Phillip: Lanning's Leap - Paranormal Erotic Romance (11 page)

Ray was screaming about what he knew all the way to the car. When he was shoved in the back seat, another man was suddenly right there beside him. He had no idea who this person was, but the fact that he wasn’t cuffed had him thinking he was with the cops.

“What the fuck are you doing here? I demand that you get out of here unless you’re going to help me. And right now, I could use someone helping me. These people are going to pay.” The man only nodded, and Ray noticed how he was dressed. “How the hell do you get in and out of that thing? Is it plastic? What the fuck are you doing here if not to help me out?”

“No. Body armor. It’s very helpful when I have work to do. Like now. I’m here to take care of you. As you were told, Ray, you are never going to see the inside of a cell. And I’m going to make sure you don’t.”

Ray started to scream, but stopped when he felt the slice across his throat. As the man got out of the car…sort of disappeared…Ray tried to get someone, anyone to listen to him as he pounded on the window. The blood staining his view as he got weaker and weaker was his, and no matter how tightly he held onto his wound, it would not stop bleeding. No one, it seemed, really did care what happened to him.

~~~

Misha had gone in to dress, as had the others, but Phillip had stayed where he was and hadn’t ventured around to the cars at all. He was pretty sure that he knew what had happened out there, but didn’t want to go there to see. He looked at Murph when she sat across from him, handing him a large glass of amber liquid. Phillip took it but didn’t say anything.

“You want it straight up or a little at a time?” He told her a little for right now. She nodded. “He’s dead. Nic sliced his throat open and made sure no one found him until he was dead. Better that way for all of us.”

“That wasn’t really a little, now was it?” Her grin had him leaning back in his chair. “He actually brought men here to kill us. Just come up on my deck and put a bullet in my head. If I hadn’t gotten a warning from James, I would have…what the fuck, Murph? I don’t think he’d figured out that we were shifters, but someone would have told him eventually. The man…he would have gotten away with it too.”

“Yes, he would have. There are just too many people on his payroll for him to get what he deserved. It had to be done.” Phillip had already figured that out when the first five names in Ray’s head were all federal agents he had on his side. “If we hadn’t killed him, like you said, we’d all be hurting. And always looking over our shoulder.”

“Charlie is going to hand the book over to them…the good guys, not the ones on his payroll. She said that she didn’t want it here anymore, and she thought perhaps if it was out that they had it and not her, things would go easier for us all. I think she’s right. Did you know where she had it?” Murph told him she’d not heard where it had been, only that Charlie had it here. “It was in the kitchen with a cookbook dust cover around it. I mean…Christ, anyone could have found it.”

“But they didn’t, and to be honest, I doubt that anyone would have even thought to look there. In a safe or even hidden in the yard, but not out in the open like she had it. That was brilliant of her.” Phillip nodded. “There’s more. Are you ready for it?”

“This has to end, Murph. Please tell me that sometime soon we all can just live our lives in a very quiet and normal way.” He thought of Max asking him to define normal and smiled. “I’m not sure if I know what the word normal means any more. It’s been so topsy turvy for a long time.”

“I can give you some highlights if you want them. They’re the good things that come our way.” He nodded at her. “You have three children. A set of boy twins and a daughter. You have more children, but those will come first. Misha and Hannah will have their son and then several more after that. Those children grow up to run one of the biggest leaps there has ever been. Your children will be helpful in ways that will make it a safe haven, as well as a place that people will respect and grow old in.”

“And you? What about you and Carter? The rest of the family?” She told him that was for another time. “Three children, huh? I like that. I guess this house isn’t too big for us after all.”

“No, it’s not. Anyway, the rest.” She handed him a file, something he’d not noticed until then. “Curtis Grant was killed this morning. Just after Max went to talk to them. He didn’t stay in the hotel room and it got him killed. Dottie was hurt as well, but it was thought that she was going to make it. When she got to the hospital this morning after she was hurt, they found that she had advanced ovarian cancer and has had it for a number of years. They only gave her a few weeks to live. Less I’m thinking from the reports. Not that it matters now. Someone got into her hospital room, even with a guard out front, and killed her as well. Made her pay, too, from the looks of it.”

He looked at the pictures t in the file. Curtis had been shot several times and then he’d been marked. Someone had cut his throat, then pulled his tongue out of the large gaping hole. But what had been done to Dottie was much worse. She’d been burned and nearly cut from sternum to navel before her heart had simply given out. Phillip asked her if Charlie knew yet.

