a Touch of Revenge (Romantic Mystery - book 6): The Everly Gray Adventures (29 page)

“I didn’t realize you’d looked.” The man was full of surprises.

He shrugged. “You wanted to know they were safe. I checked.”

I loved him. I wanted to tell him, but it wasn’t time yet. I had to finish my quest for revenge before I would feel free to say it. “Thanks.” It was so…trivial compared to my feelings. I sighed, then went back to work. Our time would come.

The rest of the file I’d been reading didn’t have anything of interest, nothing I could understand, anyway. There were lab results on several different formulas, but nothing conclusive on any of them.

I tuned my fingers up a notch, and skimmed through the rest of the files in the box. The third from the bottom zinged me, and I wrenched it free from the stack. It wasn’t labeled like the others. No date, no experiment number. “This might be something.” I opened it, cautious.

A tangle of shock and oh-shit clogged my throat. I elbowed Pierce. “Look at this.” My voice was thin with excitement. “They drank the formula. There’s a record. And results. Connor and Grady both did it, together, like some kind of pact. What the hell were they thinking?”

He slid the sheaf of papers from my fingers. “Let me…” All that beautiful color that had returned to his face after the healing drained away, leaving him dingy gray.

I snatched the page, started reading. “How are we going to tell Cait?”

Pierce ran his hands over his face. “Don’t know. Teenage girls aren’t in my job description.”

I stared at him, mouth open. “Right. She’s the product of an experiment, has a right to know, and, damn it all, she probably needs to be examined for whatever these…” I slapped the paper, “untested drugs, I guess you’d call them. Anyway, who knows what they’re doing to her?”

Pierce leaned back, tapped his head against the wall. “Same thing they did to you.”

“What? You think my parents drank all these different versions of the formula? And maybe that’s why I have ESP fingers? Why the government has been watching me?” I crumpled in on myself, then straightened. “You’re right. Cait and I could have some of the same unknown substances in our genetic makeup. But I’m positive my parents wouldn’t have experimented on themselves when my mother was pregnant.”

Pierce shoved the papers aside and gathered me in his arms. “No, they wouldn’t. Not intentionally. But your mother was in a confined situation with Connor and Grady.”

I buried my nose in his chest, inhaled the scent of lavender. It was so out of place on my man, but damn, it was soothing. “True. And as demonic as they both are, they could have tricked her, or forced her to do any number of things.” It made my skin crawl. “At least now I know exactly what I want to question Connor about.”

He tipped my chin up. “You ready to do this?”

I nuzzled into his hand. “Yeah. Let’s get it over with, then move on to Grady.”

My neck prickled, and I jerked back. “Something’s wrong.” My feet were on the floor before I realized I was standing. “Witch energy.”

Siofra’s scream rattled my bones.

THIRTY-ONE

SIOFRA’S SCREAM WAS A SOUND
I never expected to hear, and would rather die before hearing again.

Pierce crowded behind me. “Got your back, Belisama.” Tension throbbed in his voice. Not being right there to save her had to be tearing him up. The weight of his trust in me rode heavy, but there was no choice. I was the only one who had a weapon equal to Connor’s.

The violence was palpable as we stormed into the center of it. Together.

I took in the scene with a single glance. Lorcán and Annie were held by an invisible force, splayed against the far wall in the living room, ghost white, faces frozen in horror, their hands curled tight to the plaster.

Siofra dangled from the ceiling, her neck bent at an unusual angle.

“Fuck.” Pierce angled to get in front of me, shoved at me. I blocked him. “She’ll slam you against the wall, too. I need you mobile and alert.

Fion Connor sat on the sofa, stone still, her stare riveted on Siofra.

Total calm washed over me. This was all mine. Just Fion Connor and me, energy to energy. And I was totally dependent on Pierce for backup if something went wrong. I shot a glance at him. Contained violence, but he had it under control.

I closed my eyes to get a clear view of the evil Connor was pouring into the room, and I hoped to get a glimpse of her intentions as well. They would make a difference in how I approached the battle.

