Haunted, page 13
Ariel resisted the urge to lash out. Nothing of the girl she’d known and loved was left in this cold, hard woman. But because she had loved the girl, she had to warn her. “Well, someone hasn’t forgotten about us. Or the curse. We’re the only Coopers left. The others have been murdered.”
Elena’s breath caught audibly as her face paled. “Irina?”
“I don’t know.”
“Mother?”
Ariel nodded and fought the tears burning her eyes. She wouldn’t shed them, not in front of this stranger. But could a ghost cry? Her mother hovered near them, enveloped in smoke and orange light, and Ariel thought she glimpsed something glistening on the woman’s near-transparent face. She’d grown used to her mother’s appearance, but she studied Elena for any reaction to the apparition.
Elena’s slender throat noticeably moved as she swallowed. But no fear widened her eyes. She obviously couldn’t see their mother. “Was there a funeral?”
“Not yet.” Ariel sighed, then admitted, “No one’s found her body yet.”
Her sister looked at her, surprise on her face. “But you know…”
Ariel bobbed her head. “I see them…all of them…who’ve died.”
Elena shook her head. “No, that’s not possible. You’re like Mother. You’re making it up or imagining it. I can’t go through that again, wondering what’s real and what’s pretend. I can’t have that in my life.”
Even though Ariel had endured many rejections, she winced from the hurt, the pain pressing down on her chest as if her sister had stomped on it. She closed her eyes, holding back the tears she was too proud to shed. “Like I said, I didn’t expect a tearful reunion.”
“You just came to warn me.” Her sister sniffed derisively. “It’s been a while. I forgot how our mother played fools. Did she promise to ward off the evil spirits for a price? Is that what you want from me? Money?”
Ariel’s palm itched with the temptation to slap her older sister’s beautiful face. “I don’t want your money.”
Elena craned her neck, glancing around her until Ariel turned toward the black Escalade, too. David hadn’t kept his promise—or at least he hadn’t stayed behind the wheel. He stood outside the SUV, leaning against the driver’s door, his arms crossed across his muscular chest. Dark glasses hid his eyes, and the light spring breeze played in his blond hair. “David Koster. I guess you don’t need my money. Our mother taught you well. You’re just like her.”
Ariel shrugged off the insult. “I wouldn’t know. I hadn’t seen her in twenty years, not until I saw her ghost.”
Elena bit her bottom lip, either over Ariel’s claim or to hold back questions she wanted to ask. Despite her struggle, one slipped out. “You didn’t go back to her…after that night?”
Ariel shook her head. “Nope. Neither did Irina. She got adopted, and I got bounced around foster homes until I was eighteen.” Now she turned her attention to the house behind Elena, clicking her tongue as if impressed. “Looks like you had a softer landing than I did.”
Elena’s chin tipped up again. “If you don’t want my money, what do you want?”
“Your help. I need to find Irina.”
“To warn her, too? To disrupt her life? To scare her?” Elena fired the questions even though those pale eyes remained icy and indifferent.
“To save her life. If it’s not too late. Do you have any idea who might have adopted her? Maybe she’s with her paternal family, too. Did you know who her father is?”
“No.”
“That’s right. You’ve forgotten all about us.” Ariel wrestled her frustration and pain to the side. She couldn’t deal with it.
“You’d be smart to do the same,” Elena advised. “Move on with your life. Forget about the past.”
“I can’t,” she insisted. “A killer won’t let me.”
Elena’s face remained closed, disbelieving. “I can’t help you then,” she said, stepping back into the foyer. Before she could swing the door closed, Ariel braced her palm against the heavy oak.
“Yes, you can.”
“I don’t have any special powers. Mother made up that story. It wasn’t real, Ariel, no matter how much you want to believe that it was. Nothing about that life was real.”
Ariel nearly believed her because the bond she’d thought forged between her and her sisters didn’t exist anymore, if it ever really had.
“Okay. But I do need something from you….” The image of all those postcards, with the star, moon and sun in a circle flashed through Ariel’s mind. She had no real proof, but somehow she knew those charms—like the sisters—needed to be reunited to finally vanquish the curse and the killer.
Elena sighed, then asked, “How much do you want?”
“For the last time, I don’t want your money. I want your charm. The star.”
The blond hair moved again as the woman shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
“You won’t give it to me?”
“That was a lifetime ago,” she said, as if Ariel could have ever forgotten. “I don’t have that trinket anymore.”
