Turn to Darkness (Offspring 5.6) (5 page)

He drove at a nice, normal pace. “You said a man named Frost is my father? So Tucker and I aren’t related then, because the guy they killed was definitely his father.” He gestured with his head to the bed of the truck. “This guy didn’t have Darkness, which makes sense since you don’t. Maybe this Frost guy was the one who attacked me today.”

“What?” Now that she had a few spare brain cells not frozen by adrenaline and fear, she had the wherewithal to wonder why Greer had gone to her job site.

“Someone with Darkness attacked me at the warehouse fire I was called to, which was probably set for that purpose. I never saw him, only his form as smoke.”

She put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, God. But you’re okay?” She let her gaze survey him, thankful to see nothing obvious like a bone sticking out or blood flowing.

“I won’t know which bumps and bruises came from which altercation, but yeah, I’m all right.”

“How did you know I was in trouble?”

“I figured if I’d been targeted, there was a chance you were, too. On my way over, I had a feeling to get to you as fast as I could.” He glanced at her. “If you believe that sort of thing.”

“How can I not?”

“I’d better let the bonehead know what’s going on. With both of us being attacked, he could be a target, too.” He fished his phone from his pocket and made a call. “Darius, you at your shop? . . . Everything’s okay, then?” He told him what had happened, then glanced at her. “Yeah, she’s fine. Going back to her house is not a good idea for any of us. They picked up Shea there, and probably you, too. Be aware. We’ve got to dump this guy’s body . . . We’ve got it, thanks. We’ll catch up with you later. Don’t go to Tucker’s or meet with him, Del, or Cody. I want to keep them out of this. Talk later.” He disconnected. “He hasn’t seen anyone yet. He wants to hook up with us, but I’d rather keep him at a distance.”

“Agreed,” she said.

They drove in silence, out of town to Mills Road Quarry. Thankfully it was closed, no sign of recent activity. He broke the lock and drove in, pulling behind the mounds of rocky dirt.

He put the truck in park. “Wait here for a sec, let me check it out.”

She didn’t want to sit in the truck waiting by herself. She got out, giving him a pointed look, and stepped up beside him. Weeds grew in the loose gravel, and wind had rounded the top of the mini-mountains. This place had been closed for a while.

They walked around to the back of the truck, uncovering the body. She looked at the man who had, as he’d put it, sired her.

“He said he was sorry, felt bad about having to kill me. I could see that he did, too. He’d just found out about me and wasn’t going to tell the others, but Frost recognized that I’m a . . . whatever it is that we are. So he had to kill me because their boss—leader, I think he said—knew about me. I begged.” She lifted her gaze to Greer, who was watching her. “I begged for my life, like a coward.”

“That’s not being a coward, Shea.”

She had denigrated herself for not fighting harder when the three men were raping her. She had begged then, too. But prevailing against three men—or one otherworldly man—was next to impossible. She could see that now. “Let’s just get this over with.”

They took up their earlier positions, Greer holding the man’s upper body, she gripping his legs, and they carried him to the edge of the big hole in the ground and set him down. The opaque green water would hide something that was only an inch beneath the surface.

“How did you know about this place being so perfect for hiding a body?”

He lifted a thick dark eyebrow. “Because of the last two bodies I dumped in here.”

“Seriously, Greer, this is not the time to kid.” She couldn’t take any more revelations. “You
are
kidding, right?”

“I am. I know about this place because some friends dared me to swim in it years ago. We broke in; the place was operating then.”

“And did you?”

“Yep. It felt good, actually, on a hot day.” He lowered his voice. “There’s nothing in there that’s scarier than me.”

“You are scary. That’s the first time I saw you fight in Darkness.”

He looked at her for a few seconds. “It’s probably better that we didn’t go any further with whatever it was that went on between us in that bathroom.”

She couldn’t take her eyes from him, the words not sending relief through her. Finally she forced herself to say, “Uh, yeah.”

“Because of what I am.” He shifted his gaze away. “We need to find something to weigh him down.”

They scouted around, Greer picking up a big rock.

“I’m not afraid of you. Of your beast, I mean.” Though she was, a little.

He didn’t look relieved either. “It’s not my beast that’s so troublesome, in and of itself. It’s the fiercely protective, insanely jealous part.”

She walked to the back of her truck and pulled out some twine. “Have you ever felt that way?”

“Never let myself get that close to any woman.”

“Is that why you’re a serial dater? You date a woman a couple of times, and we never see her again. You seem to have a good time with them, at least from what I’ve heard in your bedroom as I’ve passed by.” God, had she sounded wistful? Jealous? “I just figured you were a slut.”

