Desire Awakened (Aaron's Kiss #13) (19 page)

“Whatever. If you run into him or his
members, just tell them to come and talk to me. I’ll straighten it
out with him. And if there’s a fine, I’ll take care of that too.”
She didn’t have any money, but she knew that if she gave him a
little pussy, as she’d done for Ollie’s help, then he’d be fine. “I
want you to go to my shop. There are people there and I want you to
tell me what the fuck they’re doing.”

Ollie looked like he might say no, but then
brightened. “We can play with them, can’t we? I mean, none of us
have had a good run in a few months. I’d like to be able to run me
down one or two humans just to scare them a bit.”

“I don’t care what you do, just don’t hurt
Lizzy. You remember who she is, right? The blonde with the big
magic.” She’d rolled her at eyes at him when that’s how he’d
referred to her. “You hurt her, you’d better find yourself a deep
fucking hole to hide in or I’ll come after you.”

“Nah, we won’t hurt her. Can’t anyway, she’s
marked. All of us can smell that.”

She waited again for him to explain, then
decided that she really didn’t care enough.

After they left, she wandered around the
grounds. There was enough trash around it to think it had at one
time been a dump. The empty buildings, all of them in some sort of
process of being built, had long since been neglected. Most of the
lower spaces where glass should have been were boarded up, and even
those had been broken out or had graffiti painted on them. She
wondered if anything could be done to this area other than to
bulldoze what was here and start over.

Going into the building she’d been working
from for a long time, she looked at her collection. She’d been
using the kitchen in this particular building since she’d found it.
She thought it had been slated to become a restaurant at one point,
and the kitchen was big enough for her to play in. She loved the
fact that the freezer was the perfect place to hide people when she
didn’t want anyone else to be able to contact them.

It was well lined, and she had used enough
of her kind of magic on it to ward it from others. The entire
building had been safeguarded against others. And if things went
the way she wanted, the plan she had for her building, now that she
owned it, she’d be as big if not bigger than Sherman had ever
dreamed for her to be. His book of spells that he’d given her just
before he’d disappeared had been very helpful in her start. And now
she was ready for more.

