Cursed

by Jamie Leigh Hansen

  “Damn straight,” Alex muttered.

  But then, he was young. In a few more years how would he be? Like Grady? She hoped not, of course. But so did her mother and older sister, every time they entered a new relationship. This one will be different. This one will be everything I’m looking for. This one will fulfill all my dreams.

  “I knew you thought that.”

  “Twelve years ago, I guess. But I’ve learned better over time.”

  Beth Ann set down the brush and limped to the double bed she’d spend the weekend in.

  Noises from outside penetrated the thin walls. There was so little protection. The room felt like a tent with tin locks and a rubber dead bolt, when what she wanted most was a fortress complete with a spiked gate and deadly moat to keep away the predators.

  Much as she’d hated living surrounded by other people, she’d felt safer than she did here, alone. Crawling under her thin sheet and equally spare blanket, Beth Ann pulled one pillow behind her head and lay on her side, hugging the second pillow to her chest.

  If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine she wasn’t alone. But she didn’t want to close her eyes. She wanted to stay awake, needed to be prepared. Fear cramped her stomach and tears burned her eyes. She’d gotten what she’d wanted. She was alone and dependent on herself. She just hadn’t expected it to scare her.

  A yearning built inside her again, the part of her that wished she had someone to hold during rough moments like this. She wanted Alex next to her on the eve of her new life. Alex to hug, to help her feel safe.

  So there, in the dead of night, in a hotel hundreds of miles from home, she allowed herself to imagine. To dream. Just for one night. Just because she needed him. She closed her eyes and let herself believe it wasn’t a pillow she hugged, but Alex as he sat with his back against the headboard.

  Alex’s fingers threaded through her hair, soothing against her scalp. An inch at a time, she relaxed against him, her vision going fuzzy and soft. The clock blinked in front of her, but she could no longer see the numbers. He slid lower, drawing her against him, surrounding her with his embrace. Alex’s heart beat against her ear, his chest warm and strong against the side of her face.

  “Did you know you’d made it real?” Alex watched the two teenagers sleeping on the bed, holding each other tight enough to keep the world at bay.

  “Not yet.” Elizabeth looked around the darkened hotel room with its small TV and not much else. If she’d known what she could do that night, she wouldn’t have kept the room they slept in similar to the hotel room. They would have had their chamber from the beginning.

  Alex looked at her with eyes devoid of anger. He was calm, accepting.

  She was afraid to trust he really felt that way.

  “You were scared. You needed me.” Alex brushed his fingertips against her jaw. “I’m glad you had the gifts necessary to reach for me.”

  “Why aren’t you mad anymore?”

  He smiled sadly. “I always promised myself that if a child ever showed me a gift they couldn’t help but have, that I would remain calm and prove to them that I loved them no matter what.”

  “It’s not so easy with an adult you are afraid will hurt you.”

  “Or with someone you think plays with your dreams to take what they need from you and never give in return.”

  She flinched. “I did take and not give.”

  He brushed hair behind her ear. “But there was nothing cold about it. You weren’t arrogantly arranging life to suit you. Tell me, was there ever a time you reached for me just because you could?”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “I was tempted. I could have a relationship that went only as far as I allowed it to. There were times I almost reached for you just because I wanted to. But I couldn’t abuse what we had.”

  Alex leaned closer, his lips a breath from hers. “Then you protected me, cared for me. Needed me.”

  Elizabeth bit her lip. His forgiveness washed over her, brought tears to her eyes. She only had one more thing to explain. “I didn’t know, at first, the danger I was putting you in. The danger I’d put Grady in.”

  Alex looked over her shoulder, at the innocent faces in the bed.

  “It wasn’t until later that night that he came to me.”

  Alex switched his gaze to the window, his heart nearly stopping in his chest.

  “At first, just a face in the window. My monster.”

  A black face made of molten lava as it cooled. Thick, lumpy ridges over blue, blue eyes. The face of a monster. The face of a being who knew the future. Alex flinched because that face in the window wasn’t from the past. He wasn’t staring at the teenagers on the bed. Elizabeth’s father was looking straight at Alex. Now twelve years later.

