Hidden Currents (6 page)

Elle was the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. She carried all the powers of the Drake family in her slender body, and with it, the ability to continue the line. Which meant birth control didn’t work well on her.

She was to be the mother of the next generation of Drakes. He would marry her, but they would keep her name. Their seven daughters would possess the power of the Drake family. He had waited, letting Elle run, making her run, because he had been afraid. Not of the children he had no idea how to be a father to—he’d learn that—but of his own violent legacy. And how could he explain it to her without putting her in danger?

He wasn’t a man able to relinquish too much control, and Elle defied him at every turn—more than defied him, she challenged him. He hadn’t trusted himself enough not to lose her when they both were such strong personalities and in hesitating, she’d turned away from him—and eventually, she’d even given up on him.

Elle. Damn it. Where are you? Answer me.
He put every ounce of command, of iron will—a will honed and shaped by violence—into the demand.
Answer me now.

He rubbed his shadowed jaw and looked up as lightning lit up the darkening sky, lacing the brooding clouds with white-hot lances, spears that felt as if they pierced his eyes and went through his skull right to the back of his head. He dropped to his knees and pressed his fingers hard to his temples, his stomach churning, the pain in his head so intense he was sick to his stomach.

Everything receded into the background, Ilya’s and Jonas’s anxious voices fading away. The world around him curved and trembled. The ground shifted, became soft and giving beneath him. He heard a voice whispering and at first he couldn’t make out words, but he reached and the voice became stronger.
Sheena. Look at me. Talk to me. Who are you? What are you doing here? Who sent you? Talk to me, Sheena, and the pain will go away.
Male. Persuasive. He’d heard voices like that before, molding their victim, holding hope just out of reach.

Jackson went still, afraid to move, afraid to hope. He’d touched her. He’d connected and if someone was questioning her as Sheena, her cover was still intact. He tried to breathe through the pain—her pain—and let his mind expand, reach out strongly to hers.
Elle. Baby? Can you hear me? I’m coming for you. We’re coming. Stay alive for me, honey.

He felt the faint far-off touch, just a slight stirring in his mind. Fragile. Tenuous, as if she was afraid to believe.
Jackson?

Her voice sent a vise gripping his heart, squeezing until there was actual pain. For a moment he thought he might be having a heart attack.
I’m here. I’m with you. Tell me where you are, Elle.

I don’t know. I can’t think straight. My head . . .
She trailed off, and the connection between them wavered.

Don’t!
His voice was sharp.
Stay with me, baby. I need you to look around you. What do you see? Who’s with you?

There was a moment of hesitation. Lightning lit up the sky and thunder crashed close, the sound louder than the booming of the sea. White light burned behind his eyes and he had to close his lids tightly against the shattering pain.

A hand fell on his shoulder. “Jackson?”

Jackson shrugged off the distraction. “I’ve got her. I’ve got her,” he snapped. It was difficult being in two places and he needed to be with her. She was slipping away, even as he reached for her.
Elle, no!

She was gone, out of his reach and he stayed on his knees, breathing deeply, dropping his forehead to the ground and staying still until he got himself under control.

“She’s alive,” Ilya said. “We’ll find her.”

Jonas held out his hand and Jackson took it, allowing his friend to pull him to his feet. “Why didn’t you connect with us and strengthen the bond?” he demanded of Ilya without looking at him, that cold coil inside of him that was dark and dangerous now, unfurling.

“I tried, Jackson,” Ilya said, his voice utterly calm. “Whatever you two have together is a bridge that is solidly between only you. I couldn’t join you.”

“I couldn’t hold her to me,” Jackson said, frustrated. “If you can’t join me, what are we doing here? How is this going to work?” Because it had to work. The pain had been her pain. She needed help. Wherever she was, she needed medical attention. “She was confused.” Almost childlike, more fragile than he’d ever known Elle to be. And that scared him almost as much as her being in the hands of madmen.

“Jackson.” Jonas put a steadying hand on his shoulder. “We’ll find her.”

Ilya gestured toward the house. “The women want us in now.”

