Entranced

Chapter One

April Fool’s Day

Munich, Germany

“Nope. Haven’t seen her.” The plump saleswoman behind the counter smiled and gestured to a rack of handmade scarves next to her. “But I knitted these myself. You find your friend and come back, and I’ll give you a discount. And see Gustav down the street. You need to eat more, young man, or the wind will knock you right over.” She laughed.

Jack had no trouble understanding her southern German dialect. Born Jonathan Keiser, he’d been raised by second-generation German immigrants and had spoken German as a first language. His accent impeccable, he thanked her and left, tugging his jacket around him.

The wind whipped and brought tears to his eyes. He put a hand into his pocket, retrieved a photo, and stared at it. Again. For two weeks now, he’d been searching for Heather Fucking Stallbridge. Owen’s sister had become as big a pain in Jack’s ass as her domineering older brother. Jack couldn’t stop staring at her damn picture, and he’d tried. He had to hold it, keep it close. He’d found himself memorizing her features, wondering what she thought, how she’d look when she smiled, if she tasted half as good as he imagined…

Fuck. A woman had almost been the death of him once, and he’d vowed never again. But he had a feeling this one would prove more dangerous, because he couldn’t get a bead on why she got to him. Why he thought about her all the time. He understood his dick getting hard. Heather Stallbridge was a knockout, no question about it. But something inside him softened when he thought of her, that part of him he’d worked so hard to build into an impenetrable shield. He’d never admit it, but his insane attraction for her worried him. This hold she—her picture—had over him wasn’t normal. She fucking enthralled him, and he’d never even met her.

He swore again and shook his head. Fortunately, his skin itched, distracting him, and he knew it was almost time to change back. He hadn’t been a young man in more than fifteen years. Though thirty-five, at times he felt three times his age. Life had been hard for a long time now, but at least he no longer questioned why he fought to stay alive.

Shrugging the bony shoulders of a young man much too frail to withstand the cold, Jack pocketed the photo as he walked back to his room. He passed a young man and quickened his step when he saw a flash of recognition.

The young guy called out a greeting. “Carl? I thought you weren’t coming back until Friday.”

He wasn’t. Jack coughed and ducked into his coat. “Came back early,” he muttered and walked faster. “Talk to you later,” he called over his shoulder as he turned down the street, then made a left and raced through the cobblestone alley leading to Carl’s small loft, a handy spot to change, undetected, between alter egos.

All this cloak-and-dagger shit to find one headstrong woman who refused to come when called. A lot of nonsense he had little time for, not with his squad of psychics at home in Oregon no doubt going off the deep end without him.

Once inside the building, he ran up the stairs to Carl’s loft. Panting because of the cold and the out-of-shape body he’d assumed, Jack used the key he’d “borrowed,” entered, and locked the door behind him. After a quick look around to determine no one had been inside while he’d been gone, he released a well-deserved sigh and stripped naked, trembling with bone-deep cold.

Too much distance between me and that picture. He knew it made no sense, but he delved into the pocket of the pants he’d been wearing anyway, pulled the thing out, and stared at her photo. For the second time in ten minutes. The woman looked enough like Owen to clearly identify them as siblings. She had the same ash-blonde hair, emerald-green eyes, high cheekbones, and stubborn chin. But whereas Owen was handsome, Heather had stunning beauty.

Jack kept his gaze on her while his body returned to normal. His bones lengthened, and his muscle mass returned to the density it had been before. Blood raced, tissue expanded, and his organs slowly reshaped themselves to reflect a man of incredible stamina, health, and speed. Jack healed quickly. Shifting forms—what had once been a traumatic, painful experience in his youth— now occurred without incident. He could assume different faces and body types with ease. But because Carl had been so unlike Jack’s normal frame, it took him a few minutes to get all the kinks out.

“Finally.” His deep baritone relieved him. Carl’s vocal chords had given him a high pitch, and the voice had annoyed Jack more than the kid’s tiny body had. He’d been Carl on and off for a week, staying in Carl’s loft and wearing Carl’s clothes.

Ian, the most ill-disciplined but well-connected member of Jack’s PowerUp! team, had actually managed to give him a decent cover in this city. Ian hadn’t fucked up an assignment for once. Go figure.

