I would laugh, only I wanted to cry.
What I’d dreamed was too frightening to be true.
The Book of Powers might hold the answers for me, only I hadn’t wanted to read any more of it. Didn’t want to know more.
Part of me wished Luc’s command to forget had taken. Then I would be free of it.
Or not.
I couldn’t forget about Shade.
The book called out to me, made my stomach churn. I refused to answer its call, but certainty filled me—the book wasn’t done with me yet.
…
Luc reluctantly returned to work, his thoughts torn between Skye and Jez’s death.
He had other things to worry about, too, like Andreas screwing up earlier, so that someone who hadn’t been invited had waltzed right in. Uninvited and armed. They didn’t need that kind of trouble here, and he needed his father to know about the incident. Heading for the executive offices to tell Pop, he came face-to-face with Nik. Luc could tell Nik was in a dark mood from his expression. He’d never been able to hide his resentment of his younger half-brother.
“You made a fucking big mistake letting that guy leave,” Nik said. “You’ll be lucky if Pop lets you back on The Ark. If it were up to me—”
”But it isn’t up to you.” Luc felt his own temper sizzle but leashed it. “I don’t answer to you.”
“You should, you little fraud. You’re nothing. A pretender. You can’t decide what you want to be when you grow up. Get off the fence and make up your mind.”
Another reminder that he hadn’t chosen between human and Kindred. It was getting more and more difficult to walk the line in between.
“Don’t you ever get tired of this tension between us?” Luc asked, wishing they could go back to a time decades ago when they’d been friends. A time when Nik had been his hero. “Maybe it’s because you never experienced the kind of fight that makes you long for a peaceful life.”
“Right, your army stint in Iraq makes you more of a man than me.”
Luc clenched his jaw. “I never said that.”
“Did you get off on the blood and guts spilled around you, the shredded body parts?” Nik darted his tongue over his lower lip.
Now Luc’s stomach clenched and his pulse began to tick-tick-tick and he felt the thrum along his flesh again, a signal he chose to ignore. He wouldn’t shift out of anger.
“How many men did you kill? How many humans like your mother?”
“Go back to hell where you belong!” Luc swung an open hand toward Nik.
They didn’t touch, but Nik went flying backward, exactly as he had when on Luc’s tenth birthday, he’d called Luc a bastard half breed, and with a furious wave of his meaty hand, their father had sent thirteen-year-old Nik flying. Nik had slammed into a wall where he’d dislocated his shoulder. Pop then had forbidden Nik to ever—ever!—use those words again in connection with Luc.
And now Luc realized that if he didn’t get away from Nik, he would lose control, the same way he had in Iraq.
But Nik left first, laughing as if he’d accomplished what he’d meant to.
Nik’s ridicule crept up Luc’s spine and threatened to consume him. He closed himself off from the sound and kept going, straight to Pop’s office, arriving even as two members of his security team met him with Andreas in tow.
As they entered, Cezar asked, “What’s going on here?”
Luc cleared his throat. “Andreas left his post the other night and it caused a serious problem.”
“And you’re just bringing this to me now?”
“I’ve been busy.”
His father’s gravelly voice set Luc on edge. He wasn’t about to explain further. He didn’t want Pop to know about Skye Cross, not after what Pop had done to her brother.
“I made a mistake, Mr. Lazare.” Andreas wheedled his pseudo-apology. “I was chatting up a bored-looking customer is all. I figured she would up her wagering.”
A lie, Luc thought, noting the sheen of nervous sweat on the guard’s face. “He let someone get by him with a gun. I don’t think the guy had an invite, either.”
Pop’s visage darkened, and he pierced the security guard with a glare that made him shake.
“It won’t happen again, Mr. Lazare.”
“No, it won’t.” Pop’s voice lowered to little more than a whisper.
“What are you g-going to do?”
“You know the punishment.”
Andreas backed up. “Not my soul. I earned it. You wouldn’t take it back.”
Luc’s gut clenched. He knew what was coming.
