Bad Boys of the Night: Eight Sizzling Paranormal Romances: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set

by Jennifer Ashley

  Even though it had been less than a day, her gentle encouragement that he was on the right track as a father meant a lot to him. Rather than hovering around, telling him what he should be saying or doing, she trusted that he’d figure it out his own way, and it meant the world to him.

  “Speaking of…where is our son?”

  “You just missed him. It snowed last night, so he went outside with Rickert. You hungry? We made a huge breakfast scramble.”

  So everyone was up? Having not seen Rickert yet, he’d figured the guy was still sleeping. His stomach growled. He’d shovel something in quickly then go outside with Darius.

  Zara started into the kitchen, but he grabbed her wrist to stop her. “I can get it. Looks like you’re busy.”

  She looked up at him from beneath her dark lashes, smiling softly. “Are you sure…?”

  He loved how she wanted to take care of his physical needs. “I’ve got it, babe, but thanks.” He bent down and gave her a quick, hard kiss on the lips, which left him aching for more, and then he reluctantly stepped away.

  Soon, he was leaning against the counter overlooking the great room, eating a huge mound of eggs and potatoes with more than a few squirts of green Tabasco. The best condiment ever. God, he’d missed this stuff.

  The two women were doing some sort of project involving a large piece of fabric. If he hadn’t already known that Neyla used to be a badass lieutenant in the army, he never would’ve believed it. She was what he’d call a girly-girl—into clothes, makeup and fashion. She’d once been a costume designer with her own business, but when her latent Talent had manifested, she was forced to give that up and join the army. She’d since gone back to what she’d done before.

  Little chance of that happening for him. You couldn’t exactly go to a prestigious art school when you’re wanted by the authorities. He was a different person now anyway.

  He thanked Neyla for her part in getting him out of prison, but she tried to brush it off as no big deal. “All I did was make a few calls.”

  “I’d still be there if you hadn’t obtained the intel you did. Once you step foot inside those walls, you pretty much disappear off the face of the earth.”

  She sighed heavily. “Yeah, there are all sorts of rumors floating around in the Talent ranks about what goes on there. You did something that all of us deep down wished we were brave enough to do—you stood up to the army. I’m just glad I could help.”

  “If only I could figure out a way to get the rest of them out, I would.”

  Zara lifted her head, her brows pulled tightly together. “You’d actually consider going back there?”

  “I wouldn’t want to go back if my life depended on it, but they don’t deserve to be there any more than I did.”

  He carried his plate to the window, expecting to see Darius playing in the snow. A fresh layer of white powder covered the ground and the vehicles, but all he saw were two sets of tracks leading from the porch into the woods. “Do you know where Darius and Rickert went?”

  Neyla flashed him a sheepish smile and rubbed her slightly rounded belly. “To indulge one of my cravings. But don’t worry. They didn’t go far.”

  Sure enough, he had just finished washing and drying his plate when the main door opened, and Darius burst inside, bringing with him a cold gust of air. Rickert was right on his heels.

  “Dad, grab some glasses. Hurry.”

  Zara cleared her throat. “I didn’t hear please.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Darius said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. “Grab some glasses, please.”

  It took Vince a moment to collect himself. His son had called him dad for the first time. His chest welled with pride, and when he looked over at Zara to gauge her reaction, he saw a faint sheen of tears glistening in her beautiful eyes.

  Oblivious to what was going on, Rickert placed a carton of chocolate milk on the counter.

  “Did you go to the store?” Vince asked, confused. He thought the nearest town was several hours away.

  “I put this out in the snow when I got up.” The other man filled several glasses, handing one to Neyla and one to Darius. “Someone had a craving for a milkshake, but slushy chocolate milk was the best I could do.”

  Darius licked his chocolate milk mustache but missed the corners. “Yum.”

  “It’s perfect,” Neyla said. “Thank you, boys.”

  She turned back to her project, but Rickert came up behind her and wrapped his arms protectively around her waist. “Why don’t you sit down? You don’t need to work on that now, do you?”

