Hierarchy

The excitement that had been pumping through his veins since he’d made his discovery turned to uneasiness as Bill Duncan waited for the man at the enormous Louis XIV desk to acknowledge his presence. He’d never stepped inside the High Lord’s mansion before, never been invited to, and he discovered that being surrounded by such opulence unnerved him almost as much as the man sitting at the desk across the study from him.

He yielded to the urge to gawk since Caleb Westmoreland seemed unaware of him, scanning the floor-to-ceiling bookcases, filled with leather bound volumes, that lined most of the walls, he tipped his head back to stare at the paintings on the ceiling.

Like the walls and ceiling of the main corridor he’d been escorted down when he’d arrived and requested an ‘audience’, ornate moldings formed a pattern overhead that created ‘frames’ for each of the depictions—which seemed to be scenes from mythology if the fantastic creatures were anything to go by—battles.

Frowning, he probed his memory for any reference to the scenes and finally gave up on identifying them aside from the fact that, to his admittedly untrained eye, they at least appeared to be the work of a master.

They couldn’t be, of course, he told himself, not one of the old masters. The mansion wasn’t that old—not that he knew much about it’s history, but America wasn’t that old so it couldn’t be. Reproductions, he decided, although he couldn’t remember anything like the paintings from his art appreciation classes.

He supposed he should’ve made an attempt not to sleep through them.

When he finally returned his attention to Caleb Westmoreland, a jolt went through him. Caleb was studying him, his gaze hooded. He’d seemed completely absorbed in the paperwork on the desk before him only moments before. Now, he lounged almost negligently in the matching Louis XIV chair that looked almost more like a throne than a chair, his attitude as still and watchful as a cat studying a mouse and trying to decide whether to eat it or toy with it a while.

The uneasiness that had wafted through Bill before returned, intensified by the realization that there was every reason for the impression. After several long, heart-stopping moments, Caleb lifted one hand from the arm of his chair, curling his fingers in a summoning motion, a silent command to approach that made Bill’s knees feel suddenly weak and spawned the urge to flee instead.

Casting an uneasy glance at the closed door behind him, Bill ordered his feet to move and approached the desk, wondering a little wildly if he should bow or kneel. He discovered he couldn’t do either, which was fortunate since it finally occurred to him that Caleb not only did not demand that sort of abeyance, he forbade it—at any time. It was just the sort of thing that could attract unwelcome attention and Caleb Westmoreland was as ruthless in protecting his privacy as he was in business.

After studying him for several unnerving moments, Caleb gestured to the straight-backed chair before his desk. Almost as if mesmerized, Bill followed the gesture, stared
4

at the chair blankly for a moment and finally wilted into it, wondering abruptly if it was wise to have approached Westmoreland in his lair.

The sunlight spilling into the room through the French doors in the west wall intensified the impression of a great cat, picking up the pale streaks in Caleb’s tawny hair and making his golden eyes, cast in shadow, glow briefly with an unearthly sheen that sent cold fingers of dread creeping along Bill Duncan’s spine. Caleb’s hard mouth curled after a few moments in a cold smile. “Cat got your tongue?”

Bill thought for several moments that he would wet himself. He swallowed convulsively, opened and closed his mouth several times, and searched a little frantically for his facility of speech, wondering what idiocy had possessed him to think he might wrangle with Caleb Westmoreland for a reward for his discovery. He’d be lucky if he left the mansion in one piece—if he was wrong!

He realized a little sickly that he had almost no proof whatsoever of his tale, none that couldn’t be disputed.

“I saw her!” he burst out finally, unable to bear the suspense any longer.

If he hadn’t been staring at Westmoreland in pure terror, he wasn’t certain he would’ve noticed the sudden tension in seemingly every muscle. As it was, the sense of a great cat preparing to pounce washed over him in a chilling tidal wave.

Westmoreland seemed to force himself to relax. Reaching for the silver letter knife on his desk, he picked up the ornate blade and began to turn it idly in his hands, studying it as if he’d never seen it before. “Her?” he prompted after a few moments.

“She had the mark,” Bill said shakily, wondering if it was a good thing or a bad thing that he had Westmoreland’s full attention again.

His tawny brows rose toward his hairline, emphasizing the deep widow’s peak on his brow. “The mark?”

Bill nodded jerkily. “On her right wrist … just as the prophecy described.”

Caleb sat forward, placing the letter knife carefully on his desktop. “Am I to assume you left her waiting in your car?”

Bill felt his face heat to the point that it felt like it would go up in flames and then chill so abruptly he felt faint. “Uh … no,” he whispered in a choked voice.

Caleb forced himself to relax. Sitting back in his chair once more, he settled his elbows on the arms of his chair, laced his fingers together and propped his chin on the steeple he’d formed, studying the man seated before him and struggling with the urge to leap over the desk and choke the life out of him. The smell of the man’s fear incited his wrath as much as the intrusion and the suspicion that had begun to settle inside of him that the fool had thought to scam him. “Meaning you lost her?” he murmured in a rumbling growl of displeasure.

Bill found himself gabbling in his efforts to excuse and explain at the same time.

“I only caught a glimpse of her. It was on a crowded city street. I couldn’t …
grab
her!”

Anger surged through Caleb. He tamped it with an effort, narrowing his eyes at the man. “Then I’m at a loss to understand what you’re doing here.”

Bill gulped several times. The demands he’d rehearsed on his way over flitted through his mind but he decided not to push his luck. The comment prompted a memory to surface, however, and he dug shakily into his pants pocket and produced his cell phone. “I got a picture,” he said hopefully. “Uh … I think.”

