a Touch of Revenge (Romantic Mystery - book 6): The Everly Gray Adventures

by L. j. Charles

  He ran his hand through his hair, leaving it mussed. “Yep, we are, and we need to get Cait out of Grady’s house.”

  “You think they’re going to…hurt her tonight?” I couldn’t say kill, just couldn’t. “And I think we need to talk about the energy issue before we try and rescue Cait. Fion might have warded the entire house, and it’ll take me some time to fix it.”

  He winked. “That part of the rescue is all yours, Hot Shot. I have faith you’ll keep me safe.”

  My insides shriveled. “It’s a seat-of-the-pants thing, Pierce. You’re used to working on the fly, but I like to have a plan. No, that’s a lie. I’m not all that good at planning, especially lately, but I’d still like to map out an escape option, and backup plan if possible. We probably won’t be able to talk, so if I hold my hands up in front of me, palms facing out, stop whatever you’re doing right away. It’ll be the signal there’s an energy field I have to heal.”

  His eyebrows hiked up. “Heal.”

  “Dismantle. But I use the Huna techniques Aukele taught me, so in my mind I’m healing the evil Connor uses to create the wards. They’re designed to cause harm.” My stomach did a flip-flop. “Oh, hell. You don’t suppose she can kill like that? In the same way I can heal? We have to go.” I ran from the bedroom into the kitchen.

  Pierce was tight on my heels. “Stop!”

  I whirled, my back slamming against the kitchen door, my hand on the knob. “What?”

  “Connor’s lover will be watching for us.”

  “Damn it. I need a weapon. Unlike you, my hands aren’t skilled in the art of murder. Wait. How do you know he’s watching? He probably went back to Grady’s house thinking he’d chased us off. It was dark. Maybe they don’t even realize the box of files is missing.” It was a ridiculous thing to say. Embarrassingly Pollyanna.

  Pierce hiked an eyebrow. “Invisibility is key here. Cling to shadows. Feel the ground with your senses before you step.”

  “Do what? Are you trying to teach me how you become invisible and fade into oblivion?” My voice had risen an octave.

  Pierce managed to slide around me, and held the door open. “Time is right, Belisama.”

  Uh-huh. All I had to do was feel the ground before I took a step. Like that was second nature.

  Pierce led me along the path we’d used for our first trip to Grady’s house, but just before we reached the ridge with the steep, slippery ground, he veered to the left. “Longer, less noisy,” his words caught on the light breeze, fading into silence.

  We made it to within twenty-five feet of the house without incident. I leaned into Pierce on tiptoe, my lips brushing his earlobe. He sucked in a breath, and the scent of Siofra’s handmade vanilla soap tickled my nose. It startled me, that flash of vulnerability, intruding in the intense danger of our situation, and it took a second to get my brain back on track. “No sign of anyone yet, but I need to move closer to sense if there are wards.”

  Pierce pointed to a thicket that looked to be about ten feet closer to the house, then signaled that he’d hold our current position while I scouted. I closed my eyes and tried to sense the ground. I couldn’t find so much as a remote connection, but then my mind was spinning with the task of checking for wards, and the time pressure of getting Cait out of the house before anything bad happened to her.

  I tried to empty my mind and find my center like I did when I meditated. No go. But when I practiced yoga, I was more aware of my feet than at any other time, so maybe if moved through the memory of that sensation and tried to touch the ground with my spidey sense…I was making this way too complicated, and we didn’t have time for complicated. A sigh welled in my chest. Still nothing. I couldn’t do it, not without some practice, preferably in a stress-free situation. My nerves were on high alert, both for the whereabouts of Murchadh and any ripples in the energy field that indicated Fion had set wards around the property.

  I shuffled closer, held my palms toward the house, and pictured Fion doing witchy things. I concentrated so hard red dots danced in my head, but it was a waste of time, since it was impossible for me to get an accurate image from my imagination. My arms dropped, limp with exhaustion. Attempt number one: miserable failure.

