by Jasmine Walt
“I don’t recall any oohing—” I started to snap, but then turned toward the sound of someone groaning. My heart leapt as I saw the kidnappers struggling to their feet. God, but Brodie hadn’t been lying. How the hell were these guys getting back up already?”
“The gods preserve us,” Brodie growled as he stepped in front of me. He summoned more green energy into his hands, then blasted the men back into the wall again. “This is what happens when ye dilly-dally like this,” he said, whirling back around to face me again. He grabbed my arm, then jabbed a finger toward the unconscious men behind him. “Now go and take care of them!”
I scowled as he dragged me over to the men. “Umm, haven’t you already done that?” I asked as I stared down at them.
“Aye, I’ve knocked them out,” he said. “No fatal wounds or anything—I know how yer kind feel about that.” Smirking, he gestured toward the men. “Since yer ilk thinks so little of Druids that ye omit us from yer history books, it’s clear that ye dinnae need our talents. So go on now. Do yer thing.”
“Do my thing?” I actually stomped my foot. “What the hell do you want me to do? They’re unconscious!”
“I’m no expert in this sort of thing, but I was led to believe it didn’t matter whether they were conscious or not,” Brodie huffed. His eyes narrowed before he added, “There is something a mite strange with these two, some aberration I cannae quite figure out. But I’m sure it’s nothing ye haven’t dealt with. Now, will ye get on with it, before they wake up?”
I glared at him as if he were completely insane, which he was. But then I turned to the men and did the only “thing” I could think of. “You have the right to remain silent,” I began, feeling like a total idiot. “Anything you say can and will be used against you. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be pro—”
“What on Gaia’s green earth are ye blabbering on about, woman?” Brodie threw up his hands, staring at me as if I’d just tried to put out a fire with a hammer. “Don’t stand there jabbering away. Exorcise these bastards already! That’s what yer kind does, no?”
“Exorcise them?” I shouted back, balling my hands into fists. “I don’t do exorcisms, and unless you mean humans, I don’t have a ‘kind’!”
“Gaia save us,” he groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose as he looked away. A vein pulsed at his temple. “What the hell is going on with ye, lass? Yer acting like ye dinnae know yer arse from yer elbow.” Shaking his head, he grabbed me by the forearm and began hauling me toward the front door. “Come on, then. These demonic bastards will be awake soon, and if ye cannae finish them off, then we need to be away before that happens.”
I let him lead me out the door, at a complete loss for words. Despite the utter craziness that seemed to be choking me like a thick fog, relief slid through me as the cool night air kissed my skin. Glancing around at the rows of warehouse buildings, I instantly knew where we were. This was the manufacturing district, located on the south side of town.
“Where are we going?” I asked as Brodie tugged me along toward the back of another warehouse. “Shouldn’t we be calling the police? Where’s your car?” I glanced around.
Brodie laughed incredulously. “We are definitely not calling the police, lass. And my car is a bit further than walking distance.”
“Then how the hell are we going to get to it?”
“I have a few tricks up my sleeve.” He knelt, and I nearly exploded when he pulled a piece of chalk from his pocket and began drawing a circle on the pavement. Seriously? I didn’t think street art was going to do us any good.
“We don’t have time for this,” I said, trying to keep my tone reasonable even though I wanted to scream. “We need to call the police. They can get here with a car, take me home, and then go find the bastard who kidnapped me in the first place.” Even as I said the words, I began to wonder if involving the police was really the right thing to do. It was becoming harder and harder for me to pass off all this paranormal stuff as parlor tricks, and I knew the cops wouldn’t be equipped to handle this sort of thing. But if not the police, then who?
“The police wouldn’t know the first thing about what to do with that ‘bastard’ if they caught him,” Brodie said dismissively. He didn’t even bother to look up at me. “He’d tear through them like a cat in a bucket of rodents.” Finished, he pocketed the chalk, then rose. “Now get yerself in the current circle so we can be off.”
