Natural Magick (9 page)

Pete watched as Sara patted Shade’s arm and then nodded when Shade raised her hand. It was funny really and she grinned at her.

“
Sara wants to know if she can talk to you now. She said she doesn’t want to break the contact between the two of you, but she’d really like to talk to you.”

“
Yes, you may answer now. Our contact is closed enough to be considered complete that I doubt it would matter anyway. To be honest, I didn’t believe you could do it. It must have been very difficult for you to remain quiet for that long.” Pete grinned wider when Sara glared at her.

Sara, nodding, tears glistening in her eyes, said, “There are no words adequate enough to thank you for what you’ve done for me, for us. I thank you for my children and for your trust. If you ever need anything, ever, you’ll have it.”

Pete started to say something, but could not. No one had ever said anything like that to her before. Not that she had ever given them the chance. She felt the room closing in on her and moved to the door. She needed to escape. Right now, she needed to get away.

Forty-five minutes later, Aaron and Duncan entered the little room, taking up a large portion of it and the air. Duncan was pressed into helping get the extra people out of the room, leaving the members of the Kiss and Pete. Colin, Shade’s mate, would be by shortly with the extra car needed to get them home and was going to meet them there as soon as he could. Brent was with Penny and waiting for the news of the new baby.

Everyone seemed ready for the little ones to be born. Now Pete needed to see if the little ones were ready too.

“
All right, Mrs. MacManus, I need you to bear down hard and push from your bottom. Push like you need a good poop. I know that sounds gross, but that’s where you need to use all the muscles to work from. Sire, you will kneel here and I will hand you your babies as they come. Ready? Push. Push hard.”

Seven hard pushes later, baby boy MacManus was born. He was a little guy and the horrific bruise around his tiny neck brought home how close he had come to death. He screamed his first cry when Pete held him upside down by his feet and slapped him a good one across the bottom. Once he took air into his healthy lungs, he quieted.

“
I’ve asked him not to cry too much for the first few days to give his throat time to heal better. His sister has agreed, quite readily actually, to cry for him when he needs something. She has told me to tell you to check him first when she cries, it’s probably for him anyway. She is going to be a handful, I think.” Pete looked at the baby and saw that he was going to be fine.

His father held him like a precious jewel. Eighteen minutes later, baby girl MacManus came into the world just like the diva she was probably going to turn out to be. She did not scream, but growled like a pro when Pete paid her bottom the same treatment she gave her brother’s.

Duncan, good man that he was, had remembered to bring the bags for the birth that the Missus had had ready for some weeks now, so they were able to bundle the babies in diapers and clothes. They were tiny and other than the bruising, were beautiful.

While the families were surrounding the children cooing and awing over them, Pete looked around the room. The hair on the back of her neck had begun to prickle since she finished with the birth. She looked for the source and spotted the man from the kitchen at the MacManus’ home standing in the corner away from her. He was staring at her. Well, glaring would be a better term for what he was doing.

Pete turned away and stood, making ready to leave. She did not need anything from him, especially since she had done nothing wrong in the first place, she thought. And she was damn well not going to listen to him if he decided to go off again.

The doctor would be there soon, and they would be moving everyone to the mansion as soon as he checked them all over. Pete was nearly to the door when Mrs. MacManus stopped her. Pete reached out to grip the shelf nearest to her to steady herself, exhaustion and hunger hitting her hard just at that moment. If she didn’t leave soon, she was afraid she wouldn’t. At least not until she took a long nap.

“
Pete, you’ll come back to the house with us. I would like you to stay with us for a few days. You look a little wrung out.”

Sara didn’t make it sound like a request, but a direct order. Pete was not intimidated. She could say “no” better than she could “yes” when she needed to.

“
I don’t think so, but thanks. I have a part-timer tomorrow morning, and I need to get home now. You all should be fine and I’m sure the doctor will have whatever you guys need. I have to get going.”

Pete looked at Mel, daring her to say something about her job, but Mel only nodded and went back to touching the little girl in her arms. Pete moved closer to the door and was proud of the fact that she had only staggered twice more on her way through to the kitchen.

Pete felt the man move toward her, but decided not to acknowledge him in any way. She knew now he was a part of the family somehow, but he was not Sara’s mate. Not that it mattered to her one way or the other. With her walls back up, Pete was not even sure if he was like them or not, and didn’t care either way. She didn’t think he was any less insane than she had before.

The Hangchows, owners and cooks of the restaurant, stopped her twice on her way out. Once to thank her for the blessing she had placed upon their establishment with the birth of the twins. It seemed that their equivalent of her Mother Nature blessed households where healthy children were born as not many survived were they had lived. The second was to ask if she could take a delivery to Booger for them. She agreed. She was going that way anyway and went ahead and paid for it for him. The man followed her closely as she left by the back door of the restaurant. She turned sharply and glared at him.

“
I want you to go away and leave me alone. No matter what you think, I didn’t take anything from the MacManus’ or Mr. Hangchow. I’m not a thief. The food is for someone who lives at the house I live at and he had placed an order. I’m just delivering it for him. And right now, I don’t have the energy to deal with whatever you think you might have to say to me. I want you to stay the fuck away from me. You’re insane.”

Pete could feel the sting of the tears in her eyes, and decided that she was just overly tired. She knew that he followed her to the door and out to her bike, but she chose to ignore him. It wasn’t as if he was speaking to her anyway. She loaded the food bag into the back of the bike’s saddle bag, and threw her leg over the seat.

“
I’d like to have a word with you, please. I think I might have said some things the other night that may have been a little rude and I—”

“
You may have said some things that were rude? Are you fucking nuts? You attacked me, you stupid asshole. I didn’t even know you existed and you came at me as if I was…I was some sort of stalker or something. You need to have your head examined. And stay the hell away from me.”

