скачать книгу бесплатно
Damned
Lisa Childs
Experience the thrill of life on the edge and set your adrenalin pumping! These gripping stories see heroic characters fight for survival and find love in the face of danger.Their only chance for salvation was each other… Born a witch, Irina Cooper was able to read other people’s thoughts. She had never known the source of her power, or her true heritage. It was police officer Ty McIntyre’s job to save her from the dark forces swirling around her.To stop the killer seeking to destroy the Cooper legacy, they must use Irina’s gift and end her family’s curse. Doing so will lead Irina to her true salvation – in Ty’s strong embrace!Witch Hunt Three sisters – magic in their blood and a killer on their trail!
“Don’t,” she murmured. “Don’tpresume to know what I think. Or what I feel, Ty McIntyre.”
She’d read his thoughts; she knew his fear. He nodded. “You’re right. I don’t have a gift, not like you.” But he was cursed all the same.
Placing her slim hands on his shoulders, she pushed him down so he sat on the edge of the rusted tub. Then she ran her fingers through his hair and over his scalp. He didn’t notice the pain, only the heat of her touch. Like her kiss, it branded him.
Sucking her bottom lip between her teeth, she murmured, “You have a few deep cuts. You could probably use some stitches. Let me clean them, at least.”
“Irina…”
“You’ve asked me to trust you. You need to trust me.”
More than once he’d requested her trust, and she’d given it. Trust didn’t come as easily for Ty.
“You think it comes easy for me?” she asked. “I don’t even trust myself.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Award-winning author Lisa Childs wrote her first book when she was six, a biography…of the family dog. Now she writes romantic suspense, paranormal romance and women’s fiction. The youngest of seven siblings, she holds family very dear in real life and in her fiction, often infusing her books with compelling family dynamics. She lives in west Michigan with her husband, two daughters and a twenty-pound Siamese cat. For the latest on Lisa’s spine-tingling suspense and heartwarming women’s fiction, check out her website at www.lisachilds.com. She loves hearing from readers, who can also reach her at PO Box 139, Marne, MI 49435, USA.
Dear Reader,
Damned is the conclusion of my WITCH HUNT trilogy for NOCTURNE. I’ve loved writing about all the “gifted” Cooper sisters, but I couldn’t wait to tell Irina’s story, partly because, as the youngest of my family, I can identify with her, but mostly because Damned is also Ty McIntyre’s story. The witch hunt has put Ty through a lot of physical and emotional trauma. He’s lost his job and a chance with the woman he thought he could love. He deserves to find the true love of his life, and he deserves to make sure justice is finally served. I hope you enjoy reading Ty and Irina’s story as much as I enjoyed writing it!
Happy reading!
Lisa
Damned
LISA CHILDS
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Acknowledgement
To the Grand Rapids Police Department,
thank you for allowing me to participate in the
Citizens Police Academy, and thank you most
of all for your selfless service to our city.
Dedication
To my family, for your constant love
and support!
Prologue
This was home: the street. Where she slept. Where she ate—if she remembered to eat. Where she drank—if she could scrounge up enough money for a bottle. And the drugs—they were easier to score.
But even here she couldn’t hide from the voices, couldn’t drown them out. They kept whispering… in her head, the voices echoing in her mind. And it didn’t matter…what she did.
She couldn’t shut them out.
Cardboard shifted and crumpled beneath her as she curled into a ball against the wall of a brick building. The stench of moldy food and dirty diapers drifted from the Dumpster behind which she lay, but she hardly noticed. She hardly noticed anything…outside her head.
She pressed her hands against her ears, trying to block out the noise. Not the rumble of traffic from the street, nor the murmured conversation drifting from the other end of the alley where shadows crouched around a barrel with flames lapping up the rusted rim.
The noise she tried to block was already inside her head, and her efforts were futile. As the voices rose, her vision dimmed, the stars, the street lamps and the fire at the end of the alley reduced to sparks in a sea of black. Blinded, her hearing sharpened.
“Where could Irina be?”
The sparks glittered and danced against the black backdrop as she struggled to recognize the voice.
“We have to find her before he does!”
Although she didn’t think she’d ever heard either of the two soft feminine voices before, in person, they were oddly familiar. Despite the anxiety in these adult voices, each of them resonated with the echo of a child’s laughter.
Her sisters…
She’d had sisters, hadn’t she? Her parents had told her no, that she’d been an only child. That she was only theirs. But there was another life to which she belonged…and it was calling her back.
“Irina…”
“Irina!”
She’d once been called Irina, twenty years ago, before she’d been taken away from her mother and her sisters. Before she’d been adopted by a couple who had wanted her to forget who she’d once been. They’d tried to convince her that she’d been born to them, that she’d been born Heather Bowers. But they hadn’t adopted her until she was nearly five. She remembered. And even if she hadn’t, she’d heard their thoughts; she knew the truth.
