Raintree: Inferno

by Linda Howard

  “How do you know that, if you’ve been asleep?”

  “I didn’t say I was sleeping, I said I was resting.”

  “Eating isn’t considered work. Come on. I have fresh orange juice, coffee, the bagels are already toasted, and the sunrise is great.”

  “To you, maybe, but it’s five-thirty on Sunday morning, and I don’t want to eat breakfast this early. I want one day a week when you don’t drag me out of bed at the crack of dark-thirty.”

  “Next Sunday you can sleep, I promise.” Rather than fight her for custody of the sheet, he slid his hand under the covers, found her thigh again and swiftly reached upward to pinch her ass.

  She squeaked and bolted out of bed, rubbing her backside. “Payback will be hell,” she warned, as she pushed her disheveled hair out of her face and stalked off to the bathroom.

  He imagined it would be. Dante grinned as he returned to the balcony.

  She came out five minutes later, wrapped in his thick robe and still scowling. She wasn’t wearing anything under the robe, so he enjoyed glimpses as she plopped into a chair across from him. It also gaped at the neck, revealing the gold chain from which hung the protection charm he’d given her on Wednesday night. He’d made it specifically for her, out here on the balcony, and let her watch. She’d been enthralled at the way he cupped the charm and held it up so his breath warmed it as he murmured a few words in Gaelic. The charm had taken on a gentle green glow that quickly faded. When he slipped the chain over her head she had fingered the charm, looking as if she might cry. She hadn’t taken it off since.

  As grumpy as she was when she first woke, she didn’t stay that way for long. By the time she’d had her second bite of bagel she was looking much more cheerful. Still, he waited until she’d finished the bagel and her juice glass was empty before he said, “Will you marry me?”

  She had much the same reaction as when he’d mentioned a baby. She paled, then turned red, then jumped out of her chair and went to stand at the railing with her back to him. Dante knew a lot about women, but more specifically, he knew Lorna, so he didn’t leave her standing there alone. He caged her with his arms, putting his hands on top of hers on the railing, not holding her tightly but giving her his warmth. “Is the question that hard to answer?”

  He felt her shoulders heave. Alarmed, he turned her around. Tears were streaking down her face. “Lorna?”

  She wasn’t sobbing, but her lips were trembling. “I’m sorry,” she said, swiping at her face. “I know this is silly. It’s just—no one has ever wanted me before.”

  “I doubt that. Probably you just didn’t notice them wanting you. I wanted you the minute I saw you.”

  “Not that kind of wanting.” Another tear leaked down. “The other kind, the staying-around kind.”

  “I love you,” he said gently, mentally cursing the bitch who had given birth to her for not nurturing the sense of security that every child should have, the knowledge that, no matter what, someone loved her and wanted her.

  “I know. I believe you.” She gulped. “I sort of figured it out when you deliberately wrecked your Jaguar to protect me.”

  “I knew I could buy another car,” he said simply.

  “That’s when I knew that you’d ruined me, that I wouldn’t be able to leave unless you threw me out. I kept hoping it was just old-fashioned lust I was feeling, but I knew better, and it scared me to death.” She gave a shaky laugh, despite the slow roll of yet another tear. “In just two days, you’d ruined me.”

  He rubbed the side of his nose. “We hadn’t had much time together, but it was quality time.”

  “Quality!” She gaped at him, mouth open. Indignation dried her tears. “You manhandled me, dragged me into a fire, tore open my head and smashed my brain flat, tore off my clothes and kept me a prisoner!”

  “I didn’t say it was good quality. You have a way with words, you know that? ‘Tore open your head,’ my ass.”

  “You don’t like it when I call it ‘brain-rape,’” she said sourly. “And I think I have a better grasp of how it felt than you do.”

  “I guess you do, at that. When you voluntarily link with someone, it doesn’t—”

  “Good God.” She looked horrified. “Some of you actually do that willingly?”

