Playing with Darkness: Book 3.5 (Sensor Series)

by Susan Illene

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  About Susan Illene

  Playing

  with Darkness

  By Susan Illene

  Playing with Darkness

  Copyright © 2014 by Susan Illene

  All right reserved.

  This book, whole or in part, may not be copied, scanned, or reproduced by electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying or the implementation of any type of storage or retrieval system) without the express written permission of the author, except where permitted by law. Please do not participate or encourage the piracy of copyrighted materials. Purchase only authorized editions.

  www.darknesshaunts.com

  Images obtained for the creation of this book’s cover were licensed for use from shutterstock.com, depositphotos.com, and Teresa Yeh photography. Design by Phat Puppy Art.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events portrayed within its pages are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not meant to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead, undead, or mostly dead is purely coincidental.

  Dedication

  This one is just for the fans. Thanks for reading!

  Sensor Series Reading Order:

  Darkness Haunts

  Darkness Taunts

  Chained by Darkness (novella)

  Darkness Divides

  Playing with Darkness (novella)

  Darkness Clashes (coming late summer 2014)

  Chapter One

  “Gentler. Don’t beat at it so hard,” I urged. He was going to leave splatters everywhere.

  His hand paused.

  “Like this?” His motions became smoother.

  “Yeah, like that.”

  “Is it truly necessary for me to learn how to do this?” Kerbasi asked, scrunching his face up in disgust.

  He was stirring in the sugar, butter, cocoa, and milk for the latest batch of no bake cookies. The guardian might complain about preparing them, but he had no problem consuming them by the mouthful once they were ready. As part of his humanity lessons, I’d made him start eating something other than the bread and water he preferred when he first arrived from Purgatory.

  A man couldn’t understand the ramifications of pain until he’d experienced pleasure.

  “Yes, it is necessary,” I said, pointing to the sauce pan. “Now once it starts to boil you let it go for sixty seconds before taking it away from the heat and mixing it with the rest of the ingredients. Don’t mess up the timing.”

  Hopefully, he would do a better job than me. More than half the batches we’d made today were in the trash because I lost track of time or forgot to add an ingredient. Why I managed to screw up so much of what I cooked I’d never understand.

  Emily came down the stairs and stared at the garbage can.

  “It’s like the blind leading the deaf in here.” She shook her head. “I could teach him, you know.”

  The teenager gazed at me with deep blue eyes. She was a much better cook, but I couldn’t risk it. The guardian had spent thousands of years torturing prisoners. No way was I letting her near him even if he was forbidden from hurting her.

  I moved to block her view of Kerbasi. “You know the rules. When he’s in here, you stay in your room.”

  I reached into the fridge and grabbed a couple of cookies from among the ones that had survived my cooking process. Emily took the one I handed her and tested it cautiously. Once satisfied it wasn’t going to kill her, she chewed it down. I nibbled on mine while keeping an eye on Kerbasi. He hadn’t tampered with our food yet, but I wouldn’t put it past him.

  Emily and I looked up at the same time when a familiar werewolf popped up on our sensor radar. He was coming up the road to our house. Emily made a dash for the door. I tossed the remainder of my cookie on the counter and leaped down the hallway to grab her. She’d almost had her hand on the knob.

  “Oh, no you don’t. It’s a full moon tonight and you’re not seeing him.” I kept a grip on her arms.

  “But Mel, it’s not even dark yet,” she whined, struggling against me.

  It was almost June. It wouldn’t be dark until nearly midnight, but that wasn’t the point.

  “It will be in a couple hours. No arguments.”

  I guided her past the door and up to the first step of the stairs. Hunter was pulling his car into the driveway. I didn’t know why he’d come at all since I’d already warned him there would be no visits around full moons.

  Emily let out a martyred sigh and allowed me to guide her up a couple more steps. “This is stupid. He wouldn’t hurt me.”

  “He doesn’t want to hurt you—true—but he’s still young and inexperienced. One wrong move and you could set off his werewolf instincts. I’m not letting that happen.”

  The werewolf had gotten out of the car and walked up to our porch. He was hovering there—probably hearing every word we said.

  “If he wants to live to see another day,” I raised my voice. “He’ll leave now.”

  “I just brought Emily a gift.” He spoke loudly enough for his words to filter past the heavy door.

  “It better not be another dead rabbit,” I warned.

  While amusing, that had gotten old quick.

  “It’s not,” came his faint reply. Hunter was already moving back toward his car.

  I didn’t need to use my senses to know Emily was angry with me. The sparks that were practically flying from her eyes said it all.

  “I hate you,” she spat out.

  At least she didn’t make the argument that I wasn’t her mother like she’d done the last time we’d fought a couple days before. It wasn’t easy playing adoptive parent when you were only eleven years older than the girl you were caring for and had no previous experience with teenagers. I ran a hand through my auburn hair and found a chunk of cookie. Great. Just great. The day couldn’t get any worse.

