Love Beyond Expectations (3 page)

Leonardo smiled. "I knew you were standing there."

"Liar."

Samuel snorted and shook his head at his soul mate's remark. "Eden's had a pretty intense vision."

Ruby's ears perked up. Not much had happened since she'd arrived at the Outsider's remote island home off the coast of Maine. She'd heard about great occurrences and tragedies but had yet to experience any of it herself. If the pace remained as slow as it had, she didn't know if she'd be able to stay put permanently on the rock they called home. At least in New York City she could study, teach, and go to Starbucks. So far none of the Outsiders had been able to produce a decent cup of coffee, herself included.

"Tell me." Leonardo moved until he faced Eden.

"There's been an attack by Sebastian."

"Damn it." Leonardo slammed his hand against the wall. "Why didn't you see it before it happened?"

"It doesn't work like that, which you know," Samuel snarled at Leonardo.

Another piece of information she'd gathered about her cohorts: the men had horrific tempers. They were forever challenging each other in shows of bravado that sometimes ended in blows. Civility had, apparently, been left on the mainland.

"So then what happened?" Leonardo ignored Samuel entirely and spoke directly to Eden.

"The demon went after two of us. Two men. They looked pretty similar. Not identical but close. The men were arguing. The demon came, did some scary stuff to them, and they both took off separately. My impression is that they are on their way here."

"Two Outsiders." Ruby finally interrupted as her mind whirled because of Eden's news. "Two at once? That's a pretty big influx, isn't it? Don't you—excuse me,
we
—get one at a time?"

"I don't know that there is a standard for any of this." Leonardo exhaled loudly. "So they're coming, and the demon is on their tail. Great. We'll make preparations." Leonardo walked off muttering to himself in a tone that told her he didn't consider any of it particular
great
.

When he'd finally exited, Eden regarded her with her unseeing eyes. "Are you okay?"

Ruby shook her head. She didn't like sharing her feelings. If the Outsider men were always whacking each other, the women seemed hell bent on wanting to bond.

"Um, yeah, I guess so. How are you guys? Enjoying the soul mating thing?" Was she supposed to talk about this stuff? They were certainly not acting particularly private when it came to their personal business.

"Yeah." Samuel grinned. "It's great. Thanks for asking."

"One of these guys coming could be yours, Ruby."

Eden nudged Samuel when she spoke.

The very idea made Ruby's head hurt. She did not want one of those people coming to be her so-called soul mate. No way, no how could she imagine acting like Samuel and Eden. Or Isabelle and Kal. Or Gabriel and Loraine. Or, even worse, Charma and Jason who sometimes spoke like they had one brain.

No. Ruby existed just fine all by herself without someone intruding on her every thought and move. She'd always been a person who needed a little space to breathe. It might have been because her grandparents had been so incredibly tough on her, but without getting too deep into her own psyche, all she knew was that she felt more comfortable when she had a little space.

A soul mate would destroy everything.

"Well, I really need to get back to these books." At her current rate, it would take a million years to get through them so she might as well get back to the task. Eden nodded and left the room with Samuel as soundlessly as they'd entered.

The room started to vibrate the moment she sat down. At first, she thought she must have been imagining the sensation. Lifting her hands off the desk, she stared at them and wondered just how far off the deep end she'd gone. But it went on long enough even she had to admit it was really happening.

"Hey," she called out as loud as she could. Standing up, she tried to walk, unsteadily, to the door before she hit the floor. "Hey, help. This room is vibrating. It's shaking. Like some kind of earthquake."

Except that she'd been in an actual earthquake once, and it hadn't felt anything like this.

The pictures on the wall shook, and the desk tilted to the right. She screamed again, and the door was flung open.

Drew Dubowski stood on the other side. Not her favorite person in the world but anyone would do right at the moment.

He lunged forward, nearly going down once while he made his way to her. "Marina says we're under attack."

"By the demon?" She reached out and took his hand, letting him help her.

"Who else?"