Trinket. To her it had been a worthless piece of junk. To Ariel it had always been a cherished family heirloom. “It’s gone?”
“Lost a long time ago,” Elena admitted before closing the door in Ariel’s face.
Without all the charms, Ariel suspected she would be the same. Lost. Fate, the vendetta and the killer would win.
David settled Ariel onto one of the leather couches, then started a fire in the marble hearth. But none of its warmth penetrated the chill that had her trembling. “You’re shivering,” he said, sliding his arm around her as he sat beside her.
“I think she gave me frostbite,” she said, trying to ease the knot in her chest with humor, however forced.
His hand slid up from her shoulder to cup her face. “It was that bad?”
She nodded. “My sister is heartless, David.”
His dark eyes widened but not with surprise. Ariel had told him on the drive to the Towers that she’d found Elena. “I don’t know her, but I do remember hearing that Thora has a granddaughter named Elle. Thora Jones isn’t a very warm woman. Her reputation is that she’s cold and ruthless.”
“Then her granddaughter is just like her.”
He shrugged. “I’m sure the same has been said about me. You can’t believe everything you hear or read.”
“She doesn’t believe anything,” Ariel said, bitterness sour on her tongue. “She doesn’t think the legend’s real or that any of us have special abilities.”
David didn’t say anything; he probably agreed with Elena. Ariel’s stomach churned. At least he hadn’t rejected her, the way her older sister had. “She wants nothing to do with me, David.”
His thumbs stroked her cheeks, brushing away the tears she hadn’t realized had slipped from her eyes. “Maybe she’s just afraid.”
“Of what? She doesn’t believe she’s in danger.” And that made her far more vulnerable, because she wouldn’t be alert. She wouldn’t be able to protect herself, not without the charm.
“She probably thinks you hate her.”
Ariel’s lips twisted into a grimace. “I don’t. But she certainly didn’t go out of her way to endear herself to me.”
“She might have figured there was no use, that you blame her for what her grandmother did to your mother.”
Ariel fisted her hands, wishing she’d met the infamous Thora Jones. But then, how could she blame the woman for wanting to save her granddaughter from the vagabond lifestyle of a con artist that no child should have lived?
“Elena was only twelve when we were taken away,” Ariel said. “If she ever met her paternal grandmother before, it had to have been before I was born. She can’t be held responsible for that woman’s actions. Elena was just a kid.”
“You all were.”
That had been the last time she had felt like a child—in that little truck camper when their mother bestowed upon each of them a charm. Ariel fingered her little pewter sun. She couldn’t imagine not wearing it.
“No, David, you’re wrong. Elena’s not worried about my blaming her for anything. She just doesn’t want me in her life,” Ariel said. “Because she doesn’t want to remember where she came from. I can’t believe that she…”
“What?” David prodded when she couldn’t go on.
“She lost her charm.” Or had thrown it away.
Had Irina? She’d been so young when Mama had given them the charms. She’d probably lost hers long ago. Just as Irina was lost to them. Maybe for eternity.
“You say that like it’s a death sentence,” David remarked, his eyes narrowed.
Ariel’s breath burned in her lungs just as the orange light burned in the smoke, which surrounded her mother’s ghost. The woman’s dark eyes widened with fear, her mouth open as if she sobbed. Ariel had grown used to her; she hadn’t even noticed when her mother reappeared.
“I think it might be. Mama said she gave the charms to us to keep us safe. At Marie’s and Sadie’s I found postcards from my mother. She signed her name, then drew the symbols of each charm and circled them. They’re important, David, and I’m probably the only one left to still have hers.”
Did that mean she would be the only to survive? Without the protection of the charm, would she have died already? She’d be the easiest for the killer to find.
David reached for her wrist, holding it so he could inspect the little pewter sun. “Let me take it, Ariel.”
Her heart lurched at his suggestion. “What? Why?”
“I’ll take it to a lab and have it checked out, see if there’s anything special about it.”
He could only understand the logical, so how could he ever really accept her? “David, what’s special about this charm isn’t something that can be measured in a laboratory.”
“There are experts in this field, Ariel. Parapsychologists who can measure this kind of stuff.”
Her mouth quirked into a smile. “This kind of stuff?” Her heart softened, touched by how hard he was trying to understand and help her.
