Through Time-Frankie (25 page)

“Yes, but…” she started to object.

“Exerilla, listen to me. I prepared everything for you last year when I first discovered what your father was planning. It will only be a few months…”

“No, I can’t. I won’t!” Exerilla frowned. “You are asking too much, Mom. I don’t think papa can force me to marry against my will. I am twenty-one and have reached my majority. I too have a few tricks up my sleeve.”

“You
have not
reached your majority. Not until Samhain. It is then that you will reach your witch’s majority. Until then, your father can compel you to do whatever he wants you to do.”

She couldn’t believe her father would use a compulsion spell to make her marry
El Creepo.

She couldn’t believe he would force her to do anything. He had never done so before.

She had made up her mind that she would not go to England and she would definitely not be sent into the past.

“No, Mom. I’m not going. I’m not doing this. I will handle papa,” she answered. None of this made sense to her.

Her mother frowned, and suddenly surprised her as she ‘poofed’ off in a cloud of white mist.

* * *

And Dangerous love in Claudy Conn’s Dark Love

There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable,

Mark Twain

Chapter One

DARKNESS ENVELOPED HER. She strained to peer through the murky night sky. Something was wrong, so wrong. Gloom overshadowed her, she knew it was because of her surroundings.
It must be night
. And yet, it didn’t have the feel of nighttime.

He was larger than any man had a right to be. It wasn’t just his size, but his aura. He seemed to fill all voids. Who was he?

She couldn’t see his face, she didn’t recognize his voice, but she felt they belonged to each other.

He had wrapped her in his arms. It was where she wanted to be. More than anything she wanted this. His magic and his touch were all consuming. He bent her to meet his lips.

Without warning she was wrenched away. Mist rose around her legs as she crouched in the forest. Fear infiltrated every pore. Danger hunted her…him. Run! Her instincts screamed
run!
—her inner self whispered something else, something so much more efficient and faster. She didn’t want to think about that because doing that something else would make her feel not quite human.

Shaking off her trance, she chose human and ran. Her lungs labored with her pace. She ran hard, as though her life depended on reaching her goal. Her toes caught on a knotted root. Windmilling her arms out for balance, she fell with a force that knocked the breath out of her.

Gasping, her mouth opened and closed as she tried to force air into her lungs. Her palms stung, wet and raw from the collision with the damp earth. There wasn’t time to consider the pain in her twisted leg. She lurched up and took off again, fear taking over and numbing the pain. For a split second she almost did what she had forbidden herself so many years ago: she
almost slipped out of human.

She had to get to the manor.
He
was there—and in danger. She had to get back to him. She had to see him. She had to know…

Something pulled at her, taking her away. A voice called. Her eyes flew open as she twitched in her seat and attempted to make sense of where she was.

On the plane. I’m on the plane.

Chazma Donnelly’s eyes flashed open and she sat up with a start. She grasped the arm of her aisle seat and a choking, gasping sound escaped. She put her hand to her lips, and hoped she wasn’t drooling.

“Sorry, miss, you were having a nightmare.” The elderly gentleman seated beside her smiled apologetically. “I thought I should wake you.”

“What?” Chaz looked at him and managed a feeble smile as she shook herself awake. “Oh—yes—thanks.” She focused on him a moment. His white hair fell over his round, pinkish face and he reminded her of a sweet grandfatherly figure. “I am so sorry and embarrassed. You must think me a spaz.” She straightened up in the chair and smoothed her clothing.

A grandfatherly smile accompanied his touch as he patted her arm. She heard him say something about never getting used to these long trips. He spoke softly and continuously in an effort to set her at ease. She only half-listened as she dispensed with what she had begun to think of as her re-run nightmare. She nodded gratefully as she ran her fingers through her blond hair.
Get a grip, Chaz
. This miserable, terrifying nightly dream wouldn’t let go. It had now followed her into the skies.

Always the same nightmare. Lack of sleep exhausted her. Where was this dark, shadowy manor? She had this feeling that she was running in the dream to find someone important in her life.

Chazma straightened in her seat and looked around. Yup, still in the air and headed for Ireland. She closed her eyes and asked herself for the hundredth time if she was doing the right thing. She had a list of very excellent reasons why she shouldn’t have taken this job.

Top on that list was the fact that her grandmother had urged her to do so.
What is
up with that
? Since when had her grams ever urged her to do anything that would take her away from home? Duh. Never.

She rubbed her eyes, heedless of her eyeliner, and grimaced as she realized she must have smudged what little makeup she wore. Her body still shook.

“Feeling better?” Her elderly neighbor moved in his seat and bent to look her over for visual confirmation.

“Thanks…yes.” Smiling, she touched his arm. “You woke me just in time.”

“Why, what was about to happen?”

“I don’t know, but nothing good.” She tried making light of it with an uneasy laugh as she got up and made her way to the lavatory. She always took an aisle seat when she flew. Easy in and out.

In the lavatory she looked at herself in the mirror. Ugh. Makeup smudged, her long blond hair a tangled mess. And her mouth, oddly swollen—as though she had actually been kissing someone.

Dreams—vivid dreams—had always been a part of her life, but this...this foreboding nightmare was altogether different. It seemed to foreshadow things to come. And now it occurred every time she closed her eyes.

One fact stood out. This nightmare had been going on ever since she had accepted the temporary summer job awaiting her in Brionn, a town just outside Dublin.

