Bonus Scenes #2
Was that how Hope had captured Miguel? Running around naked in front of him?
Well, it probably would have worked with Daniel, honestly, now that he thought about it. Damn the age difference. They could do the December/May thing, right? It would only be about thirteen or fourteen years.
He had considered it. He had. How could he not? She’d haunted his dreams that night. Then her sister had. Then…that damned evil Cashlyn monster. Cashlyn…damn it.
Cashlyn was just as evil as Summer.
If Hope hadn’t been Miguel’s first…or… Her older sister could tie a man up in knots, too. Heather’s twin. That woman could drive a man insane faster than he could blink, but it would be worth it. But he somehow doubted she’d ever go for a cop again…
Then there was Eden.
Damn, that woman could burn a man’s insides…
They all could. Every last one of them was dangerous on her own. An entire house of them?
He had to get out of there before he ended up as gone over one of them as Miguel was the gremlin. Now he understood. Daniel just understood. Summer in a string bikini. Red, his favorite color, too.
“You look weird,” Alex said. “What’s happened? Everything good over there? Do they need anything?”
Do they? What about him?
“Colesons.” It was all Daniel could get out. “Colesons. Half-naked Colesons. Mostly naked Colesons, Alex. Everywhere.”
Alex stretched up to look at the portal to destruction next door. “Which ones are naked this time? Cara?”
This time? Of course, Alex had probably seen things, hadn’t he?
How was he still sane?
“No. Not her. Others. Not that one. Seen them. Too many of them. Everywhere. I’ve seen them.
Summer, Gremlin, Heather’s twin—more of them than I can count.
There are too many of them. Dozens. No. At least six hundred of them.
” Daniel grabbed the guy he had known all of his life and yanked him around as best he could.
“You have to get me away from here. Now. Like…now. I am begging you. I need a ride out of here. Fast.”
Alex just looked at him and smirked. “Now you know my pain. Now you know.”
“Why the hell haven’t you moved to the moon?”
“I contemplated it—I just didn’t think the moon would be quite far enough away.”
COLESONS TO THE CASTLE
DANIEL FINALLY FELT he was getting better. He could stay awake all day, for one thing. Even if he had spent too much time hiding in the Colesons’ guest room to escape Heather’s demon family. He’d escaped. Finally.
By claiming he was going to stay with the Barratts, where the chief and his family, and Gunnar, were staying. So they could work the case off the books. The Colesons had said they understood, but some of them…had been smirking at him when he’d left.
Alex had made him go back over and tell them he was leaving, instead of running off like the coward Daniel would now admit he was.
They’d been up to something. He just hadn’t figured out what.
Maybe he’d been too distracted by all the half-clothed demon women that lived there?
It was a possibility.
He was just settling into the family room that the Barratts used most often after Alex had dropped him off, when he heard the main doors of the mansion open. And the sound of…children. Lots of children. Loud children.
That was a sound he’d grown very familiar with over the last two weeks—and that sounded like far too many children to be the two very quiet ones Murdoch and Zoey had, or little Beck who lived here now.
No, that sounded just like…
Daniel stood, aware of the other men next to him doing the same.
Caine Alvaro was in the family room as well, waiting for his twin brother Rafe to get there.
Something about an investigation happening at the local hospitals.
Daniel was well aware of that case, too.
It was just one that was taking a while.
They had another pair of investigators with them.
They’d been affiliated with the FBI before they’d been hired by Jordan Carrington—Caine’s father-in-law, who owned all of the hospitals in question—to root out whatever was going on.
Jordan was the fifth man in the room with them.
Daniel had offered what advice and information he could, but it wasn’t something being handled by the TSP yet.
It was all internal, but he knew the time would come when Carrington would turn over what he’d found if it was criminal.
It wasn’t his jurisdiction—Clay Addy was in charge of this one. But Addy was Houghton Barratt’s cousin, and apparently, they were all meeting here tonight, too.
“What the hell is that?” Caine asked. “I am afraid to ask.”
They stepped out into the hallway.
Daniel just about hit the floor.
