The Beholder Read online

  “Hold still, I won’t hurt you,” he grumbled, his lips brushing her pant leg.

  “I told you not to touch me,” she said, her body shaking uncontrollably.

  It had to be her magic that was driving him crazy.

  “Don’t worry, it won’t happen again,” he said, voicing a direct order to himself. For his inner beast wanted Nina Rainwater in the worst way.

  And she had no idea how much danger she was in at the moment.

  Books by Connie Hall

  Harlequin Nocturne

  *The Guardian

  *The Beholder

  CONNIE HALL

  Award-winning author Connie Hall is a full-time writer. Her writing credits include six historical novels and two novellas written under the pen name Constance Hall. She is thrilled to now be writing for Nocturne.

  An avid hiker, conservationist, bird watcher, painter of watercolors and oil portraits, she dreams of one day trying her hand at skydiving.

  She lives in Richmond, Virginia, with her husband, two sons and Keeper, a lovable Lab-mix who rules the house with her big brown eyes. For more information, visit her website or email her at [email protected].

  THE BEHOLDER

  CONNIE HALL

  Dear Reader,

  Whatever you do, don’t ask Nina Rainwater if she likes being the baby in her family. You see, she lives in the shadows of her older and more bodacious sisters, Fala and Takala, who have extraordinary powers. All Rainwater women are connected through white magic. Their unique abilities are passed down through the female line.

  If you asked Nina about her gift, she’d probably tell you it’s nothing. But don’t be fooled. She possesses the gift of tongues. She can communicate with any creature, alive or dead, and she has sacrificed her whole life in using her gift to help others.

  So when she discovers Kane Van Cleave, a beast of a man, with a sinister past and even bleaker future, she finally meets a creature she’s unable to help….

  Connie Hall

  Foreword

  It is said that the Creator formed the earth and all life. He left the Maiden Bear to rule over his creation. The newborn mother earth still spewed furnaces of molten rock. Earthquakes trembled and churned and gouged the hills and valleys of her skin. Consequently, all living creatures were thrown together helter-skelter, forced to establish hunting grounds in this tumultuous world. Maiden Bear hoped they would live in peace, but the animals and humans were neophytes, driven strictly by instinct alone, and many fought over sparse hunting grounds. There was much dissent, for the animals could not communicate among themselves or with any other creatures.

  Maiden Bear knew she would have to do something so the animals could understand each other or death would reign supreme and the earth would become barren. So she sought out the Patomani tribe, her followers, and bestowed one female brave with the Gift of Tongues. This new emissary could translate the language of life and death and could communicate with any type of being. Consequently, the creatures communicated through her, and they learned not to fear each other as well as those different from themselves. Thus, order and peace were established, and every creature found its mark on the web of life.

  Maiden Bear was so greatly pleased with the progress of her mediator, she decided to pass the extraordinary gift down through the Patomani female line to a deserving and sensitive soul.

  “Take hope from the heart of man and you make him a beast of prey.”

  —Quida

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Prologue

  Blue Ridge Mountains

  A feeling of doom woke Emma Baldoon. She glanced at the clock. Midnight. The witching hour.

  She sat up in bed. In the silence her breaths sounded like the beat of huge wings. For two days now a strange quiet had saturated the air, squeezed every sound from it: the kind of stillness that swept over a graveyard at night.

  Emma shivered, rubbed her arms and heard her four parakeets rustling in their cage. She left her bed. Her gaze swept the dark shadows in the cabin as she found the cage and opened the cover. Her babies thrashed around in the bottom, banging their bodies against the bars.

  “Shh, quiet, little ones.” She opened the door. In a flurry of feathers they flew out and landed on the rafters, huddling together. It calmed them for the moment.

  She glanced up at them and shook her head. Yesterday morning they had stopped eating. She thought they might be getting sick. Now she feared it was something much worse.

  Suddenly the sheep bleated and baaed, their bodies ramming the paddock fence. If they didn’t stop soon, they’d knock the fence down. Bessie, Emma’s milking cow, caught the fever and lowed in distress. Even the chickens squawked in the coop. She firmly believed animals had a sixth sense when it came to danger, and they were definitely warning her. What was upsetting them?

  Over the past twenty years, she had lived alone, ever since her husband, Harvey, had died. She had never felt insecure or afraid…until tonight.

  She hurried back to the gun case. With trembling fingers, she groped for the loaded 20 gauge Mossberg. A long time ago she had learned the hard way that an unloaded shotgun was useless.

  A growl pierced the night air, close enough to rattle the windowpanes.

  Her breath froze in her lungs.

  She recognized the cry of bobcats, bears and coyotes. Had lived with them all her life. This unnatural sound came straight out of hell.

  The hairs at the back of her neck stood on end. Her heart raced and her skin prickled as she aimed the gun at the door. Her arthritic hands shook so badly she had a hard time keeping the weapon still.

  Footsteps thumped up onto the front porch.

  The knob shook.

  Her finger tightened on the trigger, but before she could pull it, an invisible force knocked her down.

