by C. D. Hersh
Eli sank back into his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “Aye, I can see the strength of youth in ye. But I dinna see the wisdom o’ age. Dinna ya know that all the keys in the land are not owned by one man?” Eli stood, drawing himself to his full height. For a moment, it seemed to Alexi that he grew bigger and menacing as he stared Rhys down. “I’ve more tae offer than ye ken, lad.” He held his right hand out. “I’d prefer tae be working with ye than agin ye.”
Alexi held her breath waiting for Rhys’ response. In the short time she’d known Eli, she realized she needed someone like him in her life. Someone to replace Baron. If Rhys refused Eli’s offer of friendship she might be forced to choose between them. She didn’t want to do that. Rhys looked at her. Please, she mouthed silently.
With a reluctant shrug, Rhys extended his hand to Eli. “For Alexi’s sake,” he said with resolve. As he clasped Eli’s big hand in his, Rhys added, “I hope she’s right about you.”
She hoped so, too.
His peace made with Eli, she managed to convince Rhys to go spend some time at his apartment so she and Eli could talk alone. As Rhys carried his dirty laundry out of Baron’s office, he stopped, kissed her on the top of the head, and handed her cell phone to her.
“I put my number on your speed dial. Hit one if you need to call me quickly.”
“You didn’t need to do that.”
“Precaution,” Rhys answered. “My youthful strength won’t be here to protect you—”
“So you thought you’d try some wisdom?”
“Can’t hurt.” He crossed the foyer to the front door, picked his Stetson off the hall table, then paused. “Check in with me so I know you’re okay.”
“Rhys.”
“Humor me. Just once.”
“Okay. Just once.” It was a small price to pay for a few hours of privacy. She set the phone alarm for one hour. It wouldn’t do to have Rhys busting in because she forgot to call. She removed the extra door key from the hall table drawer and handed it to Rhys. “Take this.”
He eyed the key. “Am I moving in?”
“No. I thought it might ease your mind to know you can get in without breaking down the door. Not that I expect you’ll need to.”
“Thanks.” Rhys pocketed the key, shifted the laundry basket to his hip, and embraced her.
Alexi struggled against him. “Not now. Eli might catch us.”
Rhys released her. “How long are we going to keep this a secret? I want the world to know how I feel about you.”
She tucked a wayward sock back into the basket. “I don’t know. I’m just not ready yet.”
“Soon, Lexi. Make it soon.” He kissed her cheek, opened the front door, and strode down the sidewalk, glancing back at her as he went. She watched him get into his truck and drive away.
“He’s a guid-looking mon, yer Rhys,” Eli said from behind her. “Too bad ye’ll have tae tell him ‘tis over.”
Chapter 24
The front door closed with a bang as Alexi whirled around to face Eli. “What?”
“A Promised One canna be involved with a non-shifter.”
“I’m not a Promised One,” she said vehemently. “I’m a cop, who just happens to own a Celtic magic ring.”
“Ye canna kindle a fire in yer breast unless yer able to follow it to the end, lassie. Ye were wrong tae start it,” Eli said, bringing the conversation back to the romantic relationship.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen. Baron died, and Rhys was there to comfort me. And when Sylvia—”
“Sylvia?” He spat the name out. “Ye dinna tell me that the daughter o’ the moonless night was entangled in Baron’s death.”
“She’s not, at least I don’t think so. She’s helping me track the killer so we can get Baron’s ring back.”
“Nae, lassie. Dinna believe she’s helping ye. That one helps nae one but herself.”
“But she said the Council told her to work with me. Well, not with me, because they said it’s too risky for her to shift and hunt Baron’s killer. That’s why they want me to do it alone.”
His ruddy cheeks flushed maroon and his gray eyes smoldered like ashen charcoal. “We’d nae be sending ye oot on yer own tae find a killer. Firstly, we don’t ken that much aboot yer powers. Secondly, I dinna even ken where ye were ‘til I got Baron’s letter.” He lumbered across the foyer, pacing like a caged bear. “She dinna come with any blessing from our Council.” He stopped and stared at her, concern etched across his face. “What else did the she-witch want ye tae do?”
