“Oh, I know all about that,” she said. And then she instantly regretted it. He was well aware that she knew better than to “stay in any one place too long.” She hadn’t “stayed in any one place too long” for twenty years – because she’d been running from him.
Sam licked her lips and put down her fork. The idea of running from him suddenly sounded really good. It sounded really freeing. It sounded chicken shit and short-sighted and ultimately stupid as hell, but at that very moment in time, his nearness was nearly too much to bear, and she had the incredible urge to bolt.
Jack’s singular gaze narrowed.
Sam blinked. Her heart fluttered. Her hands went still on the marble counter. “Why… are you looking at me that way?” she asked softly.
“How am I looking at you, exactly?” came his calm, cool reply.
“Like you’re a wolf,” she told him frankly, “afraid the rabbit is about to run.”
He waited a beat before asking, “Is she?”
Yes, she thought. But that wasn’t what she said. For some reason, her back straightened and her chin raised and her body made her decision for her then and there, even if her mind hadn’t yet caught completely up with it. “I don’t scare easy, Colton. I scare smart. Give me a good enough reason, and I’ll be out the door.”
Not that I know where I am or where I would go or that I would live very long if I did, she thought silently. Out loud, she said, “So far… I haven’t seen anything particularly life threatening.” But that was a bold faced lie. Because Jack Colton was after all in the room.
Jack slowly stood, and Sam watched his height grow, dark and long like a well muscled shadow. She stared up at him, waiting for what, she had no idea.
“Go pack up, Firebird. There are suitcases under my bed.” He watched her for a moment more, his eye boring into hers with stark intensity, and then he turned and walked out of the kitchen toward the hall.
She called after him. “What about Raven?” she asked. She’d been worried about her friend. If the Hunters wanted Sam dead that badly, they weren’t above using Raven to get to her.
“Already taken care of,” he called back.
What’s that supposed to mean? she wondered. She got off the stool at the bar and made her way down the hall toward the master bedroom. Her footsteps slowed as she came nearer. It was one thing to see that overtly masculine room without Jack in it. It would be another to take it in when the “master” was there.
So she stopped at the door and spoke around the corner. “What exactly is the plan once we’re there?” It was bizarre and distancing for Sam to find that she was not behind the wheel of her own life’s vehicle at that moment. Someone else was driving. Hell, it was like life was driving her. But she was tough, and she was trying.
“You’re staying there and I’m going to speak with the Thirteen Kings,” came his deep voice from the vicinity of the bathroom.
Sam’s brow furrowed. “Thirteen Kings?” she asked, thoroughly confused.
Jack appeared in the doorway holding a few folded articles of clothing. He looked down at her and took a deep breath. “There’s a lot you need to be filled in on. Pack up as quickly as you can, and I promise to explain who they are on the way.”
*****
Sam waited with a backpack – a gorgeous leather designer backpack – over one shoulder, and a travel bag in one hand as Jack finished putting in some kind of code in the alarm box on the kitchen wall. She heard several beeps go off, and something near the fireplace clicked. Then he turned back to her and closed the distance between them in a few long strides.
He was rolling up his left sleeve, and had it to his elbow by the time he rejoined her. Sam noticed the tattoo she’d seen before. It was an intricate, knotted design inked in a strange, shimmering ink on his forearm. “What is that, exactly?” she found herself asking as he came to stand beside her.
“It’s a little trick I picked up from William Solan,” he said as he slid one arm around her waist and pulled her closer.
She stumbled a little, surprised by the contact, and when she fell against his body, heat coursed through her as if he were made of fire. She stifled a squeal and turned her head a little to hide the blush.
“You okay?” he asked, probably concerned that he’d jarred her shoulder.
She nodded, still looking away. “Who is William Solan?”
There was a pause before he responded. “I forgot you don’t know him. He’s the Time King.”
“The what?” she asked, snapping her head up to look at him again.
“The Time King. One of the Thirteen Kings who sit at the Table of the Thirteen. It’s one of the many things I promise to explain to you in due time.”
Sam prioritized. And then she realized there was no way to do that because she had no idea what, out of all of that, was the most important. So she just asked a question she was curious about. “So this Solan guy has tattoos?”
Jack smiled and shook his head. “That man is covered in ink, and it’s not normal ink either. William Solan is a man of many skills, and even more secrets.”
“And he’s a friend of yours?”
“Yes,” Jack said softly and with a kind of quiet, introspective conviction that spoke of honesty. The hardness of his angles softened out for a moment, making him appear less superhuman and more human. Just for a moment. “You could say that,” he finished. Then he brushed the fingers of his right hand across his left forearm, and the tattoo there lit up, shimmering like fiber optics.
“Hold on to me,” he told Sam. “I’ve never transported to this location, and it’s far underground. You don’t want to end up embedded in rock.”
Sam’s eyes widened. She grabbed hold of his bicep with both hands, and as the portal swirled open around them and he smiled a smug, victorious smile, she clung to him for dear life.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Shifters filled his study. And there were more of them outside in the hall and beyond in the foyer. They’d come to his west coast safe house, as a rather unconventional entourage of sorts, with Jack Colton. Jack Colton had known how to locate that particular house because he’d come once with Darius Walker.
