Thank you to my
critique partner, Charlee
Allden
. You heard my voice
in the writing before I did and found ways to sift through it all to strengthen
me. You helped save the Dragons when they were barely hatched.
A special shout out to V.B. I used your
x-husband’s first name for the bad guy. I have an unsavory end planned for him,
in the novel, of course. You’ve found your HEA with Spiderman and naturally
living well is the best revenge.
Additionally, I wouldn’t
have taken it to publication without the dedication and love of my partner
Jill, my geek librarian extraordinaire. Lady Gillian, you are
Bwave
, Steadfast and
Twue
! She
helped me with all the techno geek that I struggled to understand. As an avid
Sci
Fi reader she’s a great sounding board. I may have
given Wren her wings but Jill gave her the strength to fly.
Caleb Monroe shook
the antique
doors of
Salynne’s
Crystals & Thyme
, a new age
curiosities and notions shop. The business hours proclaimed in bold black
letters that the store should have opened half an hour ago. The sign made a
metallic ping against the windowed double frame as Caleb rattled the knob
again. The sharp sound echoed a counterpoint to the psychic vibration, which
annoyed him since dawn. The heavy walnut doors wobbled but didn’t budge.
Caleb turned to his brother. “Ethan, any special reason we’re
at a new age trinket shop.”
“You can get a head start on your Christmas shopping.” Ethan
exuded a capable calm air Caleb sometimes found reassuring, but today it
pressed all his ir-ri-tate-the-crap-outa-me buttons. He’d been growling at his
identical twin since they’d awoken. Yet he knew Ethan wouldn't have dragged him
down here on a whim.
Caleb turned on his heel and snorted.
“Riigghtt,
in October.”
He stalked the real estate in front of the store, brushing
past planters of green things. In Florida, there wasn’t enough cold to halt
their growth. He reached out to touch the herbs, even the clean aroma floating
up from the container gardens failed to ease his rising agitation.
He paused to scan the street. An uneasy tingle of premonition
radiated up the short hairs of his neck. Something wasn’t right. Something
really bad was close to happening, something in the realm of the
mother-of-all-bad, like something cataclysmic bad.
Unfortunately, the queasy feeling that hijacked his
hardwiring didn’t come with a translation guide. Caleb turned to make another
pass. Restless energy pulsed through his muscles as he paced. He knew his rock
steady brother felt the same, even if Ethan’s only response was to plant
himself
in the middle of the walkway, immovable as a damn
mountain.
Cautious about what might be lurking, Caleb extended his
psychic feelers and tapped into the current which had driven him since waking.
Dark charged power crackled over him. An uneasy chill raced across his skin and
shocked him with a burst of sensation. He jumped back from the resulting jolt
that bit him.
“Yeah,” Ethan said, as the excess energy arched between them.
“Now you know as much as I do. I’ve already shocked the piss out of myself a
couple of times this morning.” Ethan folded his arms across his chest. “You
woke me up at day break moaning in your sleep. I guessed your restlessness was
more than needing to get laid.
“Oh yeah, cause your lack of sex has turned you into Mr.
Cheerful.” Caleb couldn’t pass on the opening Ethan had left. There were plenty
of opportunities for willing sexual partners, as women were drawn to their
Drakin pheromones. Maybe they were bored with the whole sex for recreation
nameless blur or maybe they were both leery of finding a woman who might come
between them.
Ethan shrugged. “Anyway, the energy’s gotten stronger while
we’ve been standing here. It just felt right to be here, before...”
Caleb paused in his prowl across the store-front.
“Yeah, before.”
Caleb tried to center himself to figure out
how to circumvent this devastating, and as yet unknown happening before time
unfolded the result in disaster.
“Clock’s ticking, Bro.”
Ethan
prodded Caleb to use his focus talent to find the metaphysical fibers of energy
which guided them to the event they needed to stop.
≽
∞
≼
Late, late, late
…
The words pounded through Wren Aldridge’s
brain as she spun around in the middle of her bedroom, awake but far from
alert. She didn’t know what to do
first,
wake up
should be high on the list. She captured her hair, using a scrunchy to trap the
ringlets on top of her head. A creepy, weird, dream had woken her around four
a.m. Grabbing the clock must have… shut-off-the-alarm
. Damn, gotta go, late, late, late.
