Grace sighed. “One week to the day, Eve Barrows walked into the woods, never to be seen again. No trace of her body was ever discovered. Eliza heard the news and came back to Blue Moon, eventually giving birth to a daughter. The girl carried the family name of Bell, and ever since, every girl descended from Eliza has kept the name Bell. So, Ava, now you know who you truly are, where you truly belong, and what you must do.”
Ava sat in stunned silence, barely able to breathe as a single word reverberated through her entire being.
Return.
Chapter 19
Ava jumped in her seat as the compulsion force of the impulse rocked her body, twanging every muscle into compliance.
“What’s the matter? What’s going on? Are you all right?” All three of the men crowded around her, reaching out to touch her, steady her, and hold her.
“I’m fine,” Ava gasped. “Look, I’m sorry, I need to get back to White Farm. I…I just have to go.”
Robert and Declan looked over at Grace, their confused, distressed expressions clearly showing they hoped she could explain Ava’s sudden compulsion. Sean wrapped his arms around Ava’s waist and stroked her hair, smoothing it down against her back.
“Ava,” Grace asked quietly, getting to her feet and coming over to her. “Are you feeling quite yourself?”
Knowing what Grace was really asking, Ava nodded her head vigorously. “I am absolutely fine in every way. It’s just that I keep hearing this voice in my head. Well, it’s not quite a voice, and I don’t actually hear it. I get a feeling that I’ve heard it, and it reverberates like I should have heard the sound. But, I know exactly what the voice said and what it wants me to do.”
“And it wants you to go back to White Farm?” Grace asked.
“Yes. I really don’t have any choice about it. I need to back there.”
“I don’t like it.” Robert growled, clenching his hands into fists.
“No one has to like it,” Ava replied testily, squirming uncontrollably. “It’s not like I’m throwing a party about having to go back there. Sean, let go. Let go of me before I hurt myself trying to get out of your arms. Please? Can we go back? It’s getting worse.”
“I’m sorry about this, Grace,” Declan said to the willowy blonde, placing his hand on her shoulder.
She shook her head, wincing and squeezing shut her clear gray eyes. “What needed to be said has been said. Don’t come back, though. Not until it’s over. I…I don’t think I could manage to do this again.”
Declan helped her back over to the easy chair by the fire then joined the others in hustling Ava outside and back into Sean’s SUV.
Ava sat silently in the back seat, leaning tensely against Declan. Too many things were swirling around in her head. Every second that passed brought her closer to White Farm and eased the almost painful strain of her muscles that had her wanting to jump out of the car and run the rest of the way. She took in a deep breath and exhaled it slowly.
At least she now understood a lot more about the predicament she was in. She also understood why she felt so connected to Robert, Sean, and Declan, and why it had been so effortlessly easy to fall in love with them. Did they feel the same way? Her heart pounded in her chest at the thought that they might. Still, that didn’t mean she would be able to stay with them, or that they would have any kind of permanent relationship. Who could have a permanent relationship with three men? Aside from the legal implications, what about children born in the relationship? What about her career? What if everything they felt were not really their desires at all, but the compunctions of a curse. If the curse were lifted, would they all lose the intense need they felt to be together?
“One problem at a time,” Ava muttered, rubbing her face in frustration.
“What was that, baby?” Sean asked, glancing at her in the rearview mirror.
“Keep your eyes on the road, Sean Molineaux!” she exclaimed as they careened around a hairpin curve.
“Sean’s a show-off.” Declan chuckled, wrapping his arms around her. “He’s been driving this road since he was eleven, and he could drive it in his sleep.”
“And has sometimes,” Robert added, turning to look back at her. He gave her a rare smile that lit up and softened the harsh lines of his face, melting them into a heartbreaking beauty that took Ava’s breath away.
“You guys,” she tried to say. Somehow, she needed to express something of what she felt for them now, in this moment, before anything else could happen…before any other danger could come and take them away from her.
