Читать книгу Persecuted - Lisa Childs - Страница 7

Chapter 1

The muscles in Elena’s arms strained as she struggled against the ropes binding her wrists behind her back. Coarse fibers bit into her skin, scratching so deeply that blood, warm and sticky, ran down her wrists and pooled in her palms.

She bit her lip, holding in a cry at the sting. But that pain was nothing in comparison to the heat of the flames springing up around her. Sweat ran down her face, nearly blinding her, but still she could see a man on the other side of the flames. A hood covered his head; a dark brown robe concealed his body. But his frame, his height and the breadth of his shoulders, identified him as male.

Others stood behind him in the shadows and smoke, also clad in those dark brown robes. They chanted, their voices rising above the hiss and crackle of the flames.

“Exstinguo…veneficus…”

The words were unfamiliar but she suspected they called her a witch.

“Nooo…” She wasn’t a witch. The smoke choked her, cutting off her protest and her breath.

Her line of vision shifted, away from the cloaked figures, to the woman bound to the stake in the middle of the circle of flames. Was Elena the witch? The woman’s hair was dark and curly, not blond like Elena’s. The woman’s eyes were dark and wide, not pale blue.

Uncaring of the pain, Elena continued to struggle, trying to free herself from the hold of the ropes, of the dream. Of the vision.

A scream tore from her throat as she kicked at the covers and bolted upright in bed. Shaking, she settled into the pillows piled against her headboard and gasped for breath, her lungs burning.

As the woman was burning…

Even awake she could see her, illuminated by a flash of lightning inside Elena’s mind. She squeezed her eyes shut and began a chant of her own: “It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream.”

But she wasn’t sleeping. She hardly ever slept anymore for fear of dreaming of torture and murder. The images rolled through her mind no matter where she was or what she was doing. They weren’t like the “dreams” she’d had her whole life, the innocuous images of something someone might do or say a day or two after she’d dreamt it. These weren’t little revelations of déjà vu. They were murder, and she was an eyewitness to the unspeakable horror.

She reached out, needing the comfort of strong arms to hold her, to protect her. But for the blankets tangled around her legs, the bed was empty and cold. Her husband no longer shared their room. She’d been the one to throw out his stuff after accusing him of cheating. Not even his tyrant of a boss would send him out of town as often as Kirk was gone.

Truthfully, she’d been gone a long time, too. Despite the fact she’d rarely left the house, she’d been absent from their marriage. She’d pushed him away. But why hadn’t he fought for her, for them? Had he ever loved her or only her money? The hurt that pressed on her heart wasn’t new, like an ache from an old injury rather than a fresh wound.

She fumbled with the switch on the lamp beside the bed and flooded the room with light. Real light. Not that eerie flash only inside her head. The warm glow of the bulb in the Tiffany lamp offered no comfort, either.

Although he denied the cheating and only moved as far as the guest room, she knew Kirk was lying, but she hadn’t told him how she’d gained her knowledge of his affair. She’d “seen” him with another woman. At first she’d passed those images off as she had her others, figments of her overactive imagination or products of stress or paranoia. Finally she’d forced herself to face the truth about her sham of a marriage…and herself.

She didn’t love Kirk; maybe she never had, because she’d never trusted him enough to tell him anything about her past or herself. During college their relationship had been mostly superficial and fun, things that Elena’s life had never been. But their relationship had never really deepened, despite marriage, despite the beautiful four-year-old daughter they shared, and it had stopped being fun a long time ago. Sick of all the lies, his and hers, she’d finally filed for divorce.

For so long Elena hadn’t been able to discern truth from fiction. Although she hadn’t seen her mother in twenty years, she could hear her lilting voice echoing in her head with the words of a gypsy proverb, There are such things as false truths and honest lies.

When she’d been taken away from her mother two decades ago, she had also been separated from her younger half sisters. She’d only recently reconnected with Ariel. Elena had been twelve, Ariel nine and their youngest sister, Irina, just four when social services had taken them away from their mother. They’d never seen Mother again. Alive.

Ariel had seen her dead, though. Her sister could see people after they passed away. She hadn’t wanted to see Elena and Irina for the first time in two decades the way she had their mother, so she’d searched for her sisters to warn them that someone had started a witch hunt. She hadn’t found Irina yet, and had only stumbled across Elena by accident.

But Elena had already known about the witch hunt because of her dreams. She’d fought so hard to suppress her visions, to convince herself that they weren’t real. When her sister had found her, Elena had had to admit to the truth, if only to herself.

The visions were why Elena was cursed, not the three-hundred-and-fifty-year-old vendetta that had started the first witch hunt. One of Elena’s Durikken ancestors had been accused of killing the female members of the McGregor family and was burned at the stake. But like Elena, she’d seen her future and urged her daughter to run. That child, for whom Elena was named, had found safety, and she’d continued the Durikken legacy, passing on to her children the special abilities that people mistook for witchcraft.

