Tall, Dark and Paranormal: 10 Thrilling Tales of Sexy Alpha Bad Boys

by Opal Carew

  Until Adam, or even Mandenauer, got here, I needed to keep Henri away from Luc.

  Henri licked my neck. I fought the gagging reflex. “Tallient, despite his holier-than-thou attitude, chose himself over his family without a quibble.”

  Was that why Frank had become so obsessed? Grief and guilt did funny things to a person’s mind. I should know.

  “We have time before Adam comes, and I want to discover if screwing a moon goddess will give me any power over the moon.”

  “I don’t have any magic. My name is just a name.”

  “Then you’re dead.” He laughed. “But that was my plan anyway. I just want to make sure.”

  He ground his erection against me; then he yanked off his shirt. He looked so much like Adam, my eyes burned. After this, would I ever be able to be with Adam again without remembering Henri?

  I’d be dead soon; the worry was moot. One less thing.

  Henri fisted his hand in my shirt and tore it down the middle. His body was so close to mine, he didn’t see the fleur-de-lis chain, but he certainly felt it when the silver touched him.

  I heard the hiss, smelled flesh burning, even as he howled and spun away.

  My gaze lowered to his stomach, where the image of a dozen tiny French crosses had been scalded into his skin. I’d be able to tell them apart after all.

  “What the hell?” he shouted. “Where you get that?”

  “Adam.”

  “Someone will pay.” He turned toward the bathroom.

  I vaulted after him, grabbed his arm. “No. Come on, let’s, uh, do it.”

  He shook me off as if I weighed no more than a fly, and I stumbled. Before I could regain my balance, he’d opened the bathroom door. A roar of fury made my ears ring.

  Luc was gone.

  Henri backhanded me. I flew across the room, crumbling in a heap near the bed.

  “Where did he go? How did he get out?”

  There were no windows in that room. My only thought was a trapdoor somewhere. No wonder the child hadn’t fought against going into the bathroom. Clever, clever boy.

  I shook my head as Henri advanced, and stopped midmovement when my ears began to ring again. He’d hit me pretty hard.

  He pulled me to my feet by the hair. Damn, that hurt. But not as much as when he wrapped his hands around my throat. I choked, clawed at his fingers, saw black dots. But my life didn’t pass before my eyes. Only Adam’s face, and then I heard his voice. “Let her go, Grandpere. Now.”

  The weight on my chest lightened. I could breathe just a little.

  “What will you do?” Henri murmured. “I wonder.”

  I tried to speak, to tell Adam he didn’t have to choose, but my voice was gone.

  “He will do nothing.”

  Mandenauer’s voice. How many people were in this cavalry?

  “It would make my day, as they say, to blow you back to hell. Let her go.”

  I was falling and someone caught me. Before I opened my eyes I knew it was Adam. I recognized the gentleness of his touch, the strength in his arms.

  “You okay?”

  I nodded, wincing at the pain in my throat “Luc—”

  “He’s fine. Used an escape hatch under the sink.” Adam lifted one shoulder. “Can’t trust a beast to follow the rules forever.”

  He’d always known Henri would come one day.

  “Where’s is he?” I asked.

  “We ran into him coming up the road. He wanted to rescue you with guns blazing, but I convinced him to wait for us next door.”

  Soothed by the knowledge that Luc was fine, I managed to force back the dizziness. Cassandra waited in the hall with a willowy blonde, who wore hot pink shorts and an electric blue tank top. Talk about bright. I was dizzy again.

  Henri sat on the bed, Mandenauer’s pistol stuffed in his ear. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

  “How?” The word dissolved into coughing, so I just pointed at Cassandra.

  “I got worried when I didn’t hear from you. Came to the mansion just as Adam stumbled in.”

  “Grandpere was insane with the idea I’d sold him out.” Adam couldn’t stop touching me. I sat on the floor, still a little woozy, and he knelt at my side, holding my hand.

  “Insaner, you mean?”

  “If that’s possible. He knocked me out.” Adam’s mouth tightened. “When I came around, I knew he’d gone after what mattered to me most.”

  “Luc.”

