chapter 11
Alon had made a full search of the perimeter, flying low through the pines and finding nothing but the expected game in the woods. A few elk and one less mule deer now that he had eaten. With his belly full and his patrol ended, he returned to the house.
The need to see her beat inside him like a drum. Letting her out of his sight was harder than he expected. The urge to protect her grew stronger by the minute. It made no sense to him. It didn’t seem to matter that she loathed his kind or that she belonged to a race of sneaky child killers. He billowed in disgust. She mixed him all up inside. All he knew for certain was that sleeping with her would make everything worse.
In the blackest, longest part of the night, Alon flew around the exterior searching for ghosts.
He hovered before Samantha’s second-story window. None of the windows in this place had curtains. There was no need for there was nothing to look through the windows to see until now.
She had left hers open to the night and lay in a tangle of bedding, her dark hair fanning the white cotton sheets. Now he knew how thick and silky her hair was and how soft and warm her skin was and how absolutely perfectly she fit against his body.
Alon billowed through the window, under her locked door and down the hall to his own room. Once there he transformed to his final form, the one that so aroused Samantha. The one that was a lie.
He lay in bed naked, knowing he must sleep but not knowing how to put his need for her out of his mind when she was within his grasp.
Samantha had wanted him. He’d made that happen and could do it again. He could make her forget what he was, at least temporarily.
He’d been willing to let her pretend that he was a handsome lover there to meet her every need, instead of a harbinger of death.
Perhaps that was where the name Toe Tagger came from, for certainly none who lay with one avoided a toe tag. Alon rolled to his side and thumped the pillow. Yet he still wanted to have sex with Samantha. That only made him more of a monster.
Avoiding her would be more difficult now because he had seen her, felt her, tasted her.
Alon groaned and closed his eyes. Images of Samantha filled his mind. His body grew hard with need.
Nagi wanted her and he wanted her. Who was the bigger threat?
He placed his hand on his needy flesh, wishing her hand was there instead. Perhaps this would satisfy the relentless thirst to taste Samantha once more.
A familiar prickling began at his neck and spread rapidly over his flesh. He bolted up, knowing what it meant.
A ghost.
Alon was on his feet when Samantha’s scream tore through the darkest part of the night.
Halfway down the hall he recalled he was naked. He changed to his fighting form as he kicked open her door.
His vision penetrated the blackness of the interior, turning the low light to shades of gray. Samantha sat upright pressed against the headboard, clutching the bedsheets to her chest. Her pale nightie twisted about her, showing her long, toned legs drawn up as she huddled in the dark. Her gaze flashed to him and then back to something beside her bed. He had not seen it at first because the evil ghost sank half through the floor. Pure souls were as transparent as plastic wrap. A dull, sickly haze clung to this one like smoke from a cigarette. Wicked and likely one of Nagi’s vanguard. Alon’s hackles rose and a growl rumbled deep in the back of his throat.
“What is she?” asked the ghost.
Alon roared and charged toward the apparition. He lifted both hands, summoning the power that erupted as a bright green flash of light from each palm. Alon had meant to send it to judgment, but he couldn’t control the rage that poured out of him at this thing who threatened Samantha. Something changed. The soul was not cast to the Ghost Road. Instead it writhed in torment before him. The hazy, diaphanous body turned to swirling particles of charred dust. Consumed like paper, still screaming in his head, the soul contorted once more as the last vestige of existence stubbed out.
Samantha clamped her hands over her ears. Could she hear it, too? The ash sizzled like a raw steak hitting a hot grill, and then came the echoing silence. The lifeless particles hung like dust motes in the cold morning air but the soul was no more.
Samantha hunched, bracing as one does when trying to avoid being hit with flying debris. Her hands slid from her ears but remained raised to shield her face. She straightened and turned to him, her eyes seeking answers to what she had witnessed. Now did she understand how wrong he was for her?
She could heal any injury. He could extinguish an immortal soul.
“It’s terrible,” she whispered.