He barked a laugh. “Good to know you have such a high opinion of me.” His expression sobered. “I don’t have much choice.”

Now
he
looked wistful. He took the roll of twine and headed back to Ted’s body. She picked up another rock, not as big as the one he’d set on the man’s chest, and brought that over while Greer tied it tight to his body. Once the rocks were secure, he rolled the body into the water.

“It drops straight down,” he said, watching bubbles rise to the surface.

“Let’s get out of here. This place gives me the creeps.” She walked to the driver’s side and got in. “I’m okay to drive now.”

“Where do you get your plants?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“Go there and we’ll pick up whatever you need to replace what got ripped apart. We’ll replant them, fix the rocks.”

She could only stare at him. “Now?”

“How long do we have before the owners return?”

“Tomorrow.” She glanced behind them at the pit. “I’m having a hard time thinking about something so ordinary after what we just did.” They’d dumped a body. She’d murdered someone, inadvertently, and now they’d disposed of the body. Even though it was out of self-defense, the reality of it rocked through her like an earthquake.

“That’s over now. We fix your job because I know what a perfectionist you are. Be hard to work in the dark, so we’d better get moving.”

In the midst of all the horror she’d gone through, that he cared, knew her work ethic, warmed her completely. She could only nod past the lump in her throat.

Chapter Six

F
ORTY MINUTES LATER
Shea had two trees, several plants, and a couple pairs of work gloves. They each carried a tree around the side to the back. She’d remembered all the plants she had to run over, so she set a tray of them around the side on the second trip.

They worked in the late afternoon sun, Greer using the same shovel she’d sent flying at Ted to dig out the damaged trees. He rubbed his arm over his forehead, wiping off the sweat. He still had dark smudges on his face. He’d come straight from fighting that fire—and the monster within it—to her.

He pulled off his shirt and flung it over the back of the patio chair. She felt a catch in her heart at the sight of him, wide chest and ridged abdomen, pure male perfection. Then she saw that his shoulder and side were bruised, red and purple blotches marring his olive skin.

“You’re hurt.”

He looked down, running his fingers over the bruised areas. “Not bad.”

“I can heal you.”

“No,” he said, almost too fast. “I can heal it myself, with Darkness, but it makes me weak. I can’t afford to do that for some bumps and bruises. And you can’t afford to take on the pain yourself. There’s another of those sons of a bitch out there. We have to be ready.”

He continued to tamp down the dirt around the newly planted blue Douglas fir with his boot. Though it was cool out, the sun was hot. She could see a bead of sweat trail down the curve of his pecs and over his stomach.

She forced herself to finish her plantings and clean up the stray stones. The scent of the earth was always comforting, and working with plants and rocks usually kept her focused. Not this time, however. She kept glancing up at Greer, now kneeling as he patted down the dirt around a fragrant verbena with his bare hands. The pink clustered flowers looked at odds with his masculinity.

They worked for another hour, and when she stood, her body aching, the yard looked just about perfect. Again. She smiled as she took it in: the cleaned patio, Greer watering the plants with a hose. He set the hose over the table and washed his hands in the stream, then splashed his face and upper body.

His back was scraped and the bruises were now a vivid purple. Someone had attacked him. He could have been killed. She might never have seen him again.

If it wasn’t for him, she’d be dead. She shivered at all those realizations. He looked her way, as though sensing her attention on him. She felt that spark again, like the one in the bathroom when all she should have felt was anger and humiliation.

“You okay?” he asked, flicking the water from his hands.

She nodded, shrugged. “Everything’s really hitting me now.”

He walked over to the spigot and turned it off, grabbing a towel and drying his face and chest. She took off her leather gloves and met him where they’d put their work tools.

“It’ll be okay,” he said.

“No, it won’t. This Torus knows about me, that I’m a person of interest in Frankie’s mauling. That I’m half of whatever he is. The next guy they send to kill me won’t be sorry. Frost will try to kill you again.”

She focused on the hollow at the base of his throat, afraid to meet his eyes and see either sympathy or compassion there.

“We could leave, start over somewhere else.”

“We?” She met his gaze on that.

“All of us. Don’t worry, I’m not asking you to run off with me alone.” Though he was smiling, she saw something deeper in his expression. Something that said he was.

That he would even suggest pulling up roots to leave town with her . . .

