Erin tightened her grip on Jared’s hand as she glanced about Emerald s home, wondering what bothered him. She could feel him winding tighter and tighter, like a spring ready to burst, and she didn’t know how to help him. He seemed to be withdrawing from her, yet needing to keep her close as well.
Given how their first hours in the cabin this morning had gone, she’d thought they’d crossed barriers that had made them closer than she’d ever been to another. She still felt that way inside, but Jared’s actions were telling her he didn’t. Old hurt tried to well up in her, but she firmly stamped on it. She had to believe that when he was ready, he’d tell her what had upset him. It had to do with the Sno-Med fair and their discoveries there. That’s when he’d started to change.
“We’re all set to eat. Megan has the table ready, so I hope you’re hungry.”
“Very,” Erin said, forcing a smile. Before falling asleep on the couch, she and Jared had finished eating the peaches, cheese, and crackers that she’d fixed for a snack after their shared shower. But that snack was long gone, and she was very hungry.
Emerald’s home was the Better Homes and Gardens version of magical comfort. The rooms, though small, were filled with a treasure trove of diminutive art. Cabinets burst with figures of ethereal fairies and graceful, winged angels no larger than Erin’s thumb. The walls, though painted in dark tones of burgundy, green, and blue, sparkled with light as if dusted with glitter.
The heavenly smells of beef stew and fresh bread made for a mouthwatering invitation that everyone accepted despite their reservations. The great food bridged a gap the initial lack of conversation had left. Compliments went to Emerald and Megan for the delicious dinner. Erin noted that Jared watched what others did before acting himself. For a man just introduced to the physical world, he functioned remarkably well and learned fast.
“What is happening with Sheriff Slater, Sam? You said earlier that he had trouble his way.” Dr. Batista spoke as she lightly buttered a piece of bread. She’d changed from her lab coat to an attractive outfit of brown pants with a shirt that matched the soft lights in her eyes, but she’d kept her hair tightly knotted and her shoulders stiff. “I didn’t catch wind of it at the health expo today. Usually if something is up, everybody is talking about it.”
The sheriff followed his spoonful of stew with a sip of water before answering. “I think Slater is trying to keep the situation quiet until he can figure it out. It’s a puzzle that is only getting worse.” He glanced at Megan, who listened intently to his every word as only ten-year-olds who think they’re all grown up can. “I’ll have to tell you the details later,” he said, making Megan frown before he continued. “But the man they found on the side of the road came up with a print match in the computer. Unfortunately, there’s an obvious glitch in the system.”
“What?” Dr. Batista bit into her bread.
“According to his fingerprints, the man was on death row for a number of years and had been executed in South Carolina two years ago.”
“For real, Sam Sheridan!” Emerald exclaimed, brows rising. “The body of a man who’s already dead.”
“Mum, will you be doing a reading of it?” Megan asked, her green eyes wide with interest.
“No. You know readings are special. Can’t be doing them on everything.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “So your crystal ball can identify dead men now?”
“Sam.” Dr. Batista glared at him.
“I’ve wrangled with fiercer dragons, Nettie.” Emerald set her cool gaze on the sheriff. “I don’t know what my crystal will reveal or won’t reveal. The Druids are rarely kind in the secrets they give up, but I could tell you something if I wanted to.”
Dr. Batista nodded. “It’d be better than the report they got today. Sometimes I think the system is useless. They’ve yet to determine whose prints were on Stef’s—” Her voice broke.
Dr. Batista had mentioned her sister’s connection to Sno-Med at the fair, and something bad had happened. “I’m sorry. You spoke of your sister earlier as if something is wrong. I can’t help but ask what.”
Dr. Batista took a deep breath. “She disappeared six months ago.”
“How? From where?” Erin asked.
Emerald sighed. “I found her backpack at the Sacred Stones.”
Dr. Batista softly added, “Stef, who worked in Sno-med’s labs, was to meet a group of her coworkers at the Sacred Stones for a Saturday morning hike. She’d called me Friday and left a message on my cell to call her back that night. She said she had something important to ask me, and she sounded more concerned than usual about it, but not especially upset. There was an emergency at the hospital. I’d been in surgery for hours, and when I got her message, I didn’t call. It was late, and I was tired. She didn’t answer my call in the morning. Several hours later, I received a call from Emerald.”
