Andrew: Lanning’s Leap: Erotica Shapeshifter Romance (Lanning's Leap Book 5) (13 page)

“I don’t know what to do. I really want you to wake up, love. What am I going to do without you? You need to wake for me love. You’re my heart.” He felt his eyes fill with tears, and he didn’t even bother with wiping them away or even hiding them from his family. “Laci, please come back to me.”

Andrew and Max had settled in a hotel after leaving the last string of houses. They’d gotten some really good deals, but they were both tired. After eating a fast dinner, they’d taken a room and were going to bed soon so that they could get an early start in the morning. As soon as he got out of the shower, he felt her. Then nothing.

“She’s hurt. Laci’s been hurt.” Max stood up as well, his jammies bright in the dimly lit room. “I have to go. We have to go. Something has happened.”

“I’m coming. You go now. I’ll have someone come back for the car.” He nodded, unsure of what to do. “Go, Uncle Andrew, go now.”

That had been two days ago, and nothing had changed since he’d found her on the floor in the sublevels of the antique store. Nildale had been holding her hand and screaming for her to come back when he’d picked her up and held her to him. Andrew took her to his house and had put her here. Nildale told him what had happened.

“She was standing in front of the wall to the offices. Before that she’d been telling me what the man was saying. Then she stopped. I have no idea if he did or not, whoever this man was, but then suddenly she was falling to the floor and I couldn’t wake her.” The man had been devastated, as he was since they’d come here. Sina and Kendra had come to them as well. Even Tristin came and went, but no one could help.

“I’ve had Linyah look. She’s not hurting or unhealthy, but her mind is a jumble of things right now and she said it’s hard to capture just one thing that has her out like this.” He nodded at Misha. “Did she contact you before?”

“No. I got this trickle of something. Like she was happy, then sad. I started to ask her if she was all right, but then she was happy again. I guess I should have talked to her, but we were at this house and I just wanted to finish up and get back to her.” Misha said he more than likely would have done the same thing. “I don’t know what to do for her. She’s so quiet right now.”

“I don’t either. And I went by the building to look into that safe, but it’s all locked up. Nildale said he didn’t close it, so I have no idea what happened there.” Andrew didn’t know anything about the safe but nodded. “There was a notebook with her. Max wants to know if you have it.”

He handed him the little leather book and held Laci’s hand again. He hadn’t even looked at it, so he had no idea if it was important or not. When he heard Max speak to him, he looked over at him and wondered where his family had gone.

“They are near. I asked them if I could talk to you.” Andrew told him now wasn’t a good time. “It’s about what’s wrong with Laci.”

“You know?” He said that he didn’t for sure, but he wanted to talk to him. “I’m really kind of talked out, Max. If you can’t help her, I’d really like to be left alone, please.”

“The magic that she got from the safe, it’s yours now too.” Andrew nodded, not really caring. “You can see what she saw before she passed out. It’s right there. It was meant for her, I think. But since you are mated to her, it’s yours as well.”

“The safe she found in the basement? She told me that she found a book. Is that it, the one Misha gave you?” He said that it was. “And you knew that this was going to happen?”

“No. Had I even known that she was going to open it, I would have told her to wait. She did this...I think she had to do this.” Andrew asked him what he meant. “I think whatever was in the safe was meant for her. And when she found the combination, she had to open it. Not wanted, but had to.”

“Do you think it was to harm her?” Max said that he didn’t think so. “But look at her, Max. Something happened that has put her out like this. I don’t know what you know, but it would really help me if you could tell me what is hurting my mate like this.”

“Uncle Andrew, I don’t think she’s hurting. But I think her mind is dealing with something that she saw when she looked at the wall. And all the magic that she got. Nildale said that he’d felt it, the magic, but he never got any of it. Whatever had been inside the safe, she got it all to share with you.” Andrew looked at Laci as Max continued. “Something was there that was too much for her. Or she saw something that the man saw or did.”

“She told me about the bracelet. And how she was connected somehow to it. You think she touched something in the safe that she connected to?” He said that he didn’t know but he thought perhaps she had. “And you think I can look too? You mean go into her mind and see what she did? And you think this will help her to wake up?”

“It’s worth a shot. Linyah said her mind was jumbled. Maybe you can calm it by just being there for her.” Andrew asked him how to do it. “Just connect with her as you do when you speak to her. I think that on the level that the two of you speak, she’s there waiting for you. Like I said, I don’t know for sure, but it can’t hurt either of you to try.”

He’d tried when he’d first brought her here but had hit a wall. Andrew was willing to do anything to have her back with him. Kissing her hand and curling his fingers into hers, he took a long breath in and let it out slowly.

