by Paige Tyler
Where the hell were the DAPS guards that should have been roaming the property?
She moved across the side yard, keeping to the dark shadows until she reached the house. She dipped down and headed to the back of the mansion, using the hedges for cover. She slowed when she heard voices, poking her head up carefully to look in a window.
The first person she saw was Conrad Lloyd. Jennifer’s husband looked tense as he stood talking to a group of half a dozen men dressed in suits. Rachel glanced around the room—as much of it as she could see—but she couldn’t see Jennifer. She swung her gaze back to Conrad when it occurred to her that several of the men were pretty big guys. She did a double take. Crap. Those were the men who’d been at the courthouse yesterday—with Alton Marshall.
She dropped to the ground under the window, her head spinning. WTF? Why would men involved with a dirtbag like Marshall be at the Lloyds’ place? If they were talking to Jennifer, it might be one thing, but these men were obviously acquaintances of her husband.
Rachel was still trying to work it all out when she heard the sound of leather shoes on stone floors. Peeking over the windowsill again, she saw Theo walk into the room.
“My guys have your wife secured in a room near the garage,” Theo told Conrad. “Your call on what we do with her, but if you need help getting rid of the body, let me know and we’ll take care of it.”
Rachel’s eyes went wide. She’d heard that wrong…right?
“I appreciate the offer, but Marshall’s associates are going to take care of it for me,” Conrad said.
Theo looked a little disappointed. “Well, if you change your mind, let me know.”
Conrad assured Theo he would, then waited for the man to leave before turning back to Marshall’s goons. “Before you take care of my wife, I want you to find my daughter. I don’t want her to have any idea what happened to her mother. And I don’t want any of this to get traced back to me, either. It has to look like an accident. Understood?”
The men grumbled something in answer, but Rachel was too busy scrambling through the hedges as she headed for the other side of the house. She only prayed she could find an easy way inside and up to the second-floor guest rooms.
Pulling out her phone as she went, she sent a quick text to Knox, telling him Conrad and DAPS were working with Marshall and they were going to kill Jennifer. Calling probably would have been better, but she didn’t have time for a long conversation. She had to get to Addy and her mother fast.
Bring help ASAP, she added.
It wasn’t until Rachel reached the back of the house and the unlocked French doors there that she wondered why she’d texted Knox instead of Diego or her other pack mates. But as she silently slipped inside, she decided it didn’t matter.
Chapter 14
“Do you really think it was a good idea letting Rachel go out on her own like that?” Diego asked without looking up from the website he’d been skimming through.
Knox finished the last few powdered donuts he’d been working on polishing off. “What was I supposed to do, lock her in the bedroom and slide donuts under the door for her to live on? I haven’t known Rachel as long as you have, but I have no doubt she’d never let anyone force her to do something she didn’t want to, even if it’s for her own good. I have to trust that if she senses trouble coming, she’ll tell me.”
Diego regarded him thoughtfully. “I think Rachel may have gotten far luckier than she knows when you took that bullet for her. There aren’t many men strong enough to handle a woman as wild and free as she is. Most would try to hold on too tightly and end up losing her. You two really are meant to be together.”
Knox was about to deny it, not wanting to rub the relationship he had with Rachel in the other man’s face. Then he realized that was stupid. Diego was putting into words what they both knew to be true. Of course, that didn’t keep Knox from feeling a little bad for Diego. He was quickly coming to consider the other man a friend, and regardless of what Diego might say, the guy was still dealing with the pain of knowing Rachel wasn’t meant to be with him.
“You’re going to find The One for you, Diego,” Knox said. “It’ll happen, and when it does, I’ll be right there to tell you I told you so.”
Diego snorted and went back to perusing the Internet. “Yeah, sure it will happen. But knowing my luck, I’ll meet my soul mate only to find out she’s serving a ten-year prison sentence or married already, or has a kid who will hate my guts.”
“Damn,” Knox muttered. “Aren’t you just a ray of sunshine?”
Diego opened his mouth to reply when the laptop dinged and a Skype notice popped up. Diego immediately clicked on it and the video image of an attractive middle-aged woman with the bluest hair Knox had ever seen filled the screen. Hell, it practically frigging glowed. She was seated at a desk and there was an old-looking tapestry on the wall behind her.
“Davina, this is Knox Lawson,” Diego said, gesturing to him. “He’s Rachel’s mate and is helping her deal with this thing. Please tell us you found out something about this frigging clown.”
The woman glanced at Knox before focusing on Diego again. “Is there something in the water out there in Texas that attracts werewolves, or is it simply the barbecue?”
“How did you…?” Knox started, but Davina cut him off.
“I can tell what most people are by looking at them. It’s my thing. But we aren’t here to talk about me. We’re here to talk about what’s attached itself to your pack mate.”
Knox was about to point out he wasn’t technically in Rachel’s pack, but before he could, Davina stood up from her desk and moved out of view of the camera. A moment later, she was back with what looked like an enormous encyclopedia. Opening it, she turned the book to face them, holding it up to the camera. Knox leaned forward, straining to make out the details of a very dark Gothic-looking painting. There was a creepy-looking creature perched on the stomach and chest of a half-dressed woman draped across a bed. In the background was what Knox assumed was a horse. He had no clue what the hell a horse was doing in a woman’s bedroom.