  “I told you, it doesn’t hurt when it’s done right. If someone needs to boost their power, they find someone else who is willing to link. Every so often Gideon and I go home to Sanctuary, and we link with Mercy to perform a protection spell over the homeplace. Doing it right takes time, but it doesn’t hurt. Will you answer the—”

  “I hope you have some kind of law against doing it without permission.”

  “Uh—no.”

  She looked horrified. “You mean you Raintree people can just go around breaking into people’s heads, and nobody does anything about it?”

  He was beginning to feel frustrated. Would the woman never answer his question? “I didn’t say that. Very few of us are strong enough to overpower someone else’s brain unless they cooperate.”

  “And you’re one of those few,” she said sarcastically. “Right. Lucky me.”

  “Specifically, only the royal family. Which I’ve asked you to join, I’d like to point out, if you’ll answer the damn question!”

  She smiled, and it was like a ray of sunshine breaking across her lively, mobile face. “Of course I will. Did you really doubt it?”

  “I never know which way you’ll jump. I thought you might love me, because you stayed. Then, last night—” He flicked a finger over her chin. “Not telling me to wear a condom was a dead giveaway.”

  She stared at him, a peculiar expression stealing over her face.

  He straightened, instantly alert. “What’s wrong?” Just that quickly she looked sick, as if she were going to throw up.

  She rubbed her arms, frowning. “I’m cold. It’s that same—” She broke off, her eyes widening with horror, and before he could react she threw herself bodily at him, catching him unprepared for the impact of her weight. He caught her, staggering back, then lurching to the side as he tried to catch his balance and failed. They fell to the floor of the balcony in a tangle of arms, legs and bathrobe as the French door behind him shattered. Hard on the explosion of glass came a sharp, flat retort that echoed through the mountains.

  Rifle fire.

  Dante wrapped his arms around Lorna, got his feet under him and lunged through the shattered door just as another shot spatted into the side of the house where they had been. Then he rolled with her, getting her away from the wall, before finally lunging to his feet and dragging her out into the hall. “Stay down!” he yelled at her when she tried to stand, pushing her flat again.

  His mind was racing. The fire. The gang shooting when he and Lorna so conveniently happened to be boxed in the kill zone. Now someone was shooting at him again. These weren’t a series of accidents; they were all related. The fire marshal hadn’t found any evidence of arson, which meant—

  A Fire-Master didn’t need accelerants to start a fire, or to keep it going. Someone, or several someones, had been feeding the fire; that was why he hadn’t been able to extinguish it. If he hadn’t used mind control for the first time just minutes before trying to control the fire and hadn’t known how it would affect him, if he hadn’t suspected Lorna might be Ansara, he would have figured it out right away.

  Ansara! He snarled his rage. It had to be them. Several of them must have gotten together and decided to try burning him out. They’d known he would engage the fire, that he wouldn’t give up until it overwhelmed him. If Lorna hadn’t been there, the plan would have worked, too, but they hadn’t counted on her.

  The cold, sick feeling she kept getting—that was when any Ansara were nearby.

  “There was a red dot on your forehead,” she said, though her teeth were chattering so hard she could barely speak, or maybe that was because he was practically kneeling on her back to keep her down.

  A laser targeting system, then. T
his wasn’t simply seizing an opportunity, but actively planning and pursuing.

  The sniper had failed. What would they try next? He had to assume there was more than one Ansara out there, had to assume there was a back-up plan. They wouldn’t try to burn him out again, since the first effort had failed; they would think he had sufficient power to handle any flame they could muster. But what would they do?

  Whatever it was, he couldn’t let them succeed, not with Lorna here.

  “Stay here,” he commanded, getting to his feet.

  She scrambled after him. The woman didn’t obey worth a damn. “I said stay here!” he roared, whirling back and catching her arm, pushing her down once more. He started to stick her ass to the floor with a mental command, but he’d promised her—damn it, he’d promised her—and he couldn’t do it.

