Paranormal Heartbreakers Boxed Set

by Jeanne Rose

  Her hand trembled as she touched the feathered serpent, the snake kachina, which sat on the draped table in her bedroom. Then she climbed into her narrow bed, wondering if this would be the night she would not wake from her sleep. For as if the evil were a living, breathing thing, she felt its presence closing in around her.

  What could she do?

  She was old. And now she was alone. She was trying to pass on her knowledge to Mara and Stormdancer, but so far the effort had been an exercise in futility.

  Perhaps if she did not sleep . . .

  But she was old. And very, very tired. And try as she might, she could neither keep her eyes from closing, nor her spirit from dreamseeking.

  She floated into her dreaming place, an ancient rock formation, a deep red cliff that she had loved long and well. Herein lay her only safety.

  Darkness gradually gave way to dawn, the first fingers of light tracing crimson patterns over the dry earth and rock and painting with a blue luster the distant mountains, all of which had forever been a part of her world.

  At peace, she allowed her eyes to drift closed.

  Silence, long and deep, but for the howling wind.

  Suddenly, her insides brushed with fear.

  Her eyes flashed open and oddly, she saw all before her as if she were a stranger.

  Desolate . . . forbidding . . . ghostly . . . rough cut rocks weathered and wrinkled . . . the ends of the earth . . . unfit for human habitation. Above, the sky shifted. Gray and purple clouds rolled in, swallowing the newly weaned sun.

  The wind howled . . . or was it a voice calling her name?

  Corn Woman.

  Lightning split both sky and earth.

  She turned to see a dark shadow invading her space. A terrible shadow that was at once formless yet threatening. Evil. Her eyes widened in horror.

  “Who are you?” Her hollow voice rode on the wind. Her heart beat like a drum. “Who are you?” she shouted, even knowing death was stalking her.

  With a cry, she plunged upward and her legs impelled her forward . . . away from her beloved dreaming place . . . seeking safety where there was none. The hard-packed earth and stones grazed her bare feet. Around her, translucent canyon walls zoomed by faster and faster until they were nothing more than a blur.

  And then she felt them – the hands around her throat. But whose? She whipped around this way and that, trying to see, trying to identify the monster who would surely kill first her and then her people. But the evil remained out of sight, out of reach. Choking her.

  Choking her land and then her people. Because before her very eyes the evil settled over the canyon and rocks, earth and sky, suffocating the plants and small animals that withered and died before her, stealing the precious light of life, replacing it with a darkness from which there was no escape for anyone.

  She was old and not afraid to die, but once gone, she could not help the others.

  Her pounding heart and rasping breath resonated through her head as she saw the world around her go dark and struggled against it. The band around her throat tightened, tightened, cutting off her air. She knew her struggle was useless, that she could not save herself.

  Then, “Isabel!” came a familiar voice, giving her once last glimmer of hope . . .

  “Isabel!”

  Mara plunged upward, clutching her sheet. She was wet and shaking with fear. Dear God, someone, some thing had been trying to get to Isabel. She’d gone dreamwalking again, and she’d seen it all.

  “Luke?”

  But he was gone. He’d seen her home and then had returned to the pueblo to guard Onida and Isabel.

  The evil had slipped by him.

  Without stopping to think about what she should or should not do, whether or not she should call Luke and find out what he knew or didn’t, she threw on her clothes, grabbed her keys and ran out the door to see for herself.

  Unwarned, he couldn’t stop her.

  HAD HE KNOWN, Luke wouldn’t have let Mara come. How could he protect her? He couldn’t even protect his own grandmother any more than he’d protected his wife and child.

  Maybe he was the one, the doubt in him whispered. He’d been sound asleep. Who knew what evil he had dreamed? Maybe he’d done it . . . almost killed the fragile woman who’d never harmed a living thing.

  “You’re sure you’re all right?” Mara was saying, holding his grandmother’s hand. She glanced at him, gave him a brave smile.

  He stiffened.

  Onida stood on the other side of the bed, hands fluttering around her face.

  Isabel said, “I am alive . . . only because you came when I needed you, Mara. I knew you could do it. I knew.”

  Mara had saved his grandmother. From him?

  “Tell me about it, Isabel,” Mara urged.

  Tightening his jaw against the grief he couldn’t express, Luke backed out of the room, leaving the three women to console each other. The women with whom he had a special relationship.

  His mother and grandmother had always been there for him, had believed the best of him. Now Mara. His making love with her in reality had changed things between them. They were bonded in a way he didn’t understand and couldn’t explain. He only knew that his feelings went deeper than he thought possible and were as scary as the dreams that had haunted him all his life.

  He returned to his quarters, stared at the unfinished painting on the easel, and at another stacked against the wall. More dark views of the mysterious cliff dwelling.

  He sat. Tried to concentrate. To meditate using his paintings, for that seemed to be where the truth lay for him.

  He had to know the unvarnished truth once and for all.

  And there was only one way he could figure to get it.

  He set aside the unfinished painting and set a clean canvas in its place.

