Unleashed by Shadows (By Moonlight Book 10) (28 page)

Screaming furiously, Cale fought his own demons as much as the restraining hold, kicking, thrashing, but getting nowhere as Colin told him calmly, “It’s all right. I gotcha, brother. We’ve got your back. You want us to come on down off our mountain and slaughter every one of them, you just say the word, and it’s done. Is that what you want? You want their blood on our hands? Say the word, my king. It’s what our father would have done.”

The struggles stopped. For a moment, Cale’s ragged breathing was the only sound.

“Okay now?”

“I’m not okay.”

“I know,” Colin responded to that hoarse whisper. “Are you done? I’m not going to have to hit you, am I?”

“No.”

“Good. You’ve got a hard head. I almost broke my hand the last time.”

With a gusty laugh, Cale rested his head back against Colin’s broad shoulder. His sunglasses had been knocked off so he squeezed his eyes shut. He continued to breathe slow and steady, finally asking, “Can you handle things for me?”

“Piece of cake.”

“I need Row to take me someplace.”

“You got it.” He turned to tap Turow’s shoulder, saying quietly, “Take him.” Softer still, “Stay with him.”

After passing Cale to his brother, Colin bent to pick up the dark glasses. Restoring them, he told Cale, “You’ll be okay. I got this for you.”

A faint non-committal smile was his answer.

When he and Turow started out of the room, Silas moved to intercept him, saying worriedly, “Where are you taking him?”

Colin moved between them. “That’s not your business. Your business is here, with me. Let’s get to it.”

*

Susanna LaRoche moved the end of the stethoscope to another spot. “Big inhale. Out. Again. Good.”  She traded tools, flicked off the lights, ordering, “Look straight ahead.”

The small beam seemed to pierce his eyeball and punch through the back of his head. It was all Cale could do to sit still until blissful darkness returned. “Am I gonna live?” The cocky question disguised how terrified he was of the answer.

“Long enough to pay my bill.”

Cale let out his breath. “I’m gonna be okay then?”

“Your heart rate is all over the place, your pressure is through the roof. Whatever you’ve been putting into your body, it doesn’t like it and won’t take much more of it.”

“Am I dying?”

“You’re making it much sooner rather than later.” She prepared an injection and administered it. “This will help you sleep.” She sighed. “Normally, I’d suggest you take your family and go home. Someplace you can safely recover and clean out your system. That’s what I’d suggest if you’d listen.”

Cale smiled grimly. “I’m a stubborn sonuvabitch when I’ve got a job to do. Can you use my blood to find a cure?”

“If I’m very, very lucky. How can I put this?”

“Give it to me straight, doc. I can take it.”

“No. That’s the problem. You can’t. Put that combination of herbs and chemicals in your body again, you will die. I can’t even guarantee you’ll survive the withdrawal. The pain, the stress on your body and mind, I couldn’t imagine worse torture. This is some ugly, deadly stuff, Cale.”

“Don’t you think I know that? I have to stop this shit from destroying my people. Good, decent, hardworking, family-loving people are going to die from this. Or worse. And if I have to go through this hell to save them, I don’t see a choice. I don’t have a choice. They’re my clan. My family. My obligation.”

“It’s not your fault, Cale.”

“But it is!  Don’t you see, it is, because I could have ended it in Tahoe. I could have ordered James and those witches killed on the spot. My father would have. I thought I had it under control. And I was wrong.” He took a choking breath and continued with an awful finality.

“I’ve stood by and allowed an entire bloodline of people I loved to die because I lacked the courage to do something to stop it. That won’t happen again. It stops with me this time. No matter what I have to do. It stops with me.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Five very different females gathered in the MacCreedy’s condo, drawn by friendship and necessity to bond with others who’d understand their unique situations. A queen, an assassin, the fashionable mother-to-be of a ruler, the housewife with a secret she hadn’t known, and a cop wed to a mobster who might be the Prophesied One, sharing their tumultuous relationships with men of strength and occasional cluelessness.

Feeling very much the outsider, Kendra feared she shouldn’t have come the minute Brigit started pouring a discreetly doctored punch and boldly asked, “So, how are your sex lives?” When met with four wide-eyed stares, she laughed. “Oh, come on! Enough bitching and moaning about being the stable influence on our frustrating other halves. Let’s dish some hot stuff while we’re still able to do something about it when they get home.”