She reached out to his bruises and ran her fingers over them. They disappeared, leaving behind a trail of goose bumps instead. A dull pain throbbed through her, a small price to pay for what he’d done for her. She stood very close to him, feeling his body heat, smelling smoke, dirt, and his own scent. Her fingers trembled as she erased the scrapes on his back and arm. When she returned to the hard ridges of his stomach, she couldn’t pull away.

“Shea,” he whispered, something raw in that one word.

She fell against him, pressing her cheek against his cool damp chest, closing her eyes. Drawing in a deep breath, because she wanted to be here and was so scared to be here, too. Her hands flattened against his lower back, holding her in place.

His hands brushed against her head, fingers sliding through the strands. Something unfurled inside her at his touch, at the feel of him like a rock solid wall of strength, and the memory of how he pulled her into his arms when she’d needed that strength most. She felt as though she were walking a tightrope as she turned her head so that her mouth brushed his skin.

She felt the war inside her, that self-protective part urging her to pull back, a long-buried part of her crying out to be released. He felt so good, his fingers sliding down her neck, and then he tilted her head and leaned down toward her. She saw the question in his eyes as his thumbs stroked her lips. Whatever he saw answered it. He leaned farther down and touched his mouth to hers. She had noticed his mouth before, lower lip full, and it felt warm and soft as it covered hers in a gentle kiss.

His hands slid down over her arms in long, slow strokes, sliding to her waist. She had a flashback of hands on her, holding her down.
No, Greer’s not doing that. He’s not even touching you anywhere intimate.

She knew he wouldn’t, not knowing what he did about her. Not Greer.

Greer, who was a good man, even if he did turn into a panther. A good man who didn’t need to get tangled up with someone like her. She stepped back, to catch her breath.

“I’m sorry.” She looked down, her fingers on her mouth because it still tingled. “I can’t do this. I haven’t . . .” She shook her head, still averting her gaze. “Not since then.”

Of course, Greer wouldn’t let her avoid him. He gently guided her face to look at him. “I understand you went through something terrible. Beyond horrible. But it’s time to stop hiding yourself. To stop not letting yourself feel sensuality. Because I can see that you want it, need it.” He rubbed his thumb at the center of her collarbone. “We all need a human touch.”

She shook her head. “You don’t understand.”

“Then help me to.”

He wanted to help her, because he’d lost someone to despair. To grief. No, she’d never take her own life. She’d killed parts of her soul, though. He was right; she hadn’t gotten over it. But not for the reasons he probably thought.

She looked up, past him, tears blurring her eyes. “I shut down that part of myself. The only guy I’d ever been with was one of the guys who . . . who raped me.” She forced it out so Greer wouldn’t think she was hiding from the word. “Frankie got high after we’d had sex, and then his two friends came over and got high with him. They were stoned out of their minds, and then they started looking at me like I was a piece of meat.

“They were talking about all having ‘a taste of me,’ and Frankie didn’t stop them. Instead, he said how I could make his friends happy, couldn’t I? They were good guys, did ‘things’ for him. Whatever those things were. I flat out told him no. I didn’t love him, but I thought he liked me enough not to offer me like he owned me. I tried to leave, but he grabbed me, held me down.”

“God, Shea.” His hands grasped her shoulders, tightened on them.

“Somehow seeing me fight them incited him, and he joined in.”

He brushed away a tear she didn’t even know had fallen. “Sick fu—” He held the word back. “If he wasn’t already dead, I’d want to kill him. And then you went to the police and they didn’t believe you?”

“I got the impression the officer thought I was exaggerating. Because I’d had consensual sex with one of them, and there were drugs in the picture, he figured we all had some drunken fun and then I regretted it. He basically told me I wouldn’t have much of a chance of proving it, and I knew he was right.”

“I wish I’d known earlier. Then I would have understood—”

“But I didn’t want anyone to know, don’t you get that?” She pulled away, wrapping her arms around herself.

“Shea, you have nothing to be ashamed of. It happened to you. You were an innocent victim.”

She wished she could feel that way. Bad enough that he knew about the rape. She wasn’t going to get into the rest of it. “Maybe I do need a human touch. Maybe when I look at you, some part of me wants to feel you. When you touched me just now, that was the first time anyone’s touched me since then. It was good, yes, but then I felt . . .”

“Memories?” he asked simply.

She nodded, because she didn’t want to say, No, shame. I felt shame. That if you knew everything, you’d look at me differently.

He slid his hand down her arm. “I want to change that. When I touch you, I want you to feel safe. Cherished. Eventually aroused.” His fingers stroked the skin of her forearm, where she’d pushed back her sleeves. “I’d like to do that for you. And for me.”

