KICK ASS: A Boxed Set (3 Powerful Heroines, 2 Complete Novels + Bonus Novella)

by Julie Leto

  “Look,” Mariah said reasonably, “like you’ve said, I’ve got troubles that have nothing to do with you. Once I pack up, I suggest you don’t follow me.”

  “What makes you think you’re leaving?”

  “Who’s going to stop me, you?”

  Mariah fired the weapon again, missing Ben purposely and splintering the trunk of a nearby tree to his right.

  Ben spun and started toward the trees on the left, giving Mariah the chance she needed.

  She sprinted into the tangled forest. Behind her, Ben shouted for her to stop. She didn’t look back, but focused on leaping over rocks, ducking behind boulders and sliding over fallen tree trunks. Finally she spilled out onto the path where she’d stored her transportation—a dirt bike she’d bartered for in the village. It wasn’t pretty and it was as loud as a cyclone, but it would get her out of there in a hurry.

  She rode for nearly a quarter of a mile before her pursuers caught up, roaring behind her in an open-topped Jeep. With a curse, Mariah leaned forward, downshifted and swerved off the road, sending dirt and gravel flying. She preferred air travel to ground, but she’d scoped out the area well enough to map a few escape routes. Behind her, the Jeep’s horn honked. Did they really expect her to stop?

  She careened around an outcropping of boulders and under a canopy of trees that would lead to a river if she could avoid dropping over any of the cliffs that dotted this region. The overhang threw her into shadows. She could hear nothing but the roar of the bike’s engine, the kick of the rocks beneath her wheels and the thumping of her heartbeat in her ears.

  The path narrowed, forcing her to either slow down or crash. She cursed, wondering yet again why she’d come here. The whole operation had been a lark—a spontaneous grab at an opportunity that might have gotten her arse out of the proverbial sling. She’d jumped at the chance to beat her former lover to a valuable piece of history, which she planned to sell to pay off her debt to a certain collector who wasn’t above having her legs broken if she disappointed him a second time. Last month’s failed Mayan operation would have been her largest score in years, but she’d had to dump the coins in the Chiapas jungle rather than risk arrest by the Mexican police. Trouble was, the tracking device she’d attached to the treasure before she tossed it wasn’t working. Now, the collector wanted either the coins or the cash he’d paid her up front to facilitate her operation.

  She had neither.

  But she had the bloody stone. She could only hope that Ben’s persistence meant the thing was valuable enough to buy her out of this mess.

  Distracted by her worries, she hit a root at top speed and nearly flew over the handlebars. She corrected, scattering twigs, leaves and dirt behind her, but avoided running into a tree and kept the bike upright. The forest undergrowth was too thick for her to continue. She should have chosen another route. Damn. She stopped, fighting to catch her breath as she powered down the engine and listened for her pursuers.

  She didn’t have to listen long. They were getting closer.

  She might have offered to sell the stone to Ben right there, but she had no way of knowing a fair price until she’d examined the find more closely. She patted her jacket, surprised that the spot where she’d stashed the rock was warm. Without time to wonder about the phenomenon, she hid the bike behind a thick oak, grabbed her dilly bag and crashed deeper into the brush on foot. She’d find a hidey-hole until they gave up, then make her way back to the bike and hightail it to the next village before trading up to a car that would carry her to the nearest airstrip.

  She tried to find a balance between speed and stealth. Spying a narrow ledge she guessed might lead her to a lookout, Mariah moved carefully along the edge, digging her fingers into the mossy rocks for handholds. When the flat rock beneath her feet curved around an outcropping above a deep ravine, she stopped. Being a pilot, she wasn’t afraid of heights, but her many talents did not extend to mountaineering.

  She cursed. She’d have to go back down and find another route. But in her hurry to change directions, her ankle twisted and she lost her footing. When she tried to recover, she found nothing beneath her. Nothing but air.

  * * *

  The gadje woman was going to get herself killed.

