Band of Demons (The Sanheim Chronicles, Book Two) (7 page)

Why wouldn’t she give this to us?
Kate thought.
Why would she hide this? She could have helped us.

Quinn heard a noise outside and wondered if Stu was coming back. Acting quickly, he placed the book behind his reporter’s notebook and hoped no one would notice it.

I should get out of here,
he said.

He was almost out the door when he heard a noise behind him. He turned and looked around the room, took in the bookshelf, the row of kewpie dolls and the bloodstains on the floor. Nothing had changed.

That’s when he noticed the envelope on the ground.

Where did that come from?

He looked up and saw that it must have fallen from near the kewpie dolls. A shiver ran up his spine. He looked around the room again. 

Anyone else creeped out by this?

Pick up the envelope,
Kate said.

Not so long ago, Quinn would have dismissed the very idea of ghosts, but now…

He picked up the envelope. On the front of it was written, in Zora’s flowing script, a name: Trina.

He opened the letter with a sense of foreboding and deep dread. Zora had known Kate—whose childhood nickname was Trina—would find the letter. And he would bet anything that Zora also knew she wouldn’t be around when Kate discovered it.

She knew she was going to die
, Quinn thought.

Inside the envelope was a small note. It wasn’t long and looked like it had been written in a hurry.  He hoped it would have some clues as to how she was mixed up in all this, what she knew about the Prince of Sanheim.

Instead, it was just two sentences.

“They are coming for you. You are the last.”

Chapter 6

Kate hurried up the cemetery path. She usually stopped by her mother’s grave when she was nearby, but there was no time now.

I’m sorry, Mom
, she thought.
We’re being hunted. Again
.

The thought tasted like ashes in her mouth. When they became the Prince of Sanheim, she had thought her days of being afraid were over. After all, they were what lurked in the dark now. What could possibly harm them?

But now that confidence had vanished and she felt like she had last year. Then, at least, she knew her enemy: Lord Halloween, the man who had killed her mother. But now she had no idea what was after them or why.

She hurried faster along the path. She loved this cemetery. It was old, with trees that made a thick canopy of leaves overhead. Here and there, slivers of sunlight broke through onto the gravestones. It was the place she had her first real talk with Quinn, back when their biggest worries had been bad dreams. That at least was a difference between then and now. Last fall, she had felt alone, isolated. Now, Quinn was with her. Whatever her fate, he would share it.

They were… what? Soul mate is the term most people might use, but that didn’t feel like it covered it. She was him and he was her.

She came to the end of the old part of Middleburg Baptist Cemetery and saw Quinn sitting on the same bench where she had found him more than six months ago. It was in the new part of the graveyard, with no tree cover but a view of a picturesque pond. The bench was in memoriam of someone and for just a moment, Kate had an awful premonition. Quinn sat totally still on the bench, looking more like a statue than a person.
Like a gravestone
, she thought.
He looks like a gravestone
.

Quinn stood up abruptly and turned around, breaking the effect.

Jesus, honey
, he said in her mind. She saw him glance down at himself as if to make sure he was still there.
Thanks for that lovely image.

They walked toward each other, both trying to banish the thought from their minds. As they reached each other, she pulled him in tightly for a kiss and the world, with all its fears and prophecies, was gone.

If asked to describe it in words, neither could have done so. Just a week ago, this kiss would have been sweet and emotional, but by the standards of the rest of human experience, entirely normal. But with their powers now suddenly back, this was unique. Their contact was electric, like a pulse running back and forth between them. What she felt, he could feel. What he thought, she could hear.

When they kissed like this, it was as if it wasn’t just the last one they might share, but the final kiss at the end of the world.

God, I missed this
, she thought.

She sent him an image of the two of them lying intertwined, naked in bed. Much like kissing, the sex between them was always good, but nothing out of the ordinary. Now, however, it would be so powerful—the physical joining of two who already share a consciousness.

With great effort, Quinn pulled away. If he didn’t, he worried they would soon find themselves making love in the middle of the cemetery.

What a wonderful idea
, Kate thought.

“Just not right now,” he said out loud and laughed. He put his hand to her cheek and caressed it. “We have time to do this later. Like when it’s dark and we don’t have someone trying to kill us.”

He thought about what he knew was really bothering her—the image of him still as a statue, a cold gravestone.

“I’m not going to die, you know,” he said.

She responded by pulling him close again.

“Make love to me,” she said, looking into his electric blue eyes.

“Here? Right now?” he asked, but he knew what the answer was.

She kissed him again and that pulse between them was even stronger than before. She pulled away briefly and whispered in his ear, “I’ve been waiting months for this. Let’s just enjoy it.”

He thought about every reason they shouldn’t. Zora’s murder, her letter, the book. Something out there was after them and they didn’t know the first thing about it. They needed to start looking for answers. Not to mention that it was broad daylight and a cemetery.

But all of those reasons suddenly felt paper-thin. She was right. They had waited months for this. Why shouldn’t they enjoy it? She started kissing his neck and the urge to stop her was gone. Instead, he lifted her face to his and started kissing her again while his hands began loosening the buttons on her blouse.

Sex was the key to becoming the Prince of Sanheim. When they had first made love, it was the trigger that caused them to start hearing each other’s thoughts, sharing dreams and, eventually, facing Quinn’s greatest fear—the Headless Horseman. After they lost their powers, they had spent weeks having sex at almost every opportunity in a futile attempt to gain their powers back. It was fun, but it hadn’t worked.

