Phillip: Lanning's Leap - Paranormal Erotic Romance (2 page)

Charlie knew that the two of them were safe. For now. But in a few days, less more than likely, they’d have to move again. Nic had assured her that they were being cared for and that no one would bother them. She didn’t have any idea why she trusted him, but he’d helped her with a few things and she had it in her head and heart that he was one of the good guys. And he’d promised her that he’d watch over her mom when things were settled in a couple of days too. Charlie had had enough of the pain in her head and wanted it to end now.

Charlie knew that she only had weeks to live, more than likely less than that if the way she was feeling was any indication. It had been coming on for a while now and she knew, as did her mom, that it wasn’t going to be long. Mom just had no idea how soon it was going to be.

The tumor in her head had gone too long without anyone knowing it was there for much to be done about it. And now it was too late. It had taken over the part of her brain that would eventually shut down all her body, and she’d die. Nic had promised her, after the second time he’d come to see her, that he’d make sure that she did not suffer when the time came. Nor would her mom have to see her in that condition. It was the only reason she was willing to meet with these people today. They were going to take her mom to someplace safe.

“Mrs. Grant? We’re here to help your son.” The voice was very cultured, and Charlie waited for her mom to correct the speaker. When she didn’t, Charlie started to speak when the man did again. “We’re here to see Charleston Grant. We’ve been told that he’s in some serious trouble that we can help him with.”

“It’s a her, Misha.” The other voice, the other brother she assumed, sounded pissed. She wasn’t sure why, but Charlie thought that she didn’t care for the man. “It’s Charlie Grant, and she’s the younger woman, aren’t you?”

“I am.” She’d answered him before she could think that she shouldn’t. “And you would be Mr. Lanning? The one that is going to take care of my mom?”

“I’m here to see you, yes, and if this is your mom, then she’s welcome to come with us too.” Charlie stood up and felt the shadow of the man tower over her. She was tall, almost six foot, but he felt bigger than her. “I’m Phillip. This is my brother Misha and my other brother Thomas. And I’m to understand that you know Nic.”

Nic touched her shoulder, and she heard a soft growl. Charlie felt the hair on her arm dance at the sound and wondered what the hell that was. Before she could ask, Nic was laughing and letting her go.

“Charlie? What do you mean, he’s to take care of me? I do not need taking care of, young lady. I’m very capable of taking care of myself.” Charlie felt her eyes, useless now that the tumor was pressing against her optic nerves, fill with tears. She was going to miss her mom so much when she died. “Charlie?”

“They’re going to keep you safe from Mr. Murphy and his goons. They can do it better than I can now.” Her mother touched her, warm and comforting. “Mom, you know that they’re coming. And when they do—”

“He’s dead. Daniel Murphy is long gone, but you’re right that more than just him are after you both.” Charlie hadn’t heard that the bastard had died, but was too busy trying to think how to convince her mom she’d be safer with these men to think about it. When the man spoke again, she knew that he was closer to her, and she felt her body wanting to sway to touch him. “I’m going to…we’re going to take you back to our house and keep you safe.”

“I’m not going anywhere but back to the apartment and hide out.” She had more plans, but her mom didn’t have to know that. “So if you’ll take her now, she’ll be fine and safe for me. Nic and I have an—”

“I can no longer keep you safe.” She turned to the sound of Nic’s voice. “You will need to go with these men now. Both of you. He will…Phillip will need to care for you both now.”

The other man—Misha, Charlie thought the man’s name was—laughed. It wasn’t like he was making fun of her or the situation, but that he’d found something incredibly funny. And for some reason she was pissed about that too.

“I will not be going anywhere without you, young lady. I have spoken to you this….”

The sound, very distant yet sharp, had Charlie turning her head toward it. She knew the sound…a gunfire report, and something that had been hit. “Mom, where are you?”

“Here.” Taking her mom’s hand after fumbling for a precious second, she backed away from the men. “Where is he, Charlie? Can you hear him?”

Close was all she knew. The sound—a gun being readied to fire again—made her skin crawl up around her ears. Backing up, she hit something solid behind her and cried out. The arms at her elbows had her pausing. The whispered voice at her ear made her shiver.

“Where did you hear it from?” She told Phillip to the north. “All right. I’m going to wrap my arms around your waist and we’re going to move. As one. Your mom is with Misha, and Nic and Thomas have gone to see to whatever it is you heard.”

“I can’t go with you. Nic said he’d help me.” The arm at her waist was firm, and she put her hand over it. “Don’t let anything happen to her. She is all I have in the world.”

“Not anymore.” She had no more idea what that meant than she did a great many things lately. But before she could ask him what he meant, she felt movement, fast and very dizzying. Holding tighter to the man that held her, she closed her eyes. It didn’t make much difference, but she did feel better for it. When the movement stopped, she held onto the man just a little longer simply because it felt good. He moved his mouth near her ear, and she could have sworn he nibbled on her. Then the heat of his body was gone from hers.

