Bear my Fate (Hero Mine Book 1)

by Harmony Raines

  “A change in rendezvous location,” she said quietly as she pulled over to the side of the road.

  “I thought you were going to disappoint me for a minute, Evaine,” Crosshead said silkily. “Then I remembered how much you want to meet your dear old mom. All those questions you must have for her.”

  “What do you want?” Eva asked.

  “I would say world peace, but I would be lying,” he chuckled to himself. “Your cooperation is what I want.

  “I am cooperating. I have the Dragon’s Tear. I’m bringing it to you.”

  “And who is coming with you?” Crosshead asked.

  “I’m alone,” she replied, keeping her voice even.

  “But you weren’t, were you?” He let the silence stretch out between them. She couldn’t deny it, because he must already know the truth. He must have been spying on her. “I’ve heard you have been playing happy family with those shifters.”

  “I needed their help to get the real Dragon’s Tear. The druid who stole it from me had a degetty. I am no match for it.”

  “So you used them?” Crosshead asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And you want me to believe that?” he asked smoothly.

  “Believe it or not, it doesn’t change the truth.” She closed her eyes and the next words to come out of her mouth were a lie, but she had to make them sound like the truth. “Do you think I liked it?”

  “You were seen kissing one of them,” Crosshead said conversationally.

  “So?”

  Keep it simple. If you deny it too much he will know you are guilty. Her sixth sense kicked in like a coach instructing his protégée.

  “So I am informed you stayed the night in the bear shifter’s house,” Crosshead said the word with such distaste, it turned her stomach. This man would think nothing of killing Jack and the others when they arrived. Eva wanted to turn the car around and run the other way. But she couldn’t, not without handing her mom a death sentence.

  She pressed her fingers to her temple. This had to be convincing. In her mind she heard her sixth sense, and the way it spoke about shifters. She had to mimic that voice. “Do you think I liked it?” she accused. “You want the Dragon’s Tear. I want my mother. And I will do anything to get her. Like you said, I want answers from her.”

  “Good. Then take a detour, and someone will meet you at the White Hart Pub. It’s on the outskirts of Nomansland; you can’t miss it. Leave your car and wait by the roadside. A car will stop and ask you for directions. You will get in.”

  “OK…” The call ended, and she put the phone back in her pocket. She should have taken Jack’s cell phone number, they had discussed it, but if Crosshead found out she had been making calls, and tipped off a rescue party, things would end badly. Now the squad would be going to the wrong place.

  “It’s OK, Helena doesn’t need a phone, she can track me.” Eva tried to reassure herself.

  Pulling back out onto the road, she turned the car around, and headed back along the road for half a mile before entering the forest and heading for Nomansland. Fifteen minutes later she parked her car behind the pub, got out, and locked it, before walking out to stand by the side of the road like a hitchhiker. Only this was one car she did not want to get into, and one journey she would prefer not to make.

  Eva waited, her neck prickling as she sent her senses out to their farthest reaches. Nothing. Except a sense of being watched, but she couldn’t see anyone, and no car approached her. Five minutes passed. Damn, if Helena saw she had made a detour, they would come here and see her standing on the side of the road. Would they stop? If someone was watching, would they recognize the Land Rover and tip off Crosshead?

  Eva kept both feet planted firmly on the ground, trying to hide her nervousness. Finally, a car approached, a red Ford Focus. Her heart rate increased and she inched forward. But the car kept going; it was a family, probably on a day trip to the New Forest. It pulled off a hundred feet up the road, but no one got out.

  She looked at her watch. How long was she supposed to stand here for? An hour, a day? Her frustration grew. Maybe this was a ploy, and Crosshead would ring again, and tell her to go somewhere else.

  Behind her, a car engine started. Eva didn’t look around. This was the reason she had felt a prickle along her spine, the sense that she was being watched. A shiver coursed through her. He had been sitting there all this time, watching and waiting. The car began to move, coming up alongside her and then stopping, its window rolled down.

