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

by Julie Leto

  “Rafe? Did he answer your call?”

  “Oh,” she said, inhaling a calming breath. “Yeah, they’ll be here shortly. What about Damon and Alexa? I thought you expected them hours ago.”

  Paschal frowned. “Bad weather delayed their flight. They won’t arrive until tomorrow.”

  He turned, his gaze suddenly lost across the inky dark water. The sound of the waves lashing at the rocky shore did not quell what she suspected was his great anxiety. It certainly hadn’t done much for hers.

  “I’m sure they won’t take off in dangerous weather,” she assured him.

  “That’s not what I’m worried about.”

  Almost instinctively, she touched his arm. With a moment’s concentration, she caught an image of boys playing in a garden. Twins with golden streaks in their hair and a third boy with a black ponytail standing on the perimeter—watching, but not running with the others.

  An outsider.

  “Is that why you’re so nervous? Meeting a brother who…” She concentrated harder. Images she could see. Emotions were harder to pinpoint, since the faces of the people in the visions were often blurred and the sound muffled. “I know now. Didn’t quite fit in? You know what they say about time and wounds. Besides, he’s your brother.”

  Paschal took a great inhalation of ocean-scented air. “When’s the last time you visited your brother in jail?”

  She snorted. “Keith and I were never close. We were pitted against each other from childhood.”

  “In many ways, so were we.”

  He spoke without an ounce of malice, but a boatload of regret. A thrill of a secret scurried through her. “Really? Why? Was it because he’s only your half brother? Or was it something better? Like an old rivalry? Perhaps over a woman?”

  Paschal’s frown deepened. “You assign your gender too much credit for the discord between men.”

  “Ha! Women have been starting wars since Helen of Troy. Is that it? Was it a woman?”

  He started walking toward the castle. “Some wars rage much deeper.”

  “This sounds interesting,” she said, purring her words as she sidled up to Paschal in the sexy way that had once been such second nature to her. Now, she wasn’t flirting as much as she was trying to get under his skin.

  Paschal ignored her.

  Once inside, the soaring ceilings, carved buttresses and sparkling stained-glass windows, illuminated by exquisitely crafted gas torches, stole her breath. Nightfall had definitely added to the beauty of the place. She had no trouble imagining herself the queen of this castle, though she continued to struggle with the sense of entitlement that had haunted her since her arrival. This would get her nowhere. Rogan had existed a very long time ago. She was only the great-times-twenty-granddaughter of Rogan’s grabby younger brother. No one was going to hand her the keys to this place anytime soon.

  But under the circumstances, she couldn’t resist posing the one unasked question that had hung in the air like an unpleasant smell since they’d arrived.

  “Do you think Rogan is still alive?”

  Paschal gave no hint of surprise. He merely gestured her into a lavish library to the right, directly away from the dining hall where Catalina and Ben had spent the day poring over the documents Paschal had brought from the archives, looking for something the old man might have missed. “I’d rather talk about Rafe.”

  “I want to know about both,” she said. “You’ve regaled me with tales of this castle and of your childhood in England and Valoren, but you somehow managed to neglect to tell me anything interesting about either your brother or my ancestor. Your brother, who is still alive after two hundred and sixty-odd years. Like you. And Damon. And Aiden. There has to be a chance, at least, that Rogan’s alive somewhere, too.”

  “We’ve no indication of that,” Paschal said, a bit of a snap in his voice.

  “Actually, the indication is talking to me. You lived. Why not him?”

  “It was his magic that trapped us.”

  “I believe that,” she assured him. “He was powerful. That much we’ve all figured out. But why would he save you and not save himself?”

  “Save?” His volume rose. “Is that what you think he did to us? Save us?”

  “You didn’t die that night,” she insisted. “Or the next morning when that army descended on the village. No one died. No one was there to die.”

  “You’re wrong.” A voice from the doorway sliced into the echoing quiet all around them. Ben and Cat came into the library behind the man who had to be Rafe Forsyth.

