Darklands Book 2: Something Wild This Way Comes

by Autumn Dawn

  "What?"

  "Yep. A bloke."

  Lord frowned. Other people could get in the way. Or they might prove useful allies. “Who? She barely knows anyone down there as far as I know. My wife said she hadn't spent any time there in years."

  "Solid looking guy. Seemed like the type who could take care of himself, if you know what I mean. I was too far away to hear what they were talking about but she didn't look too happy to see him.” He paused. “I thought you told me she didn't have a boyfriend, mate?"

  "She doesn't. Or didn't, anyway,” said Lord. “She must have met him since she left Sydney. Find out who he is."

  "Righto, mate."

  "Without drawing attention."

  "Yeah.” Welch paused. “Listen, it's only a guess but he might be a uniform of some sort, maybe military or a cop. Something like that. You see a lot of cops in my line of work, and he has that look to him."

  "Really?” Lord's voice was tight as he thought through the ramifications.

  "Yeah. Well, I'll dig around a bit. What else do you want information on?"

  "Everything. Visits to town. Who she speaks to. Where she goes. Everything,” said Lord. The more he knew of her movements, the easier it would be to plan her end.

  "Listen, mate,” Welch cleared his throat. “We're gonna have to sort out the financial side of things. When I first took on this job, you said two weeks and it's been nearly four. I'm having to turn other clients away, understand what I'm saying?"

  Lord understood all right. The pathetic little weasel was upping the stakes, realizing how important this was to him.

  "How much do you want?” he asked briskly.

  "Seven hundred a day. Hotels don't come cheap, you know. And it's fuckin’ uncomfortable spending most of the day hiding behind a tree or sitting in the car."

  Lord was bored. The weasel's job was pretty much over anyway. Now he knew where she was he would handle things. He wanted this conversation over. “Six hundred and not a cent more."

  Weasel sighed. “Okay, mate. Six hundred."

  "Contact me tomorrow. I want to know about the boyfriend."

  "Speak to you tomorrow then. Oh, by the way...."

  Jesus! Was he never going to get rid of the man. “What is it?"

  "You didn't ask me, mate?"

  "About what?"

  "About the kid."

  "Er, right. I'd assumed you'd tell me if there was a problem. Well, anyway, how is she?"

  "Fine, mate, as far as I can see."

  "Well, what's the problem, then?” said Lord, irritated.

  "Nothin', mate. Just thought you'd want to know."

  Lord slammed the phone down. He hated dealing with lowlifes like Frank Welch. Somehow, even speaking to the man brought him, the esteemed Malcolm Lord, down to his level.

  He shuddered thinking of the PI's shiny pants and greasy moustache, his grimy little office. At five hundred an hour—six hundred now—you'd think the man could at least present a more upmarket front. He wondered what he did with all that money. Drank it, from the looks of him. Lord paced his office. Well, the man might be scum, but he was useful scum. At least for the moment. A few more days and he'd be ready to deal with Camille for good.

  It was a shame really. She had the kind of defiant spirit that made him yearn to break her. He hadn't met her until the day of his wedding to Verity, but he'd known in a flash that he was marrying the wrong sister. Verity might have been dazzling, but Camille was class. She would have presented much more of a challenge.

  He mused on his options. A bullet would be the quickest and safest option. She would never know what hit her. But maybe he would arrange to spend an hour or two with her first. Having her naked for his pleasure and her humiliation might well be worth the increased risk. He'd show her the price for crossing Malcolm Lord.

  Might have to eliminate the boyfriend first. If he was a cop, chances were he'd be open to a pay-off. That was the thing Lord liked best about his position. The influence. The money was good too, but largely because of the power it bought him. A couple of words in the right place and the boyfriend could be relocated overnight to the other side of the country, or overseas if need be. And if he proved reluctant or troublesome, or he started thinking blackmail, there were more permanent solutions. Anything could happen when you had power and the right contacts.

  Lord smiled to himself, his pale eyes hard. If truth be told, he was enjoying this chase. He felt like a noble hawk, sharp eyes fixed to its prey. Right now he was merely observing, hovering, waiting for the perfect opportunity. Then he would sweep out of the sky, talons unfurling, striking before she even knew he was there.

