Storm Road (Old School Book 3) Read online

“Or should I discover your pleasure for myself?” He sealed her mouth with his and sucked on her lower lip.

  She twisted to trace the muscles of his shoulders and back. Samuel had been skinny. Dean was lean but powerful. Muscles rippled under her hands.

  His chest heaved.

  He broke their kiss and rested his cheek against hers. “Kissing you shreds my control. I promise to give you time.”

  She moved her hands restlessly, unsure what she wanted; only to freeze as he groaned and his head went back, throat muscles cording with tension.

  “Damn, but when you touch me like that.”

  “Like what?” She’d just been learning the feel of his body, tracing muscles.

  He looked at her, a hint of what seemed impossibly to be shyness bringing color to his face. “As if you’re adoring me.”

  Adoring hit her stomach muscles with a tight flash of lust. It was an unusual word choice, especially for a guy, but it was accurate. “You feel good,” she admitted.

  He kissed her, hard and fast, not coaxing this time.

  But before she could lose her head in the kiss, he lifted her up and onto her feet. His hands lingered at her waist, but only to steady her. “I promised.” His voice was deep, rough at the edges. He withdrew his hands. “You’re right that this is an unusual situation. So, we wait.”

  Her body had been dormant, frozen, for a decade. Now, it was emphatically unhappy at the suggestion of waiting. Beulah’s mind and body fought for a taut few seconds, then she shuffled sideways and collapsed onto the nearest chair.

  Dean sighed with what sounded like relief and disappointment. Their gazes met, frustration in both. He grinned ruefully. “Being sensible isn’t a hell of a lot of fun, even if I know that doing anything else would only bring trouble tomorrow.” He reached for her hand. “We have time.” He squeezed her fingers and let go.

  “If we stop the ghoul.”

  “We will.” He said it definitely. “Believe me.” A mischievous grin lightened his expression although passion still darkened his blue eyes. “I’m motivated.”

  The cemetery had an otherworldly beauty in the clear light of dawn. After kissing had nearly escalated to something even more interesting the previous night, Beulah and Dean had separated to their own lonely beds. She’d expected sleeplessness from the overwhelming day and from sexual frustration, but in fact, she’d slept like the dead—which was not a good phrase to use when they were strolling into a cemetery hunting a ghoul.

  “Remember, you promised. No feeding the ghoul your blood,” she reminded Dean.

  They’d both woken incredibly early, grabbed coffee and cereal, and then he’d driven them to the cemetery in his rental car.

  Inspiration hadn’t struck overnight. She still didn’t know how she might vanquish the ghoul, but they had to confirm that it had retreated to the graveyard after last night’s encounter and that it hadn’t hurt anyone else.

  “To your right, behind the oak tree,” Dean said. He’d followed her directions and parked near the south gate, and they’d entered along that path. It was the furthest from Main Street, and partially hidden by a trio of cedar trees, their pine scent sharp on the cool morning air. There was no wind. The grass was cut, the blue-flowering periwinkle that sprawled everywhere had been trimmed, and over by the old oak tree, a man darted back out of sight behind its gnarled trunk. Hiding was not the action of an innocent man.

  However, if the ghoul had possessed the man, would it bother to hide from them?

  She nodded to Dean. They were both short on sleep and patience. “Grab him.” She had a fraction of a second to see the amusement in his face, then Dean was gone. His boots pounded across the cemetery as he skirted graves and rounded the oak tree. She followed at a run, in time to witness their target’s pathetic attempt to flee.

  The guy spent more time flapping his arms trying to decide where to flee to than running.

  Dean grabbed him by the back of his jacket and spun him around.

  The guy brought his hands up. “You don’t want to mess with me. I’m a wizard.”

  Dean curled his right hand into a fist and pulled his arm back. “Can you wizard while you’re unconscious?”

  “Eep.” The wizard stared at Dean’s fist. “That is to say…”

  “You’re not a very good wizard,” Beulah finished. A powerful wizard would have already dealt with Dean. They all had spells they’d mastered for defensive purposes, and some, to attack.

  “I’m still learning,” the wizard whined.

  A whining wizard. Ew.

  Dean lowered his fist. “You’re pretty old to be learning.”

