Nobody's Angel (The Earth Angels) (4 page)

It was so hunched over it knuckle-walked. Its blurring movement shifted around Kendall as if looking for a chink in her armor, and its hesitation to get any closer was as baffling as it was unnerving. But that didn’t matter now. The geist couldn’t be allowed to attack her. Hell, it couldn’t be allowed to attack
anyone
. It had to be crossed over before all of heaven spotlighted San Francisco with its unforgiving light.

But...it damn well better not attack Kendall.

The geist seemed to become aware of his presence almost at the same time he’d noticed it. A massive ripple twisted the thing’s aura, the same bizarre heat wave distortion that made all his senses jangle. He blinked, nearly stumbling as his attention wavered.

What the hell is that?

Before he could puzzle it out, the geist pivoted with unexpected grace, its attention seemingly cutting to him as he approached. But all too soon its intention became clear. Zeke’s heart iced over as the rogue geist grabbed up a moped and swiveled with its hideous, no-longer-human strength and took aim.

Right at Kendall.

Chapter Four

Note to self—keep all amorphous smoke clouds out of casual conversation
.

Irritated by both the vendor’s reaction and her careless flub, Kendall crossed the empty street to the parking lot, zeroing in on a small security trailer. It was amazing how the mention of one measly little cloud was enough to make some people look at her like she was a few clowns short of a circus.

Like the way Zeke Reece had looked at her.

Another curse hissed out of her. Having Zeke haunt her thoughts was driving her as crazy as he thought she was. She was an idiot to let him linger in her mind’s eye, with his gentle hands and a sculpted body that fulfilled her every secret fantasy. The fact was there was no hope of striking up a relationship with him at this point. The way things stood now, he either didn’t know anything about what was going on and believed she was a hot box full of crazy, or he was just twisted enough to enjoy making her think she had snapped under pressure.

One was sad, but understandable. The other was unforgivable.

She’d do a better job of questioning the security guard, she decided, pleased to see lights through the trailer’s uncovered windows. And this time she’d do her best to keep
The
Twilight Zone
stuff down to a minimum as she asked about The Guardian—

Strong arms engulfed her in a viselike grip, and in a blink she was off her feet and moving so fast the world around her blurred. There was no time to scream even as she came to a screeching halt, the breath knocking out of her as she was pushed against the side of a building on the opposite end of the parking area. Her brain scrambled in a frenzy of alarmed confusion as the press of a hulking, hard body pinned her in place. Panicked, she sucked in a breath to scream, but it came out as a mere squeak as a sudden crash of metal against metal tore through the darkness.

“What the
hell
—” She caught an improbable glimpse of some sort of scooter embedded into the front of the security hut she’d been heading for, before she was hauled unceremoniously into the engulfing shadows of a narrow alley at the back of the building. A babble of excited shouts pierced the night as security officers spilled out of the damaged hut, but before she could call out to them, a hand clamped over her mouth.

“That moped almost took you out, and you don’t even know it,” the man who held her growled, shocking her into stillness. “What is it going to take for you to realize you’re digging into something that’s bad for your health?”

Kendall stared up at The Guardian Angel, so dumbfounded she didn’t even notice when he removed his hand from her mouth.

“
You
,” she breathed. She struggled to get a clear view of him, but it was a hopeless task. Even if a mask hadn’t covered half his face, the darkness around him seemed deeper, like an impenetrable black hole where no light could exist. “Where... How...”

“Quiet.” The tension in his voice was palpable. She could even feel it in the body that pinned her to the alley wall, thrumming with a kill-or-be-killed urgency that made her own pulse pound. “It took off once it diverted me. I can’t believe how smart it is.”

“What’s smart?” Shadows filled the places where his eyes should be, leaving dark pools of endless mystery. Belatedly she realized their bodies touched in one long line from chest to knees, and it was all she could do to pull a coherent thought together. “What took off? Why did you attack me?”

A low growl emanated from him. “I didn’t attack you, I saved your life. Again. You’re welcome, by the way.”

“You saved me? From what, that out-of-control scooter? I’ll admit, I never heard it coming—”

“That’s because it wasn’t running at the time.”

“What?” Her eyes went wide as horror began to creep in. “That’s impossible.”

“
Impossible
is the definition of your life lately.” She sensed more than saw his head angle closer to hers, as if to share intimate whispers in the dark. A shiver she knew he must have felt shook her when the feathering of his breath caressed her lips. “The white-veiled eyes, the insanity that strikes normal people, the bizarre cloud of smoke moving of its own volition. All of it is impossible.”

