The Empath Read online

  Something came lumbering out of the undergrowth.

  It looked like a small raccoon with gray fur and a blackringed tail. Yet before her astonished eyes, it began changing. Growing, elongating. Morphing.

  Misha released a terrified yelp, ran to a tree and hid behind it.

  The creature crawled on four legs and was squat, scaly and reptilian. Its head was elongated, with rows of sharp, lethal spikes rising from it. Good God, it looked like…a dragon?

  It barreled toward them at a blinding rate of speed. A horrified scream died in her throat as it locked its gaze on her like a rifle’s red pinpoint laser. Eyes of madness, glowing like fire, gleamed with hatred. Spittle leaked from the corners of its mouth as it opened enormous jaws, showing rows of yellow sharp teeth.

  A crackling noise sounded as it hissed, breathing flames.

  Nicolas waved his hands. Twin steel daggers caught stray beams of sunlight as they materialized in his hands. As the creature reared back, never losing eye contact with her, Nicolas struck the soft underbelly. A screech of agony clawed in Maggie’s ears like nails against slate. The creature sidestepped Nicolas and snaked around. Its jaws snapped, barely missing her.

  “Get back, Maggie,” Nicolas roared. He struck again, but the daggers glanced off the thick scales of the creature’s back.

  It turned its head, as if Nicolas were a mere inconvenience. Bloody furrows showed on his bare arm as it raked a giant claw over his skin. Nicolas barely winced. Maggie’s stomach gave a sickening lurch at the crimson stream. Blood. Just like that last time…

  She moaned, trying to regain a grip. Not now. You will not collapse, she willed herself. Somewhere deep inside, she found a reservoir of strength and drew from it.

  Nicolas threw himself at the dragonlike thing. It hissed and breathed fire. Flames licked along his shirt but Nicolas waved a hand and they vanished. He reached up with both fists and struck a powerful blow to the creature’s head. The beast swayed and toppled. Nicolas jumped atop it, his powerful fists punching the soft, vulnerable snout.

  Immobilized by twin emotions of fear and shock, she stuffed a fist into her mouth. Battling this was a resilience, an urge to engage in the fracas as he tussled with the creature. Powerful instincts surfaced as the creature latched onto Nicolas’s calf with razor-sharp teeth. He winced and grimly continued fighting. At the sight of bright blood oozing out of Nicolas’s leg, she screamed.

  The dragon thing looked at her. Suddenly it swung toward the tree and Misha.

  The creature started toward her dog. Misha barked, but was trapped by the thicket of undergrowth, so she could not retreat. Jaws open to reveal sharp teeth, the dragon-thing stalked toward the helpless dog. It opened its mouth and hissed, as if to spew fire. Almost automatically, Maggie waved a hand and directed a thought at the flames, dispelling them.

  Never again. Ever. You will not hurt my friend or anyone else I love.

  A red-hazed fury blocked out everything but the need to protect Misha. She barely became aware of kicking off her sneakers, stripping off her clothing. Barely was aware of the rush of dank air brushing against her naked skin.

  All that mattered was getting that thing away from her beloved dog.

  “No!” The roar in her throat turned into a snarl. Power rippled through her. All senses sharpened. She could hear the rush of blood through veins, the frantic, terrified beating of Misha’s heart, smell the dragon thing’s bloodlust, taste the raw urge to protect what was hers. She rushed forward, snarling, to defend Misha. Her jaws snapped in a growl.

  “No, Maggie,” Nicolas shouted. “Stay back! You’re not trained yet! The heart is the only way to kill them.”

  He sprang to his feet, throwing himself in front of her as the creature lunged. The blow intended for her throat struck his right side. Nicolas groaned as flesh tore and blood flowed. Maggie turned and growled at the dragon thing. She smelled its fetid odor, felt its glee at inflicting pain and felt the urge to rip. Tear. Defend.

  The creature rose up, roared, and just as it started for her, Nicolas struck. His aim was steady and sure, and the daggers he held in both hands sank into the creature’s chest. The dragon thing died with a gasping snarl.

  Blood flowed over his hands. Nicolas winced, withdrew his daggers. Burns marked his hands, wrists and forearms where the creature’s blood had touched him.

