“You should care about what I have to say because I am Merrick Hunter, Sheriff of Paradise.” He waved his hand toward the other man. “And this is Darren Colby, chief of security for Adam Greer, our Alpha.” He stopped and scrubbed his face with his hands. “I hope, for your sake, the children were truly lost when you found them, lady, otherwise I’ll—”
“You’ll do nothing,” Luke growled as he stumbled forward. He was doubled over, holding his stomach with one hand while holding the sheriff’s belt with the other. It was probably the only thing keeping the idiot on his feet.
A cool breeze made her shiver and she thought of the boys out there without their coats, cold and alone, but for the ruthless men who kidnapped them. “The boys weren’t lost.” She moved around the man who claimed to be sheriff of Paradise to Luke and helped him stand upright. “Their parents are dead, killed by mountain lions.”
“It’s true,” Daniel added as he stumbled up behind her. “Don’t look at her like she’s lost her mind, Hunter. We saw the remains of the boys’ family.” He pulled himself up, using the lower branches of a nearby tree, then leaned against it, out of breath.
“I don’t know how, but I think those men had something to do with it. The cats didn’t eat much and they didn’t even try to drag the bodies off. They merely did enough damage to kill, then left the scene.” Luke breathed heavily as he moved closer to Daniel and tried to straighten himself against the tree next to the other man.
“Why would anyone with that kind of power want to kidnap two children?”
“They are twins named Timmy and Tommy. I have no idea what their last names are. Nothing in the car identified any of them with the exception of the boys’ clothes, which were only labeled with their first names.” Sabrina blushed as she gave away her secret. “Their names are written on the tags.”
“Let me get this straight.” Merrick began to pace, his mind obviously working to figure out the puzzle. “You found two boys, twins, not long after two crazed cougars mutilated their parents and today several men sneak into your camp and take the boys from under your noses?”
“You make it sound like we’re slackers or something.” Daniel growled as he managed to straighten to his full height. “It’s not like we were sleeping on watch, you fucking pricks. We both felt them coming. We stayed on the ground, lying in wait for them, even planned to take them by surprise when they entered the camp under the cover of darkness. We were ready to take them on when they waltzed into the clearing, but we couldn’t. Somehow, they took control of us and held us immobilized without laying a damned finger on us.” He shoved his fingers through his hair and sighed. “How can you fight something you can’t see, can’t smell and can’t feel?” Turning, he jammed his fist into the tree behind him.
Sheriff Hunter waved a hand as he kept pacing. “I didn’t mean to insult anyone. I merely stated a fact, or what I perceived as the facts.”
Sabrina stepped away from Luke when she was sure he could finally stand on his own. It shocked her to realize his touch didn’t make her feel dirty, but there wasn’t time to think about all that now. They needed to keep things in perspective. They had to start tracking the boys before the trail turned cold.
“We have to go.” She gestured in the direction of the cabin, unsure if that was the way the strangers went. It only made sense, the others came from the direction of town and the forest seemed too dense in the other directions. “We have to find the boys.” Sabrina turned just in time to see her sister run into the clearing.
“Sabrina!” Samantha cried as she ran to her, her arms outstretched.
Sabrina barely had time to brace herself before her sister slammed into her with a bear hug. “I’ve missed you so much,” they both said at the same time.
Samantha ran her hands over her as though checking for injuries. “Where have you been? You do know that running off the way you did was a stupid, stupid thing, don’t you? You’re still so skinny. Why haven’t you been eating?”
She fired the questions off in rapid succession, leaving Sabrina to wonder if she really expected an answer or if her questions were rhetorical. Sabrina looked down at herself. To be fair, Samantha did have a point, but she had spent the last few months in the cabin with so little food to go around that she didn’t feel right eating much. She did little more than cook the food and take care of the children. Besides, someone had to make sure the children had enough to eat. “For your information, food has been rather scarce, we’ve been holed up in a tiny cabin through the last three back-to-back blizzards.” She looked over her shoulder and gave Daniel and Luke a dirty look. “If these two hadn’t been so intent on trying to hide the fact that they’re shifters, perhaps they could have gone hunting and found us something other than trout to eat.” She wrinkled her nose. “You know how much I hate fish.”
One of Samantha’s mates, Aiden Troutman, also known to his friends as Fish, held his hand to his chest, his expression filled with feigned upset. “What a horrible thing to say after I saved your life and all.”
Sabrina rolled her eyes. It was just like him to joke around when everyone else was serious. He knew she never really liked him all that much. Even she wasn’t sure why. Grasping Samantha by the shoulder, she stared deep into her eyes. “Tell me you’re happy, Sam.”
Her sister smiled fondly at her mates before answering. “I am happy, little sister. And you could be, too.” She bit her lip and cast her gaze to her feet.
It was never a good thing when her sister couldn’t look into her eyes. “What?” Sabrina asked, wary. She knew that look. Her sister only got that expression when she knew what she had to say was not going to make Sabrina happy.
