Dark Destiny: Book One of the Destiny Novella Series (Destiny Novellas 1) (6 page)

“Hold still.” She focused on his face, or rather let her gaze go
out
of focus, as though she were zeroing in on a point behind Bennett’s head that she couldn’t see. It had been so long—it had once been so easy and now she felt, what had he said? Rusty.

Lily knew the exact moment when her gaze clicked into the right spot, the right intensity, the right amount of fuzzy out-of-focus that allowed her to, ironically enough, focus. His aura burst from him in an overwhelming array of blues and greens, and the shades came as no surprise at all. Calm. Strong. Content at his core. There were slight shadows of red on the fringes, signaling a mix of attraction and tension. He was either agitated or he wanted to kiss her. Maybe both.

She blinked and staggered a little, and the colors faded. Bennett grabbed her arm as she swayed backward. “Ow. My head.”

“What did you do? You did an aura read, right here? Geez, Lil, I didn’t think you’d really do it! Are you ok?”

She scowled, her heart beating faster than she would have liked. It had taken much more of her concentration than she’d thought it would; she was ridiculously out of practice. “It’s not that big a deal. I’ve done it since I was a really little kid.”

“No, you haven’t done it for, what, twelve years?” Bennett shook his head and moved her forward, pulling her arm tightly through his as they began picking their way into the dark. He retrieved a small flashlight from his pocket and flicked it on, sending a shaft of light through the foliage that showed a barely discernible path twisting forward into the swamp.

She stumbled and he paused, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. “If this hut doesn’t come into view in the next thirty seconds, we’re turning around. This was really, really stupid.”

“Well I am sorry you think so. I’m not going to just sit around and do nothing while some crazy man spies on my whole family and tries to kill them all. If you’re scared, just go back and wait for me at the boat. I have a flashlight on my phone.”

He looked at her as they walked and she made a point of not looking back at him. Her foot got stuck in some goo and ruined her performance as she pulled free, luckily retaining her shoe.

“I am not scared, Lily Duschesne. I am pissed at myself for bringing you here.”

“You didn’t have a choice—I’d have figured it out on my own anyway.”

“That’s what scares me,” he muttered and pulled her closer as she slipped in more mud.

“I’ll protect us with my mad paranormal skills.” She shivered in spite of herself as a twig cracked here, a splash sounded there, and the ever-pervasive dark closed in on all sides. Light from the outside world was all but obscured and she lost her sense of direction.

“We don’t need your mad paranormal skills. I’ve had a permit to carry for over a year.”

She looked at him in surprise. “You’re packing heat?”

His mouth twitched. “The 70s cop shows called and want their lingo back.”

“Aren’t you funny. ‘Packing heat’ is a perfectly normal way—” She cut herself off when he stopped walking and followed his gaze forward to a small building hidden in the undergrowth.

It was every bit the haunted-looking shack she’d thought it would be. Run down, decrepit, and very dark. They stood still for a moment, studying the structure, before Lily finally squared her shoulders. “Ok, then.”

Bennett glanced at her, his expression unreadable, and followed her when she began walking toward the small house and up the front steps. He reached around her to twist the doorknob and paused, his hand on the back of her neck as the door swung slowly open on hinges that loudly protested the invasion. “Let me go first,” he murmured.

“Absolutely.” She stayed close behind him as he entered the little home, noting the smell of grit and mildew, old herbs and dirt.

Bennett cast the light slowly around the room and Lily’s heart sank. “Of course it’s been ransacked,” she whispered. “I guessed it would be, but hoped not. What a mess.”

She moved out from behind him and pulled her phone from her pocket, flicking through the apps and finding the flashlight. Walking slowly into the room, she cast the light on an overturned chair and a small sofa that was missing its cushions, and made her way toward the wall where an old potting bench sat with pots of dried herbs still on display. The rafters above it held a multitude of objects hanging from twine—an odd combination of feathers, bits of bone, and bunches of dried mint and sage.

The floor creaked underfoot and sounded loud in the eerie stillness. Lily was struck by the fact that this humble place had been a woman’s home, her refuge. Physical objects that defined a life were left behind, offering nothing to the soul who had moved beyond them. “These things were important to her,” Lily murmured, and she bent to examine a shelf beneath the bench.

A squeak in the corner of the room startled her and she lost her balance, falling to her butt on the floor.

“Shit!” Bennett dropped his flashlight and it rolled to a stop, casting a beam on something small that flashed through the illuminated shaft of light and then disappeared with a scuttling of feet.

“Rat?” Lily said as Bennett picked up the flashlight.

“Who knows,” he muttered. “I’m afraid to look closely,”

Lily shifted from the floor and got to her knees, using the bench as leverage. She shined the flashlight again on the lower shelf and noted the same things as above. Pots of dead plants, a few empty
gris gris
bags, nothing of note. She tried not to be disappointed, but what had she really expected? To walk in and find the talisman? Scary phone man would have searched the little hut by now, probably several times over.

A single dark hair caught her eye. It lay on the shelf next to a partially broken pot, and she reached for it, strangely drawn to it.

“What’d you find?” Bennett asked, moving closer.

“A hair.”

“You going to do DNA testing on it?”

“My, you’re a funny one today.” She focused carefully on the hair and shifted closer, moving her phone so the light shone more fully on it. Cursing when she bumped her hand against the bench leg and her phone wobbled as a result, she narrowed her eyes and squinted into the shadows. Locating the hair again, she gingerly picked it up between her thumb and forefinger, and very nearly dropped it as a jolt shot through her hand and up into her arm.

CHAPTER NINE

“What’s wrong?” Bennett dropped down beside Lily and grabbed her arm.

