by Rachel Lee
“Stay back,” Ian whispered again.
The column of swirling smoke grew until it reached from floor to ceiling. Sudden, loud raps came from the walls and ceiling of the living room, a staccato burst that seemed somehow angry. Honor suddenly glanced upward, remembering the scratching she had heard from the attic. And now she heard it again from the floor directly above, as if…as if that thing were following her thoughts.
Shuddering with a fresh chill, she dragged her eyes down and forced herself to watch Ian. He might need her, she reminded her terrified mind and heart. He might need her. But, oh, how she wished she could run, or scream.
Ian still hadn’t moved a muscle. A faint murmuring seemed to fill the air, a sense of voices that were not quite audible. The column of oily smoke began to expand, as if it meant to fill the entire room, and it seemed impossible that it made no sound save the faint murmurings and now the occasional rap on the wall. It ought to howl and roar with the fury of the storm, Honor thought. The thing she had seen as a child hadn’t been like this. It hadn’t carried with it this sense of…evil. Truly consuming evil.
It was moving toward Ian. Oh, God! Stiffening, she moved away from the wall and clenched her hands. Then a loud bang sounded behind her, and she whirled, expecting to see someone. But there was nothing. Not a thing.
Quickly she turned back to Ian and found him…swallowed up. Oh, dear God, that smoke had surrounded him, nearly obscuring him, winding and twisting like a million snakes that wanted to devour him. And still he never moved a muscle. He might have been carved from stone.
Oh, God. She had to do something! But what? If she plunged her hand into that smoke and tried to yank him out, she might infuriate that thing. It might hurt him. Or her. From what she could see now, it wasn’t actually doing anything except…surrounding him.
Stay back.
There wasn’t a shadow of a doubt in her that Ian had just touched her mind. It felt like him, the warmth, the concern, the distance he couldn’t quite keep. The way he felt when they made love. Sobbing for air, she clung to the last shred of her control and waited. Outside, the wind picked up as it did every night, moaning forlornly around the corner of the house.
All of a sudden Ian gave a hoarse shout and threw himself backward, out of the coiling smoke. He stumbled once, then swung around toward Honor.
“Get out of here! Now!”
“But you—”
He grabbed the knob of the deadbolt and twisted it before flinging the door wide. Outside, the night was normal—windy, warm and damp. It seemed like another world as he hustled her through the door. Behind them, something slammed violently against something else.
“Let’s go,” he muttered, and when she stumbled on something, he simply swept her up and carried her. He didn’t walk, he trotted. His hurry worried her as much as anything he might have said.
“Ian, what happened?”
“Just wait a minute.” He trotted up the steps to his back door, fumbled with the combination lock.
“Put me down and make it easy on yourself.”
But he kept his hold on her. When he got the door open, he stepped swiftly inside and then locked it again before he set her down. “Stay right here. I’m going to check out the house.”
“Wait.” She grabbed his arm, half expecting him to throw off her touch. But he didn’t. Impatient though he was, he waited, looking down at her with enigmatic eyes. “Ian, what’s going on? No one could get in here past the locks.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Just wait a minute while I check it out.”
She stood in his kitchen, shivering with a chill that wouldn’t seem to abate, and waited impatiently while he prowled through the house. Lord, he was silent, even in those big, ugly combat boots he favored. She didn’t hear him, not once, not climbing the stairs or moving through the hall and bedroom above her head.
Finally he returned to the kitchen. “All clear,” he said as he went for the coffeemaker and started it brewing. Then, and only then, did he turn and pull her into a warm embrace. “You’re ready to burst with questions,” he remarked.
She tilted back her head and pretended to glare at him, even though she was really feeling extraordinary relief that they were out of that house, that he was safe. “Wouldn’t you be? It doesn’t take a mind reader to know that!”
He gave a short, soft laugh. “No,” he agreed. “I’m sorry I was so rough about getting you out of there, but when it realized that I’d figured out it was protecting something, it got pretty pi— You know.”
