Charmed by the Beast: an Adult Paranormal Shifter Romance (The Conduit Series Book 3)

by Conner Kressley

  “Damn it,” I said, the air rushing from my lungs as I rushed to Satina. I looked back at Abram, and his expression said everything.

  While we were out having fun, Charlie had sprung into action again.

  We were wrong. I was wrong. We weren’t enough to stop him, and now—if Abram and I couldn’t find him soon—one of Charlie’s old girlfriends was going to pay for my mistake with her life.

  Chapter 6

  I paced the room as nervous as a newbie model on her first Milan trip while Satina pressed an ice pack to her head and Abram checked her vital signs.

  I nodded at his efforts. “You a doctor now?”

  His attention never left Satina. “I spent a couple of decades after the Great Depression as a medic,” he said. “I know enough.”

  “Were you always this slow?” I asked, thinking about the fresh hell that we had just unleashed on the city through our exuberance and incompetence. “We need to find Charlie before he hurts somebody.”

  Satina groaned, standing. “I’m sure you mean somebody else,” she said. “Either way, to find that unimaginable nightmare, you’ll need an object that is closely tied to him. I don’t suppose he left you a ring on your wedding night by any chance?”

  I narrowed my eyes, but I thought the better of wasting my breath arguing with her. “I’m sure we can find something. He couldn’t have taken everything with him when he tore out of here.”

  “Well, since ‘tore’ is the operative word there, I’m afraid I wouldn’t know.” Satina threw the ice bag on the table. “He moved quicker than anything I’ve ever seen before. And there was magic rushing off him in torrents.”

  “How? We checked him for hours and didn’t come up with anything.”

  Satina frowned. “He must have pulled a Houdini because it was definitely there.”

  “What about this?” Abram stepped toward us with a white washcloth that Charlie must have slipped away while Satina and I were arguing.

  Satina arched her eyebrows. “A crusty towel?”

  “The buffoon used it to wipe his mouth after eating the entire contents of our minibar,” Abram said. “It should work as an anchor.”

  Satina clapped her hands together. “Look at you, spouting off magical terms like an authentic Conduit,” she said as she held out her hand. “Give me the damn rag.”

  “I’ll do it,” I said.

  “Yes, you will.” Satina glared at me. “But not alone. You have the power, but absolutely no direction. So give me your goddamn hand, and let’s find this lunatic.”

  “Fine,” I muttered, taking Satina’s hand.

  As she winced, I bit my lip. I couldn’t believe what Charlie had done to her. But how was that possible? She was one of the most powerful beings on the planet. How could Charlie, who had trouble opening stubborn pickle jars, be capable of doing this to her?

  Energy coursed through us, running from me to her and channeling into the cloth and outward. I felt my mind expanding, taking in everything in the room, and then everything in the building. It stretched outward, encompassing the street and then the block.

  Finally, it latched onto something. Something flashed in my mind—a visual tick that came as quickly as it went.

  But it was him. It was Charlie.

  “He’s on 7th and Center,” I said. “But he’s on the move. We need to get down there.”

  When I pulled my hand from Satina’s, the world reappeared around me. My mind was just my own again, and my heart was pounding.

  I stood, shaking off the residual magic.

  To my left, Abram cocked the hammer of a gun.

  I crossed my arms and glared at him. “What the hell is that?”

  “A gun,” he said, clearly enunciating the word. “It’s also a necessity.”

  I blanched. “Since when do you have one of those?”

  “Since last night.” He looked past me. “The only thing easier to come across in this town than a gun is a lunatic. So let’s go find one.”

  “What’s the plan here, Abram?”

  “The plan?” He tucked the gun into a holster he’d at some point attached to his hip. “The plan is to find that sociopath and put a bullet in his head before he hurts more innocent people.”

  “No,” I said, leaving no room for argument.

  Satina hauled herself onto the couch. “Oh, this should be fun.”