She’d sensed Sylvia wasn’t to be trusted, but the depth of loathing Eli displayed took her by surprise. She’d trusted Sylvia because of her connection with Baron. To hear his closest friend call her a she-witch deepened her uneasiness about Sylvia, sending a knot plummeting into her stomach. “She’s not on the Council?”
“Mayhap she is on a council. She’s got the required abilities. Baron saw tae that. But she’s nae on ours.”
“She’s a rogue?” Her voice wavered, all her worst suspicions about Sylvia confirmed.
“She’s worse than a rogue. She’s a traitor.” Eli steered Alexi into the living room. “It wisnae enough tae become a rogue shifter herself, she tried tae sway Baron and yer family into evil as well. It’s the likes o’ her that we’ve been fighting for centuries. She’s black, Alexi. As black as they come.”
In her quest for information about Baron, she’d ignored the whorls of black she’d seen in Sylvia’s aura. Let her heart override her instincts. She shouldn’t have done that.
Legs quivering like gelatin, she plopped onto the couch. Everything made sense now: why Sylvia kept pumping her for family history, her birth date, her skill level. “She said the Council thought I had Promised One potential. She wanted to know my birth date.”
Eli sat on the couch next to her and laid his gnarled hand over hers. “Ye dinna tell her, did ye?”
“She asked if I’d reached the third level of shifting. Tested me to find out if I could see auras.”
“By the Druid’s beard, lassie.” The old man’s voice shook with anxiety. “Ye dinna tell her, did ye?”
“No.”
Eli sank back against the couch and exhaled in one giant whoosh. “Guid, lassie. Ye did guid.”
“Eli, what do you think she wants? Besides the ring?”
“I canna ken for certain, but tae have ye dead would be my guess.”
“She’s had plenty of opportunities to kill me, if that’s what she wants.”
“Then ye havenae served yer purpose yet, lassie. Trust me, when she’s nae more need for ye, she’ll do ye in a hirtbeat and not blink an eye ower it.”
A chill ran over Alexi. “I’ve never done anything to make her want me dead. I just met the woman.”
“‘Tis not who ye are, ‘tis what ye are that she hates.”
“A cop?”
“A shifter . . . from one o’ the most powerful lines o’ shifters in the history o’ the Turning Stones.” He raked his hands through his hair, standing many strands on end. “Baron did ye a great disservice hiding ye away. Ye should have been taken under the wings o’ the best on the Council and trained for yer destiny.”
There it was again, that nagging word, destiny. How she hated it. “What do you think my destiny is, Eli? Sylvia said Promised One. Baron only hinted at greatness. I’d like to know for sure where everyone else thinks my life is going. I’m pretty certain it won’t match my perceptions.”
Eli quirked a bushy eyebrow. “A bit crabbitt, are ye? Ye can’t just put your hand intae the creel, lassie, and take yer choice o’ flounders.”
“What the heck does that mean? Do you always talk in riddles?”
“You have tae deal with what life gives ye, Alexi. And ‘tis given ye a hard destiny tae fulfill.”
“I don’t want that destiny. I want a normal life, with a husband and kids. And a dog.” Normal people had dogs, didn’t they? “I want a dog,” she repeated, as if that would magically
alter her life.
“The dog ye can have. The rest, maybe not. Unless ye find a nice shifter tae marry. Which brings us back tae the start o’ this conversation. You have tae break it off with the lad.”
“I can’t.”
“Ye have tae, lassie. For his safety.”
“I can’t,” she repeated, knowing she would have to. “He’s my link to normalcy. I . . .” I love him.
“If ye care a’tall aboot him, ye have tae let him go.”
She hid her face from Eli and swiped at a tear. Eli tilted her chin back toward him. “What yer uncle said in the letter aboot ‘yer time had come’ . . . he meant ye were ready tae be introduced tae the Council as a potential Promised One. He would have wanted ye tae take yer place in the Society. ‘Tis what he was training ye for.”
