by Ann Gimpel
Gemstone
A Zodiac Shifters Paranormal Romance
Ann Gimpel
Edited by
Kate Richards
Contents
Gemstone
Book Description: Gemstone
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
About the Author
Book Description: Deceived
Deceived, Prologue, Cataclysm
Deceived, Chapter One, Hell Yeah, It’s the Shifters’ Fault
Gemstone
A Zodiac Shifter Paranormal Romance: Gemini
Wylde Magick, Book One
By
Ann Gimpel
Copyright Page
All rights reserved.
Copyright © April 2018, Ann Gimpel
Cover Art Copyright © April 2018, Raven Blackburn
Edited by Kate Richards
Names, characters, and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or people living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced or shared by any electronic or mechanical means, including but not limited to printing, file sharing, e-mail, or web posting without written permission from the author.
Created with Vellum
Book Description: Gemstone
Niall’s nothing if not charming with his Irish brogue and dashing good looks. Jaguar shifter and player to the core, he’s a love ’em and leave ’em type. His job as a paramedic keeps him busy and offers under-the-table opportunities to splash a wee bit of magic around.
In a world where magic is all but invisible, Sarai and her family fly beneath the radar living on a small ranch outside Denver. She only takes her wolf form on the darkest nights when discovery is unlikely. Captured by a vampire consortium hellbent on world domination, she watches with horror as they siphon her power, diverting it to kill humans for sport.
An unnatural fog causes a ten-car pileup. Niall nearly chokes on the thick, malevolent power hanging around the accident site. Anger running just below boiling point, he takes his jaguar form and follows a scent track, making a discovery that changes everything. For once, he curses his curiosity and wishes he’d left well enough alone. Vampires are rising. Fueled by shifter magic, their evil threatens not just him but magic’s very existence.
Author’s Note
The constellation of Gemini depicts the twins, Castor and Polydeuces. Legendary dualistic zodiac sign, the discrepancy is actually between how the Gemini would like to be seen, and how he (or she) really is.
Curious, socially outgoing, and with a passion for novelty, Geminis are creative as all get out, but their follow-through sucks. The original commitment-phobes, Geminis have a tough time with romantic relationships because they’re always on the prowl for a better offer.
Chapter 1
Sirens blared, adding discordant notes to the squeal of spinning tires as the Medic One van careened around a corner. Adrenaline surged, and Niall MacLier pushed his right foot hard against the van’s floor. He wasn’t driving, but he wanted the ambulance to move faster. The radio sputtered, humming to life.
“Doc Hansen here. It looks bad. I’m ordering up another team.”
Niall exchanged glances with Meredith West, the driver and a paramedic just like him. Her black hair fell in one long braid down her back, revealing the clean lines of her face and her deep-blue eyes. She had a hot little body, but she was also very married and had made it clear she wasn’t interested in his cutesy suggestions they take a shag break in the back of the ambulance. She loved his Irish brogue, but that was where her fascination started—and stopped.
“What do you think?” he asked, without engaging the radio’s push-to-talk switch.
She shrugged, and the van slewed around another corner, tires stuttering on rain-slick pavement. “About the other team?” At Niall’s nod, she added, “Have the doc define bad.”
Niall clicked the two-way. “How many injured?”
“Hard to say. The incident is still unfolding. At least six, though.”
“Yeah.” Meredith angled her head toward the mic. “By all means, send another team. We may be hot shit, but that’s a lot for the two of us.”
Niall dropped the radio back in its cradle. “How much longer till we get there?”
She tapped the navigation screen. “Maybe ten minutes. I swear, you’re really dense when it comes to electronics.”
Maybe because they didn’t exist a few hundred years back.
He offered her a tight nod and undid his seatbelt so he could crawl into the back and get go-bags packed and ready. It removed the temptation to tell her what he really thought.
Or what he really was, which would be worse.
“Get back up here,” Meredith shouted. “It’s not safe.”
“Sure and I’ll be fine.” He added a dollop of calming to his words. Last thing he needed was her giving him a hard time. Because her attention was glued to the road, he employed short jolts of magic to bring what he needed within easy reach.
Rain pounded on the van’s roof. If the scene was as chaotic as he suspected it would be, he’d keep right on drawing power to save people. No one would notice the flickers of charged air, not in this downpour. And if they did, they’d chalk it up to a mini electrical storm.
As he stuffed supplies into duffel bags marked with a white cross and a caduceus, he wondered—again—if he’d done the right thing settling in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. It was the smallest place he’d ever lived, and people wanted to get up close and personal right away.
Except for Meredith.
He’d had a relatively simple time keeping to himself in New York and Los Angeles and Seattle and Denver, the four places he’d lived over the past couple hundred years since he crossed the Atlantic with a boatload of shifters just like himself.
