He offered her his arm. “Let me show you upstairs, Miss Divine.”
Slipping her wrist into the crook of his elbow, she stiffened at the sudden shiver up her spine. Whoever had been watching in New Orleans had produced a similar sensation, but few outside of the Black Triad possessed the ability to travel through time. Had Naga sent a spy to follow her? Or was she becoming paranoid after two years of implementing her elaborate plan?
“You fooling around on the job, Benny?” The serious tone belied the chuckle that came from behind her and her escort.
Beside her, Benny jerked his head toward the commanding voice. “No, Mr. Capone. Miss Cherry Divine here wanted to see you.”
Sauntering around to stand facing Patience and Benny, the mobster crossed his arms in front of his chest and stared her in the eyes. “With a name like Cherry Divine and a body like that, you must be here for pleasure. Because what other kinda business would a lady have with Big Al?”
The man was chauvinistic pig, but she swallowed the insult, studying his eyes instead. As she’d suspected, even with his ruthless nature and appalling use of women, his soul wasn’t near black enough to step into the open third position. Some genetic anomaly kept him from being completely irredeemable. Her search would continue.
Withdrawing her grasp on Benny’s arm, she extended her hand. “Mr. Capo—”
“Sarah! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” A tall, dark-haired man with penetrating eyes strode across the lobby toward her. His intense gaze made her stomach somersault and lungs seize. “I told you to stay out of my business, woman.”
His business?
What was he talking about? He obviously had her confused with someone named Sarah. Her insides pitched again, this time from panic rather than animal attraction.
Sarah? I’m the only person alive who would know—
Al grasped her chin, forcing her to look at him. His thick eyebrows rose. “Sarah? Did you lie to me, Miss Divine?”
He can’t possibly know.
Not ready to risk exposing her powers to escape the escalating situation, Patience tried a new tack. She growled low in her throat. “You will let go of me now.”
Evidently not expecting her to fight back, Mr. Capone’s grip loosened. “Get the hell out of my hotel before I decide to make sure you can’t ever come back.”
A hand closed over her shoulder, dragging her toward the exit. “Sarah, if I catch you interfering again, I’m going to whip your backside.” He pulled her along through the double doors and out onto to the sidewalk, lowering his stern voice to a whisper. “Keep moving. And don’t look back. We’re being tailed.”
Cutting a path through the foot traffic on the busy Michigan Street sidewalk, he steered her into a solid wall of man. Another hand closed around her wrist, sending a jolt of electricity up her arm. Alarms went off all over her body and in her mind. Not that she couldn’t easily transport herself away from the men and her current location, but she’d never been physically or mentally overpowered since the day she taken the Black Triad oath. Something was very wrong.
The pair guided her past the line of hotels and stores as they headed north beside the busy main road in the heart of Chicago. Far too many people rushed along the sidewalks to simply disappear into nothingness. The extensive complications of transporting kept her from changing to her ethereal form as she hurried to stay abreast of her assailants. Both men’s strides outstretched her own, and wearing high heels on the uneven walkway hindered her pace.
Although she could probably scream for help, she was loath to draw attention to herself. The fewer bystanders who noticed her presence, the better. Disabling the men would have the same consequences, and once she had them alone, she could control them with her thoughts. She had nothing to fear.
Then why is my heart racing?
She’d determined long ago that death held no power over her. If she died, she wouldn’t complete her well-laid plan—although her nemesis would lose a great deal in the process. Eventually, someone else would take over her conspiracy, destroying her centuries-old prison and its influence on the world.
What am I afraid of?
* * * *
Dodging honking cars, John Grey tightened his hold on Sarah Pennymead’s wrist as they angled across the street. She might’ve come quietly with him and Tanner, but he didn’t trust her not to attempt a time jump again. If she did, they were going with her—even if it meant facing Naga.
Recover the bounty or die trying.
Such was the life of a hunter.