  Gemma’s heart skipped a beat and she gulped painfully. She’d thought Ben was on the hot side, and the natural attraction she’d felt toward Paschal in spite of their age difference had been undeniable, but Rafe’s dark skin, penetrating eyes and proud mien captured her fantasies in an elemental way. Unfortunately, he had a woman attached to his arm whose eyes, the moment they clashed with Gemma’s, warned her to stay away.

  Gemma forced herself to stand up taller. “I’m sorry?”

  “You said no one died in the village, and that is a lie. My wife was murdered hours after I was captured by Rogan’s curse. Her throat was slit and her blood soaked into the ground not three paces from where I was trapped, unable to save her. Unable to avenge her. Thanks to your ancestor’s black magic.”

  His eyes flashed with something inherently more frightening than anger. For an instant, Gemma thought she felt the floor beneath her feet shake, but the woman beside him, Mariah Hunter, she assumed, tightened her grip on his arm, and the unsteadiness stopped.

  “Rafe?” Paschal said, his voice tremulous.

  Gemma bit back the myriad questions that tumbled in her brain and instead allowed the brothers to greet each other. They clasped hands at first, and then embraced, and the fire she’d seen flash in the Gypsy’s eyes melted away with warmth for his long-lost sibling. Mariah watched, her eyes glossy, until the two men sat to talk. She then turned and left, a little unsteady on her feet and suddenly looking a little green. She disappeared with Ben and Cat into the dining hall. Gemma considered hanging around the library and seeing what she could pick up from the brothers’ conversation, but she couldn’t resist an opportunity to explore the castle without an escort.

  She headed toward the main hall, but found her way blocked by an invisible barrier just beyond the threshold.

  When she spun around to complain, Rafe was directly in front of her. She jumped back. Taller, broader and twice as intimidating as he was from a distance, he would have made her stumble if he hadn’t caught her by the wrist.

  “Don’t,” Paschal warned. “Don’t touch her.”

  “What?” she asked, insulted. She might have the ability to soak up his magic, but she didn’t have damned cooties. “I’m not going to hurt him.”

  “Explain,” Rafe demanded, turning on his brother after breaking eye contact.

  Paschal traded the fearful look on his face for a mask of indifference. “Let her go. She can do no damage up there.”

  Rafe stared at her long and hard, as if searching for signs of Rogan’s face in hers. Cold tendrils of apprehension ran sprints up and down her spine. She had the strong suspicion that if she shared so much as the same nose, Rafe might tear her in half where she stood.

  Then the atmosphere shifted. He turned away, and she guessed she was free to go.

  She headed straight for the stairs, leaping around crates and heavy machinery, getting away faster than her cool demeanor normally allowed. In a collection of tools on the landing, she found a flashlight. She shone the beam up the grand staircase, which turned sharply to the left and into total darkness. The ominous feeling she’d experienced near the beach returned full force. No matter what Paschal said, she knew there was something in this castle that belonged to Rogan. Something that belonged to her.

  “Well,” she said, “I wonder what I’ll discover.”

  A familiar male whisper curled around her ear.

  Come and find out.

&nb
sp; Twenty Five

  “Someone’s here,” Cat said, glancing up at the high ceiling, half expecting something unwelcome to float down from above. She’d heard a voice. A disembodied voice. And her insides had immediately chilled.

  Ben looked up from the architectural plans he’d been studying, and Mariah, who’d been examining the mosaic that spanned the entire opposite wall, whirled around.

  “Who? Where?” Mariah asked.

  Cat held up a hand, concentrating. For a split second, while staring at a kaleidoscope of color on the stained glass, Cat had experienced a strong sensation of foreboding. And then something like an echo of a voice had teased the outer edges of her consciousness. Her arms had erupted in gooseflesh. But now she felt and heard nothing. Had it been her imagination? The offshoot of being inside a place that had possessed dark magic for centuries? Where, not long ago, she’d been shot in the arm?

  Cat cursed. “I’m not sure. But something’s not right.”

  Ben came up beside her and wrapped his arm around her shoulder, saying nothing while she closed her eyes tighter and attempted to key back in to whatever had invaded her consciousness.