  Infuriated, Rafe Forsyth tried to tune out the woman’s emotions. For years he’d existed in peace. Centuries. His entrapment within the stone had not, until now, included experiencing the feelings of others as he had so naturally in life. Unpracticed at bearing the onslaught of emotions after all this time, he could not tune her out. Despite his efforts to remain alone, he could not ignore the warmth of her flesh so near his, could not resist reacting when a jolt of fear shot into his soul like a scalding blade.

  Suddenly the ground beneath them disappeared. Her terror spiked, and the image of an impending plummet caused him to yell out the Romani word for “fly.” A sensation of weightlessness suddenly surrounded him, surrounded her. Movement, sleek and swift, like a bird, propelled them forward. Then her fear gave way to surprise and, a second after her feet gently touched the ground, relief.

  He saw none of this, but he sensed it. Sensed it all.

  “What the bloody hell?” she said, her voice muffled even as she dug into her pocket. He heard the rustle of fabric, and then a yank of limitless force grabbed at his middle and pulled. She’d wrapped her hand completely around the stone that contained him, and instantly he was injected with an essence of woman that stirred his blood. Spiked his awareness. Tempted him to sin.

  Concentrating, he fought the wrench of the magic, the all-encompassing drag of the sorcery that had bound his soul to the stone for what he guessed had been hundreds of years. Rogan had not controlled him in life; nor would he now, despite Rafe’s entrapment by the curse.

  How had this woman found him?

  And why?

  From the moment she’d brushed her fingers across the stone that had become his prison, the same dark magic that had entrapped him centuries ago awakened with full force. The urge to expand from the containment of the stone pounded at him, but he refused to succumb.

  And yet now, in the open, with sunlight dappling across hair the color of rich mahogany, he couldn’t help breathing in the essence of this woman named Mariah. He sensed no fragrances except her own natural musk mixed with the fertile scent of the earth and the sweet smell of torn leaves. For an instant, before he saw her startled amber eyes and the pale arch of her cheek, he wondered if she might be Romani, like himself.

  She turned the stone that contained him over in her palms, fascinated by what he imagined was the same fiery glow that had drawn him to the marker so long ago. He pushed the memory aside and concentrated on the woman holding him, examining him, her entire being seized by a boundless curiosity unlike any he’d ever experienced.

  What was this stone? Had it given her the ability to fly and saved her from certain death? Was it magic? Or was it truly cursed?

  He had no answers. Only regrets.

  At the sound of distant voices, she released him. Sudden darkness engulfed him once more. An intense burst of energy told him she was again on the run.

  This time she suppressed her fear with a thrill of adventure and a burst of confidence. The lure of her tugged at his core, but he fought. He had no desire to leave his prison.

  No desire for anything but quiet. Peace. Solitude.

  Forgetfulness.

  Gifts he suspected he’d never experience as long as this woman possessed him.

  Two

  “What the hell just happened?”

  Gemma crashed backward, colliding with a collection of dusty knickknacks that rained to the floor and shattered on impact. The sound magnified. She grabbed her temples and pressed hard, crouching into a ball as pain radiated throughout her body. She forced her eyes to squint open. She was still in the repository. She hadn’t left? Hadn’t actually traveled back to the past?

  It had seemed so real.

  She caught sight of Paschal splayed on the groun
d. She crawled across the floor and turned him over. In the uncertain light from the lantern, his skin resembled fine vellum—thick, but translucent. The dark rings beneath his eyes looked nearly black against his ashen complexion. His mouth, parted slightly, was ringed in blue. Was he dying or already dead?

  She pressed her cheek to his chest and tried to distinguish the throbbing in her brain from the beating of his heart. He was still alive. Which was good, because when he came to, she was going to kill him.

  “Paschal! Wake up. What just happened?.”

  His eyes fluttered but didn’t open. His groan sounded dry and weak.

  Visions of her father crushed her with an emotional weight she had worked hard never to bear again. A lifetime clinging to dreams of limitless magic could not save him from mortality. Instead, he died, his beloved organization in disarray, his children pitted against each other in a battle for supremacy, and now, his daughter making pacts with the enemy to regain her family’s once-precious status.

