His Purrfect Mate (16 page)

“I know this is going to be difficult to believe, but when you were handling those statues, you accidentally cut your arm and released a demon, which took over your body, and sent you into a kind of dreamless sleep
for many decades. It’s 2013,” Chloe told her.  “The demon married several times, while in your body. One of those men was Hilary’s father.”

Sophronia
went pale and backed away from her. “No. That isn’t possible. Oh, God, I remember it taking over my mind.  We were staggering, falling around the room, it was controlling my body and I was fighting it.  I remember it calling out to Barrett, in my voice, and then everything went black.  It happened, didn’t it? Oh, no…Barrett? Where is Barrett? What happened to him?”

Chloe, Kenneth, and Hilary
exchanged dismayed glances.  Sophronia’s eyes filled with tears.

“Tell me!” she cried
frantically. She grabbed Hilary’s arm.  “He was my fated mate! I have to know! What happened? Did I kill him when I was in demon form? What happened?”

“
Nobody killed him.  He isn’t dead,” Karesh said.

His words struck Kenneth like a thunderbolt
,  like a physical blow.  His grandfather was alive?

The room fell completely silent, all eyes on
Karesh.  Chloe and her mother gaped with astonishment.

“What did you say?” Kenneth’s voice went ice cold. “Excuse me?”

“
Karesh, you had no right!” Abdul yelled at his son. “I am the leader of this family! You have overstepped your bounds!”

Kenneth whirled to face the man, his eyes blazing with anger.
“Abdul. You son of a bitch. My grandfather is alive, and you have knowledge of this?”

Kenneth had flown into
Turak and contacted Abdul the night before, and they’d devised this plan to lure in Sophronia.  They’d talked for hours.  Abdul had sat there and looked him in the face and shared dinner with Kenneth and the bodyguards he’d brought from California, and introduced him to his family, and never said a word about his grandfather.

Abdul took a deep breath, and appeared to be struggling to control himself as he glared daggers at
Karesh.

“There is no longer need to keep the man a prisoner,”
Karesh said coldly.  “All of these people know of the statues now. The secret is out.”

“I know that,” Abdul spat
out his words as if they tasted bitter. “I would have released him. But that was my decision, not yours.”

“Would you have?”
Karesh’s voice was scornful. He turned to Kenneth. “My father is no longer the man that he once was.  I think that he has been influenced by the demon.”

“
Karesh!” an attractive older woman cried out, sounding shocked. He shook his head at her sadly.

“I’m sorry, mother.  We all live for our duty, and we all know that it is more important than anything, including family. Father’s actions
lately have been…questionable.”

Kenneth’s arm slipped from around Chloe’s shoulders, and he whirled with fury on Abdul
,  grabbing him by the throat and slamming him against the wall. 

“Tell me,” he growled.
“Where is my grandfather?”

“Make him tell you!”
Sophronia cried out. “Where is Barrett?”

There were shouts from the soldiers
, who were working for Abdul, and from Abdul’s family.

Kenneth had
Bobbi, Jax, Heath, and Pixie on his side, and had bought two dozen of his own men with him from the Shifters, Inc., firm.  Within seconds, everyone in the room was bristling with anger – the shifters, literally bristling – and pointing weapons at each other.

“You must understand,” Abdul choked out. “We are not monsters.  After we tried to buy those two statues from him,
  he kept coming around here, asking questions.   He was asking everyone in town, stirring up curiousity, and he would not give up.  Year after year he came back to Turak. He risked exposing us. Finally we staged the plane crash and took him prisoner.”

“
Of course he kept coming back; he was trying to find out what had happened to his fated mate.  You’ve held my grandfather prisoner for fifty years. You made his family think he was dead. I can’t think of one good reason not to kill you.” Kenneth tightened his grip and Abdul gasped for air, his face reddening.

Kenneth was so angry that he could barely breathe. 
Maxwell had only been ten when Barrett disappeared.  Kenneth had never had the opportunity to meet his own grandfather.  All these years, the man had been held a prisoner, like a condemned murderer without even the right to trial? Kenneth’s grip tightened even more, and Abdul’s face went purple.

“Don’t kill him! Please!” Abdul’s wife cried out frantically.  “This is our duty, our destiny!  You do not understand what could happen if the demon were freed.”

