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

by Opal Carew

  If she committed her heart and something happened to her beautiful Quinn… She knew her heart would not survive this time.

  Sliding off the bed without jarring her head or her stomach, she went to the kitchen and mixed a virgin Bloody Mary, adding mint for her stomach and rue for her head. She felt a little better after finishing the glass, enough to banish all thoughts of the physical and concentrate solely on the spiritual.

  Down the hall, she knelt before her altar, the familiarity of the tools comforting. The wand from the walnut tree in Benevento, the black cauldron she hadn’t used to cook food for centuries, the athame her father had made for her.

  After lighting the candles she made from beeswax, she opened the circle.

  “Great Mother Goddess Uni, from whom all gifts emanate. I give thanks for your blessings.”

  A whisper of power brushed against her arus, like a cat rubbing against her legs. It soothed her jangled nerves, gave her a sense of serenity she sorely needed.

  With a tiny yank, she pulled the nail, in its key form, from around her neck and held it in her hands. Wrapping her fingers around it, she felt it transform, then placed it on the altar.

  “Goddess Menrva, whose wisdom is all-knowing, I am humbled by your faith in me to watch your most precious gift. Accept my humble words as offerings, Great Mother Goddess Uni. Grant Your protection to my children and my loved ones. And give safe passage to those no longer with us.”

  Poor sweet Tullia. Why her?

  It was a question she knew better than to ask the Goddesses because, sometimes, there were no answers.

  And in her darkest moments, Serena thought maybe, just maybe there were no answers because the Involuti, the founding deities of the Etruscan pantheon, had deserted them.

  After she finished the prayer and banished the circle, Serena fell to the floor and let herself weep for Tullia’s death, her tears pooling in front of the altar. Another offering.

  Several minutes later, after she’d worn herself out, she dried her tears and took a deep breath. She had work to do. She couldn’t put it off any longer.

  In the office, she picked up the heavy black phone on the desk and called Madrona and Furia first. Her daughters would have only a vague notion of what had happened. Their Gifts, arrested at the time of the curse, were spotty.

  The phone rang once before Maddie picked it up, her brisk hello erasing the lingering memories of her daughters’ screams.

  “Hello, sweetheart, how are you today?”

  “Mama! I was going to call you today. We haven’t heard from you for so long and we both felt something last night. How are you? Are you okay? What’s going on?”

  Goddess, Maddie could heap the guilt thicker with just a few words than Serena could ever hope to. Of course, they’d had five-hundred years to perfect their technique. But she wasn’t ready to answer her daughter’s last question yet.

  “I’ve missed you, Maddie. What trouble are you and your sister getting into now?”

  “Nothing much lately. Donal is a more-effective watchdog than the others you’ve sicced on us before. The bookstore is doing well, and Furia’s finally agreed to close that burlesque club and open a respectable business. How is everything up there?”

  She couldn’t avoid it any longer. “Tullia’s gone, honey. Last night. I don’t have details yet, but…”

  The silence from the other end of the phone throbbed with unspoken questions. Maddie always thought things through before she spoke, looked at all the angles.

  “Brian, too?”

  “I don’t know, sweetheart.” So much I don’t know.

  “Do you want us to come?”

  Oh, Goddess, yes. She missed her children. “Not yet. Soon. And Gabriel will be calling you. He’ll explain why.”

  “Mama, is there something going on that we need to know?”

  “I miss you, Maddie. You and Furia. I’ll see you soon.”

  She hung up before she broke down again. She had other calls to make, calls that wouldn’t be as easy.

  Sophia and Nerina would need to be contacted wherever they happened to be in Europe at the moment. She wouldn’t be able to notify Amalia. She had no idea where that girl was, though she’d tried for years to find her. She’d been the strongest after Dafne. She should have been the one to lead, not Serena. Serena didn’t have the strength.

  But Amalia had deserted them almost immediately.

