Animal Instincts (Entangled Ignite) (7 page)

“No, wait. I can ease your mind.” Again he moved closer, this time stopping the dog from interfering with a hand gesture. They were almost as close as they had been in the cleansing station. “I tried to help you earlier, but you resisted.”

“What makes you think I won’t resist now?”

Only one way to make her pliable to his will, Luc thought, slipping a hand behind her neck.

“That won’t work,” she informed him.

He said, “I’m up to the challenge,” then dipped his head and slipped his mouth over hers.

She gasped, and he took full possession of her. Not merely of her mouth. But of her body. And her thoughts.

He let her
see
what they would be like together. Let her
feel
the erotic impulses that raged through him, that he kept in control only by sheer will. If only his will were strong enough to protect him from her, now that he knew what she was. He couldn’t have her. Shouldn’t want her. That didn’t stop him from imagining it, from having her in his mind.

He thought about the things he would do to her to make her mindless with desire. He could see his hands on her breasts, could feel her hot, wet flesh wrapped around his.

When she moaned and swayed closer, brushing her breasts against his chest and her hips against his groin, he knew that it was now or never.

You’ll dream about this tonight as if it had happened, and when you awake, you will remember the dream. Nothing else. No casino. No predators. No me.

As if his command broke their connection, she straightened and pushed away from him. He could see her face, ghostly in the streetlight. Her expression held a myriad of emotion. Longing, yes. But something akin to disappointment as well.

Saying nothing, she backed away and took the dog with her. She practically ran up the steps to the entrance, and once inside the foyer, opened the door to the second floor.

He waited.

Sensing her greeting her animals.

Undressing.

Then she crawled into bed and within seconds was asleep.

He’d done what he had to.

So why didn’t he feel satisfaction at his success?

Chapter Eleven

Bleating and squawking and roaring filled the air, and an ominous dark sky threatened to swallow the earth whole. I must be on some kind of rescue mission—animals of every size and shape and sort milled around one another. Pairs of elephants and camels and horses and goats. Two of every mammal and bird and reptile as far as the eye could see fought the savage winds that ripped through the air, threatening to pick us up and carry us away.

Heart pounding so hard that it threatened to leave my chest, I looked around for other rescuers. No one familiar. I turned toward a yawning entry into the belly of the largest boat I’d ever seen.

Thunder nearly deafened me and lightning crashed to the earth. More rumbling from the heavens and then ragged lightning strikes surrounded us, their eerie blue glow unnatural as the skies opened and water began flooding the land. Within seconds, I was soaked to the skin. The animals panicked and cried out as if they understood what it would mean to be left behind.

I ran with them, touching them, trying to broadcast calm, but it was no use. I could do nothing for them. Fear was a fever and all were infected, including me. I kept going and soon found myself on board in the midst of a panicked four-legged herd.

The white-bearded man in charge ordered a handful of men to remove the plank they’d used to climb onto the ark. They didn’t seem to notice me. People still on land pressed in closer and screamed for entry even as the waters covered their ankles and kept rising.

“Let us on board!” one man demanded.

Another yelled, “Curse you, Noah, for leaving us to die.”

“Take my child,” pleaded a woman, holding a newborn over her head. The water was at her knees now. “Please, my baby is innocent. Don’t let her drown.”

My stomach turned over and knotted as the downpour continued.

“The Lord has spoken!” Noah shouted down at them. “He punishes you for your wicked ways.”

“Then we punish you!” a man yelled, pitching a lit torch onto the deck.

A second torch followed.

And a third.

Despite the rain, several fires kept Noah and his people occupied. Hearing a scrabbling sound, I turned to see what was happening behind me. Having somehow scaled the other side of the boat, dozens of men scrambled into the midst of the terrified animals.

One of the men locked gazes with me, his eyes an unnatural molten copper. I’d never seen evil undisguised before. My heart almost stopped.

Looking around until his gaze lit on a panther, the man focused and his expression darkened. His body began to shift into something formless and unspeakably malevolent. I watched in horror as the shadow floated over the panther, then split into multiple tentacles to reach deep inside the unsuspecting animal. The panther threw back its head and bucked and twisted and screamed in terror.

Tears sprang to my eyes and I tried forcing my way through the herd, but it was no use. I couldn’t rescue any of them. Predators all around me were being taken over by these evil beings in the same awful way.

A wolf howled and bit its own flesh as if trying to extricate the invisible invader.

A hawk screeched and flew straight into the wheelhouse, where it collapsed and fluttered helplessly along the deck.