  But that enemy was going to die, too, if she didn’t get her head on straight. With a push of determination, she staggered to her feet and grabbed the lantern, but then decided to leave the light and brave the darkness in case Paschal woke up. She tripped only once, upending a shelf and bringing down an avalanche of dusty books.

  At the top of the stairs, she caught her breath. The house was still empty, she was sure. But as she opened the hidden door that led from the underground storage area into the old manse, the atmosphere seemed to shift, as if she’d walked into a dream.

  It had been daylight when she and Paschal had gone down into the bowels beneath the house. Now an inky blackness doused the innards of the creepy old house. Though she’d spent much of her childhood in these rooms, she hadn’t lived here for more than ten years—hadn’t visited for more than three. She couldn’t remember where the light switches were, so she concentrated on finding the kitchen from memory. The kitchen had windows. The kitchen was where she’d find something to bring Paschal out of his fugue.

  She reached back into her childhood, breaking into the memories she’d so carefully locked away. Her flitting around the house in the frilly, old-fashioned dresses her father so adored, trying to stay clean, trying to stay out of the way while the men talked of things she shouldn’t understand. Magic. Power. Domination.

  And perhaps she hadn’t understood what those words in combination truly meant, though she’d operated for the past three years thinking that she did. What Paschal had just done—what he’d just shown her, had nothing to do with magic born of nostalgia or tradition or wishful thinking. The K’vr viewed magical power as something their leader had possessed in the past and that they intended to regain. But the magic Paschal wielded was very real. Very now.

  Doubling back after a wrong turn, she finally found the kitchen. Shiny silver moonlight illuminated the window above the sink, so she pushed back the curtains. Except for a breeze flitting through the collection of willows that dominated the front of the property, she saw no movement. Even if someone from the K’vr had returned, she’d have no energy to fight him. She had to focus hard just to fill a large tumbler with ice water from the refrigerator and then retrace her steps back to the repository.

  Paschal had managed to pull himself up against the shelf, but his eyes were closed and his face looked as pale and semitransparent as before.

  “Here,” she ordered, holding the tumbler to his lips. “Drink this.”

  He obeyed, then coughed and sputtered, showering her with water.

  “Damn, woman,” he choked out. “Water? Need brandy.”

  She shoved the cup to his lips again. “You’ll drink this water and savor every drop, old man. Once your whistle is wet enough, I want a full explanation of what the hell just happened. Then, maybe after that, you’ll get your booze.”

  He didn’t argue, but drank as she instructed, resting between sips. She took some of the cold water herself, suddenly feeling the full effects of her exhaustion now that adrenaline had subsided.

  She’d never experienced anything so draining and disturbing, and yet so fascinating. Somehow, they’d traveled into the distant past. She’d felt the body of the man named Rafe wrapped around hers, as if he were a thick wool blanket in an icy storm. His emotions flowed through her. His anger. His fear. His rage. He’d lost his sister to her ancestor, Lord Rogan, for whom the K’vr had been founded. And in the end, he’d become trapped within some sort of magical lockbox. Why?

  And how on earth had she piggybacked onto Paschal’s psychic journey? She’d studied the phenomenon of psychometry since the first time she’d heard rumors of what he could do. But until she’d experienced the sensations for herself, she’d truly had no idea what magic felt like.

  “Ready to talk yet?” she asked.

  “Didn’t you see everything for yourself?”

  “Who is Rafe?” she asked, annoyed. She had no time for his coyness now. Not when there was so much she needed to know. “Did he own the flute?”

  “Owned it or carved it,” Paschal replied. “His connection to the instrument was strong. I felt him the minute I turned into this aisle. We channeled into his last memory.”

  “How?”

  He shrugged, though the motion was barely noticeable. “If I have contact with an item associated with… certain people… I can view their final or, at the very least, most powerful experience.”

  “But he didn’t die,” she insisted. She wasn’t entirely sure how she knew this, except that what happened, though painful, had not felt like death. There was something constraining about the experience. Something tight and dark. But the rage and anger and fear never dissipated. She continued to feel them now, though they were a fading echo, giving way to her own confusion and, truth be told, excitement.

