gifted

by Charmaine Ross

  Julius ran fingers through his hair, leaving it all spiked up in its wake. “I can’t believe I have her back.”

  “She should never have been taken ...” I bit my lip before asking, “How long was she gone?”

  His mouth tensed into a straight line. “Five years.”

  The breath whooshed out of my mouth. He’d been blackmailed by Victor for five years, knowing his daughter could be killed on a whim. I wanted to say something to make it all up, something that would take the heartache away, but words were not enough. Would never be enough.

  “You made it,” I said, lame as it was.

  A hint of a smile curved his generous mouth, and I felt mine tilt to match. “So did you.”

  We had survived, but still so many things were left unanswered, raw open nerves that we just couldn’t close. “But what about the soldiers? Victor. Seth. We didn’t see anyone when we left. Don’t you think that was strange?” We’d escaped, but almost too easily. As though we were—forgotten.

  Julius sighed. “I agree. I hate to say this, Katia, but I don’t think this is the end.”

  I watched the land slip past. It all looked so pure out there, untouched by a century, but the evil I knew existed underlay its rugged beauty. I hated to agree, but deep down, I knew Julius was right. It wasn’t the end. Would never be until Victor lay dead at my feet. Or it ended with my death.

  But now I had something worth fighting for. A family of my own. And there was no way Victor was going to take that away from me.

  “When I was in his mind ... he told me that ... I was his true daughter. His flesh and blood.”

  Julius linked his fingers through mine. There was strength in his grasp, “You are nothing like him.”

  “He told me he needed my DNA to make sure his experiments would work on his body. Think about it, Julius, why else would he have gone to such lengths to find me when he had so many willing subjects?”

  Julius shook his head, “I don’t know. But we’ll find out, Katia. That I promise. And what I do know is even if you are his daughter, you are nothing like him. You are strong, compassionate, beautiful ...” He leaned toward me and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, leaving a tingly trail where he touched my skin. “And even after everything you’ve been through, you can still care about a little girl.”

  “And you, Julius. I care about you,” I whispered. A tranquil smile curved his mouth, and a peace I had never known washed through me. It was a smile that said no matter how hard it got, that we would face it together.

  “Don’t worry, Katia. We have each other now. We’ll go to the authorities for help. We have damaged Victor’s operation, taken away its head. We have time to recover. And if we have to fight—when we have to fight—we’ll be ready.”

  Things had irrevocably changed for me. Although my future was now my present, there was more future here than I ever had. I didn’t have to fight on my own anymore. I had someone who knew me. Who understood and, most importantly, who believed that we had something worth fighting for. My gift had changed, become stronger. I had done things I never knew could be achieved. Who knew what more I could do? This time, I wouldn’t let it lie in latency. I would make it work harder; I would become stronger;, I would push myself. I would practice. Whatever the future had in store for me, I was ready to face it headlong. I would have a fighting chance.

  I leaned over and pressed my palm to his cheek. “Thank you, Julius. You healed my body, but you healed my soul as well.”

  He took my hand, pressing his lips against my fingertips. A delicious swirl started in the pit of my stomach as his eyes darkened into something deeper, something that made me forget all about Victor and my gift. I was just a woman who looked forward to making love with the man she loved for the first time. And finally, I was happy.

  Ghost: a Paranormal Ghost Romance (Damned Series Book 1)

  What happens if you could suddenly see ghosts? With amnesia?

  Cassie Hunter wakes to find a man with serious green eyes staring down at her in the morgue, but her initial confusion turns to absolute horror when she realises this man has been dead for over seventy years.

  Elliot Stone doesn’t know he’s dead. Or how he came to end up in the morgue. Or why he can’t keep his eyes off the sexy doctor. Or anything else, for that matter.

  But the truth is, the family curse has awakened. Something Cassie went out of her way to prevent from happening. How can she turn away the soulful, amnesiac detective who strikes a chord in her like no—living—man has ever been able to do?

  Ghost is a powerful new paranormal romance series that will captivate your imagination. Follow Cassie on her journey through perilous dimensions of reality to fight for the love of her life.

  Read an excerpt.....

  GHOST - CHAPTER ONE

  I fainted just after I lost my mind.

  Being a cardiac registrar in The Alfred, I see more blood and guts in one day than most people do in their lives. But since I’d crashed head first into the sharp end of a trolley that morning, things were happening to me that I didn’t particularly want to happen. That included falling into a dead faint on the morgue floor and waking up to a striking pair of serious green eyes peering down at me. The type of eyes that had seen too much of the wrong side of life.

  “Who are you?”

  “You called for help and I came.” His voice was a soothing deep rumble.

  “I did?” I put my fingers on my forehead. The few seconds before I fainted were fuzzy.

  A furrow appeared between his brows. “I heard you. And then I saw you. Do you need assistance?”

  He was crouching over me. That’s why I had focussed on his eyes. They were so close to my face they filled my vision. I rolled to my side and leveraged myself from the floor.

