Yearnings: A Paranormal Romance Box Set (106 page)

“
NO. Do you hear me, Grant? I said no!” But it wasn’t up to Leigh.

Grant had to find his nephew. With a deep exhale, Grant knew what he had to do. He let go of his wolf body and as he did, he found he could sit up. He opened his eyes. The wolf lay in Leigh’s arms, bleeding, eyes shut, belly rising and falling with his deep, fast breaths.

He was nothing but light and energy now. Wonder filled him up. The weight, the feel of his surroundings, even the pain was gone. Was this death then? Leigh looked at him, pleading in her eyes. Her mouth moved but he couldn’t hear what she said.

His mother rushed to his side, embracing him. “My sweetest boy! Oh, how I have missed you! I have no words that can express how sorry I am for the heartache I burdened you with. My baby boy.”

“
Mom, I know.” He had to hurry. He couldn’t leave Leigh. Not for good. “It’s alright. Where’s Tristan? I have to get Bea her baby boy back now.”

“
Yes, he’s here.” Her eyes widened, and she nodded furiously. “Samuel. He held all of them here.”

“
Here? All of them?” Oh, no. Dread filled him up. He suspected he already knew what them she referred to—the souls.

She took his hand and with a quick blurring shove, they were in a room filled with small beds. Ten, fifteen, and so many more. At least fifty—fifty?!—little beds with small forms in them...sleeping or dying, Grant couldn’t tell. Dear God. From each little body, a tiny, gold threadlike light floated skyward.

“
Umbilical cords to their souls.”

“
But, where are their souls?” How could he possibly find all the people walking the earth with these children’s stolen souls keeping them alive? His mother pulled him along ignoring his despair. Most of these children were Asian. Chinese boys. He’d heard of children being sold into prostitution and slavery. Lijuan, he realized, had tried to tell him as much. He’d thought she’d meant herself, that she had survived a childhood of human trafficking, and that was why she had saved him and would do all she could to undermine the tong, which she blamed for overlooking the hundreds of exploited children in Chinatown.

Oh, God. She meant this? Souls on the black market.

His heart sank. Nausea washed over him even though he knew he couldn’t in fact vomit, having no body, he needed to purge this horror. His mother pulled his hand again.

“
Here he is, Grant. Here is our boy,” she said and bent at his bedside. She stroked his pale forehead. “I can’t get in here often. But I’ve tried to keep him safe. Samuel gives them enough to live, but not enough to thrive. How can they when most of them are missing?”

Grant fell to his knees and tried to take Tristan’s limp hand. But Grant had no form. After all these long years, he couldn’t even touch his nephew, and only seeing him just wasn’t good enough. He choked back tears he could not actually cry. Having to swallow the pain because he had no bodily way to get it out sickened him, making his vision tip and blur. “Who has
his
soul?”

“
I thought Samuel had him inside. His own son. But you killed Samuel and Tristan remains the same.”

Grant focused on the strand of gold floating above his nephew. “Where do they all lead?”

His mother shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut. “Into darkness so deep that you will never return if you enter it.”

“
How do you know?”

“
Because when I get too close, I can feel it trying to swallow me up. Like a cold undertow of pitch black. The deepest sorrow you could ever imagine.” She shivered, still stroking Tristan’s forehead, or leastwise mimicking what that stroke would look like if she could, in fact, touch her grandson.

Grant frowned. His mother had never been a brave woman. He couldn’t ask her to be one now. He knew the blackness she spoke of. It was where the wolf came from. Lijuan had helped him understand that the souls had protectors. All souls were tethered to death, even in life. The wolf and other like him guarded those tethers. The thieves are clever, though and from the corporeal side of life, stole the souls. In the moments that Grant lay dying in the gutter, when he had begged God for the power to save Tristan the wolf had heard him and beckoned Lijuan.

Now that he’d found Grant, the wolf could right the balance and free all the souls. And kill every soul thief.

“
Take me back,” Grant said, feeling a pull, like someone calling his name. He knew what he had to do.