The smells were different. She knew that the dump that they were hiding in, her mom and her, was in horrible shape. The smells alone made her think of old abandoned buildings, and even if her mom had not described it to her, she would have known it wasn’t in the best of neighborhoods. But this place did not smell anything like that.

Pine, like a Christmas tree, was strong in the air. She could smell vanilla and sugar too, and wood burning in a fireplace. Charlie reached out her fingers to move and touched the man again, and had no idea why she knew it was him. When he curled his fingers into hers, it felt as right as anything she’d ever done before. She pulled her hand from his, and he didn’t fight.

“Where is my mom?” He laughed a little, and Charlie felt embarrassed. She’d been sharp and harsh and that wasn’t like her. “Can you please tell me where my mom is? And for that matter, where I am?”

“You’re in my brother’s home…Misha’s house. Your mom is here, too, but in a different part of the house. I think she’s with my sister-in-law, Hannah. That would be Misha’s wife.” Reaching out again, she took his elbow when he offered it to her. “We’re in the living room. Right in front of you is a sofa. It’s about three inches to your left.”

The warmth of the fire had her moving toward it a little, and he told her to be careful, it was huge. As her toes touched the hearth, she knew he was right…the fire blazing from the area was enormous, and she put out her hands to get warm. It seemed that lately she was never warm enough…or for that matter, rested enough.

“Why am I here and not with her?” Phillip said that he wanted to talk to her. “About what? I want to go and see her to make sure that she’s all right before I go.”

“And where do you think you’ll be able to go? You can’t see to drive, not that I think your blindness would stop you. I bet given enough time, you’d do just about anything. And since I’m pretty sure that you have no idea where you are, you’re not going to be safe out there once you go. How am I doing so far?” She wanted to hit him, and she was pretty sure he knew it. “Also, as I said, I wanted to talk to you. About what you are to me and what sort of things you might know about my kind.”

“Your kind? You mean men?” He told her no, he was more than that. “How did I get here without you driving me here? And I want to see my mom.”

Charlie felt weak all of a sudden. It was coming on her more and more often of late, and she reached blindly for something to sit on. The man put his arms around her again and she had no choice but to lean heavily on him. Blood—she knew what it was without being told—poured from her nose.

He picked her up suddenly. Charlie might have protested, but she knew she wasn’t getting over it this time. That was another thing, it was taking her too long to recover. Letting her body go, having no choice on that either, she felt herself being swallowed up. She heard the man saying her name, shouting it really, but there was little to nothing that she could do about it as darkness took her away.

Chapter 2

Phillip watched her sleep. Nic had brought him her medical records about an hour ago, and after reading them three times, he was no closer to understanding what was wrong with her than before. He understood the tumor that was taking over her brain, but very little else. And when she’d fainted in his arms, it was all he could do to calm his poor cat. There was so much information on her condition that he couldn’t tell how to help her other than to do what came natural to his kind. When someone opened the door behind him, he watched as his mom came in with Charlie’s mom, Dottie.

“She’s getting weaker all the time.” Phillip nodded and slid the file under his chair. He was sure the woman knew most of what her daughter was dying from, but he didn’t want her upset when he talked to her. “Nic and Maribel said that we should talk. I don’t suppose you’re some fantastic brain surgeon and can fix her, are you?”

“No, ma’am. I’m not.” The woman nodded sadly. “I’m not sure what they told you. Or what you know about her condition.”

“Condition? I know that in a few short weeks my daughter will be gone from me. That the tumor in her head is eating away at her, and not only will she die, but she will be in so much pain that nothing can take it away.” Phillip nodded. “Can you help her?”

“Yes. I think.” His mom patted him on the back and left them. “Do you know what a shifter is? What a paranormal is?”

“You mean like they have in those books? Those romance books?” He nodded, then shook his head. “Are you going to tell me that you’re a vampire and that you can give her your blood and she’ll be healed? I’d about believe anything you’d tell me if that were possible.”

“I’m not a vampire.” She nodded and looked broken as he continued. “I’m a leopard. A shifter of sorts, as I can only shift into a cat.”

She only stared at him for several seconds before looking back at Charlie. He looked at her, too, and wondered not for the first time since sitting down with her what the hell he was going to do. Thinking he needed to talk to her mom about what had to happen, Phillip leaned back in his chair.

“I can convert her into what I am. It will be painful and she might still be blind, but she won’t die. At least not from the tumor.” She asked him what he meant. “The process is hard on a body and she’s already very weak. Weaker than Nic even knew about when he told me about her. She’s my mate. Do you know what that is?”