At first all he could feel was emotions. Sadness. Happiness. Love. Depression, and even felt her being overwhelmed by a great many things. But the deeper he moved through them, the less and less he could feel of her emotions but found memories. Her parents. Her aunt and the upcoming trial. There was a puppy that she adored that had been killed, as well as the day her parents had been taken from her. The memories weren’t in any sort of order, but he thought that they made sense to her. A timeline of her own making. Then he saw the man.

“He’s there. I think it’s him. He looks older than us, even older than Nildale. He’s putting things in the safe.” Max told him that was more than likely it, that Nildale told him what Laci had seen with him. “Money and vials. I don’t know what they are, but I can see them all. Jewels as well. In large leather pouches that are on the bottom in the back, there are things she didn’t look at. It looks as if she touched very little of what is in it. And there is a blade.”

“She mentioned that too.” He didn’t move from his positon when he heard Nildale speak softly. “That’s when she moved over to the wall. She said he was speaking Latin. And she told me what he was saying to her.”

As they made their way to the wall, he could see the mirror there and commented that he’d seen it before. But when the man was standing there, he sort of faded out and became Laci. Andrew watched her carefully in the reflection.

He said that he put the safe here for me
. Andrew asked her why.
I don’t know. He told me that I was the soul of his magic. And when I was able to understand everything, then I would also understand the reasons behind the things that have been set in motion for me. Then he called me Laci Lanning, like he knew that I was going to meet you. And that Nildale could help us understand all the magic that we got. That we were to let him help us.

Anything else?
She told him about saving people.
Who? Did he say that? Did he also explain to you how to get you to come back to me? I’m so worried about you.

We have more magic now. I know that much, and with it we can do a lot more shit than we could before. Andrew, I’m not sure I can handle more magic.
He told her they’d be all right.
If you say so. I’m not sure how to come back to you though. It’s as if I’m in this flux state. I can hear you all, but I can’t seem to move.

I’ll work on that.
She told him to hurry
. I will love. I promise you I will. Just don’t go anywhere. I need you too.

When he moved out of her mind, seeing things that he was pretty sure he’d not noticed before, he also felt her magic. It was hers…he had no doubt about that. And when he leaned back in his chair again, he looked at Max.

“She’s all right, like you said, but she can’t seem to wake up. She also said she can hear us. But there’s...she has this power now that I never felt before. And for whatever reason, I don’t think I’m supposed to get a part of it. It’s for her.” Neither Max nor Nildale said anything as he sat there. “She also said that the man told her that we were to let Nildale help us with the magic. I’m not sure what that means, but she might when she wakes up.”

“I will do whatever I can to help you both. You know that.” Andrew nodded at Nildale. “The mirror, do you suppose we should return it to the wall where she spoke to the man? It might be the connection that she needs later.”

“I don’t know. She was there, in the mirror for me to talk to.” Nildale only glanced at Max but said nothing. “If that means something to you, right now I don’t care. I’m too exhausted to wonder what that might be about.”

Andrew felt calmer having talked to her. He closed his eyes, thinking only to rest them, when he felt his body simply give under the weight of the last week. Andrew felt like a man drowning as the heavy need to sleep took him.

Chapter 12

Martin moved from one end of his office to the other. He hurt. Even to breathe pained him so badly that he knew that he had broken ribs that were sticking in part of him that they shouldn’t. His legs too, both of them, were not right. The way they had set up on their own made him think that he’d never walk well again. Whatever the monster was that hurt him, he was going to pay for it.

Several times since he’d woke to find himself in the middle of his lair floor, he’d tried to think who or even what it was that had hurt him. Sometimes, at the oddest times, he’d think it was a man. Then others still he thought of a woman. The woman, however, scared him much more than the man did, even for all his apparent strength and power that seemed to come with the memory of him.

Cyrus was there too, though at what capacity he had no idea. But fear him he did. Again, not as much as the woman, but he did shiver when he thought of Cyrus. He’d even tried to find him again. Cyrus had been lost to him somehow, but Martin didn’t think that he was dead. And if he was honest with himself, he really wasn’t sure that he wanted to find him again. Fear had him shying away from that.

He heard a noise behind him, like a door slamming in the house, and he flinched away from the sound. Screaming from the pain in his legs again, he felt sweat bead on his forehead and reached up to touch it. Never, not even before he’d hit his maturity, had Martin ever remembered sweating for any reason.

Martin had grown up privileged. Not to say that his parents were as rich as he was now, but they’d had money to use and spend on the family. Even as a child, Martin had made sure that whatever was spent on him and his brothers, he got more than his fair share. Even if he had to take it from his brothers by beating them to shit.

He also knew that as the third born son to his father that he was really entitled to nothing. But he wanted it no less. Simply because he was Martin Richards, last in line to get the estate if anything should happen to his two brothers, didn’t mean that he should have to find his own way in the world, not when it was all right there for the taking. And Martin, as he did now, thought he should get it all.