They’d decided it was better if they spread out. America was a big place, and if they didn’t settle on top of one another, perhaps they’d be able to conceal what they were. Magic had almost been their undoing in the Old Country with the Church intent on shackling them to mute their ability. Burning or hanging followed on the heels of iron manacles.
He'd picked Glenwood Springs, a small community that butted up against extensive wilderness because he was sick of not being able to shift. If it was a mistake, it was one he’d jumped into with both eyes open.
Niall shivered. He made it a habit not to look back. Who the hell knew why sitting on the cold metal floor shook memories loose? The van lurched to a precipitous halt, accompanied by screeching brakes.
“Aye, and you’d drive better if you weren’t sexually frustrated,” he yelled in the general direction of the cab.
“Smarty pants,” she retorted. “Look out a window. It’s a fucking mess out there.”
He latched the duffels around his shoulders, crawled to the back door, and opened it. Maybe it was opening the door that unlocked his senses, but screams and moans and the hot, coppery stench of blood blasted him. Along with it came foul magic. Lots of it, throbbing in primitive patterns that chilled him to his bones. He wanted to dig deeper, determine where it was coming from, but Meredith planted herself in front of him, arms extended. “Toss me one of those kits.”
He jumped down and handed hers over. “Team or solo?”
She craned her neck. “Other van’s not here yet. I say we split up.” S
he keyed the mic to her communicator, and it chirped in his ear.
Resisting an impulse to rip the plastic earbud out, he said, “Fine by me, darling. I’m as close as your electronics,” and took off at a run for the first overturned vehicle.
He waited for her to follow him, complaining about the endearment, but it didn’t happen. He joined the group trying to free the driver from a smashed mini pickup. “One of you tell me what happened.” He infused compulsion into the request, turning it into a demand.
“Not sure,” a wraith-thin man with silver hair replied. “I mean, the weather was hideous, but all of a sudden this dense fog settled over us. I couldn’t see two feet in front of me.”
“Me, either,” another man chimed in. This one was younger with reddish hair cut close to his head.
“I pulled over,” the first man said. “Finding the side of the road was like reading braille. I overshot it. By the time I was parked, I heard cars smashing into one another.”
“Pretty much the same for me,” the younger man said. “I started to get out, but it sounded like bumper cars gone bad, so I stayed in my truck until I thought it might be safe.”
While the men talked, Niall took advantage of their attention being elsewhere and bent back the metal holding the driver prisoner. If he was playing it by the book, he’d have retreated to the van for a backboard. Instead, he scanned the unconscious man with magic for spinal cord deformities. Once he was convinced he wouldn’t cripple the man for life, he lifted him gently from the cab.
The lights of the second ambulance cut through fog and rain. Good, they could transport this guy to Valley View, Glenwood Springs’ only hospital. By now, he was positive fell power was responsible for the wreckage spiraling around him, but he had lives to save.
“Could one of you flag that ambulance and tell them I’ve got one to go?” Niall asked.
Both men turned away, and Niall did more poking and prodding, encouraging the unconscious man to rejoin the land of the living. If he was awake and talking—and moving his extremities—no one would insist on a backboard and cervical collar.
“Arrgh, I feel like shit,” the man moaned.
“’Twill be fine, mate. You banged your forehead on the windshield.” Niall leaned close. “Your guilty no-seatbelt secret is safe with me.”
The man’s blue eyes widened. He probably wasn’t much past eighteen, twenty at the outside. “Aw shit. Thanks. I was only going a couple blocks. Didn’t think—”
Niall closed a hand over his shoulder. “’Tis all right. I skip mine when I shouldn’t too.”
“W-where you from?”
“Ireland.”
The clomp of boots splashed over wet asphalt, and two men wearing paramedic uniforms rolled a gurney close, lowering it to ground level. Niall straightened. “He’ll be fine. Nothing broken. Maybe a mild concussion. They can clear him in the ER.”
“Want to help us load him?” The younger of the two paramedics asked.
“Sure, mate, but there’s way more to do.”
“He’s right,” the other paramedic said. “John and I have this. Get moving. We’ll be back as quick as we can. Christ. What a mess. This is like a ten-car pileup.”
“Yeah, and no one knows a thing, at least according to what the cops were saying over the radio,” the other paramedic muttered. Turning to his coworker, he said, “You get his shoulders. I’ll grab the legs.”
Niall loped into the storm before they started to ask about his assessment and what he’d done or how he’d extricated the poor sod from his broken truck. He could lie, but it was easier not to have to answer at all.
It was hours past nightfall when he finally finished triaging the injured. Meredith slogged toward him, her wet jacket clinging to her like a second skin. Sodden bits of hair stuck to her wet face. “Ready to blow this popsicle stand?” She tried for jaunty, but she sounded trashed.
“Only if you let me drive.” He held out his hand for the keys.
She fished them out of her slicker and tossed them his way. “No argument there, partner. I might fall asleep behind the wheel.”