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “I’m not sure what the technical terms are, but I can get in contact with one of these parapsychologists—”
She pressed her fingers against his lips. “I appreciate what you want to do,” she said, “but until we catch this killer, I’m not taking off my charm.”
His brown eyes darkened. “You don’t need it, Ariel. I will keep you safe.”
With the gun? She didn’t voice the thought, didn’t want to spoil the moment with the doubts that had had her eavesdropping at his locked office door.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she told him. She’d lost Haylee, her job and any hope of reuniting with her family. She couldn’t lose him, too. But what if he were only sticking with her out of chivalry, because he wanted to protect her?
“Shh,” he said as he pressed a kiss against her lips.
Ariel wrapped her arms around his neck, clinging to him. If she couldn’t emotionally hang on to him, she would physically until he pushed her away as her sister had.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he promised her.
She managed a smile. “No, you’re not,” she agreed as she reached for the buttons on his shirt.
His deep voice vibrated with warning as he murmured her name. “Ariel…”
She was heedless of his threats as she pushed the shirt from his shoulders, baring his broad chest to her gaze and her touch. Her fingertips slid across his skin, his muscles rippling beneath. Then she tasted him, gliding her lips up his chest, where she nipped at his collarbone.
He groaned and his eyes squeezed shut as if in pain. Ariel could identify; she ached for him, too. His hands pushed up her skirt, his palms both rough and warm sliding along her thighs until he pushed them apart and stroked the heat of her through her thin cotton panties.
“David, I need you…now….”
Another lie. Even with passion burning in her veins, she lied. She didn’t need him just now, she needed him always. She opened her mouth to tell him the truth, to accept his proposal, but all that escaped was a moan, as he pushed her panties aside and slid two fingers inside her. She arched her back, then lifted her sweater over her head. Her breasts bounced free, unbound by a bra, the nipples jutting toward him.
David answered their silent plea, tugging one into his mouth. His tongue laved the hard point while his fingers continued their sweet torture, sliding in and out of her.
Passion burned low in her belly as she trembled with the need for more even as the first climax crashed through her. With trembling hands she reached for him, unzipping his pants and pushing aside his boxers until he sprang free.
“Wait,” he murmured, reaching into his wallet for a condom, always so logical and controlled even when flushed and shuddering with desire.
She suckled on his collarbone as he rolled on the latex. Then he lifted her onto his lap, driving into her, hot and hard.
“David!” She screamed his name, holding on tight to him as her world shattered. Again.
The mingled scents of lavender and sandalwood teased Ariel’s nose, drawing her from a deep sleep. Before she fully awakened, she became aware of another sensation, of the links of her silver bracelet tugging at her wrist. Through cracked lids she spied David fumbling with her charm. Her heart shifted, thudding hard against her ribs. Fear kept her from sitting up in bed and demanding to know what the hell he was doing. Instead she murmured as if still asleep and rolled over, tucking her wrist beneath her.
Forcing her breathing to remain even and unaffected, she waited to see if he would try again for the charm. The mattress shifted as he moved, but he rolled away from her and slid his legs from under the satin sheets. With a soft thud his feet hit the floor.
Her fear dissipated, easing the burn in her lungs and slowing her rapid pulse. The charm held some fascination for him, probably because of what she’d told him. He couldn’t have been trying to steal it. She reached out, but the smoke thickened, blocking her fingers from touching him.
Moonlight streaming through the windows painted his skin as golden a hue as his hair. The muscles in his back and arms rippled as he leaned over and pulled out the drawer of the nightstand. The light changed color, the gold turning to flame-orange as it glinted off the metal of the object he lifted from the drawer.
A gun.
Ty had come through on this favor, too. What did he owe David? What exactly was the history between them? She’d considered it none of her business before, something that had happened before her time and had nothing to do with her. Now she wondered….
The cords in his neck distended with tension as he stared down at the weapon in his hands. His breath shuddered out with such force that his shoulders shook.
Fear and doubt squeezed Ariel’s heart, and her fingers, still extended toward him, curled back into a fist. She couldn’t ask him all the questions churning in her mind. When he turned his head, she closed her eyes, feigning sleep.
She kept them closed as he moved around the room, clothing rustling as he dressed. She only opened them after the bedroom door closed behind him with a soft click. Then she slid across the satin sheets until she could reach the nightstand. The clock on top of the black lacquer table flashed two o’clock in luminous green. She cared less about the time than the contents of the drawer, but when she pulled it open, the gun was gone.
