by Holley Trent
But it wasn’t hers.
She pulled it back toward the knuckle, calling, “Claude?” but the ring wouldn’t budge. She should have been able to rock it side to side and get it over her joint as there seemed to be enough of a gap to manage it, but she couldn’t. It was as if there were some teeny, tiny force field keeping it there. Some bit of—
“Goddammit.” She growled and spun on her heel. Magic. She stormed to the bathroom where Claude stood in the dark doorway, arms crossed, casting her a blasé look.
She held her left hand in front of his face, but he didn’t bother looking. Why would he? He’d certainly seen the ring enough before.
“Wanna explain that? I don’t know how you managed to get it on me, but I want to know why I can’t get it off, and what it’s supposed to do.”
He raised his shoulders in the barest shrug. “Maybe it’s just a gift.”
“Bullshit. You don’t give one-night stands gifts like this unless they’re doing you a hell of a lot more favors than what we just did in my bed. Is that why you’ve been stalking me all this time? You wanted to get this ring on me, and I bet you won’t even tell you what it’s meant to do.” She snapped her fingers. “A-ha. That’s right. It’s some incubus thing, right? It’s going to slowly suck my life force away over time while you’re off doing other things. I didn’t know incubi were so concerned with time management.”
He leaned against the door frame.
“Aren’t you going to defend yourself?”
He pursed his lips and shook his head. “Why? It’s so much fun listening to your wild-ass speculations. It really is entertaining. Do go on. What else do you have?” He had the audacity to grin.
She pointed to the front door. “Get out.”
“You don’t want that.”
Truth? She didn’t. She wanted him to stay and play, but he needed to leave the crazy outside on the welcome mat. She had enough ridiculous shenanigans in her life as it was without adding any new ones to the mix.
“Tell me what the deal is with the ring, or I will give you the most annoying static shock I can work up, so help me.”
She rubbed her hands together to punctuate her threat, and literally shocked herself with the result.
Blue sparks leapt from her palms and fizzled in the air for lack of grounding, and she yipped, jumping back.
He laughed and pushed away from the door frame.
“What the hell? You did that, didn’t you?”
“Nope.” He sauntered toward the sleeping area, and she followed, staring at her plain old hands. She’d never felt that sort of power before, even when she used it for self-defense. She could usually put out enough juice to knock a guy out, but never before had she felt it coursing through her, battering against her insides as it were searching for a way out through her hands, skin—anywhere. She had to be good and angry. Right now, she wasn’t angry so much as confused.
She bumped into his rear when he stopped as she was still staring at her palms.
He turned, took her hands in his, and kissed the backs of both.
“It’s your power, chéri. I just gave you a little help calling it.”
“How?”
He let her hands fall down gently and picked up his wadded boxer shorts. “It’s the ring.”
“Explain.”
“It’s …” He stepped into his shorts and gave her patronizing peck on the forehead. “It’s complicated. Suffice it to say I’ve been holding onto it for a very long time, hoping to once again encounter the woman who it was meant for.”
Meant for?
No—once again? “Do what, now?”
She was so distracted by the damned ring, she didn’t notice Claude had stepped away. He was in the living area, and when she joined him, he was extricating her lacy panties from their pile of discarded clothing.
He held them out to her, grinning, and she snatched them. “What do you mean, once again?”
“You want to have this talk with clothes on or off?” His blue gaze tracked down her torso and lingered at the juncture of her thighs. “Maybe off would be better. We could spoon.”
Or maybe fork.
She clapped her hand to her eyes, groaned, and headed to the bed. Suddenly, she’d acquired a one-track mind. She teased her male cousins mercilessly about their perverse infatuation with sex, but maybe she understood why they were that way now.
