Weathering Rock

by Mae Clair

  “So you chose Richard. After your real first name. But what about DeCardian?”

  “Like I’ve been telling everybody, I found it in a phone book and liked the sound of it. My condo project, DeCardian Pointe, was the first thing I thought of.”

  “So you told her your name was Richard DeCardian?”

  He nodded. “I’m sure you can guess the rest. Isabel and I fell in love. Not hard to do, considering I’d loved her in my head for years. I know you think I’m a game player, Ari, but that’s the Rick Rothrock of this century. I belong in the past. I’m a different person there. I have a wife and a family I adore. I designed Weathering Rock and built it with the help of Isabel’s uncles.”

  Arianna stared openly. “You designed Weathering Rock?”

  “Condos didn’t seem appropriate.”

  She flushed, appreciating his humor. “What about the name?”

  “My wife’s idea. That’s a story in itself, so I’ll save it for another time. Developers create communities to be remembered and put their mark on the map. Nothing I did in this century was worth that. I wanted Weathering Rock to be different, a legacy for my children’s children. As the eldest, the property would have passed to Caleb, with Charles receiving a financial inheritance.”

  She looked at him steadily, realizing that although he held all the memories of Richard DeCardian up until his death, he wouldn’t have known what happened to his son. He was only learning that now, realizing Caleb hadn’t died when his troop was ambushed.

  “Rick…” She faltered, smiling self-consciously as she adjusted her image of him. Rick Rothrock, family man. Lauren would have collapsed in hysterical laughter at the idea.

  “Richard,” she corrected. “Caleb knows who you are. He doesn’t understand what’s happened any more than you do, but you need to see him.”

  “Yeah.” Rick blew air between his teeth. “I know that. It’s awkward.” He pawed the back of his neck, shooting a sideways glance from under his brows. “How old is he, anyway?”

  “Thirty-three.”

  “Makes sense. He was thirty when he disappeared, and you said he’s been in this century for three years. We didn’t know if he was killed in that ambush, or taken to Libby Prison.” He fidgeted, disturbed by the memory. “I did everything I could and used every scrap of influence I had to get to Libby, but nothing worked.” His voice cracked.

  It couldn’t have been easy to learn the son he’d once thought dead had survived. How many years had he carried that tragic grief in his heart? She watched as he drew a breath, visibly collecting himself.

  “When the war ended and prisoners were released, we hoped Caleb would come home. That was when Isabel cried in earnest. I think up until that point she’d always believed he was alive.” Clasping his hands between his legs, he looked at his feet. “If only I could change that. She died never knowing what became of him.”

  “Rick, I’m sorry.” She folded her hand over his.

  He gave a half-hearted shrug. “They were hard times, Ari. The war, Reconstruction.” He pushed from the chair and paced a short distance. Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he kept his back turned, his eyes on the clipped hedgerow at the rear of her property. “I tried to be proud of Caleb, but I never wanted him going to West Point. I knew what was coming. Four years of Civil War and the highest loss of American combat lives in history. He wouldn’t have sat idle while the war raged around him, but that didn’t make the idea easier to swallow. A Union officer in Confederate hands would have been treated harshly, assuming he wasn’t killed outright. Isabel refused to think of such things. She was so proud of him.”

  “Did she know?” Arianna asked. “About you?”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “I told her. I didn’t want obstacles between us and she’d already sensed I was different. I knew things I shouldn’t have and had a strange way of talking. I showed her my driver’s license and credit cards, even that damn newspaper clipping from the Sagehill Business Journal. I had a copy of it folded up in my wallet. When she saw the date, she agreed we should keep everything secret. We hid all of it in a box in the attic and never told Caleb or Charles. We didn’t want to frighten them. I wanted a normal family.”