Before she could say anything else to him, or start the engine, he touched her forehead with the palm of his hand and simply said, “Sleep.”

CHAPTER NINE

When Pete woke up the, she didn’t know where she was. She sat up slightly and looked around. The room was nice with lots of old but beautiful furniture. The bed she was in was huge and smelled like warm nights.

Now I am nuts, she thought and started to rise. She saw him then, sitting in a dark wingback chair staring at her intently. She didn’t speak to him but got up anyway, as she really needed to use the bathroom.

Throwing off the heavy comforter, she swung her long legs to the floor and stood up. She staggered only a little, caught herself, and took a step toward the bath. He was in front of her in a flash. Pete put her hands out to stop her forward momentum, but still hit him in the chest. She looked up at him and saw that his eyes had started to change to a deep red.

“
Are you like them, like the MacManus’s?” she asked before she remembered she was not going to speak to him.

“
A vampire. Yes, I’m a vampire. Are you afraid of me?”

There was a weird cadence to his voice, she noticed. It was husky and deep. As much as she hated to admit it, she liked the way it made her feel—warm and protected, nothing like he had actually made her feel in real life.

“
No. I have to pee, and if you’ll move, I’ll take care of that right now.” She moved to the right at the same time he did to the left. The same move occurred when she moved left. “Do you mind? I want to use the facilities.”

He looked at her again, just stared at her for the longest time. She glared at him and began to step back and away from him. When he slowly leaned toward her, it felt as if she was frozen in place, just waiting for him to kiss her.

His lips brushed against hers softly, then a second time. He pulled back slightly, tilting his head more, sliding his hand up to the back of her head, cupping it and pulling her forward and into his kiss. He kissed her gently at first, and then pulled her lower lip into his mouth to suckle it.

Suddenly, everything around her just dropped away—the sounds, the smells, everything seemed to fade away as he deepened the kiss. When his tongue slid along the seam of her lips, begging her for permission to enter, she let him in. As soon as her mouth opened slightly, his tongue darted forward to mingle with hers.

Pete had been kissed before, but nothing like this. Her whole body responded to him, to his mouth, his body. She hesitantly slid her tongue along his and felt his growl, felt it rumble from his chest she was pressed so tightly against. He suddenly pulled away, stepped back from her. She staggered again, only this time it was not from exhaustion but being tossed back by him. When he went to grab her, to keep her from falling, she stepped back further and snapped.

“
Don’t touch me! Don’t you dare touch me again! Who the hell do you think you are? Are you enjoying this? Are you trying to drive me insane? Because I gotta tell you, you—” This time, it was she who growled and turned away.

Pete started to move toward the door to leave the bedroom, and he flashed in front of her again, this time to stop her. Again, she stepped back, but instead of backing away from him, she clasped her hands together, brought them around, and connected with his right jaw, snapping his head hard to the left. Then in a nasty move, brought her knee up and connected quite nicely with his groin and his manly parts. Her hands snapping against his jaw had hurt. There would be a bruise tomorrow, she thought. But the satisfying grunt coming from him made her think it was worth it.

She went into the hall and realized she was in the MacManus’ house, and moved quickly to the front door. She saw Aaron step out of the kitchen so he was sure to intercept her just as she cleared the last step of the grand staircase. She was so not in the mood for him either and didn’t say a word to him but kept moving toward her goal of out of this house.

“
Pete, I’d like to have a few words with you while Dominic recovers, if you wouldn’t mind?”

She didn’t even think about how he knew the other man, Dominic, she supposed, was hurt.

“
As a matter of fact, I do mind. Stay away from me. I don’t want to have to hurt you either.”

He either didn’t listen or didn’t think she’d follow through. But she was beyond being pissed and didn’t stop to think about the fact that a full grown man, a vampire, was in her way. He was just there.

Without thinking about what she was going to do or slow down her forward motion, she swung her entire body around, landing on her hands just as her feet slammed into his chest. It was a nice trick she had learned from a guy she traded computer lessons for. He taught her how to fight dirty and she taught him how to use the Internet. Aaron flew across the living room and hit the far wall, knocking the wind out of him.

Another man—Christ, was everyone this man knew huge?—came out of the kitchen at full speed. He grabbed her around the waist, leaving her arms free. He will regret that soon enough, she thought with a smile. She twisted around in his arms, grabbed two handfuls of his long hair, and knocked her head into his nose, breaking it. When he loosened his grip enough, she broke free and brought her knee up and for the second time, she unmanned a vampire. She stepped over his inert body and out into the early morning.

She was nearly to the garage where she could see her bike parked when Sara cleared her throat behind her. Pete turned quickly and just managed to catch herself from harming the woman a few feet behind her.

~~~

Sara knew what had happened to each of the men. As soon as she felt Pete wake up, Sara got up herself thinking to go to her and thank her again. She had been standing just inside her bedroom door when she heard Dominic groan in pain. Reaching out to him, she realized what Pete had done and why, and smiled.

Following Pete down the stairs, a goodly distance behind her, she watched as Aaron had tried to stop her as well. That fancy footwork had Sara smile and wince. Aaron would be fine, but he would be mad. She had told him before that women, especially pissed off women, did not like to be cornered and were not rational either.

Colin must have felt Aaron’s pain and came running out of the kitchen and got a broken nose for his trouble. Sara was still smiling when she walked out the door and saw that Pete was going to leave.

“
You fight dirty. And mean. I like that. Going somewhere?” Pete seemed to relax a little, but Sara could tell that she was still wary. She was sure that Pete would not hit her, but she wasn’t taking any chances and stayed five feet from her.