Storm's Fury Page 15

  Iya was crazy. There was no such thing as chosen mates, gods, or true love. She knew this to be true, so what the hell was she waiting for? Stormy looked away from Fury’s prone body and glanced around the room before pushing to her feet. Even if she had the mark and wanted to accept him, it still wouldn’t work between them.

  Her mother, aunt, and grandmother…hell, even her father, everyone she loved and who claimed to love her met horrific ends. Maybe her dad didn’t, but he still left her. And he left her with nothing, with nowhere to go, and with a relentless stalker on her heels.

  Yeah, he left me all right. But still even now, years after his death, a part of her still yearned to hear his deep, infectious laughter once more. The other part of her tried desperately to hold on to whatever resentment it could.

  She shook her head. This would be no different, no matter how she looked at it. She wasn’t meant to be one of those people who found or held onto love. If she remembered nothing else, it was imperative she never forget she was a woman continually hunted by a ruthless foe she’d never seen but always felt.

  Seventeen years ago, Stormy had dreamed that her mother was racing down a dark alley, sobbing, as something hidden within the dark shadows cackled and laughed, whispering her name. When Stormy woke up, the police were at the door, telling her babysitter her mother’s body had been found floating in the Savannah River.

  She was twelve when the feeling returned. Her aunt had gone to the corner store to get popcorn for their movie night. As she sat waiting for her to return, she must have dozed off, because soon she was witnessing a dream similar to the one she had of her mother. Except this time, no one was running. Her aunt was huddled in a dark building, shivering and crying, begging someone or something not to hurt her. When Stormy woke up, it was the next morning. She was still curled up on the couch and her aunt had not returned with the popcorn.

  Stormy sighed as she stared down at Fury. “And now I’ve seen you die. I saw him kill you. I can’t watch another person I care for leave me. Not even for you. I can’t risk it.”

  She had to remember she was not a woman who he or anyone would be able to love. Not if her stalker had anything to say about it. She crossed the room to her purse. After situating the strap on her shoulder, she glanced around the room for the rest of her belongings but found no trace of them.

  She couldn’t hold back the rueful smile, knowing Fury had to have gotten rid of them thinking it would stop her from escaping.

  As she exited the room, she clutched her shoes to her chest and refused to chance another look at him for fear her resolve would falter. The moment she crossed the threshold into the hall, Stormy broke into a run that would rival an Olympian. Nearing the door, she ran the backs of her hands across her eyes, but refused to give thought to the wetness coating them.

  “I don’t belong here with him. I don’t—I don’t belong anywhere,” she whispered.

  Stormy did the only thing she knew she was great at.

  She ran.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Buried deep within Fury’s jackal body was a barely contained geyser of rage.

  His front paws pounded against the uneven ground, grinding the twigs and leaves to dust, crushing pebbles into sand. He skirted around tree after tree, jumped over boulders, and tore through bushes, incinerating them. His intent was clear and focused: to find his wayward mate and bring her back where she belonged.

  Fury had expected her to try to leave, but he hadn’t anticipated her actually succeeding. He’d thought she would stumble around for a while, but by the trail she left behind, stumbling hadn’t been one of the things she did.

  Her scent leads straight to the damn road. Thankfully, he hadn’t slept the full twelve hours he thought he’d need.

  The fact that she left baffled him, but that she didn’t do it alone infuriated him. There was no way she could have found her way back to civilization on her own, and the underlying scent told him without a doubt who had helped her along.

  That son of a bastard and lover of whores! I’ll rip him apart!

  Fury burst through a coppice of trees and came to a roaring halt as he came face to face with the betrayer himself. Hatrid! His head lowered, and his hackles rose as his lips pulled back in a snarl of pure rage. He took a step back, and then moved in a slow deliberate circle around him.

  Instincts told him Hatrid could not be trusted and needed to be dealt with posthaste, but his blood told him this was family, and he deserved a chance to speak.

