Three Days of Dominance (20 page)

She was, surprisingly, an inch or so taller than Danii. When and how had that happened? She flicked a look at Amy’s feet. Low-heeled pumps. Puzzled, she stared at the yellow sunglasses. Absurdly, Amy still wore them inside the house. Someone else had those exact sunglasses. Exactly those.

There was a sign behind the door. She recalled the words—something about strange women, but…Amy was no stranger.

Danii tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Amy?”

“Yes?” The woman turned, wide-eyed, cocking her head a little to one side. She held out her hand as if to shake hands with Danii.

Her sister? No. The thought jarred her, thumping into her as shockingly as a blow to the head.
This is not my sister.

The fingernails were red and pointed like arrowheads, and the back of the woman’s hand bore a lacework of fine bloodred tattoos running along the ridges of her bones.

Alarm bells clanged. Danii shifted her right hand closer to the jacket opening, where with a few inches of movement, she could get at the pistol butt.

Not-Amy reached up and removed the sunglasses, revealing eyes of a startling orange, with a tinge of yellow in places.

“I’m Aroha.” She smiled and extended her arm a little farther, touching a fingernail to Danii’s arm and speaking a strange word as her fingernail scratched a feather-thin line on Danii’s skin.

Aroha? As her hand swept under her jacket toward the GLOCK, she scrambled to remember that name. She knew it from somewhere.

The moment slowed to molasses speed. Danii heard Killer’s nails clattering on the hallway floor, and Killer growling low and menacing as he walked. Killer never ever growled at friends. A fly buzzed past, wings flapping slow as a bird’s.

Those eyes—like Heketoro’s—too weird to be real. Danii shivered. Ice spread from the nail, up her arm, then outward, fanning across her chest, down to her legs, and she found herself crumpling to the floor to lie helpless and still, her head cushioned by her outstretched forearm. Her limbs were numb.

Aroha fastidiously wiped the fingernail against her shirt, then squatted, eyes almost kind with the echoes of her smile. She caressed Danii’s cheek.

“Frankly, I’m stunned at how easy it is to get into the houses of your kind. Though I can see why Heketoro likes you.” Her tongue ran along her upper lip. The tip of that tongue was tattooed with red spikes of lightning. “Now, there is something I simply must have you do for me.”

“Why?” Danii managed to croak, squeezing the sound through a narrowed throat. Using every particle of strength, she strained to raise an arm. Teeth clenched, neck muscles taut, and…nothing. Her body was there, she could feel the cold floor against her side. What had been used on her? Curare? The poison used in those darts by the natives with the blowguns? No, she was pretty sure that stuff stopped you breathing.

“Why am I doing this, Danii? I don’t think you need to know that.” The tips of the nails pressed lightly against Danii’s neck, not deep enough to scratch, but enough to hurt a little. “What use is such knowledge to someone who’ll be dead in a few hours? Listen carefully to what I say.”

“Hypnosis…can’t make…” Breathing
was
definitely harder. “Me do…anything I don’t want to!”

Aroha laughed, deep and sultry, and for a few seconds she leaned on Danii’s chest enough to stop her breathing. “Hypnosis? What makes you think I’d use something so primitive? Relax now. I’m a master—or should that be mistress?—at creating a
geas
. Listen to my words, my pretty, pretty words. I shall
so
enjoy watching you when you kill my brother.” She began to whisper, barely loud enough to reach Danii’s ears—repetitive, beguiling words that insinuated themselves into her thoughts and squirmed away before she could understand them.

Kill Heketoro? No. Never.

As she talked, Aroha rearranged Danii’s body, rolling her onto her back, pulling her arms and legs out straight. She unzipped Danii’s jeans, slipping them with her panties down past her buttocks to below her knees. Wherever Aroha’s skin accidentally grazed against hers, that same arousing shock sizzled through her.

Danii bit her lower lip, hard enough to taste blood. The pain was a welcome distraction from what the egg was doing to her.

Her eyes hooded, showing only a crescent of orange, Aroha surveyed Danii’s body, gaze moving leisurely upward from between her legs to her breasts. Red tongue flicking slowly out between her teeth, she reached down to unclip the chest strap of the GLOCK holster, then pushed Danii’s T-shirt up high, baring her black bra.

“Hmm, what have we here?”

