Rogue Rider

Nine

Jillian woke to the smell of burned pancakes and charred bacon. She sat up, blinking, the events of last night as fuzzy as her eyes. She’d crashed, and crashed hard. She remembered waking at one point in the night, and although she couldn’t recall why she’d woken, she did know that Reseph had been holding her, and his chest had been wet with her tears.

He hadn’t said a word. He’d just handed her tissues and kept her close, his strong arms banded around her. And now, it seemed, he was trying to burn down her house.

She made a quick trip to the bathroom and donned her robe before hurrying to the kitchen, where Reseph, wearing only jeans, was dousing a fire.

Smoke drifted out of the sink, billowing up around a stream of rushing water. “Oh, uh… hi.” Reseph shot her a sheepish grin over his shoulder. “I tried to make you breakfast.”

“I can see that.” She peered into the sink, where the remains of paper towels and pancakes were an ashy mush. “I think, in the future, you should leave the cooking to me.”

He frowned down at the mess. “It’s like I’ve never cooked in my life. How could I not have cooked?”

“Maybe you only ate out?”

“Maybe I’m rich and have servants,” he suggested. “That would be cool.”

She turned off the gas burner that was heating the empty cast iron frying pan. “I don’t think I’d like being that rich.”

He pivoted around and propped his hip on the counter, giving her a tantalizing view of his sculpted chest. “So there’s nothing you’d want to change around here? No place you’d like to travel?”

The magical island full of hunks like Reseph came to mind. “Maybe I’d get a new truck and expand the barn, and a tropical vacation would be nice, but no, I like my life the way it is.”

“Huh.” He rubbed his sternum and worked his way up to his shoulder, getting out the morning kinks, and Jillian could barely tear her eyes away to open the fridge. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m better,” she said, as she fetched the bowl where she kept her fresh eggs.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Nope.” She didn’t think she’d ever want to talk about her neighbors’ deaths, or the fact that she’d freaked out last night. “But thank you. And thanks for getting the fire going.”

“I also fed the animals and shoveled the path to the barn.”

“You didn’t have to do that.”

He shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep. I hope it’s okay, but I spent some time on the Internet.”

A twinge of anxiety shot through her. “Did you find anything? About yourself?”

“No, but I scanned my horse tattoo and uploaded it to a skin art forum to see if anyone recognized the work. Nothing so far. I also caught up on what happened over the last year. Sparked my memory on a lot of stuff. I remember who the president is now.” He ran his hand through his hair, and her fingers itched to do it for him. “It’s weird, though, because I swear I actually remember Washington.” He shook his head. “But the really fucked-up thing is that I’ve got bits and pieces of memory and knowledge up until around the time everything started. Then nothing after that.”

Placing the bowl next to the sink, she thought about her own month in a coma. When she’d awakened in a hospital bed, confused and alone, she didn’t remember what had landed her there. It was only weeks later that it all came back, and in many ways, she wished it hadn’t.

“Maybe you were injured. In a coma or something.”

His expression was troubled. “Maybe. But that still doesn’t explain how I got onto your property, naked and half-frozen. And what if the explanation for why I have no memory is something worse than an accident or coma?”

“Like what? Like something terrible happened, and you’re blocking it out? Some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder?”

“I don’t know.” He pushed off the counter and began to pace. “It’s like there’s a wall in my brain that surrounds my past, and if I could just break through it, I could remember. It’s right there… I can almost touch it.” He shook his head. “But then I think that maybe I don’t want to.”

“I get that,” she murmured. “I so get that.”

“What happened?” Reseph brought his hands down on her shoulders, and her breath caught. He was so careful, so gentle with his strength. “You cried out in your sleep last night.”

She suppressed a groan. “I was upset about the Wilsons.”

“Bullshit.” The harsh word was spoken softly. “It was a nightmare, and you have them a lot.”

“You can’t know that,” she blurted, too defensively.

Reseph dropped his hands, but he didn’t move away. “When I slept on the couch, I heard you.”

