Warrior Enchanted: The Sons of the Zodiac (3 page)

A sisterhood she missed desperately.

She kept other women at a distance, the nature of who and what she was difficult to share. Add in the shoddy relationship with her own sister and there wasn’t really a female sounding board in her life save her grandmother.

And, Emerson acknowledged, one didn’t exactly regale one’s grandmother with tales of the hot next-door neighbor who banged your brains out on a regular basis.

A hot,
sexy
next-door neighbor who increasingly twisted her thoughts in unexpected directions.

Dragging herself from an endless loop of questions she never seemed to be able to answer, Emerson opted for one she could. “Sure. I’d like that.”

Five minutes later, she was swirling a dark red Cabernet at the heavy butcher-block counter in Callie’s kitchen. She hadn’t spent that much time in here; she avoided the room most often reserved for family gatherings and dinners like the plague.

Even if Drake had extended an invite.

Repeatedly.

“You’re up late.”

Callie swirled her own glass. “I could say the same for you.”

“I can’t sleep.”

“I know your grandmother is far more expert than I am, but I could make you some teas. Something to help take the edge off.”

On a shrug, Emerson took another sip of her wine. “Nothing helps.”

“Not even Drake?”

“No.”

“He might be able to if you let him in.”

She raised a practiced eyebrow. “I don’t need the lecture, Callie.”

“You’ll get none of that from me. He’s a grown man. He can figure out his own mind. That one only looks dreamy on the surface. A hell of a lot more goes on underneath.”

Emerson rubbed a spot above her heart. Didn’t she know it.

Which was the entire problem.

The all-fun, no-strings sex fest she’d looked forward to carrying on with her hot neighbor had turned too serious.

Way
too serious.

She took a sip of her wine in an attempt to chase the suddenly raw taste of fear on her tongue. “Why does everyone want to make this more than it is?”

Callie’s voice was quiet across the butcher-block counter. “Maybe because it is?”

“It can’t be. I’m not wired that way.”

“Is anyone?”

Emerson laughed at that one. “Hell yeah, lots of people. They’re the ones that live those nice comfortable lives in the suburbs, with two-point-two kids and a minivan.” People like her sister, who believed if she simply ignored the gift she’d been given—ignored the gift that lived and pulsed and
breathed
under her skin—it simply didn’t exist.

“You don’t really believe that, do you?”

On a quiet nod, Emerson stared at Callie, unable to lie to her friend. “No. I don’t. Nor do I think anyone has a carefree life without pain or suffering or their own personal brand of misery.”

“So why can’t you have it, too? Love is what makes all the pain and suffering and personal misery worth it.”

“I’m just not cut out for it, Cal.”

“He loves you, you know.”

The words struck as hard as a blow to the chest before being replaced with something else.

Delight.

Yet even as the hot bloom of satisfaction suffused her veins, Emerson fought to cut it off. “Then that’s his problem.”

“It’s
your
gift, Emerson. Yours and Drake’s.”

“I can’t give him what he needs.”
But the goddess help me if I can give him up.

Drake clawed his way through the afternoon heat of the jungle. Themis’s intelligence had been spot-on, as always. The scumbag drug lord was exactly where
she’d said he’d be. Other than the land mines the asshole had embedded all along a two-mile radius from his home base, the hunt had been quick, the kill justified.

Themis loved her humans far too much to take such decisive action, and he’d been more than a little surprised at the order. The goddess of justice rarely, if ever, ordered killing as a means to solve a problem.

After he’d seen the shallow graves full of the drug lord’s victims and the devastating pollution that filled the nearby river—a result of runoff by the man’s manufacturing operation—Drake understood Themis’s decision.

All of her Warriors had a job to do—a contribution that made the whole of their unit greater than the sum of its parts—and he believed in his. His military training had set him up as the perfect person to handle ops like this. He knew how to execute military strategy and could be counted on to get in, do the job and get out.