Danii hissed in warning as Aroha efficiently inserted both hands into the cups and scooped out her breasts so they sat perkily above the squashed-down bra. “Don’t!” A trio of sharp fingernails lanced into her stomach, and she gasped in pain.

“
Never
”—Aroha leaned over, her eyes narrowed—“ever tell me no!”

Unable to stop her, Danii watched as Aroha delicately bit and licked at each nipple in turn. Her lips closed over one nipple and drew it in, enclosing it in softness. Even though she hated what Aroha was doing, her own nerve endings were determined to betray her. What that tongue was doing, oh, it was nice. Her nipples hardened. Her pulse deepened. She sighed.

“Ahh.” Aroha raised her head, then moved up Danii’s body like a lizard shifting position on a rock. She poised with her lips a bare inch from Danii’s, orange-yellow eyes locked on hers. “Perhaps”—she kissed Danii, tenderly—“perhaps, I can find a use for you afterward. But you distract me from my purpose, you naughty girl.”

When she moved away again, Danii breathed a sigh of relief, her eyes closing. Whatever happened, this woman was not winning, was not getting her way. This woman was her enemy.

I’ll fight you, she told herself, every step of the way.

Those fingers plunged inside her, thrusting upward, and when they touched the egg, she cried out, driving her pelvis upward, sent into an obliterating orgasm that faded the world into a buzzing cloud of white.

The whispering voice brought her back.

“So, Heketoro, the energy is here already. You’ve brought her that close. Tonight then. Tonight. What a surprise you will find.”

Then, though she struggled to break loose, a sea of whispered words and blood closed over Danii, dragging her down into the depths.

Chapter Thirteen

When she pulled the front door shut and saw the empty cane chair, a feeling of déjà vu overcame Danii, and a prickling hinted at danger. She patted the GLOCK, then the wrist sheath. All there. Time to pay a visit to the lake. Her forehead wrinkled when she checked her watch.
Seven forty-five. How did it get so late?

At the last of the porch steps, she paused, toe of boot still pointed, a millisecond before she completed the stride. Inside the house, Killer was whining.

Turning, she studied her house. Over three years she’d grown to like this little house and to love the neighbors that had come with moving here. Yet now a sense of finality came over her, a feeling that she might not see it again. She shook her head.
Silly.

But she ascended the steps and let Killer out. He leaped up, frantic, placing his paws on her thighs and trying to lick her everywhere his tongue would reach.

“Down! Down, Killer!” She couldn’t help patting him. The dog trainer would be horrified. “You can come. Okay?”

Should she leave a note for her friends, in case—again, she wasn’t sure exactly why the idea had occurred to her. But she found a notepad and pen and stood at the kitchen counter and wrote a note to her friends that seemed absurd yet somehow sensible.

If I don’t come back, please don’t worry. I’m okay. I’m happy.

She stared at the page. Her parents had died years ago, and her sister had moved to Spain with her husband. The house, well, they could sell it and—

Damn. She was going crazy.

She thumped the tip of the pen into the pad a few times, then gave up, put the pottery cat on top to hold it down, and headed for the door with Killer sticking close to her heels.

There was a lead in the car. She double-checked it was there before strapping the old surf ski a friend had left behind onto the roof racks. Killer watched her every move from the backseat. “Right. Let’s go,” she muttered, as if she had to convince herself.

Ten past eight at the lake, and the lights around the concrete path were on and making little pools of yellow. Above, the moon was full and fat as a saucer of milk waiting for a thirsty cat. Its light shimmered on the lake, painting a silver road out across the water from the edge to the darkened island.

If she’d been deaf, it might have seemed a tranquil evening.

But on the far side of the lake, floodlights carved a bright niche out of the night. There was a concert on. Two or three hundred people sat, lay, screamed and jumped up and down on the grass before a temporary platform—heavy metal from the sound of it. A flotilla of groupie ducks cruised the waters over near the concert.

No one, drunk or sober, had yet ventured over to this side.

For a few minutes, she stared at the island. The moon barely touched the tops of the trees, and deeper down at ground level, the dark tangle of shrubs and saplings made it look impenetrable. Yet that was where she knew she had to go. And the only way to get there was across the water. Prickles of clammy fear marched up her arms, then fled down her spine. She could do this. She had to.

