“Bella, come back here and talk to me.”
“Screaming child, remember?” she tossed back at him over her shoulder. She marched herself into Jason’s bedroom, hitting the lights and making her way to the crib. An instant smile streaked over her lips the minute she saw Jason’s face, his eyes lighting up at her approach. His belligerence turned to babbles of delight and, as usual, he melted her cranky little heart.
“Come here, you,” she said, scooping him up into her arms. He kicked his feet and wriggled with excitement before wrapping around her like a monkey on a flagpole. Then he laughed. He had what he wanted and that was the end of that. “Spoiled little booger,” she said softly, kissing his forehead three or four times.
“Bella,” Jacob scolded her as he followed in her wake.
“Let’s just feed him,” she said, not meeting her husband’s questioning eyes as she went to push past him.
“Not until,” he said, a hand and arm in the doorframe blocking her path, “you tell me what you want. Just tell me and it is done.”
She looked up into his nearly black eyes and saw the determination in them. Immediately she was reminded of why she would love this man until the day she died … which, being immortal and all that … was a long way off. Hopefully. There were always dark forces out there that could risk their lives the same as anyone else’s. Immortal was not the same thing as invulnerable … or unkillable.
It was just that being a Nightwalker meant it was just harder to pull it off.
Thank God.
Or thank Destiny, as Jacob would say.
“I love my son,” she blurted out.
“I—” he frowned. “I know that, little flower. I have never said I doubted that—Bella! Why are you crying?”
Immediately he was enveloping her face between his elegant hands and tipping her head back so she was looking up at him through the sudden wash of tears in her eyes. “B-because I’m hormonal!” she said, trying to pull away.
“I know you are dealing with exhaustion—”
“No! Not that hormonal! I mean … h-o-r-n-y hormonal,” she said bluntly, a little stomp of her slippered foot accompanying it. “And you haven’t touched me in four months! Not once! Well … I mean you touch me all the time and you’re very loving, but you’re just all gentle and sweet and nice. Of course I am very grateful that you are gentle and sweet and nice—don’t get me wrong. I know how lucky I am. It’s just that we used to have s-e-x. I mean, of course we had s-e-x. We have two children,” she rambled on, so fast her husband was having difficulty keeping up with her shifting topics, “but I don’t think you find me sexy anymore and I can’t even find out because I’m so tired all the time or the minute we have two seconds alone the baby cries or Leah jumps into bed with us or we have to save the world or something!”
And somewhere in all of that, Jacob finally got the gist of the problem.
“Ohhh,” he said, light dawning, “you want to go on vacation.”
“I could swear I said that. You’re a little slow on the uptake tonight.” She went to walk past him again but he wasn’t ready to let her go just yet. He swiped a thumb through the track of a tear that had fallen when she’d blinked.
“Vacation. Childless. United States. Cold. Cocoa. Fires. Skiing. Consider it done,” he said. “We shall leave tonight.”
“B-but the b-baby and Leah and—”
“We leave tonight,” he pressed onto her. “Noah will watch Leah and the baby. Or we can give the baby to Elijah and Sienna.”
That made Bella laugh. “You’re evil,” she said. Sienna was renowned for being completely stumped by children of any sort. They made her incredibly nervous. Even more so since she’d found out she was expecting her own. She was fairly large and uncomfortable and desperately afraid of what was going to happen next.
Elijah’s answer had been immersion therapy. He’d offered to watch any child in a thousand-mile radius, exposing Sienna to all shapes, sizes, ages, and sexes in the hope that it would calm her worries.
So far, not so much. Bella had tried to tell him that the only thing that would make her calm down would be birth. The ultimate immersion therapy. Elijah had not been convinced, much to Sienna’s dismay.
“My point is, we know Lycanthropes, Demons, Mistrals, Shadowdwellers, Druids, and Vampires. Out of those six Nightwalker breeds we are going to find someone trustworthy to watch our children, and you and I are going to go away.”
