Witching Moon (23 page)

“She's some kind of threat to them. They didn't just drive her off the road. They came after her with their psychic powers! The way they came after me that night in the swamp.”

The sheriff was watching him closely. “How do you figure that?”

His own tension level was so high that he didn't have to fake a show of emotion. He ran a hand through his hair in a good imitation of a man who was thoroughly perplexed. “Maybe I've got a little of their…their powers. All I know is that I sensed that Sara was in trouble out here—from them. And I came running. Or rather driving.”

Which left out the part when he
had
come running. But he wasn't going to bring that up. He was pretty sure Sara wouldn't, either—if she'd understood what had happened. He didn't even know that much.

He kept his gaze fixed on Delacorte, to see how the explanation had gone over. The sheriff nodded as if the answer didn't really surprise him. “I've got a theory about that,” he muttered.

“Oh yeah?”

“It's the Olakompa. There's something in the swamp that seeps into your system. From the water. Or the rotting vegetation. And if you've got the right receptors in your brain, it acts like a drug to…to…give you psychic power.”

Adam tried not to gape at him. Obviously the man had been mulling over this rationale for Wayland's supernatural troubles for quite some time. The lawman focused on Sara. “Have you found any plants that might be involved?”

“There are plants that cause hallucinations. I…I don't know about ones that…that increase psychic power,” she stammered.

Adam tipped his head to one side, torn between this fascinating discussion and his need to be alone with Sara. “That's a pretty enlightened point of view from a small-town sheriff.”

“I've lived in Wayland all my life. I grew up with the witch tales. I've had a lot of time to think about what's happened here over the years.”

Adam nodded.

“If you've got a better hypothesis, I'd like to hear it,” Delacorte said.

“I don't. And I'm not going to stand on the side of the road speculating about it,” he added, finally unable to control his own emotions a moment longer. He could feel Sara leaning more heavily on him, and he suddenly wondered how she was managing to stay on her feet at all. Probably she'd had an emotionally draining experience at her parents' house. And she'd come home to
this
. Now she must be beyond exhausted.

“I'm going to take this woman home,” he said, hearing the tightness in his own voice. “We can arrange for towing tomorrow. Unless you need her for something else.”

Delacorte looked at the wrecked vehicle. “I'll call a truck and have the car towed to Jerry's Garage in town, if that's agreeable with you.”

“Yes, thank you,” Sara murmured.

When Adam started to shepherd her toward his SUV, the sheriff shook his head. “Before you leave, I need some basic information from you.”

“Like what?” Adam demanded.

“Dr. Weston sideswiped a tree. I have to fill out an accident report, and for that I need her driver's license, vehicle registration, insurance card, home address, phone number—that kind of information.”

Adam nodded tightly, stepping back so Sara could comply with the request. She had to call him back, though, to ask for the phone number at the park.

He waited for Delacorte to finish, listening to Sara's even voice, trying not to look like a pressure steam valve was about to burst in his chest.

When the sheriff had taken the basics, he put away his notepad. “Did you recognize any of the…witches?”

Sara shook her head. “They were all wearing black capes with hoods.”

“Okay.” Delacorte didn't write it down. Obviously the witch part wasn't going into the official report.

“Are we done?” Adam asked.

“Yes.”

Adam silently led Sara to his vehicle, opened the passenger door for her, and then closed it after she climbed in.

He had been desperate to be alone with her. Now he walked slowly around the car, putting off the moment. But finally there was nothing left to do besides slip behind the wheel.

He looked back, seeing Delacorte watching them. The sheriff had already seen him pull Sara into his arms and hug her, so he knew something was going on between them. But it could be over in the next few moments.

So instead of dragging her close and hanging on to her, he started the engine, then headed back to the safety of Nature's Refuge.

Taking his eyes from the road, he glanced at Sara. She didn't speak.

His voice was gritty as he asked, “So, what about the wolf?”

ADAM HAD DROPPED
the question into a deafening silence. He clamped his hands on the steering wheel, thinking that he'd made a terrible mistake.

But he wasn't going to take it back. He risked a glance at Sara. She had knit her hands in her lap so tightly that her knuckles were white.

Instead of answering his question, she said, “We were talking about the witches like some science fiction movie we'd seen! But it's not a science fiction movie. I'm one of them.”

“Jesus! That's not true!”

“What am I?”

“A woman with…with some special talents.”

She twisted her hands in her lap. “I told you I was going home to find out about my background. While I was there, I had one of my old
daymares
. Only this time, it made better sense. It was the one about the little girl and her mother in the cabin. I put some of it together, and I made my adoptive mother tell me some of it. I'm Jenna Foster's little girl. My mother was the witch they killed. My father was there that night. He got me out of the cabin, then found adoptive parents for me.”

