consume another soul again in a week. We’ll wait out the storm. Then we’ll see if you can pick up anything.” His expression lightened, as if he had just discovered a solution to an impossible calculus problem.
She had no idea why, but she couldn’t destroy the one glimmer of hope she’d seen in his face, so she said, “I’ll help you find your brother. Now, please go rest while I fix something to eat.”
He eyed her long and hard, then finally turned and left.
Nina welcomed the distance. At least her heart could settle down and she could think. She couldn’t forget how he’d stroked her neck and made her shiver all over—no, she had to get it out of her head. She was not attracted to him.
Then it hit her. In a moment of sheer weakness, she had revealed the full extent of her powers to him. She had agreed to find his brother, succumbed to Kane’s alpha powers of persuasion. She just made a deal with the devil—or, in this case, someone protecting a devil. Well, she’d had no choice. Gleaners were evil, whether they had brothers who cared for them or not. And in the end, she’d find a way to destroy the monster.
Nina sat at the kitchen table with Kane. He refused to eat on a tray like an invalid, and he had hobbled to the kitchen table. He sat next to her sipping coffee and gnawing on beef jerky. It was a little stale and didn’t look all that yummy, but it was protein.
Nina ate cereal with warm powdered milk. Not the tofu burger with onions and mustard as she wanted, but it contained calories. She was aware of Kane watching her with that fixed stare of his, and she felt her hands trembling from a sudden case of nerves.
She shifted uneasily in her chair and swallowed. The cereal seemed to stick in her throat, swell, and make it impossible to swallow. She gave up eating and sipped her coffee.
“You warm enough?” he asked, his deep voice a low purr in his throat.
“Not really.” She didn’t know if being near him made her shiver or if she was cold.
“There’s some extra clothes in the bedroom closet you can wear.”
“Thank you.” He was actually being accommodating, which prompted her to say, “That’s nice of you. I don’t believe you’re as mean as you’d have me believe. I think that’s your way of pushing everyone away.”
She’d hit a nerve. His eyes softened for the briefest of seconds, revealing a wealth of hidden emotion he kept hidden from the world. For a fleeting moment, he wore the expression of a wounded animal in a trap, crying out for help but willing to bite the hand that freed him. Something in her heart ached for him, even though she didn’t want to feel anything. She almost touched him but stopped herself before she did something foolish.
“It’s not a defense mechanism, I assure you. I’ve done things that would send you running in the opposite direction.” His gaze followed the lines of her hair, down to her breasts, then slowly rose to meet her eyes.
“I don’t frighten easily.” She tried to sound offhand, but his assessing glance had caused a waver in her voice.
“I murdered my wife,” he said, tossing out well-chosen words that were meant to shock her.
All of his words and actions seemed carefully executed to isolate him from others, so she pretended the disclosure hadn’t surprised her and said, “You have no idea how world-weary I am when it comes to death. I’ve seen six lifetimes of it. What happened?”
His breathing increased, as if he were fighting a huge demon inside him. His expression turned distant. He leaned back in the chair. It creaked loudly in the silence. “I don’t even remember doing it.” His fingers tightened in fists as he rested his forearms on his knees and clasped his large hands.
“I don’t understand. How could that happen?”
“I don’t know. I fell asleep, and when I woke up she was dead, maimed, her blood all over me….” He paused, his expression full of torment. “I’d shimmered and killed her in my sleep…somehow.”
“You recall nothing about that night?”
“Only the stark reality of waking up and finding Daphne dead. Bitten so many times her face was hardly recognizable.”
“And you’ve been living with the guilt.” So that’s what was eating away at Kane Van Cleave. “Were you arrested for the murder?”
“The council ruled it an accident and said I couldn’t be held accountable, since I’d shifted and couldn’t remember. Sometimes tragedies happen like that among us. If we become too impassioned and our animal instincts take over.”
“Do you usually remember what you do when you shift?” She leaned against the table and crossed her arms over her chest. “I know some lower forms of shifters don’t, like were-dogs.”
“We’re nothing like them,” he said, snarling in disgust. “Some things are vague when we hunt, sometimes. Depends upon how strong our animal instincts become and when the moon is closest to the earth.”
“So that’s when it happened?”
He nodded.
She knew that the phases of the moon affected the earth’s tides and weather patterns, but also governed supernatural and natural beings as well—including humans. Homicide rates, suicides, major disasters, psychiatric admissions, stabbings, shootings, accidents, birthrates and fertility all went up during a full moon. Nothing new there. What wasn’t known was that the same thing happened in the supernatural community. Man couldn’t handle that bit of truth. Patomani lore stated that the moon and earth were sisters. One could not survive without the other, and the moon controlled the inhabitants of the earth’s many dimensions. It gave the word moonstruck a whole new meaning.