Jackson glanced up at the empty captain’s walk. Hannah would know the optimum time to try to send the wind to Elle. If they were lucky, and all the elements fell into place, they would create a surge of energy capable of crossing great distances to Elle.

I’m coming, baby,
he whispered to the night and followed the other two men up the winding path to the huge, sprawling house.

Sarah Drake stood at the door, holding it open for them. Her pale face was still, anxiety in her large blue eyes. The wind tugged at her dark hair, giving her an ethereal look, one Jackson often associated with the Drake women. Sarah was the oldest and engaged to Damon Wilder, a neighbor who owned the house just below the Drake family estate. His arm around Sarah’s waist, Damon greeted the other men with a slight nod and, leaning heavily on his cane, turned and limped back across the living room to stand against the wall.

Jackson followed Jonas inside, Ilya trailing behind him. The atmosphere in the Drake home was usually one of warmth and laughter. Tonight it was heavy with tension and sorrow.

Joley, the sixth Drake sister, the musician of the family, ran to fling herself in Ilya’s arms. It always astounded Jackson that a man as remote and unemotional as Ilya, lit up when Joley was anywhere near him. The Russian brushed a kiss on top of her blond-streaked head, his arms tightening protectively around her.

“Did you feel her?” Jackson asked Hannah. “I had a small connection to her just now, but then I lost her.”

Hannah, tall and elegant with long platinum spiral curls and wide blue eyes, spun around to face him at his question. An ex-supermodel, married to Jonas and already pregnant with their first child, Hannah was particularly strong in her talents and would be one of their greatest assets in trying to find Elle. Jackson saw the answer on her face, the complete blank look that told him she hadn’t caught even a small ripple from Elle.

It should have made him happy that his connection with Elle was so strong, so much so that he had found her and not her sisters, even for just a few moments, but what mattered most, was getting her home safe and unharmed.

“You spoke to her? Are you certain?” Hannah asked.

The room went silent and all faces turned toward him. Kate the writer, serious and gentle, Abigail the marine biologist, Libby the doctor and healer, Sarah, Hannah and Joley, and the men who loved them, waiting, holding their collective breath.

“She’s alive. Hurt.” Jackson frowned. “A head injury, I’d guess. She was confused and the pain was excruciating. Someone was questioning her and they used the name Sheena MacKenzie, so hopefully her cover is still intact, although they wanted to know who had sent her and asked what she was doing there. They spoke English with a heavy accent.”

“Greek?” Ilya asked.

Jackson shrugged. “I couldn’t say one way or the other. I wasn’t there, just heard it through her and I got the feeling of a great distance.” He rubbed his shadowed jaw, needing to find a way to still his hands, to keep from betraying the terror building in his gut. Elle. Damn him for not taking charge. For not keeping her safe.
Baby, I’m coming for you. If you don’t believe anything else, believe I’ll come for you.

He sent the message to her in the way he’d been whispering to her for the last couple of years. Soft. Intimate. Intense. He could tell her things across a distance he couldn’t seem to say to her face. He could feel the emotions, so deep they shook him, across that same distance, but up close, he was always so carefully controlled.

“Come into the house,” Sarah said, her voice gentle, almost as if she knew what he was feeling. “Standing in the entryway isn’t going to help. You have to commit to us, Jackson. We can’t help if you don’t give us your full commitment, and it seems to me, as close as we are to Elle, you’re her soul mate and you’re the one that’s going to find her.”

There was that waiting again. The silence. He lived in silence. Understood it. These people in this room had opened their lives to him, shared their world, yet he had always stood apart by choice, refusing to go all the way with the very commitment Sarah was asking of him. He didn’t understand people. He wasn’t comfortable being around them. The desert, the mountains, the sandy dunes above the ocean were places he sought and understood.

Emotions were kept at a distance, yet this family, these people who always welcomed him, kept emotions close and intense, and every moment he spent with them made him feel both cared for and yet isolated and apart. For Elle he went deeper into the room, into the circle of her family.

