They all knew about the Otherworld. Knew that when a loved one died, that person would go to a better place where eventually all their souls would meet once again after death. It never made death any easier. No, if those left behind were fortunate to live out their lives in relative health, many years would pass before they saw a deceased loved one again.
For Alastair, he’d been granted a boon from Isis to visit Aurora after she’d been shot, allowed to see for himself she was at peace and to talk to her one last time. But now, this inability to speak to his brother was shredding his soul. He became angrier by the minute, and controlling his temper was difficult at best.
What he wanted to do was teleport to New Orleans and torch Delphine’s shop, with her and Henri inside. It didn’t speak well of him that he didn’t care if her daughter and grandson were present. In a sick way, he could justify their demise if it came to pass that they should die with Delphine. The reason? He didn’t need another enemy rising from the ashes.
It was ironic he now sat trying to stop GiGi from teleporting to do the very thing he wished to.
“That horrid bitch!”
A quick glance toward the window showed storm clouds gathering. The blackness rolled in followed by lightning strikes and booming thunder. Strong and loud enough to make the windows shudder in their frames.
Alastair met Ryker’s wary gaze. His friend’s mouth had tightened in his fear that GiGi would do something unpredictable, as was her nature.
“You are likely to create a tornado, Aunt G.” Summer leapt to her feet and hugged GiGi. “Please calm down. Delphine won’t get away with what she’s done. Not as long as one of us in the room is left standing.”
The gathering thunderstorm dissipated, but a drizzling rain remained.
“Thank you, child.”
Ryker walked to his wife and gathered her close. It was the first time GiGi had allowed him to comfort her in the last fifteen years that Alastair knew about.
“We’ll get her, sweetheart. Count on it,” Ryker told her.
“I want to be present. I want to pull the trigger or, barring that, look that two-faced bitch in the eye when she gets hers.”
“You will.”
GiGi wrapped her arms around Ryker’s neck and clung for a long moment. “Thank you, Ryker.”
Ryker fisted his hands behind her back, squeezed her once more, and finally released her to leave the room. Hurt flashed upon his sister’s face, and Alastair suspected she felt rejected by her husband’s departure.
“It’s as hard for him not to take action as it is for you and me.” He pushed off the arm of the chair he was resting against and moved to her side. He placed a hand on her small waist and gave her a one-armed hug. “He’s a good man, GiGi.”
Without waiting for her response, Alastair followed Ryker from the room. The rain was still coming down as he stepped onto the porch, but it didn’t bother him. He leaned out over the railing and reveled in the feel of the water as it slapped his palm.
Footsteps approached. “We’ll need a foolproof plan. She can’t see us coming.”
Alastair straightened, wiped his palms together, and faced Ryker.
“She already knows I will be. What she won’t expect is the rest of you. The question is, do we go after Beecham now, or wait to collect more evidence against him.”
“You know my answer to that. If we take him out without proving to the Council it was justified, then we put targets on all the Thornes.”
“Agreed. How long do you think you, Drake, and Jace will need?”
Ryker rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know, right off. It depends what we can get out of Delphine before GiGi rips her apart.” A wry smile twisted his lips. “You really should stand back and allow her to do her worst.”
“I’m terrified of my sister’s worst, as you should be.”
“Pfft. Why do you think I disappear when she’s gearing up to fight?”
“I always knew you were intelligent.” Alastair straightened his tie and cufflinks. “Back to Beecham.”
“Months, most likely. It’s not something we are going to resolve this week, Al.”
“So we deal with Delphine first.”
“Know that if we do, Harold is likely to become overly cautious. He’ll have no one to turn to.”
“I suspected as much.” Going after Harold Beecham was going to be the long game. Together, he, Ryker, and a few trusted individuals would ferret out the truth, but in the meantime, Delphine couldn’t be left alive to cause trouble for his family. “Tomorrow we head for New Orleans. I’ll task Knox with watching over the women in addition to the Carlyles. You, GiGi, Quentin, and I will go down.”
“And me. I intend to go, too, darling.”
He hadn’t heard Aurora step out on the porch.
“I’d prefer you stay behind, my love. You haven’t regained all of your strength.”
“No, and I may never gain it all back. But that doesn’t mean I’m helpless. What I have noticed, is with every infusion you provide, I feel stronger. We could do another tonight.”
“I’ll leave you two to talk,” Ryker said softly. He nodded to Aurora as he passed, but she maintained eye contact with Alastair.
“I can’t lose another person in my life, Rorie. I just can’t. If that person is you, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“You don’t get it!” he shouted his frustration. The windows rattled in their frames, and the weather around them turned violent. He hadn’t realized his temper was on a hair trigger, but he could no more control it now that it had made itself known than he could control Fate’s damned design.
