She didn’t blush under his heated appraisal, her rosy mouth tilted at a wry angle as she looked him right in the eye. Slowly, she said, “I never thought I’d see the day that Noah Winston came slinking back home.”
“It’s…good to see you,” he murmured, giving her a wary nod as he shoved his hands in his pockets, figuring it was the safest place for them. He watched as she slipped the knife into the sheath strapped to her tanned, bare thigh, her cutoff shorts and skimpy halter top revealing far too much flesh for his peace of mind. He was a little shocked to see her wearing the weapon so openly, but knew he shouldn’t be. Any woman who was related to Jessie Broussard was bound to be hell on wheels, and Willow was obviously no exception. Her parents had been killed in a boating accident when she was only five, and it was Jessie who had raised Willow and her siblings. Raised them and loved them like her own.
Clearing his throat, he added, “It’s been a long time.”
She dragged her gaze over him, then slid him a taunting smirk. “You look like hell.”
And you look good enough to eat. Or lick. Or nibble on, he thought, keeping the provocative, no doubt dangerous, words to himself. Instead, he said, “You look…pissed.”
She arched one slim pale brow. “I’m sure that doesn’t come as a shock. Most girls never stop hating the first guy who trampled their heart. We have long memories.”
“I didn’t do a damn thing to your heart,” he said tightly. Her body, yes. He’d kissed it and touched it and had been on the verge of taking things too damn far before they’d been interrupted. Just thinking about it made his insides burn. He’d been about two seconds away from burying himself between her sweet little thighs when Harris had shown up. Then his mother…followed by Jessie. Before he knew it, a goddamn crowd of relatives had surrounded them.
“You know what?” she murmured, her voice growing softer. A chilling light flickered wildly in her big brown eyes, the unique color reminding him of gold-dusted cinnamon. “You’re right. You didn’t do a damn thing, Noah. You just cut out and ran.”
He scraped his palm across his scratchy jaw, silently reminding himself to stay calm. He couldn’t let her rile him, which was exactly what she was trying to do. “We haven’t seen each other in years, Will. Can’t we at least be civil?”
“You can be whatever you want,” she drawled.
“I didn’t come here to fight with you.”
With a sharp sigh, she crossed her arms under her breasts and cocked her hip. “Exactly why are you here?”
“I already told you. I need to talk to your aunt. Ask her some questions.”
“And would this have anything to do with your little quest to save the world?”
Surprise had his eyes going wide. He knew she’d become some kind of hotshot private investigator for the ancient clans who still walked the earth. But he hadn’t imagined she would ever waste her time keeping tabs on him. “You’ve been spying on me?”
She shrugged, and Noah couldn’t help but notice how the motion pushed her breasts against the thin cotton of her shirt. “I’m not deaf,” she replied, the lazy, liquid cadence of her speech striking him as incredibly seductive. He’d spent so much time on the West Coast, he’d forgotten just how sultry a true Southern accent could sound on a woman. Like something hot and sugary that would melt on your tongue. “I’ve heard the talk spreading among the clans. You’re a part of the Watchmen now. Or whatever the separatists have decided to call themselves.”
Separatists? He almost laughed, imagining what Kellan, one of his werewolf buddies, would say to that. Idiot would probably love it.
“Look, it’s important that I talk to Jessie.” Before she could tell him her aunt wouldn’t want to hear anything he had to say, Noah played his ace. “It’s about your family.”
HER FAMILY? Though she tried to play it cool, Willow knew he’d seen the truth in her eyes. That initial blast of wariness and fear that had caught her by surprise. He couldn’t mean… No, that would be impossible. She didn’t know with any certainty that he was talking about Sienna. Hell, there were Broussards scattered all over the world, each one as crazy as the other. Any one of them could have stumbled into trouble. Noah was just sticking his nose in where it didn’t belong.
Taking a deep breath, she ran her hands over her arms, wishing she were wearing more clothes. A woman needed full emotional battle armor when faced with a man like Noah Winston. Carefully, she said, “I don’t see how that could be possible. You don’t know a damn thing about my family, Noah.”