  Blood. Crimson, flowing blood. Horror overcame her. Maggie whimpered, felt rage leave, replaced by shock. She went to stick a fist into her mouth.

  Instead she saw a paw. Claws extended from the soft padding.

  Oh, God. Shock tore through her, and just as quickly, she found herself shivering in her bare skin. Skin. Not fur. Human again.

  But Nicolas had been right.

  She was a wolf. She had changed.

  No, no! It couldn’t be, this wasn’t happening…a memory flickered. Maggie squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block it out. You can’t hide from what you truly are, Nicolas had told her.

  I can’t be, I just can’t be like him! She quickly dressed.

  “Oh, caira,” he said thickly.

  Maggie opened her eyes to see concern twining with pain on his face. She winced at the ugly burns on his hands and arms, the blood oozing from the lacerations. A twinge of sympathetic pain laced her.

  Morph blood was acid. Maggie pushed aside her own fear, glad for the distraction. Time enough to deal with that horror later. She raked an anxious gaze over him and saw the suffering glaze his dark eyes. His strong jaw tensed so hard it seemed it might shatter.

  “Are you all right? It didn’t hurt you, did it?”

  Shaking her head, Maggie felt a sense of wonder laced with unexpected tenderness.

  He had defended her, deliberately thrown himself in front of the creature to keep her safe. No one had ever done that. Not once since her parents’ deaths had anyone dared put themselves in danger to protect her. Trembling, she reached up, touched the blackened bruise on his cheek. Pain barely dented her as she absorbed the injury.

  Nicolas pushed her hands away. “Draicon heal from such injuries, Maggie. I’ll be fine.”

  She examined his side, saw him flinch even at her gentle touch.

  “You can’t go on like this,” she asserted. Maggie closed her eyes, placed her hands on Nicolas and concentrated on healing his injuries. To her enormous shock, the suffocating pain endured through healing was gone. Instead, the pain was sharp but fleeting, as if she’d bumped her shin on a coffee table.

  When she finished, Nicolas touched her face. “Thank you,” he said hoarsely. “Maggie, about what happened…”

  Her head flew back and forth in a vehement shake. She couldn’t deal with that right now. “Stop,” she whispered, putting a finger on his lips. “Just hold me.”

  His arms slid around her waist, drawing her close. She nestled against him, needing the simple contact and comfort of an embrace. Maggie rested her head against his chest as he stroked her hair. His touch felt comforting, gentle.

  As she looked up, something enigmatic entered his eyes. His mouth hovered inches away from hers. His lips were firm, full.

  Unable to resist, she leaned forward, touching her mouth to his. A groan wrenched from his throat. Nicolas crushed her against him, his mouth moving over hers. Maggie’s mouth opened wide as he thrust his tongue inside. She tasted him, warm, strong, a heady combination of cinnamon and male. His scent invaded her mind, spicy, earth and pine, making her want to join with him and roll about on the spongy ground in a fierce, frenzied mating as wild as the surroundings. She rubbed against him, feeling her nipples tauten, warmth flood between her legs. Maggie hooked her hands around his neck.

  She wanted him, desperately. More now than even last night after the wine. Needed him, needed this, to banish what had happened. Push aside the dreaded realization of what she was.

  It was Nicolas who gently pulled away, set her on her feet. But the pulse throbbing in his neck warned her she’d nearly tipped him over the edge as well.
/>   Sensible Maggie. Whatever happened to that woman? It was the spice of danger, having a knight in shining—denim? Wolf fur?—rush to defend her. Animal attraction.

  Real animal attraction. Suppressing a strangled laugh, she gathered the trembling Misha into her arms. She suppressed a shudder as she looked at the dead dragon creature. “I thought you said the Morphs only replicated as existing animals.”

  “Who said dragons didn’t exist?” Nicolas attempted a lopsided smile.

  “We can’t leave this…thing here.”

  “You won’t have to. Watch.”

  Astonishment seized her as the dragon began to disintegrate before her eyes. Another memory surfaced. Bodies, blood flowing from them, then watching them crumbling into gray ash. She buried her nose into Misha’s fur. It was too much to open that particular door.