“No. Not yet. I can tell her, but you should be there.” He told her that he’d tell her, but handed her back the pictures. “Dottie had given up everyone she knew. Apparently, she and Curtis had worked on their own book of names, and she had a list of them to give the officer that was first on the scene. He was one of the few good guys that are on the force. And as of this morning, I’ve taken the job as sheriff. Misha said it was the only way to make sure that everyone was safe. I don’t know how much safer I can keep people, but I told him I’d do it until they voted me out come the next election.”

He nodded and agreed with Misha. Murph was perfect for the job. And as much as she seemed to think that this was a temporary position, he knew that once she got in the office, they’d never let her leave. She’d not just clean it up there, but she’d have a better handle on what was going on with all the men too. Her abilities as Doran were going to help her in ways that would keep everyone on the straight and narrow.

“What else? I’m sure you know more than just that.” She nodded but didn’t say anything. “Come on, Murph, I can take it.”

“They want to take Charlie in.” He stood up, then sat again. Phillip was not going to let anyone take her without him. “Phillip, we’re not going to let them, but they might be able to do so without our helping them. As it is right now, she’s only going in for questioning. Nothing else. There are too many players in this to have her out free. At least with them, and you with her, she will be safe for a time. And they can make sure that everyone knows she knew nothing other than the book was in code that she couldn’t read it.”

“They think she had something to do with this? With all these deaths?” She only stared at him. “What are you not telling me? Damn it, Murph, just tell me.”

“Sonya.” That alone was almost enough to bring chills to his body, but he waited for her to finish. “She’s got the ear of a few people, and she’s telling them that Charlie was blackmailing my dad and was a part of the entire ring. Not that many are believing her, but she’s using something on them to get them to see things that aren’t there. Such as, there are some that think that Charlie was there when her…when Dottie and Curtis were killed, and that she actually pulled the trigger.”

“You know that’s not true.” Murph told him that she did know that. “So, just on that, a perfect stranger’s word, they’re going to accuse her of killing the only parents she knew?”

“It’s because of that reason. They weren’t her parents, and when she found out, she went a little over the edge.” Phillip wanted to go and find Charlie but stayed where he was. Getting as much information as he could was going to help them, and he knew it. “Charlie isn’t talking either. I mean, she’s handed over the book, but now she’s just sitting there. I’m very proud of her by the way. She has it down. Never play poker with her.”

He wanted to run screaming into the woods. Jokes. She was making jokes. But when he saw Charlie coming out of their house, he stood up to go to her. The men that had put Ray in the cruiser were just finding the dead man, and all hell had temporarily broken loose. Phillip held onto Charlie when Murph moved to take things under control.

“They asked me what I knew of Dottie and Curtis being killed. I think…they think I had something to do with it.” Phillip told her that it wasn’t going to stick. “But they want me to go downtown with them. I’m not going without a lawyer. Or someone bigger than them. Do you think you could ride there with me as your leopard? I’d pay him back with sex. He loves having sex with me, and I’d very much like to know I was safe. Wouldn’t you?”

He laughed. With all the stress of the day and everything else going on, he laughed. When she smiled at him, he pulled her to his body and held her tightly, and wondered not for the first time how he’d ever made it before she’d come into his life. He knew that while it had been a little less chaotic, it was also boring.

“I’m going to go with Murph in a bit. Did you know about Curtis and Dottie?” He told her that he’d just found out too. “I was mad at them, but I didn’t hate them enough to kill them.”

“I’m going with you when they take you in. Murph said for now it’s just for questions, but I’m going to be there with you. And I’m going to find us a good lawyer too. There is no reason for us to go into this half blind or halfcocked.”

They both watched as an ambulance came and pulled Welshouse from the back of the car. People were looking for clues, but he knew that they’d never find any. Nic would never be charged with anything because he’d bet anything there wasn’t a single shred of evidence tying him to the death. It would look like someone had gotten in and cut his throat, and it would never be tied to anyone in his family. The cameras on the other cars would prove that.

The questioning never happened. Sina showed up at the station with his mom, and everyone seemed to be going out of their way to make sure the two women were well taken care of. Someone had even taken a cruiser to his brother’s house and brought back his mom’s favorite cup so that she could have her tea in it.

But as for Charlie being questioned? No one, not a single person, could find any reason why she’d been brought in. When Sina winked at him, he knew that she’d changed their minds. He wondered if anyone realized what a wonderful person she was. His mom came over to him and kissed him on the cheek and told him that she loved him. Phillip thought things might just be looking up as they traveled to his home and they were both let out of the car.

