Lewis: The McCade Dragon –Erotic Paranormal Romance Read online

  “Who sent you here? And why?” The shifter answered her, saying that King Butler had done so to kill one of the McCade men. “He is no longer king. The castle that he was a part of is no longer his to command. I do.”

  “You are a witch, the one that he wishes to take to his bed.” Emma thought that wasn’t right, but the shifter spoke again. “He wishes to kill you as he fucks the life out of you, as he did your mother.”

  “My mother was beheaded, not like he says.” The shifter stirred around in the jar, then settled again. “You have checked? You know what I say is true?”

  “Yes, he lied.” Raven said that he was very good at that. “He wishes for me to kill your mate or the other man and take the jewels.”

  “The jewels are a part of our bodies. You cannot take them without killing the host.” The shifter stirred again. “You cannot kill what does not harm you or your master.”

  “He wishes them dead?” Emma moved closer, but not enough to touch the thing. But it looked directly at her. “You are magical, and hold the dragon’s heart that protects you all. You are very powerful. I cannot kill you.”

  “You can’t kill any of us.” The shifter looked at Raven. “She is going to destroy you because you were told to come here. You can’t kill any of us.”

  “I was to kill the male before he found his mate. He knew some about her, and I knew some that King Butler told me. That was going to make him trust me. But he did not.” No one spoke as the shifter worked things out on its own. “Power is very strong in this room. Are you going to destroy me, Raven of the mountain?”

  “Yes. I am.” Raven put her finger on the metal lid and Emma saw it heat up. When it was hot, so hot that it was white with it, the shifter moved to the bottom of the jar, trying to stay as far from the heat as it could. “You will be no more.”

  The jar exploded, but glass didn’t fly around as she thought it would have. Instead, it lay on the counter like it had been laid there after it was broken. The shifter, and its dark magic, was gone, not even a poof of smoke to say that it had ever been.

  “Cover your ears.” The urgency of Raven’s voice had her doing what she said. Even with her fingers deep in her ears, Emma could hear the scream of something, like an animal in a great deal of pain. Then, just as it had started, it ended too. The shifter was gone, as well as the glass that had held it inside. “I’m sorry. I should have warned you sooner. Are you all right?”

  Nodding, she sat down on the floor. “That was...I have no idea. But that was painful. I cannot imagine what it would have sounded like had you not had me cover my ears. Is that thing dead?”

  “Sort of.” There was more. Emma didn’t know why she felt that, but she knew there was more. So when she asked her, Raven told her. “The maker, Butler, is going to be in a great deal of pain once the shifter finds him. And that won’t be too hard to do, since Butler is making no bones about hiding out.”

  Emma laughed. It was funny really the way that Raven got back at him. It wasn’t big things, but things that even she thought of as fantastic. If she had hung out with criminals, as Emma had done, then there would have been no stopping the kind of mayhem that she might have caused.

  Chapter 6

  The package was magical, and every time she reached into it to pull something else out, Lewis was astounded. Item after item came out. A goat, as well as two donkeys. When the second goat came out, he didn’t even try to look like he wasn’t surprised. The little guy came and sat right on his lap as the magic wore off him and he grew to his normal size.

  In addition to the animals, she had several large handmade blankets. A handwoven basket full of herbs and other plants. Lewis laughed when she pulled out a miniature dresser, as well as a chair. But almost as soon as she shook them a bit and put them down, they started to grow as well.

  “You have to admit, it would be a nice way to travel if you wanted no one to know that you were moving out.” She grinned at him, and he fell in love with Raven all over. “Is this all of it? I mean, the unicorn, will she be joining us here too?”

  “Caelin said that she was thinking it over, but she didn’t want to travel in a box. I might have to go and get her.” Lewis nodded when the goat took off to chase his sister. “There are a few more items in here as well. Would it freak you out if I just shook the bag to get them?”

  “Is it dangerous?” Raven assured him that it wasn’t. “Then shake away. Also, I have to get some feed for these little guys. And whatever the unicorn would eat. I never thought I’d have to say that either.”

  The bag that was inside the box was turned upside down. Another hard shake and a rocker tumbled out, as well as several knives and a table. When she picked up the table, setting it to the side, he thought that one was staying in the barn as it looked well-worn and smelled of several herbs at once. Then the large pot, cast iron he’d bet, came rolling toward him. Setting it upright, he watched as several items that he had no name for came out. She told him one was a drying rack, much like people used for socks in the winter, as well as a small box of photos and another rocker.

  “I’d like to put these on the deck, if you don’t mind.” She asked him why he’d want to do that. Getting up, he sat down in one and moaned. “They’re much more comfortable than they look, too. Yes, on the deck. I can see the two of us out there, rocking away the evening while sipping on some tea.”

  “Brew.” He corrected himself. “What time do you have to be at the restaurant in the morning? It’s the big day, right?”

  “Yes. The cake isn’t put together yet. Emma said she’d do that tomorrow, so it would be fresh. I’ve not seen it, but she said it’s her greatest masterpiece to date.” The rest of the items were put into baskets and totes that had been brought out when they came to see what Caelin had sent. “Everything is ready on my end, with the exception of cooking a few things. There isn’t that much. The tables are set up. Plates are scattered around. And thanks to your help, nothing will be that difficult to clean up either. Thank you for suggesting to them about the heavy-duty paper plates.”