She’d pushed a self-imposed schedule since inheriting the
shop. She expected herself to be as reliable as any good employee, responsible,
and damn-it-all, at least on time. Not that she had to worry about a flood of
customers. Snow birds hadn’t arrived yet. Her biggest concern was keeping her
doors open until the relief of tourist season.
Clothes, clothes, somewhere she had clean clothes. Wren
grabbed underwear and a bra from the rattan basket, clean laundry which once
again had not made it into the heavy antique chest of drawers.
Damn, got to go. Out of habit, she touched her throat to be
sure Gram’s necklace still hung there. Her cell phone on the night stand sang
out a Celtic musical score.
Izzy!
If Wren
didn’t answer the call she wouldn’t get to talk to her friend until lunchtime.
She balanced the phone between her ear and shoulder grabbing a pair of jeans
from the laundry. Isabeau -- Izzy’s voice purred from the speaker. “So, how did
the great break up with stinky Ron go?” Wren’s recent dating interest landed
the unfortunate nickname after she shared her revulsion for Ron’s natural
masculine smell.
“It was awful, he went on and on about how much he invested
in our relationship. All him, like I was a freaking prize.”
“Sweetie, I’m sorry. I know that’s hard.” Izzy’s voice made
you feel good all over. She explained her warm and unusual accent as a
combination of native tribal mother and Scottish father.
Wren hopped, pulling the snug jeans up over her hips and
fastening them. “No, really, I don’t care.” She waved a dismissive hand in the
air, as if Izzy could see her. “I thought we had a casual dating relationship,
you know, friends and fun. He expected more than I’m ready to give. I should
have dumped him before now.”
Wren continued to talk as she pulled a green tank top over
her head. The shirt cropped across her belly above a small gold and jade, navel
piercing, a token of her rebellious youth.
“He lost it when I wouldn’t change my mind.
Called me a frigid, tight-ass bitch.”
“Oh, no, he did-n’t!”
Outrage
colored her friend’s voice.
“Yes. After that, he got all whiny and followed me out of the
restaurant … major scene time. I won’t go back to that place for quite a while.
He went on and on, talking about how much he wanted to deepen our relationship
and he was sorry for losing his temper.
“That was the end of your date? Then, you came home?”
“Oh, and get this. He told me I had a difficult temperament
for a reasonable man to deal with. Putting the failure back on me again and
acting as if screwing me would freaking fix everything that wasn’t working
between us.”
“He didn’t hang around or anything?” There was a funny hitch
in Isobeau’s voice.
“No, I came home, ate Rocky Road ice cream and had awful
dreams all night.”
“He is unstable Wren, stay away from him. I’ve had something
happen…”
Only half listening, Wren looked up at the clock on the wall
before cutting Izzy off. “I’m sorry. I’ve overslept, and you know how much I
hate being late, so I’ve gotta run.”
“Okay, well, call me.” Izzy let out an exasperated sigh.
“We can meet for lunch or I’ll see you when you come in later
this week for readings.” Izzy had table space at the shop once a week to read
tarot cards for private customers.
“Okay, Wren, just watch your back.” She disconnected the
call.
Wren looked around the room one last time before leaving. Why
would Izzy say that? A moment of oddness tickled the back of her neck making
her nerves jump with an undefined twinge. She shook it off. Now she was being
paranoid.
≽
∞
≼
Caleb struggled
to feel the metaphysical fibers, hair fine and strung taught as a piano wire
from the energy of their touch. If psi-talent was a Goddess gift, from the
benevolent Gelfin, it seemed like it should be easier to use the damn ability.
He knew the thread had to be right there, yet he couldn’t quite grasp the
vibration. Power built around him, making his skin tingle with the exertion.
Something was near, and whatever it was, tied to them in a
very personal way. The vibes of the new age shop breezed through him, bringing
with it the wispy vision of a woman. Her green eyes flashed with some unspoken
message he couldn’t interpret.
Ethan’s awareness intruded, diverting the foresight vision to
explore her petite frame, which was voluptuous in all the places that mattered
to cushion a man as he buried himself in her heat. Caleb pulled his thoughts
back from where Ethan’s had dragged them both and snarled. “Pay attention. This
is not the time to think of what we’d want to do with her… curves.”
Ethan growled back. “Centuries of genetics are hard to
fucking fight.”