  “My father.”

  Alex flinched.

  “He told me about Grady. He reminded me …”

  Alex finished what she couldn’t say. “What you did to him when he tried to leave you.”

  In darkness, Maeve cloaked herself, moving silently through two worlds. Dugan had hidden her well. He’d cared for her just as efficiently. And now her body thrummed with a satisfying hum of pleasure. With her hands shoved deep in the pockets of her black and burgundy dress, Maeve manipulated several small emeralds between her fingers and allowed a satisfied smile to stretch her lips. She fairly vibrated, not just from Dugan’s skill in riding her the way she liked, but also from the aftermath of violence. A temporary release of tension. An orgasm of destruction.

  Which was just as well. If she’d released that fury on the ones who deserved it, they would have died too quickly and she would have been stuck with this ball of cold rage still lodged inside her. But now she had the serenity to do this the way she liked. Their pain would be all the greater for her patience.

  Find her son. Find her emerald. Repay her enemies. They were simple things, in theory. But her emerald was hidden from her. She’d called to it, but it was silent, as if it had never existed. Her power, her strength. It couldn’t have been destroyed. Without it, her search for Kai was more difficult.

  Silas and his accomplice had done much in the time she’d healed. But they’d only slowed, not halted her.

  Silas led her to the ones he now watched over. Did he believe the bastard was safe? Was he working to ensure it? Either way, he brought her to another that deserved her special attention. The healer—Alex.

  With an innate stealth, Maeve gracefully slid through that which was solid in the human realm and insubstantial in hers, and halted where she wished—the healer’s bedroom. At the side of his bed as he lay sleeping, bare to the waist. The show stopped at the dark green cotton pants he wore.

  Alex stretched across his bed, his muscled arms to either side of him. Maeve leaned close, inhaling the scent at his neck, thrilling at the pheromones. A scent that called to who she was, at the core. He smelled clean, with just a hint of natural musk. Her fangs itched to taste him, but she was still full. Too bad.

  Maeve licked her lips and held her hand just over his skin, feeling curls of hair mixed with his aura of power. Considering whether she’d feel more.

  Sinuously, she drifted her hand down his chest, stroking him in a way that wouldn’t wake him, but that his spirit would feel. Down she moved, to the spot she valued most. Her hand hovered, her heart pounding with the thrill. He wasn’t hard, not yet, but there was plenty to the package waiting to be unwrapped. She could do so much with a relaxed, slumbering cock. Maeve smiled, her tongue moistening her bottom lip.

  Her fangs itched for more than just one type of taste. She imagined sliding her fangs down his hard shaft, allowing just a small nick from one of them. Not deep enough for blood, just shallow enough to hurt. Then she could take his sac into her mouth. With the right angle, she could bite deep, could suck him so dry, Alex would never have children.

  So clever, so diabolical. That was vengeance with finesse.

  Maeve opened her eyes, imagining the satisfaction. The pleasure. From what she’d see
n so far tonight, that would pain him tremendously. No man, even a half-angel, could resist the need to build his own dynasty.

  So sweetly, humanly vulnerable. So many ways to destroy him. She didn’t need vicious violence. Now it was time to use her mind, to cause pain that lasted longer than hours. But perhaps Alex was not the right candidate for that. She couldn’t find her emerald, or her son, until Silas was pulled away from his current mission.

  With the healer gone, Silas would return to the bastard, raise the drawbridge and flood the moat with poisons. Everything Maeve wanted would be in that metaphorical castle, her ally, her tool, and her enemies, and if there was anything she’d learned from Kai’s Norman father, it was how to crumble castle walls.

  She would kill the healer, but—Maeve pressed her hand to the hardened flesh beneath the cotton—she didn’t have to do it quickly. Leaning forward, she kissed his chest, inhaling his scent and allowing it to power her own desire.