Then he leaned in, ignoring the wriggly bundle that was their son and pinning her to the spot with dark, famished eyes. “And I’ve been waiting for you to get h-o-r-n-y for three months now,” he said hotly. “Had I known you were already there, I would have done something about it immediately.”
“Ha! Some telepathic connection we have,” she snorted. “I thought for sure you knew and that I was too chubby with baby weight and that you didn’t want me …” And suddenly it sounded ridiculous to her own ears.
“And I thought for sure you knew I wanted you, will always want you. I was just … toning it way down because I did not want you to feel like you had to. I know how tired you have been.”
“Well, okay then,” she said with another little sniff. “Vacation.”
“Great,” he said, smiling wide and a little bit lecherously. “Where? The Catskills? Vale?”
“Stone Gorge, Washington.”
Jacob blinked. “Where the hell is that?”
“Stone Gorge, Washington, duh,” she said dryly.
Jacob rolled his eyes. “I know that. I meant to say, why there? I know a great place in Vale. It’d cost a small fortune and rightly so. Plush cabins, night skiing …”
“Stone Gorge, Washington.”
“I’m having a bad feeling about this,” Jacob said hesitantly.
“Have all the bad feelings you want. We’re going.”
End of story. She didn’t say it, but Jacob knew she didn’t have to, and so did she.
Oh yeah, he was definitely having a bad feeling.
And yet, with copious amounts of scorching sex on the horizon, those bad feelings were easily pushed aside.
CHAPTER EIGHT
He was snoring.
Not your average rumbly little snore, but a fricken freight train that rattled her rafters.
Great. How was she supposed to get any sleep between that and the fact that he was in her bed? Oh yes, there was another bed upstairs, but it wasn’t her bed, and she didn’t want to go too far out of earshot. God only knew what he was going to do this time and it usually ended up with her trying to pick his enormous bulk up off the floor. And honestly, her legs had truly had it. So had her arms. And her back.
God, she was getting old.
Thirty years old and old. Retired. Decrepit.
And, apparently, not that dried up. Not if her constant review of his blistering kiss was any indication. She kept finding herself rubbing absent fingertips over her slightly parted lips and in the middle of remembering the feel of his mouth against hers.
No. Forget it! she kept telling herself every time. And every time she was just as unsuccessful as the time before. She was sitting in the chair in the corner of her bedroom, one foot tucked under her and the other pushing rhythmically against the floor so she was rocking and gliding gently. She had a cup of coffee perched on her raised knee, and she blew on it intermittently because it was still too hot.
He’d been asleep for about three hours and in that time she’d checked on him more than half a dozen times, doing things like checking his pulse and his bandages. Never once had he stirred and never once had he stopped snoring.
After hours of the sound it was beginning to have a lulling effect. She found herself drifting off more than once and that was when she had decided on yet another pot of coffee. By this time of day she was usually drinking tea instead of coffee …
Hell, by now she was usually asleep.
She had gone out into the living room about ten minutes ago and cautiously peeked outside. It was so da
rk out for daylight hours that she did something she very rarely did.
She left her house and walked out into it. Karma was utterly delighted, although a half-hour ago she’d been looking at her with consternation wondering why they were still awake and why she wasn’t the only big thing lying in her bed. The snow had not lightened in the least, but the driving ice part of the storm was in a lull, it seemed. Karma bounded through the snow, six fresh inches already added to what had already been there. It had been a heavy winter thus far, and there were huge icy piles of previously plowed snow on all sides of her driveway. Fortunately the gully on the one side made an excellent receptacle for snow. And the icy piles made Karma feel like the king of the mountain when she climbed atop them, so she would bark, great white clouds of breath fanning into the air.
The temperature was dropping rapidly, even colder than it had been when the storm had started. She could hear the heavily laden trees creaking as the wind rushed between them.
“Karma! Come on, girl!”
