Valyn_Mystic Protectors_An Angelic Paranormal Erotica

by Kathi S. Barton

  “You won’t.” Tholan asked him if he was willing to take the chance on him making one. “I am. I have more faith in you than I do anyone else, Tholan. But you’re too sated in being here for so long. You need to stretch out your wings and be with humans for a while. It won’t be so bad, and you might grow to like it.”

  “I don’t even think that is possible.” He wanted to sob, something that he’d not done in decades, not since he’d made the mistake. “I guess it’s my fate to go there and be with a human.”

  “It is. And you will thank me for it when you are finished.”

  Boss stood up and so did he. There was no hope for it; in four days he’d be with a human for the rest of its life. Whatever was he going to do?

  “Don’t think on it too hard, my good man. You’ll make yourself sick for nothing.”

  Tholan couldn’t even work, he was so stressed about this. The computer was turned off, so there weren’t any messages coming in for him to see to. He wished that he could convince someone that this was going to be a fatal mistake. Turning on his computer to try and work, he saw that not only were there no messages for him to look into, but there wasn’t anything for him to do now that the schedule was taken care of.

  When his shift was over, he made his way to his room. It was as stark as his office, no clutter around like the others had. Tholan supposed it wasn’t actually clutter, but he didn’t even have the first picture hanging on the wall, nor curtains over the massive window.

  His bed had a mattress that he’d had for several years, now lumpy and flat in places. His blankets were a pale brown, not a bright color, and there were no rugs in his room to cover the cold floor. His closet was devoid of clothing, and he only had one pair of boots that he hadn’t ever worn because he was saving them for when the ones he had on wore out.

  “Oh, what am I to do?” He laid down on the lumpy mattress and stared up at the ceiling. Even the light in this room was a single bulb that didn’t even have a cover over it. “What am I going to do with all the colors and fast-moving things when I get there? How many changes have I missed over the years that I will not know? The few times I have been there, I was only there but a moment or two, and that was too much. Being there for a lifetime will be like a prison sentence to me.”

  He knew that he was going a little too far with his woes, but he did not want to mess up again. That was the real issue. He hadn’t yet forgiven himself for what he’d done. Tholan wasn’t even sure that he ever would. Taking a life—it’s what he’d done. And there was nothing anyone could have done about it.

  Instead of going back to his computer, he pulled a book from the shelf and began to read it. If the others knew what sort of stories he read in his room, they would surely make fun of him.

  Tholan loved a good romance story, the kind that some of the humans, he heard, called bodice rippers. It was an apt name, he thought, and pulled it open to the chapter he’d been reading last night before he’d gone to sleep.

  It was a common story. The man saved the woman from some dastardly deed and ended up breaking her heart in some way. And before he was able to redeem himself with her, he had to walk through hoops. But it was worth it in the end. They lived happily ever after.

  Tholan wasn’t sure that was the reason he read the books that he did. The happily ever after part. He knew that he’d never have that sort of ending. He wasn’t like the others, the ones that had found mates and could make them happy. Tholan had never been responsible for anyone but himself. Taking care of a woman would be difficult if the women he knew on the compound were any indication. They were frightful to him in the ways that they said and did what they wanted. He rolled to his side and laid the book on the floor.

  Tholan knew that he wasn’t a bad looking man. He was tall, like the others of his kind. He had a good smile when he had the occasion to use it, which hadn’t been much in the last few decades. And his face was smooth when he wished it to be. Reading his books had alerted him to that. Women didn’t care for scruffy.

  Not that any woman would come to him. He would just be the man that he was forever. Tholan hated feeling sorry for himself, so he got up and shook off the mood. Looking around his room, the only one that he’d ever had, he wondered about adding a little to it.

  He could go to the other plane and get himself a nice comforter. That would put him with the humans, and perhaps it wouldn’t be as bad as he thought. Sitting down again, he tried to remember when he’d last seen one of the others, how they were dressed.

  Standing when he had on a pair of blue jeans and a shirt, he thought about how he looked. Fashionable, yet not too standout-ish. Yes, he was ready to go. Now to get some money. He had plenty of that, and he’d be set.

  Sitting on his bed, he thought this was one of the worst ideas he’d ever had. He didn’t know why he felt that he could do this. Putting his book back on the shelf, he almost missed the cover on the next book in the series.

  It was of a beautiful woman and a man, much like him, tall and dark haired. The woman wore a gun. She had on jeans and a T shirt that outlined her body so that there was no doubt that she was a woman. But it was what was in the background of the two of them together that drew his attention.

  There was a dove in the tree, its feathers brilliantly white. The green around her made her seem all the more pretty. He could see no reason whatsoever why there was a dove there, nor how to explain how the snowy white feather was in her mouth.