I didn’t budge. “If we’re not going to call the police, then we need to run. Those guys will be up any minute, judging by how fast they revived the last time you knocked them out. I’m not going to stand here in some stupid chalk circle and wait for them to find us.”
“For the love of Gaia,” Brodie groaned as I turned away. His fingers curled around my upper arm, and the next thing I knew he’d yanked me into the circle. “Did they not teach ye anything in that blasted school?” he snapped, crushing me against his broad chest.
“The academy?” I asked, trying to ignore the way his strong arms felt as they wrapped around my waist. “No, they taught us how to enforce law and order, not how to draw chalk circles.”
“If ye weren’t so bonny, I’d turn ye over my knee and spank that perfect arse of yers,” he muttered, and my cheeks flushed. He thought my ass was perfect? “It’s not just about the chalk circle. The world is full of currents. Ye gather the right herbs, find the right spot, and say the right incantation, and you can ride those currents if yer good at what you do.” He winked at me. “I dinnae think it would surprise ye to ken that I’m very good at what I do.”
“What do you mean by ‘riding currents’?” I shook my head. “It’s chalk on the ground, Brodie. Two more lines, and we could play hopscotch.”
“Maybe later.” That mischievous grin grew even wider, and his grip on me tightened. “Ye better hold on tight, lass. We’re in for a wild ride.”
I was about to ask what he meant when the ground suddenly shook beneath us. Crying out, I grabbed hold of Brodie as tight as I could just as a green light exploded from the ground and swallowed us whole.
5
Arabella
When the blinding light finally subsided, everything around me had changed.
Well, not everything. Brodie was still the same. Same lively green eyes. Same ridiculously handsome face. Same hard, muscular arms wrapped securely around me, same calloused hands gripping me tight in a way that sent warm tingles through me, and made a part of me ache for something I had no business thinking about right now.
But the rest of it was completely different. We weren’t in a back alley anymore, crammed together in a chalk circle and suffocated by the stench of rotting trash and oil. No, the circle we stood in was now ten times the size of the other, and in the center of a large field. The foul air had been replaced by a clean scent laced with sunshine and grass. Above us, a thick blanket of stars blazed so brightly in the night sky that I knew we had to be far from any urban area.
Nausea rose into my throat, and I retched. Quickly, I stumbled back from Brodie, so I wouldn’t hurl all over him, and fell to my knees. I curled my fingers tightly into the stalks of grass as my stomach heaved a few times, but it was empty as a vampire’s grave, and nothing came up.
“Dinnae worry, lass,” Brodie said, crouching down next to me. He placed a hand on my shoulder, and the warm touched helped settle me a little even as my cheeks flamed with embarrassment. Leave it to me to make an utter fool of myself in front of the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen in my life. “Riding the currents can be very unsettling the first time, even to someone like yerself.”
“What happened?” I asked, swallowing down a bit of bile that had worked its way up my throat. “How the hell did we end up here?” I had no clue why Brodie kept talking about me like I was something special. What did he think I was, anyway?
“I told ye, lass. We rode the currents.” He took my hand and gently pulled me to my feet. As I rose, the world began to spin, and I cl
utched his tattooed forearm for balance. “I dinnae ken why yer having such a hard time comprehending that.”
“Because it doesn’t make sense!” I snapped, snatching my hand away from his arm. My body still ached from the car accident, but I refused to lean on Brodie for strength any more than I had to. I didn’t like showing weakness to strangers, and even though Brodie had saved my skin, it just didn’t seem right to let my guard down around him so soon. In a man’s world, showing weakness was a sure ticket to getting walked all over. And I sure as hell wasn’t about to let that happen.
I took a deep breath to try to calm myself before saying, “You’re talking about riding currents, magic Irish Druids, and exorcisms. I would think you were a crazy person if those so-called EMTs hadn’t done some pretty strange shit, and if you hadn’t just teleported me to some country field.” I crossed my arms against the chilly breeze and scowled at him. “So just which one of us is the crazy one?”