“I don’t want to spoon,” she said over the half-wall as she stepped into her panties. She pulled open her topmost dresser drawer and plucked out a baggy, oversized Carolina Panthers T-shirt. Very unsexy. If that didn’t deter Claude’s incendiary gazes, nothing would. She bumped the drawer closed and pulled the shirt over her head. “Just tell me what’s going on in the least twisty-turny way possible. No lies, no cheap tricks.”
“You sure you don’t want to cuddle?”
“I’m pretty damn positive.” Positive that she did want to cuddle. She wanted to cuddle the hell out of that incubus. Sounded about right.
“All right, then.” He stepped around the partition, ambled slowly to the bed, and sat on its corner. “The truth is, this isn’t your first time walking the earth. You were reincarnated. Numerous times probably, but I’m only personally familiar with the last one and this one. About a hundred and fifty years ago, we were together.”
Yeah, right. She sucked her teeth. “I believe reincarnation exists, but I don’t believe you would know we were together then. You wouldn’t be able to find me in this life. It’s not an easy thing.”
“Oh, it’s easy enough for me because I’m still on the same life I was born into in 1800. I saw you die.”
That crackling static danced over her hands again. “You’re more than two centuries old?”
He shrugged. “I’m a cambion. I’m more or less immortal.”
“Okay …” Immortal. All right. Sure. Cool. Shit. She balled her hands into fists and crammed them against the bedspread as she sat. “How’d I die, then?”
She didn’t think he was going to answer, he was quiet for so long. Candy Corn nudged her nose between the two of them and bopped her head against his hand.
He rubbed her, sighed, and said, “My father killed you.”
“What?” She asked it before she could even process the words, but on a base level, she knew something wasn’t right.
“Because you’re mine, there are plenty of people who would want to harm you to spite me. I believe someone was here earlier looking for you, but you’re safe now. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Her brain seemed to be running its processes in an extraordinarily slow fashion and it took a few moments for her to break down his outlandish statements.
She swallowed. “Kill me? Kill me why?”
“Because incubi aren’t supposed to fall in love. It means we’re spoiled. Defective. I loved you. So, he took you. And now you have to come with me to a place where no one can touch you.” He took her left hand and squeezed it. “I’m not going to let anyone take you from me again.”
She snatched her hand back. “Game over. No prize. Get out. I’m not going anywhere with you. Take this thing off before you go.” She held the ring under his nose.
He blinked a couple of times and said, “You’re going to have to get over it, chéri.”
“Get over what?”
He blew a quick breath into her face, and suddenly, things went dark.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Gail was going to be spitting mad when she woke up, but that bit of magic he’d tossed at her should keep her out for at least the next eight hours.
She slept, lips parted and slumped against the passenger-side window of his Jeep, barely held upright by her seatbelt, and Candy Corn mewled pitifully in her carrier in the back.
He’d considered leaving the cat at the apartment, thinking perhaps Gail’s sister could tend to the animal the next day, but he knew the familiar wouldn’t fare well without her master. She’d pine away, and probably run off in search of her. If anyt
hing happened to the annoying critter, it’d be all his fault, and Gail already had enough reasons to be pissed at him.
He’d driven the entire distance between Robbins and Clarissa’s house at well over eighty miles per hour, barely slowing for traffic lights. It was late—or early, depending on perspective—and few cars were on the road. Even if he did get pulled over by Highway Patrol, he had the distinct advantage of being able to enchant the hapless officer. He or she would forget why they’d pulled him over in the first place and send him on his way with a warning to drive safe.
Maybe he shouldn’t have been burning rubber, but it was a hard habit to break. He was practically indestructible outside of beheading. No one could survive that. Gail, though—if he crashed, she’d be vulnerable. Witch or not, she was still more or less human.
He slowed, sighing as he rolled up his window. They were close, anyway. Just a couple of sharp turns and a few more country blocks, and they’d arrive at the little village. Mortonville had become its unofficial name.