  “I want to finish this before we leave. Who knows when I’ll be back?” she said, patting her slightly rounded belly.

  “How many other Havens are there?” Vince asked curiously.

  “This is the first,” Rickert replied. “But we’d like to set up a few others, with one on the peninsula being the next on the list.”

  “You’re not afraid of Pacifican soldiers finding them?” Vince asked.

  “Did you happen to notice the fog when you came in?”

  Vince nodded. It was so thick that they almost lost sight of the Harley’s taillight just a few feet in front of them.

  “It’s an illusion created by placing Esmerelda glass strategically around the perimeter of the property,” Rickert explained. “Unless you have a shard from one of the crystals and know exactly where to go, you’d never find the place.” The other man pulled a pendant from a chain around his neck. “All the warriors wear them now.”

  “The Taghta sisterhood uses a similar method to keep their abbeys hidden,” Zara chimed in. “But I didn’t realize Esmerelda glass would survive a portal crossing.”

  Rickert nodded. “They’ve got flecks of iron, so it’s one of the few items that does. But you do deal with more portal sickness when you cross.”

  “A necessary side effect.” Asher strode into the kitchen, ruffling Darius’s hair as he passed, and leaned against the counter. “I’d rather deal with that and have a place of our own than live like gypsies when we’re over here. So you’ll be working on finding a location for the peninsula’s haven after the Warrior Games?”

  A shadow crossed Rickert’s face “Aye. We need one. The Pacifican army is getting too close to one of the portals there, so we can’t risk pulling our men. So far we’ve been successful, but every time we get them to retreat, they just regroup and come back. They know they’re getting close. Our saving grace is that if they do get through, it’s located in a very remote corner of Cascadia, and we’ve got people keeping watch on the other side.”

  “Warrior Games?” Vince asked.

  Rickert explained that the Iron Guild holds a tournament where young men compete in various speed, endurance and skills competitions. The best are invited to become warriors.

  “Besides, it’s a huge party,” Asher said, grinning. “No one wants to miss it if they don’t have to.”

  CHAPTER 16

  The trail from the Haven into the mountains was rugged, not much more than a game trail with slight dips and indentations in the underbrush. However, Vince could’ve found their destination with his eyes closed.

  They hadn’t been walking for long when he became aware of a low thrumming just under his skin, and although it had been ages ago, he knew exactly what it was. The portal called to him like a radio beacon and he was the receiver, which was how he’d found the Granite Falls portal that had led him to Zara.

  He rubbed the goosebumps on his arm. Yeah, the Impedio must be completely out of his system now.

  He’d been fly-fishing with friends one summer the first time he’d felt the hum of a portal. Hobs and Jamie were on one side of mountain stream, and he had just crossed to the other side to get a better angle at the pool behind a downed tree. His fish intuition was usually pretty accurate; he knew there were rainbow trout in those depths.

  His first cast had gone a little too far to the right—it was liable to get caught in the snag as it drifted downstream—but his sec
ond cast was perfect, placing the hand-tied fly atop the water in the center of the pool. Hobs had given him a silent thumb’s up, not wanting to make any noise. As he waited for the telltale shimmering shape of a fish to rise from the depths and take a bite, he’d heard a faint hum, a far-off, even sound like the buzzing of an insect. Batting a hand instinctively around his face, he’d glanced around looking for angry bees. He’d stepped on a hornets’ nest once, so he was always wary of buzzing noises.

  “Do you guys hear that?” he’d called.

  Hobs had glared at him silently. It was Jamie who spoke, holding a hand up to his mouth. “I don’t hear anything.”

  He’d shrugged it off and made a few more casts, but the moment he went still, he heard it again. Reeling in his line, he’d set the pole down, climbed up the low river bank behind him and scanned the sky through the trees. “Are you sure you guys can’t hear that? It sounds like a helicopter.”

  “What would a helicopter be doing clear out here?” Hobs had asked, his face contorted with impatience. He took his fishing very seriously and Vince was breaking the quiet rule.

  “I don’t know. Rescuing a stranded hiker or something?”

