Aurora felt the energy shift in the barn and lifted the gun to defend herself if she needed. When Autumn showed up with her husband and step-daughter, Aurora quickly tucked away her weapon. She wrapped her eldest daughter in a tight hug. “Thank the Goddess,” she gushed. “Where are your sisters?”
“I don’t know exactly.” Autumn relayed the facts as she knew them. “I’m worried for Summer. Delphine took her out of the house.”
“She wouldn’t have gone far,” Ryker said. “Her minions would need her black magic to stay hidden when Alastair arrived.”
“I agree,” Autumn said. “Either Winnie’s workshop or Spring’s garden center would be the logical location.”
“The greenhouse,” Aurora corrected. “She could cloak herself and still see the front yard.” Trying to calm her racing heart, she faced Ryker. “If Alastair teleported to the front porch, she would have seen him.”
“Fuck!” He ushered them away from the doors and into the old elephant enclosure. “New plan. You all stay here out of sight, and I go warn Alastair.”
“The hell you are!” GiGi exclaimed. “Not without backup, Ryker.”
“I’ve been doing this type of thing for the better part of my life, sweetheart.” He moved close to her, but didn’t touch. Lovingly, his gaze swept her features. “I’ll be fine. But if not, then the keys to my ‘Vette are hidden under the workbench in our garage,” he said. “I give you my permission to drive it.”
“I’ll use it for scrap metal if you get yourself killed.”
“More reason for me to return unharmed.” With a wink, he was gone.
“That thick-headed bastard,” GiGi growled.
“I have a plan,” Aurora said, stopping her sister-in-law before she warmed to a rant. “I do need your help.” She smiled at Autumn. “Tell me, dear, what exactly did the man holding you look like?”
Delphine glanced back at the unconscious Summer. She hated having to drug her, but if she was Alastair’s daughter, chances were she was a powerful witch in her own right. It was doubtful the woman was stronger than the black arts of Delphine’s ancestors, but she couldn’t take the chance.
“If I was smart, I’d poison the lot of you and be done with it,” she told the sleeping Summer. With a heavy sigh, she faced the house. After Alastair was gone, Delphine would persuade Harold Beecham to relocate her family with added protection. Somehow. In some way.
A slight ripple on the side of the porch closest to her caused Delphine to squint into the darkness. If she had to guess, it was a cloaked Alastair. He had to have guessed by now she and Henri had left New Orleans. As she watched, a hole opened in the wall and the light from the living room poured out onto the side porch.
“I had no idea he could do that,” she said aloud. Again, she glanced back at Summer. She watched her blonde cousin for the span of ten heartbeats. Her breathing was deep and normal for someone asleep.
A minute later, her man Rufus staggered out of the opening, holding his head. He looked back toward the hole in the wall as if in terror and ran toward the greenhouse.
“Don’t lead him here, you idiot!” she muttered.
But either Alastair hadn’t seen him escape, or he didn’t care about one foot soldier when he was concerned with finding her hiding spot somewhere in that huge Victorian home.
Rufus paused a few feet from the door and bent to catch his breath. He touched the heel of his hand to the wound on his head.
Frustrated because he was blocking her view of the home, she visually checked her sleeping prisoner then opened the front door to the greenhouse. “What are you doing, you fool?” she hissed. “You could have led Alastair straight here!”
As he looked at her, his fear disappeared and he straightened. A sly smile crossed his face. “It’s not Alastair you have to worry about, Delphine. It’s me.”
Rufus conjured an electrically charged orb in the palm of his hand and flung it at her chest. She dove to her left but not before the ball slammed into her shoulder and sent her crashing back into the glass structure.
Large, wicked shards rained down, and Delphine threw her arms up and out to create a bubble of protection. Not-Rufus charged her, and she called up the fragments from the ground and shoved them toward her attacker. The glass collided with whatever magical shield he had in place.
“Who are you?” she demanded as she stalled for time to think of her next move.
Not-Rufus snapped his fingers, and the glamour surrounding him fell away.
“Aurora!”
“That’s right, you bloody bitch. I suggest you pray to whatever black-hearted devil you worship, because I’m sending you to hell.”
A cat yowled in the distance. The wind around them picked up to storm force. The trees thrashed to and fro under its power. The knife Aurora removed from behind her back was lethal looking. She blew on the tip, turning it a white-blue.
“This is going to sting, and I’m going to enjoy every second of it,” she shouted over the elements she’d stirred.
