Free Black Blood by Melissa Pearl Page A

Tears
trickled over his broad, flat nose, but he didn’t bother to brush
them away. In his bony hands he held a leather pouch. Pulling it
open with shaky fingers, he emptied the contents into his hand
before lifting it up to the moonlight.
    Gemma felt her
breath catch as she recognized the arrow shaped necklace.
    Another
one!
    The talons of
doubt scraped down the back of her brain.
    Don’t be
stupid. Dad is just finding out where they are so he can keep our
family safe.
    That was
the theory Harrison had presented to her a couple of months ago and
she liked it… a lot. She remembered the first trip to Germania
where she had had to re-locate the trinket for an archaeological dig. She had
questioned the validity of the trip and found her concerns growing
when they had done it a second time. She had worked out that the
necklaces belonged to two of the electus . Titus and Tita.
    She had
pushed her suspicions aside as time had worn on, but here they were
again. Maybe each electus had a
necklace. She wondered if they would be doing four more of these
trips in the not so distant future. Her father was obviously
looking at where the piece was buried so it could be retrieved
easily in 2011.
    But why do you
need to retrieve it, Dad? What are you doing with these
necklaces?
    Fighting off
the doubt, she clung to her father’s good nature as she watched the
crying man dig a small hole in the ground.
    Bringing the
necklace to his lips, he whispered a jumble of words Gemma couldn’t
catch before kissing the arrowhead and placing it in the
ground.
    Gemma
could feel the agony of lost love radiating through the clearing as
the man buried the small treasure. She wondered if he was one of
the electus . The
idea that she was gazing at one up close and personal sent a thrill
through her body. Was it Gaius? Did the necklace he was burying
belong to his true love, Gaia?
    The thought
made her smile. She knew of this love. The kind of love Nathaniel
had held for his morning star; the kind of love that inspired
poetry.
    Its roots had
taken hold within her soul too, blooming with hope and spreading
life throughout her entire body.
    Harrison.
    Her mind
lingered over him as she watched the man pat the dirt in farewell
before her body shredded to dust.
     

 
    Chapter Twelve
    St Augustine, Florida
– 2011 AD
     
    It had been two
weeks since their disagreement. Harrison had made a special effort
to avoid the topic, but he found his mind was plagued with worry.
If Gabe was right then her parents were potentially very dangerous
people and he shivered to think of what they might have planned for
Gemma. He needed to protect her, but how?
    Help her see
the truth?
    The idea was
plausible, but he wasn’t sure he could pull it off when he didn’t
really know what the exact truth was. He wasn’t really in a
position to go spying on the Hart family. The only time he ever
went into their home was if Gemma was sneaking in to grab
something. They never lingered and if they did happen to see one of
her parents the temperature in the room dropped to sub zero and a
quick retreat was the only chance of survival.
    Pulling the rag
from his back pocket, he wiped his hands then lowered the hood of
the car he’d been working on. Slapping the red paint, he turned to
the office in search of the key.
    Avoiding the
topic of Gabe had kept his relationship with Gemma on smoother
ground. They were still bickering more than usual, the tension they
were living with was impossible to ignore. She had been relatively
happy pretending Gabe didn’t exist. Wanting to avoid full on
blowouts with her, he had kept his thoughts to himself, but he
wasn’t sure how much longer he could do it.
    “ She’s running out of time.”
    Gabe’s words
echoed in his head as he unhooked the key from beside Bryan’s desk.
Harrison’s biggest fear was that he would leave it too long and
then it’d be too late.
    His worry for
Gemma wasn’t helped by the fact that she was looking more and