He chuckled, even thinking of it. Two years ago, Clarissa Morton’s property hadn’t had much more than an old two-bedroom sharecropper’s house, a chicken coop, and a rusting, abandoned trailer back in the trees. Now her little house had a second-floor addition, a gravel road had been constructed from ditch to trees, and numerous new homes had been erected.
One was John’s and Ariel’s, way in the back. A second, about halfway between Clarissa’s and Ariel’s, was Charles’s and Marion’s. A third house back near the woods belonged to Ariel’s and Marion’s parents. Beyond those structures were a few small but tasteful modular homes that belonged to tenants. John’s mother and his two youngest sisters were in one. They’d left a cult only to move into a commune of a different sort.
Tenants. That was what Clarissa called them because it sounded more genteel that what they really were: refugees. There were few places safe for people who offended the likes of Papa. Clarissa’s property was so heavily ensorcelled, thanks to Claude, that they could go there and hide. Leaving, however, was another matter. If they left, they might not make it back. That’s what Claude and his brothers were trying to fix. They were trying to put all the ridiculous politics and infighting on ice, at least as far as the cambions were concerned.
Cambions were stuck between here and there, demons but not demons. For too long, they’d been denied the ability to choose their affiliation. It was Hell or else. “Or else” was a death sentence, and an unfair one.
“Huh. That’s odd.” Approaching the property, Claude’s hackles rose upon spying the bright lights of the main house. It was three a.m. What the hell would Clarissa be doing up so early? Normally, she got up early to cook a good meal for all the bedraggled supernatural types in her charge, but that was generally closer to sunrise.
One or two lights wouldn’t have been so concerning, but the entire downstairs? It looked like Charles’s lights down the path were on, too, as well as John’s porch light.
Claude turned into the driveway and pulled right behind Clarissa’s pick-up truck. He killed his Jeep’s ignition and hopped down onto the dewy grass, pausing to filter out the sound of chirping crickets to hone in on the noise through the house’s open windows. The sound was muffled, through that side window, so they must have all been in the kitchen.
They were agitated, and gathered, so something had happened. Why hadn’t they called him?
He slammed the door shut and walked around front of the Jeep, pondering if he should go in first, or tend to Gail and her howling cat.
It was an unseasonably cool summer night. Though it was good and warm inside the vehicle, that temperature wouldn’t hold long. He pulled her door open and stabbed her seatbelt release with his thumb. As he worked her into his arms, he grinned. He’d done the best he could to dress her back at her apartment, though when she woke up, she probably wouldn’t approve of his choices. He knew little about women’s fashion beyond what he saw while perusing certain intimate wear catalogues every month. Those stretchy pants probably didn’t go with that nightshirt she’d pulled on, but between those and her jeans, they’d seemed like they’d be easier to get on.
He bumped the door closed with his hip and carried Gail carefully across the uneven pavers and up the porch steps. He pulled the storm door open only to find the inner door locked. He pressed the doorbell button once, waited a moment, and then remembered that Clarissa’s doorbell hadn’t worked since before John added on the second story.
“Let’s see …”
Closing his eyes, he let his mind travel through the doors and walls, and isolated the thoughts in abode. Two, five, six, eight—yes, eight people inside. It was about to get even more crowded, but that was par for the course at Clarissa’s. Her house was like the living room and snack pantry of the community. Fortunately, she thrived under those conditions. She loved taking care of people.
He didn’t bother knocking, and chose instead to give a mental nudge to one of the minds capable of telepathy in the kitchen.
Charles, open the front door.
He could sense Charles disengaging from the discussion and pulling away.
Footsteps sounded through the front room, and a moment later, Charles opened the door.
Charles—tall, broad, and probably built like one of King Arthur’s legendary knights if Arthur’s knights wore flannel pajama bottoms with thirty-eight-inch inseams—pushed his long hair out of his face and squinted at his older brother.
He hit the front porch light switch, and Claude closed his eyes and hissed at the sudden brightness.
“Move, pute.”
“What the fuck?”
“This is Gail.”
