Witch's Awakening

by Neely Powell

  He set her suitcase on a cedar chest at the end of the bed and watched as she emptied the shopping bag of shoes into the closet floor. She sensed his disapproval of her disorganization. From what she had seen of his house, Jake was very tidy.

  “Have you thought about how your parents feel in all of this?”

  Brenna was surprised.

  Tasmin looked up at Jake as though the man had lost his mind.

  “My parents? What the hell do my parents have to do with anything?”

  He looked uncomfortable. “They came to see me today.” He told her what her parents asked him to do.

  Brenna felt a spike of anger. “They had no right to ask you to talk to me about anything. They’re not a part of my life.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “So now you’re best buddies with Delia and Aiden?” Brenna snapped. “That’s just wonderful.”

  “Don’t get angry with me,” he shot back. “They came to me, but their argument made a lot of sense. Is it helpful for you to be arguing with Sarah like you are? Does it protect anyone for you to leave home?”

  He was verbalizing the questions Brenna had been asking herself since she packed her car. Tasmin studied him as if she agreed, then looked at Brenna and flipped her tail.

  “Oh, shut up,” Brenna told the cat. She glared at Jake. “You expect me to believe my parents give a rat’s ass about what happens to me? My mother?” Brenna snorted.

  “You’ve got a legitimate gripe about Aiden and Delia not being picture-perfect parents,” Jake continued. “But right now, when their daughters need them most, they’re here. That’s not the worst thing, Brenna. Not by a long shot.”

  “Maybe this wouldn’t be happening if they came home before now.”

  “They’re not the only ones who left town. You were gone for three years.”

  Her anger heated, the air stirred and the window shot up with a bang. Jake flinched. Tasman looked at her in disapproval. Brenna knew she still needed to work on not letting her emotions spill over in magic. Once upon a time, she had better control.

  She took a deep breath. “Comparing my leaving to my parents going away is low, shifter. You didn’t grow up here. You found your haven after traveling around the world. What was here for me?”

  “Your life, your family.”

  “My parents were halfway around the world in a cave in Ireland or Scotland or England. But I’m supposed to stay here?”

  “Other than your parents, all of the people who care about you were right here,” he insisted, not backing down. “You and your mother are more alike than you think. You just have different priorities and ideas about what is important.”

  “What’s more important than raising your children? What’s more important than nursing a child through chicken pox or a bout of stomach flu? What’s more important than helping a young girl become a responsible adult?”

  “People often do things to their children they think they will never do.”

  They said nothing to each other as Tasmin gave them both a dismissive look and left the room.

  Jake shrugged and looked past her. “That really is an ugly bedspread. I got it at a thrift shop.”

  Brenna went to him, blocking his view. He had hinted at this before, and now she wanted to know. “What do you mean? What happened with your family?”

  He left the room and she followed him to the kitchen. Pulling another beer out of the refrigerator, he offered it to her, but she shook her head. He twisted the cap off and drank half of it in one gulp.

  “Do you know anything about the mating habits of tigers?” he asked.

  “Not really, though I do know tigers are the largest of the big cats.”

  He finished his beer and tossed the bottle in the recycle bin with such force it broke. Brenna jumped, but she didn’t move. “When tigers mate, the male has almost nothing to do with raising the cubs. They are completely dependent on their mother for sustenance, protection and education. She sometimes even eats their feces so predators can’t scent them. Tiger mothers are amazing.”

  “I thought you said your mother wasn’t a shifter?”

  “No, she was human, but she was fiercely protective. She had to be, because my father didn’t care. He liked to pretend I didn’t exist.”

  When he reached to open the refrigerator again, Brenna stopped him. She had never seen Jake drink more than two beers. He was upset and he needed to talk, not get drunk. She gestured toward the dining table. “Sit down and tell me about your parents. Please.”

  They sat across from each other and he continued without looking at her. “When my mother got pregnant, she got a job as a secretary and my dad kept working shows when he could. He came in and out of our lives.”

  Jake looked so bleak that Brenna wanted to hug him. “What about the times when he was gone?”

  His smile was immediate. “My mom was great. She may have had to work every day, but she made sure I was cared for. As soon as she got home from work, she gave me her complete attention. I helped her clean and take care of the house. She’s the one who taught me to cook. She had infinite patience. Life was great except when Dad came home. For some reason Mother always let him come back.”

  “She loved him?”

  “Pitied him, I think,” Jake said, frowning. “He hated what he was and what he did. She tried to get him out of show business, to work at something else. He was born in a circus. Performing was all he knew.”

  “So he didn’t help you learn about shifting?”

  “He told me it was a curse,” Jake retorted. “Mother helped me accept who I was. For someone who didn’t shift, she had an amazing understanding of what it feels like to have wildness inside. I think that’s why my father hooked up with her in the first place, because her gentleness was a complement to his wild side. That’s the crazy thing. I think he really needed her.”

  “She sounds like a wonderful person.” Brenna couldn’t imagine being that close to her mother. Her relationship with Delia had always been conflicted. It broke her heart to think of Jake losing someone he loved so much.