  The guy looked to be in his mid-thirties, near enough to Dean’s age for the differences between them to be stark. Where Dean was muscled and edgy, the wizard had a doughy body as if he existed on a junk food diet eaten in front of the television. He also squinted although the dawn light wasn’t that bright. Did the man never see daylight?

  Fussily, he tugged at his jacket, although the fake leather, scratched jacket wouldn’t actually zip closed. The wizard’s girth exceeded his jacket’s reach. His graying white t-shirt remained on display, rust-colored ketchup stain and all. “Some of us who are rich in magic mature later than others.”

  Dean raised an eyebrow at Beulah.

  “That’s rubbish,” she said.

  “What would you know?” The wizard scowled at her. “Mundanes are clueless.”

  His tone of superiority amused Beulah more than it irritated her; or it would have if this wannabe wizard hadn’t been in the ghoul’s cemetery. “Why are you here?”

  He stopped fiddling with his jacket and drew his shoulders up in an attempt to look haughty. He succeeded in appearing constipated. His narrow nose twitched. “There is an entity of great power in this cemetery.”

  All humor, reluctant or otherwise, vanished from the morning. Dean took a step closer to the wizard.

  Beulah caught his arm. “The ghoul called to you? I don’t recognize you from town.”

  “Of course you don’t. I don’t live in this dump.”

  Nice.

  Then the wizard seemed to actually register what she’d said. “A ghoul? No. No, it’s a demon.”

  “Would a demon be better?” Dean asked her.

  “In the sense that we could call in someone else to deal with it, yes.” She kept her gaze on the wizard. “Unfortunately, this is a ghoul.”

  “Ghouls aren’t real.” The wizard’s statement would have sounded better if his voice hadn’t trembled. The darting glances he cast in all directions didn’t exactly inspire confidence, either. “The ground in here isn’t disturbed. Nothing’s risen from a tomb.”

  “Ghouls aren’t zombies,” Beulah said, studying the guy. Had the ghoul really called to this pathetic creep? Actually, it probably had. This was a wizard that she guessed to be barely in command of himself or his magic which made him a perfect subject for the ghoul’s possession. “Do you feel any different?” She hadn’t expected to encounter the ghoul in another body, and she couldn’t tell if the ghoul hid within the wizard, laughing at them behind the man’s incompetence.

  “I’ve barely gotten started,” the wizard said. “I only heard the call late last night. Then I had to gather my supplies. I had to double-check my research. Then I drove here.”

  “What research?” Dean asked.

  “On how to summon a demon. Like I said, I’m still learning. I knew I couldn’t break through to Hell to call forth a demon, but when I felt one on this plane of existence, it was my chance. I scryed for the direction of the power I felt and it brought me here. I’m still getting set up. I’ll show you.” He cast Dean a wary look, but when the former marine didn’t object, the wizard grew a little more confident and led the way to the late nineteenth century corner of the cemetery and one of the few grand tombs in the graveyard. Somewhat hidden from the street, the wizard had marked a few shaky symbols on the ground in powdered chalk.

  Studying the poor workmanshi
p, including symbols she recognized as wrongly drawn, Beulah shook her head. “I don’t think he is possessed—yet.” The wizard was just too inept. The ghoul was many things, but this level of bumbling inadequacy couldn’t be faked.

  “The demon can’t possess me,” the wizard declared. He tugged at his dingy white t-shirt with its ketchup stains. “I used the blood from a piece of steak before I drove here. I’m not stupid. I know how to protect myself.”

  Ew. Those weren’t ketchup stains. The smears were blood that had soaked through from whatever symbols the wizard had sketched onto his skin.

  “Have you seen the ghoul?” Dean asked.

  “It’s a demon. And no.” The wizard knelt down and fussed with a jar of dark, oily liquid, replacing the lid on it and stuffing it into a beat-up leather satchel. When he withdrew his hand, he held a knife.

  Dean lashed out with his left leg in a kick that knocked the knife from the wizard. Dean kept moving, tracking the trajectory of the knife, and picked it up from the ground, spinning around in a fighter’s crouch.

  The wizard had fallen backwards onto his butt and cradled his right hand. “You broke my hand.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “I’m very sensitive, you know.” The wizard sniffed.