For the first time in a while, they were alone at the house. It had been nearly six when the police and the rest of the department left them. The car had been put on a dolly and taken away about an hour before they’d gotten back, and the police, still trying to figure out how the hell anyone had gotten in the car without being seen, were now long gone too. Phillip was sitting on the deck with Charlie when Rocco came out to ask them what they wanted to do about dinner.

“I think I’ll take my lovely wife out for dinner. I have a couple of errands to do in town anyway. Why don’t you join us, Rocco? It would be great to have you eat with us.” He, of course, declined, but told them that was an excellent idea.

They were moving to the car to leave when Misha and Hannah pulled in the drive. After inviting them to join them, they were making their way into town and the restaurant when Phillip remembered the buildings Max had spoken of. Making a few phone calls while Charlie drove, he made an offer on all four of the buildings on the same block, as well as the one that Max had wanted him to buy. He was feeling pretty good about things as they were seated in the back of the restaurant. Phillip told Misha what he’d just done.

As they talked over the restoration of the buildings and what he might be doing with them, he saw Hannah rub her hand over her belly. Phillip had a blinding moment of clarity when he realized that he was going to be a father. He was going to be a father sometime soon, of two boys and a girl. For several moments he didn’t think he breathed, and when he did, he felt panicky. Looking at his brother, he blurted out the first thing that popped into his head.

“How the hell do you be a good father?” Of course they all laughed at him, and Phillip was okay with that. For now. But to be a father, he was going to make sure that he took notes on what Misha did and try his best to not be their dad. Misha wasn’t just his big brother and someone that he looked up to. He was his hero and had been his entire life.

The only person that Phillip admired more than his brother was his mom. Maribel Lanning was the best there was, hands down. She’d pretty much raised them on her own, gave them whatever they needed and not necessarily what they wanted, and made them into the men that they were. Good men. Not at all like their father. Yes, Phillip thought, not being his sire was going to be a good start to being a great father.

Chapter 10

Sonya watched her men work. Most of them were failing at fighting, but their magic would more than make up for it, she knew. To have them at her side when she went to the castle was going to win the war for her. And when she was inside, she was going to use all her considerable powers to take the royal family down and set herself up as reigning queen. That had been her goal since Sina had retired some years ago.

There had been some talk about Kendra not wanting to take the job. Sonya had actually told others that Kendra wasn’t fit for the job. It was a rumor that had taken a life of its own when she’d started it, but it fizzled out sooner than she had wanted. But Kendra had proven her rumors to be true over and over. What kind of queen would let her sister marry a mortal, then on top of that, get herself kidnapped? The Lanning family had been a stick in her ass for too long now, and she wanted them dead. But first she had to take the castle.

“My lady?” Sonya looked at the man standing next to her and smiled at him. He’d been her lover the last few nights and it was beginning to show on him. Sonya had certain tastes, and he’d been more than enough for her. But she was thinking he wouldn’t stand another night with her. Besides, his wife was making too much ruckus and that just would not do. Sonya had thought about killing her but didn’t have time for that right now. She had to save her magic for the coming war. “My lady, the second queen is wishing a word with you.”

“Sina?” He nodded. “Tell her to fuck off. Better yet, tell her I said to roll herself up on a pile of crap and die. It would do the world a big service if she did.”

“I cannot say that to…she would have me beheaded should I say…I cannot say that to the second queen.” She didn’t think he would, but she wouldn’t have such problems. But not today. “When should I tell her that you will meet her?”

“I’m not. Going to meet her today or any other day. Not on her terms anyway. I’ll see her when I see her and not before.” She’d heard someone say that in a movie and she’d never gotten to use it before. Sonya thought it was funny when the man in front of her only stared at her, shocked. “Just ignore her. If she asks again, tell her that I didn’t answer you. Which I didn’t. I don’t have time to go to tea parties with her today. I have to get this thing moving in the right direction, and I can’t keep an eye on things with her breathing down my back.”

As he moved away, she thought of the meeting that she had planned with the people in the castle, the war of all wars that was going to make her queen of it all. But there was something worrisome that she’d had to deal with, and right now all she could think about was her helper and where he’d gone. What the hell had happened to her Toby? And then there were the others that she’d hidden in the big building, spies to bring her information and details about the daily goings on of the rest of the family.
Where are they
? she wondered.