Karma did so happily, another indication that it was getting colder. Normally she would have been hard to get back indoors. But even with her thick coat of fur she had reached her limit, and despite thick down, so had Kat.
After coming indoors, she was a bit at loose ends and quickly became bored. She moved into the bedroom and, since she’d already cleaned up all the soiled gauze and such, she found herself picking up his cut up jeans from the floor. That was when she realized there was something in one of the pockets.
It was a necklace. A very pretty silver and onyx necklace. The silver was an oval disk, polished to a shine so that she could see a mirrored image of herself within. It was rimmed with highly polished black pearl-like stones. She guessed they were onyx, but perhaps their luster meant they were pearls. She wasn’t exactly a gemologist so she didn’t know. All she did know was that the pendant was very beautiful and very old. She had a weakness for very beautiful and very old things. That was why she felt absolutely no guilt when she hurried to the mirror and dropped the thing over her head, lifting her hair and letting it settle. As if it were made just for her, the pendant rested perfectly flat at the top of her cleavage.
“Ooo. Pretty,” she whispered, fondling the thing, feeling the cold metal and stones between her fingers.
She probably should have taken it off right away, but since he was out cold she didn’t see the harm in wearing it for a little while longer. He would never know, she told herself. And that was why an hour later she was toying with it, running the loose pendant up and down the chain. The chain had no clasp, no beginning, and no end, just delicate links that shone and glittered.
Suddenly, the freight train screeched to a halt. He awoke with a roar, shoving himself out of the bed in a huge leap until he was crashing into the wall and her innocent little hand-painted bedside lamp was lying like an incandescent murder victim on the floor. He had both hands clenched into fists and at the ready, and his skin rippled into stone and then flesh again like a rolling wave changes the color of the sand.
She leapt to her feet, holding out a steadying hand.
“It’s okay! You’re okay!” she said quickly and loudly, never knowing what might penetrate into his dubious awareness. He glared at her distrustingly for a full fifteen seconds before his darting eyes had taken in his surroundings and allowed him to relax just a fraction. Then he seemed to reconcile where he was and with a great exhalation he relaxed, slowly releasing the clench of his fists.
It was strange, but of all the thousands of questions she wanted to ask him, at the top of the list seemed to be Who the hell hurt you? It shouldn’t have been. At the top of the list should have been What the hell are you? But in all fairness, it was a close second. And since she doubted she was going to get an answer to the first, she thought she’d shoot for second best.
“C-can you tell me something?” she asked hesitantly. “Can you tell me why your skin does that … that stone thing?”
For a second he had an expression on his face like he had been caught with his pants down around his ankles … only she doubted such a thing would make him feel self-conscious. He just didn’t seem the type to care much about what others thought of him. Then again, she had, like, a total sum of thirty minutes to go by, so how would she know?
For a second she had the feeling he was going to tell her to mind her own beeswax, but after a momentary debate he ran a hand back through his wild black hair and eyed her as if judging just how much truth she could actually handle.
“I’m no’ sure you want tae know that,” he said cautiously, his body listing to the left. He was bleeding once more. With a tsk of sound she put her cup down and grabbed more 5-×-5s. She came up to him and approaching with a little caution she pressed them over his saturated bandage and leaned her weight into him. It pushed him back against the wall, which was good because it gave her a little counterforce.
“It’s kind of the elephant in the room no matter how you look at it,” she said, daring a look up at him. His amber eyes glittered in the muted light of the room, reminding her that her lamp lay on the floor. That made her frown. She’d found it in an antique barn for a song. It’d been one of her favorite acquisitions.
“Most humans canna handle the truth of things,” he said darkly.
Most humans? Was there something other than humans to be found? She kept in mind what she’d seen so far and swallowed hard.
“Try me out. If I panic you can knock me unconscious or something. In fact, if I panic I’ll probably thank you for it.”
“Just the same,” he said cautiously.
“Try me,” she repeated.
“Verra well. I’m a Gargoyle.”