With one third of the Black Triad destroyed by the Macska witches, a golden opportunity had come to take down the second. Although their clan had given Tanner and him permission to kill her if necessary, the members preferred bringing Sarah before the tribunal for judgment and punishment. Considering the havoc the elders of the Triad had wreaked, she would likely be sentenced to an agonizing death by removal of the tattoo that gave her infinite youth. She would age as the inked design was slowly burned away with acid, until the nearly three hundred fifty years of her lifespan turned her shapely human form to only skeletal remains. Every witch and warlock in the clan would then help scatter her bones across centuries since her conception. They couldn’t risk the resurrection of a condemned witch turned malevolent shifter.
A peripheral glance at her face revealed timeless beauty, no matter the century. As a child, that beauty may have gone deeper than the surface, but her deeds since becoming part of the Triad told another story. Evil resided in her soul—all the way to the core.
John ignored the softness of his captive’s skin and the occasional whiff of her flowery scent. His cock’s reaction was nothing more than a hint that he’d gone the duration of the search without sex. Keeping his mind on the game and his prisoner under control trumped the need to get laid. He had a job to do, and he’d damn well get it done.
Finally.
“This way.” Tanner’s hissed command came as he ducked into an empty passageway between two buildings.
Sarah tripped, her delicate wrist nearly slipping from John’s grasp.
Tanner looked over his shoulder and narrowed his eyes, still continuing forward. “And don’t even try to pretend to fall.”
Her unreadable expression didn’t change. Nor did she attempt to pull away. The seeming acceptance of her capture set John’s nerves and awareness on edge, but she showed no sign of fighting them. An elder wouldn’t surrender unless—
“Oof!” She dropped to her knees, yanking free of their restraining hands to vanish in a thin cloud of red mist.
“Son of a bitch!” Anger surged through John’s veins, and he focused on reading the traces of her essence she’d left behind. A faint humming in his ears made his muscles tense. “No fucking way.”
Tanner shook his head and growled. “You hear it too, don’t you? You think we have the wrong woman?”
What are the odds of another witch with the ability to time travel matching the description of Sarah Pennymead?
“No, it’s her. The humming is a fluke. She must’ve done something to try to throw us off her trail. Sarah Pennymead has a black soul, without a speck of good in her. Otherwise, Naga wouldn’t have made her the third elder.”
Seeming to agree with John’s logic, Tanner held out his hand. “Then let’s go before the stream fades.”
John clasped his partner’s forearm with his right hand, and Tanner mirrored the action. Less than a second later, Sarah’s tunnel swallowed them, propelling them through a dimension most people believed to be imaginary. Colored lights flickered as they sped forward in time. How far, he had no idea. They could land ten or almost a hundred years into the future from 1928. Only the shifter they followed knew where—and when—they’d arrive.
The pressure on John’s arm increased as the whirling vortex slowed, a signal to prepare for an attack. Clearing his mind, he allowed his instincts free rein as the humming grew louder and the ground solidified beneath his feet. A light breeze brush
ed against his cheek a moment before he spun a quarter turn to the left to scan his surroundings.
Releasing Tanner’s forearm, John studied the nondescript buildings. A measured stomp preceded a booming call. The sound became an echoed shout. “Heil!”
His stomach lurched.
Hitler’s Germany.
He had no doubt now about Sarah’s intentions.
In New Orleans, he couldn’t begin to guess her motive for being there. Her meeting with Capone in Chicago had given him a clue, but coming to this place could mean only one thing. She was on a hunt for a new elder to complete the triangle. A man capable of genocide would have a soul blacker than even Naga. The blood of millions stained his hands.
John scurried to the nearest building, gesturing for Tanner to follow as he flattened himself against the wall. They had to prevent Sarah from making contact with the Nazi leader.
A hissed whisper came inside his mind. Do you see her? Or her imprint?
Making a careful pass of the visible square, he willed his senses to pick up her distinctive trail. The humming had ceased in the roaring of the crowd gathered to pay homage to Adolf Hitler. No flowery scent lingered in the air. His gut told him she couldn’t be far ahead of them, but no bloodred essence hung like a subtle fog around any of the swastika-worshipping fanatics.
