The Ghosts' Release [Were-Devils of Tasmania 4] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Read online

  It had to be coincidence, she decided, finally, as the rain kept up relentlessly. The ghosts happened to be here, sensed her and sought her out, probably as curious as she was. Nothing more sinister than that.

  * * * *

  “I need to get out.”

  They’d been in their hotel on the cliffs of Whitby, looking out at the bleak coastline. Kadar had looked at his brother curiously. Damon rarely showed what he was thinking but his agitation was so extreme he could no longer hide it. Something was wrong. Or maybe it was just this place. The sea was a cold gray, mist hovering on the horizon. The ruined cathedral could barely be made out on the opposite cliff, just occasional hints of a wall when the wind blew and the mist and rain swirled in a different direction. Rain was splattering against the hotel’s window panes and the fire behind him was a good deal more enticing than the outdoors.

  “The Cathedral?”

  This was where they had gone every other time they’d come here, but Damon shook his head. “I need to walk to clear my head.”

  “Brilliant,” said Kadar. “Great day for a walk.”

  Kadar wouldn’t have wanted to walk if the sun had been shining, either. An occasional soccer or Australian rules football match when he’d been younger, perhaps, but he’d long since decided that his height and breadth made him a target for every dickhead that wanted to show how tough they were and that it was a good deal safer to watch matches on TV. He would have been happy drinking beer all afternoon in front of the fire with a computer on his lap. He’d been thinking about the imminent ghost assault on the were-devils on the plane and had started to wonder if this was something that might be part of the prophecy. An idea was forming, but if he was going to go anywhere with it, he needed time with a computer and the Internet. Neither was going to happen on a walk.

  But there was no way Kadar was letting Damon go anywhere on his own. If the Baekken vampires were here somewhere, the brothers were in danger. There was little love lost between the vampires and the ghosts, if their grandfather was to be believed. While Kadar was more bluff than brawn, his brother was often so lost in thought he wouldn’t notice a vampire until it swooped down on him. So, a walk it was.

  He’d sensed her first. He’d been thinking vampire so it had taken a moment to discern what it was he was sensing. He sent a silent message to Damon who stopped dead, frowning.

  They had seen her long before she saw or sensed them. Kadar stood very still and watched her making laboriously slow progress through the mire. She looked very wet and very…alone. He hadn’t ever thought much about were-devils as individuals before. More, they had been a concept. A group his grandfather had done wrong by, because one had impregnated his great-aunt and married someone else. They were also a group with a fascinating disease caused by the vampires’ ancient knowledge, that with Damon’s medical studies and his computer mapping, he and his brother were going to get to the bottom of.

  So, when he had seen his very first were-devil, he’d been totally unprepared for his response. It wasn’t just that she was slight and exotic and had deeply fierce brown eyes streaked with amber. She was also quite simply the hottest woman he had ever seen.

  Chapter Two

  The last three miles felt like twenty. Misty kept a surreptitious eye on the compass to ensure the ghosts weren’t leading her astray, but they kept a steady course with their GPS in what appeared to be the right direction. When they finally hit a road and a sign that said Robin Hood’s Bay, she felt considerably more relaxed than she had since meeting them. Surely if they were going to attack her, they would have done so on the moors where she could have been left in the bottom of a bog and never found.

  “Where are you heading?” Kadar asked easily.

  “Wainwright’s Bar,” Misty replied. She was meeting Bonnie there, the traditional place to celebrate the end of the Coast to Coast walk. She felt a bit of a fraud, given she’d only done the last three days of what should have taken over two weeks, but there would be a lot of people there and right now, if these boys intended to follow her, this would be a good thing.

  “Let us buy you a drink and you can tell us why you’re here,” said Damon. It was the first thing he’d said in half an hour.

  Wainwright’s Bar, named for the person who first completed then wrote about the walk, was at the far end of Robin Hood’s Bay. When they arrived on the cliff tops above, it was late afternoon and the sun was low on the horizon behind a layer of cloud. The wind and rain were worsening and Misty hurried through the narrow street with the Karlssens behind her, lights already on in the shops and bars lining the path. She passed the hotel she was staying at but thought better of dropping her day pack off. Though she still felt more comfortable than she had any right to be, better to keep where she was staying to herself.

  The street ended, opening out on to the beach below. Upturned boats sat in front of a boat shed, fishing nets and tackle heaped between them. To the left was the bar. The downstairs one was closed, so Misty hurried up the stairs and out of the rain.

  “B’n swimming, lass?” joked one of the guys at the bar.

  Misty glared at him and looked around the faces. Sure enough, Bonnie was with a group who looked well along the way to tasting all of the local ales, several empty glasses and chip packets lying over the table.

  “Misty! You made it.”

  Misty didn’t think there was much need to reply to this. She eased off her outer layers down to her black thermal top which was damp but at least not drenched. The trousers below the Gore-Tex cover and her socks hadn’t fared as well.

  “This is Damon and Kadar,” she said. Looking at them, she added, “Bonnie shares my apartment. It was her idea to do this walk.”

  Bonnie grinned. “Have a beer.”

  Damon turned to Misty. “What would you like?”