Delphine spread her arms, palms down. Without removing her eyes from the enraged woman in front of her, she called her magic to her. “Dearest Ancestors, hear me now—” She grunted as something small and hard punched her in the back. Dropping to her knees, all she knew was darkness. As the last of her life force faded, she caught a glimpse of Preston’s spirit standing behind Aurora. He smiled his pleasure at seeing her die in the same manner he had—a bullet to the heart.
The wind returned to a gentle breeze, and the cat stopped its bitching. Aurora twirled her knife and jammed it into the sheath at the small of her back. She didn’t pause to congratulate GiGi for her stellar shooting skills. Instead, she rushed to her prone daughter.
GiGi crowded in beside her to check Summer’s pulse. She lifted her lids and sent an arch of purple light straight into her chest. Within five seconds, Summer opened her eyes and glanced around in confusion.
“Welcome back, child,” GiGi said with a smile.
“Did I die or something?” Summer asked groggily. One hand went to her head, and the other touched her abdomen as her eyes flew wide in terror. “My baby?”
“Your baby is fine.” Aurora helped her to sit and smoothed back her hair. “You were only heavily sedated. Your aunt is going to take you to the old barn. Autumn is waiting there to help you.”
“Where are you going, Mama?”
“To provide your father with a little bit of backup.”
“Henri… he’s not in the house. I heard Delphine order him to get Holly.”
Aurora sent a panicked look at her sister-in-law. They both suspected something was wrong when they couldn’t reach Quentin. Now, they were faced with a decision.
“I’ll go,” she told GiGi. “You get Summer to Autumn, and then tell Alastair where I’ve gone.”
“Hurry, Mama. I feel something is seriously wrong with Holly.”
She kissed her daughter’s brow, simultaneously warming her cells to teleport. “I love you, baby girl.”
Because she wasn’t familiar with Holly’s home, Aurora teleported to Alastair’s study.
“Alfred!”
He appeared in seconds. “Yes, madam?”
“I need your stealthiest guards with all the firepower you can provide, and I need them now.”
“Yes, madam.”
He whipped out a cellphone and sent off a single text. Thirty seconds later, a half-dozen men crowded the doorway of the study.
“Tell Alastair I said you all are getting raises in your next paycheck.”
“Consider it done.”
“What do you know about my daughter Holly’s residence? She’s being held by someone named Henri LeRoux.”
Alfred rushed to Alastair’s desk, removed a key from his pocket, and unlocked the bottom right drawer. He withdrew a folded house plan from a file and spread it out on a nearby table.
“This is the drawing for Holly’s house. Mr. Buchanan provided it for Master Thorne when Holly moved into his home.”
She studied the layout and gestured to Alastair’s men. “Memorize this.” With a quick kiss to Alfred’s cheek, she thanked him. “Oh, and after everything settles, we need to discuss your use of the term Master. Unless I’m off in my calculations, it’s twenty-nineteen, my good man. No one uses the term Master anymore.”
Holly cradled Quentin’s shaggy, dark head in her lap where she sat on the floor. He’d been knocked on the head pretty hard, and blood oozed from a wound on his forehead. Their burly attacker refused to let her heal her husband.
She silently thanked the Goddess the man hadn’t arrived ten minutes earlier than he did. Right now, he had no idea little Frankie was asleep in an upstairs bedroom. When his head was turned to check for movement outside, she mouthed a cloaking spell for her baby. If the big man killed her, the spell would be broken, but at least for the moment, he wouldn’t hear if Frankie decided to fuss.
“Who are you? What is this all about?”
“Silence, woman. I don’t need your endless questions plaguing me.”
“Yes. Silence, woman,” Quentin growled softly, turning his face into her belly.
“He wakes?”
Holly was fearful of the gun the man waved in their direction. Cautiously, she eased her gaze from the cold stare of the barrel to glance down at Quentin. “No, he talks in his sleep.”
The golden-eyed man watched for any sign of a lie.
“Seriously, it’s annoying. Talk, talk, talk, twenty-four seven,” she babbled. No doubt Quentin would make her pay for that lie if they got out of this alive.
“Shut up. You annoy me.”
“Me, too,” grumbled Quentin.
The man charged to where she rested with her back to the sofa. He drew back his booted foot. Before he could swing it forward to connect, Quentin rolled and aimed a punch right for the guy’s ballsack. Even Holly winced when Quentin’s powerful fist hit his intended target.
Still, the man had the presence of mind to turn the gun on them, but he was no match for the power of the gods. It only took a simple thought from Quentin to freeze time.