He shook his head and ducked behind the corner. She isn’t out there.
Where the hell did she go? Tanner’s low grunt made his frustration clear. Damn it! We can’t lose her. It took too long to find her the first time.
Turning to face his partner, John caught a slight movement less than twenty feet from their location. Sunlight had glinted off something metallic. He forced his eyes to connect with Tanner’s, a quick glance away and back again all the communication necessary to relay the information.
Someone was hiding behind the stack of delivery crates across the empty street.
He took a step toward the spot where they’d appeared. Come on. We’ll have to retrace the path. She must’ve doubled back before we got here.
With a nod, Tanner moved with him, their actions perfectly choreographed from years of working together. He pointed to a spot near the crates. Her signature is gone, but I think we landed about there.
The closer they got to the stacks, the more a soft hum filtered over the drone of voices from the square. John hadn’t been a hundred percent certain their prey hid across the street from them, but he was now—even if he didn’t understand how the pleasant reverberating note came from an elder of the Black Triad.
Tanner frowned. No, this isn’t it. Maybe a little closer to the building.
They took two more steps toward their hidden target. Silence descended on the square, and John strained to catch a quiet inhale or exhale.
Nothing.
Had she shifted into another form? They’d have a hell of a challenge capturing—or trailing for that matter—something they couldn’t readily identify as Sarah Pennymead.
Withdrawing a handful of change from his pocket, John let a coin slip from his fingers to roll along the pavement and behind the lopsided pile. He almost didn’t hear the soft gasp over the sudden guttural rhetoric of Hitler speaking to his followers.
A lightning-fast grab around the crates yielded what felt like a nylon-covered ankle. Tanner pounced on the other side, upsetting the crates but catching her around the waist. A violent wind whirled around them as lights blinked in John’s vision. The buildings, the crates, and the street vanished, and he held on to his recaptured prisoner while the tunnel led them to yet another time and place.
He fought a wave of nausea at being dragged through time under someone else’s control. Voluntarily jetting along in the wake of a traveler had never disturbed him, but hitching a ride sure messed with his equilibrium. The cloud of Sarah’s essence could’ve had something to do with it, or the winding path she chose. Given the urgency of his assignment, he’d only let go if she killed him—a distinct possibility. The likelihood didn’t deter him.
The earthy scent of damp, decaying leaves hit him as he materialized face down on the ground. A groan escaped.
Where the hell are we now?
“You will let go of me.” Sarah’s slow, deliberate tone had John levering up on his elbow. She held Tanner’s chin in her hand as she looked down at him.
Tanner raised his eyebrows and smirked. “That mind-persuasion shit doesn’t work on us.”
Glancing at John, she locked gazes with him. “Let go of my ankle.”
He tightened his grip and shifted to sit at her feet. “Not happening. By authority of the Xanthus clan, we hereby claim your bounty, Sarah Pennymead.”
Chapter 4
Every nerve ending in her body was on fire, but Patience kept her reaction bottled inside her. She’d buried her emotions for so long, the cold lack of response came without thought. Only the utterance of a name she hadn’t heard in over three hundred years stole the air from her lungs.
Standing before her judge, she’d frozen when he’d announced the verdict and punishment. “Sarah Pennymead, you are hereby found guilty of murder and practicing witchcraft. You are sentenced to hanging at sunrise.” A glance to her husband confirmed that he believed the judgment to be justified, his smile and quick exit from the meeting hall an obvious agreement that she had caused the death of their son. Not that the judge’s reversion to her maiden name hadn’t already made it perfectly clear.
“I am not Sarah Pennymead.” She nearly choked on the words.