Pop advanced on Andreas, held out an open hand, and without touching him, pinned the guard where he stood. Andreas fought the invisible shackles but couldn’t pull himself free.
“No, please,” he begged as the hand closed in on his chest. “I’ll do anything to make up for it. Anything.”
Pop ignored the plea. He pressed his open hand through Andreas’s sternum.
The man’s scream skittered down Luc’s spine.
When his hand was buried inside the man’s flesh, Pop lifted his arm. The guard’s body rose as well, limbs dangling and dancing as if Andreas were a marionette. His body glowed like the dazzling green light created by bioluminescent fireworms found in tropical seas. Andreas leaked green mucus from the wound all over the office floor.
“Return to me the gift I have given you,” Pop ordered.
Sparks shot from the guard’s body and his scream rose to a pitch that hurt Luc’s ears. Even as he hated what his father was doing to the guard, the Kindred part of him responded to the violence with a rush. Luc couldn’t look away.
The glow spread, moved along Pop’s arm, crawled over the security guard’s shoulder and down his body until it encased him, leaving Andreas with a flat, sickly green pallor. Finally, Pop released him. Andreas fell in his own mucus and flopped around the floor like a dying fish. The guards scooped him up by the arms and dragged him away.
Glowing green, Pop approached his sea glass desk and placed his hand flat on the surface. The glow gathered together and zapped down his arm and into the glass surface as if Pop were pouring the soul into a container.
Luc’s heart pounded as he watched in fascination. The glow zigged and zagged inside the glass and then finally settled down in one spot. A multitude of tiny green lights blinked as if recognizing the new occupant.
Who knew how many souls the desk vault contained?
Pop sat behind the desk and stared at Luc hard for a moment. Taking a big breath, he scraped a hand through his hair, still black but for the streaks of silver at the temples. As if Luc had just walked into the room, he said, “I haven’t seen you since your excursion to the cemetery. Did it help?”
So Pop knew about the cemetery, though whether from an informant or from his own version of a crystal ball, Luc wasn’t sure. “The man’s dead, Pop. Nothing’ll bring him back. He left people behind who loved him.”
That Shade Cross had somehow come back wasn’t something he wanted to discuss with his father. At least not yet.
“He got mixed up in our business. But in the end, he was a hero, wasn’t he? That should make his people proud.”
“Pride doesn’t make up for his absence.”
Pop frowned and grew quiet. Luc tried to read the old man, but he’d never been able to, and he couldn’t now. He wanted to shout at him that he owed the Crosses, that they both did, that he would never rest until the debt was paid. If there was guilt to be dished out, Pop deserved the biggest serving, and he knew it.
It was his business that had set the tragedy in motion. His personal choices.
Luc had always been torn between the opposite worlds of his parents—his mother’s with its neat rules to guard humanity, his father’s with his disregard for anything that didn’t suit his immortal purposes. He loved both sides of his family, and he’d been drawn to the Kindred world despite himself, but this was one of those times he yearned for a kind of justice his father didn’
t seem to understand. He wanted Pop to make things right for once in his life. Shade Cross had died saving Luc’s mother, the woman Pop claimed was the love of his life.
It was obvious the Crosses weren’t on his father’s mind when he said, “I promise you, whoever tried to kill your mother will pay with his life.”
So in the meantime, it would be up to him to make sure that nothing happened to Skye.
Chapter Twelve
“What in the world are you doing here?” my best friend and business partner demanded when I entered Petopia halfway through the next morning.
Phoebe looked particularly cheery today, her frilly magenta top matching her newly streaked hair. Bangles from her wrists halfway to her elbows clanged. By comparison, I was decked out in straight-legged jeans, and the only ornament I wore—the sparkling sea glass pendant—was tucked out of sight beneath a navy T-shirt.
Leaving the counter, Phoebe threw her arms around me. “You shouldn’t be trying to work yet.”
I hugged her back and said, “I need to keep myself busy.”
Otherwise all I would do was think. About Luc. About Shade still being here. About Luc. About The Ark—both the casino boat and the ark in my dream. About Luc. About The Book of Powers. About Luc.
