Unquenchable Desire (15 page)

“Our results are promising, but we need a volunteer to
test the product before distribution.”

“Shoot, I’ll volunteer,”
Victoria
said.

Valerie watched the color drain from her dad’s face. “Me,
too,” she said, not willing to let her sister outdo her.

“Don’t even suggest that, either of you,” Dad shouted,
then lowered his voice. “We need someone outside the family.” He glanced at
Brian.

Brian loosened his collar. “I could do it.”

Valerie gasped, not only at his reluctant tone but at her
confused emotions.
“But you’re like family. Today,
you saved my life…and
Kindra’s
life and almost lost
yours in the process.”

Dad and Mom paled and Dad asked, “What’s that all
about? What haven’t you told me, now?”

Uncle Hugh sauntered into the room. “Why didn’t someone
wake me? Oh, hey
Victoria
,
glad to see you back. We all missed you.”

“Sit down, Hugh,” Dad said in his commanding tone. “It
seems Valerie has something important to tell us.”

“Hold up, Dad.” She rang for Kyle.
He appeared almost instantly like an apparition. “Please take my little friend
Kindra
to the kitchen and show her your blue birds. And
show her the garden. Maybe there’ll be a squirrel or two out there, and she can
feed them peanuts or something.”

When
Kindra
was out of earshot, Valerie told of the wolf attack on the child’s mother, the kidnapping
and the harrowing rescue. “I think it might have been Reeves, your evil
stepbrother, Dad. He chewed out
Kindra’s
mom’s throat
and said if I didn’t come to him immediately, he’d do the same to her little
girl. I had no choice.”

Dad rested his forehead on
the pads of his fingers and shook his head. “And here your mother and I thought
you were safely at work. Why didn’t you call us for backup?”

She shrugged. “There wasn’t
time—and I had Brian.” She glanced at her dear wolf-man with gratitude and
patted his hand, thankful he didn’t tell them that she’d ordered him to stay
away.

“If you believe it was
Reeves, who is his host body? Is it someone we know?”

“His black hairy features
were too distorted and wolf-like to identify the host. But he was tall and
muscular like Brian, only heavier.” She paused and took a breath. “But there’s
something interesting and a bit frightening that we don’t understand fully. Somehow
the stress brought on by our need to rescue
Kindra
before he harmed her forced us into a daylight morphing mode. The fact that the
evil wolf also morphed in the daylight hours was peculiar. It complicated things
and upped the risk.”

“Our morphing wasn’t all
bad,” Brian said. “The advantages were increased strength, ability to run
distances quickly, and—”

“Where did all this take
place?” Uncle Hugh asked, leaning forward.

“That was part of the
complication,” Valerie said, noting that the blood had drained from her
parents’ faces.
 
“It was in a condemned
house in the barrio gang territory. Most of the houses were empty.
Just entering the walled area
creeped
me
out.”

“With good reason,” Brian
said. “The gang had their sights on her. However, another advantage of the
daylight morphing was when those tattooed thugs heard and saw us in our morphed
condition, they scattered like a hen house of frightened chickens.”

Victoria
sat
quietly, squeezing her new husband’s hand. He’s eyes were wide and he kept
shaking his head. “God help us all,” he said.

Brian nodded. “Amen.”

“Reeves
has
pushed us too far,” Hugh said. Somehow, we have to identify his host body and
destroy him.”

Brian shook his head. “I’m
all for that. I’d start looking closely at Rory.”

“What?
Victoria
said,
her
expression wide-eyed. “Why?”

“A lot has happened during
the short time you were gone, Sis,” Valerie said, realizing they were talking
about a guy
Victoria
had dated and maybe still thought of as a friend. “But basically he’s become a
jerk.”

Victoria
rolled her eyes. “Give me a break. He was always that. You want to kill a guy
for being a jerk?”

“No. Of course not,” Brian
said. “We need to uncover the
right
host.
But once we do, how do we destroy the resurrected walking dead?”

Hugh sighed. “We can only
keep killing him. He’s protected by evil. The devil gave him the gift of
eternal life. It’s a non-ending circle.”

Brian reached over and
touched the cross he’d placed around Valerie’s neck. The heat and electricity
of his touch shot through her. “Maybe God’s the answer,” he said.

Dad scoffed. “And maybe fairy
tales come true. I’ve been praying for my family for years.”

Brian rubbed his chin,
looking reverent. “And they’re still alive,” he murmured quietly.

Valerie’s heart did another
double-time from his touch. Still, his exquisite fingers on the cross hadn’t
distracted her beyond her ability to appreciate the depth of Brian’s belief, or
to realize fully what everyone at the table was faced with. The reality of the
situation could really bring her down if she let it.

She forced a smile. “We need
a change of focus for a while.
Victoria
,
show us your pictures and tell us about your trip.”

Kyle brought
Kindra
into the room and Valerie pulled her onto her lap. She
looked down and winked at her. “Did you have fun?”

She nodded, still sad-faced.

No doubt she was thinking
about her mom and worrying about her brother.

As Rick lowered the lights,
they all went silent. Victoria gave a few details as Rick flashed pictures onto
the double-wide TV screen. When they’d seen all the pictures, Valerie hugged
her mom who still looked shaken like an earthquake had rocked her world. Maybe
it would do her good to have something else to worry about.

“Mom, would you mind taking
Kindra
under your wing for a while this evening so Victoria
and I can have some girl talk time without little ears listening.”