Ruby nodded, trying to act as cool and collected as Drew seemed to be. This was her first attack. The others, they'd all been through these things before.

The house lurched, and she let out a scream. Drew rubbed his forehead, muttering under his breath to a person not currently with them. "Come on, Marina. You can get it done."

Drew and Marina were soul mates who, for some reason, had not actually mated. They circled each other, alternating between silence and hostility. If it was Ruby's soul mate on his way to the island—and maybe she shouldn't be thinking about it at that moment, but if she really focused on the fact that they were under attack by a demon, she might flip out—then she thought perhaps they could co-exist like Marina and Drew did. Without so much nastiness.

"The house will survive this, won't it? I mean, we're warded or whatever."

Drew cocked his head to the side. "They don't seem to be holding up particularly well at the moment."

That didn't fill her with a great deal of confidence. "Do you think you should be, I don't know, helping Marina instead of me?"

"I couldn't leave you in that room. You need to be gotten to safety."

"Is there safety?" She shoved Drew off her. "I'd feel better knowing you were getting this handled than babying me. Point me to wherever safety is and I'll go there."

"If you think you can." Drew indicated the kitchen. "Beneath the floor is a safe room. Unless the demon blows up the whole island, you'll be fine beneath there. It's a different location, different set of wards."

All right. She could manage that. Maybe. "Thanks so much for getting me out of there."

Drew nodded, but his attention had already moved on as he unsteadily made his way down the hall.

The house lurched again, and Ruby's stomach threatened to overturn. She didn't like boats and airplanes. She really didn't want the structure beneath her feet to be moving.

She. Really. Didn't.

Feeling like she might throw up at any moment, she stumbled into the kitchen. Handling the demon was beyond her abilities. She could sometimes summon random things, and she could translate ancient texts. That was about it. Ruby felt perfectly fine with hiding belowground while the crazy people she lived with handled a mad demon.

If she had a role to play in this war, it wasn't to fight the paranormal.

The latch to the hidden room was open in the middle of the kitchen floor. Someone else must have gone down there so at least she wasn't alone in her cowardice.

In two awkward strides, she made it to the opening and knelt down so she could make her way down without killing herself.

"Hello?" she called into the darkness as she moved down the ladder. In two more strides, she reached to the floor. Drew had been right. As a separate structure, the demon wasn't shaking the lower level.

She took a deep breath, loving the feel of solid ground beneath her feet. "Anyone down here with me?"

"I am."

Ruby jumped. She didn't recognize the voice as anyone she knew.

She'd taken two steps backward when the man stepped out of the shadows. He was strikingly beautiful. Regal and well put together, like he'd walked out of the pages of a men's fashion magazine, she gasped as she covered her mouth with her hand.

Marina had warned her—Sebastian was beautiful to look at. But the last she'd heard, he was supposed to be incorporeal. How could he be standing in front of her?

He nodded. "Yes, that's a good question."

The shaking house suddenly looked much better. "How are you reading my thoughts?"

"Easy. I'm in your mind, which is how you can see me. Marina is correct. I no longer have a body, but it doesn't mean I'm not capable of doing even more damage without one."

"No one has any doubt about that, you scumbag." She'd been raised not to curse. Scumbag represented the best she could do in this kind of verbal sparring. "Why are you messing with me? The people you should concern yourself with are not cowering in the basement. I'm not a threat to you."

"Oh, if only that were true." Sebastian circled her. He smelled of expensive cologne. Or, she reminded herself, he made her think he did. As he didn't really have a body, it seemed likely he didn't carry a scent.

"You're so cerebral. That's what I've always loved about you. Such a tough life and yet you are still so successful. Too bad you're doomed to fail where it really counts."

"This is what you do. You place doubt. You mess with us. The others have told me how you operate. I'm not concerned. I'll do my part, and you'll be defeated. So go pester someone else."

Sebastian laughed aloud, his blue eyes turning red for a moment as he glared at her.

"I was there, you know."