“Then why did he wait until I was twenty-one to start? If this Promised One thing is so important, shouldn’t he have started as soon as my family was killed? So I could find their killers? Wreak godly Council revenge on them for killing my family and stealing their rings?”
“He probably waited for that verra reason. Revenge is never the right motive. And he ken from experience that rushing a young mentee tae full potential wisnae a guid thing.”
Alexi jerked free of Eli. “And why didn’t the Council do something? Why would I want to be associated with a bunch of people who didn’t investigate a triple murder?” She jumped to her feet, yanked off her bloodstone ring, and threw it at Eli. “I don’t want the life you’re proposing for me.”
Eli picked the ring off his lap and stood, towering over her. “Sit, lassie, and I’ll tell ye what I ken. What I think yer uncle’s reasons were for hiding ye away and waiting till ye were a grown woman tae start yer training.”
“I don’t care anymore,” she said petulantly.
He pushed her onto the couch. “Put yer ring back on,” he ordered, “and don’t take it off agin . . . for any reason. Yer in danger and I’m going tae tell ye why.”
She scowled at him and jammed the ring back onto her finger.
“When yer mither and faither and brother were killed, we couldnae believe the guid luck in yer escaping the fate. Baron, who was on the Council at the time, resigned his post and disappeared, taking ye with him. The Council did investigate the murders. We shoogled every rock and searched in every cranny for the slime that killed yer family. But they vanished like ye and Baron.
“They were killed on Samhain, you ken. The most powerful magic night o’ the year. We figured the culprits wanted the family dead for twofold purpose: tae stop the linage o’ the Jordan family, and tae seal the new ownership o’ the rings by stealing them on Samhain. Now that yer existence has been confirmed, yer in grave danger.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Whoever possesses a Turning Stone ring on Samhain becomes its owner.”
“Is that why Baron gave me my grandmother’s ring on Halloween?”
“Aye. Did he have ye read the inscription that night?”
She nodded. “Scared the heck out of me. I thought I was having a heart attack.”
“‘Tis a bit tae get used tae. Does it bother ye now?”
“No, I’m way past that point. Do you have to read the inscription on Samhain to make the ring yours?”
Eli rifled his hand through his hair again, bushing every strand higher, giving him the appearance of a wild man. “I canna believe yer uncle left ye so uninformed. ‘Tis not like him tae footer aboot and do such a thing.”
“Maybe he planned a crash course before he died,” Alexi suggested. “You were telling me about Samhain and the inscription.”
“The intersection o’ Samhain and the reading makes the bond between ring and owner stronger and brings the most magic oot o’ the wearer, but isnae necessary tae become the owner. If someone possesses a ring before Samhain ‘tis verra easy tae break the bond between ring and possessor. You simply steal the ring. But after Samhain, and especially after the inscription has been read on Samhain, tae separate the ring from its owner requires the owner tae be killed.”
A horrible thought crossed her mind. “Does that mean that if I don’t find Baron’s ring before Halloween, I’ll have to kill the wearer?” The thought of premeditated murder chilled her.
“Aye, it does, lassie.”
She’d hoped she could just find him, knock him out somehow, and take the ring. She wasn’t sure she could kill in cold blood. Murder would cause her to lose her job. The city frowned on cops killing citizens.
“Have ye any idea who might have the ring?”
“I’ve seen him twice now—once as what I believe is his true form and once mimic shifted. I also think he mugged someone as Baron.”
“What aboot putting oot an APB thing on him?”
“I thought about that, but if he’s shifting forms, it’s just a shot in the dark.”
“Shifting like that increases his risk o’ retaining parts o’ his shifted forms, which’ll put him in a semi-permanent shifted shape.”
“A semi-permanent shift could make him easier to track, unless he was mixed in with more shifters—like the thirty or so I ran across in a bar this morning. Even though I could sense all of them were shifted, it was nearly impossible to separate them.”
“Thirty shifters? By the Druid’s beard! What were sae many doing in one place?”
“I wondered the same thing. Could word about Baron’s missing ring be circulating among the rogues?”