“Mama,” Ariel called to her mother’s ghost, who hovered in the smoke, her dark eyes wide with fear. “I need to hear you. I need you to tell me that David has nothing to do with the vendetta.”
Her breath caught like a stabbing pain in her chest. “Please, Mama, tell me my doubts are unfounded.”
Her mother’s ghost said nothing, just faded away with the orange glow and the dissipating smoke. The only noise in the penthouse was the grind of the elevator as it descended to the lobby with David…and the gun.
Gates and guards. They thought that would keep them safe from him? They had no idea how powerful he was. Or how close.
Soon he would be even more powerful, once they were dead. But they had to find the youngest one yet, for him. Then he could reclaim the charms and kill them all, the last of the witches.
He pulled the hood over his head and stepped out of the vestibule. Candles blazed from the altar, pillars of smoke rising up from their flames to the rafters of the old church.
His church.
He was God to these people.
They knelt before the altar. They knelt before him, the dark robes hiding their bodies, the hoods their faces. They didn’t laugh at him as the witches in his visions did. They worshipped him. They would do whatever he asked of them…and more.
Despite the concealing brown fabric, he knew the identity of each of them. He’d chosen them specifically, either because of bloodlines or a thirst for revenge. They shared a special bond, a common goal.
“We must protect ourselves from witchcraft,” he declared, his voice echoing off the rafters and reverberating inside his head. His knees weakened, trembling a bit with the pain, but he couldn’t give in to it. He had to keep fighting. “We must destroy them before they manipulate our minds and steal our souls.”
Or, more dangerous yet, their hearts.
“Beware their treachery. Stay the course. Remain strong.” He spoke the warnings as much for himself as for the others. Maybe more.
The others began a chant, something he’d taught them in Latin about vanquishing witchcraft, about regaining power. “Exstinguo…veneficus…”
But the words ran together in his head with the throbbing pain. For a moment his vision blurred, and the witches appeared in the hooded robes. Their lips curved as they laughed at how they’d tricked him.
Rage whipped through him, and he swept an arm across the altar, knocking the candles over. Alarmed cries emanated from his followers. The flames caught the sleeve of his robe, but he pounded his arm against the altar, snuffing out the fire before the heat could sear his skin.
Then he glanced up, his eyes tearing as he tried to peer through smoke, an eerie orange light nearly blinding him. But he saw her.
Elena’s breath caught audibly as her face paled. “Irina?”
“I don’t know.”
“Mother?”
Ariel nodded and fought the tears burning her eyes. She wouldn’t shed them, not in front of this stranger. But could a ghost cry? Her mother hovered near them, enveloped in smoke and orange light, and Ariel thought she glimpsed something glistening on the woman’s near-transparent face. She’d grown used to her mother’s appearance, but she studied Elena for any reaction to the apparition.
Elena’s slender throat noticeably moved as she swallowed. But no fear widened her eyes. She obviously couldn’t see their mother. “Was there a funeral?”
“Not yet.” Ariel sighed, then admitted, “No one’s found her body yet.”
Her sister looked at her, surprise on her face. “But you know…”
Ariel bobbed her head. “I see them…all of them…who’ve died.”
Elena shook her head. “No, that’s not possible. You’re like Mother. You’re making it up or imagining it. I can’t go through that again, wondering what’s real and what’s pretend. I can’t have that in my life.”
Even though Ariel had endured many rejections, she winced from the hurt, the pain pressing down on her chest as if her sister had stomped on it. She closed her eyes, holding back the tears she was too proud to shed. “Like I said, I didn’t expect a tearful reunion.”
“You just came to warn me.” Her sister sniffed derisively. “It’s been a while. I forgot how our mother played fools. Did she promise to ward off the evil spirits for a price? Is that what you want from me? Money?”
Ariel’s palm itched with the temptation to slap her older sister’s beautiful face. “I don’t want your money.”
Elena craned her neck, glancing around her until Ariel turned toward the black Escalade, too. David hadn’t kept his promise—or at least he hadn’t stayed behind the wheel. He stood outside the SUV, leaning against the driver’s door, his arms crossed across his muscular chest. Dark glasses hid his eyes, and the light spring breeze played in his blond hair. “David Koster. I guess you don’t need my money. Our mother taught you well. You’re just like her.”
Ariel shrugged off the insult. “I wouldn’t know. I hadn’t seen her in twenty years, not until I saw her ghost.”
