Rampant

He afforded her a quick glance. “Undoubtedly I will, when my time comes.” His smug expression faltered for just a moment, before he climbed out of the boat and headed off through the marina.

“You were a big, big mistake,” she said to herself as she watched him go, hating him for the mess he’d pulled them all into. “I vow never to make a mistake like you ever again.”

Annabel. My Annabel.

Cain’s mind was full of her. Nothing else mattered anymore, nothing other than this reunion. Never in all his years had he met a woman like her. She had haunted his memory, her eyes reflected in those of every woman he had ever got close to, a constant reminder of a fractured affair. He’d wanted to turn back the clock. One day it came to him, he could. Why not? He worked hard for it, because he wanted to have what had been wrongfully stolen from him by another man, so many years before. It had been a long, lonely life without her, one filled with disappointment and regret. He’d lost count of how long he’d been alive but he knew the end of his borrowed time must be near. He wanted to reunite with her before then. She would make everything right again. Together they would be able to live forever

. His heart flamed into life.

When he’d seen the Londoner in the boat with Murdoch, her aura had glowed fiercely and he knew what that meant. Annabel was with her. Annabel was inside her. The transformation was almost complete, had to be. She was here, and he would be reunited with her this very night. It made his heart rise within the cage of his chest, years of anticipation building to a cathartic release inside him.

He reached the promenade and turned right onto Shore Lane. That’s where she was. As he approached the house he saw a figure moving quickly in the shadows ahead of him. Following, he strained to see. Was it the Londoner, Zoë? Or Annabel returning to her home? Could the transformation have taken place already?

His heart was thundering in his chest and he was finding it hard to breathe, but Her Haven was just ahead and all the windows were lit up. Then he saw the figure standing inside the window, and his heart stopped. Her hands were splayed on the glass and she stared straight at him, her eyes blazing passionately. She was as beautiful as he remembered, her long dark hair falling over her shoulders, her pale skin glowing.

“Annabel,” he whispered.

Blind need had hold of him. He had to touch her, had to hold her. The door to the cottage was ajar and he pushed it open and staggered inside.

The door slammed shut behind him.

Instantly, he found himself shoved back against the wall. “Murdoch,” he hissed, enraged.

With his forearm under Cain’s chin, Grayson Murdoch had him pinned to the wall. “That’s right, and I have a ringside seat for this particular show.” His eyes flashed silver. “Don’t even try to spill any more of your poison enchantments, they are futile.”

Enraged and confused by that comment, Cain struggled to break free. He reached for his gun, to no avail.

“You can’t stop this,” he said, choking, and then faltered, when his attention was drawn beyond Murdoch to the place where Annabel stood. Her image shimmered, ghostlike, as she waited by the window, staring across at him, a smile on her beautiful face.

“Annabel,” he whispered again. He struggled again to free himself from the ironlike grip of his adversary, then tried to issue a hex but faltered on the words. There were two women there, and he did not understand it.

Several feet away from Annabel stood the Londoner, Zoë. She looked like a drowned rat, her wet hair sticking to her skull, her eyes wide, a dripping wet sweater clinging to her body. Swallowing hard, he tried to reconcile it. With the two of them so close together, the transformation must be moments away. Yes, that was it.

The hex forgotten, all Cain could do was stare across the room at his proud beauty. He was longing to hold her, longing to bury himself between her thighs and pour himself into her. When she nodded and beckoned to him, her eyes aflame, he went limp in Murdoch’s grasp, emotion unraveling him.

Murdoch’s grip finally loosened, and his face swam in and out of focus.

Then the Londoner spoke. “Why do you want her to live again, Ewan?”

Ewan? The name unsettled him, coming as it did from his distant past. No one had called him Ewan for a long, long time. He wanted to question it, but he could scarcely draw his attention away from Annabel. “There has never been another woman like her, not in all the years I have lived.”

He wanted Annabel to know that. He wanted to please her.

Annabel’s lips moved, but he couldn’t hear her speak, and then she looked toward the other woman as if communicating with her instead. Confusion hit him. Something was wrong here. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. “You must die,” he blurted, fixing her with a stare, “for this to be complete.”

The Londoner lifted her chin, eyeballing him brazenly. “You’re mistaken, Cain. Annabel does not want to live again, that isn’t why she’s here tonight.”

“That’s a lie, a lie from a desperate woman who doesn’t want to die. She has called to me—”

“Yes, that’s exactly it, isn’t it?” Zoë interrupted, and stepped toward him, boldly. “She called to you. This is the result of her work, not yours.”

He stared at her, incredulous. “Not possible.”

“How much do you really want to be with her, Ewan? Why didn’t you join her before, in the spirit world?”

Cain shook his head. He wasn’t ready for that realm yet. He wasn’t ready for judgment day. “I need her to be alive and with me, in this world. We can be powerful here, like we once were. As we should have been, for all time.”

The room spun, and he realized they were all three staring at him, as if they all knew something he did not. Annabel smiled a ghostly smile, and then shook her head at him. A cold fist closed around his heart. “Annabel?”