  He felt a rush, as though he really were a bird of prey, a powerful surge of energy that swept relentlessly through his veins and into his brain like a red tide. It was like he'd stuck his finger in a power socket. Electrical energy filled the room, crackling and snapping, and when it retreated, Lord knew, he just knew, that anything he wanted was now in his grasp.

  He looked at a framed photo on his desk. A young blonde woman with a pretty face and schemer's eyes looked back at him. Verity. A few more weeks and he could throw it out. She was in the past, but he needed to observe the proper mourning period for the sake of his image. He moved to stand in front of the large window that had been repaired just last week but the eyes in the photo followed him so in the end he turned the photo face down on the desk, picked up a file and got on with his work.

  * * * *

  Fuck!

  Nathan slammed down the phone. Hard.

  "Everything all right, boss?” asked Jason Lai.

  Nathan rubbed his temples and swung onto the back legs of his chair.

  "Just not getting anywhere with this ... damn.” He couldn't even call it a case. No one had made a complaint. There was no crime that he was aware of. Just a woman with scared hazel eyes and a cute-as-a-button baby. And his gut instinct.

  "What case?"

  "Oh, just some unofficial leads I'm following up. Getting nowhere fast."

  Jason gave him a sympathetic look. There was relatively little detective work in a quiet place like World's End but he had seen Nathan in action a few times in the past and knew that he never missed anything.

  "If there's something to find, boss, you'll find it."

  "Yeah,” Nathan smiled tiredly and looked down at the article on Camille's business that he'd printed out. He'd finally managed to get hold of Mark Stevens, her assistant, after several hours of unreturned calls, but the man had proved reluctant to tell him anything at all, except that Camille was taking some personal leave for family reasons. He'd offered to take a message but when Nathan had pushed him for more information, he'd put the phone down.

  He was getting nowhere fast. He was waiting to hear from Rowan, who'd sounded rushed off her feet when he'd spoken to her earlier. She'd promised to ring him back, and if she didn't do so within the next hour, he swore he'd go up to Ravenswood House and refuse to leave until she told him about her meeting with Camille this morning.

  Nathan's investigative instincts were fired. This was what he'd loved about detective work. The harder the case, the more his concentration focused. What he hadn't liked was being able to solve a case but not being able to solve the real problems which almost always underpinned serious crimes. It was why he'd chosen to relocate to the southern Local Area Command three years ago. In World's End he was part of a local community and in a position to help as much as to investigate. Sure, he occasionally itched for a juicy case to work on, but there were definitely compensations.

  He wanted to drive up to Sydney and stand over Mark Stevens until the guy told him what he wanted to know. He wanted to dig around, talk to her neighbors, the local police, anyone who might be able to tell him something that might hold a clue. But he couldn't just head off.

  Saturday was World's End biggest event of the year. The annual summer fair, which attracted visitors from hundreds of miles around. It would be kicking off with a parade of floats
, led by the recently crowned Sapphire Coast Queen. Clowns, jugglers and people on stilts frolicked amongst the crowd, generating a festival atmosphere, while stalls filled the square, selling cakes, gifts, bric-a-brac. There was face-painting and balloon animals for the little kids, while the older kids disappeared to smoke or make-out while the adults were otherwise occupied.

  Most of the security plans were in place, but he still needed to touch base with the organizers on a few of the final details. The next couple of days would be frantic, and he couldn't expect the young guys to handle it all. However unwilling, he would have to put Camille to the back of his mind for forty-eight hours. And maybe it would give her the opportunity to think about what he'd said.

  "Boss?” Jason stuck his head around the corner. “Got the insurers of Bensons on the line for you. They're still investigating that fire last year."

  Nathan nodded, his mind switching to the fire that had virtually gutted the factory last spring. He hoped they'd found an explanation that had nothing to do with the kind of dark magic that Rowan was convinced was behind the blaze.

  He turned his attention away from Camille Aston and concentrated on the call.