Jack shivered and told himself to stop dicking around. He put his own clothes back on, relieved to feel decent underwear, denim, a thick sweater, and a leather jacket over his six-five frame. He threw on socks and stepped into his boots, then donned his gloves. Grabbing Carl’s clothes, he shoved them into his bag, not wanting to leave any traces of DNA behind. Then, after pocketing Heather’s picture, he took another look around the living space. Having left no visible hint of his stay, Jack put the spare key back on the key ring by the door and left with his bag in hand, closing the locked door behind him.

He passed two older women, who gave him a wide berth as he left. “Friend of Carl’s,” he muttered, and they scurried up the stairs behind him.

Once outside, he got into his rental and drove away from the city on the only lead he hadn’t yet followed. A week ago, when he’d arrived in the borough, an old man had walked right up to him and told him to head toward the Zugspitze—Germany’s tallest mountain.

“Toward?” Jack had asked.

“Yes, and around, and behind. And in.” The old man had winked. “You’ll find what you’re looking for not on any map. But you’d better hurry before the truth comes out.” Then he’d tipped back another beer, belched, and laughed before staggering away and rounding a corner.

When Jack had tried to follow to ask more questions, he’d found that the old guy had vanished.

So now, the great Jack Keiser, leader of an elite band of psychic investigators, had nothing better to do—or a better lead to investigate—than to follow a drunken man’s ramblings. At least the view would be decent. He drove for an hour out of town, south toward the majestic mountains. Snowcapped and tucked into a verdant forest of spruce and fir, surrounded by crisp air and nature enthusiasts, the Zugspitze commanded attention with a majesty Jack appreciated. Often compared to a mountain of muscle himself, he’d accepted that bigger sometimes did mean better. And he took his responsibilities to heart. As he drove closer to the Wetterstein Range, he realized he hadn’t taken a vacation in over six years.

Odd time to have some fun, looking for a missing woman, a paranormal book, and trouble he could almost taste in the crisp, mountain air.

He continued toward Grainau, another town on the way toward the mountain and Lake Eibsee, a few miles away. The lake itself attracted a fair share of tourists, so maybe Heather had headed there? She wasn’t in Munich. He’d scoured the places his resources couldn’t and had found no hint of the woman. The town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen had a small enough footprint that, in a matter of days, Ian’s contacts had reported no sign of the woman’s presence there either. Maybe Grainau?

At this rate, Jack could cross southern Germany off his places to see list. He’d been to Germany before, but mostly on ops in the northern, more industrial cities: Frankfurt, Berlin, Hamburg. His Audi had no problem traversing Southern Germany either. Jack saw a sign for Lake Eibsee ahead, but his attention caught and held on a distinct dirt road coming up on the right. Some instinct told him to turn off the state road onto the dirt road, one barely wide enough to fit two cars side by side.

He continued to drive, conscious that the road seemed to veer north, away from the mountains. Probably wound up and around, meeting up with B23. Yet as he followed the road, he felt it. Power. A connection to something vast, something he hadn’t felt since the government had enhanced his psychic skills and made him the monster he was today.

His brain cramped, then opened, and Jack felt as if butterflies kissed his skin from his head to his toes. Desire, hunger, and need poured through him, as did the urgent need to find Heather before the big bad came and took her away for good.

Big bad?

Everything around him seemed hazy, and he had the insane feeling the car was about to go over the edge of a cliff and never stop falling. Yet the wheels continued to turn, and Jack blinked to clear his vision. Trees, more trees, a dirt trail, the bright blue sky overhead. Kind of normal.

He didn’t understand what the hell was going on, but then he turned around a bend and hit the brakes, hard. A bright, cheery little town bustling with people popped up from out of nowhere.

The dirt road ended just in front of him, turning into a cavalcade of cobblestone leading him right to—her. On a fucking silver platter. Seated at an outdoor bistro surrounded by what looked like half the town, Heather Stallbridge enjoyed a cup of something steaming hot.

He got out of the car and stared, trying to comprehend his new circumstance. People laughed and talked in German, not a word spoken in English, and he had to look around him again to see if he stood on a movie set or in an authentic Bavarian town. A few of the older people wore long dresses and lederhosen, while the younger crowd dressed in jeans and light jackets to ward against the cold even now turning warmer, like a brisk fall day despite the snowy mountains to the south.

Jack couldn’t understand the increase in temperature, especially since the elevation had remained constant while he drove. What the hell had he happened into?

For over two goddamn weeks, he’d been trying to find Heather Stallbridge, and she suddenly appeared like magic in the middle of nowhere? His gut started to churn, the joy all around him now mired in suspicion, danger, and a disconcerting sense of nearby power.

