by Richard Amos
“I’m fine. What’s going on?”
He dropped his hands. “We have a situation.”
I followed what Greg was looking at.
Oh. Fuck.
“Lilisian.”
I couldn’t deny the fear that ate at me, but neither could I deny the return of my fury. This wasn’t the kind that had sent me over to the garden of the goddess. No, this was the good kind that helped kick arse—though also tended to make me gung-ho about things.
I pushed everything down that I had learned, the doubts in my head about Karla. Lilisian was standing in the road all by herself, so she was top priority in this moment.
Her flying solo wasn’t a good sign.
“Plan?” I asked.
“Running her over won’t work,” Nay said.
“Shame. I think we’d better get out of the car before she blows it up.”
“The fuck?” Greg boomed and flung open the driver’s door.
I followed him out into the cold, striding up the road toward her. She was quite a distance away, dressed in a too-big crimson robe that swallowed her figure, hair flying behind her in the chilly breeze.
We gathered, the four of us, a wall of strength against God knows what she now had at her fingertips. She was back and at full capacity.
I could smell something in the air, something different about her, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. When it came to scents, I was no wine sniffer. My cocaine addiction would’ve put any hopes of me exploring that field firmly in the grave. Still, there was a wrongness to her.
“Hello,” she greeted. “It is wonderful to see you all again.”
“Spare us the bullshit,” I retaliated. “Ready for a showdown, then?”
“What, so you can escape death again?” She shook her head—the head that had once belonged to DI Williams, who Dean had also had a one-night stand with pre-Lilisian taking over her body. “No, Jake. I don’t think so. One has to be cunning, it’s clear, to end your life. Even if I were to pull out a gun on you right now and fire it over and over again, you’d find a way to survive. You should be dead, yet I underestimated the work of Hecate. Still, it only makes things more interesting for me. You are the reverse of a puzzle, something for me to take apart piece by piece.”
“Dream on.”
Her silver eyes ran over me and each of my friends in turn. “Jake Winter and his crew of supernatural guardians.”
Lilisian’s voice was grating on me. “We haven’t seen you since you tried to burn the city, and this is all you have to say? If we’re not gonna fight, kindly fuck off and work on your plan to try and undo me.”
She clasped her hands together in front of her. “Oh, Jake. It makes me happy to see how clueless you are.”
“Not so much now that your precious Purple’s spilled some juicy info.”
She smirked.
Damn! That was supposed to wipe the laid-back look off her face and start the spittle flying.
“This may shock you, weapon, but I’m not here for you.” Her tone was so sickly sweet.
“Don’t try and—”
“Dean?”
My breath caught in my throat. Did she just say Dean’s name?
He was next to me, and my head snapped round to him. Every inch of me was numb. Please … no. Don’t say he was working with her all along or something fucked up … don’t let the dread rising up in me be true.
No! This wasn’t right. He would never betray me. He wasn’t working with her. No way! No way! This was all bullshit!
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t fucking breathe …
“Dean?”
Nay’s voice gave me a hard slap, letting me focus on his face.
There it was again, that emptiness he’d displayed in the bathroom.
“Dean?” I said, reaching to touch him. His arm was solid, muscles frozen. He didn’t even blink.
“What you playing at?” Greg barked at Lilisian.
Without giving a shit, I turned my back on the Supreme beast and put myself in front of my lover, taking his face in my hands like he’d just done to me in the car moments ago.
He was as cold as death, rigid. His dark eyes were locked on her, never leaving her. “Dean … please.”
This wasn’t happening.
“Dean?” I whispered.
“Dean Tseng,” Lilisian said with the same whispered tones as me.
I spun around, jutting a sparking finger at her. “Back the fuck off, right now.”
She cocked her head. “The fae has your affections, I see. Interesting and far more delightful than I could have hoped for.”
“You deaf? You back the bloody hell off right now. I swear I’ll—”
“Come to me, Dean,” she cut me off.
Dean moved then, shoving me out of his path. He. Shoved. Me. It was hard enough to almost make me lose my balance.
I charged at him, jumping into his trajectory. “What’re you doing?” I pushed him, but he kept moving. “Dean! What the hell? Dean!”
He stopped, dark eyes boring into me.
“Yes, yes. Look at me. Whatever she’s doing, you—”
He grabbed my shoulders in a crushing grip and threw me out of his way. I went tumbling to the asphalt with the force of it, rolling into a dirty puddle.
Greg roared and was making a beeline for Dean when Lilisian waved a hand, energy pulsing through the air. It sent Greg on his back—me too as I tried to get to my feet.
Dean had … pushed me …
“Hell no!” Nay yelled and chucked a potion at Lilisian.
With another wave of her hand, the beast sent the potion hurtling into the trees. Blue magic exploded uselessly in the forest.
This wasn’t happening!
“Spare the efforts, witch,” Lilisian said softly.
“You—”
Before Nay could say anything, Dean was by the beast’s side. “My Queen.” He bowed before her.
Still on the ground, I clawed at the road. My stomach churned, and I threw up. He hadn’t just said, he hadn’t said those words. He wasn’t bowing, none of this was real.
Only … it was so bloody real.