  Serena would have to find her this time. Amalia needed to be told about Shea. The rest of the boschetta needed to be told about Shea.

  But not yet. Not until she’d met the girl.

  Then hopefully, together they could figure out how to break this miserable curse.

  * * *

  It took Shea a few minutes to open her grandfather’s journal.

  She had the ridiculous sense that her life was about to change. The knowledge lay so heavy on her chest, she could barely breathe.

  Get a grip, it’s just a book. No harm ever came from reading a book. At least not in real life.

  “Just open it already,” she chided. “Do you really think you’re going to find a page titled ‘How to Break the Curse’?”

  Forcing her fingers to obey, she cracked open the cover, nose wrinkling at the musty smell. Probably hadn’t been opened in decades.

  She gasped as the first few pages slid away from the rest of the book, thinking the damn thing was going to crumble before she got to read it. Then she realized the journal was more of a folio. The outer leather covers enclosed several paper notebooks, each labeled with a range of years. The first was 1941-1950.

  She read every word of the first few pages, brief entries that talked about his days in boot camp, preparing for World War II. Those pages were fascinating glimpses of a time long gone but not what she needed.

  After a while, she started skimming pages, looking for key words—Kyle, Celeste, son, curse.

  Her grandfather hadn’t been a real dedicated writer. He’d skipped whole years completely, wrote only a few passages for several years in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s.

  Her dad’s birth in 1960 started a slew of entries that continued through the last journal, dated 1990.

  Just the sight of her dad’s name made her chest tighten. Damn, she missed him.

  Taking a deep breath, she wanted to read everything her grandfather had to say about her dad, but knew it would have to wait until she had more time. Now, she was supposed to look for answers.

  She forced herself to skim her dad’s early years, his training as a grigorio, searching for anything that might have something to do with the curse. And then she found an entry from 1972.

  Kyle had the dream again last night. Woke up screaming so loud, thought he’d wake the neighbors. Third time this week.

  Rina and I haven’t talked about it, but she’s probably thinking the same thing I am. It’s been almost five hundred years since Paganelli’s curse took the streghe out of the natural order of life.

  Still no sign of the daughter foretold by D before her death. The daughter to break the curse.

  Unless K’s dream is a vision.

  He described Dario perfectly, down to the mole on his cheek. K says he sees Dario stick a knife into his chest then into the chest of a dark-haired girl. The girl screams in agony and K wants to stop it but he can’t. It’s like he’s watching it on television. He can see what’s happening but he’s not there.

  He says he doesn’t recognize the girl but I don’t believe him. Asked him to describe her, but it made him cry. Figured it wasn’t worth it. There’s so much pain in his eyes. He’s hiding something.

  Was it at dream? Or a vision of things to come?

  Maybe I don’t want know.

  Flipping through the pages with shaking fingers, she searched for any more references to the dreams, anything else her dad might have told his father.

  Was it her mother he’d been dreaming about?

  Or her?

  She found her answer several pages later.r />
  C&K stopped to say goodbye. They’re disappearing. They want the girl to have a life before K’s dream comes to pass. Before the curse is ended.

  A low drone buzzed in her ears and her temples throbbed, the start of a headache imminent.

  Setting the journal on the table in front of her, she swallowed a few times, trying to keep her stomach from revolting.

  That was her destiny? To die with a knife in her heart? At the hands of the monster who wanted her brother?

  No. That couldn’t be it. It was too…gruesome.

  But if that wasn’t how to break the curse then why had her parents run?

  And why hadn’t they told her about the curse? Had they been trying to protect her? Or had her parents been biding their time until she was old enough to be sacrificed?

  Her breath started to come in shallow pants, and her gaze fixed on the book in front of her.

  No. It’s not fair. It’s not…

  Vaffanculo. She couldn’t breathe.

  She sat there, trying to calm down, trying not to panic. Not to give in to the feeling that she was fighting a losing battle.

  So many questions. Too many questions. But she knew one thing for certain—her parents had believed she could break the curse.