  “Can you give me some directions?” the voice, all too familiar, asked. This was the same man who had driven her to meet Crosshead before.

  “Where did you want to go?” she asked.

  “Get in,” he snapped.

  Eva opened the door and slid in. As they drove away she took one last look at her car and hoped she would see it again.

  “No hood?” she asked. They were driving through the forest, taking the scenic route, maybe. Or was the route being watched? If the Land Rover came this way, Crosshead would know she had lied. The words kept drumming in her head, over and over. Liar. Liar. He will know.

  “You like being in the dark?” he asked. “I can put it on if you want me to.” He thumbed toward the backseat, where the hood lay.

  “Aren’t you supposed to put it on so I can’t see where we are going?” Eva asked.

  “No point,” he said, and smirked.

  She wanted to scream at him and tear at his face until he told her what he meant by no point, but she wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of seeing how much his words unnerved her. No hood. No future. Was that what he meant?

  “Fair enough. I always did like looking at the trees. And the ponies.” She slouched down in the seat and looked out of the window. While her body looked relaxed, her brain was working to sift through all the information she had. She had to stay on high alert. Her sixth sense was alert too, and it comforted her that she was not alone. The voice was right, she needed it; they could sort out their differences later.

  She huffed at that, drawing a suspicious look from the man next to her. Eva took a proper look at him. When he’d picked her up in the dark, she had not been able to make out his features, but his voice made him sound in his twenties. This man looked middle aged, his black hair graying around the temples, but that was not what aged him. The wrinkles across his face did that well enough alone. Deep lines across his forehead and around his eyes put years on him. Perhaps he was a heavy smoker. Eva inhaled. No smell of stale tobacco. He might have kicked the habit.

  “Stop staring at me,” he ordered.

  “Why? If you aren’t going to let me go, what does it matter?”

  He looked at her sharply. “We’re not going to keep you prisoner,” he said, his face cracking into a grin as her face gave way to hope. “But where you are going, you won’t be talking to the police.”

  “What do you mean?” She had to ask, she had to have some clue as to what they had planned for her.

  “Once you hand over that Dragon’s Tear, you and your mom stay a while. We want what’s in your head. All that knowledge.”

  “I’m not telling you anything,” she said firmly.

  “You will. We have your mom. How long do you think it will take you to spill out all that information when we start cutting her up?”

  “You promised to let her go when I brought you the Dragon’s Tear,” Eva said.

  “That was a test. We need to know the knowledge really had passed to you from your father. It was why we killed him. He just would not talk. He’d hidden your mom away, with you in her belly. And no matter what we did, he would not give up the location. So we had to get creative. We found someone who knew where it was hidden. All it takes is the right persuasion.”

  “You tortured someone else?”

  “No, we converted him. We told him the true power of the Dragon’s Tear, and he was sold!”

  “A druid?” Eva asked.

  “Not telling,” he said with a smi
rk.

  “You knew about me all my life?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “We knew about you, but we didn’t know where you were. You see, your stupid traitorous bitch of a mother hid you. It took some time to track you both down. Time and money. But the payoff will be worth it.”

  “The Dragon’s Tear.” She put her hand over the stone in her pocket, waiting for the voice in her head to whisper words about protecting it and doing harm to the people who had taken her mom. It didn’t.

  “What’s it for?” Eva asked. “You’ve gone to such a lot of trouble to get it.”

  “You really don’t know?” he asked. “Those voices in your head haven’t shared its purpose with you?”

  “They don’t exactly talk a lot,” she lied. “I don’t know anything.”

  “We are going to use it to resurrect the dead. It’s what it was meant for, only we have tweaked the process. Your father wanted to stop us. That was why he hid it. And now, it’s ours.” He was jubilant, to the point of ecstasy.

  “Who are you going to bring back?” she asked.

  “No, no, no.” He tutted. “That is classified.”