“Yeah. I know.” She was distracted suddenly by the stubble on his strong chin, chocolate-dark prickles that she had an instant, urgent desire to feel against her skin. She drew a sharp breath, embarrassed by the turn her thoughts had taken.
“It’s okay,” he said, his voice turning totally husky. “It’s okay. Adrenaline makes you…hungry. It does for most people.” Bending, he pressed his cheek to hers and let her feel that prickly stubble against her cheek.
Such an erotic, masculine texture, she thought. Then she sighed as she corralled her thoughts. “I was so scared,” she admitted. “But I’m okay now. Tell me what you learned.”
“It sounds weirder than hell,” he said, straightening. “That thing—that ghost—is evidently whatever is left of Mrs. Gilhooley.”
“Mrs. Gilhooley?” Honor repeated. “You mean the woman who used to live there? The one who was so mean to you?”
He nodded. Honor reached for a kitchen chair and pulled it out from the table. Sitting, she put her elbows on her knees and wondered if she had gone stark, raving mad. And then she knew with grim certainty that she had not. Who better to be a haunt than that nasty, evil old woman?
“I almost couldn’t figure it out,” Ian said. “It wasn’t like touching a human mind. Something is very…different. As if only parts of her personality are here.”
“The hateful parts,” Honor said, lifting her head quickly. The room immediately began swimming, and she waited a moment for the blood to reach her head again. “The vile, nasty, murdering parts of her, right?”
“Looks that way.”
“Well, what the hell is she doing in my house? Why doesn’t she just go away and burn in hell?” She was getting mad. Putting a name to the ghost had an incredible effect on her, banishing her fear and making her furious. “How dare any part of her get stuck here!”
Ian studied her for an endless moment, and then he broke into a huge, tension-breaking laugh, a laugh so unexpected that it startled her right out of her anger. It didn’t last long, but while it did, it made him look years younger, erasing all the cold distance he usually kept between himself and the rest of the world.
He should laugh more often, Honor thought. And it did her heart so much good to see it that she couldn’t even get mad at him.
“I’m sorry,” he said a few seconds later. “I wasn’t laughing at you. It was just the absurdity of the whole thing.” Leaning down, he kissed her; it was a hard and quick salute that promised more later. “It sounds crazier than a loon, doesn’t it? I felt stupid even saying it out loud.”
He poured two cups of coffee and joined Honor at the table with them. Crossing his legs loosely, he settled back in his chair and sipped coffee.
“It was her,” he said again. “Worse, it’s not what I would call rational. It’s more like distilled feeling with a blind purpose.”
“What purpose? What is she trying to do?”
He shrugged. “Protect something. I’m not sure what, but she doesn’t want something to be found. Which means, if we want to get rid of her, we’re going to have to find it.”
“How can you find something if you don’t know what it is?”
“I have a feeling we’ll know when we see it, Honor. Something tells me there’ll be no mistaking it.”
Sometime during the night Honor found herself standing at the window of Ian’s bedroom, looking out at the windy night. The rain had stopped, and the moon sailed on a sea of stars. The trees in
her yard tossed restlessly before the wind, and the moss swayed eerily in a shadowy dance.
Abomination.
She knew now where those strange, alien words came from, and she shuddered a little as she felt the touch of that thing. Mrs. Gilhooley. She shivered again.
Demon spawn.
Honor wondered if Ian had heard those epithets from that mean old woman while he was growing up. Probably. She sounded like a broken record, the same few words, over and over again. Now, dead and buried for three years, she was still up to her despicable tricks.
Personalizing the evil over there hadn’t made it any less terrifying. She could feel the threat even here, with Ian sleeping behind her. A smile almost dispelled her uneasiness as she thought about him. Evidently good sex was an antidote for insomnia. He’d been asleep for more than an hour now.