Kenneth loosened his grip slightly. “And I don’t care. I just want my grandfather back, you son of a bitch,” he snarled at Abdul.

“You don’t care because you don’t know what this demon
is capable of,” Abdul wheezed, sucking in air.  “My ancestor, the great sorcerer-priest Garesh, made the same mistake. He was the one who summoned the demon Lashkallu and his servants from the demon realm, thinking he could control them and conquer all of the cities in Sumer. He found out very quickly, nobody can control the demon. The demon laid waste to entire cities, including Garesh’s city, killing thousands of people, making their blood boil like hot lava inside their bodies.”

“Who defeated the demon?” Chloe asked.  That was Chloe, ever the academic
, Kenneth thought.

“
Garesh did, at the cost of his own life,” Karesh told her. “He built the statues as vessels to trap the demon, and its two servants.  The only way to summon up a spell powerful enough to trap the demon and its servants in the statues was to sacrifice his own life by spilling all of his blood.   Before he did, he made his two oldest sons vow to split the statues up and take them to different parts of the country, so they would never reunite. They were to be walled up in two separate tombs, where they were to remain and be guarded forever.  My house is built on top of one of the tombs.”

Kenneth turned back to
Abdul, lips peeling back to reveal his fangs as they descended. Black fur rippled over his face and hands, his ears turned rounded, and claws shot from his fingertips, puncturing Abdul’s skin.

“
Enough talk.  Take me to my grandfather, now, or I swear to God I will kill you,” Kenneth rasped, voice shaking with fury.

* * *

“
Are you nervous?” Hilary asked Sophronia as their car bounced over the cratered road. 

“Dazed, bewildered…I’m too stunned to be nervous.
Can I look at your cellular telephone again?”

Hilary handed it to her. 
Sophronia stared the pictures on the phone’s screen in fascination.  “So there are hundreds of pictures inside this thing? And movies?  And it makes telephone calls, but like a radio, with no wires?”

“Wait till I teach you how to use Facebook,” Hillary said enthusiastically.

Chloe groaned aloud. Her mother was a crazy woman.

“How to use what?”
Sophronia asked, puzzled, turning the phone around and examining the back. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. The whole world has changed. I don’t have a job or a home.”

“Oh, don’t be silly. You’ll stay with me.  You’
ll be like my younger sister!” Hillary said enthusiastically.

“If Barrett is alive, I should be with him. We can live right next to you, though,”
Sophronia said. She stared into Hilary’s face again. “I can’t stop looking at you.  I’m so sad I didn’t get to see you grow up.”

“You know…we don’t know what kind of condition Barrett is going to be
in, and he’ll be in his 70s now,” Chloe said. Kenneth was sitting next to her, and she felt him go rigid when she said that.

“I don’t care,”
Sophronia said loyally. “I don’t care if he’s a thousand years old. He’s my fated mate, and I will be with him for as long as he’s alive.”

“Are you all right?”
Chloe asked Kenneth.

“I’ll be fine.” He grabbed her hand and squeezed it, and managed a smile, but the grim set of his jaw gave away his anger and distress.   She couldn’t blame him one bit.

Abdul was driving the vehicle.  Karesh, Kenneth, the female human named Pixie, and four of Kenneth shifter’s bodyguards had come along for the ride.

“There it is,” Abdul said.
 

Abdul had confessed to them that
Barrett had been trapped in his panther form ever since he was captured in the 1970s, at a private zoo owned by friends of the El-Debar family.    The zoo owners had never known that he was a panther shifter, only that he must be kept safe and treated well, Abdul told them. 

Barrett had come to Abdul’s home demanding answers, and refused to leave if he didn’t get them. Abdul had shot him with a tranquilizer dart, and, while he was unconscious, had placed a special collar on him – a collar that had been enchanted by a powerful sorcerer, to keep a shifter trapped in their animal form.

Then, Abdul had arranged for the faked plane crash in the mountains, with liberal bribes to the easily corruptible local police force to back up their story. They’d told Barrett’s family that Barrett’s body had never been found.

The car swiftly headed past a giraffe habitat, past a giant aviary, over a small bridge that crossed a river full of crocodiles, and on to a lush, sprawling jungle habitat where a panther paced through high grass.