  “And you.”

  I blinked. But now was not the time to examine his sudden change of heart.

  “Why is he so obsessed with Diana?” Cassandra asked. She didn’t know about the goddess-of-the-moon part of the curse, so I told her.

  “That bears looking into.”

  “I’m not magic,” I protested.

  “We’ll see.”

  “She’ll leave,” Henri blurted. “They always do. Your wife couldn’t bear it. The woman had no guts. Or at least she didn’t when I was through with her.”

  Shock spread over Adam’s face. He hadn’t been lying when he’d said she’d left and never come back. He just hadn’t known she was dead.

  My shirt hung in two pieces, and I tied them together under my breasts, which was the best I could do. With Adam’s help, I got to my feet. “Fix him,” I said, voice hoarse.

  Henri scowled. “I don’t want to be fixed.”

  “They never do.” Mandenauer nodded to the woman. Henri reared up from the bed, and Adam left me to shove him back down. He hovered over his grandfather nose to nose. The resemblance was downright creepy.

  “You like so much the choice, here’s yours. Be cured or die.”

  Henri’s top lip curled back. “I choose to die.”

  He banged his hands against Adam’s chest Adam flew into a nearby wall and slid to the floor. Henri ducked as the old man fired, and the bullet plowed into the bed.

  Adam scrambled up, but Henri was already streaking toward the door. The blonde stood in his way. I tensed in expectation of her flying through the air next. Instead, she slammed the palm of one hand against his forehead.

  Henri jerked as if in pain. “You’re like me.”

  “Not really,” she said, and her eyes closed.

  Henri appeared frozen. Adam, Cassandra, and I gathered closer to watch.

  “What’s she doing?” I asked.

  “Magic.” Mandenauer didn’t appear happy about it.

  “Cool,” Cassandra said. “What kind?”

  “I have no idea. According to a dead old native woman, Elise has been blessed, though I cannot see it.”

  “She’s your werewolf cure?” Adam asked.

  “Ja.”

  “And she’s a werewolf.”

  “Ja.”

  “But you haven’t killed her.”

  “She is different.”

  “How?”

  “No demon,” he said simply.

  “That would be handy,” Cassandra murmured.

  Mandenauer shot her a suspicious glare, but she just smiled.

  A thud drew our attention to Henri and Elise. He lay on the floor, twitching. She stared at him, uncertain, one hand fiddling with a tiny white wolf icon she wore around her neck; then slowly she turned up her palm to reveal a tattoo in the shape of a pentagram.

  “What’s with that?” I asked.

  Elise blinked as if she’d forgotten we were there. “I received it in the Land of Souls.”

  I glanced at Cassandra, who shrugged. “Not a voodoo land.”

  “Ojibwe,” Elise said. “Another time, another place, different werewolves.”

  “I thought a pentagram was protection against a werewolf,” I said. “Although from what I’ve heard, it doesn’t work.”

  “According to legend, the points ascendant are benevolent.” Elise held up her hand so we could see she was one of the good guys. “Descendant points indicate evil.” She returned her attention to a still unconscious Henry. “Something’s wrong.”

  “What?” Adam demanded
.

  “Usually I touch a werewolf and the demon is gone. They’re human again.”

  “Just like that?” I asked.

  “Pretty much. I see their soul on the other side of darkness. A faint light that becomes brighter and brighter until it fills my mind and theirs.”

  “But not this time?”

  “I saw his soul, but it wasn’t very bright. Kind of hazy and gray.”

  “He wasn’t much of a human to begin with,” Adam said. “Getting his soul back isn’t going to change that.”

  “Maybe,” Elise said, but she didn’t sound convinced.

  “Do the cured werewolves remember what they did?” I asked.

  “No. The big problem has been trying to explain to them why they’ve woken up in a different century and enabling them to live in this one.”

  “What do you do?”

  “We have a branch specifically created to deal with those issues,” Mandenauer said.

  Henri’s eyes opened. They were different now, no longer evil but haunted.

  “Oh, God,” he whispered, his voice quavering. “I can hear than screaming.”

