Ellora's Cavemen: Tales from the Temple II (27 page)

“Do you want to catch your sister’s killer, or don’t you?” the old woman demanded.

He stiffened, his gaze narrowing on hers. “What do you know about that?”

She thrust the Yorkie at him again. “Take Gav, and all your questions will be answered.”

Impatiently, Ramsey reached for the dog. “Ma’am, what is it you have to…?”

The instant his hands closed around the animal’s furry ribs, the Yorkie began to glow. Jack glanced down in surprise. He barely had time to yelp before a beam of raw force shot from the dog’s eyes and into his.

As the energy blasted into him, his body jolted as if he’d seized a live electric line.

Pain ripped through him. He couldn’t even force a scream past his straining vocal cords.

When the beam finally cut off, Jack toppled backward like a felled tree to hit the sidewalk flat on his back.

The dog was gone.

The old woman looked down at him as he stared blindly at the stars, arms and legs still jerking. “Now, isn’t that better?”

With a satisfied nod, she turned around and headed back toward her car. Distantly, Jack heard the purr of a big car’s engine as she drove away.

162

Taming Jack

On some level, Lark Anderson knew she was dreaming again. Jack wasn’t really with her. She was alone in the big bed she’d once shared with her lover, alone as she’d been for all the months since Jack had lost his sister.

But knowing better didn’t stop the dream. It never did. And she didn’t want it to.

Dreams were all she had of him now.

Jack looked up at her over the curve of her breast, his breath gusting warmly over one hard
pink nipple. “God,” he whispered, his voice silky and very male, “I just love your breasts.” He
gave the little peak a teasing lick, and Lark moaned.

He laughed at the helpless sound and traced his fingers over her sensitive ribs until she
wiggled. “Like that?” His white teeth flashed. “I certainly do. You taste so sweet and hot.”

Lark looked up at him, feeling a bubble of passionate love swelling within her until she
thought she’d burst with it.

He lay on his side next to her, his chest forming a powerful curve, muscle shifting in his
biceps as he teased her with those big hands. She loved looking at him, watching the subtle way
muscle rippled in his pecs and abdomen when he moved. He was just so damn male, so damn
arousing. So damn big. Six-foot-five, every inch of him built like a brick wall.

Yet despite the linebacker build, when he made love to her he was exquisitely gentle, as
though she were precious and breakable. Every touch and stroke seemed to proclaim silently how
much he loved her.

As Lark watched, breathless with hunger, Jack lowered his head and closed his hot mouth
over her nipple. His tongue flicked and swirled around the sensitive flesh until she arched under
him. Instinctively, she eased her legs apart. He took the gesture for the invitation it was and
slipped one hand between her thighs. Long, strong fingers found her opening, eased inside
through thick cream. He smiled into her eyes. “Oh, you are ready, aren’t you?”

“You’ve…AH!…got a real gift for understatement, you know that?” She rolled her hips and
closed her eyes, letting the pleasure spin through her in long, silken streamers.

He smiled lazily and rolled over on top of her. “Well, in that case…” She caught her breath
as he settled that big body between her thighs, blanketing her in warmth and strength. He felt so
good…

And even better when he slid his thick cock slowly into her creamy core. He groaned in
pleasure. “God, Lark, you make me so hot!”

She grinned up at him. “Same—AH!—here…”

163

Angela Knight

He’d begun thrusting, slow and gentle, the big shaft teasing its way in and out of her,
stroking her pleasure rapidly toward a quivering peak. Panting, Lark watched him as he moved
over her, riding her in that easy way he had. His handsome face was absorbed as he gazed down
at her. “I love you, Lark,” he whispered.

“I love you too, Jack.”

The heat rolled up her spine, and she tossed back her head, coming, convulsing around him.

“I love you!” She screamed it this time, the words borne on a wave of searing pleasure.

Her own cry jolted Lark awake. Instinctively, she looked around for Jack, missing the warm strength of his body.