“This is a painting titled The Nightmare. It was done in 1781 by an Anglo-Swiss artist known as Henry Fuseli,” Davina explained. “The popular theory is that the creature on her chest is an incubus, while the horse is supposed to be a mare, representing nightmares. Turns out that’s only half-right. The thing on the woman’s chest represents a creature called a nachtmahr, also referred to as a mare, mara, maron, or half a dozen other names, depending on the culture you’re dealing with.”
“Sorry, but that thing doesn’t look anything like the clown that attacked us,” Knox said, hating to interrupt but not interested in an art history lesson.
Davina dropped the book on the desk with a thud, making the camera shake. “Really? If you want clowns, go find a circus. The nachtmahr is a malicious entity—a spirit that feeds on its victim’s fear. It creates that fear by scaring the crap out of them, appearing to each victim as whatever terrifies them the most. In Rachel’s case, it’s a clown.”
“But we saw the clown too,” Diego pointed out. “I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about clowns, so if this thing changes its appearance for each victim, why appear to Knox and me as a clown?”
Before Davina could answer Diego’s question—which seemed very logical—Knox’s phone dinged. He glanced at it long enough to see that it was a text from Rachel saying she’d arrived at the Lloyd mansion. He breathed out the tension he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
When he looked up, Davina was frowning, like she was disappointed in their lack of intelligence. “Because you weren’t its victim—Rachel is. You were collateral damage. You mentioned this guy Horace attacked her as a clown over a year ago, then Horace died in prison. That’s how the nachtmahr works. It finds a victim it likes the taste of, then rides that victim until they’re dead, usually by their own hand. Then it ju
mps to a new victim and starts the process all over again. It must have gotten a tiny nibble of her fear when Horace tried to kill her and decided she’d be fun to go after next. I’m not sure how much Rachel has told you, but I’m willing to bet this all started with little stuff—strange smells, cold chills, shadows out of the corner of her eye.”
At Knox’s nod, Davina continued. “The horrifying nightmares come next, wearing down a person’s defenses, physically exhausting them. It’s downhill from there—hallucinations, sounds—until finally the creature creates a crack in its victim’s mind. That’s when the physical manifestation comes. Like the incident that happened today. The shocking thing is that it’s taken so long. From everything I’ve read in my books, most victims don’t manage to make it more than two weeks before they completely lose it.”
“Then what?” Diego asked.
Davina sat back in her chair. “My understanding is when the nachtmahr has taken complete control, it will force Rachel to do things she’d never consider doing, so it can feed off her fear and her horror. She’ll kill innocents, like Horace tried to do with that girl in Chattanooga. Then at some point, she’ll come after those closest to her, like the two of you.”
“Rachel would never do anything like that,” Knox growled.
“She will,” Davina insisted. “She won’t have a choice.”
Diego cursed. “How do we find this fucking thing and kill it?”
“The first part is easy,” Davina said. “It’s obsessed with Rachel, so while it might jump out for short rides in other people, like those killers in the basement of the courthouse or that therapist, it’s tied itself to Rachel for the long term. Killing it, on the other hand, is both easy…and hard.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Knox snarled, his fangs and claws coming out. He had no interest in playing riddle games with Rachel’s life.
“Like I said before, a nachtmahr is a malicious spirit, and spirits are damn hard to kill,” Davina said sadly. “There are only two ways to do it. You must either drown them in salt water, or incinerate them in fire. Obviously, they have to be in a host at the time and you have to do it when there aren’t any other people around, or the thing will jump to another host. That’s how the thing got from Horace to Rachel. Once it finds someone it wants, it creates a link, so it jumped from person to person like a damn parasite until it got to Rachel.”
“You have to be shitting me,” Knox whispered. “There isn’t some way to draw it out? Someone must have destroyed one of these things before.”
Davina shook her head. “I don’t know of any way to draw it out of a host—it simply jumps from one to another. And as far as someone trying to destroy it, there are two reported instances of it. One in the mid-1800s, when a sailor possessed by one took his ship alone into the middle of the Atlantic by himself and jumped overboard, and another in Hawaii in 1910, when a possessed woman ran to the top of a volcano by herself and jumped in.” She sighed. “I’m sorry, but that’s all I’ve got. You can’t get this thing out unless it wants out, and if there’s anyone else within twenty or thirty feet when you try to kill it, the thing will simply jump to their body. At least that’s what the documents I found lead me to believe.”
Davina shut down the connection shortly after that, telling them she’d keep looking, but she wasn’t holding out much hope.
Knox couldn’t do anything but sit there, staring at the blank laptop screen. “What the hell are we going to do? We damn sure can’t tell Rachel any of this. She’ll sacrifice herself without a second thought to save everyone around her.”
Before Diego could answer, Knox’s phone dinged again. He picked it up from the coffee table, expecting to see a text from Rachel saying she was heading back. He was right about who it was from but wrong about the rest.
“Shit,” he muttered, shooting to his feet.