  “Well, I don’t hear anything,” Hobs had said after a moment.

  “Me either,” Jamie chimed in.

  Fine. Vince didn’t push it, even though the humming persisted. They ended up catching and releasing several nice rainbows before heading back to Jamie’s car parked at the trailhead. As he’d lain in bed that night, he couldn’t get the memory of that sound out of his head, so he made plans to go back later on his own.

  If only he hadn’t told anyone after he’d found the portal. Hell, he didn’t even know what a Talent was back then. He should’ve known something was wrong when Hobs started asking him all sorts of questions about the portal a few years later. By that time, he’d met Zara, so he’d downplayed his discovery, saying he didn’t really remember. How was he supposed to know that Hobs’ father was an army official in charge of rounding up latent Talents?

  Vince was so lost in thought that he didn’t notice that Darius was getting tired. Asher had, however, and hoisted the boy onto his shoulders, then pretended not to notice he was heading straight toward a low-hanging branch.

  Darius clung to him. “Watch out!”

  Asher ducked at the last minute, and Darius shrieked with laughter.

  Vince felt a tinge of jealousy. Asher was a fun, carefree guy, unencumbered by a dark past that consumed him. A much better father figure than a man whose only goal for the past ten years had been revenge.

  After side-stepping a thick patch of blackberries, the tiny hairs on his arms prickled. They were getting close. A large stump nursing two cedar saplings lay straight ahead and behind that, the terrain became rockier, angling sharply upward, the mountain simply rising out of the ground.

  Rickert pointed. “It’s up there.”

  Asher set Darius down and the boy ran the rest of the way. Glancing over at Zara, Vince noticed the tiny lines of tension around her mouth. “Nervous?”

  She nodded. “A little. Haven’t been back in years. Once Darius goes through, we’ll be staying there. Our lives over here are gone.”

  Guilt gnawed at him as he reached out and rubbed her shoulders.

  If a teenager couldn’t be trusted to keep his mouth shut about a portal, a little boy certainly couldn’t. Vince couldn’t forget the serious ramifications his presence had on Zara and Darius’s lives. Had they parted ways once they got to Reckless, Zara could’ve continued on with her life as it had been. She’d be at the library and doing the occasional job for Mariah, and Darius would still be in school. Sure, she may have faced some routine questions from the authorities because of the car, but she could’ve come up with a plausible story. Who would ever think that a single mother working at a library would be involved in the high-profile escape of a prisoner anyway?

  When they got to the base of the cliff, Asher lifted an excited Darius up the rocks.

  “I see it! A cave.”

  Zara turned to Vince. “Ever since he was little, he’s been fascinated by them. His favorite books from the library were ones about caves and spelunking.”

  Vince grinned. He’d been fascinated by caves as a boy, too.

  Once they climbed up the rocks, Olivia pulled a flashlight from her backpack and handed it to Darius. “Can you light the way for us?”

  “Yes!” Darius snatched it from her and ran to his mom. “I can’t believe we’re going into another world. I’m so excited. It feels like someone’s tickling my arms and legs with feathers.”

  Her smile looked forced. “I know how you feel, buddy. I’m excited, too.”

  Darius stood in the mouth of the cave and snapped on the light. “Do you think there will be bats inside? Wow, look. Stalagmites.”

  The temperature inside the tunnel had to be twenty degrees colder than outside. And damp. Zara managed to zip up Darius’s coat before he charged ahead. After several twists and turns, a rock wall loomed ahead of them. They’d come to the end. Vince’s heartbeat cranked up a notch.

  They all gathered in the narrow alcove and Asher explained to Darius what was going to happen. “See that indentation in the wall? That’s what I was telling you about.”

  Darius shined the light over the surface. “It looks like normal rock.”

  “I know, but it’s not.”

  It was decided that Rickert and Neyla would go through first. Several small storage lockers were stacked against the wall. Rickert opened one and reached for the belt of his leather kilt.

  “What’s he doing, Mom?” Darius whispered. “It looks like he’s taking off his clothes.”

