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  MAKE ME BELIEVE

  An Ellora’s Cave Publication, DECEMBER 2003

  Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.

  PO Box 787

  Hudson, OH 44236-0787

  ISBN MS Reader (LIT) ISBN # 1-84360-728-X

  Other available formats (no ISBNs are assigned):

  Adobe (PDF), Rocketbook (RB), Mobipocket (PRC) & HTML

  MAKE ME BELIEVE © 2003 SHILOH WALKER

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without permission.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. They are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.

  Edited by Pamela Campbell

  Cover art by Darrell King.

  MAKE ME BELIEVE

  Shiloh Walker

  Chapter One

  “Nikolai.”

  The gleaming black head didn’t so much as lift in acknowledgment.

  But the leader knew he was aware. In nearly nine hundred years of walking the earth, those large green eyes had rarely missed anything

  “You did not come to our meeting.” The boss’s voice was grim, aggravated, and firm. Nikolai should have been intimidated.

  Nik’s soft sigh filled the room. He closed his heavily lashed eyes, a thick lock of black, silken hair falling into his eyes as his long-fingered, graceful hands stilled on the small sculpture he held. The Council can go fuck themselves. He didn’t say it out loud, but he suspected his captain heard him all the same.

  “How many times must I tell you? ‘Tis bad enough in the eyes of the Council that I have chosen an unmated man as my successor—”

  “One of three.”

  The low, deep timbre of his voice still held the rich hints of Russia, the echoes of his homeland from centuries past.

  “It doesn’t matter if you are one of a thousand. You are unmated, you shirk our traditions, you do not act as one of us, dress as one of us.”

  “Renounce me,” Nikolai suggested pithily as he continued to carve an angel from a piece of crystal. Dreamy blue eyes narrowed in concentration, though he was fully aware of the concerns of his mentor—once his master, now his friend. But Nikolai had more important concerns on his mind than whether or not the North Council chose him.

  Once, it had been the most important thing to him.

  Once…

  * * * * *

  Chelly lowered herself gently down onto the couch, afraid her body was going to shatter. The papers in her hand sealed her fate.

  The bastard was trying to take Bryan from her, saying she was unfit, losing her mind, dreaming of places, men, worlds that didn’t exist. Certainly not fit to take care of a normal boy, much less a handicapped child, one with special needs.

  “Our son isn’t handicapped, you cold-ass son of a bitch,” she hissed. Then her emerald green eyes narrowed. He couldn’t hear. That didn’t mean he was less of a person. Damn him! “My son. My son.” Drawing her knees to her chest, she rested her cheek on them and sighed shakily. “Nikolai…this is all your fault.”

  Of course…what good does it do blaming it on you?

  You aren’t real.

  I am going crazy.

  She had first had dreams of him when she was small, just five. Right after the death of her parents, on Christmas Eve. They had been out doing some last minute shopping. A desperate druggie, looking for money, needing that next fix and her parents had been wealthy-looking targets. He hadn’t cared he had robbed a child of her parents, her focus, and on Christmas Eve, the most magical day of the year.

  It would have stopped being so magical that day.

  But a gentle, smiling man with kind, caring eyes had come to her in her tear-filled dreams and whispered soothing things, promised her that her parents were well and together and she would see them again, she just must be good and patient…and she mustn’t cry so…Christmas was coming. A man who made magical things happen as he spun snowflakes from his hands, and made rainbows come alive in midair while she watched.

  A man who had eyes that glowed in the dimness of the room, and curving, pointed ears.

  Damn Christmas!

  He had laughed at her outburst and picked her up, cuddled her, stroked her downy, golden curls. Da, da, you feel this way now, I know. But not for always. Sleep, little one. Sleep.

  That was the first time he had come to her, though not the last. Her imaginary friend wasn’t the typical one. Hers was a tall, handsome man, with hair that billowed down to his waist, impossibly blue eyes, and curved pointing ears…elf ears. A handsome, fairy tale prince. And as she went from girl to teen, he became the focus of all her daydreams, her first teenage crush, a man who didn’t exist.

  This imaginary friend who never went away, who knew her better than she knew herself.

  Nikolai who had guided her through her teenaged crisis and turbulent college years with his infrequent visits in her dreams, with his wry smile and dry wit, his low, husky laughter and that exotic voice that sent shivers rushing down her spine even thinking of it. Anytime life had gotten to tough, Nikolai had crept out of her subconscious and guided her through the toughest times—was it any wonder she had fallen in love with her fantasy?

  It wouldn’t have been so bad if she had kept the knowledge completely to herself. If she hadn’t taken to writing her daydreams down in journals, or letters to him. Which was how Nate had found out about Nikolai. He had found the journals inside the wooden chest in her home office, filled with years of lovingly written words—page upon page of thoughts, letters, and sketches of the man who wasn’t real.

  Chelly had laughed it off.

  She didn’t realize how very real Nikolai was to her. It was written all over her face, in the way her eyes softened, her mouth, the way her entire body seemed to relax and go into preparation for his touch. Nate had seen it—and hated the man whose image was vaguely similar to his own.

