Touched by Darkness – An Urban Fantasy Romance (Book 1, The Sentinel Series)

by Catherine Spangler

  “No, I wasn’t,” Kara interjected. “Alex had a convulsion after he got the first shot in the series. Fortunately, there wasn’t any permanent damage.” She paused, gave her son a teasing smile. “Oh, wait, maybe there was. It would explain a lot of things.”

  “Mom!”

  Kara laughed and hugged him. “You know you’re absolutely perfect. Just stay away from anyone with mumps or measles.”

  “You don’t have to worry about Alex getting sick,” Damien said. “Sentinels have very powerful immune systems.”

  “So I noticed. He’s always been healthy as a horse. Have you two found any flights?”

  “Yeah,” Alex said. “Mr. Morgan’s computer is really cool. Look.” He showed her what he and Damien had lined up. There were no direct flights to Huntsville from either Austin or San Antonio, so Alex would have to fly into Birmingham, with one stop in Houston.

  Kara phoned her mother back and confirmed that the grandparents could pick up Alex in Birmingham tomorrow.

  “Maybe I should fly with him,” Kara suggested. “Make sure he gets to my parents safely.”

  “You can,” Damien replied. “But I don’t think that’s necessary. There’s no way the Belian can know our plans, and I’ll make sure no one follows us from Zorro to the Austin airport. Even then, there would be no way to know what flight Alex is taking. And he can shield himself completely now. No other Belians will be able to pick up on him. He’ll be fine, Kara, and we’ll draw less suspicion if you remain here.”

  His logic was sound, so Kara conceded. She phoned her mother back and confirmed that the grandparents could pick up Alex in Birmingham tomorrow, and the ticket was booked.

  One fire put out, Damien thought, as he powered down his laptop. But there was another matter that had to be handled tonight: a conduction. They couldn’t put it off, not with the possibility that the Belian might have identified Alex. If that were the case, then all three of them were at risk. Damien had to push for any information that could give him the jump on the Belian.

  He would wait until Alex was down for the night before he approached Kara. So he bided his time through the bedtime rituals—snack (he and Mac participated in that one), brushing teeth, and reading a book, along with a lengthy question-and-answer session, because Alex was anxious about going to Alabama, and the flight.

  When Alex and Mac were ensconced in Kara’s bed, her usual concession when Alex was upset, she sat on the edge of the bed and kissed her son. “Good night, you two,” she said.

  “I don’t want to go to sleep.” Alex pulled the covers under his chin.

  “Why not, sweetie?”

  “I might not know if the bad person comes back. And I might have bad dreams.”

  “I don’t think the Belian will come back, but if it does, I’ll make it go away,” Damien said. Permanently. “And you won’t have any nightmares. I want you to close your eyes and think of something fun, like winning a soccer game.”

  “Okay.” Alex closed his eyes. A mischievous grin flashed on his face. “Hey! I just scored a goal.”

  “Great.” Damien sent him a mental push toward sleep. His guard was down, and he went under readily, as did Mac. Damien deepened their sleep level, gave Alex a powerful, subconscious suggestion that he wouldn’t remember any of his dreams.

  Kara watched her son a long moment. “I hate that you have to do that.”

  “And you know I don’t do it without good reason—in this case, two reasons. Alex was exhausted, and he needs a good night’s sleep, without disruption from fears or nightmares. You know the other reason.”

  She looked at him steadily. “Yes, I do.” She stood, squared her shoulders. “Let’s get this done.”

  He had to respect her determination and grit. She was practically swaying on her feet from exhaustion. She’d eaten very little dinner, and her skin was as pale as fine porcelain. Fatigue clouded her eyes and created dark circles beneath them. A conduction would wipe her out completely.

  The feelings of concern and regret over pushing her to do this tonight caught him off guard. While he had certainly never mistreated a conductor, he’d never before hesitated to do what had to be done. He couldn’t allow himself to feel remorse, or to care. Any weakness could get him—get all of them—killed. There was no option of delaying the conduction, and Kara knew it as well as he did.

