Incubus Moon (11 page)

About to take a sip of wine, movement from the neighboring property caught my eye.

A lone male figure had emerged from a thicket of trees. He came to a stop at the center of a small knoll, his hands shoved deep into his pants’ pockets.

Impossible to tell what he looked like from this distance and at this late hour, the man turned to gaze in my direction. I
felt
rather than saw his eyes lock onto mine.

The wine glass in my hand grew inexplicably heavy, as random images flashed behind my eyes, too fast to capture before another took
its place. I had to balance my weight against the chunky wooden balustrade when a disorienting, prickling sensation ricocheted through my body. When I glanced up again, the man had vanished.

So much for normalcy returning to my life!

CHAPTER 12

“Later,” I said to Mark on my way to the front door, a piece of sourdough toast clenched between my teeth. Out of bread, I’d come over to borrow some of his—and his toaster, some butter, oh, and his kitchen, too.

“Hold it.” He regarded me from the living room sofa over the leading edge of the morning paper, looking a bit green around the gills. “We polish off a six-pack and untold tequila shots last night and Mr. Unemployed’s out the door at seven a.m. What gives?”

You’d be fine, too, if you had my incubus constitution
. Booze was beginning to have very little effect on me anymore. “Got some errands to run.”

Tossing the newspaper onto the seat cushion next to him, Mark folded arms across the chest of his favorite Bruins T-shirt and leveled a suspicious gaze at me. “Like snooping at the moving vans next door?” I took the piece of toast out of my mouth. The mystery guy in the clearing last night was our new neighbor? “Don’t take this the wrong way, but please do us all a favor and don’t get too friendly.”

That same, almost electric, prickling from last night skittered across the surface of my skin. “No worries,” I reassured him on my way out the door.

Backing the convertible down the long driveway, two enormous moving trucks came into view. Tall rear and side doors stood open,
while half a dozen men pushed substantial pieces of furniture and several hefty-looking crates on dollies down their ramps.

Once in the street, I pulled forward and killed the engine. Becoming an incubus hadn’t only heightened my sex drive, it had also given one heck of a boost to my already considerable curiosity.

Despite Mark’s warning, something told me it was time to meet the new neighbor.

A high, vine-covered wall and the tallest oak tree I’d ever seen obscured most of the property from the street. The driveway’s wrought-iron gates, tipped with arrow-shaped points, stood wide open, affording a better view of a house that looked more like a medieval stronghold than a stylish Los Angeles mansion. Mullioned windows held a multitude of diamond-shaped, lead glass panes, with stones of various size and shades of gray and brown cladding the exterior walls that soared three floors to meet a steep-angled roof. A striking turret with three elongated windows and a crenellated crown served as the centerpiece of the structure.

“Welcome to Hogwarts,” I chuckled passing through the main gates.

Hollywood theatrics aside, the house wasn’t without a certain stateliness, which became more evident as I followed the cobblestone drive curving beneath the colossal oak.

That was about the same time a chorus of warning bells went off in my head.

This time, though, they weren’t cautioning me to beware of any
Shadow Walker
. No, this was far more mundane a warning. I was trespassing on someone else’s property, a fact which didn’t (but probably
should) keep me from drawing nearer the main entrance to the house. But the broad, arched front door was standing wide open and begging me to peer inside.

The more I thought about it, I wasn’t a trespasser in the true sense of the word. I mean, I lived next door, for heaven sakes. One little peek wasn’t going to hurt anyone.

“Hello?” I called out. When there was no answer, I ventured a few feet across the threshold. “Anybody home?”

Muffled shouts in Spanish echoed down the broad stairwell to my left, while movers pounded the floorboards above. From my viewpoint, I could see only a small portion of the main salon. Beneath my feet, the wide, ebonized plank flooring felt substantial.

I took a few more tentative steps inside. Packing crates had been stacked here and there, most of them nailed shut. A few, however, were open to reveal a hint of their contents.

“Hello?” The air was strangely still, and my greeting echoed in the two-story foyer.

Now that I was inside, it wouldn’t be such a stretch to imagine Dumbledore descending that grand staircase to remind me that: “Curiosity is not a sin, Austin, but we should exercise caution with our inquisitiveness.”

Seeing as I was already trespassing, why not take a few steps more?

Doing just that revealed a large portrait propped against a shipping crate at the far end of what turned out to be a truly massive living room. A young woman stared out at me through deep sapphire eyes. Alone on a grand terrace overlooking a dramatic mountain range, a hint of violet sky emerged through the storm clouds behind her.

Concentrating on the portrait, a shock of recognition rippled through me. This was one of the twelve women from my dreams! The one who’d tried to warn me before the Queen of the Damned intruded on us.

Coincidence? Not likely.

Fine and heavy cracks veined the canvas, yet the image remained vital. I could almost feel the wind dancing in the locks of her long, nearly platinum hair, lifting the heavy folds of her scarlet skirts that billowed out against the stone balustrade on which she leaned. Her pink lips, slightly parted, gave the illusion that she was about to speak.

I leaned in toward her pouty mouth. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“Getting her to speak,” a deep voice sounded from behind me, “would be some feat.”

I spun round to find a tall, striking man with stern green eyes staring back at me from the entrance to the parlor. His black, wavy hair fell away from a smooth forehead to brush the leading edge of his collar. A strong jaw and pronounced cleft chin drew me up to a pair of full, unsmiling lips. Everything about this man thrummed with restrained authority.

