Caught Forever Between (4 page)

Cass nodded. She’d been pushing fire all her life.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

C
ass
held Alex’s cool, unresponsive hand, her gaze on his dreaming face. At least, she hoped he was dreaming and that the dreams were sweet. The machines that monitored her Michelangelo’s every breath and heartbeat blipped and beeped, a steady, reassuring sound. Needles pierced his flesh and IVs dripped fluid and medication into his veins.

A beige curtain partially encircled Alex’s bed, giving the illusion of privacy, but the harsh coughing from the patient on the other side provided the reality. Cass’d placed a vase of lilacs on the nightstand; the purple flowers glimmered under the lights, and their sweet, clean scent filled the room.

She slid her hand over Alex’s chest, rested it over his heart. She felt every faint beat. She’d never tried looking into Alex, had never tried to see the inner man, feeling no need; whenever she looked at him, he dazzled her sight. He burned white-hot and pure, like the sun. She almost believed that sunlight filled his veins instead of blood; he was strong and golden and warm. He smelled of summer, like dew-flecked grass at dawn and cool blue lakes and August heat.

But now when she looked, Cass saw only darkness; sunlight hadn’t sprayed from his veins, after all. Now she only smelled stale air laced with disease and death.

She caressed his hand, squeezed it. “Don’t leave me, Alexander Paris,” she whispered. “Don’t let go.”

“Hey, Cass,” drawled a soft, familiar voice.

Cass glanced up as Raleigh strode into the room, his sketch pad tucked under his arm. The sight of him was like a knife to the heart — tall and lean, long blond hair framing his face and sweeping past his shoulders, his lips curved into a smile. Except for the wry twist to his lips and the shadows lurking in his cobalt-blue gaze, Raleigh was the spitting image of his older brother.

But where Alex blazed, burning with life and laughter and talent, Raleigh was more like a reflection in an old, dim mirror. His eyes held dark secrets, and a look of mirth lit his face at odd moments — like he’d heard a good joke, a
really
good one, but a joke only he was smart enough to understand.

Cass often felt sorry for Raleigh. Twenty-one to Alex’s twenty-four, he was light-years behind in talent and personality. Yet he tried so hard to be like his brother.

“How is he?” Raleigh asked, his voice shaking Cass from her thoughts. He tossed his sketch pad onto the nightstand next to the vase of lilacs.

Cass noticed dark spots spattered or dripped across the sketch pad’s cover. Looked like blood. Maybe from That Night . . . “The same,” she said. “But I believe he’ll get better soon.”

How had blood gotten onto Raleigh’s sketch pad?

“Do you, now?” A strange tone edged Raleigh’s voice.

Cass looked at him. His gaze was on his brother’s face, his own still and tight with some emotion — grief, she thought, but in the split second before Raleigh’s attention shifted back to her, she realized, with a cold shock, that what she saw on his face was hatred.

“Well, if he doesn’t,” Raleigh said, voice hushed, “I’ll take you for my apprentice, Cass. That’s a promise.”

“You don’t have a practice,” Cass said.

“I will,” Raleigh said.

She stared into Raleigh’s eyes, looked for light in his midnight-blue gaze, searched for the sun, but all she saw was her own reflection. His gaze shifted back to Alex.

Cold iced Cass’s veins. She felt faint movement beneath her hand. Alex’s fingers twitched within her grasp. Pulse racing, heart triple-timing, she kept from reacting to the movement, to the fire melting the ice within her, to the sudden hope blazing in her heart. A sunburst filled her vision, golden and white-hot, then it was gone. Cass squeezed Alex’s hand.

Then, glancing up, she
looked
into Raleigh.

An endless abyss stretched before her, utterly lightless; a yawning maw surrounded by row upon row of razor-sharp fangs as yellowed as old bones. Like a black hole it sucked in everything around it. Compressed. Absorbed. Annihilated. Nothing escaped. Nothing remained
to
escape.

Had Raleigh attempted to feed the void with Alex’s light? Tried to shift from reflection to the one reflected? Yearned to live Alex’s life?

