Incubus Moon (15 page)

He began pacing back and forth in front of me. “This is bullshit, Austin.”

I could have reminded him that
he
was the one who told me I had to go. “I’ll leave these with you,” I said instead, retrieving the house keys from the kitchen counter and dropping them into his hand. “I’ll use the same moving company to pack up and store everything.”

Mark stared down at the keys in his palm for a long moment and then shook his head. “After fifteen years of friendship, this is how you want to end things?”

My heart sank to watch him storm out. All I could do was gape at the open front door and wonder if I really was doing the right thing. Nerve sparks exploded in and around my injured knees, a not-so-subtle reminder that the weird and dangerous had returned to my life.

This was exactly the right thing to do. The
only
thing to ensure Christie and Mark’s safety. The sooner I got away from them the better for everyone.

There was just one last task ahead of me before I said goodbye to my friends and Los Angeles for good: A visit to Dimitri Ravello.

Two hours later, I was standing in the living room of my guest cottage staring at the suitcase and duffle bag next to the front door. I couldn’t believe I was actually doing this.

The king-size knots in my stomach tightened when I secured the locks to the tall, folding doors leading out onto the veranda for the last time. Beyond their glass panes, the first real stirrings of fall danced in the rustling tree branches, in their dryer and less verdant foliage. The pool still sparkled brightly in the late-morning sun, with silvery glints skittering across the water’s deep turquoise surface.

It was my cell phone ringing, followed by the blare from a car horn, that took me to the kitchen window in time to spy Christie’s SUV backing down the long driveway.

I tapped the ‘accept call’ field. “Mark told me everything.”

“Christie, I—”

“No! You listen to me Joshua Austin Iverson. I don’t care what was said in anger last night.” He must have been in the car with her, because I could hear Mark muttering something in the background. “You are not moving out, and that’s final. Whatever happened between you two, fix it. Got it?”

The vehemence in her voice took me by surprise. “Yeah, I got it,” I lied.

She let out a ragged sigh. “Good. Now, we’re headed up to Ojai. Vic’s had a motorcycle accident and is in the hospital there.” Vic was a childhood friend of Christie’s. “When we get back tomorrow, we’re all going to sit down and talk this out.”

An image of Christie and the French chef flashed in my mind. “I’ll be here,” I told her, hoping that she’d mistaken the crack in my voice as remorseful compliance.

“You’d better be.”

She hung up just as her SUV disappeared from sight, leaving me with an even sicker feeling in the pit of my stomach. How could I leave the two people I loved most in this world?

It’s because you love them that you have to go…

CHAPTER 18

I gave the angry, horned dragon knocker another couple of strong raps and waited.

Still no answer.

Even in broad daylight Dimitri’s house gave off a somber vibe, much of its gray and brown stone façade shaded from the sun by the giant oak tree behind me. Only the very top of the turret came to life against the deep blue autumn sky. And while the main gates had been left open, almost as if he were expecting me, a glance at the upper-floors revealed garnet drapes drawn across thick lead-glass panes. In fact, drapes covered every window I could see.

Shit. What if he and Andrea’s are still…?

I dismissed the notion with a mental shrug. Girlfriend or wife, a surgically-enhanced brunette with insecurity issues was the least of my concerns. My goal for coming here today was to find out exactly who (or what) Dimitri Ravello was. Either he would enlighten me to that fact or toss the insane neighbor claiming to be a sex demon out on his embarrassed ass.

Another distinct possibility? He was a
Shadow Walker
and I was walking into a trap.

About to give the dragon’s head one last rap, a sound from the edge of the property took me to the eastern-most boundary separating our two houses. Another security gate stood open.

“Hello?”

When no response came, I crept along a path of stone pavers until I emerged into a spectacular Mediterranean-style garden that unfurled all the way to the tree-lined rear of the property. Well-manicured lawns and hedges curved around pathways dotted by squat stone walls and carved marble benches, with an enormous fountain serving as its centerpiece. I could have easily been in Southern Europe instead of Southern California.

Deeper into the yard, I passed a covered terrace laden with pink bougainvillea at the rear of the house. The path I was on ended at the fountain, its four mythological sirens making up the innermost portion of a wide column, with a muscular Poseidon seated above them on a throne of coral and starfish. He gripped the rod of his legendary trident in one fist, the staff overtly suggestive in its arrangement between his legs. Hogwarts this was definitely not.

I heard that noise again. A muffled, slicing/scraping sound that came from beneath a cluster of trees near the same wall bordering our properties.

“
Madre de Dios
!” yelped a short, stocky man, when I stepped through the canopy of low-hanging branches. He’d been tilling the soil near a clump of fragrant gardenia bushes.

“Sorry. I thought you were Dimitri.”

The gardener straightened at the mention of his employer’s name, his eyes widening as though something monstrous were sneaking up behind me.

“Austin?”

I turned and peered through the lacy leaf cover to find Dimitri Ravello standing at the center of the covered patio, arms folded across his broad chest.

He didn’t appear overly happy to see me.

“Sorry to intrude…again,” I said with forced cheer and stepped back out into the bright sunlight. “But I think we should talk about what happened last night.”

