Noah (8 page)

“Do I need to?”

“Of course not.”

“Why not?” she asked casually.

Sands laughed. “Are you kidding? Anyone who would try to cheat you would have to be insane.”

“And there’s the reason why I never have to count,” she rejoined, picking up the box and tucking it into her purse. She shouldered the leather accessory with ease, as if all it had within it was a comb and lipstick, not nearly a quarter million dollars in cash.

“We’ll be calling you again,” Sands said cordially.

“I would imagine so.”

Sands stood up, wiped his palm on his kerchief, and extended the hand to her. Kestra merely smiled politely and kept both her hands on her purse strap. Handkerchief or not, she wasn’t about to get slimed, and she wasn’t going to give him the opportunity to grab her by her hand.

The thought gave her pause. That was when she realized something wasn’t quite right. The shiver that suddenly walked up her spine, resting with a sharp tingle at the base of her hairline as it was doing right now, had never failed to alert her that something bad was about to happen to her.

She lowered her thick white lashes until they all but obscured the blue diamond irises of her eyes. She glanced around the room yet again, as she had been doing since stepping into the unknown territory. This time she caught the slightest shadow of movement in the hallway behind Sands’s back.

She sighed, long and regretfully, flicking open her icy eyes so she could give him a cold glare. “Whatever you are planning,” she hissed chillingly, “let me warn you it’s not a good idea.”

Then, without waiting for a reply, she swung out with her heavily weighted purse and clocked him upside his head. Kestra popped out of her heels and made a mad dash across the room. Heading for the door would be a mistake, leaving her too open if the person in the hallway was armed, so she dove over the breakfast bar and into the kitchen where she would be out of his or her line of sight. Unfortunately, it put her far from the only apparent exit from the penthouse.

She reached into her bag for her gun, dropping everything else as she cupped it in her hands and laid her finger over the trigger. All the clues to trouble were now in the forefront of her mind, making her curse herself for missing them at the outset. She glanced toward Sands as she eased into the kitchen entrance. He was out cold and bleeding heavily into the formerly pristine carpet, near her abandoned shoes. The question on her mind was how many others might be hiding in the enormous suite.

She was screwed, and she knew it. A second later the wall near her head exploded. She yelped as drywall was flung everywhere and in rapid succession as someone shot through it from the opposite side. All she could do was drop down to the floor as the wall shattered above her, raining plaster and water down onto her. As the path of holes being blown into the wall started to descend toward her prone body, she had no choice but to get out of range as quickly as possible. She scrabbled against the Italian tile, her stocking feet sliding without purchase as she pulled forward on her hands. She grabbed the carpet, her fingers of her left hand gaining purchase on the thick fibers of the pile. She barely had both knees on the carpeting before a huge hand grabbed her by her thick blond braid and jerked her hard to her feet.

She felt the burn of a hot gun muzzle against her temple.

There was the slap of flesh meeting flesh a second before the gun fired near her ear. Kestra dropped to the floor, but miraculously found herself with her head intact. Her ear was ringing painfully, but her attacker had missed. She looked up quickly and saw why.

A tall, black-haired man with the build of a roughneck had the gunman by the arm and did exactly what she would have done had she been given the chance. He broke it clean in half. He grabbed the screaming thug by the back of his collar, slamming him face-first into the near wall so hard that Kestra could easily imagine the snap of one or two more bones, even though she would be lucky if she could hear herself sneeze at that point.

But there was nothing wrong with her eyesight.

She watched as her assailant was dropped at the other man’s feet without even a hint of care or concern for his life, an attitude of contempt she was very much inclined to share. Then she saw a second male, no doubt the one who had been playing turkey shoot with her through the wall, run around the bend of the back hallway.

