Spell Bound (Darkly Enchanted) (28 page)

She dropped her gaze to her grandfather’s journal as a chill whispered up her spine.

Leo was only six.

And I was four when Mom started my training.

“Hey. Shea.” His quiet tone made her eyelids fall. “He needs to know.”

She didn’t really have a choice, did she? She was unprepared for all of this, so in the dark. Even with all her dad had taught her, obviously it hadn’t been enough. And now she was responsible for Leo, too.

Did she want Leo to grow up as oblivious as she had? She realized her parents had thought they were protecting her by not telling her about the curse. But she knew they’d made the wrong choice.

She didn’t want Leo to be as clueless. Or hate her for withholding information.

Didn’t want to lose him to Dario because he couldn’t defend himself.

She raised her gaze to meet Gabriel’s and nodded. “Then I guess you should start.”

* * *

Gabriel left Shea in the library, nose stuck in her grandfather’s journal.

He left because, if he didn’t, he would’ve sat there and watched her read.

Ceffo
.

Instead, he walked over to the TV room and stood in the doorway, waiting until Leo and Quinn, side-by-side on the floor, finished their race.

“Hey, kid. You kick Quinn’s a—butt?”

Leo looked up at him with big, dark eyes, so much like Nino’s he couldn’t stifle the slash of pain before it managed to nick him in the heart. He covered his expression well enough, though, because Leo didn’t seem to notice.

“He’s good.” Leo didn’t smile but his eyes brightened. “I’m better.”

“You just wait.” Quinn dropped the controller and leaned back against the sofa. “I’ll get you next time.”

Leo held out his controller to Gabriel. “Do you want to play?”

Damn, the kid was too good to be true. Gabriel didn’t want to like him so much, but it was hard not to.

“No, thanks. I’ve got another game we can play, though, if you want.”

Leo’s expression turned eager and he scrambled to his feet, the top of his head barely reaching the bottom of Gabriel’s rib cage. “Did Sissy say it was okay?”

Gabriel dismantled his smile in mid-formation. She’d taught the kid well. “Yeah, she did. Come on.”

Leo padded after him like a puppy, Quinn bringing up the rear as they headed to a stairway hidden behind a door in the dining room. Flipping the switch for the lights at the bottom of the stairs, Gabriel led them up, smiling at Leo’s gasp as the room came into sight.

“Wow. What is this?” he asked in a hushed whisper.

Gabriel stood aside so Leo could walk into the open space. “This is a training room.”

“For what?”

“Guys like us.”

Leo tore his gaze away from the sights to look at him. “Cool.”

Quinn laughed as Gabriel nodded. “Very cool.”

Overhead, skylights revealed the clear blue sky and illuminated the weapons lining the walls. Gabriel knew all their names, had been trained on all of them. Some were thousands of years old, like the double-edged gladius. Some were ceremonial, and some were experimental prototypes created by Digger and his father and grandfather.

Leo started at the closest wall, examining the cinquedea, the short sword of the Roman gladiators; ran his finger over the shafts of the hasta and pilum. He spent some time staring at the round, razor-sharp chakram before moving onto the Indian tiger-claw blades.

He walked halfway around the room before he stopped and reached for a matched pair of Malay kris. His hands already on the hilts of the blades, Leo turned to look at Gabriel. He never questioned instinct so he nodded.

He let the kid remove them from the wall and hold them in his hands, getting a feel for them.

“They’re called kris,” Gabriel said. “You want to learn how to use them?”

Leo’s eyes widened. “Can I?”

“Yeah, you can.” Gabriel squatted so he and Leo were eye-to-eye. “It’s time to find out what you can do, Leo. You up for it?”

He nodded, his expression becoming serious. “Daddy said I had to be ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“To protect Shea.”

Christ, that was a hell of a lot of responsibility to put on a child’s shoulders, even one as powerful as Leo. But then, Shea was a special case.

“Did he tell you anything else, Leo? About your powers?”

Leo shrugged, his gaze dropping to the weapons in his hands. “Sometimes they scare me.”

Gabriel put his arms around the kid’s shoulders before he even thought about what he was doing. “You don’t have to be scared anymore, Leo. I’m gonna teach you how to control them. Okay?”