  Suddenly, an arc of strangely familiar power surged from her lips, through Alex’s body, up through her hand and inside her. Completing its circuit too quickly for her to defend herself, Maeve fell.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The face disappeared from the window a split second before the hotel door burst open. Elizabeth jumped, spinning around. Alex tried to pull her back from the furious giant with the demonic horns, but she resisted.

  “Daddy!”

  All ironic quips fled from Alex’s mind when the demon’s blue eyes rested squarely on him. “The battle has begun. She is loose.”

  Alex’s heart stopped for one endless beat, terror sliding over his flesh like swamp water, hot, sticky, and completely unpleasant.

  Elizabeth frowned. “What battle? Who?”

  Alex grabbed her arm and pulled her back to him. A glance to the left of the demon answered every question he had. Maeve’s green eyes narrowed on him, hate slithering around inside them like venomous snakes.

  Holding Elizabeth tight to him, Alex said, “Time to go.”

  Her father raised his hand and the night went black around the sight of Maeve attacking the giant’s back.

  Adad sent them away, not to their own bodies, but to their chamber until it was safe for Elizabeth. Maeve’s presence, here of all places, was the worst sort of danger to his daughter. He spun, the hotel room disappearing behind him. The walls of Elizabeth’s rock tunnels disappeared, becoming a wide expanse of sand and rock, peppered in the distance with willow and sorgum. Perhaps not perfectly Babylonian in design, but there was no place he’d ever been that he wanted to ruin with the presence of Maeve.

  “Adad?” she snarled, furious, disbelieving. She rushed for him, her nails extended like claws. “You will die for your treachery.”

  Adad grabbed her wrists, struggling with her. His flesh appeared impenetrable stone, but Maeve knew best how to damage him. Still, she did not terrify him. He crushed her against him and laughed mockingly. “Surely you can appreciate a Judas kiss? It comes so naturally to you.”

  She froze against him, then softened. Her eyes dampened. Her whisper was tragic, her pain fathomless. “I trusted you.”

  His lips twisted into a sardonic smile. Adad refused to be weakened by sympathy in remembered closeness. “I seriously doubt that.”

  The wounded look disappeared as if it had never been. In its place was the hardened whore he knew so well. “As much as I trusted anyone. But you abandoned me. You betrayed me. Do you realize how I have suffered?”

  “You were imprisoned as you should have been long ago. As you would yet have been, if you weren’t so clever about the letter of the law.”

  “For a thousand years, Adad! Since when do you care so much for the law?” she demanded. “I know what you’ve done. You’ve stolen my plan for yourself.”

  “I may have fallen, beautiful witch.” Adad met her gaze with an unflinching stare. “But I have never promoted destruction.”

  “Ruling is not destruction,” she snarled. “It is the very opposite. You agreed at one time.”

  “Yes, I considered your truth. It seemed a possibility, until I saw where your decisions would lead you.” His lips curved mockingly again. “Would you like to know, sweet Maeve? I could show you.”

  She thought about accepting his offer. But then she stiffened with caution as her alluring green gaze considered him. “Bribing me, Adad?”

  “Why would I do that?” he purred, a breath from her lips.

  “Why, indeed.” Her green eyes narrowed on his blue ones, her thick lashes swooping down, as if preparing for his kiss. When he made no move to do so, her lashes flew up and her gaze focused on him. “Your daughter has your eyes.”

  His gaze narrowed. “She is protected. You can’t touch her with me here.”

  Maeve grinned slowly, “Perhaps not. But what about the others, Adad? Can you protect them all?”

  He shoved her from him. “You will leave them alone. You’ve cursed them enough.”

  “Nothing is enough, not after what you did. If you want to save them, try to stop me.” Maeve laughed wickedly and held her arms open in invitation, her body wavering, ready to disappear. When Adad didn’t move, her eyes widened. She looked at him from the tips of his horns to his feet. With a flick of her lashes, her green eyes met his. “You are trapped.”

  Maeve threw back her head and laughed to the starless sky. When she finally straightened, she said, “Protect them as best you can, but I have an enormous debt to repay.”

