Seduced by the Storm (23 page)

"Don’t
bother," he said shortly.

"It’s
not a bother." Her voice was soft, her touch to his shoulder more so.

"Let’s
just say that I understand your family situation. I know you might think that
I’m not ruthless enough—that any other agent wouldn’t give a shit what your sob
story is."

She
raised an eyebrow, but let him continue.

"I
get it, Faith. I get the family thing. The guilt." He shook his head, hard
enough to make it spin, wished the fucking memory would fall out rather than
rattling like a loose spring. "But you never let the bad guys win, even if
it means the biggest personal sacrifice you can think of. That’s what being a
good agent is all about."

"I
understand that, Wyatt. But I’ll do whatever it takes to get Liberty. You have
no idea what it must’ve been like for her, in that institution—"

"I
have every idea," he heard himself roar. She took a step back from him,
stumbled a little in the sand, and he fought for control. When he spoke again,
his voice was lower. "I was committed too—for a nice, long spell when I
was in my teens."

"You
spent time in a funny farm?"

"That’s
right, baby. I told you, every time you called me crazy, that you were right.
Certifiably right."

"Shit—behind
you," she said, reaching for the weapon he knew she’d tucked into her bag,
but Wyatt put a hand on her arm and pushed it down.

"He’s
here for us," he told her, turning to see the man known to just about
everyone merely as ML. ML wore his trademark, awful Hawaiian shirt, bathing
trunks—a tall, tropical-looking drink in his hand. "Hey, ML,
whassup?"

"I
could’ve picked you up in the water."

"I
had other plans."

"Like
coming back from the dead?"

Wyatt
shook his head. He pushed his wet hair away from his face. "I’m still
buried."

"Hot
date for a dead man." ML lifted his drink in a toast to Faith. "Come
on, let’s get you two back to the house and into some dry clothes, before we
all get arrested."

"Nothing
to arrest us for, man," Wyatt said, and ML just laughed and said,
"Bullshit"
into the wind.

Annika
couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so exhausted. Dev had ordered all
available ACRO personnel to participate in hurricane preparations now that Lily
appeared to be heading their way.

The
base was far enough inland that storm surge wasn’t a concern, but a category
five hurricane could pack destructive winds inland for hundreds of miles. Dev
wanted the base and the nearby town to be as prepared as possible, and he
wanted everyone on standby to assist in search-and-rescue and hurricane
recovery.

Haley
had stressed that no matter where the hurricane struck the eastern seaboard,
they were going to be dealing with Katrinalike devastation—in a best-case
scenario. A direct New York City strike would not only be ten times worse, but
could set the entire U.S. economy back twenty years.

After
hours of shoring up shelters and prepping staging areas, Annika was ready to
fall into bed with Creed, and for the first time, not for sex. Unfortunately,
she still had a night martial arts class to teach. Dev had insisted that the
new recruits’ schedules not be altered if possible.

"You
hungry?" Creed looked at her from the driver’s side of her Jeep, where she
sat in the passenger seat. He claimed he liked to drive, but she had a feeling
that her wild antics behind the wheel made him nervous no matter how many times
she explained that she’d taken hours upon hours of stunt-and evasive-driving
instruction.

"Starving.
You cooking?"

He
pulled into the driveway of his two-story hilltop house. "If you don’t
mind spaghetti, with sauce out of a jar."

"I
can deal with that."

Twenty
minutes later, they were at the dining room table eating spaghetti and sharing
a bottle of red wine. She loved coming to his place, which, though sparsely
decorated, was large and homey. She lived in remodeled barracks on base, and
since she was rarely there, her place had about as much charm as a prison cell.

"What
did you get stuck doing today?" she asked, as she sprinkled Parmesan
cheese on her pile of noodles.

He
took a swig of his wine. "Since we’re expecting significant casualties, my
department began preparations for soul recovery."

"Which
is?"

"When
a lot of people die suddenly, especially in major disasters, souls are lost.
They need help crossing over."

"Isn’t
that something that can wait until the survivors are taken care of?"

He
eyed her from across the table, the intensity in his expression sending shivers
of appreciation over the surface of her skin. He was so sexy when he talked
shop. "Our bodies are just shells. The true essence of any human or animal
is the soul, so caring for the spirit is priority. Where we’re really alive is
on the Other Side, not here on earth. If the lost souls aren’t helped quickly
to cross over, they grow even more confused."

"What
else?"

Creed
reached for his fork. "What do you mean what else?"

"I’m
sure that saving souls is important," she answered, as she wiped sauce off
her mouth with a napkin, "but I get the feeling there’s more."

He
nodded, his dark eyes sparking with excitement, and she realized she’d never
truly understood how much he loved his job. "Prophets, psychic scholars,
heck, even ancient civilizations have predicted an apocalyptic event in our
near future, as well as an impending period of darkness. No one can agree if
these events are one and the same, but what they can agree on is that some sort
of disaster will result in an overflow of souls for evil to seduce. There will
be a war of souls."

"What,
like ghosts fighting against the living?" The very idea creeped her out.
She could handle anyone or anything in a tangible, physical form, but facing a
foe she couldn’t see tapped into her feelings of frustration and helplessness,
something she already experienced too much of when she was forced to deal with
Kat.

"Pretty
much. One of the goals of the Medium department is to prevent something like
that from happening. It’s why we’re always dispatched to large-scale natural
and man-made disasters."

The
phone rang, and Creed answered in the other room, leaving Annika to ponder what
he’d said. She remembered Dev saying that ACRO scientists had been trying to
explain the surge of people born with special abilities, and that it might be
tied to the apocalyptic event Creed had mentioned. The creepy period of
darkness, though…that was new. But again, Dev had also said that there were
more mediums in existence today than at any time in history, so obviously,
something was up.