A king cobra snaked over my foot and tied itself into knots before spewing its own venom on itself.

The voices of the animals rose in an ear-piercing shriek that made me cry out, too. Their agony shuddered through me and all I could do was watch as those who’d boarded the ark pillaged innocent animals to contain their darkness.

When I looked back, the panther emanated a new energy. Pure aggression. As if sensing my interest, it turned toward me, head tilted as it considered me with molten copper eyes.

Heart thundering, I jerked out of the weird nightmare. The room was still dark, but sensing I was awake, the cats stirred. Phantom jumped off the bed, undoubtedly in hopes of being fed. I couldn’t move. I’d never had such a complex dream. Or one so dark. I didn’t get how my mind could have imagined such evil.

I lay there, terrified, remembering what I’d read in
The Book of Powers
:
He decided to send a Great Flood to wipe mankind and animals, all of whom he created, from the face of the Earth.

That had to be it, the reason I invented such an impossible dream.

The Book of Powers
, with its promise to continue the fight against evil spirits, added to the casino with its predators. Added to Luc.

He’d kissed me and I hadn’t been able to resist. What if he was one of them—one of the predators from my dream? No, that was impossible, something I’d made up. Still, he was something else. I’d heard him. Felt him. I’d lusted after him for that brief moment.

He kept accusing me of being something else, but I wasn’t. I was the same me I had always been. I had an ability lots of other people had. That didn’t make me something other than human.

Luc was another matter. I couldn’t forget how he’d been able to control the predators.

Ironically, the casino boat was named The Ark. And I’d dreamed about another ark, one in which predators were somehow joined with humans.

I would laugh, only I wanted to cry.

What I’d dreamed was too frightening to be true.

The Book of Powers
might hold the answers for me, only I hadn’t wanted to read any more of it. Didn’t want to know more.

Part of me wished Luc’s command to forget had taken. Then I would be free of it.

Or not.

I couldn’t forget about Shade.

The book called out to me, made my stomach churn. I refused to answer its call, but certainty filled me—the book wasn’t done with me yet.

…

Luc reluctantly returned to work, his thoughts torn between Skye and Jez’s death.

He had other things to worry about, too, like Andreas screwing up earlier, so that someone who hadn’t been invited had waltzed right in. Uninvited and armed. They didn’t need that kind of trouble here, and he needed his father to know about the incident. Heading for the executive offices to tell Pop, he came face-to-face with Nik. Luc could tell Nik was in a dark mood from his expression. He’d never been able to hide his resentment of his younger half-brother.

“You made a fucking big mistake letting that guy leave,” Nik said. “You’ll be lucky if Pop lets you back on The Ark. If it were up to me—”

”But it isn’t up to you.” Luc felt his own temper sizzle but leashed it. “I don’t answer to you.”

“You should, you little fraud. You’re nothing. A pretender. You can’t decide what you want to be when you grow up. Get off the fence and make up your mind.”

Another reminder that he hadn’t chosen between human and Kindred. It was getting more and more difficult to walk the line in between.

“Don’t you ever get tired of this tension between us?” Luc asked, wishing they could go back to a time decades ago when they’d been friends. A time when Nik had been his hero. “Maybe it’s because you never experienced the kind of fight that makes you long for a peaceful life.”

“Right, your army stint in Iraq makes you more of a man than me.”

Luc clenched his jaw. “I never said that.”

“Did you get off on the blood and guts spilled around you, the shredded body parts?” Nik darted his tongue over his lower lip.

Now Luc’s stomach clenched and his pulse began to
tick-tick-tick
and he felt the thrum along his flesh again, a signal he chose to ignore. He wouldn’t shift out of anger.

“How many men did you kill? How many humans like your mother?”

“Go back to hell where you belong!” Luc swung an open hand toward Nik.

They didn’t touch, but Nik went flying backward, exactly as he had when on Luc’s tenth birthday, he’d called Luc a bastard half breed, and with a furious wave of his meaty hand, their father had sent thirteen-year-old Nik flying. Nik had slammed into a wall where he’d dislocated his shoulder. Pop then had forbidden Nik to ever—
ever!—
use those words again in connection with Luc.

And now Luc realized that if he didn’t get away from Nik, he would lose control, the same way he had in Iraq.

But Nik left first, laughing as if he’d accomplished what he’d meant to.

Nik’s ridicule crept up Luc’s spine and threatened to consume him. He closed himself off from the sound and kept going, straight to Pop’s office, arriving even as two members of his security team met him with Andreas in tow.