  The three of them had been alone in the great hall for only ten to fifteen minutes. Rafe and Paschal had remained in the library. The sounds of their discussion, peppered with bursts of laughter, broke the castle’s unnatural quiet. The renovation workers had cleared out early on Alexa’s orders, but both Ben and Cat had explored the building and the island shortly afterward to make sure no one had been left behind. And yet, Cat sensed a presence that had slipped under her skin, turned her bones to ice, then slithered out again, leaving her shivering from head to toe.

  “We need to check on Rafe.”

  They sprinted into the library, with Mariah following. Paschal and his phantom brother remained where they’d left them, hunched together on a tarp-covered couch. Their talk ceased the minute the trio had entered the room.

  “Where’s Gemma?” Mariah asked, immediately noticing the absence of Paschal’s unlikely sidekick.

  Gemma Von Roan had been avoiding Cat, which she couldn’t help but find suspicious. Everything about the woman screamed turncoat. Up until six months ago, she’d been Farrow Pryce’s right-hand woman. Now she’d taken up with Paschal. Yet Rogan’s long-lost relative had sworn no allegiance, and Cat doubted she knew how.

  Rafe blinked at them, as if he had to register who Gemma was. “She went upstairs.”

  Paschal’s stare met Cat’s. He’d already told her, albeit in rushed tones on the phone prior to their arrival, that Gemma should be kept away from Rafe. She had some sort of ability to gradually assimilate paranormal powers—an ability they could not risk her using while Rafe was still in the phantom state and had so much magic at his disposal.

  “I’ll find her,” Cat volunteered.

  “No, I’ll go,” Ben said. “You said someone was here.”

  Cat quelled him with her best, oh-no-you-won’t glare. “I don’t think whoever I felt is in the castle. Rafe?”

  Rafe’s eyed widened. Poor guy didn’t realize that Cat had dealt with three of the Forsyth brothers while they were still tied to the magic. She knew their powers just as well as she knew her own.

  He closed his eyes and concentrated. “There is no one upstairs but the Von Roan woman.”

  “A disaster waiting to happen, if you ask me,” Cat concluded. “I’ll find our runaway traitor. Every time she sees me, she rubs her jaw. She must remember my roundhouse kick.”

  She exited the room, but Ben caught up with her before she’d taken a half dozen steps toward the grand staircase.

  “What?” she asked. The K’vr bitch was probably digging into stuff, hunting for the immense fire opal that was the source of Rogan’s magic. As if they’d just leave it lying around.

  “Be careful,” Ben said.

  “You’re telling me?” she asked, with exaggerated shock. “I’m so not the daredevil in our little twosome.”

  He wrapped his arms possessively around her waist. “I like that we’re a twosome.”

  An increasing hardness in his groin area made her regret that there was a threesome in the adjacent room and a wandering onesome somewhere upstairs. When the renovation was complete, this castle was going to end up one of the most romantic getaways owned by Crown Chandler hotels. She’d have to work it so Alexa gave her and Ben a night alone here before it opened. As a wedding gift, perhaps.

  “Me, too,” she replied, keeping her marital musings to herself. “Think Rafe and Mariah are ready for that next step?”

  He frowned. Yeah, that was what Cat had been thinking, too.

  While Mariah wasn’t quite as prickly as usual, she was quiet and contemplative, and from all she knew about the woman, she wasn’t the quiet and contemplative type. Rafe had been focused on reuniting with his brother. Understandable, but troubling. They’d arranged to come to the island because Rogan’s magic was strongest here—and could, hopefully, be used to help break the curse.

  “Maybe we should lock them in one of the finished bedrooms upstairs and let them work out whatever is holding them back,” Cat suggested.

  “I don’t think sex is the problem.”

  “Might be the solution,” she encouraged.

  Ben grinned in that lopsided way that made her heart melt into a puddle at her feet. “I find it cures all my ills. Only with you, of course.”

