by Misty Evans
When he’d forced his way into the building, the women with Keva had formed a circle around her and tried to bind her to them with their own skillful magic. As their chants arose in the air, the volcano inside him, carefully contained for centuries, had exploded.
Keva is mine and mine alone.
Anger fueled his dark magic. With a subtle inner manipulation, he possessed the five women’s minds, rendering them immobile and unable to speak. That stopped their interference and showed Keva the power he had acquired. Pleased, he watched for her look of awe and admiration. Instead her face had distorted with anger.
Once she had been strong enough to stop him, but her powers had dulled now, listless—as if she hadn’t used them in this lifetime. He had laughed, smug as he easily overtook her with the same simple mind control.
The memory of how puny her strength had felt compared to his made him smile all over again. But the next memory pushed aside his pleasure and filled him with a renewed sense of cold fury. Her determination was still as strong as ever and she had used it to break through for a single beat of his heart to curse him and his soul. He’d heard the words and the blind rage that had poured through him again rose like bile in his throat. How dare she…
His fingers tightened on the garment in his hand, feeling them wrapped around her slender neck instead. He’d squeezed until his fingers grew tight and cramped. After all he’d done to travel through time and rescue her, how could she still refuse his love?
When she’d finally gone still, the last of her breath dissipating in the air around him, Enann had been overcome with satisfaction. She’d never been his in life, but she was now his in death.
Still intent on taking her back, he’d used the others to form a circle around her, carving the symbols of life and death, Soul Catchers and Time Keepers, upon their skin. As he’d laid the sacred Moon Water knife on Keva’s abdomen, an idea had come to him. He would take her body back and show Chieftess Keva the result of her magic—her dead future self.
Then he’d force her to change course before the day that sealed his fate played out yet again. She would follow his orders this time, do her duty. There would be no binding ceremony with his half brother, no spell to ruin everything. Her tribe would be spared, and she would be grateful for his guidance and marry him, securing the future of the Moon Water Tribe and Red Fire Nation as leaders of the entire Salt Coast region.
Their life would have been so perfect. But even this plan had gone wrong. Before Enann could lie down on Keva’s body and say the spell to jump through time, pulsing lights of color had illuminated the building and strange warriors had come. Escaping outside into the woods, he’d watched as a constant stream of men and women came and went from the building.
Believing Keva was dead at his hands, he was shocked to see her carried from the building alive and a man who looked like Kai beside her shouting orders. The man’s hair and clothes spoke of this future time and the tattoos that should have covered his naked chest were missing, but it was him.
Somehow, some way, Kai had survived with Keva.
But how?
His gut cramped. Keva didn’t want to correct what she’d done. She still had what she’d always wanted.
At the thought, a fresh surge of raw anger pounded in his head again. She was still alive but he would not let her go unpunished. Placing her garment inside the deer-hide shirt covering his chest, he scanned the room where she had slept.
The slam of a heavy door in the front of the building brought his thoughts back to the present. Stilling his mind as he’d taught himself to do, he tuned all his senses to seek the spirit of the Thunderbird God the amulet held. Thunderbird, whose giant wings beat the clouds into giving rain, would guide him on his journey.
There. The magic was heaviest, thickest, on a wooden table Keva had set up as an altar. A statue of a woman the size of Enann’s forearm was in the center, her placid face and blue robes in contrast to the other items on the table. A raven feather, a rock, a small bowl filled with water, another with salt. In between these items sat short, fat columns of wax. He’d ignored the altar before, Keva’s scent overwhelming him with memories of their life together and distracting him with the most recent memories. Why hadn’t she understood him? Why hadn’t she loved him the way she’d loved the traitor Kai?