Pulling out the
Spells of White and
Black
, she opened a page at random. She knew them all by heart
in the back half of the book, the black magic, but she sometimes
like to dabble in the white just to fuck with it until she could
make it her own. It didn’t ever work, but that didn’t mean she
didn’t stop trying. Pulling up the one on how to make a tree grow
made her think that she’d see if she could make it go in reverse.
Going into the nearly dead grounds, it took her almost an hour to
find a tree, much less one suitable to practice on, and another
hour before she gave up. It was a stupid plan anyway. What the fuck
did she care if a tree grew or didn’t? Going back to the building,
she waited on the pack to return.

~~~

“Again.”

Logan glared at the man standing before him.
Shamus had been working with him for nearly five hours, and he was
hurting in places that he’d not known could hurt. Colin laughed
when he looked at him.

“Nay, I’ll not be giving you what you need
either, boyo. You said to work you until you got it. The lass said
for you to go slow and you said that you’d learn now. Not my fault
you’re as stubborn as she.” Colin raised his hand and wiggled his
fingers. “Like this.”

Lightning shot from his fingers and singed
the ground. Logan didn’t leap back as he had been doing when it
seemed to race toward him, but he waited. The line of blackened
grass stopped an inch from his toe. As he watched, the grass seemed
to heal itself over until there wasn’t a trace of what Colin had
just done.

Lifting up is hand, he felt the energy race
along his skin, but that was the way it had done every time. But
this time, he felt something more. He wiggled his fingers and felt
the strong urge to raise his other hand. He did so. The arc of
electricity leapt from one hand to the other and Logan held it.

“There’s a boy. Now you need to use it.
Think about where you’d like it to go.” Colin laughed. “But don’t
be tossing it at us. You canna harm us, and it will come back on
you tenfold.”

Logan had learned that, too, when he’d
unknowingly tried to pick Shamus up and toss him around liked he’d
been doing to him. The way he’d bounced along the dirt had him
seeing double for two hours.

“Now, Logan. Throw it at the ground
now.”

He did as Shamus had commanded and felt the
power drain him for a second as he pushed it from him. The beauty
of it, and the fact that he’d made it, made him both proud and sad
to see it destroyed. He looked up when Shamus patted him on the
back.

“You’ve done it. Of course it took you
nearly a day, but you’ve got it now.” Shamus patted him again and
told him to come along. “I’ve something to show you. And you’ve a
meeting with the Fates.”

They went to the largest tree that Logan had
ever seen. They’d been on pack property for most of the training,
but Bradley had asked them to move further back from their meeting
place. He had been afraid that the others would be afraid to come
and ready the area for the pack meeting, and it was the night
before the full moon. So they’d gone to the castle and Avalone.

“This is the tree of life. I show you this
so that you’ll know that magic resided in this place that is as old
as time. And when you come here, to this spot, you’ll know that
whatever you do, whatever you feel that is magical, it comes from
here. And I’d like to show you something that no one but a few have
ever seen.”

The area around the tree was amazing. On one
side, there were fruits of every kind hanging from it, apples,
oranges, and even fruits he didn’t know. Another side was filled
with small green buds and green branches filled with blossoms of
every color. As he and Shamus moved to another quarter of the tree,
he could see that the leaves had all but disappeared and that the
branches now were covered in snow; the leaves and buds were gone
and the grass beneath it held prints of animals that had passed by.
He walked to the final side, looked at the leaves here, and saw the
signs of fall, colors of gold and brown mixed with green, and Logan
watched as a few of the millions of leaves dropped to the ground.
He looked at Shamus.

“The tree will rotate. In a few months, the
fall will be winter and the spring will have turned to summer. It
will do this at each season, giving the tree life where there was
none and put it to sleep in others. It is truly the tree of
life.”

Logan nodded.

“But that’s not all it does. Come look.”

He took him to the spring side and pointed
to the upper branches. At first Logan wasn’t sure what he was
seeing until the tree seemed to bend toward him. He started to
reach for the leaves there and stopped, somehow knowing that to
touch was to harm and to harm what was here would never be
repaired.

“She trusts you.”

Logan knew that Shamus was right and laid
his hand on the bark in front of him. He heard the tree sigh. “She
is giving you a great gift, Logan, take it.”

The leaves just in front of him seemed to
flutter, and he focused on them. That’s when he saw it. His breath
caught when he realized what he was seeing. He watched as the
leaves started to change and move. “It’s my name and Lizzy’s.” More
leaves fanned around their names and then showed his son, Mathew’s,
as well as several more. No names on these but one, and the rest
simply said “Boy Child” and “Girl Child.” He watched the ones there
fan into more and more still until Shamus called his name. As he
watched, the tree branch stood again and he could no longer make
them out.

“You’ve been shown something that others
have never seen and will never know. Do you know what you’ve
seen?”

Logan nodded as he stepped away. “I’ve seen
my family. All of them. I’ve seen the children that Lizzy and I