Elena bit her bottom lip, either over Ariel’s claim or to hold back questions she wanted to ask. Despite her struggle, one slipped out. “You didn’t go back to her…after that night?”
Ariel shook her head. “Nope. Neither did Irina. She got adopted, and I got bounced around foster homes until I was eighteen.” Now she turned her attention to the house behind Elena, clicking her tongue as if impressed. “Looks like you had a softer landing than I did.”
Elena’s chin tipped up again. “If you don’t want my money, what do you want?”
“Your help. I need to find Irina.”
“To warn her, too? To disrupt her life? To scare her?” Elena fired the questions even though those pale eyes remained icy and indifferent.
“To save her life. If it’s not too late. Do you have any idea who might have adopted her? Maybe she’s with her paternal family, too. Did you know who her father is?”
“No.”
“That’s right. You’ve forgotten all about us.” Ariel wrestled her frustration and pain to the side. She couldn’t deal with it.
“You’d be smart to do the same,” Elena advised. “Move on with your life. Forget about the past.”
“I can’t,” she insisted. “A killer won’t let me.”
Elena’s face remained closed, disbelieving. “I can’t help you then,” she said, stepping back into the foyer. Before she could swing the door closed, Ariel braced her palm against the heavy oak.
“Yes, you can.”
“I don’t have any special powers. Mother made up that story. It wasn’t real, Ariel, no matter how much you want to believe that it was. Nothing about that life was real.”
Ariel nearly believed her because the bond she’d thought forged between her and her sisters didn’t exist anymore, if it ever really had.
“Okay. But I do need something from you….” The image of all those postcards, with the star, moon and sun in a circle flashed through Ariel’s mind. She had no real proof, but somehow she knew those charms—like the sisters—needed to be reunited to finally vanquish the curse and the killer.
Elena sighed, then asked, “How much do you want?”
“For the last time, I don’t want your money. I want your charm. The star.”
The blond hair moved again as the woman shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
“You won’t give it to me?”
“That was a lifetime ago,” she said, as if Ariel could have ever forgotten. “I don’t have that trinket anymore.”
Trinket. To her it had been a worthless piece of junk. To Ariel it had always been a cherished family heirloom. “It’s gone?”
“Lost a long time ago,” Elena admitted before closing the door in Ariel’s face.
Without all the charms, Ariel suspected she would be the same. Lost. Fate, the vendetta and the killer would win.
David settled Ariel onto one of the leather couches, then started a fire in the marble hearth. But none of its warmth penetrated the chill that had her trembling. “You’re shivering,” he said, sliding his arm around her as he sat beside her.
“I think she gave me frostbite,” she said, trying to ease the knot in her chest with humor, however forced.
His hand slid up from her shoulder to cup her face. “It was that bad?”
She nodded. “My sister is heartless, David.”
His dark eyes widened but not with surprise. Ariel had told him on the drive to the Towers that she’d found Elena. “I don’t know her, but I do remember hearing that Thora has a granddaughter named Elle. Thora Jones isn’t a very warm woman. Her reputation is that she’s cold and ruthless.”
“Then her granddaughter is just like her.”
He shrugged. “I’m sure the same has been said about me. You can’t believe everything you hear or read.”
“She doesn’t believe anything,” Ariel said, bitterness sour on her tongue. “She doesn’t think the legend’s real or that any of us have special abilities.”
David didn’t say anything; he probably agreed with Elena. Ariel’s stomach churned. At least he hadn’t rejected her, the way her older sister had. “She wants nothing to do with me, David.”
His thumbs stroked her cheeks, brushing away the tears she hadn’t realized had slipped from her eyes. “Maybe she’s just afraid.”
“Of what? She doesn’t believe she’s in danger.” And that made her far more vulnerable, because she wouldn’t be alert. She wouldn’t be able to protect herself, not without the charm.
“She probably thinks you hate her.”
Ariel’s lips twisted into a grimace. “I don’t. But she certainly didn’t go out of her way to endear herself to me.”
“She might have figured there was no use, that you blame her for what her grandmother did to your mother.”
Ariel fisted her hands, wishing she’d met the infamous Thora Jones. But then, how could she blame the woman for wanting to save her granddaughter from the vagabond lifestyle of a con artist that no child should have lived?
“Elena was only twelve when we were taken away,” Ariel said. “If she ever met her paternal grandmother before, it had to have been before I was born. She can’t be held responsible for that woman’s actions. Elena was just a kid.”
