The Golden Bell (17 page)

The Golden Bell

Ghost in Her Heart

Beast Wars

Dark Lovers (G.Bell & Homecoming
combo)

Dark Warriors (Ghost IH & Beast Wars
combo)

The Woman Inside

The Other Woman

Through the Looking Glass

Ride The Stars

Careful, He Bites

Interstellar Lover

Under the Bridge

* * *

Excerpt from
The Charmer

CHAPTER 1

“Wait a minute, Lemming! Let me catch my
breath,” Jasmine gasped as she clutched a slender poplar for
balance. A shower of bright leaves and water peppered her head and
shoulders as the tree swayed. For a moment, her vision blurred and
her legs trembled, but she stiffened them to wait out the asthma
attack. The painful tightness in her chest nagged at her.

Grumbling, she dug out her inhaler and took a
couple puffs. She hated resorting to medicine. Every couple of days
it seemed, the TV would announce that people were getting cancer
from some drug or another. Her favorite ads were the ones for male
impotence that announced in fine print that the side effects
included impotence. Next they’d announce that inhalers caused black
lung.

She shook her head at her imagination and
shoved the inhaler deep in her pocket. There was no sense being
morbid.

Lemming trotted over to her, tail wagging,
and sat gracefully at her feet. The black and white Border collie
was used to such stops, but unlike her companion, she still had
energy to burn.

Jasmine inspected a large rock that had
washed free of the sticky clay, looking for ants. Satisfied, she
shifted the holstered pistol on her hip and sat down gingerly. Cold
seeped into her jeans from the lichen covered stone, even with the
extra layer of long johns underneath. She ignored it and took in
the view.

Densely wooded Alaskan hills rolled away in
the distance without a sign of civilization. Autumn had hung her
gold coins from every birch and cottonwood as far as the eye could
see, and the golden wash of late evening sunlight showed them to
their best advantage. Even the dark spruce covering the gentle
slopes were sprinkled with the bright leaves.

She glanced at her watch, her breath frosting
in the chill air. It was 7:44 P.M, and it would start getting dark
soon. This late in September, it could snow at any time. Too bad it
wasn’t June. If it were then she wouldn’t have to worry about the
darkness at all, since the sun never set during the height of
summer.

She stood and hefted her pack, her lungs
giving a tired protest. To cheer herself, she counted her
blessings. She could have been born allergic to chocolate, or dogs.
She glanced at Lemming affectionately.

Come to think of it, if she’d been allergic
to dogs, she wouldn’t have to be out here.

Suppressing a groan, she pushed herself to
her feet and started out again. Wiley better have something hot on
the fire, or there would be war. The least her friend could do
after coaxing her into the boonies was to make camp.

Rapidly losing steam, she trudged up the
trail, really little more than a brushy track, noting the moose
nuggets and cloven hoof prints in the soft turf without enthusiasm.
She didn’t fancy running into an irate cow with a calf. She didn’t
want to spend the evening stuck in a Mexican standoff while the cow
tried to decide if she was worth trampling or better off
ignored.

While she was looking down she noticed the
bounty of cranberry bushes. It really was a shame she didn’t have
the energy to stop and pick some. They were plentiful this year and
she could use a good batch of cranberry bars.

Hey, while she was dreaming, how about a hot
date, an end cut of the Turtle Club’s prime rib and a dry pair of
socks?

Maybe she should be dreaming about a hot date
for Wiley, she thought with disgust. If her friend and roommate
paid more attention to her love life, maybe she wouldn’t feel the
need to run off to the woods at a moment’s notice. It was all great
and well if Wiley had the itch to commune with nature, as long as
she didn’t drag her friends into it.

The only itch Jasmine felt were the ones left
by the hordes of gnats and mosquitoes. It was almost pointless
using repellent—the mosquitoes mistook it for ketchup and came back
for seconds.

Lemming barked from somewhere up ahead,
signaling that she’d found Wiley’s camp. Jasmine’s head came up and
she eagerly picked up her pace. In a minute she’d be sipping hot
cocoa and roasting herself in front of a fire. Wiley would sweet
talk her with chili and she’d forget she’d just spent the last hour
stomping through the woods.