"Sorry,"
Creed said, and she was grateful for the interruption from her disturbing
thoughts. "It was my mom."

"Your
mom?" She couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice. Parents were not a
hot commodity at ACRO. Many agents had none—those who had parents, they were of
the soul-suckingly horrible variety. Dev had once mentioned that Creed was
adopted, and she’d assumed his parents were either dead or out of the picture.

"Do
you have a father too?"

He
must have taken for granted that she knew his story—his whole deal. Clearly,
he’d forgotten that, as of just a year earlier, if it didn’t concern her, she
didn’t give a shit. "Yep."

Wow.
"So…are they normal?"

He
laughed. "They didn’t raise me in a cage or abuse me, if that’s what you
mean. They were typical, all-American folks who just happen to see ghosts. We
had barbecues and went to church and had big, happy family holidays."

Creed
twirled some noodles on his fork and grinned. "When Mom and Dad weren’t
out hunting ghosts, she was Ms. Domestic. She worked in the garden, sewed,
cooked her heart out. Man, she put out great spreads. Sundays were the best.
She’d make a huge dessert, and Dad and I would fight over who got the first
piece."

Annika
couldn’t help but wonder what growing up with them would have been like. The
warmth she felt from Creed as he talked about his parents…it was something
Annika couldn’t quite wrap her mind around. She bet they baked cookies and
colored Easter eggs and went trick-or-treating, all as a family. Annika hadn’t
even been allowed to go to CIA holiday functions, for fear she’d shock another
kid.

She
shoved the thought aside because she was a grown-up and who cared about
coloring Easter eggs anyway, and sipped her wine. "You told me you were
adopted."

"I
was, in a way." Creed put down his fork. "They found me in a cave.
Abandoned as a newborn."

"Oh,
my God." She fumbled her fork, nearly dropped it. "Who would do
that?"

"We
never knew. But we suspected why. The tats," Creed said, drained his wine
and poured more. Annika resisted the urge to reach out and stroke the symbols
on his face, the way she did at night sometimes, when he slept and she just
wanted to feel closer to him. She knew he’d been born with them, but he’d never
explained. Then again, she’d never asked.

"My
mom and dad were investigating the cave the Bell Witch was said to haunt.
People had been claiming they heard wild talking, singing and moaning coming
from the cave, but that particular morning they also heard a baby crying. My
mom and dad went into the cave when no one else would, and found me
there."

"And
they just kept you?"

He
shrugged. "Yeah. I guess they’d been trying to have kids for years but
couldn’t, so they said I was a gift."

Chewing
slowly, Annika let Creed’s words sink in. His parents had taken home some
strange kid and raised him? How could they have loved him? He wasn’t theirs.
Annika’s CIA parents hadn’t loved her, not even a little, and she’d always
assumed it was because she wasn’t their natural child. Well, that and they had
a job to do at all costs, and a lack of emotional ties was part of the price.

In
fact, when the CIA had moved Annika, at the age of thirteen, to a dormlike
facility to live under strict, military-like supervision, her
"parents" had barely blinked. They’d been happy to be done with the
ruse, the fake marriage and fake family. Annika had long suspected that
Patricia and Joseph White weren’t her parents, but all doubt had been blown
away that day. It had taken nearly three more years to learn the whole truth,
and when she had, the rampage had been bloody.

Patricia
and Joseph had not been spared.

Martha
and Dave had found a strange, tattooed kid in a cave and had loved him, so how
could Patricia and Joseph not have felt even a small measure of affection for
her? And why did it suddenly bother her now when it never had before?

"When
did they discover your ties to Kat?"

"Right
away, I guess. They’re both mediums, so they knew instantly that Kat was
protecting me."

Annika
knew there was a difference between a normal medium, who could sense and
communicate with spirits and ghosts, and what Creed did, which was to
communicate with ghosts through Kat, who was, herself, a ghost.

"So…growing
up—with the tattoos and the spirits—did you go to regular school?" she
asked, suddenly needing to know everything about the man who set her world
right.

Creed
finished the last of his wine. "Mostly I was homeschooled."

"Mostly?"

"Sometimes
I’d get a bug up my ass to go to school and be with other kids, and my parents
always let me, but it didn’t last long."

"The
markings?"

He
nodded. "Teachers, other kids…they didn’t understand. No one believed I
was born with them, and a teacher went so far as to report my parents for
abuse, thinking they’d forced me to be tattooed."

Annika
reached beneath the table and gave his knee a squeeze. When she was very young,
she’d craved contact with other children, so in a way, she understood what he’d
gone through. "I’m so sorry, baby."

"It’s
nothing compared to what you went through."

"Maybe
not, but at least no one ever made fun of me." She was lucky to not have
gone through that pain. And those who had messed with her in other ways—for any
reason—had paid dearly.

"No,
you went through worse. You were only two when the CIA took you from your
mother and left you in the care of people who raised you like a prized pit bull
instead of a daughter."

Everyone
at ACRO knew she had been raised to be a weapon for the CIA, but only Dev—and
now Creed—knew the fine details. She’d only last night shared how she’d made
her first kill at twelve, and how, until she came to ACRO, the only thing she
knew how to do was kill.

And
here he’d been raised by gentle, loving parents to be a gentle, loving adult.
Despite his hard appearance, he was a giant teddy bear, all soft and squishy.
She was about as opposite as she could be. What had someone called her once?
Robobitch?