Seared [Pain & Love 1] (BookStrand Publishing Romance)

by Ashlei D. Hawley

  She heard the knocking once the water’s flow had ceased. There was a moment of fear, which she immediately quashed. She was not going to be paranoid about everything now.

  She looked a mess, and did wonder momentarily who would be at her door after sunset. Prepared wasn’t paranoid, she reasoned as she grabbed one of the wickedly sharp butcher knives from the mount. The blade was nearly as long as her forearm, which she’d always found a little unnecessary.

  Reyna’s door didn’t have a peephole and looking out her front window wouldn’t allow her to see the porch.

  “Hello,” she called out before she opened the door. She admitted to herself, perhaps she was a bit on the paranoid side.

  “Hello, Ms. Sommer,” a pleasant voice raised in volume to pass through the door began. “Could I have a moment of your time to speak with you?”

  “Who are you?” Reyna asked. Her hand was on the doorknob, but she’d yet to unlock it.

  “My name’s Jerry,” the man answered. His voice was still affable and friendly. “I’m a reporter investigating some strange happenings around your area. Your neighbor told me you run at night and may have seen something to interest me.”

  Her neighbor knew more about her than she realized, Reyna acknowledged grudgingly. She didn’t like that.

  “I don’t think I have anything that would interest you,” Reyna told the man. She heard him laugh.

  “It’s possible things you think are of little consequence would be of great interest to me, miss. I could come back at a later time, but it’s only a few quick questions.”

  Reyna fingered the sharp knife as she debated. Telling herself she was being ridiculous, Reyna still couldn’t bring herself to open the door.

  “I think I’ll pass,” Reyna said loudly so Jerry could hear her. “You have a good night.”

  “Ah, that’s too bad,” Reyna heard him say before blinding pain took over her entire body.

  She’d never been hit with a taser, but she’d bet the pain came close. She tried to take a step backward. She wanted to run to her car, but her body betrayed her and moved forward instead. She hit the door with surprising force and cried out. She wanted to release the knife, but her fingers were locked around it. When her arm twitched, she saw a gash open on her right thigh that gushed blood onto her pale carpet. The pain of the injury didn’t touch the currents of fire rippling through her veins and over every inch of skin.

  Reyna fell and had enough of her mind left to thank God that she didn’t skewer herself. She was twitching on the ground, moaning in pain when her door burst inward and the group that had been on her neighbor’s porch entered, minus the woman with flaming red hair.

  The man who might have been Jerry smiled down at Reyna as four others entered her home behind him. Though they were all dressed casually and emanated no aura of malevolence, something that could not be pinpointed was incredibly wrong about each of them in turn. The group was not lacking in attractiveness, but the sense of wrongness could almost be directly attributed to their good looks. One man had eyes of such clear blue they looked like the glass eyes of a doll. Each of them had hair that looked as though it had been professionally styled only moments before. Not a single strand was out of place between the five of them. Their clothes were immaculately pressed and without personality. They each dressed like the other, varying their clothing only in the color of their collared shirts or the style of tie they chose to wear. Altogether, the group that could at a glance blend into any normal population up close became a collection of soulless stares and uncanny similarities. They were walking wax men, and the look of them terrified Reyna as much as her thoughts when she looked at the leader.

  The one she decided was probably Jerry was holding the strange device she’d pointed out to Tyler earlier in the day. His brown eyes, which were dull and flat as old copper, were devoid of the smile that graced his lips. Reyna’s heart sank as she realized Tyler had been right about them. They were more than happy to have her, even without Tyler.

  “Dan, get her in the backseat then you take her car.”

  The man who’d been addressed said, “What about the male? He didn’t come back with her.”

  Jerry smiled again as Reyna neared the oblivion of unconsciousness. Reyna found she really didn’t like that smug smile.

  “He didn’t, but he won’t leave without her, either.”

  With that ominous prediction ringing in her mind, Reyna slipped away into darkness.