  Not that it would matter in the end.

  Fury stopped half way around Hatrid. Explain yourself. Every syllable was spoken with deadly venom.

  Before Hatrid could speak, Sodona and Brutus, followed by Apache and Navajo, tore through the foliage. Each of them spreading out in a different direction, they surrounded Hatrid, ready to tear him apart if the order was given. It was true Hatrid was a member of their extended pack, but Fury was Alpha of their primary pack. If he said jump, they didn’t ask questions, they jumped.

  “Is this what it comes to, brother?” Hatrid spun, his arms out at his sides, and a smirk on his face.

  Fury reared back and released a howl before he began to prowl to the right, his unwavering focus on his prey. Brutus and the others followed his lead as they awaited his final command. He didn’t need their help to deal with Hatrid, but they would make the process quick and as painful as possible.

  “I see.” Hatrid pushed his hands into the pockets of his loose-fitting jeans and eyed the pack of oversized canines surrounding him once more. “Your intention is to rip me apart, is that it?”

  Give me one fucking reason why we shouldn’t.

  “Because I’m blood,” he seethed as if it should have been a no-brainer.

  You had no right to interfere! Fury reared back and leapt forward, snarling. She’s blood! She’s my heart and the air filling my fucking lungs, you son of a bastard! It wasn’t your place to assist her in her escape! What you did is a betrayal against blood! I should free you of your head for this!

  “Call it what you like.” Hatrid pursed his lips and shrugged as he stared up at the graying sky. “She wanted to leave, so I helped her.” He was audacious enough to chuckle as he turned his attention back to Fury. “If it hadn’t been for me, she would’ve been killed. You should be thanking me.”

  There had never been a time that Fury could remember when he seriously wanted to rip his brother’s head off, until now. One saucer-sized paw lifted as his tail swished to the right and left, his ears raised and twitching erratically.

  “Look at it this way: I did you a favor. You wanted her gone, didn’t you?”

  No!

  “Are you sure about that, brother? You at no time felt resentment toward her and Anubis for bringing our hunt to an end so abruptly? You didn’t wish that Anubis would’ve waited for a different time to bring her to you? You never entertained ditching her?”

  He’s been listening to my thoughts when all others were supposed to be blocked, Fury thought in disbelief. He may have thought along those lines, but they were merely thoughts and nothing more. He had had no intention of acting on them or allowing anyone else to.

  Before he could respond, Hatrid continued. “You don’t have to thank me; let’s just get things back to the way they were—just you and me. We need to interrogate Luzivius, and then there’s the matter of Terroar.” Hatrid’s head tilted ever so slightly to the right. “I was told you already had a run-in with him. Since you needed time in hibernation, I’ll assume you didn’t fair too well.”

  Enough!

  The insinuation made by Terroar after their battle that Hatrid had aided him in his abduction of Stormy was one thing, but now Fury could damn near smell Hatrid’s pleasure at his injuries rolling off the jackass in waves of sickening revelry.

  Hatrid’s only warning was the curling back of Fury’s lips right before the jackal leapt, aiming straight for the younger Anubi’s neck. At that same time Sodona, Brutus, Navajo, and Apache l
eapt, paws outstretched, lips drawn back from their razor-sharp teeth, with blood and death on their minds.

  Stormy turned on her heels, taking in the nondescript motel room before sagging on the foot of the queen bed. She took a moment to pull off the cheap white tennis shoes and sweat pants she had purchased from the feed store that had also doubled as a Greyhound bus station.

  She hadn’t actually thought she could do it. Not make it out of the middle of nowhere and back into civilization on her own, but she’d trusted her intuition and in the end had stumbled on to what seemed to be an unused county road. There were instances when she felt more confused than anything else, but at those times she would close her eyes, breathe, and when she opened them the route would be as clear as a highway. She didn’t know if it was all in her head or if it was wishful thinking, but whatever it was, she was happy for the help.

