Unveil My Heart (Wiccan Haus Book Seven)

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  Title Page

  Unveil My Heart

  Wiccan Haus Book Seven

  Nya Rayne

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  An imprint of

  Musa Publishing

  Copyright Information

  The Wiccan Haus: Unveil My Heart, Copyright © Nya Rayne, 2012

  All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.

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  This e-Book is a work of fiction. While references may be made to actual places or events, the names, characters, incidents, and locations within are from the author’s imagination and are not a resemblance to actual living or dead persons, businesses, or events. Any similarity is coincidental.

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  Musa Publishing

  633 Edgewood Ave

  Lancaster, OH 43130

  www.musapublishing.com

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  Published by Musa Publishing, December 2012

  ...

  This e-Book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of International Copyright Law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines and/or imprisonment. No part of this ebook can be reproduced or sold by any person or business without the express permission of the publisher.

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  ISBN: 978-1-61937-351-8

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  Editor: Jeanne De Vita

  Cover Design: Kelly Shorten

  Interior Book Design: Coreen Montagna

  Content Warning

  This book contains adult language and scenes. This story is meant only for adults as defined by the laws of the country where you made your purchase. Store your books carefully where they cannot be accessed by younger readers.

  Chapter One

  THE FERRY’S HORN SOUNDED in the far distance as it made its weekly journey from the mainland to the island. The sound pierced through the thick wall of fog that kept the island secreted away from prying eyes. From where Hayze stood on the dock, staring back at the gray-white mass, the resonance cutting through it shook him out of his reverie.

  Hayze shivered against the cold that blew in off the ocean as the tails of his linen button-down shirt fluttered around him. He’d never shivered in his life until now. Up to a month ago, temperatures—no matter how extreme—had not bothered him. Anubi, those born from the crushed bone and blood of Anubis, felt nothing. Like breathing, this was something new.

  “Hayze, this is not what the Wiccan Haus was created for,” said Rekkus, head of the island’s security, as he stepped up beside him.

  “Isn’t it the motto of the mystical brat pack to heal the broken?” Hayze glanced at his old friend out the corner of his eye.

  Rekkus stood broad and strong at six foot five, which was an inch or so taller than Hayze. His shoulders were set wide across his barreled chest. Among humans, he could have easily been mistaken for a linebacker, or a yeti.

  “If I were you, I wouldn’t let any of them hear you call them that, least of all Sarka. She would find a way to transmute you into a tailless lizard without a second thought.”

  Sarka was an unparalleled alchemist and the eldest of the four siblings that ran the island. She was also the bane of Hayze’s existence. Hayze snorted out a laugh. “She’s tried worse things before and failed.”

  Rekkus’s laugh rumbled up and washed over Hayze.

  At Rekkus’s laughter, Hayze said, “This mate of yours must be something, to have changed you in such a way. There was a time, friend, when I didn’t think you knew how to turn that frown of yours upside down.”

  Rekkus sighed heavily, his golden eyes taking in the clear sky above them. “My mate is a blessing. One for whom I would turn my back on heaven and crawl through hell for.”

  “Then understand me, old friend. I would not ask you for such a favor if there were any other way. There is no other place on the planet where I could’ve sent her to be safe and healed at the same time. She needs what the Wiccan Haus offers.” Hayze dug his hands into his pockets.

  “She is your mate, then?” Rekkus was nothing if not blunt.

  Hayze put his hand to his chest, feeling the thrum of his newly beating heart. Though he was by no means a spiritual man, he wore an onyx-colored pearl rosary around his neck. He took hold of the cross that hung at the base of the rosary the second Rekkus reminded him that after over three millennia of waiting, he finally had his mate. The woman created just for him. Whenever something unsettling occurred over the last two hundred and fifty years since he’d been gifted the holy jewelry, he’d noticed that this gesture, touching the rosary’s cross, had brought him peace.

  “Her name is Blaine,” Hayze answered. “And yes, she has bound herself to me, but she refuses to see me. However, I truly can’t blame her for her actions because of what she’s been through.”

  “Didn’t you tell me when you found your mate you would have three days from the binding to make her accept you?” Concern filled Rekkus’s voice. “How long has it been, Hayze?”

  Lying to Rekkus was Hayze’s first thought, but there were two problems with that. Anubi couldn’t lie, no matter the situation. And, well, it would be pointless, since the brat pack would sense his vulnerability the minute he stepped foot in the Haus. That is, if they didn’t already know, and there wasn’t much they didn’t know.

  “This isn’t about me, Rekkus—it’s about Blaine. I need to know she will be okay whether she is with me or not. This is the only place that I know of where I’m assured she will be healed.”

  Rekkus exhaled, visibly biting back whatever else he wanted to say. He turned back to the ferry that was slowly cutting a path through the fog and straight toward them. It was still a good forty-five minutes away and but a speck of dust on the horizon, but because of their amplified abilities they could both see it clearly.