His father had already appointed his brother, who was older than him by nearly eighty years, to be the overseer to most things on the estate. Even his second brother, also older by nearly forty years, had a great deal of responsibility with the way things were going to be run, as well as how the money was going to be settled when his parents had had enough of life.

Martin had done what he’d wanted, who he wanted before that, and saw no reason for him to change things because his father was bowing out. Almost as soon as his brothers were in charge of things, his life started to not progress the way he’d wanted. He was no longer pampered, but if he wanted something he now had to work for it. Meaning he was no longer given the best of everything. His brothers said they were saving for a rainy day, that maybe they’d not always have the kind of money they had now. Well, fuck that shit. He didn’t care if a monsoon had come on. He hated their new rules.

Martin didn’t want to have to work for anything. To him it should have been his because he said so. Even now he hated the word no. And when he heard it, Martin would lose his temper. Few survived when he let his anger get the better of him.

“I should have had what I wanted, without all those rules.” So at the tender age of fourteen, a full decade before he was to be a full vampire, Martin hired a bunch of thugs to enter his home and kill his family. They were really of no use to him by then anyway. Even now he was saddened. Not by their deaths, no, but that the money hadn’t been as plentiful as he’d been led to believe.

As he turned to start back down the long room, he saw his reflection in the tall mirror. Something had happened to his face when he’d been out. It had taken him nearly an entire day to convince himself that it wasn’t a trick in his reflection, but that someone had branded his face with a blade or claw of some sort. Each time he’d looked at himself, he would be horrified that he’d been hurt like this. Martin was going to make someone pay for this. And his cock.

Martin had been putting on clean clothing when he felt a pain in his balls. At first he’d thought it the need to urinate, a feeling that he’d not had in a very long time. Anything that he took into his body was used up. There had been nothing for him to void out of his body for centuries. As he’d made his way to his bathroom, stripping off his clothing as he went, Martin heard a man’s laughter and he felt his balls tighten closer to his body.

Going into the bathroom and closing and locking the door behind him, he hid in the shower stall for twenty minutes before he let his legs stretch out in front of him. That was when he noticed that his cock was gone.

There was no wound there. Not even a scar to indicate that there had ever been an appendage he’d ruled women and men with. He touched the area where his balls were and felt them full, but his cock was simply gone. A flittering thought ran through his head again. A man’s laughter again and someone telling him that he had a small dick, but it didn’t stay there long enough for him to capture the exact time he’d been mutilated.

Martin had gotten up then. Stood on the counter in his bath to search his entire body for his cock. He’d even looked at the bottom of his feet, in his ass, and on his back. Nothing. He made his way back to where he’d been when he woke and looked around the area as well.

No blood on the floor. There was no knife or any kind of weapon that would have cut him through like that. After a thorough search of his body, he tore apart his room. The bed, the mattress. He even tore the curtains from their rods. Lifted rugs that had been scattered around the room. Martin had even gone as far as to look in the fireplace grate to see if it had been put there.

The search of his home took longer. Every person he met, he asked if they’d seen his cock. Two of the girls in the kitchen had giggled and he lashed out at them, tearing both their heads from their bodies and leaving them where they died.

It was gone. No trace of it anywhere in his home or his person. And he had no idea how or when it had happened. Now he was reduced to pacing his own hallway trying to work the soreness out of his body. There didn’t seem to be any relief to that either. No matter that he’d nearly drained four of his staff for fresh blood. Nothing helped.

Cyrus. The name entered his head like a small fly buzzing around his head. Stopping where he was, he was just reaching the end of his walk when the man’s face appeared. Taken aback by the sheer size of the man, he fell back on his ass and hit his head as he took a long tumble down the staircase. Blackness took him.

When he woke, finding himself sprawled out on the stairs still, he lay there for several minutes to try and get his bearings. He was in a great deal of pain, yes. But that could have been from his fall. Reaching carefully to his cock, he sobbed hard enough to give himself more pain when he found nothing there. It hadn’t been a dream after all.

“I’m not small.” He had no idea where the thought came to him that someone thought his cock tiny and that was the reason they’d cut it off. He was huge. Women adored his cock. And when he fucked them with it, they screamed out their delight. But no one had ever said he was small. Not and lived to say it a second time.

Rolling to his side to get up he nearly just lay there, thinking he’d be better off if the sun took him. But the name Cyrus came to him again, fluttering through his head again like he should remember it. If not the man behind the name, then the name itself.

The man standing in front of him had him crying out again, but he didn’t black out this time. Martin asked him who he was and what the fuck he wanted. The man only looked at him from head to toe, and Martin thought he found him lacking.