I took an instinctive step backwards. “You startled me.”

“Indeed.”

I found it nearly impossible to look away from the intensity of his eyes, contoured by thick, dark lashes that curled beneath full, well-shaped brows. The light played in their unusual color, like the insides of a ripe avocado ringed by a darker halo of green.

“The, uh, front door was open. I’m Austin Iverson. I live next door.”

The exotic quality to his olive skin contrasted handsomely against the crisp white dress shirt. His shoulders were broad, his thick forearms exposed from upturned sleeves, and his dark trousers tapered to stylish Italian loafers he wore without socks. The man also stood a good inch or two north of my own six feet.

I extended my hand, a gesture he seemed to consider, then ultimately accepted.

“You have excellent taste in art.” His words hinted at an accent I couldn’t quite place. “She is a rare find.”

She wasn’t the only one; and not just because my incubus hormones had kicked into high-gear. This man was at once fascinating and foreboding, and standing this close to him felt as if all the molecules making up my body had sped up at once, generating a low-boiling heat in my stomach and exciting every nerve ending. Somehow, I knew that he felt this, too.

“She looks almost…”

“Alive? Yes, she is exactly the way I remember her.”

His words didn’t register at first. I was too mesmerized by this striking man and his absorption with the portrait of the woman from my dreams. “But isn’t the painting old?”

“What is old?” he stated, taking a step closer to it. “When true love transcends all time.”

“Like reincarnation?” I said it with an easy laugh.

I’d clearly said the wrong thing, because my enigmatic neighbor shut down so fast it felt as if a physical barrier had dropped between us. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said, gesturing toward the front door. “I have pressing matters to which I must attend.”

What had I done to bring on the sudden arctic chill? Oh right, I was trespassing.

At the threshold, I turned to attempt an apology, but found the space empty where he’d been standing only moments before. I didn’t know which felt worse, having angered my inscrutable new neighbor or not being able to study that compelling portrait any longer.

I had an unsettling feeling that both would soon begin to haunt me.

CHAPTER 13

I returned to my parked car with my metaphoric tail between my legs, and kicking myself for what had happened back there with—I hadn’t even asked the man his name.

Great
. The last thing I needed was a pissed off neighbor, which would inevitably lead to a pissed off best friend. Mark had issues with my cozying up to the people who impacted his life, professionally or personally; Christie being the sole exception. He was fiercely private and I was his polar opposite. His fear was that my natural candor would lead me to say or do something to embarrass him, like stroll into a perfect stranger’s home, for example.

In any event, the man I’d just met was definitely the same one from the clearing last night. This went beyond supernatural insight. He’d sent a ripple of energy shockwaving across the surface of my skin simply by being in proximity to me. And while I may not have gotten a
Shadow Walker
vibe off him, our handsome new neighbor was decidedly unlike most men.

Ready to head down into the city, my cell phone exploded to life with Trina’s “Nasty Bitch”. I’d assigned that ringtone to only one person.

“Wanna come play with me?” the female voice on the other end asked.

Twenty minutes later, and wearing a big grin, I was back in the car with an overnight bag. Mark and Christie had already left for work, so I’d taped a brief note to their fridge to let them know that I’d be gone for a night or two. They still worried about me, despite the fact that I literally lived a stone’s throw from their back door.

Another reason I’d kept the note vague was Christie. She wouldn’t be pleased with my destination, or the person I planned to visit there. The less they both knew the better.

I turned the convertible’s engine over and was rewarded by a low, sexy growl. She was full of gas, her top down, and the Nine Inch Nails’ song “Closer” was giving the speakers a thorough work out. With one last, embarrassed look at the two moving trucks in the rearview mirror, I pointed the car’s nose toward Sin City. Given everything that had happened to me over the past year, I figured I deserved some harmless, irresponsible fun.

CHAPTER 14

Suzanne Donahue skewered a piece of Kobe beef from my plate with her chopsticks and offered me a flirtatious wink. “Unemployment looks good on you, babe.”

Actually, becoming an incubus looks good on me
, I wanted to tell her.

While I was getting ready back in my room at the Aria, I couldn’t help staring at my naked reflection in the bathroom mirror. My tanned skin almost glowed, the muscles of my six-foot frame were firmer and more sculpted than ever. I’d never possessed much body hair, but what little had developed on my arms and legs was gone, as were the fine lines that had settled at the corners of my eyes after Laura’s death. Even their color had intensified to an almost-sapphire blue, with tiny flecks of green in them. I had to admit, I’d have sex with me.

“Thanks, Suzie. Guess you never noticed before.”

“Have you gone mental? I worked half a bloody semester to get you in the sack at university,” she said in her clipped, British accent. “The day I fail to notice a hot bloke is the day they put me in the ground.”

We both laughed, no doubt remembering the outrageous fun that was our UCLA experience together. Never a couple in the traditional sense, we’d been too sexually unbridled to settle down with any one person. We’d made a great team, though. My eagerness to explore her bisexuality was a huge turn on for Suzie. In fact, one of her favorite games was to lure respectable sorority girls into our bed. By the end of
our freshman year, we’d been crowned “the Insatiables” by our fellow class.