  As soon as Hunter drove off, Emily brushed past me and rushed outside to watch him go. After he was out of sight she picked up a bouquet of flowers off the cement porch. They were a mixture of blue hydrangea, crème roses, and white lilies, along with a few other blooms I couldn’t identify.

  She pressed them to her nose and inhaled deeply. A dreamy look came over her face and a smile twitched at her lips. They were already in a large glass vase so at least we wouldn’t have to find one for them, which was good since we didn’t have any. No one had given me flowers in years—not even Lucas, my lover. I couldn’t help envying her for that.

  Emily barely noticed me as she came back inside and moved up the stairs. I might have thought she’d let her anger go if not for her slamming the bedroom door. It wouldn’t last long. The one good thing about her quick temper was that she let it all out at once and got over it quickly.

  A crunching noise drew my attention to the floor. Sable, my shape-shifter kitty, was chewing on something. I bent down and saw she had a cookie in her mouth. Crumbs trailed from the kitchen to the stairs, making me think she’d nabbed more than one and worked her way over to me. The cat had no shame.

  In her current lynx form she could have hopped onto the counter and snagged them while I was busy with Emily. It wasn’t like Kerbasi would have stopped her—she’d bitten him the one time he’d gotten too close. He’d smacked her for it and I’d ended up putting a few bullet holes through his head. After that he’d
decided to keep his distance. The wounds still hurt him even if he could heal remarkably fast.

  “Dammit, Sable.” I swept up the last of the crumbs before she could get to them. The cat would eat anything if I let her. “We’ve talked about this. No eating food from the counter.”

  Unlike regular cats, I knew for a fact she could understand every word I said.

  Kerbasi’s bare feet appeared within my line of vision. “I do not understand this strange custom. Why would a girl be pleased over some plant cuttings?”

  It was going to take me years to explain the ways of mortals to him. He might be more than four and a half millennia old, but living in Purgatory his entire life as a guardian and torturer had left him rather ignorant. After seeing the horrific damage he’d done to his prisoners, it was hard to be civil with him. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much of a choice.

  I got up and gave the dark-haired man a disgruntled look.

  “Because they look nice and smell good. Didn’t you notice men bringing women flowers in any of the movies you watched?” I asked, dumping the crumbs in the trash.

  I’d certainly made him watch enough of them in the last two weeks since he’d come to live with me in Fairbanks—including romance.

  “It still does not make any sense to me.” He frowned.

  My nose twitched. Was something burning?

  I rushed into the kitchen to find a dish towel half-draped over the stove burner—which Kerbasi had failed to turn off when he removed the sauce pan. Bright orange flames were eating up the fabric. After taking a quick look around, I grabbed a large cup and started filling it with water from the sink. The fire hadn’t spread to anything else yet, but smoke was filling up the kitchen. Loud ringing from the smoke alarm pierced my sensitive ears and forced me to ratchet my hearing down a notch.

  “Kerbasi, you can’t just leave a fire unattended like that!”

  He lifted his brows. “I simply wanted to see your reaction.”

  With a snap of his fingers, the fire went out.

  He’d stood there the whole time watching me panic and didn’t do anything until I’d yelled at him. I hadn’t even known he could put flames out like that. Upon closer inspection, I saw there was nothing else nearby that could burn easily. I gritted my teeth. The bastard. He’d moved everything away in anticipation of this little prank.

  The water spilled over the edges of my cup and I tossed it at his face. Two could play at that game.

  He rubbed at his eyes and shook his head at me. “Some of those movies you make me watch have people doing silly things as a joke. I thought to try something myself, but now you’ve become angry. I admit to some confusion. Am I to put your humanity lessons into practice or not?”

  It appeared I was going to have to stop showing him comedy movies until he got a better grasp at how human humor worked. Of all the lessons Kerbasi could have picked up, why couldn’t he have tried something harmless?

  “We’re going to have a long talk later about what you can imitate from movies and what you can’t.” I tossed the burned remains of the cloth in the trash.

  He gave me a blank look, but I wasn’t fooled. The man might have a long way to go in understanding human behavior, but he wasn’t stupid. He’d known exactly what he was doing when he set that fire.

  I brushed past him into the hallway and almost tripped over Sable. She was stumbling around and her belly was unusually distended. I could hear her heart beating irregularly, too. I kneeled down and rubbed my hand gently over her orange and black fur. She made a mewling sound and moved away from my touch.

  What had happened to her? She’d never gotten sick and I couldn’t find any injuries. Just a few minutes ago she’d seemed fine. I narrowed my eyes at Kerbasi, who was watching me from the kitchen doorway.

  “Did you do something to her?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. It would violate the terms of our contract.” My senses told me he spoke the truth.

  I’d ordered Sable not to mess with Kerbasi after that first incident, just to be safe. As long as she didn’t attack him he couldn’t hurt her without bringing down the wrath of the archangels. I was really glad they’d added that stipulation into the contract when they’d bound him to me. Otherwise the powerful guardian would have been causing all kinds of problems for my supernatural friends.