  “Very stupid,” Beulah said, her heart racing, although Dean seemed unaffected by the swift intrusion of violence.

  He was simply narrow-eyed and watchful. And he didn’t just watch the wizard. Like Beulah, he scanned the cemetery as well.

  Where was the ghoul?

  “How did the ghoul call to you?” she asked the wizard.

  The man on the ground tucked his injured hand against his blood-stained t-shirt. “You wouldn’t understand,” he sneered. “I felt it.” His voice slowed and deepened, awed. “So much power. I’ve felt it in rituals, but not as much as this. It’s around us, now.”

  “If it’s around us, what were you doing with that on the ground?” Dean indicated the wizard’s workings. Then he showed that his recent intensive study of magic had paid off. He recognized the purpose of the workings. “Why would you need to summon the ghoul if it’s already here?”

  “It’s a demon, not a ghoul.” The wizard stared at his workings, the lines in the dirt scuffed from Dean’s retrieval of his knife. “Binding it to me is part of the summoning. I have to possess it.”

  All of Beulah’s instincts stood up and screamed a warning. “You have to possess it, or it intends to possess you?”

  The wizard stared at her, uncomprehending.

  Impatient with such blind, greedy stupidity, she looked away from him to Dean. “Last night, the magic in the protection charm hurt the ghoul. It must have decided to acquire some magic of its own. We were safe behind the ward on my land. This guy must have been the nearest person with magic. Or the nearest person with magic and without wards,” she corrected herself.

  Dean understood. “It called him here, into its territory and to its base at the cemetery where it’s strongest, so it could possess him.”

  “No!” the wizard objected. “I’m protected. The symbol on my chest.” He pulled at his t-shirt, raising it to show more of his body than Beulah cared to see.

  She froze, staring. “You sweat when you’re scared.”

  “What?” the wizard gaped at her. Then down at his chest. He yelped.

  The steak blood on his chest had smeared into a formless, worthless mess partly soaked up by his t-shirt.

  “Those symbols wouldn’t have stopped me.” The ghoul materialized a few feet away.

  In daylight, its blue body had a vaporous form, the cemetery visible through it. But what the ghoul lacked in density, it made up for in size. It stood ten feet tall, skinny and eerily tree-like, with long, skinny arms and fingers, and its lower body wriggled across the ground as if the blue strands of fog were roots that reached out to tap graves. Perhaps they did.

  Beulah shuddered.

  The wizard screamed.

  “He is mine.” The ghoul drifted forward; ominously, powerfully beginning to separate the wizard from Beulah and Dean. “He came to my call.”

  “He’s an idiot,” Dean said.

  “Yes,” the ghoul agreed. “But he made his choice.”

  “No, no, no, no.” The wizard’s whimpering wasn’t helping anyone.

  But what Beulah wanted to know was why the ghoul had waited. Why hadn’t it possessed the inept wizard as soon as the man arrived in its territory, or at least, when he entered the cemetery?

  Oh dear God, no!

  “Your blood!” she shouted. “It has to have your blood to possess you. When Dean kicked the knife from your hand, did his boot graze your skin?”

  The ghoul bent over her, arms reaching around, not yet touching her, but enclosing her. “Be quiet.”

  Horror, guilt and an agony of regret, all pressed down on her. She held her ground because while the ghoul concentrated on her, Dean had understood what the wizard seemed not to grasp—and Dean was moving.

  He stripped off his shirt as he ran through the ghoul and grabbed the wizard’s arm, wrapping his shirt around the man’s injured hand. “If the ghoul gets your blood, it’ll own you.”

  Beulah heard and saw him dimly. “Do you have to touch the blood or is it enough that it touches the earth?”

  The ghoul’s blue fog roots made sense. It had prepared itself to suck up the wizard’s blood and possess him.

  But the ghoul was no longer listening to her.

  It sank down into itself, bringing its form nearer to human, nearer to the wizard. “If you give yourself freely to me, power such as you dream of will flow through you.”

