by Kita Bell
“I did not anticipate guests,” the Resh said, and Eva heard the fury in his voice, the faint whiplash of angry pride. “I’m afraid we have no place for you to stay.”
“I’m sure we will find something,” Brand said mildly. “Eva can put us up. Doubtless she and her sister have space at their home.”
The Resh’s displeasure seeped through the air. “They don’t.”
There was a long silence. Eva stared at her fingers. Her shoes. The brass feet on the Resh’s desk.
Then the Resh cleared his throat. “What is the nature of your visit? This is Turner land. Not Stronghold territory. We want nothing from you, and have nothing for you.”
“We are always looking for allies.”
An unamused laugh. “I know what Stronghold is. Who Stronghold is. But this isn’t Europe. This is my land, and these are my people, and you can’t have either. Others might play your games, but I won’t. I won’t play your servant and I won’t pay your tithe. I won’t dance,” there was a sneer in the Resh’s voice, “to a Kade tune.”
“We don’t need servants.” There was cold iron in Brand’s response. “And we don’t ask for tithe.”
“No? Then what is she?” Eva’s head jerked; she felt more than saw the Resh gesture at her. “Your scent covers her. At least you had the good sense to return what you stole.”
Brand growled, and Eva glanced at him from the corner of her eye. His eyes flickered gold, his head was thrown back. He was pure strength, and Eva suddenly wished she could pull some of that strength into herself. She needed it. She desperately needed it. And she wondered, abruptly, if – perhaps if she apologized to Brand – perhaps he would be willing to overlook the other night enough to wait before he left. If he waited, she and Rainey could leave with him. She wouldn’t ask him to take them to Stronghold, but it would give her and Rainey a head start, a chance to leave and start a new life.
Because Eva had the sudden, horrible feeling of what her punishment would be.
“I am not returning Eva to you,” Brand snarled, and Eva felt an odd fondness in her heart at the way he was angry for her. At the way the dark hair fell over his forehead. “She wanted to come back. And we did not steal Eva. She was kidnapped.” Eva wanted to reach out, to stroke that dark hair on his forehead. To run her lips over his throat.
Yes, she would ask Brand to wait. He might be angry, but he would do that much for her.
“She is a runaway,” the Resh’s voice was icy, breaking into Eva’s thoughts. “Just like her mother was. Just like her sister is.”
Mother. Sister. Rainey? Rainey – a runaway?
Eva’s head flashed up and she stared at the Resh. Thomas Turner’s pale eyes glittered, a mixture of fury, warped pride and personal satisfaction. A tyrant, Eva distantly remembered her mother calling him. Our personal tyrant. Back when her mother had still bothered to call Thomas Turner anything. Back before she died.
“Rainey’s not a runaway,” Eva snapped. “She’s never done anything wrong. She always listens to you. She listens to everyone. You have no reason to punish her.”
He sister was too afraid to disobey.
The Resh gave Eva a coldly satisfied smile, as if he knew something she didn’t. As if he were right, and she was wrong. Eva’s stomach turned over in a tight, dark premonition. Don’t say it, she prayed, don’t say it.
“Reason to punish her? It’s not a matter of punishing your sister, it’s a matter of finding your sister. Rainey,” Thomas Turner sneered, cruel anger filling his gaze, “ran away two weeks ago.”
“No.” Never. Rainey wouldn’t leave. “Not without me.”
Rainey just…wouldn’t.
Eva bolted from the room.
Brand rose, holding onto his temper by a bare thread. “We will stay the night. I want no interference,” he informed the Turner Resh as he turned toward the door. He needed to go after Eva. Now.
She needed him. She might hate him, she might be furious with him, but she needed him.
Her need pulsed through his blood, his soul.
“My most humble apologies. You’ll have to leave. There is no room,” the Turner Resh said, oily satisfaction in his voice, and Brand felt his shoulders tense as his temper surged. He wanted to kill the bastard for the way he treated Eva. Worse, he wanted to kill the bastard for the way Eva had accepted that treatment, as if she expected it. He counted to ten then fixed his gaze on Thomas Turner. He was vaguely aware of Eva’s cousin, Justin Turner, sitting quietly and circumspectly in the far corner.