  He slapped his hands over his ears and started to scream himself.

  Elise grabbed her medical bag, put on gloves, then used a hypodermic needle on Henri. He went limp again. We stared at the man on the floor. No one spoke for a very long time.

  “He has his soul back,” Elise said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Only someone with a soul would care about those he’s killed. Which is why none of them remember what they’ve done. I think if they could, they’d go mad.” Elise cast a considering glance in my direction as she snapped off the gloves. “Maybe you should touch him.”

  “Me?” My lip curled.

  “This goddess-of-the-moon thing might help.”

  “I’ve touched him. Well, he’s touched me. Nothing happened except nausea. Names may have power, but I don’t.”

  “His soul is restored. Perhaps your touching him now would be different.”

  I hesitated, but Adam looked at me with such hope, I sighed. “Fine.”

  Kneeling, I put my palm against Henri’s head as Elise had.

  Nothing.

  I shut my eyes, opened my mind, got a little creeped out to be so close to him while unable to see, and opened them again.

  “Zip,” I said.

  Elise joined me. “Let’s try it together.”

  She pressed her fingers to Henri’s forehead, too. A jolt, like an electric shock, made his body jump. I yanked back, and so did she.

  “Hell. I’d forgotten how much that hurts.” Elise lifted her gaze to Mandenauer’s. “He’s still a werewolf.”

  “How can you know that?” Adam demanded.

  “When we touch, skin to skin, we know.” She rubbed her brow. “Major ice-cream headache.”

  Henri appeared unaffected by everything we’d tried. I wondered what she’d doped him with and how long it would last.

  Elise dropped her hand. “I don’t know what to do. This hasn’t happened before.”

  “You’re forgetting Damien,” Mandenauer said.

  “Who the hell is Damien?” Adam demanded.

  “He was a werewolf,” Elise answered, “but he was cursed by an Ozark Mountain magic woman to get his soul back.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a curse to me,” I said.

  “The lycanthropy stayed. He was cursed to shift, to hunt, to kill, all the while knowing exactly what he was doing but unable to stop.”

  “I can see where that would suck.”

  “We need to make a decision,” Adam said.

  I glanced up and saw what he meant. The sun was going down.

  Chapter 41

  “Stand back.” Mandenauer pointed his gun at Henri’s head.

  “Old man, you try my patience,” Elise said

  Confusion swept over his face. “What did I do?”

  “You can’t shoot someone with a soul.”

  “Since when?”

  Her mouth moved as if she was counting to ten. I kind of thought she was. “We’ve been over this. Put the gun away.”

  “Never.” But he did lower it. “What do you suggest? A mad werewolf, soul or no, is not something I plan to let run free.”

  “I’m with him,” Adam said.

  Elise stared at Henri as if he were a brand-new science experiment. “I wish I could cage him until I’m certain what we’re up against.”

  “I’ve got a cage,” I said.

  “I’d forgotten,” Mandenauer murmured, and Elise shot him a glare.

  “That’s not something that should be forgotten.”

  “I’m ancient.” He sniffed. “Sometimes I forget.”

  “One day you’ll forget to shoot the bad guys, and then you’ll be dead.”

  “Perhaps.” He didn’t appear concerned. “We must hurry and incarcerate Henri before the sun disappears.”

  A flurry of activity ensued, followed by a frantic trip to the mansion; then we practically dragged Henri through the swamp, and tossed him into the cage. Not a minute too soon.

  I turned the key in the padlock as he came awake with a howl of agony. His body bent; his clothes tore; hair sprouted from every pore. I’d seen him change from wolf to man; now I watched as he went from man to wolf. That had to hurt

  His too human eyes peered at us from behind the bars. When I’d seen them before they’d been full of hate and hunger. Now the hunger was there, but the hate was gone. He paced back and forth, whining, pawing the ground, then throwing himself against the bars until he bled.

  “Give him the serum, Elise,” Mandenauer ordered.

  She’d already pulled a vial from the pocket of her shorts and snapped gloves onto her hands once more. Another migraine she didn’t need.

  “What’s the matter with him?” I asked.