  Next try, I dipped into my memory of untangling the energy web at the Connor estate. A rush of energy flowed into me, strong enough to push me back a few inches. Yep, I’d found a ward. Finally in my element, I dipped into my well of healing energy, and began to untangle the ward from the base up, because it looked like that was how Fion had created it, and wouldn’t it be safest to untangle it in the same direction as it had been created? I couldn’t remember exactly what I’d done with the two wards at Fion’s estate, partly because I hadn’t had a clue what I was doing while I worked with them, and partly because at the time I was so damn focused on avenging my parents.

  This energy-lock protected Grady’s front door, not an entrance Pierce was likely to use, but it was still the best place for me to start working—in case I made an irreparable mistake.

  After I cleared the door, I back-pedaled to Pierce’s location, and leaned close. “There was a ward on the front door. Loose. She didn’t spend much time on it. You ready for me to do the back window where they’re holding Cait?”

  He jerked his chin down in a sharp nod, and we began to inch our way around the perimeter of the property. Working with the healing energy when I untangled the first ward had forced my senses wide open, and before we made it around the side of the house, I picked up on a strange undercurrent in the ethers. I tapped Pierce’s arm, then pointed in the direction of the disturbance.

  He leaned close, his breath tickling my ear.

  Sensitive as I was from the energy work, his light touch sent a series of shivers cascading over my skin and deep into my core. I tried to block the sensation, because seriously, not the time, but there was no hope for it. Pierce had unleashed a flood of female hormones that had been dormant for far too long. I had no choice but to block the crash of emotions. Cait’s life was at stake, for God’s sake. I shook with the effort.

  “Connor’s lover.” Pierce’s words were the harsh equivalent of ice water being dumped on my head. Thank you, Pele. Internal fire doused, I was able to hear what Pierce said. “He’s on patrol. Should pass us in…” He held up three fingers, two, one, and Murchdah’s feet came into view just on the other side of the hedge. I clamped down on my inhalation, held still as death, and counted footsteps. By the time I got to twelve, he’d passed us. The sweet, scented night air filled my lungs. “Close,” I mouthed.

  Pierce nudged me to keep moving. The farther we got from Murchadh, the more my gut relaxed, and I was able to think through several scenarios for how this could play out. My favorite: me healing any energy-locks on the window, Pierce slipping inside, then helping Cait escape. I ran it on my internal screen like a continuous video—with every move falling neatly into place, and by the time we reached the back of the house I was confident Cait’s extraction would be silky smooth. Athletes prepared for major sporting events with this technique, so why not me?

  But my prep process only covered the beginning of our mission. I’d still need to get inside, first to listen to whatever plans Connor and Grady were discussing, and second to get answers. I wasn’t leaving here until I knew exactly what had happened to my parents, how Fion Connor managed to impersonate an MI6 handler, why Mitch had believed she was his handler, why she wanted me dead, and what the hell she’d been doing with my mother’s formula.

  First things first. I closed my eyes, and scanned the energy-lock Connor had put on the window. Tight. Deadly. No way would anyone survive the fallout from bumping into it, even accidently, never mind if they deliberately tried to break through it. I nodded toward the window. “Stronger ward. Dangerous. And it’s keeping Cait inside as surely as it’s keeping us out. At least there’s a light on in the room so she’ll be able to see us, and we won’t scare her to death.”

  I sat on the ground. This was going to requir
e a deep connection with the earth, or I could end up frozen—only not with cold this time. Fion had used something more evil. Demonic. The pattern wrapped around itself in an intricate design of coiling snakes—and they weren’t the living, breathing kind that inhabited the earth. These had been carefully constructed to rip the breath from anyone who touched them. The pattern pulsed with an insatiable hunger to consume oxygen from human lungs, to literally suck us dry.

  Fear simmered, and my stomach lurched. I rested my hand on Pierce’s thigh. “If I stop breathing, drag me away from the window.”

  He squeezed my hand, and with that bit of super-spy reassurance I went to work. I summoned a huge ball of healing energy, and started at the base of the pattern, just like I had on the front door. This wasn’t the time to deviate from what worked. The strands of the pattern were Boa constrictor thick, and even though I saturated them with love, they fought me. Hard.

  At first it was easy to block the strands, to keep them away from my aura, but when they sensed the love in my energy field, they lunged at it full force. Panicked, I shut down and frantically scuttled backward, away from the house.