This evening, he’d been using the Shifter King’s ward key when he “rang” at Roman’s doorstep. It was like using a knocker on a mansion door, but knocking out a secret code when you did so. Only one of the Thirteen would have the ward key to Roman’s private property, and when it showed up on the Vampire King’s radar, it had his immediate attention.
The shifters had come in order to inform Roman D’Angelo that Darius Walker was missing. He’d apparently been taken by the very same Hunters who’d cornered the Thunder Dragon in downtown Chicago and caused the destruction of one of Chicago’s social landmarks.
Roman took the news in stride, compartmentalizing the danger, and immediately sent Pi, the fire elemental, out with a call to the other kings. One of their own was in trouble, and though the Traitor among them had yet to be revealed, the Thirteen had always prided themselves on siding with the theory of innocent-until-proven-guilty, and not the other way around.
Roman then followed Jack Colton out of the house and into the Redwood forest. He did not fail to notice how the other shifters filed out after Colton. They watched him like a hawk, scanning their surroundings as if they were the Secret Service, and he the president. Roman began to wonder… he wondered about a lot of things.
For one thing, he wondered whether Colton could smell Roman’s blood. Because Roman could sure as hell smell his. It wasn’t human – obviously. But it wasn’t like any shifter blood he’d ever smelled before either. He’d caught a whiff of it on the street outside Dylan’s Candy Bar. It was a smell like the iron of blood, magic, wildness and revenge. But there had been so many people there at the time, people seeped in all of those things, he’d thought little of it. Besides, that Thunder Dragon and the men shooting at it had taken precedence.
But now…
And there was more. More than
a scent. It was as if Jack Colton had a shed a skin, gotten rid of an outer layer, or taken off a mask. There was something emanating from him now that reminded Roman of static electricity and a night breeze and the brush of fur against your skin when you weren’t expecting it. It was powerful and subtle at the same time. Like a secret – like one of those he must be keeping.
What are you? he thought silently.
Roman also wondered about the Thunder Dragon. Had it escaped the Hunters alive? If so, where had it gone? And where was it now?
His gaze flitted to the shifters who circled loosely around Colton as if they were body guards as the man revealed the tattoo on his left arm and prepared to transport out. They were attempting to appear casual, but Roman would recognize that kind of allegiance anywhere. It was the same kind his vampires had for him. Colton was more than a friend to them, more than a fellow shifter. So what was he? What was going on here?
Roman pulled up his own portal, and with a nod to Colton, the two men vanished through time and space in separate directions. It wasn’t until Roman was surrounded by the swirling miasma of light and color that was his portal that the truth dawned on Roman like a crashing wave. Darius Walker wasn’t the Shifter King. Jack Colton was.
*****
If Sam had possessed further questions regarding Raven and what Jack meant when he’d said she was “already taken care of,” those questions were answered the moment she arrived at their next location to find Raven Ashwing waiting for them. What he’d meant was that she’d been whisked to their safe house just like Sam. Better safe than sorry….
There were a few problems with this, however. The first problem was that Raven was not alone. She had been “accompanied” by no fewer than a dozen very strong, very gorgeous, and very deadly looking shifters… or maybe they were weres. Sam was having trouble telling the difference. It had always been hard to tell the two apart; their scents were very similar. And there were so many of them standing around the underground mansion attempting to appear as though they were doing anything other than the very obvious thing they were there to do – keep Sam and Raven from leaving.
The other problem was just that – it was an underground mansion. Sam could never have fathomed such a construct if not for the fact that she was standing inside it at that very moment. It was a castle built into the ground, and apparently there was no front door. There was no way in or out of the mansion but by way of transport.
Seven bedrooms, eight bathrooms, two great rooms, ten fire places – where the smoke went, Sam could not even imagine. The kitchen was large enough to feed a small army, and the master bath boasted a hot tub. The walls were carved stone, the floors were hard wood, basically everything Sam loved about a house was once more evident in a property owned by Jack Colton.
What the hell do you do for a living? she wondered as she and Raven gave themselves a private tour of the mansion. There were four levels to the mansion, connected by winding staircases. The bottom-most level contained an Olympic-sized swimming pool, heated, with a marble bar at its center and a waterfall at one end. The pool connected to a hot tub, of course, and not a small one either.
The second level boasted an actual home theater. Sam had never been in one before. She’d seen them in architecture and design magazines and online at places like Pinterest – where dreamers go to visually dream – but finding herself in one in the real, non-dreaming world was something else. Especially when she sat down in the front row to find the armrest was outfitted with a panel. Apparently the seats could vibrate with the movie, just like the “D-Box” seats in those fancy theaters. She wondered if the movies were in 3D too….
The third level from the bottom hosted three beautifully appointed bedrooms and a large rosewood-carved study replete with built-in shelves stacked with hundreds of books, a built-in desk, and a decorative mural on the ceiling. The very hallways in this underground mansion were a sight to behold; there was something about the mastery of this subterranean architecture that belied imagination. The devil was in the details – and apparently, so was beauty.
