Madly and Wolfhardt (12 page)

He took a circuitous route through the woods, keeping his nose to the ground most of the way.  It was when the trees began to thin that I recognized where we were, where the wolf was going.

Kellina’s.  He was going to Kellina’s house. 

I gasped just as a light flicked on in one of the upper rooms of the graceful old house that loomed in the clearing.  A shape passed in front of the window and the wolf growled.  It was a low, deep, menacing sound.

He watched the window unblinkingly.  He growled a second time and I heard hissing break out all around me in response to it.  I looked and saw that the tree spirits were watching.  Their yellow eyes were trained on one thing, but it wasn’t the house.  They were watching the creature. 

The wolf quieted suddenly and I looked back to him.  He crouched low, as if readying himself to spring into action.  I glanced back at the house. 

A shape was standing in front of the window.  It lowered, as if sitting down, and then the light died.

With no other warning, the wolf sprang into motion, leaping from the cover of the trees and running full speed toward the house.

A scream bubbled up in my throat.  I wanted to warn Kellina, but the hold of the Seer had me paralyzed and mute.

As the wolf circled around to the back of the house, my heart sped up, thrumming heavily against my ribs, almost painfully.  Before I could think of a way to free myself and run to help Kellina, however, the Seer started pulling me backward, back into the deeper parts of the forest from which we’d come. 

Every silent, motionless fiber of my being strained to go back to Kellina, but the Seer was relentless in his control.  Back, back, back we went until we were once again ascending into the sky and retracing our journey, returning to the ocean. 

Just as it had before, the world went black but for the feeling of movement, and then I was back in my shower stall, the warm water coursing over decidedly chilly skin.

I looked at my feet and saw the Seer disappear into the drain, his hollow eyes the last thing to go.  His absence left the stall warm and steamy, as if something cold and dark had never come to take me away.

Shaken, I looked around, parting the curtain once more to look out into the bathroom.  There was a small, frosted window toward the ceiling that let in minimal amounts of natural light.  Through it, I could see the orangey glow of a fading sun.

Disoriented and confused, I thought of the rainy, nighttime scenery of my trip through the town.  Then, just as the knowledge of the tree spirits had become apparent to me in the woods, now came the certainty that the Seer had let me glimpse what was to come.  He’d shown me something priceless—something I could use to help Kellina, something I could use to prevent the attack, to change the outcome.  He’d shown me the future.

Finishing up my extended shower, I toweled off and dressed hurriedly to make my way quickly back to our room.  When I burst through the door, I saw that it was empty.  Jersey was gone.  She’d left me a note, though.  It was short, but the words painted a picture that was crystal clear to me.

Nice, Madly.  Very nice.

I looked at the clock.  Nearly an hour had elapsed since I’d gone to get in the shower.  Jersey must’ve thought I was just avoiding her, avoiding our double date.

With a sigh, I sat on the edge of the bed.  I wondered if she’d come into the bathroom looking for me.  What had she seen or heard?  Or, worse yet, what had she not heard?  Had she spoken to me and my lifeless body simply ignored her? 

Pushing the thoughts aside, I reminded myself that I had more important things to worry about right now than Jersey’s hurt feelings.  I had to tell Jackson so we could figure out a way to save Kellina, capture Wolfhardt and get Jackson into Atlas. 

As I piled my wet hair atop my head and inserted clips to hold it in place, I thought how perverse it was that only the last part of that plan made my stomach knot with dread.  It seemed that I wasn’t nearly as fearful of catching a killer as I was of letting Jackson sneak into Atlas and fight a small war all by himself.

When I surveyed my reflection in the mirror—my stylishly messy up-do, my low-riding jeans, my cap-sleeved
Wild Cat
t-shirt—I found that I was presentable enough to go get Jackson.  My face was scrubbed clean of makeup, but he’d seen my almond-shaped aqua eyes mascara-free before, so…

Rather than bursting in as I’d done on more than one occasion, I knocked on the adjoining door and waited for Jackson’s reply.  When none came, I knocked again.

This time, I could hear low voices, one of which was feminine and vaguely familiar.  It was followed by the opening and closing of a door.  A few seconds later, Jackson opened the adjoining door.

His dreamy blue eyes skimmed me from the crown of my head to my hiking boot-shod feet, quickly making their way back to my face.  I felt tingly everywhere his eyes touched.

“What’s up?”

“Who was that?” I asked without preamble, my brain as scrambled as always in Jackson’s presence.

“Nobody.  What’s up?  I thought you had a coffee date,” he said acerbically.  He really didn’t like the Kender brothers for some reason. 

“I didn’t go.  Who was that?” I repeated.

Jackson made a noise that sounded like a sigh, a sigh of equal parts irritation and frustration.

“It was Nadia Cobretti,” he answered abruptly.  “What did you need?”

“Nadia?  What did she want?”

Jackson made the noise again.

“She needed to talk about something.  It’s none of your business.”

I felt Jackson’s words like a slap in the face.  They hurt, much more than I cared to admit.  It only hurt for an instant, however, because my one, ever-present defense mechanism came rushing to the surface to overwhelm it.  It was my temper.  And I saw red.