“What is it, sweetheart?” Declan murmured, his lips against her ear, sending delicate needles of pleasure through her veins.
“I just want you guys to know that—” she started to say, but her words were cut short when Sean tried to make the turn onto West Road. He had slowed enough to make a normal turn, but something hit the SUV, tossing it up and sending it spinning through the air.
Everything seemed to happen in split-second flashes. The sensation of being airborne. The sound of the men yelling. Declan caging her in his arms. The snarls and snaps of enormous wolves as Sean and Robert shifted in the front seat. Spinning. A bone-clattering crash that slammed her either up or down—she couldn’t tell which way was which. Motion, rolling motion, spinning, her body snapping against the seat belt, despite Declan’s efforts to keep her in his arms. The punishing puffy punch of an airbag. A splash.
Ice cold water touching her scalp.
She stared, her eyes frozen wide as her mouth hung open. The first touch of icy water shocked her into realizing she wasn’t breathing, and she drew in a desperate gasp of air. In an instant, she dizzily saw that the SUV had somehow landed upside down in the ocean and was quickly filling with water.
The windows had all been blown out by the impact, and only she and Declan were still in the vehicle. Her hair hung heavily in the rising water, the tang of salt telling her that death was only a few moments away. She turned as best she could to Declan, hoping they could help each other escape.
His eyes were closed, and blood covered his face.
“Oh God,” she cried out. “Declan! No! No! Oh God, we have to get out of here. Shit! SHITSHITSHITSHIT!”
Stiffly, every movement causing her searing agony, she fumbled upward for her seat belt. The impact had somehow slammed the seat next to her down, burying the seat belt latch beneath an immovable seat back panel.
“Oh God, please,” she whimpered, forcing herself to turn through the pain and think through the panic. Get Declan free. If he was freed, she could slip his body out of the way and squirm out herself, then try and pull them both through the broken window and swim to the surface.
“Shit!” she chattered, cold seeping into her with sharp aches through her wet scalp and now covering her eyes so she couldn’t see. The water had almost reached the tip of her nose.
Feeling for Declan’s face, she realized the water covered his nose completely. If he was still alive and breathing, he’d drown. Now, she was forced to use one hand to lift his head above the gurgling, gushing seawater while she fumbled futilely for his seat belt buckle with the other.
Her fingers found the buckle and pressed to release the straps, which flew back. Water now filled her nose, and Declan slipped from her grasp, sliding down into the water that was now almost up to her mouth.
“Shit!” she exclaimed desperately. A completely calm, detached part of her brain realizing that her last words would be something completely inappropriate. Hysteria was close on the heels of the panic that was setting in as she struggled to wiggle herself out of the seat belt and keep her mouth above water.
The water closed completely over her head, and she could feel it now pushing the last of the air bubble out of the car. No! She couldn’t die like this! She didn’t want to die! Her lungs were going to burst from the burn of her last gulp of air, and she knew it was only a matter of seconds before she lost the battle.
Declan’s body now drifted just beyond her reach.
She wouldn’t even be able to hold his hand in the end. Her eyes stung as her tears added treacherous drops to the saltwater that was quickly killing her.
Suddenly, two giant wolves swam through the broken windshield, straight for her. One wolf grabbed Declan’s shirt, and she felt the whirl of water as his body floated past her. The other wolf snapped the seat belt off her with one powerful shake of his jaws.
Ava involuntarily breathed in a lungful of water, thrashing to exhale it when there was no air and no hope of air. The wolf grabbed her collar in his jaws and carefully pulled her through the broken window. She tried not to struggle, but she wanted to scream at her need for oxygen. There was no air, nothing she could breathe in, nothing she could exhale, only water. Another inadvertent inhalation brought another lungful of water, stunning her and rendering her suddenly limp. She sensed that her brain was starting to fade, random images flitting through her mind, all emotions seeming to float away to a great distance.
She drifted.
The hard thumping on her back beat some awareness into her numb body. It annoyed her. She felt sharp grit beneath her cheek and wondered what the hell was going on.
