The Chosen

Book 3: Legend Chronicles

by Theresa Meyers

Genres: Paranormal Romance; Steampunk

Synopsis

The Chosen: a prophecy older than dirt and more dangerous than death. Even as they perfected steam-powered gadgetry and rounded up varmints from Hell, the Jackson brothers didn't believe in it. But when the chips are down, three brothers named for weapons aren't going out without a fight. . .

A Walk On The Wild Side

Attorney by day, demon-hunter by night, Remington Jackson is used to being on the sunny side of the law, even in the Wild West. But it's showdown time, and Remy and his brothers are getting desperate. They don't have the relic they need to slam the door shut on evil--so Remy is going to have to find and steal part of it.

Enter China McGee, shapeshifter, thief, beauty, and current prisoner. When Remy offers her freedom in exchange for a little light-fingered help, she's pretty sure she's going to end the association with a good old-fashioned seductive double cross. But there's something about fighting through a jungle full of Mayan ruins that makes you want to settle down together. China could change. Remy might be special. But none of that matters if the devil takes them all. . .

"Meyers is a genuine, fresh voice in the paranormal romance genre." --RT BookReviews on The Slayer

"Meyers puts the steam in steampunk." --Cherry Adair

Release date: March 1, 2012

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 400

Sample

“What can I do for you, stranger?” A stout, pot-bellied sheriff stirred out of his afternoon nap and sat up at Remington Jackson’s approach. Remington closed the jailhouse door and stepped into the dark interior. The place smelled of dust and body odor, but the welcome drop in temperature from the desert heat made his mission suddenly more bearable.

“I’m here to see Miss McGee.”

The sheriff eyed him suspiciously. “You her husband?”

Remington nearly choked on the thought. The whole idea of being tied to one thing for the rest of his life was loathsome enough, but to a Darkin was unthinkable. He cleared the sour thickness out of his throat and grasped the lapels of his black gentleman’s jacket. It had been foolish to wear his court clothing on a trek such as this, but he had no idea who he’d have to convince to let the Darkin thief go once he arrived, and a good attorney used all his assets, not just his silver tongue. He needed to be prepared to sway anything from a local sheriff to a federal marshal to a territorial judge.

“No. I’m her attorney.”

“Name?”

“Remington Jackson.”

The sheriff ’s gaze sharpened. “Have we met before?”

Remington was about to throttle the man, but he kept his face placid and his manner cool. Maintaining control was key in these matters but the sooner he got Miss McGee released to his custody, the better. “No.”

“You look awful familiar, mister.”

“I assure you, had I met such an outstanding officer as yourself before, I would recall the moment.”

The sheriff sniffed, wiping the back of his hand across his nose, then hitched up his pants. “This way.”

As Remington approached the cell, even in the gloom of the jail, he could see her propped up against a wall, her hair a golden tumbled halo about her head, her curvy body accented by form-fitting buckskin breeches and a matching fringed jacket over a faded, pale blue chambray shirt. His body jolted with a hit of pure, intense attraction. Colt had said China was a looker. He’d lied.

From the light filtering in through the barred window of her cell, Remington could see even coated in dust she was something crafted out of pure male fantasy made real. Her creamy smooth skin, tinted with pink, delicate features, and the glass-like clarity of her silver-gray eyes reminded him of an expensive china doll. The normal taint of sulfur that hung about Darkin was softened by the scents of black tea and vanilla.

Colt had once bragged this woman could steal the rails out from under a train and no one would be the wiser. If Colt was right, directions to a missing piece of the Book of Legend were within his grasp. If Colt was wrong, well then Remington figured he’d have wasted his time and considerable skills as an attorney getting this shape-shifting female thief out of jail.

Why Colt would work with a supernatural being like China, Remington couldn’t figure, except his little brother had a penchant for running on the wrong side of things and liked pretty females. All their lives they’d been raised to hunt the Darkin down, protecting the unsuspecting population from the likes of vampires, demons . . . and shape-shifters.

