Beauty's Beast(18)

These Ghostlings were bigger, nearly half Aldara’s size, and imposing in such a large group. Still Samantha did not feel afraid. She listened when Aldara explained about her but could not really understand what was said.

“They know where the Betas are,” said Aldara. “And they’ve agreed to leave with me. To find our parents.”

Samantha glanced to him and found his gaze pinned on her.

“I can’t leave her,” he said, speaking to Aldara while looking at Samantha.

And then she understood. Aldara and Alon, even these little ones, could all fly. She was holding them back and endangering them all.

“But there may be more of them,” said Aldara.

“More reason to stay.”

Aldara glanced from her brother to Samantha and sighed. “You will follow?”

He nodded. “As quickly as we can.”

“We’ll go to the Beta Pack first. Then find our parents.”

She stepped forward to hug her brother and then turned to face Samantha. “Thank you for healing my wounds. I owe you a favor, but if you get my brother killed you answer to me.”

With that mixed message delivered, Aldara made a clicking sound in her throat. The Gamma Pack gathered about her. She pointed to the sky. They nodded their understanding.

Then, right before her eyes, Aldara evaporated into billowing gray smoke and rocketed into the blue. Each of the Gammas poofed into smoke and followed their half sister.

Samantha gaped in wonder as she witnessed their retreat. They could fly!

Alon watched them until they disappeared.

“I’m sorry,” Samantha said.

“We have to hurry,” he said.

How long until the souls of the Ghostlings walked the Spirit Road and reached Nagi in his shadowy realm?

How long until her enemy found her?

* * *

Alon wasted no time getting Samantha back to the house. Fifteen minutes later he was back in human form, dressed in boots, creased trousers and a gray pinstriped shirt with cuffs rolled to the elbow. His mussed hair and untucked shirttails spoke of his rush. He hustled her out to the garage and threw a small duffel into the bed of a red Ford pickup truck. She strapped on her shoulder restraint and he led them out of the mountains, driving as fast as the twisting switchbacks would allow. Samantha had never learned to drive and was relieved that Alon had.

Twilight painted the sky purple. Samantha held on to the armrest and braced her feet on the floor, trying unsuccessfully to keep from banging into the door frame. Many switchbacks later, the road, and Samantha’s stomach, leveled on the valley floor and the sky opened above them, giving her a view of the stars emerging one by one. First the Holy Star, Venus, twinkled bright and then Winter Maker, the cluster called Orion by many, appeared, still clinging to his place in the heavens.

As Alon drove, Samantha told herself to keep her attention out the window, but she could not resist snatching quick glances at him. He was handsome again. She could not get her mind around the reality that this stunning, sexy man was that terrifying, vicious creature who had so effectively used his claws to puncture the heart and lungs of his challenger.

His third form called to mind the ones who had attacked her family. It was a comparison that lifted the hairs on her neck. Had they done the same to her father? Alon thought so.

He wasn’t one of them. This was Alon. Still she inched farther from him and clung to the armrest.

He had been right not to show her his third form. How had she ever kissed him? How could she have fallen for his looks when she knew what he was inside? He’d been born that way. This, what she now saw, was not his natural form. She, on the other hand, had been born human and only later grew into her second shape.

Her entire life had been filled with the terror of being found by Nagi. Always she feared his ghosts and lately his evil monsters. Alon was one of them.

She had not always balanced her fear for her family’s safety and the urging of her heart to do what she was meant to do. What would Alon do with her if he knew that she was also a Seer, one of the three Halflings whom Nagi most wanted dead?

She shivered.

“Cold?” he asked and fiddled with the air system.

She was cold right through to her heart. What did she do now?

She closed her eyes and wished for the kind of life many took for granted, one of peace, security and purpose. Would she ever have that?

When she opened her eyes it was to find Alon casting worried glances at her. Her vision worked well in near darkness and she could see his features clearly, even with only the dashboard as illumination. His ghostly gray aura provided even more light as it stretched toward her. She pressed her back against the door.

When he spoke, the strain in his voice caught her in the chest. “I didn’t want you to see me like that.”

She knew what he meant. “It’s what you are. As much a part of you as my human form is to me.”

His fingers clenched the wheel, constricting with the relentlessness of a boa constrictor.

“My mother calls it my fighting form.”

“The shape in which you were born,” she whispered, her words an accusation.

He stared out the windshield. “Yes.”

Alon’s aura glowed bright and unnatural in the cab, flaring to the roof the color of pewter. No, that wasn’t quite right, more silver, capped with inky black. Black, she knew, was the color of death, and being born of Nagi that did make sense. But what about the silver?

“Why didn’t you want me to see?”

His eyebrows tented and he gave her a long look. “Because I’m hideous.”

She gasped. Did he think so, too? How terrible. Her unease shifted to empathy. Alon hated his original form, and yet it was a part of him.

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want your pity. I want...” His words dropped away.

She folded her hands in her lap, resisting the urge to reach out to him.

His aura flared and arched toward her again, but this time her rust-and-gold-capped aura also stretched toward his. She drew a quick intake of breath.

Electricity charged the air.

Samantha recoiled and banged against the door. He shot her a look.

She’d witnessed something similar before between her parents. Her neck prickled. No, that wasn’t it. It couldn’t be. Simply impossible.

“Am I that repugnant?” he growled.

“Did you see it?”

He swung his gaze about, hunching over the wheel as he scanned their surroundings. “Ghosts?”

She shook her head. “That aura.”

He exhaled his relief and straightened behind the wheel. “I can’t see auras.”

He lifted a brow as if waiting for her to elaborate. Damned if she would. Letting him know she could see them was a mistake. Only Niyanoka saw auras. He must suspect now that she had another gift. Would he still protect her if he knew she was the one Nagi sought?

In the darkness, his eyes glowed bright as any predator, only not the normal green of an animal caught in the high beams, but orange like hot embers.

“How is it that a Skinwalker can see them?” he asked.

She dropped her gaze, knowing she was a terrible liar. When she looked back it was to find him still staring, his gaze flicking from the road to her and back.

“You saved me today,” he said.

She had, too, or at least gave him the time he needed to save himself. Samantha glanced away, staring at the yellow lines that divided the narrow highway.

“And you healed Aldara. You buried our dead.”

“Well, don’t make it out to be more than it is. I need you to get to Bess.”

“No.” He kept his eyes on the road. “It was more.”

“Why did they kill them?”

“Join or die. Only they were too young to even understand the question.” Alon’s grip tightened dangerously on the steering wheel and she saw it bend. He extended his fingers then gingerly returned his hands to the wheel.

Would he ever face that choice?

Someone had to stop Nagi. Could that someone be Alon?

She swallowed back her uncertainty and cleared her throat. “Alon, if he finds you. Would you join?”

His look was incredulous, as if he did not understand how she could even ask. His conviction shone in his crystal eyes. “I fight against Nagi. I fight for the Balance.”

“You would fight against your father?”

“My father is a Soul Whisperer.”

“Nagi sired you. You are a part of him.” She said this aloud for herself. She needed to remember what he truly was.

“A curse I face every damned day.” He glared through the windshield, not looking at her as he spoke. “Nagi threatens the Balance. I will never side with him.”

She exhaled her relief and realized she believed him.

“But neither will I fight with those who hunt my kind.”

Samantha’s brow knit. “You mean the Ghostlings who have joined Nagi?”