Force of Knight Magic (21 page)

“
Are you going to shift or watch me run?”
She’d never asked him if he could shift. She’d heard once that he could move in mist
,
but never had an occasion to find out about his abilities.

“I can shift
,
though I’ve never been a wolf.
I usually stick to animals that are my size or bigger.
I was a cat once.”
She growled at him.
“Not my choice of animals either
,
but it was that or a snake.
I prefer to walk rather than slide along my belly.”

“And you needed to be one of those why
?”
His blush told her that she’d be digging deeper for that story if he didn’t tell her.
She laughed at him when he changed the subject.

“I’m not going to run with you tonight. I want to keep an eye on you.
I’ll be in the sky or perched in a tree.
When you’ve had enough
,
howl.
I’ll come back here and meet you.”

She was disappointed
,
but not enough to not go on the run. She was excited and when he opened the door for her
,
she shot out into the night quickly.
She was prancing in the moonlight when she felt him shifting.
Looking to where he’d been she was amazed to see him shift into a beautiful bird, a large owl as a matter of fact.

“Go.
I don’t like knowing that you’re naked beneath that fur and there are any number of animals running around here that might see you.
Including a few dozen humans.”
She took off running for the forest line and heard him laugh again
.
“You would go to the darkest part of the back yard.
It’s a good thing I can smell you.”

Holly ran for over an hour. She was careful in that she only encountered one human on the property and gave him a wide berth.
She was watching a deer when she heard a low cry of another wolf
,
but knew better than to chase after it. She didn’t want to piss off Phil and she knew that if the male was close enough to her, Phil would more than likely kill him.
She was starting back to the house when she heard him hoot.
Stopping
,
she dropped down and waited.

The human moved close by her. She didn’t recognize the scent
,
but she knew he was someone that Phil knew.
Otherwise
,
he would be dead if he wasn’t invited.
She watched the man walk past her and saw him headed toward one of the guards she’d just passed.

She lay low and waited
,
knowing that Phil would either give her the signal that she could move or he’d come to her.
She watched the two men and decided to listen in on their conversation for a little while.

“…electric running all around the property too? That’s gotta run into some big bucks. How
’s
this guy affording all this?”
The guard didn’t answer and suddenly
,
Phil spoke to her.

“It’s a test for the guard.
He’s not been in my employment for all that long and I send out someone on occasion to see what sort of information a person can get from the guards in a normal conversation.”
She snorted at him.
“Do you have a better idea on how to make sure you and everyone else on the estate is safe?”

He was laughing at her
,
she knew
,
but did actually have an answer.
“If the guard is a sup
e,
then you can bet he smelled you all over him. I did.”

Holly nearly laughed out loud when Phil started cussing.
He’d begun to slow down when she thought of something else.
“Of course he could have known you were flying about the estate
,
as you call it
,
and knew that you were watching him.
Does everyone know that you’re an owl?”

His command for her to return to the house was funny and she told him so. She’d not listened well to orders as a child and less so as an adult so there was no way she was going to listen to a grown man ordering her about as if she were too dumb to know better.

“Would you please come back to the house? I’d like to fuck you senseless and I can’t do it out of doors
,
as was my plan
,
knowing that they can smell us both.”

She pretended to consider his plan
,
but in the end got up to do as she wanted, not what he’d told her.
His low growl made her wet and she hurried along the wet leaves to get to him and let him have is wicke
d
way with her.
She was nearly there when she heard him walking toward her.

“I thought I was meeting you inside.
Have you changed your—
”
It wasn’t Phil.
She knew the moment he asked her what she was talking about that she’d made a mistake.
“There’s someone out here.
Someone that smells like you coming toward me.
Where are you?”

“Above you.
I don’t see…wait
,
there he is. I don’t know who it is from here.
Stay there and let me see what I can find out.”
She didn’t move from her dip in the ground.
The person was getting closer if the vibrations in the ground were any indication.
“It’s my brother.
I asked him to come and talk with the guards.
He also has some information for us.
I’m sorry
,
love, I wasn’t expecting him to come to the house until tomorrow.”

She stood up when he told her she could and moved slowly toward the second man. Not that she didn’t trust Phil’s brother
,
but she didn’t know him at all.
When the man spotted her
,
he stopped all movement and spoke to her.

“My name is Rolland Campbell.
I’m here to see my brother, Phil Campbell.”
He raised his hands palms out.
“I don’t have anything on me
,
just a file to give him.
Do you know where he is?”

She wondered if he expected her to shift and answer him buck naked.
She growled low in her throat when he took a step back.
He didn’t move again until she heard Phil coming toward them.