Falling on his knees in front of the altar, he spotted the smooth, black amulet he sought. A traveling trader from a tribe far south of their lands had given it to Chieftess Keva, telling her it held great power. The trader had been anxious to get rid of the amulet and Keva had told Enann afterward that at night she heard the Thunderbird God speak to her through it. She hadn’t understood the words, but sensed they told of the future. She had carried it with her everywhere, including it in her sun ceremony each morning, using it to bless the births she attended, and even seeking its solace when the child growing in her own body died.
But Enann had discovered the power the amulet held was more vast than the ocean. In a thousand years of living the same terrible day over and over, he had learned the amulet’s power far exceeded even the most talented shaman’s magic. Similar to the sacred Moon Water knife, the energy stored inside the amulet was like the ocean itself—unending and with depths no man could ever fully discover.
Gray Braid was whistling. The sound rose and fell in the distance. Rising, Enann pulled a small, handmade cloth doll from the woven belt at his waist and laid it in the center of Keva’s bed. When she came back to her home, the doll and his message would haunt her. Smiling to himself, he moved back from the bed and snatched up the amulet.
The amulet’s cold surface warmed instantly in his hand and Enann pushed the thoughts of Keva from his mind. Once he was safe again, he would figure out a way to sever Keva’s ties to Kai. After all, having been stuck watching Keva kill Kai and a mudslide wipe out the entire Moon Water people over and over a thousand times, he knew what could and could not be undone. Now that he had the magic amulet, his power was unstoppable. If he couldn’t stop Chieftess Keva, he would kill her and Kai.
Footsteps echoed outside the room, slowing as they came to the doorway. The whistling ceased. Even without seeing him, Enann knew Gray Braid sensed his presence. Closing his eyes, he chanted the ancient spell that would take him back to a time and place he understood.
As Gray Braid slipped into the doorway, they locked eyes for one heartbeat before Enann’s body scattered into a million atoms.
Chapter Five
Keva was stuck now. There was no way out of the hospital room unless she could convince Kai, in his reincarnated state as Rife St. Cloud, that she remembered nothing about the attack. Either that or she had to awaken his soul so he remembered who he really was…a Red Fire warrior who had been sent to kill her but fell in love with her instead.
He’d unknowingly sentenced his own mortal fate to her hands when he’d pushed her to kill him. He’d had no idea she’d charmed the knife to reincarnate him.
While she preferred to awaken his soul—even though it meant facing his anger over her deception—she was at loose ends to figure out how.
His simple presence made her heart leap with joy as he stood at the side of the hospital bed. She wanted to just soak him in, but the news she sensed he was about to give her about her family made her heart plummet.
Putting off the impending truth, she fiddled with the edge of the blanket. “How long have I been sedated?”
From the moment she fell into his arms, his strong, physical attraction to her had ratcheted up to an unbelievable intensity level. He watched her now with such acute interest her nipples puckered and her thighs hummed. “A little over twenty-four hours.”
A whole day. “And why was I sedated?”
“You had something going on with your heart. The doctor ran tests and tried to figure out what was wrong, but claims whatever the problem was, your heart’s healing on its own. Even took you off the monitor.” He smiled and Keva’s pulse jumped. “The nurses say it’s a miracle.
They cross themselves every time they speak your name. When they realize you’re awake, they’ll be hounding you to cure their colds and bless their babies.”
Truth was, she could cure their colds and bless their babies. But her, a miracle? If they only knew.
Breaking eye contact, she tilted her head toward his shirt hanging in the closet. “I appreciate the loan of your shirt.” That was an understatement. The way her senses exploded at the touch of his clothing against her skin had been heaven. Even now, she yearned for the feel of it like a child wanting her favorite blanket. “Unless I get someone to bring me some clothes, I may have to wear it home.”
Rife chuckled low and the hum between her legs kicked up a notch at the sexy sound. Raw, magnetic energy poured off of him, and she knew he was imagining her wearing his shirt under much different circumstances. Her nipples hardened.
“I don’t mind contributing to the cause,” he said, “but I’ll see what I can do about getting you some of your own clothes to wear out of here when the time comes.”