Luc…Luc…Luc…
Enough already.
Not knowing the truth about someone I was so attracted to was more frightening than facing those predators outside the fight arena had been. For them to have obeyed his command made him more dangerous than any wild animal.
“Hey, are you okay?” Phoebe asked.
“Jeez, sorry. I phased out for a minute.”
“No worries. I understand. Are you sure you want to be here?”
“I needed to get out and do something that would make me feel better,” I told Phoebe. “The adopts could use a little snuggling.”
“Yeah, they already know you’re here.”
I glanced to the back of the store where animals yawned and stretched and paced in their cages. I smiled. Not knowing how much time I had with him, I’d hated to leave Shade, but coming to the store, at least for a little while, had been the right decision. Being with animals that need to feel loved always lifted my spirits.
Meows and whines greeted me as I entered the back room. As a member of the board of directors of the Animal Rescue League, I’d volunteered our store as an off-site adoption center. I stopped to give each cat or dog some TLC. The pet supply store fed my bank account, but it was the animals I helped that fed my soul.
Even so, my thoughts wandered back to Shade and how impossible it seemed that he could still be here. I wondered if he felt powerless stuck in his apartment with only Boomer for company. I’d looked for him to tell him I was coming here, but he hadn’t shown himself. Had he been angry with me? Or had he simply gone somewhere else? What if he didn’t come back? Of course he would. He was here for a reason.
If only I could figure it all out.
If only I knew what he’d wanted with Luc’s mother the night he’d died.
Asking her myself would be a start.
Getting on the computer in my office, I did a search for Elizabeth Reyes’s phone number. I found a few possibilities in the Chicago area. All but one of the numbers I called answered, but none of the people I reached had been shot. I wrote down that last number and address and stuck the note in my pocket.
“Hi, guys, sorry,” I told the animals, all of which were complaining at my lack of attention. “You want some chow, don’t you?”
I opened cans and filled their bowls and passed them out.
We generally housed about half a dozen homeless cats and two or three dogs. Right now, we also had a rabbit, an Easter reject. As happened every year, some parent caved in to a kid’s begging and bought a bunny. The day before Shade had died, one of the coppers had brought Cotton Tail to the cop shop to give away, and my brother had taken the poor thing and brought it to me.
“Hey, there, how are you doing?”
I picked up the rabbit and immediately its heart began pounding so hard, I feared it would have a heart attack. It jerked in my arms, and I rode on its terror.
Caged…a large hand reaching in…grabbing another rabbit and tearing it from the enclosure…the rising frenzy of yelps…a fast glimpse of the rabbit being thrown before a weird-looking dog…
My own heart was pounding now, and bile rose in my throat, but I swallowed hard and reined in my emotions so I wouldn’t frighten the poor rabbit. I gently stroked its back. “It’s all right, no one’s going to hurt you here,” I promised.
I lay my forehead against its furry ears and tuned in, hoping to calm it with soft thoughts and comforting whispers. Eventually, the rabbit stopped trying to leap from my arms. Its heartbeat slowed.
I couldn’t say the same for mine. What I’d seen had been totally unexpected. This had been no Easter bunny but a rabbit that had been owned by people who trained dogs. Wild dogs like the one that had shown me the animal habitat on the casino boat. Undoubtedly, Cotton Tail’s companion had been used as bait. And my brother may have lied about another copper bringing the poor guy in to give away. Shade had probably saved the rabbit himself.
I went over all I had learned, began putting together the big picture.
Shade must have thought he was going after a normal dogfighting ring to start, before he’d become aware that the fights had involved other kinds of predators. While a federal crime, dogfights were the purview of the Animal Crimes Unit that operated under organized crime, and Shade had been a homicide detective.
So he must have followed a trail left by a murder investigation straight to the animal fights. The murder investigation that Ethan had mentioned when I’d gone to see him. But why hadn’t Shade told Ethan anything he’d learned that linked those deaths to the fights and ultimately to the casino?