  “He is, honey. When you go through a portal, whatever you’re wearing disintegrates, so you have to take it off or…well, it’ll be gone anyway. Besides, it gives them something to put on when they come back through.”

  Following Asher and Olivia’s lead, Vince, Zara and Darius turned their backs to give Rickert and Neyla some privacy.

  “See you on the other side,” Neyla called from behind.

  “We’ll be waiting for you,” Rickert said.

  A rumbling noise came from deep inside the rock. When they turned around, Neyla and Rickert were gone.

  Darius tugged on Zara’s sleeve. She bent down and he whispered something in her ear, which made her smile. “Boy, you really are excited.”

  Now it was Vince, Zara and Darius’s turn. Vince sat on top of one of the lockers and took off his boots.

  “Does it hurt, Mom?”

  “I’ve only been through a portal once—with you a long time ago. It felt strange, but, no, it didn’t hurt.”

  Darius’s eyes widened. “I went through a portal?”

  “Yep. But you were really little, so you probably don’t remember.”

  Zara stood behind Darius and removed the rest of her clothes. As Vince folded them and placed them into a storage locker, she put her hands over Darius’s eyes.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “You don’t need to see your mom naked,” she informed him.

  “We’re ready,” Vince called to Olivia and Asher.

  “Okay,” Olivia replied from around the corner. “We’ll be right behind you.”

  The three of them stepped into the tiny alcove. “See you in Cascadia.”

  With a nod of his head, they touched the wall in unison. Instantly, a frisson of energy ran over Vince’s skin, and the ground beneath his feet fell away. He was struck with the simultaneous yet contradictory sensations of flying through the air at dizzying speeds yet being perfectly still.

  When he opened his eyes a moment later, they were in Cascadia, all right.

  A large man stood over them, holding a deadly broadsword.

  ***

  Although it had been eight years since Zara had been in Cascadia, it all came back to her in a flash. The damp, earthy smell that settled over her skin and seeped into her nostrils. The sound of horses nearby s
norting and stamping their hooves.

  And, yes, the pounding in her head. She didn’t dare open her eyes yet. Not ‘til the spinning subsided.

  “Toryn, they’re with me.” It was Rickert’s voice.

  “Yes, sir.”

  She heard a scrape of metal on metal and the rustle of fabric.

  Darius tugged on her hands. “Mom, we’re here.”

  “Yes, honey,” she managed to say through the fog.

  A cloth was thrust into her hands, but she wasn’t sure what to do with it.

  “Zara? You okay?” The concern in Vince’s gruff tone was palpable. He put her arms into some sort of garment and slid it over her head.

  “I’m…I’m a little dizzy is all.”

  “She’s got a touch of the Iron sickness.” Rickert’s voice again. “Everyone gets it to one extent or another when they cross through, some worse than others.”

  Hands on her elbows, Vince gently guided her down two steps and had her sit on a cold stone bench. Only then did she crack open her eyes, careful not to let in too much light.

  They were in a small stone antechamber not much larger than the apartment at Reckless. Above where she sat was the portal they’d just come through. Unlike the Pacifica side, there was no doubt what this was. The indentation was flanked by two bare-chested men in kilts brandishing large broadswords at their hips. Iron Guild warriors. They were guarding the Cascadia side of all known portals now. No one came in or out without their knowledge. A rustic wooden table was topped with dozens of candles that cast a warm, flickering glow on the walls. The whole place was almost alter-like.

  Sunlight streamed through a low doorway to her left. It appeared to be the only way in or out. Darius would be able to walk through without stooping, but a tall man would have to go on his hands and knees.

  Neyla, dressed in a simple blue shift, was helping Darius roll up a pair of drawstring pants that were much too big for him. “Once we get back to the castle, I’ll get you some clothes that will fit better,” she promised.

  Vince was lacing a pair of leather breeches. She couldn’t help noticing how well they fit.

  A broad-chested man stood next to him. Like the guards, he, too, was wearing a leather kilt and carried an enormous sword, but rather than being bare chested, he wore a loosely tied white tunic. He held out a pair of leather moccasins.