The bed was cool and empty.

Then she remembered.

He wasn’t there. He’d turned his back on her, cut off all communication months ago, a bare three weeks after Heather’s murder.

Without explanation. Without a word.

Tears stung the back of Lark’s lids. Biting her lip against her moan of grief, she curled on her side in her cold bed and wrapped her arms around herself.

Since Jack had left, they were the only ones that ever held her.

* * * * *

Lark looked up at the deli’s neon sign. She hadn’t had any real interest in food since Jack had dumped her. Today her appetite was even worse than usual, an effect of the depression that had nagged at her since last night’s dream.

You’re pitiful, Anderson
, she told herself.
Pining away for that son of a bitch when he
doesn’t give a damn about you.

She ought to make herself eat something. Maybe some soup. She’d worked all day at the bookstore; by rights, she should have worked up an appetite.

What the hell, Lark decided. Might as well give the deli a try. After all, she and Jack had never eaten there, so it should be mercifully free of painful memories—the way he threw back his head when he boomed out that rich male laugh, the little crinkle around his dark eyes when he was about to make some truly awful pun.

The way his impressive cock rose high and hard when she modeled her latest extravagance from Victoria’s Secret…

Wimp
, she thought at herself, disgusted, shoving the deli’s door open and stalking to the counter.
It’s been six months. It’s time to cut him out of your heart the way he did you.

Assuming he even had a heart to begin with, the big jerk.

Then she sighed. Unfortunately, it was painfully obvious Jack did have a heart, or Heather’s murder wouldn’t have butchered it so thoroughly.

164

Taming Jack

Dammit, the least he could have done is let her comfort him. That’s what people in love did—turn to one another for solace in times of pain.

Which proves he never loved you to begin with
, Lark told herself. Deal with it.

As she studied the menu written on the menu board behind the counter, she felt something furry brush against her ankles. Lark looked down to meet a pair of brilliant green eyes.

“
Meow?
”

“Hi, there, kitty.” The cat looked like some kind of longhair mix with its pointed little face and abundance of silky black fur. It meowed up at her again and rose on its hind legs, stretching its soft paws up her thigh. “What’re you doing in here, other than violating a slew of health codes?”

“Some things are more important than rules,” a frail female voice said. “Like soothing people who are hurting. Cats are good at that.”

Lark looked up to meet the gaze of the old woman who’d just stepped up behind the cash register. She was wearing a pink waitress uniform, an old-fashioned pink frilled cap resting on her lavender curls.

The cat chose that moment to extend its claws delicately, gently pricking Lark’s leg as if to reclaim her attention. She smiled down at the animal and stooped to pick it up.

“I’ve always liked cats,” she said, as the little beast settled against her chest, purring and silken.

“And she seems to like you,” the waitress said.

Lark thought of Jack. “Glad somebody does.” Absently, she reached to scratch behind the cat’s pointed ears.

Then it lifted its black head and met her gaze. An energy beam stabbed from its eyes, driving into her skull like a red-hot ice pick. She opened her mouth to scream, but her body wouldn’t obey as pain ripped through her.

She didn’t even feel herself hit the floor.

Distantly, Lark was aware of the elderly waitress moving past her to hang the

“Closed” sign over the door. “There,” she said. “We wouldn’t want you and Xedda to be interrupted, would we?”

Lark didn’t care.

Something alien was in her head.

At first that was all she knew, all she cared about—the alien thing that didn’t belong, that filled her skull with its invasive presence. She began to fight, everything in her howling in frantic rebellion as she fought to force the invader away.
Get out!
her mind shrieked.
GET OUT! Getoutgetoutgetout!

“
I won’t hurt you
,” the voice said, soothing and female. “
I’m here to help. Help you and
Jack Ramsey both.
”

I don’t care! Get out!

165

Angela Knight

“
He’s in danger, Lark.”

