The fact that she was attracted to Max probably aided her sensitivity to the spirit’s emotions. This wasn’t the time or place to be distracted by a man, not to mention her libido, but she couldn’t seem to turn off her attraction to him.
Suddenly, she realized she was not only still staring at Max, he was staring back. She swallowed, feeling the heat of his hazel eyes all the way to her toes. Something about him got to her in a big way. A way that defied the circumstances, which were quite serious. People’s lives could be on the line, she reminded herself.
She drew her spine stiff and delicately cleared her throat, afraid she wouldn’t find her voice otherwise. “At least take an umbrella,” she suggested, needing some semblance of comfort that he had protection.
The front-desk clerk was quick to assist. “I’ll get you one, and we have a carport ’round back. Pull around there and you can unload under the shelter.”
Max looked as if he would refuse, which wasn’t okay with Sarah. When his gaze found hers, she made sure he saw the determination in her expression. He sighed with resignation and walked to the desk.
The front-desk clerk headed toward a closet as an elderly man approached the desk. He placed several lit candles on it as he called to the clerk. “Hold up, honey,” he said, and eyed the rest of them, but she didn’t listen. She grabbed an umbrella before returning to the counter. The man lowered his voice. “You’re the people the sheriff called in from that Austin University?”
“Yes,” Sarah said. “That’s us.”
“I hope you got answers that don’t require fancy equipment ’cause nothing’s working. Not even battery-powered.”
Sarah grimaced with that news. “No need to risk the rain for equipment that doesn’t work.”
The man’s lips thinned, his expression grim. “I don’t want to scare the guests, but we got us big trouble here in Nowhere, Texas. We got us a ghost or a demon or something evil like that.”
The clerk swatted his arm, and he shot her a mad look. “You know it’s true, Helen,” he said. “Tell ’em.”
“Actually,” Cathy said, doing one of the things she did well—calming people’s fears. “There’s a long list of scientific explanations.”
“Name one,” the man said.
Cathy was quick to respond, drawing them into conversation, Edward assisting her. He never showed his cranky side to the public, saving it for Cathy and Sarah.
Thankful for the escape Cathy had offered her, and concerned about the newest developments, Sarah motioned to Max. Discreetly, they moved away from the group. “Look,” she said softly, the sense of unity she felt with this man like that of a longtime friend, not a virtual stranger. “If you have any idea what we are dealing with, please tell me now. Don’t avoid my questions. Who called you here and why?”
Max hesitated and Sarah narrowed her eyes on him. She wanted to know about this man. About why he was here and what made him different from everyone else here. Because he was different and they both knew it.
As much as her instincts said he was worthy of her trust, her past history told her to be concerned. She’d learned the hard way with her parents’ death that, in the world of demon hunting, trust could lead to destruction. She wouldn’t give Max, or anyone, her blind trust, ever again. “Did the sheriff call you?” Sarah asked, pressing Max for answers when he offered none.
“The sheriff didn’t call me. I work for a covert operation called in under extreme circumstances. I’m told where to go and I show up—sometimes, like now, with very little information. All I know for certain is that my boss is selective about what I deal with. I wouldn’t be here if the situation wasn’t bad. Real bad.”
Sarah wanted to press for more details. Turning her attention to the view outside the window, she processed what she’d just been told. He’d basically admitted to hunting the supernatural, just as she did. Only he hunted a different breed. Perhaps those who bore fangs?
Without looking at him, she said, “I know you aren’t telling me everything there is to tell.” She cast him a sideways look. “Since we’re the only two people who seem unaffected by what’s going on, it appears we might have to work together. I can’t do that if I don’t trust you. I can’t trust you if you talk in code. I need to know who sent you and why.”
Several people walked past them and Max hesitated. “Now isn’t the time or place for unveiling deep, dark secrets.”
She drew a labored breath, her chest expanding with effort. He was right, of course. And her instincts told her to trust this man. For now. “Fine.” She narrowed her gaze. “But soon.”
“Fair enough,” he agreed.
Sarah considered her next move. The best thing they could do now was to start researching. That meant interviews, since they were cut off from technology. “As much as I don’t want to go out in that mess,” she admitted, referring to the weather, “I need to talk to the sheriff and get some answers. I need to do something productive while we wait for our equipment to work again.”
“I’m all for that,” Max inserted. “It beats the hell out of standing here in the dark, waiting for some invisible bomb to explode.”
“Yeah, it does,” she said, searching his face, surprised at how accurately he described what she felt, and how in tune they were with each other. How in their own world. These people around them were scared, her team included, but no one else seemed to sense the ticking clock that she and Max did. “I’ll get that umbrella.”
She started to turn away and his voice called her back. “Stay here where it’s safe. I’ll go and bring the sheriff back.”
It was a gentleman’s offer, and she appreciated it. She just couldn’t accept. “I don’t know if I’d call here, or anywhere in this town, safe,” she said, not one to worry about her own safety, anyway. Risk was part of this job, as she suspected he knew from his own work. Demon hunters made bad lovers; they were always knocking on death’s door. “Besides. I’m not the type to sit and wait.”
“I’d feel better if you stayed,” he said.