  Stormy stripped off the T-shirt she’d taken from Fury’s and tossed it on the shopping bags. Once she had made it to the county road, she’d been picked up by Mitch, a nice old man who had taken her to the bus station. She’d then taken a bus to Olympia, Washington.

  The entire time as she was bouncing around on the under-stuffed seats of the bus headed back east, she kept thinking she would look up and see Fury stalking down the aisle toward her, his gray eyes menacing, his lips in a sneer of disapproval. As much as she hated to admit it, there was something about the thought of him coming after her that made her insides flip and her head swim. It was during these occasions that she regretted leaving him and in the same moment understood if she cared anything for him, it was best that she got as far from him as fast as possible.

  It would only be a matter of time before the feeling came again if she stayed, and if she didn’t run, he would die. When she was younger, she hadn’t understood it, but now she knew what it was—a premonition of horrors to come. She’d had the same feeling before her mother was killed, her aunt disappeared, and her grandmother had driven her old Chevy into a ravine.

  If I had run those times, would I still have a family? Would Iya still be here rambling about gods and devils, and would Momma be married by now? Would Auntie Lyla have passed her nursing exam? Hell, would I actually have a home to call my own? Stormy pushed her thoughts away and turned her attention to the plastic bags on the bed. Only the foolish lived on should’ves, would’ves and could’ves.

  She picked up the plastic bag that now held everything she owned in the world. A pair of jeans, a Hello Kitty tank top, two pairs of panties, a toothbrush, a hairbrush, a stick of deodorant, and a tube of toothpaste. She didn’t care about the material things she had left at her motel room, but she desperately wanted the pictures of her mom and dad, and of Iya and her aunt. There was also a bracelet she wanted to retrieve. It wasn’t from Tiffany’s or even a low-end department store, but it was hers. When Iya had given it to her, she told her that though it wasn’t worth anything, it had been passed down through generations of their female family members.

  Lost in her own thoughts, Stormy nearly missed the light knock on the door.

  Her first thought was that Fury had found her as he’d promised. But when had Fury ever knocked on a door? He’d find a way in or break the damn thing down.

  She slipped into one of the dingy robes that came with the room and crossed the floor to the door. “Who is it?”

  “Alan from the front desk, ma’am. I have the information you requested.”

  After tugging on the sash to make sure the robe was closed tightly, Stormy tipped up on her toes and peered through the peephole. Satisfied he was who he claimed to be, she removed the chain from the door, released the lock, and stepped to the side.

  Alan was a tall gangly man in his early twenties, his hair a washed-out red and his face scarred with the hideous reminder of his pimple-riddled teenage years. He reminded her of one of the geeks in an old movie she’d seen, minus the leather pocket protector and Darth Vader helmet.

  Nervously, he looked away from her, and his gaze darted around the room as he fidgeted with a sheet of paper he was holding. “This is the nicest room we’ve got. We usually rent it out to honeymooners.”

  “Is that so? Well, thanks for letting me have it.”

  He blushed and ducked his head. “It was nothing. My mom says if a man sees a lady in distress he should do everything in his power to help her.”

  “Sounds like a very smart woman.”

  “She is,” he replied, a light blush stealing over his cheeks. “She’s sick right now. You know, from the bug going round?”

  “Really? Is it the flu?” Stormy lounged across the doorway so he wouldn’t have to come into the room. It wasn’t that she thought he was going to do anything to her, but she’d been around enough men to know some of the safest looking men were the worst of them all.

  “I don’t know. It has some of the same symptoms, but it doesn’t really last more than forty-eight hours.”

  “Well, I hope she gets better fast.”

  “Yeah, me too. We sure need her around here. Especially with Canadian Labor Day right around the corner.” He smiled at her. “You actually beat the rush. Another two days and we’d be booked up. You came across the border right? From Calgary?”