She couldn’t outrun his accusation, but she could get away from him, and she crossed to the other side of the kitchen and busied herself with wiping the counter. “Everyone has nightmares.”

“But you don’t have to wake up from them alone.”

The way he said it, so weighted with emotion, wrapped around her heart. A strange tension sprouted between them, as if they were both uncomfortable with the way their relationship was progressing. Which was way too fast, for Jillian, at least. She didn’t want a relationship, but she couldn’t help how she felt, either. And the more time she spent with Reseph, the more she liked him. The more she found herself craving the way he made her feel.

Lighten it up. Fast. She jammed her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes in mock disgust. “You will turn anything into an opportunity to get into bed, won’t you?”

A slow smile spread over his face. “Jilly, you know me so well.”

Wince. No one had called her Jilly since she was in diapers. She grabbed the frying pan off the stove. “Call me Jilly again, and I’ll nail you with this.”

“Looks heavy.”

She hefted it higher. “Cast iron.”

“You wouldn’t really hit me, would you… Jilly?”

She spoke through clenched teeth. “Yes.”

Reseph sauntered over, and her heart pounded faster with each step. He stopped when they were almost touching and leaned in so close his lips grazed her ear. “You know I love a woman who can handle a weapon.”

“Yeah? You know what you can do with the handle?”

Laughing, he raised his hands in defeat and stepped back. “I’m going to check on the animals.”

“Didn’t you already feed them?”

“Yeah, but there’s something out there.”

The reminder put a damper on the light mood. “Be careful.”

“Yup. If I had a middle name, careful would be it.” He waggled his brows. “I think.”

“Somehow, I doubt that.”

He shrugged, making all those luscious muscles play under his skin. “You’re probably right.”

Reseph tugged on a T-shirt and stepped out into the cold, grateful for the icy breeze. For once, it wasn’t the sexy play that had gotten him sweaty. It was the talk of Jillian’s nightmares. He hadn’t been exactly… forthcoming. Yes, she’d whimpered in her sleep, cried out at times, and she tossed and turned like she was a kernel of corn in a popcorn popper.

But so did he.

This morning, what had driven him from bed had been nightmares that played like movies every time he closed his eyes.

He’d seen monsters… horrific creatures of all sizes and shapes. The worst ones had been the beasts who, at first, looked human, but who then morphed into things that fell upon actual humans and… did things to them. There’d also been plagues, so many people suffering.

The worst part of all was that in the nightmares, Reseph sensed that he was supposed to enjoy the horrors. The blood. The death.

Maybe he shouldn’t have spent so much time researching the shit that had gone down over the last year. He’d watched news reports, read up on official statements released by governments worldwide, seen pictures so disturbing he’d grown nauseous.

It had all been so familiar.

He needed to know why. He needed answers, answers the Internet couldn’t provide.

Glancing back over his shoulder, he made sure Jillian was still in the house and started down her driveway. He trudged to the main road and made a left, heading up the mountain in the direction he assumed the Bjornsens had lived. He wasn’t sure how long he walked, but he knew when he found the right driveway.

Even if the grim, sinister vibration hadn’t grabbed him, the sight of the tire-chewed driveway would have. Out here, in the middle of nowhere, there had been a lot of traffic turning onto the crude gravel drive.

Cautiously, he followed the tire tracks, his eyes and ears alerted to danger. The drive twisted for a good half a mile. As he rounded an uphill bend, he spotted a rusted-out trailer house ringed by police tape. There were no cars save the ancient Jeep wagon parked in front of the detached garage.

The sense of evil became more concentrated as he ducked under the police tape, and with it, his pulse kicked into high gear. Again, the familiarity was tapping at the inside of his skull. His hand trembled as he reached for the door handle.

The unlocked door swung open, and the stench of death slammed into him. The rank odor of blood and bowels was also accompanied by an odd smokiness, like a combination of sulphur and brimstone.

Brimstone? How would he know what brimstone smelled like? Hell, how did he know what death smelled like?

Fuck. This couldn’t be good.

