by SM Reine
Remy blinked, trying to process this turn of events. “But the next full moon is nearly two weeks away. The witch can’t have gone far. With your patience, I’ll find the women and be back in a few minutes.”
“If Lilith Darke wanted to return, she would have.” Gideon waved a lazy hand. “Look for her if you want, but in the meantime, the boy remains with me.”
The beloved brother of the Lost Legacy pack’s alpha for a hostage; it was what Gideon had wanted all along.
That, or a war.
Or both.
Owen’s hands clenched into fists and a muscle jumped in his jaw. He opened his mouth, but Remy shook his head. To Gideon, he said, “When I locate the women, where should I bring them?”
“There is a house on the spit south of town. You know the one? It faces the setting sun.”
Remy tried to speak, but choked. In a moment, after his throat cleared, he said, “Yes, my lord. I know the one.”
“Good. Bring them there.” With that, he turned and strode from the room.
As he watched Gideon depart, Owen’s face went red. “Who does he think he is?”
“Your alpha,” Remy said flatly.
Owen propped his fists on his hips, looked at his feet. After several deep breaths, he looked back up. “I don’t know if I can do this. I mean, I know I have to, but I don’t know if I can stay with that bastard without trying to kill him.”
“One thing at a time.”
“You don’t understand,” Owen said, darting anxious glances the direction Gideon had gone. “He thinks he’s going to take Lan’s house. The only way that will happen is if—”
“I know what it means,” Remy said, “and we’re not going there. Not yet. Maybe not ever, but certainly not unless we’re totally out of options.”
“Lan’s still weak. He can’t fight Gideon. That monster would kill him.”
“All you have to do is hang tight,” Remy said. “Give me a chance to find Tasha and Lilith. You need to trust that I’ll bring them back and then we will settle this thing.”
“Doing nothing,” Owen said in a bitter tone. “Something I fucking good at.”
Silence spooled out between them until Remy jerked his head toward the door. “You should go.”
“That fucker doesn’t own me.”
Remy shrugged. “Somehow I don’t think he considered your submission a mere formality.”
“It was only for Tasha. Nothing else.”
“Gideon doesn’t know that. Or he doesn’t care.”
Owen raised haunted eyes to Remy. “It wasn’t like this when I was thirteen.”
“That when you submitted to Lan?”
“Yeah,” Owen said.
“Go, we’ll figure this out.”
Owen nodded.
Remy waited until Owen closed the door between the banquet room and the hall before he unlocked the glass door and stepped out onto the terrace. Spotlights mounted on the back of the building illuminated the waves crashing on the rocks and sand below. He breathed the cool, clear air.
He’d promised Lan that he would take care of things in the alpha’s absence. He’d vowed to protect Lilith. He’d promised Gideon that he’d find Lilith and Tasha. He’d promised Owen they’d find a solution.
From where he stood, the only way to keep all those promises was if someone died.
The question now: who?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Tasha ran uphill along the side street, wincing every time her bare feet smashed into a pebble, more terrified of the silence lurking in the dark behind her than the strange creatures.
What in hell were those things?
Were they even real?
A shoe dangled from her right hand, banging into her thigh with every stride.
And then it hit her.
Shoe. Singular.
Shit.
She slowed to a stop, rested her hands on her knees, her chest burning, sucking air like she was dying. Her 4.7 pound weight loss and ten days of training did not an athlete make her. She must have dropped the other shoe in her haste. They were Laboutins, and she should be more upset, but in the overall scheme of things, it was better to escape demons from hell than to lose one very expensive shoe.
But still, she’d loved those shoes.
Turning around, she peered down the street to where the spray of light from the street lamp ended trying to see if she could make out Lilith, but mostly hoping the other woman had managed to get away and would appear any moment, running like hell.
She couldn’t see a thing.
Wishing would not make it so.
She needed to find help instead of scampering back to Chill like a ninny. If she ran inside yelling about creepy, floaty monsters, who would believe her? She wasn’t sure she believed her own recollection. Besides, when she’d needed more conventional assistance, it wasn’t like she’d managed to enlist anyone to help her get Erin back to the car.
She’d been on her own. As usual.
Light flashed, sudden, bright and intense.
Tasha threw up a hand to shield her eyes. The flash was close enough that she should have felt the heat of the blast, but there was nothing. A deep rumble followed and the sidewalk shook. Tasha stumbled backward, catching herself against the flaking side of a building. The shaking didn’t last long. Probably a micro-quake. The closest street lamp had gone dark, however.
She edged back toward the center of the sidewalk. Calling as softly as she could without actually yelling, she said, “Lilith?”
Silence.
Something bad had happened and those…those things were involved. She didn’t know how she knew, except that she did. It was an unshakeable, bone-deep kind of truth that connected to the core of her self. That woman did not run away like a chicken and leave someone behind. So what if those things had scared the living crap out of her?
Not cool.
She’d faced challenges before. It hadn’t been easy being a curvy female engineer when she’d had to tell a masonry guy he’d fucked up the specifications for a foundation. Or they’d used the wrong size of rebar.
