Rock Star Romance: Dan (Contemporary New Adult Rockstar Bad Boy Romance) (Hard Rock Star Series Book 4) (33 page)

****

Luckily, Natalie was much more receptive with
three lions insisting she listen. After they’d ridden back home, Susanna called
an emergency meeting of the two leaders of the pride so they could fill them
in. Charlie was on board almost immediately; apparently, he’d wondered why he
hadn’t heard about a council visit from friends or family either.

“That was an oversight,” Natalie admitted. “I
should have known, and I apologize for that.”

She was properly remorseful for silencing Susanna,
and Thomas was glad to see it. The five of them were gathered in their backyard
as the sun made its slow downward trek, lighting up the space underneath it in
brilliant yellow and red hues. Charlie, Thomas, and Leslie stood together as
Natalie apologized to a visibly uncomfortable Susanna.

“I put my comfort in the illusion of safety above
your actual feelings,” she said tearfully. “I failed you, and now there’s a
human out there looking to do us real harm.”

“You didn’t fail us,” Susanna said, her cheeks
flushed and warm. Thomas wished he could take some of the attention away from
her, but this needed to be done.

“I failed you,” Natalie repeated. “I’m your
matriarch; I’m supposed to protect you and help you become stronger, not make
you think you’re weak and ineffective.”

To everyone’s surprise, she dropped to her knees
and hung her head in shame. Susanna stared at her, open mouthed, until she
remembered the customary gesture of forgiveness and held out one shaking palm.

Natalie pressed her face against it and burst into
tears, and Charlie came behind her to help her up. Thomas knew the tears were
most likely because of her pregnancy, but Susanna looked grateful all the same,
though her cheeks were still a little pink with embarrassment. After she’d
risen, Natalie insisted on leading the charge into the field herself, but
Thomas turned her down.

“Susanna and I are going to take point on this
one,” he said, his voice sounding more confident than he felt. “These were her
flashes, and it could even be a human from her bloodline.”
Though I hope it
isn’t,
he thought. He knew it would hurt her more than anyone else if it
turned out she was somehow linked to this crazy assailant.

“I need to do this,” she said to Natalie, her
green eyes burning with determination. “I kept quiet on this, and I know I
should have spoken up earlier.”

“It’s not your fault; I shut you down,” their
matriarch reminded her.

“That may be, but I have to do this. Let me take
point.”

Natalie frowned, then finally nodded. She
hesitated before she spoke again.

“I don’t like it,” she said. “But I respect it.”

That was all Susanna wanted, Thomas knew. She was
never the type to need praise or extra affection, only the type to demand she
be given what she was due. It was part of the reason he’d fallen in love with
her. His eyes traveled over her sharp features now, and he was happy to see
that she looked oddly at peace as they headed toward the squat building on the
horizon. After they’d walked a mile past the edge of the Doyle property, they
caught sight of the barn. Susanna let out a cry that was a mixture of pain and
relief when she saw it, and Thomas shivered, as though he were feeling the
echoes of whatever had caused her to shout. As they got closer, they could see
it was a faded, rust-red barn that looked like it hadn’t been used in years.
When they were a hundred feet away, the five of them stopped and stared at the
building, huddled together in fear and anticipation.

“Why do I feel so…cold?” Leslie asked, her brown
eyes glossy as she gazed at the structure. “Why is this place making me feel so
bad?”

“I don’t know,” Susanna said. “But I really think
I’m gonna need a vacation after this.”

Thomas laughed, a dry chuckle that sounded more
like twigs snapping in the grass. Then it dawned on him that the sound really
was
twigs snapping in the grass, and they all whirled around, ready to lunge toward
whoever it was.

Standing not twenty feet away from them was a wiry
man with a unkempt beard and baggy black sweats. He was holding two guns, one
in each hand; they were identical, down to their sawed off barrels. Thomas had
to stare for nearly a full ten seconds before he realized who it was: Frank
Donovan, the human who ran Frank’s tires. What the hell was he doing here?

“Frank?” Natalie asked nervously. She took a step
forward, putting herself in the front of the group, and the man swung one of
his guns wide until it settled on her head. Leslie screamed, and he moved his
second gun to settle on her at chest level.

He grinned, and Thomas saw that his teeth were
yellowed with flecks of brown on the surface. ”Yeah, it’s old Frank. Finally
remembered me, eh? Finally remembered I exist?” The muscles in his arms were
twitching, and Thomas didn’t like what that meant for his trigger finger.