  Adad stared at the space she’d occupied long after she left. He knew the risks, the options, the paths that lay before them all. He knew the future, the failures, and the triumphs. But he’d forgotten one simple fact. Maeve terrified him.

  Elizabeth stepped from behind a tower of rocks, watching her father. He hadn’t been able to maintain his human form since she was little. Illusions were lies here. Neither the brimstone that formed him, nor the sharp horns protruding from his body scared her.

  No. What terrified her had always and ever been his visions. His glimpses of the future, her family’s future, destroyed from the inside out. Her inability to stop them had turned her nightmares into hours of helpless torment. But never, in all that time, had she considered the cause of their annihilation to be her father’s fault. After all, he’d only left. It was she who’d ensured he never returned.

  Rigid with fury, she faced her father. Adad, his lover had called him. “So you need to protect us from what, exactly?”

  “Elizabeth!” He actually seemed surprised to see her.

  She waved his response away. “This is my mind. As powerful as you are, you do have limits. You can’t simply dismiss me.”

  His eyes narrowed and the black stone of his face settled into harsh, forbidding lines. “No, it seems I can’t.”

  “What can she do to us?”

  “Anything she pleases,” Adad stated bluntly.

  “Aren’t there rules?”

  “Of course, and she knows every one of them. She’s capable of inventing loopholes where none should exist.”

  “So she’s the goddess of lawyers. Great.” Elizabeth looked to the side as Alex approached. His eyes were calm and focused, his stance self-assured.

  Halting at her side, Alex took Elizabeth’s hand before facing her dad. “How did she get here?”

  “I brought her through Elizabeth’s connection to you, before she could harm your physical form.”

  “And now she’s back there again?”

  Adad nodded. “I couldn’t prevent her return, so now I must hasten yours.”

  Alex swallowed, nodding. He had so many urgent questions. Quickly he tried to think, to sift and sort through them before time ran out. “How did she find us?”

  Adad shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. It was destined that she would.”

  “Like it’s destined for her to threaten all of us.”

  Elizabeth frowned at his matter-of-fact tone. Was he speaking of the vision her father had shown him? The branch of the tree that was abru
ptly cut? The one her father had shown her had moved beyond that, to a time when they’d all survived but taken a broken road. So the threat was preordained, but either result was still a possibility.

  Adad inclined his head to both of them. “Exactly.”

  “How do we survive her attack?” she asked.

  His blue eyes closed briefly. “Through all of your choices. All of your sacrifices.”

  “What was the plan she mentioned? The one she accused you of stealing?” Alex asked.

  “Her son—” Adad turned his head, as if listening to an unheard voice. His eyes flashed with sudden fire, flames moving within their depths so not a hint of blue was seen. A second later, Adad’s eyes cleared and he looked straight at Alex. “Go.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes widened and her breath stilled in her chest. Quickly, she sent Alex away, but, much as she desired to follow, she couldn’t leave yet. The answers she needed were too crucial. Gritting her teeth against the anxiety tightly coiling inside her stomach, Elizabeth faced her father.

  All these years she’d blamed her mother’s poor decisions, her mother’s weakness, her mother’s failures for the destruction of their family. But it was his fault. Her father’s poor choices a thousand and more years ago doomed their family now.

  “My intentions were good, Elizabeth. I was not power-hungry. Instead, I was convinced I knew a better way to give the best to mankind. I had ideas, plans to bring help and aid and happiness. Ultimately, I was corrupted with visions of glory, believing I knew best and that the dynasty I founded would lead this world into the next golden age.”

  Good for him. That made the danger to Shelly, Teddy, Tommy, and the others so much more bearable. “And how is that different from what she wants?”

  “She wants to deliver humanity into slavery.” At her raised brows, he became more specific. “After wreaking vengeance for what she considers a terrible injustice.”

  “Was it unjust?”

  “Imprisoning Maeve for the deeds she has done is justice. Imprisoning her for the deeds I know she will do, is mankind’s only hope for survival.”