“I wouldn’t.” She gave him a smile. “But thank you, anyway.”
“What if I insist?”
“I’ll go anyway, and you can’t stop me,” she said sternly, turning away with decisiveness this time, and as expected, facing an argument with her staff over her decision to go out in the storm. But they knew what Max was starting to learn. She made her own choices.
Sarah returned to Max’s side with an umbrella and a few supplies. “Ready?”
He gave her a nod and pulled the door open. They stepped outside, the wind gushing with sudden force as if it were warning them to turn back into the inn.
Sarah was about to step off the porch when Max grabbed her arm. “Not until I do a test.”
She rolled her eyes. “Macho is so not appealing.”
“Humor me,” he said, and started to hold his hand out.
Instinctively, she yanked it back. His brow arched. “Sorry,” she said. “That water just looks so damn evil.”
“But you want to go out in it,” he said flatly. “I told you I can go and get the sheriff.”
“I’m going,” she said, her voice firm.
“You’re very stubborn,” he declared.
“Yep,” she said. “I am.”
“Then I guess we better try my test again,” he suggested as he eased her fingers from around his wrist, which she was holding tighter than she realized.
She crossed her arms in front of her chest so she wouldn’t be tempted to grab him again. “If you insist.”
“I do,” he said quickly.
She held her breath as he reached into the rain. The dirty-looking substance ran over his skin, through his fingers, splattering on his leather jacket. But nothing more happened. No pain. No insanity. No demon possession. Not that she could tell, anyway.
Sarah let the air slide from her lungs. “Thank God.”
Still, he held his hand under the water, apparently not quite satisfied it was safe. It was har
d for Sarah to shake the fear of demon possession after watching a demon take over a friend and turn him into a killer. A killer who had murdered her parents. The thought had her studying Max with renewed concern.
Yet she was attracted to Max in a way she didn’t remember ever being attracted to any other man—in a way that went beyond his physical beauty. She thought she’d shut off that part of herself when she’d lost her parents—the part that connected beyond the surface, that allowed emotion to flare—but somehow Max had slipped under her guard. And she couldn’t help but wonder how and why.
She drank in the vision he made, his face so full of character, full of strength. A dimpled chin. A long scar across his right brow. She wondered how he got it. Would he tell her if she asked?
He was different from anyone else she’d met, she concluded. Could she actually have found someone who she didn’t have to fear would be possessed by a demon? Did she dare hope?
She stiffened. That was a dangerous thought that would only lead her to destruction. She couldn’t let down her guard. “You still feel okay, right?” she asked, needing that verbal confirmation.
“Same as I always do,” he said, shaking the water from his hand. He popped the umbrella open and offered her his arm. “Shall we?”
The air around them crackled with menace, and Sarah gratefully slipped her hand beneath his elbow, welcoming the warmth and security of that deliciously muscled, well-armed body. A strange thing for her. She preferred to stand alone, not depending on anyone.
She prayed that the feelings that urged her to trust Max were genuine. She prayed she wasn’t being lured into some dangerous charade by some evil spirit.
But deep in her core she felt Max was part of her journey in this town. He felt familiar in some odd way. And her gut said they were headed for a fight, and it was going to require both of them to win.
Something was here, around them, near them. She could almost feel it watching. Something that could strike at any minute. She didn’t know much about Max. Nor did she know what she would face in the next minute, the next hour. Only that danger seemed to surround them, to blanket them in warning.
Determination formed in Sarah. She didn’t like defeat. She didn’t like allowing things to spin out of control. She was going to learn Max’s secrets, to dig beneath the surface of the sexy stranger who’d pulled her under some sort of seductive spell. And she was going to find out the source of evil in this town and what killed that woman on that bridge. Sarah couldn’t turn back time and prevent that woman’s death, but she could help her rest in peace. And she could stop anyone else from dying the same way.
Chapter 3
Demon Prince Vars fed on human desires and emotions, created each person’s personal destruction by delving into their innermost thoughts and feelings. Until he was cut off from his connection to the earthly realm, imprisoned in the Underworld beneath a magical barrier created by the Archangel Raphael. For centuries, he had been without his powers, weak and pathetic.
That had all changed when Kate and Allen Walker had chosen the land above his hell hole, his prison, as the place to build their home. Their presence had delivered to him the power to find escape, had allowed Vars to create a tiny hole in the magical barrier of his prison and begin controlling their lives.
Vars stepped to the top of a boulder, the highest point inside the confines of his prison, and looked down at the fiery caverns he would soon depart. Satisfaction filled him. Everything was going as planned. Stage one had been Kate’s death, which had led to Allen’s interest in the dark arts and his study of black magic. An amateur at his craft, Allen had accepted the mental push Vars had given him, and foolishly tried to subordinate demons as his servants, demanding they resurrect his wife. All part of Vars’s plan, of course.
Unknowingly, Allen evoked the most powerful of Vars’s demon legions, Vars having guided him to their names. When Allen found the demons too weak to do his bidding, he attempted to send them back to hell, but he was too inexperienced to succeed. Instead, Allen had set them free to roam the earthly planes, to aid Vars’s efforts at escape. But escape for Vars would not be as simple as it had been for the lesser demons who reported to him. To break the binding spell of an archangel, Vars would require a source of great magical energy. A source Allen would now bring to him.