“For the last several months, the people of Paradise have felt a…presence—a strange presence. Something I remember Grandmama telling us about. When Aiden and Quinn took me to get our things from the apartment complex, I stopped by the safety deposit box and emptied it. I have all of Gram’s things in Paradise. Her journals read more like a book of shadows. We always knew she could do things that weren’t…normal, but we never knew anything about the stuff I found in those books.”
Sabrina couldn’t help the feeling of trepidation that settled deep in her middle. “What are you saying?” She swallowed, then looked at the men talking on the other side of the clearing and lowered her voice. “More importantly, what aren’t you saying?”
Samantha began to pace. It was a sure sign of her upset. “We aren’t what we’ve been brought up to believe we are.” She paused and waved her hand. “I’m saying it badly. What I mean to say is, we are who and what we have always been.” She gave Sabrina a lopsided smile. “Apparently, we just happen to be something else as well.”
Holding her hands out to her sides, Sabrina asked, “And that is…what?” She stood silent, waiting for Samantha’s reply as her sister took her time and continued to pace.
“Our mother wasn’t human as we thought. Remember how we always thought mom and Grandmama were normal?” She shrugged. “Well, we always knew they were a bit strange, but you have to admit, we never thought of them as anything but totally human, even if they were a bit odd.”
“Will you just get to the point?” Sometimes Sabrina hated that about her sister. Whenever Samantha got nervous or excited, she couldn’t seem to get to the point.
Samantha took a deep breath and sighed. “Grandmama was some sort of shifter or something. She never said what kind in her journals. At least she hasn’t yet.” She paused with a frown. “And her journals don’t have spells either. It just held instructions on what to think, how to think and things to meditate on.”
Stumbling backward, Sabrina fell hard on her rear. Even the pain shooting up her spine couldn’t detract from the impact of her sister’s statement. She shook her head at the thought that their grandmother was a shifter. “She never shifted. Not once.” She couldn’t believe it of her grandmother. She wouldn’t. The old woman had been eccentric, but she couldn’t have been anything but human.
“I never said that I knew for a fact that grandmamma was a shapeshifter, Rina,” Samantha said with a sigh. “It’s just the only thing that makes sense.”
If anyone knew the reasoning behind her fear and hatred of shifters, it was her sister. So, call her a bigot. She didn’t care. Sabrina wanted nothing to do with anyone who could shift their shape. She glanced at her only living relative and made an exception…and maybe, just maybe, she could deal with those two overbearing jerks with whom she’d just spent the last few months stuck in a cabin, but she drew the line there.
“Mom made her promise that she would give us a normal life. That’s why she never told us about any of this. I’m thinking she broke her promise to Mom just teaching us what she did. She also promised Mom that she wouldn’t tell us what we really were and where we came from.” She moved over to Aiden and took his hand in hers for a moment before she dropped it and started pacing again. “I don’t even know why Mom didn’t want us to know. Deciphering Gram’s chicken scratch had been slow going, especially after I found her notes on how to keep the others from finding us, though those instructions may not do us any good now. It seems they have already found you and though we don’t know what they are, they certainly know what you are. The only thing we can do now is damage control and that means shoring up our defenses at home. At least with Grandmama’s books, we aren’t totally defenseless.”
Samantha stopped pacing and sat down in the wet grass beside her. “As near as I can figure out, like the Leoparo people, they have their good factions and their bad. We just need to discover which side we’re dealing with here. From what I understand, the good have been hiding from the bad for several generations. There are only a few purebloods left.” She paused and looked down at her trembling fingers.
Sabrina knew without being told that she and her sister were pureblood…whatevers. She held up her hand to stop her sister from going on. “Don’t say it. I don’t want to hear you say it. Better yet, don’t even think it.”
“Refusing to talk about it isn’t going to change the fact that whatever we are, we may be the last purebloods of our race.”
* * * *
All six of the men listened to the two women talk. Fish and Quinn filled Luke and Daniel in on current events in Paradise before the women got to the subject of their questionable heritage.
Luke watched the sisters together. There was no mistaking the love each of them had for the other and there was also no mistaking that they were anything but sisters. They both had the same dark caramel complexions and the same amber-flecked dark chocolate eyes. Two more beautiful women didn’t exist.
“What do we do now?” Sabrina asked her sister as she leaned over to rest her head on Samantha’s shoulder. “I can’t just give up on the boys.” Reaching up, she swiped the tears from her cheeks. “They need me. I’m all they have now.” She glanced toward him and her lips twitched into an almost smile when their gazes met. “They need me. I’m… The three of us are all they have now.”
Samantha wrapped her arm around her sister and pressed her hand to Sabrina’s hair. “You don’t know that, Rina. You said yourself there was no identification in the car. They could have relatives all over the place,” Samantha said it gently, but there was no gentle way to break to Sabrina that the boys may belong to another. “They could even have family near here.”
Sabrina shook her head and slapped the center of her chest with the palm of her hand. “I know here that they have no one.” Her voice broke on a sob. “Just me. Who else will take care of them? Who else will make sure they bathe and brush their teeth? Who else will hold them in the middle of the night when the night terrors come and they remember watching their parents die? Who—” She choked on another sob, drew her knees to her chest and buried her head against her knees. “Who else will care enough to brush their white-blond hair until it glows and is as soft as silk?”
