“Hey there, how are you doing?”
As she picked up the rabbit, its heart began pounding so hard, she feared it would have a heart attack. It jerked in her arms, and she rode on its terror.
Caged... a large hand reaching in... grabbing another rabbit and tearing it from the enclosure... the rising frenzy of yelps... a fast glimpse of the rabbit being thrown before a weird-looking dog...
Her own heart was pounding now, and bile rose in her throat, but she swallowed hard and reined in her emotions so she wouldn’t frighten the poor rabbit. She gently stroked its back. “It’s all right, no one’s going to hurt you here.”
Skye laid her forehead against its furry ears and tuned in, hoping to calm it with soft thoughts and comforting whispers. Eventually, the rabbit stopped trying to leap from her arms. Its heartbeat slowed.
She couldn’t say the same for her own. What she’d seen had been totally unexpected. This had been no Easter bunny but a rabbit that had been owned by people who trained dogs. Wild dogs like the one that had shown her the animal habitat on the casino boat. Undoubtedly, Cotton Tail’s companion had been used as bait. And her brother might have lied about another cop bringing the poor guy in to give away. Shade had probably saved the rabbit himself.
Going over all she had learned, she began putting together the big picture.
Shade must have thought he was going after a normal dogfighting ring to start, before he’d become aware the fights had involved other kinds of predators. While a federal crime, dogfights were the purview of the Animal Crimes Unit that operated under organized crime, and Shade had been a homicide detective.
Which meant he must have followed a trail left by a murder investigation straight to the animal fights. The murder investigation Ethan had mentioned when she’d gone to see him. But why hadn’t Shade told Ethan anything he’d learned that linked those deaths to the fights and ultimately to the casino?
Undoubtedly, he’d run into the very same things she had on that casino boat, including one Nuala Lazare whose thoughts she’d been able to read. Shade’s gift. He must have been able to read her thoughts and those of the employees. Had he, too, imagined he could hear the thoughts from animals in the habitat?
Last night’s dream whipped into her, making her think things that couldn’t be true. Predators both animal and human. Impossible.
After giving each of the animals in the shop a bit of attention, she got to work on inventory, wheeling boxes of supplies from the storeroom and restocking shelves while Phoebe waited on customers and worked on accounts using her laptop. They barely stopped for lunch. Skye went next door and got sandwiches and sodas and they ate in the store. Then back to work, her head still spinning with things that had nothing to do with Petopia. She forced herself to keep working, to focus on normal, daily activities. But her thoughts kept creeping back to how far from normal her life had become.
Skye’s mood altered. Mind spinning with questions, she was suddenly anxious to leave so she could try to find some answers. And she wanted to make sure Shade was still around. She had to be sure she hadn’t imagined everything. That she hadn’t imagined him.
She nearly made it to the end of the workday before she decided to call it quits.
“I think I’m going to book out of here a little early.”
Phoebe put her arms around her for a big hug. “I knew it was too soon.”
“Hey, I almost got through the day.” Unable to tell her friend what had gotten into her, Skye shrugged and smiled. “I had to give it a try.”
“You always have something to prove. Now don’t rush back. I’ll get the kids to work extra hours,” Phoebe said, referring to their part-time high school employees. “They’ve asked me about it anyway. Take whatever time you need.”
Part of her wanted to tell her best friend everything. Phoebe knew she had a special connection to animals, and that Shade and she could read each other, but she didn’t know how deep those abilities went. It wasn’t something she talked about. It made her different. Plus, the last thing in the world she wanted was to have Phoebe look at her with doubt clouding her expression. She definitely couldn’t tell her about Shade’s ghost.
Anxious to see him, she power walked home.
Petopia was in Lakeview, the high-end part of the north side neighborhood, about a mile west of Lake Michigan. She tried to make the five-minute walk home stress-free. Tried to get her mind off murder and animal fights and terrified rabbits and be at peace with the sun shining down on her. She cut off busy Lincoln Avenue to a side street where narrow city lots held some single-family homes but mostly two- and three-flats. Over the last dozen years, the neighborhood had seriously gentrified. Some of the beautifully landscaped yards were maintained by a service. Two men with big lawn mowers and uniform shirts worked across the street from each other even as she passed by. The smell of cut grass filled the air.
Personally, she enjoyed tending to her own garden. Gardening could be healing, yet it wouldn’t make her forget all that was pushing at her to be resolved.
But how to find the truth?
Luc... Luc... Luc...
A flash of her experience with him the night before when walking the dog shot a shiver through her despite the warmth of the day. She didn’t want to go there again. And she did, more than anything. Luc—at least to her—was the equivalent of human catnip. He could be seductive and irresistible, and being near him made her long to step outside her usual self.
He could know more than he was saying about Shade’s murder. She had to keep that in mind, not let Luc affect her again.
As if she’d conjured Luc by thinking of him, she felt a familiar sensation along the pathways of her nerves. She grew aware, but when she stopped in front of her two-flat and looked around, she saw nothing on the parkway.