“Yea, keep your mind on fighting more than fucking.” Caleb
reached out psychically again, grabbed back the precog vision.
He could feel Ethan there with him as a crushing sensation of
loss swamped him then slipped away. Another blaze of energy arced through him;
the charge leapt across the distance to his brother, then grounded with a
sizzle which made his head rock back with a snap.
“I’m so tired of this fucking shit.” Ethan voiced Caleb’s
thought as his twin smacked the door frame with his open hand.
Ethan relieved strong emotions by peppering his speech with
fuck
in all forms. The word was his
version of aloha-- the multipurpose noun, adjective and verb. One succinct word
captured his diverse range of emotion.
The f-word expression and pounding on things were Ethan’s way
of trying to cope, when life went out of control. Caleb watched and waited
knowing his volcanic brother would rumble to a volatile eruption. Once the
emotional lava spilled over, Ethan would calm again. The role of Anchor, son of
earth, matched Ethan, perfectly.
“We both know the fucking thing is here.” Ethan scrubbed his
fingers through his hair. “There isn’t any-fucking-thing to grab and anchor for
you. We really don’t have time for this. This is a distraction from doing our
job, hunting recessives and the rogue dragon shifter.”
“We have no choice but to take the time.” It didn’t take a
detective to tell the store belonged to a woman. “She might be an emerging
offspring of recessives.” Caleb couldn’t help but state the obvious.
Ethan didn’t have any love for their power hungry mother.
“Yeah, too bad the Queen
Bitch mother didn’t put more emphasis in science instead of status. We’d have
learned sooner that two recessives can breed a dominant dragon shifter. Our
people might have contained the recessives a bit more carefully and taken the
time to track down those who’d escaped sooner.”
“That’s where we come in bro, they can call us ‘Enforcers’
but we’re just the fuckin clean-up crew.”
The conversation, with
Ethan’s earthy crudity was a familiarity which gave them comfort in ways that
defied explanation. He sunk back to be a placid calm anchor again, opening
himself to the magic needed to solve the puzzle. He stood, with feet
shoulder-width apart, hands on his hips, resuming his road-block impression.
Caleb cupped his eyes and leaned against the glass window of the
store to peer into the darkened interior. He scanned the books, crystals,
herbs, candles and other miscellaneous stuff. A counter similar to an old
fashioned grocery partitioned off the backside of the room.
A fireplace and chimney flanked the opposite corner with a
fancy sword replica resting in a rack over the mantle. The positive energy
brushed at him. “The place has nice vibes. I mean, for a girly fru fru woo-woo
shop.”
He pulled back from the glass and closed his eyes for a
moment, following the sheer hint of silken power from the store. He searched
once more for threads of energy, like a blind man sifting through clutter,
examining and discarding items.
There,
the
metaphysical pull a tight, fine pluck. “Come to me baby, let me get a hold on
you.” He grasped another one to wrap with the silken fiber and began weaving
the threads as he found them.
He reached with his gift, trying to bring his brother into
the link without knocking him onto his ass from the force of the charge.
“Ethan, I think I’ve got something.”
Ethan’s awareness joined Caleb stretching out to anchor the
fragile slip of energy. His relief was palpable. “We’ve got it.”
Caleb exhaled. “Oh yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. This
way, I think.
Hurry.”
Now he’d caught onto the damn
thread, anxiety bordering on sickness gripped him, twisting the uneasy churning
in his belly with increasing urgency. He felt his brother’s presence but still
confirmed they were in sync together. “Are you seeing this?”
“Yeah, I’m with you.”
With Ethan on his heels, he jogged around the side of the
shop toward an outside staircase built against the wall. An illogical need to
get beneath the stairs pushed at him.
He wasn’t sure whether the psi-awareness was trying to tell
him someone
had
fallen or
was going to
fall. Their precognition
had led them on a good number of white-knight, ass-bustin’, dog-and-pony shows
in the past.
The crushing premonition of calamity increased to a pounding
tempo. So, the occurrence hadn’t happened. He had a momentary glimpse of a
woman falling through the air before the vision receded. The urgency slammed
into him,
move it,
move
it.
They had to reach her in time.
≽
∞
≼
Wren rushed
through the kitchen, mentally organizing a list of things she needed to do for
the day. Order more goats’ milk soap, place advertisement for the Samhain, ok
Halloween for the kiddies, open house and make the bank deposit.