But almost as soon as it strayed, her mind returned to the threat over there. In her house. Damn! It made her mad and sad and frustrated, all at once. Why the hell hadn’t she sensed the thing when she’d first seen the house? Useless question, considering there couldn’t be any possible answer.
And now this. Something hidden in the house. And what was keeping her awake long past fatigue was the simple terror of knowing that it was Mrs. Gilhooley in her house, and that Mrs. Gilhooley had always hated Ian, had tried just the other night to get him killed.
What if she still wanted to kill him? What if the old woman wanted Ian’s death as much as she wanted to keep her secret? What if there was no secret at all, and Ian was her real target?
“Can’t sleep?” A husky voice filled her ears as strong arms closed around her waist from behind.
Honor sighed and leaned back against Ian, enjoying the warm texture of his skin and hair from her shoulders to her hips. She rested her hands over his. “You were sure sawing wood.”
He blew a soft laugh right into her ear. “La petite mort. Such sweet death.” His arms tightened just a little. “And you’re over here worrying loud enough to wake the dead.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. Come back to bed and let’s talk about it.”
The words were like a warm wind blowing into the cold places of her heart and soul. In the six brief months of her misbegotten marriage, nothing had been discussed in bed. Bed had become a place to avoid, an instrument of torture and disappointment. Now, hearing those beautiful words out of the mouth of a man she had come to care for, she realized just how badly she had needed to have someone feel that way about her.
There was, she thought, a world of difference between a man you could go to bed with to make love with, a friend you could lie on a bed with to talk to, and a man with whom you could do both. A man who wanted to hold you while you talked.
Because the cots were so narrow, they had made a pallet on the floor with the mattresses from both their beds. They snuggled up there now, him propped against the pillows, her curled on his chest.
“When this thing materialized, did you see it?” Honor asked.
“The black smoke, you mean? Yeah.”
“I was terrified when it wrapped around you. It reminded me of snakes.”
“I wasn’t exactly comfortable with it myself. It was like being touched by cold worms.”
“Yuck!” She shuddered and tightened her hold on his waist. “I was so scared. I wanted to snatch you right away from it, but I was afraid if I did anything, it might get madder and hurt one of us.”
He stroked her arm soothingly and pressed a kiss to the top of her hair.
“What made you jump back the way you did?” she asked. “What happened? You were in such a hurry to get out of there.”
“She was calling somebody,” he said flatly. “She was trying to get someone to come. I could feel it, and I figured it was the guy who shot me, so I wanted us both out of there fast.”
“Oh, no.” Her hold on him tightened even more, and unconsciously she dug her nails into him. The crease in his side was healing beautifully, but she hated to think how close it had come.
“I think,” he said quietly, “that it might be wise for you to get out of here while I try to deal with this. I know it’ll play hell with your sense of honor, but if something were to happen to you…”
He didn’t finish, and this time she didn’t really need him to. Slowly she lifted her head and looked right into his strange green eyes. Dark though the room was, they seemed to glow. “Don’t you know I feel the same way? Can’t you tell?”
He muttered something almost prayerful and touched her cheek with his fingers. “But you don’t trust me, babe. Not yet. I can feel that, too.”
Unable to deny it, she lowered her head again to rest on his chest. It was true, she thought. Partly because she had learned painfully that things were not always what they seemed, and partly because she didn’t know him that well yet. And partly because of that thing in her house. It had influenced someone to shoot Ian. It had influenced her to try to kill him. How could she be sure it wasn’t influencing him to do some horrible thing, possibly to her?
Because she couldn’t discuss what lay between them, she turned to the problem at hand. “What are we going to do?”
He stroked her hair gently, with a tenderness that seemed odd in such a hard, harsh man.
“We’re going to go over there and look for whatever it is. Short of burning down the house, there doesn’t seem to be an alternative.”
