Animal Instincts (Kindred Souls Book 1) Read online

  You’ll dream about this tonight as if it had happened, and when you awake, you will remember the dream. Nothing else. No casino. No predators. No me.

  As if his command broke their connection, she straightened and pushed away from him. He could see her face, ghostly in the streetlight. Her expression held a myriad of emotion. Longing, yes. But something akin to disappointment as well.

  Saying nothing, she backed away and took the dog with her. She practically ran up the steps to the entrance and, once inside the foyer, opened the door to the second floor.

  He waited.

  Sensing her greeting her animals.

  Undressing.

  Then she crawled into bed and within seconds was asleep.

  He’d done what he had to.

  So why didn’t he feel satisfaction at his success?

  Chapter Fifteen

  Bleating and squawking and roaring filled the air and an ominous dark sky threatened to swallow the earth whole. I must be on some kind of rescue mission—animals of every size and shape and sort milled around one another. Pairs of elephants and camels and horses and goats. Two of every mammal and bird and reptile as far as the eye could see fought the savage winds that ripped through the air, threatening to pick us up and carry us away.

  Heart pounding so hard it threatened to leave my chest, I looked around for other rescuers. No one familiar. I turned toward a yawning entry into the belly of the largest boat I’d ever seen.

  Thunder nearly deafened me and lightning crashed to the earth. More rumbling from the heavens and then ragged lightning strikes surrounded us, their eerie blue glow unnatural as the skies opened and water began flooding the land. Within seconds, I was soaked to the skin. The animals panicked and cried out as if they understood what it would mean to be left behind.

  I ran with them, touching them, trying to broadcast calm, but it was no use. I could do nothing for them. Fear was a fever and all were infected, including me. I kept going and soon found myself on board in the midst of a panicked four-legged herd.

  The white-bearded man in charge ordered a handful of men to remove the plank they’d used to climb onto the ark. They didn’t seem to notice me. People still on land pressed in closer and screamed for entry even as the waters covered their ankles and kept rising.

  “Let us on board!” one man demanded.

  Another yelled, “Curse you, Noah, for leaving us to die.”

  “Take my child,” a woman pleaded, holding a newborn over her head. The water was at her knees now. “Please, my baby is innocent. Don’t let her drown.”

  My stomach turned over and knotted as the downpour continued.

  “The Lord has spoken!” Noah shouted down at them. “He punishes you for your wicked ways.”

  “Then we punish you!” a man yelled, pitching a lit torch onto the deck.

  A second torch followed.

  And a third.

  Despite the rain, several fires kept Noah and his people occupied. Hearing a scrabbling sound, I turned to see what was happening behind me. Having somehow scaled the other side of the boat, dozens of men scrambled into the midst of the terrified animals.

  One of the men locked gazes with me, his eyes an unnatural molten copper. I’d never seen evil undisguised before. My heart almost stopped.

  Looking around until his gaze lit on a panther, the man focused and his expression darkened. His body began to shift into something formless and unspeakably malevolent. I watched in horror as the shadow floated over the panther, then split into multiple tentacles to reach deep inside the unsuspecting animal. The panther threw back its head and bucked and twisted and screamed in terror.

  Tears sprang to my eyes and I tried forcing my way through the herd, but it was no use. I couldn’t rescue any of them. Predators all around me were being taken over by these evil beings in the same awful way.

  A wolf howled and bit its own flesh as if trying to extricate the invisible invader.

  A hawk screeched and flew straight into the wheelhouse, where it collapsed and fluttered helplessly along the deck.

  A king cobra snaked over my foot and tied itself into knots before spewing its own venom on itself.

  The voices of the animals rose in an ear-piercing shriek that made me cry out, too. Their agony shuddered through me and all I could do was watch as those who’d boarded the ark pillaged innocent animals to contain their darkness.

  When I looked back, the panther emanated a new energy. Pure aggression. As if sensing my interest, it turned toward me, head tilted as it considered me with molten copper eyes.