Now someone else had resurrected the vendetta that Eli McGregor had begun three and a half centuries ago, of ritualistically killing all witches. Elena had dreamed, sleeping and awake, of his murders. While she saw his victims, she hadn’t seen the killer; she couldn’t identify him. Helplessness and frustration churned in her stomach, gnawing at the lining like ulcers.

“I don’t want this!” she insisted to the empty room, as she had for so many years.

Leaning over, she wrapped her fingers around the handle of the nightstand drawer and pulled with such force that the drawer dropped onto the floor. Papers flew out, scattering across the thick beige carpet. Her copy of the divorce papers. Her husband refused to sign his. She couldn’t continue their farce of a marriage, which had been over long ago and was past time to officially end. If only she was a witch, like the legend claimed, then she could cast a spell on Kirk and make him go away forever. Somehow she suspected that a big check would do the job.

Elena rolled out of bed and dropped to her knees on the floor. Instead of picking up the papers, she pushed them aside. In the dim light, she couldn’t see what she sought. Blindly she ran her fingertips through the carpet, raking it, until her nails grazed warm metal. She dug the pewter charm from the thick fibers, then dropped the little star, the tips dulled with age, into her palm. Twenty years ago her mother had pressed the star upon her, telling Elena that as well as keeping her safe, the charm would ensure that she never forgot who or what she was.

Images flashed in her mind like snapshots. A woman hanging. Another woman crushed beneath rocks. Another woman burning. Pain knotted her stomach and pounded at her temples. Her hands fisted, the points of the star digging into her palm.

She didn’t want to remember those horrifying images.

She didn’t want to be a witch.

She lurched to her feet and staggered to the bathroom. She lifted the lid to the toilet and dropped the little pewter charm into the water. Drops splashed up from inside the bowl, spattering the rim, as the star bobbed. Hand trembling, she reached for the handle. Maybe flushing the charm would stop the visions and make Elena normal. Her fingers closed around the metal handle, which was cool unlike the charm. The little star radiated warmth, always.

Her sister believed the charms held some special power to protect them, that if all three sisters united with the charms, they could stop the witch hunt. Elena’s fingers slipped away from the handle. Then she reached into the bowl and pulled the star from the water. She’d held on to the charm too long to get rid of it now. Even though Elena didn’t share Ariel’s beliefs, she didn’t want to shatter her sister’s hope.

Her breath coming in shallow pants, she moved to the sink, turning on the gold-plated faucets to wash off the charm and her hands. Because of the soap, she kept a firm hold on the piece of metal, careful not to lose the star down the drain. She glanced at her image in the mirror, the disheveled blond hair, the wild light blue eyes, the silk chemise nightgown baring her shoulders.

“Liar,” she called herself. She hadn’t just lied to her sister when she’d claimed that the charms held no power; she had lied to herself, about so many things.

The marble floor cold beneath her bare feet, Elena walked from the bathroom. With one hand, she fitted the drawer back into the nightstand, then laid the star inside. The charm’s warmth had already dried it, so it glistened in the soft glow of the Tiffany lamp.

Over the years Elena had many times considered tossing out the charm, but she always refrained. No matter how hard she’d tried to forget her past, a part of her had been unwilling to let go. With the witch hunt resurrected, that part would either prove her salvation…or her demise.

* * *

Elena had no idea how long she’d been asleep when moist lips touched her shoulder, gliding over the bare skin. Her pulse quickening, she murmured and shifted against the bed, struggling to awaken. She dragged in a deep breath, the scent of citrus soap and musk.

This was not her husband joining her in bed. He wasn’t even down the hall tonight; he was out of town. But when he’d been around, he hadn’t touched her, not for a long time. From the way he’d started looking at her, with uneasiness and a trace of fear, he might have figured out that his wife wasn’t normal. Perhaps he’d picked up clues from her nightmares, or from the things she knew before he told her.

The lips moved, nibbling along her shoulder to her neck. The brush of moist, hot breath raised goose bumps along her skin. The blanket lowered, pushed aside by impatient hands. Then those strong, clever hands ran over her body, skimming down her arms, then around her waist and over her hips. Sometime during the night, even though the air blowing through her windows was cool in mid-May in western Michigan, she had removed her nightgown. Nothing separated her skin from his as his body brushed against hers.

“Elena,” a deep voice whispered in her ear, his hot breath stirring her hair and her senses. “You’re ready for me.”

Excitement pulsed in her veins, and she opened her eyes, staring up into his face as he leaned over her. Desire had darkened his eyes so that only a thin circle of green rimmed his enlarged pupils. A muscle jumped in his cheek, shadowed with the beard clinging to his square jaw.

