by Angel Lawson
“Goodnight,” he said, opening the door. The rain had finally passed and I stepped out into the muggy night. I turned to say goodbye, but instead heard the loud snap of the solid wood door as it closed in my face.
Chapter 2
Liam
The house reeked of wet hair and nerves long after she left. I watched her , navigate the driveway and front gate on the security monitor, but it wasn’t enough to satiate my curious nature. I’d kept away from Nadya for many years—as instructed. But now? She had been the one to cross the well-maintained truce established between our families.
I left through the kitchen and took the stairs down to the garage. I picked a car different from the one I normally drive to the airport—something less noticeable than my antique Chevy. The truck was made in this century and looked common enough. She wouldn’t notice. I would make sure of it.
“Liam,” I heard my name from the bottom of the stairs. “Do you think this is wise?”
“No,” I replied, opening the door. I flashed Helen a bright smile. “Since when has that ever stopped me?”
“Be careful, you’re playing with a fire that could burn us all if you don’t watch yourself.”
I slammed the door and revved the engine. Careful wasn’t something in my vocabulary, but fire? I liked it very much.
***
Nadya was rushing from her car to the house when I caught up to her. I knew she lived here, of course, but I hadn’t been here since that day so many years ago, when her father and I made our first arrangements. He’d done everything to protect her and I respected that, but her arrival at my house tonight stirred up basic instincts I’d managed to suppress for a long time.
She entered the wooden clapboard house quietly; the only light visible was upstairs in her bedroom. Her movements created shadows on the curtains and I exited my car, moving to that side of the house.
The lingering effects of the rainstorm caused a steady drip from house gutters, but otherwise the street had a silence that came only at night, when the majority of the world was asleep.
I stared up at her window until the light flicked off and then for a while longer. I couldn’t help but wonder what her room looked like—if it still had a childish motif. My sixth-sense told me that her father clung to the past like a child to a blanket. A false sense of security from things that go bump in the night. Real things that tore his family apart. I couldn’t blame him for wanting to hold onto better times.
Mr. Tolbert’s arrival drove me from my spot perched on the wall between her house and the neighbors. Dimmed lights flashed down the driveway, pushing me further into the darkness. I retreated to my car. Coming here had been foolish and Ms. Graves was right, I shouldn’t do it again.
***
My role in Nadya’s life had always been the same. Above everything else I had been assigned as her protector. My position came from birthright and demanded that I act as a guardian to all of our kind, but beneath that universal role was a stronger connection with Nadya. She and I were bound by our bloodlines and the symbiotic nature of our existence. Without the other—we simply did not exist.
As parasites, our people fed off one another and occasionally, according to legend, a perfect match like ours existed. I should feed directly from Nadya, but because of our truce, due to the unfortunate death of her mother, I agreed to stay away from her. I told her father years before that he could attempt to keep the distance between us, but as a human, he didn’t comprehend the intensity of our bond. Regardless of rules and agreements, Nadya would eventually crave me too.
Her recent interest confirmed her primal desire for me and now the flimsy barrier established between us had a fissure, gaping and jagged. I won’t pretend the idea didn’t fill me with excitement. I was exhausted from staying away from her. In the grand scheme of our world, she was rightfully mine.
“Hopefully,” I said, wiping the back of my mouth with a handkerchief, “This will be the last inferior feeding I must endure.”
The woman lounged across the leather couch gazed at me with clouded eyes. Her face appeared drained and tired. She tasted fine, I supposed, but she never quite diminished my hunger. Sidhe guards required regular feeding from other Sidhe and in a normal situation this girl would be enough. But the bond made things different. The only one that could satiate my particular craving was my mate.
“Is that really necessary?” Ms. Graves asked, taking the soiled handkerchief. We took nourishment from the blood or, for back of better human term, their essence. Pure energy gave me strength. “This waif made herself available to you, at the very least you could show your appreciation.”
I turned and bowed to the girl addled in a drugged out bliss. “Thank you for your services. Ms. Graves shall compensate you accordingly.”
My companion rolled her eyes but shut the door behind us so the girl could have time to sort herself out. Alone Ms. Graves said, “I wouldn’t dismiss her just yet. Again, you’re playing a dangerous game. Do you not recall the terms of your agreement with Nadya’s father?”
“Of course I do. I drafted them. I am not to engage her in any way other than protective services. I shall not touch a hair on her head or taste a drop of her blood. In return, he allows me to use his airport to come and go to do my businesses.” I scoffed at the idea. “As if he has much choice. Every one of those creatures I capture and destroy seeks Nadya’s blood as much as I do. They just want it on their hands.”
“So what makes you think he will relent?”
I smiled at the woman who had stood by my side for the last fifty years and who had counseled my father before that. “Nature will take its course, Ms. Graves, regardless of treaties and truces. Nadya will figure all of this out soon. It’s in her blood. When she does, I’ll be here waiting.”