  Heart thundering, Skye jerked out of the weird nightmare. The room was still dark but, sensing she was awake, the cats stirred. Phantom jumped off the bed, undoubtedly in hopes of being fed. She couldn’t move. She’d never had such a complex dream. Or one so dark. She didn’t get how her mind could have imagined such evil.

  She lay there, terrified, remembering what she’d read in The Book of Powers. He decided to send a Great Flood to wipe mankind and animals, all of whom he created, from the face of the Earth.

  That had to be it, the reason she invented such an impossible dream.

  The Book of Powers, with its promise to continue the fight against evil spirits, added to the casino with its predators. Added to Luc.

  He’d kissed her and she hadn’t been able to resist. What if he was one of them—one of the predators from her dream? No, that was impossible, something she’d made up. Still, he was something else. She’d heard him. Felt him. Lusted after him for that brief moment.

  He kept accusing her of being something else, but she was the same person she had always been with an ability lots of other people had. That didn’t make her something other than human.

  Luc was another matter. She couldn’t forget how he’d been able to control the predators.

  Ironically, the casino boat was named The Ark. And she’d dreamed about another ark, one in which predators were somehow joined with humans.

  She would laugh, only she wanted to cry.

  What she’d dreamed was too frightening to be true.

  The Book of Powers might hold the answers for her, only she hadn’t wanted to read any more of it. Didn’t want to know more.

  Part of her wished Luc’s command to forget had taken. Then she would be free of it.

  Or not.

  She couldn’t forget about Shade.

  The book called out to her, made her stomach churn. Though she refused to answer its call, certainty filled her—the book wasn’t done with her yet.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Luc reluctantly returned to work, his thoughts torn between Skye and Jez’s death.

  He had other things to worry about, too, like Andreas screwing up earlier, so that someone who hadn’t been invited to the cloaked deck had waltzed right in. Uninvited and armed. They didn’t need that kind of trouble here, and he needed his father to know about the incident. Heading for the executive offices to tell Pop, he came face-to-face with Nik. Luc could tell Nik was in a dark mood from his expression. He’d never been able to hide his resentment of his younger half-brother.

  “You made a fucking big mistake letting that guy leave,” Nik said. “You’ll be lucky if Pop lets you back on The Ark. If it were up to me—”

  “But it isn’t up to you.” Luc’s temper sizzled but he leashed it. “I don’t answer to you.”

  “You should, you little fraud. You’re nothing. A pretender. You can’t decide what you want to be when you grow up. Get off the fence and make up your mind.”

  Another reminder he hadn’t chosen between human and Kindred. Simply because he could shift into a black panther didn’t obliterate his human ethics and morals, but it was getting more and more difficult to walk the line in between the two worlds.

  “Don’t you ever get tired of this tension between us?” Luc asked, wishing they could go back to a time decades ago when they’d been friends. A time when Nik had been his hero. “Maybe it’s because you never experienced the
kind of fight that makes you long for a peaceful life.”

  “Right, your army stint in Iraq makes you more of a man than me.”

  Luc clenched his jaw. “I never said that.”

  “Did you get off on the blood and guts spilled around you, the shredded body parts?” Nik darted his tongue over his lower lip.

  Now Luc’s stomach clenched and his pulse began to tick-tick-tick and he felt the thrum along his flesh again, a signal he chose to ignore. He wouldn’t shift out of anger.

  “How many men did you kill? How many humans like your mother?”

  If only he knew...

  “Go back to hell where you belong!” Luc swung an open hand toward Nik.

  They didn’t touch, but Nik went flying backward, exactly as he had when on Luc’s tenth birthday, he’d called Luc a bastard half-breed, and with a furious wave of his meaty hand, their father had sent thirteen-year-old Nik flying. Nik had slammed into a wall where he’d dislocated his shoulder. Pop then had forbidden Nik to ever—ever!—use that word again in connection with Luc.

  And now Luc realized if he didn’t get away from Nik, Luc would lose control, the same way he had in Iraq.