Even so, her body began to tingle with need, and it took everything she had to ignore the seductive sensation. Luc had to be here somewhere. Rather than give him the advantage by waiting for him to show himself, she changed direction and headed down the gangway sidewalk to the backyard where they could talk in private.
No footsteps behind her.
No sense of his presence.
Damn. Had she blown it? Or had she simply imagined feeling him?
When she opened the back gate, Luc was already there waiting for her. Standing near the bench under the shade of the crabapple tree, he was gazing around, taking in his surroundings. Heart-stoppingly attractive in a bronze shirt with a white tee beneath, he looked at home amid her hydrangeas and roses and the perennials that had replaced the grass. This was her special place where she came when she needed to center herself, and Luc seemed comfortable here, as if he fit right into the landscape.
Not liking that, she closed the gate behind her and said, “Here to try to make me forget again?”
He shrugged. “I doubt that would work.”
“Then why?” She made her mind go blank to keep him from getting inside her head.
“I was simply checking up on you, making sure you were all right.”
Which didn’t make sense to her. “Why?” she asked again.
“I told you I owe you.”
“You do, don’t you?” she changed direction and narrowed the distance between them, not stopping until she got into his personal space. “And you probably don’t like owing anyone anything very much.”
“And you what?” His gaze narrowed on her face. “Have a way I can obliterate the debt?”
“I do.”
she wanted to lick her lips, but not only had they gone dry, so had her mouth. She was playing with fire here, and she knew it. He dipped his head so close to hers his breath fluttered across her face.
“Shall we go inside?” he asked.
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Your pulse jumped.”
“Perhaps because I don’t trust you.”
His lips were nearly brushing hers when he said, “I have your best interests at heart.”
&nbs
p; “Right.”
When he didn’t answer, simply stood so close she had trouble breathing, she felt as if he could seduce her right there, right in the middle of her own backyard, and she wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing to stop him. He ran a thumb down the side of her face. Sensation jumped from neuron to neuron, lighting up her internal network and spreading throughout her body.
She stood frozen. Unable to move.
Her breasts swelled and her nipples tightened and, in one tiny corner of her mind, she got the picture of his mouth on them, doing unspeakable things, while his hands explored lower territories now wet with anticipation. Rather, she would be unspeakable, so caught up in sensation that she could only make unintelligible sounds.
And then he removed his thumb from her jawline, and she jerked back to reality. Whatever he’d been doing to entice her flatlined. Relieved, she was able to take a deep, normal breath.
How had he done that?
Her face flamed. Despite her best efforts, he undoubtedly knew everything she was thinking.
“Not everything,” Luc said, looking distinctly unhappy.
Unhappy why? He’d had power over her for that moment. Maybe he hadn’t wanted that kind of power but hadn’t been able to stop himself.
Now she was smiling. Not an all-out, wide-mouthed grin. More like an ironic curve of her lips. Maybe she had some power over him, as well. Now if only she could make him talk.
“Maybe you can tell me why someone wanted your mother dead.”
His brow furrowed. “If I knew...”
“What?”
“I’d fix things.”
She didn’t get the feeling that would involve turning in whoever had shot his mother and killed her brother to the police.
“What was your mother into, Luc? Something to do with the casino? Or with the animal fights?”
He looked as if she had struck him. And then he scowled at her, making her quake inside. Just a little.
“My mother is one of the most decent human beings that you would ever hope to meet.”
An odd way of putting things. Was he trying to tell her that Elizabeth Reyes wasn’t something else the way he was? She didn’t want to consider what she’d learned about her own lineage if The Book of Powers was to be believed.
“Does that mean you want me to meet your mother?” she asked. “That you’ll introduce us?”
“Stay away from her.”
“Why? She knows what happened the night my brother was murdered. You owe me, remember. You said you have my best interests at heart. Her best interests mean I find out who killed her brother and see that justice is done.”
“Oh, justice will be served. It’s merely a matter of time.”
He sounded so sure of himself. And still, she didn’t know what justice meant in his world. She suspected they might be at odds on that one. Though part of her figured the killer deserved whatever he got, she was from a family of cops. She believed in the legal system. Arrests. Trials. Incarcerations. No death penalty in Illinois.
But the killer being something else—whatever that was—would put a kink in the legal system.
Whoever it was couldn’t go free.
Skye thought of all she had experienced at the animal fight, on board The Ark, and with Luc in a few short days. And then there had been the nightmare about the human-animal predators aboard the biblical ark. It had all seemed so real, almost as if she’d been transported back in time. As if she’d witnessed the event.
What if the killer was like one of the men—beings—that had entered a predator?
Would it even be possible to hold on to such a suspect if the CPD arrested him?
“How do you define justice?” she asked Luc.
He moved closer to her again. “Nothing you need to worry about.”
Her pulse shot through her. “Don’t start.”