The candles made a pattern on the floor, the flames flickering with life. He looked around the house. It would be his home. His life would be here when he married Elle. He walked across the room and laid his hand on the wall. It was an old house, yet always appeared new. He had seen the house come to life, protecting those who dwelled inside. When he laid his palm on the wall, he felt energy, strong and pulsing. Little sparks danced around his fingers and across the back of his hand.

If you’re alive, the way the Drakes believe, help us find her. Help me find her.

Beneath his palm, the walls undulated, and for a moment he thought he heard the sound of feminine voices rising in the distance.

He turned to look at the Drake sisters, but they were looking at one another, their eyes wide, their faces slightly shocked. He dropped his hand and moved back to the center of the room. “The storm is nearly overhead. Let’s get this done.”

“The house spoke to you,” Sarah said. “Jackson, do you know what that means?”

His dark eyes slid over her face, noting her astonishment. “Did you really think Elle didn’t belong to me?” His voice was quiet. Low. Soft even. The menace there reverberated through the room, enough that Damon stirred from his place against the wall and limped over to Sarah, his cane supporting his weight as he put one arm around her.

“Jackson, we all know you’re meant for Elle,” Sarah said softly. “You’re the one who is holding back, not us.”

He felt the arrow in the pit of his stomach. Damn her, she was right. They said she could see into the future at times, and right now she looked a little fey. She was seeing too much and what was inside of him wasn’t fit for a woman to see, least of all a Drake and the sister of the woman he was going to marry.

He could smell the scent of the herbs each sister had used to cleanse herself before the ceremony. The pentagram was laid out with the mosaic tiles in the center of the circle. Candles lit the way in four directions. He took a deep breath and forced himself forward when Hannah gestured to him to come take his place in the center. Each sister sat near a point of the star and Jonah and Ilya sank down beside their women, close, thighs touching. Abigail’s husband, Aleksandr, threw open the double doors to allow the storm into the house. This was not his way, but it was the Drakes’ way, as it had been for hundreds of years. It was Elle’s way and he needed the strength of her family to send the summons, create the bridge and gain the information they so desperately needed.

Outside the wind shrieked and moaned, rising and falling like the churning waves. Jackson took a deep breath, drawing in the salty mist. The rain began to fall, a light drizzle, promising a much more ferocious downpour. Thunder boomed just as a wave crashed against the rocks and white water formed a geyser, hurling into the air. Jackson could see the white foam bursting above the cliff and then falling out of sight again.

Unconsciously he rubbed his palm along the floor, over the mosaic tiles Elle’s ancestors had placed a hundred years earlier. He felt the life in them, warmth against his skin, as if the mosaic breathed. Once again he heard the soft feminine voices speaking from a great distance. Some speaking in an ancient tongue, others more modern, but all whispering to be strong, that they were with him. He had never sought nor wanted a family, or unity or the belonging. It wasn’t for him. Yet here he was, the house, the family, the woman, and he had shoved it away.

Elle. Stay alive for me. Believe in me.

He was asking from her what he hadn’t done himself. He should have believed in what Elle was offering. Love. Unconditional love. Elle had watched him quietly, waiting for him to recognize what was in front of him. He wanted, not unconditional love, but unconditional surrender. Her will to his. He didn’t want to be out of his comfort zone, he wanted Elle to come to him, bending her ways to his. He hadn’t wanted to give away the violence inside him. He’d wanted acceptance without having to give anything of himself.

And he had lost her. He even knew the exact moment she had turned away from him and had chosen to go her own way. She had left him behind just as he expected her to do, just as he’d pushed her to do. Jackson shook his head. He
had
pushed her. He wanted to remain the rolling stone, the man who refused to need anyone. He was determined to show her she was the one who would have to change. He wasn’t going to explain himself to her or change for her. She had knocked on his door, stood just outside on his porch with the ocean roaring behind her, her delicate features soft and beautiful, her emerald eyes deep and fathomless, her long red hair blowing in the wind.

“My house was obviously wrong,” she’d said. “You’re not man enough to take on this task and I’m done waiting for you.” She had turned away from him and walked away, never once looking back. Worse, he hadn’t stopped her.