The huge dark blob
of unspecified anxiety weighed on him. They must discover who or what the woman
was before this went much further.
He really wanted answers on what
caused their skin to absorb her blood.
The whole experience
had the potential for monumental fuck up.
Isobeau looked around
at
the shelves of books. The
den doubled as a library in the old Victorian house that the watchers had made
into headquarters on this side of the veil. Her fingers ran over the various
titles. Herbal Healing, Candle Magic, Lexicon of Remedies, a favorite book by
Jude Renlow a renowned author of pagan literature.
The one immeasurable perk of becoming part of the Watchers
organization was access to their extensive library. She pulled the next tome in
her search, off the shelf checking the title. She swept her long dark hair over
her shoulder in an unconscious movement. Maybe something here would finally
reveal an answer to the hornets’ nest of questions buzzing in her mind.
She’d learned quite a bit about Drakin society and ancient
customs that had been obscured and hidden in part by their own mystique and in
great portion by the reigning monarch of the realm, her mother. She sat down at
the small corner desk she used for her office space. There were so many things
that weren’t as they appeared. What would be the chances of one more intruding
on her platter sized portion of problems?
The door pushed open with a tentative easing.
“Yes.” She shoved the book aside without opening the cover.
Rhys ducked his head around the frame of the hard wood. “You
asked to see me, mistress.”
She beckoned him “Come on in.”
The burly man filled up the doorway as he entered the room.
His bearish lumbering closed the distance between them. She wished he’d sit but
he never did, as if his size made him uncomfortable in the room. How could this
man be a recessive? Everything about him screamed active dragon shifter.
The question of Kiernan became a rhythm within her day. She’d
known the dragon shifter from the before time, when she was a member of the
royal house and he a leader in in the Solidarian. The power of his hatching as
dragon, so different from her human shifter existence gave him a dark dangerous
edge that called to her.
She’d lived as a princess in her tower of royalty and him a
warrior, sovereign in his own right, but just as trapped by conventions of
their caste system. They were never free to be together. They’d met maybe twice
in the order of her mother’s business. She’d never forgotten him.
He’d probably never even noticed her or knew her name. Her
affair with him grew from her one sided need.
Isobeau motioned to the couch.
“Any word on
Kiernan?”
It had been her question of the day, every day. In the six
long months since she’d reported Kiernan’s presence on this side of the veil to
the Drakin authorities, there hadn’t been an answer. It had been her impression
he was here on her mother’s business and thought he’d be recalled home.
She’d no idea how far it would go. She’d had no idea the
devastation that one action would wreck in Kiernan’s life. He’d been declared
Rogue, stripped of his title and hunted. Somehow he’d just disappeared off the
face of the planet. She couldn’t help but worry where he really was.
Isobeau
had only wanted to separate
him from Wren, to buy her more time to figure out how the woman fit into the
pattern of events unfolding. All the signs in the runes and tarot cards pointed
to something huge. No not just huge, bigger, monumentally huge, colossal, world
changing. The cards never lied.
A gleam in Rhys eyes met her for the first time in the many
months she’d been asking the question.
“A rumor.
I’ve a contact on the
fringe of the Society.” The Knights of Druiere, a society of dragon slayers,
their cause so much like the watchers but twisted by their mission of Death to
all dragons. In a different world they might have worked together.
“Tell me.”
“I think there is a reason the venerable Enforcers haven’t
found a trace of him to date. I now believe he is in the hands of one of the
servants of the Society. There are whisperings about a dragon that is being
kept. I can only assume it might be him.”
“Kept? How on earth could they have captured Kiernan? Or is
he with them willingly.” That could potentially change the entire scenario if
Kiernan had thrown in with the enemy.
“I don’t know mistress. My contact is going to try to
discover more, if at all possible.”
“Very well, keep me posted.” Her guilt weighed heavy on her
conscious against the possibility that he was indeed a rogue and a betrayer.