  “You’ll be the thing’s puppet.” Beulah shuddered. The ghoul’s intense attack on her had lessened, but not completely vanished. It was weakening her and Dean—and both of them could bleed and be possessed, just like the wizard. Just like poor Nate Smith, the ghoul’s first human victim.

  “Power,” the ghoul crooned.

  But the creature had underestimated the wizard’s cowardice. Greedy, the man might be, but it seemed he did have an instinct for self-preservation.

  “Take him!” The wizard scrambled up and tried to push Dean toward the ghoul.

  Dean didn’t move, but the wizard did. He ran like a rabbit, zigging and zagging around the obstacles presented by old graves and trees.

  The ghoul elongated, stretching out after the fleeing wizard.

  “The blood must have to fall to the ground for the ghoul to possess a person,” Dean said. “Because the guy’s hand was scratched up, but he’s still free.”

  The wizard screamed again as the ghoul was suddenly in front of him. But he ran through the dense blue fog and reached an old rusty car. The wizard dived into it and slammed the door shut.

  “Safe,” Dean said.

  “What?” Beulah looked at him.

  “The man’s blood can’t touch the ground while he’s in the car.”

  Unless the wizard crashed, but neither of them said that aloud. They didn’t want to give the ghoul ideas.

  As it was, the ghoul completely enveloped the car in its fog body.

  Beulah shivered and reached for Dean’s hand. “How can he survive the ghoul’s total focus? The guilt and grief and crushing despair—”

  The wizard’s car roared to life, and tires squealing, accelerated down the road. He didn’t stop at the corner. The ghoul’s full attention hadn’t frozen him.

  “I’ve defended people like him,” Dean said. “He’s too selfish to feel grief and guilt.”

  “So the ghoul can’t touch him because he’s a sociopath?” The thought staggered Beulah. Could pathological selfishness be a good thing?

  Dean watched the street where the ghoul had vanished, streaming after the wizard’s car. “If the guy bleeds on the ground, the ghoul has him. But in terms of freezing the wizard into despair as it attempts with us…yeah, that strategy won’t work on a sociopath. They simply don’t care enough to feel guilt or grief, although they do fee
l sorry for themselves.” He looked down at her. “Now, we need a simple story for your neighbors because someone is going to be curious after that display of screaming in the cemetery followed by him tearing out of town.”

  Beulah rubbed her forehead. Trying to juggle supernatural and ordinary human concerns was overloading her brain. “Perhaps we should get out of here, first. Maybe visiting the ghoul’s home base wasn’t such a smart idea.”

  “We learned that the ghoul can call people in from outside its territory, and we confirmed that it requires blood to possess a person, blood spilled on the ground. This was definitely worth doing.” His gaze tracked an approaching car, a police car. It parked where the wizard had peeled out from, and the sheriff got out.

  Sheriff Loyola was a medium-height man in late middle age. His comfortable build was proof of his enjoyment of his culinary hobbies, but he was still fit, and no one ever doubted his intelligence.

  Dean tugged at Beulah’s hand and they strolled between the gravestones to meet the sheriff.

  She just hoped the ghoul wouldn’t reappear. But now was so not the time to look around in a shifty fashion for threats. Not with the sheriff looking tired and unamused.

  After she’d made introductions, and as the sheriff shrewdly assessed her guest—and the fact that the stranger in town held her hand—Dean took charge of the conversation.

  He was low key, but authoritative, and his explanation of what the two of them were doing in the cemetery so early in the day was believable.

  She realized she was witnessing Major Dean Fortescue, JAG lawyer, presenting his case and making any other explanation seem frankly impossible.

  “…in town looking for my aunt,” he said easily. It was news Mrs. Johnson’s grapevine would have already broadcast, and the sheriff acknowledged it with a slight nod. “I’m not sure why Aunt Millie settled here. I wondered if there was a family connection, so Beulah agreed to a quick visit to check out gravestones before we had breakfast at the diner. Didn’t expect we’d interrupt some kind of weird ritual.”

  The sheriff’s head jerked up.

  Beulah decided it was time she joined the conversation. “The guy hid what he was doing behind Jeddiah Porter’s tomb.” They all looked back in the direction of the cemetery’s grandest gravestone. “When the guy saw Dean and I, he freaked.” Which was true. “We tried to talk to him.”