A warning flashed in his shadowed gaze, making her stomach bottom out. “I know something you’re going to want to hear. Trust me.”
“As if. I’m not in the habit of trusting the Casus,” she murmured, deliberately baiting him. She knew damn well that he hadn’t been taken over by one of the monsters. Yet. He was still Noah. But for how long? Without sustenance, the Casus had become shades while trapped within their metaphysical prison. From what she understood, they were forced to take human hosts when they returned to this world—but not just any humans. They needed ones who had a trace of Casus blood in their ancestry, and the Winstons fit the bill. Hell, they were practically the headliners.
“Stop the bullshit,” he growled, finally losing his temper as he took a step toward her. “You know me.”
Shaking her head, she said, “Wrong. I knew you, as in past tense. I don’t have a clue about who you are now.”
“I’m still me. Nothing’s changed.”
Like hell it hasn’t, she thought. But she kept the resentful words to herself. She didn’t want him thinking she was still bitter over his desertion. A girl had her pride, and a Chastain witch had more than most.
And even though it appeared as if he’d just walked through the fires of hell, he still looked damn good. Gone were the boyish looks that had made all the girls in Sacred pant after him when he’d been nineteen. He’d matured over the years, and he wore that rugged maturity well. He was attractive in a dark, sinister kind of way, his long body wrapped entirely in black—black jeans, black boots, black shirt. His thick black hair was spiky from the wind, his mouth almost cruel, but sensual. And then there were those ice-blue eyes that should have looked cold, but burned like smoldering flames instead.
“What happened to your arm?” she asked, changing the subject as she eyed the wickedlooking scar that was still healing on his forearm. She didn’t want to think about how hot he looked, or how badly she wanted to strip off that black T-shirt and see for herself if he was even half as muscled as he appeared to be. He was all sleek, predatory strength, ripped and hard and mouthwateringly gorgeous.
“I got bit,” he finally forced out in response to her question, the memory of the event clearly not a good one. Not that she had expected it to be.
“By what?”
“A bastard.”
“You kill him?” she asked, lifting her brows.
“No.” For such a simple reply, it held a wealth of emotion. Fury. Regret. Maybe even a touch of desperation.
“Weren’t fast enough?” she murmured, clucking her tongue. She was being a total bitch, but she couldn’t help it. It was as if the sight of him had cracked the cool, calm, nothing-can-hurt-me attitude she’d been hiding behind for years. With every second that went by, a little more of that fragile veneer was crumbling, leaving her feeling small and tense. She hated it. Hated that he could reduce her to this, when she was normally so good at shielding herself and keeping men in their place.
Shaking his head, he said, “Someone decided to save him before I got the chance.”
Dread spilled through her system. “Your bad guy had a guardian angel?”
“It seems that way.” Tiny lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes as he held her stare. “Wanna know her name?”
“It was a she?” The words were so soft the wind nearly carried them away, the panic in her veins burning like acid.
He nodded, and Willow could tell from the look in his ice-blue eyes that
he didn’t like what he was about to do. “It was a she,” he said quietly. “A woman that I know.”
She crossed her arms tighter and ground her jaw. “I have a feeling you know a lot of women, Noah. So why should I care?”
“Because this one,” he told her, his deep voice rough with regret, “just so happened to be your sister.”
CHAPTER TWO
“YOU’RE WRONG! There’s not a chance in hell that Sienna would help those monsters! Not. A. Chance.”
The angry words Willow had blasted at him were still ringing in Noah’s ears as the two of them neared Jessie’s cabin. Not that he blamed her. He could understand how difficult it was for her to hear that kind of news, much less believe it. Noah had seen Sienna collaborating with the Casus on two different occasions, with his own eyes, and it was still hard to accept. It was likely impossible for Willow to reconcile the image of her lovely older sister with a woman who would align herself with someone like Anthony Calder.