  “Of course,” she said with a laugh. “I’ll be back. Now that Rafe and Paschal have had time to reconnect, I think we should get the ball rolling.” She leaned in closer and whispered in Ben’s ear. Not only did it give her a chance to take a heady whiff of his intoxicating cologne, it ensured that they weren’t overheard. “Once Rafe is free, we can seal the marker in the same hidey-hole as the Source. That will keep them both safe.”

  “You really think it’s a good idea to store them together? We’ve been trying to avoid allowing both the sword and the stone to fall into Pryce’s hands. If he gets the stone and the Source, too—”

  “Then we’re royally screwed,” Cat finished.

  ***

  “Who are you?” Gemma asked.

  Don’t you recognize me, or have we been apart so long?

  Farrow.

  She turned off the flashlight and threw herself flat against the nearest wall. She trained her ears to register any sound of his approach. Her throat constricted and her heart slammed double-time against her chest. After a full minute, she sensed no one. And yet, she’d heard what she’d heard—and she knew Farrow’s voice. Tentatively, she continued down the hall. Her shoes scuffed over the dusty marble beneath her feet.

  “Where are you?”

  Find a window that faces the ocean.

  She stopped. Wasn’t he here? In the castle? How was he talking to her? Acid churned in her stomach and shot up her esophagus, nearly choking her.

  The magic.

  Farrow had caught up with them. He was contacting her. Rafe and Mariah had warned that he was gaining knowledge of the magic, but how had he known she was here?

  “I don’t trust you,” she said, trying to keep her voice quiet even though she wanted to scream at the top of her lungs.

  Of course you don’t. But you can come to me of your own free will, or I can make you. Which do you prefer?

  She stopped. If he had defied death despite throwing himself off a steep California cliff and now could speak into her mind, maybe revealing her exact location by going to a window wasn’t the best idea.

  I don’t want to hurt you, Gemma. I need your help. And as you can see, I have quite a bit to offer you, as well.

  She swallowed deeply. He was telling the truth. Still, her instinct to turn and run was strong—stronger than she’d ever want to admit.

  Of course, he didn’t know about the power she’d inherited from dear old Dad. He would expect mistrust. “Why should I believe you?”

  He did not answer. She walked farther down the dark corridor, turning two corners and flashing the l
ight into rooms with open doors to guest suites in the midst of renovation. One or two were nearly finished, with plush beds and paintings on the walls, glittering glass cases filled with bric-a-brac that matched the eighteenth-century time period of the decor. The room at the end of the hall had a large, ocean-facing window. She paused at the threshold. Farrow could hear her, but did he also know what she was thinking?

  Because if he did, she was in serious trouble.

  * * *

  Mariah jumped when Ben stepped back into the library and gained their attention with a clap of his hands. “Okay, people. I think it’s time for us to get this show on the road.”

  “What show?” she asked.

  Ben exchanged a nervous glance with Rafe. He and Paschal stood, and Mariah felt her heart drop to her toes. The time had come.

  Surprisingly, her heart seemed to bounce back into her chest just as quickly as it had dropped, lighter than it had felt in a very long time.

  “Oh,” she said with a smile. “Think we could be alone for a few minutes?”

  She held out her hand to Rafe. Despite the personal inroads she’d made in the last twenty-four hours, she had a few private confessions to make before she outwitted a curse that had held him for nearly three centuries.

  With a grin that made her insides liquefy, he took her hand in his and marched them into the dining hall.

  Then he jerked to a stop.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “This room. It is exactly as I remember it.”

  He led her deeper inside. Incredibly impressive, the space was dominated by a long, carved table that could easily sit fifty people. The walls to their immediate left sparkled with clouded stained glass. In front of them, a fireplace large enough to fit a small car (or roast a whole cow) sat amid one of the most glorious mosaics Mariah had ever seen. Made up of tiny tiles in various sizes and colors, the scene depicted a small Gypsy camp with multihued houses and even more vibrant villagers.

  Something about the artistry was so alive, so compelling. Mariah had seen a lot of native art in her life, but nothing had compared to this.

  “Is this Umgeben?” she asked.