“That would be great,” she lied. Somehow, some way she was keeping that blue shirt.
Rife pulled a chair from the corner of the room up next to her bed. He sat, saying nothing, as still as Annika, Keva’s cat, when she watched a mouse.
Unnerved, Keva plunged into the impending truth. “My Moon Water sisters,” she said, working the blanket’s edge again. “What happened to them?”
The sensual energy coming off of him cooled. He opened his jacket and made busywork out of retrieving a file and pen from his briefcase. “Do you remember anything about what happened around midnight Saturday night?”
“No.” Keva allowed her frustration to show. “And I don’t understand why I can’t remember. It’s freaking me out.”
“I’m no doctor, but it’s probably post-traumatic stress disorder. Happens to some people after a violent trauma.”
“A violent trauma?” She swallowed hard. “Tessa and the others, they’re dead, aren’t they?”
Honest sadness crept over his face. “I’m sorry, Miss Moon Water.”
Keva thought she was prepared for the news, but as her heart broke into pieces, she sobbed into her hand. How could Tessa, Nova, Lindsey, Angel and Liseli, the last descendants of her tribe, all be dead? After all her experiences dealing with evil, how could she have failed to protect them?
Rife moved a box of tissues within her reach and handed her one. Keva sensed he wanted to take her hand in his and comfort her. Instead he asked, “Can you tell me who might have done this? Did you or any of the other women have an enemy? Like an ex-lover? Abusive husband? Stalker?”
Enann, her soul answered. Her wanna-be husband. She pushed the thought aside. It wasn’t possible. While she had begged the Great Mother to make him leave her alone, she had never wished for his death. Yet using her shamanic magic for her own gain, she had destroyed him as effectively as she had destroyed the rest of her tribe.
But Enann lived in the past, and whoever had killed her sisters, and left her for dead, couldn’t be caught by traditional law enforcement. Steadying her voice, Keva answered. “No. No one.”
Rife’s eyes narrowed before he scratched a note on a paper inside his file. Keva noticed with a jolt that her name was on the file’s identification marker. He had a file on her? She’d always made a point to stay under the radar, leaving no trace of her immortality in the modern world—constantly moving, living in out-of-the-way places, paying for everything with cash. She’d only just recently gone back to using her given Moon Water name when she and her family had moved to the small town of Wolf River and bought the abandoned church on the outskirts of town. Panic fluttered in her stomach. If Rife didn’t realize he was Kai soon, she was going to be in deep trouble.
“Where are their bodies?” she asked, hoping to distract him. She wiped at the tears leaking out of her eyes. “I need to perform the proper prayers over them and make funeral arrangements.”
“The medical examiner in Ashland will release them once he completes the autopsies. Things move like frozen water in this state, but I’ll be sure to notify you as soon as I get word. In the meantime, Police Chief Chee—he was the detective at the church. He’s gathering family information to notify their next of kin.”
“I’m their only—” her voice hitched, “—next of kin.”
Again, his protective energy wrapped itself around her. “I’m very sorry.”
Her aching heart swelled with a sweet, familiar love for him. All she could do was nod.
He shifted in the chair, examined the file again. “I want to get some background information on you and each of the others, but first I’d like to talk about the murder weapon.” Reaching into his briefcase, he pulled out a photo. “Do you recognize this?”
The blood in Keva’s veins froze as she stared at the knife she had plunged into Kai’s heart. There was no mistaking the ornate handle with its malachite stone that marked it as hers. “Where did you get that?”
Rife examined the photo with a casual air. “It was lying on your stomach at the scene of the crime.” She knew his casualness was faked when he lifted his eyes to hers. “Ever see it before?”
Without warning, Keva heard Enann’s voice, saw the flash of the blade as he held the knife in front of his face and showed it to her. Malevolence tightened the muscles in his face as he smiled. I’ve come for you, Chieftess. Come to take you back in time to do your duty.
