Body Temperature and Rising - Book One of the Lakeland Heatwave Trilogy Read online

  Marie yelped, and Tim cursed. As they fought their way to their feet, the mare screamed, and they could hear her struggling.

  Tim vaulted over the manger’s edge seconds before Marie, calling back to her. ‘Get the door. Get it open.’

  Struggling to secure her jeans with one hand, Marie felt her way along the perimeter of the stable toward the door. The relief was short-lived when her fingers closed around the handle, and it wouldn’t budge.

  ‘It’s locked,’ she shouted above the desperate cries of the mare.

  ‘What do you mean, it’s locked,’ Tim shouted back. ‘It doesn’t have a lock. It can’t be locked.’

  ‘I’m telling you it won’t open,’ she yelled back, feeling an icy chill blasting her from behind. With one final tug, the door gave and she tumbled backward on her arse. The sharp knife-edge of light that shot through the darkness was blinding, like a flashbulb going off, leaving a deep bruised after image dancing in front of her face, an after image of Deacon.

  She cried out and crab walked backwards, as he stepped toward her, unfurling his bullwhip, in what seemed like endless slow motion.

  Then from somewhere beyond the blinding light, Tim grabbed her beneath the arm pits and hauled her to her feet, pulling her protectively to him, manhandling her until his back took the brunt of the whip’s lash, as it cracked like thunder even above the horse’s terrified screams.

  Marie felt his body tense, jerk and go rigid, felt his heavy pull of oxygen.

  Then the air was suddenly warm again and filled with birdsong, and the mare was instantly calm. The light from the sun filtered through the open stable door sliding down the dust motes as though nothing had happened. With a sob of relief, Marie wriggled free of Tim’s arms and shoved at his shirt. ‘Get it off! Get it off. Let me see.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ Tim said.

  ‘Let me see!’ Marie shoved and tugged at his shirt, then turned him so his back was to her.

  ‘I’m all right,’ he repeated. ‘Honest. It wasn’t real. It only seemed that way.’

  And sure enough Tim’s broad muscular back was smooth and supple with no sign of the damage a whip would have made on tender flesh.

  ‘But you felt it,’ she breathed incredulously. ‘I felt it. I felt the wind of it as it snapped by.’

  ‘Marie,’ he turned to face her and took her by the shoulders. ‘It wasn’t real.’

  She felt the tension ease from the back of her neck. The mare munched her oats as though nothing had happened. The heat of the heavy morning once again settled around them like a thick blanket. Marie nodded up to the shattered light bulb. ‘Parts of it were pretty real, I’d say.’

  ‘So what are we going to do?’ Marie said, pacing the floor in front of the kitchen table ignoring the cup of tea she’d just poured for herself. ‘I don’t have any knowledge of magic and the paranormal, and we just found out the only person who might have been able to help us is a killer. Any suggestions?’

  Tim sipped his tea and ran a hand through his hair. ‘They can’t be the only woo woo folks in Cumbria, Marie. There must be someone else who could help us out.’

  ‘Woo woo is one thing, Tim. I have no problem with people who want to dye their hair red and dance naked in the full moon, they’re harmless. They’re innocuous, but we’re not dealing with woo woo. We’re dealing with a poltergeist or a demon or something, and he’s real, and he wants to destroy us because of our association with Tara Stone.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘Is that what she told you, that it was all because of her? Well what the hell did you expect her to tell you, Marie?’

  She turned to face him, hands on her hips. ‘She hasn’t tried to hurt me, Tim, and she’s had plenty of opportunity. In fact, I don’t know what would have happened if Anderson hadn’t shown up when he did last night, or on the fells the day before for that matter.’

  Tim cursed under his breath at the mention of Anderson’s name. ‘I don’t know why they do what they do, but I do know that Fiori is dead and she’s dead at Tara’s hand. Of that much I’m certain.’

  She dropped into her chair and glared across the table at him. ‘How did you know that Tara killed Fiori?’ Even now, she found it hard to believe, even after Tara had admitted it, and something definitely didn’t add up when Fiori stood right by her and fought like a trooper.