  “I’m not okay with this, but I owe you more than my life, Hayze,” Rekkus told him. “However, if her being at Wiccan Haus brings danger to my mate or anyone else, I swear to your god, I’ll have your balls as an appetizer and your head for my main course.”

  “I don’t expect any problems. The yazaron that was hunting her has been properly dispatched. I’m certain of that.”

  As the Anubi were created by Anubis to do his bidding, the yazaron were creatures originally created to protect Anubis’s wife. However, when she manipulated the yazaron into killing Anubis in a play for power, the Anubi and yazaron became immortal enemies. Banished to the far corners of the earth, the yazaron were cursed, their once handsome faces becoming riddled with lesions, their shape caught between jackal and beast. Unable to withstand even dim light, they plague the night, hunting and devouring the blood, skin, and tissue of Anubis’s descendants, the only remedy for their curse.

  Rekkus curled his lip. “Nasty bastards, huh?”

  “The worst.” Until he met his mate, Hayze’s only job was to hunt down and kill as many of these creatures as he could as fast as he could, keeping women who carried Anubis’s blood within their veins safe. After thousands of years of service, his reward was supposed to be her: Blaine, his mate. Or so it had been decreed over three millennia ago.

  “Will this fight ever end for you, Hayze?”

  “Until the last of Anubis’s blood runs clear in these women it will continue, unfortunately,” Hayze replied.

  He and Rekkus stood side by side, each lost in their own thoughts until Rekkus broke the silence. “I assume you will be staying on as well.
” He didn’t wait for an answer as he continued, “I’ll have you added to the roster.”

  “I’ll only be staying long enough to make sure Blaine’s comfortable—three days, tops.”

  “It doesn’t matter to me.”

  Hayze nodded at his friend. “Do me a favor and tell Sage I won’t need any of that healing crap.” Sage was the youngest of the brat pack and well-known in the Para community as an herbalist and healer. She was one of the main reasons why he’d chosen to bring his mate here, of all places.

  “Sage is not who you should be worried about. You’re in Sarka’s domain now, old friend. Second floor.” Rekkus moved away from him and back toward the gravel path that would carry him to the resort, but his laughter hung in the air between them like wisps of cigar smoke.

  “Figures,” Hayze whispered, turning his attention back to the ferry, drawing closer with each passing second.

  His future, the very beat of his heart and the reason for air filling his lungs, was aboard that little wooden boat.

  Did she know how much he needed her?

  Did she know that with each rejection she was literally killing him?

  And did she know that if asked, he would die a hundred times over if it meant she would live and laugh?

  Chapter Two

  LUCKY?

  Yeah, not so much.

  Blaine was a lot of things but lucky wasn’t one of them. Matter of fact, if a friend wanted to win a contest, she’d enter just to give them a better chance. So, what were the odds that she would win a contest she didn’t remember entering? Or that she would receive word of her winnings on the same day she was scheduled to be evicted from her motel room with no place to call home, except the worn front seats of her old Kia Spectra?

  Her adopted mother’s voice played through her mind. “Honey, sometimes you have to accept your good fortune for what it is and stop waiting for the other shoe to fall. When you do that, you chase your blessings away.” Every time Na-Na told her that, she wanted to believe and to accept her words as truth. But with the good, the bad always followed—tenfold.

  Blaine learned that at a very early age.

  The last time Na-Na had given Blaine her speech on blessings was the day she’d received word that she’d gotten the Animal Awareness Grant. She’d beat out forty other well-deserving applicants and had even started to believe that maybe it was a sign that her luck was turning around. The night she received news of her winnings was also the night of the fire…the night she lost everything: Na-Na, her best friend, Paula, her nonprofit veterinary clinic that she’d built from the ground up, and nearly all of the animals she’d cared for.

  For as long as she could remember, it had always been like that. Anytime she had a windfall or something wonderful happened to her, disaster always waited around the corner.

  Yet, here she was, on an amazing island somewhere off the coast of Maine, standing in a beautifully decorated room, gazing out of a picturesque window as seagulls blanketed the sky. All while frothy waves washed up upon sand that looked pillow-soft. Her only question now was what was her time here going to cost her? She had nothing left to give. No parents, no family, no home, no friends—nothing.

  I guess I still have my life. But if the Fates had wanted that they could’ve taken it that night. Hell, if it hadn’t been for him, that creature, that thing would’ve…

  Blaine shook her head. She refused to dwell for one more waking moment on that creature, because it already consumed her mind, her body, and what was left of her very soul. Every night as she slept she relived the scenario over and over again. Along with every ounce of terror she felt as it chased her out of her clinic and home and into the darkened streets of downtown Boston. She soaked in the awareness of its merciless intent right before it cornered her and forced her to leap from a fourth-story garage to what was supposed to be her death. And every morning she woke doused in buckets of sweat and screaming for help that never came.