He stayed cautious, keeping an eye out for the hastily set land mines stationed every few feet. He’d already tripped one and narrowly missed having to regrow a few limbs thanks to a quick port back to where he’d started. He did sport a nasty burn on his foot that hurt like a bitch and his attitude—already prickly from Emerson’s standard exit strategy—had gotten worse with each heat-filled, passing step.

Why did he let her affect him like this?

Kneeling down, he settled his backpack next to the river and rubbed a hand over his chest. The once-clean river showed the ravages of the drug lord’s greed as several dead fish bobbed along the fast-moving current.
It was moments like this—those quiet moments he spent all alone—when he wondered if he’d have been better off taking his chances, living the life he’d been given and dying like a normal man.

At least then he’d have had only one lifetime of seeing how humans fucked one another instead of a never-ending parade of lifetimes to experience it again and again.

Stripping off his clothes, he stepped into the river. The cold shock of water rushed over his burned foot and he winced before ignoring the pain to step deeper, the mud and silt of the riverbed soft under his toes. As he continued stepping farther and farther into the raging current, the water sluicing around him, he opened up his senses.

The pollution of the drugs assailed his skin in harsh rivets, like a thousand daggers along his nerve endings. Through it, he felt more than heard the screams and suffering the poison had wrought, from the thousands upon thousands of souls it had touched.

Addiction.

Violence.

Death.

And through it all, like a thread that grew stronger and stronger, was anguish. Soul-deep anguish borne by humanity for centuries.

The fish on his back, tethered together by an unbreakable string, came to life in his aura. He heard the splash as both dropped into the water to swim in circles around his body, driving against the current. The animals pushed Themis’s power into the water to begin the process of eradicating the damage done by the drug lord.

Drake closed his eyes and allowed the gifts of his immortality to do their job.

Although he couldn’t save all the life in the river, he could begin the process of healing it. Biting down on his back teeth, he fought the rising pain as it assaulted his senses—fought the drug-ravaged water as it branded his skin with poison—and held firm against the raging water.

He allowed minute to follow minute and hour to follow hour as he stood in the water, patiently waiting for his aura to repair the damaged river. His body weakened against the assault, yet he fought on. Fought with the stoic determination he’d spent his life with.

Only as the sun was setting in the sky did he finally give in to the pain. Crawling out of the river, he fell onto the banks facedown in the scrub that lined the soggy ground. He’d done all he could do.

Had taken all he could take.

He could only hope it was enough.

The sounds of the rushing river faded as sleep took him, and just before he fell fully under, Drake whispered one word.

The same word he’d whispered each and every night for the last year.

It was his prayer. His benediction. His comfort.

“Emerson.”

T
he cool, slightly dank smell of her family’s brownstone basement surrounded her as Emerson ground herbs with a mortar and pestle. The satisfying crunch of stone on stone and the soft, airy scent of rosemary offered a soothing balm to the raging thoughts she couldn’t get under control.

Drake loved her.

She’d known it, of course, but the evidence—the acknowledgment from another person—was a swift kick to the head.

And to the heart she’d tried so very hard to keep distant from him.

She’d allowed her hormones and her brain to think they knew better—to think they could keep him at arm’s length—and she was paying for it.

Who was she kidding? She ground the pestle harder as the contents of the mortar grew to the consistency of the finest dust. She’d loved him since she was a young girl.

She could even name the very first night she’d seen him, during that full moon the August she was fourteen. Emerson remembered it like it was yesterday. The moon had been high in the sky, the oppressive heat of the city in late summer breaking slightly overnight.

She and her mother and grandmother had prayed to the goddess that night, chanting their prayers skyward. Emerson had asked for extra help that evening, trying to find a way to get through to her older sister, Veronica, who refused to celebrate the moon with them.

Her throat was still tight from the horrible fight they’d had that reduced them both to tears.

Sadly, she now knew, they’d have many more along the same lines.

After their ritual prayers, her mother and grandmother had eventually gone inside, but Emerson had wanted to enjoy the night sky a little longer. Wanted the time to stay wrapped in her thoughts as she tried to puzzle through her sister’s unwillingness to accept who she was.