She huddled closer to him, wondering what the ghost would try to do when it realized they were searching for the very thing it was trying to conceal. She had an unhappy feeling that the thing hadn’t yet fully displayed its powers.
“We’ll go in daylight,” Ian said quietly. “It seems to gather strength in the darkness. We’ll go when the sun is bright and high, and we’ll search the damn place from bottom to top.”
She shivered again as a cold wind touched her. “Maybe I should just give up the house. I mean, it’s only money, right? I can just tell the bank I’m leaving and it’s theirs. So what if my credit rating is ruined. It’s only a credit rating—”
He squeezed her so tight that she gasped and covered her mouth in a devouring, demanding kiss. “No,” he said when he lifted his head.
“No?” That damned word again. Frustrated and scared past bearing, she hammered her fist once against his chest. In an instant she was spread-eagled beneath him, pinned so that she couldn’t move, exposed so that she couldn’t defend herself.
“Nobody,” he said softly, “nobody hits me.”
Sudden fear turned her veins to ice. Looking up into those strange, glowing eyes, she looked into the eyes of a hunter. She’d done it, she realized. She’d aroused the sleeping tiger.
CHAPTER TEN
Honor had never felt so defenseless or so exposed in her life. She had been aware before of his vast strength, of his skill in using it. All along she had known he could kill her with no more effort than it would take to swat a fly. But never before had she been acutely aware that he might well do it.
Staring up into his eerie green eyes, completely helpless beneath him, she wondered if she had trusted him too much. Wondered if, once again, she had completely misjudged a man.
But she knew, too, that she should never have hit him. Gasping, trying not to struggle against his hold for fear of angering him even more, she waited, wondering what he would do. Terrified, a mouse trapped by a lion, she forced herself to go limp so as not to arouse his hunting instincts further.
For long seconds neither of them moved a muscle. Then, suddenly, with a savage oath, he levered himself off her and the bed. She heard him this time, heard him pad barefoot and naked down the stairs, heard him slam a cupboard shut. Heard him open the back door.
Oh, God, surely he wasn’t going over there?
Scared in a new way, she grabbed up the first wearable piece of clothing her hand found and pulled it on. It was his olive T-shirt, big enough to make anything else unnecessary. Hurrying, she padded down the hall and stairs after him.
He had turned none of the lights on, which was why she saw him through the screen door. The moonlight brightened the night enough that she saw him standing on the porch, hands on hips, legs splayed, head thrown back.
She thought she had been silent, but he stiffened when she reached the screen door. One way or another, he knew she was there. Uncertain whether she should do anything, she simply waited.
And in the waiting she realized that she trusted him more than she had trusted anyone since her marriage. Whatever resistance she had felt toward trusting Ian had sprung from self-doubt, not from anything he had done.
And now, even in rage, he had not hurt her, not even when she had hit him.
He turned. “I’m sorry I scared you,” he said levelly.
“I’m sorry I hit you,” she answered, her voice quavering just a little. “Truly sorry. I’ve never done that before, and I despise women who think they can hit a man, knowing he won’t hit back.”
“We agree on that.” He turned away again, looking out into the night. “I shouldn’t have scared you, though. I know my size is intimidating, and to hold you down like that…” He shook his head.
Honor pushed the screen door open and stepped out. The night was alive with cicadas and tree frogs, and she tried not to think about that huge bug she’d seen mashed on the road. She crossed the porch to stand beside him.
“I imagine,” she said after a moment, “that you’ve suffered a lot for your size. And your unusual eyes.”
He stirred a little. “I don’t pay attention.”
“Of course you do. You’re not deaf, dumb and blind.”
The wind gusted, rustling the trees in her yard and whispering sorrowfully through the darkness. It sounded as if the night were sighing. Tentatively, aware she might well be rejected, she touched Ian’s forearm with her fingertips.
He turned toward her instantly and gathered her close. “I’m sorry,” he said gruffly. “Damn it, I’m sorry. I never wanted to scare you….”