  Then he started painting his nightmares.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHILLED BY ISABEL’S RETELLING of her nightmare, Mara renewed her determination to tap her inner resources, to find the power that the wise woman believed she possessed. The burden of responsibility weighed heavily on her shoulders. She hadn’t been able to stop the unnatural death of her patient, but she wasn’t going to let Luke’s grandmother slip away from them, as well, not while breath was left in her.

  “In the morning,” Mara told Isabel, “I’ll be ready to try again. In the meantime, you should sleep.”

  Sitting on the edge of her bed, the elderly woman appeared exhausted and even more frail than usual, and yet she protested, “No. I must stay awake at night and sleep during the day. Perhaps by doing the unexpected, I can fool the witch who would see me dead.”

  “I’ll sit here with you, then.” Mara glanced at Luke’s mother, who seemed grief-stricken and helpless at the same time. “It’s all right,” she told Onida. “I won’t let anything happen to Isabel now.” She said it with more conviction than she was actually feeling. “And if she sleeps during the day, she’ll need you to guard her.”

  Nodding, Onida hugged Isabel and touched her cheek lovingly. To Mara, she said, “I’ll go to my bed, then, but you must call me if I’m needed.”

  “I promise.”

  Feeling the weight of that promise on her shoulders, Mara again wondered why Luke had disappeared within minutes of her arrival. Where could he be and what was he up to? Blaming himself again? Now that they’d made love, she felt closer to him than to any human being. What they’d shared went beyond a normal relationship. She had to help his family and his people . . . for him.

  After Onida left the room, Isabel sighed and lay back against her pillows. “You have the gift as was proven again tonight. I do not understand why my training has so far been unsuccessful. At dawn, you must leave the pueblo without food . . . go into the desert . . . seek power in nature.”

  “But what if . . .” Mara didn’t want to admit that she feared failure. “For how long?” she asked instead.

  Isabel turned her sightless eyes on Mara. “For as long as it takes
. You must find your own dreaming place.”

  At a loss, Mara asked, “Where do I look? Which direction do I take?”

  “Let instinct guide you. Allow yourself to let go of the real world, to seek on a higher plane. When you encounter your dreaming place, you will recognize it. Then you must fast and remain sleepless until you know why this particular spot is meaningful to you.”

  The whole process could take days, Mara realized, knowing she had no choice, despite the fact that it would interrupt her life. Before starting off, she would leave a message for Felice on the gallery answering machine. She would ask her assistant to take over for her and to assure Felice that she would somehow make up for this extra burden.

  Chilled again by the realization of what she might be up against, Mara only hoped that she would be able to keep all her promises.

  “Who knows what you’ll have to deal with out there?” Luke groused when he finally faced Mara just before dawn. “I’m going with you.”

  He’d stayed up all night to complete a canvas that still held no definitive answers for him. Then, haggard, drawn and thinking he was emotionally spent, he’d come into the kitchen for something to drink only to find Mara at the sink, filling a gourd with water. When she revealed her plans to storm the desert alone and on foot at first light, his emotions resurfaced fast enough.

  “No, you can’t come with me,” she said stubbornly. “Isabel told me I must go alone. If you’re around to distract me, I’ll never find my dreaming place.”

  Distract her. Even fatigued and irritable as he was, the idea held a certain appeal. And he probably could do it, too. The chemistry between them was cooking even now. Watching her lick her lips nervously knotted him up inside and out. Making love once definitely had not been enough to satiate him even for half a day.

  He moved closer, watched Mara’s eyes widen, heard the sudden expectant intake of her breath.

  Exhaustion dropped from Luke like a disguarded mantle. He shot out a hand and wrapped it around the back of her neck. She didn’t resist but allowed him to draw her closer, her gaze searching and pleading at the same time.

  Pleading for his kiss? His love?

  Or pleading for him to let her go, the one thing Luke couldn’t do.

  He couldn’t stop himself. With the water gourd between them preventing further intimacies, he kissed Mara, consumed her as if there were no tomorrow. Which there might not be if she persisted in taking on the high desert alone. But even as he recognized the danger, he also recognized the truth of his grandmother’s words about Mara’s needing to be alone to find her dreaming place.

  And he recognized the importance of her doing so, and fast.

  For if they each didn’t make the supreme effort to reach a higher spiritual plane, his grandmother would surely suffer. Perhaps die. Then, no doubt, would the Kisi.

  And Mara, whispered an inner voice that reminded him of the coyotes sent to track her down through witchcraft.

  Why Mara? Why a white woman?

  The answer still eluded him, as did the identity of the evil one . . . perhaps himself.

  Savoring the taste of her mouth, an experience that would have to last him a while, Luke lost himself for a moment more before releasing her. Then he drew back and memorized her face, every nuance of her expression. Her feelings for him – raw, deep, hungry – were written for him to see. He wondered if she saw the same in him.

  “Be careful,” he said, reaching around her and drawing a brimmed straw hat from a peg. “And wear this.”

  Taking a big breath, fastening the prayer stick she’d made to her belt and clutching a water gourd to her breast, Mara took the hat and edged away, her gaze never leaving his. “This has to work.” She paused at the door. “I’ll give it everything I have.”

  “That’s all anyone can ask of another human being.”