  He followed her into the living room and pulled the chair up as she settled herself on the sofa. As he slid his legs on either side of hers, he caught a whiff of her Chanel perfume. It was faint, probably put on this morning, but his sense of smell was many times keener than a regular human’s. The fragrance was subtle, Earthy and rich, like Kara herself. Mingled with her natural scent, it was enough to send the first flare of sexual awareness through him. And he hadn’t even initiated the chakra energies yet.

  Focus, he told himself. He pulled the crystal from beneath his shirt, held it in his left hand, centering himself mentally and spiritually. He cast protective shields around Kara and himself, around Alex, and the entire house. Dropping the crystal, he offered his hands to Kara, his left up and his right down.

  She wiped her palms on her pants, like she’d done the first time. He felt her resistance, her hesitation, saw her chest heave, before she fitted her hands to his. Her skin was cool, yet the effect of the contact was instantaneous. Slashes of blue and red exploded on the edges of his peripheral vision; his nerve endings tingled—again, without any initiation. Her palms quickly warmed against his, and the air sizzled around them.

  A deep breath, and then he commanded the rise of the energies. It was like opening a floodgate and releasing an avalanche of pure electricity. There was no buildup to the sexual surge. It burst upward like a geyser, rushing through the first three chakras so fast and furiously, they snapped open with pops that sounded like gunfire. Kara gasped and jerked backwards.

  He tightened his fingers around her hands. “Stay with me,” he ordered in a guttural voice, although he was just as shaken.

  He was rock hard, his erection straining uncomfortably against his jeans. It took all his will to marshal his control and maintain his focus on the energies. By the Light, this was no way to perform a conduction.

  “Oh, God,” Kara gasped. He could feel her tremors. “Damien, I can’t—”

  “Yes you can. Breathe! And let it happen. You can do this, Kara.”

  Yet it took everything he had to ride the turbulence as it roared through his chest and up his spine. The crystal resting against his chest pulsed with the energy of the great Tuaoi stone to which it was linked. Brilliant light and heat flowed through him, and for a moment, the mystical veil that separated lifetimes raised, and he could see the glistening green lands of Atlantis, the sapphire blue water surrounding it.

  He could feel the purity and power that had resonated in the magnetic disks in the sacred Temple, where The One had spoken directly to the Children. He was connected to his birthright, his past, his future. The light gathered and burst into his head with a blinding flash, brighter than a thousand suns, spilling over between his eyes. The veil dropped back down, the brief moment of divinity gone, but the spark had ignited the seeking.

  Now all seven chakras were open, and the energies circulated through them so fast, his body felt jerked around like he was on a roller coaster. Colors whirled past like photo flashes.

  He projected through his sixth chakra and its companion third eye, locking the link to Kara’s third eye, and ensuring the psychic images projected only in the upper chakras. This would keep them in the Sentinel realm. The Belian might sense the sexual surge, but hopefully wouldn’t be able to detect the location or their identities.

  “We’re there,” he managed in a relatively level voice. “All you have to do is hold on, Kara. Hold the link.”

  She clutched his hands in a death grip, and a groan escaped her lips. Or maybe it was a moan. He doubted she was capable of more communication than that. He wasn’t sure he could utter a
coherent word himself. He needed to be inside her, needed her legs wrapped around him, to be claiming her, allowing the sexual surge to build to a crescendo, creating a vibratory rate that would attune to the Belian’s energy pattern and break through its psychic barriers.

  Belians were tied to the lower, Earth-bound chakras, which resonated on the vibratory level of sexual energies. He needed to tap into those energies for the clearest images. And damn, his body needed release.

  But Kara had said no sex, and coercion was not an option. No Sentinel would ever take a conductor by force. So he gritted his teeth, and dug deep and wrenched his focus back to the images he was able to discern through the third-eye link. He committed them to his photographic memory as they flashed by in one-second bursts.