  “I’m okay. I just fainted. I don’t normally faint, but I saw Henry...”

  I turned slowly, heat vaporising my blood as I expected Henry to leap out at me again. But there was no Henry. There couldn’t be any Henry. Henry wasn’t dead. I’d checked on him last night. He’d had an Angina attack but had recovered. I’d expected him to go home today. He couldn’t be here.

  Unless… I shook my head, laughing at myself. I didn’t have the same gift as my mother.

  Not after all this time. If it didn’t appear as a child, I certainly wouldn’t have it as an adult.

  I closed my eyes and leaned on the bench, waiting for my heart to stop banging a way out of my chest. The man looked around the room, taking notes in a small notebook. He wore a grey, felt fedora pulled low over his forehead and a calf-length trench coat. Beneath the coat was a light-grey, three-piece suit. The waistcoat was neatly buttoned, the tie precisely knotted between a brilliant white starched collar. He looked like a detective in one of those old-time gangster movies.

  He turned penetrating eyes on me. “Who is Henry?”

  “He’s a...a patient of mine.” I’d hardly expected to see my healthy, living patient in the morgue.

  It couldn’t have been him. I’m just seeing things. I swallowed. Hard. This was just a bad dream. It had to be. I was a doctor. A believer in science and what the eye could see.

  Ghosts weren’t science.

  My gaze crept to the open trundle. Yep. Henry’s body was still there, half covered by a sheet. Cold and still and dead. Just as I’d seen him before I fainted. But how? Why? Had I forgotten chunks of time? I had suffered a head trauma after all. Maybe that could account for any missing memory. It was natural. Expected. I huffed out a sort of laugh. “All in my mind,” I murmured.

  “Do you often speak to people that aren’t there?” Detective Man peered at me, eyes narrowed taking me all in. He wasn’t the type of person you found in a morgue. It struck me as increasingly odd that he would be here at all, let alone speaking to me as though I was the nutcase.

  As though I was my mother. As far back as I could remember, I’d never seen what she saw.

  A vision of Mum talking into an empty space crowded my mi
nd. I wasn’t my mother.

  I never wanted to be.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Answer the question, please Miss.”

  “Not regularly. No.” I didn’t want to answer him at all, but I could see he wasn’t going to let up unless I did. Police could be like that.

  But normally, if the police were involved in an unexpected death they made an appointment, told me they were investigating. This happened time to time. I was a cardiac surgeon. People came to me because they were sick and I couldn’t save them all. Even though I tried all I could to keep them alive. Also, those detectives didn’t wear fedora hats and trench coats and ask question after question after someone had woken up from a dead faint on the morgue floor. They would help. Not interrogate.

  It occurred to me that I was all alone down here, if you didn’t include the dead bodies, and if something were to happen with not-quite-right-in-the-head detective man, I didn’t have any help close at hand. Either way, I had to get myself out of here. The sooner the better.

  I had to make things look as normal as possible so I covered Henry’s still dead body — that hadn’t changed even though there was a good possibility that this could still be a nightmare — with shaking hands and slid the trundle back into the locker, taking the opportunity to make my way closer to the door. Just moving slowly. No sudden movements.

  “Are you prone to times of unreasonable frustration?”

  “Not including this moment?” I went on before he could answer, “Look, why are you asking me these questions?”

  “To prove you’re sane.”

  He was asking me if I was sane? I mentally shook my head and took another step towards the door. “Are you a psychologist?” Just keep him talking, concentrating on things other than me, getting closer to that door.

  Moments passed and I watched as he considered my question. “I don’t think so. Now—tell me exactly what happened.” He frowned, the line between his brows more of a valley then his green eyes settled on the bandage on my forehead, “You’re hurt!”

  He strode towards me and I saw that his eyes had flecks of brown in them, like golden streaks, shining beneath the emerald green. They were deep. So deep I was sure I glimpsed his soul in their depths. As he studied my bandage, I read...concern. I didn’t expect to see that. His gaze slipped from my forehead to my eyes. I felt it digging past my defences, right through me.

  “Look, who the hell are you?”

  Confusion entered those green depths. He felt through his pockets, eventually tugging out a black leather wallet from an inside pocket of his coat. He flipped it open and stared at it as though it was the first time he’d read his own badge. The sense of not-quite-right speared me, racking my composure.

  “Tell me!”

  He roused, coming back into the moment, “I’m Elliot Stone. Detective Elliot Stone.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “You… you asked for me.”

  “Listen, I don’t know you and I never asked for you.” I pointed to the door, doing my best impression of a woman who wasn’t currently doubting her sanity. I was a doctor, after all. I did have authority. “You need to go.”

  His frown grew deeper. He blinked in his surroundings, as though this was the first time he’d thought to understand his surroundings, “Where...am I?”

  My pointed finger fell to my side. The urge to flee was overwhelming. It was a battle of my will to remain calm. At least on the outside. If he wasn’t going to get out of here, then I had to. I chanced another step closer to the door. “You’re in a morgue.”