“Dean!” I cried.
Dizzy as hell from the shock of what I was seeing, I got vertical and ran at them.
Lilisian sent more of that energy at me to send me back to the ground.
“Dean! Fight this!”
Nay cast a spell, and it was deflected by Lilisian. Whenever Greg tried to move on her, he was sent to kiss the tarmac.
Greg’s roars of frustration cracked the air like raging thunder.
Dean was no longer bowing, staring straight ahead as he waited at the beast’s side. He didn’t look at me.
“Jake Winter,” Lilisian said. “He is mine.”
Tendrils of gray smoke danced at her feet.
Dean turned to her. “I am yours, My Queen.”
“Mine, mine, mine,” she sing-songed.
“What’s happening …” I gasped. I couldn’t get up, the wind knocked out of me. Vomit rose up and splattered all over the pavement at the sight of this reality. It couldn’t be real.
The smoke rose and circled the two of them in twisting gray.
“Dean …” My plea was pathetic. “Dean … please …”
Within seconds, the spinning smoke engulfed them in a solid mass until it fell away like ash. The remnants were picked up by the wind and carried away into the trees, leaving behind the road and nothing else ahead of me.
No Dean.
No Lilisian.
They were gone.
Chapter Ten
Rain fell as I picked myself up off the tarmac.
I watched the space Dean has just occupied, waiting for this nightmare to break. He was still there—I just wasn’t seeing him. Adreana had left something inside me, causing me severe torment. I mean, why would Dean say that? He wouldn’t.
Oh, my God! What if … what if … What if DI Williams had been Lilisian all along and they were really lover
s, him getting close to me to somehow break me? I took a moment to catch my breath. No, Dean had been helping me come back to together. That was a stupid theory to have. So he’d had a history with the previous owner of that body. That was then, this was now. His kisses were for me. Even if he wanted to nibble both sides of the cookie, the last person he’d go with was Lilisian no matter what shell she wore. She’d taken DI Williams’s body—Rachel—and pushed away her soul. There was no secret plan, only … only that Lilisian had done something to him.
My head was spinning. The idea that this was some remnant of Adreana’s mind-fuckery was slipping away fast. Panicked ‘what ifs’ were not bloody helping.
This was all too real. The icy rain kissing my skin, the bitter bite of the day, the sting in my heart as he bowed to that bitch. Dean was gone, and I couldn’t feel anything from the SOS bonds. At all.
Shit.
“It has to be magic,” I said weakly, finally halting the screaming in my mind. That was all it could be.
Greg and Nay were at my side, my chosen brother and sister flanking me.
“Course it is, mate,” Greg offered. “Why else would he do that?”
They didn’t know yet, about the whole Karla thing. Shit. How was I supposed to tell them? I couldn’t keep it a secret. It was too deadly to hide away, yet too chaotic to set free. Karla, though physically blind, was a powerful witch. She’d given Lilisian the smackdown on the beach, for starters.
I couldn’t lie to my family.
“I have … I have something to tell you both.”
I explained everything that Adreana had told me.
“But it can’t be true,” I finished.
Both Greg and Nay were deathly silent. They looked at one another, the look lasting way longer than I could stand.
“Someone say something.”
Eventually Nay did. “We’ve never known how this happened to Coldharbour. Karla always said she tried to find out, but never could.” Her shoulders sagged. “What if this …” She trailed off, shaking her head.
Greg was as solid and still as Dean had been and it scared the shit out of me. “You better start speaking, mate, or I’m gonna freak out.”
That wasn’t very fair of me, but I was so petrified that he was gonna run off and make it a threesome with Lilisian I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.
His amber eyes moved to me. “Give me a moment, Jakey.” That deep voice of his was now a mere rasp.
I drew some deep breaths. What I really wanted to do was crumple, sob my heart out some more because I couldn’t take the constant flashing reminders what I’d just seen. My stomach was in knots, my brain submerged in a sickening soup. But I stayed on my feet. I wouldn’t allow myself to fall apart. Not now.
“How do we play this?” Greg said. His voice was back to normal.
“I don’t know,” Nay answered. “We can’t just blurt it out. If she’s … I can’t get my head around it. I just can’t. The beast is a liar. This is Karla! She would never do this.”
Fuck! I’d started the wheels of doubt, even though they had to turn. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t even, Jake,” Greg responded. He sighed deeply. “And the white eye bastard …”
I scratched my left palm. Damn. I was nothing but a puppet on a string, obeying the commands of a power that had control over me. Even though I had control of the shield now, I just felt so dragged along.
Not a puppet … the creepy version of the goddess’ voice corrected me.
I’m so in the dark, though.
She didn’t answer.
Nay pulled me into a hug. “There’s no way Dean’s in league with that bitch, Jake. It’s a spell. God, he hasn’t left your side since you two moved on into this new dynamic. He’s so into you.”
I rested my head against hers. There were no words I could say. It would be pretty obvious from my expression that I was shaken to my very core. And Nay was good at seeing my thoughts. She was my sister from another mister.