“It’ll be my pleasure,” Mom
said, smiling.

“Thanks, Mom,” she said,
grabbing her sister’s hand and heading up the spiral stairway.

She closed the bedroom door.
Once they were comfortably stretched out on the twin beds, she glanced at her
vibrant, raven-hair sister and forced a smile. “Let’s forget all of that
depressing talk for a while. Tell me the juicy stuff about your wedding….your
honeymoon.”

Victoria
laughed. “The wedding was perfect. The only thing that could have made it more
perfect was if you and the family could’ve been there.”

With stars in her eyes, she
described the music, the flowers, the way her heart raced during the
ceremony,
and the magic when they slipped rings on one
another’s fingers.

“Rick has really beautiful,
strong fingers,” she said dreamy-eyed.

“Boy you’ve really got it
bad.”

“Oh,
no, Sis.
I got it good.
Real good.”

“Are you going to do the big
ceremony here so we can all share in the beauty of it?”

She frowned. “With all that
is going on here, the timing is wrong. But we’ll see how much pressure the
folks put on us. I’d just as soon move on. As far as I’m concerned, I had my
dream wedding.”

“Let’s get to the
knitty
-gritty. Is making love with your biker everything
you hoped for?”

“Oh,
God, yes, yes, yes.
There’s something to be said
for waiting. I had all this passion just bursting to come out. And, Sis, it
did, better than any fireworks.”

“Did your wolf counter-part
come out and play, too?”

She nodded, grinning. “But
with my moon-poppy herbs, I achieved a wild control that absolutely heightened
the pleasure.” She paused and winked. “When we finally crawled out of bed, ten
hours later, we indulged in the full Vegas experience. Then we flew to
San Francisco
and played there
for a while. Next, we flew to
San
Diego
and looked at homes. Sharing and merging our
idea’s made me feel really married.”

****

Sin,
if it wasn’t so much a part of him, Reeves would curse it.
Outside
the sun was setting low in the sky and threw the dorm room in shadows. He
turned on a light over the mirror and basin. At first, he hadn’t noticed the
darkness slipping in. He was in too much pain. But now that he’d treated his
deeper wounds with a magic healing compound he’d learned from Lazar, he was
more aware of his surrounding and even his host’s reflection in the mirror. The
handsome face glared at him. “What are you glaring at?” he mentally asked his
counterpart. “At least your
face
isn’t
scratched or full of bites.”

When Rory’s glare darkened,
Reeves decided his alter-ego needed a pep talk. “Glorious sin,” Reeves mentally
told the glowering face in the mirror,
“
gives
spark and danger to otherwise dull days. I was born in sin and will no doubt
die over and over again in it. But if a guy’s
gotta
go—going in sin is the cool way to go. The danger…the thrill and fear of
getting caught…”

“Look, Man,” Rory said, “I
don’t want to die in sin or any other way. I’m young and, without you, I’d
probably have a long, unscarred life. So my face is unmarked, but what about
the rest of me. Look at all the scratches and bites on my once perfect body. And
besides the damage, I don’t like the way you conduct yourself. If you weren’t
in control, maybe I’d be engaged to the hot, blonde, very rich Lamont-twin by
now. You’re really messing with my life and my mind.” He ran his hand through his
blond, uncharacteristically messy hair.
“I
don’t like killing innocent people. All that blood…all that screaming. And that
poor kid,
Kindra
, will probably be traumatized for
life.
And for what?
After all that, you turned tail
and ran like a coward.”

“Shut up! Shut up! I need to
think. And, I only ran because I decided the plan had flaws. And that was your
fault. You harassed me so much with your sissy objections that I wasn’t able to
think clearly and prepare for the unexpected. Brian wasn’t supposed to show up.
At my specific orders,
Kindra
warned Valerie to come
alone. Now, she’ll pay double for not obeying.”

“You were going to kill her
anyway, so how do you die double?”

“If we weren’t housed in the
same body, I’d show you, college boy.”

“Well, sadly we are. So tell
me.”

“With torture my irritating
friend—long
, excruciating
torture.”

“I don’t want you to hurt
her.”

“Tough. Now shut up. I didn’t
have all this aggravation with my host, Lazar, a cleverly evil man I grew quite
fond of. You are far more troubling. Your obsession for Valerie and her dad’s
money is getting in my way.”

Menacing thoughts filled
Reeves’ mind. The next attack had to be flawless, perhaps something he could do
at a distance. Explosives came to mind. And he knew where he could get
everything he needed. March AFB munitions building, or maybe at Cohen’s
Construction site. He’d seen a help wanted ad for the construction firm a
couple days ago.

Chapter Thirteen

Eerie silence hung in the
mansion like a cloak of uncertainty
as
Valerie tiptoed
barefoot down the hall, wearing only the filigree cross Brian had placed around
her neck and a flimsy
shortie
pajama set dotted with
little golden angels. She shivered and hugged herself. When would Reeves strike
again and where? It was great to have her sister back home, yet she felt
misgivings about it. It placed
Victoria
back into the reach of evil.

She tapped lightly on Brian’s
door. Her heartbeat accelerated. If he was asleep, she didn’t want to disturb
him. But she really needed to see him…thank him…talk with him…be with him, if
only for a little while. She put her ear to the door and listened. Disappointment
washed over her at the absence of padding feet answering her tap. She waited a
moment more,
then
turned away.