Reseph stepped inside, careful to avoid messing up any of the police evidence marks, tags, and photos that had been pinned all over the place. Dried blood created gruesome art on the walls and furniture, and pools of still-damp blood sat like muddy gel on the linoleum floor and orange shag carpet.

His boots crunched on broken glass in the kitchen, remnants of shattered dishes and a window. Crouching, he studied the claw marks that raked the cabinets. They were deep, some completely piercing the flimsy particleboard. Bloody footprints littered the place… some human, and some… not.

He hovered his palm over one of the nots. The print was longer than his hand, and wider, very similar to the ones he’d seen in the snow near the cougar tracks.

This was definitely not a cougar, and if the cops suspected a bear, they were morons. At least they’d been smart enough to call in experts.

I’m responsible for this.

The thought came out of nowhere, a stab in the brain that rocked him on his heels. He couldn’t be responsible. He’d been frozen in the snow.

Unless I killed them and then wandered through the woods until I collapsed.

A breath shuddered out of him. He was so sick of doubting himself. Almost idly, he dragged his finger through a scatter of salt from a broken shaker. Some demon-proof-your-house advice website had claimed that certain supernatural creatures couldn’t cross a line of salt. Sounded stupid to him, but hell, anything was worth a try if it would keep Jillian safe.

The sound of an engine had him leaving behind ideas about stealing road salt trucks. He leaped to his feet and scanned for a back door. It wouldn’t be cool for the cops to catch him here. Especially if the cop was Stacey, who already wanted to string him up by his balls. Shit.

Ducking low, he eased to the kitchen window to peek out, and his heart stopped. It wasn’t the police. It was Jillian on a snowmobile.

Double shit. He’d almost rather Stacey found him. Dressed in black ski pants, snow boots, and a green parka, she climbed off the machine, eyeing his footprints as she walked toward the door, where he met her.

And she. Was. Pissed.

Expression set in fury, she clenched her gloved hands at her sides. “What the hell are you doing? This is a crime scene. Why didn’t you tell me you were taking off? That was an ass move—” She broke off, her gaze glued to the scene behind him. The fire that had been snapping in her eyes snuffed out, and her skin lost so much color he prepared to catch her if she passed out.

Before he could step out and close the door, she bulldozed her way past him.

“Jillian,” he said, taking her arm, “you shouldn’t see this.”

“Oh, but it’s okay for you to see it?” She jerked out of his grip. “I’m not a child.”

“You’re the one who pointed out that it’s a crime scene.”

She glared. At least she wasn’t carrying a frying pan.

The moment she stepped into the kitchen and saw the claw marks in the cabinets, she went even paler.

“I don’t know much about police procedure,” Reseph said, “but it seems odd to tape pictures of the victims and the evidence at the scene.”

She swallowed sickly a few times. “I don’t think it’s standard procedure for normal crime scenes. A while ago, Stacey mentioned that when paranormal specialists are called in, they require the police to leave pictures of the victims and evidence since the specialists don’t work closely with law enforcement.”

Swallowing harder, she peered at one of the pictures, and Reseph held his breath. Of all the photos, that was the most graphic, revealing a pattern of claw marks on a woman’s torso.

The photo was of just her torso, since her legs, arms, and head were missing.

Jillian slapped her hand over her mouth and ran for the door. He chased after her, found her around the side of the house next to the woodpile, trying desperately not to throw up.

Helplessness was a lump in his gut, so he did the only thing he could. He rubbed her back, small, gentle circles over her coat. “I’m sorry. Did you know these people well?”

She shook her head. “They’ve only been here for a few months. Honestly, they were jerks. He shot one of my goats for wandering onto their property, and his wife didn’t care at all. But I didn’t wish… this on them.” She shivered. “That was no wild animal, Reseph. We both know that.”

His heart nearly stopped, and even in this cold, his palms began to sweat. “Do you know what it was?”

“Yes.” Her green eyes came up to cling to his. With shaking hands, she unzipped her coat and lifted her sweatshirt.

On her belly were scars. Scars scratched into her skin in the exact same pattern as the claw marks on the dead woman.