Erin shifted her gaze to Emerald’s. “You worked for Sno-Med?”
“Mother Mary. Whatever gave you that idea? No. I’d gone to the stones at dawn looking for you two and found the backpack. Stef’s information was inside, along with Annette’s as an emergency contact.”
It took Erin a second to absorb this new fact. “You were out looking for Jared and me six months ago?”
“It’s a story,” Emerald said.
The phone rang, and Jared started. Erin set her hand over his, remembering his sensitivity to sound.
“It’s Bethy ringing,” Megan said as she jumped up and ran to the phone. She picked up the receiver, totally assured that she knew who was calling. “Bethy!” She listened to what Bethy had to say, then squealed with delight. “Hold on.” She pressed the receiver to her chest, eyes shining. “Mum, can I go to Bethy’s tonight? She just got Fairy’s Fantasy X, and her mum’s said we can have a marathon until we best the Dark Lord. Can I? Sarah, Susan, Barb, Mel, Beanie, Mish, and Carrie are all going to be there. It might take us days!”
Erin recognized the newest game craze for the younger set of video maniacs, where a force of tiny fairies managed to defeat all foes in their quest to save the world.
Emerald sighed. “It’s Sunday. We’ve not done your reading for tomorrow yet. You can’t be going tonight.”
“But Mum!” Megan’s eyes grew mistier with tears. “It’s just Bethy’s! Please. We did two for today. Can’t it wait a day or two—”
“Meggie—”
“Just once, please. Can’t I be like everyone else just once, Mum? Please.”
Emerald inhaled as if she was facing a foe she didn’t know how to fight. “Tomorrow, then. You need to come home tomorrow night for your reading. I’ll delay no longer.”
“Yes,” Megan squealed into the phone. “Mum will run me over in a jiffy.”
“After we’ve finished,” Emerald cautioned.
Megan dashed back to the table, kissed her mother’s cheek happily, and sat to finish her meal. She bubbled with so much excitement that Erin thought she’d float to the ceiling before it was over with. Emerald seemed distracted for the rest of the meal and through dessert.
Jared commented on the sweet bread pudding. It was the only thing he’d said since speaking to Emerald when they first arrived. “Peaches,” he said. “Peaches would be good with this.”
The heat of his thumb caressing the inside of her wrist told Erin he hadn’t made an idle comment. Her pulse raced back through the memory of him and peaches and juicy kisses.
Dr. Batista gave Jared a puzzled look that soon turned to compassion. “Peaches are good, Jared,” she said, as one might to a small child. “You like peaches? I like peaches too.”
Emerald sputtered her coffee and shook her head. “Nett, both you and Sam are going to be eating a load of crow.
Erin frowned, then realized Dr. Batista had come to the conclusion that Jared was mentally handicapped. And from the look in the sheriff’s eyes, he was reaching the same conclusion.
Hell, Erin thought, deciding not to disabuse them of the notion. Having them think Jared was imp
aired would go a long way to avoid having to explain anything. The silver-bell sound Erin associated with Emerald’s cell phone tinkled, and Emerald quickly rose up to attend to it.
“I’ll get my stuff ready to go to Bethy’s,” Megan said, jumping up and dashing away with a big smile on her face.
Sam shook his head as he spoke to Dr. Batista. “Em’s so married to her cell phone that she can’t have a life of her own.”
Dr. Batista glared at him. “You wouldn’t be saying that if I’d gotten a call for emergency surgery.”
“That’s different.”
“No. It’s not.”
“What good can she do? Tell them to go to page sixty-nine now?”
“You are impossible. Have you ever even read her book? Do you even know what is on that page?”
“I don’t have to,” Sam grumbled.
“What book?” Erin asked.
“”Sexual Synergy” Dr. Batista said. “Emerald is a sex therapist known as Dr. Em in Dublin.”