“I’m terrible,” he corrected. He stood in his fighting form, letting her witness what he was. Did she see the creatures that had attacked her family, mauled her father, hunted her even now? He was one of them, just as surely as she was a Skinwalker. It was there in the marrow of his bones, the viciousness and the danger. He needed her to see it and remember it, because he could not resist her any longer.
He would need her to resist him. He knew it and he feared for her. Be strong, Samantha, and be wise. I am not for you. All I bring is death.
At last she looked away, huddling against the headboard in the nightie that revealed clearly what he could never have.
“There may be more. Get dressed. We’re leaving.”
* * *
Samantha climbed into the truck as Alon tossed a cooler, duffel bag and a heavy sack in the truck bed. His shoes he threw behind his seat. Barefooted and hastily dressed in his favorite trousers and close-fitting dove-gray sweater, he looked tousled and appealing in his human form.
Appearances were deceiving, she remembered.
A moment later dirt and gravel spewed behind them as he fishtailed back out the driveway and through the opening gate.
Samantha peered behind them. “Are there more?”
“Didn’t see any.”
“Will it... It can’t tell, can it?”
“It’s gone, Samantha. I finished it.”
She’d known it. Seen it. Understood even as her mind objected. Alon had not sent the soul to the Ghost Road. He had destroyed it.
“I thought souls were immortal. That they could never die.”
He cast her an impatient look. “They die.”
“Have you done that before?”
He glared out the window. “No.”
And now he had because of her. Samantha realized she still wore her coat in the form of a flimsy pink nightshirt. She brushed her hand over the garment, focusing her energy on what she wanted. There was a crackling sound, like static discharging from warm, dry laundry, and then she sat in jeans, worn brown cowboy boots, a frilly flowered blouse and a faded denim jacket.
He lifted a brow at her transformation.
She folded her arms protectively across her body as the truck picked up speed.
“You want to talk about it?” she asked.
He hunched over the wheel. “Talk changes nothing.”
His silence was more deafening than a steam whistle. Did he think he was the only one who carried regrets?
He stepped on the accelerator as if he could not reach his destination fast enough.
She closed her eyes and focused on her breathing, trying to calm the fear of seeing that ghost in her bedroom. Alon had saved her. He’d protected her again. Gradually the tension in her shoulders drained away and she opened her eyes to a light show of their auras.
His glimmering silver with flashes of bright blue sexual energy. It reached across the wide distance that separated them and hers stretched to meet his. They blended in a shimmering curtain of violet and gray punctuated with tiny pops of light, like the last bit of a sparkler burning bright on a warm July night.
She stared in slacked-mouth wonder. As he sat there, hunched over the wheel, eyes fixed on the road, some essential part of him reached for her. But it wasn’t the soul mate connection. Or at least not like her parents’ connection. Their auras never twinkled. Theirs simply found the other in a wash of light that reminded Samantha of a watercolor painter’s palate. Her mother’s a golden hue of all Spirit Children and the violet unique to Seers blending with her father’s rich nutmeg brown and vivid navy blue. They came together in tones of copper and deep purple.
Samantha’s aura crested most vividly with cinnamon tones in a gilded cap. Beneath them both the violet beamed close to her skin.
“What are you staring at?” he asked.
His voice startled her out of her trance.
“Our auras.”
He growled. “What about them?”
She continued to watch the sparks. “They’re dancing.”
He glanced at her and then into what must seem to him empty space. Alon returned his attention to the highway before he spoke.
“What does that mean?”
She shook her head in bafflement. “I don’t know.”
Outside the truck the stars winked out and the trees that lined the highway appeared in silhouette. The sky turned deep blue as dawn approached. Samantha drifted between dreams and wakefulness. The hypnotic monotony of the road lulled. Her head lolled and she forced herself back awake. The dashboard clock read 5:00 a.m. When she opened her eyes again it read 7:32 a.m. The sun was well up and the truck rode half on the shoulder of the road.
“Alon!”