Sonya supposed when it came down to it, it didn’t matter. Her magic was much stronger, and once she had the power of the ones beside her, nothing would be able to stop her. Glancing to her left, she smiled at the guillotine that she’d had built last week.

The only way to kill one of them was to remove their head. Everyone knew that, but few knew that it had to be done with a silver blade that had been forged in the castle’s own smithy house. And fewer still knew that in order to take over the kingdom once they were dead, you had to spill first blood. Something she was going to do as soon as she had them in her clutches.

All she was going to do was nick the queen or the queen mother, and the rest would fall into place. Her magic was going to hold them for her, of course, while she took her silver blade that had been stolen from the smithy himself and cut her deeply enough that blood flowed freely. Then she would bring them here and line them up to have their heads removed. The Lannings, too, would have their heads fall into her woven basket, one that she’d made decades ago when she’d started her plan.

Sonya made her way back to her home. It wasn’t her first home, the one she’d grown up in and the one that she had lived in until recently. That house was being watched. Guards were waiting for her to come there so they might arrest her. They thought her a fool was all she could think of, and she had simply never returned.

But there were other things afoot, and she’d yet to figure out who had told the queen where she lived in the first place. Toby had more than likely done it. He’d been so full of himself lately that she’d bet that in a fit of power, he’d mentioned it. No matter, she’d already taken precautions to get to a better location, and this place nearly had everything she wanted in a home. Not her Toby, of course, but if he had told where they lived, she would have killed him anyway. Betrayal was something she did not tolerate.

This house was bigger than her first home, and it had plenty of room for her to plan in. One of the larger rooms on the lower floor had made a perfect office for her, and the room on the upper level had worked out for her play room. A room she used often, for it relaxed her to no end when she was hurting someone softer than her. And she had to admit, everyone was softer than she was. It was the way she loved it.

It had taken some doing to get all her equipment bought and put into this house, but now that she had it all set up, she’d been having so much fun in there she hadn’t wanted to leave it. And the men were very willing to do anything she said for them to do when she showed them what she had. Some, sadly, didn’t care for the way she had things set up, but she brought them around if she had to.

There had been a few that had told her no. Of course, they’d never lived to talk about her place. Only the select few, the ones that had seemed excited, had been able to continue breathing. She knew that they thought she was going to let them tie her to the iron cross and that they would be the one that would get to use the strap and whips she had there when they were shown to her room. But they figured it out soon enough when they entered, as there was nowhere for them to go until she was done with them. And only a few had made it past the first night. Toby had been one, and this man, Rogers, had been the other. Excited, she made her way up the stairs, turning off the lights as she went.

Blood had been spilled quite a bit in her play room. And as she could not trust any of the people who might act as a servant for her, she’d had to clean things herself. But last night had been a very good night and when she’d finished with Rogers, she’d been just too tired to go back and clean up. Perhaps she’d have him do it tonight.

“And then I’m going to have to find a replacement for him.” She didn’t want to have to go trolling again. She’d thought of taking a few of the humans to her lair, but they were too soft, puny when it came to the way she liked things, and hadn’t been much fun. The screaming and the begging could and did get on her nerves very quickly when they never stopped.

Using a bit of her magic, she locked up the house and then made her way to her planning room. There was still much to do and no time for mistakes. Things had to go fast and had to be done with precision. If not, everything would fail. And Sonya had been planning this for too long for things to go wrong now. It was going to be all hers.

Killing Curtis and Dottie had been something she’d not planned on either. They’d both been close to dying anyway, thanks mostly to them disobeying her and Sonya having to take away her magic. But she knew that Dottie had talked to one of the people from the castle. And no matter what she’d done to her while at the hospital, she would not tell her a name. Killing her had been tricky, but it had to be done. And to make matters worse, someone had blocked Dottie’s mind from her and Sonya couldn’t even get into her head to see who it was. But they’d both paid, and now that part of this was over. If Dottie had just kept Charleston away from the Lannings, killing them wouldn’t have been necessary. But with Charleston and Phillip meeting and the fucking pretend queen finding out, it had brought other things to light.

She’d been messing in the lives of those leopards for their entire lives, and no one had known about it until that damned woman Dottie had let Charlie meet and fall in love with the youngest of them. Damn it all to hell. Their power was going to be hard to deal with. Not impossible, but hard. And it was all Dottie’s fault.