  “No, Vancouver, I think,” she corrected. She still wasn’t ready to try and wrap her head around that just yet. When Mitch had told her that she was in some little town outside of Vancouver, Canada, Stormy had nearly passed out. Somehow, Fury had transported her from New Jersey and into a foreign country within the span of a few hours and without her passport. Then to make matters even more twisted, he’d obviously traveled back to the spot where he kidnapped her and retrieved her purse. Twice in one night he skipped across the country. Thankfully, she carried her passport in her purse, otherwise she’d still be stuck back there at the border.

  She pushed her thoughts away as she scratched at her wrist. “Alan, what do you have for me?” If nothing else, she needed to get the hell out of there.

  He wiped his forehead, brushing back tendrils of hair caught between curly, wavy, and frizzy. “Ah, yeah.” He handed her the sheet of paper. “I called down to Mulholland to see when the next flight was leaving. It’s going to be tonight at midnight. If you’re not on it, you’ll have to wait until Saturday.”

  Saturday? Another three days? No way in hell. She took the paper. “Where’s the flight going?”

  “Well, it’s going to make a stop in Casper, Utah and then fly on to Nashville.”

  Stormy scanned the sheet of paper where Alan had scribbled several different numbers and times on it. She could take the flight out tonight and then move on to Tennessee, head back up to New Jersey, get her stuff, and jump on an international flight out of Philadelphia.

  “Those numbers there—” Alan pointed a shaky finger to a row of numbers scribbled on the paper “—are for local taxi services I know. They run late at night.” He blushed and pushed at his hair again. “But if you want, I-I could drop you at the airport.” He shuffled his feet and looked away from her. “I mean, that is, if you’re planning on leaving tonight.”

  Stormy couldn’t help but smile at the man-boy. “I’d like that, Alan.”

  He beamed at her. “Great! Call down to the front desk when you’re ready and I’ll pull the truck around.” He looked over her shoulder and into the room before his eyes landed on her again. “You don’t have any luggage?”

  She turned and looked at the bed with her meager belongings littered on top of the pastel polyester blanket. “Nope, just the essentials.”

  “Okay, well, call me when you’re ready,” he said with a wave of his hand.

  She pushed the door closed and sighed, her shoulders slouching forward. “If I’m not careful, I’m going to be just as broke as I was before I robbed that Sanderson idiot.” Stormy crossed to the nightstand and set the piece of paper on the King James Bible collecting dust there. “Maybe when I get back to Atlantic City, I’ll make one more hit and then I can disappear in any country I want
. Maybe even head down to Cuba or something,” she said as she slipped out of the robe and made her way to the bathroom. “My money should go a long way down there, right?”

  The feeling came without warning, like a large fist bashing against the back of her head. It was rage—such fiery rage that it burned right through her soul. Her head swam, her fingers clenched, and she gritted her teeth against it, but it didn’t assuage the desire to scream out to…to call to him…to Fury.

  Her head told her different, but her heart and soul knew it was Fury. The pain—she’d never experienced anything like it. It was like a lake of blackness, a sea of agony, and a burning inferno of trepidation and destruction.

  Did I do this to him? Th-This can’t be because of me.

  Stormy shook her head with vehemence. She couldn’t think about him. She couldn’t allow him to change her plans. If she did, they would both lose in the end.

  I’m not your chosen. I’m not your anything, Fury. But he was fast becoming her everything—her every thought, every desire.

  Stormy tried to breathe through the emotions that were not her own. This was for the best. If anything happened to him because of her, how would she ever forgive herself?

  She closed her eyes and envisioned a large cement wall that grew and stretched, disappearing off in all directions. She fortified herself behind the wall and envisioned him and everything dealing with him on the other side. Then she created another wall between them, and another.

  Tears spilled from her eyes as she built her fortifications. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, “I’m so sorry. But this is for the best.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Stormy scanned the brightly lit corridors, filled with people of varying colors, heights and nationalities, but she didn’t see them. She saw Fury. No matter where she looked, he was there scowling at her and hating her for shutting him out the way she had.