  They were pulling off the main road. Eva looked out of the window and then closed her eyes, recalling her memories of the last time she was driven here with the hood covering her head. She slotted the memories together. They were going back to the same place. Her mother would be there.

  This douchebag and Crosshead were planning something big. His excitement was too exuberant for them to be attempting to bring back someone close to them, like a child. They had waited years. Twenty-five years or more.

  Her father had been killed for his knowledge. She processed what she had learned and let her anger surface. If she wanted to be free of these foul men, she had to make sure none of them left the warehouse alive.

  A surge of power coursed through her. She was a Night Hunter, and she was going to hunt these men down, whatever it took.

  Chapter Sixteen – Evaine

  “Are you sure we’re going the right way?” The panic in Jack’s voice was clear, he couldn’t mask it. Something was wrong. When Helena had taken the map out to get a reading on Evaine, using the store card to connect to her and a crystal pendulum to pinpoint her on the map, it had become obvious Eva was not going to Bolderwood.

  “Yes. She’s moving, just not in the right direction. OK, I think she’s stopped. A pub, outside Nomansland. You know it?” Helena threw at him.

  He tried to focus, but it was a blur. “Come on, get yourself together,” he told himself, groaning.

  “I know it,” Kurt said from the front. “We took out a troll there a few months back.”

  “That’s where she is.” Helena balanced the map on her thighs while Kurt turned the Land Rover around and took them back the way they’d come before turning off down a narrow road that took them through the forest.”

  “Wait,” Jack said, his brain beginning to function again. “We need to be careful. What if they are watching her?”

  “Jack’s right,” Liam said. “We need to think like us.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Lucas asked scathingly.

  “That we are usually doing the hunting, and if we wanted to flush someone out, we would watch the route we think they will travel. If Eva is stationary, it could be they are watching to see if she has company.”

  Jack nodded. “There is every chance they have been watching her since they let her go. They will know she’s been in contact with us, and this Land Rover isn’t exactly inconspicuous, is it?”

  “So, suggestions?” Lucas asked.

  “Steal a car,” Kurt said matter-of-factly.

  “This is not the time for jokes,” Lucas muttered.

  “Who’s joking? How else do you expect to remain unseen?” Kurt asked.

  “The same way I make your big bear pawprints look like a fox,” Helena said, nodding. “I’ve never tried it on something this big.”

  “Then let’s join forces and do it together.” Lucas held his hand out to Helena, who hesitated, her eyes narrowed as she studied the young druid.

  “Why did you come with us, Lucas?” she asked.

  “To help,” he said easily.

  “No, honestly, why?” Helena asked.

  “Helena, we have no time for this. Hold his damn hand. And make us look like a family out for a day trip.”

  She huffed, but took Lucas’s hand. Together they uttered a spell. When it was done, Helena yanked her hand back from Lucas. “You didn’t need my help.”

  “No, I just wanted to hold your hand,” he said, with a wink.

  “Moron.”

  “I am anything but a moron, and we both know it,” Lucas said silkily.

  “So we’re good?” Jack asked, his temper frayed.

  “Yes. We look like a family, in a red Ford Focus.” Helena angled her body away from Lucas. “Let’s go get your mate and her mother, so I don’t have to sit next to a druid any longer than I have to.”

  “Great,” Jack said under his breath. He needed them to all work together if they were going to get this right.

  Kurt sped up, weaving through the back roads, until he reached Nomansland, and then he slowed. The pub was up on the right. Jack slid forward in his seat to look out of the front window as they approached.

  “There she is,” Kurt said. He drove straight past Eva, who watched them, totally oblivious to the passengers in the car. “We can safely say the glamor works.”

  “Good. Pull over and let’s watch.”

  Kurt indicated to pull off the road into a gravel area. He kept the engine running, Jack kept his hand on the door, ready to jump out and help Eva if she needed it.