“Thank you, Zeus,” Holly murmured.
Her husband shot her a wry look, removed the gun from the attacker’s hand, and conjured rope. He shoved the mocha-skinned man to the ground, not showing an ounce of sympathy when the guy toppled with the force of a marble statue.
Jerking his arms behind him, Quentin tied him. Holly jumped up and kicked the man in the head once for good measure. Time corrected, and she swayed from the magical recoil. Her husband had anticipated this and steadied her with an arm around her waist.
“Any idea who this twatopotamus is?” she asked.
“You can’t say ‘damn’ or ‘ass’ without sneezing and calling all the ravens in a hundred-mile radius, but you can say twatopotamus?” he demanded.
“I don’t make the cussing rules.”
Quentin shook his head and searched the man’s pockets. He withdrew an ID from a leather wallet. “Your twatopotamus is one Henri LeRoux. Name sound familiar?”
“Nope.”
“Not to me either.”
A noise from the stairway caught their notice, and in one smooth motion, he had her on the floor and the gun pointed toward the staircase.
“It’s John,” she grunted from beneath him. “He works for my dad.”
He eased her up and, with one hand on her shoulder, maneuvered her behind him.
“Why don’t you tell me what you’re doing in my house, John,” Quentin demanded softly. The silky menace of his voice was terrifying.
Holly suspected he kept the barrel trained on the other man’s head because the flak jacket the guy wore made a bullet to the heart impossible. If it came down to it, Quentin wouldn’t miss.
“Holly’s mother.”
“Mama?” Holly tried to shove by her husband, but he held tight. “Where is she?”
John glanced down at the dark-skinned man tied at Quentin’s feet and holstered his gun. “Outside. It took three of my best men to hold her. Damned fool woman wanted to charge in here with magical guns blazing.”
“You get Frankie,” she ordered Quentin when he released her. She hadn’t seen her mother since Aurora had been revived, and Holly ran to the door in her impatience.
“Like mother, like daughter,” he quipped. “Word to the wise, John, don’t let Alastair Thorne hear you call Aurora a ‘damn fool woman.’ He’ll smite you from existence.”
Holly ignored them both and rushed to greet her mother.
Aurora, who had seen most of what went on through the front bay window of her daughter’s home, hurried for the front door as it swung open. The impact of Holly’s fierce hug stole her breath away. They pulled back to search each other for any wounds or such.
“You’re all right?”
“I am, Mama. I promise. Quentin took a blow to the head, but he’s extremely hard-headed so I imagine it didn’t faze him much.”
“I can hear you, Hol,” he called from the upstairs window.
Both women looked upwards to find him gently rocking Frankie. Grinning, Holly waved and blew a kiss.
His laughter was the type of deep, sexy sound that curled a woman’s toes. Aurora leaned close to her daughter. “If I were twenty years younger, I’d give you a run for your money.”
Holly turned and shushed her. “Don’t say that so loudly. If he hears you, he’ll be unbearable for days.”
“Too late, my prickly pear. I heard everything. Here, take the baby. I’m running away with the hottie who doesn’t insult me constantly.” He stroked Frankie’s downy, dark hair and gently kissed the top of her precious head.
Seeing his tenderness with her granddaughter, Aurora fell in love with him more than a little. He was the perfect mate for the feisty Holly.
“In all seriousness, we need to get you three to safety. Where’s Alastair?” Quentin asked as he handed the baby to her mother.
“Thorne Manor. Now that you’re all safe, I’m going back,” Aurora said.
He shook his head. “That’s going to be a big nope. If anything happens to you, my life is null and void.”
“The boy speaks the truth.”
The sound of gun butts hitting shoulders was overly loud.
“I appreciate your diligence, fellas, but you’re a little late. Had I wanted to, I could have killed you all two minutes ago,” Alastair said as he strolled into sight.
Both Aurora and Holly moved to greet him, but Quentin pulled them up short with a hand clutching the back of their shirts.
“Ostendo,” he barked.
Alastair raised a brow and lifted his hands to his sides.
“Yeah, that’s your dad, Hol. I doubt anyone can duplicate that arrogant stare.”
“Where’s Henri LeRoux?” Alastair demanded. “I have a spine to detach and obliterate.”
Quentin caught John’s eye and gave him a meaningful nod. The security team leader turned a sickly shade of green.
“You’re mean,” Holly murmured to her husband as Alastair stormed toward the house.