That woman had ceased to exist the night she sat in her cell and listened while the man who’d betrayed her set fire to the jail. Sarah had perished in the blaze, eventually giving life to Patience Wyndham. Percy Ellington awoke to a knife in his back, payment in kind for throwing her to the wolves and trying to burn her alive. After more than three years of living without a name, she’d finally chosen a new one. She may have been a Pennymead witch in 1692, but she wasn’t anymore.
The man holding her ankle narrowed his eyes at her as he slipped the shoes from her feet. “Give up the pretense. No disguise can conceal your true identity from a bounty hunter of Xanthus.”
A bounty hunter?
“I am Patience Wyndham. Sarah Pennymead is dead.”
He snorted. Even with the conviction in her voice, he clearly didn’t take her word for anything but lies. “You leave a trail of red mist wherever you go. Only one who abandoned the lawful ways of the Goddess could have an essence so filled with the color of blood. Bind her hands with the cuffs, Tanner.”
Red mist?
Her soul had bled dry the night her son had died.
Cool metal closed around one wrist, and her vision blurred. She considered fighting for one short second. Hurting the men would serve no purpose. Hadn’t she already decided that dying didn’t damage her cause?
She held out her hand for the other cuff. “Kill me.”
Her death would weaken Naga to the point of being unable to leave the catacombs. He’d need decades to gain enough strength to conduct the search she’d feigned, and she would finally find peace.
The man who’d grabbed her around the waist—Tanner—narrowed his eyes at her. The second band snapped into place. “Reverse psychology doesn’t work, either. Our job is to bring you to justice, not carry it out. Bind her legs, John.”
John removed a coil of leather lacing from his belt. “Unlike the elders of the Black Triad, we don’t act as judge, jury, and executioner. You’ll stand trial before the Xanthus clan.”
Her captors possessed honor, something she hadn’t expected. “What are the charges?”
Weaving the strap around her ankles, John tied a knot. “You don’t deny that you’re an elder of the Triad?”
She shrugged. “Would you believe me if I did? I have nothing to gain by denying what I am.”
Tanner tensed behind her. Had he thought she’d try to convince them to release her? Or had he had doubts about her identity? “The charges will be read to you prior to the proce
edings.”
“I have stolen, murdered, and left my enemies for dead. The curses I’ve brought down on the world would strike fear into the hearts of the most hardened of men. I have no heart, and my soul is black. The accusations lodged against me are true, whether I know them or not.” Perhaps if she provoked them with her misdeeds, they’d tire of her bragging and end the business sooner rather than later. “I have tortured men for the sole purpose of seeing them suffer.”
Keeping his fingers woven in the leather laces, John rolled his eyes. “You have also tortured men with your endless chatter, no doubt.”
Tanner’s chuckle vibrated through her spine. “She does talk a lot. But then again, most women do.”
For the first time in years, her temper truly sparked. “I’ll bet you have to beat them off with a stick. Or do you gag them while you rut like a pig?”
John’s palm smoothed up her calf. “No need for a gag. I enjoy hearing a woman scream when she comes. Besides, I’d find plenty for her mouth to do. She’d be too busy for talking.”
Despite the riot of tingles racing up her thigh to her pussy, she stifled her body’s reaction, focusing instead on the revulsion his words incited. “Men like you are the reason women like me exist. Sex is always about what you can make her do for you, and then you claim you’re a great lover. If she screams, it’s because she’s in pain or she’s faking her orgasm so you’ll stop.”
His hand stilled at her knee, and he frowned. “I would never force a woman to do anything she didn’t like or want.”
“Is that what happened to you, Sarah?” Tanner’s breath tickled her ear, sending a flurry of anticipation to her nipples. “Did hatred of a man who used and abused you turn your soul black? Not all men—”
A snarl erupted from her chest, and she flung herself free of her captors. The volcanic heat in her veins from John’s and Tanner’s touch changed to ice. She jerked her ankles apart, shredding the bonds. The metal cuffs shattered and fell from her wrists as she allowed her fury full rein. She didn’t need a mirror to know her gray-green irises had suddenly drowned in the blackness of her past.
Beyond Bewitching Page 3