by Susan Illene
She drove home, thinking about the steaks she’d set out for dinner and whether to take one over to Bartol. It had been a few days since she’d last visited, so at least she’d given him some space, and she knew he enjoyed anything with beef.
Cori pulled off the highway and started the final trek toward her cabin, passing the nephilim’s place along the way. A soft light shined out from his living room window, but she didn’t see him. The sun had set on the way home, and her headlights barely penetrated the full darkness. She bumped across ruts in the road and swore that once she had more money she’d get the drive paved. Bartol didn’t have to worry about it since he didn’t have a car, and he could flash anywhere he wanted to go. That left it entirely up to her. There used to be a few more homes along the route, but the others had burned down in a forest fire a few years before Cori moved into the area. It was a small miracle the cabins she and Bartol lived in now had been spared.
After parking the truck, she grabbed her purse and got out. The night was quiet and still—more so than usual. She gripped the vehicle door as the hairs on the back of her neck prickled. A flash of movement in the woods caught her eye. She squinted. Clouds covered the moon, making it even darker than usual, and the porch light she always left on didn’t quite penetrate that far.
There—she saw it again.
The distinct shape of a man moving from one tree to another, quiet as a whisper despite the thick underbrush. Her heart rate picked up, and her breathing quickened. There was no reason for anyone to be lurking in the woods near her home.
Keeping her gaze on the trees, she lowered her hand into her purse where she’d put a loaded .44 Magnum revolver before leaving for work this morning. Cori didn’t carry a gun often, though she owned several and practiced with each regularly, but the threatening note from a few days ago had triggered her paranoia. Right after she’d read the letter, she’d gone straight to the cedar chest in her bedroom and pulled out her father’s old revolver from beneath a pile of blankets, trusting the weapon to protect her if she needed it.
Usually, she went with her H&K .45, but if she was going to be haunted by her past, she wanted her dad’s weapon. He was the one who gave her the courage to leave her ex in the first place, and he’d been there to pick her up when everything fell apart after that. It was a piece of him that gave her strength to fight back against whoever was coming for her now.
“Who’s there?” she asked, her voice coming out uncertain in the still night air. Get a grip, Cori. Showing weakness to a stalker will only give them more confidence.
No answer.
She kept the weapon close to her side, cocked but out of sight behind the truck door, not wanting to reveal the revolver until she was certain the person out there was a threat. So far, they’d done nothing more than move between trees. Could Emily and her friends be playing a prank on her? It wouldn’t have surprised Cori. Melena’s adopted teenage daughter had pulled some wild stunts in the past, one of which got a guy stuck in a bear trap out in the middle of nowhere and nearly got Mel turned into a werewolf when she tried to rescue him.
“Stop being a coward and come out,” she said, tone more forceful this time.
Cori waited, hoping her taunts would be enough to put an end to this stalemate. Seconds ticked by before the dark figure stepped around a tree. He moved slowly, once again hardly disturbing the brush. She almost couldn’t breathe as he crept closer. Then the shadows peeled away from the man as he reached the edge of the woods, and he stepped into the circle of light.
Her heart thundered in her ears, and she lost the ability to breathe. It wasn’t him. It couldn’t be him, and yet he looked exactly the same as the last time she’d seen him nearly four years ago. He was the man who had haunted a thousand nightmares and left her waking up shaking and sweating in the middle of the night. Her gaze started at the top of his head with his shaven brown hair, down to his pitch-black eyes, then on to his goatee and mustache, and she noted his skin had become paler, almost like a ghost. And just the same as before, he had a stocky physique with large muscles built for fighting, especially those weaker than him. She knew about that all too well.
“Hello, baby,” he said, his voice coming out low and rumbling.
A cold shiver ran down her spine. “Griff?”
Her ex-husband chuckled, the resonance sounding similar to something she’d expect from of a horror movie. Everything about him sent alarm bells ringing. He didn’t seem real, but no amount of blinking made the specter of him go away. Cori wanted to pinch herself to see if this was some kind of bad dream. And could she possibly escape it?
He took a step closer, flowing over her lawn so smoothly she couldn’t be certain he actually touched it. “I’ve come back for you, baby, and you’re going to pay for what you did.”
She lifted the stainless steel revolver in her hand. It shook a little, but she didn’t let that deter her. “Stay away from me.”
He barely spared her weapon a glance.
“Come here, Cori,” he beckoned, voice deep and mesmerizing. “I want to look at you.” The tone and expression on his face reminded her of those early years when they were together. Griff had been attentive back then and would do anything to make her happy. Not like later.
Her feet threatened to move of their own volition, but she kept them firmly planted. “No.”
“Yes,” he said, his gaze turning demanding.
“Leave me alone.”
He let out a growl and rushed forward in a blur across her lawn. She fired, squeezing the trigger over and over again. The shots pierced Cori’s ears, and the recoil punished her palms and wrists, but she didn’t stop until she’d unloaded all six rounds.
As she lowered the revolver, she squinted into the darkness, unable to find a body or any sign of her ex-husband. He’d vanished. She scanned left and right, studied the woods, and finally spun about in case he’d somehow gotten behind her. Nothing. She couldn’t have imagined him, though. Griff had been standing directly in front of her when she’d started firing, but sometime between the first round and the last, he’d fled.