“Again, only what I read in those books. Nic, that other man, he told you who she was to you? Again, assuming that you’re not nuts and just a really nice man who saved us today.” He told her he might be nuts but not about this. But Phillip had a feeling that she was hiding something. Perhaps her knowledge of what he was or something more. Or both. “She’s all I have in the world, Phillip. I’ve talked to your mom and Hannah. They said that I should talk to you with an open mind. I’m trying, but this is a little more than me thinking you were going to tell me we were going to be safe.”

Phillip had another moment of unease. He had no idea from what or why it touched at him, but looking at Dottie and hearing her words didn’t set well with him. Liar was all he could think about. She was a liar and it was going to hurt them all. Telling himself that he was overly tired and that he’d been working too hard, he shook his body and smiled at Dottie before continuing.

“You will be. I have a few extra powers in keeping you safe.” Boy, was that an understatement. “My family does as well. My brother—Thomas, you met him today—is very powerful, and he said that he’d help me should you allow me to do this.”

“Me allow you? Isn’t this Charlie’s decision?” They both looked at the bed, and he watched her face. He knew when she realized what was going on. “She’s not going to wake this time, is she? She’s much worse off than she’s been telling me.”

“Yes, it’s progressed that far. And as far as her waking up, I’m afraid that’s not going to happen either. I’ve had someone come here and have a look at her. There is nothing he can do to help her now. The tumor is growing quicker with her weakened state.” Dottie started crying, but she didn’t tell him he was a liar or rant at him to save her. “She’s my mate, as I’ve said, and she’s going to die unless we try and convert her. Thomas said that he’d save her if necessary, but she’ll die anyway if he has to step in. Saving her won’t prolong her life, only keep what I’m doing to her from killing her. I need you to tell me that it’s okay to do this.”

“Can you tell me what will happen?” He said that he could and would, but he wanted to tell her something else first. “I’m not sure I can take too much more, to be honest with you, Phillip. It’s been a very difficult couple of month’s since she fell and we found out what had happened. Then this thing with Murphy hasn’t helped either. Too much stress is what is making the tumor work faster.”

Nodding, he decided to give her a watered down version of the process. “I’ll bite her, as my cat, in several places, which will cause her to be in more pain than anything you’ve ever felt before. It will be hard on her, so if she lives, we will wait for my saliva to take effect. If it doesn’t, she will die. If it works, which Nic has assured me it will, she will be an immortal. Like I am.”

“You mean you’ll live forever.” He nodded at her as that quick unease touched him again. “You do know that this story is getting more and more farfetched as we speak, don’t you? I mean, you’re a leopard that can live forever, that says he’s the mate to my dying daughter. Is there anything else you want to put on me right now?”

“Yes.” He got up to pace. There was a great deal more, but he was trying to decide what she needed to know now as opposed to when Charlie was better. “The book that she has, what do you know about it?”

“I’ve never seen it if that’s what you mean. I know that it’s important to a lot of people. And Charlie said that it would get us killed. Is that what you meant?” He shook his head. “Then I don’t know what else you need to know.”

“You should know that I can read your mind.” He watched her face and then sat down in front of her. The problem was he could only read parts of her mind. The rest, a great deal of it, was locked away from him. And that bothered him more than her lying to him. “I know that you know exactly what is in the book and what it means to the men who would kill for it. I know that you told Charlie that the police would do you no good, and you know all this because of her father. I know a great deal more, but for now, this is enough to get you to tell me the truth.”

“He was a good man, my Curtis, and loved us both very much.” Phillip nodded but said nothing to her. “He was a man who kept records for some very powerful men. And while they were bad men, he was a good one, like I said. Up until the day he was killed for skimming money, I’d had no idea he was anything more than just a man who went to work every day as an accountant. The week before he was killed, he told me about something one of his clients was doing and how sickened he was about it. Not that he did any of those bad things. It wasn’t until later, after his death, that I knew what he was doing about the money and who he was doing it to. He was an accountant that needed more than they gave him, I guess. And when he was caught, I was just as in the dark as everyone had been. Then they shot him dead one day as he was coming home from work. Of course, they denied it, but who else could it have been but them? Is that who is after her, my Charlie? Are you saying that these men that are coming after my Charlie are like them?”

“Worse,” Phillip told Dottie just as someone knocked on the door. Thomas came into the room then and nodded to him. They were running out of time. If they were going to do this, it had to be now. Even he could hear that her heart was slowing. “Mrs. Grant, we have to do it now, or in the next few minutes, it won’t matter if they get the book or not.”

“Do it.” She stood up when he did. “I would like to stay here, if I may. I know that I more than likely will regret this, but I want to be here in the event that she doesn’t…in case…you know what I mean.”

“Yes. But once I start, there is no turning back. Ever. If you try to stop me, you will be hurt.” She nodded and sat down. “I’m going to shift. Don’t run. And don’t…don’t scream. All right?”