What could have prompted Sienna to make such a dangerous alliance? He remembered her as a sweet, beautiful young woman who had always been kind to him. His friends, however, knew her only as the witch fouling up their plans—which was why he hadn’t risked giving this job to one of them instead.
He and Willow had wasted a good ten minutes arguing before she finally demanded that he give his bullshit version of events to Jessie herself. He’d seen the surprise in her big eyes when he hadn’t balked at the idea of facing her aunt with his claim, but had simply agreed. Surprise, and a shadow of fear at the realization that he just might be telling the truth.
As they climbed the wooden steps to Jessie’s cabin, she said, “I guess you’ve got more balls than I thought you did, to come back here this way. Jessie despises you.”
“It’s either balls…or stupidity.”
She was carefully avoiding his gaze, but he could see the corner of her mouth twitch with a tight smile. “In your case, probably both.”
Though he’d expected to be sweating bullets by the time he got to this point, standing at Jessie Broussard’s door, Noah was surprised to find that he was more concerned about the woman standing beside him than the one he would soon be facing. All he had to do was look at her, and he felt that same uncomfortable, edgy sense of need that had always spiked through him whenever she was around. A bad place to find himself in, seeing as how nothing could come of it. For one, she probably hated him as much as her aunt did. And it wasn’t like he could stick around to change her mind. Once he had the information he wanted from Jessie, he’d be gone. And the odds of him coming back were… Well, they definitely weren’t good.
The maudlin thought made him frown, and he searched his mind for a diversion. “I thought you would have moved away by now. Didn’t expect you to still be around.”
She snickered. “You mean you were hoping not to run into me.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“But it’s what you were thinking,” she offered in a slow drawl, finally lifting her hand to knock on the door that was painted a bright, sunny yellow. “And I’m not still around.”
“You’re here, aren’t you?”
“Only for a visit between cases.” She turned her head a little and shot him a look from beneath her thick, golden lashes. “Guess you’re just unlucky. I’m only in town to spend a few days with Jessie. The ‘no technology’ lifestyle she’s so desperately clinging to makes it difficult to stay in touch.”
“Where do you live?” he asked, surprised that she apparently no longer adhered to Jessie’s “no technology” lifestyle. He would have thought she’d be too stubborn to change. “Are you still in Louisiana?”
She rolled her eyes. “Like I’d tell you.”
Before he could respond to her smart-ass answer, the door opened and Noah found himself caught in Jessie Broussard’s dark, “witchy” stare. That was how all the local kids had described Jessie when he was growing up. Witchy eyes, witchy hair, witchy attitude. She was considered the scariest female in the state, and while Noah figured she could help him, he couldn’t help thinking the woman was probably going to make him pay for that help in blood.
Her face was remarkably unlined for her age, her nose still covered with a sprinkling of freckles. She wore a flowing green sundress, and what looked like…well, she was wearing what looked like a rabbit. On her head. A dead one, but a rabbit all the same. Or at least the animal’s skin, complete with head and eyes made of dark glass, the rabbit’s long ears hanging down the sides of her temples like some kind of macabre hair accessory. Any hopes that this particular Chastain witch would have mellowed with age had obviously been futile. She was clearly as crazy now as she always had been.
With an odd light burning in her midnight eyes, she took her time looking between him and Willow. “Noah David Winston,” she finally murmured, settling that disturbing gaze directly on his face. “To what do I owe this surprising…pleasure?”
Willow spoke in a rush, her voice strained. “Play nice, Jessie. He has information about Sienna.”
One slim white brow arched with surprise, the pale color in sharp contrast to the darkness of her eyes and the rabbit’s fur. “Does he now?”
Noah nodded his head respectfully. “It’s true, ma’am.”
“Hmm. Then I guess you should come in out of the heat,” she said, turning and heading into the shadowy recesses of the cabin.
Noah allowed Willow to go first, then followed her inside.
“Have a seat,” Jessie told him while she settled her slim frame into a wicker-back rocking chair. With a push of her bare foot, she set the rocker in motion, the steady creak of the wood seeming strangely ominous in the sunlit sitting room, where soft beams of gold poured in through the numerous windows.