“You’re not alone, you know,” she said, running a pointer finger over a deep notch in the wooden table and listening to the coffee pot dripping. “The moon does crazy things to everyone. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve been called away on jobs during full moons because some animal turned vicious. Had a hamster once, Bacon. He turned into a little Tasmanian devil when the moon was full. Attacked his owner so much I had to make monthly visits.”
“Did you help him?”
“Yes, and the owner, too.”
“What happened to Bacon?”
“Oh, he had a fit one night and died from the stress of it. Vet said he probably had a stroke. Poor Bacon.” She shook her head and remembered wishing she could have been there to help the hamster.
“You really hate losing a single creature under your watch, don’t you?”
“I do. And the poor owners love their pets. They’re the ones who suffer.”
He snorted as soon as she mentioned love. “They knew the consequences when they decided to take in the animal. Pets die. Why should you feel sorry for them?”
“Probably the same reason you carry the guilt of your wife’s death.”
“Two different scenarios. I’m responsible for her death. You’re not when it comes to your clients.”
“Are you any more responsible than me?” she said reasonably. “If you think that, then you must believe you are above all this.” She gestured to the natural world around them.
“I should be.” He scowled down at his clasped hands.
“How can you say that? Every soul’s destiny is in the Book of Life.”
“That what you believe?” He looked at her as if she were an innocent child about to put her finger in a light socket.
“It’s what my people believe,” she said adamantly.
His brow crinkled in a frown. “Survival of the fittest is our religion.”
Nina heard the emptiness in his words and couldn’t help but feel touched by it. “What about love? Seniphs don’t love?”
“Love is weakness. You care for someone, you get hurt.” He spoke as if the word love left a bitter aftertaste in his mouth.
“My spirit guide says love is the glue that holds the universe and all its dimensions together.”
He shot her a cynical glance. “Spirit guide?”
“Yes, Koda.”
“Pulling my leg, right?”
“No,” she said, rolling her eyes. “He’s an honest-to-goodness angel—I think.”
“You don’t know?”
“If you want the truth, I think guardian angels are above spirit guides. But he’s all I got.”
“Male, huh?” His lips thinned.
“Yes.”
“And how does this Koda guide you—when he’s not filling your head full of drivel about love?”
Nina was sorry now she’d said anything about Koda. Come to think of it, he was the first person outside her family whom she’d ever told. She hadn’t meant to tell him; it had just slipped out. She wasn’t about to justify Koda’s existence to anyone—even though he wasn’t all that good of a spirit guide. “Just forget it. The point I was trying to make before I digressed was that you’re extremely arrogant if you think you’re so powerful that you’re above all the dynamic forces of nature. What I’m trying to say is that you’re a seniph, with feral instincts that can’t be repressed at times. Your wife’s death was a tragedy, to be sure, but you said yourself seniphs don’t always remember when they shift, and it was ruled an accident by your pride’s council. You’re an alpha male—”
“All the more reason I should never have let myself shift unchecked. The council ruled it an accident, but my people fear me, go out of their way to avoid me.”
She heard the emptiness and loneliness in his voice and said, “You have to forgive
yourself before others can.”
“I’m not one of your sick pets. I don’t need your advice.” He tensed, his expression darkening right before her eyes. He stood, and the chair scraped the floor. Even hurt, he moved with such agile speed and grace that she could hardly follow him with her naked eye.
She sucked in her breath, waiting for him to attack, but he only stalked past her on his way out of the kitchen. He walked hunched over. She didn’t have to touch him to know he was feeling pain, physically and mentally.
When she could breathe again, she told herself she was glad that he’d left. But she still wondered what would have happened if he’d shifted and lost control. Another icy tremor shook her.
She felt sorry for him. From the few moments she’d managed to get him to open up to her, she’d learned that his guilt was harming him in ways he didn’t even realize. No wonder she had felt such penned-up hatred from his animal side. Kane’s own self-loathing fueled the beast’s inner discontent, a vicious cycle in which they were both caught. And pointing it out only angered him. It was too bad she couldn’t use her magic on him, but her powers were limited. Emotions were not hers to command; she could only perceive them and sense a being’s inner turmoil. She could try to communicate information that would help their present state of mind or take them out of harm’s way, but she couldn’t control how they felt. And Kane had plenty of history troubling him.
Her problem was the gleaner. He may have come to the cabin to see Kane, or to finish them both off. At the thought of facing the gleaner, her gut clenched and her stomach began to hurt. Last time, she had almost lost her life, but she wouldn’t be as careless this time. Would her powers of suggestion work on Kane’s brother, since they didn’t work on Kane? She prayed so.
Kane flopped down on the couch in the living room. It occurred to him that he’d spoken his innermost thoughts to her. He hadn’t been able to talk to anyone about Daphne’s death, not even Charles, and he didn’t like divulging his emotions like this. What had possessed him to spill his guts to her? It was that magical attraction of hers. She lured him in, and he heeled like an obedient puppy. Well, he was no one’s faithful pet, and she’d find that out soon enough.