Working with one just seemed a shade too desperate for Remington’s taste, but then he wasn’t much like either of his brothers. Not the older one, Winchester, who detested Hunting, and not the younger one, Colt, who reveled in the life.

Remington fit into neither category. He sat firmly in the middle. He liked to play both sides of the tracks as it suited him. Some days he was safe behind a desk, living a normal, respectable life. And others he was out hunting down Darkin and getting in a taste of adventure and danger.

The plan was simple and foolproof. Get in. Get her out. Obtain the material from Diego Mendoza’s safety-deposit box by legal means, if possible. Illegal if necessary. Head back to Tombstone and send the information on to Colt who could take care of things from there. Go back to the nice little life he’d carved out for himself as a part-time attorney and part-time Hunter. The only variable he couldn’t count on was the female Darkin.

He knew she’d worked with Colt before. He knew she’d cheated Colt a time or two. In fact at one time he and Colt had come to blows and gunshots over the matter. And he knew she’d been in Colt’s bed. Not an easy matter to untangle, but he’d dealt with worse.

But after taking a second long look Remington suddenly had a new understanding of his little brother’s assessment of this Darkin’s assets. Colt had never brought her around Winn or him before because his brother didn’t want either of them being sucked in by her like he was. Altruistic of him? Probably not. But Remington was made of sterner stuff than his little brother. He at least knew how to resist a Darkin’s charms, even one as pretty and deadly as China McGee. The trick was never to get emotionally entangled. As long as he treated her like the Darkin thing she was, everything would move along slick as oil.

Blowing up the bank had seemed like a sensible thing to do at the time. Colt Jackson had claimed the map in a Hunter’s safety-deposit box in the bank would lead them to a piece of the Book of Legend, giving China a way to gain favor from the Darkin archdemon lord Rathe. He was part demon, part vampire, and all powerful, and she’d do just about anything to ensure she stayed in his good graces permanently.

Of course now that her dirty skin pimpled up in gooseflesh as a black cockroach skittered up the stone of her cell wall next to her head, she had changed her mind about her methods and crossed off blowing up banks and working with Hunters.

The stench of stale sweat and fumes of liquor and urine from the drunkard in the next cell sleeping away his intoxication made even breathing an unpleasant experience. The crust of rock dust from the explosion still coated her skin, making it itch. Being cooped up in a cell made her chest tight. She needed to get out, soon. Shifters didn’t do well in confined spaces.

In retrospect, it had been stupid of her to trust Colt even marginally. Their rocky, on-again off-again relationship over the years should have given her enough experience to know better. The only reason she’d been willing to give it another shot was because she had usually come out better than he did whenever they’d crossed paths before.

Maybe it had been just her pride talking a bit too loudly, but she’d truly believed she could take the map, leaving him behind to take the punishment for the robbery. So much for well laid plans. It had turned out just the opposite. He’d double-crossed her and made the fuse on the dynamite shorter than she realized. She’d been the one caught in the blast and hauled off to the pokey.

China frowned and crossed her arms over her chest, making her fringed buckskin leather jacket creak. Once an apple went bad, it was bad to the core, and their seeds were soured too. She’d never trust another bad-seed Hunter again as long as she lived. Colt had seen to that. As much as she found him physically appealing, if he ever dared cross her path again, she’d scratch those blue eyes right out of his head.

The heavy thumping step of the sheriff, accompanied by the jangle of brass keys, grew louder. China leaned forward, trying to see who was coming.

“She’s down here. I’ll give you five minutes.”

“Ten.” The deep male voice wasn’t familiar, putting all her senses of self-preservation on alert. Ten minutes alone with the wrong sort of man could be an eternity. China pushed away from the wall.

The sheriff huffed. “All right then, ten, but not a tick longer. I’ve got to get to lunch.”

China pressed her face against the cool metal of the bars to get a better look at the man the sheriff was leading to her cell, but all she could see in the shadows of the long hall were his hands. They were an odd mix of smoothness and size. Big and powerful, but so well-manicured it had to be a fancy man who hadn’t done a lick of hard work in his life. What in the world could he want with her? A brothel owner? A card sharp?