“You forgot a masked man who appears out of nowhere.” Terrified he’d once again leave her drowning in a sea of ignorance that could get her killed, Kendall tried to hold onto his shirt, but it was some sort of tough material she couldn’t get a grip on. “You know what all of this means. I know you do.”

His hands came up to shackle her wrists as if he wanted to fling them away. “Let it go.”

“Damn it, don’t you see I’m trying to save my own life here? I can’t afford to
let it go
, or believe I’m as nutty as that jerk paramedic made me feel.” She gritted the words out through teeth that wanted to chatter in violent reaction to yet another near-death experience. “I’m smart enough to know that if I don’t figure this out, I’m dead. Now please, just answer me—have you ever heard of red-veiled eyes?”

“Red-veiled eyes means demonic possession, and glowing red eyes denotes an actual demon. That’s what I thought this case might be at first, since I screwed up and let one slip through my fingers about a month ago, but I was wrong. The thing on the loose now isn’t demonic in nature. It’s something else.” His voice had roughened around the edges. “Some paramedic was a jerk to you, huh?”

“Maybe he just thinks I’m pitiful.” She shrugged this away as unimportant, because it was. His casual acceptance of the horrific concept of demons running around loose in San Francisco—or anywhere else, for that matter—was nothing short of mind-boggling. “If you want to talk about glowing eyes, yours win the prize for going supernova when you took out my attacker at the hospital. And your hands...they were covered in some kind of weird white fire that didn’t seem to burn you. Yet in all the news reports I’ve read about you, no one has ever described anything like that.”

“You were able to see even that, were you?” His grip gentled by degrees, his thumbs rubbing the thin inner flesh of her wrists, as if to soothe her frenzied pulse. “You’ve got a gift. Though I’m sure right about now it’s feeling more like a curse.”

He had no idea. “My aunt can see ghosts. When I was a kid I thought I saw my grandfather’s spirit leave him, just as I thought I saw Dave Beamer’s. But I’ve been told that’s crazy talk, so I’ve always tried to pretend it’s not there.”

“Pretend all you want, but it won’t make it go away. If anything, you should be glad you have it. That gift seems to be protecting you.”

She frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“Unlike Dave Beamer and the man at the hospital, you seem impervious to being possessed. You’ve got just enough of an unusual psychic spark to keep it at bay. I think that’s why it keeps attacking you physically—it can’t get to you any other way.”

“Keep what at bay? What’s attacking me?” Again she tried to grab him. “
Please
tell me. My life depends on it, don’t you get that?”

He loosed a rough breath. “It’s a geist.”

The foreign-sounding word came out with great reluctance, and it only added to the ominous tone. “What is a geist?”

“You probably know it by another name—a poltergeist. But in reality, geists are nothing like they’re portrayed in Hollywood. They’re essentially human spirits that have gone bad.”

“Oh.” Kendall tried to even out her breathing. It didn’t help. The fabric of her reality was ripping under the pressure of everything she’d seen. If it ripped all the way through, she was terrified she’d have nothing left to support her sanity. “That’s a funny way of putting it.”

“What do you mean?”

“You make it sound as though spirits are like...I don’t know. Rotten fruit.”

“That’s as good a description as any. Try to understand—this is the physical world. The bodies that house our spirits, they’re nothing more than physical shells. Once that shell dies, the spirit no longer belongs here in the physical plane. If that spirit is not passed into the next world quickly, it changes. It devolves, goes insane. That’s when a ghost becomes a geist.”

“Um. Okay.” She swallowed, trying to accept his explanation when every word he uttered sounded like make-believe. “That doesn’t explain the whiteness in Dave’s eyes, or his sudden insanity.”

“He was possessed. Though I’ve never seen a geist possess anyone before now.” She couldn’t see his face, but there was a definite frown carried in his tone. “Usually ghosts and demons are the only culprits when it comes to human possession. Geists are the mindless, violent beings that toss physical objects around, throw door-slamming tantrums, pull a person’s hair, that sort of thing. They’re usually too unstable mentally to pull off possession, but not this one. This geist is one for the record books, including its fixation with you.”

“What?” The alarm rose so fast she could barely whisper the word, and she had to take a moment to tamp it back down. “You mean I was right to think this thing is targeting me? Like a stalker?”

“I don’t know how else to put it.” He shrugged, a movement she could feel far more than see. “A geist doesn’t have the mental capacity to focus on one person unless it’s emotionally bound to them, like a relative. Or a lover.” He caught her chin and tilted it up as if to receive a kiss, and her lips parted in a response she couldn’t help. “Has anyone in your life died recently?”