  And they’d knowingly hidden her from the rest of the boschetta.

  The drone in her head grew, the voices buzzing. But they weren’t angry. No, they were upset.

  Damn, her head hurt. She rubbed her temples, trying to massage away the pain.

  She knew what the voices were trying to tell her. They wanted her to know her parents had loved her. Her dad had told her every night before he tucked her in bed. Her mom… Had her mom ever said it?

  She couldn’t remember her mom saying the words. Not once.

  Rising from the couch, she started to pace, accepting the still-sharp pain in her leg to bring a little clarity to her brain.

  Had her mom just been biding the time until she could sacrifice her daughter to end the curse?

  The voices responded with a surge of denial that stopped her in her tracks.

  No, she didn’t believe that, either. Her mom might have been aloof most of her life, but she hadn’t been plotting her own daughter’s death.

  Come to think of it, aloof wasn’t the right word. As a child, she remembered asking her dad why her mom was always so sad. She didn’t remember his exact response. Couldn’t remember if he’d actually answered her.

  As she’d gotten older, she’d translated sad into aloof. So many years she’d spent pissed off at her mom. At her distance, her unwillingness to connect. Her disapproval.

  Had her mom just been overwhelmed at the thought that her daughter would have to have a knife stuck in her heart to break the curse?

  “Shit, Mom. What the hell am I supposed to do?”

  Was she supposed to let a madman kill her to break a magical curse on five-hundred-year-old women she’d never met?

  She laughed but slapped a hand over her mouth when the sound escaped. She sounded crazy.

  Or course, she might be crazy. That would actually make more sense than believing her death could break a curse.

  But she wasn’t crazy and she knew it.

  If she broke the curse, would Dario stop pursuing Leo?

  Could she save her brother by letting Dario kill her?

  Fear made her shiver and she rubbed at the goosebumps breaking out all over her arms and legs. It made her stomach roll.

  Not fair. So not fair.

  “Yeah, like anything in life is fair,” she muttered. “What if…”

  She didn’t finish. She had too many questions and no answers. Would Serena or Madrona have answers? And to which questions?

  “Stop, just stop. You don’t have the answers and you’re going to make yourself sick with worry.”

  And she couldn’t afford that. They couldn’t afford that. She had to think about Leo.

  And Gabriel. Actually, she was probably thinking too much about that man. About his dark, steady eyes. Broad shoulders, wide chest and slim hips. She allowed herself one brief minute to fantasize about what she might do with Gabriel and a few uninterrupted hours. The feel of his body covering hers, his hair trailing along her skin…

  She stepped forward—and the throb of pain in her leg killed that daydream. Still, it didn’t hurt as badly as it had, and she bent her leg at the knee a few times, testing her mobility. She’d healed fairly quickly. That was a good sign.

  Walking out of the library, she heard the ping of metal on metal and followed the sound to the stairs in the dining room. In the stairwell, she heard their voices perfectly.

  “You’re doing fine, Leo.” Gabriel sounded pleased. “Just remember to move your feet when you parry. Try that move again. Keep your arms loose, drop your shoulders. There, like that. It makes it easier to maneuver the blades.”

  “Did you use these, Gabriel?” Leo’s sweet voice carried down to her.

  “No, I started with a bo staff. It’s not something you can carry around, but you can take that training and apply it to most anything you can pick up on the street.”

  She could practically hear Leo turning that one over in his brain in the short silence that followed. “You mean like sticks?”

  “Yeah and other stuff.”

  “Show me?”

  “Sure. Hang on a sec.”

  Not wanting to miss the show, but not wanting to distract them, she drew on her arus and whispered the spell to pull a glamour over her body, ignoring the slight throb in her temples. She crept up a few more stairs until she could see the room. And the two hot men and one little boy.

  Leo sat cross-legged on a corner of the huge mat covering half the floor space, his wide-eyed gaze glued to Gabriel. Quinn rested against the opposite wall, using his discarded shirt as a pillow. He looked tired, a sheen of sweat on his lean body. Quite the sight for any red-blooded female.