“You want to know how your brother is in bed?” Nica arched an incredulous brow.

Brigit grinned. “I bet he folds your clothes as he takes them off you.”

Kendra could help herself. “And does the laundry afterward.
“Probably strips the sheets while you’re still in them.” Brigit and Kendra laughed together over that.

Nica simply smiled. “He would.” A dramatic pause. “If he had the energy.” She drew her celery stick through a flavorful black bean dip. “I’ll have you know, it took a herculean effort on his part to get up this morning, make this very tasty dip, and run a load before I let him go to work.”

“Ah, a man in the kitchen,” Cee Cee sighed. After a long first day back on the job, she’d eased out of her killer heels and had her feet tucked under her on the sofa, but her cell phone sat on her lap, a tether to her NOPD obligations.

“Like you’ve ever been in a kitchen before,” Nica scoffed.

The detective leaned back into the couch cushions to muse, “We bonded over the breakfast bar in my apartment.” She smiled in smug challenge. “I was his first.”

“First what?” Tina asked, shocked, but intrigued.

“Everything. Jimmy Legere kept him on a very tight leash.”

“Until he slipped it, the sly dog,” Brigit chuckled.

With a satisfied smile, Nica ran bare toes through the nap of the carpet. “Right here on this rug in honor of our first time together under the skylight.”

Brigit’s feet jerked up. “Eww. I hope he did more than vacuum afterwards.”

“In the bathroom,” Kendra offered somewhat shyly then at the astonished looks, elaborated with more confidence. “In the main Terriot lodge with all his brothers and his father in the other room. And Silas outside the door. We paraded the mark up to Bram. Then Cale claimed the crown and me as his queen.”

Silence. Nica settled the matter. “You win.”

“And you’ve managed to hold onto him despite all the rumors about Terriot princes.” Brigit let that dangle.

Tina leaned curiously toward her step-sister. “What rumors?”

“Go ahead.” Kendra made a helpless gesture with her hands then quickly stole her thunder. “It’s not like it’s a secret that they’ll hit and quit anything that moves. And yes, my prince was as big a horn dog as the rest of them, a fact the Terriot females were very gracious to share with me. I believe Sizzle, Boom, Done was their fond nickname for him.”

“And that doesn’t bother you?” Tina gasped.

Kendra put her hand to the diamond he’d given her when they were children, that sacred symbol passed from king to prince that he’d shared with her claiming she held an equal loyalty with his crown in his heart. “He’s my prince, my king. I’m the one he fought for all his life to make his queen. I don’t worry about what he did before me because they’ll be no one after.”

“Because he knows I’d rip out his heart, among other things, if he ever hurt you,” Brigit vowed.

Kendra smiled, her mood growing introspective as she murmured, “I’m sure his fear of you is what keeps him in line.”

“As well it should.”

“What’s it like?” Nica asked her flamboyant sister-in-law. “Being with a human?”

“I prefer it. None of that biting and clawing nonsense. I was never a fan. He calls me Goddess.”

“As well he should,” Cee Cee echoed, chuckling at her friend’s hard fall over the sassy redhead.

“No one could be as shocked as I was to find an Upright so completely and utterly satisfying in every way I could ever imagine. Isn’t that true with your cutie detective, Tina?”

“I have nothing to compare him to.” Tina took a deep breath and sadly confessed, “Alain was everything I dreamed of as a husband and father.”

With an interrogator’s insight, Cee Cee caught the soft snag in her voice. “Was?”

“He’ll come around,” Kendra assured her. “He’s an honorable man.” Her thoughts took a guilty turn. If Cale left them alone to sort out their differences.

Brigit’s brows soared. “Your vacay lingerie didn’t work?”

Tina sighed and shrugged. “He’s a man, and we were in paradise. Of course it worked. Things were very . . . amorous. But not so much that he’d forget a condom, or me the fact that he doesn’t want me to bear his child.” As tears brightened in her eyes, Kendra slid close to put an arm about her. “He feels cheated out of a family because he didn’t know what he was getting when he married me and became Oscar’s father.”

“He’s an ass.” Cee Cee’s conclusion came from equal parts indignation and guilt, because she’d been the one to out Tina’s heritage during a heated argument with her partner over her relationship with Max. She’d been trying to patch that rift ever since. “What he got was a wonderful wife and an exceptional boy.” A truth that had taken her a long time to embrace.