“What do you mean?” Thomas asked loudly, hoping to
split the man’s attention.
What the hell are you doing?
asked a voice in
his head, and he wasn’t sure if it was meant for him or the man with the guns.

“You know what I mean, freak,” Frank growled, his
eyes dark with hatred. “I know what you’ve been doing. Think you can drive us
out of town? Out of this state?” his hands tightened on the handles as he
screeched at them, spit flying out of his mouth. “Guess again. You can’t keep
the humans drugged up with memory serums forever, and I got an antidote. Know
what that means? I figured it out, freaks; old Frank figured it out!”

“Figured what out?” Susanna asked then, and she
didn’t even flinch when he moved one of his guns to her. Her face hardened, but
she didn’t move.

“That you guys are demons,
senorita,”
he
sneered. “Seen you with my own eyes, sprouting fur and claws as sharp as the
day is long. Tried to tell the others, but they didn’t believe me. It’s those
damn drugs you use to keep us docile. They wanted to see you for themselves,
and since they’re not enlightened, like me…” he laughed, and the sound was
crazed. “They didn’t see you. But
I
see you.” His smile slipped as he
gazed at Susanna, and Thomas wanted to leap in front of her and shield her from
everything—even his steely gaze.

“So you were trying to kill us from the start?”
Susanna’s voice didn’t portray any fear, while Thomas was struggling to keep
his pulse under control.
How can I get us out of this?

“Not from the start,” Frank admitted. “At first,
when I didn’t know for sure you were demons, I just wanted you gone. Then I saw
you change, when I was hiding down in the community center…I guess you guys do
have blind spots.”

Thomas looked at him then. “Blind spots?”

Frank beamed, looking genuinely proud of himself.
“You all are nose blind, just like any other human. Can’t smell your own shit.
So I took advantage of that.” He paused, and his smile faltered. “Not
literally. But I dressed in some of your clothes, and used the rest to make
quilts and blanket so you wouldn’t see me coming. You could pick up a little of
my scent, but not enough to pin me. Once I figured out you couldn’t see humans
clearly in visions, I was all set.”

A frisson of terror moved through Thomas’ body,
and he didn’t have to think of more questions to keep the man occupied—they
just came pouring out of him.

“How did you know about the visions?”

Frank smiled nastily. “You think you’re the only
people who know how to spy? I’ve been a lot closer than you think, Loverboy.”
He winked, and a wave of revulsion moved through him.
He must have seen us
the other day.

“Why are you doing this?” Thomas demanded. “Why
are you messing with us? We were going to fix your shop for you, and then move
on with our lives. We had nothing to do with its destruction, you have to know
that.”

“If you hadn’t been here, none of this would have
happened!”

Thomas sucked air into his lungs sharply as Frank
swung both of his guns toward him until they both pointed at his chest. His
heart stopped, and he heard screams, but they seemed soft and distant.

Frank’s mouth set into a thin line, and he
narrowed his eyes.

“No,” Thomas said frantically. He saw Natalie and
Charlie exchange a look, but he didn’t dare move his head to see what it was.
“Frank. Why are you doing this?”

“Because my niece got stuck by one of you beasts,
and when I demanded she cut ties with him, she cut me off instead!” Thomas
noticed that even the whites of Frank’s eyes were yellow. “My own flesh and
blood shunned me. I know you don’t care about humans, but my niece was the last
good thing I had in this god forsaken town.”

Frank’s thumbs pulled down on the hammers of both
guns, and adrenaline shot through Thomas’ body. “I didn’t get to burn you to
death, but I’ll burn you after. Wanna know something?” he smirked. “Your girl
Leslie wasn’t completely wrong about the burial ground. There’s shifter bodies
under that barn. Men like me have been putting them there for years. That’s why
you’re all drawn to this land. That’s why you’re all transfixed on it.”

That’s how you snuck up on us,
Thomas
realized.
Some weird shifter magic. Thanks a lot, metaphysics.

“Now, I think I’ll get this over with,” he said
finally, and his voice was choked with tears. “None of you try anything funny,
now. I’ll get you one at a time. Would have been better in the barn, but then
you had to go and figure out my plan.” He chuckled and shook his head. “You
know, it’s—”

A loud
boom
sounded, and the next moment,
Frank was dropping toward the ground, both guns falling from his lifeless
hands. Thomas blinked rapidly, trying to make sense out of the scene before
him; everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. The grass fluttered beneath
his body as his weight settled on it, and a dark red stain was spreading out
around him, turning the soil brown and wet. His eyes finally told his brain
that Frank’s head was missing—it had been torn clean off his shoulders by the
lioness standing over him, wearing an expression as bewildered as the rest of
the pride’s.