His mother air-kissed Tristan, swept a sorrow-filled glance over the beds, and tugged Grant back down to the room where he lay as a wolf in Leigh’s arms. Giving his mother one last embrace, he shut his eyes and spun his energy back into the wolf’s body. The pain there hit him hard. He bit down and pushed through it, opening his eyes. Leigh’s soft voice became a beacon. One hand stroked his fur, and the other pressed something to his wound.

There were so many things he wished he could tell her. But he couldn’t risk it. His energy faded fast. He had to use the last of it to switch forms, and send the wolf to do what it did best. The wolf was the only one who could enter that blackness.

Clenching his teeth and willing his mind and heart to forget the fear that came with the pain, he told his bones and muscle and skin to become a man’s again. His energy faltered. The wolf whimpered. Leigh’s face filled his vision. Love shone there. Pure, hard, brave love. Even as an animal lying in her arms, she loved him?

Hope sparked in his chest near the wound Leigh pressed the cloth to.

He grunted, shut his eyes and let the wolf take him into the blackness to find Tristan. Now! The wolf answered the demand with its own, dominating Grant into submission, and for a long moment, the world was a dizzy struggle of wills and emotion. The black enclosed him, man turning wolf. That dank space his mother had described touched him. He knew it well, and it terrified him. He didn’t want to go down into that dark. He couldn’t shut his eyes anymore, because if this was his death, if he had failed, he had to see Leigh’s beautiful blue eyes brimming with love he didn’t deserve just one last time.

Too late.

Leigh was gone.

All of it was gone. The itchy rug underneath him, the powdery smell of Leigh’s gentle hands, the tang of blood. Gone. The black swallowed him up.

He howled. His fur bristled. He bared his fangs, and the second he felt solid ground under his paws, he launched through the black. Black gave way to gray. The rush of his own blood in his ears fell silent, as the wind in trees on a high snow-topped hill breathed through to him. He was here. He sniffed the air for the hint of Tristan that he knew only from the night he was called to the gutters to save Grant.

Slinking low, he trotted through the wet snow. A howl in the distance tugged at his heart. A wolf pack. They were looking for him—no. Not calling to him. To each other. Trekking prey. The wolf shook off the longing to join the pack, to simply be again. No failed soul keeper duties. No human knowledge. But he had to find the boy. Everything hinged on finding that boy. He’d made a vow to protect all souls and he had to free Tristan.

The name, the scent, free him. The urge took on imagery and emotion. Words lost the ability to live in him. Only the image of Tristan, the feel of him. But where? Where did he begin? The wolves howled, prey found. Unable to resist, he let out an answering chord into the evening sky. He warned the pack he was here. But would not be staying. The moon hung low, glowing bright. A tall man in the trees beckoned him. The ghost man with the dark eyes. He went to the ghost man. He knew his name. Somewhere in his mind, he knew this man. Jacob. Yes, Jacob would help.

Jacob was who brought him here to this distant wood, far from the Grayson estate. Far from the chaos Grant had come back to. Jacob had pulled him through space to this new place.

Boy. Find the boy, find the soul thief.

Sniff the air. Paw the ground. A scent. His own blood in the snow. He licked the wound in his chest. He looked around. There—in the wet ground under the snow. A pungent scent. Down the steep slope. Civilization. The darkness at its edge. On the wind, there, a scent of the boy. The pack in the distance. Missing being just a wolf. Not a man. Not a keeper. Needing him. The boy. The boy, the scent, the smell, that man. There. A sturdy woman breaking wood. Puffs of air at her mouth. There is where the wolf and Grant, together smelled the boy.

This couldn’t be right. Not this woman, out in the cold, clumsily chopping wood. Smoke wafted from the nearby cabin’s chimney. Could there be someone else inside? The one who truly housed Tristan’s soul?

Jacob crouched at his side, and they huddled low in the trees and foliage. “She isn’t alone. But she is the only soul thief here. Tristan is inside of her. There are others. So many more. But not here.”

His hackles rose. His mouth salivated. A bird chirped in the branches above. Small scampering paws in the underbrush. Sweet smell of boy. Jacob seemed to sense how torn he felt inside. The yearning to join the pack, the fear of being so close to the woman combined with sense of duty to the souls and now to Grant. Jacob patted him, reassuring him.

