“Don’t you protect that little scalawag!” Alexandria came running after her brother, her hair bouncing in a pony tail, her sapphire eyes dancing with mischief. “You won’t believe what the little monster has been hiding under his bed!”
Joshua ducked behind Aidan’s neck. “Run, Aidan! She’s gonna tickle-torture me, I just know it.” Aidan obliged, trotting the boy into the shelter of the garage, knowing Alexandria would follow.
“Ha!” Alexandria said, unaware that she had placed herself in danger from the early morning sun. “You wish I’d tickle-torture you. I’m going to do a lot worse than that,” she threatened. “Put him down, Aidan, and let me box his ears.”
Joshua clutched at Aidan’s thick mane of hair. “No! I’m telling you, Aidan, we gotta stick together on this.”
“I do not know.” Aidan pretended to think about it, winking at Stefan as he twisted and turned to protect Joshua from Alexandria’s jumping attempts to reach the boy. “She looks pretty mad to me. I do not want her coming after me like that.” He shifted slightly, as if he might really turn the child over to his sister.
Alexandria pretended to spring at him, laughing wickedly. At the last second, Aidan turned to keep his body between her and Joshua. Joshua grabbed him even tighter, squealing in feigned alarm.
“I’m gonna tell her!” Joshua cried. “If you don’t save me, Aidan, you’re gonna go down, too!” His eyes were alight with mischief.
Alexandria stopped in her tracks and glared at Aidan. “You are a party to this mutiny?”
He attempted innocence. “I have no idea what the child is trying to accuse me of to save his own life.” His golden eyes were laughing, belying his words. “Remember, Alexandria, that a man will say anything to save his own skin.”
“Ha!” Joshua snorted. “You tell her, Stefan. It was all Aidan’s idea, and you helped, right?”
Alexandria faced the older man accusingly. “You, too? You were in on this blatant disregard for my orders?” She put her hands on her hips. “And it wasan order.”
The three males hung their heads in unison, looking for all the world like naughty little boys. “I am sorry, cara.”
Aidan took the blame squarely on his broad shoulders. “I could not resist the little creature.”
“Little? You call that little! It’s a moose!”
Stefan pushed out his chest. “No, Alexandria, it wasn’t Aidan. I saw the little thing, and young Joshua’s face was so bright, I just had to get it.”
“Little? Are we talking about the same animal here? That dog is not little. It is huge. Did either of you two pushovers take a look at the paws on that thing? They’re bigger than my head!”
Joshua burst out laughing. “No way, Alex. He’s really cute. You are gonna let me keep him, aren’t you? You just have to. Stefan says he’ll be a good guard dog someday. He says he’ll look after me and be a friend if I treat him right.”
“And in the meantime, he’s going to eat like a horse every day.” Alexandria swept a hand through her hair, her smile fading. “I don’t know, Josh. I barely make enough money to feed the two of us, let alone whatever that thing is.”
Aidan lifted the boy to the ground and circled Alexandria’s waist with one arm. “Have you forgotten, cara? You promised to marry me. I think I can cover the cost of the dog food.”
“You mean it, Aidan?” Joshua shouted, jumping up and down. “You mean it, Aidan? You’re really gonna marry Alex? And I can keep my dog?”
“You’d sell me out for a dog?” Alexandria demanded, catching Joshua around the neck in mock aggression.
“Not justa dog, Alex, but this neat house and Stefan and Marie, too. Plus, you won’t have to work for that bozo.”
“Bozo?” Alexandria turned slowly and regarded Aidan with glittering blue eyes. “Now, how would an innocent little boy come up with a descriptive word like that?”
Aidan smiled at her, a sweet, innocent smile that should have made her feel like laughing but instead sent heat curling through her body. She tilted her chin. “You’re lethal,” she accused him.
He framed her face with his large hands and lowered his head slowly, purposefully. “I would hope so,” he murmured right before his mouth claimed hers, sweeping her into their own private world.
But Alexandria was soon reminded they were not alone. “Holy moly,” Joshua said in a loud whisper. “Can you believe that, Stefan?”
“Never saw such a display,” Stefan admitted.
Chapter Seventeen
The sun was unusually large in the sky, gleaming a strange red. There was little wind, few clouds, and the ocean itself was tranquil, the surface like glass. Beneath the earth, a heart began to beat. Soil shifted, churned, then spewed like a geyser from the secret chamber beneath Aidan’s house.
He lay still, his great body drained of strength. Beside him, as silent and still as death, lay Alexandria. Aidan’s eyes snapped open, fury burning in their depths at the disturbance to his sleep. Outside his home, somewhere close, something evil lurked in the bright sunlight on the peaceful afternoon.
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, his arms folded across his chest. He sent himself seeking outside his body and into the air itself. It took intense concentration and focus to be bodiless, completely without form. He moved upward through the chamber and passed through the heavy trapdoor. Passing through solids was disorienting, a strange wrenching of atoms and molecules, and Aidan mentally shook himself. He had experimented with this process and often found the complete separation of body and mind difficult. In the other forms he took, his body was different but still with him. With only his mind and soul, his senses were altered. Sounds were strangely distorted, as he had no ears, and he couldn’t actually touch anything, passing straight through it if he tried, causing a slightly sickening sensation. As he had no stomach, the nausea was even stranger.
Yet it was imperative to stay completely focused; it was essential not to allow himself to be disturbed by the unwanted sensations. He traveled along the rock tunnel deep within the earth. It always seemed so narrow, his shoulders nearly brushing the sides, but without his body, the space was enormous, another sensory distortion.
He passed through the door leading to the basement. Already the dark, oppressive evil that had awakened him deep within the earth was filling the air with its stench.
Aidan proceeded through the basement door into the kitchen of his home, warped vibrations and tones seeming to bounce through his being before he could identify them as Joshua’s laughter, Marie’s musical voice, Stefan’s deeper baritone. The knowledge that the three were still safe gave him a measure of comfort. Whatever was in the air, whatever was stalking those he loved, had not penetrated the safeguards of his home.
The sun blazed through the huge windows, and Aidan instinctively veered away from the rays. He had no eyes, no skin to burn, but he felt the wrenching agony all the same. When every survival instinct screamed at him to go back to the safe, cool earth, far from the burning sun, the stench of evil impelled him forward.
Over the centuries, he had often lived in proximity to humans, more so than most of his kind, yet it never failed to astonish him that they had so few warning systems, or if they did, that they completely ignored them. The air was thick with the stench, the disturbance so great it had penetrated his chamber below the rich earth, intruding on his deep sleep. Yet Marie was singing in the living room as she dusted his jade collection, and Stefan was humming as he tinkered with an engine in the huge garage, one of his many hobbies. Aidan wanted to call to him, to warn him, but in his energy-consuming formlessness, he didn’t dare try. He moved through the garage and back into the house, homing in on Joshua in the kitchen.