  Idiot…why did you ever write to him? Slamming her head back against the wall, she stared outside, tears streaming down her face. Chelly could have explained away the sketches. But the letters…how could she explain away years and years of letters?

  And she should have listened when Nikolai had warned her, hell, threatened her about marrying Nate when she found out she was carrying Bryan. She had fully intended to take care of the baby on her own, but Nate had talked her into it, lulled her into thinking he truly loved her, the pompous bastard.

  Nikolai had warned her—

  “Damn it,” Chelly hissed, clapping her hand over her mouth in horror. “I’m doing it again.”

  Maybe Nate was right, maybe she was crazy.

  Chapter Two

  “I am real, you contrary little minx,” he murmured into the mirror, narrowing his eyes, frowning as she buried her face against her knees. Why was she so sad now, his little angel? His time with her was bitterly short, and it had been nearly six months since he had seen her and the little one last, just a few days after she had broken her union with that bastard who was so unworthy of her.

  Nik waited, waited for her to whisper to him, the words that would bring him to her. But they never came. A thick, bitter swell of disappointment rose in his chest and he clenched his fists as she rose from the window seat, alone, scrubbing her tears away, and squaring her shoulders.

  There was a determined look on her face, a look he didn’t like.

  What was his little minx up to?

  Nikolai shook his head and pulled himself away from the mirror, away from the woman who had called to him for years. So much to be done. Christmas was only a month away, and he had much to do, they all did.

  He did not have the time to sit around and yearn for the sloe-eyed minx w
ho had haunted him for years.

  Rhys would love to see him now, yearning and sighing after a young mortal he could never have. Just another thing to make him even more melancholy, another mark against him, in the eyes of the Council. Rhys was unmated as well, but at least he was not a somber, unsmiling bastard, as he so often pointed out to Nikolai.

  With a grim sigh, Nikolai turned away from the mirror and focused on the task at hand. Work. There was work to be done.

  He would worry about Chelly after Christmas.

  Or when she called him.

  When she needed him, she’d call.

  But the call never came.

  Even after a year of waiting, the call never came.

  * * * * *

  One Year Later

  Gone…

  Missing…

  Every mother’s worst nightmare, and Chelly was living it. Nate hadn’t returned Bryan from his visitation. Had, in fact, absconded with him—along with his new fiancée—clearing out their house, and fleeing the state. Chelly paced the living room as cops and federal people surrounded her, talking around her and through her, but rarely to her.

  Chelly jumped every time the phone rang, and slept only in stops and starts. Last week, with shaking hands, she had flushed her medicines down the toilet. Medicines she hadn’t needed—she wasn’t depressed and she wasn’t suffering from hallucinations or delusions. Her headaches still plagued her and would take a while to go away, but she would no longer pretend that she was delusional and needed medicine just to keep her ex-husband happy. Hell, he had taken Bryan away from her anyway.

  As she paced the room on the eighth day of Bryan’s kidnapping, she grew aware of how quiet the room had fallen. Slowly, she turned and met Agent McKiernan’s faded gray eyes, his tired face. He gazed at her from across the room as he started toward her and she realized he held his cell phone. Cell phone…

  Tearing her gaze from it, Chelly started to back away.

  No.

  “Chelly…they’ve found your ex-husband and his fiancee. And your son…”

  * * * * *

  After nearly a year without it, he felt her. Nikolai jerked up in the middle of a vast lake of silken sheets, the midnight blue comforter falling to his waist, his chest heaving raggedly as he struggled to breathe beyond it.

  Her pain was tearing at him.

  Nikolai felt it in his heart like a great ripping beast.

  It was her need that pulled him, her hunger, her wishes. More often than not, she merely pulled his consciousness into her dreams, and he would try to soothe whatever troubled her.

  Oft times, her misery was great—she took on much and she did too little for herself, ignored her own heart, her desires, her needs. He made his way to the darkened bathroom and threw on the light, staring at his eyes, his faintly glowing eyes pulsing almost feverishly, before the mirrored reflection dissolved away and revealed Chantelle—for the first time in almost twelve months.

  A hospital room, darkened, lights and machines pulsing and beeping, small plastic tubes going to and from the child.

  Heaven above, what has happened? Nikolai’s hands griped the edge of the counter and his vision blurred for a brief moment. Swallowing convulsively, he reached out and pressed his hand to the mirror and flexed it, watching as Chantelle’s body flinched as he slid inside her mind, probing and seeking…

  Ahh, there would be no simple soothing this time, Nikolai knew. Staring through the mirror, he studied the child. Bryan was a happy, rather astounding child, he knew. And he lay fighting for his life. Mortal bodies were so frail. An old scar, very old, low on his belly, was proof of that. Nikolai had been mortal…once.

  A wounded child, grievously wounded, in Russia nearly a thousand years ago, he had been hunting with his father at the age of nine. His father hadn’t survived the thieves attack on their camp. Nikolai wouldn’t have. But Alisdair had come upon them that wintry, frozen night as he lay bleeding to death from the ragged knife wound low in his belly. He still clutched the knife he had used on one of the thieves as he tried to protect his father’s fallen body.

  Da… Mortal bodies were frail.

  Chantelle lay with her head against the bed linens on the narrow hospital bed sobbing.