“Why? Why would you do that for me? Why me?”

He seemed puzzled by the question. “Why not you?”

Anger surged, a familiar and comforting friend. “Things were perfectly fine before you walked in on me. We were friends, nothing more.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Shea, I caught you watching me sometimes in the mirror, when you didn’t know I could see you. You had a longing in your eyes, a hunger. Until then, yeah, I saw you like a friend, one of the guys, sort of. But that got me thinking. Then I saw how gorgeous you are under all those baggy clothes. You got under my skin.”

“Just because you saw me naked. Come on, I’m not that gorgeous. Besides, you see naked women all the time.”

“Shea, don’t you get it? It’s not that I saw you naked. It’s that I saw
you
naked.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “That makes no sense.”

“You, Shea. A girl I care about, who I know is sweet and strong and a little bit mysterious.”

“I’m not sweet, okay. And now you know why I keep to myself, so I’m not mysterious.”

“I don’t know everything.” He gave her a challenging look. “But I will.”

“You just said it was a good thing we didn’t take things in that direction. And you meant it; I could tell.”

“I did. But there’s another part of me that’s not so logical. That part wants you no matter how dangerous it might be.”

“Darkness?”

“No. That’s the part that will kill to protect you. The part that wants you, it’s all me, Shea.”

“I’ll be the logical one. I want to go back to the way we were, only friends. Nothing . . . sensual. Can we do that? Because I miss you in my life.”

“This is where you guys went.” The voice, nearly a growl, came from the side of the house where she’d just planted the replacements. Darius wheeled across flagstones that made his chair wobble. “Looking all tense like the last time I saw you two talking. Greer, what the hell are you doing to her? And what’s going on?”

Greer jabbed his finger in Darius’s face. “What’s going on is that you screwed up and put us all in danger!” Darius slapped at his finger, but Greer was faster, pulling it away before he made contact. “If you hadn’t killed that guy, none of these people would know about us. There wouldn’t be an order to get rid of us.”

Darius’s face twisted in a sneer. “You’re just pissed because you weren’t man enough to take care of Shea’s problem. You weren’t out there watching over her, didn’t follow that guy home and find those despicable letters and presents he was planning to leave for her. You weren’t man enough to take care of things.”

Greer fairly bristled. “So killing people makes you manly? Sending the police to Shea’s door, that’s your way of taking care of her problems?”

“All right, I missed the letter. I didn’t plan on them connecting her to him. But they have nothing on her or us, so it’ll fade away. The guy was a sick loser. How hard do you think the cops are going to work to find his killer?”

“That’s their job,” Greer said through gritted teeth. “But it’s the least of our problems. Shea’s father just tried to kill her.”

Now Darius turned to her, his righteous anger faded. “Shea, you all right?”

It was creepy how fast he changed moods. Her arms automatically slid into their protective gesture. “We’re fine. Greer showed up in the nick of time.”

“Of course he did,” Darius said, all that anger back again.

“At least I was man enough to be here when it counted,” Greer said.

Darius morphed to Darkness, launching out of his chair in his human shape, his hands ready to grab Greer, who morphed, too. The two wrestled, rolling across the ground.

“Stop!” she shouted. “We just fixed this place.”

Greer pounced on top of Darius, his fangs hovering just above his neck. “Enough,” he said on a growl. “You and I will deal with this later. Right now we have one more of those bastards out there. My birth father, Frost. If you want to play hero, you won’t waste our energy fighting.”

Darius remained still for a moment, making her wonder if he was going to spring back up again. He moved his arms out, raising them in surrender. Greer stepped off him and morphed back to man. Darius returned to his chair and did the same.

“This is why I moved out!” she said, flinging out her arms.

Darius wheeled toward the front of the house with quick jerks of his arms.

Greer stepped closer to her, his voice low. “No, you moved out to get away from your feelings for me. How’s that working for you?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Just fine.”

She started to walk away, but he pulled her arm, sending her spinning back into his body. She took a step back, but he didn’t release her.

“Because it’s not working for me. I haven’t seen you much in the three months since you moved out, but I can’t get you out of my mind.”

So he didn’t want to let the conversation go. “Surely there’s been one woman or two who’s helped.”

His mouth quirked in a slight grin, as though he thought—
thought
—her statement was said out of jealousy or a way to find out if he’d been with someone recently. “The date I was going on that night, when I walked in on you, I said good-night to after dinner. I’ve asked a few girls out and then canceled. Because it’s not fair to go out with one girl while you’re thinking about another.”