“I don’t know…this thing shocked me.” Her heart pounded and a light sweat that had nothing to do with humidity broke out on her forehead despite the cool air in the hut.

Bennett frowned and looked at the six-inch piece of hair she held between her fingers. It was wiry and black, and when Bennett held out his hand, she placed it in his palm. She looked at him expectantly and he shrugged.

“Nothing?”

He shook his head.

“Let me see it again.” Lily took the hair from him and experienced a small jolt, nothing like the first. She closed her eyes and tried to relax. That was one thing she remembered from her mother. She had always told her to relax, whether she was reading an aura visually or emotionally. As she calmed her pounding heart, sensations crept through her consciousness—Lady Chamonix feeling worried, upset, angry.

“It’s hers. It’s her hair.” She opened her eyes and looked at Bennett. With her concentration lessened, the sensation was much more subtle. But it was still there. Experimentally, she dropped the hair onto the floor. Nothing. Picked it up again with intense focus—the emotional connection was back.

Bennett looked at the hair and then at Lily’s face. “Can you see her?”

Lily shook her head. “I just feel her. What she must have experienced at some point—maybe when she lost the hair?”

He frowned and pulled a hair from his own head. Dropping it into her palm, he eyed her expectantly.

“Nothing. That’s weird.”

“Why are you able to channel her?”

Lily shrugged. “Maybe because she willed it? Or she had similar abilities so it’s like some cosmic connection?”

“My mom has abilities too, but you’ve never clued into her like this before. There are probably genetic bits of her all over the family house, you’d have come across something by now.”

Lily squinted at the the voodoo priestess’ hair and felt a surge in the air, much like when she connected with an aura. “That’s it. I was intensely focused on it. When I found it the first time, it I lost it for a minute in the dark and I had to look hard for it.” The sensation was fleeting, lasting for only a few seconds at a time. She frowned. “I can’t hold it for very long, though.” She looked at Bennett with a shrug. “I don’t know how this will help us.”

Bennett reached into his wallet and pulled out a small piece of paper. “Here, I don’t have an envelope or anything, let’s keep the hair in this receipt. I think you should hang on to it.”

Lily carefully placed the hair on the receipt and Bennett folded it up, placing it in his pocket.

“Well,” he said and stood, reaching a hand down to help her up, “at least we know how far your aura reading extends. Do you want to try mine again?”

Lily bit her lip as she stood and dusted off her pants. “I don’t think so. It seems kind of…invasive.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t mind.”

“You really want me to know how you’re feeling? Not just know it in my mind but
feel
it?”

His mouth quirked in a bit of a smile she could barely see in the dark. “Might not be such a bad thing.”

She tipped her head to the side and studied him, her heart thumping a little too hard. “What do you want from me really, Bennett?”

He was still for a moment. One heartbeat. Two. He moved closer to her, slowly, and her breath caught in her lungs. He paused, as though debating with himself. “I’ve loved you for a very long time, Lily Bordeaux,” he finally murmured, and cupped the back of her neck, tipping her head up slightly as he lowered his mouth to hers.

It was more than she’d ever imagined. Every nerve ending came alive as he kissed her, his movements almost desperate. She responded, touching the tip of her tongue to his lower lip and he groaned, pulling her up against him as her arms encircled his neck. She barely registered the twinge of pain in her ribs, didn’t care. It had never been like this with anyone else. And as much as she’d tried to block him out, replace him with other guys, the substitute had always been a shallow comparison and she’d never been satisfied.

She bunched her fingers in his hair and tightened her arms, sighing into his mouth as he deepened the kiss until she thought she would drown in the sensations that flooded through her. She gasped for breath, her broken ribs sharply protesting as she tried to drag air into her lungs.

Bennett broke the kiss with a muttered curse and rested his forehead against hers, his arms still wound around her and her body hauled up against his as though he would meld them together if he could. “Lil, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t,” she said breathlessly and lightly pulled on his hair with fingers that were still entangled in it. “Don’t apologize. Please. I love you, too. I always have.” Tears burned in her eyes and the emotion was overwhelming, too much. She closed them tightly and tried to stifle the sob that escaped despite her best efforts.

He rubbed his hand up and down her back, shuddering a bit and relaxing his own stance, as though he’d been waiting for something, tense and primed for dismissal or rejection. How much time had they wasted? How long ago should she have confessed her feelings for him? He buried his face in her neck and she felt the breath of his sigh against her skin. She opened her eyes, and although still blurred by tears, focused on him with her hand still clenched in his hair, reading this time not only for his visual aura, but something deeper.

The sensations that slammed into her robbed her of all breath, of all thought. Longing, desire, relief, an overwhelming sense of love combined with an equally overwhelming sense of sexual frustration. She choked back a laugh, again struggling to breathe as she clamped her eyes closed and mentally shoved the emotion out of her head, glad he was holding her up because she was completely and utterly weak.

He stilled. “What did you just do?”

“Nothing,” she managed.
Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out.

He lifted his head and loosened his hold, only to tighten again when she gripped his upper arms.

“Just a minute,” she whispered. “Just give me a minute. Wow. Note to self. Don’t do that again.”

“Did you just read me?”

“Maybe.” She softly blew out a breath and closed her eyes. “You told me to.”

He was quiet and she opened her eyes to see him watching her speculatively in the dark. “And?”

“You want to throw me down right here on the floor, and—”

“That’s all you got? Everything I have going on in my mind and that’s what you came away with?”

She laughed and then slowly sobered, not wanting to cry again but feeling her eyes sting anyway. “You love me. And my emotions are more than enough for me to handle—I can’t be zeroing in on yours, too. For a guy, you have a lot of feelings.”