Heaven and Hell (Beautiful Beings, #2) (14 page)

“There’s more.  Shayne is up there, too.”  His hands on the wheel, he made no move to start the car.

“Then what are you waiting for, Brax?  Moore is there to kill her.  I can’t let that happen.  It’ll destroy him.  He wants his revenge for what she did to me so badly, I know he doesn’t’ see the consequences.”

Brax paused.  “Lux, you’re fresh out of the hospital and I was right there when the Doc told you to take it easy.  Yosemite is huge and…”

“And what?”

“And Shayne… Shayne is more dangerous than ever.”  He turned to me, his eyes filled with concern.  “She fully intended to kill you, Lux.  It wasn’t just a beating that got out of hand.  Her intent was to kill you and it still is.  If she sees you out there…  and besides, I don’t think she’ll just sit idly by and let Moore get even close to her, so you don’t really have to worry about him.”

“She’ll kill him.” I muttered.  “Please, Brax, stop arguing with me and get me there.”

“You care about him that much, huh?” He turned the key in the ignition, a flat and resigned line on his lips.

And you care that much about me, I thought with a pang of guilt. I sighed inwardly. I needed all of them, like Lothario had told me. I just never thought they would end up having romantic feelings for me, too, and becoming rivals. I needed everyone to work together. “Please, Brax.  If we’re to have any chance of saving him, you have to hurry.”

“I have a way of getting us there much faster.”  He turned onto the road.  “I’ll fly you there.”

I glanced at him, wondering if he could possibly have the power of flight.

“Don’t look at me like that, silly. I mean on a plane.”

I snorted. “You have a plane, too?” The riches that surrounded me continued to prove astounding.

“It’s considerably more modest than Moore’s, but it’ll get us there.”

After a quick drive to the airport, Brax parked near a hangar and came around to help me out of the car.  Inside the hanger, we came upon a small two seater that shined with promise.

“Come on,” he said, opening the passenger door.

“What about a pilot?”

“You're looking at him.”

I stared at him, dumbfounded.

“Don’t look so surprised.  I’m more than just a pretty face.  My uncle thought it’d be a cool thing for me to do.  Besides, look how handy it turned out to be.”

He hopped into the pilot’s seat and put on a headset while gesturing I do the same.  In an instant the motor roared to life.

“You must miss him,” I shouted into the din.

He shrugged, pointed to his ear then set the little microphone close to my lips and said, “What did you say?”

“I said, you must miss your uncle.”

“Yeah.” He directed the plane to the tarmac.  “More than I thought I would.  The old guy kinda grew on me.”

Concentrating as he brought the plane into the air, he was confident and self-assured as he piloted the small plane with an expert hand, but I could see how his uncle’s death still affected him.  Only when we’d reached the desired altitude did he completely relax.  With pain in his eyes, he looked at me.

I reached for his hand.  “I’m really sorry.  We won’t let Shayne get away with this.  I’ll help you, Brax, in any way I can.  And before this is all over, we’ll find the link between you, Shayne, your uncle and Moore.”

“And my parents.”  He stared out at the bay as it drifted further and further away.

“And your parents.”  I kissed his cheek, feeling his sorrow and loss.

“I have so many reasons to hate the Hatchett’s; Shayne for obvious reasons and Moore…. Well, for the spell he put you under and this hold he still has over you.  Despite all that, I know I need them in order to understand what happened to my parents… and what’s happening to me.  I think my uncle knew… or at least he had a good idea, but he’s not here…”  He choked.

“I’m here, Brax.”  I squeezed his hand.

He pressed a tight smile.  “I don’t know what I’d do without you.  I’d go nuts.  I need you; your goodness, your light.”  He was silent a long moment.  He occupied himself with the adjustment of various dials and switches, gazed out at the horizon then glanced at me.  “I’ve been seeing things, and now I even see my parents… as demons.”

“You’ve seen them?”

He nodded.  “At the estate.  I completely freaked.  My mom spoke to me and I instantly knew the voice… and my dad… his eyes, just like I remembered them… green and intense, but those were the only things I could recognize.  Their skin was charred, black and malodorous.  The kid in me wanted to block out the ugliness and follow the voice of my mother, but all I could do was vomit.”

“What did your mom say?”

“‘I’m sorry, I love you and I’m sorry,’ over and over again.”

“I can’t imagine how you must feel.”

“Yeah, can’t say it’s all that great.  And the worst of it is they warned me about something happening to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“What will happen to me?  Am I gonna become like them?  Am I gonna become like Shayne and Moore, like the very demons we fight?”

“I don’t know,” I muttered.  “We’ll start by finding out what happened to them, and why they disappeared.”

He grunted.  “I’m not like Moore.  I couldn’t live with myself knowing an evil entity was taking over my body.  I’ve seen what it’s done to them, how it’s destroying them and I won’t allow that to happen to me.  Maybe Shayne and Moore had a more innate ability to allow the evil into their lives, to live with it, but I don’t.”

“It’s not as easy to control as that, Brax.  Look at Shayne. As demonic and evil as she’s become, she’s desperate to avoid what’s coming.  The whole thing with Asher and the Book of Angels… it was all an attempt to… to find a cure in a sense, and Moore, he’s fighting it.”

Brax gripped the controls of the plane as though hoping to gain some control over the course of his life.  “I’m more and more like them, Lux.  I’m becoming one of them.”

I glimpsed his aura and hoped to find a hint of what awaited him, but it was impossible to know whether his aura was angelic or demonic.

Whether to find a clue or just to sooth the growing fear I felt for his fate, I leaned over and kissed him.

His lips were soft, supple and innocent one moment, then charged, hungry and urgent the next.  Intense and consuming, the kiss grew into something else; something new, strange and foreign.