Surf ski on her shoulder, a short plank in one hand, Danii made her way to the water’s edge, sinking ankle-deep in the soft mud as she laid the ski onto the water.

Breathe one two three. Think of that thing new mothers did. Lamaze? Breathe and forget the water. Breathe. Her heart wasn’t just pounding; it had a battering ram going full-time inside her, and the butterflies in her stomach had morphed into circling sharks.

Then she looked back.

Killer? She hadn’t thought this through too well. At that, her fear diminished, shrinking down so that only her legs shook. Control. Calm. She had a dog to take care of. As long as she didn’t have to get
in
the water.

“Well, Killer, if you can balance on that, you can come.” She looked at him, eyebrows raised, doubting her own wisdom in bringing him. “Let’s try this.” Cocker spaniels were water dogs, weren’t they?

Yet no matter how hard she tried to coax him onto the front of the ski, Killer refused to obey. Wouldn’t even get his paws wet. At last, frustrated and disgusted with herself, she abandoned the idea. Sitting midway on the ski, she tucked her feet into the little hollows and pushed off. Thank God. It only wobbled a little.

“Stay! Stay there, boy. I’ll be back soon.” God, she felt like a fool. If he went missing, she’d never forgive herself.

When she was a few feet out, Killer launched himself into the water and paddled to her, scrabbling his paws on the fiberglass. Laughing with relief, she hauled him up. “Good boy!” He sat there on the prow, dripping wet, laughing back at her, tongue lolling out and perfectly at home.

“You little bastard,” she muttered, grinning all the same. If the dog could conquer his fears, she could also.

Without a proper paddle, the piece of timber had to make do. The water looked terribly black, and weeds caught at the makeshift paddle, slowing her progress and making the surf ski lurch alarmingly a few times. Gradually, the island grew nearer.

When the nose of the surf ski slid up onto the shore, Danii waited a while for her heartbeat to quiet.
Why am I here
? There didn’t seem a clear reason, just a lot of incoherent feelings and a vague memory of Heketoro telling her she should be here. A man—she frowned, massaging between her brows—a man who seemed in the middle of a god-awful mess inside her head. For once, shooting first and questioning later might be a prudent course of action.

A hiatus in the music and screaming let her hear the small creatures shifting in the undergrowth. Something fled as she pulled the ski farther up the bank. Cold mud squished up between her toes. Killer ran up the bank to plunge happily into the undergrowth chasing some imaginary prey.

From the shore the island had appeared clogged with a hazardous mess of tree, shrub, creeper, and their rotting remains. Up close, in the light from the moon and the flickers from the floodlights that broke through the gaps in the vegetation, she could see spaces where there was grass, and a narrow worn pathway leading inward, toward the center. Perhaps the gardeners who maintained the park sometimes came here.

The music resumed, belting out its loud, insistent beat, drowning all other sound. That prickling of her skin came again—it was what she called her seventh sense. More than once it had saved her from harm. But why here? Could Heketoro be a danger to her? She knew she had to be here, now, tonight. The call of this island had pulled at her all day.

She moved onto the path, treading softly, her hand on the gun. Was he here?

The pathway opened out into a clearing dominated by a grand dead tree. The ground bulged where its roots emerged from the earth. Surging upward from a broad trunk as wide as a man could stretch his arms, the tree split into four great, gnarled branches that writhed their way upward, themselves dividing again and again. To Danii, it looked as if the tree strived to anchor its fingers into the sky. From the nearest of the large branches, long vines hung almost to the ground.

* * *

From childhood, Heketoro had been taught how to be strong and impassive in the face of danger. He’d seen the terrible deaths of men and women in battle, the humiliation of those he loved come about as a result of a misjudgment or a misstep of fate, and he knew how to school himself to reveal nothing. Yet, when he saw Danii walking toward him like a female leopard stalking prey—eyes alert, claws unsheathed, beauty and deadliness combined in one package, he barely remembered to breathe.

She had come.

Despite all that strove against this moment, she had come.

He wanted to go to her and gather her into a rib-cracking embrace and never let her go. Patience, he told himself. Observe the ritual or we both may die. He made his breathing settle to a steady rhythm—though his pulse rebelled and persisted in pounding hard at his temples. He allowed himself a smile. Considering the ritual and what he would now get to do to her body, that was not surprising.