Under his boots, something stirred. The ground trembled, though no one seemed to feel it but him. Energy twined through the rubber soles of his boots, past his wool socks into his heels, and then spread throughout his body.

As one, the people in town stopped and turned to stare at him.

What the fuck?

He swallowed a moan as pleasure enveloped him. The energy swirled up his legs, centered in his groin, and continued up into his chest until it finally settled in his brain. He felt his body grow taller, becoming stronger, ready to face any threat. And the living power inside him approved.

The townsfolk seemed frozen, and then in the span of a heartbeat, they returned to their business, talking and laughing as if it this Stepford moment was normal.

But the woman… Heather didn’t smile as widely as she had before. She seemed spooked and refused to look at him, which bothered him to no end. He shoved his hand in his pocket and fingered the picture, intent on finding out what it was about her that made him want her so damn much.

She had to be like Owen. He’d never been able to put his finger on it, but he knew Owen had skills—psychic skills. The shit stolen from his warehouse that Jack’s team continued to recover was cursed, possessed, or paranormal in some way or another. It figured Owen and his baby sister would be outside of normal too.

Jack stared hard at her, unable to look away from the golden head nodding at something a woman said. Even from this distance, he knew he could drown in her gaze, that the deep green of her eyes would reach out and soothe all the aches and loneliness he kept buried inside.

He blinked and took a step back, not sure why he’d gone so introspective. Jack didn’t do emotions other than caution, like, and lust. And he wished to hell he felt nothing for this woman.

He had to figure out what he’d gotten himself into, or rather, what she’d stumbled over. But not now, and not with an audience motioning for him to join them. He moved back into his car, parked a block down the street next to a shiny black Mercedes, and found the closest pub for something to drink.

The bartender, slid him the best beer he’d ever had in his life. Jack finished it in record time and ordered another. One way or another, he’d get Heather back to Owen and out of his life…and his pocket. He took out the photo, swore as he glanced at it again, then repocketed it and took another swig of beer.

HEATHER HAD HOPED the guy wouldn’t approach her, though he seemed the type to ignore good sense. Huge, menacing, like an animal with a thorn in its paw, the stranger exuded danger the way Gretchen, next to her, exuded chatty nervous energy. And where the hell had the stranger come from, anyway? She hadn’t seen anyone new in town since she’d arrived two weeks ago.

This place put the W in weird. She’d been trying to leave, with or without her book, but every time she managed to get near the gate through which she’d entered, one of the townspeople found her and somehow managed to convince her to stay. And that main road where the new guy had shown up? Fifty feet from where she sat, around the bend, it dead-ended in the forest. So where had the giant come from? It was like a bad Twilight Zone episode, except the people here were nice…for the most part. She had no idea what they wanted with her, except to make her their new best friend. Bizarro.

If that weren’t strange enough, she couldn’t seem to hold on to her book, Chronicles. The blasted thing had to be cursed. It had been stolen from her family over a year ago, retrieved five weeks ago, and before she’d had a chance to fully translate the code hidden in the pages, she’d lost it somehow in this funny town.

Because of the book, she’d found herself stranded here. Wherever the hell here really was. The town didn’t exist on a map, on Google Earth, or in any atlas she’d ever seen.

She nodded at Gretchen again, thanking fate that she’d learned the Bavarian dialect of German at an early enough age to speak it like a native. Way to go, Granddad. The old woman shared gossip about who was dating whom and which woman had burned her husband’s breakfast that morning. In a town the size of three hundred, everyone pretty much knew everyone.

“Yes, so handsome. This one we like. He and you will make big, strong babies. I can feel it.”

Heather tuned back into the conversation. “What?”

“Yes. Jan knows much about things.”

From what Heather had seen, Gretchen’s brother knew how to skin venison and could shoot through the eye of a needle. Now the man knew things? She suddenly had a bad, bad feeling about her stay, especially if he knew the truth about her. She’d been pretending to be Heather Wurtz, great-niece to the town’s oldest woman, the local wise woman and a revered leader. The first person she’d met, Ida had insisted on a private audience, for which Heather remained eternally grateful. Ida had proclaimed Heather her long-lost niece, and like that, Heather had found acceptance and security. An ally in a place she’d never imagined might be so dangerous.