Alon’s head snapped up. He gripped the wheel and steered them back onto the pavement as Samantha clutched the dashboard.
“You need to sleep,” she said.
He nodded wearily. Samantha’s eyes burned with fatigue and Alon blinked at her with red-rimmed eyes.
“I’ll find a place to pull over.”
According to Alon, his parents were traveling in a large RV with the Alpha Pack and possibly any twins they had located. Aldara was also there with the Beta and Gamma packs. If Alon was as weary as she was, they’d never make it.
It took another hour for Alon to find a suitably isolated spot on a long stretch of dirt road that seemed to lead nowhere. Once parked, he walked to the rear of the truck and removed his clothing. Samantha watched him in the rearview mirror, lapping up the sight of his bare chest and muscular shoulders.
“Stay near the truck. I’ll make a quick pass to see if we are alone.” He gestured toward the truck bed. “Eat something.”
Before she could answer he was gone, billowing up into the sky. She left the truck to relieve herself then walked the kinks out of her muscles. Returning to the vehicle, she explored the cooler packed with nothing but bottled water. The sack held a neatly ordered variety of dehydrated food used for camping, canned food and prepackaged crackers and oatmeal. There was even a single-burner camp stove, two fuel cartridges, mess kits and a series of aluminum pots that stacked one inside the next.
She realized she was famished. After about twenty minutes, Samantha’s stomach no longer grumbled and Alon returned. He approached from the direction of the truck, pulling on his sweater. She caught a glimpse of his ripped torso. The flash of pale skin and contracting muscle made her stomach flutter.
“I ate all the tuna,” she confessed. And most of the crackers and all the diced ham. The water boiled and she added the oatmeal and stirred.
“The area seems clear of ghosts. Did you find the sleeping bags?”
“No.”
“In the back container with the chairs and tents. Do you want a tent?”
She glanced up at the blue sky. “Seems unnecessary.”
He retraced his path, returning with two tightly rolled bags.
“Do you camp often?” she asked.
“Aldara keeps this truck ready for extended outings. It gives us another base on our expeditions.”
“When you search for other Ghostlings?”
He nodded and accepted a bowl of oatmeal. His pale skin revealed dark circles under his eyes. He ate quickly, blinking as if struggling to stay awake.
Surely that wasn’t all he was going to eat. He’d provided the bounty. The least she could do was fix it for him. “Can I get you anything else?”
“I ate at the house. I just need a few hours’ sleep.”
She rolled out the bags and set them side by side with a respectable distance between them. She’d be damned if she’d cross that distance again.
Alon crawled inside his bag. A moment later he pulled his trousers and sweater from beneath. Knowing he was naked and sheathed in only nylon and down batting did funny things to her insides. Samantha forced her hand away from her chest, where she had placed it to keep her heart from beating out of her ribs.
“Would you prefer I remain dressed?” he asked.
She shrugged. “What’s that to me?”
“I don’t know, but your pulse is rising and there is much color in your cheeks and neck.” He pointed in a manner she found very rude.
Samantha thrust her legs into her sleeping bag and rolled to her opposite side.
“You really are the most disagreeable man.”
He propped himself up on one elbow. “Not a man. It’s why I sleep alone.”
She found his tone condescending and annoying as hell.
“You’ve seen my true form, Samantha. You would do well to remember just what it is you almost took to your bed.”
She thought of their dancing auras and feared that his words would not be enough to keep them apart. Whatever was between them, it was strong and growing stronger.
“All I want to do is get you to my mother.”
“And be rid of me,” she finished.
He said nothing to this.
She knew it was true and his refusal to say so only upset her further. How could she convince him to bring his family to fight with her father? How could she convince her father to allow the Naginoka to join him? Samantha knew what was needed. But she had no idea how to make it happen. With her mind spinning like a top, it took some time to relax enough to sleep.
He woke her at dusk.
“We’re going,” he said and left her there. She watched him return to the vehicle and replace his neatly rolled sleeping bag to the box in the truck bed.