  He walked to the edge of the patio. “I built an empire in the eighteen hundreds–land, iron, lumber, glass. It’s easy to invest wisely when you have hindsight. Caleb wasn’t interested in any of it. He wanted a military career. Don’t ask me why. I couldn’t tell you where he got the idea. He was strong-minded and willful, even as a child. The Union desperately needed officers during the war, but Caleb’s rank of colonel was well earned. My son was a valiant commander.” He shook his head with a lopsided grin. “My son. God, I can’t believe I’m saying that. Where Caleb got his drive for leadership, I’ll never know.”

  She smiled. “Well, I do.” Arianna crossed to his side. “Take a look around Sagehill, Rick. You developed a quarter of the residential communities in this town. You’re one of its leading citizens. And you just got through telling me how you built an empire over a century ago. You might not have put on a uniform and gone into battle, but if Caleb learned anything about leadership, I’d say it was from watching you.”

  “Scary thought.” He flushed and grinned, vain enough to appreciate having his ego stroked. It suddenly dawned on Arianna where Caleb had inherited his sporadic penchant for arrogance.

  “What about his health?” she asked. “Did he have any problems growing up? Or maybe later, after the war started?”

  He looked at her quizzically. “Why?”

  “No reason.” She groped for an excuse. “I just wondered what you remembered about his childhood. Caleb doesn’t talk much about his past.”

  “I can understand that. It hurts remembering.” He drew a breath, refocusing on the question. “Caleb had the usual childhood illnesses. Colds and fevers, an occasional sprain. He had two close calls during the war. One when he took a bullet in the leg and they had to cut the slug out in a field hospital.”

  Arianna shuddered. She’d read enough about field surgery to realize Caleb was fortunate he hadn’t lost the leg altogether. She’d noticed a scar on his calf when he was dressing that morning, but had been too perplexed by Wyn banging cupboard doors to ask about it.

  “The other time he took some shrapnel in the neck,” Rick continued, unaware of her distraction. “It’s how he got that scar on his throat. Damn idiot kept fighting afterward. He’s lucky he didn’t sever his jugular.”

  “That was with Seth.” It unnerved her to think he could have died. He hadn’t told her about getting shot in the leg. Exactly how many times had he come close to being killed?

  Rick balked. “You know about Seth?”

  Arianna drew a deep breath. “You might want to sit down for this,” she suggested. “You and Caleb aren’t the only ones who’ve traveled through time.”

  Chapter 21

  Arianna wasn’t positive how she did it, but she convinced Rick to hold off seeing Caleb until she had a chance to talk to him. Once he’d gotten over the initial shock of realizing Caleb was his son, he was anxious to meet him face to face. Instead she persuaded him to go home, shower and crawl into bed.

  “Sleep for at least twenty-four hours,” she insisted. “You need to be clear-headed when you talk to him. And it will give me a chance to tell him about you and what you remember.”

  It was mind-boggling when she thought about it. Rick Rothrock, Lauren’s self-absorbed playboy ex, had fathered and raised the man she loved. He’d seen Caleb through skinned knees and bloody noses, summers fishing and winters gathering firewood. Had he sat with Caleb over a piece of slate, helping him scratch out numbers for schoolwork with a fat stick of chalk? Had he taught him how to climb trees and fashion a slingshot, things she couldn’t imagine Rick doing himself? It couldn’t have been easy for him, adapting to the traditions and nuances of another century. In the matter of a few hours, she found herself deeply respectful of the man he’d become. Richard DeCardian
.

  By the time they’d finished talking and he left, morning had crawled into afternoon. The discussion drained her emotionally, compounding the turmoil of the last few days and the excitement of the previous night. She might have spent a good eight hours in Caleb’s bed, but they hadn’t done much sleeping.

  Deciding she needed a few minutes to recuperate, she curled up on her bed and fell into an exhausted slumber. When she woke hours later, the sun was setting, turning the windows of her bedroom a translucent orange. She took a quick shower, and then heated some leftover pasta in the microwave while she mulled over her conversation with Rick. Caleb already had plans for the evening, but she was anxious to tell someone about their discussion. With any luck, she’d be able to catch Wyn at home.