No. Deep in the recess of my mind, I knew the sensations brought on by the kiss were not so foreign, not so new. I tried to find when I’d felt so swept away, so consumed by a kiss. Every inch of my skin longed for him, hungered for him.

He pulled away and brought his focus to piloting the plane. “That was...hot.” His teasing grin only made me want him more.

“Don’t you have an autopilot or something.”  I couldn’t take my hands off him.  My fingers walked along his lap while my other hand played with his soft hair.

“Ah, Lux,” he said, “if you keep this up…Damn, I wish I had autopilot. You sure know how to make a guy forget everything.” He tensed, visibly having a hard time concentrating on flying. “Now I just want to forget them all and just concentrate on you.”

“How long before we land?” My voice was a blend of husky wantonness and sharp command, as my hand inched its way up his thigh.

Brax closed his eyes for a second and swallowed. “We’ve still got a good twenty minutes to go.”  He turned to me, a crooked and naughty grin on his lips.  “I’ve never seen you like this, Lux. You’re so seductive. I like it.”

“Moore,” I murmured as tears rushed to line my eyes.

The naughty grin clenched into a tight line and his eyes filled with dismay.  “Again?”

“No, it’s not what you think.” The inevitable was right there, right in that hypnotizing kiss, and I didn’t want to face it. “I didn’t have visions of Moore.”

“Then what?  I know you guys are close and I know how he feels about you. This damned spell he has…”

My fingers tightened on his thigh and a pinching and painful sensation grasped my heart. “The pull Moore had on me, the amazing and inexplicable attraction… arousal I always felt when I was close to him, that’s what just happened now… with you.”

He turned to me, his jaw tight as he fought the fear growing inside him.

“I think you have a lot more in common with Moore than you thought.” Tears streaked my face as the truth dawned on him. “I’m afraid you may have that same curse.”

Chapter 15

“
N
o!”  His shout of denial rang out long and loud.

Pulling the headset off before I went deaf, I set it in my lap and stared silently at it.

The roar of the engine filled the void, masking Brax’s angry and confused mutterings as the majestic peaks and jagged ridges of Yosemite came into view; such beauty, mesmerizing and breathtaking.  Under any other circumstances this would have been a fascinating and inspiring flight filled with sights few ever witness, but now, it was just a mass of mountains and forest filled with potential evil and possible death.

Brax patted my headset and I put it back on.

“We’ll land over there.”  He pointed to a long stretch of flat land.  “It may be a bumpy landing.”

He spoke in a professional tone, cool, calm and in control. The effect was chilling, sending a shiver across my shoulders. His full concentration, good training and probably a bit of luck brought us to a landing that wasn’t as bad as I’d expected.

The plane rolled to a bumpy stop and Brax killed the engine. With the task completed and the silence weighing in, his gaze lost its resolve.

“I can’t be, Lux,” he muttered softly.  “I can’t be like them… like him.”

He pulled me into his arms and I fought the painful ball in my throat. This wasn’t a time for tears. There was too much to do.

“I won’t become like Shayne.  I won’t hurt you.  I’ll never hurt you.”

I pulled back to look at him. “You probably won’t be able to help yourself.”

“Moore fights it. He’s never hurt you.  Surely I can control this as much as he has.” He grasped my shoulders, his piercing eyes desperate to convince me.  “I’ll fight it.”

He licked his lips and I saw the hunger in the slacking of his jaw, in the subtle parting of his lips and in the narrowing of his eyes.

When he kissed me, my reaction was as strong and rapid as it had been earlier, but his restraint, his attempt to control was obvious.

“This desire for you, it’s stronger every day.  Every time I’m close to you, touch you, I can feel it take over, but it has nothing to do with a demonic spell.”  He covered my face with heated kisses. “I wanted you from the very moment I laid eyes on you.  That attraction, that need to get closer to you… it had nothing to do with what I’m becoming.  It was there from the start.  We had something special right from the start.”

I wanted to tell him how insidious evil could be, how it could fester and grow in unpredictable increments.  It was impossible to know how long he’d been acting on the demands of the demon in him.

“Brax,” I said.  “Your parents, or what I thought were your parents, asked me to help you.  They begged me not to slay you.  It’s the last thing in the world I want to do… so we have to find a way to help you… and the Hatchetts before it comes to that.  We have to find Asher.”

Brax nodded, his gaze resolute and ready to fight.  He hopped out of the plane, helped me down then pulled his cell out.  “I said I’d get in touch with him the moment I got back.”

“This place is so big.  It’s acres and acres…” I muttered softly as I looked at the endless mountains around us.

”Hey,” Brax said into the cell.  “I’m back.”  Listening, he nodded, looked up at the nearby forest and nodded again.  “Got it.  Ier.ll be right there.”

Clapping the phone shut, he returned to the plane and grabbed a backpack.

“Anything you want me to carry?” I asked.

He grabbed a flashlight and compass, and shoved them into his pack. “No. What I want is for you to stay here and sit tight. You’re still recovering, remember? I’ll be right back.”

Without leaving me time to argue, he ran to the forest.  I took half a dozen steps after him then stopped as I felt a strong pull in the other direction.

Standing motionless, I let the sensations wrap around me; sensations of love and longing. I knew it wasn’t from Brax. It was different. It ran deeper than any of the sensations brought on by Brax. This was all consuming, like an obsession.  The pull was irresistible.

Moore.

With no compass to guide me, I followed the pull that led me down the field to an outcropping of tall pines.

I saw him, contemplative as he sat on the upper branch of a distant tree.  Logic hinted at the impossibility of what I saw.  He was far away and obscured by branches, but I saw him nonetheless.

I ran as fast as I could over the rugged terrain, skipping over isolated shrubs, stones and saplings.  My heart pounded with the need to see and touch him, to confirm his true presence.