The gardener snatched up an old coffee thermos and faded red plastic cup from the ground and took off toward the rear of the property. The look of fear in his eyes after he caught sight of Dimitri should have been warning enough that I might be in over my head.

“Come,” Dimitri surprised me by saying and gestured to the open door behind him.

I crossed the expanse of green lawn separating us, stepped up onto the slate-tiled terrace, and followed my enigmatic neighbor into a house of which I knew practically nothing about the layout. My mysterious neighbor who just so happened to possess superhuman strength.

The scenario screamed spider/fly.

It turned out the spider’s parlor was an impressive study that would have made any Edwardian English gentleman proud. A soaring, coved ceiling showcased large, ebonized beams, and an entire wall of glass-fronted bookcases sat opposite floor-to-ceiling windows, which were also draped in the same heavy garnet velvet I’d viewed from the outside. An ornate fireplace anchored one end of the study, but the room’s real showpiece was a massive, antique wrought-iron chandelier that illuminated what would have otherwise been a gloomy space.

Absorbed by the room’s contents, I startled to find Dimitri standing next to me and holding up a bottle of red wine with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“The vintage is excellent. Can I tempt you with a glass?”

His nightmare doppelganger flashed in my mind, lips and chin dripping with Francesca’s blood. Instinct dictated that I get the hell out of there pronto, but I’d purposely landed at the center of his web. I had to find out as much as I could about this mysterious man before I left Los Angeles for good and, hopefully, learn more about myself in the process.

I just prayed the spider wasn’t in a snacking mood.

“Tempt away,” I said with equally forced amiability.

He crossed the expansive room to an ornate coffee table situated between a pair of burgundy leather, wing-back chairs. Two crystal wine glasses sat in waiting, which he now filled, and then motioned for me to take the opposite chair.

I hesitated, glancing back at the open doorway through which we’d entered, the clanging of alarm bells in my head joining the cold shudder running up my spine.

“Expecting someone?”

“No,” I replied too quickly. “Well, maybe Andrea.”

He smirked. “I can assure you, we are quite alone.”

I approached the armchair with tentative steps, Dimitri studying my progression with keen interest. The wince of pain from my wounded knees as I sat down didn’t go unnoticed.

“You are injured.”

I waited for the sharpest stings to subside before responding. “That’s one of the reasons I stopped by.”

He raised open palms. “And the others?”

The cool, tufted leather creaked beneath me as I settled in to regard my circumspect host. His white, button-down shirt, tapered gray trousers, and black Italian loafers without socks were Euro-stylish all the way. Although it was the curious onyx ring on his left, middle finger that caught my eye. I hadn’t noticed last night.

He held the piece of jewelry up for inspection. “A family heirloom.”

Of course he’d seen me eyeing the ring. Were he an ordinary man, I’d have thought his action perfectly natural. But Dimitri Ravello was not an ordinary man. He’d plucked the thought from my mind. I’d felt him do it, like the delicate caress of silk against the inside of my skull.

This was followed by a warm ripple of energy descending around me, similar to what happened between us poolside last night. It appeared to hinder his ability to invade my thoughts.

Guess I could add mind-reader to the growing list of
talents
that made this man so unlike most, and far more dangerous.

Also, I had no intention of drinking the wine he’d poured. There was even less reason to trust him now, especially since he was growing more attractive by the minute, the sound of his voice more hypnotic. His skin held a tantalizing olive sheen that hadn’t been there moments before, his body fuller through the chest, shoulders, and thighs. Even the fabric crotch of his trousers appeared rounder and more inviting. The man was trying to bespell me.

“You should know that hypnosis doesn’t work on me.” A modest lie. “I’m not into men, either.” Which was mostly the truth.

My declaration elicited a cocked brow from him. “Good to know that we share at least two things in common.”

Time to be blunt: “Who are you, really?”

He leveled an amused gaze at me, his eyes igniting from within like dancing green flames. “A better question might be
what
am I?” Another cold frisson traveled up my spine. I’d come here today for answers and, by all accounts, it looked as though I was about to get them. “The question I find more intriguing is
what
are
you
, Austin Iverson?”

My gut tightened and adrenaline raced into my limbs. Every fiber of my being wanted me to bolt. And yet, I made no effort to leave.

“All I can tell you is that I feel an inexplicable connection to the blonde woman in your drawing room. The one in the portrait.”
I recalled her sapphire-gray eyes from my recent
vision
that had held Dimitri with such love, her voice gentle as she spoke to him, until he viciously attacked her. “I even dreamed about the two of you last night.”

His unruffled expression faltered. In that same instant I experienced another wave of metaphysical mind-intrusion. “How extraordinary.”

The incubus in me couldn’t help thrusting a sexually charged image of our dream intimacy back at him, a move which visibly sped up his breathing. “I thought so.”

I sensed his own psychic protection rise up around him, though not quick enough to keep me from glimpsing a series of images. In them, I saw Francesca again, visited the deep forest where they’d kissed in a clearing under silver moonlight for the first time, saw her out on the broad palace balcony from the portrait, her blonde hair and scarlet skirts billowing out behind her in the wind, the angry red and orange sky above both beautiful and menacing.

Dimitri had been painting her and was trying to coax her inside and away from the gathering storm winds.