  * * * *

  Camille pulled the door of Elizabeth's room open a crack so if she woke, she would be able to see the light from the hallway. She stopped by the phone and wondered what to do with the rest of her evening. She wasn't ready for bed yet. There was too much buzzing around her head thanks to Rowan Byrne and Nathan Donnelly.

  Her gaze fell on her bag where the book that Rowan had given her stuck out. All right, so she'd look at it before discarding Rowan as a complete fruit-loop, albeit a nice fruit loop.

  The book was almost small enough to fit in the palm of her hand, the cover bound in cracked leather and the parchment pages yellowed with age. She fingered it delicately. It felt a lot heavier than it looked. She took it out onto the veranda where the sun was beginning its lazy descent to the west, and curled up in the old cane chair. She flicked through the pages, letting the book fall randomly open at a chapter that read, Making your own magicke.

  Yeah, right, she thought. This was going to be one of those corny self-help books about how you could change your life through a few well-placed spells. But it wasn't anything like that. Its message was that magical forces were all around, and that everyone could tap into them. Some people just had a more natural instinct for it. She found herself drifting as she read on to the last paragraph.

  Magicke is all around. In earth, skies and sea. It is in the tree, the bird, the fish. It is in you. When you need it, summon it, and it will find you.

  Half asleep, Camille frowned. She remembered her grandmother saying something similar the last time she and Verity had spent the summer here. Something about finding the magic. It was a fragment of memory, hazy with the passing of the years. At the time, she'd simply taken it as something to do with the magical time she and Millie had enjoyed that summer. Their parents had been there to whisk them away and, after that, she and Verity had never spent another summer with Millie.

  She came awake with a start when the phone rang shrilly, and the book fell off her lap. Half asleep, she ran to pick it up before it woke Elizabeth. She caught herself hoping it was Nathan. But when she held it to her ear, there was nothing but silence.

  * * * *

  That night, she dreamed of her grandmother and Rowan Byrne, of circles cast in dark woods and unearthly spirits descending upon the land. She saw Rowan standing in a clearing in the forest, inside a circle illuminated by candlelight. In the vision, she was holding a short silver dagger in her right hand and she was speaking, although the words were inaudible. Then Rowan's calm gaze was on her, before the image began to fade.

  The woods grew dim, shadowy as she drifted away from that beacon of light amid the darkness. She felt herself soaring, flying high through the night sky over the treetops, to a spot on the edge of town, a stone's throw from the beach, where a small rustic house stood, not much more than a shack. She was standing on the deep veranda at the front of that house and she knew it was Nathan Donnelly's house. Then she was gliding through the front door, down a corridor and past rooms that opened to the left and right. She stopped at a door that stood ajar, and hesitated. Even in the midst of the dream, knowing she was still safely in her own house and her own bed, she stood on the threshold. Once she saw beyond the door, there would be no turning back.

  She pushed it open with one bare hand and stood there, letting her eyes adjust to the dark. Green glare from a digital alarm clock on a table next to the bed sent a faint glow across the sheets that lay rumpled against tanned skin. The clock said four twenty-nine.

  Nathan was sleeping, his face turned to one side in sleep, his jaw stubbled and hard-looking. He muttered something she couldn't understand and she stepped a little closer, close enough to see he hadn't wakened. Her heart began to thud in a slow tempo as her gaze glanced over that strong chin, the wide shoulders.

  He was restless, his hands clenched on the sheet, his legs moving. Sweat glistened on his stomach and in the dark hair on his chest. He muttered again, inaudibly. He moved and the sheet was pushed lower down to his groin. Camille saw the burgeoning thickness of him rising from below, and she understood the cause of his disturbed sleep. He was hot and heavy with arousal.