  The gun clattered to the floor beside her. She reached for it, but an invisible claw tore through her chest, bored down into her very core. Molten lava spread to her organs.

  Pain seared her, arching her back, slamming her down onto the floor again. She felt her life force being drawn out, burned out of her, blood boiling in her veins.

  The door rattled angrily on its hinges, then something kicked it open.

  Plop! Plop! Plop!

  Emma felt something hit the floor next to her. Dear heavens! Her babies. Flames engulfed their wings.

  She drew her last breath as her own body erupted into an inferno.

  Chapter 1

  Oh, no! Make it stop! Nina Rainwater grabbed the steering wheel with both hands but still weaved over the white line. The guardrail and sheer drop below filled her headlights.

  She gasped and jerked on the wheel.

  Tires swerved right and hit the opposite shoulder. Gravel crackled against the undercarriage.

  She braked the car to a crawl and straightened out, heart thumping, keeping time with her pounding head. Close call, that one.

  Sunlight gnawed at the edges of ominous clouds but refused to break through. Their angry billows engulfed and eddied and animated the rounded peaks of the Blue Ridge Mountains. A northern wind screamed downward and swept another huge, angry fist against her Taurus. The whole car shook.

  It wasn’t the impending storm that concerned her at the moment, but the terror
and desperation that throbbed in her head and prickled her skin.

  If she could only concentrate fully on driving. The shivers wouldn’t let up. At the age of two, when she had first realized her own clairvoyant powers, she had innocently called her perceptions shivers because they made her feel as if she were trapped in a freezer.

  If the entities involved were few, she could usually manage the shivers. But the more energies tangled up in the intricate web of thoughts, the stronger the connection and her reaction to them. The awareness she experienced now was legion, the massed fear a throbbing jackhammer in her brain, a siren song with no end.

  The maddening thing was that her empathic abilities had limits. She couldn’t tell if the shivers were coming from living or deceased souls. She had to actually locate the harmed being or animal, or its place of death, to detect that information. And if they didn’t want to be found and stopped sending her messages, she couldn’t find them at all. In those instances, she assumed they were souls and had moved on to heaven. Sometimes being a lightning rod for spiritual emotions was like playing hide-and-seek in a foggy labyrinth. But once she cornered and tagged the shivers, any physical distress she had experienced seemed insignificant when compared to the benefits of helping others.

  A chill went through her, and she glanced at the outside temperature display in her Taurus: twenty-four degrees and dropping. She had already jacked up the heater as high as it would go, but she knew the closer she drew to the source, the lower her body temperature would drop. Until she found the source of the perceptions and helped the beings, the sensations of cold and her headache were hers to bear. As was this crazy northern clipper that threatened to toss her car over the side of the mountain.

  Bits of sleet began to chime against the windshield. She turned on the wipers and slowly accelerated, fighting the wind to stay in her lane. Dark squiggles formed in her vision. Great! If she didn’t do something soon, she knew the shivers would escalate into a full-blown migraine and she might end up running over the side of the mountain. She needed help and fast.

  A relentless wind pounded the rooftops of Brayville, shaking shingles, testing wall supports, cracking icicles. Bits of sleet pinged the roof of Kane Van Cleave’s Jeep as he drove down Main Street. The snarl of the wind drowned out the purr of the engine.

  He coasted into a parking spot in front of the Wayside Café, then hopped out.

  A frigid breeze hit him, raw against his face, piercing through his jeans and flannel shirt. He braced himself against the cold and easily fought his way inside the café. The cold didn’t bother him. His inner-body temperature was five degrees warmer than a human’s. But the wind was brutal this morning.

  The bell on the door banged as he slammed it shut. His face and hands met the café’s cozy heat. He felt them warming instantly as he scanned the seats.

  Empty.

  Figured. No one in their right mind would venture out in this weather without good reason. His reason hadn’t arrived yet.

  His long legs quickly covered the length of booths. The Wayside hadn’t changed in forty years, and the sameness of it pleased him. He liked the comfortable ’50s feel, the red and stainless-steel counter, the black-and-white asbestos floor tiles. Retro at its finest.

  He inhaled the familiar smell of coffee, cigarettes and fresh meat and felt his mood lifting a little. As he strode past the oversized Felix the Cat clock, tail swishing with a steady click, he felt the plastic eyes following him. A Bubbler jukebox hugged the back wall, its bubble tubes glowing yellow and orange. The jukebox hadn’t seen a modern hit in half a century. It only played scratchy 45s. The denizens of Brayville liked it that way; so did Kane.

  He dropped a quarter in the box and picked E6, “There Goes My Baby.” He chose a booth opposite the door and slid into the seat, his jeans catching on the duct-taped plastic. The scent from the layers of chewing gum stuck under the table wafted up to his hypersensitive nose. He frowned. It was almost as bad as the smell of a public restroom. Both were hard to take at five o’clock in the morning.