She stepped back, pressing herself against the wall, the rough texture of the stones digging into her back. The sheriff rattled the key in the lock and opened the cell door. China stiffened her shoulders, smoothing her damp hands along the legs of her buckskin pants.

In walked the spittin’ image of Colt Jackson, all jet hair, superior blue eyes, sexy mouth, and broad shoulders, gussied up in a black suit and tie. The cell door clanked shut behind him, leaving them locked in together. All the words China had been holding in her mouth crumbled into a gritty dust that coated her throat and made her choke.

She bent over double with a coughing fit, and the man laid one of his smooth hands on her shoulder, his touch burning right through the leather to sear her skin.

“Are you all right, Miss McGee?”

China blinked back the tears in her eyes and glared at him for an instant, slapping away his hand. His features were nearly the same as Colt’s, but his chin held a cleft that Colt’s didn’t, and the blue of his eyes was just a shade lighter. She didn’t trust him any more than she trusted the man he resembled. Less. She didn’t know just how far this one would go to get what he wanted.

“I thought you were Colt.”

The man tugged at the impeccable white cuffs that peeped from underneath his suit jacket. Expensive sapphire cuff links winked in the light. Nothing like Colt would’ve worn. “People often mistake us at first. I’m his older brother, Remington.”

China drew back from him as though she’d been branded. “Get him out of here!” she shrieked.

The sheriff came at a run, his breath in short gasps, his hand on his chest. “What in tarnation is goin’ on in there?”

Mr. Jackson ignored the question and stared at her, his blue eyes piercing straight through her. “Miss McGee, may I at least explain why I’m here?”

China shook her head, making her hair, still dusty from the explosion, swing in limp hanks about her face. “I don’t want nothin’ to do with you, or your brother, or whatever other kin you have out there. Colt’s the reason I’m stuck in this cell, so no. I don’t want to have any kinda conversation with you. Just git.”

The doppelganger’s face turned nearly as smooth and unreadable as blank paper. “I’m here to get you out. I’m your attorney.” He turned to the sheriff. “We’re fine here; you may go. I’ll be taking Miss McGee with me.”

The sheriff ’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t think so.”

Mr. Jackson’s jaw ticked. “And may I ask why?”

The sheriff held up a yellowed “wanted” poster of a face very like Remington’s. “Said your name was Jackson, didn’t ya?”

Remington frowned. “If you would check the name on that poster, you’ll find it’s a Colt Jackson—my brother.”

The sheriff eyed the paper, glancing from it to Remington’s face and back again. “Yep. It is. But as close as you both look, it could be an alias. I can’t let you out until we track down your brother and can prove you ain’t him.”

Remington grabbed the bars, bringing his face as close as he could to the sheriff ’s. “You have no right to hold me,” he said, his tone cool, calm, and lethal. “You have no evidence. I demand to see a federal marshal or at the very least a judge.”

The sheriff smirked. “Well, that’d be long about Friday three weeks from now. They don’t come by here but once a month, and you just missed them. Unless, of course, you can tell me where I could track down your brother.”

Jackson’s body remained deadly still. His icy cool façade frightened her more than Colt’s gun-blazing anger at a time like this.

“Just tell him!” she urged. He blasted her with a bone-chilling stare that was colder than an icicle through the heart. China about swallowed her tongue. Clearly he wasn’t about to turn in his little brother to the authorities to save his own skin—or hers.

“Do as you must,” he told the sheriff without a hint of emotion. “And I shall do the same.”

The sheriff turned on his heel to walk back down the hallway. China rushed to the bars. “Wait! I didn’t hire no attorney,” she spat, but the sheriff wasn’t listening. He kept his back to her and kept walking, whistling some inane tune under his breath. She turned and glared at Colt’s look-alike brother. “I didn’t ask you to come here.”

“No, but Colt did.”

China didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Her plans had already failed. She’d needed to get the piece of the Book of Legend. But Colt had ditched her before they’d recovered it. “Why would he do a fool thing like that?” But she already knew the answer.