“No shit, it’s Gail. Of all people, I would know. I’ve got an excellent memory, so I remember quite clearly the conversation we had yesterday morning. You said you hadn’t spoken to her yet. Call me suspicious, but I don’t think she came here on her own volition.”
Claude edged past his brother, being careful not to brush her body against Charles’s on the way through the door.
Charles was a bit like a live wire. Most paranormal types were unaffected by his incubus touch, but witches sort of walked the thin line between human and supernatural classification. Supposedly, the first witches were born of minor gods and their human consorts, and millennia of propagation and intermarriage had made the gene pool somewhat unpredictable.
Some witches, like Claude’s maman and her mother had been, were closer to those godly ancestors. Even after uncountable generations, their power never dimmed. Others, like Gail, were more human than not.
He didn’t want to risk her safety for the sake of feelings when he knew Charles wouldn’t take offense with Claude’s cautiousness, anyway. Charles was nearly a hundred and twenty-five years old. He’d accepted his lot in life, and that meant knowing there were few people he could touch.
“Yes, I did say that.” Claude shifted Gail in his arms and freed one hand to reorder the pillows on the living room couch. He laid her down reverently and pulled Clarissa’s old afghan over her. “But something clicked, and couldn’t wait. You know how it is.”
Charles sighed. “Yeah, I know. It’s like you see a pretty thing in a museum’s glass display, and you know it belongs to you. They won’t give it back for some bullshit reason, and you can’t rest until it’s returned to your possession.”
“I suppose that sums it up.”
Charles put up his hands. “I was there eighteen months ago, remember? That’s why I know you’re supposed to jump through the hoops, cross all the Ts and dot the Is before you get that thing back. If you don’t, people will think you stole it, even though it was yours.”
Claude rolled his eyes and padded back to the door. “If you had ripped that Band-Aid off sooner with Marion, you two wouldn’t have gone almost a year with few civil things to say to each other.”
He pushed the storm door open, and Charles followed at his heels.
“How much did you tell her?” Charles as
ked.
“Everything.” Claude pulled the Jeep’s cargo bay door open and unhooked the bungee cord holding the pet carrier in place.
Candy Corn’s yellow eyes shone like mirrors in the near dark.
“And she believed it?”
Belief had been a huge problem for Marion when Charles had gone looking for her eighteen months ago. She hadn’t grown up in their world and had no knowledge of things like incubi, demigods, and werewolves. Saying she was skeptical would have been putting things mildly. In all those years on her own, hidden in the Ohio foster care system, she’d had no clue that she was a touch supernatural herself. That, she was still trying to come to grips with, because although her parents and grandmother did try to hide what they were, sometimes the magic made its own way out. At twenty-six, Marion had only just begun figuring out her gifts. Oddly enough, her older sister Ariel had no supernatural gifts at all. John liked it that way.
“Yes, she believed it, thanks to this thing.” He pointed down at the cat carrier. “It would be just my luck she’d have a familiar.”
“What do you have against familiars?”
“Nothing. Just the fact that after Laurette was killed, her cat kept finding me and following me around whenever I was back in New Orleans. You think people are good at doing guilt?” He slammed the Jeep door shut and picked across the lawn toward the house. “Cats are even better at it.”
“You do realize that just because she believes it doesn’t mean she’ll be happy about being here, right?”
“I doubt she’ll be happy about it. In fact, I fully expect her to throw every insult and barb she has in her at me before we come back around to something resembling civility. She’ll learn to tolerate me.”
“More than that.” They climbed back up onto the porch and into the house. “But whether or not she’s going to help you is another question altogether. She may not want to get involved in this shit, and who could blame her?”
They paused near the door, and Claude watched Gail’s chest as it slowly rose and fell with her deep breaths. Her lips moved as if to form words and he wondered what she was seeing in her dreams and whether he was in them. Likely, if he was, he was enduring unspeakable torture at her hands. He probably deserved it in real life.