Apparently, the Stallbridge name was hated enough to get her killed, and she had no urge to find herself gutted and strung up the way Jan’s deer had been just a few days ago. In this place, Ida might be respected, but Ralf Baer kept the law with a mighty fist. And his sons Ernst and Klaus gave her the shivers. She didn’t like the way they looked at her.

Which led her thoughts back to the stranger. Should she put him on the good list or bad list? He didn’t seem to be one of them. It appeared he’d come upon the town like she had, out of the blue. A sudden thought hit her. What if Owen had sent him? She’d told her brother over and over to leave her alone, that she needed to solve this riddle by herself, to contribute something of her own to the family. Determined to fulfill the quest started by her great-grandfather, Heather meant to solve the puzzle in that damn book. But Owen wouldn’t let it rest. And if he’d sent the stranger, he just might get her killed.

She stood suddenly. “Um, Gretchen? I’ll be right back.”

Gretchen winked at her. “If I wasn’t sixty-eight, I might make a play for him myself. I’ll be here.” She held up her cup of tea and raised it in appreciation, then took a drink and turned to converse with her neighbor.

Heather took the opportunity to slide away from the tea party, as she’d come to calling the group that met regularly outside Edda’s Tea Shop, and looked for the stranger. She spotted his vehicle and noted the rental tags. Not a local, then. Shit.

Hurrying to the most probable place he’d gone, she entered the pub and overheard him say, “So how long has Heather been here?” Heather. Damn. He knew her name.

She rushed to his side and put on the brightest smile she could. “I can’t believe you’re here! Sorry, but the light was behind you outside, and I almost didn’t recognize you.” Heather hugged him hard, dragging his head closer so she could whisper, “My name is Heather Wurtz. Hug me back, damn it.”

He didn’t falter and swept her into a bone-crushing hug. He nuzzled her cheek, sending shivers down her spine, and whispered back, “Jack Harmon. Strawman sent me.”

Owen had sent this man. Strawman was the code word Owen used to prove association. Whoever else this guy might be, her brother trusted him to come after her.

When they finished embracing, Jack kept a muscled arm around her. Up close, he set her libido on high alert. But that wasn’t all. Her ability to heal sensed deep wounds in this man, and she had the crazy notion to plaster herself to him and inhale him, one kiss at a time, until he recovered from past trauma and she reached orgasm.

So unlike her. Sex and healing had never been joined together, in any way.

She squirmed, and he tightened his grip on her shoulder. He had killer eyes, light gray one moment and then a hint of blue the next. But that fierce expression, coupled with his incredible size and breadth of muscle, warned her to tread carefully. For all that the guy had a rough kind of handsome sexiness going on, he also had a serial-killer vibe she’d need to keep an eye on.

Hans at the bar stared at him with suspicion. “You aren’t part of the ski group, are you? How did you get here?”

“Ski group?” She and Jack asked at the same time.

Heather talked over him. “Hans, I’ve been here for two weeks and haven’t seen anyone but the locals.”

“Of course not, sweetheart.” Hans grinned. “We keep family tight, right here.” He patted his chest. “The stupid Americans and the idiot locals are kept outside the yellow gate, the one by Jan’s cottage.” Hans blinked at Jack. “Jan… Of course. Forgive me. Jan said you’d be coming.”

“He did?” Jack’s deep voice soothed her, despite the tenor that sounded more like the growl of a hungry beast.

“Yes. We’ve been more than curious about Heather’s boyfriend.”

Oh boy, that was all she needed. An imaginary lover. Heather said in a rush, “I need to take him to see Aunt Ida. I know she can’t wait to see him again, and she told me to let her know as soon as he arrived. We’ll be back later, though.”

Hans nodded. When Jack tried to pay him for the beer, Hans shook his head. “No, not for Heather’s man. You go and settle in.” Jack stuck out his hand, and Hans shook it, grunting. “Firm, strong shake. It’s good you came to Drei-Gewalten. We need to build our stock and let it grow.”

Stock? “Drei-Gewalten. Great name for a town, huh?” she said to get Jack up to speed.

He didn’t bat an eye and nodded. “Great name. Let’s go see Aunt Ida, honey.”

She didn’t breathe a sigh of relief until they left the pub and headed down the street, away from the tea shop.

“Yeah, we can catch up at Aunt Ida’s, for sure.” She squeezed his hand in hers. He squeezed back, and it didn’t escape her notice that his palm completely covered hers. When she tried to discreetly tug her hand away, he wouldn’t let go.

“That we will, sweetheart. I can’t wait.”