  Chapter Six

  Tyler was comfortably warm in a hotel room, watching the rain that had recently erupted from the clouds in a hellish tempest. It lashed his window, matching his mood with its violence and strength. He didn’t know if the weather was directly affected by how he was feeling, but he felt darkly entwined with the storm’s fury.

  The memories he’d brought with him from home were vanishing from his mind and he clung to them desperately. With Reyna rejecting him, the memories of the lives he’d loved her through at a distance were truly all he had left of her.

  Tyler had never cried through the centuries alive alone on his home world, yet now he could not stop the tears. Always he’d had hope. Now he felt he’d expended what he’d always known was a limited supply.

  She didn’t want him. Tyler hadn’t had the capacity to fathom the idea that Reyna wouldn’t want him.

  He’d gotten whiskey to drink, thinking the human habit of numbing the pain would be an effective route to pursue. He’d reconsidered after the first sip and the rest of the bottle remained untouched. He didn’t want to mask or forget. He just wanted his mate.

  Dropping his head down into his open hands, Tyler fought the tears and simply ended up with more. Human life was miserable.

  Tyler began to feel a pain apart from his own emotional anguish. It was an ache he immediately associated with Reyna. His head snapped up as the ache became a harsh, flaming agony that screamed over his skin. Reyna wasn’t just sharing his emotional trouble, he knew. She was actually in danger.

  On his feet in an instant, Tyler grabbed the small, unpacked duffel bag he’d filled with clothes and necessities and rushed out of his rented room. He’d paid up until the next day, but he didn’t care about the wasted money. He had enough and knew he could make more.

  “Excuse me,” he said respectfully as he approached a fair-haired woman just getting out of her car. Her wide blue eyes looked him over with what he felt was an exceptionally accurate scrutiny.

  “Can I help you?” she asked slowly.

  “A friend of mine needs help,” Tyler answered. “If you drive me to her, I will give you one thousand dollars.”

  The woman squinted at him, wondering if he was crazy or joking.

  “She is very dear to me,” Tyler insisted. “If one thousand is not enough, one stop at an ATM and I can get you more.”

  The woman hesitated but very briefly. She reopened her door and gestured for Tyler to take the passenger seat.

  “What’s your name?” she asked before she restarted her car.

  “Tyler,” he answered and directed her to turn right out of the parking lot.

  “Well, Tyler, I’m Mallory,” the woman told him. “Why don’t you tell me about your friend?”

  “Her name is Reyna,” Tyler began after giving Mallory brief driving directions. “She is a hard worker. She loves to run. She lives alone in a house near the woods. She is a wonderful cook and is fantastically beautiful.” He hesitated before he finished. “She was a devoted and loving mother.”

  “Was?” Mallory asked as she focused on driving through the heavy storm.

  Tyler’s tone was heavy with sorrow when he said, “She lost her infant daughter two years back.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” Mallory responded. Not wanting to pry, she tried to temper her curiosity. Somehow, the question managed to work its way out, anyway. “Was she yours?”

  Tyler seemed to flinch at the inquiry, but he answered, “Not technically. But I loved her like she was.”


  Mallory felt incredibly sympathetic to Tyler. He obviously still felt a great amount of pain from the girl’s loss.

  “Here we are,” Mallory announced as they pulled into Reyna’s driveway.

  Tyler knew something was wrong and tumbled out of the car almost before Mallory had put it into park. He raced to Reyna’s front door, intending to pound on it until she let him in, personal feelings and distaste be damned.

  As soon as his fist touched the door, it swung open. Tyler saw it had already been broken down by someone else. There was blood on the floor directly inside.

  Mallory left her vehicle running and approached Tyler. It was happening as it frequently did—she showed up in a random location and boom, someone needed her help. As per usual, the individual was unique, as she was unique. The closer she got to the house, the more she could glimpse about what had transpired. Excluding the compulsions to drive to random hotels, motels, restaurants, and morgues, Mallory needed proximity for her powers to activate.