“Yes.” She stood, then sat down. He asked her if she was ready and she nodded, then shook her head. The terror was there, and the indecision of what she might be doing. He wouldn’t have blamed her if she ran. He would have, too, if he could have. When she spoke next, he wasn’t the least bit surprised. “I’ve changed my mind. I’m not staying. I can’t. Call me if you can before…if she…I can’t watch her suffer.”

As soon as she left them, Phillip let his cat take him. When he got up on the bed with Charlie, he looked at Thomas and Linyah, who had come to help. She nodded once at him, and he bit deeply into the soft belly of the woman he knew nothing about. Her scream was enough to make his cat whimper, but he never stopped. Phillip had never been so afraid in his entire life.

~~~

Dottie sat in the little room that she supposed served as a pantry. There were shelves overloaded with canned goods and other things, but she wasn’t thinking about that right now. The nice man that was in the kitchen when she’d come in the room had simply opened the door to this room for her and then shut it behind her. The light that was in there with her had gone out long ago. She supposed it was on some kind of motion thing. But since she’d not moved, it had gone out.

Her Charlie was dying, if she wasn’t dead already. And for some reason, Dottie thought it was going to end badly for them all. Not that she’d given her the tumor or anything like that, but she was guilt-ridden all the same. A mom should not have to endure something like this. To have a child that you’ve raised to be hurt the way that her Charlie had been. Things should have gone better for her and Curtis, but they’d frittered it all away like fools.

Charlie had come into their lives one stormy night. She was still a baby, no more than about a month old she’d always guessed. There were things with her…big bags of clothing, formula, as well as toys that the child had never seemed all that interested in. And rules. There had been plenty of those.

She’d been a good child and a great teenager, as well as smart. Her grades were always high, her teachers had loved her, and Charlie could turn ten cents into ten dollars almost in the time it took her to get the money. But she was driven, something that even Curtis, Dottie’s husband, had never been.

At the age of sixteen, Charlie had been on her way to making something of herself. Curtis had been working more and more and the money, while good, had been a little sparse around the house because of the fact that they’d been putting it away. Squirreling it, as Curtis liked to call it. So Charlie had started up her own little company to help out the working families around their neighborhood by watching their children while they were at work or just needed a night out. Soon she had several other girls working with her, and they’d shared the profits. It had been a huge success.

Then Curtis had been caught and they’d had to use the plan they had in place to keep him safe. And all the tales about his lifestyle and hers were brought out. They were all true, of course—the money, the spending, and even that the things in their house were all stolen property…gifts from his bosses to keep Curtis happy. Even the cars they owned were stolen, and the VIN numbers all taken off. Charlie had been spared most of that since she’d long since moved out to a bigger city, and no one had associated her with the man named Grant.

It had taken her months to try and prove to them that she’d been as innocent as Charlie about the things that Curtis had done. Longer still for her to get to the stash that she’d put away for herself, money for her to live on in the event that they had to go to extreme measures. Which, as it turned out, had been what had happened to them. That had been a lifesaver, and might still prove to be something that she’d be thankful for should something happen to Charlie. But long before this all happened, Dottie had thought that, after being a mother and catering to the whims of those around her, she needed a break. She needed to live again.

When Charlie had called her a few years ago to ask her to come and live with her and work on this new job she had, Dottie had told her that she was just too busy. There were her clubs and other things that she did, like working at the school to help with some of the children. None of that was true, of course. She just didn’t want to be where her daughter could see her all the time. Dottie had enjoyed her time alone, doing what she wanted when she’d wanted. She hadn’t even gone to visit her when she’d asked; her life, now that her child was gone, was set the way she liked it.

Then one day, about five years later, out of the blue, she’d seen something on the television about the business called Grant Me Anything, and knew it was her daughter’s business. It had told how this company had thrived when others had failed. That the owner, a recluse named Charleston Grant, had been filling orders and getting rave reviews for years now, and not one person had seen him. The woman reporter stood in front of Dottie’s daughter’s business and speculated on how there must have been hundreds of little workers in the house, because there was a truck coming and going daily to take things out and bring things in. She held up one basket—a gift, she’d said, from one of her coworkers—and said it was the nicest gift she’d ever gotten. Bar none. Dottie wanted to call her daughter then, tell her how she’d changed her mind, when the phone rang. It was her little Charlie, and she’d begged her, once again, to come and help her. This time Dottie said yes.

They’d worked out a way to keep strangers away. To a point that was fine by Dottie. No more hiding from cameras or questions that she didn’t want to answer. Or anything else for that matter. Charlie would take the orders over the Internet for whatever a company or person wanted, and Dottie would go online and get whatever was needed to fill the orders. No one saw them. She was pretty sure that no one cared to. Her daughter was a task master, and she wanted to get things done well before they were due to go out.