“Whom he thinks of as monsters,” Tina whispered.

“He’ll come around,” Cee Cee promised. “Even the biggest fools do eventually. I should know. Give him time, Tina.”

Kendra waved off the others with their outrage and sympathy, her own emotions too close to the surface not to burst through however unwisely. “It’s easy for the three of you to give advice. You’re safe with your doting men and big bellies.” The trio exchanged confused glances. Kendra plowed on blindly, pulling her hand free of Brigit’s.

“Maybe a child isn’t the answer to everything,” she cried out, expressing her own fears. “But to us, it’s the guarantee of a future we don’t have now. If Tina was carrying his, he wouldn’t deny them. If I could conceive Cale’s—” She broke off, horrified by her declaration.

“Kendra, what are you saying?” Brigit demanded.

“That he’d find living with me more appealing than throwing his own life away.” She buried her face in her hands, turning away from Tina’s offer comfort.

“Kendra,” Nica said gently. “Cale isn’t himself. That’s not your fault.”

“Yes, it is,” she lamented. “I pushed him away. I fight with him over everything without trying to understand. I don’t know what’s wrong with me! I get upset over everything. He doesn’t even want to touch me anymore. I’m a weeping, screaming, hysterical shrew. No wonder he stays away.”

Brigit, Nica and Cee Cee exchanged knowing looks.

Kendra Terriot was worried about nothing.

*

The party ended soon after Kendra’s confession. Tina went to collect Oscar from school, Cee Cee to meet Max at his office for an update on his morning meeting, Nica to prepare for work, leaving Kendra to ride home with a suspiciously silent Brigit.

“I’m sorry,” she sniffled at last.

“For what?”

“Killing the mood. See what I mean? I’m such a downer I can hardly stand myself.”

Brigit reached over to squeeze her hand. “No, you’re not, sweetie. You’re just fine. You’ve had a helluva couple of months. I think you need to take hot stuff away on a honeymoon. I highly recommend it for therapeutic reasons.”

“He wouldn’t go with me, not until he’s finished whatever it is he thinks he has to do. I could murder your brother for bringing him here.”

“If it wasn’t that, it would be some other damn fool thing. Men. They’re never content unless we’re dangling off a cliff or they’ve got some crusade to wage.”

“So you’re saying it’ll never get better.”

“Depends. Would you be better off without him?”

“No.” She didn’t even have to consider it. “I just don’t know what to do, Bree. I don’t know what he needs from me—if anything at all. Maybe I’m just in his way.”

She laughed. “You charge in on a motorcycle, dragging his brothers behind you all because you sense he might need you. You’re selling yourself short. He was a beast before you, a wreck without you, and he thinks he can conquer the world as long as you’re at his side. You’re a perfect match. All he needs is for you to be you and for you to be there.”

Kendra heard his quiet petition echo.

“Stay.”

“Do you want to be his queen, Kendra? Do you want to be surrounded by his brothers, his problems, and his enemies every day for the rest of your life? Do you love him and yourself enough to share him with what he has to do to be who he is?” 

“Yes. Yes, that’s what I want.”

“Then quit your whining, find him, and bang him brainless. Let the rest take care of itself.”

*

She didn’t have to look far.

Turow waited in the parlor like it was a dentist’s office. He came quickly to his feet when he saw her.

“Cale?” Alarm jumped in her voice.

“Up in your room. Sleeping.”

She blew out a breath of relief and turned toward the stairs.

“Kendra?”

Because it was the first time he’d called her by name, she paused. “What is it?”

“Our prisoner. It’ll be dark soon, and she’ll be outside with no comforts.”

“And you think I should care about her comforts after she tried to kill our king?”

He reddened, mumbling, “Of course not. Forgive me.”

She hadn’t had time to give Sylvia a second thought. Now that the female was forced to her attention, she couldn’t ignore that she was at their mercy even though she deserved none.

With a heavy sigh, she pulled her focus away from the room upstairs and promised, “I’ll see to her, Turow.”

“Thank you, my queen.”

Again Kendra wondered if she’d imagined his personal interest in their prisoner. She hoped she’d been wrong.

*

“I brought you some things, blankets, clothes. You and Brigit are about the same size.”