“We can’t discount Ron Packard’s involvement. I haven’t told
Wren yet but I believe he was the one who abducted Maura the fae woman we
found.” Zeila one of the Tracker
race
of Wyrmarch and
Maura of the Dar’kind Fae had been working this side of the veil looking for a
lost member of Maura’s family. Zeila made contact with Isobeau when Maura had
been taken. The resulting rescue had brought them in for healing and help.
“Rhys?”
“Yes Mistress.”
“Another matter, regarding Haydn.”
He was their latest rescue from Drakin. A shifter who didn’t manifest on the time
table deemed appropriate by the ruling bodies. Like so many others he was sold
into slavery, serving the one of the Telihedran. He’d been badly used as a
captive.
“I was up in the early hours of the morning or I wouldn’t
have heard him at all. Evidently a night terror captured him; His shouts would
have woken the house if he’d been in his room. He seems to have taken to the
kitchen at night instead of his quarters.”
“Yes Mistress.”
“So you know about this.”
His curt nod revealed little.
“I haven’t been able to get him to open up and talk to me.
He’s holding it all in. The poison of his experiences seeks a way out during
sleep. I feel it tearing him apart.”
“I do too.” Rhys eyes shone with emotions he barely held in
check. “I
can do ought
but watch over him. Anything
more adds to the violation he experienced.”
Isobeau had been thinking it was time to force the issue. She
wanted to dig the pain out like a violent weed so that he could begin to heal.
Something about Rhys tone of
voice,
derailed the
thought. “Keep an eye on things. Let me know if you think of a way we can help.
I can’t bear the anguish in his dream voice much longer.”
“Nor can
I
.”
His voice had her wondering just how much of Haydn’s
projections Rhys actually felt, in a more than rhetorical sort of way. Was he
saying Haydn’s pain had woven a way into Rhys own psyche?
Her phone started its low chime indicating a call. So many
difficult pieces of the puzzle were finding their way to her expecting
resolution.
≽
∞
≼
There they were.
those
meddlesome plan wreckers. He watched from his
parked car vantage point as the rusty old dodge truck pulled up to park on the
opposite side of the street, just down from the same Victorian house he watched
this morning. He’d come here without much plan.
The woman who lived here had an association of sorts with his
quarry and it might behoove him to know more about her. She was reputed to be a
healer of sorts. He hadn’t been able to learn very much about her from
conventional sources.
She seemed to be another person with mysterious, unknown,
unverifiable past, maybe even one of them. If he could establish that, perhaps
he might even use her to work on the beast he held. Yes, the other two arriving
to watch her indicated she was something more than ordinary and his suspicious
were probably right.
His focus in watching now turned to the male pair sitting in
their truck. Just seeing them there made his blood boil. How dare they intrude
once again? Hadn’t they already done enough?
At the corner of his eye he saw something and turned to see
the healer skipping down the front steps a phone to her ear and car keys in
hand. He pulled his hat down a little lower on his brow in case she glanced his
way. If the two men weren’t here he could probably have grabbed her right now.
As it was they blocked his every move.
He started the car, watching her pull out from the curb in
the older model nondescript white vehicle. It
figured,
everything about her encouraged invisibility. The men both ducked down as she
drove by their parking place. They didn’t have the advantage of being quite as
invisible. Once she’d passed, they hurriedly started the truck.
The Chosen floored his own vehicle racing after the white
economy car while the truck pulled onto the street. Without conscious decision
he barreled down on the truck in a high stakes game of chicken. They swerved
bouncing the curb and sliding toward the ditch. It was grim satisfaction for
the disturbance they’d caused in his life.
≽
∞
≼
All Wren needed
now was coffee and a little breathing room. The shower hadn’t done anything to
restore her balance after waking up from the afternoon sex nap half an hour ago
with Caleb and Ethan. Or the disquieted feeling of them leaving her with an
order of stay put we’ll be back. She didn’t miss that they hadn’t specifically
said when they would be back.
She jumped in her yellow Miata,
then
hit Izzy’s speed dial number on the cell phone, while piloting the small car
out of the lot. It was only four blocks down to the pizza place in a side strip
mall. The line opened with Izzy’s voice sounding more cheery than anyone had a
right to.