She crawled out of the bag and sought a little privacy before returning to find Alon waiting in the driver’s seat. She climbed in and swung the door shut. He handed her a box of granola bars and a bottle of water.
From there Alon stopped only for gas and food. The following morning, he pulled off the interstate just before the Canadian border.
“Can you make it across?” he asked, indicating the woods.
“Don’t see why not.”
“I’ll meet you on the other side.”
Samantha transformed and loped off into the forest. Her trek took a family of hikers by surprise but was otherwise uneventful. When she reached a paved road, she stopped. Alon descended in his vaporous form then transformed to human for the time it took to tell her where to meet him.
She made her way to the rendezvous thinking of little but how Alon looked naked. When she arrived it was to find him dressed and sitting in a cream-colored four-door Jeep.
She closed her eyes as the energy ripped through her, bringing her to her human form. A moment later she stepped into the Jeep in the same clothing she wore that morning.
They made it through Calgary and headed west on 93 and entered Kootenay National Park.
Samantha grew hopeful that they’d arrive soon, but it was another hour before she spotted the camping sign. They bounced over the gravel road at dusk and into the primitive camping ground. The sites were all empty except for one mammoth RV. A string of lights hung from the awning, casting bright light all about the camper like the perimeter of a high-security prison. Samantha wondered where the three packs might be and kept close to Alon.
The door to the bus slid open and a tall, handsome man stepped down. His jeans and button-up shirt were ordinary enough, but that was the only thing expected. His copper skin and dark eyes complemented the close-cropped cap of brown hair. His physique showed him to be fit and physically capable, and he moved with the grace of a Skinwalker, though his aura showed he was not. The jagged white spikes were tipped with black and crowned by the familiar gold of all Spirit Children. The odd mix of the purity of white and the deathly black was new to her. But she had never seen a Soul Whisperer before. Cesar could speak to the dead, and his wife could follow them to the Spirit World. Samantha repressed a shudder.
On reaching the ground he lifted a hand to assist his female companion down the steps. Samantha noted that the couple’s auras blended naturally together, like colors of light merging in a rainbow. A fully formed soul mate bond, exactly like her parents, though Alon’s father’s aura was a more unsettling black and white.
“That’s my mother,” said Alon, extending a hand toward the woman.
Bess Suncatcher’s aura was a familiar fawn brown surrounded with the white of a spiritual being. She did not have Samantha’s height but was still unusually tall for a woman. Slim and reedy, Bess had long black hair that cascaded over the shoulder of a black tailored blouse cut to reveal her elegant neck and slender arms. The rest of her attire, also black, consisted of a sedate pair of formfitting pants tucked into stylish calf-high boots. So this was the Skinwalker who married a Soul Whisperer and adopted Nagi’s ghastly offspring.
“Mother. Father.” Alon extended his hand to Samantha. “This is—”
Before he could say her name, Bess repeated her given name, the one held secret to all but family and the closest of friends.
“Night Sky Woman.”
Her smile was warm and welcoming, but her eyes held an intense scrutiny that disquieted.
Bess took Samantha up in her arms and hugged her tight.
“You’ve grown into a beauty just like your mother.”
Bess released Samantha to greet her son with a kiss on each cheek. “Welcome home, Alon.”
Alon did not look at home. In fact his rigid posture and strained expression told of his mood.
“I’m sorry I could not save them, Mother.”
Bess’s dark eyes filled with tears that caught on her lower lashes. “If you could not then no one could.”
Alon dipped his chin, breaking their eye contact. “It is the wish of Samantha’s father that I bring her to you.”
An instant later smoke billowed from the place he had stood and his clothing collapsed to the earth.
“Wait,” called Bess, but her son was gone.
There was an unfamiliar sound like the fluttering of wings and many more billowing clouds escaped from the bus.
Bess rolled her eyes, glanced to her husband and then back to Samantha. “The Alphas. Alon is their leader. They will want to know his plans. You wouldn’t know them, would you?”