“Look out!” Her warning was apparently unnecessary. So was the bead she drew with her suddenly remembered weapon. The newcomer left his first victim behind him as he stepped into the path of the second. It was as if he couldn’t care less that these men were armed. James accused her of having a death wish sometimes; this man who was in the process of saving her life was that term personified, apparently. He was also incredibly fast. One second a gun was brought up in his face; the next he had hold of the other man’s arm, wrenched it almost completely around, and moved to strike him in the face with a speed that was unreal for someone his size. She knew an expert fighter when she saw one, but this was out of the scope of even her experience. There was no trading of blows, just him eliminating threats with perfunctory ease.

He turned as the second gunman fell, and her eyes went wide at the imposing sight he made, sturdy legs braced apart, hands half curled into fists, green-gray eyes lit high with the fever of the fight. All of this while dressed in a wardrobe she could only identify as being antiquated. With skintight breeches and a loose, billowing shirt of silk tucked in at his lean waist, he looked like he had stepped off an old pirate ship. Right down to his highly polished boots and the brief ponytail held back by a simple black strip of leather or something like it.

“Come with me.”

He held a hand down to her as she stared at him.

“As if!” she exclaimed, getting quickly to her feet and backing away from him. “Thanks for the help, but I am
so
out of here.” She raised her weapon, eyeing him so he would take the threat seriously. She barely completed her next step back before he wrapped fingers like steel around her left upper arm, disarming her with embarrassing speed and ease, turning her to him and stepping close enough that they bumped bodies.

“Come willingly or not, it is your choice, but you
are
coming.”

For a single suspended instant, Kestra felt the fit of their tense bodies as they stood close enough to exchange heat. Her heartbeat fluttered as she was overwhelmed with the feeling that she knew him somehow. Somehow, his fit and warmth and even his commandeering attitude were instantly recognizable to her. Recognizable, but not identifiable.

“I choose not to come,” she snapped at him.

She moved with lithe, determined speed, breaking his hold on her arm swiftly as she recoiled to strike him. He barely ducked fast enough to miss getting clocked in the nose by her palm. She unleashed herself on him with rapid violence, landing half the strikes she intended to, clearly learning as she went how best to feint and orchestrate his responses. But Kestra fought with her emotions in this instance, probably without even knowing why. Her true advantage was that he refused to strike back at her.

He had been human.

But Noah was not human, and he was not very full of patience at the moment, either.
Ungrateful thing that she is
, he thought with an inner chuckle. Kestra was suddenly faced with nothing but air. Then she felt an arm wrapping around her from behind. He jerked her clean off her feet and up into his body, pressing her back and bottom tightly to the contours of rock-hard muscle beneath the delicate fabrics he wore. Kestra gasped when his free arm crossed over her breasts, trapping her beneath flat, open palms of his powerful hands.

“Good night,
Kikilia
,” he whispered on a hot breath into her ear.

Kestra opened her mouth to lambaste him, but the next thing she knew her body was draining of energy so rapidly she was suddenly terrified there wouldn’t be enough left for her to draw her next, much-needed breath. She fell down into the will of his embrace, blackness overwhelming her.

Isabella coalesced with a sharp snap in Corrine’s living room. It made no sense to her that Corrine would take Leah without sending Kane to them with a quick pop-in-o-matic message telling them so. Even if it had been terribly close to dawn, Corrine would have known she’d be mad with worry and would have found a way to reassure her that her daughter was safe in her care. Then again, Kane was limited to teleporting to places he had been to or seen before. With the two Enforcers running around like they had been, getting a locus on them would have been impossible for Kane.

Bella rubbed her hands together anxiously as she oriented herself to her surroundings. Right away her hunting senses flared to life, alerting her to the presence of not only her daughter, but her sister and the elusive Demon King. Instantly on the heels of that was the aura of something else…something powerful and distorted…and a blanketing underlayer of fear that was so potent, the little Druid could practically taste it.

Everything she sensed went directly into her husband’s awareness, but she ignored his shouting voice of warning in her head as she ran across the room to Corrine’s meditation quarters. She threw herself at the door, which burst open with the momentum of her weight.