“No, it’s none of my business who you sleep with.  I just wonder how the High Council would feel about it?  I doubt they’d think as much of you if they knew you were screwing half the descendants.  Maybe if they found out, they’d move you.  Get you out of my hair,” I spat, spinning on my heel and stomping angrily back into my room.  It only added insult to injury when I felt the sting of tears at the backs of my eyes.

I was reaching for my keys when steely fingers wrapped around my upper arm and spun me around.

“There’s nothing you can do to get rid of me,
Princess. 
There’s nothing going on with me and Nadia, and no one will believe otherwise, so save your breath.”

“Oh, they’ll believe me alright,” I said, tilting my chin up and glaring defiantly into Jackson’s face.  “I’ll get rid of you one way or the other.”

Jackson wrapped the fingers of his other hand around my other arm and jerked me toward him, pulling me up on my tiptoes.  I got the feeling he wanted to shake the stuffing out of me. 

He looked irate, but I didn’t care.  I was hurt and angry, and that was a dangerous combination for a female of
any
species.

“Why do you want rid of me so badly?  Am I interfering with your plans for Aidan?  Oh, wait.  Aidan’s infatuated with someone else now.  Maybe this has something to do with the Kender kid then.  What, did he turn you down, too?  Feeling a little wounded, Princess?”

“This has nothing to do with either of them.  I could care less who Aidan’s interested in.  And I just met Berlin.  Why would I give a crap about him?”

Jackson bent his head, his nose nearly touching mine, and he spoke.  His voice was deadly calm, making the hair at my nape prickle.

“Then what’s your problem?”

I stared at Jackson’s handsome face.  His manly smell teased my nose and the heat of his body warmed me through my clothes.  I wanted to cry and scream at the same time.  I wanted to tell him that all I cared about was him—his safety, his nearness, his kiss.  But his indifference, his rejection stung my pride, overriding everything else.

“I just want you out of my life.  I can’t stand having you near me.  It’s driving me crazy.  I…I…I hate you,” I shouted at him, my traitorous chin belying my words with a faint tremble.

For a moment, I saw hurt flicker in the depths of Jackson’s fathomless blue eyes, but then it was gone, leaving in its wake an indecipherable expression.

His voice was so quiet when he spoke that I had to strain to make out what he was saying.

“I didn’t feel hate on your lips when I kissed you in the woods.”

His reminder caught me off guard.  Immediately, my mind was flooded with memories.  I recalled every subtle nuance of that kiss, from the feel of his lips to the fire in my belly.  And that’s all it took.  That small lapse in the tidal wave of my anger was just big enough for my body to forget my pique and turn in a totally different direction.  I went from impotent rage to burning hot passion in the space of a few seconds.

“I…I…”

“You what?”

I was caught in an invisible web of feeling.  I was lost in the sudden change in the conversation, the sudden change in Jackson.

His eyes were softer, steamier as they watched me.  His touch was gentler now, his fingers tenderly massaging the flesh of my arms.  His voice was dark and velvety, like a caress.

“We were pretending,” I somehow managed to squeeze past my dry lips.

“Were we?”

My stomach leapt with excitement, with desire, with the whole-hearted hope that he was insinuating that we hadn’t been just pretending, that
he
hadn’t been just pretending.  I wanted it to be real.  Oh, how I wanted it to be real.

“Yes,” I whispered, the last remnants of my pride digging in its heels.

Though Jackson’s face drew closer to mine and his head tilted slightly to one side, his eyes never left mine.  I felt them like burning holes in my soul, felt them like a nest of unruly butterflies in my stomach.  My entire world—all of my senses, every nerve in my body, every cell of my blood—was tightly focused on him.

“Liar,” he whispered, his breath fanning my lips, making them throb with want.

He didn’t move, not one tiny bit, just stared at me.  We were so close that when I took a deep, shaky breath, my breasts grazed his chest.  I could feel his thighs brushing mine as I inadvertently swayed toward him. 

All I could think about was getting closer—pressing my lips to his, feeling his body against mine, having full contact.  Everywhere. 

I heard Jackson suck in a tiny breath and my control broke, pride a thing of the past.  I didn’t care about anything but touching my lips to his. 

I leaned in, just enough to close that last inch of space between our mouths.  And then there were fireworks.

The instant our flesh made contact, sparks flew.  I felt a tiny bolt of electricity shoot straight to my core and explode into a shower of light and heat.  Intuitively, I knew then that I’d never be able to get enough of Jackson.  Just as I’d known other things that day, things that I’d somehow divined, I had no doubt that there was something magical and eternal between us. 

I knew that Jackson couldn’t deny it anymore either.  I felt it in the way he released my arms and splayed his hands across my back, pressing my chest into his.  I felt it in the way he sank into the kiss, teasing my lips open with the tip of his tongue.  I felt it in the way he tasted the inside of my mouth, like a dying man tasting life.

Stretching up as far as I could, I melted into Jackson, touching him with every surface of my body.  I wound my arms around his neck, threading my fingers into his short hair, feeling the silky prickle of it against my palms.

And then his lips were gone. 

I could’ve cried when I felt Jackson pull back.  He looked down into my eyes for one heart-stopping second and then he stepped away.  Dejectedly, my arms fell back to my sides.  Inside, I felt emptier, more bereft, than I could ever remember feeling.