She blinked. Like an owl, she blinked again. “I don’t understand. You’re … a mean ugly statue at the top of Notre Dame cathedral? Or more cute like the Disney versions?” She swallowed noisily, hoping for the latter. Knowing otherwise.
“We doona all live on churches,” he scoffed, as if she had stereotyped him. She didn’t see how that was possible since she knew of only one Gargoyle. One living breathing moving one, that is.
“Okay,” she said carefully. “Forgive me for pointing out the obvious,” she said after a delicate clearing of her throat, “but despite the occasional flash of stone, you’re kind of made of flesh and bone.”
He laughed, the gravelly sound of it suddenly taking on a whole new meaning for her. “Aye,” he agreed, “that I am. Half of the time. And the other half I’m solid stone with wings and as ugly a face as you ever did see.”
“Oh,” she said. Then without thinking she asked. “Can you show me? Like, on purpose?”
“Nay, I canna,” he said with a slow shake of his head. “No’ right now.”
“Why not?” she asked, unable to quell her curiosity.
“ ’Tis a long story. Ye doona want to hear it.”
“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to know.”
“I doona think you know what you want because you doona know what you ask.”
“Nice. Way to condescend,” she said darkly.
That made his brow furrow. “I only mean tae say if you think you’re scared now, an explanation will no’ make things better.”
“I see,” she said, unable to help nibbling on her lip a bit nervously. “But I was just wondering—”
“Jesus, woman!” he burst out, half exasperated, half laughing at her. “Verra well, then. All the wee things that go bumpy in the night are real. Djynns, Phoenixes, and the like, Wraiths … and some things you never heard of before.”
“Gh-ghosts? You’re telling me ghosts are real?”
“Wraiths,” he corrected, wincing when she pushed a little too hard into him.
“Phoenixes,” she whispered. “What about Vampires? Werewolves?”
“No, no such thing. They’re called Nightwalkers. There’re six breeds. Wraiths, Mysticals, Djynns, Bodywalkers, Night Angels, and Phoenixes. Six Nightwalkers in all.”
“Wait, that
makes seven. Gargoyles makes seven.”
“No”—he shook his saturnine head—“Gargoyles are no’ Nightwalkers. We’re … more like scions of a Nightwalker breed called Bodywalkers. And if you want a better explanation, I’ll need to be off my feet.”
“Oh! Oh, of course!” She immediately pulled the gauze back, checking and seeing that the bleeding had stopped again. For now. She helped him the short distance into the bed, tucking pillows behind his back when he was clearly determined to sit up. She pretended not to notice when he made an appreciative sound down around the area of her cleavage.
And suddenly, just like that, he grabbed hold of her by her arms and gave her such a good shake her eyeballs clattered around in her head.
“Where did you get this?” he demanded roughly, grabbing for the pendant.
She had the conscience to color.
“I’m sorry. I found it in your pocket and it was so pretty … I couldn’t help my—”
“Off! Now!” he all but bellowed into her face.
“All right!” she snapped. “Jeez, don’t have a conniption! I was just trying—”
“Off!” He made like he was ready to rip the thing free of her neck and fearful for the life of the pendant she hurriedly went to take it off. Bad enough he’d killed one antique already.
“I know, it’s for your wife right? You’re right, it was wrong of me to put it on. But I promise I didn’t hurt it.”
“Why aren’t you taking it off then?” he demanded to know.
“I am!”
“No, you aren’t, you keep picking it up and putting it back down.”
“I am not!” she said, picking the pendant up.
And letting go of it again.
Their eyes met, hers perplexed and his stormy. “I’ll do it,” he said, grabbing the necklace.
Kat felt a solid punch in her chest and she went flying through the air and into the far wall. The air kicked out of her lungs as she dropped hard to the floor a second later. On the opposite side of the room, her houseguest was scrambling out of bed. She felt dwarfed as he loomed over her and she flinched when he lifted his hands toward her.
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