The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance

by Trisha Telep

  “Are you sure you’ll be all right?” Noelani asked. “I don’t see anyone around. We can stay for a while, if you’d like.”

  “Chances are my nephew’s off fishing. He’ll be back before long. I’ll be fine. Don’t worry. And, Noelani?” As Noelani started to turn away, Auntie Polly took her arm in that surprisingly firm grasp. “Don’t be angry with your grandmother. She meant well. She always meant well.”

  “You knew my grandmother?” Noelani asked, but Auntie Polly didn’t answer. She just smiled, released Noelani’s arm, then walked up the crushed-shell path towards her nephew’s house without a backwards glance.

  “How do you suppose Auntie Polly knew my grandmother?” Noelani asked Dillon as they headed for the plantation. More puzzling still, how had she known about the anger Noelani had been suppressing when Noelani herself hadn’t even been aware of the feelings on a conscious level?

  Dillon, who appeared to be wrestling with his own internal demons, didn’t respond.

  “Maybe she didn’t actually know Grandmother,” Noelani mused. “Maybe she just read about Grandmother’s death in the paper and, when I mentioned my name, Auntie Polly made the connection.” Though that didn’t explain the old woman’s parting comments.

  They travelled another half-mile in silence. Then, just as they passed between the stone gateposts that marked the entrance to the plantation, Dillon spoke. “Did you notice what Auntie Polly had in that purple bag?”

  “No,” Noelani said, a little puzzled since she didn’t see the relevance.

  He pulled to a stop, shifted into park, then killed the engine. “Tears,” he said. “The bag was full of them. I got a good look when I handed it to her after she climbed into the back seat.”

  “Pele’s tears?”

  He nodded.

  “So if she’s a collector, too, maybe she did know Grandmother.” Noelani faltered to a stop. “Why are you looking at me that way?”

  “Because you’re ignoring cause and effect. An obsidian teardrop shatters our windshield. Moments later, when we stop to assess the damage, who shows up but a woman with a whole bag full of obsidian teardrops? Cause and effect.”

  “Are you suggesting Auntie Polly shattered our windshield? That she targeted us deliberately?”

  “Makes sense.”

  “But why? Just so we’d stop and give her a ride?”

  He shrugged, then released his shoulder harness and climbed out of the Jeep. “I suppose we ought to finish searching the attic,” he said, not sounding overly enthusiastic.

  “Go on up if you want,” she said. “I’d like a few minutes to think this through. If you need me, I’ll be in the gazebo.”

  “There’s a gazebo? Where?”

  “Hidden among the trees on the other side of the koi pond off the rear lanai.”

  “Would you like some company?” he asked, taking her hand.

  She shot him a look.

  “Not that kind of company,” he said. “Unless, of course—” a wicked smile curved his mouth”—you’d like that kind of company.”

  “When you look at me like that, all I see is the boy I fell in love with all those years ago.”

  He smiled again, and her heart beat a little faster. “Do you remember when I told you about my dog getting run over?” he asked.

  She nodded. “I wanted to make you feel better, so I brought you a pineapple shave ice.”

  “My favourite,” he said.

  “Only by the time I found you—”

  “Uncle Lopaka had me cleaning out the loft.”

  “—the shave ice had melted into lukewarm pineapple slush.”

  “It’s the thought that counts.” His kiss started out sweet but quickly morphed into wild and demanding.

  When he finally released her, she gazed up at him, her body buzzing, her mind in a whirl. “We’re not teenagers any more.” But her protest was half-hearted, and Dillon knew it.

  “The chemistry’s the same,” he said with another of those wicked smiles. Then he tossed her over his shoulder and headed for the gazebo.

  “Hey! Put me down!”

  “All in good time,” he said and smacked her bottom. “Quit squirming. I don’t want to drop you on that pretty head.”

  No, getting dropped on her head didn’t sound like much fun, whereas . . . She tugged his shirt free of his jeans and splayed her hands out over the warm skin of his back.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Just checking things out,” she said.

  “Then turnabout’s—” he slid a hand between her thighs “—fair play.”