will have, and their children, and theirs as well. Mathew too. He
will marry and have children as well. But not my sister.”

“No, and you won’t see hers either. Not
here. Donna’s branch is still forming. Do you know why?”

Logan shook his head but then nodded.

“You’re a bright man, aren’t you? Yes, Lizzy
saved her life, and the branch that was to end that day for her is
still reforming and becoming her own. She will live longer because
of what your mate gave her, but she will eventually die. You cannot
convert her; her chance at life will end when the time is
right.”

“Because she sort of cheated death
once?”

Shamus shook his head.

“Then why can’t I convert her?”

“That will be up to her own mate someday.
You must listen to me, Logan. There will be a time when you want
to, feel you need to, but you cannot. It is not your decision to
make, nor will the Fates be happy if you do.”

He nodded, trying his best to understand
when three women appeared before him. Christ, he didn’t think he’d
get used to that ever. He bowed before them as Shamus had, then the
other man disappeared. When one of them reached for his hand, he
took it and found himself in a large room filled with so much color
it was painful at first to see.

“We so love color, you see.” Atropos smiled
at him. “I can tone it down, but I’d rather not.”

“No, it’s your home. I would hate for
someone to come to my home and ask me to change things around for
them because they didn’t like it. Leave it. I’ll get used to
it.”

She smiled at him and asked him to have a
seat. He sank into the most comfortable chair he’d ever been in,
and felt the soreness from earlier dissipate. He looked at her when
he realized one of them had done it.

“We wanted you comfortable. As a wedding
gift, I’ll make sure you get a set of them. Now, why we brought you
here.” He nodded at Clotho as she continued. “You’ve seen the tree.
Did Shamus tell you that the only other person besides us that has
been given that gift is your Lizzy? She didn’t tell us until she
was nearly fifty, but then she has her own powers that even we’re
still trying to see. She’s very powerful.”

“And beautiful.”

They each nodded at him.

“I’m assuming that because she’s my mate is
why you gave me that gift as well.”

“No. We didn’t give you anything with the
tree. It is magic all its own. What you see from her is from her
only. But I believe you’ll be pleased with what she has asked us to
grant you.”

For a reason he couldn’t fathom, he was
afraid. Not terrified, but just scared enough to think that what
they were about to give him would change him forever. He looked at
Lachesis as she continued.

“It will help you in the years to come and
when dealing with Megan. She will be powerful when she finds you,
so the Tree has asked us to sort of speed up your training.” She
handed him a drawing and he looked at the cover of a book. “She
asks that you get this for the kingdom and return it. She believes
that Megan stole it, or was given it by Sherman, a very powerful
and evil man.”

“Mel’s first mate.”

Clotho shook her head.

“I’m sorry. I just assumed that you were
talking about him because of—”

“It’s the same man, just not the mate of
Mel. He tricked her, you see, all of them. We couldn’t intervene
because we cannot. But he served the purpose that was needed. But
you do know that he’s not dead, do you not?”

“He’s not? I thought that…I don’t
understand.”

Atropos smiled sadly.

“If he’s still alive then how is it that Mel
was able to mate with Shamus?”

“Shamus was her true mate all along. And
Sherman is alive and will be for all time. He has been changed, you
see. Changed into a living tree to watch and feel others around
him, but unable to ever interact with them. Until now.”

“Megan.” Her name popped into his head
almost immediately, and the sisters nodded. “She is going to set
him free.”

“No, she’s not that powerful, but she can
feed from him. The ground where she has her magic now brewing is
where he is. She, of course, doesn’t know this, but she can feel
the power of the earth. She can harm more humans if she were to
succeed in tapping into his roots. If she does that, I’m afraid
many more lives will be taken.”

Logan looked at the three of them. They had
said they were going to speed up his training. Now he understood
more. It was coming along faster than they’d thought, and he was
going to be somehow helpful in bringing Megan down. He leaned back
in his chair and regarded them.

“You need me.”

Lachesis smiled and nodded.

“What can I get from this if I let you power
me up?”

“You wish to bargain with us, Logan? Things
do not always go as you wish when you make a bargain with the
Fates.”

He nodded, remembering from some of the
movies he’d seen and the saying that he’d heard countless times.
“Be careful what you wish for. I understand that. But I don’t want
something for myself. It’s for…” He stood up to pace. “All my life
I’ve worked very hard, most of the time going without in order to
get to where I wanted to be. Not wealthy, though many think I was,
but I wanted more for my family. Then my mom died a few years after
I had Mathew. But I wanted Mathew to have more than me, better. Not
easier, but better. Understand?”

They nodded. “You wish for him to be able to
succeed.”

He shook his head, knelt before the three of
them, and realized that they were as beautiful as anything he’d
ever seen, but nothing compared to his Lizzy. “I want you to help
me find more people like me.” He shook his head. “I mean beings
that have a power or something that frightens them and they can
find help in learning to control it. I want you to help me give
them a place where they can go and feel safe secure and have
someone to answer their questions.”