She entered the mossy clearing where Lemming
waited and stopped, confused. It was empty.

Later, as Jasmine nursed a cup of cocoa by a
fire she’d had to make herself, she tried to figure out what could
have happened. At first she’d circled the area, calling Wiley’s
name and trying to find evidence as to her recent occupation. It
occurred to Jasmine that her friend had played a trick, maybe hid
higher on the hill and grinned as she watched Jasmine wade through
stickers and brush. It wasn’t like her to make Jas worry,
though.

As full dark descended, she had known Wiley
wasn’t playing a game. Something had happened to her friend, and it
was too dark to make her way back to the Jeep to get help. If Wiley
had tumbled down a hill, it would be no help to her if Jasmine got
lost herself. Instead she tried to reason out what might have
happened.

Wiley might take off at a moment’s notice on
her perverse games of hide and seek, but she always left a map, and
she never strayed from it. If she said she was going to be
forty-five minutes east of the Dalton Highway that’s where they’d
find her. Or rather, Lemming would find her, and Lemming always
found her quarry.

She glanced at the search and rescue dog
Wiley had trained from a pup. Lemming rested quietly at Jasmine’s
side with her chin on her paws, content with a job well done.
Jasmine had tried to get her to keep tracking, but she’d only sat
down, looked at her in confusion, and thumped her tail once. As far
as she was concerned, her job was over.

Jasmine sighed and scratched an itch under
her black Road Runner stocking cap. She was worried, but tried not
to dwell on it. It wouldn’t help the situation. Besides, there
might be a good explanation for this.

She noticed a sticker bush twig in Lemming’s
fur. Gently, she removed it and flicked it into the coals. So now
what? She didn’t plan to stay in grizzly and wolf infested woods
any longer then she had to. At first light she’d pack up and go for
help. Maybe if she kept her eyes open she’d see signs of her
friend.

She coughed as smoke suddenly blew into her
face and moved around the fire.

Well, there was nothing more she could do
right now, and she was tired of having the fire roast her front end
while the cold air behind froze her rear. Time to crawl into her
tent, shuck down to her long johns and hope she wouldn’t have to
shiver too long before the down sleeping bag warmed up. Though come
to think of it, the night almost seemed to be getting warmer.

Scoffing at her wishful thinking, she stood
and kicked dirt over the fire. That’s when she saw them.

Eyes.

Freaky, glowing golden eyes. Lots of
them.

Lemming growled and pressed so tightly
against her that she nearly tripped as the eyes evolved into wolves
with eerie, alien faces.

Slowly she reached for the 357 Smith and
Wesson revolver strapped to her hip. She’d brought the thing as a
bear deterrent, but there was no reason it couldn’t take down a
wolf.

The fur on the creature directly in front of
her hackled and it snarled a warning that made her own hair stand
on end. Lemming responded with a vicious bark that made her
jump.

“Touch it and they’ll rip your throat out,” a
man’s voice said mildly. It came from the dark, behind the
wolves.

Jasmine emitted a strangled yell. Her nerves
were on the crawl as she thought of someone watching her. She
searched the darkness, but couldn’t see beyond the animals. “Who’s
there?”

As if in a nightmare, a man stepped away from
the camouflage of dark trees. He stood less than ten feet from her
and seemed to study her with faint distaste. Maybe she didn’t
measure up to his twisted fantasies. Maybe he liked tall girls,
like Wiley. What were the odds he knew where she was?

Her jaw hardened. She itched to draw and cock
the gun, but the slight movement of her hand brought the snarling
beast before her a step closer.

“Call off your dogs,” she demanded hoarsely.
All the moisture that should have been in her mouth decided to run
down her back instead. Who’d turned up the heat?

“Give up your weapon,” the stranger ordered,
and his words were brushed with an odd accent. “They don’t trust
you.”

“The feeling is mutual, pal, but I’m not
doing it. They’ll eat me alive if I do.” She’d watched TV. She knew
what happened to the idiots who dropped the gun.