  “My dad ended up in a show with an abusive trainer. The man sometimes forgot that Dad was a human part of the time. He used the whip once too often. One night after a show, Dad went berserk and killed him.”

  “Oh, Jake, that’s horrible,” Brenna murmured, reaching for his hand. “What happened? Did the police get him?”

  “Dad came straight to the house. He asked Mother to help him. For the first time ever, she said he had to leave. They argued. Mother sent me to my room and they were out on the patio, but I heard them. I heard what he said. Dad left, and Mother was outside, crying. I didn’t know what to do.” He stopped, emotion clogging his throat and affecting his voice.

  Brenna squeezed his hand. “What could you have done?”

  Jake shook his head. “But I should have done something. I should have known…”

  “Known what?”

  “What he would do.” Jake’s hands closed into fist. “I’ve never told anyone about this.”

  Brenna waited, sitting very still, saying nothing.

  “I looked up just as Dad came over the fence. He was on her, ripping her to pieces before I could do anything.”

  Horror clenched Brenna’s gut. Jake had watched his father kill his mother.

  He stood and slammed his fist on the counter. “I should have helped her.”

  She got up and put her arms around his waist, laying her cheek against his back. “He would have killed you, too.”

  “That might have been for the best,” he said.

  “No, that’s not true. What happened to your father?”

  Jake turned to face Brenna again and held up a hand when she reached out to him. “Dad ran away and I never saw him again. The attack was tagged a freak accident. As if a tiger could escape from a club on the strip, make it all the way to our house to kill my mom, then disappear into the desert.” His laughter was bitter. “I lied to the police. I told
them what they wanted to hear.”

  “So you don’t really know that your father is dead?”

  “He’s dead to me,” Jake retorted. “And he taught me a lesson about how quickly love can turn into hate and death. It’s not something I’m going to forget.” Defiance rang in his tone, as if he was challenging Brenna to argue with him.

  She kept herself calm. “Jake, you should think of the other shifters you’ve known. People like Garth’s family. They live peaceful, good lives and never hurt anyone. Your father had a problem, obviously—”

  “Yes, and I am his son. I have the same problem.”

  Brenna struggled to find words of comfort and understanding. Before she could say anything, Jake distanced himself from her, looking wary.

  “You should know this. I’m a murderer, too. Just like my father.”

  She thought she knew where he was going. “You were in the army. You had a duty—”

  “I wasn’t following orders.” He grasped her shoulders and shook her. “I killed a man for no reason other than I wanted him dead.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  When Brenna didn’t move, Jake tried to turn around.

  She grabbed his hand. “Don’t pull away from me.”

  “I just assumed you wouldn’t want to be so close to a killer.”

  “Don’t assume things about me, Jake. You’ll end up having to live with disappointment.”

  “You’re not shocked?”

  Her gaze was steady. “Look at my family. Every generation someone dies and yet we’ve gone on for over two hundred years, just supplying victims. We’re murderers as well.”

  “It’s not the same.”

  “How? Tell me what happened and I’ll judge for myself.”

  He had already told her enough secrets. These were stories he never planned to share with anyone. Why did he feel this responsibility to tell Brenna? He didn’t owe her anything. What startled him, however, was the yearning he felt to tell her. Was this a spell? What was this witch doing to him?

  She rubbed her thumb across the top of his hand. “I know things about you, things you probably won’t let yourself know. So tell me about this murder.”

  He moved away. “What kind of things would you know about me? I’m a shifter, an animal. Tigers aren’t exactly tabby cats.”

  “But most tigers don’t have a human half either,” she said.

  “I didn’t kill him as a tiger.” He didn’t look at her. The guilt was too much.

  If she was surprised, she hid it well. Her deep green eyes remained calm. “Here’s what I know. There’s nothing evil in you. You wouldn’t kill just for the thrill. Your sense of justice is too strong. There has to be a reason—personal safety, protection of others, no other choice.”

  Jake drew in a deep breath. She needed to know the truth about him. So he began. “It was my last tour in Afghanistan. I was exhausted. My men and I went out night after night, looking for insurgents and for leads on hidden Taliban members. It was grueling and frustrating work. We never knew what we would find. We relied on local citizens for our information.”

  Jake put his hands in his pockets. “It’s a familiar story. We got a tip from a regular informer and went out to do a house-to-house search.”

  “How did you do it, day after day? I can’t imagine.”

  “You do what you have to do. You know that. You would do almost anything to end this curse.”

  Brenna agreed and waited for him to continue.

  “We posted men outside and were getting ready to search another house. It was a husband and wife, and one of the men was holding them in the front room while the others moved to the back. I won’t give you the details except to say two of my men started into a bedroom and were both killed. By the time we’d taken out the insurgents, two more of my men were wounded. One will never walk again.”

  Brenna took his hand.

  The memories crowded into Jake’s head, a horror he could never forget. “I had to write letters to the families of my men. I don’t know why, but those two deaths were the hardest I’ve ever faced. I felt useless and incompetent. Even though we’d dealt with this informer several times in the past, I felt I should have seen something, known something was different.”

