by Kelly Moran
“Someone needs to explain...hunters. I’m freaking out.” Kaida’s pulse was skittering to dangerously high levels. “Should I be frightened? Because I am.” She was finally grasping curses, magick, and premonitions. Now they were off-handedly telling her she was being hunted?
Lord. Grab the pitchforks and torches. This was insane.
Ceara reached out and took Kaida’s hand. “Tomorrow, we’ll have a sit down about it. The family grimoire has information you can read, and then we’ll fill in the gaps for you. For now, you don’t need to be afraid. Not tonight. Protection spells are in place.”
Grimoire. “We have a grimoire?”
“Never mind that.” Fiona lifted her head from her hands and looked at Ceara. “Is that a yes or no on inviting the Meaths to Eostara?” She shifted focus to Kaida. “Do you really think it’ll help with your task?”
“I believe it will, yes.”
Ceara rose and set her blanket aside. “Extend an invitation to Brady and his brothers, then. Let’s hope they accept.”
Chapter Eleven
The second Brady opened his eyes, he knew he was in one of his mystery woman dreams. He stood atop a crested hill, overlooking the meadow, and Kaida’s form was a mirage in the distance by the cliffs.
Except something was very, very off this time. For starters, everything was in black and white, including him. He had on the blue flannel pants and white tee he’d fallen asleep in, but there wasn’t a trace of color. Like a cheesy fifties sitcom. Second, it was cold. As in, arctic. It wasn’t sleeting, there was no hint of snow on the ground, yet his breaths expelled frost before his face and his limbs were blocks of ice.
Forcing his feet to move, he walked, then jogged closer to Kaida’s position, and the harder he tried, the farther she got. It was like the meadow grew in size, expanding to keep him away from her. Panicked, he yelled her name, running.
One moment she was light years out of reach, the next she appeared in front of him. Hair up in a messy knot, she wore a pink two-piece silk pajamas set not appropriate for the weather, and looked at him. No, not at him. Through him. And she was in color. Confusion clouded her pretty cerulean eyes as she glanced around, seemingly unseeing. By the time his heartbeat caught up, fear had settled in her expression.
“Kaida?” He reached for her, grabbing hold of her upper arms.
She sucked a rapid breath and finally met his gaze. “Brady? Thank God. What’s going on?”
“I don’t...”
A topsy-turvy sensation blasted through him, and suddenly they weren’t in the meadow anymore. With a firm grip on her arms, he righted them through an unstable landing and gaped at their new location.
The woods. Smack in the center of the clearing.
“How did we get here?”
Goosebumps skated over every square inch of his body. “No clue. Are you...”
Again, he was thrown through a dizzying spiral, and he stumbled when it rapidly halted, nearly taking them both down. Fingers digging into her arms, he sucked oxygen and bent slightly at the waist to avoid passing out. Nausea churned violently in his gut.
The pier. That’s where they’d been dropped this time, on the west end of the island. Fishing charter boats bobbed in the choppy water, secured to the docks for the night, the island ferry being the last in a long row. Saltwater clung to the stiff wind, stinging his eyes.
“I’m scared.” Her eyes misted and she shook in his hold, panting as adamantly as him for air in short supply. His lungs felt like slime coated the walls and, judging by her effort, so did hers. “Brady...”
Her form blinked before him. Flickered as if she were a TV station and the satellite signal was getting lost.
“No! Stay with me, sweetheart.” He had the sickening sensation if she disappeared, it would be for good. She wouldn’t come back.
Christ. What the hell was happening?
“I...can’t,” she whimpered. “It’s pulling me.”
“What, Kaida? What’s pulling you?”
The world went black. Some kind of suction flung him through a vacuum, and he held onto her for all he was worth. He was probably leaving bruises, but he didn’t dare let go. Something was trying damn hard to rip her away despite his efforts. He roared through wind slapping his face, plastering his clothes to his body.
A jolt careened him to a stop. Abrupt. Jarring.