Interest flickered in Caleb’s eyes. He extended his hand in demand and Bill shot
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up from his seat and dropped the phone in his palm. Caleb studied it a moment and finally removed the memory chip, plugging it into the port of his laptop on his desk. His long, thin fingers danced over the keypad, scrolled the mouse and then he settled back in his chair, staring at the image he’d pulled up on the screen.

His expression was unreadable and Bill felt his discomfort increase. Crane though he might, however, he couldn’t see the scene to ascertain whether he’d actually gotten the photo.

Caleb felt his pulse leap as the image popped up on his screen. The image was a three quarter view from the back, however. Apart from the fact that the woman had a very nice ass and a glorious mass of curling brown hair that hung down her back to her narrow waist, he could tell damned little about her. The shot had been snapped as she lifted her hand to tuck a wayward strand of hair behind one ear, turning her head just enough to give him a partial profile. She had a distinctive jut to her chin that seemed indicative of determination, a long, straight nose with just the hint of a roman hump on the bridge, and high cheekbones. Her mouth was narrow, her lips on the thin side, but there was a hint of a laugh line along her cheek that seemed to belie the sternness of her mouth and pugnacious chin.

An odd sense, almost of breathlessness, hit him as his gaze settled on her wrist at last. There was no mistaking the symbol, as blurred as the image was with the movement of her hand, and it was precisely where the prophesy had described it.

The realization sent his entire being into an unaccustomed flurry of chaos.

She was here … now … in his time and his city.

The realization was staggering, almost impossible to fully grasp.

There was no mistake. The prophesy was unfolding.

He
would sire the child that would unite the supernaturals.

She was to be his.

He lifted his head to stare at the man across from him. “Find her. If I discover that this is some sort of scam you hatched to line your pockets, you
may
live long enough to regret it.”

* * * *

Not for the first time, Bronwyn wondered what had possessed her to move to the city as she stared down from her third floor apartment window at the clogged streets below her, but then she knew why she’d come—hopefulness and nagging memories of Nanna. Shaking her head at her thoughts, she moved away from the window and headed over to the miniscule kitchen area of her apartment. She didn’t belong in the city, she thought irritably as she opened her small fridge and stared at the contents with little interest. She was hardly a country girl, and yet the small town where she’d spent the majority of her thirty years barely qualified as a town, much less a city.

Truthfully, she hadn’t even fit in there—she’d been
borne
a square peg in a round peg world—but there’d at least been the comforting familiarity of faces and places she’d known for years. She would never have thought she’d actually
miss
Greenville when her life there had hardly been pleasant, especially her childhood.

Guilt smote her at that disloyal thought. The
children
had made her childhood a misery, especially after her ‘best friend’ had blabbed about her ‘secret’ and everybody had started calling her a freak, but her grandmother had more than made up for that.

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It was the lack of anything to do, she told herself irritably, unwilling to revisit the incident that had created most the problems she’d had. She’d always been a loner. She wasn’t lonesome. She was just blue because she was bored.

She needed a job, but it was beginning to look doubtful that she would find one.

She’d spent too many years ‘self employed’, helping Nanna run the boarding house and then running it herself after her grandmother died, and apparently that was a definite turn off to would-be employers. Not that she was desperate in the sense that she would starve if she didn’t land a job soon. The sale of the boarding house she’d inherited from her grandmother, added to the already comfortable liquid assets of her grandmother’s estate and the money she’d put away herself over the years had left her well enough off to afford some down time without feeling a huge pinch. She was hardly rich, or even well to do. She certainly couldn’t afford to simply ‘retire’, but she was alright money-wise and would be for a good spell.

It was the time she had on her hands that bothered her. She was too used to working from the time she got up in the morning until she went to bed at night. There were just so many hours a day that she could devote to pounding the pavement in search of a job. Eventually, she had to return to the cramped little apartment she’d leased and stare at the four walls … wondering what the hell had possessed her to leave Greenville and head out on what was almost certainly a wild goose chase.

Of course, Nanna had rarely been wrong. She wouldn’t have had such a reputation as a psychic if her predictions didn’t generally come true, but Bronwyn couldn’t help but wonder if the future Nanna had seen for her was more in the nature of hope than fact. Maybe her grandmother had just thought she needed inspiration? That, if she was convinced a move to the city would bring her face to face with her destiny, she would make it happen?

On the other hand, the stranger
had
arrived and offered to buy the boarding house out of the blue just as her grandmother had said would happen.
Years
too late, in Bronwyn’s opinion to make it likely she was going to find the man she was destined to be with and have that mythological family her grandmother had said she would, but that part had certainly come true.

Deciding finally that nothing in her fridge appealed to her, she closed the door and ransacked her cabinets. Nothing in them appealed to her either, and she finally returned to the living room area and flopped on the ragged old couch that had come with the ‘furnished’ apartment.

She was hungry and there wasn’t a damned thing in the apartment that appealed to her.

Because she was sick of eating alone in the damned apartment, she thought irritably!

Getting off the couch, she paced to the window again to stare out. It wasn’t dark yet, but the sun had already dropped behind the skyscrapers. It would be dark soon. The traffic only seemed to have picked up, however. It wasn’t really safe to go out, alone, at night in the city, but she was a grown woman! Surely it would be safe enough if she used common sense and steered clear of the worst areas of the city?

Her decision made, she left the window, marched purposefully to her small bedroom, and knelt down to scratch through the box that still held most of her clothing.

She was going out to eat, she decided, and when she’d eaten, she was going to check out
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the nightlife. She was thirty years old! If she was ever going to sow her damned oats, she was running out of time!

Besides, she wasn’t likely to meet the man Nanna had said was her destiny holed up in her cramped little apartment!