Undoubtedly he’d run into the very same things I had on that casino boat, including one Nuala Lazare whose thoughts I’d been able to read. Shade’s gift. He must have been able to read her thoughts and those of the employees. Had he, too, imagined he could hear the thoughts from animals in the habitat?
Last night’s dream whipped into me, making me think things that couldn’t be true. Predators both animal and human. Impossible.
I gave each of the animals in the shop a bit of attention, then got to work on inventory, wheeling boxes of supplies from the storeroom and restocking shelves while Phoebe waited on customers and worked on accounts using her laptop. We barely stopped for lunch. I went next door and got sandwiches and sodas and we ate in the store. Then back to work, my head still spinning with things that had nothing to do with Petopia. I forced myself to keep working, to focus on normal, daily activities. But my thoughts kept creeping back to how far from normal my life had become.
My mood altered. My mind spinning with questions, I was suddenly anxious to leave so that I could try to find some answers. And I wanted to make sure that Shade was still around. I had to be sure I hadn’t imagined everything. That I hadn’t imagined him.
I made it almost to the end of the workday before I decided to call it quits.
“I think I’m going to book out of here a little early.”
Phoebe put her arms around me for a big hug. “I knew it was too soon.”
“Hey, I almost got through the day.” Unable to tell her what had gotten into me, I shrugged and smiled. “I had to give it a try.”
“You always have something to prove. Now don’t rush back. I’ll get the kids to work extra hours,” she said, referring to our part-time high school employees. “They’ve asked me about it anyway. Take whatever time you need.”
Part of me wanted to tell my best friend everything. She knew I had a special connection to animals, and that Shade and I could read each other, but she didn’t know how deep those abilities went. It wasn’t something I talked about. It made me different. Plus I was afraid she wouldn’t believe me. The last thing in the world I wanted was to have Phoebe look at me with do
ubt clouding her expression. I definitely couldn’t tell her about Shade’s ghost.
Anxious to see him, I power walked home.
Petopia was in Lakeview, the high-end part of the northside neighborhood, about a mile west of Lake Michigan. I tried to make the five-minute walk home stress-free. Tried to get my mind off murder and animal fights and terrified rabbits and be at peace with the sun shining down on me. I cut off busy Lincoln Avenue to a side street where narrow city lots held some single-family homes but mostly two- and three-flats. Over the last dozen years, the neighborhood had seriously gentrified. Some of the beautifully landscaped yards were maintained by a service. Two men with big lawnmowers and uniform shirts worked across the street from each other even as I passed by. The smell of cut grass filled the air.
Personally, I enjoyed tending to my own garden. Gardening could be healing, yet it wouldn’t make me forget all that was pushing at me to be resolved.
But how to find the truth?
Luc…Luc…Luc…
A flash of my experience with him the night before when walking the dog shot a shiver through me despite the warmth of the day. I didn’t want to go there again. And I did, more than anything. Luc—at least to me—was the equivalent of human catnip. He could be seductive and irresistible, and being near him made me long to step outside my usual self.
He could know more than he was saying about Shade’s murder. I had to keep that in mind, not let Luc affect me again.
As if I’d conjured Luc by thinking of him, I felt a familiar sensation along the pathways of my nerves. I grew aware, but when I stopped in front of my two-flat and looked around, I saw nothing on the parkway.
Even so, my body began to tingle with need, and it took everything I had to ignore the seductive sensation. Luc had to be here somewhere. Rather than give him the advantage by waiting for him to show himself, I changed direction and headed down the gangway sidewalk to the backyard where we could talk in private.
No footsteps behind me.
No sense of his presence.
Damn. Had I blown it? Or had I simply imagined feeling him?
When I opened the back gate, Luc was already there waiting for me. Standing near the bench under the shade of the crabapple tree, he was gazing around, taking in his surroundings. Heart-stoppingly attractive in a bronze shirt with a white tee beneath, he looked at home amid my hydrangeas and roses and the perennials that had replaced the grass. This was my special place where I came when I needed to center myself, and Luc seemed comfortable here, as if he fit right into the landscape.
Animal Instincts (Entangled Ignite) Page 8