  Tholan put it away—he was being silly. He was sure that once he read the book, it would come abundantly clear why she was there. He just wasn’t going to think about it now—he still had half of the other book to read. Yes, he wasn’t going to think about it, and took himself to the little town they were all living in.

  ~*~

  “Prisoner number four four eight, come to the front.” PJ moved to where she’d been told. “Prisoner number four four eight, come with me.”

  She followed behind the man in front of her. PJ had been known as four four eight for so long, she sometimes had to remind herself that she was a real person with a real name. Parker Jane Brooks. Most of the time she had spent on the outside she’d been called by her initials. But she was going to take on a new life now, and she’d go by Parker.

  Today she was being set free. After nine years, eleven months, and twenty-three days, she was going to be free. She didn’t have a clue what she was supposed to do now, other than to abide by the rules and do nothing that would send her back. Not that she’d done anything anyway, but in order for her dad to live out his last days a free man, she’d taken the fall for him.

  Parker Daniel Brooks had been the greatest man she knew. PD to his buddies, to her he was always Da. He’d died the second year she’d been in here, and she’d not been able to go to his funeral. And other than her attorney, telling her that she had inherited his estate, she’d not had a single visitor for the last seven years.

  Being in the wrong place at the wrong time was an understatement. He wasn’t there at all. The robbery of the little liquor store had come as a huge surprise to him, as well as her stepmother. But they had a witness that had said he was there, and that he’d held a gun on the owner until he was able to leave with all the money and a bottle of cheap wine.

  First of all, Da didn’t drink, cheap or otherwise. He didn’t know how to hold a gun, much less fire one. And the fact that they had him running away was erroneous. Her da had been in a wheelchair for most of his adult life. But the eyewitnesses had pointed him out, even with him sitting in his chair. It was then that PJ knew that they were only arresting him to get the robbery off their yearend books.

  So when it became evident that her da was being railroaded, she stepped up and confessed to it all. Any idiot within five miles of her knew that she looked nothing like her father, in weight or height. But the police and the prosecuting attorney had leapt on it like it was a lifeline. Parker had done this for him. And only him.

  She was let out of the big mammoth
of a building that had been a home for so long, and a taxi was there waiting for her. Asking him if he was able to take her someplace, he asked if she was PJ Brooks. After telling him that she was, he got out of the taxi.

  “I’m to take you to your home, the one here in town that your father left for you.” Nodding, she got in the back and waited for him to get the car started. “You’re going to be met by two men when you get there. One is your attorney, and the other is your father’s. I’m to tell you that there are clothes in the master bedroom for you, as well as anything else you might need to clean up.”

  “Why?” He asked her what she meant. “Any number of questions, I suppose. Why are they meeting me there? Why is there clothing for me? Why the master bedroom, and where might I be going that I have to clean up? Any or all questions you have an answer to would be nice.”

  “I don’t know. I was just hired to pick you up today and give you the message they gave me.” She nodded and looked out the window as he made his way down the road. “If you don’t mind me saying so, you look pretty good for a woman that has spent the last ten years in prison.”

  Nodding, not even sure how she was supposed to respond to that, or even if she should, she thought about going home. She wanted to find someplace else to spend her first night out, anywhere but where Angela was. Parker thought about asking him where she was in all this, but didn’t really care all that much.

  He tossed back a box to her. “Cell phone. It’s charged and programmed with a few numbers. And I’m to tell you that there are a few pictures you might want to take a look at before you get home. And I’m sorry, I don’t know what they are of, nor who put them on there.” She asked about her stepmother. “I didn’t see anyone else but those two men when I was called there.”

  Parker pulled the phone out of the box and turned it on. It was something that she’d had before going in, but they’d changed so much that she was afraid of breaking it. Almost as soon as it was on, it rang. The name that came up was Joseph March, Da’s attorney. She ignored it for the pictures.

  They were of her and her da. Fishing trips that they’d taken. A few times a year he’d go out on the boat with her, too. She was nearly at the end of them when the phone rang again—this time it said Allen Blackwell. Not wanting to talk to him either, she let it go.

  When they were pulling up in front of the mansion that was now hers, or so she’d been told, the two men came out to stand on the porch that surrounded the house. She didn’t know what they wanted, but she wanted a shower in the worst kind of way, and a meal that didn’t make a slop sound when put on her plate.

  “Maggie still here?” Blackwell nodded and smiled at her. “Whatever is going on that brings you both out here? Can I get something to eat and a shower? Unless this is about Angela. If so, I’m not ready to talk about her.”