  ‘I know.’ Tim was suddenly very interested in the spoon in the sugar bowl.

  She reached across the table and grabbed his hand. ‘Tim, I need to know how you know. Who told you? Was it the bum bashers?’

  He shook his head, still avoiding her gaze.

  ‘Then who?’

  A fine tinge of pink rose above his collar and onto his neck and cheeks, and with an icy knot of certainty she knew. ‘Jesus, Tim, Deacon told you, didn’t he? And you believed him?’

  ‘I didn’t have to believe him, did I? She confirmed it.’

  ‘But you believed him when you came in. You believed him enough to barge into a house that didn’t belong to you like a rampaging bull. I saw it in your eyes. How could you believe him? How could you possibly trust him at all?’

  Tim pushed the chair back from the table with a loud screech. ‘I don’t trust him, and I don’t doubt for a minute that he would lie to me if it would get him what he wants. But this is a truth he likes. This is a truth he wants made known. It serves his purpose.’ Then he added quickly. ‘That doesn’t make Tara Stone any less of a killer, does it?’

  ‘So that brings us right back to where we started.’ She watched him pace. ‘What do we do? Especially if what they say is true about me.’

  That got his attention, and he eased back into the chair. ‘What did they say?’

  She told him about her ability to enflesh ghosts without the spell, without even realizing what she was doing. She told him that they all believed she was responsible for Deacon’s unbinding. All the while she spoke, the lines along Tim’s jaw got harder, straighter. Several times he cursed under his breath. By the time she had finished, he sat with his arms defiantly folded across his chest. ‘So you conjured this Anderson bloke, and Deacon? That’s what they’re telling you?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And do you believe them?’

  She released a slow breath, and squared her shoulders. ‘After what’s happened to me the past 48 hours, I don’t know what to believe. I can see how I could have conjured Anderson. I saw him with Tara. I had opportunity. As for Deacon, I can’t imagine how I could have conjured him. But I do know that knowledge is power, and without the Elementals, we had better be for finding another source of knowledge really quickly because I have a feeling we’re gonna need all the power we can get.’

  He worried his lip with his bottom teeth, then nodded to her laptop where it sat on the end of the table in a pile of newspapers and unopened mail. ‘You any good at research on that thing?’

  ‘Not bad. You?’

  He disappeared out the door and returned in a couple of minutes with a bright red netbook. ‘OK, let’s do this then. Let’s find us some knowledge.’

  She grabbed the mocha maker from the cupboard. ‘We’re gonna need coffee.’ At least they were doing something, and she was amazed at how much consolation she took in such a small thing.

  Serena Ravenmoor was startled out of her meditation by the ghost watching her at the water’s edge. She loved it when he watched her. She loved it that he found her so fascinating. A gifted witch, he had called her that first night before he made love to her, before he made her come like she’d never come before. Just thinking about it made her heart race. And thinking about him, like always, summoned him to her side.

  He helped her to her feet. ‘I hope I didn’t disturb you, my darling. But I just couldn’t stay away from you any longer.’ He raised a hand with a flourish in front of her chest and offered a wicked smile as her nipples hardened beneath her blouse without so much as a touch. She gave a little whimper of delight at what she felt far south of her nipples. He chuckled softl
y. ‘This place is much too public for me to pleasure you as I desire.’ He rubbed the thick pad of his thumb against his index finger and dropped his gaze to her crotch for the briefest of seconds. And her whimper became a little cry, which escaped before she could cover her mouth.

  A man sitting on a nearby park bench looked up from his newspaper. But he only saw what he might have thought was a silly woman probably yelping at the sight of a spider or some such. He had no idea that the orgasm she was in the midst of would have rendered it impossible for her to stand if not for the support of her ghost, her lovely, strong, virile ghost, which the man, like the rest of the people enjoying the sunshine around Derwent Water, couldn’t see.

  As her Deacon moved to support her, he guided her hand against the bulge threatening the crotch of his leather trousers. He spoke against her ear. ‘That was only just a foretaste of what I will do to you if you take me home.’

