Maximum Witch: That Old Black Magic, Book 3 (17 page)

There was no way in hell he could give her a blow-by-blow of her blowing him without needing to pull the car over and take care of business. Preferably with Willa straddling his cock while he fucked her to a mind-blowing orgasm in the driver’s seat. “How about I give you a rain check for later?”

“Party pooper.” Adjusting her seat belt, she slouched deeper into the upholstery. She nibbled her thumb, her expression pensive. “Can I ask you something?”

“Baby, I already told you I’m not spilling my dirty thoughts right now.”

“I know. This isn’t about that.”

“Okay. Then shoot.”

She plucked at the edge of her seat belt. “Do you think it’s odd to hear voices…that shouldn’t be there?”

“Be where?”

Willa was quiet for so long, he didn’t think she was going to answer. Finally she said with wavering uncertainty, “Your head.”

He slashed his gaze toward her and she turned bright red.

“You think I’m crazy now, don’t you?”

“Uh, no.”

She twitched her nose. “Has anyone told you that you really suck at lying?”

The truth was he didn’t think she was necessarily crazy. But telling someone you heard strange voices in your head? That was bound to throw anyone for a loop. “What do these voices say?”

She squinted at him. “Are you asking that just to humor me?”

“No. I’m honestly curious.”

“Well, the night you rescued me? It told me to jump your bones.”

He choked on a cough.

“It also told me you possessed what I needed.” She slid him a sidelong glance.

“I think I’m starting to like this voice.”

“This is no joke, Max. You don’t know what it’s like having no control over your thoughts or actions.” Her lips trembled. “To be at the mercy of an invisible puppeteer.”

Her obvious anguish tore at him. He wished he could offer some comfort, but he didn’t know the words to give her. Reaching across the console, he squeezed her knee. “Maybe the voice means you no harm. In fact, it sounds like it’s trying to help you. Or tell you something.” A tingle broke out on the nape of his neck, his first clue that he might be on to something. “How long have you been hearing it?”

“Technically, I didn’t hear it until that night. Before then, it was more of a nonverbal thing.”

“You mean like telepathy?”

She scrunched her forehead. “Sort of. Sometimes I’ll get flashes of odd images too. Almost like snapshots.”

“Memories?”

“They’re not mine.”

The tingling intensified and he tightened his grip on the wheel, trying not to get too excited by the possibility poking at him. “How do you know that?”

“I—I guess I don’t.”

He couldn’t hold back his theory any longer. “Sweetheart, what if the strange voice isn’t some disembodied hallucination, but
you
.”

“Me?”

“Yes. Think about it. The mind sweeper erased all traces of everything that wasn’t human about you.”

“Okay,” she said, stringing out the word. “I’m following you so far.”

“But you can’t completely destroy a basic part of someone’s psyche. The core of what they are. Maybe you can submerge it. Beat it into submission. But sooner or later, it’s going to surface and seek the other half of itself and do everything it can to become a whole unit.”

Rather than look impressed by his theory, Willa’s expression turned horrified. “That crazy broad is going to try to take over my body?”

“Willa, that crazy broad is
you
.” He quickly reevaluated what he’d just said. “That came out wrong, but you know what I mean. Bottom line, there’s no reason to fear your nymph side. Sure, they can be a little mischievous at times. And their appetites tend toward the…lusty.”

Her eyes nearly bugged from their sockets as that part registered. A moment later a distressed wail bleated from her. “Oh my goddess. I’m a
nymphomaniac
.”

He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from chuckling. Somehow he doubted she would find it the least bit funny. “Look on the bright side. Now you know how the term originated.”

“Thanks. That was very helpful.”

“Damn, you’re incredibly sexy when you’re sarcastic.”

She cocked an eyebrow. “Jeez, you’re even more mentally unstable than I am.”

This time he allowed himself to laugh. “Keep throwing out those zingers, and I
will
find a pull off so I can fuck you against the steering wheel.”

She snorted. “No doubt that would thrill my inner nympho to no end.”

They crossed onto the bypass leading to Tybee. This time of day most of the tourists were already soaking up rays on the beaches, leaving the roadways relatively free of traffic. Fine by him. The sooner he got to the station and sent Fritz packing, the quicker he could be on top of Willa.
In
Willa.