“Elena, I want you.” His biceps bulged as he braced his arms on the mattress on either side of her, trapping her beneath the long, hard length of his body. His voice deepened to a throaty growl as he told her, “I want to bury myself so deep inside you that you’ll feel me forever as a part of you.”

“You’re already part of me,” she murmured.

His were the arms she’d instinctively sought earlier, when the horrifying dream had awakened her. She turned to him for comfort and protection. And for this, for the passion that pounded like a drum in her heart, heating her skin and melting her muscles so that she flowed beneath him, fitting herself to the hard lines of his body.

His chest tempted her, wide and muscular with soft, black hair that grew thinner as it arrowed down, over his washboard stomach. Some of the hair dusted his muscular legs, tickling hers, as he entwined them.

He was naked and ready. And so was she.

Her stomach quivering with anticipation, she reached up, twining her arms around his back, pulling him closer. But his weight didn’t settle hot and heavy against her. Her arms moved through empty space, flailing the covers aside as she moved restlessly in her bed, empty but for her.

For the second time that night she bolted upright, panting for breath, her lungs burning with the struggle for air, as she awakened from a dream.

Just a dream.

This was no vision of the future, for there could be no future between Elena and her dream lover. Unlike the killer, she’d seen this man’s face; she knew him, and wished she didn’t.

He might not be the killer, but to Elena, he was just as big a threat, if not to her life, to her heart. His were the last arms in which she would find comfort or protection. With a man like him, she’d only find more heartache and danger.

Elena hadn’t been to this wing of the house in six months, not since her father died. Each step on the Oriental runner that covered the wide corridor brought back more memories. Painful ones. That was one reason why she hadn’t been back to this part of the Tudor mansion. She never wanted to relive those last weeks spent at her father’s bedside, listening to his feverish ramblings as she watched him die.

Unlike the many times he’d taken ill before, this time the pneumonia had killed him. Maybe because he’d gotten it so many times before, or maybe because, as his mother had feared twenty years ago, he’d given up fighting for his life.

As with her visions, Elena had been helpless to stop his death. During his last days, half the time he’d thought she was her mother, so the fever had blinded him before killing him. She looked nothing like Myra Cooper with her wild curly black hair and big, dark gypsy eyes; eyes that had seen so much, like Elena’s, through her visions. She might not have resembled her mother in looks, but Elena had taken after her in other ways.

The other half of the time, her father had thought she was his mother, which probably made more sense. She did resemble Thora Jones physically but in no other way. Elena still had her soul, even though she sometimes felt it slipping away… like when she had a vision of murder and didn’t know how to prevent the killing.

Elena stood outside the door to her grandmother’s rooms, hesitant to knock. She was the other reason Elena had stayed away from this wing of the house. No good ever came out of contact with Thora Jones. The first time Elena met her paternal grandmother she’d been twelve and ripped away from her mom and sisters because of Thora’s manipulations. Thora had sworn out the complaint that had declared Myra Cooper an unfit mother, causing the authorities to take away her children.

But Myra hadn’t fought to keep Elena. She’d signed away her parental rights. Until Ariel had found her, Elena had thought she’d been the only one their mother had given up, because of who and what she was. But Myra hadn’t kept any of her three daughters. Ariel believed it was because of the McGregor vendetta, that she’d been trying to protect them. Elena wasn’t convinced. She was a mother; she couldn’t imagine giving up her child for any reason but most especially if Stacia were in danger. No one would fight harder to keep a child safe than her mother.

That was why Thora had found Elena twenty years ago and brought her to this house, to give her son a reason to fight for his life. After a car accident paralyzed him, he’d wanted to die…until he’d met his daughter. He hadn’t known about her existence until that day, but he’d immediately loved her. If not for her father, Elena wouldn’t have stayed. She would have run away the first chance she got.

Growing up in this mausoleum had made Elena feel like a grasshopper trapped under a glass, powerless to escape and totally at the mercy of the person who held her captive. When she’d left for college, she had never intended to come back, but then her father had had one of his bouts with pneumonia. Thora had made certain Elena knew just how sick he was and how much he needed his daughter. So she’d been sucked back under the glass.

She curled her fingers into a fist but didn’t lift it to knock. Not yet. Before she could, the door opened.

“Elena.”

Although she closed her eyes, she recognized the deep voice and wished for many reasons that she could disappear. Joseph Dolce wasn’t her favorite person, probably because since her father died, he was her grandmother’s favorite. Thora had trusted him enough, despite his relative youth and inexperience, to make him CEO of her corporation, stepping down herself from the position of power she had held since her husband died, from a heart attack, over twenty-five years ago.

Rumor was that Thora owned most of Barrett, the midsized city in the southwestern section of Michigan. Elena knew the rumor to be fact; she’d seen the business records since inheriting her father’s shares of the company. Jones Inc. owned car dealerships, trucking companies, hotels and restaurants.