The little boy nodded but didn’t lift his gaze.

“Did your dad tell you anything else? About what you can do?”

Now Leo looked up and Gabriel saw something hard flash through the boy’s eyes. “He said Sissy would come for me and we’d have to take care of each other.”

“Well, Quinn and I are here to help you with that now. So…you want to get started?”

When Leo nodded, Gabriel set him on his feet and waved Leo onto the mats in the center of the room. “Quinn’ll get you going. I’ve got a call to make first.”

He had Quinn start Leo on stretches before taking him through some simple moves with the blades. Gabriel made sure they were okay before he headed for an alcove at the rear. He picked up the old-fashioned black receiver, turned a few numbers on the rotary dial and waited until he heard Phil ask, “Party, please?”

“Matteo Michael Tedaldi, Las Vegas.”

Phil paused before answering. “That may take a few hours, Gabriel. I will call you back at this extension when I’ve reached your party.”

He caught her just before she disconnected him. “I need another connection. Crimson Moon Productions.”

“Please hold and I’ll connect you.”

Serena answered on the fourth ring.

“Gabriel, is everything all right?”

He paused, hearing the careful way she tried to hide the slur in her voice. Shit, his mom was drunk. And according to his sisters, that was never a good sign. “Yeah, we’re all fine. Quinn got here this morning.” He decided against telling her about Quinn’s accident. She’d be able to handle that better when she was sober. “But I’ve decided we need to split up. I want to take Shea to Maddie after we bring the boy up to you. I’m going to call Matt in from Vegas for Leo. The kid’s strong. Really strong.”

Serena fell silent and he knew she was biting her bottom lip, thinking it over, trying to look at it from all angles.
Damn, Mom…

After at least thirty seconds, she said, “I’ll speak to Maddie, tell her to expect your call.”

“We’re going to move out after I hear from Matt, hopefully later today. We’ll wait for Matt to arrive before Shea and I head to Louisiana.”

“You appear to have this all figured out.”

“Yeah well, I learned from the best.”

She chuckled, but it had a shaky sound to it. “Stay safe, Gabriel.”

“Hey. You okay?”

“Yes. I’m fine. I didn’t sleep well. Stay safe.”

* * *

Serena’s head throbbed with a hangover and a vague sense of impending doom.

Looking at the bedside clock, she realized it was three in the afternoon. Dribbles of light seeped through the cracks where the curtains met the sill. Her mouth tasted like she’d eaten a whole bag of sour cream and onion chips and her throat was parched.

Groaning, she sat up and eased her legs over the side of the bed. The room spun around her for a few seconds before she got her feet on the ground.

She couldn’t remember coming back to bed. She hadn’t had a binge like that in years—

Quinn. She’d talked to Quinn last night.

Her temples pounded and her stomach rolled as their conversation came rushing back. Served her right. She’d said things to Quinn she’d never meant to say. Things he’d make her pay for the next time she saw him.

Because nothing had changed. Even though she’d told him how she felt, it didn’t change the facts.

She couldn’t be with him.

Losing her husband Nicolo five-hundred years ago had devastated her. But she’d had two teenage daughters to care for and they’d been on the run.

She still remembered that awful night in vivid detail, sometimes relived it in her dreams. After they’d burned Dafne, the villagers—men and women they’d grown up with and cared for for years—had stolen into their homes, slit the throats of the
streghe
and every member of their families then had carried the bodies to a mass grave.

She’d never forget the terror of her daughters’ muffled screams, the sensation of the dirt pouring down on their bodies. The blackness in the pit, buried alive.

Her lungs starved for air as she clawed her way out from under the dirt. Frantically digging for her daughters. Seeing the horror in her sixteen-year-old children’s eyes.

She hadn’t believed. Not until that moment, when their bodies healed what should have been Fatal wounds, that they had truly been cursed. She hadn’t believed and her husband had paid with his life, along with all the other
streghe
husbands and children not of the
boschetta
.

Bending at the waist, she took deep breaths, waiting for the nausea to recede. For the sounds to fade from her memory.

But the pain of losing Niccolo would never fade.