  “Vodka. Straight up.”

  Bonnie burst out laughing and leaned into the beer-bellied man next to her. “Sounds like that’s how she likes her men.” She pushed Beer-belly and a wiry man with a Scottish accent around the table so they could pull up more seats. Misty sat on the empty one and Kadar pulled up one next to her. When Damon returned with her drink, a scotch, and a beer, he angled a chair on her other side.

  Great, squashed between two ghosts. Misty downed the vodka in one hit and relished the burning sensation all the way down. She didn’t drink often, but right now she needed something to both warm and steady her. Bonnie tried to engage Damon but soon got the hint that he really wasn’t the chatty type and went back to drinking games and talking soccer news with her two men.

  “So you’re living here, or on holidays?”

  Damon was close enough to her that she could feel him without their skin touching. It was an odd sensation, a total awareness of him that seemed familiar, yet how could it? He radiated an intensity that Misty had never before sensed. If she had to describe it, she would have said there was a cerebral plane where they met, like a sixth sense. Given he was a ghost, it was thoroughly disconcerting. Now out of his Driza-Bone she could get a good look at him, and he was even more striking than first impressions had suggested, with a long nose, a perfectly symmetrical face, high cheek bones and firm jaw. Six foot, perhaps, and lean. There was a hardness and a hidden part of him in the same way people described her. What was underneath?

  “Studying,” Misty replied. “And you?”

  “We do a lot of work in Europe.”

  “Which leads to the question, what sort of work?”

  “And to the question, what are you studying?”

  Touché. “I think I need another vodka.”

  Kadar got up and went to the bar.

  “We work for World Health Organization,” Damon said evenly.

  “Really? Doing what?”

  “Strategic response to viral epidemics. I do the medical side, Kadar the computer mapping.”

  Misty stared at him. “That’s, uh, amazing.” Misty silently groaned. Did I really say that?

  “Not
as amazing as what you do,” Bonnie interrupted as Kadar returned with more drinks and Beer-belly went off to get more for the others.

  “Yeah?” Kadar said, smiling encouragingly at Bonnie.

  “She’s a real brain,” Bonnie went on as Misty looked at the vodka and wondered if she could down this one in a gulp as well. “Works at the London Institute, no less.” Bonnie added the BBC accent to her comment.

  Misty caught the quickest of flickers. From Damon.

  “Which area of research?” he asked quietly.

  “Genetics.” Misty looked him straight in the eyes and added, “Actually, the genetic markers that turn the immune response on and off.”

  The stillness felt like the whole room had gone quiet. It was interrupted by Bonnie. “Whatever that is. I don’t understand most of what she says. For the first month, I thought it was the accent, but then…”

  No one was listening, because just at that moment Misty felt something that nearly knocked her off the chair. If she had downed the second vodka she might have thought it was to blame, but as it was, coming from so far away and totally unexpectedly, it took her almost a minute to get her breath. She had felt something similar, on a smaller scale, when her sister Melody had been attacked by the ghost that infected her with the viral cancer. But this continued to hit at her every sense. She didn’t understand it, but she knew that something was badly wrong home in Tarrabah.

  Bonnie rabbited on in the way that Misty found at times endearing but mostly infuriating. At the edge of her awareness she knew the ghosts also knew, or had sensed, something. They were looking at each other, Kadar somewhat stunned, Damon with a dark expression.

  “Excuse us,” said Damon. “We have to meet someone at a bar up the road. Misty, are you going to finish the drink?” Softly he added, “You might need it.”

  Misty was in no state to make any decisions. In her ears, she was hearing her entire family shrieking, totally paralysed by the pain of knowing that no matter what it was that was happening, nothing she could do from so far away was going to make any difference. Someone—probably Kadar—put the drink in her hand and she downed it quickly. Then, with Bonnie saying something about dinner, she was led out of the bar with a Karlssen on either side keeping her upright.

  * * * *

  Damon knew what was happening as soon as he saw Misty’s expression glaze. Unlike her, he had known an attack was eminent and had been expecting some sign from her if it had already started. She’d been wary of them, but not paranoid. If Tarrabah had already burned, she would never have sat down to drink with them. What he hadn’t expected was a message directly from Tasmania. It wasn’t strong, but it was there. Time enough to work out why, later. He had to get Misty away from her intoxicated human friends who couldn’t possibly begin to understand. Whether she would accept him helping, he wasn’t sure. But he sensed his brother’s reaction to this strange woman, so alien and forbidden, and realized his reaction, while more complex, was also overwhelmingly positive.

  Damon liked women and women liked him. But he hated it when he told girls who he was out with that he was a doctor and they swooned in that “oh, you’re so smart” and “what a great catch” way. The only woman he’d had a serious relationship with had been a doctor, too. But in the end, she had wanted a big house and a sports car more than she wanted to save the world. And Damon had a very particular world he needed to save. With Misty, he sensed a like mind, for all of her social awkwardness. And of course she, in essence, wanted to save a similar world. One that his kind may well have just wiped out.

  They got her to the next bar and found a quiet corner.

  “What’s happening?” Misty said, shaking as she spoke.