“You can’t possibly be that stupid.
What the fuck, Rolland, are you trying to get yourself killed?”
Phil stood beside her and put his hand on her head.
“This is my mate, Holly.
And she will come inside and sit with us after you tell me what the fuck you’re doing wandering around my property in the middle of the fucking night.”

“Dad sent me. He has some information on your rogue and he said that it would be better if no one knew I was coming.”
Rolland pointed at her.
“I don’t suppose she’ll shift now
,
will she
?
I bet she’s a beauty.”

He barely got the words out when she pinned him to the ground with her jaws locked around h
is
neck.
He didn’t move as she bit down just enough to draw blood.
Phil’s laughter made her want to turn to him and see what he’d found so funny
,
but he told her before she had to.

“I’m thinking she doesn’t care for your idea of a joke.
Next time you’ll remember that wolves don’t share and neither do vamps.”
Phil turned and walked away
,
shouting over his shoulder.
“When you two are finished getting to know each other come on in. I have a really good bottle of wine that I was going to break open when we got back inside.”

She let him go and stepped back.
He sat up but didn’t move to hurt her.
Rolland grinned at her as he sat on the cold
,
wet ground.

“I’m sorry.
I was only kidding.
I’m going to stand now and then go inside. If you’ll please forgive me, I’d like to start over…once you’re dressed
,
of course.”

He stood up then and bowed before her.
He was whistling as he made his way to the house and she shook her head.
The man was nuts.
Either that or he was just trying to throw her off her game.
Running back to the house
,
she entered through the open door at the office and was glad to see jeans, t
-
shirt
,
and under things in a neat pile waiting for her.
She’d have to thank Phil later.
Maybe when his brother left.
Grinning at the prospect of thanking her mate properly Holly joined them in the living room.

There were several stapled sheets of paper in the file his brother had handed him.
He looked at them one at a time then handed it to Holly.
She hadn’t said a word since Rolland had handed him the file and began explaining what it was.

“Dad was doing some research on the time period.
He was just telling us how when you’ve lived as long as he ha
s,
the years seem to have less and less meaning.
Things change too quickly to get all worked up about them anymore.”
Phil knew that to be true.
He wasn’t as old as his parents
,
of course
,
but he had been a little jaded for some time.

“It says here that someone would come through the towns in that area once or twice a year and record any births and deaths for a particular area at the courthouse.
According to what
D
ad was able to find
,
this kid, Sykes
,
was born in the early part of nineteen fourteen
,
not sixteen like we were told.”

Phil looked at the record of birth.
It was filed in the later part of the year in fifteen
,
but the date was what his brother had said.
He was still trying to figure out why someone would purposely lie about it when Holly suddenly started cussing.

“I think she found what
D
ad did.”
Phil looked at Rolland as he laughed.
“The name, look at the name of the mother.”

Holly handed him the sheet of paper and got up to pace.
He read down the copy of the certificate and saw the name.
He looked up at his brother before looking back at the name again.

“Is this right?”
Phil knew it was before Rolland said anything.
“Anye Sykes is the mother of our rogue?
How could she not know…or does she
?
”

“Oh she knows
,
all right.
Dad said that Anye has been searching for any and all information on this
province
for decades.
He figured she was a history buff
,
but he thinks now that she was trying her best to make sure all these records were destroyed too.”

He looked up at his brother when he started laughing again. “What do you mean these records too?
Did something happen to other records?”

“The courthouse was burnt to the ground in nineteen fifteen, about four months before this was marked in the registry.
The accounts were that someone left a candle burning…on every floor of the three
-
story building.
They never figured out how the entire thing seemed to burn for hours before the fire squad was called for.”
He handed him another sheet of paper.
“This was in one of the Bibles that
D
ad had unearthed a few days ago.
Look at the bottom of the page.”

Phil looked it as Holly sat down beside him.
There at the bottom was a list of names and dates.
Births and deaths had been recorded with a not so steady hand over the years until about nineteen twenty.
Then one could see that the handwriting was written by someone with a younger hand and a better grasp for spelling.
But he was focused on the entries for the years they were talking about.

Birted Theresa Eliseth Skyes by mouther Anye Sykes 1914~02~14

Died Anye Sykes 1914~02~16 Bleeded to deeth

Anye bled to death.
He wondered if someone had found her with marks or
if
she’d simply disappeared as her daughter had years later.
And he also wondered if Anye had sent Suzanna to change the daughter so that she could keep her with her.
He didn’t think either story rang true.