Susanna stared around at them with her eyes wide,
panting from the effort of ripping the man’s head off. She’d gotten over to him
before he realized she’d moved; but how? Before he could ask, she started
speaking.

“Everything slowed down,” Susanna said numbly. “It
came to me in a flash…and then it just slowed down. And I got to him before he
could…” she trailed off, and her vivid green eyes filled with tears. The
boom
must have come from her faster-than light movement.

Natalie was crying, and Charlie wrapped his arms
around his wife as she sobbed into his chest. Leslie was staring at the body,
unable to pull her eyes away from the darkening red pool around his frame. Her
face was bone-white, and Thomas had a feeling she wouldn’t be volunteering for
any more adventures for a while.

Susanna let out a strangled sob, and Thomas felt
his heart wrench in his chest even as relief started to wash into his
bloodstream. “It’s okay,” Thomas said, hurrying forward and stepping over
Frank’s corpse. “It’s okay. We’re safe now. You saved us.”

“We’re safe?” Susanna asked. She turned her eyes
toward him quizzically and drew in a deep, shuddering breath, apparently
gathering her air to speak again.

Then, for the first time ever, she fainted before
he got the chance to faint first.

****

They sat together in their wicker rocking chairs
every day afterward, holding hands and sipping mixed drinks while they stared
at the sunset. Susanna would sometimes go out before the sunset started and sit
on the grass, ripping individual blades from the soil absentmindedly until
Thomas joined her. After everything that had happened, it felt nice to be able
to stare blankly ahead without anticipation of anything ruining their marvelous
sunset. Evan would drop by on occasion, or Natalie, but for the most part,
everyone’s lives returned to their normal swing. Only Susanna and Thomas seemed
frozen for a while—trapped in place like ghostly images of their former selves.

“Anything today?” he would ask as he slipped his
hand into hers.

“Just normal stuff,” she would say. Or, “Kylie is
going to lose her keys down a storm drain tomorrow; it’ll tie up our pride’s
schedule since we’ll be down one car for the caravan.” Then they would talk
about television, or black holes; anything at all that wasn’t about Sierra
Leandra. Thomas kept thinking about the vacation she’d mentioned, wondering if
it was closer now, or further away.

Sometimes when he spoke she wouldn’t say anything,
and he knew that she was thinking about seeing Frank’s body crumple to the
ground, or how close Thomas had been to being shot to death. She wouldn’t move,
and it seemed like she wasn’t even breathing, so he would put an arm around her
shoulders as she let her feelings spread out and float away down the gentle
slope of their back yard and out over the fields, toward the fertile farmland
and the promise it held.

Then she started coming to him with predictions;
just weather changes at first, and then a few basketball game scores a day or
more in advance. It warmed his heart immeasurably to see the twinkle in her
deep green eyes as she spoke about the flash of clairvoyance excitedly,
stumbling over her words in trademark Susanna fashion. Slowly, the thin layer
of ice that had surrounded her since they’d been targeted started to crack and
fall away. She was laughing again, and singing. She stopped hiding when their
friends came over, and they all visibly reacted to the change in her demeanor.
On one particularly cool evening, he sat next to her in the grass, and she
turned to him with a slow smile moving across her face.

“Guess what I saw today?” she asked.

“What?” he said, expecting to hear about new horse
at the stables just outside of town, or the renewal of their favorite sitcom.

“The mountains,” she answered. “Covered in snow.
Beautiful peaks dusted in fluffy white flakes, three or four feet of it falling
at a time. A lodge, some rum, and a fire.”

Thomas blinked, not daring to believe what he was
hearing. “Where might this ski lodge be?” he asked casually.

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe Aspen? Perhaps Vermont?”
She closed her eyes thoughtfully. “I’m not quite sure, but I do know there was
a hot tub on the patio, which was also covered.”

Thomas turned to his mate and kissed her on the
lips. When he pulled back, she giggled, and the roughened chuckle was like
music to his ears. “What was that for?”

“Just because,” he answered. “Isn’t that reason
enough?”

Susanna pecked him on the cheek and gazed at him
dreamily, the sunset painting her skin even brighter and warmer than usual.
“It’s reason enough for me.”

THE END