The heat from Pierce’s body warmed my back. “Tell me what you need, Everly.” It came out a snarl. If Connor survived this, somehow, some way, Pierce would see that she didn’t leave the room alive.

But right now it was my fight. “Not sure yet. Stay close, but don’t touch me.” It was all I could do to get the words out when I wanted nothing more than to have his arms wrapped around me while I worked. But it wouldn’t be safe.

“Got it.” He backed up a half step.

Time skidded to slow motion while I assessed the situation. This attack was different from my other encounters with Connor’s destructive energy. It was nothing like the patterns she’d created to block the doors and windows in her house; this was depraved and ruthless.

And worse, I recognized the energy immediately. It was so similar to the colorful weavings I used when I healed, I could barely tell the difference between her work and mine—apart for the intention behind what we created. Disgust coiled in my belly and worked its way to my throat. Connor was using the energetic manifestation of my mother’s lethal formula, and she planned to kill us off one by one.

Siofra first, because her personal aura was the most pure. Connor would be able to “steal” that energy as soon as Siofra’s soul left her body, and from what I could tell, believed she’d be able to twist it and use it against us. What Connor had failed to understand: the very power she hoped to gain with the theft of Siofra’s life would drain her reserve energy.

There was a balance in nature that simply couldn’t be altered. It was one of those laws of physics, and woe be to the person who tampered with it.

The aura surrounding Siofra was a deep pink, almost pure love, and rare enough that I’d never seen anything like it before. Love, the most powerful force in nature, would be impossible for Connor to tame, and she didn’t have anywhere near enough badass to counteract Siofra’s strength. Temporarily incapacitate her, yes, but even that I couldn’t allow.

I began unraveling the energetic pattern Connor was using to suck the energy from Siofra, and managed to drill it full of holes, bloody energy leaking out all over the place. I popped my eyes open long enough to check on Siofra’s physical condition. Her color was beginning to come back, and I let go of a sigh that had been riding hard in my chest.

Before I could close my eyes and get back to work, Connor caught my gaze full on, and sneered. Then she heaved a ball of ugly, oily energy at me.

I ducked, shoved Pierce out of the way, and covered him with my body. He let out a curse, rolling me underneath him.

Siofra screamed. Pierce hauled me to my feet, but not in time to stop Siofra from crashing to the floor.

Connor had dropped her to aim the full blast of her attack at me. Smart move, since I was the bigger threat.

I staggered under the onslaught, bumping hard against Pierce. “Siofra needs you. I’ve got this.”

He trusted me enough to let me stand on my own, and it filled me with strength. My mother’s formula pulsed in my veins. I was her daughter. This energy belonged to me, a genetic gift that couldn’t be stolen by the likes of Fion Connor.

Power surged under my skin, and I began to change the pattern Connor was designing. I manipulated the layers that deviated from the healing formula my mother had created, altering the intent from
dis
-ease to healing.

But Connor was fast. She followed after me, switching the pattern back to its lethal configuration with lightning speed.

I considered touching Pierce, using the love we shared to fight Connor, but thought better of it. She was still holding Lorcán and Annie at bay, and that was slowly draining her reserves. Mine were strong. I could afford to wait her out, and keep Tynan safe in the process.

A shuffle sounded behind me. I didn’t dare look, and chance losing my focus. Pierce would take care of any threat. I trusted him. That simple act of acceptance gave me a renewed blast of power.

And then an icy cold hand threaded through mine. “This is my fight, too, El,” Cait said.

It was like nothing I’d ever experienced. Cait held the genetic attributes of my mother’s formula that were designed for biologic warfare. I was sure of it. The energy was heavy, dense, and very, very strong. Close to what her mother was using to destroy us, but they weren’t an exact match.

But it was the
exact
opposite of mine.

There was another critical difference between Cait and her mother—Cait chose to use her gift for healing rather than destruction.

We made a damn formidable team. Our auras joined, meshed into an entirely new configuration, one capable of mirroring Fion’s energy.