Chapter 3
Nadya
Three days passed, during which nothing extraordinary happened. No plane crashes. No injured pilots. Just the typical take-off and landings that occur on a standard day at Nomad Airlines. I stayed in my bed at night, restless, consumed by odd dreams of my mother but other than that everything was normal.
In fact it was absolutely boring.
Two things got me through the day. The first was trying to get information from my father about Liam Caldwell. The second was the idea of seeing Liam Caldwell again. It wasn’t unusual for him to miss several days in a row at the airport, but I knew he’d return. He always did.
“Have you heard from Mr. Caldwell?” I asked Pop one afternoon. I had cornered him in the back office while filing maintenance reports. He’d been acting weird since the accident on the runway, and I was tired of tip-toeing around it. “You know, about his injuries? He’s not planning on holding us responsible or anything, is he?”
“No, he won’t do that.”
“Why not? Has he even filled out an accident report?”
Pop looked me up and down. “What are you getting at, Nadya? Do you want us to have trouble?”
“No, sir, but I just want to make sure we’re prepared if he decides to make a claim of some kind.”
“Mr. Caldwell and I are on good terms. He’s not filing any sort of report.”
I moved over to his desk and push aside a stack of paperwork to sit down. “What happened to him? How did he get those injuries?” I didn’t mention the fact they’d were healed by the time I saw him hours later.
“He has a dangerous job. The less you know the better.”
Dangerous. Liam had said that same word to me at his home. How did my father know about his job? “What does he do?”
Pop peeked at me over the edge of his glasses. “Nadya, you know better than this. Do not pry in affairs that don’t concern you.”
“But they do concern me! And you! When he landed in here during that storm torn up like some sort of animal attacked him. It’s crazy, Pop, why do you cover up for him all the time? Why do you let him fly in and out of here?”
“You want me to tell him not to use our airport? Our
best customer?”
I shook my head. No. That was the last thing I wanted. What I wanted was to know everything about him—not push him further away.
“It’s really not fair for you to treat me like this,” I said, hopping off the desk.
“Like what?”
“A child. You want me to work and live with you. You want me to obey all your arbitrary rules. And I do. But if I question anything, you clam up and act like I have a problem. Like I’m ruining your business, even though the other day, when Liam was injured, I was the one that took care of it. I was the one who—” I cut myself short before I said, “Went to his house to check on him.” I knew better.
Pop stood and circled the desk. He took my hand and said, “Nadya, you are full of such life. I hate that you feel stifled here, but it’s the only way. The world is dangerous. I can’t lose you like I lost your mother.”
A shiver ran between our hands and again, I felt the jolt of a hazy vision. My father standing above my mother, blood dripping from a cut in the smooth skin of her neck. A man kneeled next to her. Liam Caldwell. I shook my head—terrified of the image—and snatched my hand from his.
“Nadya, are you okay? You look pale.”
“I’m fine,” I said, but bile rose in the back of my throat, and I wondered for the first time how my mother really died.
So the rumors were true, I thought, flipping the lock to the office in the hangar. I was a witch.
It was the only logical explanation, because otherwise I was crazy. As if thinking you were a witch wasn’t crazy. I sat on the couch and took a deep breath, trying to sort this out. Had I seen the past? Maybe, but how? And why now?
“This is insane,” I said to myself, but my eyes traveled to the pinkish-red blood stain on the couch. Liam had recovered from his injuries so quickly. Impossibly fast. Deep down I never believed in the witch games I’d played as a teenager, and I’d never, not once, bought into the crazy stories people whispered about my mother. But then again, rumors were often rooted in the truth.
If those visions were real, then my father and Liam were both present at the time of my mother’s death, which, clearly from the blood pouring down her neck, was not from an aneurysm as I’d been told. She’d been murdered.
Outside the office I heard Brayden order the ground guys to prep one of the planes. I thought back but no one was on the list for departure this afternoon. None of our pilots fly last minute—no one but Liam Caldwell. I crept to the door and leaned close enough to see his plane pulling out of the hangar toward the runway.
I took a moment to compose myself, hoping to get the timing right. Someone else would have to check him in and I wondered if he would be disappointed not to see me? Doubtful. If my vision of him with my father and mother held any truth then that would explain a lot about his behavior toward me.
Brayden greeted him just outside the hangar door, loud and respectfully. Everyone at the airline always approached him this way—everyone but me. He’d always been a game for me.
“Mr. Caldwell,” I said, approaching him as he walked around the airplane.
“Nayda.”
“How are you feeling? We haven’t seen you since your accident.”
“I’m fine,” he said, eyes holding mine.
“Good.” I glanced at Brayden, who carried a wrench over to the plane to adjust something. In a lower voice I said, “We need to talk.”
“I doubt that.”
“Make it happen.” He raised an eyebrow and I caught the hint of an amused smile, so I added, “Please.”