He stomped his foot on the gas, and she shot him a look. “In a hurry to get to work?”

Oh yeah, baby.

Less than ten minutes later he roared into the lot of the stationhouse. He noticed a woman standing by the front door, blocking it. She turned, revealing possibly one of the most stunningly beautiful faces he’d ever seen.

A strangled yelp came from Willa. “Sh-she was in my dream.”

He shifted his focus between Willa and the stranger. Suddenly the woman’s features went from beautiful to ugly in zero seconds flat, her eyes blacker than midnight. Opening her mouth, she screeched an ear-splitting cacophony, exploding the stationhouse windows.

Chapter Fifteen

Willa clamped her hands over her ears, trying to mute the horrible noise. All around her, glass shattered, including the Taurus’s windshield. Fragmented shards pelted her knees and lap. When she moved to brush them off, Max slammed her hand back in place.

The sound of his voice was muffled, but she read his lips loud and clear. “Keep those on your ears, damn it.”

She wondered how he could take the screeching without his eardrums bleeding. He shifted in reverse, the Taurus bucking as the gears caught. The acceleration on the gas knocked her back in the seat. They hit something with enough force to make the vehicle jolt. A moment later it happened again. Max floored the gas, finally clearing the obstacle. She stared in bafflement at the buckled blacktop. Even while she tried to process what she was seeing, the parking lot and the driveway continued cracking, heaving asphalt in massive chunks.

The woman left the doorway, the shrill decibel of her shrieks making Willa cringe and curl into a fetal position, convinced her brain was about to explode. Tiny hairline cracks radiated across the surface of her eyeglasses, blurring her vision. The Taurus spun in a wide arc, bouncing with enough impact to jostle her in the seat. Somehow she managed to keep her arms banded tight to her head, but the hideous wailing seemed to have wormed inside her ears anyway. Tears leaking from her eyes, she willed the agony to stop.

They drove at a breakneck speed for several minutes. With the majority of the windshield now scattered on the floor, the relentless wind pummeled her unmercifully. Eventually the vehicle slowed and the discord in her head muted to an unpleasant ringing. She became aware of someone vigorously shaking her. Max. Concern riding every inch of his face, he pulled her hands away and began speaking, his voice muffled and tinny, as if it were coming from miles away.

“Willa, I said can you hear me?”

A tremble coursed through her and she began crying. She hated sobbing like a big baby. Especially in front of Max.

“Damn it. Hold tight. I’m taking you to Boone.”

The only thing she seemed capable of at the moment was nodding weakly as she struggled to keep her wind-whipped hair from blowing in her eyes. By the time they reached the small animal hospital on the outskirts of Savannah, she felt like she’d been through a tornado and survived. Barely.

Max rushed to her side of the car and wrenched the door open. He freed her from the seat belt and bundled her into his arms before running toward the brick building’s front entrance. A young woman in bright orange scrubs stood behind the check-in desk. She stared at them in bewilderment, but Max ignored the girl, jogging right past her and down a short corridor. He shoved open a battered wooden door that bore countless scratches and gouges, likely from the four-legged patients that typically roamed these halls.

Boone looked up from the medical equipment he was sterilizing, his eyebrows knitting when he spotted them. “What happened? Did she relapse?”

It took her a second to remember the leviathan bite that Boone had previously treated. Goddess that seemed like almost a different lifetime, when in actuality it’d only been two days ago.

Max carefully settled her on the edge of the stainless-steel examining table. “No, screaming siren. I’m not sure what the extent of the damage is on her eardrums.”

To Boone’s credit, he didn’t even bat an eye at the announcement. Unclipping a penlight from the breast pocket of his lab coat, he quickly clicked it on and moved beside her. He looked in her ears, occasionally giving a noncommittal hum. Then again, maybe what she mistook for humming was really the residual ringing inside her head. Tucking his knuckles beneath her chin, he coaxed her to meet his gaze. The cracked state of her eyeglasses made them more of a hindrance than anything, so she plucked them from her face and hooked them on the collar of her shirt.

Boone flashed the light in her eyes. “Are you experiencing any sort of pain?”