In a flash, Cait and I constructed a wall, slammed it in front of Fion, and clung to each other with every ounce of strength we had.

The wall shook, cracked.

Adrenaline shot through me, through Cait. We heaved it into the wall, and every bit of the malevolence Connor threw at us, turned on her, crushing her where she sat.

I tried to break my connection with Cait, to protect her from the final moments of her mother’s life. No go. The Universe, or Cait—maybe both—wouldn’t allow it. We held our position until every drop of energy had seeped from Fion’s body.

And still we held on.

Minutes ticked by. Maybe hours. And then with a great whoosh of energy, Connor’s soul left the earth plane, leaving Cait and me in a tangled, exhausted heap on the floor.

Every bone and muscle in my body ached, and I longed to collapse into Pierce’s arms to just simply sleep. Later. There was Cait to see to, Annie and Lorcán to check on, and Siofra to get to a doctor or the hospital. Oh, and we were going to need one of Pierce’s cleanup crews for Fion Connor’s body.

She was dead. The woman who killed my parents. Gone.

I worked my way to my elbows and looked around. Annie and Lorcán appeared to be dazed, but were moving. Pierce was tending to his mother. And Cait… “Are you okay?”

She rubbed her forehead. “Yeah, just muzzy-headed. Did we do what I think we did?”

I glanced at Connor. “I’m sorry, Cait. She was your mother—”

“No. She was my incubator. That’s all. Siofra has been more mother to me for the past day than Fion Connor ever was.” She huffed out a sad sigh. “I’m sorry it had to be this way, but she wasn’t right in the head, El. It made her happy to hurt people, and it had to stop.

“I wish it could have been different. I’ll carry a scar from murdering my mother for the rest of my life, but it would have been immoral to allow her to continue killing. Siofra, Lorcán, Pierce, you—that sacrifice was too great. And it took both of us to stop her. Guns or knives wouldn’t even have slowed her down. You know that, because when you shot her, it only deterred her for a few hours. Blowing her up might have worked. But this was…I hesitate to say ‘right,’ but it was. It had to be us, together.”

“I know.” There really wasn’t anything else for me to say. But Pierce and I would be watching over Cait for the rest of her life. “You’re part of
our
family now.”

Pierce helped his mother up, steadied her, then walked her to Lorcán. When they were safely tending each other, he bent to help Cait up, gave her a hug, then said something to her in Gaelic that made her smile. My man was so damn perfect…in his own, unique, stubborn, arrogant, loving, imperfect way.

Annie held her hand out, pulled me to my feet. It took a minute to get my knees under control, and then the hunger set in.

Cait spilled the words running through my head. “I’m starving. And I need a shower.”

Siofra smiled. “Those things we can fix. Tynan, will you please see to getting this bit of rubbish out of my living room while I heat up some stew for all of us?”

He kissed her cheek. “On it.”

Lorcán trailed Siofra into the kitchen, and I suspected he wouldn’t be more than two feet away from her for quite some time.

“Want me to handle the cleanup, Pierce?” Annie asked.

He cut a sideways look at Cait. “No. I have a team coming in.”

Annie had followed his gaze. “Cait, why don’t we take showers while Siofra prepares our midnight snack?”

“Yeah, that sounds good. I feel…dirty. What we just did, it was the right thing, but all wrong, too. You know?” There was stark anguish in her eyes that only time would ease.

I tugged her into a hug. “It was the right thing. And it was the wrong thing. We have these elements in our blood that we didn’t ask for, and we’ll carry the weight of them through every day of our lives.” I set her away from me. “But we’re strong women, Cait. And we can handle this so much better than either of our mothers did.”

She sighed. “I hope you’re right. I’m only twenty, and there’s a whole lot of life left for me to get through. And there’s still my father to face. He’ll be looking for…” Her eyes strayed to the sofa. “Eventually, he’ll wonder where she’s gone off to. But could we put off dealing with him until tomorrow? I’m really tired.”