There they were. Almost…all of them. “Colesons. The most diabolical children on the planet.”
“I don’t doubt that—I have five Coleson children of my own.”
Of course he did—Alvaro was one of Heather and Hope’s nephews, too. Colesons of some sort were everywhere he turned.
Heather’s family was crowding into the mansion foyer now.
Why were they there?
For one wild moment, he thought they had to have followed him.
There was Summer—thankfully with clothes on this time. Unlike the last time he’d seen her in nothing but a damned string bikini. She held a baby in her arms. Heather’s baby.
And there were all the rest of the Coleson children, from sixteen-year-old Maris, a very quiet carbon copy of Heather, down to Heather’s baby girl, a carbon copy of the gremlin.
Miguel Rodriguez’s three children were in the mix. And two little blond toddler boys he’d seen before at the Colesons. Samia was there, a concerned look on her face, clutching the hands of those toddlers. And Eden, with her boy next to her. And all the rest.
All of them.
Including Alex. He’d driven Daniel here and gone home. Now he was back. “Alex, what’s going on?”
“Technically, under the Texas penal code,” Cara said, a snotty little look on her gorgeous face. “We were all abducted and brought here against our will.”
“I’m not sure we should call it that, considering,” Megan, a fiery teenager who looked a great deal like her cousin Samia, added.
She was a real handful, Daniel had learned that many, many times before.
Once she was older—she was eighteen now—she would be a major monster for any man who dared to get close.
“Most of us climbed into the limo willingly. A few didn’t, though.
But one Coleson, all Colesons, so…we are in this together? ”
“We should press charges. Against all the Barratts. All of them. Except…Powell is my friend, so we won’t do that. We voted her into the coven, already,” Cara added.
“Well,” Melody said. “I am sure we can figure something out, Cara. We don’t think we abducted anyone—even if Alex did bring you here.
And I definitely know the definition of abduction.
Just ask me sometime; I’ll tell you what Houghton did.
Did Alex toss you over his shoulder, by any chance, and just carry you away? ”
“He did. I kicked him.”
“Good girl. I pulled Houghton’s hair when it was my turn.”
“Huh?”
Daniel looked at the one he suspected was in charge, since Bonnie wasn’t there.
She was quiet, but she usually did take charge when needed.
He found her as fascinating as Murdoch’s twin brother did.
If. Anthony Lake wasn’t so obviously gone over her, Daniel just…
probably… Even if she was a Coleson demon. “Sam, what’s going on?”
“There was…something happened at the hospital,” Samia said. She had a scared look in her big brown eyes that shot right through him. “Alex came over, said Mac told him to get us all here. And wait. So here we are.”
“What happened to Heather?” Caine asked. Daniel was asking the same damned thing. They hadn’t heard anything about Heather.
“We don’t know. Just…Mom called and told us to go with Alex.
She’d explain when she got here. She said to get the kids somewhere safe.
So…here we are.” Samia looked at the little blond boy climbing up her leg now.
He was one of her friend’s kids, Daniel thought.
“We just have five extra kids than normal. Until they can be picked up.”
“We’ll handle it,” Melody said. “And your family is welcome to stay here as long as you like. We have plenty of room. And I’m sure Beck would love having kids to play with for as long as you need to stay here.”
“Just our luck, we’ll get stuck here forever,” Cara said. She was still glaring at Alex. Who just gave her a smirk. “I really don’t like you at all now. You can’t just carry people away, Alex. You can’t. It is illegal.”
“Did you like me to begin with? Do you have a passport? I may just take you to Mexico as soon as I possibly can.”
Just like that.
Daniel’s sanctuary was invaded. It had only lasted an hour.
Summer smirked at him, looking very much like Heather. Then she plopped Ember into his arms. The baby gave a very gremlin-like baby grin. “We’ve found you again, Commander Butthead. You just can’t get away from us, you know. You just can’t.”
“Looks like you didn’t escape us, after all,” Hope added. The gremlin had been rather hidden in the crowd, but there she was. Miguel Rodriguez’s baby girl in her arms.
Hell.
The Colesons had arrived.
He just hoped the Barratts were prepared…