She let that settle into the darkness before demanding, “Say something.”

“I was starting to wonder if you were her daughter. Delacorte was, too.”

“You talked about that? About me?” she demanded.

“That's not how the conversation started. He dropped by while you were away to talk about the wolf he'd seen downtown at the historical society building. The wolf he almost shot.”

She made a low, moaning noise.

“So, yeah, we were having a pretty…intense conversation. And you came into it. I told him that even if you were Jenna Foster's daughter, you hadn't come back to town to get revenge on Wayland. You weren't one of them.”

“It doesn't worry you that I'm her daughter?”

“That didn't bother your natural father when he was having a relationship with your mother.”

“Oh, I think you're wrong. He was ashamed of his liaison with her. He kept it hidden from everyone in town. After she died, he took me to North Carolina and found a childless couple to adopt me.”

“It didn't have to have anything to do with the damn witch thing. He could have been married, for all you know.”

He saw her taking that in and went on quickly. “But he loved you. He didn't let you down. He found good parents to bring you up.”

“Far away from Wayland where nobody would know who I was.”

He made an exasperated sound. “Maybe he sent you far away to keep you out of danger.”

She shot him an astonished look. “I didn't think about it that way. But it doesn't change anything. I'm still worried about my…background. When I was driving back here, I kept wondering how I was going to face you.”

He started to speak, but she waved him to silence.

“Let me finish! The closer I got to Wayland tonight, the more I felt the world closing in on me. I kept thinking, What happens when he finds out the real truth about the woman he made love with? I kept thinking, The witches are after me. And they could hurt Adam. Or I could hurt him. Somehow, something bad could happen.”

“No!”

She kept talking, staring straight ahead, as though he hadn't spoken. “Then…then they forced me off the road, and they started that stuff with me that they did the other day. Only it was worse. They had on those damn hoods. And they were using their minds to attack me. Sending mental energy bolts at me. And you know what I did? I fought back the same way!”

“Good.”

“You can accept what I'm telling you…just like that?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He thought about the answer for a moment, recognizing the importance of what he told her—to both of them. “I guess because my whole life has been lived knowing there were things in the world that would scare the…the spit out of ordinary people. If there are men who change themselves into wolves and roam the woods at night, who knows what the hell else is lurking in the genetic heritage of humankind.”

As they'd been talking, he had been driving, going on automatic pilot, going home. When he looked up, he saw that he was in the parking lot of Nature's Refuge. He'd left the gate open when he'd come tearing down the road in his car.

He'd driven inside the park grounds without even thinking about what he was doing.

Sara sat staring straight ahead. “The witches would have finished me off except that the wolf came along and started tearing into them. He could have gotten hurt. Or killed.”

“The wolf did what he had to do! The problem is that he
is
a wolf.”

She had avoided looking at him. Now she turned and met his eyes. “I saw the wolf before tonight. Not in real life. In a daydream about the past. When it started off, I was my mother, living in that cabin. Then I looked up and saw the wolf. I didn't know his identity. But I knew he had come…for me.”

“Were you afraid of that?”

“Yes.”

“And now?” he asked, hardly daring to breathe.

Instead of answering the question, Sara asked one of her own. “Why aren't you running screaming from a woman you know is a witch?”

“Because I love her!” he fairly shouted, then realized what he'd said.

 

AFTER
Adam and Sara drove away, Paul Delacorte focused on routine tasks, like drawing a quick sketch of the scene. Then he took some measurements, triangulating the vehicle to a big tupelo tree, so three or four years later, he could place the car in the exact position where it had come to rest—in case there was going to be a trial for some reason. Next he took some flash pictures of the Toyota and the road surface and a couple of comprehensive shots covering the scene from different angles.

Finally, he looked around for any evidence he might have missed: drugs, alcohol, anything that might have been thrown out of the car. But he found nothing. So he drove to a nice quiet spot on a side road and began writing up the accident report. When he'd first come upon Sara Weston's battered Toyota at the side of the road, he'd wondered if he'd come upon a case of falling asleep at the wheel or DWHUA, driving with head up ass. Swerving to avoid a porcupine or a raccoon fell into that category, and she looked like the tender-hearted type who wouldn't want to hurt a small animal. Instead, she'd come up with the story about another vehicle that had vanished into the night.

She'd been shaken. And she'd been trying to figure out what to say. Unfortunately, Adam Marshall had driven up and started speaking for her.

Marshall blamed the accident on the witches. But there was more to it than that. Stuff that neither he nor Weston was saying. Paul had been a cop for too long not to recognize evasive answers when he heard them. They were leaving something out, and he was going to find out what it was.

Was Sara Weston involved with the people he'd come to think of as the bad witches?