  “What do you mean, ‘no’?” Abram spread his hands. “He’s going to kill someone, Charisse. Perhaps even a lot of people. I understand you were close to him, but I will not abide that.”

  I closed the distance between us. “We still don’t know what’s going on with him,” I said heavily, looking from Abram to Satina, hoping for a bit of understanding. “The disappearing magic, the way he doesn’t seem to remember anything. It must mean something. We need to find out what.”

  “Not at that cost,” Abram said, moving past me and heading for the door.

  “Abram!”

  “We don’t have time to argue,” he said, not even looking back over his shoulder. “Charlie Prince is going to kill at least one person tonight if we don’t stop him. That’s at least one more than I’m comfortable with. Now, if you want to try and convince me to go about things in a different manner, you’ll have to do it while we’re moving.”

  Abram pulled the door open and stepped into the hall.

  “Fair enough,” I muttered. Grabbing my jacket, I followed him out the door.

  “All right then,” Satina yelled from the couch. “I’ll just hold down the fort.” She paused a beat. “And, if you happen by a frozen custard shop, I wouldn’t say no.”

  * * *

  “I wanna readdress this gun situation,” I said, practically running to keep up with Abram’s long gait as we made our way toward the location I saw during the spell. “I mean, how do you even know how to use one of those?”

  “I was raised in the 19th century,” he said. “They handed guns out to boys with their birth certificates. Also, I was a police officer for a couple of decades following the Great Depression.”

  The picture of Abram in a cop uniform was not dissatisfying, but I was growing a little frustrated to realize all I didn’t know about him.

  Abram took a left on 7th Street toward Center Avenue.

  “Can you slow down?” I asked. “You said we could talk while we walk, but you’re practically racing.”

  He shot me a withering look, but he didn’t slow down.

  “Abram,” I said, frustration coloring my tone. “You’re being rash. There’s no coming back from gunning somebody down. Even if that person deserves it.”

  This made him slow, if only by a fraction.

  “Do you think this was a speedy decision, Charisse? Do you believe that I’m the sort of person to take a pistol to anyone who’s ever had designs on my girlfriend? Because I’m not, and I assure you that—while it irks me in a way that’s surprised me in its potency—the fact that you and Charlie were connected plays no part in what I’m about to do.”

  About to do? My God, he’s already made his mind up.

  “Abram, I just want you to take a breath.”

  “I’m sure the girl he killed last night would love to take a breath as well. The woman he’ll kill tonight will probably share that sentiment come tomorrow morning.” Finally, he stopped. “Look around you, Charisse. This place has literally millions of people in it, and Charlie Prince is strong enough to lay one of the most powerful women I’ve ever met flat on her ass. This gun is the only way I have to ensure he doesn’t kill again.”

  “You’ve got more than a gun on your side, Abram,” I said. “You’ve got me.”

  “I do. I have you, and I would like to keep you. Alive. I’m not sure you have the will to do what needs to be done in this particular situation, but this I can do.”

  I bristled. Hadn’t we been through hell and back together? Did he really doubt that I was all in?

  “I’m stronger than—”

  “It’s not abo
ut being strong, Charisse.” He shook his head. “Killing someone you love, or even used to love, it changes you in ways you’re not ever going to be prepared for.”

  Something flashed through his eyes—something that made me think he had first-hand experience with the idea.

  “Abram, what did—?”

  “There!” He pointed, and his eyes narrowed as they fixed on something past me.

  I turned to find Charlie standing at a crowded intersection.

  As I swiveled back to face Abram, I hoped one last-ditch effort might be able to talk some hesitation into him. But before I could open my mouth, he had brushed past me.

  “Wait,” I called after him, the gesture futile.

  Abram rushed toward Charlie, gun in hand. His top speed was a fraction of what it had been two days ago, but he reached him quickly enough, pointing the gun at him in plain sight of everyone on the crowded street.

  A woman screamed, and then a burst of activity shielded Abram from view.