  Forty minutes later, she hurried out the door and headed for Weathering Rock, unconcerned by the sight of a full moon struggling above the horizon.

  * * * *

  “Winston!”

  Caleb paced, his restlessness confined to the square fifteen-foot width of the parlor. Beyond the front windows, the sky deepened with the gargoyle gray of a warm midsummer night. A patchy mist corkscrewed between the garage and house, reminding him of the night he’d met Arianna. He glanced at the wall clock impatiently.

  He should have headed to the basement thirty minutes ago, resigned to another torturous night of imprisonment. He hated the accursed cell with its rough limestone walls and massive door inlaid by bright bands of silver, but the confinement was necessary. In wolf form he couldn’t control his instinct. The moment he tasted human flesh or human blood, he’d be doomed to suffer the hex forever. There was still time before the spell overtook him, but he was edgy, the pull of the moon stronger than usual.

  “Damn it, Winston, hurry up!”

  “All right. I’m coming.” Wyn’s voice drifted from the den where he’d been sequestered most of the day in an attempt to glean information on Rick Rothrock. Caleb had left him alone, finding him gruff and close-mouthed after their early morning discussion. His nephew’s attitude aside, he could no longer ignore the tug of the rising moon.

  It hummed in his blood, seductively murmuring of cool nighttime darkness and the freedom waiting outside. He could feel a change in his body, his normally enhanced senses engorged. Every sight, sound and smell fanned his restlessness higher.

  “Winston, we need to go downstairs. Now!”

  “All right, I’m coming.” Wyn hustled from the den, harried and preoccupied. One side of his gray t-shirt hung sloppily over his belt, the other tucked tightly at his waist. He looked as lopsided as the shirt, his eyes red-veined and glassy from too many hours hunched over a computer. Caleb knew it was easy for him to become engrossed in a research project to the exclusion of everything else.

  “Rothrock has a slew of press on him,” Wyn explained with a tired exhale. “Most detailing his residential developments. But I found a few tabloid-style pieces glamorizing his girl-a-minute lifestyle.”

  “You’re talking about my father, Winston.”

  “So I’ll skip the descriptive stuff. Bottom line, the man knows his shit. He might take risks and live in the fast lane, but he’s got his thumb on the pulse of the real estate market. Even after the bubble burst, he kept afloat financially. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a single reference hinting he might have gone back in time.” Yawning, he rubbed his eyes. “You should have called me sooner.”

  Caleb raised a brow. “I’m not all that anxious to get locked up.” He started to turn away but halted at the sound of a car pulling into the driveway. “Now what?”

  Wyn flagged him off, craning his neck toward the windows. “You head downstairs. I’ll see who it is.”

  “And what am I going to do in the basement? Lock myself in? I can’t touch the ’cursed door with all that silver when I’m this close to changing.” He paced to the window, trying to catch a glimpse of the vehicle outside.

  “Caleb, the moon isn’t up yet.”

  “It doesn’t matter. It feels different. Stronger. Not all moons are the same. I thought after three years, you’d realize that.” Before he could say another word, the doorbell chimed, echoing through the house.

  “Look, if you’re that worried, I’ll ignore it.” Wyn headed toward the hall. “Let’s just go downstairs and get this over with.”

  “Hello?”

  Caleb tensed at the sound of Arianna’s voice drifting from the front of the house. He knew Wyn had left the door standing open for ventilation, only the screen closed. She’d probably heard them talking and knew they were in the parlor.

  “Caleb? Wyn?”

  “Damn. It’s Arianna.” He caught a delicate whiff of jasmine and clover, her flowery perfume resurrecting sensual memories of the night before. Desire washed over him in a searing wave of lust that streaked to his groin. As much as he loved her and cherished their intimacy, the violent nature of the wolf twisted his passion into something dark and erotic. It was easy to remember the earthy fragrance of her hair, the intoxicating silk of her body beneath his, the way she’d wriggled and moaned when he’d spilled into her. How much better would sex be when he teetered on the edge of change?