  “Just enjoy this peace while you have it,” she told herself. “’Cause only the heavens knows how long it’s going to last.” Na-Na would’ve been so disappointed in her if she heard that. But she wasn’t here anymore, was she?

  leaning her cane against the nearest wall, she tried to stretch the muscles in her right ankle. Carefully removing the sling from her shoulder, Blaine allowed her left arm a little freedom. Her arm was still badly bruised and a little weak from her jump, but as the doctors told her, she should feel lucky—there was that word again—that she was even alive. When she was brought into the hospital, in addition to her torn Achilles’ tendon, she’d also had a collapsed lung, a ruptured spleen, three fractured ribs, a severely bruised tailbone, a serious concussion, and a vein in her brain was bleeding.

  Blaine half-hopped, half-waddled over to the bay window that overlooked the ocean. The view was dazzling: the Haus was a stark white with reddish brown trim and shingles, built like something out of a German fairy tale. When the ferry had docked, she had been so enamored by the view that she’d almost tripped and fallen into the ocean.

  Thankfully, one of the other passengers riding with her had been nice enough to catch her. Though even her rescue had been tinged with luck, because the passenger had looked up from his unresponsive smart phone at the same time she’d started to fall. Most of the twelve passengers on the ferry were more than a little peeved that their electronic devices had ceased to operate somewhere during the trip from Maine. Blaine, however, didn’t own a cell phone, or a tablet, so the lack of service didn’t bother her in the least.

  She surveyed her room. It was plain, but inviting. A queen bed draped in plush white blankets lay in the center of the room, a nightstand on either side. On each, tall ivory candles were centered, lending the room a romantic, country feel. Sheer drapes hung from the windows, and in the far corner sat a chaise that she could swear was whispering her name.

  “I have six days left on this little slice of paradise and I promise I’ll spend at least half of one of those days with you,” she whispered, eyeing the chaise.

  A light tapping on the door drew her attention away from the alluring piece of furniture.

  She glared from the door to her cane and back. Blaine hated to use it, because it made her feel clumsy and helpless, decrepit. However, it did make moving around on her damaged leg easier. She sighed and ran her hand over the white bandage wrapped snuggly around her ankle. It could have been worse. The monster could have torn right through her ankle, taking her entire foot off. Better yet, it could have succeeded in ripping her apart, like it had done to Na-Na and Paula.

  Blaine exhaled a breath she hadn’t been aware she was holding. The sole survivor, again. She couldn’t really remember her parents’ faces anymore or the sound of her little brother’s laughter. But she could still clearly remember the sound the metal made as it twisted around the base of a light pole. She could still feel the tiny fragments of glass from the broken windows as they cut into her flesh, and she could still recall her parents’ screams and her brother’s painful cries for help as the car they were in exploded.

  How had she survived? No one knew. But if she hadn’t won the cutest toddler contest at the local shopping mall and hadn’t been en route to pick up her winnings, her family would probably still be alive today. She was certain of that.

  The light tapping turned to a slightly more insistent knock. “Hold on,” she called. Maybe the Haus’s management had figured out their mistake. But even if they did, they couldn’t really ship her back across the ocean, could they? Granted, the ferry operator had said he only made the trip once a week. But that didn’t mean the Wiccan Haus staff didn’t have a private boat or helicopter stashed away somewhere. After all, there had to be a way off this rock if an emergency occurred, right?

  Grabbing her cane, Blaine crossed to the door and pushed those thoughts to the back of her mind. “Who is it?”

  “Sage Rowan. I came to escort you down to dinner,” a sweet female voice called from the other side of th
e door. Sage was one of the owners of Wiccan Haus. Blaine remembered seeing that in the brochure.

  Unlocking the door, Blaine allowed it to swing open. “Do you guys escort all of your guests to dinner, or only the handicapped ones?” She held back her smile and added, “Trust me, I’m faster than I look.”

  Sage winked and replied in a melodic, pixie-like voice, “Just the handicapped ones, and I’m sure you are.” She skipped into the room. “Dana was going to join us, but she and her mate got a little tied up.” She giggled. “You know how it is with newlyweds. Their first year is one long honeymoon.”

  “Mates” was a strange term to use to describe a husband and wife, but Blaine let it go. “Who’s Dana?”

  “She works with me in the herbal garden and is mated to the head of security, Rekkus. You’ll be meeting her soon. I believe you have a few yoga sessions with her later in the week. Anyway, I’m sure you’re going to love her when you meet her. The two of you have a lot in common.”

  “Unless she lost everyone who’s ever mattered to her and has been maimed to within an inch of her life, I doubt we’ll have anything in common,” Blaine mumbled.

  “What happened to you was horrific and I doubt that there are many people on the face of the planet who can understand how you’re feeling, but don’t let that keep you from reconnecting and moving forward.” The look on Sage’s face as she spoke was so sincere, Blaine had to glance away.

  “How do you know what happened to me?”

  “I know we’re tucked away here on this little island, but we do thoroughly research all of our incoming guests.”

  “You were saying something about yoga?” Discussing that night in any form was not going to happen.

  Sage shot her an understanding smile. “Yes, Dana teaches a class twice a week. It’s something new we’re trying out. So far it has received rave reviews. We’re considering making it a regular activity, so your feedback would be appreciated at the end of your stay.”