Then a painful pressure on her lungs forced her into burning coughs that wracked her whole body. Nothing else mattered as she retched up saltwater, not the slab of ice that her jeans had turned into, not the hundred pounds her sweater weighed as it hung heavy and dripping off her shoulders. She just had to get the water out and the air in.
Gulping air deep into her burning lungs, she surfaced, opening her eyes to find that she was lying on the tiny point that lay at the end of West Road. The wind bit into her, stabbing her raw skin with the icy fibers of her clothing. Voices slowly penetrated into her hearing as her ears popped and water trickled out.
“Ava! Oh my God!” Sean cried out, pounding and rubbing her back. “Talk to me, say something, baby, anything. Tell me I’m full of shit or to fuck off. Just tell me you’re alive.”
“Ohhhh…fuck,” she moaned, her throat raw from retching.
“That’s my girl!” The relief in Sean’s voice was almost comical, except she was too close to tears to feel like laughing.
“Declan,” she gasped. “Declan, he’s…”
“Robert took him back to the house, he’s gonna be okay.”
“Hospital.”
“Do you need to go, baby? Hell, I should take you anyway.”
“No! No, Declan needs a hospital. I’m fine. Ohhhh shit, damn. Okay, I’m fine in a few minutes. God, I’m cold!”
“Robert’ll get Doc Nasir to look at Declan. You, too. Come on, baby.”
Ava felt herself swept up into strong arms, and she leaned limply and gratefully against Sean’s bare, strong chest.
“You’re naked!” she exclaimed.
“Yeah, and it’s damn cold out here. My nuts are in my throat. But, when you shift to wolf, your clothes kind of…”
“Rip apart like the Incredible Hulk?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh God, my head.”
“Hang on, baby. Here’s Robert with the car now. You’re going to be okay in just a few minutes.”
Robert squealed the gorgeous pickup truck to a halt at the end of the road, and Sean dashed to the cab, carrying Ava in his arms. She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around his neck, trying to shut out the pounding in her head and the cold that was making her body throb even as it burned in her fingers and toes.
She felt blankets wrapped around her and Sean, and she let herself go limp against her man. She was so sleepy. If she just let herself drift toward sleep, the pounding seemed to ease, and the cold didn’t seem so bad.
“No you don’t, love,” Robert said, reaching over to shake her, even as he single-handedly maneuvered the car with absolute precision. “You, too, Sean. Both of you stay the fuck awake.”
“What happened?” she mumbled, doing her best to tread water, but feeling that she could slip any moment into the deep, welcoming darkness of a quiet, peaceful abyss.
“I was driving,” Sean said, stifling a yawn and settling his arms heavily around her. “And then the next thing I knew, I had no control over the car. It was as if something picked us up. No steering, no brakes, no gas, no nothing.”
“The car was thrown almost one hundred fifty yards to the edge of the point where it hit then continued to roll into the water,” Robert said grimly. “We must really have a chance at destroying Them if that much power is being used against us.”
Robert’s words filled Ava’s limbs with leaden weights. She was too tired, too cold to care anymore. She wanted to see Declan, to know that he was okay. She wanted to go to bed. She wanted them all to snuggle in with her, and to hell with demons and ghosts. Let Blue Moon solve its own problems. She hadn’t asked for this. She hadn’t grown up knowing about werewolves or that she was supposed to be a demon hunter. She was just a grad student who still had a dissertation due in a month. Bitterly, she wondered if it was worse facing down evil spirits with homicidal tendencies or telling her advisor that she was going to be another few weeks late.
“Wait,” she mumbled, looking up and noticing they were pulling into the circular drive in front of the Molineaux mansion. “This isn’t my cottage.”
“You’re staying with us, Ava,” Robert said in a voice that tweaked at her consciousness, demanding and getting instant submission from her. “I’m not going to leave you unprotected on that farm again. Ever.”
“My stuff is there,” she said, struggling against Sean as he got out of the truck and began carrying her toward the door.