Like her, he had waited months for this. He thought he remembered what it felt like, but now he knew it was just a pale memory. As he kissed her, every other care in his life just melted away.

When they had agreed to meet in person, he just thought it would be easier to talk out options, discuss strategies. But he knew now that he just needed to see her, be with her. When they were the Prince of Sanheim, they could hardly stand being apart. And now that they were together, they wanted nothing else but to touch each other.

Quinn’s hands fumbled with the last of her buttons. Rather than stop to loosen it herself, Kate responded by tearing the button loose and tossing her blouse to the ground. She unclasped her bra and immediately began unbuttoning her jeans. His hands reached to caress her body.

All Quinn could think about was Kate. How she felt, how she tasted, how she smelled. He kissed her neck and worked his way down to her bellybutton. He wanted nothing in this world as much as her.

When Kate was finished with her own clothes, she began rushing to take off his. She was almost frantic now. When he went in to kiss her again, he felt her in his mind.

There’s no time
, she said.
I need you now.

They were barely words. All he sensed was her urgent need and his own desire. Neither paused to look around to see if anyone was watching.

She lay down naked in the grass between two graves and grabbed his hand to pull him down on top of her. As they moved together, they once again felt that pulse between them becoming stronger. Her memories from the past year flooded into him. Images of them making love, talking, watching television, walking together—everything came to him from her point of view.

She gasped beneath him as they moved together. It felt like an electric field surrounding them—every inch of their bodies tingled like a live wire. The relentless pressure inside of them built to a furious conclusion—and finally was released in a moment when the two were one.

*****

They lay there on the grass next to each other, panting and out of breath. Quinn was afraid to speak. It felt like some kind of strange, mad spell had descended on them. It only ended when they finally broke apart, but he had the feeling it would capture them again shortly. He didn’t dare look at her, for fear that the sight of Kate’s naked body lying in the grass would start it all over. Instead, he watched the thin wisps of white cloud drift across the bright blue sky and tried to—at least temporarily—recover himself.

“Well, that was certainly new,” Kate said finally, when the silence between them had grown thicker than the cloud cover overhead.

“Was it me, or was that more…” he started.

“Intense? Yes. Definitely. And amazing.”

Quinn merely nodded and fought not to look at her. It would be so easy to start over. If the first time they had made love had been incredible, this had been like that times 10 or maybe even 100. His hands were still shaking, his heart beating a million times a minute. And if he let his thoughts drift, even for a second, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from kissing her and letting the spell overtake them again. But even without looking at her, he felt her next to him, breathing rapidly.

“We can’t start again,” he said.

“Oh, it’s not a question of ‘if,’” Kate said and her voice was quiet. “It’s just a question of when. If you even try to stand up, you won’t have time to get your pants on.”

“You don’t seem to be fighting this very hard,” he replied.

“Why should I?” she said. “This is the best feeling I’ve ever known, and I’m sharing it with the person I love most in the world. Why would I possibly fight it?”

“When you put it that way…”

“Look, I see your point of view,” she said. “We’re in danger of losing ourselves. Whatever powers we have seem to be controlling us at least as much as we control them. But so what? It’s so much better—so much easier—when we just let them take over.”

She wasn’t looking at him, but her hand was now caressing his arm.

“But what happens when we aren’t ourselves anymore, Kate?”

“That won’t happen,” she said.

“How can you be so sure? I’m wondering how many limits we’ll be willing to cross before we realize we have none left.”

“Honey,” Kate said, and she turned over on her side and put her hand on his chest. “Left to myself, I don’t know. When I’m with you—when we’re like this—I feel like every burden I’ve ever known is gone. It’s like nothing else matters.”

“And I should remind you there are plenty of other things we should be discussing right now,” he said.

“That’s just my point. When I drove here, I was scared, nervous, worried. Now, I’m none of those things. All I want is to be with you. I could let myself go entirely, you know. I don’t need to tell you I carry around a lot of baggage every day. But when I’m like this, for the first time in my life, I feel free.”

“But what…”

She put her finger to his lips. A wind blew through the trees and he shuddered. She moved his face toward hers.

“Let me finish,” she said. “I told you, I might let myself go. There are still a lot of things I’m trying to run away from. But you’re my anchor, my harbor. I know that no matter how far I’m willing to go, you will always be there to pull me back. To make sure we don’t do something crazy.”

“Like have sex in broad daylight in the middle of a cemetery on a work day?” he asked.

“Well, before the day is done, it’s going to be having sex repeatedly in broad daylight in a cemetery,” she replied, “but that wasn’t what I was talking about.”

Quinn’s blood was racing again. The sense of current was stirring. He was trying to focus on something—anything—but her naked body.

“You might want to talk quickly,” he said.

“Your job is to balance us out, but my job is to push this as far as we can. The old rules don’t apply to us anymore.”

“What if someone showed up? What if the caretaker or a family member…”

“Who cares, Quinn? I know there are limits and I know you will make sure we don’t cross them. But this… this isn’t one of them.”

She rolled on top of him and started kissing him again.

They had so much to talk about, so much they needed to find out. Even now, he knew they were running out of time. But in the end, he let go and followed his heart’s desire.

He wasn’t sure he was wrong to do so. When a storm is coming, you can’t always outrun it. You just have to enjoy the few peaceful moments left.