He felt guilty for leaving her to be arrested when he robbed the bank. He needed her skills to get to the missing piece of the Book of Legend that he’d been searching for during the last two years, said he’d need a Darkin thief to get to it. He might even still be attracted to her. She hoped.

She had a thing for Colt Jackson. He’d somehow gotten under her skin. While their relationship had been brief—and neither could trust the other farther than either could pick the other up and throw him or her—it didn’t mean he wasn’t attractive as hell.

China eyed the other Jackson brother. He was just as devastating as his little brother, perhaps more so because he had the polish and an air of sophistication that Colt lacked. A keen intelligence sparkled within the depths of his blue eyes that she found intriguing. They looked so much alike she could see how the sheriff would be damn certain he had the outlaw with an alias behind bars.

“Maybe he was concerned you knew too much and wanted someone to keep an eye on you.”

China frowned. Now that sounded like Colt. No trust. But with good reason. Colt was a man who liked to win. But what about Remington Jackson? Was he cut from the same cloth as his brother? Just how hard would it be to outsmart him and get away from him once they were out of the jail? She wasn’t about to stay in this cell with him any longer than she had to. She had a job to do. And she was going to recover a piece of the Book of Legend for Rathe one way or another.

She lifted her chin and looked down at her fingernails, dirty around the rims since the bank explosion. “And if you get me out, then what do I owe you?” She wasn’t stupid enough to believe he’d do this out of the goodness of his Hunter heart—if he even had one. She glanced up.

His firmly sculpted lips tilted into a calculating half smile that made her shiver. It reminded her of Rathe. Dead certain you were gonna do whatever it was he wanted because he had you by the shorthairs. “You’ll give me what you retrieved from Diego Mendoza’s box.”

Out of habit her index finger went into her mouth, and she nibbled at her nail. “What if I don’t have it?”

All traces of humor suddenly vanished and his blue gaze turned to ice. Out of sheer will, China forced herself not to squirm under his scrutiny. “Don’t bother lying to me, Miss McGee. I’ve learned to spot lies easily enough in my profession. The deal is simple: your freedom in exchange for whatever you recovered from Mendoza’s deposit box. Agreed?” He held out a hand to her.

For a second China hesitated. The hand-scrawled page from Diego’s safety-deposit box was burning a hole in her shirt pocket right over her heart. What choice did she have? She’d already tried to shift into something small enough to crawl out of her cell, but each time she touched the iron bars either at the door or at her window, she shifted back to her human form. Iron was a pain in the ass to shifters, neutralizing them back to their original form and sapping their other Darkin powers.

She slipped her hand into his to shake on the deal, but the first contact of his warm, dry skin against hers sent a shock of awareness up her arm. Her heart went from a trot to a gallop. China sucked in a startled breath and got hit with the scent of expensive Bay Rum aftershave with its distinct blend of bay leaves and cloves. It reminded her of wood warmed in the sunshine, but spicier. He not only looked nice, he smelled nice. She stopped herself from taking another deep breath.

Remington Jackson was trouble, plain and simple. He’d ruin everything she had planned.

China went to yank her hand back and found his grip suddenly tightened while his other hand placed something cold on her wrist. An iron bracelet! He released her, and for a second she stared at it. She tried prying it off, but it was locked.

China glared at him. “How dare you!”

He didn’t seem the slightest bit ruffled by her anger. “You’re a shifter. Did I really have a choice? You were planning on shifting into God knows what the second we got out of this building and leaving me without honoring our agreement.”

China’s eyes narrowed, even as her fingers fought to pull off the hated manacle. How had he known? “I said I’d go with you,” she gritted between her teeth, wishing like hell she could have transformed into a mountain lion right then and there and bitten his head off.

Remington had the balls to grin at her, which only pissed her off more. “Yes, but you never said how far you’d go with me. My guess is to the front door. The bracelet is just to insure we’re on equal terms until I have Diego’s information, then you can be on your way.”