  “Hades.” Bracing an arm against the wall, he ducked his head, panting through his teeth. “Winston, get her out of here.”

  “Caleb?” she called again. “Are you back there?”

  It was too late. Not receiving an answer to the bell, she stepped inside, the click of her heels announcing her presence in the hallway.

  Caleb groaned, bowing his face against his arm. Her proximity sent a reactionary trigger through his blood. He shuddered as a sticky deluge of sweat and heat crashed over him. Something was wrong. The curse shouldn’t overtake him so soon. The moon was still sluggishly climbing to its perch in the sky, but the wolf was growing powerful.

  “Winston,” he snarled, barely clinging to his fragile grip on humanity. “Do something.”

  Wyn needed no further prompting. He darted to the doorway, blocking Arianna’s entrance before she could step into the room. “Ari,” he said nervously. “What are you doing here? I thought Caleb told you he wasn’t going to be available tonight.”

  “Caleb?” She craned her neck, calling over Wyn’s shoulder. “What’s wrong? I came by to tell you I’d spoken to Rick, and–” She stopped suddenly. “Caleb, are you sick?”

  “Ari, no!” Wyn held her back when she tried to shove past him.

  At the same time, Caleb retreated deeper into the room. Cornered, he began to pace, his movements taking on the roaming, predatory lope of the wolf–faster and faster, his heartbeat ratcheting higher with every slinking step.

  “Stay away from me!” Her scent engulfed him, making him mindless and numb with hunger. His human half wanted to gather her into his arms and profess his love, but the part that was ruled by a wild animal grew drunk with the thought of hedonistic pleasure. The wolf wanted to take, control and dominate. The desire spread through his body like a plague.

  “Annie, please. You have to leave.” It was growing harder to talk, his breath coming in ragged gulps as the crippling pain of transformation ripped across his chest. His worst nightmare was about to come true. She would see him as he truly was, a man cursed to live a demon’s existence. “Winston, get her the hell out of here.”

  There would be no basement this time, no doors with silver wardings or protective bindings. The change was already taking place, pumping hot and fierce through his blood.

  Wyn realized it at the same time. “Arianna, we have to go. Now!” He propelled her into the hall, ignoring her startled squawk of alarm.

  The door slammed behind them, and Caleb was alone with the predatory half of his soul.

  * * * *

  “Stop it!” Arianna shook off Wyn’s grip, pivoting to face him. “Are you crazy?”

  Before he could answer, something slammed against the door. Caleb screamed. The sound knifed through her like the violent jolt of an electrical wire.

  “Caleb!�
� She launched herself at the door, panicked and terrified by the thought of the man she loved in horrific pain.

  “Don’t!” Wyn stiff-armed her aside and grabbed the knob, forcibly holding it in place. “Get a chair. Something, anything! We’ve got to keep him locked inside.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Arianna, get a fricking chair. Now!”

  There was another crash, and then a bang as something heaved against the door, making it shudder from top to bottom. Arianna heard a snarl that turned her blood to ice. The door rattled in its frame, weakening as something battered against it. Something inhuman locked in the room with Caleb.

  A cold fist clamped over her stomach.

  “Wyn, what’s going on?”

  “Chair!” he spat. “Get me a fucking chair.”

  The raw urgency of his voice plowed through her confusion. She darted into the dining room, snagged a chair, and dragged it into the hallway. The thing in the parlor was still hammering away, heaving itself against the door in an attempt to burst through. Wyn’s face was white with strain as he struggled to hold the door shut with both hands. He rammed the top of the chair beneath the knob, wedging it securely into place. A blood-thirsty howl exploded from the other side, kicking Arianna’s heartbeat into overdrive.

  “My God, Wyn, what’s going on?” She lurched for the door.

  “Don’t. You don’t know what you’re doing.” Wyn caught her around the waist and swung her up against the wall.

  She tried to squirm free. “I know Caleb’s trapped in there. We have to help him! There’s something in the room. Can’t you hear it?”