“You all were.”
That had been the last time she had felt like a child—in that little truck camper when their mother bestowed upon each of them a charm. Ariel fingered her little pewter sun. She couldn’t imagine not wearing it.
“No, David, you’re wrong. Elena’s not worried about my blaming her for anything. She just doesn’t want me in her life,” Ariel said. “Because she doesn’t want to remember where she came from. I can’t believe that she…”
“What?” David prodded when she couldn’t go on.
“She lost her charm.” Or had thrown it away.
Had Irina? She’d been so young when Mama had given them the charms. She’d probably lost hers long ago. Just as Irina was lost to them. Maybe for eternity.
“You say that like it’s a death sentence,” David remarked, his eyes narrowed.
Ariel’s breath burned in her lungs just as the orange light burned in the smoke, which surrounded her mother’s ghost. The woman’s dark eyes widened with fear, her mouth open as if she sobbed. Ariel had grown used to her; she hadn’t even noticed when her mother reappeared.
“I think it might be. Mama said she gave the charms to us to keep us safe. At Marie’s and Sadie’s I found postcards from my mother. She signed her name, then drew the symbols of each charm and circled them. They’re important, David, and I’m probably the only one left to still have hers.”
Did that mean she would be the only to survive? Without the protection of the charm, would she have died already? She’d be the easiest for the killer to find.
David reached for her wrist, holding it so he could inspect the little pewter sun. “Let me take it, Ariel.”
Her heart lurched at his suggestion. “What? Why?”
“I’ll take it to a lab and have it checked out, see if there’s anything special about it.”
He could only understand the logical, so how could he ever really accept her? “David, what’s special about this charm isn’t something that can be measured in a laboratory.”
“There are experts in this field, Ariel. Parapsychologists who can measure this kind of stuff.”
Her mouth quirked into a smile. “This kind of stuff?” Her heart softened, touched by how hard he was trying to understand and help her.
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “I’m not sure what the technical terms are, but I can get in contact with one of these parapsychologists—”
She pressed her fingers against his lips. “I appreciate what you want to do,” she said, “but until we catch this killer, I’m not taking off my charm.”
His brown eyes darkened. “You don’t need it, Ariel. I will keep you safe.”
With the gun? She didn’t voice the thought, didn’t want to spoil the moment with the doubts that had had her eavesdropping at his locked office door.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she told him. She’d lost Haylee, her job and any hope of reuniting with her family. She couldn’t lose him, too. But what if he were only sticking with her out of chivalry, because he wanted to protect her?
“Shh,” he said as he pressed a kiss against her lips.
Ariel wrapped her arms around his neck, clinging to him. If she couldn’t emotionally hang on to him, she would physically until he pushed her away as her sister had.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he promised her.
She managed a smile. “No, you’re not,” she agreed as she reached for the buttons on his shirt.
His deep voice vibrated with warning as he murmured her name. “Ariel…”
She was heedless of his threats as she pushed the shirt from his shoulders, baring his broad chest to her gaze and her touch. Her fingertips slid across his skin, his muscles rippling beneath. Then she tasted him, gliding her lips up his chest, where she nipped at his collarbone.
He groaned and his eyes squeezed shut as if in pain. Ariel could identify; she ached for him, too. His hands pushed up her skirt, his palms both rough and warm sliding along her thighs until he pushed them apart and stroked the heat of her through her thin cotton panties.
“David, I need you…now….”
Another lie. Even with passion burning in her veins, she lied. She didn’t need him just now, she needed him always. She opened her mouth to tell him the truth, to accept his proposal, but all that escaped was a moan, as he pushed her panties aside and slid two fingers inside her. She arched her back, then lifted her sweater over her head. Her breasts bounced free, unbound by a bra, the nipples jutting toward him.
David answered their silent plea, tugging one into his mouth. His tongue laved the hard point while his fingers continued their sweet torture, sliding in and out of her.
Passion burned low in her belly as she trembled with the need for more even as the first climax crashed through her. With trembling hands she reached for him, unzipping his pants and pushing aside his boxers until he sprang free.
“Wait,” he murmured, reaching into his wallet for a condom, always so logical and controlled even when flushed and shuddering with desire.
She suckled on his collarbone as he rolled on the latex. Then he lifted her onto his lap, driving into her, hot and hard.
“David!” She screamed his name, holding on tight to him as her world shattered. Again.