She wasn’t theirs, and because of her uncanny ability to read their minds, they didn’t want her to be. They couldn’t love her. But they’d tried.
The way her sisters were trying to find her now. Why after all these years?
The sparks brightened like embers on a stoked fire as the voices quavered with fear.
“If he finds her first, he’ll kill her like he killed the others.”
“Like he killed our mother.”
She squeezed her eyes shut so that even the sparks of light disappeared. But she couldn’t shut out the voices. Others called to her, jumbled inside her head, echoes of thoughts and fears she’d already heard.
“I’m not a witch.”
“Don’t kill me! Please, don’t kill me!”
But the killer ignored their pleas, and the women’s voices rose in screams of terror and pain. Irina winced at the volume, which threatened to shatter her skull, and she cringed at the agony expressed in each shrill cry. No matter how long ago she’d first heard them, she couldn’t get them out of her head, couldn’t forget their suffering. Not only had she heard their cries but she’d felt their pain, too. The fire scorching her flesh, burning her alive. The noose chafing her skin, tightening around her throat until it cut off her last breath. The jagged rocks piled one by one onto her body, crushing her beneath their weight.
She’d wanted to help them, but she hadn’t known where the women were. She hadn’t been able to see them or their surroundings; she’d only heard them. Even if she had been able to figure out where they’d been, she would have been too late to save them. She’d wanted to help, but she couldn’t even help herself right now.
One of these screams, the first she’d heard filled with such agony and fear and so hauntingly familiar, had driven her back here…to the street. Her biological mother’s. She hadn’t heard her voice in twenty years—not in person, just many times inside her head. With that scream she’d known her mother had been killed even before she’d heard her sisters speak of her death.
Were they real? Any of them? The voices? Her memories? Or had that first scream been the beginning of some kind of psychotic break?
Before hearing that scream, just months ago, she’d been managing. She’d been living. Going to school. Working.
Now she was barely existing, just waiting…until the next scream…was hers.
Chapter 1
Were they witches? They didn’t cast spells. They didn’t heal with potions and herbs as their long-dead ancestor had. But they had special abilities and they needed to use them to save a life—just as their ancestor had tried three hundred and fifty years ago. He only hoped their efforts weren’t rewarded the same way hers had been.
With death.
Ty McIntyre cared about these two women. They sat together, holding hands, on the black leather couch in the penthouse owned by Ty’s best friend. Actually Ariel held her older sister’s hand, and Elena held the charms—a little pewter sun and a little pewter star—in her palm, combining their powers.
Their powers?
A muscle jumped in his cheek as he clenched his jaw. Skepticism nagged at him. God, he was a lawman. Even though he listened to his instincts, he relied on evidence. Tangible proof. How could he rely on something he didn’t understand, something he couldn’t trust?
Believe, he silently chanted to quell his doubts. He’d seen the proof of their powers in the results they wrought. Ariel was alive. Stacia, Elena’s daughter, was alive. Because of their intangible powers.
“Can you see anything yet?” he asked Elena, frustration thickening his voice.
She scrunched shut her pale eyes, and her forehead furrowed with concentration. The knuckles on the hand holding the charms tightened and turned white, while her fingers reddened.
“She can’t force her visions,” Ariel defended her sister as she stared up at him through narrowed eyes. “What’s up with you, Ty? You’re edgier than usual. Did you find out something you haven’t shared yet?”
He shook his head, then started pacing the marble floor of David’s living room. Like a jolt from an electrical outlet, pain traveled up his leg from his not-quite-healed wound. Maybe the doctors were right—maybe he’d had them remove the cast too soon. “No, I haven’t learned a damned thing.”
“So that’s why you’re edgy,” Ariel said. “You’re frustrated.”
“We all are,” Elena chimed in, her eyes still closed. “Since we know who the killer is, we should be able to find him.”
Donovan Roarke. The man was a private investigator, but before that he’d been a cop. Like Ty. And like Ty, he’d been suspended from the police department due to excessive force. Ty’s guts knotted, but he reminded himself he was nothing like the madman. Donovan Roarke was a sadistic son of a bitch. He might have convinced himself that by killing witches in the ways that witches had been killed centuries ago he was honoring his family legacy, the vendetta begun so many years ago. But Ty knew the guy was a psychopath, and if he wasn’t caught soon, he’d kill again.
Anger gripped Ty, but he fought it off, breathing slow and deep. Then he shoved a hand through his hair. Even though he hadn’t worn his uniform in months, he kept his black hair short, in an almost military cut. He liked his life simple, like the T-shirts and old jeans he wore. But there was nothing simple about his life now; there hadn’t been since Donovan Roarke had begun his witch hunt.