  “They’re biodegradable as well, so that won’t hurt the landfill. What do you think about putting this table in the greenhouse?” He hadn’t known he had a greenhouse as yet, and smiled at her. “Oh. I think that Poe did that. It was a gift from Caelin. He said that he might have a need for something later, and didn’t want to wait for the correct season.”

  “You can have whatever you wish, my love. The fact that you can have it put up with only a thought, that’s wonderful as well. And I noticed that you finished the bedroom closet. No one would believe that there is that much room in there until you open the door.” She flushed brightly, and he grinned. “Why don’t you come over here and let me hold you for a little bit? Then we’ll head into town, go see that stupid building that has Clayton all hot and bothered, and have some dinner. After that, we’ll come back here and I’ll ravish you.”

  “How about you go ahead to the building, I take a long bath, and be naked and ready for you when you return? I’m sure you could feast on me, should you wish.” He stretched out his legs and asked her if he could get started now. “No. I’ve been working in this barn all day, and I smell like a goat. So do you, as a matter of fact.”

  He left after making sure that she was ready for him now. Lewis wasn’t sure who had gotten more out of him teasing her, him or Raven, but as he drove to the building in the merchant district, he asked Vance if he wanted to meet him there.

  Sure. I’m in the area now. I have two things that I’m looking into. He asked his brother if he could help him out. Not with this, no, but I do have another project you can work on for me. I have to be away for a few months. Then when I return, I’m settling down and becoming a cop for the locals. Not full time, I don’t want to do that, but I’m thinking I can’t do as bad a job as they’re doing right now.

  That’s wonderful. He started to ask him about the tags in his body, but he pulled in behind him in his truck. “You working on get
ting those things out of your body, Vance? Or do I want to know?”

  He entered the building ahead of him, and Lewis didn’t think he was going to answer. Vance was good at that. If he didn’t think you should know something or he didn’t think you’d understand his reasons for something he was doing, he’d just not answer. But as soon as the door closed behind them, he leaned against the wall and looked at him.

  “I’m going to be in deep shit when I take them out. And I’m going to, right before I kill the men involved in doing this to me.” Lewis asked him if he knew who the players were. “Yes, there’s three men. Men that I thought I could trust. Hell, Lewis, I thought all of us could trust.”

  “The president.” He nodded, but said nothing more. “Who else? I’m assuming that it’s some people high up on the food chain and in his offices.”

  “Yes. One of them is the vice president. I don’t know how involved he is in this, but his name is on the paperwork as well. Then there is the guy running the Secret Service for the president. He is all over this shit. And the worse part of it is, he acts like we’re the best of buds. You know me well enough to know that I don’t play well with others.” Lewis asked him how he was going to cover his ass. “You’re assuming that I want to.”

  “Yes. I do. You wouldn’t do anything to hurt Mom, and you know as well as I do that it will if you’re caught doing this.” Vance nodded, but didn’t look like a man who cared. “What are you going to do? I want to help. Please?”

  “No. As much as I’d like to have you there with me, I can’t bring you into this. Not with the shit that is going to hit the fan. And there is a lot of shit going to be slung around before I’m done. I have two people working for me on the inside. These two people stand to lose more than I will if this goes public, and it will, but they’re in as deep as I am. Both of them are people that have been tagged too, though differently.” Lewis asked him how. “If they fuck up, they’re dead. Their devices are set to go off if they monkey around where they’re not supposed to. Mine are older, and that friend of Emma’s, he said he can fix theirs to not go off, but he needs for them to trust him. That’s not happening.”

  “Do you trust him?” Vance said that he trusted him with his life. “I’ve never heard you say that before. I’m assuming that the two of you, you’ve come to an understanding about this?”

  “Yes. When I go dark, in the two months that I’m gone, he goes too. Not with me, but he’ll be well cared for and hidden.” Lewis asked when this was going to go down. “Soon. That’s all I can tell you for now. When I leave here, the best I can do is tell you that I’m leaving. And if you don’t hear from me, then assume that I’m dead or so deep I can’t connect with you.”

  “All right. I know that it has to be done, but I will worry about you.” He nodded. “Okay, let’s have a look in this building to see what dumbass is foaming at the mouth for. Raven said she thought it was something about money and trunks or trucks, but she can’t get his mind to calm enough to know.”

  “I have to tell you, having a witch in the family is paying off.” He asked him why as they moved through the upper levels. “The other day I came by your place and Raven was in the yard. I haven’t any idea what she was doing besides planting something. Anyway, she made me promise that I wouldn’t go to the bank that morning. I hadn’t realized that I was going, but I told her I’d not. Then about an hour later, Mom calls and asks me if I could meet her down at the bank. I told her what Raven had told me, so we both didn’t go. You know what happened? A woman came in, shot three people in the bank, then herself. Her house was ready to be foreclosed on, and she was upset.”