  But it was Gabriel who made her hormones dance the happy dance as he walked into the middle of the circle, shirtless, holding a long wooden pole. That chest should be classified a deadly weapon. Deadly to her common sense because she wanted to lick the beaded sweat off his skin.

  He’d taste amazing, she decided. Salty and hot and…

  Well, shit. She dragged her gaze away from his chest and checked out his weapon. And she didn’t mean the one in his pants, though, she decided after a quick check, maybe she—

  Bad Shea.

  Regretfully, she focused her gaze on the bo staff, looking almost delicate in his large hands, but, she knew from watching her dad train that the pole could be just as deadly as any gun.

  Gabriel started slow, the weapon slicing the air with a gentle whoosh. As he picked up speed, she could tell he’d logged many hours with the instrument.

  His movements were as graceful as any ballet and just as hypnotizing. Concentration shone in his eyes as he dipped and swayed and swung the staff, gaining momentum.

  Gabriel’s body moved in a dance of strength and power, and soon she wasn’t watching the staff. Instead, she watched the play of muscles in his broad shoulders as he swung the weapon over his head, let her gaze glide to his strong forearms as he brought the staff down hard, stopping just before it hit the ground.

  Then he crouched, drawing her gaze to the black cargo pants molded over his bulging thighs.

  She didn’t notice Quinn had moved until he was in the ring. He’d picked up another staff and now swung it at Gabriel’s head from behind. She managed to stifle her gasp just as Gabriel turned and blocked the swing.

  Grinning, Gabriel stood and the fight began in earnest. It looked almost choreographed, like something they’d worked on for years. But she knew by the amount of effort they put into it that this was no memorized routine.

  They fought each other with a ferocity that would have been frightening if she hadn’t known how much they cared for each other. Their staffs met with solid snaps as they tried to find the other’s weakness, moving all over the mat. They
never came close to Leo, though, and Shea knew that took a high level of skill.

  They must have fought for close to ten minutes, neither of them gaining the advantage for long.

  When it seemed like Gabriel had Quinn on the defensive, Quinn would retreat then attack with a burst of speed. Gabriel never faltered, no matter what Quinn threw at him. He wore the other man down, letting Quinn get close then beating him back.

  And when Quinn finally made one wrong move, Gabriel took out his legs with one swipe. Quinn hit the mat with a hard smack and Gabriel had the tip of the staff pointed at his neck in half a second.

  Quinn started to laugh and Gabriel’s intent expression faded into a smile that wasn’t any less fierce. He tossed the staff to the side and extended his hand to Quinn, who promptly tried to throw Gabriel over his head. But Gabriel must have known what Quinn had in mind because he braced and flipped Quinn away. Still laughing.

  “I never could get you to fall for that one.” Quinn stood and brushed himself off. “Good to know you haven’t lost your edge with age, buddy.”

  “You’re still telling, Quinn. Those cub eyes do you in every time.”

  “Yeah, but only because you know me too well. My enemies fear me, kid.” Quinn turned to wink at Leo then looked straight at Shea. “And the ladies love me.”

  She should have known the glamour wouldn’t work with these two, and she dispelled it with a huff. Jeez, Leo could probably see through it now.

  “Sissy, did you see? I’m going to fight like that.”

  Bittersweet emotion filled her chest at the excitement in Leo’s voice. Seemed he’d finally found something to talk about. Standing, she walked up the stairs, aware that Gabriel watched her every move.

  “That was beautiful.” She stopped at the top of the stairs, knowing if she got any closer she wouldn’t be able to resist sniffing the sweat on Gabriel’s body, his olive-toned skin shimmering in the bright sunlight from the skylights. The only other outward sign of his physical exertion was the faster pace of his breathing. She had to tear her gaze away before she drooled. “Did you and Quinn train together?”