Adam had said it wasn't true. Paul was still waiting for the rest of the chickens to come home to roost. And he had a lot of questions. Like, for example, he wanted to know how Adam Marshall had gotten there so fast. Did he really have some psychic power that had drawn him to the accident site?

He sighed. That was the least of his problems. At the moment, he had to figure out how to write up his report. Because he sure as hell wasn't going to mention anything paranormal. Not hardly.

 

ADAM
heard Sara's indrawn breath. “Is love enough?” she asked.

“What the hell do you mean—is love enough?”

“It's a fair question.”

“The hell it is!”

“Adam, I'm scared.”

“Of me?”

“Not of you. Of…of…” Her hands fluttered. “Of what's happening. Of the witches. Of myself. Didn't you hear what I said? When they hurled thunderbolts at me, I started fighting back the same way. Adam…I'm frightened of what I am. Of what I can do.”

“But not of a man who changes into a wolf and roams the woods at night?” he asked, putting the question in the most stark terms he dared.

“Not of you!”

“In that case, we'll make it work,” he growled, unhooking his seat belt, then unhooking hers so he could haul her across the console and into his arms.

He cupped the back of her head with one hand, bringing her mouth to his in a kiss that started as a desperate attempt to show her what she meant to him. What they meant to each other.

The other hand dragged her closer so he could feel her beautifully rounded breasts pressed more firmly to his chest.

The contact delivered a jolt of sexual need that drove everything from his mind except the feel of her, the wonderful taste that he had discovered so recently.

She might have resisted, but her fingers kneaded his shoulders, moved to his upper arms, and back again, her touch questing and erotic.

He had driven home as though he were traveling through a dream landscape. He was still in a fog. He had forgotten where they were. Forgotten everything but the enticing woman in his arms.

With a jerky motion, he released the lever and pushed back the seat to its maximum extension. Lifting her up, he pulled her skirt out of the way and settled her in his lap, positioning her so that she was facing him, her legs straddling his.

He accomplished all that without lifting his mouth from hers. When he had her where he wanted her, he pushed up her knit top, then reached around to unhook her bra so that he could take her breasts in his hands.

She moaned into his mouth, moaned again as he played with her nipples, the feel of those hard pebbles against his fingers driving him close to insanity.

Her hips moved restlessly against his, and her lips were soft, warm, and open, silently begging him for more. He obliged, deepening the kiss, using his tongue and his teeth and his lips in all the ways he'd learned to please a woman.

It wasn't enough, and he realized that he had moved her onto his lap too quickly. The layers of clothing separating them were driving him beyond the point of madness. And when she made a frustrated, whimpering sound of agreement, the blood in his veins turned to molten lava.

Somehow he kept himself from screaming in protest when she pushed away from him—until he saw that she was trying to struggle out of her panties. He ripped the fabric and tore them free of her body, so that he could dip his fingers into her throbbing center. She was hot and wet, and the stroking touch of his fingers seemed to make her whole body pulse and tremble.

Her fingers scrabbled at the snap of his jeans, then the zipper. And when she took him in her hand, he thought he would self-destruct.

“Sara,” he gasped. “Don't. I want to come inside you.”

“God, yes!” As she spoke, she lowered her body, bringing him into her with a sure, swift motion that robbed them both of breath.

He brought his mouth back to hers, caressing her breasts as she moved frantically above and around him, her moans of pleasure mingling with his.

They climaxed in an explosion of passion that felt to him like a rocket blasting off into outer space.

She wilted against him, her face damp, her breath ragged.

He kissed her cheeks, her lips, his hands stroking possessively over the silky skin of her back.

For long moments, neither one of them moved.

He was the one who spoke first. “Don't give this up because you're afraid of the future.”

“There's more to working out our relationship than great sex.”

“Was it?”

She reached up and gave a tug at his hair. “You know damn well it was!”

He laughed, a low rumble in his chest. “Yeah.” Laughing felt good. She felt good, her body covering his, clasping him. He kissed her again, slowly, tenderly, then with more urgency as he felt himself getting hard a second time, still inside her.

She raised her head, looking down at him, smiling. The smile turned to a small gasp as he found her breasts again.

“Good, that's so good,” he whispered.

“Yes.”

They kissed and touched, arousing each other more slowly now that the urgency was sated. This time they enjoyed the delight of being together. Of giving and receiving pleasure, of working their way from peak to peak until climax overwhelmed them once more.

When they could finally move again, he helped her up, and she flopped into the passenger seat.

He stepped out of the car, pulled on his jeans, then circled around to her door. Helping her out, he stuffed the ruined panties into his pocket, then swung her up into his arms and carried her along the path to his cabin, determined to keep her safe no matter what the cost.