  Pierce covered me, knocked me flat to the ground. “You okay?”

  The innate stupidity of his question cleared my mind. “Not so much. The pattern is alive, and hungry.” I should have pushed him off me, but I needed the pressure of his body, the reassurance that I wasn’t alone. I could barely see Pierce’s face in the dark, but his muscles tensed.

  I tried for a better explanation, a fast one, because we didn’t have time for a lengthy chat. “It’s like it was created in hell, and the healing energy I have is providing the only way for it to break free. The pattern is starved for love.”

  Pierce’s grunt was real, and normal, and the best sound I’d heard in eons. “Heard your words. Not getting it. How do you want to do this?”

  “I have to make myself similar to it, become evil.”

  “No.” His response was brittle and final. “I’ll find another way in.”

  Shuffling footsteps sounded nearby.

  “No time,” I said, shoving him off me. We moved in tandem to the relative cover of the hedge, and I went to work.

  I’d seen, and even touched, the dark side of my mother’s formula when Kahuna Aukele was teaching me how to heal. Now I had to use it. With a deep breath, I sunk into the familiarity of love energy, traveled through it, and found the beginning of a dense, gray, cold layer. This wasn’t an exact duplicate of what Fion had used to set the wards at her estate, but it was a close cousin. Close enough that it would allow me to untangle the energy-lock on the window, but at what price? I stuffed my panic into a cubbyhole in my mind, formed a tightly knit ball of the cold, gray stuff, and began to unravel the complex pattern Fion had created.

  The strands were slippery, and they shied away from my etheric touch, but once I learned to start working from an end rather than within a knot, I began to make progress. My focus was intense, but after a while I knew that Pierce had left me, his movements silent and deadly. I scooped some of the energy he’d left behind from the ethers, and used it to fuel the release of the ward. It upped the speed of my work exponentially.

  Pierce came back when I was tying the ends, securing the loose pattern pieces so they couldn’t harm anyone. I opened my eyes, met his stare. “It’s done?” I asked.

  “Yeah. In a couple ways. The window’s clear?”

  The warrior in him was at full strength, and I shifted away, putting some space between us. I was energetically dirty from touching the evil strands, and the vibes coming off Pierce were making it worse. There was no question he’d done something…irrevocable.

  “Yes, it’s clear.” There wasn’t time to think about, or explain, that I’d never be the same, not ever again.

  Pierce vaulted the hedge, leaned over the top, and touched my cheek. “I’ll be right out. Don’t move.”

  He’d made it halfway to the house when a muffled scream sounded from inside Cait’s room.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  CAIT’S SCREAM RATTLED ME. I expected Pierce to take a flying leap at the window, shove it open, and jump inside. Instead, he slowed down. Cocked his head at different angles, apparently listening.

  A shriek built in my chest, threated to explode, and my feet twitched with the need to break through the damn window. Cait had screamed. She was in trouble, and Pierce was stuck in slow motion. When he finally moved, I let out a breath, but my relief was short-lived. The man took baby steps, his attention riveted on the window, I was surprised it didn’t shatter from the sheer force of his will. Or maybe that was my desire to act rather than stand around waiting.

  Pierce flattened against the house, his ear turned to the window. My hands were fisted so tightly, I’d dug my nails into my skin. Deep breaths, Everly. He knows what he’s doing. Pierce turned, faced the window, and—damn it all to hell—he blocked my view so I couldn’t see what he was doing.

  The window eased open a notch. Two inches. A long pause. All the way open, and Pierce reached in, shoved the drapes aside, and finally leapt over the sill.

  The night stayed silent. Only about an hour had passed since we’d set off on this mission, but my body swore it had been a lifetime since Pierce left me. My stomach heaved at the thought, but it was highly probable that he’d dispatched Murchadh to a place more suited to his personality.

  That left Fion and Eamon for me to interrogate. Two against one, but Grady was wheelchair-bound, and Connor had two bullet holes in her. Make that two healed bullet holes. And I wasn’t leaving until I found out how she’d pulled that off, because there was my curiosity to satisfy, but mostly I was ninety-nine percent certain it was related to my mother’s formula—something I needed to keep close tabs on. No telling what mayhem the involved governments had caused since her death.