The Lanning men had their mates. No matter that she’d taken the first stumbling block in her way out, they’d still managed to meet and fall in love with them. Mates were bad news. Especially when Linyah had been the one she’d been working to get out of the picture in the first place. And now, Sonya was pretty sure their magic had been shared with all of them. Including the women and any children that might be born of them.

“Why must everything be such a problem? When will people learn that my way is the way things are to go?” Sonya giggled. “Oh yeah, when I’m queen they’ll know better than to go against me.”

It was well after darkness had fallen before she moved out of her room to the main levels of her home. She was surprised to find the house cold and empty, and when she tried to reach for Rogers to ask him where he was, she met with nothingness. She decided that she’d had enough of people treating her as if she were nothing and reached for the door just as someone knocked on it.

Opening it, she was ready to blast the person on the other side for startling her, but she paused when she saw who it was. Manfred wasn’t one to come to her home, not even during the day. And the fact that he was covered in blood made her think things were going to be delayed more than she’d thought.

“My lady, there’s been an accident.” She was right. One of the idiots had done something that was going to make it more difficult to get the royal family to bow before her. “I’m afeared that Rogers has been killed.”

When he didn’t say anything else, she started tapping her foot. And when that didn’t work, she finally spoke. “Well? Was the rest of the work finished up before you left to take care of him?”

“My lady? It was Rogers, he worked for you. He was killed today by a falling tree. We were making more of the arrows that you—”

“And did you finish them? Come, come now. It’s not that difficult a question. Did you finish what I assigned you before you came here? Why am I assuming you didn’t?” Manfred started stammering about death and Rogers again, but all she could see was more delays and how there simply wasn’t time for them. “Tomorrow you will need to start early for work. I need those arrows done now so that I may cover them in magic. That sort of thing does not just happen, you know. And no lunch either, unless you are willing to eat while working. We have less than a day to get ready for this, and I will not tolerate any more delays. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

As soon as he nodded, she slammed the door in his face. There would be no one to play with tonight, thanks to Rogers’s insensitivity. The nerve of the man getting himself killed at this late hour. Didn’t he know she was under enough pressure and didn’t need him to be doing this to her?

As she made her way up the stairs to her bedroom, she thought of all the things he’d messed up by getting killed. She would have to go in earlier tomorrow just to make sure that everyone knew the importance of what they were up against. She had been telling them this daily, hourly as the time grew nearer, but apparently they’d forgotten. The thought of taking her whip with her tomorrow and using it on a few of the workers was tempting, but she didn’t want to come across as a horrible queen from the start. Sonya thought she’d have to think of other ways to get them motivated again. Then she was going to go and talk to Leila. It was well past the time to do it, and as much as she hated the woman, she had an army that would look good surrounding her when she went up against the castle.

She and Leila, the old Doran queen of her people, had never gotten along. But she knew the woman didn’t like the current queen and her family any more than Sonya did. In fact, Sonya had been working on souring that relationship for a great many years, hoping that someday she’d have a use for the old bat. And now that day had come. Tomorrow she was going to go and tell her what she was going to do and, if she was willing, let her be a part of it when they quite literally stormed the castle.

~~~

Leila was nearly ready to go to see her grandson when Durk came to the door. He was smiling an odd smile, and she couldn’t help but smile back at him. There was devilment up his sleeve, and she was going to enjoy this.

“Your grandson is here. Alone, should you like to know. He said it is with great urgency that he needs to talk to you very soon. As in the next five minutes, he said.” She asked him why that was funny. “Because, my lady, he has brought you a gift.”

“A gift? Am I going to like this gift from him?” Durk told her he didn’t think so. “Then why, pray tell, are you laughing?”

Something small and fast moved by her butler and into her room. It was a puppy. And when he started barking at her, at a very loud pitch, she snapped her fingers and told him to sit. As soon as he tried, several times as it turned out, his feet slipping out from under his ample butt all the while, she finally bent and picked him up.

That seemed to let him think it was all right to lick every part of her face. Putting her hand over his mouth, she looked him in the eye and told him in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t to do that. Max came into the room just as she started to ask Durk to get rid of the thing.

“You like him?” Leila looked at the pup now sitting all over her feet, then at her grandson. “Dad said I should have asked you first, but I thought for sure if you saw him, you couldn’t say no. I have his brother at home.”