The Turner Resh paled.
“We will stay the night,” Brand repeated, voice little more than a guttural snarl. His body was tense, ready to leap after Eva before she fled too far – or ready to leap on Thomas Turner and rip his throat out. “There will be no interference from you or your people.”
“This is my land. My people. You have no right.” The male’s words were reedy, thin. Brand allowed his lip to curl, showing his contempt for the other’s weakness, then released his claws and slowly – deliberately – shredded them down the wood doorframe beneath his right hand.
The oak splintered, fracturing away, as Brand left a thick line of grooves behind.
“I will kill you,” Brand said, and it was a promise. But he knew he was understood, because the Turner Resh flinched, his eyes locked on the grooves. “If I ever see you again, I will kill you. And if you interfere, I will take my time to make you wish you were dead.” Brand let Eva’s Resh see the truth of that, enough that he smelled the other man’s fear, then bared his teeth and left.
Kevin was at the outer door. “That way,” he said, pointing west through the winter-sparse trees, avoiding Brand’s gaze. Brand nodded. He wasn’t a Tracker, but he would know Eva’s scent anywhere. “She Changed. Joshua followed to make sure she stayed safe.”
“Pull back into the trees and watch this house. I don’t trust them.”
Kevin nodded, then Brand moved off following Eva’s trail through the brush.
She smelled of spring rain, of summer mornings. Of freedom – and fear. She smelled like his amati, and everything he had ever wanted in a woman.
Not that she didn’t have her flaws.
Though, he supposed, he had plenty of his own.
It’s just sex. Nothing more, her voice said, adamant in his memory, and Brand growled softly, baring his teeth against the pain as he ducked beneath a branch, stepping carefully through the thick trees that surrounded her Gens home.
He refused to believe that. He couldn’t believe that. It could never be “just sex” with Eva. No matter how much Eva insisted, or how much Eva ran from him, Brand knew it was more. It had to be more.
God, he hoped she felt that.
She has to. Brand bared his teeth and quietly followed Eva’s trail deeper into the trees. It wasn’t long before he came to a clearing, a small house, and a silver-coated Kaspian tigress crouching at the end of an overgrown brick sidewalk beneath the trees. There was a vacant look to the house; Brand didn’t need the Turner Resh to tell him that it was abandoned. Eva’s muscles were tense, her eyes wild. Brand glanced up, caught Joshua’s shadows across the clearing and gestured his cousin away.
“Eva.” Brand approached her quietly. She was dangerous in this form. Brand could take her, but he didn’t want to hurt her. Never that.
Eva’s beautiful eyes found his, then returned to the tiny two-story house. Brand kept his movements easy. When he finally stood beside her, she growled softly, but he wrapped his hand over the base of her neck, above her shoulders, and clamped into that silky fur. Her fur was dark silver – rich with darker silver-gray stripes. He allowed the softness of it to play between his fingers, enjoying the sensation, the spring rain scent. “I haven’t seen you in this form since Vermont.”
She shook her head, as if trying to shake his words away. Her eyes were locked to the house, her muscles taut beneath his hands; her ears were flat, her teeth bared. Brand kneaded his hand up her neck, feeling the muscles reluctantl
y relax beneath his fingers. He moved in front of Eva, breaking her view of the house, and crouched.
“This is where you live?”
Eva’s eyes snapped to his. They were full of gold, laced with red. Anguish. Brand’s heart compressed. Eva growled softly as he smoothed his hands over her face. His amati was fucking beautiful.
And in pain.
“Eva,” he forced his voice to be gentle as he held her head, tracing his thumbs over her markings, “I can’t help you if I can’t talk to you. You need to Change.”
She snarled refusal.
“Eva,” Brand put a note of command in his voice, sliding his hands back to grip the skin at her nape, “your Resh can’t help you find Rainey. I can. I need you to Change. Now.”
Her teeth snapped in his face, her tail lashed. Eva pulled back, and Brand made his fingers release her. “Evita.” She took a step back, looking as if she were about to run…then sighed. Her body slumped, as if suddenly, incredibly weary.