  “I was going to call the cops!” she shouted at him, so furious at his rough handling that she was practically levitating.

  “Don’t bother. This isn’t something the cops can handle. Stay here, Lorna. I don’t want you caught between us.”

  “Who is us?” she yelled at his back as he charged down the stairs. “What are you going to do?”

  “Fight fire with fire,” he said grimly.

  Dante had a tremendous advantage. This was his home, his property, and he knew every inch of it. Because he was Raintree, because he was the Dranir and took precautions, he went out through the tunnel he’d built under his house. He knew where he’d been standing when the laser scope had settled the telltale dot on his forehead, so he had a good idea where the shooter had been standing, too.

  There was only one. He hadn’t found signs of any others.

  He had no intention of trying to capture the bastard or engaging him in any sort of face-to-face battle. He prowled up the ravine like a big cat, death in his eyes. The shooter’s position must have been just around this cut, maybe in that big cluster of rocks. A sniper needed a stable shooting platform, and those rocks would be convenient. This ravine provided good cover, too, for approaching.

  And for leaving.

  Dante slid around the cut and came face-to-face with a man wearing desert camo and toting a rifle. He didn’t hesitate at all. The man had barely moved, bringing the rifle up to fire, when Dante set him aflame.

  The screams were raw and terrified. The man dropped the rifle and threw himself to the ground, frantically rolling, but Dante ruthlessly kept the fire going. This bastard had come close to killing Lorna, and there was no mercy in his heart for anyone who harmed her. In seconds the screams became howls, taking on an inhuman quality—and then silence.

  Dante extinguished the flame.

  The man lay smoldering, barely recognizable as human.

  Dante used his foot to roll the man onto his back. Incredibly, hate-filled eyes glared up at him from the charred face. The hole that had been the man’s mouth worked, and a ghostly sound tore from a throat that shouldn’t have worked.

  “Toooo late. Toooo late.”

  Then he died, massive shock stopping his heart. Dante stood frozen, his thoughts working furiously.

  Too late? Too late for what?

  He’d touched the Ansara. The man had been in agony, his hate projected like a force field, and Dante had read him.

  Too late.

  He could warn Mercy, but it would be too late.

  “Oh, shit,” he said softly, and ran.

  Lorna had obeyed him, and stayed put. She was in the kitchen, crouched by the refrigerator, when he charged in and grabbed the nearest phone. His first phone call was to Mercy. His second was to Gideon, who could get to Mercy much faster than he could.

  Because it was the solstice, because Gideon’s personal electrical field played hell with all electronics, when Gideon answered the phone almost all Dante could hear was static.

  “Get to Mercy!” he roared, hoping Gideon would understand anyway. “The Ansara are attacking Sanctuary!” Then he slammed down the phone and tore open the door to the garage, his mind racing.

  The corporate jet would get him to the airport nearest Sanctuary in about four hours. He could try Gideon again from the plane.

  Two hundred years ago the Ansara had tried to destroy the Raintree and had failed. Now they were trying again, and, damn it, this time they might succeed in destroying Sanctuary—where Mercy was, with Eve.

  “Where are you going?” Lorna shrieked as he got in the Lotus.

  “Stay here!” he ordered one last time, and reversed out of the garage. He didn’t want Lorna anywhere near Sanctuary. He didn’t know if he would make it back alive, but no matter what, he had to know she was safe.

  “I don’t think so,” Lorna muttered furiously as she changed clothes. Dante Raintree wasn’t the only person who knew how to get things done. If he thought he could leave her behind while he went to fight some sort of supernatural battle, well, he would soon find out he was wrong.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-2252-0

  RAINTREE

  Copyright © 2008 by Harlequin Books S.A.

  The publisher acknowledges the copyright holders of the individual works as follows:

  RAINTREE: INFERNO

  Copyright © 2007 by Linda Howington

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3K9, Canada.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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