Suddenly an image flashed through her mind, like the flickering impression from a nightmare. Jack, battling savagely against twisted caricatures of men who pounded back at him with hammer blows
.
Men she somehow knew were raw evil in human form.

He grabbed one of them. Red light flared around the two men as they struggled, Jack’s powerful arms bunched as he held on until the evil thing slumped in his arms.

But even as it died, Jack’s handsome face twisted, his eyes burning with something wild, something tortured and mad.

“
He’s killing them
,” the alien voice said, “
but they’re destroying him. We have to save
him before it’s too late.
”

The bottom seemed to drop out of Lark’s stomach. She knew this had to be some kind of trick, knew she shouldn’t listen to this…whatever it was.

And yet…

What if Jack really did need her? Everything inside Lark rebelled at the idea of allowing this
thing
to stay another second. But remembering Jack’s distorted face, the despair in his eyes, she knew she couldn’t turn her back on him. No matter what it cost her.

Who—what – are you? And what were those things fighting him?

“My name is Xedda, and I am a Spirit Rider. Those he battles are Dark Ones.”

Are they . . .human?
They looked like men. In a way. But there was a sense of evil there, as if they were something more. Something worse.

“Only in part. Listen, child, and I’ll tell you what they are. What we are. Where we come
from. And I’ll tell you how you can save him.”

Feeling as if she’d been trapped in a dream, Lark listened as Xedda told her the incredible story of her kind, a race of immortal energy beings.

They’d evolved on a gas giant hundreds of light years away, eventually splitting into three separate races. Among them were those like Xedda, who could feed on the ambient energy of the planet around them. Another race, the Dark Ones, preyed on Xedda’s kind, absorbing their life force to power their own.

A third species, now called Paladins, fed on the Dark Ones. They formed a kind of partnership with Xedda’s people, both protecting them and using them as bait to attract the Dark Ones.

But then the sun their world orbited became a red giant as it aged, swelling and flaming across the sky, making their world uninhabitable. All three races were in danger of extinction when a group of alien methane breathers came to their planet to observe its death throes.

In desperation, Xedda and her sisters managed to enter the minds of the some of the aliens, possessing them. The Dark Ones and the Paladins had quickly followed suit.

166

Taming Jack

Unfortunately, the hosts weren’t really compatible. So once they were all on their way from their dying world, the energy creatures sought new species to possess.

Physical bodies, after all, were able to use tools and equipment to protect themselves, skills the energy creatures now knew they badly needed.

Soon afterward—about two thousand years before the birth of Christ—the creatures and their hosts discovered Earth. The energy beings were delighted to find humans were more compatible than their current hosts, so they began possessing the new life forms at once.

The Dark Ones soon discovered they could prey on human life force just as they’d always preyed on Xedda’s people. But because they were incorporeal, they needed human hosts to do their killing.

The Paladins, for their part, used their hosts to hunt Dark Ones, just as they always had.

Spirit Riders like Xedda still assisted the Paladins. Yet now they did so by keeping the Paladins’ hosts sane and stable, since absorbing a Dark Rider’s energies tended to have a negative effect on the human mind.

Despite the risk, the beings’ hosts found there were advantages to harboring one of the spirit races. All the Riders formed symbiotic relationships with their hosts. imbuing their human vessels with fantastic abilities, such as super strength or the ability to heal.

Even so, finding those partners was no easy task.

Fortunately, the energy creatures learned to assume physical form for short periods—usually some small animal like a dog or a cat. Another Rider already in a human host would help them find someone suitable. In the case of Lark—and, according to Xedda, Jack—that had been the elderly lady in pink.

The question was, did Lark want to be one of those symbiotes?

“Now,”
Xedda asked, when she’d finished answering Lark’s tumble of questions,

“will you help me?”

And Lark, remembering the madness she’s seen growing in Jack’s eyes, knew there was only one possible answer.
Yes.

167

Angela Knight

“
Pull over here
,” the spirit said.