Cori lowered her weapon with one hand and used the other to dig into her purse, searching for the box of ammunition she’d put in there. Her ex was hiding out there somewhere, and she had to be ready for him when he came out again. She grasped hold of the package with trembling fingers and started to pull it out, but a flash of light ten feet away made her freeze.
Bartol appeared, his gaze scanning the area with alarm. “What is going on?”
Cori shook herself and continued the process of reloading her weapon. A nephilim might be a lot more deadly than a revolver, but she still wanted her own weapon on hand in case her ex appeared again. Assuming, of course, that Griff wasn’t just a ghost who’d come back to haunt her. She had no idea how to fight one of those since no one had ever mentioned them being real before.
“A man tried to attack me,” she said, forcing herself to sound calmer than she felt. Cori wasn’t prepared to tell Bartol she knew the guy and that he was someone from her past. “I shot at him, but he disappeared.”
His brows drew together. “He disappeared?”
“Yes.”
He frowned at the empty field and woods. “I don’t see anyone. Did you hit him?”
“I don’t know.” She checked her revolver and dropped it back into her purse. “He moved too fast for me to be able to tell—like he was a ghost or something.”
“Where exactly?”
She pointed at the spot in the woods where she’d fired all her rounds. “There.”
They walked together to the place where her ex-husband had stood. She didn’t spot any drops of blood on the ground to prove Griff had been hit, and none of the underbrush appeared disturbed. The only evidence of the confrontation at all was several of the trees had bits of bark torn off of them from where her bullets had struck. Could she have just been seeing things? Her ex-husband’s body had seemed almost ethereal, but darkness could play trick
s on the eyes. He had to have been real because she couldn’t be going crazy. Not when things were actually looking up for her.
“He was here?” Bartol pointed to the shrubbery where her ex-husband’s specter had exited the woods. “In this spot?”
Cori nodded. “Yes. He even spoke to me.”
“What did he say?”
She took a deep breath. “That he was coming for me.”
“Did you recognize him?” Bartol asked.
That was not a subject she wanted to get into since then she’d have to admit her would-be attacker was supposed to be dead because she’d killed him. No one knew what she’d done except her father who passed away a couple of years ago, and she wasn’t about to admit it to anyone else now.
“Can you smell him?” she asked, avoiding Bartol’s gaze. “With your heightened senses or whatever?”
He grunted. “A nephilim may have a better sense of smell than a human, but we are not werewolves. We can’t track anyone outdoors unless they have a particularly strong odor, which this man does not.” He flashed away from her, reappearing deeper in the woods. For the next ten minutes, Bartol moved from one spot to another until he’d searched the whole area around her house. “I cannot find any trace of him. If he was here, he is long gone now.”
Cori was both relieved and frustrated. She probably didn’t have to worry about the ghost of her ex-husband returning tonight—it had to take a lot of mojo for one to appear at all since they weren’t exactly common—but now she looked like she’d lost her mind. How could he have gotten away like that? How did none of her shots hit him?
“Okay, thanks.” She shifted from foot to foot. “I appreciate your checking.”
Bartol lifted a brow. “What is it you’re not telling me?”
She pasted a blank expression on her face, hiding the terror she felt. “It’s nothing. I’m sorry I disturbed you from…whatever it is you do in the evenings.”
He gave her a skeptical look. “You shot at this man, and you were shaking when I found you. It is not nothing.”
No, it wasn’t. Cori felt as if the proverbial walls were closing in on her. She’d thought she’d put the past behind her, and now it was back and more frightening than ever. It wasn’t Bartol’s problem, though. It was hers, and she’d deal with it on her own.
“Look, I’ve had a long day, and I’m tired,” she said, adjusting the purse strap over her shoulder. “Maybe I imagined the man, or maybe it was a bear or something. It’s gone now, so let’s just drop it.”
Cori began to turn away, but Bartol grabbed her arm. “You’re lying to me.”
She stared at the hand wrapped around her bicep. He’d never touched her—not in anger or for any other reason. She lifted her gaze back to his. “I have a past, and like you, I don’t want to talk about things that happened a long time ago. Can we please drop it?”
He studied her for a long moment. If anyone could understand how much she needed her privacy, it would be him. Still, she couldn’t miss the warring emotions in his eyes. He was reluctant to leave her alone, and yet he didn’t want to push things, either.
“Fine.” He pulled his hand away. “I’ll let it go—for now.”
Without another word, he flashed away. Cori locked up her truck and hurried into her cabin, sliding a bar across the front door for extra protection. Something told her she wouldn’t be sleeping very well tonight.
Chapter 4
Cori
She couldn’t stop thinking about seeing her ex-husband for the first time in four years. He dogged her thoughts when she worked on customers, cleaned her work area, and even while she sat on the phone ordering supplies. There was no getting him out of her head. He lurked there like a creepy villain stalker who might leap into full form in front of her at any moment. As much as she wanted to believe he was dead and gone, she had to face the facts. He was back…somehow.