  “You think you might have been shot?” Vance just shrugged. “Well, I’m glad to know that someone is watching out for you. Maybe it would help you to have her touch one of those devices in your body. Perhaps she can tell you the outcome and warn you about getting hurt.”

  “I might.” They covered both of the upper levels and made their way to the main floor again. “Not much here, is there? I mean, a lot of rat shit and dust, but nothing to get your panties in a knot about.”

  “I don’t know either. Maybe he really does want it for sentimental reasons. Some people can be attached to the stupidest shit.” They made their way to the basement and paused on the steps. “It looks like someone just took all the crap on the upper levels and brought it down here to dump. This will take a hell of a crew to clean up.”

  “Lewis, come here.” Vance had walked ahead of him, and around the furnace that obviously wasn’t working. There were four trunks there, and one of them had been left open. “That’s a lot of green.”

  The money, in stacks around the trunk as well as inside of it, was wrapped in homemade wrappers. Each of them had been initialed, and a number was on the front of them that said the amount. Lewis picked up the first three stacks and quickly put them back. Those had added up to nearly ten grand.

  Vance pulled a long blade from his boot and opened the other trunks. There was stacked up money in them as well. One of them had fifties, the other three had tens, twenties, and a mixture of everything respectively. Christ, there might well be over ten million in them all together.

  “We have to make sure this isn’t from a robbery or something.” Vance only nodded and stared at the place beyond the trunks. “Are you listening to me, Vance? We have to call the police. This could be money from something big.”

  “I’m thinking that he might have been in on whatever it was.” He asked him who he was talking about, and Vance pointed. “I think, in my opinion, that man has been dead for a decade or more. Probably killed about this money. Yeah, I’d call the cops, but I have to get out of here. You know that.”

  “Yes, I do.” He didn’t know what to do, and was relieved when Vance said he’d contacted Dalton. “What did you tell him? That there’s a body and money, or you letting him walk into this as blind as we did?”

  “I told him. You might want to remember what you touched while you were looking around. The money for sure, but neither of us got close to the body.” Lewis watched his brother as he faded into the darkness of the room. “Also, call your mate. Unless you can do that funky thing she can do. Maybe you can figure this out before Dalton gets here.”

  “Right. I’m going to touch a dead man and see if I can figure out what killed him and why.” Vance said it was worth a try. “I’ll wait on Dalton, if it’s all the same to you. If this doesn’t work for me, then he’ll know just what I touched. Christ, no wonder he wanted this building. No matter what he paid me for it, he still would have…. Do you think he saw the body?”

  “Doubtful. The only reason I saw it was because I was looking for one. Don’t know why, but I figured that something bad had to have gone down here.” He looked around, then back at his brother. “You might be the luckiest bastard alive, or not, but had you sold him this building, no one would have found that body. Clayton would have made sure of it.”

  When Dalton showed up, he wasn’t alone. Not only did he have Kenton with him to look at the body, but a second man who was using a camera. He started to tell them that Vance needed to leave when he realized that he was already gone. Like a fart in the wind, as his granddad used to say.

  ~~~

  Kenton hadn’t seen a body like this since his college days. It was mummified. Not only that, but someone had gone to the trouble of putting lye all around it and over it to hide the smell. He was sure that at some point there would have been a strong one, too. He looked around as the body was being photographed, and wondered what else they’d find down here. The place was a mess.

  “The money will have to be processed. It might take as long as a few months to figure out if it’s part of a robbery or not.” Dalton asked Kenton if he’d heard of anything like that. “Not necessarily a robbery, but anything where a large sum of money was taken?”

  “Nothing that I can think of, but then I was gone to college for a while. Mom might have an idea, but I don’t know.” Dalton said he’d
ask her. Kenton turned to Lewis. “Have you touched it? I mean, to find out clues?”

  They all knew that Raven could touch something and get a kind of reading from it, but they didn’t know if Lewis could. It was as good as any time to figure it out, he thought. But when the large raven came into the room and landed on Lewis’s shoulder, he looked at the bird too when it started to squawk. It occurred to him that the cop holding the camera might not take it so well if Poe did speak.

  “I guess I can do it as well.” Kenton nodded and watched his brother. “I don’t know if I want to touch the man or not, but I can start with the money. Poe said that I had to think about it, not just touch it. I have to figure that out.”

  Lewis went to the first trunk and picked up one of the stacks. There was plenty of them to choose from, it seemed, but he took one off the trunk that Vance had opened. He said it might hold more information than the ones that they touched. Kenton thought that was a good point.

  The basement was filled with crap, as they had said, but there was a sort of flow to it. He stood up while his brothers did their thing and looked harder at the scene. The trash, it wasn’t really trash but newspapers, and all of them were tied off except for one stack. Then there were the boxes of books.

  Careful of what he touched, Kenton picked a random book out of a box. The title on the jacket of it was Roundoff, but the book itself was something different. A child’s primer. The rest of the books in the box were the same. A dust jacket of one title, the book something a child would read. Then he looked at the bags of trash.

  There was something off about those as well. Going to them, asking the cop that was using the camera for the station to go with him, Kenton pulled the first one away from the wall. Behind it was more newspapers, these tied off with a dark string. Just as he was reaching for the stack, he heard from Raven.