She muttered some choice curses beneath her breath. Remington Jackson was a snake. A slippery, loathsome snake of a Hunter who was too smart for his own damn good. She didn’t have a damn map. All she had was Diego’s chicken scratches on a patch of paper that Colt claimed were supposed to lead them across the border. On one half was a jumbled series of numbers that made no sense to her and on the other a few scrawled lines that looked like a trail through some mountains. No well drawn roads, no place names. Nothing to help pinpoint where it was or what it meant. She figured Diego didn’t intend for anyone but himself to understand the dang thing. But the bit of the Book of Legend it was connected to was her ticket to redemption in the Darkin realm, and she wasn’t going to let any fool Hunter, Jackson or otherwise, take away that opportunity to regain her standing with Rathe.

“So how are you planning on getting me out of here? They’ve got a price on my head. And you ain’t a judge, and now you’re stuck here in the pokey same as me.”

Remington Jackson’s eyes sparkled with a mix of mischief and determination. “You didn’t think I’d walk in here without an alternative exit plan, did you?” He pulled the right side of his jacket back to reveal not just a holstered revolver and gun belt filled with silvery bullets, but also a couple of glass vials of clear liquid topped with cork stoppers.

China snorted. “It’s gonna take a lot more than that little bit of water if you want to get through those walls. They’re at least two feet thick.”

He gave her an arch look. “It would, if it were water.” He picked up one vial and glanced at her. “But considering it’s nitroglycerin, I’m assuming it’ll be much more effective. Toss that mattress up on its side and hunker down behind it for cover.” She didn’t question, just did as he said.

Remington crouched down behind the mattress with her in the corner of the cell, their backs to the bars. He threw the glass vial as hard as he could at the outer adobe wall, then ducked.

The explosion rocked the jail, sending down a shower of dust and chunks of stone and mortar. Miss McGee coughed, then frowned. “Blowing up the jail? That’s your solution?”

He shrugged. He really didn’t care what she thought of his methods. “It works.” His life wasn’t a black or white proposition. It was more like a smorgasbord. He took what he needed, when he needed it, to get the job done. Being a Hunter, even part-time, meant he didn’t always have the luxury of doing things by the book.

Judging by the narrow-eyed look and pinched mouth on Miss McGee’s pretty face, he’d been right to bring the iron bracelet along as a precaution. Colt said she could change into many things, including a mountain lion, and he had no plans of getting shredded to pieces on the way back to Tombstone.

Remington didn’t waste any time. He hustled Miss McGee out of the jail as quickly as possible, assisting her with his hand as she crossed the rubble, aware that the sheriff and half the town would likely be on their heels at any moment.

They dashed around the outer edge of the jail and waited for everyone to disappear inside. He grabbed hold of her hand. “Let’s go.”

He rushed to his horse, Joe, grabbing on the reins that swung about the horse’s legs. The explosion had spooked the chestnut gelding and he’d pulled free from the hitching post.

China’s mouth dropped open. “How are we gonna get out of here quick on that? Don’t you have a mechanical horse like Colt?”

“No. Hate the damn thing. Now are you coming or not?”

China snapped her mouth closed and nodded. Remington mounted in one smooth, swift motion, then hauled the Darkin up to sit in front of him. Well, really, given the confines of the saddle, she sat more in his lap than in front of him. She was far softer than he’d anticipated. Somehow Miss McGee’s prickly exterior didn’t change how very feminine she felt. “Hold on to the pommel.” She gripped it hard, and he grasped the reins in each hand.

“Is this really necessary?” she growled as he kicked Joe into motion.

“Until I have clear access to Diego Mendoza’s information, absolutely.” That was a half-truth. He could have just taken whatever she’d gotten from the safety-deposit box and left her there, but his gut had told him that wasn’t the safest path. And if there was one thing Remington did, it was always listen to his gut. Besides, everything Colt had him meticulously research indicated a Darkin was needed to access the hiding place of the missing pieces of the Book. No, he didn’t intend on letting Miss McGee out of his sights any time soon.

He wheeled Joe around and sped up the hill, making quick tracks out of Bisbee before anyone figured out what had happened and where they’d gone. A hot breeze, tainted with the ozone of heated metal and the acrid stench of woodsmoke belching from the stack on the Copper Queen smelter at the base of the hill, blew hard as they crested the hills around Bisbee and powdered his coat with a fine layer of grit. But he didn’t stop or slow until Bisbee was completely out of sight.