Had Alex finally
looked
into his brother? And seen the truth of him?

Shuddering, Cass turned her face away from Raleigh and her vision. Instead, she looked at Alex’s pale face. She released his hand and wiped her sweaty palm against her skirt. Her heartbeat thudded loudly in her ears. She felt sick.

“What were you doing?” Raleigh asked, his voice flat. He leaned over her and tipped up her chin with an ink-stained finger. “Were you
looking
?” he whispered.

Beneath Raleigh’s sharp sage cologne, Cass smelled something hot and bitter, like vomit in an alley, like the lingering stench at the shop.

The blood on Raleigh’s sketch pad
was
Alex’s. It’d been spattered there when Raleigh had shot him. Had he still been there when she’d come in? Gone out the back? And what — came back in to see his handiwork? her reaction? to savor the moment? all of the above?

And Devlin — the
loup garou
— was on his way to deliver cold and brutal justice to the wrong person.

Or, at least, for the wrong reason. What
had
she seen within Helena’s heart?

“What did you
see,
Cassie?” Raleigh demanded, leaning in close enough for a kiss, his breath hot against her cheek, his sage and bitter-bile scent stealing her breath. One hand closed on her shoulder.

Forcing a smile onto her lips, Cass met his black-hole gaze. “The sun,” she said. “Only the sun.”

Raleigh blinked.

“I’m tired. Would you mind taking me home?” Cass said. “I hate making the trip alone, especially on the bus.”

“Yeah,” he said, releasing her shoulder. “Sure.”

“Great. Just let me call Helena and tell her she doesn’t have to meet me.” At Raleigh’s nod, Cass fished her cell out of her purse and speed-dialed her sister. The phone rang twice, then Helena’s voice mail kicked on. Dread snaked through Cass.

It’s too soon!
she thought, glancing at the clock. She left a message for Helena to phone her before coming over, then ended the call.

Cass glanced at Raleigh. His sardonic expression and tilted smile were back in place. Something cold and dark twisted within her, latched on to her heart. He wouldn’t be wearing that expression much longer.

“Let’s go,” she said.

Lights burned inside the shop. Cass’s dread intensified. She climbed out of Raleigh’s pickup and shut the door. The night air felt thick and still, oddly soundless, given that it wasn’t yet midnight. On the sidewalk, people hurried by, shoulders hunched, hands in pockets, like a storm loomed over them or a mugger followed, surefooted and silent.

He’s here,
Cass thought. The
loup garou
had arrived and, somehow — primal instinct, sixth sense — people felt the danger in their prickling skins, their senses electrified and wary.

Just like Cass’s.

“Looks like Helena didn’t get your message,” Raleigh drawled, narrowed gaze on the light seeping around the boarded-up windows. “You still want me to come in?”

“Just to make sure it’s safe, okay?”

Raleigh grunted in assent.

Cass pushed open the unlocked door. The bell above tinkled, the sound loud in the silent shop. She looked around the room; not much to see or hide behind since she’d cleaned it and trashed all the ruined furniture and equipment. Counter. Walls bare of patterns. Fan. Nothing out of place.

She glanced at the door leading to the back room and the living quarters upstairs. It was open. Her heart leapt into her throat, and she felt cold and fevered at the same time.

“Helena?” she called.

Silence.

Taking in a deep breath, Cass hurried across the stone floor — cleaned of the blood-smeared swirls and designs etched forever onto her heart — and through the door. A thought arrowed through her mind:
Maybe she didn’t return my call because she’s already dead.

“Cass?” Raleigh said. “Something wrong?”

She didn’t answer him, couldn’t. Her words dried up in her throat when she saw her sister backed up against the kitchen counter, her face white, her gaze locked on something or someone out of Cass’s sight — but she didn’t need to see Devlin to know he was there. A blood-red moon, full and swollen, filled her vision. She stumbled to a halt, her hand groping for the wall.

Cass blinked until the image cleared from her mind and from her sight. Helena didn’t glance at her, didn’t even blink. Maybe she believed her steady gaze kept the beast in his place.