“We’ll go get everything you need,” Robert replied, coming to Sean’s side and gently touching her frozen hair.
“You had better get my laptop and papers and books,” she slurred as another wave of sleepiness washed over her, the last of her energy finally spent. “I have a dissertation due in a month.”
“You heard her, bro.” Sean chuckled between his chattering teeth. “The girl has priorities. Hop to it.”
“Bow wow,” Robert replied with a grim smile.
Chapter 20
Ava leaned back in the hot bathwater, wiggling her fingers and toes as her circulation finally returned to normal. She rested her head against the soft, rolled-up towel that Robert had placed on the rim of the tub for the back of her neck.
“Are you okay, love?” he asked for the hundredth time.
She looked at him sleepily and smiled. “I’m fine, Robert. Just finally unwinding before I have to rewind to face…well, to face whatever I’ve got to face.”
She frowned and felt Robert’s fingers, wet from the bathwater, smooth out the wrinkle between her brows. She sighed contentedly and snuggled her cheek into his cupped hand.
“A girl could get used to this,” she murmured, then paused and looked coquettishly up at him through her eyelashes. “I was talking about this bathroom, you know. Get your mind out of the gutter, Mr. Molineaux.”
Robert chuckled, the reverberation of the sound low and deep in his chest. She really had meant it, though. This bathroom, which was attached to her bedroom, was absolutely out of a dream. She felt like she had stepped back in time to when people lounged about English country houses in the 1920s.
The bathroom was huge, with fourteen-foot ceilings, crown molding, and electric sconces along the wall. Discreet, gauzy curtains hung over a tall window. There was a large porcelain sink with beautiful antique fittings and shelves full of fluffy towels and other bath accoutrements. A large modern shower was tucked away in one corner, and next to it was a small cubby of a room with the toilet.
The ultimate fixture was the bathtub. It was enormous, wide enough to fit two people side by side, and long enough to accommodate any nine-foot giants who wanted to stretch out. Ava could tell it was antique, porcelain over cast iron. What was also amazing was the way it was boxed in by a teak platform.
The entire tub was encased in shiny, varnished teak paneling, with a marble top cut around the bathtub to provide a pl
ace to put a book, bottles of bath oil and a whiskey on the rocks—which was apparently one of Robert’s favorite remedies for feeling cold. She had to climb two shallow steps in order to get into the tub. It was on those steps that Robert now sat, looking at her adoringly.
“Are you warm enough?” he asked, testing the water with his fingers and pouring in some more bath oil.
“It’s perfect,” she replied, stretching out under the water.
“I’m glad that Zara Nasir didn’t bring over bubble bath,” he said, studying her body appreciatively through the clear, scented water.
Ava felt her cheeks burn, but fought the need to cover herself up. Hell, all three of them had seen everything she had to offer already. If something surprised them now, they could throw a rock at it. Still, it was both liberating and naughty to be so on display when Robert was still fully clothed. The combination of feelings made her more attuned than she ever had been to what it felt like to be feminine.
“I like the sandalwood oil she brought over,” she said, thinking of how Dr. Nasir’s petite dynamo of a wife had fussed over both Sean and Declan, basically beating them into submission with the threat of withholding her cooking. An RN, Zara had worked with Dr. Nasir to make sure none of them were suffering from hypothermia. “It’s funny how she and Dr. Nasir seem to accept all of this.”
“They’ve had no choice,” Robert said sadly. “Their son was born in Blue Moon.”
Ava stared at Robert. She was shocked and saddened that a simple twist of fate had brought the Nasirs to this remote coastal town, and then a curse had trapped them here forever.
“They make the best of it, like we all do,” Robert said, mustering a smile. “And in a way, it has benefitted Blue Moon tremendously. We would never have been able to keep someone of Doc Nasir’s caliber here in normal circumstances. A bigger hospital in Bangor or Portland would have eventually snapped him up.”
Blackthorne, Fiona - Moonstruck [Blue Moon 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 14