“An online sex therapist,” Sam said. “I bet her clients e-mail her from bed. Gives a whole new meaning to ‘you’ve got—‘ “
“Don’t you dare say it.” Dr. Batista groaned.
“Male,” said the sheriff.
Emerald returned, and the meal soon ended on a more congenial note than it had begun. The sheriff returned Erin and Jared to the cabin with an “I’ll see you in the morning” good-bye.
Erin stood for a moment next to Jared, looking at the soft fingers of moonlight bathing the cabin in a silvery glow. It appeared almost mystical amid the dark shadowy trees and black edge of the rugged earth. Honeysuckle scented the humid air, bringing childhood memories of plucking the nectar from the hearts of the delicate blooms and dipping the droplets onto her tongue. More fireflies than Erin had ever seen at one time flickered like a carpet of fairy dust about them, blanketing the area in beauty and quietly reminding Erin that Twilight was different than other places. Just the fact that Emerald, Dr. Batista, and Jared had all ended up there told her that, even if her sixth sense hadn’t.
The sound of a wolf howling cut through the magic of the night and made Erin shiver.
“Hurry,” Jared said, taking her arm and urging her into the cabin. Once inside, she turned to find him stripping his clothes off in the doorway.
“Jared, we need to talk. We can’t let what almost happened happen.”
He stood naked in the doorway, powerful and hungry. He breathed deeply, his nostrils flaring. His eyes glittered an eerie blue in the moon’s silver light.
He walked to her, sending her heart fleeing places her feet didn’t have the sense to run to. Her breath caught, her lips parted, and her insides clenched, already heated with the memory of the pleasure he alone had branded upon her.
He shoved the clothes into her arms. “I have to run,” he said harshly. “Lock the doors, and whatever you do, do not leave the cabin.” He turned and ran into the dark of the night.
“You don’t look as if you are feeling well, Manolo,” Cinatas said holding up a bottle of Chateau Petrus merlot to the intense surgical light he kept beside his seat while dining. He examined everything for impurities. Manolo stood subserviently in the doorway, his body shivering from fever, which Cinatas knew would become very painful shortly. Marburg virus, or as Cinatas liked to call it, Marvel virus, for it miraculously wiped any nuisance from his life within a week’s time, purged the host of all impurities before his very painful death.
Almost as painfully as his dinner was progressing, Cinatas thought. Shashur had decided to join him, and the tedious affair had become a pissing contest. One that Shashur couldn’t even dream of winning.
Cinatas smiled at the secret progress he’d made in locating Morgan and her not quite mortal friend. Erin had to be traveling with someone not of this world; nothing else could explain Morgan’s ability to evade capture.
Shashur reached over and snatched the bottle from Cinatas. “If you’re going to fraternize with your idiots, I’m at least going to have a drink.” He sank his dentally altered fangs into the cork and twisted it free of the bottle.
Cinatas shuddered at the violence of the act. His manicured nails cracked to the quick as he dug them into the arm of his Louis XIV chair, carved by André-Charles Boulle himself. Shards of pain ripped up Cinatas’s arm, and he silently vowed that Shashur would fall subject to the same hemorrhagic fever as Manolo. It would be interesting to see what its purging effects would do for the damned.
“I’m fine, sir,” Manolo said, answering Cinatas’s query. “Reports are that Sheriff Sheridan ran a check on Erin Morgan today. She’s in Twilight. We’ve ears in his office and a man on his tail. We should know at any minute where Morgan and—”
“You’ve got a team ready to act, right? Then keep up the excellent work,” Cinatas hissed though his pain, interrupting Manolo before he could say anything more about the man with Morgan.
Manolo disappeared, and Shashur drained his wineglass then poured another. “You’ve no cause to feel smug,” he said. “The damned found them on that god-forsaken spirit-ridden mountain. It was an easy deduction to know they’d surface in the nearest town.”
“Of course,” Cinatas said. “I’m sure incompetence had nothing to do with your inability to secure Morgan. What can the damned do when a few Blood Hunters from the spirit world bare their teeth?”
Shashur stood, shoving his chair back from the table. “I’m bringing your insolence and this whole incident up for review before the Vladarian Order. Pathos found you, and he can replace you.”