“Roarke’s clever,” Ty admitted. Or he would have found the sick bastard by now.
“He’s crazy,” Ariel maintained.
Maybe Ty was, too, because he’d actually thought this might work, that Elena would have a vision that would lead him to her missing sister, the youngest of the three of them. Since he’d come up empty in his other investigations, he’d decided to use the sisters’ powers. He had nothing left to lose.
“Let’s concentrate on Irina,” he said, which was easy for him since she was all he thought about lately.
She’d been nagging at his mind ever since he’d first seen the picture of her as a little girl. From the glass-and-marble coffee table he picked up the trifold pewter picture frame they’d found in Roarke’s office. The private investigator must have stolen the twenty-year-old portraits of the three sisters from their mother after he’d killed her.
As Ty focused on the youngest child with her loose brown curls and her big, dark eyes, a memory teased him: flashing lights, blurred before his swollen eyes; pain pounding in his skull and tearing at his arm as he fought for consciousness, for life; then a little girl’s voice calling out to him, calling him back from the brink of death.
Hers? Or the little girl who’d died because he hadn’t gotten to her in time? Was the memory an old one, buried deep with the rest of his childhood? Or was it a new one, suppressed like the rage over which his lieutenant had suspended him?
His hand shaking slightly, he set the picture frame back on the table, then turned his attention to Elena. He’d deal with his own demons later, after he’d dealt with theirs. “You’ve had visions of her before. If you can’t have another, try to remember everything you can about those, even what you might think insignificant.”
Elena nodded in perfect understanding of the gift she’d denied and fought for so long. “I’ll try to recall every detail.”
He blew out a ragged breath, relieved that she understood what he wanted. Irina. “We have to find her.” Soon.
Knowing who the killer was didn’t make him less dangerous. In Roarke’s case, Ty suspected knowing who he was made him more dangerous. Now the man wasn’t worried about concealing his identity; he, like Ty, had nothing to lose.
Having tried and failed to get Ariel and Elena, he’d concentrate all his efforts on Irina. And Ty would do the same. The others could look for Roarke; his friend David and Elena’s fiancé Joseph were out now, searching for him. Ty already knew where he was—wherever Irina was.
“In that first vision you had of her, she’s homeless.” God, he hoped Elena was wrong, but he’d investigated the lead, spending days and nights among the street people. While he hadn’t found Irina, he had found desperation and despair, reawakening memories he’d locked away in his past.
Elena shook her head. “I’m not even sure it’s Irina I’m seeing. I haven’t seen her since she was four.”
“She was almost five,” Ariel added, her turquoise eyes glistening with unshed tears. As if a year would have made a difference then.
Ariel had been nine, Elena twelve when they were taken away from their mother and separated from each other. Ty’s gut twisted at having to bring up bad memories for them both. But the pain and fear they felt now would be worth it if he were able to reunite the sisters.
Ignoring the ache in his leg, he knelt on the floor in front of the couch, the marble cold through the denim of his faded jeans. Excessive force hadn’t been his biggest hurdle in being a police officer; until his last day of active duty, he’d never had a problem dealing with suspects. His struggle had been dealing with the victims. Offering comfort—something never offered to him—hadn’t been easy for him.
Now he reached out, closing his hand over their joined hands. “We’ll find her.”
Ariel stared into his eyes, hers still shimmering with tears. “Or will I, Ty? Will the first time I see my baby sister in twenty years be as a ghost?” Like she’d first seen her mother when Myra Cooper had been killed several months ago.
That was Ariel’s gift—seeing ghosts; Elena’s gift was seeing the future. What was Irina’s? The lights flashed again, digging up the memory, but he couldn’t pull it out of his mind. Not yet. He had too many other things on it.
He swallowed hard, then reminded her, “But you haven’t seen Irina’s ghost. She has to be alive.”
His breath trapped in his lungs until she nodded her head in agreement. He shared her fear that they might not find Irina in time; it kept him from sleeping, from eating, from doing anything but search for her. Even though he had begun his quest to find the missing sister as a favor for his best friend and Ariel, it had become more personal to him. Irina was more personal to him than a twenty-year-old picture in an old pewter frame.
A moan slipped through Elena’s lips. Her pale eyes glazed, she stared not at the opulent living room of the penthouse or the view outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, Barrett, Michigan, aglow with lights in the black sky. She stared instead at whatever images played out inside her head.
“Tell us everything you’re seeing,” he prodded her, as he would have any witness.
“She’s on the street, like I saw her before,” Elena said, taunted by the old vision like the old memory that wouldn’t quite leave Ty alone.
“What do you see?” He needed some landmarks, something so he could pinpoint the place instead of wandering the streets the way he had.
“It’s dark….”
“No street lamps?”