  “The hunger is maddening. On the night of the full moon I have to run as wolf. Without this,” she held up the vial, “I’d kill. I wouldn’t be able to help myself. For him, the same thing must happen under the crescent moon.” She shook her head. “One night a month is bad enough.”

  “Why is he whining?” I resisted the urge to cover my ears, the pathetic noise grating on my nerves like sandpaper.

  “Killing sickens him, but he can’t resist the desire.” Elise walked to the cage, and Henri slammed against it right in front of her.

  “Be careful,” I said.

  “He can’t hurt me. I’m a werewolf already.”

  In a lightning-fast movement, she reached inside and grabbed Henri’s snout. Then she poured the contents of the vial down his throat. When she was through, he actually licked her hand before falling asleep.

  “Does Damien still get furry every full moon?” I asked.

  “My touch cured him.”

  “But you can’t cure yourself?”

  Something flickered in her eyes, and she looked away. “Not yet.”

  “And Henri? What’s his problem?”

  “I’m not sure. I’d like to take him back to the lab and figure that out.”

  “No,” Adam said flatly.

  “I can fix him,” Elise insisted. “I haven’t spent much time in the lab since this.” She lifted her palm. “Works better than any medicine. But not so long ago, I lived there. I’m sure I can discover what his secret is.”

  “You can’t kill him. If he dies, I’m cursed.”

  “The curse might be lifted. His soul is restored.”

  “The only way to know is for him to die. I’m not willing to take that chance.”

  “He’ll be safe with me. You should see the compound we built. Impregnable this time.”

  “This time?” I asked.

  “Last one went boom. But the werewolves survived the blast.”

  “That really sets my mind at ease,” Adam muttered.

  Cassandra, who hadn’t said a word since we’d gotten here , moved closer to the cage. “I think I might know why your cure didn’t work.”<
br />
  “I’m all ears,” Elise said.

  “Henri was made a loup-garou through voodoo, not by science or by being bitten.” Cassandra stared at each of us in turn. “A voodoo curse can only be removed by voodoo.”

  My heart kicked against the wall of my chest. “You can fix him? Why didn’t you say so?”

  “Not me.”

  “Who?”

  “Only the one who placed the curse can take it away.”

  My shoulders slumped. “She’s gotta be long dead.”

  “Exactly.” Cassandra’s eyes met mine. “But the dead can rise.”

  “Zombie.”

  Elise’s eyebrows shot toward her silky blond hair. I was amazed that in her profession she could still be surprised.

  “Zombies are dangerous,” Mandenauer said. “And unpredictable.”

  “You’ve seen one?” Cassandra asked.

  “I have.”

  “You know someone who can raise a zombie?”

  “I did.” He sniffed.

  “That means he killed the guy,” Elise said. “Grandfather, sometimes it’s better to keep them alive.”

  “Wait a second.” I held up a hand. “He’s your grandfather?”

  That the head werewolf hunter had a granddaughter who was a werewolf was a little hard to digest.

  “Yes,” Elise confirmed. “Neither one of us is too happy about it.”

  I could imagine.

  Adam turned to Cassandra. “Tell me about raising the woman who cursed my family. Could you do it?”

  “Not me, no. I’d need to find a practitioner powerful enough to perform that kind of magic. I’m not even sure it’s possible to raise someone who’s been dead that long.”

  Adam’s shoulders slumped. I moved closer and slipped my hand into his.

  “Until then, let me try,” Elise urged.

  I understood why Adam didn’t want to give anyone power over Henri. In relinquishing his grandpere, Adam relinquished control over his own and Luc’s destiny. But we’d exhausted our options. Protecting Henri wasn’t getting us anywhere. We needed the experts’ help.

  Adam must have thought the same thing, because he squeezed my hand and said, “Okay.”

  The night passed; the sun rose; Henri became a man again. A very crazy man.

  Elise was forced to sedate him to get him back to the compound in Montana. She’d been right. The knowledge of all he’d done had sent him over the edge. He did a lot of moaning and muttering. If I hadn’t almost been one of his victims, I might have felt sorry for him. As it was, I was glad to see him go.