  “I don’t suppose you could do anything to help her, could you?”

  “Absolutely not,” he scoffed. His answer didn’t surprise me. He’d let her die even if he had the ability to heal—which he probably did considering his origin.

  I could sense Sable’s discomfort getting worse. Micah could have helped, but he was missing. There weren’t any other healers I knew about who could handle something like this and Lucas was too busy looking for Micah for me to consider bothering him.

  Someone at the fae city could help. Sable had been bred there and they had healers. I was overdue for a visit anyway, still needing to return the fae portal device I’d recovered two weeks ago. They were probably annoyed I hadn’t rushed it back to them right away, but bringing it now would give me leverage in case I needed it to get my shape-shifter healed.

  I pulled my phone from my back pocket and began making calls.

  Chapter Two

  Ulric, the werewolf pilot I’d hired, nodded at Kerbasi and me as we walked up to his floater plane. It was just past dawn and we were meeting him at a local shaman’s airstrip. Charlie, the shaman, hadn’t minded when I’d called late last night asking to use it. I’d had to make a lot of calls to get everything in place to leave.

  Not long ago Ulric and I had fought together in a battle to get Fairbanks back under our control from a powerful female nephilim. He’d come away with a few injuries, but he looked good now.

  His shaggy brown hair wasn’t long enough to pull back behind his ears, but it did reach to the corners of his hazel eyes. They’d been black and blue thanks to a broken nose the last time I’d seen him. He might not have been as heavily built as some werewolves, but he fought just as hard as any of them. Not to mention the muscles he did have on his medium build were earned through hard work living out in the bush of Alaska.

  Ulric’s gaze moved down to the lynx snuggled in my arms. Genuine concern reflected in his eyes.

  “How is she?” he asked.

  Normally Sable always paid attention to her surroundings. This time she just shuddered a little and kept her eyes closed.

  “Not any better. I have no idea what’s wrong with her.” If anything, she’d gotten worse during the night. She felt hot to the touch, making me think she’d developed a fever.

  He nodded. “Her breeder should know what to do.”

  “Can you take her and get her settled in the plane?” I asked, holding her out in my arms. “I’ve got to say goodbye to Emily before I go.”

  “No problem.” He gently took the shape-shifter kitty from me.

  I walked back to the car we’d driven to the landing strip. The red Mustang was one of many vehicles that belonged to Nik, the master vampire of the area, but Lisette was borrowing it. I was thankful the pixie hadn’t left town since the battle and was willing to watch over Emily for me while I was gone. Most of the other people I trusted were vampires and unable to keep track of the teenager during the day.

  “You gonna stay out of trouble?” I asked Emily, taking my pack from her.

  She rolled her eyes. “Of course.”

  Her answer didn’t quite ring true on my lie detector abilities, but I doubted very many teenagers could answer that question honestly.

  I slung the pack over my shoulder. “Okay, well, give me a hug and pretend like you mean it.”

  She sighed and embraced me for about two seconds before letting go.

  “Just make sure Sable is okay,” she said, glancing in the direction of the plane. At least the cat got some concern from her.

  “I will,” I promised.

  Lisette, who’d been my best friend since high school, gave me a genuine hug. S
he had such a tiny figure that I had to remember my newly-acquired strength while embracing her. The wind blew her hair up and tickled my nose before I pulled away. She hadn’t changed it from the white color, even though it’d been over a month since she arrived in Fairbanks. Guess the pixie hadn’t decided on a new shade yet.

  “Try to keep that idiot guardian in line,” she warned. “They’re not going to be happy when you show up with him. I thought about contacting them to let them know you’re coming, but I didn’t want to be the one to break the news about your tagalong.”

  I snorted. “They’ll find out soon enough.”

  If there’d been any way to leave him, I would have. But the damn arm cuffs we wore were magically spelled so that we couldn’t be more than a half-mile apart.

  I headed to where the guardian still stood. For the first time since I’d met him, he looked nervous. Even his silver eyes swirled in an irregular pattern I hadn’t seen before.

  “Are you sure this…this thing is safe?” he asked, eyeing the plane with trepidation.

  “Yes.” I moved toward the door. “And even if something bad happened, it’s not like it could kill you.”

  He hesitated a moment before following close behind. I pointed him to a seat and showed him how to buckle up. He probably didn’t need the safety precaution, but it would keep him confined and out of trouble.

  I found my own spot by where Ulric had set Sable. After tucking away my bag and getting myself strapped in, I took the sick kitty into my arms and held her securely. The werewolf wasted no time getting the plane off the ground. At least the flight to the Yukon Territory in Canada wouldn’t take long.

  ***

  We landed on a pond about two miles from Feidlimid. They had rules about modern technology getting too close to the city so we were going to have to hike the rest of the way. Not wanting to jostle Sable any more than necessary, I forced everyone to walk slowly.