  She had conjured him at the psychic fair, was it only three days ago? It was on the green, down by Derwent Water across from the Theatre by the Lake. Stupidly, she’d brought her new scrying mirror with her, rather than the cheap plastic one she usually used for such events. She was good at scrying, and she thought the sight of her lovely mirror would be more likely to draw clients. Besides it was such a beautiful mirror, with its exquisite inlay of silver, tooled in the image of a circle of women dancing naked beneath a canopy of oak trees. She couldn’t bear to leave it at home.

  She was certain it was very old when she’d seen it at the car boot sale, and when she’d felt its vibrations, its energy, she’d known she was supposed to have it. She’d left it unguarded on the table for only a second, but it was long enough. The stupid American chick had picked it up, handled it like it was any of the other cheap rip-off charms and potions being sold at the fair. Oh the woman had been very apologetic when Serina had jerked it away from her and practically screamed at her that one does not touch the magical tools of a witch. She had been furious, mostly at herself for leaving it in harm’s way. It had taken her weeks to cleanse it and purify it and meditate with it until it truly was attuned to her energy, and now she would have to start over again because it had been polluted by the touch of another.

  That’s what she’d been thinking about when suddenly, out of nowhere, he had been there, looking a little confused at first, his gaze following the American as she disappeared among the crowds. He was frightening and lovely and dark, and he carried a bullwhip, which she found rather sexy in a BDSM sort of way. What mattered, though, was that he was a ghost, the first ghost who had ever contacted her, and he had revealed himself to no one but her.

  She had always known she possessed the gift. She had always believed that eventually she would make contact with the other side, but she never imagined it would be with anyone so powerful.

  That night he made her feel things she never imagined she could feel, like she was flying, like she was timeless, like the whole realms of the living and the dead and even the Ether were hers to command. He said she was just coming into her power. He said she would do greater things that she could imagine and he would help her. In fact, he said, just as it had been intended that she should have the mirror, it had also been intended that he should be sent from the other side to serve her.

  And, Goddess, how he served her! That night he had made her come more times than she would have imagined possible, and yet he held his sexual energy, never coming himself. It made his magic stronger, he’d said. And pleasuring her would strengthen both of them. Afterward, when he lay next to her naked and still hard, he whispered against her ear, ‘the American. Do you know her?’

  She shook her head. ‘Why?’

  ‘She troubles me,’ he replied. ‘She troubles my dreams.’

  Up until that point, Serina had no idea ghosts dreamed.

  Fortunately, she didn’t live far from the lake, because her Deacon was insatiable and had given her two more orgasms before she managed to throw herself through the front door of her flat and slam it shut behind them. Then he scooped her into his arms and carried her to the bed, shoving her skirt up over her hips, lifting her arse and running a heavy finger along the wet gusset of her panties, laughing wickedly as she squirmed. Then he slipped them off over her hips. Straddling her so that the bulge in his trousers was only inches from her mouth, he tied her wrists to the headboard with her knickers. Then he ran his hands down over her breasts and scooted back, forcing her legs apart with his knees.

  ‘Shall you be my sacrifice, my lovely?’ He pinched her clit and she yelped and wet herself further ‘Shall you be my offering to your beloved goddess?’ Then he took his bullwhip and raked the coil of it between her drenched pout. ‘Oh yes,’ he breathed. ‘Such a succulent juicy sacrifice you would be.’ His eyes were wild, dark. His pupils dilated and his jaw set hard. With his free hand, he opened the flap of his trousers and released his always heavy dark cock.

  ‘I think your goddess would be very pleased with such a sacrifice, don’t you?’

  The tiniest frisson of fear crawled up her spine, but was quickly forgotten when he pushed into her and began to thrust.

  Later, so many orgasms later that she was barely conscious, he curled around her and gently kissed her raw nipples. Then he whispered next to her ear. ‘The American will come to you with a young man, a sheep farmer by trade. They will desire you to help them with sex magic’ He pinched her nipple hard and she yelped. ‘Pay attention my lovely. This is very important.’ He pushed the damp hair away from her ear and whispered. ‘Here is what I want you to do.’