  “Angela has been put out.” She looked at March and asked him what he’d said. “Put out. The will that your father made out the month before he died stated that she was to get nothing of the estate. Also that she was to be, and I quote, ‘Put to the curb without anything that she didn’t come to him with.’”

  She went into the house and could smell her da’s cigars. The cologne that he wore when he’d shave. Parker went into his study and inhaled deeply. Tears filled her eyes, and she thought of the only man that she’d ever love. Before she made too much more of a fool of herself, she went to see Maggie to ask her for something to eat.

  The two of them hugged tightly, several times. She wasn’t used to being touched so much, so it took her a moment not to flinch back from her. Maggie was crying, which brought Parker’s tears to the surface, and she headed up to the master bedroom to take a shower and get cleaned up.

  The room was devoid of anything but the bed and furniture. There were no pictures on the walls, and the knickknacks that her da had were gone as well. His books were also gone from the shelves in the room.

  After cleaning up, she dressed in clothing that she would have to get used to, things that fit her, and the shoes were soft tennis shoes, the kind that she had loved before all of this. Going down to the kitchen again, both men were there waiting.

  “Can we talk while you eat?” Nodding to them both, she took a bite of the roast beef sandwich that had been made for her, and thought she’d gone to heaven. Blackwell spoke first. “The money has been transferred to your account. The houses, all six of them, have been transferred to your name as well. We have a meeting downtown at six to sign all the paperwork that establishes you as head of the corporation that your father built. The rest is right here; if you have any questions on that, let me know.”

  She picked up the sheath of papers and laid them back down. Parker would read them over, but not right this minute. Finishing up the sandwich, she leaned back in her chair.

  “What’s happened to my da’s room? There is nothing in there to even show that he was living here. Even his books are missing.” March cleared his throat and looked uncomfortable. “Look, I would have just as soon not come here at all. But knowing that Angela isn’t here makes it better. Spill it.”

  “When the will was read for your father, Angela had assumed that she’d get a large share of the company and the homes. Before that, even before the funeral was set up, she had the room cleaned out and put together the way she wanted it. All the things in the room where sold or given away. I’m terribly sorry, PJ.” Her heart broke for all Da’s things. She asked them to call her Parker. “She’d had a team lined up to come and strip the entire house of you and your father. Then when the will was read, and she found out that she got nothing and wasn’t going to be able to live here, she went a little crazy. Violently. She was arrested, and since she was let out, she’s been causing all kinds of trouble, not only around here but at the company as well. Angela has since been barred from all the companies that you now own.”

  “Where is she now?” They didn’t look like they were going to answer her. “Am I going to have to look over my shoulder for the rest of my life? Where is she?”

  “She was able to purchase a house about a mile from here. We’re still trying to figure out how she had the funds for that, but there is nothing missing from here or the company.” Parker stretched her neck. “This is not the homecoming that your father wanted for you, child. Things have gone on here that frankly, I’m glad that you’re back to take care of.”

  “The board of directors, they know that I’ve been in prison, no doubt. Do you suppose they’ll want me out?” March shook his head with a huge smile. “Da told them that I was taking it for him, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, he did. They have been sworn to keep it to themselves. That’s the only people that we think he told. Besides us. You can expect a warm welcome from them, I’m sure.” He handed her a thick file, and she knew what it was immediately. “There is everything we could get on the trial and the sentencing hearing. There are so many things wrong with it that I’m surprised that you didn’t take them to heel. You are a good attorney.”

  “Not any more. I’m an ex-con, remember?” Both men nodded and Parker stood up. “I’m going to go to bed for a while. This meeting, I’ll go to it, but I would like you both there as well.”

  “Yes, all right. We’ll be there.” They both stood up and started to leave. March turned and looked at her with a smile. “I’m glad that you’re home, Parker. Your father, he was so proud of you. And had such high hopes that someone would come forward with information.”

  Nodding, she headed up to bed. It would be nice to sleep uninterrupted for a few hours. Lying on the bed, she thought of Angela. If she thought that she was going to get by with anything with her, she was going to be in for a very rude awakening.

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  Kathi Barton , winner of the Pinnacle Book Achievement award as well as a best-selling author on Amazon and All Romance books, lives in Nashport, Ohio with her husband Paul. When not creating new worlds and romance, Kathi and her husband enjoy camping and going to auctions. She can also be seen at county fairs with her husband who is an artist and potter.

  Her muse, a cross between Jimmy Stewart and Hugh Jackman, brings her stories to life for her readers in a way that has them coming back time and again for more. Her favorite genre is paranormal romance with a great deal of spice. You can visit Kathi online and drop her an email if you’d like. She loves hearing from her fans. aaronskiss@gmail.com.

  Follow Kathi on her blog: http://kathisbartonauthor.blogspot.com/