He didn’t agree. He didn’t say or react to my request at all. He simply brushed past me, and his arm grazed mine. I nearly stumbled but caught myself and watched him climb into his plane, sealing the door between us. His reply seeped into my mind, spreading out like a spider-web, a memory or a vision, I didn’t know which. I did know what he wanted and where he would meet me. He communicated that and more in one simple touch.
Now I had to wait.
Chapter 4
Liam
Twice she had approached me directly. Twice I’d felt the connection between us. There was no denying her gift was expanding. She became more powerful each time we interacted, and it was only a matter of time before she experienced the full onslaught of our bond.
When she asked to speak with me I should have said no. Instead I said nothing, but I showed her enough, and now I stood in the dark outside her house.
She waited at the window, silhouette outlined in a warm yellow light. The curtain fluttered shut and the room fell black. Moments later she emerged at the back door, her bright blue eyes flashing beneath her blunt cut bangs.
“Get in the car,” I directed. She crossed her arms over her chest. She wore black jeans and clunky boots. If she was going for street tough it worked—except she reeked of anxiety. I sighed. “Please?”
“Are you going to murder me?” she asked, leaning into the car where I waited behind the wheel.
“No.”
Nadya’s fear smelled like churned dirt. Her nervousness a little mossy. Neither of these masked the scent of her person—her body, which gave off the aroma of something sweet and ripe. Something I’d never tasted before—but I wished too, badly.
She closed the door quietly, to keep her father from waking. At least she had an awareness to keep this secret. The car started with a low rumble, and before she could change her mind we were gone from her driveway.
We rode in silence as I took us back toward the airport. Just before the driveway I turned on a service road. The runway stretched along the waterfront, as did almost everything in this town, and I stopped the car overlooking the lake. I didn’t make a move to leave the car. It was windy and cold by the shore and Nadya looked wary, one hand clutching the door handle.
“Again, before we get started, are you going to murder me?”
I frowned. “No.”
“Rape? Assault of any kind? Because I left my dad a note and I’ll fight.”
She didn’t leave her father a note, I knew that much. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Then why are we way out here?”
“Because we aren’t supposed to be together. And what we’re going to talk about is strictly off limits. I’m not going to hurt you, but I wasn’t exaggerating when I said being with me was dangerous.”
Her wariness turned to frustration. “What’s happening to me?” she finally asked, eyes never leaving the water.
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t act like you don’t know because the alternative is that I’m crazy. And I’m not crazy. I know I’m not. I saw you land that plane even though you were half dead and then I watched you heal in a matter of minutes. I’m having dreams and…” she looked down at her hands, twisting in the fabric of her shirt. “For lack of a better term, visions. At least one involved you.”
She only confirmed what I suspected. I’d had many roles in my life: hunter, guardian, peacekeeper…but this was one I had no experience with. I inhaled, tasting her very essence, and centered myself. What I was about to do wasn’t wrong. What we had been doing was the actual crime.
“I will tell you what you want to know,” I said. “But you have to understand that once I do, your life will change forever. You must listen to my words carefully and then you have to decide if you’ll trust me.”
“I get a choice?” She laughed darkly.
I run my hand over the steering wheel, wishing we could get out of this car. I want to get Nayda alone and show her what this is all about, not just tell her. “You can leave now and we’ll pretend this never happened. Blank slate.”
“And my visions, they would go away?”
“If I left and we never encountered on another again, I think they would taper off.”
“So this is about you.”
I pinned her with a hard, direct look. “It’s about us.”
“Okay then,” she said, adjusting herself in her seat and leaning back against the door. “T
ell me. Everything.”
Chapter 5
Nayda
“Ask me a question,” he said.
Without hesitation, I blurted, “How did you heal so quickly?”
“I’m not human. It takes a lot more to injure and kill us.”
Okay. Wow. I forced the next words out of my mouth. “Are you a witch?”
“No.”
“Am I a witch?”
He shook his head. “No, but you’re not entirely human, either.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means that your father is human and your mother was not. She had powers also and now that the time is right, your abilities are increasing.”
“God, what is all this tip-toeing around? You just told me I’m half-human or something. I’m not freaking out or having some sort of breakdown—even though I really, really should. I just want to know the truth.” Okay so maybe I was freaking out, just a little.
Liam leaned back in his seat and rubbed his eyes. “You and I are bound through our bloodline. We can communicate without words and your touch helped me heal. I’m here and have always been here to protect you.”
“From what? What do I need protection from? I live the most boring life ever. No real friends, no social life. Definitely no dating, even though that’s more because of my father than anything—” I paused. “What does he know?”
“He is aware of who I am.”
“And my mother?”
“Her death was a tragedy.”
“You were there,” I whispered.
“I was, and it is my biggest regret that I was unable to help her.”
“Did you kill her?”
“No, but I didn’t protect her either.”
Right then that was enough; I didn’t want to know more. It was all too much, except one thing. “Show me.”
He tilted his head. “Show you what, exactly?”