  “No,” Paschal replied. “No, I don’t believe he died.”

  Crouched beside Paschal until her legs ached, Gemma let him drink the last of the water, then eased onto the stone floor and stretched her limbs until the kinks loosened. A year ago, even six months ago, she would not have anticipated this series of events, all culminating with her sitting on a dirty floor beside a man she’d once considered only a means to an end—a source of information that would lead her closer to authority over the K’vr. But in the time she’d spent with Paschal, he’d become her mentor and teacher—in ways her father never had.

  “When did you realize you had this ability?” she asked.

  “Since childhood, though I kept it hidden from my family. My stepmother guessed, though, and helped me hone it in secret.”

  “It’s remarkable. And I was able to come with you. Was it because you were holding my hand? Can we do it again?”

  Paschal pressed his lips more tightly together, enhancing the blue line circling his lips. Okay, so he wasn’t up to another go so soon. Neither was she, truthfully. But she would revisit the idea once they had their energy back. Wasn’t like he was going anywhere. Not without her, at any rate.

  “Tell me about Rafe,” she asked, changing tack. “How did he know Rogan?”

  “You heard his thoughts,” he replied, the relaxation of his jaw indicating that she’d hit a topic he was willing to discuss. “Rafe’s father was the governor of Valoren, the land your ancestor usurped.”

  “So this Rafe was somehow important to Rogan? An enemy?”

  “Important? Hardly. But an enemy to the last. Sarina was Rafe’s only full-blooded sibling. They were very close. Until Rogan seduced her away from her family.” Paschal’s volume dipped to barely a whisper. Even clearing his throat did nothing to strengthen the sound of his voice. “She was young and beautiful and wild as the wind.”

  For a split second, Gemma thought she heard more in Paschal’s voice than the mere repetition of Rafe’s emotions. It was almost as if he’d known her himself. But that was impossible. Rogan had disappeared over two hundred and sixty years ago. The Gypsies of Valoren and the family of the governor were all as dead as her forebear.

&nbs
p; But Rafe had not died. At least, not in that moment.

  “Rogan must have loved Sarina,” Gemma insisted. “She must have been the woman to whom he gave the Queen’s Charm.”

  The truth about her ancestor’s life was, for the most part, a great unknown, but the stories were endless. Rogan’s brother, Lukyan of Hungary, had started the K’vr, and wrote extensively about how his sibling had used his magic to collect great wealth and control the locals. Then Rogan had left his homeland and migrated first to England, and then to a Gypsy colony named Valoren by King George, its founder, who’d wanted to cleanse the Romani from London. He’d set aside barren Hanoverian lands for the task, lands that, unbeknownst to the monarch, possessed a powerful magic all their own.

  According to K’vr archives, Lukyan never saw his brother again. But Lukyan used the villagers’ fear of Rogan’s power to maintain a position of might over them. And his strength did not die with him. His son kept the K’vr going, as did his son afterward. War and political change forced the K’vr underground, where they remained to this day, amassing wealth in anticipation of the day their legacy of magic would take them out of the shadows and into a position of unyielding strength that armies of the greatest nations would not be able to thwart.

  And though Gemma knew that various grand apprentices, as their leaders were called, often wielded psychic abilities that helped them make money and influence others, she’d never seen anything like what Paschal could do—not even in her own father.

  “Rogan wanted Sarina, yes,” Paschal offered, “but Sarina received the Queen’s Charm from her father.”

  “That’s not the story I heard,” she contradicted.

  Paschal did not argue. He said nothing at all. Then she realized his eyes had closed and he was, undoubtedly, asleep.

  She cursed. She shook him once, but when he simply snored more loudly, she gave up. He was in no shape to tell her more right now, but he would. Eventually.

  Though Paschal looked uncomfortable sitting on the floor with his head lolling sideways against a dusty shelf, she didn’t imagine she could move him without doing more damage. She pulled off her jacket and shoved it under his head. With sleep, he’d recover.