She Changed.
Brand watched the familiar red-black mist fill the air before him, flowing out in thick tendrils to slowly encompass Eva’s form in a spiral…then the tendrils spread further, until there really was a mist obscuring her from sight. One coil reached to stroke Brand’s cheek and he smiled, raising his fingers to touch it. It twined there, playful as Eva, before the mist began to pull in again.
It lightened, taking on errant glints of color: the shimmer of Eva’s flesh, sparks of liquid silver. Pale soft skin, dark silky hair, wild Kaspian gold – the mist solidified as it assumed Eva’s shape. Brand waited patiently as the remainder of the red-black haze flowed back into her body through her mouth, her nose, her ears, her eyes, between her legs – then Eva gasped, a sharp reflexive gasp that was loud in the clearing, as she sucked the rest of that red-black mist – the rest of her Kaspian essence, her Kaspian soul – back into her body. There was that glow to her face, that soft joy a Kaspian always felt in those moments after changing, and Brand silently wished that this moment could last for her.
It didn’t.
Eva’s eyes flashed open. They were silver. The silver transformed to gold, then flecked red.
She gave a strangled, gasping sob, her beautiful face crumbling, as she threw herself forward, buried herself into Brand’s arms as if she could burrow into his chest. His heart. She already has. Brand tightened his arms around her, kissing the top of her head.
Eva made a choking sound. “I thought maybe he was lying. That if I came to the house, Rainey would be here – but she’s not. I can’t scent her at all. Everything smells old, everything smells dusty. It’s empty inside Brand, it’s all empty.”
She began to cry in earnest.
Eva stepped across the foyer to the short hall, her arms crossed over her still-naked breasts, and glanced back over her shoulder, oddly conscious of Brand’s eyes on her body as he followed her.
The rough sensation of the tears still caught in her throat and behind her eyes. “The living room is to the right,” she said hoarsely. “I need to get some clothes.”
Brand just nodded, his eyes running over her body, filled with desire and that odd possessiveness, and Eva felt her own attraction prickle across her skin. Heat melted between her thighs as hunger pulsed inside, and Brand’s gaze turned gold as his nostrils flared. He took a step forward.
Pure undiminished need rose in Eva, and she shook her head, a shaky denial of herself, of her sudden inexplicable arousal. “Be right back,” she whispered, and dashed up the staircase with as much speed as she could muster. The skin of her upper thighs rubbed an aching reminiscence.
Eva darted across the hall, closed the door to her room…then stood listening.
She heard Brand curse softly. His feet moved across the hall to the living room.
Eva’s shoulders slumped and she shuddered. Rainey would call me juvenile. She hadn’t wanted Brand to follow, not really…but it would have been nice. She shivered, trailing her fingers along the bruise on her swollen breast as she dropped her hands away. Her nipples were hard, tender. She was ready. More than ready.
In fact, she had never been so ready. The desire that arced through her body was like a living thing.
She and Brand were over, but she wanted him. She wanted to feel Brand’s body over her, inside her, against her.
Brand acted like he cared. In the way that family cared. Eva’s breath caught, she shook her head, running her palm down the paneling of her door.
“God, I’m so unreasonable,” she muttered. Of course Brand kept secrets. Eva had known that. But she…knew him. Brand wouldn’t use his ability to hurt people. And he might be half-Sakai, but he wasn’t evil like Rohe was. Actually, Brand was…
“Stop that,” Eva snarled softly. Temporary. They had been temporary. So maybe her body had become difficult lately – maybe it didn’t want to listen to reason, but Eva could ignore it. She could.
She would deal.
Eva dug through her dresser to find a long t-shirt and pair of old gray sweatpants. But when she opened her sock drawer, she stared into it for a long minute. Her socks were wrapped in those perfect little rounds Rainey always made. Rainey had done Eva’s laundry, filled her drawers, while Eva was gone.
Eva’s choked as her tears – and fear – resurfaced.
Brand. Brand said he would help. Eva gritted her teeth and spun toward the door. Of course they would find Rainey. Eva had seen Stronghold’s resources. If there was any place that could find her sister, it was Stronghold.