  But Nik left first, laughing as if he’d accomplished what he’d meant to.

  Nik’s ridicule crept up Luc’s spine and threatened to consume him. He closed himself off from the sound and kept going, straight to Pop’s office, arriving even as two members of his security team met him with Andreas in tow.

  As they entered, Cezar asked, “What’s going on here?”

  Luc cleared his throat. “Andreas left his post the other night and it caused a serious problem.”

  “And you’re just bringing this to me now?”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  His father’s gravelly voice set Luc on edge. He wasn’t about to explain further. He didn’t want Pop to know about Skye Cross, not after what Pop had done to her brother.

  “I made a mistake, Mr. Lazare.” Andreas wheedled his pseudo-apology. “I was chatting up a bored-looking customer is all. I figured she would up her wagering.”

  A lie, Luc thought, noting the sheen of nervous sweat on the guard’s face. “He let someone get by him with a gun. I don’t think the guy had an invite, either.”

  Pop’s visage darkened, and he pierced the security guard with a glare that made him shake.

  “It won’t happen again, Mr. Lazare.”

  “No, it won’t.” Pop’s voice lowered to little more than a whisper.

  “What are you g-going to do?”

  “You know the punishment.”

  Andreas backed up. “Not my soul. I earned it. You wouldn’t take it back.”

  Luc’s gut clenched. He knew what was coming.

  Pop advanced on Andreas, held out an open hand and, without touching him, pinned the guard where he stood. Andreas fought the invisible shackles but couldn’t pull free.

  “No, please.” He begged as the hand closed in on his chest. “I’ll do anything to make up for it. Anything.”

  Pop ignored the plea. He pressed his open hand through Andreas’s sternum.

  The man’s scream skittered down Luc’s spine. Andreas had given up his own soul at puberty to become immortal as had most of the Kindred. Only living forever wasn’t much fun without one, something the borrowed souls provided.

  When his hand was buried inside the man’s flesh, Pop lifted his arm. The guard’s body rose as well, limbs dangling and dancing as if Andreas were a marionette. His body glowed like the dazzling green light created by bioluminescent fireworms found in tropical seas. Andreas leaked green mucus from the wound all over the office floor.

  “Return to me the gift I have given you,” Pop ordered.

  Sparks shot from the guard’s body and his scream rose to a pitch that hurt Luc’s ears. Even as he hated what his father was doing to the guard, the Kindred part of him responded to the violence with a rush. Luc couldn’t look away.

  The glow spread, moved along Pop’s arm, crawled over the security guard’s shoulder and down his body until it encased him, leaving Andreas with a flat, sickly green pallor. Finally, Pop released him. Andreas fell in his own mucus and flopped around the floor like a dying fish. The guards scooped him up by the arms and dragged him away.

  Glowing green, Pop approached his sea glass desk and placed his hand flat on the surface. The glow gathered together and zapped down his arm and into the glass surface as if Pop were pouring the soul into a container.

  Luc’s heart pounded as he watched in fascination. The glow zigged and zagged inside the glass and then finally settled down in one spot. A multitude of tiny green lights blinked as if recognizing the new occupant.

  Who knew how many souls the desk vault contained?

  Pop sat behind the desk and stared at Luc hard for a moment. Taking a big breath, he scraped a hand through his hair, still black but for the streaks of silver at the temples. As if Luc had just walked into the room, he said, “I haven’t seen you since your excursion to the cemetery. Did it help?”

  So Pop knew about the cemetery, though whether from an informant or from his own version of a crystal ball, Luc wasn’t sure. “The man’s dead, Pop. Nothing’ll bring him back. He left people behind who loved him.”

  That Shade Cross had somehow come back wasn’t something he wanted to discuss with his father. At least not yet.

  “He got mixed up in our business. But, in the end, he was a hero, wasn’t he? That should make his people proud.”

  “Pride doesn’t make up for his absence.”