“Not really.”

Boone winced, leading her to believe she must have shouted the words. Jeez, it was hard to judge sound when your hearing was wonky. Mindful not to blast
his
eardrums, she deliberately lowered the pitch of her voice for the rest of her statement. “I thought my brain was going to detonate earlier, but now it’s mostly just…foggy.”

Pocketing his penlight, Boone gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Wrestling a leviathan wasn’t exciting enough for you, huh? Had to go and get in a yelling match with a siren. You’re damn lucky your eardrums didn’t rupture.”

She peered at Max, recalling how he hadn’t even covered his ears. “Why is it that you’re perfectly fine?”

“I’m immune to any siren’s call. All sharks are. I suspect you would be too, if your nymph side was fully integrated into your psyche.”

“Nymph side?” Boone parroted.

Max gave him a quick rundown of events without revealing Willa’s true identity. But even without that staggering part of the story, Boone still looked properly stunned. “Do you think the siren was Reva, and not merely one of her cronies?”

“I’d say it’s a good bet. I haven’t heard anything from Justin yet about word of his grandmother’s escape, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything if he truly wasn’t in the loop of what was going on. Speaking of being in the loop, I better get a hold of Jona and let him know we have a homicidal siren in our backyard.”

Max reached for his cell, and she strained to keep up with his side of the phone conversation, her panic escalating. If Reva Bellemuir had indeed escaped… “Aurele! We have to let her know what happened.”

As soon as Max finished talking to his deputy, he handed over his cell phone, and she frantically punched in Aurele’s number. When the voice mail kicked on, she practically screamed in frustration. After leaving the older woman a brief message about Reva’s appearance in Tybee, as well as terse orders for Aurele to call Max’s cell phone, Willa hung up and buried her face in her hands, helpless sobs racking her. Max’s strong arms surrounded her. Despite her resolve to at least pretend at being a steady rock, she clung to him. He stroked her hair, soothing her. His presence comforted, but it didn’t change the reality of the nightmare facing them.

Secured prison walls no longer protected the world from Reva Bellemuir’s hatred.

The countdown to Armageddon had just begun.

Chapter Sixteen

It took every ounce of Harrison’s nonexistent patience not to strangle Reva as the duchess sailed by him and stormed into the stationhouse. That stupid, crazy bitch. What the hell had she been thinking, letting loose with her caterwauling before the fucking shark and the girl abandoned their vehicle? Clearly being locked up all those years had killed off more than a few of the siren’s brain cells.

Pivoting, he walked inside the building and slammed the front door shut. Not that it did a damn bit of good. The glass that should have been affixed within the frame currently littered the floor. He glared at the duchess’s rigid back. “Don’t
ever
do that again.”

She whipped around and stared at him coldly. “How dare you speak to me that way. Do you know who I am?”

Yes, you’re a fucking basket case
. He’d worked with enough of them to read the signs. Hell, he’d been forced to deal with
seven
basket cases with his previous mentor. Definitely made him an expert on the subject. “Because of that giant hissy fit you threw out there, the girl got away.” Again. With that fucking shark in tow, no less. Damn if that didn’t sting worst than salt in a wound.

“Do you take me for a fool?”

Did she honestly expect him to answer? No, too easy.

“The girl didn’t slip through our fingers with no hope of being found again. We’ll simply lay a trap for her.”

He flicked a speck of dust from his waistcoat. “And how do you plan on going about it? Bloody difficult to lay a trap without bait.”

“Everyone has a weakness. It only takes a little digging to find it. I propose we start searching for clues at her residence.” She marched to the nearest desk and waved imperiously at the computer resting there. “I trust you know how to use one of these contraptions? Plug in her name and find out where she lives.”

He despised being ordered around. It reminded him too much of his previous life. Still, it was a necessary means to a glorious end. Crossing to the desk, he shoved the dead officer from the rickety seat and plopped down. Fortunately, the crazy bitch’s siren blare hadn’t blown out the monitor. He tapped the keyboard, inputting the girl’s name into the database. In less time than it took him to type the two words, her information popped onto the computer screen. Jotting her address onto the adjacent pad of paper, he grumbled to himself.