Brand was on the phone when she went downstairs. She glanced into the living room, noted how he sat on the sagging burnt orange couch her mother had bought in the seventies and refused to get rid of. Brand glanced up, raised an eyebrow, then said, “Seth’s on the other line. We need a picture of your sister, Eva.”
Eva nodded as she pulled back from the room again. A picture. Of course. And probably something with Rainey’s scent. Brand had said that his brother was a…a Tracker. Or something like that. The picture would be in her room, the old clothes in Rainey’s.
When she came back downstairs again, the items clutched in her hands, Brand was sitting on the couch, hands clasped around his phone, waiting for her. His face was unaccountably serious. Eva dropped into the wooden chair across from him. It was originally from their kitchen, but Rainey liked to prop her feet on it when they watched TV.
“I should have known something was wrong,” Eva said, a dark, recriminating pain welling up inside. “She didn’t answer her phone, she didn’t respond to her emails. It’s been a month. I thought…I thought she was angry with me. But I never thought she would just leave.” Eva stared down at the picture and the old shirt in her hands. “Do you think she’s trying to find me?”
“It’s not your fault, Eva,” Brand said quietly, and rubbed at the back of his neck. He put the phone on the couch beside him.
“I should have come back sooner.”
“You still would have missed her.”
“My ability should have told me something. Warned me of something. God! It’s so useless…”
“No Warning is a good thing. That means Rainey is alive, Eva. Not in immediate danger. We can – ”
“No. I didn’t get a Warning with my mother. And that’s not what…” Eva clenched her fingers, shook her head. “I meant…I should have found a way to escape Rohe. To get away sooner. I never should have let myself be caught, and then I let three weeks pass…”
“That,” Brand said sharply, pulling away from his study of the room to frown at her, “is not your fault, Eva. That is nothing you could have helped. Nothing you could have done.”
Eva shook her head and didn’t respond, instead extending the photo and the t-shirt to him.
“It’s old,” she explained, gesturing to the photo. “I couldn’t find any better. Rainey had them make extra when they took her senior yearbook picture. She was always,” Eva choked slightly, staring at the photo her sister had given her, “popular in high school.”
Brand took it in his hand and stared for a long moment. But instead of looking at the picture, Eva found herself watching him. His face was so serious, his jaw tight. His expression told her nothing. Eva looked away, clenching her fingers, and wondered what Brand saw when he looked at her sister.
“She looks like you,” Brand said quietly, and Eva heard the tension in his voice. She glanced at Rainey’s picture and shrugged.
“Except for the hair and the height. She’s shorter. I always…” Eva forced her voice not to waver, “…teased her about it.”
Brand gave Eva a quick look, then nodded. He picked up his phone, raised it, and snapped a picture of Rainey’s photo.
“You’re sending that to Seth?”
“Yes. He’ll run a search through the local security cams, police stations, mor…” Brand hesitated, and Eva flinched as he changed his wording, “…through local databases.”
“You think she might be in a morgue? That she might be dead?” Eva realized that she had risen again, and forced herself to sit as Brand’s eyes locked on her.
“It’s not easy to kill a Kaspian, Eva.”
“No. It’s too easy,” she murmured, remembering her uncle and her mother. She looked at the t-shirt in her hands, that she had pulled from Rainey’s hamper. It was full of mud and leaves, as if her sister had worn it through the trees on a stormy day, or perhaps while she Changed. Though if Rainey had Changed in it, it would have been shredded, maybe ruined. Like Eva had ruined her own clothing earlier. Eva forced herself to hand the shirt to Brand.
He didn’t take it, instead moving his hands out of the way. “What?” Eva said, frowning at him.
“I’m assuming,” Brand said dryly, studying the shirt, “that is Rainey’s scent I smell on that shirt?”
“Yes.”
“Kevin’s the only tracker we have with us. He’s good, but he still has problems separating out scents, especially if he doesn’t know someone. Rainey’s scent is on that shirt, but so is yours. And if I take it, mine will be as well,” Brand raised his eyes to give Eva a wry smile. “Khael is the best, but I think we should start with the resources we have at hand.”