Despite the unhampered wash of sunlight, the house was wonderfully cool, thanks to what must have been a kick-ass air conditioner. Noah took a seat on the edge of a small sofa, his elbows braced on his spread knees as he leaned forward and laced his fingers together. Jessie just kept staring at him, waiting for him to begin, so he finally cleared his throat and got on with it. “For about a year now, I’ve been working with the Watchmen.”
Willow immediately interrupted him. “You keep calling them that, but rumor has it they’re not the Watchmen anymore.”
Shooting her a quick look, he said, “I guess they’re not.” Until recently, the purpose of the Watchmen had been to act as the eyes and ears for the Consortium, the group of leaders who governed over the remaining ancient clans. Disgusted by the Consortium’s refusal to take action against the Casus, many of the Watchmen units located around the world had finally decided they’d had enough. “The Watchmen I’m working with have broken with the Consortium,” he added, “along with a lot of the other units. But they still haven’t decided on a name for their new organization.”
“And what does any of this have to do with Sienna?” Jessie asked, the slight tremor in her voice the only sign that she was worried about what he had to say.
Clearing his throat again, Noah got back to telling his story. “Every time we’ve killed one of the Casus and sent them to hell, a portal has opened into that section of the pit that holds the souls of the condemned clansmen and women. These condemned souls are called the Death-Walkers, and each time the portal has opened for a Casus soul, one has escaped. Last month, we finally found Meridian, the Casus prison, and destroyed nearly all of the bastards, but that victory has led to another problem.”
Jessie nodded with understanding. “When so many of the Casuses’ souls were sent into hell at once, it allowed the Death-Walkers to escape from the pit in greater numbers. How many are we talking about?” she asked over Willow’s quiet cursing.
“We don’t know,” Noah replied. “Likely thousands. Enough to be causing more trouble than we can handle.” Holding Jessie’s dark-eyed stare, he said, “They’re attacking small towns and villages, infecting some humans, feeding on the others. At the rate they’re going, containment is
nearly impossible and the loss of life catastrophic. It needs to come to an end.”
“Do you know how to kill them?” Willow asked.
“Not yet.” Noah caught Willow’s gaze as he reached into his back pocket and pulled out several folded sheets of paper. “But these are copies of a section in a journal we found a few months ago. We call it the ‘death journal,’ because it’s filled with instructions on how to kill a variety of clan species, some we’ve never even heard of.” Looking back at Jessie, he said, “We think this section contains instructions on how to kill the Death-Walkers.”
“Then what’s the problem?” Willow asked, no doubt eager to get on to the part about her sister. “Are the instructions difficult?”
“We don’t know. We can read the heading for the section, but not what’s written beneath it.” He offered the folded sheets to Jessie. “Take a look for yourself.”
Opening the folded sheets of paper, Jessie studied the passage. She spoke after a moment, but kept her gaze focused on the strange symbols that Noah and his friends had been unable to decipher. “It’s in a demonic dialect. A very rare one that I’ve seldom seen used.”
He choked back a sharp curse. “We were afraid it might be something like that.”
Jessie’s gaze lifted from the papers, trapping Noah in its grip. “So you’d like my help deciphering this.” It wasn’t a question. She knew exactly what he’d come there for.
Noah gave a sharp nod. “We’ve had specialists from all over the world look at the passage, but no one’s been able to help us. I’m hoping you’ll be able to make something of it.”
Her gaze didn’t waver. “I think that might be possible.”
“Great. So that’s settled.” Willow’s voice was sharp with impatience. “Now tell us what you know about Sienna.”
Scraping his palm over his jaw, Noah said, “When we were in Meridian, we got to Anthony Calder, the guy who’s been leading the Casus, and almost killed him. But then Sienna somehow popped into the middle of the battle. She came in through some kind of portal and grabbed him. They both disappeared, along with a few other Casus shades, and then the portal vanished.”
Rush of Pleasure Page 2