“
I know it must hurt, hearing them. I remember my life, too. Every day, I miss living. But it isn’t our time. We both know that. Release Tristan and I will help you return. Grant wants to go back and deep down, so do you. To find the next soul thief,” Jacob whispered. “I promise.”

He wanted to feel the belonging that came with a pack, to feel the love of a mate, her muzzle with his. That is what the wolf wanted. But the souls needed him, too. He needed to free this boy. This woman was a soul thief. He had to murder this woman, who, even while wielding an ax, looked as kind as Grant’s own mother. The wolf and Jacob both longed for all of the souls, every single one to be freed, returned to their bodies, or released to the ether, wherever they belonged now. Their theft had upset a balance Grant couldn’t decipher but could feel here inside of his wolf body.

Fear at the enormity of it all slipped over Grant. He had difficulty clinging to the surface of the wolf’s mind. The wolf had control and that terrified Grant. He couldn’t lose himself forever. He could feel the wolf’s longing as if it was his own. The longing for the pack felt the same as the longing he had for Leigh.

Leigh.

Tristan.

He couldn’t fail Tristan again, but he didn’t know what to do. He feared letting the wolf and Jacob lead.

The wolf harbored no more doubts, though. The wolf knew Jacob and trusted him implicitly; it could smell the boy, Tristan. Stealthily quiet, he stalked through the wet snow. Cold under his paws, then warmer, harder, bare ground. Silently slinking toward the woman. The ax stilled in the air. Puffs of air. A gasp. The woman saw him.

Now! He leapt forward. The woman struggled to right the ax. She lifted, swinging wildly. The blade grazed his tail. The wolf ducked and dodged, not giving up but hesitating nonetheless. Grant saw what was wrong. He was holding on too tightly. His fear of letting go was giving the wolf panic. He had to give into the wolf—into himself.

Surely if he did, he would die. The wolf would win this battle inside and Grant might be no more. But Tristan would live.

His desperate wish that it had been him taken, Tristan who had survived that night and who Lijuan found and saved, he could make that wish come true now. His heart tearing with pain, either from the stab of the flailing ax or from his heart breaking in two, he would never know. Tristan mattered more than life itself.

For the second time that night, perhaps in his life, Grant let go.

He let himself become pure, full wolf.

Wolf took over.

The woman’s scream tore through the cold air. Jacob hovered closer, urging him to attack again. The blade hurt when it thunked against his belly. Pain sang through his body. He stepped to the side and flashed his teeth. He nipped at her ankle, sending her toppling.

The ax fell, too, into the snow. She rolled over, grappling through the snow drift for the weapon. Someone had heard her, was coming. The man had a gun.

Wolf saw his chance.

Wolf pounced. Her soft flesh made his purchase precarious. He gripped with his claws and nosed at her throat. She screamed so loud his ears ached. Gunshot cracked through the sound of her scream. Wolf snarled, showing his dominance and power, preparing simultaneously for the cut of a bullet slicing into him. None came. He latched onto her jugular, at first a warning and then, smelling the sweet boy soul inside of her, sank his fangs into her hot flesh. Her scream gurgled and another shot careened in the night air. Birds scattered. Scampering stopped. He bit the man’s neck and tasted the blood and the scent as a tender soul slowly leaked out and floated through him then up, up, up into the starlit sky.

Wolf pulled back, unlatching its jaws.

Tristan was free. His body shook from exhaustion as he retreated, far into the cover of the trees. The wound he’d suffered earlier still stung, but his heart beat strong and hard. He threw his head skyward and released a long, mournful howl meant to tell his mate he was coming home. He turned his head to say good-bye, but Jacob was already gone.

~~~

Chapter Twenty-three

“
Where is he?” Leigh screamed at Jacob. He’d come back and for what? Grant had vanished right off of the sofa she, Nick and Beatrice had been placing him on. The bleeding hadn’t slowed, his breathing had remained shallow. He was pale and must have lost a lot of blood.