  She knew they needed to act immediately if she was going to be able to follow Reyna’s psychic trail. She was unconscious, Mallory knew, but her energy signature was strong.

  Mallory said the only thing she thought might inspire the trembling man kneeling in his mate’s blood to react quickly. “Tyris.”

  She thought he’d been shaking in mental anguish and worry for the woman. When he turned quick as an alley cat and took her by the throat, she realized her psychic talent had betrayed her. He was quaking in fury.

  “Tell me what you know of us or I’ll snap your neck here and now.”

  His grip cut off her words and she clawed at his hand, trying to choke them out. Tyler loosened his fingers enough for Mallory to speak.

  “I’m a psychic,” she got out. “I’m special—like you and Reyna. I know who took her. My family has safe houses all over the city. The Hunters who took her have been increasing their activity lately. I want to help you, Tyris. I’m supposed to help you.”

  “If you’re lying to me, I will kill you with no hesitation,” he warned as he released her and moved to reenter the passenger seat of her car. Mallory rubbed her aching neck and followed him.

  They buckled in and Mallory whipped out of Reyna’s driveway. The breakneck speed she pushed the vehicle to didn’t faze Tyler.

  “Who are these Hunters?” Tyler asked. His voice was steely. Mallory wasn’t sure she wanted to converse with him after he’d nearly strangled her to death, but she found herself answering him, anyway.

  “My parents say in the old days, the city sprang up around the Hunters. Their line is pretty strong here. For some reason, there’s a pretty high level of magical and supernatural people and things around this area.”

  “You mean others like us, others who are unique, they’re drawn here?”

  “Or something like that, yeah,” Mallory agreed. She took a sharp left turn, narrowly missing running a red light.

  “Why don’t you fight back against them?” Tyler pressed. “Or just leave?”

  “Well, the Hunters are hard to find, let alone fight. Seriously, like you think we haven’t tried?”

  She scoffed and turned again. Tyler gripped the side of the door, finally beginning to feel some discomfort about Mallory’s driving.

  “They’re humans who seek out and fanatically kill the magically talented and you speak of them like they’re boogeymen,” Tyler snapped unhappily. “It doesn’t make sense. How do they accomplish this?”

  “Easy,” Mallory replied. “They’re not human.”

  “Come again?” Tyler asked in confusion as Mallory’s speed and his fear of immediate death decreased.

  “My Gran says the line originated with Fallen Angels in the biblical times.” She flushed when Tyler barked out a disbelieving laugh but rushed on with her explanation. They’d be coming upon Reyna and her captors shortly.

  “Make fun all you want, but Gran’s no loon. She says while some angels fell with Lucifer to the pits, others got stuck here. They hope to buy their way back into Heaven by eradicating unnaturalness in the human realm caused by Lucifer. But with fanatics, sometimes the truth gets ‘buried by bullshit’ as my Gran would say.”

  “And by that you mean these Fallen target anyone of magical talent, even if they are naturally occurring and have no dealings with the devil, so to speak.”

  “Right on,” Mallory agreed with a grin. She turned the car into a pharmacy and parked it three spaces away from a black Hummer with tinted windows. Tyler saw Reyna’s car parked in the space beyond the one the Hummer occupied.

  “That’s them,” Mallory informed Tyler with a head tip toward the other vehicle. Tyler didn’t need her to tell him but nodded as he received her information. “Your lady’s wounded pretty badly—they stopped for supplies to patch her up.”

  Tyler remembered all of the blood on the floor and wished a slow, burning death upon all parties involved in the injuring of his mate.

  “There are two in the vehicle guarding her,” Mallory continued. “You have any alien powers that can help us out here, because I can’t very well ‘psychic’ them into letting her go.”

  “I do not,” Tyler admitted in frustration. He wished they’d come with a better plan than what they had.

  Mallory further infuriated him by smiling again. What could she possibly still be grinning about?

  “Don’t worry, sugar,” she told him while patting his leg. “There’s a slew of good reasons we’re able to help as we do.”