“What is it?” Diego asked, now standing.
“Rachel just sent me a text saying Conrad and DAPS are working with Marshall, and they’re about to kill Jennifer,” he told Diego as he headed into the bedroom to grab his Glock and extra ammo clips. “She needs backup. Now!”
Chapter 15
Rachel slipped into the kitchen, pausing to let her senses take in everything around her in the huge home. She’d been at the Lloyds’ place a lot, so she instinctively knew what scents and noises were the everyday kind, but there were a lot of people she didn’t know moving around, which made things difficult.
Reaching down, she pulled out her .380 automatic from her ankle holster, wishing like hell she’d brought her Sig. Being without it felt like she was missing a part of herself—an important part with lots of large caliber ammo. The little double action she carried was okay in a pinch, but if things degraded to a shooting match with these a-holes, it would almost be laughable.
Rachel pushed thoughts of shooting matches aside as she carefully made her way through the house, silently slipping past some of the men without them seeing her. She recognized several as the DAPS guys she’d worked with over the past several days, but now it was clear their allegiance was to whomever was paying them—and right now, that seemed to be Alton Marshall.
She wished she could move faster, especially since she had no idea how much longer Jennifer had before Marshall’s men either took her away or killed her right where she was. But with so many people in the house, she was forced to duck and hide several times. The delay was frustrating as hell, but if there was a silver lining, it was that her snail’s pace would give Knox and her other backup time to get there.
Rachel heard a few of the men talking about not being able to find Addy. One even suggested she’d slipped out of the house earlier to go see her boyfriend. That wasn’t true, of course, and thankfully Rachel had no problem following Addy’s scent straight to the last guest bedroom at the end of the hallway on the second floor.
Stepping inside, Rachel silently closed the door behind her, then stood there in the darkness. A moment later, she picked up Addy’s heartbeat. The poor girl was so scared it sounded more like a hummingbird than a sixteen-year-old kid.
“Addy?” she called softly. “It’s me—Rachel.”
There was a gasp, then a rustle as the girl scrambled out from under the bed like there was someone chasing her. Rachel almost fell over backward when Addy threw herself in her arms and buried her face in her shirt, soft sobs of relief shaking her.
Rachel shushed her as quietly as she could, patting Addy’s back and hugging her. She understood the girl was terrified, but if one of those goons she’d seen below heard them, bad wouldn’t even begin to describe it.
Gently pulling away, she took Addy’s hand and led her over to the window, where a patch of moonlight filtered in.
“Honey, this is going to be hard for you to hear, but it’s important you understand the situation we’re in, okay?” Rachel whispered.
Addy’s eyes widened and for a moment, Rachel felt horrible for putting her in this position. But in the end, there wasn’t a choice. Rachel had to get Addy—and her mom—out of there within the next few minutes, before it was too late.
“What’s wrong?” Addy asked in a broken whisper. “Is it my mom and dad? Are they…?”
Rachel shook her head quickly. “No, your parents are both still alive. I promise.”
She immediately cursed herself for making such a vow. The truth was, she really had no way of knowing if Jennifer was still alive. Rachel prayed she was right about that. But standing here talking wasn’t helping the situation. They needed to move.
“Addy, your mom is being held at gunpoint by some really bad guys in a room somewhere close to the garage.” Rachel hesitated, wishing like hell she didn’t have to put it all out there like this. “I don’t know all the details, but your father is somehow involved with Alton Marshall, the man your mom is trying to send to prison. I think your father and Marshall may be working together.”<
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Addy’s eyes went wide. “Working together? Are you sure?”
Rachel nodded. “I’m sure. I wish I weren’t, but I am.”
Addy swallowed hard. “There’s a workshop behind the garage. Dad used to work on old cars when I was little as a hobby. He hasn’t done it in a long time, though.”
“Do you think you can help me find a way to get there without anyone seeing us?” Rachel asked.
Nodding, Addy reached up to wipe the tears off her cheeks. “There’s a back staircase at the far end of this floor that leads to that end of the house. If we’re careful, we should be able to get to the workshop without anyone seeing us.”
Addy reminded Rachel so much of Hannah in that moment she wanted to hug her. But they had no time for hugs.
Taking Addy’s hand, Rachel headed for the bedroom door, pausing only long enough to confirm there was no one in the main hallway. Then they both hurried as fast as they could along the hardwood floor.
Rachel was glad she had Addy with her or she would never have found the back staircase or followed the myriad twists and turns that led to the area behind the garage so quickly. She got the feeling this part of the house had been added on after the original construction and the passageways had been necessary to connect the various rooms.
“There’s a long hallway around the next corner,” Addy whispered, pointing ahead of them. “If you go left at the end, you get to the garage. If you go right, it’s the workshop.”
Rachel nodded.
If they were going to stumble across any of Marshall’s men, this would be the place, Rachel thought as they moved. But they made it down the dimly lit corridor and all the way to the workshop before Rachel smelled anyone. Unfortunately, there were two men with Jennifer, on the other side of the closed door to the workshop. That sucked. But on the bright side, she could make out three heartbeats in there, which meant the prosecutor was alive.