Killer Kisses (38 page)

Hair loose, blue eyes flecked with gold and her face more youthful looking as the Change approached, Rebekkah appeared in the doorway. “About time, you told her.”

Zack realized she’d heard the whole argument.

She pulled the door behind her. “I’m coming with you.”

With the full moon rising, a sense of urgency seized Zack and he rushed them into Jethro’s pickup truck. “I’m driving.”

He flew down the dirt roads, hitting potholes and tearing around corners. The brakes screeched as he slammed them on in front of Charlene’s house. The front door was wide open and the minivan was gone.

He leaped out of the vehicle and took the porch steps two at a time. “Charlene? Where are you?”

Jethro and Rebekkah came up the stairs behind him.

Zack turned. “She’s not here. Where the hell is she?”

Rebekkah peeked into Joey’s room and returned to the kitchen, a stunned look on her face. “She left her brother alone. She would never do that.”

Silence fell over the little group as Jethro pointed at the kitchen table. Her iron bracelet lay in the center. “She’s unprotected. This is what Oblis did to her mother. He whispered her into the woods.” He began to wail, “What have I done? What have I done?”

Jethro’s face crumpled and he clutched the side of his head. He fell to the floor. Rebekkah cried out and grabbed at his hand.

Zack went down on his knees. “What should I do?”

Speech slurred, Jethro reached up a shaking hand and pulled the iron chain off his neck. On it hung the large signet ring inscribed with pentacles and Hebrew letters.

“Take the Ring of Solomon,” he gasped. “Save her.”

~*~

Charlene climbed out of the minivan and stared at the woods near the old mining camp. “How did I get here?” She shook her head and turned to get back in the car and hightail it home.

“Charlene!”

“Zack?” She searched the moon-dappled forest for signs of her lover. “Where are you?”

He stepped out from behind a large tree, his silver hair a strange hue of green from the mist that surrounded him. “I’m so glad you’re here. Come closer, I want to hold you in my arms.”

She took a few steps toward him and stopped. “What are you doing here?”

He grinned. “I wanted to make love to you here in the woods, under the full moon.”

Something was off. His teeth were even his canines a regular length. She began to back up and heard a low rumbling. Five black dogs stood between her and the minivan. One growled and nipped at her hand. She cried in pain.

“Come over here and the dogs won’t hurt you.”

She hesitated and one bared his teeth at her and snarled. She picked her leaden feet up, one at a time, her mind trying to make sense of the dogs and Zack’s strange behavior.

“Closer.”

She shuffled up to him.

“Take off your nightdress. I want to see you naked in the moonlight.”

Trembling with fear and cold, she lifted the flannel gown over her head.

Zack trailed his fingers down her neck, across her breasts, and rubbed at her nipples. Unbidden, a rush of erotic images of him taking her from every side, her mouth on his hard cock, his fingers in her moistness, stroking her, forced their way into her mind.

He whispered, “Oh, yes, we are going to have a very good time.” Zack slid his fingers down her belly, played with her silky triangle.

Heaviness filled her limbs, lassitude took over her body, and she leaned back against the tree for support.

“You are so beautiful. Even more beautiful than your mother was when my dearly departed father, Oblis, took her.”

Her eyes flew open and Zack shifted and shimmered, morphing into a creature with a forked tongue and scaled skin. Life flowed back into her lungs and she began to scream.

~*~

Zack pulled up behind Charlene’s minivan and killed the headlights.
Where was she?
He looked in the rearview mirror. His hair was more silvered, longer, thicker. His eyes glowed orange, his shirt strained across his chest, and silver fur stuck out between the buttons. He was running out of time, already changing. He climbed out of the truck and heard a gut-wrenching scream.

“Charlene! I’m coming—” His voice turned into a howl as heat filled him and frissons of pleasure and pain undulated from his toes to his head. The sounds of his clothing ripping came to him as if from a distance. He fell to all fours, heard her scream again, and raced into the forest, searching for her, hoping it wasn’t too late.

He found the man-sized lizard in a swirling mist of green standing over her, laughing and taunting her with what he was going to do to her. Black dogs, too many to count, held her wrists and ankles in their teeth, growling and snarling. She was white-faced and bleeding profusely. He had no time to waste.

Jaws snapping, Zack jumped on the creature’s back and sank his teeth into his neck. The evil one arched his back, threw Zack off, and turned to face him. The black dogs whined, but didn’t release their prey.

“Zack, oh thank God, it’s
really
you,” Charlene cried out.

Claws extended, the shape-shifting deviator jinni came at Zack, hissing and screaming in a strange language. Then in clear English, the creature shouted, “Not even Solomon’s daughter and her soldiers could capture me. You think a
dog
can hurt me?”

The snake man swiped at Zack and grabbed a handful of his fur. Zack yelped in pain, then lowered his chest to the ground, a deep growl morphing into a snarl as he hunkered down and prepared to leap.

The reptile snickered and danced before him, a whirling dervish of death and destruction as Charlene lay pinned to the ground by the jinni’s companions. The night sounds of the forest ceased. Zack’s nostrils twitched at the dank smell of the genie and the clean copper scent of Charlene’s blood. He thought of his friend, Jessie, and how she must have been tortured in the same manner by this evil being. His paws gripped at the moist ground, and a rush of energy coursed through his legs into all of his muscles—as if the earth mother reached up to give him additional strength against this creature from another world.