  Chapter 9

  Tara didn’t know how long she had been wandering the fells before she realised she wasn’t alone. It miffed her a bit. Most ghosts knew that when she took to walking the fells alone at night, it meant she didn’t want company. There was only one ghost bold enough to follow her anyway.

  The moon was still full enough to reflect silver off the sheen of Derwent Water, which sparkled up the reflection of the lights of Keswick around its North Eastern shore. She stood for a long moment taking in the view from the top of Latrigg, then heaved a sigh and wiped sweat from her forehead. ‘Anderson, I know you’re here. What I’m wondering is why you’re here.’

  For a second a shadow appeared and shimmered next to her, and suddenly the ghost, fully enfleshed, stood next to her. ‘My dear Tara, I think you know the answer to that query as well as I do.’

  ‘I don’t want company, Anderson.’

  He folded his arms across his chest and stepped closer to her, and she was reminded again of just how substantial he was when he was in the flesh. ‘I suppose, as my high priestess, you could order me to leave, but we are not, at the moment, about coven business, nor are we performing any acts of high magic, therefore, I do believe I am as free to wander about on the fells at night as you are.’

  She turned on her heels and continued to walk as though he were not there. He followed, keeping her impressive pace.

  ‘I don’t need a babysitter.’

  ‘A fact that relieves me greatly, my love, as I have no gift with children.’

  She walked on. ‘You’re a smart arse sometimes, you know that?’

  ‘So I have been informed.’

  For a few moments they walked on in companionable silence, the view disappearing as they walked the shadowy path under the trees.

  ‘They are both safe and unharmed.’ Anderson said, at last.

  She stopped suddenly and he nearly ran into her. ‘You stayed with her?’

  ‘Of course I stayed with her. In her distress she was not able to call me forth into the flesh as efficiently as she otherwise would have been. I assumed that would be the situation, though it was a bit of a risk.’

  ‘A bit of a risk. Right.’

  An owl trilled and they both glanced out into the trees toward the sound. Then the ghost added, ‘Of course it would have made no difference if she had been able to force me into the flesh. I am quite capable of enduring her wrath if I must.’

/>   Tara grunted a chuckle. ‘I have no doubt of that.’

  The ghost stepped forward and slid a warm hand onto Tara’s shoulder. ‘If you would but let me talk to Marie, I am sure I could make her understand.’

  Tara shook her head. ‘I’m not happy with the way things have gone either, Anderson, but holding them too closely may only put them more at risk.’

  They walked on with the moonlight glinting in and out of the thicket of trees. At last Anderson spoke again. ‘No doubt you know Deacon paid them a visit this morning? At a most inconvenient time, as he is wont to do. They were about to engage in intercourse.’

  Tara nodded. ‘Yes, I know. Deacon provided a very powerful distraction. But no one was hurt.’

  ‘At the moment he is just toying with them, and with you.’ Anderson spoke to the back of her head. ‘At the moment.’

  ‘Don’t badger me about this, Anderson.’ She turned on him. ‘Don’t you think I’m racking my brain trying to figure out how to protect them, how to get them back to where they’re safe.’ She forced a laugh that sounded more like a sob. ‘If there even is such place.’ She raised a hand before he could speak. ‘I knew this would come up, I knew I would have to talk about it, about …’ She swallowed hard. ‘About what really happened. That’s why I wanted the time with Marie, I wanted her to understand on a deeper level than just me telling her that I killed Fiori.’ She forced the last words back in a gulp of breath that made the delicate bones of her throat contract tightly and ache, words she hated, a truth she hated, a vision that would be forever burned into her memories. ‘And now she’ll never understand beyond the taint of the act.’

  This time, Anderson didn’t allow her to push him away. He took her into his arms and pressed her close to his chest, close to the beat of his heart. ‘I think it is you, my dearest Tara, who cannot see past the taint of that act to the mercy and tenderness it yielded up.’