Cinatas only smiled. Shashur would be dead before that meeting in three weeks.
Jared ran from the cabin into the woods with the Tsara bite burning as if he were being branded anew. The poison in him roiled, scraping the insides of his chest like a beast clawing to be free. When he’d exited the sheriff’s vehicle just minutes ago, something had told him to run as far from Erin as he could. Whether it was the full light of the moon shining on him, pulling the evil in him to the surface, or if the sudden release from the magic of Emerald’s cottage caused an eruption of evil, the bloodlust had reared its head.
He’d escaped into the forest, moving like the wind across the mountain terrain. The scent of earth mingled with the fertile green of the leaves and the decay of yesterday s life. Wildlife skulked. He could smell the fear of those hiding, and the hungry power of those lurking to kill smaller prey. He could also sense their awareness of him, and with growing satisfaction, their fear of him. No other predator could match his prowess.
Too late, he realized the mistake of running into the wild and giving free rein to the poison. The deeper he delved into the recesses of the forest, into the primal heart of savage rule, the darker the night became, and the more his soul fed upon the feral air. His vision sharpened, his hearing heightened, his incisors cut into his lip, and he savored the taste of even his own blood.
He howled as his blood pumped through his veins so forcefully that every fiber within him throbbed painfully at the pressure. He gasped for air, his body trembling, shivering. He ran harder, forcing himself to the very edge of his abilities. His mind was consumed with the need to give in to the darkness and taste Erin’s Chosen blood. He ran until his lungs could stand no more, and when he came to a stop beneath the light of the moon, he stared in horror at his body.
His Blood Hunters cloak had appeared, but the pure silver of it was gone, faded to a dirty gray-white, a ghastly, twisted caricature of his once sleek coat. He was no longer pure and true of heart.
Within him grew a hunger for any blood to temporarily stave his overwhelming desire for Chosen blood. As he crossed over a ridge, the scent of roasting meat on a campfire curled up from the valley. The laughter of mortals grated in his ears even as the scent of humans and of blood filled him with a lust he had to satisfy. He howled as he hurled himself toward them, his primordial cry sending creatures fleeing from their hollows, obliterating all instincts but flight.
The
wolf’s ravenous howl, carried by an evil, icy wind, ripped through the Blood Hunters gathered on the mountainside. Silver moonlight bathed their glittering cloaks that bristled with horror at the torment of one who could no longer be called their own, but whom they couldn’t turn their back upon. The blood-lust in the wolf’s howl ripped at Aragon’s soul.
“His pain is mine,” Aragon said harshly. “I chose wrongly, and he’s suffering a slow death that no warrior should ever face.”
Sven paced. “You’re giving up too soon. His soul isn’t damned yet. He hasn’t given in to his lust for Chosen blood.”
“He’s close,” Aragon whispered, lowering his head. “The Tsara poison is too potent for him to ever redeem himself.”
“You may be right,” Navarre said angrily. “Other forces are working against Jared as well. The presence of the Vladarian Order and this search for Jared by both mortals and the damned is a grave concern. We have to consider that Pathos is trying to get Jared, to force Jared to join the Vladarians.”
Aragon raised his head. “The damned are searching as we speak, and Jared is running wild—he can’t even hear me above his bloodlust.”
“Then we run with him,” Sven said, stepping forward.
“I will run as well,” said York. “We’ll surround Jared and slay any demon who tries to capture him.”
Navarre paused. “The plan has merit.”
Aragon wanted to tear the world apart with his pain. He’d already risked too much on the possibility of Jared’s salvation, and as leader of the Blood Hunters, he didn’t dare risk more. The consequences within the mortal world could be devastating if Jared were to become as Pathos. Having another Blood Hunter in the Vladarian Order as strong or stronger than Pathos would likely bring hell to reign upon the mortal ground. “Let us find Jared and then we’ll see.” The dawn was too far away for Jared to survive the forces of evil, and Aragon knew he would have to be strong enough to kill Jared this time. A human scream echoed through the forest as the Blood Hunters ran, telling them that they might be too late.
Touch a Dark Wolf (The Shadowmen Book 1) Page 14