“Want me to drop you at home?” They reached the ambulance, and he pulled the passenger door open for her.
“It’s against regulations, but yeah, that would be great. Hubby-boy can drive me back to the shop tomorrow to get my car.”
He closed her door and walked around to his side, climbing into the cab. He’d fired the engine and headed for the west side of town where Meredith lived in one of the newer developments when she said, “I’m beat and not processing all that well, but did the whole mess we just left seem odd to you?”
Not odd at all. Just a few supernaturals throwing their weight around.
“Odd, how?” he probed, wondering what had tipped her off. Once humans found out about him and his ilk, it wouldn’t be pretty. Last thing he wanted was a replay of his last years in County Donegal dodging clerics and the law.
Meredith dropped her face into her hands and dragged the heels of her palms down it. “I don’t know. Odd. The weather was bad, but everyone relayed variations on the same theme. A mystery fogbank blew up out of nowhere and surrounded them.” She shook her head. “It could be global warming, but I’ve lived here all my life and never heard of such a thing. Not that we don’t get fog, but it thickens gradually, not all at once. And it never gets so dense you can’t see anything, like this bunch claimed.”
“Climate change is doing some unusual things,” he murmured, intent on altering Meredith’s version of reality. “Look at all the tornadoes and hurricanes and freak snowstorms.”
She lowered her hands to her lap, staring at them. “Yeah. Maybe you’re right.”
“Only maybe?” he inquired.
“I guess you didn’t feel it, huh?”
“Feel what? I was pretty busy. So were you.”
“Something felt strange out there. Eerie. Like people were watching me, except I couldn’t see them. Every time I looked, nothing was there.” A nervous laugh rattled from her. “Don’t listen to me. Not sure what’s going on. I’ll be fine once I’ve fallen on my face and slept for twelve hours straight.”
“Of course you will be. It was rough tonight. Two died, and you ended up working on one of them.”
“Don’t remind me. Wouldn’t have been so bad if she’d been dead when I got there, but she wasn’t. And her two little kids were clinging to her, soaked in her blood and crying their eyes out. The rain would wash the blood away, but her severed artery just kept pumping it back out. I tried my best, but by the time I got there, she’d lost over half her blood. I—”
Niall reached across and gripped one of her hands. “It’s all right. We can’t save everybody.”
“I know, but I’ll see those two little girls’ faces until my dying day.”
Niall snaked a thread of soothing magic across the cab. At least he’d diverted her from thinking about the powerful enchantment she’d felt lurking from the sidelines. Some humans were far more susceptible to magic than others. Apparently, Meredith was one of the sensitive ones, which meant he’d either need to watch it or pair up with another of the twenty paramedics who worked the region.
In truth, he didn’t need to work. He’d lived plenty long enough to have amassed a fortune, but he’d wither away from boredom with nothing to do.
He drew the van to a stop in front of her house. The door flew open, and her husband ran toward them, a frantic look on his face. She pushed the van door out of the way, jumped down, and raced into his arms. Niall caught the sound of her sobbing as he reached across the cab and pulled her door shut.
He honked once to say goodbye and backed the top-heavy vehicle into a nearby driveway. As he pulled out of the warren of streets in Meredith’s housing development, his mind was a jumble. Magic had been so thick at the accident scene, he could have taken a bath in it. As it was, the ozone residue from expended power still burned his nostrils.
What the bloody fucking hell was going on?
Apparently, he’d been wrong.
By the time he’d returned the Medic One van to the shop and traded it for his nondescript Toyota, he had a plan. Plenty of night left, and it was still raining with no moon. He’d go home, leave the car, and shift. His jaguar senses were far more acute than his human ones, and now was the time to return to the scene—before the rain washed everything away and obliterated the scent track he hoped to find.
And follow.
Anticipation made his heart beat faster. He loved anything new. And having mysteries to solve was the absolute best.
“For Christ’s sake, I need to get over myself,” he muttered and reined the car back to a sedate thirty-five. For a moment there, he’d gotten up to sixty. This wasn’t about him and his fascination with novelty. It was about some other paranormal beings running amok and potentially making it impossible for the rest of them to keep on flying under human radar.
The world was a much smaller place than it had been two hundred years before, and he wasn’t certain where he’d go next. Maybe the Amazon jungle or a native village in some third world country. He’d be bored to tears in no time, but at least he wouldn’t have a bunch of hotshots with silver-and-lead-laced bullets gunning for him.
Much like vampires, silver and lead were his undoing. They wouldn’t kill him, but they’d immobilize him, so it was kind of the same thing. He parked the Toyota and hustled into his modest two-bedroom bungalow in the run-down part of town. Neighbors didn’t look too closely here—at anything—and that suited him just fine. Plus, the house backed onto acres of wilderness. Perfect for his jaguar to run free.