Ruby swallowed. She'd challenged the demon, and he hadn't left, which meant he still had some sort of emotional pain to inflict on her. "I'm not going to ask you where you were."

She had no intention of playing his games. None.

"That's okay, I'll tell you anyway." He leaned forward, invading her personal space. "I was there when your mother killed herself. I was there when your house blew up. I was there when you had to escape the town where you lived in the middle of the night to avoid capture by people who had found out about your talent. Ruby, I have been there for every bad moment of your life, and I have laughed the entire time."

Goosebumps appeared on her skin while he spoke. She swallowed through the lump forming in her throat, glad to see that it wasn't fear causing her reaction but sheer unadulterated rage.

"Get out my head, you sick beast."

Like she'd suddenly acquired a surge of power, she shoved Sebastian from her mind. Shaking from the adrenaline, she whirled around, looking at her surroundings. Everything appeared the same. She still stood in the underground room but without Sebastian.

Grabbing her head, she felt slightly dizzy. "Shit."

As if her grandparents could hear her, even though they were both buried six feet underground, she covered her mouth after her expression of profanity.

Could she believe the demon? Had he really been present every time her life went to hell? Why hadn't he simply destroyed her when he'd had all those chances?

"You okay?" Leonardo jumped down, not using the ladder to get to her. "Marina thought the demon got down here."

"In my head, actually." Ruby tried to smile. "Is the attack over?"

"Yes. They got the wards back up."

"Good."

"You're sure you're okay?"

"Well." She took a deep breath. "I'm pissed as hell, and I'm going to figure out a way to translate those books."

Turning on her heel, she walked as fast as she could up the ladder and back to the office. She'd always been very good at pretending things were fine when they weren't. So she would manage, somehow, not to feel violated that the demon had plowed his way into her mind without her knowing he had done it.

Still, although her determination to translate the texts had been solidified, she couldn't escape the fact that she still did not have the ability to make sense of them. Demon visit or no demon visit, she didn't have the tools to get the job done. Her brain didn't seem to be up to the task.

Ruby flipped on the television, mostly just for the noise. They didn't get great reception, and the satellite had been shaken with the rest of the house. She flipped until she got to some of the local channels and left the television on some commercial for women's hair dye.

Staring at the page in front of her, she didn't let herself think about the demon's appealing face looking at her as he promised her he'd been there for every bad moment in her life. Why her? There were eighteen Outsiders. Why had he focused on her?

Sighing, she tried to do a better job of not thinking about what she didn't want to think about.

A voice coming off the television screen caught her attention, and her head shot up as she realized where she'd heard it before.

Preacher Talbot
. Her grandparents had been terrified of him. Any time he'd come anywhere near one of the towns where they stayed, she'd been made to basically live in the basement with the windows bolted and locked. It had always seemed really odd. Her grandfather had been a Marine. She'd once watched him take down three neighborhood thugs using nothing more than the end of the broom he used to sweep the garage.

However, one small man with a cane showed up, and her family went into some kind of catatonic state of terror. They'd always move after that, too. Some place smaller, some place her grandparents thought the man was less likely to visit.

Ruby stood up and walked to the television to get a better look. He might have freaked out her family—and she never did learn why, her grandparents had taken that knowledge to their graves with them—but he didn't scare her.

She wasn't at all interested in what he was selling. Instead, she focused on the way his lips moved. How and when he smiled, what moments he looked at the camera and when he glanced down. Truly, he seemed to be some kind of expert. The audience roared in applause. Ruby shook her head.

Coffee. She should walk to the kitchen and see if any of the coffeemakers had survived the shake-up.

Preacher Talbot shook his cane in the air, waving at the audience. All thoughts of caffeine fled her mind as her heart rate increased rapidly. "Holy cow."

She reached out to touch the television. The top of the cane held a symbol. She'd seen it before, many times, as she stared at the book she couldn't make sense of. Both sides of the cane were covered in letters, but ones she knew.