She glided forward and cupped his face. “I do get it. You spent almost a quarter of your life looking for a way to revive me. It took me a little while to differentiate what I thought was your obsession from what you deem to be love.” She stretched up and kissed him. Softly. Lingeringly. When she pulled back, her eyes were misty and love shone brightly. “What you and I have, it’s rare, Alastair. You’ve sacrificed for me just as I’ve sacrificed for you. As I imagine that we will sacrifice again in the future. But our story doesn’t end in New Orleans, and certainly not at Delphine’s hand.”
“I don’t want you in harm’s way,” he insisted stubbornly. Fear rose up like a rabid animal. Snarling. Snapping. It made him ready to bite at anyone and everyone.
“Why? Because you fear how I’ll react when the beast in you comes out? You think I don’t know what you are capable of?”
“Yes!”
“But I do know. I know, and I don’t care. I want retribution for Preston, too. I loved him.”
He pushed her hands away and turned his back. “Don’t tell me this right now, Aurora.”
“I did love him. You know I did. Just as you loved him. Just as GiGi loved him. He was my husband and the father of three of my girls. In the end, he was my friend.”
When she placed her palm against his back, he flinched.
“I feel guilty that I could never love him as he deserved. Not the way I will always love you, darling.”
He dropped his head back and swallowed convulsively.
“I’m going, whether you want me to or not.”
“Fine.” Because he was feeling savage, he stalked away. Escaping his own inner turmoil wasn’t as easy, but he headed to the pond where he and Preston used to spend their mornings fishing. Not caring that he ruined his Armani suit and hand-crafted, Italian leather shoes, he waded into the center of the pond. Throwing back his head, he roared his pain to the heavens. The ground rumbled in time with the thunder above, and the water hurled toward the shoreline as if it wished to escape his presence.
Then… silence.
The wind had stopped. The water had frozen as it crested the shore. The rain had paused mid-downpour. The absence of sound was eerie as hell. Slowly, he spun around. His eyes caught on the figure sitting on a boulder beneath the hundred-year-old oak.
“That is some temper tantrum, brother.”
“Preston,” he breathed.
“I’d hug you, but…” Mischief sparkled in his amber eyes, and he looked as alive and healthy as Alastair had ever seen his brother look.
“What are you doing here? Isis told me—”
Preston waved a hand and cut him off. “Isis decided to make an exception. She feared you’d devastate the planet.”
“Are you back?”
“No, brother, not the way you wish. Only for a short chat.”
He tried to focus on Preston, but he couldn’t seem to see for the grief clouding his vision.
“What happened that day?”
“When Rorie opened the handkerchief with the herbs from Delphine, the smell hit me. It was one I recognized as a poison from my brief time in India.”
“She intended to murder Rorie?” He’d suspected as much when GiGi mentioned the herbs, but until now, there was no real proof.
“She did.”
“For the love of the Goddess, why?”
“She said Beecham kidnapped and threatened to kill her daughter. If I had to guess, he wanted tit for tat. You took Trina away, he decided to take Rorie away. He probably had no way of getting to her before she woke. You had her hidden. Also, the idea of you resurrecting her was only a rumor until it came to pass.”
“But why didn’t she come to us? We’d have helped her.”
“I asked the same thing. In our pain over Aurora’s shooting, you and I became unavailable. It appears some of our distant Thorne relatives didn’t care to be left to their own devices.”
“She shot you?”
“Henri LeRoux did.” Preston shook his head and rubbed the heel of his hand over the area of his heart. “The air was heavy with her magic. I never picked up on his presence when I sent out the magical feeler. Hell, I never sensed hers either. I confronted her. She basically confessed to being Beecham’s accomplice to cover Trina’s death, and then she smiled as Henri’s bullet pierced my heart through my back.”
Alastair went cold. He waded to the base of the boulder and accepted his brother’s outstretched hand. They sat together for a long minute.
“I have to go now, Al.”
“I know.” He turned his head to study his brother, hoping to memorize the ruggedly handsome features. “I felt it. Your death,” he choked out. “For a second, I thought I was having a heart attack. The pain in my chest was so great, and I couldn’t breathe.”
“I’m sorry for all the years we lost to anger and hurt.”
“Me, too. More than you know, Pres.”
“You’ll watch out for my girls?”
“You know I will.”
The men embraced. Alastair was afraid to let him go. Afraid that if he released his grip, he’d never see his brother again. It was foolish because one day he would join him in the Otherworld, but still, he was loath to open his arms.
“I love you, big brother.”
“I love you, little brother.”
Preston patted him on the back and drew away. With a laughing glance at the frozen elements, he said, “You’re going to need to undo that mess, you know.”