She noted the smile curling his lips before he came so close that all she could see were his eyes. Their color subtly shifted from a soft gray to molten silver, as if gleaming with some knowledge she couldn’t quite grasp. Her body reacted the way it had earlier. As much as she wanted to, she refused to move away from him, refused to let him think he had the upper hand. Even so, he must know.
“You’re a tempting woman, Skye Cross.”
Not as tempting as he was. Not that she would say so. Not that she had to. Obviously, he knew how he affected her. How he sent her imagination spiraling. Even with her eyes open, she could see them together, naked, rolling, her landing on top, him buried deep inside her. Shocked, she squeezed her eyes shut tight and banished the image from her mind.
And when she opened them again, he was gone.
Vanished.
Again.
“You’ve got to stop doing that!” she yelled.
She had no doubt, wherever he was, he somehow heard her message.
How? Something she needed to learn along with dozens of other things. Luc probably knew the answers to all her questions.
The problem was that he wasn’t talking. But perhaps his mother would.
~
Shade appeared the moment Skye entered his apartment through the back door. “About time you got back.”
She tried to hug him. When her arms went straight through his upper body, she withdrew, the flesh on her arms pebbling. The reminder that he was dead put a lump square in her throat and made her eyes sting.
Hearing his master, Boomer came running from the front room where he’d been napping. Shade crouched down and gave the dog an air kiss.
“What was going on out there in the yard?” he asked. “I saw you with Lazare.”
Uh-oh, what had he seen? “Luc was checking on me. You saved his mother and he intends to save me. From what, I have no idea.”
“Me, neither.” Shade rose. “I got nothing. Well, almost nothing.”
“What do you remember?”
“I keep seeing animals.” He threw up his hands. “Predators.”
“Maybe with more time, you’ll remember everything, and we’ll be able to figure out the identity of the shooter.”
“I’ll still be dead.”
Skye wished she could touch his hand and reassure him. “But you’re still here now.”
“I can’t help you,” he said, “not when I’m stuck in this apartment.”
“I wonder about that.” Thinking she might get an idea from The Book of Powers, she fetched it, and her mind made connections.
Their abilities. Shade’s with humans, hers with animals. They’d never been normal, never like other people. But she didn’t want to be something else. And she didn’t want the responsibility the book put on her.
How was she supposed to neutralize evil?
Her stomach knotted, and she told herself she didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to. She could leave things as they were. Not get involved. She had her job during the day, and she could have her brother’s company at night.
Skye looked at Shade, what was left of her brother. His spirit must have remained behind for a purpose, and she knew in her heart the book demanded more of her than stepping back.
On her deathbed, Mom had told them they had a vital destiny to fulfill. That because her inheritance was shared, Shade and she were two halves of a whole and only together could they do what she couldn’t. Only seven at the time, she’d had no idea what Mom had meant then. Now she did.
Unless she figured out a way to get Shade out of this building, she would have to work alone. She told him about her early-morning nightmare. About Noah’s ark. About the demons entering the predators.
“I think it was more than a dream. It was more like a vision. Something the book wanted me to see. I think the predators in that vision—or their descendants—are the ones fighting each other in those animal fights.”
Shade swore. “There’s a certain logic there.”
“We have to figure out a way to stop the fights and shut down The Ark casino.”
“Big order considering I don’t
have a body.” He swiped a hand through his hair. “I can’t even step a foot out of the damn apartment.”
“Maybe you can leave the apartment.”
“How?”
“The Nephilim joined spirits with the animals on the ark. What if you can do the same?”
Simultaneously, their gazes shifted straight to the dog. Boomer whistled through his nose as if in agreement.
“You’re kidding, right?” he asked. “I can’t do that to Boomer. You told me those animals in your dream experienced terror, that you felt their pain.”
“Because evil entered them. You’re not evil. And Boomer loves you.”
“We can’t know.” Shade reached out a hand to Boomer’s nose as if he wished he could touch his dog one last time. “If you’re wrong, you’ll stop me.”
Hearing the screams of the animals on the ark in her mind, she felt her gorge rise, but she took a big breath and nodded. “All right.”
She slipped to the floor and kept the book on her lap.
Let Shade and Boomer be safe.
“Boomer, come.” When the dog got up from the floor to see what she wanted, she patted the book. “Come over here.”
After getting him to lie down partly on her, partly on the book, she ruffled the top of his head and kissed his nose. Shade sat close to his dog and closed his eyes. Gradually he began to shimmer.
“Now,” she said softly.
Opening his eyes, he reached out and touched Boomer’s side with one hand, then with the other. As his hands disappeared through the dog’s furry sides, Boomer wiggled around as if he was startled, but not like he was hurting. He looked around to see what Shade was doing. Shade leaned in... closer... closer... closer... and disappeared.
A few seconds later, Boomer barked and thumped his tail against the wooden floor.
“Shade?”
It worked. I could kiss you.
With Boomer’s big, sloppy tongue, her brother planted a wet one on her cheek.
Skye was overwhelmed. She wept and her hands touching the book felt electrified.
Animal Instincts (Kindred Souls Book 1) Page 9