  “I think your town is being attacked,” Kadar said gently, hesitantly rubbing her arm.

  Misty put her head in her hands and sobbed. “No, please no,” she whispered.

  They sat with her while she tried raising someone on the phone in Australia. It was the middle of the night there, but no one was answering.

  “Let me try,” said Damon, finally.

  “Try who?”

  Damon could see under Misty’s despair that anger at them was just below the surface. Was he going to ring someone who would gloat?

  “My great-aunt has been trying to get the ghosts and were-devils to reconcile all her life,” said Damon. “She won’t be there, but she will know.”

  Angel answered her home phone on the second ring.

  “This is will either be the annihilation of us all or our one chance to resolve the curse for us and them,” his grandmother said.

  “How?”

  “Your cousin Lena sent you the call,” said Angel. “She’s the direct descendant of my sister Larissa, and this has always been about revenge and forgiveness for Larissa, her lover, and the child they made. Lena has joined with the were-devils, as has your other second-cousin, Gabriella.”

  Damon hit the End button and looked at Misty, his mind racing. If two ghosts had already crossed, did this have anything to do with the fact that when he looked at Misty all he could think of was that they were somehow destined to meet on those moors?

  * * * *

  Misty needed to be alone. The Karlssens were solicitous and helpful, but her emotions and thoughts were in turmoil and they were ghosts, which added to the confusion. They said sorry and seemed to mean it. They hadn’t been at Tarrabah, her home, so she could hardly blame them as individuals. When she took her leave, they both stood awkwardly until Damon took the lead and kissed her gently on the forehead, Kadar doing the same. If she had been less emotional, she would have tried to make sense of her body’s response, an extraordinary tingle that left her unsteady. She went back to her hotel and curled up under the bed covers until Bonnie arrived and pulled her out, too alcohol influenced to take no for an answer.

  “You need to eat,” said Bonnie.

  Bonnie dragged her down to the pub restaurant but Misty was feeling too shaky to look at a menu, let alone eat. At least Bonnie, the Scot, Beer-belly, and another couple that had joined them were oblivious to her. Every fifteen minutes she tried her siblings’ cell phones, absentmindedly eating a slice of bread and fries that materialized in front of her. At about half past ten, her brother Mac finally picked up.

  “Mac? Are you all right? What’s happened?” The relief that he had answered was immeasurable, but she steeled herself for what was coming. Big Mac, her powerhouse of a brother who she was sure nothing could destroy, sounded exhausted.

  “It’s okay,” he said, as the words reverberated through her mind. “We all made it.”

  “But what…?”

  “It’s a long story,” said Mac. “But the ghosts are on a warpath, determined to annihilate us. All except a couple, that is.”

  Misty listened while she was told about Lena and Gabriella, about the prophecy and about the virus originally designed to kill the were-devils. It might now be turning against the ghosts who had first introduced it. Misty, whose scientific knowledge was well ahead of her brother’s, was finding him hard to follow, but it seemed Tilman thought he had the antidote. Though it was a lot to take in, when she finally hit the End button, she was at least relaxing into the knowledge that her family was all okay, even if their homes had been burned to the ground. She was still distracted, and almost didn’t see Damon and Kadar coming out of the bar opposite. She wanted to run and hug them both, have them hold her. But at the same time she was appalled by the thought and shrank back into the shadows instinctually.

  “We need to find her.” Kadar.

  Damon was silent.

  “We don’t know what will happen,” Kadar continued, sounding agitated.

  Damon was sounding grim. “We will find her.”

  The Karlssens went through another door into the bar Misty had come out of. She couldn’t risk asking them what this was about. She needed to hide. Watching through the door, she saw them talking to Bonnie.

  The cook, an older man with a strong Yorkshire a
ccent, came out of the bar kitchen, wiping his hands on his apron. “Wanting to give them the slip, are you?”

  “Yes, actually.”

  The big man grinned. “This way.”

  He took her down to the cellar. “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll have one of the young lads tell them he saw you going up the hill and I’ll let you know when it’s safe.”

  Misty waited in the cellar. As the time passed and she calmed herself about her family, she began to take in where she was. It was cold, very cold, but she also sensed a draft, and salt was on her taste buds, as if the sea was right there. In the shadows she could see stacks of boxes and at the end of the stone cellar, a door. She was attempting to open it when the Yorkshire man returned.

  “All clear, lass,” he called. Seeing where she was, he winked. “Trying to find our secret there, are you?”

  “Secret?”

  “The smuggler’s secret passage,” the cook told her. “Used to be famous. Not just here, the whole town. You Australians are meant to be the convicts.” He laughed. “I reckon we have just as good a pedigree, just we didn’t get caught.”

  “So, the door goes to the beach?”

  “Aye, and to the next cellar.” He tossed his head behind him. “Over there behind the wine boxes is another passage. The cliff is riddled with them. Contraband being moved and my ancestors escaping the wallopers.”

  Misty looked blank until he added, “The law.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I guess I could have escaped through these tunnels if I’d had to.”

  “Aye, but it would have been a dangerous route if you’re not knowing what it is you’re doing.”