  “Morgue?”

  I nodded, “Yes, Detective, and this interview is over.”

  I’d reached the door. I didn’t stay to hear his answer. I ran. Right into the arms of doctor George Campbell. The living, I-could-feel-his-hard-body-crushed-against-mine, reason for my head injury. My attention had been glued to him right before I crashed headlong into that trolley. Even though I couldn’t remember apparent chunks of time when my healthy patient had died, I’d remembered that I’d quite literally had nothing in my mind expect filling it with George Campbell while I’d been standing beside the trolley. Before I’d crashed landed into it. His perfect, long-fingered hands gripped my forearms to balance me while his face widened in shock, “Cassie...you look like you’re in quite the rush.”

  I staggered back, breaking the contact, keeping Campbell at arm’s length. It was the only way I could think. I peeked over my shoulder. The door to the morgue flapped open and as it did, Detective Elliot-Insane-Stone slipped through, still looking as confused as when he was in the morgue. His state of mind seemed to be real. He looked completely lost I almost felt sorry for him, but my frayed nerves got in the way of any residual sympathy.

  I grabbed George’s elbow, steering him along the corridor, maneuvering him to use as a human shield. “Don’t worry about him,” I flicked a glance over my shoulder.

  “Who...?”

  I clicked my tongue. He’d have to be blind not to see someone dressed like Elliot, “That detective man. If you ignore him, he should go away like all good insane people.”

  Then another thought struck me. Perhaps detective-man was a figment of my imagination and that’s why George looked so confused. I was hallucinating with something I could see and even talk to, but wasn’t real. I stifled an internal shudder, hoping that wasn’t the case.

  I blustered on, purposely talking to George and not looking at ‘The Figment’, “Look, I came to see a patient of mine. Henry Davis.” I stopped mid-step as a thought struck, “Actually, weren’t you on duty last night?”

  George’s smooth gaze connected with mine, “I was, but I was on a break when your patient went into cardiac arrest. If you need to speak to the nurse on duty, that would be Jane Murphy.”

  “He… he went into cardiac arrest?” Surely I would have been told…

  I was actually pretty good at knowing who was responsible for my patient’s care when I wasn’t here, but maybe hitting my head had done more damage than I thought. Maybe I really had lost time. Maybe I had really forgotten that Henry had died. Maybe that was why I’d come here in the first place. If that was the case, then I’d lost more memory since I’d fainted. Panic surged like an acid bile-tsunami, burning my throat. I swallowed it back down through sheer will.

  “Yes. Normally doctors are notified about the death of their patients,” George said.

  We’d reached the service elevator before I knew I’d even walked over to it. I stepped back so that I couldn’t fall head-over-heels in those liquid brown eyes of his that were looking at me like I’d lost my mind. Which, I was coming to suspect, wasn’t far from the truth. I’d collected more than just one nightly dream that included me, George, a deserted island, no clothing and a hammock that was the perfect fit for the both of us.

  “Yes. Yes, they would have,” I mumbled. Surely someone would have informed me. The hospital needed the doctors signature to note time of death. I would have been called. I just couldn’t remember it. That was all. My memory would come back when my brain stopped swelling from the fall. I just had to get through it, that’s all. And forget about insane detectives.

  I couldn’t stop glancing at my object of insanity. Detective-Man still frowned, but now he studied George, his brain powering behind soulful green eyes. Thankfully the elevator door slid open and I slipped onto the rail at the back of the car. I was fast losing the ability to stand on my two shaking legs. “Thank you, George. I’m… just going to check my notes.”. The cool metal as the doors slid shut.

  Then I forgot to breathe when Elliot walked right through the doors after me. He didn’t just dash through at the last second before they shut. He walked through the metal. My body flushed with a fiery heat while my insides went ice-cold. He really was my imagination…or possibly something much worse. Something I never wanted to see or hear or know anything about.

  I couldn’t—wouldn’t—entertain that notion at all. I cringed in a corner of the lift,
hoping he wouldn’t attack me, but if he was what I thought he was, then he couldn’t actually do a damn thing to me.

  Even knowing that, I perspired from pores I never knew I had. I caved against the corner, fighting to stay upright, fighting quickly disappearing consciousness. My vision had already narrowed to a pinprick. Oxygen! I needed oxygen! I gasped in a big lungful of air. When the doors opened, I dashed past him. I stumbled through a crowd of people, not waiting to see if I’d pushed anyone over, and scampered down the people-filled corridor and into the safety of my office.

  I grabbed the phone from the desktop and cringed beneath my desk. I dropped the handset and it took me a further two minutes for my hands to stop shaking enough to dial Laura’s number.

  “Come and get me. Now.”

  I ignored Elliot, who had followed me all the way into my office, even though he was now crouching over me with a concerned expression on his face. He was a figment of my imagination and he was concerned about me. A wild giggle nearly erupted from my mouth and I stifled it before it had a chance to come out.