  “You weren’t a telepath,” Brenna pointed out. “How could you expect to know what another man was thinking? You said yourself you’d done this many, many times. He had been a reliable source, correct? Why would you expect this time to be different?”

  “All I know is I couldn’t get over it. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw those two guys opening the door and the lower half of their bodies being blown away.” He squeezed her hand and looked straight ahead as he continued, “One night, I left the camp and went to where I knew the informer lived. I thought about confronting him as a tiger, mainly just to scare the shit out of him, but then I decided I wanted to talk to him.”

  The scene played out in Jake’s mind. The black night. The hot, dry air. The smell of rotting garbage. A baby crying in the distance. Though humanity pressed in on every side, Jake had melted through the shadows, silent and deadly. Part of that skill was training. Part was his nature.

  He told Brenna, “I snuck in the back and found the informer passed out drunk on his bed. I tied him down and threw a glass of water in his face. He started blubbering as soon as he came to, telling me he was forced to send my men into an ambush, claiming the Taliban were holding his wife and son and he had no choice.”

  He turned to look at her, his gaze level and direct.

  “But I knew he didn’t have a wife or a kid. He’d turned in his own brother and killed a female cousin for falling in love with an English soldier. I finally knew what had been bothering me for months—this guy was a rat bastard. I always suspected he would betray us someday. Even after what had happened, he would do it again. If not to us, to some other unit or someone else. He was filth.”

  When he paused, Brenna didn’t look away. She took his other hand in her free one.

  His voice flat and emotionless, Jake said, “So I slit his throat and left him where he was.”

  This time Brenna couldn’t hide her shock. She sucked in a breath and closed her eyes. The muscles in her throat worked as she swallowed.

  Jake looked at her, a dull ache in his gut. He cared about her reaction. He cared so much more than he should.

  Brenna steadied herself and looked at him again. “What happened next?”

  “There was a cursory investigation, but they assumed he was murdered by the insurgents he betrayed by giving us information. I finished my tour two months later and left the army. Garth begged me to come to work for him in New Mourne.”

  Jake shook his head. “I almost didn’t come. I had murdered a man in cold blood. After all those years in the military, I thought I learned to control the wild impulses inside me. I thought I wasn’t like my father, but maybe I’m worse. It wasn’t my tiger who killed that man. It was me.”

  Brenna’s reaction was instant. “You’re a good man, Jake, and what you’ve just told me doesn’t change my view of that.”

  “I’m a dangerous man with a beast inside me.”

  “And you deal with that,” she said firmly. She moved and put her arms around him. “I saw you fight off the demon that night in the diner. A bad man with a beast inside who craves killing would have welcomed the excuse to break free. You fought it.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “I understand that you can’t wall yourself off from the world. All of us with special abilities live with challenges. We have impulses. Do you know how many times I’ve thought about infesting The Enclave with rats and snakes? In my opinion that would get rid of a big problem in this town.”

  Thinking back to his meeting with the BOC, Jake had to agree. Yet he thought her argument proved his point about himself. “I didn’t resist the impulse, Brenna. I killed that man. I didn’t even have to shift to do it.”

  “And you live with the awful regret. You
wouldn’t do it again.”

  “I’m glad you’re so sure.” Jake shook his head. “I cared so much about those men I served with that I gave into my impulse.” Which was why he should avoid deep entanglements.

  “Yes,” Brenna said, her voice firm. “You gave in and you killed him as a man. As an angry, frustrated, heartbroken man. The story proves that you’re not only shifter, but you’re human.” She studied him for a moment. “Which side of yourself are you more afraid of?”

  The question shocked Jake. Damn this female. She forced him to examine himself much too closely.

  Brenna pressed, “If you had to choose, which one would it be? Would you be a man with all those tendencies that men have to do right and wrong? Or would you run free as a tiger, a hunter and killer?”

  The answer, Jake realized was simple. As a tiger, he couldn’t be with Brenna. And that’s what he wanted. More than anything, he wanted to be with the difficult, complicated and demanding woman. He held back the confession of love that started to tumble from him. Though his feelings had deepened, Brenna made it clear from the start that she wasn’t looking for a commitment.

  “The good thing,” she continued, lifting a hand to his cheek. “Is that you don’t have to choose. You just have to try to be the person and the shifter you want to be. Someone that chooses right more often than not. Luckily, you’re in New Mourne. Because of that deal my family made, it’s easier here for supers to live at peace.”

  “Most of the time.”

  “That’s what we have to fix.”

  Jake stood still, enjoying the warmth of her body against his. He needed to pull away, to return to the person who didn’t want a future with any woman.

  She held him closer. “You’re a good man, Jake, and you did what you did to save lives.”

  He turned and tightened his embrace. “God, Brenna, you almost make me believe I could live a normal life.”

  He started the kiss with a delicate touch, but quickly took it deeper.

  Jake found himself wanting to purr like Tasmin because of the warmth of her touch. He remembered her caressing his tiger in the forest. She’d been gentle and trusting, believing he’d never hurt her, just like she did now.