He glanced at the creatures. “Your
choice.”

Long moments passed while she held his gaze.
Sweat plastered the hair under her hat to her scalp. For all she
knew this guy had kidnapped Wiley and was keeping her somewhere
nearby…if she was still alive.

It was that thought more than anything that
made her give in. Swearing one of Wiley’s favorite words, she gave
a curt nod. Careful not to make any sudden moves that might set the
wolves off, she unfastened the safety strap of the holster and
eased the gun out. Surprisingly, she wasn’t snarled at until she
hesitated at the last moment.

“You’ll never kill them all,” the stranger
said with a trace of impatience.

Reluctantly, she tossed down the gun.

While she’d been stalling, the heat had
turned killer. That was one heck of Chinook blowing, or he’d done
something to cause it. There was a faint shimmer in the night
behind him, an odd pressure in the air. She’d swear she smelled
ozone.

Fearful she’d die of heatstroke at any
moment, she yanked off her hat, then unzipped her heavy coat and
shrugged it off. If she had to die, at least it wouldn’t be from
the sudden thaw.

She glanced at the wolves, but they were no
longer snarling. In fact, the one she thought of as the leader had
backed off. He kept his eyes on her while the others wove in and
out of the huge trees.

Huge trees?

Jasmine paused in the act of stripping off
her Norwegian sweater, all the fine hairs on her body standing on
end. Huge trees? There were no trees like that in Alaska. But there
they were, gleaming in the light of the triple moons….

For a bad moment Jasmine’s world tilted,
threatening the first faint of her life. Just in time, her innate
good sense kicked in. Now was not the time for wilting.

As she stared, ferns sprang from the
undergrowth and the trees moved closer, as the shimmer behind the
stranger seemed to grow, marching forward as if swallowing her
world whole. She hadn’t moved, but that shimmer behind him, that
otherworldly window, had grown to encompass them both. She was
afraid to look behind her, afraid to see it consume all the
earth.

First things first. The heat was humid and
tropical, murderous to blood thickened by a cold climate, and she
was overdressed. With a deep breath to calm her jangled nerves, she
sent the man a defiant look and pulled off the bulky sweater,
tugging the black T-shirt underneath to keep it from riding up.
Then she just stood there in the redwood-scented air and tried to
make sense of the moment. Sweat rolled down her back, and she
wished she could ditch her wool socks and the long underwear. Her
feet were sweltering in her heavy boots.

The man shifted restlessly. “Come,” he said,
melting into the trees before she had a chance to argue.

“Wait!” she called, but he ignored her. She
hesitated, wondering if she could possibly retrieve the small
flashlight inside her jacket. No way did she want to go blindly
charging off through the night with a spooky stranger without at
least being able to see what he was doing. She bent a little, and
the lead wolf snarled. “Easy, fella, I just need to get a light.”
His lips pulled even farther back and saliva flecked his muzzle.
The other wolves took their cue from the pack master and stalked
closer, showing hundreds of teeth.

Stumbling through the darkness following a
possibly vicious stranger suddenly held appeal. She picked up her
feet and hurried after the man before she found out if the pack had
a taste for sweaty hikers.

Besides, who knew what else might come
creeping out of the brush?

There might have been three moons in the sky,
but none of them were full, and she’d never had the best night
vision. The second time she nearly went sprawling while jogging
after the stranger, she decided to call a halt. If she didn’t slow
down one of the branches hitting her in the face was going to put
out an eye, and then where would she be? Besides, Lemming could
always track him.

The wolf things had other ideas.

“Look,” she tried to explain to one of the
creatures that inched slowly closer, growling, while Lemming nearly
backed up her leg, “I’m trying, but I can’t see where I’m going.
Just give me a minute, okay?”

A hand shot out of the dark and gripped her
upper arm, making her shriek.

“This way.”

She gasped for breath, trying to calm her
frantic heart while the stranger hauled her through the woods. “Did
you have to do that?” she demanded, but he didn’t answer and didn’t
slow down. She tried again. “Where are we going?” Still no answer.
“You’re a real jerk, you know that?”