Chasing Shadows (A Shadow Chronicles Novel) (26 page)

“Mida, darling,” my father said as he walked down the few steps to the ground.

I turned reluctantly as I was about to round the end of the truck to get in on the passenger side. “Yes?”

He smiled genially. “Despite the lack of total harmony we endured on this voyage, I wanted to say that I thoroughly enjoyed spending this time with you. I hold to my word that I will make sure our people understand your bondmate is not to be harmed.”

“I very much appreciate that,” I replied, hoping I sounded grateful. I did
feel
grateful, but the man was so damn hard to trust that my gratitude was edged with wariness.

Diarmid smiled and turned to Mark, who stood by the open driver’s door. “My daughter is very important to me. See that you never incur my wrath by causing her pain. Do we understand each other, Mr. Singleton?”

“As long as you understand that the reverse is also true,” Mark replied succinctly.

My father smiled and nodded. “Well said, young man,” he said to him,
then
turned back to me. He kissed me on both cheeks again and then embraced me, to which I awkwardly responded by wrapping my arms around him briefly. Diarmid then stepped back, and with a nod at Lochlan, walked over and got into another waiting limousine.

We watched it drive away, and then I said to Lochlan, who had driven his own car, “You’ll see that Gail is taken care of?”

He nodded.
“Aye.
She’ll be well looked after by yours truly.”

“Thanks, Loch.
For everything.”

My brother reached over and embraced me heartily. “You’re quite welcome,” he said, then stood back and offered Mark his hand. “Congratulations on learning you’re a little more a freak of nature than you thought you were, brother.”

Mark laughed as he shook his hand. “I’m glad for it, believe me. One less thing to have to worry about, knowing I get to stay with Saphrona forever.”

Lochlan rolled his eyes at that, but he smiled. After bidding Juliette a farewell, he turned and climbed back into the airplane to tend to Gail.

The three of us then climbed into my truck and headed home. It occurred to me that by the time we reached the farm it would be almost 12:30 in the morning, leaving a good six hours to sleep before we’d have to get up and start our regular day. Grateful that Mark had offered to drive, I leaned my head on his shoulder and drifted off even though I had slept some on the plane, but was woken a few moments later by the ringing of my cell phone. Concern flashed when I saw Harry Mitchell’s number on the caller I.D.

“Harry, what’s wrong? Is one of the animals sick?” I said without preamble, knowing there was no way he’d be calling unless he had bad news to impart.

“Oh God, Saphrona,” Harry’s weary, worried voice came over the line. My concern became full-fledged fear. “I’m sorry, honey, I’m so sorry.”

“Harry, what happened?” I asked, praying that Moe and Cissy and my farm animals were alright.

“
Your
… Sweetheart, I’m so sorry. Somebody set your barn on fire.”

*****

“
What?!
”
I roared, and had to stop myself from crushing the phone in my hand.

The volume of my voice awoke Juliette, who had drifted off in the back seat. She leaned forward as Mark reached for my hand.

“I heard fire trucks a little while ago, making all kinds o’ ruckus, so I went and looked out the window and I could see the flames from my place. I’m down at your
place now, but they won’t let me up the road too close,” Harry told me.

I screamed again, and did not care if I shattered the windshield. Mark pulled over to the side of the road and yanked the parking break, then gathered me into his arms as tears began falling down my face.

“Harry, what about…what about the animals? What about my animals?! And my house! What about my house? Moe and Cissy are in there!”

“They told me the house hasn’t been touched, but the barn’s a goner,” my neighbor replied. “I won’t know about the barn animals until they get the fire under control. Honey, I’m so sorry.”

I could no longer speak—I could only cling to Mark and sob. I was vaguely aware of Juliette taking the cell phone out of my hand and speaking to Harry, then relaying the story to Mark as to what had happened.

After venting my pain through tears and soaking Mark’s t-shirt, the anger began to creep in. I sat up and wiped my eyes furiously, a slow burn of a different kind beginning in my chest. “Let’s go,” I said, and Mark nodded wordlessly, putting the truck back in gear and taking off down the road.

Based on where we had pulled over, it would normally have taken another forty minutes to get home. Mark virtually ignored the speed limit and we made it in twenty, turning onto our street and pulling to a stop behind a long line of police cars and fire trucks. He hadn’t yet engaged the parking brake when I opened my door and threw myself out, taking off at a run. A couple of police officers tried to stop me, but I threw them off—I had to get closer, to see.

To smell.
I knew that if I could get close enough, I would know if my beloved horses and cows and pigs and chickens had perished in the blaze.

A burly fireman grabbed me as I started up my tree-lined driveway. “You can’t go up there, ma’am.”

“That’s my house—
my
house, damn it!
My
barn! I have animals in there! I have to know if they’re okay!” I hollered, shoving him off of me.

He grabbed for me again as Mark and Juliette caught up, and the former of the two relieved the fireman of the duty of restraining me. “Ma’am—”

“Saphrona!”

I turned and saw Harry Mitchell coming toward me. Mark let me go and I ran to him. “Harry, the animals—
are
you sure you don’t know anything about the animals?” I asked desperately.

He surprised me by nodding. “I just got a call from Tommy—he said he just found the horses over by our back pasture.”

Relief, although fleeting, crashed through me.
“All four of them?”
I pressed hopefully.

Harry nodded again. “I had the boys go looking in the woods, in case any of the animals might have escaped. Tommy said he and Billy only found the horses. They’re putting them in our barn for safe keeping.”

Mark had wrapped his arms around me again. “Some good news at least,” he said. “And you’re sure the house is safe?”

The other man nodded. “The fireman you were just talking to
said
the house is fine,
though it was a good thing they got here when they did or it would have been a different story.”