Now a thirty-five-year-old who’d grown up on the streets was in charge of the multimillion-dollar corporation. To his credit, Joseph had managed, despite some juvenile scrapes with the law, to go to college instead of prison. He’d also run a couple of those businesses under the Jones umbrella before running the whole thing. As Thora’s CEO Joseph was at the house often, far too often for Elena’s peace of mind.

“Mr. Dolce,” she finally acknowledged him.

“Joseph,” he corrected her. He’d been telling her to use his first name for the year since he’d become CEO, and she had yet to use it.

She probably never would. She didn’t respect anyone who worked for her grandmother, even though at one time she’d used business to try to gain Thora’s acceptance. When her father’s health had compelled her to return, she’d asked Thora for a favor, the chance for some respect. But despite her MBA, her grandmother had refused to give her anything, let alone the role Elena had wanted running the company. She realized now that she’d been foolish to even ask, to give her grandmother more leverage with which to hurt her.

Her husband worked for Jones Inc., though, far beneath Thora and Joseph’s level. Is that what had changed him from the sweet, fun-loving boy she’d met in college eleven years ago? Elena doubted anyone could stay sweet and fun loving around Thora, least of all someone as weak as Kirk. Because he was weak, she couldn’t fathom why he had chosen to fight the divorce. Why now, when she wanted him gone, did he refuse to leave?

She closed her eyes, as a headache nagged at her temples. Her divorce was the least of her concerns in light of her visions. The dissolution of her marriage was trivial in comparison to someone’s life. Irina? Had her baby sister been the woman in the fire in Elena’s first dream the previous night?

She refused to think about her second, trying to wipe it from her mind even as her body pulsed with frustration in the way it had ended. Too soon.

“Elena, are you all right?” Strong fingers closed around her arm, offering support.

Her heart lurched. Just with surprise, she told herself. Joseph seemed more the type to shake someone than hold her. Curiously enough she’d always respected that about him, that he wasn’t the type to coddle anyone, that he was so strong that he demanded strength from those around him.

When she opened her eyes, his head was close. He had to be leaning, because he was tall, well over six feet with wide shoulders and a chest so muscular it strained the buttons on his gray shirt and suit. His deep green eyes softened with concern. Elena wasn’t used to a man looking at her like that, not since her father died. But underneath the concern was something that unsettled her even more, an awareness that hummed between them; another reason she could never use his first name. For them, it would be too intimate.

Like her dream.

She resisted the urge to tremble and lifted her chin instead. “I’m fine.”

“Yes, you are,” he agreed, his voice deepening with innuendo as he teased her. He always teased her.

Her palm itched to slap him. He didn’t know that she’d filed for divorce. She’d told no one yet. For all he knew she was a happily married woman. Didn’t anyone respect marriage anymore?

Heat warmed her face, as an image from the dream tugged at her memory. Arms and chest rippling with muscles, wrapping tight around her, pulling her close so that skin brushed skin. She drew in a shuddery breath. But that had been just a dream, not a vision. She was never going to make love with him. She would make certain of it, and if she could change that part of her future, she could change more.

She was here, in her grandmother’s wing, because she couldn’t keep ignoring her visions. They weren’t going away; they just kept getting worse. Not for her, but for the people she saw in them. She had to help. Like that ancestor who had so long ago warned about the lightning that would cause the house fire and begin the vendetta, Elena had to take the risk—even if she was the one who wound up getting burned.

“Excuse me,” she said, stepping around Joseph. “I need to speak to her.”

Then she closed the door, shutting him into the hall and herself into her grandmother’s rooms. The parlor, a profusion of Victorian roses and fragile, antique furniture, misled the visitor into thinking Thora Jones a delicate, old-fashioned woman. Nothing could be further from the reality.

Double doors led off the empty parlor into the den. Without knocking, Elena opened those doors into her grandmother’s real sanctum: dark, heavy woods, dim light and the faint, lingering odor of pungently sweet cigars. Elena had never caught her smoking them, but she suspected it was one of her grandmother’s many vices.

The woman lifted her gaze from the files on her desk, which was cluttered with more picture frames than work. Most of the photographs were of Elena’s father, Elijah Jones. The only ones of Elena were snapshots taken with him. Thora’s parlor also had several pictures of him, among the gardening ribbons and plaques, but this room with its faint light and solemn atmosphere felt more like a shrine to him.

This was where, since his death, Thora worshipped her son.

Elena turned her attention from the framed photographs to the woman behind the desk. Her grandmother’s hair was as blond as Elena’s, her eyes as eerily blue. Despite her seventy-three years, very few lines marred her pale complexion. Sometimes Elena wondered if her grandmother had sold her soul for beauty or immortality, but that thought was ridiculous.

Thora had sold her soul for vengeance.