The room was swirling with eerie, alien energy, a fog of smoke, and a crackling web of lightning that ran along the ceiling. The rush of air the opening door sent into the room pushed the center of the cloud of smoke back in an angry swirl. The wild billows and curls parted with abrupt violence, revealing the imposing figure of the Demon King standing within.

In his arms he held the limp form of a human woman.

Isabella gasped with shock, no matter how much Jacob’s thoughts had warned her she might encounter something exactly like this.

“Bella!”

Isabella turned at the sound of her sister’s voice, instantly making out Corrine’s huddled figure and the fact that her daughter was clutched desperately in her arms.

“Be careful! He’s gone mad!”

Isabella snapped her attention back to Noah. She instinctively braced her feet as she took note of his abrupt advance on her, the unconscious human woman still clutched in his powerful arms.

“Noah,” she addressed him quickly and softly, “what are you doing?”

“Making things right,” he answered as if it would explain everything. “She is mine.”

“That may very well be,” she said hurriedly, purposely putting herself in his path when he made the move to go around her.

He could have altered form in a blink, but he knew as well as she did what that would force her to do. If there was truly one person in all Demon society who could bring this to a quick end, it was Bella. But there was a price to pay when she snatched someone’s power, so if she could avoid it, she would. She had taken of the King’s power once already, with disastrous consequences that had nearly cost several lives, including her own. It wasn’t something she wanted to repeat, especially with her vulnerable family in such close proximity.

“Noah,” she continued, her voice pitched with calmness and gentleness. “If she is your destined mate no one will keep you from her. However, this isn’t the way to bring the woman into our world. It isn’t our way or the way of your laws.”

Bella glanced down at the woman in question, taking a better look at her. Her head hung limply back over the King’s left arm, a braid of pure white hair swinging in the smoky air. She was pale, clearly drained of most of her vital energy, a condition Isabella was familiar with enough to know who had initiated it. Since Noah had committed his crimes in Corrine’s presence with apparent purpose, it was very likely that this woman
was
his intended mate. However, she could also be an innocent on the wrong end of the King’s misdirected and volatile emotions. Either way, Noah was in no state to be in charge of the fate of a vulnerable human female.

“She looks weak,” Isabella noted softly. “Let me help.”

“Stand back, Enforcer. You will not take her from me.”

“I didn’t say I would,” she agreed quickly. “But if you force us into an altercation, Noah, it could harm everyone in this room. Leah, Corrine…and this female as well. You’re so powerful that I’d have to dampen your power with every ounce of my strength. There would be little room for finesse, Noah. The young woman you hold couldn’t stand such a drain on her energy.”

“As you say, Leah is in this room. Can so young a child bear the brunt of her mother’s power?” he countered coldly.

“Perhaps not. But I can guarantee that you will not survive her father’s wrath if anything happens to her or any of his family.”

Noah looked up over the tiny Druid who blocked his path, to meet the black gaze of his male Enforcer. He realized then that Isabella had been stalling him while awaiting her husband’s arrival.

Finally, the monarch visibly hesitated. One Enforcer; perhaps he could get away with the advantage in such a battle. However, the matched set was something else entirely.

It was this moment of hesitation that always heralded a turn in the dynamics of an enforcement situation. Jacob was quite familiar with it after all these centuries. The hesitation was no doubt as selfishly motivated as anything else the King had done in these past few hours, but it was also the first step toward logical reasoning. If he realized how futile his situation was, he would be on the path of recognizing the other flaws in his uncontrolled behavior.

Jacob put a hand on his wife’s waist, nudging her gently in the direction of their child. As Bella hurried to inspect and protect her sister and her baby, Jacob squared off with his longtime friend.

He observed every detail of Noah’s body language for a quick second, everything from the solid brace of his feet to the death grip he had on the blond woman hanging so limply in his arms. She would sport some serious bruises come the evening, but Jacob was determined to see that was the worst of the damage. It worried him that her breath came so shallow and that she was so deeply unconscious, but his senses, as sharp as all of nature, told him Noah hadn’t had the time to put any other marks or damage on her.