“I can just give you the page. That’s all there was. No map. Not a decent one anyway. Just a bunch of squiggly lines. No place names. No directions.” With her right hand she reached beneath the edge of her leather jacket and pulled a folded page of yellowed paper from the breast pocket of her faded pale blue chambray shirt. “Here. Take it. Then you can just drop me off at the next town. Deal?”

Remington smiled. She was just as anxious to get away from him as she was to get back at Colt. He could tell by the nervous way she fidgeted. “No deal. How do I know that paper will lead me anywhere?”

She shrugged, the movement causing her back and the curve of her shoulders to rub up against his chest. Remington grit his teeth. He was a Hunter, not a monk, after all. And despite the taint of being Darkin, she was a beautiful creature.

“You don’t. But I don’t have anything else, so it doesn’t matter.”

“Oh, I think you have a bit more than that. You were working with Colt to help find the lost piece of the Book Diego knew about, weren’t you?”

She heaved a sigh. “I don’t know anything.”

“That’s not what Colt said.”

A fine tremor worked its way through her body. Remington wasn’t sure if it was anger or desire. There was an exceedingly fine dividing line between hate and love, and it didn’t take a whole hell of a lot to push some folks from one to the other.

“Colt knows everything I do.”

“Yes, but he’s bent on finding Cadel’s piece of the Book, which my father hid. That means I’m collecting you so you can help him find the piece Diego is rumored to have discovered.”

She twisted in his lap. The leather stretched across her finely curved ass was not nearly enough of a barrier between them. Remington grunted. China gazed up at him. “You’re trying to put the Book of Legend back together, aren’t you?”

They started down the rugged hills surrounding Bisbee, and Remington weighed the options of telling her the truth versus telling her only what he wanted her to know. His gut told him to trust her when every bit of Hunter training told him he was a fool to do so.

“Yes.”

Something changed in her eyes. A flash of silver, like lightning streaking across a stormy, cloud-covered sky. It was a breathtaking sight. “I’ll help you on one condition.”

Remington was tempted to tell her she wasn’t exactly in a position to bargain, but his curiosity got the better of him. In the courts, sometimes what people told you when trying to bargain revealed far more about their intentions than they realized. “And what’s that?”

“If you do find all the pieces, I want to be there when you put it together.”

Remington frowned. “Why?”

“’Cause if what the Darkin legends say is true, it’s gonna be one hell of a show.”

In Remington’s opinion deals were made to be remade. He didn’t see the harm in agreeing to it if it could get the information Colt needed out of her. “Sounds like you have a personal stake in the matter. Is that true, Miss McGee?”

She shifted uneasily. “You’ve got your secrets, Hunter. I’ve got mine. Do we have a deal, or don’t we?”

“Your help in securing whatever Diego’s map leads to in return for being there if and when the Book of Legend is reunited?”

“Yes.”

He paused for a moment, letting her believe he contemplated things. “Deal.”

She relaxed a little, her back curving into his chest as she handed him the paper she had retrieved from Diego’s box and he unceremoniously stuffed it into his pocket.

“Ain’t you even gonna look at it?”

He shook his head. “Not yet. I’ll look at it when I have the time and space to properly analyze it. Maybe you’ve just missed something and I can figure out Diego’s intentions.”

“And maybe you can’t.”

He gave her an enigmatic smile. “Never bet against an educated Hunter, my dear. You won’t win.”

She grumbled, the sound of it vibrating through her body and into him. Remington resisted the urge to laugh at the absurdity of it all. He knew Colt liked women with spirit; he just hadn’t realized his brother liked them hardheaded too.

The horse huffed. As the white hot sun bore down on them from overhead, heat rose up in shimmering waves from the parched earth. Joe was growing tired carrying a double load. Only the large saguaro cacti, their tall, prickly bodies topped with multiple arms reaching toward an endless blue sky, offered meager shade. . .