The top level of the mansion was the living space. At its center was a round conversation nook with fully-grown trees and greenery planted in a circle all around it. The nook’s centerpiece was a large stone fire place. It wasn’t a pit, but an actual hearth, with a chimney that rose through the ceiling. The seating area was composed of a round stone bench covered in a plethora of plush pillows.
From this nook, several hallways tributaried. One led to a library, stocked to the brim with even more books. Another led to a wine cellar, equally well stocked. A third led to a game room with standing arcade machines. A fourth led to the dining room and kitchen beyond it.
The fifth and final hallway, like the last remaining point on a star, led to the garage, which boasted a “lift” to raise a vehicle from the garage level to the above-ground driveway overhead.
Each room was breathtaking. Each bedroom had its own working fireplace. The colors were warm and inviting. The environment was safe, protected, and beautiful. If Sam had thought Jack Colton’s apartment was extravagant and perfect, it was a drop in the ocean of how she felt about this place. Which was literally everything she’d ever dreamed of in a home.
It was too much to take in, to be frank, and as Sam and Raven moved through the house with Jack’s men giving them the tour, she felt numb. Under different circumstances, Sam could imagine this was some sort of heaven. Except that this was not her home. It belonged to a man she barely knew, and that fact was becoming more and more clear with every step she took in the underground mansion.
Her world had been turned upside down. Here, in this massive, elaborate hole in the ground, she could honestly believe she was Alice and she’d taken a tumble – and this was Wonderland.
“I’m sorry Sam,” Raven said suddenly, breaking through their silence as she gave one of Jack Colton’s “guards” a sidelong look and pulled Sam into yet another room for more privacy.
She hastily shut the door behind them, at once separating them from the others. By the looks on their faces just before the door had shut, it was obvious the shifters on the other side didn’t know what to do about it. But they must have decided the girls just wanted to be alone to talk – and besides, where could they possibly go? Because the door remained closed.
“I’m sorry I never told you about… about me being your….” Raven paled a bit and looked at the ancient rug on the floor of the study.
“Guardian?” Sam finished for her. “Never mind,” she said with a wave of her hand. “I don’t really blame you. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it and I’m being a selfish child,” she told Raven. “You did what you thought you had to do. And it isn’t as if we didn’t become the best of friends. In the end, I love you and you love me and that’s all that really matters in the huge scheme of things, right?”
Raven stopped and stared at Sam a second, and then she beamed. “Right,” she agreed readily.
Sam then pulled her further from the door and gave her a hug, which Raven readily returned ten-fold. Sam was surprised it actually didn’t hurt all that much. Her shoulder was nearly healed, which meant she could probably shift into an avian form and stay airborne.
As they embraced, Sam placed her lips to her friend’s ear. Knowing the men on the other side of the door were shifters with excellent, enhanced hearing, she very quietly whispered, “We have to get out of here. I have to go after the Hunters. They killed my parents and they’re after me. This is my fight.”
Raven held on to her for a few beats, probably wondering if she’d heard Sam correctly. But then she slowly released her and leaned back a little. Their eyes met. An unspoken understanding moved between them in that shared gaze.
Then Raven nodded, just once.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The hidden Bose 191 In-Wall speakers were blasting music throughout the mansion. The fact that it was a classic didn’t soften the spike of fear that went through Jack. He stopped in
his tracks and lifted his chin, scenting the air like a silent beast as he stepped out of the portal and into his home. The portal closed behind him, but he couldn’t hear it over the blare of Europe and their Final Countdown. Alarm bells went off in his head.
He’d lied to Samantha when he’d told her that he had never stepped foot in this house. He’d spent endless, waking minutes, hours, days and weeks at the birth of this site, seeing the home built from beneath the ground, and up. He’d then spent twice as long overseeing its internal decoration.
Every tapestry, every carving of wood, every nook and cranny cut into the bedrock of the mountain was done with Sam in mind. Her likes and dislikes, her dreams and wishes. Oh he knew it, alright. So when he entered the home’s fourth floor, he knew instantly by the feel of the air in the house that the magishifter had been there – and gone again.
He glanced at the four shifters in the main area around the fireplace in the conversation nook. They were four of the twelve he’d left behind to keep track of Sam and her friend. They hadn’t heard his portal over the roar of the music either, and when they finally noticed that he was there, they instantly assumed guilty expressions and jumped to their feet.
The look on his face must have terrified them, because their brows furrowed and the blood ran from their cheeks.
“Where is she?” he asked without pretense. He had to voice the question quite loudly. And he was betting he knew whose idea the music had been.
“In the hot tub,” one of them responded. It was clear from his expression that he misunderstood his boss’s tone and body language. “Is something wrong?”
Yeah, thought Jack as fury mounted within him. You let her get away. But he said nothing, focusing only on Sam’s presence and how it waned and faded with every step he took through the enormous underground mansion. He took the stairs down to the bottom level two at a time and was practically running when he reached the hall that led to the pool and hot tub beyond.