Rachel’s eyes went wide. She’d heard that wrong…right?
“I appreciate the offer, but Marshall’s associates are going to take care of it for me,” Conrad said.
Theo looked a little disappointed. “Well, if you change your mind, let me know.”
Conrad assured Theo he would, then waited for the man to leave before turning back to Marshall’s goons. “Before you take care of my wife, I want you to find my daughter. I don’t want her to have any idea what happened to her mother. And I don’t want any of this to get traced back to me, either. It has to look like an accident. Understood?”
The men grumbled something in answer, but Rachel was too busy scrambling through the hedges as she headed for the other side of the house. She only prayed she could find an easy way inside and up to the second-floor guest rooms.
Pulling out her phone as she went, she sent a quick text to Knox, telling him Conrad and DAPS were working with Marshall and they were going to kill Jennifer. Calling probably would have been better, but she didn’t have time for a long conversation. She had to get to Addy and her mother fast.
Bring help ASAP, she added.
It wasn’t until Rachel reached the back of the house and the unlocked French doors there that she wondered why she’d texted Knox instead of Diego or her other pack mates. But as she silently slipped inside, she decided it didn’t matter.
Chapter 14
“Do you really think it was a good idea letting Rachel go out on her own like that?” Diego asked without looking up from the website he’d been skimming through.
Knox finished the last few powdered donuts he’d been working on polishing off. “What was I supposed to do, lock her in the bedroom and slide donuts under the door for her to live on? I haven’t known Rachel as long as you have, but I have no doubt she’d never let anyone force her to do something she didn’t want to, even if it’s for her own good. I have to trust that if she senses trouble coming, she’ll tell me.”
Diego regarded him thoughtfully. “I think Rachel may have gotten far luckier than she knows when you took that bullet for her. There aren’t many men strong enough to handle a woman as wild and free as she is. Most would try to hold on too tightly and end up losing her. You two really are meant to be together.”
Knox was about to deny it, not wanting to rub the relationship he had with Rachel in the other man’s face. Then he realized that was stupid. Diego was putting into words what they both knew to be true. Of course, that didn’t keep Knox from feeling a little bad for Diego. He was quickly coming to consider the other man a friend, and regardless of what Diego might say, the guy was still dealing with the pain of knowing Rachel wasn’t meant to be with him.
“You’re going to findThe Onefor you, Diego,” Knox said. “It’ll happen, and when it does, I’ll be right there to tell you I told you so.”
Diego snorted and went back to perusing the Internet. “Yeah, sure it will happen. But knowing my luck, I’ll meet my soul mate only to find out she’s serving a ten-year prison sentence or married already, or has a kid who will hate my guts.”
“Damn,” Knox muttered. “Aren’t you just a ray of sunshine?”
Diego opened his mouth to reply when the laptop dinged and a Skype notice popped up. Diego immediately clicked on it and the video image of an attractive middle-aged woman with the bluest hair Knox had ever seen filled the screen. Hell, it practically frigging glowed. She was seated at a desk and there was an old-looking tapestry on the wall behind her.
“Davina, this is Knox Lawson,” Diego said, gesturing to him. “He’s Rachel’s mate and is helping her deal with this thing. Please tell us you found out something about this frigging clown.”
The woman glanced at Knox before focusing on Diego again. “Is there something in the water out there in Texas that attracts werewolves, or is it simply the barbecue?”
“How did you…?” Knox started, but Davina cut him off.
“I can tell what most people are by looking at them. It’s my thing. But we aren’t here to talk about me. We’re here to talk about what’s attached itself to your pack mate.”
Knox was about to point out he wasn’t technically in Rachel’s pack, but before he could, Davina stood up from her desk and moved out of view of the camera. A moment later, she was back with what looked like an enormous encyclopedia. Opening it, she turned the book to face them, holding it up to the camera. Knox leaned forward, straining to make out the details of a very dark Gothic-looking painting. There was a creepy-looking creature perched on the stomach and chest of a half-dressed woman draped across a bed. In the background was what Knox assumed was a horse. He had no clue what the hell a horse was doing in a woman’s bedroom.
“This is a painting titledThe Nightmare. It was done in 1781 by an Anglo-Swiss artist known as Henry Fuseli,” Davina explained. “The popular theory is that the creature on her chest is an incubus, while the horse is supposed to be a mare, representing nightmares. Turns out that’s only half-right. The thing on the woman’s chest represents a creature called anachtmahr, also referred to as a mare,mara,maron, or half a dozen other names, depending on the culture you’re dealing with.”
“Sorry, but that thing doesn’t look anything like the clown that attacked us,” Knox said, hating to interrupt but not interested in an art history lesson.
Davina dropped the book on the desk with a thud, making the camera shake. “Really? If you want clowns, go find a circus. Thenachtmahris a malicious entity—a spirit that feeds on its victim’s fear. It creates that fear by scaring the crap out of them, appearing to each victim as whatever terrifies them the most. In Rachel’s case, it’s a clown.”
“Butwesaw the clown too,” Diego pointed out. “I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about clowns, so if this thing changes its appearance for each victim, why appear to Knox and me as a clown?”
Before Davina could answer Diego’s question—which seemed very logical—Knox’s phone dinged. He glanced at it long enough to see that it was a text from Rachel saying she’d arrived at the Lloyd mansion. He breathed out the tension he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
When he looked up, Davina was frowning, like she was disappointed in their lack of intelligence. “Because you weren’t its victim—Rachel is. You were collateral damage. You mentioned this guy Horace attacked her as a clown over a year ago, then Horace died in prison. That’s how thenachtmahrworks. It finds a victim it likes the taste of, then rides that victim until they’re dead, usually by their own hand. Then it jumps to a new victim and starts the process all over again. It must have gotten a tiny nibble of her fear when Horace tried to kill her and decided she’d be fun to go after next. I’m not sure how much Rachel has told you, but I’m willing to bet this all started with little stuff—strange smells, cold chills, shadows out of the corner of her eye.”
At Knox’s nod, Davina continued. “The horrifying nightmares come next, wearing down a person’s defenses, physically exhausting them. It’s downhill from there—hallucinations, sounds—until finally the creature creates a crack in its victim’s mind. That’s when the physical manifestation comes. Like the incident that happened today. The shocking thing is that it’s taken so long. From everything I’ve read in my books, most victims don’t manage to make it more than two weeks before they completely lose it.”
“Then what?” Diego asked.