“What’s going on?” Raleigh stopped beside Cass. He fell silent, his narrowed gaze dropping from Helena’s face to her white-knuckled hands gripping the counter behind her. He took a step back.

Cass gripped his arm. “I made a mistake,” she said, her voice low and level. She knew the
loup garou
’s pointed ears would hear her even if she whispered. “I gave the wrong name.”

Raleigh stared at her, his muscles tensing beneath her tight-fingered grip. “Who are you — ”

In a blur of snarling movement, Devlin sprang around the corner and onto Raleigh, hitting him so hard that Cass was knocked away. Her head thudded into the wall. Bursts of color starred her vision. Nausea knotted her belly. She slid to the floor.

As her vision cleared, she saw Raleigh on the floor, his right arm up and over his throat, his blond hair spilled across the floor like honey, his eyes wide as he struggled to escape the creature on top of him.

Devlin, still mostly in two-legged form, eyes silvered and gleaming, black claws extending from human fingers, crouched on Raleigh, knee to chest.

Cass glanced up as a hand latched around her arm and hauled her to her feet. Helena clutched a steak knife. Cass sucked in her breath.

A low growl, building in intensity, froze them both. Cass looked at the
loup garou.
Devlin’s claws pierced Raleigh’s shoulders. The smell of blood and musk filled the room. The
loup garou
watched Cass through a wild tangle of hair, curving canines revealed as he growled.

“I gave you the wrong name,” Cass said, heart pounding. She wondered if Devlin was still human enough to reason with. Wondered if he’d ever been. What had Gabrielle called him?
Coeur sauvage.
Wild heart.

“Raleigh shot Alex,” Cass said. “I’ll still walk the road with you,
loup garou,
but let my sister walk away.”

“No,” Devlin said, voice thick. “You had it right. She a kinslayer, for true.” His burning gaze fixed on Helena.

Helena held his gaze for only a heartbeat or two before she lunged, jaw clenched, knife slashing like claws through the air, arcing down toward Devlin’s chest.

“No! Don’t!” Cass cried, uncertain of who her words were meant for.

The
loup garou
yanked one hand from Raleigh’s shoulder and slapped the knife from Helena’s hand. The blade tunk-tunked across the stone tiles. Helena’s wrist snapped beneath Devlin’s black-clawed grip, the sound sharp and sickening. Gasping, she dropped to her knees.

“Kinslayer,” Devlin snarled.

“It was an accident, but I’d do it again,” she whispered. Sweat beaded her forehead. “I’ve got no regrets.”

Helena looked at Cass, and Cass felt herself drawn into her pained, defiant eyes like smoke into a fan. Thoughts and images whirled through her mind, leaving her dazed.

Tiger. Sleeping cub. Black silhouette.

She’d been right. And wrong.

Cass knew in that moment, knew it with the clarity of a polished mirror, a mirror aimed behind her, that her treasured and puzzling memory of her mother bending over her was a memory of Helena; long red curls, dark eyes, smoky-sweet smell of tobacco and vanilla. The glitter sparkling on her face hadn’t been fairy sprinkles or magic dust or even tears — it’d been droplets of blood, their mother’s blood.

Closing her eyes, Cass turned her face away.

“She was doing meth again. Neglecting you,” Helena said. “Her life
revolved
around meth. I asked her to give you to me, since she had no time for you. I was eighteen, Cass, and I’d been on my own since you were born. Because she had no time for me, either. And I asked . . . we argued . . . she hit me . . . one thing led to another.”

Helena laughed, a low, throaty sound full of irony. “When I found out you were an Intuitive, I was afraid you’d see what I’d done. And hate me for it. So I sent you to Alex.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And I was right.”

“Cass, I got nothing to do with this — ” Raleigh’s words ended with a snarl from the
loup garou.
Raleigh moaned and whether it was just simple fear or added pain, Cass couldn’t tell.

“Cassandra Aphrodite Danzinger,” said a familiar voice. “Open your eyes, girl, and witness what you done brought about.”