Melissa Darnell - Covet

“Savannah,” a familiar voice whispered like an annoying mosquito near my ear.

“Mmm,” I mumbled, wanting that voice to go away. Only one male’s voice was welcome right now, and that one wasn’t it.

“Savannah, wake up,” Dad insisted, his whisper slightly louder but still far too soft for Tristan’s human ears to hear.

Scowling, I cracked one eyelid open.

“We are an hour away from the Cherokee County Airport, and the pilot warned that we will be landing in bad weather. You should call your grandmother and mother and let them know.” Dad held out a black cell phone stamped For In Air Use Only in gold letters.

I took the smartphone, and Dad returned to his recliner at the front of the cabin.

Worried my talking would wake Tristan, I tried to ease out of his arms, intending to move closer to Dad’s end of the plane. But as soon as I moved, he woke up.

“Sorry,” I whispered. “I need to make some calls. Go back to sleep.”

“I’m all right.” He tugged me back onto his lap, brushing his nose against mine in a too-familiar, silent request for a kiss. At the last second, I turned my head so his lips touched my cheek instead. He leaned his head back to search my face, his heavy-lidded gaze hurt and confused.

“We shouldn’t…not until we land and you can draw some energy.” Thanks to the demon Lilith, the creator of my father’s race of hybrid vamps, I could drain energy with a bite or a kiss, a fact I had only recently been reminded of. As long as we were away from the ground, my kiss could kill Tristan, despite his being the son of the most powerful family of witches in the Clann. His ability to pull energy from the earth through direct contact with the ground was the only thing that had saved him a few days ago after too long a kiss with me and a fight with his fellow Clann member Dylan Williams. If I hadn’t been able to drag Tristan over to some nearby grass where he could draw replacement energy, Tristan might have died that night.

He frowned but nodded, letting me slide over to sit at the other end of the short couch. As soon as I was settled again with my legs curled up between us, he rested a hand on my ankles below the cuffs of my slacks. His unusual need to maintain constant physical contact with me over the last few hours made me wonder. Did he somehow know what the council had made me agree to? Or had the council’s test simply left him on edge and worried about me?

I covered his hand with one of mine and tapped numbers on the plane’s phone with the thumb of my free hand.

My home phone rang four times, then the answering machine clicked on. I glanced at my watch, which was still set on Central Standard Time. It was 10:00 a.m. on a Sunday. Nanna, whom my mother and I had lived with most of my life, should be home and getting ready for church. As our church’s pianist, she never missed the Sunday service. Why wasn’t she answering?

I tried again, thinking maybe Nanna was in her room getting dressed. Again, I got the answering machine. Unease crept in as I left a message.

I called my mother’s cell phone next. At least her whereabouts weren’t a mystery. She was probably still on her latest sales trip.

Mom answered on the first ring, making me jump. Unlike Nanna, Mom seldom had a signal while she was delivering safety products and chemicals to forestry clients out in the fields and woods.

“Oh, hey, Mom. Just wanted to let you know I’m okay and—”

“Savannah! Oh thank God. I, we, your grandma…” She was on the verge of shrieking, her normally low voice pitched high enough to hurt my ears and make me wince. “I’m on my way home now. But I’m still hours away from Jacksonville and—”

My hands convulsed around both the phone and Tristan’s hand. “Whoa, Mom, slow down. What’s going on?”

Eyebrows pinched with concern, Tristan flipped his hand under mine and laced our fingers together. Grateful for something strong and solid to hold on to, I squeezed his hand.

“Sav, they took Nanna! They called me, and—”

“Wait a minute. Who took her?” What little warmth my body had drawn from Tristan’s drained away. Had the vamp council gone after my grandmother now?

“The Clann. They called me, asking about that Coleman boy as if I would know where he is. For some reason, they think you two are involved. I tried to tell them it was a mistake, that you’d never break the rules like that. But they didn’t believe me.”

Oh God. The Clann knew. Dylan must have told them he’d caught Tristan and me kissing after dance team practice Friday night.

I eased my hand away from Tristan’s and back into my own lap. Frowning, Tristan sat forward on the edge of the couch, resting his elbows on his knees as he watched me.

“They insisted he was with you,” Mom continued. “I told them he couldn’t be, that you were on a trip with your father, and they went crazy! They said they have your Nanna, and they won’t release her until we bring the Coleman boy back. I tried calling her, but she’s not answering.”

Holy crap. “Mom, hang on. Let me get Dad.”

Dad must have been listening at the front end of the cabin, because he immediately joined us and took the phone. While Mom filled him in, I returned Tristan’s stare and tried to absorb my mother’s words.

“The Clann…they’ve kidnapped my grandmother,” I whispered, hardly able to believe the words coming out of my mouth even as I said them.

“They wouldn’t do that,” Tristan insisted. “There’s been a mistake.”

I told him word for word what my mother had said. By the time I finished, his face had turned pale and his left knee was bouncing out a rhythm only a hummingbird could appreciate.

“I’ll fix this,” he promised. “Let me use the phone and I’ll call my parents.”

“Joan, we are half an hour from the Rusk landing strip now,” Dad told my mother. “I will straighten this out and call you back when I have news.” He ended the call then handed the phone to Tristan.

Tristan tried reaching his father first, then his mother and even his sister, Emily. Scowling, he tried a few other descendants’ home and cell phones. No one was answering.

“I don’t understand. Wouldn’t they be waiting for your call?” I said.

“Yeah, they should be. Unless…” Tristan looked away for a moment, then his gaze snapped back to mine, his jaw clenching. “Unless they’re already meeting at the Circle and using power. If they’ve raised enough power together, sometimes it blocks incoming radio and cell phone signals.”

“Why would they be raising a lot of power?” I asked, hopeful the Clann did this at all their meetings for ceremonial purposes or something.

Tristan stared at me in silent answer, and my stomach twisted.

This wasn’t the norm for the Clann. Which meant they were doing something to Nanna…

Bile burned the back of my throat, and I couldn’t look at him anymore. If anything happened to Nanna, if Tristan’s fellow descendants did something to her to try and find Tristan, the fault would be ours. We’d broken the rules to be together. I’d thought the vampire council was our only real worry, that the Clann couldn’t do anything more to my family since we’d already been cast out due to my Clann mother marrying my vamp father before my birth.

I was wrong. And now Nanna was paying for it.

“Take your seats and put on your seat belts,” Dad muttered, breaking the long silence. “We are landing.”

I avoided making eye contact with both him and Tristan as we moved to the recliners and belted in, then gripped the armrests as my heartbeat hammered in my chest.

Please don’t let it be too late, I prayed.

As soon as the jet touched ground and finished a short taxi, I unbuckled my seat belt and jumped up. Dad was faster, though, reaching the door before I could even blink. He got it open and the stairs unfolded so we could run down them to the rental car he’d called ahead and had delivered. The sky, which should have been a bright spring blue, was an ominous shade of dark gray, the storm clouds blackening out the sunlight so much it appeared to be almost dusk. Wind whipped my curly hair into an untamable red cloud, using the strands to slap first one side of my face then the other.