Heaving oxygen, he widened his stance to maintain his balance and pried his eyes open to make sure she was still with him. Relief punched him square in the gut at finding her there. He was about to haul her against him when she did that frightening static blink again. There and then gone, only to return several feet from him.
“Kaida?”
Wait. Where the hell were they? A king-sized bed with a nondescript patterned quilt faced one wall. A cabinet holding a flat screen hugged the other. Desk in the corner. Dresser beside it. Window with heavy drapes.
A...hotel room?
“This was where I stayed the night before I boarded the ferry.” Hand at her throat, she jerked her round eyes from one furniture piece to the next. “I recognize it. It’s the same room.” Then she gasped, closing his airway in the process. Her watery gaze locked across the small space to the opposite side of the bed.
He pivoted in that direction. The bathroom door was ajar, light on, and...steam billowed from the cracked opening. The sound of a shower running could barely be heard over the rattling whir of an exhaust fan.
Crap. They weren’t alone.
That had never, not once, happened before. Hell, they’d never left the meadow in their merged dreams.
Chilled to the bone, he moved to her side, but she disappeared into thin air. Before he had the chance to royally flip out, she reappeared in front of the bathroom door, her back to him.
Damn it. No.
He called her name, went to skirt around the bed, but she threw up her palm and...a wall of water erected between them. Floor-to-ceiling, free-forming water.
He froze, gawking at the thin ripples. Tentatively, he put his fingers out and drew them back. Wet. He did it again, but found he couldn’t put his hand completely through the shield, just graze its surface. It was like Fiona’s barrier in the clearing, except not air this time.
What in the hell was Kaida doing? Trying to protect him?
Irritated, frightened, and more than a lot confused, he glared at her through the wall. Her form was but a haze, yet he could make out just enough detail to have his pulse jack-hammering. “Kaida, let me pass.”
She ignored him. Or couldn’t hear him. Spine stiff, palm out, she stared at the bathroom, her figure haloed by the strip of light. She didn’t even seem to be breathing. Moments passed until she finally turned her head to glance at him over her shoulder.
“Brady, you have to wake up now.” Her voice was barely a whisper, and the quiver in her tone indicated he wasn’t the only one about to snap. “We’re in trouble. Wake up and find me before it’s too late.”
He had point three seconds to absorb her warning and the bathroom door flew open. A shadow of a man’s shape half-emerged on the other side of the frame.
Shit. No, no, no. Out of his mind, Brady roared her name over and over, pounding on the wall of water, but all his effort managed to do was get his shirt drenched.
The man’s arm snaked around her waist, and she screamed. Long, loud, and tearing a hole right through Brady’s chest with the piercing wail. While he perished, watching in horror, the shadowed figure dragged her into a fog of steam with him.
Brady woke with a jarring crash, her scream fading in his ears. His eyes flung wide and landed on the ceiling, throat raw from yelling Kaida’s name. Lungs soughing, he took in his dark bedroom while his heart relocated ribs.
Seconds ticked by, him lying prone, gripping his sheets with such force he had no circulation. Unfurling his fingers, he swiped a trembling hand down his face and...
Wet. His hand was wet. He shot to a sitting position and frantically checked his shi
rt. Drenched. And the trinity knot on his inner wrist was...hot. Like the night it had first been branded, to a lesser degree.
Oh damn. Kaida.
Footsteps thumped in the hallway while he wrestled the blankets aside. He’d just managed to untangle himself as Riley and Tristan opened his door, rushing in with the finesse of a freight train.
“Are you all right?” Riley glanced from Brady to his sopping shirt to the balcony doors and back again. “What’s up? We heard you yelling all the way in our rooms.”
Brady didn’t have time to chat. He snatched his glasses off the nightstand and shoved between his brothers to get to his dresser. “Kaida’s in danger.” He removed a dry tee from a drawer, tossed the wet one on the floor with a thwap, and pushed his arms through the sleeves of a clean one while running into the hallway. “Come on!”
Tristan sighed, but his and Riley’s footsteps followed Brady down the hallway and grand staircase. “Where are we going?”