Who they were.

It had been that moment when she’d stood, angry again and ready to pace, that she’d seen the tall head bob past their fence. Curious, she ran to the large wooden play set that now sat empty since she and her siblings had grown too old for it and climbed up the wooden slats that ended in a fort.

The cotton robe she’d put on after the prayer ceremony wrapped around her legs, slowing her motion so she had to take the rungs at half her normal speed, but some sense of urgency pushed her on. She’d just
cleared enough of the ladder to see into the backyard next door.

The man whose head she’d seen at the top of the fence was at the back entrance of the brownstone connected to theirs. He was bloody and bruised, looking exactly like she pictured the heroes of her books—Robin Hood, Ivanhoe and the Knights of the Round Table—after they returned from battle.

He rested his head against the door as she stared at him, his shoulders slumping. He looked utterly defeated, like it was an effort to even stand there. Like the doorframe was the only thing holding his body upright.

Emerson watched, fascinated that someone so large—a man so seemingly invincible—could look tired.

And so lonely.

Then he’d pushed off the door with some inner reserve of strength and stepped back. In quick movements, he shucked the filthy shirt he wore and her breath caught in her throat as moonlight coated his body. The heat of the summer night and the noise of the city faded away in that moment and she could do nothing but stare.

At the large form of his body—the broad shoulders and thickly muscled back that tapered down to a narrow waist. He was powerfully built, and the only thing Emerson could think was,
This is what a hero looks like
.

Her gaze drank him in and an odd awareness settled low in her stomach. She’d felt a slight tingling between her thighs. The sensation was foreign but exhilarating.

Feminine.

Powerful.

He’d stood there for only a moment before pushing through the back door, but it had been all she’d needed.

The man had captivated her.

Emerson waited at least a half hour, watching and hoping for another glimpse of the man, until she finally climbed off the play set and moved into the house to her room on the fourth—and highest—floor of the old brownstone. And it took until dawn peeked through her curtains for her to finally fall asleep.

After that night, Emerson stayed alert to any and all news of the occupants of the house next door. She’d always sensed the large brownstone held secrets, but now she had a face to put with those secrets. Stories had filled her head about the men next door—the made-up fantasies of a young girl. In addition to the man she’d seen, she knew of the others who lived there—large, imposing figures who looked like ancient warlords.

She imagined them on covert missions, saving princesses and keeping the world safe for humanity. And him…the large Warrior she’d seen in the moonlight. He’d fueled her fantasies for so long, always hovering in the back of her thoughts. Always causing her to take the men she dated and try to make them measure up.

But no one ever did.

“Emerson.”

Dragged from her thoughts, it took her a moment to focus on the dark brown eyes of her grandmother.

“What?”

“Where were you? I’ve called your name about five times.”

Emerson glanced down at her hands as her grandmother gently took the pestle from her. “I think you’ve done well enough there.”

“Just wrapped in my thoughts.”

“I can see that.”

Gram took the stool next to her worktable, a light mischief bubbling in her smile. “I suspect I know just who’s got you wrapped up, too.”

Shades of the conversation she had the night before with Callie came back to her. “Grandmother.”

A withered, gnarled hand stopped her from saying anything further. “I’m not prying and I don’t need the sass. I’m just teasing you.”

Emerson dropped onto her own stool, the wind effectively knocked from her sails. “Sorry.”

“You’re a grown woman entitled to your own business.”

“Thank you.”

“But I can’t help notice you’re not sleeping. Or eating all that much. Has Drake done something? Has he hurt you in some way?”

The fierce set of her grandmother’s mouth had Emerson reaching for her hand. “No, no, no. Of course not. He’s wonderful, Gram. Really.”

“Wonderful?”

Emerson didn’t often find herself backpedaling—she was far too comfortable speaking her mind—but the urge to do it in this instance was strong. “I meant he didn’t do anything.”