“You, obviously.” He grinned, and my heart skipped a beat. “Anyone with a working pair of eyes can see that I’m not a filthy Irishman. I’ve the classic good looks of a Scot.” He turned his nose up at me.
“I’m serious,” I said, doing my best not to give into the smile twitching at my lips. God, but did he have to be so stupidly charming? There was an impishness about this man that made it difficult to stay angry with him. I held his gaze for a long minute, and his smile gradually faded away.
“Ye are being serious, aren’t ye?” he asked, shaking his head. His jaw clenched, and he scraped a hand through his hair. “Christ Almighty! How is it I get the one bleeding Sentinel in all of creation who isn’t shoving her ideology down my throat?” Those gorgeous eyes narrowed, sparkling with ire. “Take off yer shirt.”
“What?” My cheeks flushed, and I took an involuntary step back. “I’m not getting undressed, creep!”
“Calm yer tits,” Brodie snapped, rolling his eyes. “I just need to see what’s under there is all.”
I folded my arms across said tits, refusing to budge. “I’m pretty sure you can figure out what’s under here without having to look under my shirt.”
He let out a long-suffering sigh, as if I were the one being unreasonable. “There’s a mark on you, a mark that all your kind have,” he said, jabbing a finger at my chest. “I can see it peeking out from beneath yer shirt, but it doesna look right for some reason. I need to take a look at it.”
I clutched my torn shirt closed as another wave of embarrassment heated my cheeks. How did he know about the mark stretching across my chest, the same one Lucas had scrutinized earlier?
“I don’t have a ‘kind,’” I said defiantly. “Unless you’re referring to me being a Baptist.”
“Baptists?” Brodie raised his eyes to the sky, as if imploring some god above to save him. Hell, I wished someone would come and save me from this craziness. “The woman has Demonkin coming out her backside and she tells me she’s a Baptist.” He turned his green gaze back to me, his shaggy hair falling into his eyes. “Yer not a Baptist, lass. At least, that’s not all ye are. Now let me see the mark on yer chest.”
His tone softened. For some reason, it touched something inside me. The knot in my stomach loosened a bit, and I suddenly found it hard to come up with a reason to refuse him. The look in his gaze told me he wasn’t some perv—and besides, he had rescued me. I could show him the mark on my chest, if it would help get some questions answered.
Swallowing hard, I loosened my grip on my shirt, then undid the rest of the buttons. Cool air caressed my bare flesh, but the shiver that raced down my skin had nothing to do with it. No, it was the way Brodie’s nostrils flared, his eyes heating up as they traveled up and down my torso. My cheeks flamed as he leaned in to examine the mark, and his warm breath fell against my bare skin. His fingers grazed the unsightly expanse of flesh, drifting left and right across it as though he were reading over a treasure map, or perhaps trying to understand a lost language.
“It’s a birthmark,” I said, my voice more breathless than I would have liked. God, but the sensation of those strong, calloused fingers caressing my chest did wild and wonderful things to me. Suddenly, I wanted to grab his hands and pull them against mine, to run them all over my naked skin and relieve the sudden ache that blossomed in my core. I had no doubt those hands knew what to do with a woman’s body, and that mouth…
“’Tis not a birthmark,” Brodie replied, scowling. “I can feel that much.” He pulled his hand away.
“Of course it is,” I said, folding my arms across my chest and trying to pretend as if I didn’t miss his warm, gentle touch. “I’ve had it since I was born. What else could it be?” Everyone’s obsession with my birthmark was freaking me out.
“What you got there is an aberration,” Brodie insisted. “But that doesna change the fact that ‘tis no birthmark. There’s holy energy simmering within. Someone tried to hide it by disfiguring the original mark. But it will come back, as soon as ye awaken it again.”
“And just how do I do that?” I asked as I buttoned up my shirt.
“How should I know? Yer the Sentinel, not me.”
“And just what is a Sentinel?” I kept hearing that term, and I was getting tired of everyone acting as if I should automatically know what it was.