As they entered, Cezar asked, “What’s going on here?”

Luc cleared his throat. “Andreas left his post the other night and it caused a serious problem.”

“And you’re just bringing this to me now?”

“I’ve been busy.”

His father’s gravelly voice set Luc on edge. He wasn’t about to explain further. He didn’t want Pop to know about Skye Cross, not after what Pop had done to her brother.

“I made a mistake, Mr. Lazare.” Andreas wheedled his pseudo-apology. “I was chatting up a bored-looking customer is all. I figured she would up her wagering.”

A lie, Luc thought, noting the sheen of nervous sweat on the guard’s face. “He let someone get by him with a gun. I don’t think the guy had an invite, either.”

Pop’s visage darkened, and he pierced the security guard with a glare that made him shake.

“It won’t happen again, Mr. Lazare.”

“No, it won’t.” Pop’s voice lowered to little more than a whisper.

“What are you g-going to do?”

“You know the punishment.”

Andreas backed up. “Not my soul. I earned it. You wouldn’t take it back.”

Luc’s gut clenched. He knew what was coming.

Pop advanced on Andreas, held out an open hand, and without touching him, pinned the guard where he stood. Andreas fought the invisible shackles but couldn’t pull himself free.

“No, please,” he begged as the hand closed in on his chest. “I’ll do anything to make up for it. Anything.”

Pop ignored the plea. He pressed his open hand through Andreas’s sternum.

The man’s scream skittered down Luc’s spine.

When his hand was buried inside the man’s flesh, Pop lifted his arm. The guard’s body rose as well, limbs dangling and dancing as if Andreas were a marionette. His body glowed like the dazzling green light created by bioluminescent fireworms found in tropical seas. Andreas leaked green mucus from the wound all over the office floor.

“Return to me the gift I have given you,” Pop ordered.

Sparks shot from the guard’s body and his scream rose to a pitch that hurt Luc’s ears. Even as he hated what his father was doing to the guard, the Kindred part of him responded to the violence with a rush. Luc couldn’t look away.

The glow spread, moved along Pop’s arm, crawled over the security guard’s shoulder and down his body until it encased him, leaving Andreas with a flat, sickly green pallor. Finally, Pop released him. Andreas fell in his own mucus and flopped around the floor like a dying fish. The guards scooped him up by the arms and dragged him away.

Glowing green, Pop approached his sea glass desk and placed his hand flat on the surface. The glow gathered together and zapped down his arm and into the glass surface as if Pop were pouring the soul into a container.

Luc’s heart pounded as he watched in fascination. The glow zigged and zagged inside the glass and then finally settled down in one spot. A multitude of tiny green lights blinked as if recognizing the new occupant.

Who knew how many souls the desk vault contained?

Pop sat behind the desk and stared at Luc hard for a moment. Taking a big breath, he scraped a hand through his hair, still black but for the streaks of silver at the temples. As if Luc had just walked into the room, he said, “I haven’t seen you since your excursion to the cemetery. Did it help?”

So Pop knew about the cemetery, though whether from an informant or from his own version of a crystal ball, Luc wasn’t sure. “The man’s dead, Pop. Nothing’ll bring him back. He left people behind who loved him.”

That Shade Cross had somehow come back wasn’t something he wanted to discuss with his father. At least not yet.

“He got mixed up in our business. But in the end, he was a hero, wasn’t he? That should make his people proud.”

“Pride doesn’t make up for his absence.”

Pop frowned and grew quiet. Luc tried to read the old man, but he’d never been able to, and he couldn’t now. He wanted to shout at him that he owed the Crosses, that they both did, that he would never rest until the debt was paid. If there was guilt to be dished out, Pop deserved the biggest serving, and he knew it.

It was
his
business that had set the tragedy in motion.
His
personal choices.

Luc had always been torn between the opposite worlds of his parents—his mother’s with its neat rules to guard humanity, his father’s with his disregard for anything that didn’t suit his immortal purposes. He loved both sides of his family, and he’d been drawn to the Kindred world despite himself, but this was one of those times he yearned for a kind of justice his father didn’t seem to understand. He wanted Pop to make things right for once in his life. Shade Cross had died saving Luc’s mother, the woman Pop claimed was the love of his life.

It was obvious the Crosses weren’t on his father’s mind when he said, “I promise you, whoever tried to kill your mother will pay with his life.”

So in the meantime, it would be up to
him
to make sure that nothing happened to Skye.