  The boy was still young enough…he could be made elf-kin.

  But the mother…that option simply wasn’t there. But he would have her, nonetheless.

  And she wasn’t likely to forgive him easily either.

  He waited until she had fallen asleep. She was weary—once sleep held her in its bond, there was no waking her, but he brushed his mind to hers and whispered of sleep just to be certain. Then Nikolai went to the boy and hunkered down beside him, cupping his face and easing inside his mind. Ahhh…the pain…so young to feel such pain…

  He felt the boy’s sudden jerk, his startlement as he recognized a phantom touch in his mind. Then his fear… “Do not be afraid, boy, I come to give you a good thing,” he whispered. “To take this kind of pain away forever and ever.”

  “Nonononononono…Mama!”

  In reality, all the boy did was whimper, but it was enough. Wrapping his arms tight around the child, Nikolai opened his eyes, a flash of moonlight falling across them as he stared at Chelly just as she woke. “No more pain, Bryan, I promise.”

  * * * * *

  Chelly awoke to see a familiar, glowing pair of eyes—dreamy, soft, and blue—awash with light, the face in shadow, as a man lifted Bryan, still hooked up to various machines and monitors. And they were gone, before she could even draw in the breath to ask who in the hell he was.

  But she didn’t need to.

  Chelly knew those eyes. They haunted her dreams, both sleeping and waking.

  Nikolai…

  The soft, husky voice rolled through her mind even as she opened her mouth to scream as nurses came running in. Shooting up out of her chair, she flipped on the lights and whirled around, staring at the room. He was gone. Well and truly gone. Not out the window, or the door, just gone. Her breath left her lungs in a shuddering gasp and her teeth were chattering as she stared at the nurses who started to ask where the boy had gone.

  And she had to whisper, “I don’t know…”

  But she did. Chelly knew.

  He was with Nikolai, a fey creature who shouldn’t exist, a man who had eyes that glowed, and exotically curved ears, a smile that turned her insides to mush, her knees to jelly, and made her heart flip over in her chest.

  And that fey, magical being had her son.

  Gritting her teeth, Chelly felt the anger start to build in her gut.

  Nik had her son.

  Chapter Three

  “Where is my son?”

  That low, furious female whisper rasped through Nikolai’s rooms and he lifted his gaze away from the still child who lay on his bed. Ganessa looked up from Bryan and smiled sympathetically. “She will be so angry.”

  “Angry is better than heartbroken, da? He would not have survived such grievous injuries, Ganessa.” Long, silken hair spilled like an ebony cape around his broad shoulders as he knelt beside the bed, stroking one hand over the boy’s downy, golden locks. Nikolai lifted his gaze to study the healer who had come to assist him and he shrugged. “Her anger I can handle. Her broken heart I cannot. And the boy—I love this child. He has a hold on my heart, and has had since his birth. First because he came from her, but then because of who he is.”

  Ganessa smiled at Nikolai, shaking her head. “I wish you luck. A woman’s wrath is a terrible thing. And mortal anger…”

  Nikolai arched a brow at her. “I was mortal, Ganessa. Once.” Lowering his eyes back to the boy, he asked, “How is he faring?”

  “Well. He is younger than most that are brought into the kin-bond. Elf-kin isn’t a pleasant journey to make, but he is taking it better than the older children. He will sleep through it all and wake with no memory of the accident that nearly killed him. But his mama needs to be here when he wakes. Hadn’t you best bring her here now?” Gan
essa asked as she ran mental hands through the boy’s spirit and psychic self and her physical hands over his healing body. Lastly, she cupped her hands over his ears, lingering, wondering.

  Nikolai grimaced. “Da. And what a pleasant task I go to.”

  * * * * *

  Nikolai hadn’t possibly just come in here and taken my son…

  But that means he is real.

  But a man doesn’t just appear and disappear.

  He did! The cameras didn’t record anybody entering or leaving this floor—Chelly was almost ready to put a pillow over her ears to drown out the voices in her head. But she was pretty damn certain it wouldn’t work.

  It had been Nik. Which meant he was real.

  Slowly, Chelly turned her head and looked at the security guards and various administrative staff and nurses who had gathered in her room. Chelly smiled a brittle, false smile, her eyes wild and bright as she said in a high, nearly hysterical voice, “Excuse me. I need a minute alone.”

  Once in the bathroom, she leaned over and splashed water on her face, leaving it running as she straightened to stare into the mirror. Her soft green eyes were snapping and glinting, harsh and full of threat as she rasped quietly, “Nikolai…where is my son?”

  There was no answer for a long moment.

  Then the mirror started to fog…maybe it was the heat from her breath. Maybe she was nuts. Would that explain why the surface rippled like water?

  When Nikolai’s face appeared in the mirror, Chelly had to stifle a scream. She’d hoped he would answer. Had prayed. But so quickly? Long, glossy black hair spilled around broad proud shoulders, two thick braids at each temple keeping the hair from his face, displaying the fine, arrogant bones of his handsome face, the high arch of his brows, anda polite, quizzical smile.

  Polite? Quizzical? Like he hadn’t just kidnapped her son.