  Throughout the process, sexual need rode him like a razor-edged sword. He could feel the heat of Kara’s body, could smell the musky scent of her need, could hear the hammering of her heart in conjunction with his. But discipline and training, along with his iron will, managed to override the physical deluge.

  The psychic images began dissipating, and he initiated the process of bleeding off the energy into the ethereal and sealing off the chakras, this time from the top down. The rocking motion slowed, the various chakra colors faded in foglike wisps; the link between him and Kara evaporated like a sigh on the wind. Tiny aftershocks tingled through him, and he knew she felt them as well.

  He released her hands and sat back in the chair, drawing deep breaths. The psychic, higher-chakra energies continued to calm, but not the adrenaline and sexually laced energies of the lower chakras. His body screamed for release, and he was still painfully hard, his jeans about three sizes too small. It was a lot more difficult to diffuse physical energy. He shoved the chair backward to a safer distance.

  He’d never experienced such a powerful conduction. This one had been even stronger than their first one. It had required all his power to control the energies, so he could only assume it had upended Kara. He saw she had her own struggle to get air into her lungs. Her body shaking, she braced herself with a hand on the couch cushion.

  “You okay?” he managed to ask.

  With a barely perceptible nod, she sank against the cushion behind her. Her chest heaved as if she were struggling for air. “White,” she said slowly. “I kept seeing a white expanse. And it was moving. That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It does, actually, because I think it was a white truck that was being driven.”

  “A truck…” Her eyes narrowed in concentration. “An F. I saw an F floating on the white.”

  Damien was surprised she could recall that much from the light-speed images. “You’re correct, because it was a white F-150 Ford truck.”

  She considered that. “It could have been a white truck I saw. Do you think that’s what the Belian is driving?”

  He closed his eyes, turned inward to focus through his third eye. “I’m getting that impression.”

  “Great. That’s about as helpful as River Road and the live oak. The Ford F-150 is the truck of choice around here, and white is the preferred color, because of the heat. There are probably three hundred of them in the area.”

  He let himself drift on the ethereal plane a little longer, sifting through the images again, then he mentally clicked off, settled back into his physical body. “Even so, it’s a clue, and I’ve got precious few of them, against this Belian.” He drummed his fingers on the chair arms. “That’s basically all I got.”

  “It’s so little to go on.” She shifted upright and immediately groaned, her hand going to her head.

  “Another headache,” he said, but it was a statement, not a question. He could feel the pressure pounding through her head, could sense the pain radiating off of her. “Maybe you’d better lie down.”

  She just stared at him, her eyes large in her flushed face. Cursing silently, he lunged up, resisting the urgent need to adjust his jeans.

  He grasped her shoulders, turning her and lowering her to the couch, just as he had the first time. He could feel the burning heat of her skin through the delicate, feminine sweater she wore. It was unbuttoned partway down, revealing the alluring slope of her breasts and the matching camisole beneath, as well as the outline of her taut nipples.

  She obviously hadn’t changed from her work clothes, probably hadn’t even thought about it, not during the crisis with Alex. Now Damien wished she’d taken time to put on the sweats she’d worn the first conduction. Not that anything could dampen conduction-induced lust.

  She swung her legs onto the couch before he could do it for her. He stepped back, intending to retreat to the relative safety of the chair. A shudder ripped through her. Her body vibrated with intense sexual need—as did his.

  He could have resisted that, could have called on his higher self and his honor as a Sentinel to respect her request that there be no physical intimacy. He could have returned to his chair, and continued the discussion on the conduction images with relative calmness.

  But she lifted a hand toward him. “Damien—” She stopped, dropped the hand. Her gaze locked with his, myriad emotions flooding from her to him. Fear, grief, and the need for comfort. She looked so vulnerable…so alone.

  Her world was not only coming apart, it was colliding with a horrific past. But she wasn’t giving in without a fight. She was courageous and fiercely determined to defend her child. She was allowing herself to be subjected to the emotional and physical drain of conductions to help fight a monster, despite her past experiences.

  Yet at the end of the day, with her friends and neighbors dying—murdered—her child in danger, and the life she’d built threatened, she had no one to turn to.