  I moved toward them, but throngs of people kept pushing me back as they tried to get away from Abram—or, more likely, the aim of his gun.

  As I tried to press through, a chill ran up my spine as a shot echoed into the night.

  No.

  I shook my head, trying to move even faster through the crowd, wanting so badly to be wrong, to get to where they stood and find some different truth waiting for me.

  As if on cue, the crowd parted, clearing a path for me to look on what would surely be the last moments of Charlie Prince.

  I slowed as the scene I could not change came into focus. Abram knelt over a broken person. Blood poured out of the man as he shivered and shook.

  But it wasn’t Charlie.

  The man on the ground had the same blond hair. The same lanky frame. But that was where the similarities ended. The man Abram had shot—the one dying on the ground—was not Charlie Prince.

  My heart plummeted. Tears filled my eyes at all the lives that would be ruined by this horrible moment.

  Abram looked up at me, his expression dark.

  “His face changed right after,” he said, holding the man in his arms. “As soon as I…as I shot him, his face changed.” He swallowed hard. “It was a trick, Charisse. That sonofabitch tricked me.”

  The air crackled around us, and I spun around, looking for the source of the familiar feeling of magic.

  There was Charlie, standing on the other side of me.

  “Well, look at that,” he said, a weird grin sliding across his face. “Your boyfriend made a boo-boo. I bet you could fix it,” he said. “I bet you could twinkle your nose and stop that man from dying.” He looked up at the building beside us. “Of course, if you did that, you wouldn’t be able to save the woman in 4B.” He smiled again. “The one I’m about to disembowel.” He tilted his head. “So, which one of you is going to be a killer—you or your boyfriend?”

  Snapping his fingers, he vanished.

  Chapter 7

  I stared at the empty space where Charlie used to be, gasping for breath and squeezing my eyes shut to block out the way my vision was spinning the city around me.

  What had I just seen? Was Charlie really capable of this? Was he going to kill someone if I didn’t get up to room 4B to stop him? And, if I did, would that mean the poor man Abram inadvertently shot would pay the price?

  “Charisse,” Abram shouted.

  My body trembled. I willed myself to open my eyes, to take action, but I couldn’t seem to commit to any one thought or desire. I didn’t know what to do. This couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t Charlie. This wasn’t the person I knew. He couldn’t do this.

  Except…he had done it. And if I didn’t do something to stop him, two people were going to die.

  “Charisse!”

  This time, Abram’s words finally reached into my mind and slapped me out of it.

  Eyes flying open, I spun to find Abram pressing his hands against the man’s wound. The blood kept pumping out from under his hands and through his fingers, pooling on the street beside his body.

  Air would not come into my lungs. The moments were flying by me too fast to process what to do, while at the same time, the horror of the moments dripped past too slow for my body to take action.

  Abram’s jaw clenched, and his manic, red face stared up at me with desperation beaming from his eyes. “Do something, Charisse.”

  “Do what?” I asked, panic rising into my throat. “No matter what I do, somebody dies.” I spread my hands. “I don’t…I need to…”

  “Pull yourself together,” he cut out, not even a thread of sympathy in his voice. “You need to figure it out. Like it or not, you’re the only person who can save these people now.”

  Oh God, he was right. Abram didn’t have the power to help me anymore. He couldn’t make any of this right. The entire thing was on my shoulders, weighing me down like an anchor.

  No. I couldn’t think like that. I needed to calm down. Charlie might have left me with an impossible choice, but I was a Conduit and a Supplicant. Impossible was literally in my blood.

  With that thought in mind, I dug into my purse, pulled out a nail file, and sliced my hand open.

  It’s now or nothing.

  “Stand back,” I said, making my way to Abram and the poor man on the pavement.

  “If I move my hand, he’ll bleed out all over the street,” Abram said. “So if you’re going to do something, I need you to be sure about it.”

  “Like you said, this is up to me. Now stand back.”