“Crime lab lifted one fingerprint from it.” Rife’s voice snapped her out of the memory. His gaze bored into her. “Yours. Do you own this knife, Miss Moon Water?”
Her knife, her fingerprints, and her, the only survivor. How could she answer him? Sure, that’s the knife I cast a spell on when I sacrificed you a thousand years ago to save my people. The spell reincarnated you, and your half brother, who’s now a ghost, apparently used it to travel through time to find me.
Yep, that was the ticket. The truth in this case would not set her free.
As the seriousness of the situation descended on her, Keva forced her still somewhat shaky body to sit up. She had to get out of the hospital and back to the church. Her sisters’ spirits would be there and they would help her remember everything. Then she could figure out if Enann was the evil shaman after her and find a way to get herself out of this mess.
Shoving the blanket off, she swung her legs over the side of the bed, coming face to face with the man her soul was forever sealed to. He was so beautiful, so alive, her heart thrummed with joy even as her throat vibrated its ceaseless warning.
Steeling her nerves, she took the biggest gamble of her long, lonely life. “Get me out of here, Agent St. Cloud, and I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”
Chapter Six
Rife had always been a sucker for pretty eyes. No matter their color or shape, the ones that showed kindness, gentleness, got him every time. Keva’s eyes rocked him to the core. This weakness, however, didn’t explain why he suddenly wanted to take her out of the hospital and home to his grandfather’s house. What was he thinking? He could lose his job over this.
Correction, he would lose his job over this. To begin with, he only had permission from his boss back at Quantico to consult on an as-needed basis with the locals, which meant at that moment, as he stood by and watched her sign herself out wearing nothing but his shirt, he was guilty of tampering with another agent’s case, another agent’s victim. But since the agent from Eugene wouldn’t be there until the next afternoon, Chee had given him the go ahead to interrogate Keva.
Interrogate. Not assist her leaving the hospital against medical advice. The doctor had walked in ten minutes ago, checked her over and suggested keeping her for at least four or five more hours to run a few tests. Keva had adamantly refused, insisting Agent St. Cloud was going to take care of her. She’d laid a hand on Rife’s arm, gave it a squeeze and looked at him with those big eyes, appealing to his sudden sense of misplaced honor to her and what had he done? Nodded his head in agr
eement.
Never mind the fact that his testosterone spiked every time he looked at her and she might actually be the best suspect he had at the moment, he was acting like a rookie.
After the nurses at the front desk tsked at Keva about checking herself out, she gave each of them a hug, assured them she was fine and would call if anything seemed off. The weird thing was, she did seem fine. A little shaky, but otherwise no indication she’d been in a coma a few hours ago.
Unlike the nurses, Rife didn’t believe in miracles. Medicine, however, and the mechanics of the body weren’t his thing, so he diligently nodded at the nurses, just like he had at the doctor, who insisted he take care of Keva, and followed behind her toward the front entrance like he was her pet dog.
It was surprisingly easy to ignore the logic that said there was no way under the sun she could be walking out of the hospital. Especially when he was busy enjoying the view of her long legs peeking out from under his shirt as she walked in front of him.
One of the floor’s aides crossed herself as Keva passed by, though, and the action sobered him. Disgusted with himself, he slapped his testosterone back into its man cave.
Outside, the sun was shining. Light bounced off Keva’s jet black hair. Rife caught up to her, took her gently by the elbow and reveled in satisfaction when she leaned into him. Her skin was soft, and even after being in the hospital, she smelled like lavender and sugar cookies. His testosterone went renegade on him again and he nearly pulled her into his arms and kissed her, right there in the parking lot. Nearly backed her up to the nearest car and put his hands on those beautiful long legs, and…
Rife pulled himself up short. What the hell was he thinking?
The FBI agent inside him reminded him he was on this vacation for inappropriate behavior to begin with. Another incident and the Federal Bureau of Intimidation would kick him so far out the door, he’d be in Hell. Literally.