“Aye. Ye can be certain o’ that. Sylvia’d have her lackeys oot in force hunting agin ye. Hedging her bets in case ye dinna come through.”
The odds were getting worse. Not only did she have to protect her back against Sylvia, she had more shifters to worry about, no apparent backup, and only six days to retrieve the ring before she had to kill someone. “So how do you propose I catch him and give everyone else the slip?”
“I canna say for certain, but we’ll have tae be canny aboot it. Let me sleep on it and I’ll come back in the mairning with an answer.”
“I work tomorrow.”
“Not any more. Along with the lad, ya need tae get rid o’ the job. You’ve only six days tae catch a killer, and, if I’m right, only six days tae prepare tae save yer ownself.”
“Wait a minute. You can’t expect me to quit my whole life. I won’t do it.”
“Whether ye do it or not, yer life’s in danger. Tae my way o’ thinking, it’s better tae fight with everything ye got at yer disposal, having no millstones round your neck.”
“Rhys isn’t a millstone.”
”Have ye told him what ye are? Has he accepted yer true self?
“No.”
“Then he’s weighing ye down sure as he is. Git rid o’ him, lassie. ‘Tis time ye soared.”
Time I soared? Just what does the old man know about me that he isn’t telling?
“We’ll start yer testing when I return.” Eli headed toward the front door.
She trailed after him. “Testing? For what?”
“Tae confirm yer the next Promised One.”
After Eli left she locked the door behind him. If only the sun wouldn’t rise tomorrow. It would be the only way she could escape what appeared to be an inevitable fate.
Chapter 25
“Alexi? Where are you?” Rhys dropped the clothesbasket on the entry floor, placed his Stetson on the hall table, locked the door, and set the alarm.
“Upstairs, Rhys. I’ve got a surprise for you.”
He headed up the stairs, lined with vanilla-scented votive candles. The flames cast flickering light across the stair risers. As he climbed the steps he blew the fire hazards out. Lexi needed a lecture on safety. The number of votives on the steps could burn down the house.
The votives gave way to rose petals and pillar candles burning on the landing side table. With a smile on his face, he blew those candles out, too. Suspecting what Alexi’s surprise was, he removed his shirt as he entered the bedroom.
The roses led to the bath
room door. Rhys slipped off his shoes and socks and eased the door open. Alexi lay in the tub, bubbles piled around her to her chin. The flicker of candlelight softened her features. His groin tightened as he imagined her naked body beneath the cloud of bubbles.
He leaned casually against the doorjamb. “Hello, beautiful,” he whispered.
She gave him a shy smile, then scooped a handful of bubbles and blew them at him. “Want to join me?”
Alexi’s face went dreamy as he dropped his pants and sauntered over to the tub. He planned to ease his way slowly into the bubbles, but when he got within arm’s length, she rose from the water to make room for him. The bubbles slipped seductively down her body exposing her. He stepped over the edge and then lowered her into the tub. Warm water slid over their bodies, the bubbles releasing all friction between their skin.
He groaned as he slipped up and down over Alexi. “God, woman, you drive me crazy.”
“It makes me crazy, too.” Alexi tipped her head back and covered his mouth with hers.
They moved in rhythm, the water slapping against the tub and his backside in a pulse that set Rhys on fire. Their bodies rocked in perfect harmony.
Then he felt it.
The beat shifted. The rhythm became ragged. The friction between them built, warming his skin, then heating it, and finally searing his molecules, melting their atoms together. It was happening again—like it had in the hotel.
He opened his eyes and watched Alexi straining beneath him toward orgasm. Pumping faster, he held his breath as he waited for the exchange—the proof he sought that they were soul mates. It came in an explosion of red and green.
Alexi’s eyes flew open as Rhys thrust harder and harder. His arms braced on the sides of the tub, he pounded against her as if he were trying to get under her skin. Something was different this time. Good, but different. She felt like she was melting into Rhys—becoming one person.
Determined to get the most from her last time with him, she took herself to the limits of her strength. She wanted everything he had to give her. Every ounce of his passion. This moment would have to last a lifetime.