  Hesitantly, Abram lifted his hands. A wave of crimson gushed from the man’s chest. If my plan didn’t work, he would be dead mere moments from now.

  I squeezed my hand over his body, and a trickle of my blood dripped into the wound. Whispering under my breath, I told the blood what to do.

  “Heal,” I said over and over again. When nothing happened, pain throbbed through my chest. I knelt down, squeezing my hand tighter and letting more of my blood drop into the wound. “Please heal.” The desperation reached my voice now, and I channeled every ounce of magical energy I could summon through the haze of horror, sending it out to this poor man. “Heal, heal, heal.”

  My blood began to glow in a bright gold swirl against the red.

  Please let that be enough. I couldn’t afford to wait to see. I had someone else’s life in my hands.

  “Abram, I—”

  He stared deep into my eyes. “If you don’t stop him, Charisse, I will. And you won’t like how I do it.”

  “You just worry about him,” I said, waving my hand at the dying man in the street. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

  Abram nodded, and I darted off. It would have been faster if I zipped back and forth the way Charlie just had, teleporting or whatever that was, but I didn’t have near enough control over my abilities for something like that. Not only would it be a waste of valuable time trying to figure it out, it would also be a waste of energy. Healing that man—or giving my best effort to—had zapped most of my magic.

  So I pushed through the door, blowing past the buzzer entry. At least I could do that much.

  Kicking off my heels, I headed for the stairs, still muttering, “Heal,” over and over. Maybe if I kept chanting the word, it would help fuel whatever I had stirred up back there on the pavement.

  Four flights of stairs later, I barreled onto the fourth floor, trying to push my fear into a tiny ball and knock it out of my mind so I could focus on what was about to come next.

  Whatever was going on with Charlie made him strong enough to take out Satina. And, given that Satina was about as powerful as I was and way more experienced, it didn’t bode well for the impending battle.

  However, I had something going for me that Satina didn’t—Charlie loved me.

  Or, at least, he used to.

  He wouldn’t hurt me the way he hurt Satina. There was no way he would kill me like he did that poor woman last night. Not when we had so much history, not when we had meant
so much to each other.

  Please let me be right about this. Even if I was wrong, though, I needed to tell myself this to muster the courage to move forward.

  As apartment 4B came into view, my pulse kicked up another notch. Steeling my nerves, I reared back to push the door open, but it complied without any help from me.

  Uh-oh. That’s never good.

  I squinted my eyes, trying to see into the oppressive darkness of the room. Nothing. Stepping closer, I readied myself to cross the threshold. I knew all too well that a girl didn’t need to see her demons to fight them, but a force pushed at my back and knocked me into the room before I was ready. As I stumbled forward, the door closed behind me, enveloping me in the blackness.

  Okay, not so brave now.

  I turned, pulling at the door, but it wouldn’t open. Pausing, I took a deep breath.

  Calm down, Charisse. He won’t kill you. You’ve got this.

  As I turned back toward the unseen, my hands curled into fists. The cut on my palm was still fresh and the pressure squeezed out a few more drops of blood. The droplets lit gold and floated away from me, lighting the room like a family of fireflies.

  As I scanned the newly illuminated space, I expected something to jump out at any given moment.

  But it was…it was just a room.

  A chair. A table. A television that had to be at least fifteen years old. There was nothing off about this place, and certainly no cause for concern. Except for the whole fact that I was trapped inside, and I didn’t see that ending up being benign.

  As if to confirm my suspicion, a cackle echoed throughout the room.

  “Charlie,” I yelled as the glowing blood droplets combined to form a sort of sun that bobbed in the corner, lighting up the room. “Charlie, get out here. I swear, if you hurt another woman, I’m going to end you myself!”

  I couldn’t believe the words coming out of my mouth, and more so, that I meant them. But things were different now. This wasn’t the world I knew anymore. This was a world where my ex-boyfriend was a killer, and I was the only one who could stop him.

  Or what if it wasn’t a different world? What if…what if he had always been what he was now?