  Benches lined seven of the eight walls of the octagonal gazebo. Dillon deposited Noelani on the red-and-white flowered cushions of the bench opposite the entrance.

  “Oh, right,” she said in mock annoyance. “Get a girl all worked up, then just dump her.”

  He kicked off his shoes and stripped off his shirt and jeans.

  Noelani gazed at him, her eyes huge and luminous. “We’re really going to do this, aren’t we?”

  “We really are,” he said, then sat down beside her and started to remove her clothes, a job that turned out to be more difficult than anticipated when her lacy pink bra got snagged on her necklace.

  “Don’t pull,” she said. “You’ll break it.”

  “The bra?” he asked, then realized what she was talking about when the pendant suddenly came free. A tiny horse’s head carved from koa wood, dark against the skin of her breast, hung from a chain around her neck. “You kept that trinket? All these years?”

  “You made it,” she said. “It was all I had left of you.”

  “But you thought I’d forgotten you. You must have hated me.”

  She shook her head solemnly. “Never. Did you hate me?”

  “I tried,” he said honestly, “but the minute I laid eyes on you in the Shamrock, I knew I hadn’t succeeded.”

  “Lucky for me.”

  “Lucky for us.” He kissed her, tenderly at first, and then with increasing passion. They made love in a delicious tangle of limbs, playful and intense by turns, and when they were both sated, basking in the afterglow, he repeated, “Lucky for us.”

  Noelani studied Dillon’s face in the flickering shade of swaying palms and royal poinciana trees, her expression solemn. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.” He brushed a thumb across her full lower lip. “So why so serious?”

  “I don’t understand why she did it. Grandmother, I mean. She banished me to boarding school and confiscated your letters. She must have known the hell I was going through. I thought she loved me.” She hesitated. “Do you think that’s why she killed herself ... to atone?”

  “No.” His heart clenched at the expression on her face. “I know what you’re thinking, but it wasn’t your fault.”

  “Then why? Why suicide?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Maybe we never will, but—” he shoved himself to his feet “—we still have three-quarters of the attic to search. We may find a clue yet.”

  “Maybe.” Noelani started to sit up. “Ouch!” She snatched back the hand she’d been using to lever herself up. A trickle of blood ran down her palm.

  “What happened? Something bite you?”

  “No. My hand slipped between the cushions. I must have dragged it across an exposed nail head.”

  “Move over and I’ll have a look.”

  She inched sideways, nursing her injured hand, and he pushed the cushion aside to examine the bench. “Damn,” he said. Another of Pele’s tears, thin and razor sharp, had been wedged into the wood.

  Noelani paled, and he thought for a second she was going to faint. “It ... It m-must mean something,” she stammered.

  Anger flashed through him, fierce and hot. “Yeah, it means somebody’s playing nasty tricks.”

  Noelani studied the obsidian teardrop, a frown creasing her forehead. “Or maybe it’s a clue. Maybe we’re supposed to look inside.”

  “What
are you talking about?”

  “Inside the bench. The tops are hinged,” she explained, “so the cushions can be stored there during bad weather. But maybe there’s something else inside. Maybe that’s what the tear’s trying to tell us.”

  She stood, tossed the cushions aside, and then lifted the top of the bench to reveal a storage compartment. Empty, Dillon thought, until he noticed the envelope tucked into one corner. He reached for it, but Noelani was closer and beat him to it. She turned the cream-coloured envelope over and over in her hands, oblivious to the blood she was smearing on it.

  “Grandmother’s stationery,” she said. “And Grandmother’s handwriting.”

  “Noelani” was scrawled across the front. Nothing else.

  I spent my whole life trying to protect those I loved, and yet, one by one, I lost them all - except for you, my darling granddaughter, and even you have not escaped unscathed. Years ago when I saw you kissing that Makua boy, I panicked and sent you away. I was afraid he’d ruin you, break your heart. Instead, I was the one who managed that. You thought he’ d forsaken you. He hadn’t. I just made it seem that he had. Please don’t hate me for my deception. At the time, I thought I was doing the right thing.