“I told you, Kaida’s in danger.” Frenetic fear threatened to consume him. He opened the front door, setting off the alarm, and vaulted down the porch steps.
Tristan cursed a wicked streak, and the beeping of the keypad to disarm the system was a distant memory while Brady dashed across the estate’s front lawn.
“Slow down, man.”
He ignored Riley and kept going, damp grass making traction difficult in bare feet. Tree line in sight, Brady hauled ass for the woods. Blocking his face with his arms, he broke through foliage and shot into Galloway Forest, his only thought to get to Kaida.
The fragile sound of her voice, the fear in her teary eyes, that scream.
Let her be okay. He’d give anything. Please, God, let her be okay.
Chest tight, lungs burning, muscles straining, he darted around trees. Small animals scurried in the dark. Twigs snapped under his feet and he had a vague sense of pain in his soles, but he didn’t dare stop. His brothers muttered behind him, their respirations heavy. He was just grateful they weren’t giving him crap and had come with him.
It took what seemed like forever to get through to the other side. Exiting the canopy of woods, he made a hard left around the Galloways intricate gardens toward the front of the house. The mark on his wrist seared hotter. Heart-pounding, pulse-tripping fear lodged a ball in his throat as he bounded up the porch steps.
He tried the knob. Locked. Ringing the bell repeatedly, he banged on the door with his other fist. “Kaida!”
No answer.
Elbowing his confused brothers aside, he jumped onto the lawn and glanced up at the second story. All the lights were off, the old Victorian dark. Silent.
“Fiona! Ceara!” Huffing, he fought the terror crashing in his skull and raced back up to the porch. Pounded. Rang the bell. Yelled Kaida’s name until his voice was hoarse.
Just as he was about to epically lose his shit and bust in, the door swung wide. Fiona stood in a barely there yellow nightie, her full lips pursed and cocoa hair wild around her shoulders.
“Is this a bootie call?” She tilted her head to glance around him. “And you brought back up. How thoughtful.”
“I don’t have time for this.” He barreled past her and into the foyer. Pausing just over the threshold, he whipped his gaze around the living room, trying to get his bearings. The only time he’d been in the house was the night of their meeting, and he’d only seen this room. He had no clue of the layout. “Where’s Kaida?”
Fiona closed the door behind his brothers, giving them the hairy eyeball. “Upstairs sleeping as most people do at two in the morning.”
Dodging furniture, he strode into an adjoining room that looked like a circular solarium. Glass walls and padded bench seating had it set up like a reading nook. Bypassing it, he rushed into another and found a dark polished winding staircase with a burgundy runner.
“What are you doing here, Meath?” Fiona flicked her glance at his brothers, who trailed after him like lost puppies. “And Meath accessories? It’s the middle of the night.”
“Something’s wrong with Kaida.” Brady stomped up the steps, hysterical anxiety clawing his gut. The burn in his mark grew hotter, nearly intolerable. “Very wrong.”
Ceara met him at the top, auburn ringlets in a high ponytail and wearing a green nightgown that molded to her slender frame. “What’s going on?”
“Which bedroom is Kaida’s?”
She moved aside and pointed. “First door on the right. Why?”
“Kaida!” He tried the knob. Locked. “Kaida!” He pounded, but she didn’t respond. Whipping around, he eyed his brothers and her sisters while they gawked at him from varying positions on the staircase. “Unlock the door. Unlock the door now!”
Ceara flinched. After a second, she mumbled some kind of chant he couldn’t fully hear through the blood rushing in his eardrums, then flicked her fingers.
A snitch of the latch clicked in the silence.
Turning the knob, he shouldered the door open. He plowed into her bedroom and came to a dead stop. The breath seeped from his lungs with a wheeze and he barked a sound of distress, clutching his abdomen.
Kaida lay in a suspended state above a queen-sized white poster bed along the right wall. As in, she hovered several feet over the mattress. Spine arched, her legs and arms were limp at her sides. Head thrown back, her caramel hair remained in a messy knot, but wisps had freed to drift around her pillow. Yellow sheets and a lilac-patterned comforter that matched the striped wallpaper were twisted under her as if she’d wrestled with them and lost. The same pink silk pajamas she’d had on in his dream ghosted her curves, gravity pooling them under her while she floated.