A length of rebar would have been useful a few minutes ago.
Hindsight.
Lilith had acted and made sure Tasha got away. The least she could do would be to find help, go back and make sure Lilith was all right. And then there was Erin, still safely asleep in the car, she prayed.
She pushed away from the safety of the building and set off for the bar. As she rounded the corner onto the main drag, she noted thankfully that none of the fixtures had been damaged in the quake. The light from shops and restaurants was reassuring.
Two blocks down, the front door of Chill flew open. Two men in denim and leather emerged and planted their big bodies like sentries in the middle of the sidewalk, one looking north, and the other south.
They looked an awful lot like the two goons who’d followed the big guy into the bar.
Gideon.
His men were looking for her. She couldn’t say how she knew that was what they were doing, but it felt dead-on, and nothing about the feeling was good. The desire she’d felt earlier to return and work things out with Owen and this Gideon person evaporated.
She’d spent her professional life in meetings observing the differences between company owners and CEOs versus their plant managers and CFOs. The owners and CEOs listened more than the second group, who generally made her life miserable their repetitive questions and doubts on subjects about which they knew diddly squat. The owners and CEOs took her measure quietly and then made decisions.
Men like that didn’t talk pointlessly; they took what they wanted.
She ducked into an alcove formed around the recessed entrance to a shuttered store and huddled. When her heart rate slowed, she peeked around the corner. The two men stood with their heads together then split to march in different directions. One of them would pass her location in moments. She tried on the notion of flagging him down, asking him to go with her to find Lilith.
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She remembered they way they’d flanked Gideon, like he was the don and they were his loyal foot soldiers.
So no, then.
Because they were the guys who’d row the boat out to the middle of the lake and throw some poor slob overboard simply because the don said so.
She squeezed deeper into the alcove, grateful she’d worn a black dress that blended with the shadows, and waited. When Gideon’s guy passed, she ducked out and scuttled down the sidewalk in the opposite direction until she reached the end of the block. She turned right, trotting west toward the ocean a couple blocks until she could cut through the parking lot that filled the broad expanse between the side streets.
Running low and ducking behind cars whenever possible, she made her way to her rental and paused there long enough to check that Erin was still breathing, still asleep. Her head still lolled against the headrest and her hands lay open palmed and limp in her lap as if she hadn’t moved since Tasha had wrestled her into the vehicle.
She put her hand on the door handle.
And realized the vehicle was still locked.
Her keys.
Shit.
Her keys were in her purse, which was… where? The last time she remember having it was just before those things had appeared. She must have put it down when she’d stopped to take off her shoes. With any luck (questionable, considering how things had been going for her lately), her purse would still be laying on or near the sidewalk across the way.
With a regretful sigh, she propped her remaining Laboutin on the hood of the Kia and crossed the quiet parking lot. The silence and absence of humans filled her with dread.
When she reached the sidewalk, she turned right and left, hunting for any sign of Lilith.
Nothing.
She turned west, anxiety rising like an evil tide as she left the relatively well-lighted area near the parking lot for the deeper reaches of the side street. “Lilith?” she called softly. “Where are you?”
Something that looked like a body lay on the sidewalk up ahead. Tasha picked up her pace.
Lilith lay face down on the cold concrete, her face turned to one side. Tasha dropped to her knees and pressed a trembling finger to Lilith’s neck, felt a strong pulse. She let out a breath she hadn’t been aware of holding.
She shook Lilith by the shoulder. “Can you hear me? You’ve got to wake up.”
The other woman mumbled. Tasha shook her again. “Come on! You don’t want to spend the night out here.”
Lilith’s head moved from side to side, and her eyes fluttered open. After a moment, she levered herself upright where she sat blinking in the gloom.
“Are you all right?” Tasha asked. “What happened?”
Lilith scrubbed the back of her hand across her eyes then looked around, her gaze coming to rest on Tasha, her brows knitted. “Why’d you come back? I told you to get out of here.”
“There were guys on the street,” Tasha said. “The ones who were with Gideon. I think they were looking for me.”
Lilith snorted. “Probably. You should have gone with them.”
Tasha glared at Lilith. “Are you out of your mind? I don’t know what those guys want with me, but it can’t be anything good.”
“Yeah,” Lilith said, “with them, it’s always something.”
Which wasn’t an answer. Tasha sat back on her heels. Before all hell broke loose, Lilith had convinced her to go back to the bar and talk to those very men, although she hadn’t said why that was a good idea. Yet, she was also the same woman who had likely saved Tasha’s life this evening. She needed to have a serious talk with this woman, but it would have to wait.
Tasha scanned the inky skies. “What were those things?”
Lilith’s expression turned grim. “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.” There was such determination in the set of her shoulders and the line of her jaw that Tasha was glad to not be in Lilith’s sights for once.
“Do you think you can help me find my purse first?” Tasha asked. “I think I dropped it when I took my shoes off.”
Lilith curved her palm in front of her mouth and blew on it softly. A handful of flame flickered to life.