“It’s a warrior, lass,” he said. “Pretty damn good ones too. I should have known you didn’t have your faculties about you. Otherwise, those Demonkin couldn’t have touched ye, let alone held you like they did.” He pressed his index finger into the mark on my chest again, which was still peeking out through my torn shirt. Another tingle shot through my body, but I ignored it. “That’s yer proof right there—a holy branding that no man could ever inflict. It’s not a birthmark, lass—it’s yer birthright.” He scooped a hand through his hair. “Can ye not even talk to yer angel?” He shook his head when I just stared blankly. “No, o’ course not. That would be too easy.”
He dropped his hand, and I gaped at him, trying to process the answer he’d just given me. I was a Sentinel, a warrior who was supposed to have an angel with me who could help me fight… what? Demons? Demonkin? I didn’t even know if they were the same or different. This wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.
But given everything I’d seen so far, it wasn’t that crazy. Despite the insanity of it all, something inside me leapt, as if rejoicing. Could this be the real reason behind my insatiable desire to serve and protect? Had I found my true calling?
“If I am a Sentinel,” I said slowly. “Wouldn’t it be best to find others of my kind, so I can learn more about what I am and how to fix this? If there truly is something wrong with me, I mean.” A light bulb went off in my head as soon as I spoke the words. My seizures… I’d always thought that if I could find out what was wrong with me, what was causing them, then they would disappear. Could they be connected to this lost past of mine?
“Aye, we’ll find them,” Brodie agreed. “But right now, I need ye to come with me. If those Demonkin find the current circle, which they probably will once they come to their senses, they’ll follow us here. We need to be gone before that happens. I’ve got a car over there,” he added, jerking his head toward the other end of the field. “Come with me, and I’ll take ye somewhere safe.”
He grabbed my hand, and the touch of his skin against mine sent another rush of warmth through me. My gut told me to do what he said and follow this trail of craziness to its source. But there was a little voice in the back of my mind screaming that this was insanity. That this man was a stranger, and that smart women didn’t get into strange cars with strange men, even handsome ones.
It would be so nice if Brodie was the answer to all my prayers. If he could truly help. But I didn’t know if I could trust him, and he’d taken me to the middle of nowhere, away from anyone and anything I knew, without so much as a by-your-leave. How did I know that he didn’t have ulterior motives? Those EMTs were supposed to rescue me, but instead, they’d kidnapped me. What
if Brodie’s handsome face and charming grin were blinding me to the truth—that he was no better than they were?
A loud noise echoed from beyond the circle, and I jumped. Immediately, Brodie’s grip on me tightened, and he hauled me roughly across the line. Panic seized me. I yanked back, then slammed my elbow into his face. Roaring, he clutched at his bloody nose, and I took advantage of the distraction, kneeing him in the family jewels. He dropped to his knees like a stone, and I sprinted away, fear driving me faster than the wind. Going for the balls was a low blow, and I did not want to see what would happen if he caught me.
“Stop!” Brodie called, his voice hoarse with a desperation that sent a chill through my bones. “He’s going to kill ye, lass!”
Ignoring him, I put my head down and kept running. I was tired of being hauled around by men and told what to do. It was about time I took my life into my own hands.
6
Arabella
My heart galloped as I shot through the field in record time and burst into the forest that lurked just at the perimeter. The narrow paths between the trees and the roots sticking out of the ground slowed me a little, but I didn’t stop. No way was I stopping. I couldn’t allow myself to be taken to a strange place where I had no idea what was going on. I was a capable woman, and I was going to find civilization, determine where I was, and figure out how to get back home.
My breath came faster as I charged up a steep hillside, and I clutched at my ribs as they began to ache again. Dammit, it would be nice to have another one of those strange healing patches Brodie had given me.
As soon as I thought those words, the air in front of me started to shimmer. I skidded to a stop just as Brodie stepped out of nothingness, fully formed in all his muscular, tattooed glory. My hands slammed against his chest, and he gripped them hard, fingers digging into my wrists. The expression on his face was absolutely thunderous, and I swallowed hard against the ball of terror in my throat.