“You see? It is beautiful! He has been treated like a prince!” Abdul’s tone was pleading.

Kenneth responded with a stream of obscenities, and leaped from the car. They all scrambled to follow him, and
Sophronia raced over to a puzzled looking zookeeper who had come to meet them.

“Let him out!” she cried.

He shook his head in bewilderment. “That is what my boss told me, but you do not understand.  He will attack you,” he protested. “He is very vicious.”

Kenneth half shifted
, face lengthening to a snout, and he snapped at the man’s neck, causing him to stagger back and cry out.

“I’ll show you vicious,”
Kenneth snarled. “That man is my grandfather, and you’ve been holding him prisoner here.  Let him out!”

“That is not possible!” the man cried.
He glanced at Abdul, who hung his head.

“What have you done?”
the zookeeper demanded. “This was a man that I kept caged here all these years??  We never would have kept him here if we’d known! This is criminal!”

Abdul
scowled sullenly and didn’t answer.

Furious,
the zookeeper stormed off to the back of the enclosure, and quickly used a key to open a series of gates, with Kenneth and everyone else hot on his heels.

The panther
was waiting for them. He rushed out, snarling, and Chloe saw he was wearing a strange jeweled collar.   He immediately ran over to Sophronia, and Chloe’s heart leaped into her throat. Would he still know her? Would he attack her?

The panther stopped in his tracks, and lay down on the ground at her feet.  
Sophronia fell to her knees, threw her arms around the panther’s neck, and buried her face in its fur, crying. “Barrett,” she sobbed. “You’re alive.”

She frantically began pulling at the collar.  “Take this off him! This must be what’s entrapping him!”

Pixie ran over and began fiddling with the collar. “Nice jewels on this,” she muttered. “I could fence this for a friggin’ fortune.” She had tiny lock picks in her hand and was expertly working the lock.

“It won’t be that easy,” Abdul said. “It’s an enchanted lock. You can’t just-”

“Can’t just what?” Pixie held the collar up, dangling from her hand. 

Barrett instantly shifted to human form, and threw his arms around
Sophronia.   Everybody gasped.  In his enchanted form, he hadn’t aged a day. He was tall, with corded muscles and rippling black hair, and eyes the color of the ocean.

“Oh my God,” Chloe said. “He looks exactly like you, Kenneth!” She stared at the panther’s
naked, muscular form, which was wrapped around Sophronia.   Sophronia flung her arms around his neck and buried her face in his shoulder.

Chloe
looked closer. “Wow. I mean
exactly
like you,” she marveled.

“Hey!” Kenneth said indignantly. “That’s my grandfather you’re checking out!”

“Oh, surely you aren’t jealous of your own grandfather,” Chloe laughed.  It was utterly adorable, she thought.

“Maybe.
A little,” he grumbled.

Barrett turned to stare at the group of people who were gawking at him. “Who are you?” he demanded. He looked at Kenneth. “Are you Maxwell’s son?
Where is Maxwell?”

“He’s in California.
I’m his son Kenneth.  Grandad,” Kenneth said emotionally. He moved forward to hug him, then paused, took off his jacket, and handed it to Barrett, who tied it around his waist like a loincloth. Then the two men hugged, long and hard.

Barrett swung around to glare at Abdul. “You traitorous son of a bitch,” he snarled. His fist shot out, and Abdul’s nose shattered, blood spraying everywhere.
Abdul staggered back, crying out.

“
How long was I in there? It’s been decades!” Barrett roared. “You bastard.” He raised one hand high, and it turned into a paw, claws shooting out.

“Don’t kill him!” Chloe leaped in front of Abdul. “It was the statues. I understand that you’re furious, you’re right to be furious, but you need to know – those statues contained demons. He and his family were despera
te to keep the demons contained, and they thought that you were a threat.”

“I knew it! I knew it was demonic possession!” Barrett cried. He turned to
Sophronia. “Do you remember what happened?”

“Very little,” she said.

He threw his muscular arms around her and pulled her to him. “You went into that room to start unpacking the collection we’d bought, and then I heard strange noises, and when you came out…you were a different person.  You were no longer my fated mate; I could sense it immediately. It was like you had died; it was like having a limb ripped from my body.  Your body was there, but you were gone.”