Luke watched as Samantha did what he longed to do and gathered Sabrina into her arms. He didn’t expect the soft chuckle as she kissed the top of her sister’s head.
“What is it with us and falling in love with blond kids?”
“You have a thing for blond kids?” Luke took the opportunity to force his way into their conversation by kneeling down and handing Sabrina a tissue. It may be a small comfort, but at least it was one he could provide without risking his mate’s panic.
After wiping her eyes and blowing her nose, Sabrina gave him a wobbly smile. “Yeah.”
When neither of them volunteered any information, he cocked his head to the side and raised his right brow. “You told me you’d never been attracted to Caucasians before.”
“I never said that!” Sabrina forgot about her broken heart for a moment as her expression filled with righteous anger. “What I said, you ass, is that I’d never been attracted to white boys before. Not once did I mention the word Caucasian. You can just take you and your political correctness and shove it where the sun don’t shine. And I’d better not hear you refer to me as an African American either. I’m an American…period. I don’t know shit about no Africa.”
By the time she finished her little speech, she’d sat up and started poking her finger into his chest. No doubt to make sure he got her point. Literally.
Luke almost gathered her into his arms right then and there. If she could get that indignant and talk to him the way she did, it could only mean that she was finally overcoming her fear of him. It was almost enough to make him shout with joy. He held his arms up, palms out. “Okay, okay. I will never refer to you as anything but a very beautiful and charming woman.”
“Oh, he’s a charmer, isn’t he?” Samantha chuckled. “What I meant was that when we were younger, we used to babysit for a woman named Shandee. She had long, strawberry blonde hair and her daughter had platinum blonde hair.” She smiled fondly in remembrance. “We took Maddie to the mall one day and were actually detained. We had to call Shandee to verify that we were babysitting for her. After that, we always carried a photo with a copy of Shandee’s driver’s license and a letter stating that we were Maddie’s Godmothers.” She laughed and shook her head.
“That was both funny and insulting. The south wasn’t always a great place to grow up, I suppose.” Samantha chuckled again. “You should have seen the looks we got when we carried that blonde baby girl into the stores. There we were with a baby so white she practically glowed in the dark.”
“I miss them,” Samantha said, sobering. “I wish we hadn’t just left. I wonder what they’re doing.”
Sabrina snorted. “I know there’s one thing Shandee isn’t doing and that bailing out nuts like you who call her from a hospital three hours from home crying about needing a ride because they practically totaled their car.”
“That wasn’t my fault. You and Gram were out herb hunting. Who else could I have called?”
Sabrina pulled a face. “Who else would have cared enough about either of us to drive that far for a friend?” She paused. “You should find her and give her a call.”
“You’re right.” Samantha stood and held out her hand. “And we should all get back to Paradise.”
Sabrina accepted the help up, then shook her head. “I have to find those boys.”
“No, Rina. You have to come to Paradise and help me look through Gram’s journals to find a way to fight these guys. Let’s say you do get the boys back. What’s to stop them from just taking them again?” She frowned. “How did you find those boys anyway?”
After Luke related the story, which had been too painful for Sabrina to recount, Samantha sighed. “I almost hoped you were going to tell me one of the men murdered them. I had a theory, but an accidental death just doesn’t jive with it.”
Daniel stepped forward. “Those boys’ parents may have been attacked by wild cougars, but it was no accident.”
Luke interrupted him to add. “He’s right. Cougars don’t kill just to kill and it wasn’t a shifter.” He paused, thinking. “There was a taint in the area
. A feeling something like what we felt today just before those men entered the camp, only it wasn’t as strong. I’d bet good money that, somehow, those men controlled those cats that day. The only thing I can’t figure out is why they didn’t take the boys then.”
“Because I came along.”
Merrick stepped forward. “Yes you did, but why not take control of you the way they did this morning?” He glanced at Samantha. “Something tells me you’re right, but we’re missing something.”
Sabrina stood and brushed the dirt off her perfect ass. “The only way we’re going to figure it out is to confront them.”
Samantha grabbed her sister’s arm before she moved out of her reach. “And to do that, we need to be able to defend ourselves against them. We need Grandmama’s books.”
Sabrina looked so heartbroken at the prospect of not going after the boys that Luke wanted to pull her into his arms and kiss her worries away. Instead, he held out his arm. “Shall we?”
Sabrina pressed her lips together and sighed. “Do I really have a choice?”
Chapter Seven
Sabrina choked on her coffee and it went everywhere. It was a good thing her sister wasn’t sitting directly in front of her otherwise, Samantha may have worn it. “Excuse me,” she stopped to clear her throat and mop up the mess on the table between them with a napkin. “What did you just say?” She couldn’t believe her ears and she didn’t want to believe her sister as Sam repeated the words written in one of their grandmother’s journals that left her both hot and cold. Good God! Could she really do it?
Samantha pointed at the page she just read. “It says right here. And I quote. There is but one way to defend against many of our kind. At least two mated Rougewa’ pairs or triads are needed to perform the ritual of Pontouq.” Samantha read off a few expected instructions, mainly those associated with casting a circle.
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