  The murmur of voices drifted from inside Cait’s room. If Eamon and Fion were depending on Murchadh to guard the premises, they probably wouldn’t bother to check on Cait or do any perimeter checks. Surely it would okay for me to let my guard down long enough to peek in the window and make sure Cait wasn’t hurt.

  I checked in all directions. No sound, and no movement aside from a light breeze. I hunched down and crab-walked to the window. If Pierce and Cait were still in there, they were doing whatever in total silence. My curiosity won its battle with caution, and I stood, shifted the far edge of the drapes, and peeked inside.

  Cait was curled into a ball on the bed, and Pierce stood over her, working on the ropes binding her wrists. Her face and arms were red, swollen, and bloody, but it looked like she’d be able to make it out the window with our help. She’d been awfully quiet since the scream. Drugs?

  My attention drifted to the bedroom door. Warded, and with the same malicious, gray energy. I closed my eyes and went to work. This time I was better prepared and shrouded myself in a dark aura before I began untangling the ropes of energy. It also went more quickly because I’d learned Fion Connor’s method of creating harmful wards, but knowledge didn’t make the ugliness any easier to stomach. My gut pitched and rolled with the effort to keep the nausea under control, and my hatred for the woman hiked up a notch.

  When the ward released I opened my eyes, and looked into a pair of angry, azure blue eyes. “What?” I asked. Surely Pierce didn’t think I was going to wait in the bushes when there was no imminent danger to Cait or him if I moved.

  “You’re pale.”

  I waved my hand toward the bedroom door. “I dismantled the ward on the door. How’s Cait?”

  She was huddled behind Pierce, one hand clinging to his belt. She peeked around him. “I’m okay. Groggy from the drugs and I hurt like hell, but I’ll be fine if you just get me out of here.” Her words were garbled, and her tongue didn’t seem to be working quite right, but since she was walking and talking, I figured Pierce could get her back to the cottage without my help.

  I balanced both hands on the windowsill, and hiked myself up and into the bedroom. />
  Pierce grabbed me. “What the hell?”

  “Go. You can lift Cait down. I’ll help her hold steady until you’re ready to take her.”

  “I’m right here, people. Can do my own steady.” Her eyelids were drooping and she could barely stand.

  I gave her kudos for determination, and some of the tension in my shoulders let go. Cait was a survivor. “Go.” I pushed at Pierce. “Any minute they’re gonna wonder why the guard hasn’t reported in.”

  His eyes went dark, but he did a silent leg-body-leg out the window, and then reached for Cait. Before I could pull away, he had my arm wedged in a tight grip. “Out. Now. We’ll finish with Grady and Connor later.”

  Frustrated, I nodded. Not only had I failed to hide my intentions, but I’d come close to breaking my promise to put our partnership first. Tears stung, and I gave one last glance at the bedroom door before I jumped out of the window, put my arm around Cait, and helped Pierce maneuver her to the path. “They were right there. So close.” My breath hitched.

  His gaze met mine over the top of Cait’s head. “You’ll get your shot, but not until you have backup.”

  Cait turned toward me, semi alert. “You’re going to kill my parents, aren’t you?” Her words were blank, without emotion. I hoped it was a side effect from the drugs and not a head injury.

  “I…don’t know. I am going to question them about what happened with my parents. I deserve answers, Cait.”

  “They were going to kill me. I knew my mother hated me, but my father, crazy bastard that he is, I didn’t think… They’re greedy, awful people, El. And they probably need to be put down just like they do to rabid dogs, but—” The spark of lucidity drained from behind her eyes, and she stumbled into Pierce.

  “Doesn’t mean you’re like that.” Pierce understood the panic in Cait’s words.

  I’d totally missed it. Too involved with my own issues, damn it. I pulled her into a light hug, helping Pierce keep her upright. “It’s not the genes, it’s what you do with them that counts. And you’re doing lots of good things. The right things. I’ve touched your mother’s energy, Cait. You know first-hand about the traps she puts on doors and windows, malicious evil locks that they are. You’re nothing like her.”