Snarling, Zack jumped on the capering tormentor’s chest and hit him squarely on the face with the Ring of Solomon. There was a deafening bang, a blinding flash of light, a puff of green smoke, and the world went black.

~*~

Zak didn’t know how long he was out. He blinked his eyes and when he could see again, the jinni was gone, along with the dogs.

Running to Charlene’s side, he found her barely conscious and pale—as pale as the moon.

She smiled. “You’re here.”

He couldn’t speak, could only try to communicate with his eyes, his paws, and tongue. He licked her terrible wounds and whined.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” she asked.

Zak nodded.

“I’m dying.” Not a question.

He whimpered.

“If you bite me, will I live?”

Zack nuzzled and licked her neck.

The light was going out of her eyes.
Please choose, please choose,
he urged mentally.

Charlene whispered, “I choose life. You and the Pack—bite me.”

Worried that it might be too late, he placed his teeth on her neck, and drew blood.
Nothing.
He pushed at her with his nose. Her head flopped to the other side, lifeless.

The love of his life, his one and only soul mate was still and cold. He staggered away from her body, threw his head back and gave a long mournful howl. All was lost. Jessie, Jethro, and now Charlene were dead. The pack was going to die out. He had failed. Zack thought his heart was going to break. He howled again, and again—until his throat was hoarse. He paused to take a deep shuddering breath.

A female howled back.

He turned.

Resplendent in thick golden fur, her smoky blue eyes flecked with emerald green, Charlene trotted over to him and nuzzled his ear.
“I can hear your thoughts.”

“Charlene,”
he breathed.
“You’re so beautiful.”

“Thanks for the love bite. Let’s go home.”

~*~

Eliana’s heart thundered and her hands shook as she watched the live video feed on her home computer in Alexandria, Virginia. She could scarcely believe her eyes, but there it was, live and in color, proof of the existence of jinn
and
the power of the werewolves. Furious, she began to type up her report, and cursed her boss.

“Stand down, he said. Stay away from the mine, he said. Stay away from the Carter clan, he said. You
killed
that corporal with your foolhardy scheme, he said.”

Despite the wealth of intelligence she’d gathered from Fred Johnson’s research, her by-the-book boss had refused to listen to her and had told her to get back to Virginia and prepare to be transferred.

She had obeyed his orders—right
after
she installed a dozen infrared, motion activated surveillance cameras in the woods around the abandoned mine. She attached the video clip to the email and hit the send button with a hard click of her mouse.

“Let’s see what you have to say about this, el Jefe.”

Epilogue

~*~

New Beginnings

Special Agent Eliana Solomon stood by the abandoned mine in Eden and drummed her fingers on the butt of her Sig Sauer. She rubbed her eyes and wished she hadn’t been right. That poor soldier had paid with his life. Generations of women and children of Eden had suffered and paid with their lives, too. The Carters had been particularly hard hit. But now, they had a fresh start. And, thanks to Charlene and Zack’s unflinching desire to protect the world from this threat, Eliana knew why the Djinn attacked certain groups in a blood feud of biblical proportions.

She sighed, whispered the prayer for the dead in Hebrew, and waved over the military demolition expert, a huge hulking figure of a man whose size belied his intelligence. “This is a Djinn portal. The people of Eden have been terrorized by these deviants long enough. Fill it with iron, whatever you can find. If you’ve got anything magnetic, throw that in there, too. Then demolish it.”

The large man nodded. “I got no problem with that. I’ll see what kind of scrap metals we can find in the area.”

She flexed her fist and rubbed the heavy signet ring inscribed with pentacles and Hebrew letters. Last night, she received a call from the Virginia Bureau of Investigation. Girls had gone missing and turned up traumatized, alive, and pregnant. Or found dead, torn to bits. When the doctors at Quantico saw the ultrasounds of the babies, they promptly called the Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate, and Special Agent Eliana Solomon, aka, “The Jinn Hunter.”

She was going to need some help in the Virginia coal fields, someone who had personal experience with the Jinn. She knew
exactly
who to ask—a tall, dark, and dangerously handsome psychiatrist and Islamic scholar she’d worked with on an extremely difficult case two years ago. But he was the
last
person in the world she ever wanted to see again. Not that she held a grudge, mind you, but didn’t she have the right to be pissed at a guy for leaving her for
dead
?

~*~

The orchard exploded in pink with newly opened buds, tables overflowed and bowed under the weight of food, and little tow-haired girls, decked out in their best dresses, played hide-and-seek, their laughter ringing through the trees. Mothers chatted, their excitement palpable. The boys from the bus route poked at their mothers and signed, “Where Charlene?” Trotter made rounds, investigated each partygoer with his gentle nose, and created a ripple of giggles in his wake. He found Joey, sat down at the foot of his wheelchair, and began to snore.

Tired of surveying the pack and listening to its happy rumbles, Zack turned to Jethro and demanded, “What’s taking her so long?”

The Old One looked up from whittling the wolf head on his new apple wood cane, amusement glinting in his sky blue eyes. “Don’t you know women take whatever time they need? You’d better learn to be patient.”

“I can’t stand this,” he growled and fisted his hand with the large signet ring. “Why can’t Rebekkah make her move faster?”

The door flew open, framing Rebekkah. Strands of hair fell out in wild angles from her normally impeccable bun. She grabbed Zack’s wrist and said, “Get in here. Now!”

Seized with a type of terror he had never experienced before, even when he faced the jinni, Zack turned to his elder. “Come with me?”