Unable to breathe, he stepped closer, needing to...do something. Wake her. Hug her. Anything. “Kaida?” He’d almost made it to the side of the bed before Ceara braced her arm across his chest.
“No, don’t.” Concern tightened her brow. “You might do damage if you disrupt her.”
“We can’t leave her like this, damn it.”
Eyes on her sister, she nodded. “I know. Just give me a minute to figure out what’s happening. She’s okay for the moment.”
Her soothing tone did little to quiet the riot in his head, the shitstorm in his chest, but he stayed put. She had way more experience with this magick crap than he did. Needles pricked under his skin and he glanced around for reprieve.
His brothers had backed themselves against the far left wall near a tall dresser that matched the etched design of Kaida’s headboard, their expressions frozen in shock. A large bay window with a seat under the pane let in moonlight and faced the ocean. She didn’t have any pictures, but several books were piled on the nightstands flanking the bed.
“Oh boy.” Fiona moved to the other side of Kaida, dipping her face to look at him and Ceara from under her sister’s hovering form. “Houston, we have a problem.”
Brady couldn’t take much more of this standing around doing nothing nonsense. His head was ten milliseconds from exploding and the mark on his wrist utter agony. Absently, he rubbed it and hissed.
“That hurts?” Ceara gently took his arm and turned it over. Outlining the black tattoo were reddened spots as if it was infected. She bent and, without touching Kaida, looked at her wrist. “Hers is irritated, too.”
Tristan set his hands on his hips. “What does that mean?”
“It might be some sort of bat signal.” Fiona straightened. “A way to let the other know they’re in trouble.”
Brady gnashed his molars, his sinuses stinging with the threat of tears. “If you don’t do something, so help me, I will.” Kaida’s scream from earlier still had an iron fist around his heart. Every moment they stood here could put her in more danger.
“All right.” Ceara faced him. “Quickly, tell me everything that led up to now.”
“We were in a dream together.” He lifted his hand and dropped it helplessly, slapping his thigh. In a rush, he spilled what went down. The black and white colorization, the cold, her freakish blink
ing in and out, and the shadowed man in the hotel. Once finished, he jabbed his thumb and forefinger into his hot eyes and reset his glasses. “I couldn’t get to her.”
Riley swiped a hand down his face and Tristan shoved his fists in his hair, both brothers tense as they were obviously getting a glimmer of Brady’s torment.
Ceara crossed her arms. “And that was the only instance in all these years you left the meadow? She’s never transported before and no one else ever appeared?”
“First time anything like that happened.”
She rubbed her forehead, her gaze drifting. “In your initial encounter with her, the first dream, did something significant occur that day? Anything out of the ordinary?”
“I was nine years old.” Brady sighed, trying to recall. A flicker of memory ignited. “Actually, yes. In school, our teacher paired the kids into groups of two for a science project.” He looked at Fiona. “We were put together. Remember? I was supposed to go to your house after school to work on it.”
“Sure.” Fiona nodded slowly. “Except you never showed and, the next day, they switched us.”
“Because my Uncle Greg heard about the assignment and went postal. He ripped the principal a new one and all but got our teacher fired.” He glanced at his brothers, debating how much to reveal. Their childhood wasn’t just his secret. Yet Kaida was on the line and it was high time he started working with her sisters. If she was correct, no progress would be made if the Great Wall of Meath-Galloway wasn’t demolished.
He cleared his throat. “After dinner, he reamed me for not challenging the teacher in working with you. Bruises were involved.”
Fiona bared her teeth. “He struck you?”
Ceara’s mouth trembled as she stared between him and his brothers, seeking an answer.
Riley glared at the wall. “He didn’t get physical often, if that’s what you want to know. He preferred belittling.”
Except in Tristan’s case. Brady studied his oldest brother, distraught gaze on the floorboards, and Brady hoped like hell Tristan wasn’t angry at him for talking.