  She returned her attention to her phone, as she had several panic-inspiring times while she’d been driving. Tyler could see her typing letters into a text message box.

  “My dad’s a cop,” she explained. “And so is my baby brother. We use the police angle only when we don’t have another option. Anonymous tips have saved the asses of quite a few of the Hunters’ targets.”

  “You’re a genius and a goddess,” Tyler declared empathically. “I could kiss you.”

  Mallory chuckled and then watched in genuine pleasure as her father pulled up in his white-and-cobalt-colored cruiser. On shift and in the area. She’d say luck had been on their side had she not been explicitly aware that luck had had very little to do with it. Her father was as psychic as she was, after all. It was where her talent had come from.

  The Hunters were met by Luke Wright as they exited the store. Their flustered expressions nearly made Mallory giddy.

  Luke was good at his job. A man of small stature and kindly, attractive features, he didn’t go for intimidation as much as lulling people into a state of ease and carelessness. There was no mistaking the steel in the man, though. From his salt-and-pepper close-cropped hair and icy blue eyes to the ever-polished tips of his combat boots, Mallory’s father screamed in more ways than one that he was a figure of authority that should never be taken lightly.

  Mallory and Tyler watched the men interact even as an ambulance pulled in beside Luke’s cruiser. The “anonymous” tip had been that a woman—heavily bleeding and unconscious—had been taken from her home, which had had the front door broken down. It could have been a neighbor or a passerby to report the potential crime. Mallory felt her influence had remained safely undetected by the Fallen.

  Luke ordered the Hummer’s doors opened and instead of fighting, the Hunters relented. Reyna was transferred to the ambulance and Mallory and Tyler watched as the Hunters hastily piled into the vehicle and left. Reyna wasn’t their main target anyway, and at least they knew where she would be at.

  “Why did he let them go?” Tyler demanded to know in an outraged tone.

  “Nothing to hold them on, most likely,” Mallory commented nonchalantly as she made sure Reyna made it safely into the ambulance and the Hunters drove off in the opposite direction. “Plus, the Hunters have this innate ability to get out of legal trouble. Once again, kind of insulting for you to think we haven’t tried…They’d have alibis perfectly in place. They’re able to make themselves into good Samaritans instead of abductors. My dad pl
ays along—most officers confronted with a Hunter walk away with no memory of the encounter. Dad at least gets the targets out before sending them on their way.”

  Mallory sounded increasingly more offended as she spoke and she flung the car into gear almost violently. They would head the long way toward the hospital, taking a roundabout in case watching eyes were on the ambulance.

  Tyler wanted to apologize to Mallory for the implied offense. She glared out at the road instead of looking at him as he spoke.

  “I didn’t mean to say you are incompetent,” he said gently. “Truly, I thank you. Without you, I would have lost her.”

  Mollified, Mallory tipped another smile Tyler’s way. She was full of them, it seemed, and he didn’t mind this one.

  “Then I think you at least owe me dinner,” she teased. “We’ll hit something greasy and unhealthy to celebrate while they’re admitting your lady.”

  “You are a strange one,” Tyler told Mallory with a laugh in his voice.

  “Oh, boy, you don’t know the half of it!” she responded with a chuckle. Happily, they drove on.

  Chapter Seven

  When Reyna awakened, she was surprised to find herself in a dimly lit, unfamiliar room. She was alone but for the soft hum of machines and voices from some external corridor she couldn’t distinguish as familiar or foreign to her. She sat still, listening to the world that was at the moment alien and potentially dangerous to her.

  She remembered being taken, she thought to herself, but she saw nothing of her captors. She remembered being injured and pulled the single, white hospital blanket from her lower body to reveal a heavily bandaged right thigh. Yellow stains on her skin indicated the area had been treated with iodine and the scratchy, burning pain that was beginning to seep through whatever numbing agent she’d been given was indicative of stitches. She’d had them before in her opposite foot. They were a bitch.