She questioned the wisdom of taking the job. She had been so determined, so convinced this was the answer. Had she been wrong? She suspected her grandmother had somehow arranged the job offer, but she had reasons all her own for ignoring that and accepting the job anyway. She smiled as she thought of Grams telling her, “Go, you won’t be far from Dublin where you can go to Temple Bar and have a bit of fun. You need to get away, love.”

Her grandmother had nearly pushed her out the door.

It wasn’t hard to figure out why. She knew her grams didn’t want her snooping about New York City during her summer vacation.

She knew her dear sweet Grams was afraid she might find out something that could bring her harm…just as it had her parents.

Chazma’s eyes narrowed with her flitting thoughts. Finger wagging, she had accused Grams, ”I know you are behind this Brionn thing, Grams, don’t try and deny it. I know how many ties you still have in Ireland.”

Her grandmother had waved a hand at her. “Nonsense. Now take the job or don’t. ’Tis only because I think you’ll have some much-needed fun while you are there.”

I mean, really!
Chaz had pulled a face at her grandmother. Now she turned from the mirror, the scene still vivid in her mind. She could almost see the lie waving hello at her. How had such a job advertisement landed in the Wilmington local paper? And now that she recalled Grams’s hazel eyes had twinkled mysteriously as she put the classified in front of her and said, “Best be finding something to do before you start working at the university in the fall. I don’t want you moping around here all summer as I plan to spend my time with Miriam in Myrtle Beach.”

Chaz had looked down at the ad and it jumped out at her, as though it had been spelled. She remembered now that she had looked up from the ad at her grandmother, who had suddenly gotten busy with pots and pans.
Spelled?
Her grandmother had given up the art a long time ago.

Grams didn’t know that she was immune to ordinary spells. No. Only her mother had known that. It was a secret Chazma kept for a reason.

Chazma Donnelly had graduated top of her class and then was immediately hired by the university she had attended for the last four years to take on the job she had dreamed about. A computer whiz, her specialty was database design and web development. In addition to the skills she had acquired through love and study, she had worked for three of the last four years, doing nearly everything one could do in the university library. She discovered a toe-curling interest in ancient texts. She relished running her hands over their worn covers and feel the love and effort that had gone into preserving them. She even enjoyed the menial tasks of gathering books and putting them back where they belonged.

Hence, when her grandmother had pushed the local paper at her with a job offering that read:
Database Designer and Web Developer position available. Needs include electronic book cataloging and website design. Brionn Manor, Ireland. Send resume to: Pringle and Pringle, Box 1212, Dublin, Ireland.
She had whooped with excitement.

Chaz sat back, thoroughly struck by such an opportunity. A job that combined both her librarian experience and her computer skills would be over-the-top fantastic. A job that, from the sound of it, was temporary, leaving her free to return in the fall. A job in Ireland, where she had wished to go.

No doubt the owner of Brionn Manor was a private collector of ancient texts, manuscripts, and classic books. This person must have an extensive library. This sounded almost too good to be true. And then she thought of her mom. What would her mom say to her plans? She could see her mother wagging her finger and reciting, “If it looks too good to be true...”

Precisely. A catch was woven in this somewhere, but what it could be she couldn’t fathom. She had read and reread the job offer, a suspicious sensation lighting in her brain. The job was exactly what she wanted, so she told herself with only a twinge of doubt,
go for it!

She had a need to get to Ireland, which she couldn’t shake. It was where everything had started. The reason she lost her parents lay bubbling just beneath the surface in a village called Brionn.

No!
She objected viciously in her mind. She didn’t just lose them—they didn’t just die. Someone wrenched them viciously, horribly out of her life. It was a devastating loss—more so because she had lost both parents at once. They had been savagely murdered on the streets of New York. The unimaginable tragedy dug holes in her gut.

Her grandmother believed she wanted to go to New York to investigate their murders. It had been a double homicide that had left the police baffled. There had been no DNA, no bullets, nothing left behind except the remains of her parents—torn and shredded and dropped in the gutter to bleed out.

She vowed she would find the beast that had done that to them. The oath lodged in her soul. And Chaz already had an idea just where their vicious killer had originated from, and she knew it
wasn’t
New York.

She had no intention of wasting time in New York. That was where her parents were slaughtered, but New York wasn’t where it all started, and that wasn’t where it would all end.

She had answered the ad with a letter and a résumé and a week later she received a call from Lord McBain’s attorney advising her that she was hired. He told her that a ticket would be waiting for her at the airline desk at the Wilmington airport.

The time would come very soon when she would wonder if she had gotten in over her head. Way over her head
.

About Claudy Conn

Claudy Conn, a native New Yorker, now lives with her husband, Bob; their wolf, Cherokee; and Cherokee’s son, Rocky Man, who weighs in presently at 190 pounds.

She loves horses and riding and raised her ten-year-old gelding Southern Pride from the moment he was born. She also loves gardening, swimming, skiing, hiking, and travel—and of course, reading, writing, but no, she says, no arithmetic!

To get her monthly news, her reviews for all her new paranormal romances, and excerpts, come on and visit her at her website:
http://claudyconn.embarqspace.com/

To see pictures of Cherokee and her Shep./wolf son!, have a look at her Facebook page:

 
http://www.facebook.com/ - !/pages/Claudy-Conn-Paranormal-Romance-A

Discover other titles by Claudy at Smashwords.com:

ShadowLove—Stalkers
–
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/63037