When Allen became brave enough to call on him, Vars would promise him his wife, in return for a few little favors and a blood oath of service. Once he had that oath, he would be powerful enough to contact the Underworld. Most importantly, he could contact Cain, the king who oversaw the Darkland Beasts. Cain hated Raphael and his army of Knights even more than Vars did. He would aid Vars’s escape, and together they would crush all that Raphael valued. They would crush humanity.
Vars laughed. Yes. Allen would deliver all of this to him and more, in exchange for a promise of his wife’s return. Not that Vars had ever kept a promise in all his centuries of existence.
Power flowed through Allen as he stepped to the edge of the magical circle drawn in the center of his living-room floor. Candles flickered at four points outside the circle’s boundaries. He drew a breath, claiming his magic, feeling it flow through the long black robe he wore and the sheathed black dagger he clutched in his right hand.
Each time he used his craft, he grew stronger, more capable of mastering his skills. A rush of adrenaline poured through him as he thought of what was to come, what would happen when he stepped inside that circle. He’d come to crave this high magic that was delivered to him; he devoured the feeling of ultimate control it offered, and he hated himself for that.
Deep down he knew Kate would hate it, too, that she would not approve of his touching the dark arts. But he had tried her way, turning to the church, praying for her return. All they’d offered him was a promise that the pain would ease. That Kate would always be in his heart if not by his side. He refused to accept a promise that left him without his wife.
Besides, he knew his Kate. She would want to be with him. She knew how much he needed her. She was all he had, all the love he’d ever experienced. After a life of foster homes and loneliness, she had brought him joy. The church wanted him to forget, but damn it, he didn’t want to forget. He would not forget.
His hand tightened on the dagger, his jaw clenching. This path he’d chosen had been for one purpose and one purpose only: to get his wife back. Kate would understand why he had to do this.
New resolve formed and he stepped inside the circle. Tonight, he would evoke an upper-level demon, the one that lesser demons had called “Vars.” And he was ready. He could feel the tingling of electricity dance along his nerve endings, the surge of his own energy rippling through his veins, charging the air.
He unsheathed the dagger and sliced his hand, dropping the blade to the ground as he let the blood trickle from his skin to the floor. In a low voice, he began the evocation spell, willing Vars to show himself. Evil crackled in the air almost instantly; the hair on the back of Allen’s neck stood on end. Fire flickered within the triangle, and Allen felt the heat as if he were on fire, but still he chanted, still he continued. He had to do this. He had to get his Kate back. A vague shape within the fire began to take solid form.
“I command the demon known as Vars to show himself!” Allen shouted.
The man, or rather demon, that appeared in the center of the triangle stood a good six feet five, his long black hair in a braid that disappeared between broad shoulder blades. He wore a black shirt and pants and boots that covered his calves.
The demon lifted his hand, fingers pointing at Allen. Suddenly, Allen’s legs gave out on him, and he fell to his knees. The demon closed his hand into a tight fist, and Allen felt his chest tighten, as if the demon were squeezing the breath out of him. Fear shot through Allen’s body. The precious control he’d reveled in moments before now gone. The lesser demons he’d summoned had not wielded this kind of power.
“Prince Vars is my name,” the demon said. “Address me with r
espect or do not dare address me at all.”
The invisible grip Vars held on Allen’s chest disappeared, he gulped for air. Desperate to escape, Allen tried to get to his feet, but his legs were still frozen in place, as if they were glued to the hardwood floor.
“Those who serve me, bow to me,” Vars bellowed.
No! Allen screamed the word in his mind, silently beginning a spell meant to subordinate the demon.
Vars laughed. “You cannot control one such as me, Allen,” he said, making it clear he knew Allen’s name and what he was attempting to do. “I am royalty in the Underworld, one of the great powers. You will bow to me or you will not get what you seek.” His lips twisted sardonically. “You do want your precious Kate back, do you not?”
“Yes!” Allen said, too anxiously. He could not help himself, could not contain his urgency. “I want my Kate back.”
Vars tilted his head and studied Allen. “I can help you, but only when I have my freedom. I am bound beneath the earth, my powers bound with me. Free me and you shall have your wife.”
“How?”
“I will guide you, human.” Vars pointed at the dagger and it flew through the air into his hand. He sliced his hand and black liquid poured from his palm. “Vow a blood oath and give yourself to me. Within our blood, I will be connected to you. I will lead you on your path. A path that will deliver you to your wife.”
Allen pushed to his feet, free to move now. He didn’t hesitate, determined to find his way to Kate. A second later, he stood on the edge of the triangle and extended his bloodied hand across the line. Vars grabbed his palm, pressing it to his own.
The instant their blood mingled, a current of electricity dashed through Allen’s body. He felt numb, shaken, scared. He cried out. The pain, the pain was too much…and then it was just gone.
In its place, he felt calmness, peace; a sense of magnificent energy flowed through him. In his head, he heard Vars speak the name of three great sorcerers. Bring me their souls, and I will give you Kate.