  He picked up the ketchup bottle and opened it, hoping the scent would run interference. He plopped it down near the salt and pepper shakers and noticed the many sets of initials carved into the table. He’d left his own graffiti on the counter when he was sixteen. Teens of Brayville were compelled to leave their mark in the café, a right of passage. Kane could hardly remember being sixteen. Too much had happened. It felt like he’d lived a hundred lifetimes in those twelve years.

  The sound of the Drifters finally sent Carrie bouncing through the kitchen’s swinging door. She hurriedly tied a white apron around her pink uniform while walking toward him. For a female of forty, she appeared in good shape. She was petite, a small waist flaring to wide hips, lean arm muscles rippling below her short sleeves. A China Doll haircut shaped her red curly hair and just touched the bottom of her collar. Wrinkles creased the corners of her slightly upturned eyes and lent her face a catlike appearance. Carrie was a pride female who in human form revealed more feline physical characteristics than most. Like him, she was a seniph.

  When she saw him, she froze midstride. Her usual jovial expression melted and her hands dropped like lead weights near her hips. Burnt-umber eyes narrowed and her Adam’s apple bobbed as she swallowed hard. Immediately she dropped her gaze as befitted his alpha-male status within the pride.

  Kane could smell the fear on her. The perverse side of him enjoyed it. “Hello, Carrie.” He deliberately kept his voice brusque.

  She jumped, seemed to realize she stood there dumbstruck and forced her feet into motion. “Hey, Kane.” The cusps of her white fangs flashed in an uneasy smile.

  Kane caught the slight shift, but humans never noticed it. They just didn’t pay attention to subtleties. Every seniph had the ability to hide behind a human guise, but they couldn’t entirely erase their true sphinx—half-man and half-lion—persona from the truly observant.

  She paused well away from his table and drew out a pad and pencil. “How about that wind? Almost knocked me over this morning opening up. Never seen it so bad. Hope it doesn’t bring us a foot of snow.” Her voice hit on a nervous friendly note, but it sounded forced.

  He enjoyed watching the pencil in her hand trembling as he said, “It might.”

  “Haven’t seen you around for a while.”

  “The vineyard and the pride keep me busy.”

  “Right. Right. I guess you’re wondering about the business.” Nervous words tumbled out of her mouth. “It’s doing just fine. I actually doubled the profits from last month. I think it was putting in that new warm cream machine that did it. And we got that new meat supplier. They know how to freeze raw meat—”

  Kane interrupted her. “That’s good.”

  He, like his father and all the Van Cleaves before him, had used his wealth to keep the pride together, and that meant concealing their identities from humans. He owned all the real estate in Brayville and the surrounding mountains. The pride kept the few businesses in town running, along with the Van Cleave vineyard. It was perfect cover for the pride.

  She shifted nervously from one foot to the other at his silence, then said, “Sorry, I guess I rattled on. What can I get you?”

  “Scalded cream with a shot of coffee, a steak, bloody, tuna, hold the mayo, and lots of hash browns. That’s it.” Fried potatoes and coffee were one of the few conventional human foods he craved.

  “Not very hungry? Sure you don’t want some trout? Came in yesterday.” She feigned an eager-to-please demeanor. “It’s fresh.”

  “That’s all.” He shot her a look that sent her scurrying.

  She shoved the pad in her pocket, saying, “Sure, sure. Coming right up.” Then she ran around the counter and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Movement through the glass door drew his attention, and he spotted the motivation for coming to town at this ungodly hour: Arwan. She muscled through the wind, heading for the café. The gale flattened her down parka and sheriff’s blue
uniform to her tall, lean body and thin curves. A .45 Glock rode one hip, the holster thumping against her thigh as she reached for the door. Her platinum hair usually hung down past her shoulders, but when in uniform she always wore it in a bun. Oddly, the rigid style seemed impervious to the wind and hardly any strands had strayed.

  Most females would look manly in a sheriff’s uniform, but not Arwan. She was the pride’s alpha female; she could make army fatigues look sexy. Her feminine mystique would always shine through. Although Arwan never flaunted her sexuality. In fact, she deliberately tried to disguise her beauty behind a tomboy persona.

  The wind shoved her through the door. She banged it closed and rolled her eyes, taking a moment to recover and take off her gloves. Bits of sleet salted the floor and her boots. She spotted him and said, “Whew, some morning.” She knocked the snow off her boots, then walked toward him.

  “Yeah, we should both be home.” He was eager to find out what had been so important that she couldn’t speak to him over the phone.

  She took off her jacket, then bent and sniffed him, rubbing first one cheek against his, then the other one. It was a casual greeting ranking officers shared in the pride. His highly developed senses picked up on the odor of twenty hours of perspiration clinging to her clothes, and he wondered what she’d been doing.

  He scented her alpha pheromone, an instant love potion for most of the pride’s males. But Kane had trained himself to ignore it. The slight vibration of her throat was harder to disregard. It wasn’t audible to humans, only to seniphs. And it wasn’t something she could control. All female seniphs of child-bearing age purred when they neared another virile male. It broke the ice, so to speak, when finding a mate. Earlier in his life, he would have been driven to pursue her and mate with her, but that felt like eons ago. He had a tight rein on his baser instincts now.