  Luke watched her go. Fear for her tore him up inside, and he knew that a part of him went with her. He was beginning to suspect that he more than cared for the woman. If anything happened to her . . .

  Only when she disappeared from sight did he close the door and return to his studio. Setting another blank canvas on the easel and taking up a brush, he determined to concentrate as hard as Mara would out on the desert.

  Surely between them, they would find some answers.

  ANSWERS DIDN’T COME EASILY, not even in the desert.

  Having walked and searched for several hours, Mara sat beneath one of several cottonwoods lining a ribbon-like stream that trickled along a pebble-strewn path. The shade was a welcome respite from the sun, which had been high overhead for a while now. She uncorked the gourd and sipped at the refreshing water, thinking she should refill the half-empty vessel before moving on. Not having water in the desert – even in the cooler high desert – was asking for trouble.

  Leaning back against the tree trunk, staring at the red earth and the red rock still a short distance away, she felt more alone than she ever had before. Alone but somehow at peace, as if she were one with the land.

  The near-sleepless night caught up to her and her eyes fluttered, her mind drifted.

  “You are putting us all in danger,” intoned the elder, the very same woman who’d complained to her before. “We are at war!”

  Her temper surfaced at the unnecessary reminder of the conflict that embroiled the Pueblos with the blood-thirsty Spanish. She stopped weaving the new cloth and kept her eyes lowered only with difficulty.

  “He is not one of the cursed Spaniards. He is Comanche.”

  “Still you meet him in secret outside the protection of the pueblo.”

  ”My business.”

  “And your husband’s.”

  “An old man to whom I was given by my family.”

  “And to whom you owe your respect.”

  She finally raised her eyes to the elder, stared at the seamed face so full of wisdom and wondered that she didn’t understand.

  “I do respect him and care about him in my own way. But surely,” she pleaded desperately, “you remember what it is like to really love . . .”

  Mara started. She hadn’t been quite asleep and yet the dream had invaded her mind. Or was it a dream? The threat of war and love lost had seemed so real . . . almost seemed like a memory.

  Her hands shook as she lifted the gourd to her lips for a long draft of water. She emptied the vessel.

  A memory.

  How many times had she been aware of the sense of cognition since setting foot on Kisi land? How many things had seemed familiar to her?

  Mara stirred from her resting spot and refilled her container. Perhaps when she found her dreaming place, she would also encounter the truth about herself. The thought filled her with both relief and dread. She set off, her feet automatically taking her past the red mesa where she had first encountered Isabel in a dream.

  But halfway through the afternoon, when she arrived at the floor of the canyon, no special feeling nudged her.

  And so, on she went, hoping, praying that this time she would not fail. Instinct took her straight to the other side of the canyon from which there was no exit.

  Or so it seemed.

  Mara studied the series of boulders before her and realized there was a possible pathway between them. She drew closer, followed the intricate winding trail and came to a fairly large open area where she confronted a cleft in the rock face large enough for two men to ride through abreast.

  Ride, not walk.

  Spooked, she hesitated, her mounting apprehension keeping her from investigating immediately. Instead, she sank into the shade of a boulder and nursed another drink of water while staring at the inviting opening.

  The rocks blurred before her tired eyes . . .

  “You should not have followed me,” she angrily told her lover. “This entrance to the pueblo is secret.”

  An errant breeze whirled through the opening, blowing his loose black hair around his face as if he were about to fly away forever . . . her biggest fear.

&
nbsp; “And who would I tell?” he demanded harshly, softening when he offered, “But I can use it to come to you.”

  She nearly swooned with the desire his promise kindled in her. But, “No, it’s too dangerous for you.” The men of her pueblo would surely kill him if they were caught together.

  “Then come away with me so we can be as one always.”

  Her heart ached to do just that, but she had her parents to think of, and her sisters and their children. She even considered her husband for whom she only had a daughterly affection. “I can’t leave my people.” To never see them again would kill her.

  “Because you don’t love me.”

  “That’s not true.” Passionately, she cried, “I swear to love you and only you until the end of time . . .”

  The vision or memory or whatever it was faded. Yet a sadness swept through Mara so great that it pinned her against the jagged rock. And tears that she couldn’t control streamed down her cheeks. Grief? She’d experienced the same grief recently, after one of her dreams.

  She stared at the cleft dividing the rock face, wondering what waited for her on the other side of the corridor.

  Like a woman hypnotized, she rose and sought her present and perhaps her past. As she entered the passageway, her pulse raced, dizzying emotions leaving her lightheaded. She hadn’t had such strong feelings since setting out from Luke’s house.

  Luke. Where did he fit in?

  He and the warrior seemed entwined somehow.

  She was becoming as obsessed with Luke as the Kisi woman had been with her Comanche lover in the past.

  The further Mara went along the curving pathway, the more emotions swept through her. For Luke. For Isabel. For the Kisi. For the lovers whom she was certain had come to a tragic end.

  Mara came to the end of the passageway and could see a clearing before her. Her throat tightened and the sound of her heartbeat thundered through her ears. She took one step into the clearing, sucked in a painful breath and squinted against the setting sun that painted the entire area with such a brilliant red it looked as if the rock itself were on fire.