  She was a Draicon, just like Nicolas. For years she had suppressed everything, even quieting her anger. This was the reason. When someone she loved was threatened, her wolf emerged. She had no control. Her wolf was a caged beast, awaiting the right time to paw to the surface. Maggie gripped Misha, the only centering influence in her wildly spinning world.

  Nicolas watched her with his calm steady gaze. Misha wasn’t the only centering influence. He had controlled his wolf. If he could do it, perhaps she could learn from him.

  In silence she followed him back to the car. He tossed her the new clothing. They dressed, then he wadded up their old clothing and got out. “Stay here,” he ordered.

  Nicolas approached the Saturn SUV. The family fishing on the canal had been a distance away from the fight, shielded by the noise of traffic. Maggie envied their blissful ignorance. Her world was rocking back on its sensible heels. Nicolas waved his hands in the same mysterious gesture she’d seen earlier. He opened the back door, threw their clothing on the floor then paced back toward her. He picked up Misha.

  “Gather our stuff. We’re switching cars and leaving yours here.”

  Mutely, she obeyed. Nicolas opened the back door of an anonymous-looking Chevy and gently laid Misha on the backseat. Fuzzy dice hung from the rearview mirror. The interior smelled like old tacos and cigarettes. Maggie didn’t care. It was safe.

  They sat in silence as Nicolas steered the car back onto the highway. Though one hand rested easily on the furcovered wheel, Nicolas’s jawline was tense. Strain etched his features.

  She rolled down the window, let the breeze toss her curls as a distraction. Eventually Tamiami Trail turned into Southwest 8th Street. He drove east, then onto the Florida Turnpike and headed north. Maggie watched the stretch of the Dolphin Mall pass in a blur, then the gray-coated Rinker plant on the left. Construction on this coast blossomed like weeds. Ghostly gray melaleuca trees stretched skyward. Hurricane damage tipped some sideways into the water like drunks teetering on their last legs.

  Nicolas was a magic creature, a wolf who killed. So am I. Maggie shrank from the thought. Dr. Margaret Sinclair, respected veterinarian with a thriving practice, no car payments—no car now, either—and a beach house, now torched in flames, had turned into a wolf.

  Her life was spinning wildly on its axis. One day at a time. It was how she survived after watching her parents die, and how she would survive right now.

  Maggie squeezed her eyes shut, seeing crimson flow from the dragon creature. Then the scene shifted. Red flowing on a concrete sidewalk, not all her parents’ blood…

  Nicolas began humming a low, soothing tune. The melody quieted her turbulent feelings.

  “I wish I had brought my music,” she mused.

  She remembered him singing in Italian at the bar. Nicolas, a killer wolf, liked classical. She shuddered. Killer wolf.

  Was she one as well?

  ———

  Maggie had changed. Turned into a wolf at last to protect her beloved pet. Nicolas knew he should be turning handsprings.

  Instead, he felt ripped in half at her abject horror. Her change didn’t bring Maggie joy, only terror. He hadn’t thought she could twist him in half like this. He didn’t like it. Always he had been able to mask his feelings. But Maggie brought everything rushing to the surface. Emotions overwhelmed him: his urgent desire to protect her and her frightened confusion.

  Music would dispel the tension. Nicolas reached into the center console, pulled out the CD he’d placed there earlier. He slid it into the player, cranked up the volume and punched a button, advancing to the second song. The lyrical voice filled the SUV, soothing his nerves. Tension vanished, replaced with the deep longing in the song that echoed his own. The haunting baritone filled his senses. His emotions bubbled dangerously close to the surface: all the sorrowful emptiness of being alone, the hope felt since finding Maggie and his deep need of her. He couldn’t allow himself to love. Love made one dangerously vulnerable. Nicolas vowed never to become vulnerable.

  Maggie tilted her head, her forehead crinkling in an adorable questioning look. “Who is this? It’s beautiful.”

  “Josh Groban, Gira Con Me.”

  “I’ve heard him. He has a hit song in English.”

  “A couple. I prefer the Italian.”

  Her smile made something in his chest ease.

  “I like Italian, too. It’s a beautiful language, but every time I hear it…it reminds me of this time when I went on this date…”

  Her laugh threaded with a self-deprecating note sounded forced. “When I was an undergrad in Miami, a fellow student took me to the opera and afterward we went to the beach. I guess he wanted to get amorous. He started talking in Italian and just as he tried to kiss me, I blurted out that…that…I told him I didn’t kiss on the first date. He seemed to understand and drove me home when I asked, but told everyone the next day never to speak Italian to me because the language made me frigid.”