  “Here we go. Something is happening. She’s turning around. Damn, someone was there all along.”

  “So we follow?” Kurt asked.

  “Not right away. There could be a second car. Pull away. If they go in the opposite direction, we turn around and let Helena guide us. If not, we pull over, let them pass, and follow at a discreet distance.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Kurt said, and drove off, while Jack watched out of the rear window. “She’s getting in the car. They’re coming this way.”

  His heart ached for Eva. He hated that she might be scared they would lose her and she would have to face whatever happened alone. If only he could tell her.

  “She knows we will be there for her,” Liam said. “She knows. And you know she can handle herself.”

  “Except we don’t know who we are dealing with, and neither does Eva.”

  “Templars,” Lucas said.

  “What?” Helena asked, disgusted. “They were wiped out.”

  Lucas held his hands up. “Hey, I’m just telling you what I know.”

  “And how do you know anything, Lucas?” Helena spat. “Why are you here? This is beneath you, mixing with a witch and a bunch of shifters.”

  “Oh, I know. But when this goes down, I want to be there,” he said hotly.

  “Why?” Jack asked, putting his hand on the back of Lucas’s seat and pulling himself forward. “Why, Lucas?”

  “Because I have to do something to stand out. We don’t all have a daddy to make us shine, some of us have to rub the tarnish off ourselves.”

  “You are doing this for the glory?” Jack asked.

  “If that’s how you want to see it.” He turned in his seat to look at Jack. “We both want the same outcome. You want to defeat the Templars for Eva, I want to defeat them because it looks good on my resume. So what’s wrong with that?”

  “He has a point,” Liam said. He put his hand on Jack’s shoulder and pulled him back. “And we need all the help we can get.”

  “Liam is right,” Helena conceded. “We need Lucas.”

  “Thank you. Is a little gratitude too much to ask? I made the fake stone, didn’t I? I’m already knee-deep in this shit,” Lucas asked heatedly.

  “All right. Let’s focus, and get Eva and her mom out. We’ll discuss
the repercussions when we fully understand them,” Jack said.

  “Agreed,” Lucas said.

  “Kurt, let’s back off and get some space between us and Eva. Helena, are you still able to track Eva?”

  “Yes,” Helena said.

  “OK, play time is over, I need you all to get your game heads on. Once we reach the location, we have to be ready for anything. Eva might have only seen three people in the warehouse, but that does not mean there aren’t more.”

  He sat back and collected his temper, and shut it away in a box, which he securely locked. Staying in control was what he needed to do. They were strong, they had faced worse. He shook his head, but usually they knew exactly what they were going up against: degetty, sirens, trolls, hell, even a fairy was more predictable than this. It was the unknown that worried him; he hadn’t heard of Templars being active for centuries.

  And what did they want with the Dragon’s Tear? They had gone to elaborate lengths to make Eva retrieve it. Kidnap and blackmail. He shook his head; he had a bad feeling about this.

  “They’ve turned into an industrial site. The car is slowing. They’ve stopped.”

  “Kurt, get us close, and then we go in on foot. Get ready, people. This is where it gets real.”

  “Or unreal,” Liam said, with a grin.

  “Or unreal,” Jack agreed. “No matter what, we go in and we get what we came for. Eva, her mom, and the Dragon’s Tear. Remember Eva’s description of the one she called Crosshead. He is the one who will most likely have the Dragon’s Tear. He is our priority. Do not let him leave.”

  “Understood,” a chorus of voices called, and then the Land Rover stopped, and they were out, heading on foot toward the place where his mate was. As they got close, he began to pick up a sense of her. Not strong enough to pinpoint, but strong enough to know she was close.

  I’m coming to get you, Jack said.

  No, we’re coming to get you, his bear corrected.

  Chapter Seventeen – Evaine

  “We’re here,” the guy said, and he stopped the car, taking the keys out of the ignition and opening the door, ready to get out. “Don’t try anything stupid.”