“How did they know?” Juliette wondered. “If you didn’t even know until you heard the fire trucks, how did the fire department know to come out here?”

Harry shrugged. “Somebody driving by must’ve seen it and called it in,” he said.

Juliette pointed toward the house. “The house and barn are about five hundred feet into the woods, and there are so many trees here you can barely see anything from the road, especially at night. The barn would have had to already be engulfed for someone to see it from here,” she said.

Harry shrugged again and I turned away, looking back toward my home. I felt so heartsick. I was worried about the other barn animals, worried about how frightened Moe and Cissy must be. I wanted to wrap my arms around the neck of each of my horses to assure myself that they were really alive…

And I wanted to find the son of a bitch who had done this. How
dare
someone come out here and risk the lives of my animals, destroy my property, threaten my home and my livelihood?
And for goodness’ sake,
why?
Why had they done this to me? Was I a specific target or just a random one? Was someone out to get me, or was the fire started by a couple of kids just out screwing around? I almost wished it was someone out to get me, because at least then I would have a focus for my anger—I couldn’t hate what I didn’t know or understand, and right now, I wanted to hate the bastard who had destroyed my life.

Of course, I really had no idea who would want to do something like this to me. I was friendly with all my neighbors, when I chanced to see them. I was friendly with the people in town when I went shopping, too. Truth was I was pretty much a loner. I kept my head down and my nose clean and I didn’t draw any attention to myself—it was a law of vampire society not to draw attention! Only in the last few days had my daily routine changed, ever since Evangeline had come to me with Diarmid’s request and Mark had come into my life.

I was struck with the sudden realization that the only explanation for this
had
to be related to one or both of those events. Diarmid wanting me to seek out Vivian Drake and her source of information was drawing me back into the twisted world of vampire politics, something else I had been glad to escape when I’d left. And Mark’s appearance in my life had led me to learn that some of the things I’d believed my entire life were nothing but lies. I was also likely to be drawn into the world of the shapeshifters—with my soulmate’s sister being one, there would be no escaping it.

As soon as the fire was out and my barn—and Juliette’s new home—had been reduced to smoldering embers, I tore off up the driveway. I was two-thirds of the way there when it hit me—the scent of cooked meat, of burnt flesh. I knew in my heart that all but the horses had been killed, and when I came abreast of the house, I fell hard to my knees.

The barn was, as Harry had reported, a total loss. Three of the four corners still stood, but the entire roof of the structure had caved in. Broken timbers blackened with soot poked up here and there, and the immediate area of the backyard was full of cough-inducing smoke. My eyes stung and I vainly tried to blink away tears that I could
not say were solely a result of the ash and smoke surrounding me. Feeling broken inside, I threw back my head and screamed, conveying in one long, loud wail all of my heartbreak and outrage.

Firefighters walking around me were gathering up their equipment, and through the white noise that now filled my ears I heard one of them say, “Smells like a damn barbecue out here.”

Anger flared white-hot, and I was on him faster than it took to take one breath, smashing my fist into his face and shattering his nose. Blood gushed over my hand and my fangs dropped as we fell to the ground, and had Juliette not grabbed hold of me, I’d have broken the strictest of vampire laws by feeding on the insensitive prick in front of a hundred witnesses. With her superior shifter strength she was able to haul me up but she needed Mark’s help to hold me back. I struggled for a few minutes, growling incoherently through clenched teeth until I was spent as suddenly as I had been enraged. Drawing my canines back up, I sagged against Mark’s chest and sobbed.

*****

“Can you tell me where you were prior to your arrival on scene, Ms. Caldwell?”

Mark and I were seated at the kitchen table as was the arson investigator. He held a little notebook in one hand and a pen in the other; I held Moe and Cissy, cuddling the still-shaking Chihuahuas to my chest as if I were afraid to let them go. Juliette stood at my left shoulder, a hand resting upon it. I was sure the gesture was meant to be comforting, but I was not remiss to the fact that she was there to restrain me in case I lost control again. Mark had scooted his chair as close to me as he could get, and my head was resting in his shoulder.

“We were on the road. We’d just come back from a trip to Ireland,” I said absently.

“May I ask why you were out of the country?”

“Is that really pertinent to your investigation?” Mark countered.

The other man looked at him. “I’m only trying to be thorough, Sgt. Singleton.”

When we’d identified ourselves, Mark had shown his military I.D., an “Inactive” copy of which he carried in his wallet. As such, arson investigator Lt. Parks had taken to addressing him by his Marine Corps rank—that they were in the company of a war veteran seemed to appease the firefighters, who were naturally aggravated that I’d attacked one of them.

“We went to see a family friend. We’d heard she was ill,” I said, replying to his question. “We were only gone for the day, but I had to go. She’s very dear to me.”

Not a total lie, I mused, as Parks made notes.

“What time did you return from your trip?”

I looked at Mark, suddenly unable to recall the time we had landed. “It was around eleven-thirty local time, maybe a little later. I’m sure you can check with airport traffic control—we came in on a private plane,” he said.

Parks nodded. “And Mr. Harry Mitchell, your neighbor, called you at what time?”

I reached for my cell phone and realized I didn’t have it. Juliette fished it out of one of her pockets, pulled up the last call time, and turned the phone so that Parks could see
it on the screen. “We were on the road coming from the airport when Mr. Mitchell called,” she told him.

Parks wrote down the information. “Ms. Caldwell, do you trust your neighbor?”

Indignation rose. “Of course I trust Harry! Why else would I have allowed him or his
sons
access to my property? The Mitchells are wonderful people, a good family. Farmers take care of each other, Lieutenant.”