  I tried to save my brother, too, with even more dreadful results. My efforts to control his behaviour drove him to greater folly. In the end, his recklessness cost him his life.

  But my biggest mistake was leaving Honolulu — and John — in December of ‘41. Because I gave in to my well-intentioned — if futile — do-gooder tendencies, I missed out on the last days of my beloved husband’s life.

  Pele has offered me a second chance, an opportunity to relive those last few days with John. I’m not sure how she’ll manage, but she’s promised to grant you a second chance, too. Don’t waste it.

  Noelani set the letter aside.

  “Well?” Dillon said.

  “Do you believe the old gods and goddesses exist, Dillon?”

  “If you’d asked me a week ago,” he said, “I’d have laughed at the idea, but after our run-in with Auntie Polly ...”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It was a classic encounter. Pele appears out of nowhere and asks for a lift.”

  “Pele? The Goddess Pele? You’re saying that old lady in the football jersey was . . .?” Surely he didn’t believe what he was suggesting.

  “She told us her name was Polly Ahiaihonua, right? I’m pretty sure ‘ahiaihonua’ is Hawaiian for volcano. And isn’t the name Polly suspiciously similar to Pele?”

  Noelani considered his theory. It made sense ... in a crazy sort of way. “According to Grandmother’s letter, she struck a deal with Pele, returning the tears and sacrificing her own life so she could relive the last days of my grandfather’s.”

  “The photograph was real then?”

  She nodded, smiling as she remembered how happy her grandparents looked in the enlarged snapshot.

  “And your great-uncle’s altered headstone?”

  “An unexpected side effect, I suspect. Because Grandmother didn’t return to the Big Island to bail him out of trouble, he had to face the consequences of his actions. As a result, I’m guessing he straightened up his act and eventually became a priest.”

  “So,” Dillon said, his voice carefully neutral, “that’s it. Case closed. You won’t be needing my services any longer.”

  “Think again.” Noelani twined her arms around his neck and kissed him. Thoroughly.

  “So . . .” He shot her a bemused look. “Am I to infer you do need my services?”

  “Desperately,” she told him.

  Pack

  Jeaniene Frost

  One

  I knew I was being hunted before I heard the growl. First there had been flashes of grey and black in the trees around me, too fast for me to make out. Then crackling of dried leaves and twigs as those forms came nearer. And that primal, icy feeling on the back of my neck that told me I’d just moved from top of the food chain to prey.

  There was no one around to help me either. This was Yellowstone National Park, one of the last great American wildernesses. I hadn’t seen another soul since my friends Brandy and Tom abandoned the hike three days ago, and I’d been lost for two days now. A wave of fear rolled over me, making my stomach clench in a nauseating way. Whatever had growled, it wasn’t alone.

  New growls emerged from behind the trees - low, guttural and more menacing than a mugger in a dark alley. I flicked my gaze around, trying to hone in on the source, while I drew my backpack off my shoulders. I had a gun in there which I’d brought along in what I’d thought was over-the-top paranoia. Now I wished I’d brought an Uzi and some grenades, too.

  I had the backpack on the ground and was pulling the gun out when the animal struck. It came at me with incredible speed, ploughing right into me and knocking me over. Instinctively, I scrambled back, holding my hands out in defence, convinced I’d feel teeth tearing into me at any moment. The wolf— God, it was a huge wolf! — didn’t lunge for my throat though. It stood a few feet away, mouth open in what seemed to me to be a sick caricature of a grin, with my gun on the ground between its paws.

  I’d dropped the gun. How could I have been so stupid as to drop the gun?

  That thought raced through my mind, followed by a slew of “if onlys”. If only I hadn’t gone on this camping trip. If only Brandy hadn’t twisted her ankle, forcing her and Tom to leave early. If only I hadn’t been so determined to continue the hike alone. If only the map hadn’t gotten ruined. If only I’d had a satellite phone, instead of my useless, out-of-area cellular.

  And if only I hadn’t dropped the goddamn gun when an enormous wolf charged me. That would probably be the last regret I ever had.