“Yes.” Her heart didn’t seem to know whether to stop or start, so in the end it fluttered uselessly. “Dave Beamer.”

“This particular geist possessed Beamer and killed him, just like it possessed that man here at Fisherman’s Wharf and made him pull off that murder-suicide which mirrored the KPOW attack.”

Her mind spun in an effort to grasp what he was saying. “Are you sure it’s the same...um...geist?”

“There’s only one geist in this city now, and this one’s unmistakable. As soon as I can corner it, I’ll pass it on to the next life as easily as I passed on your friend Beamer.”

She couldn’t help it. Her jaw unhinged. “Wow, you can do that?”

He waved this away. “The geist we’re dealing with now is so old, its death would have occurred awhile ago. Months, maybe even years ago. Are you sure you can’t think of anyone close to you who passed away?”

“No. There’s no one.”

“Then its obsession with you is a mystery I don’t have time to solve. I have to get this geist crossed over before it kills you, or before...”

She waited a beat. “Before what?”

Before he could answer, a flashlight beam bounced in their direction. As if he was part of the night itself, he moved to shield her from it with his black-cloaked frame. The press of his length was as hard as the wall at her back, and without warning Kendall imagined she could feel every muscle-padded contour and raw-edged bone in his body. A spurt of something like alarm sizzled through her when it occurred to her just how big this man was. The shroud of night had managed to hide his linebacker frame, but there was no way to overlook how her breasts flattened against the lower part of his rib cage, nor could it mask the sudden awareness of his hips and lower region now plastered against her stomach. Could he feel the scorching heat their bodies generated, or was that just her overstimulated imagination? Her thoughts whirled off in a thousand different directions, each one on a path that was completely inappropriate for their circumstances. Like how it would be to try to fit her smaller stature into his embrace. Or if she would have to stand on her tiptoes to reach his mouth with her own. Or whether or not it would be more exciting for him to leave his mask on or take it off if he took her to his bed.

An appalled breath hissed out of Kendall, and she shifted furtively away from the intoxicating press of his body. Her motor sure was running hot lately, she chastised herself, shocked by her lusty thoughts. First Zeke got her all steamed up with his bedroom eyes and hands made for caressing a woman’s body, and now she was revved-up for the so-called Guardian Angel. Since when had she pulled on her any-man-will-do hot pants? It had to be the danger, she decided, trying to ignore the fever flushing her body. Danger was an aphrodisiac, but as of now, she was immune. The one thing she had to focus on was making sure she stayed out of the hands of the geist, and not pushing herself into the hands of a man who had a mask fetish.

His grip on her tightened. “Stay still. As soon as they head back inside to report a moped trying to take a short cut through their trailer, I’ll walk you to your car and you can make your escape.”

“I...I just didn’t want you to crush my Junior Mints.”
Oh God, did I say that?

His huff of laughter confirmed her wince-worthy stupidity. “We wouldn’t want that, now would we?” With the unerring dexterity of a pickpocket, he lifted the box of candy from her bag with a telltale rattle. “I think they’re okay. Mind if I check them out just to be sure?”

“Um...”

“Don’t be stingy. Didn’t your mother ever teach you to share?” There was another faint rattle. “Are you going to open it, or should I?”

“Allow me.” Popping the lid, she shook one out into her palm and offered it. “Though I’m disappointed you don’t have some nifty gadget tucked away in a utility belt to do the job. You’re also missing a kick-ass cape in your ensemble, by the way.”

“It would get in the way. And as the masked hero who keeps saving you, I’m surprised you think I’m worth only one measly piece of candy.”

“Oh uh, I...” Her frazzled words faded into silence as he cupped his hand under hers and brought his mouth to her open palm. The precursory caress of his warm breath set her flesh ablaze scant moments before his lips slid, as light as a whisper, along the rim of her palm. Her lungs ceased to function, her breath catching in an audible hitch in her throat. Her skin flushed with a fever that seemed to hit everywhere at once, all because of an innocent brush of lips against her hand.

Innocent? Yeah, right.

His lips lingered with sensual deliberation, nuzzling her with an intensity so focused it was clearly a caress designed to seduce. Then he took the candy into his mouth, the moist rasp of his tongue licking the melted chocolate from the bowl of her palm, and everything that was feminine in her dissolved as easily as the candy. This was about as far from innocent as the sun was from the moon, and though she knew it was insane to let a strange man—strange on many, many levels—touch her with such open intimacy, she couldn’t find the strength to protest. Whether it was the shock of the night’s revelations or once again finding herself so close to death, she didn’t know. Nor did she care. What mattered was that she was alive, and there was nothing to stop her from enjoying that life to the fullest.