  He was not a man who knew how to be gentle, or give comfort. Nor was he a man to woo and soothe a woman; all things feminine and soft were totally alien to him. He was a trained tracker and executioner, the sole purpose of his existence to hunt Belians. His was a solitary path, free of human relationships and emotional entanglements.

  Yes, there had been numerous female conductors in his life, along with steamy, uninhibited sex, but never a commitment beyond performing conductions to identify a Belian. However, most female conductors played the game willingly, either for the rush of the danger or the exceptional sex. The world’s permissive societies gave rise to many conductors of both sexes, who didn’t balk at working with several Sentinels, and didn’t expect anything beyond the temporary, conduction-based liaisons.

  Kara wasn’t like that, and she had entered into a committed relationship with her Sentinel, suffering the inevitable consequences. With Damien, she’d been unwillingly drafted into service.

  Now she was paying a heavy physical price for the bottled-up energies that were normally released during sexual conductions. He saw the lines of pain etched on her face as she pressed both hands against her head, could feel the throbbing in her temples. The headache was obviously escalating into a major migraine, and her libido hadn’t calmed; he could still sense her need.

  He might not be able to offer her emotional comfort or reassurances, but he could banish the headache and ease her body’s relentless demands. Not a good idea, his analytical side argued. Even as every instinct he had told him to back away, he walked back to the couch.

  He stared into her shimmering gray eyes, found himself kneeling beside her, unable to leave her like this. Her torment was too great. He reached out, cupped her face, marveled at the satiny texture of her skin.

  She allowed his touch, turning into his hand. His own lust resurged like fast-flowing lava. “Let me ease you,” he said hoarsely. “Let me take away your pain.”

  He slid his other hand behind her neck, rubbed away the tension. At the same time, he sent soothing, calming energies into her head and a subtle command to end her headache. The pain eased, but her body was still as charged as a live wire.

  He moved his hands to her shoulders and down her arms and hands, massaging and kneading away tension. Her
eyes closed, she offered no resistance, just gave a little sigh. He moved to her feet, massaged the pressure points, and this time she did moan. “Oh, that feels wonderful.”

  From there, he worked his way up her legs, along the sides of her hips. He felt the leap of tension go through her, the unabated sexual energies refiring. His body was pulsing, straining with its own demands, but he overrode it with fierce determination. This was for Kara, and there was only one way to rid her of the high-wire tensions that would otherwise leave her lying awake in bed most of the night.

  He moved his hands upward, brushing lightly against her abdomen and midriff, settling them along the sides of her breasts.

  Her eyes flew open. “Damien, what—”

  “Hush,” he murmured, watching her breasts swell at his touch. “Lie still.”

  “But—”

  “Just lie back, and let me do this for you,” he ordered hoarsely.

  Before she could object, he feathered his thumbs over her nipples. She gasped, arching upward.

  * * * *

  As Damien’s fingers stroked her nipples, shock chased a hot rush of sheer lust that torpedoed through Kara’s body. She tried to protest, but a red, blurry haze filled her mind, and her dry mouth felt as though it was full of cotton. But the rest of her came alive—sharp, vibrant, pulsating with desire so intense, she felt engulfed in white-hot flames.

  She moaned as his hands moved down and beneath her camisole, stroking back upward over her bare skin, his fingers trailing fiery electricity in their wake. Then they were slipping beneath the lacy edges of her bra, and her breath caught. She tried to protest again, but then he unhooked her bra and slid his hands over her breasts. The breath hissed from her lungs and she dug her fingers into the couch. Yes…How could she object when it felt so good, and when she craved it like an addict craved drugs?

  She must still be in thrall to the conduction-induced energies, because as Damien stroked her breasts, colors and images flashed through her mind. She heard his voice in her head, speaking in a language she didn’t know, his words flowing over her, holding her in place for his touch. It was like a dream where she knew what was happening, but was paralyzed. She didn’t feel threatened by him, but her out-of-control body, desperately straining against his hands, was another matter.