  A heated flush covered her face. She looked out the window.

  “He sounds like an insecure loser.” Nicolas tightened his hands on the steering wheel with the urge to throttle the man who dared to try to kiss his Maggie, then mocked her.

  A tremulous smile touched her mobile mouth. “I thought as much, too. But in a way it made me sad because I could never hear opera again without wondering if I were. I’ve never…” Her hands twisted in her lap. “Been much attracted to men. I thought he was right.”

  “You didn’t hear the right Italian from the right person,” he said gently.

  “I think you’re right.” Maggie raised her gaze to his. A thrill of hope raced through him at the equal longing in her own eyes. Was it the romanticism of the rich baritone drifting from the speakers? Or him?

  Too much to expect it was him. But he continued humming and the frozen void inside him began to shrink a little.

  Chapter 8

  It felt like minutes later when the car stopped, and the door opened. Maggie blinked in sleepy confusion as Nicolas squeezed her hand. “Wake up, darling, we’re here.”

  Gray clouds scudded over the sky. Warm air wafted into the car as he opened the door. Disoriented, she studied the elegant white ranch house sitting on an acre-wide lawn. Slash pine trees peppered the yard. It looked remote…better yet, safe. She blinked, studying the small gold watch on her wrist. It was well after three o’clock. Her stomach grumbled a loud protest. A knowing smile touched his mouth.

  “We’ll get something to eat here.”

  Nicolas gathered Misha in his arms and escorted Maggie up the curved stone walkway to a set of elegant oak doors with stained glass panes. He twisted open the brass doorknob and ushered her inside. A white-tiled hallway opened to an expansive living room with mint-green furniture, coral walls and floral window hangings. Maggie forced her sleepy brain to clear as Nicolas set Misha down. A delicious scent of grilled meat filled the air, as welcoming as baking cookies.

  The eager look on Nicolas’s face vanished as a man glided out from an adjoining kitchen. His square face, dark curly hair and wiry body clad in a silk shirt and creased trousers contrasted with the hard look in his steel gray eye
s as he studied Nicolas.

  “Baylor,” Nicolas said thickly. “Why are you here?”

  “Damian thought you’d need a little help along the way.” The man’s frank interest settled on Maggie. “Hello. I’m Baylor, from the New Mexico pack. You must be the longlost Margaret. I’m delighted to see you again.”

  Confusion settled over her as his hand gripped hers. “Again?”

  “None of us have seen you since you were very young. It’s good you’re coming home. We’ve all missed you.”

  A frisson of warmth filled her. A real family, one who wanted her, unlike the parade of foster families in childhood. Baylor’s smile widened as he swept an admiring gaze over her. He ignored Nicolas, whose fists were clenched.

  “You’re even more lovely than I imagined,” he murmured. Then he looked businesslike.

  “Damian sent me because I’m one of the pack’s most experienced in fighting Morphs, if they should try to attack while you’re here tonight. He trusts me to help keep you safe, Margaret. I’m pack. Family. Draicon, like you are, Margaret, and can be trusted.”

  The man shot Nicolas a look of disdain. “Unlike others.”

  Baylor raised her hand to his lips in a courtly gesture. Nicolas wrapped his fingers around her wrist and pulled it down.

  “Get your hands off my mate,” he warned.

  His eyes narrowed to slits as he pushed Maggie behind him. The men silently sized each other up, bristling like combative dogs. Baylor threw up his hands in a gesture of surrender.

  “Enough of this. I came here to help. Both of you must be hungry. I have steaks on the grill. So come in and make yourself welcome. Margaret, I arranged for you to sleep in the master bedroom. You’ll find it comfortable enough.”

  Squatting down, Baylor wagged his fingers at Misha. “Who’s this? Hey there, little fellow.”

  “She’s Misha. My dog.”

  “I’ll take her into the bedroom for you, Margaret. I’m sure she’s special to you.”

  “I’ll do it.” Nicolas lifted Misha and narrowed his eyes at Baylor. “Why don’t you go into the kitchen and do a little domestic work?”