“Yeah, Wren-- What’s up?”
“The Ground Up, now.”
She barked the
name of the local coffee bar into the phone, adding as an after-thought.
“Please, I need someone to talk to.”
So lost in thought she missed the turn into the plaza
entrance she had to go around the block, damn. On the hope that they would be
back soon, she’d order pizza-- the one fast food that was even good cold. She
didn’t know what toppings they liked.
Cheese was always a safe bet but she hated plain cheese. Her
favorite pepperoni, mushrooms and black olives would have to do. She put in the
order for two large pizzas and went across to The Ground. Next stop, caffeine,
large quantities and keep it coming, hot and now.
She scooted into the coffee shop and couldn’t bring herself
to order. The smell turned her stomach to acid. She settled for a large skinny
chai latte with colored sprinkles on the non-fat whip cream instead.
That was why she was so fuzzy headed today; she had not had
her quota of caffeine to get all her brain cells firing, much less the residual
terror from her brush with death. She sat there sipping tea, lost in musing on
the events of the day and trying to make sense of the insanity.
Izzy slid into the seat across from her dressed in a red
flowing peasant blouse and multi-layered skirt, apparently more than a little
flustered for having been summoned from what she was doing, to come so quickly
to the coffee shop. She looked the part of a gypsy fortune-teller, perfectly.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get here faster. One of the new guys,
Haydn, who joined the house recently, had a bad night. He’d had a really tough
time in his former life and last night was an awful for him.”
Wren knew Izzy lived and worked at something that seemed like
a residential half way house. She wasn’t sure if it was homeless men or
addicts. She’d never thought to ask.
Izzy just called it ‘the house’. Wren had the impression from
past conversations that Isobeau helped men transition. Could one of them have
followed Izzy to the store and invented a reason to try to hurt Wren? She
closed her eyes and sighed. She was seeing boogie men where none existed.
Wren’s expression must have given her inner turmoil away
because Izzy stopped mid-rant and asked. “Honey, what’s wrong? How did your
chin get cut? You’ve got bandages on your hands. What happened to you?”
“I fell this morning, ah, the stairs. I may need you to come
in and run the shop for a few days.”
She
could feel Izzy studying her. It wasn’t like Wren to bail out on her
responsibilities, after months of excited planning and especially this close to
an event.
“I’ll be there for the Samhain festival we have planned
but.
. . something’s come up. I’ve met…I just need you to
handle the shop for me, please.”
“I thought maybe you’d hurt yourself worse than you look
but…” Izzy breathed deep collecting her thoughts before speaking.
“Oh my, hell, you’ve met him,” she gasped out
with an exhale.
Izzy had done a tarot reading the previous week, saying wild
things about betrayer, turning of an age, and yes passionate love. The
prediction was turning out to have potential for an uncanny accuracy.
Wren wasn’t sure what the give-away was and she certainly
didn’t intend on explaining. Lustful feelings did not equal lovers taken. She
really wanted to hide out somewhere till everything returned to normal.
Before she could lock her lips closed, she told Isabeau
everything. Well, almost everything. She left out the part about the police
coming by and wondering if she’d be filing bankruptcy by the end of the year.
Oh and that someone evidently wanted to kill her…
Okay she left out quite a bit of stuff actually. The
conversation focused on the fact that she’d gotten pretty intimate, okay
orgasmic intimate and wanted more with two freaking hot men, together,
simultaneously, two at once. What kind of kinky freak was she?
Izzy was after all her best friend. And, if a best friend
couldn’t be trusted to help you make sense of your most intimate secrets,
who
could?
The strong urge to escape the coffee shop rebounded. Just
talking about them caused a need for Caleb and Ethan to flash over her as
clearly as if they’d called her. Her panties were soaked with feminine
moisture. The pearl between her legs felt swollen and twitched in rhythm to her
thoughts. She clenched her thighs together to stop the pulsing. What was
happening to her?