Tasha sucked air, stunned. “Okay, then.”
Lilith grinned and stood, swinging her arm back and forth in slow arcs that illuminated the ground about them. “It’s magick, but I can’t keep this up forever, you know?”
“Oh, right.” Tasha scrambled to her feet and hunted until she spotted the leather bag.
She flicked open the clasp and dug out the keys to her rental. “Need a ride?”
Lilith closed her hand and the flame vanished. “He’s not going to stop, you know.”
“Gideon?”
Lilith nodded.
“Well, he can forget about it.” Tasha shook her head. “I don’t know what the deal is between him and Owen, but it has nothing to do with me. Even if they think I’m involved, here’s a newsflash: I’m not. Owen and I had a thing. A hook-up. Whatever. Now…we don’t.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to go back to the spa and see if they’ve got someone on staff who can see Erin—”
“Your friend?”
“Yes, and then I’m going to pack my things and in the morning, I’m going back to my life. End of story.”
“Good luck with that,” Lilith said.
Her matter-of-fact tone made Tasha uneasy, but she ignored the feeling along with the skeptical light in the back of Lilith’s dark eyes. Maybe it wasn’t skepticism. It was too dark where they stood to be sure, but why should she care what Lilith thought?
“Do you want a ride or not?” Tasha asked, her tone cool and far more nonchalant than she felt.
Lilith didn’t speak. She’d turned, craned her neck toward the parking lot. Great, she wasn’t even paying attention.
Tasha started to walk away.
“Wait.”
Tasha was so done with this nonsense. “Suit yourself. I’ve got to go.”
Lilith grabbed her arm in a surprisingly strong grip. “Didn’t you hear me? I said, wait. You need to start paying attention.”
Tasha ground her teeth. “What for?”
Lilith pointed.
Tasha saw three men—the two big ones who belonged to Gideon—stalking across the parking lot, plus a third who trailed behind. From the silhouette, the third man looked like lean, dark-haired one who’d been standing behind Owen inside the bar.
Tasha swallowed. Why was she so important that someone would send three men after her? For a stupid one-night stand? This was insane.
More insane than a woman who faced down demons and held fire in the palm of her hand?
Panic bloomed in Tasha’s gut. The urge to run was almost overpowering. She had her keys, she was barefoot, the car wasn’t that far away. If she could evade them across the parking lot and hit the fob and jump inside the car…
“Wait,” Lilith hissed.
Tasha jerked her arm out of Lilith’s grasp. “You wanted me to go back inside and talk to him. That… that Gideon. That biker-gangbanger-hoodlum guy. Now you’re saying stay away? What is up with that?” She gestured helplessly. “What is up with all of this?” Her lower lip quivered, and she hated herself for it.
Something bright flashed in Lilith’s eyes and then it was gone. She jerked a thumb toward the men who were still combing the parking lot. “For right now, all you need to know is that I’m not on their side. I’ve never been on their side.”
“Why does that not make me feel any better?”
“Because you know I’m telling the truth,” Lilith said in a soft and patient voice. “You wouldn’t have come back for me if you’d thought I had lied to you. If you’re being completely honest with yourself, you know there’s more to this than just a hook-up. You’ve decided you don’t want to know the whole story, so you’ve allowed yourself to forget.”
“I can’t tell whose side you’re on, except maybe your own. That being sa
id, I don’t understand what the sides even are. While I don’t think you’ve lied to me, you also haven’t told me the whole truth.” Tasha narrowed her eyes. “What’s in it for you?”
“Right now? Nothing.”
Tasha shook her head, feeling more confused and exasperated than ever. “Not good enough.”
“Things have changed,” Lilith said. “That’s all I can tell you until I know more.”
“What things,” Tasha pressed.
“I’m not sure.” Lilith folded her arms across her chest. “But I’m not going to let Gideon Black or Owen White get their hands on you until I find out what’s going on.”
“You sound crazy, but I’m guessing you already know that.”
But Lilith had stopped listening. Again.
Tasha swore under her breath and watched Lilith creep forward and peer around a thick mulberry bush whose branches draped over the sidewalk. Tasha followed her, craning to look over the other woman’s shoulder. Gideon’s men had abandoned the parking lot and were walking uphill toward the main street.
Tasha breathed a sigh of relief. Lilith pointed. The third man had stayed behind, standing still, waiting and watching.
“Is he—”
“Shut up,” Lilith hissed.
They remained like that for some time. Tasha couldn’t tell how long, just that her feet got cold and her back ached from crouching in the dark. Eventually, she sat with her knees hugged to her chest.
At length, Lilith said. “It’s okay. He’s gone. We can go now.”
That fact didn’t give Tasha much comfort.
Her bare feet stung with every step on the way back to the car. She wanted to leave all this freaky stuff behind. Even though she only believed about half of what Lilith said, one thing rang true: you’ve allowed yourself to forget.
She’d done that once before in her life and promised herself she’d never do it again. But if Lilith was right, that was exactly what she had done.