“I’ll kill him if he is,” Greg added. “But I know he ain’t. He wasn’t in control. You wanna see what he’s like around you from where we’re looking, Jakey. Bloody hell, its intense. He’s got it bad for you in a big way. You’ve put your own spell on him.” Greg came over and patted my back. “We’ll sort this mess, mate. We’ll get answers.” And Greg, my brother from another mother, always knew the right words to say.
“We will,” Nay whispered into my ear and then kissed my cheek. She squeezed me hard and then let me go. “But we need to sort out how we’re going to get those answers.”
“The truth potion,” I said.
“We need Karla and Dean to make another batch of it, babe. As well as Randy.”
“Crap!”
“Anyway, I don’t know how she’d react to being hit with it.”
“That white-eyed prick won’t tell us anything either,” Greg added.
I folded my arms. “What if we confront her and we’re wrong? God, that would break all the trust and everything. But we can’t have this eating at us.”
Nay stuffed her hands in coat pockets. “We could just sit her down and talk her through it. I mean, it’s a report. We always give her reports.”
“We gonna risk her losing her shit?” Greg wondered.
“Karla doesn’t lose her shit.”
“This might tip her over the edge.”
He was right. Who knows how she’d react to these allegations, what she’d retaliate with.
“We’ve got no choice,” I said. “As far as I see it.” I sighed. “You two have known her for longer than me. It’s up to you how you want to play this, but I only see one option.”
Greg ran a hand over his face. “Shit!”
Nay shook her head. “There’s no other way. We leave it, we’ll go nuts without knowing. I never thought I’d ever doubt Karla, ever question her.”
“It could be a lie,” I said. “You know, it was Lilisian’s mum saying it after all.”
“The fact that we’ve never found an answer to how the beasts got over here is what’s niggling at me, Jake.”
“Same,” Greg added. “It’s like things are falling into place. But why Michael? Why would she do that? It makes no bloody sense.”
Blimey. I was hoping for all this doubt to be washed away by my friends. There should be mocking laughter at such a ridiculous suggestion, stuff about pulling the other leg because the beast’s attempt to try and divide us was so blatant and pathetic. I was still waiting for that, for the smoke to clear and normality to return.
It didn’t.
It wouldn’t.
The doubt was so damn real.
I had to know the truth. “If we’re doing this, we do it now.” I headed to the car. “No pissing about. My head is gonna explode.”
Focus, that was what I needed. There was a goal to be reached, and I had to get there before I was consumed by the raging emotion being held back by the biggest mental dam I could muster. If I let the pressure go, that would be it—me a mess again.
Karla caused all of this, ordered Michael’s death—the whole idea of it was crazy! But I had to know the answer loud and clear to sate the doubt once and for all.
With that, we were back in the car and on the move.
Chapter Eleven
I wanted to puke again as the car rolled through the wards of the mansion.
A beast attack would’ve been great right now. In fact, I’d been hoping to be delayed by a few hyenas hanging around outside the grounds as a little distraction. The closer we got to home, the worse the moths in my gut danced.
Home. This was home. Karla had made this a home for me, kept me safe. She wouldn’t want to hurt me. That was ridiculous.
Greg parked up and killed the engine. “We ready?”
“No,” I replied.
“Same as Jake,” Nay added. “But we can’t wait in the car. Come on. I’ll go in and talk to her, say about Dean, that we need an emergency meeting. You two head straight for the dining r
oom and wait. Don’t say a word to Mr. Douglas.” She drew a deep breath. “Shit just got real.”
Nay got out of the car and strode over to the front doors.
Greg opened his door. “Come on, Jakey.”
I really, really was on the verge of spewing up all over the dining table.
Nay came into the room. “She’s on her way down.”
I was crashing. I needed Dean, to see him, to have his hand in mine, his body close and safe and nowhere near her. Images of dead Michael kept assaulting me, my muscles tense, hands tightly gripping the edge of the table.
Focus, come on. Focus.
But she was coming, Karla was coming into this room under a dark cloud. Please let there be light to destroy the cloud, to restore things to how they were.
Fucking Adreana! She was so near the top of the hit list now!
Karla came into the room, followed by Mr. Douglas who was carrying a tea tray. Her white teapot sat on it, along with her cup and saucer. This was a normal routine for her—peppermint tea while she sat in a team meeting.
Karla, dressed in white trousers and a baby blue jumper, wrapped in a white shawl, took a pew in her usual seat.
“Hello, everyone.”
We said our hellos.
Mr. Douglas poured her tea. “Will there be anything else, My Lady?”
“No, thank you.”
He bowed and left the room. We’d all refused beverages—which he seemed pained by. He loved to wait on us.
“I am deeply troubled by what Naomi has told me about Dean.”
I watched the steam curl up from her teacup.
“Still in shock,” Greg answered gently.
Looking up from those white vapors was proving difficult. Her black shades stood out on the fringes of my vision. She was … she was as she always was, still with that cold bite to her tone that’d been creeping in recently.
Don’t lose it, don’t lose it …
Being cool was becoming a rapid issue for me the longer I sat there. After everything that’d just gone down … I had no choice. I couldn’t go and blurt things out, lose my shit, do anything to turn things into a situation.
Greg and Nay could do the talking. It was best for them to lead with this.