But if he hadn’t died that night, why come back after all these years? Where had he been since then? Cori had a theory, but she needed to run it by someone with more experience in the supernatural world than her, which was why she took off work shortly after Asher arrived.
She pulled up to Melena Sander’s pale yellow house. Her friend, who was about the same age as Cori, lived about as far out in the bush as she did except in a more easterly direction from Fairbanks. Her husband, Lucas, had built their home during the summer of the previous year. While he probably had more money than God, he’d known Melena would never accept living in a huge mansion, so he’d had a house constructed to suit his wife’s simpler tastes. It was two stories high with four bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, a large kitchen, living room, den, and an office. On the right side, there was an attached two-car garage with a paved driveway leading from it to the highway. Much like Cori’s place, their house sat farther back in the woods. They also had a huge lawn in the front where they’d had their wedding party a few months ago. Though there were nearly one hundred guests who’d attended, Lucas and Melena had plenty of space for them and the entertainment to fit.
Cori did note one new addition to the place. A large recreational vehicle was parked next to the house that hadn’t been there a few weeks ago when she’d last visited. She’d heard the RV might be coming, but it wasn’t for traveling. Rather, it was a private place to stay for someone Lucas and Melena had rescued from Hell last summer. Cori meant that in the most literal sense, too. They really had gone to the place of fire and brimstone to get a person they considered a friend.
Ariel, a former archangel, had been cast into the pit after her brethren found out she’d been helping supernaturals in forbidden ways for years to include assisting them with their rescue operation to free the nerou. Because Melena wasn’t one to leave anyone behind, she had faced down the archangel council to find a way to get Ariel out. With some negotiating, she’d convinced them to let her do it.
So now they had a mentally and physically damaged former archangel staying with them who would need time to figure out what to do with herself now that she was permanently cut off from Heaven. The RV got Ariel out of the guest bedroom and into a place where she could be somewhat self-sufficient, but she still didn’t have herself together enough to plan her future. Maybe she could go into weather forecasting. Surely a former angel who still had some prescience could do a better job of it than the guys on television. Of course, she’d have to leave Melena’s property first, and Cori rarely saw Ariel even when she lived in the main house. Nearly four months in Hell had done a number on the fallen angel, and she’d come out of the experience worse than Bartol.
Not that anyone could blame her. She’d been tortured in ways that made Purgatory seem like a nice vacation destination. It had taken a lot of time and effort to heal all the physical damage done to her, but no one could do much about the nightmares or mental trauma. Melena would try, though, because that’s what the sensor did for those she cared about.
Cori got out of her truck, resigned that it was her turn to ask Mel for help. She tensed when a black jaguar came loping toward her. The huge cat appeared ferocious with its intense yellow eyes and a gaping mouth full of sharp teeth. It leaped up, slamming its paws onto Cori’s chest. She fell back against the truck while the crazed feline licked her cheeks and made happy rumbling sounds in its throat.
“It’s good to see you too, Sable,” she said, laughing. What little makeup she’d worn that day was wiped clean by the time the cat finished. “Now get off of me, you big oaf. I thought you weren’t supposed to be in one of your big cat forms unless there was danger.”
Sable dropped her paws to the ground, then rolled onto her back, rubbing herself against the grass. That was the feline shifter’s way of saying she would do whatever she wanted until Melena told her otherwise. Sable wasn’t like a werewolf and couldn’t shift into human form, but she could become any cat breed she wanted, and she could fully comprehend English. The only trouble being she didn’t like to obey commands much more than her feline counterparts. Only M
elena had much of any control over the shapeshifter.
Cori kneeled and rubbed the cat’s stomach. Sable lolled her tongue, happy as a cat could possibly be. She could kill almost anything, including most werewolves, and yet she was gentle and sweet to those she trusted.
“Stop spoiling that monstrosity,” a man said, coming from around the side of the house.
He had long, black hair with a silver glint to it that framed a rigid face and swirling gray eyes. Just like anyone with angelic blood running through them, he had a muscular body, but in his case, he was also rather hulky and never quite looked comfortable in his own skin. Cori couldn’t see his wings at the moment, but she knew he had them. Kerbasi was a former guardian from one of the lower angel castes and currently lived in a shack behind Melena’s house. He was also the man who’d tortured Bartol and Lucas during their time in Purgatory, so naturally, she didn’t like him that much.
Cori scowled. “Shouldn’t you be working or something?”
He rested an arm on the hood of her truck. “Not today.”
“Well, go away. I’m not here to see you,” she said, making a shooing motion.
While Kerbasi had come a long way since he’d arrived on Earth fifteen months ago—thanks to Melena working with him—he still lacked manners and common decency. If they could have forced him to leave Alaska, they would have, but the archangels had restricted Kerbasi to the state and ordered that he work with the nerou. There was a lot of history behind why he got to live behind Melena’s house despite the fact Lucas hated him with a passion. It did help, though, that the guardian made a good guard dog when Sable was off harassing the caribou, and he’d protect Emily, their teenage adopted daughter, with his life.
Kerbasi stared down his nose at Cori. “You are a very rude woman.”