“You have unfinished business.” He wanted to ask him what it was. For the life of him he couldn’t remember anything he should be doing, but the man spoke again. “When she calls to you, and she will, do not doubt that, you will go.”

“Who? I don’t go anywhere I don’t want to.” The man laughed. “Who the fuck are you? And what the hell are you doing in my house?”

“Nic.” He said that as if that explained it all. “I’ve come to make sure that you are fit enough to go to her. She will need to end your life, and it would be better if she didn’t have to feel guilty that killing you would be a blessing to you.”

“What the fuck are you saying? Are you saying that you want me better so that when I go to this woman so she can kill me, it’ll be less painful for her?” Martin didn’t even wait for an answer, stupid as it would have been. “What are you on? Because if you think this is something that I’m willing to do, then you’re nuttier than a fucking cake.”

“You’ll have no choice in the matter. When she calls, and she will as I have said, then you will go to her. She has the power to call any vampire to her. Something that we did not know when we gave her magic.” Martin nodded, then shook his head. “You’re confused.”

“No shit. I have my own brand of magic by the way. I’m just too weak to show you just how much I have.” He felt his legs move, the bones that had been out of place straightened and got stronger. The pain made his belly sick, his head spin. “What are you doing to me? Make it stop now. It fucking hurts.”

“Of course it does. You don’t expect yourself to be repaired without some sort of pain, do you?” Martin wanted to get up and knock the hell out of the man. At the very least, he wanted to tear his throat out. “You cannot harm me. Even if you could, I’d only have to kill you and that won’t help us. You must die as it is written.”

“Help you what? Die? The only thing I can see going on here is that you’re making a lot of assumptions.” He laughed, feeling stronger all the time. “You really don’t think I’m going to go with this bitch and let her kill me, do you? And what sort of help do you think my supposed death is going to do for you? I’m a great man.”

“You are nothing. But your death will be a beacon for others. It will send a message out to others that the Lannings are not a group of beings to mess with.” He had heard the name before. Lanning meant something. He just wasn’t sure he knew what. “They are a group of leopards that are going to change the world for all paranormals one day soon. And by killing you, it will show others, men like you that fuck with them, as you have called it, that they will die. And not well either.”

Martin was lifted up. The man never touched him, but he knew that it was him taking him from the stairs. When he stood on his own feet, he could feel his body working to be stronger, his mind no longer lingering in pain but thinking and planning. Reaching for the man, just to show him who was boss, Martin watched as his hand moved through his body, as if he wasn’t really there.

“I am not. And now that you’ve figured it out, you should also know something else. I did not say that you would go with her, I said that she would summon you. As if she were a necromancer. And once you are there, you will pay the price of each of the deaths that you have caused.” Martin laughed. He had been around a very long time and knew for a fact that no one, unless you created them, could call a vampire to them. “You think so? Then I will wish you luck with your meeting.”

An hour later, less really, Martin felt like the king of the world. His body felt wonderful, his blood racing in his veins. Reaching down for his cock, thinking to find him a harem of women, he came up empty handed. His cock was still gone.

“I cannot repair what was taken from you. And even if I could, I think it fitting for a dickless man like you to have to die like you are. Painfully and not whole.” The man’s voice, Nic’s voice, seemed to echo around the room. “You would do well to save your strength, Martin. She will be calling for you soon.”

“Fuck her and the horse she rode in on.” Martin made his way to his rooms, taking the stairs back up them two and three at a time. He was going out. He might even change him a couple of dozen people tonight and have them come here and serve him. Martin was back, he thought, and dressed in his best suit to go out and conquer some of this world.

~~~

Laci knew the moment that she woke that she wasn’t alone in the bed. The warmth behind her seemed to curl around her in much the same way as the blanket that lay over them both. Reaching behind her, she felt his fingers curl into hers and she smiled in the darkened room.

“I didn’t think you’d ever wake up.” She rolled to her back to look up at Andrew. “Christ, you scared the shit out of me. Don’t ever do that again.”

“I won’t.” Laci brushed the hair from his eyes and smiled again. “You held me. Not just with your arms but your love as well. I think that’s what brought me back.”

“I had to hold you or go insane. Or I guess insaner. How do you feel now?” Laci told him great. “I’m so glad. Christ, I was terrified.”

His body rocked into hers and she felt herself respond to him. When he leaned down and kissed her, it was all she could do not to roll him to his back and take him. Running her hand down his chest, she found his bare chest hot, his nipples hard. And when he moaned as she pinched them, she felt her pussy soak.

“What do you want?” She told him that she wanted him. “I can feel that. But what do you want me to do to you? Or with you? I want you to be pleased.”

“Fuck me.” He shook his head and told her to tell him what she wanted. “I want to ride you, feel your cock deep in my pussy while I ride your cock.”