  Twigs snapped behind me. My head jerked back while I still tried to keep an eye on the wolf in front of me. Five more wolves cleared the trees, running around me with an easy, deadly grace. I started to scoot back more, but there was nowhere to go. My heart was pounding while my breath came in strange, jagged gasps. You’re lost out in the middle of nowhere, and these wolves are going to eat you. Oh God, no, please. I don’t want to die . . .

  Only four days ago, I’d been laughing with my friends about how great it was to be outdoors, instead of trapped inside our stuffy offices. This was the vacation I’d been waiting years to take. How could this be happening?

  One of the circling wolves broke from the ranks and charged me. I flung up my hands in useless defence when the huge grey wolf let out a growl that sounded like a word.

  “Mine.”

  I gasped. That wolf did not just speak! But its yellow eyes gleamed with a savage intelligence and another rumbling, coherent growl came out of its throat.

  “You. Dieee.”

  I abandoned all logic to scramble to my feet, running as fast as I could even while knowing it was futile. Scalding pain in my ankle had me stumbling, but I didn’t stop. I lurched on, heart hammering and tears blurring my vision. Around me, the wolves gleefully yipped as they kept pace.

  More pain seared my leg. I fell, panic urging me to get up even though both my legs felt like they were on fire. I tried to run again, but my left ankle buckled. The wolves’ cries became more excited. They darted in, nipping me and drawing blood before bounding back and ducking out of the way of my wild punches. I couldn’t run any more, but I staggered forwards, looking for anything that would help me. Maybe I could climb a tree. Maybe I could find a heavy branch to use as a weapon.

  It’s too late for that, Marlee, said an insidious voice in my head. Just give up. It’ll be over soon.

  The enormous grey wolf suddenly jumped in front of me. Its mouth was open, fangs gleaming in the late afternoon light. It let out a howl that stopped the other wolves in their tracks. Then they joined in, filling the air with their victorious cries.

  The grey wolf became silent, coming closer while its companions continued their howls. I braced myself, images of my family and friends flashing in my mind. They’ll never know
what happened to you. You’ll just be another vanished hiker in the woods . . .

  Despite my overwhelming fear, anger also reared up in me. I looked at the grey wolf, only a foot away now. You might kill me, but I’m going to hurt you before you do.

  When it lunged, I was ready. Its fangs sank into my right arm, which I’d thrown up to protect my throat. But even as I almost fainted at the agony of its teeth tearing my flesh, I didn’t hesitate. My left thumb jammed into its eye, as deep as it could go.

  Something like a scream came out of the wolf. Or maybe I was screaming. Either way, it took a second for the next, new sound to register, but when it did, I felt a surge of hope. It was the loud, unmistakable boom of a gunshot.

  The grey wolf let go of me. I sagged back, clutching my torn arm to my chest. The wolfs right eye was bleeding and the animal was panting, but it didn’t run. Neither did the other wolves. They crouched, staring over my shoulder, snarls coming from their throats.

  “Leave,” the grey wolf said, garbled but intelligible.

  I’m hallucinating again, I thought. Maybe I’ve passed out. Maybe I’m being ripped to pieces right now.

  Something brushed by me. I recoiled when I saw it was several more wolves. With my good arm, I began flailing at them in a pathetic attempt to keep them away, but they ignored me. Their attention seemed fixed on the other, snarling wolves.

  When the naked man squatted down next to me, I knew I was hallucinating. I might have even let out a laugh. Maybe all of this was just a horrible dream, and I’d wake up safe in my tent.

  “Are you all right?” the man asked, looking me over.

  Now I was sure I laughed, but it had an edge of hysteria to it. “Never better.”

  I looked at his face - and gasped. His eyes were amber and slanted, just like the wolves’ eyes, and the same wildness lurked in them.

  God, please let this be a dream!

  The man stood. He had a gun pointed at the grey wolf.

  “You’ve gone too far, Gabriel,” he said. “Hunting humans is forbidden. The Pack will judge you for this.”

  The wolf snarled. “They hunt us,” it said.

  “They don’t know better,” the man replied. “We do. Either you come with us, or I shoot you with her gun.”