The mingled scents of lavender and sandalwood teased Ariel’s nose, drawing her from a deep sleep. Before she fully awakened, she became aware of another sensation, of the links of her silver bracelet tugging at her wrist. Through cracked lids she spied David fumbling with her charm. Her heart shifted, thudding hard against her ribs. Fear kept her from sitting up in bed and demanding to know what the hell he was doing. Instead she murmured as if still asleep and rolled over, tucking her wrist beneath her.
Forcing her breathing to remain even and unaffected, she waited to see if he would try again for the charm. The mattress shifted as he moved, but he rolled away from her and slid his legs from under the satin sheets. With a soft thud his feet hit the floor.
Her fear dissipated, easing the burn in her lungs and slowing her rapid pulse. The charm held some fascination for him, probably because of what she’d told him. He couldn’t have been trying to steal it. She reached out, but the smoke thickened, blocking her fingers from touching him.
Moonlight streaming through the windows painted his skin as golden a hue as his hair. The muscles in his back and arms rippled as he leaned over and pulled out the drawer of the nightstand. The light changed color, the gold turning to flame-orange as it glinted off the metal of the object he lifted from the drawer.
A gun.
Ty had come through on this favor, too. What did he owe David? What exactly was the history between them? She’d considered it none of her business before, something that had happened before her time and had nothing to do with her. Now she wondered….
The cords in his neck distended with tension as he stared down at the weapon in his hands. His breath shuddered out with such force that his shoulders shook.
Fear and doubt squeezed Ariel’s heart, and her fingers, still extended toward him, curled back into a fist. She couldn’t ask him all the questions churning in her mind. When he turned his head, she closed her eyes, feigning sleep.
She kept them closed as he moved around the room, clothing rustling as he dressed. She only opened them after the bedroom door closed behind him with a soft click. Then she slid across the satin sheets until she could reach the nightstand. The clock on top of the black lacquer table flashed two o’clock in luminous green. She cared less about the time than the contents of the drawer, but when she pulled it open, the gun was gone.
“Mama,” Ariel called to her mother’s ghost, who hovered in the smoke, her dark eyes wide with fear. “I need to hear you. I need you to tell me that David has nothing to do with the vendetta.”
Her breath caught like a stabbing pain in her chest. “Please, Mama, tell me my doubts are unfounded.”
Her mother’s ghost said nothing, just faded away with the orange glow and the dissipating smoke. The only noise in the penthouse was the grind of the elevator as it descended to the lobby with David…and the gun.
Gates and guards. They thought that would keep them safe from him? They had no idea how powerful he was. Or how close.
Soon he would be even more powerful, once they were dead. But they had to find the youngest one yet, for him. Then he could reclaim the charms and kill them all, the last of the witches.
He pulled the hood over his head and stepped out of the vestibule. Candles blazed from the altar, pillars of smoke rising up from their flames to the rafters of the old church.
His church.
He was God to these people.
They knelt before the altar. They knelt before him, the dark robes hiding their bodies, the hoods their faces. They didn’t laugh at him as the witches in his visions did. They worshipped him. They would do whatever he asked of them…and more.
Despite the concealing brown fabric, he knew the identity of each of them. He’d chosen them specifically, either because of bloodlines or a thirst for revenge. They shared a special bond, a common goal.
“We must protect ourselves from witchcraft,” he declared, his voice echoing off the rafters and reverberating inside his head. His knees weakened, trembling a bit with the pain, but he couldn’t give in to it. He had to keep fighting. “We must destroy them before they manipulate our minds and steal our souls.”
Or, more dangerous yet, their hearts.
“Beware their treachery. Stay the course. Remain strong.” He spoke the warnings as much for himself as for the others. Maybe more.
The others began a chant, something he’d taught them in Latin about vanquishing witchcraft, about regaining power. “Exstinguo…veneficus…”
But the words ran together in his head with the throbbing pain. For a moment his vision blurred, and the witches appeared in the hooded robes. Their lips curved as they laughed at how they’d tricked him.
Rage whipped through him, and he swept an arm across the altar, knocking the candles over. Alarmed cries emanated from his followers. The flames caught the sleeve of his robe, but he pounded his arm against the altar, snuffing out the fire before the heat could sear his skin.
Then he glanced up, his eyes tearing as he tried to peer through smoke, an eerie orange light nearly blinding him. But he saw her.