  Pop frowned and grew quiet. Luc tried to read the old man, but he’d never been able to, and he couldn’t now. He wanted to shout at him that he owed the Crosses, they both did, that he would never rest until the debt was paid. If there was guilt to be dished out, Pop deserved the biggest serving, and he knew it.

  It was his business that had set the tragedy in motion. His personal choices.

  Luc had always been torn between the opposite worlds of his parents—his mother’s with its neat rules to guard humanity, his father’s with his disregard for anything that didn’t suit his immortal purposes. He loved both sides of his family, and he’d been drawn to the Kindred world despite himself, but this was one of those times he yearned for a kind of justice his father didn’t seem to understand. He wanted Pop to make things right for once in his life. Shade Cross had died saving Luc’s mother, the woman Pop claimed was the love of his life.

  It was obvious the Crosses weren’t on his father’s mind when he said, “I promise you, whoever tried to kill your mother will pay with his life.”

  In the meantime, it would be up to Luc to make sure that nothing happened to Skye.

  Chapter Seventeen

  When Skye entered Petopia halfway through the next morning, her best friend and business partner demanded, “What in the world are you doing here?”

  Phoebe looked particularly cheery today, her frilly magenta top matching her newly streaked hair. Bangles from her wrists halfway to her elbows clanged. By comparison, she was decked out in straight-legged jeans, and the only ornament she wore—the sparkling sea glass pendant—was tucked out of sight beneath a navy T-shirt.

  Leaving the counter, Phoebe threw her arms around her. “You shouldn’t be trying to work yet.”

  Skye hugged her back and said, “I need to keep myself busy.”

  Otherwise, all she would do was think. About Luc. About Shade still being here. About Luc. About The Ark—both the casino boat and the ark in her dream. About Luc. About The Book of Powers. About Luc.

  Luc... Luc... Luc...

  Enough already.

  Not knowing the truth about someone she was so attracted to was more frightening than facing those predators outside the fight arena had been. For them to have obeyed his command made him more dangerous than any wild animal.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Phoebe asked.

  “Jeez, sorry. I phased out for a minute.”

  “No worries. I understand. Are
you sure you want to be here?”

  “I needed to get out and do something that would make me feel better,” she told Phoebe. “The adopts could use a little snuggling.”

  “Yeah, they already know you’re here.”

  Skye glanced to the back of the store where animals yawned and stretched and paced in their cages. Not knowing how much time she had with him, she’d hated to leave Shade, but coming to the store, at least for a little while, had been the right decision. Being with animals that needed to feel loved always lifted her spirits.

  Meows and whines greeted her as she entered the back room. As a member of the board of directors of the Animal Rescue League, she’d volunteered their store as an off-site adoption center. She stopped to give each cat or dog some TLC. The pet supply store fed her bank account, but it was the animals she helped that fed her soul.

  Even so, her thoughts wandered back to Shade and how impossible it seemed that he could still be here. He must feel powerless stuck in his apartment with only Boomer for company. She’d looked for him to tell him she was coming here, but he hadn’t shown himself. Had he been angry with her? Or had he simply gone somewhere else? What if he didn’t come back? He was here for a reason.

  If only she could figure it all out.

  If only she knew what he’d wanted with Luc’s mother the night he’d died.

  Asking her would be a start.

  Getting on the computer in her office, she did a search for Elizabeth Reyes’s phone number and found a few possibilities in the Chicago area. All but one of the numbers she called answered, but none of the people she reached had been shot. She wrote down that last number and address and stuck the note in her pocket.

  “Hi, guys, sorry,” she told the animals, all of which were complaining at her lack of attention. “You want some chow, don’t you?”

  She opened cans and filled their bowls and passed them out.

  They generally housed about half a dozen homeless cats and two or three dogs. Right now, they also had a rabbit, an Easter reject. As happened every year, some parent caved in to a kid’s begging and bought a bunny. The day before Shade had died, one of the cops had brought Cotton Tail to the cop shop to give away, and her brother had taken the poor thing and brought it to her.