  Her breath hitched and heat trickled through her limbs to pool deep in her belly where it throbbed in unison with her thudding heartbeat. She felt like Eve must have at the moment of greatest temptation. Her mouth was dry, her hands damp. She wanted to climb over him and kiss her way from that male mouth, over the rough chin and down that strong throat. She wanted to taste the salt of his skin, inhale the aroma of him, kiss her way to and around those little male nipples. Down, down, she would slide her body over his, moving sinuously as her mouth instinctively followed a path preordained by nature. She would use her tongue to follow that faint line of hair arrowing down his hard belly to where it thickened and bushed. She would press little darting kisses around him, tempting, taunting. She would cup and stroke his testicles, gently, gently, seeing his blue eyes narrowed and urgent on hers, and then she would duck down and with her tongue....

  A car alarm blared, breaking the silence of pre-dawn, and Nathan woke. In her mind's eye, Camille could see herself drifting away from him. As if from a distance, she watched as Nathan came upright in bed, tugged the sheet around him and raced out onto the veranda, cursing. His car alarm shrieked as he fumbled open the car door to turn it off, and then he was becoming fainter as she drifted away, away, across the town, floating across the treetops toward her cottage. There was gentle dipping sensation and then she was back in her bed, tucked in and eyes closed as though she had never left it.

  She gripped the sides of the bed and opened her eyes. The only sound was her shallow breathing in the dark quiet room, her own room. She lay for a moment, wondering what had just happened. Could you have a dizzy spell while you were lying down? Had a dizzy spell ever involved feeling intense lust for a man she barely knew. It was ridiculous, it was crazy, it was....

  Her gaze fell on the book of magic next to the clock beside her bed. She wondered. Rowan had seemed so convinced she had a special gift. Maybe ... she glanced at her travel clock. The digital numerals read four thirty-seven. The clock at Nathan Donnelly's bedside had read four twenty-nine. Eight minutes ago. Had she really been in his bedroom eight minutes ago, watching his early morning arousal, wanting to touch him, taste him? She could still feel the embers of desire smouldering deep in her body.

  Was it as Rowan Byrne had said, that she could tap into others’ energy at moments of emotional vulnerability? In her dream, she'd seen Rowan too, standing inside the candlelit circle, and Rowan had seen her and looked at her. What did it mean? She had to know, and despite the fact it wasn't even dawn, she had to know now.

  Chapter Eight

  Camille pushed back the sheet and dragged on a tee shirt and loose-fitting yoga pants, not bothering with underwear. Sh
e slipped her feet into open-toed sandals before tiptoeing into Elizabeth's room.

  The baby was fast asleep and didn't wake when Camille picked her up and carried her out to the car. She remembered to restore the pebble to the gate before she left. The roads were deserted at that hour of the morning, and it took less than five minutes before she was pulling up outside Ravenswood House. Her heart thumped at what she was doing, but she was overwhelmed by instinctive sureness that she was doing the right thing. A light shone outside the front door and as she approached with Elizabeth in her arms, the door opened to reveal Max Larkham-Jones, this time without the dogs.

  "Heard your car,” he said in response to her questioning look. He held out his hands for Elizabeth and Camille carefully laid the sleeping child in his arms. “I suppose this is good training for parenthood,” he said, his face twisting in a sleepy smile. “Being woken at all hours."

  "I came to see Rowan,” Camille whispered.

  "I know,” said Max. “She hoped you would.” He jerked his chin toward the dark woods. “She's in there. Just follow the light."

  Camille followed his glance. Surely he didn't mean she had to make her way into the forest in the middle of the night. Well, she glanced at the slightly lightening sky, maybe nearer to dawn than midnight.

  "Yeah,” he said, wryly. “I don't get it either. I mean, be a witch, sure. But why there? And why at ridiculous hours of the night?” He shrugged. “Better get this one indoors. Lucky we have a nursery already done up."

  "But how do I know where to go?” said Camille hastily. “There's acres of forest. I could easily miss her."

  Max turned, a sardonic look on his darkly handsome face. “Rowan told me to tell you to trust your instincts. You'll find her."

  He whisked the baby indoors, shutting the door behind them, leaving Camille in a pool of light on the stone steps. She hugged herself. Shivering, not from cold for the night was warm, but from the step she was about to take into the unknown. The woods that looked leafy and cool in the daytime were gloomy and menacing at night. How did she know Rowan was really there? She didn't really know these people. Maybe it was a set up, maybe Lord....