Immortal Bride. Lisa Childs

months ago, on one night of their honeymoon, she had waited on the shore for him to return from checking in at the casino in Grayson. Wearing only her wedding-night negligee and moonlight, she had planned a special surprise for him. Anticipation had rushed through her as she’d heard the distinctive engine of his custom-made sports car pulling into the drive. But she hadn’t anticipated the attack moments later. She’d had only a momentary flash of foreboding before the blow—not enough warning to react. To save herself and…

      She had been knocked over the head and dumped into the lake. The icy water had shocked her into consciousness, and she had fought hard against the hands holding her beneath the water. His hands. She had clawed and kicked, trying to free herself. But then the water had filled her lungs, and she had lost her strength and consciousness again. She’d sunk deep to the bottom of the lake that legend claimed was bottomless. Because no one had ever reached such depths…and lived.

      And this time, neither would he…

      She cut through the water until she found him. He had changed direction now, kicking toward the surface, unwilling to dive as deep as he had sent her, as he had consigned her for eternity. And she reached out, manacling her fingers around his ankle.

      This was the revenge she had wanted, she reminded herself, as doubts assailed her. This was what he deserved for what he had done to her. An eye for an eye…

      A life for a life…

      But he hadn’t taken just one.

      

      Lungs burning with oxygen deprivation, Damien fought his way toward the surface—toward air. But something caught his foot, wrapping around his ankle and pulling him down. Above him lightning flashed, illuminating the lake and those precious feet that separated him from the surface.

      What the hell had he been thinking to leap into the Lake of Tears after an apparition? She couldn’t be real. God, he was losing his mind. And now maybe his life…

      He kicked with one foot, the other still caught. Something cold, but which paradoxically heated his blood, wound tight around his ankle, trapping him beneath the water. Panic pressed against his chest, adding to the constriction from lack of oxygen. He had to stay calm if he intended to stay alive.

      But hell, what was the point of fighting, of living, when he had nothing for which—for whom—to live?

      But he was a Gray—a Gray Wolf, actually, before his ancestors had dropped their surname. And through history Grays had always been fierce warriors. Damien could not stop fighting because he didn’t know how; it was too much a part of his nature, the very essence of who and what he was.

      Summoning the last of his energy, as unconsciousness threatened, his vision growing black, he turned in the water, diving down to see on what he was caught.

      And he saw her. Pale—almost translucent—fingers wrapped around his ankle, trapping him under the water.

      Why?

      Her face lifted toward his, and their gazes met. Those pale blue eyes, which had once shone with love whenever she’d looked at him, were now hard and cold with hatred.

      “Why?” he mouthed the word at her. And as he did, the last of his air left his lungs and his world went black, swallowing her ghostly image from his sight as the Lake of Tears swallowed his body.

      

      The ancient ghost of an Indian shaman stood on the rocky slope, where he had died centuries ago, before a sorceress’s tears had filled the deep ravineand formed the lake. And he watched and waited, hoping that this time the Gray Wolf warrior would not rise from the depths of the abyss and live….

      Chapter 2

      Head pounding like the beat of an ancient war drum, Damien crept back to consciousness. His skin stung as the icy chill receded, chased away by the warmth of a blazing fire and a scratchy wool blanket. He knocked the blanket aside as he lifted his hand and pushed his shaking fingers through his still-damp hair.

      “It was real,” he murmured, his throat raspy with shock and cold.

      “It was stupid,” a deep voice grumbled as a man kicked shut the door of the small cabin and dropped chunks of wood onto the floor near the mammoth stone fireplace. “What the hell, man? What were you thinking?”

      “Nathan…” Damien recognized the rough-hewn pine boards of the ceiling and the log walls of his cousin’s cabin. The structure in the woods was even older than the house sitting on the rocky edge of the Lake of Tears. “You pulled me out?”

      “Again,” Nathan said.

      He had been there last time—six months ago. He had dragged Damien, kicking and swinging, from the water and convinced him it was pointless to search for Olivia. He hadn’t even known for certain that she’d drowned.

      But Damien had found her robe and her shoes on the rocky shore. And he had guessed where she’d been.

      And tonight, he knew for certain. She hadn’t run off as Nathan had tried to convince him she had.

      She was dead.

      “You were there,” Damien said as he pushed himself up, bracing his elbow on the arm of the couch on which he lay. “Again…”

      “Lucky for you,” Nathan said.

      For a man who made his living gambling, Damien was actually remarkably unfortunate—in love. “Yeah, lucky for me…”

      His cousin turned to him, his dark gaze penetrating. “Were you trying…to kill yourself?”

      “God, no.” But Olivia had tried to kill him. Why? Had she only grown to hate him that much after her death, or had she hated him before? Had her love been a lie?

      “Then what the hell were you doing out there, in the lake,” Nathan demanded to know with anger and concern, “in the middle of a storm?”

      Head still pounding, Damien winced at the volume of his cousin’s voice, and the memory of what had compelled him to risk the storm and the icy water of the Lake of Tears.

      Her…

      Not willing yet to share what—who—he had seen, he asked instead, “What were you doing out in the storm?”

      “My job. I’m the caretaker here,” Nathan reminded him. “Your caretaker.”

      Damien suspected his cousin didn’t refer to the fact that Nathan worked for him but that he was worried about him, about how he’d been living, actually barely living, since Olivia had disappeared nearly six months ago.

      “If you weren’t trying to kill yourself,” Nathan persisted, “what the hell were you doing? You know the lake is bottomless. Some of our ancestors believed it to be the portal to the other world.”

      “Hell,” Damien uttered the word as more than a curse, as a destiny. He should have known better than to think he could ever find happiness. “Hell is where this place always sends me. I never should have brought her here—not after—”

      “She wanted to come. You told me that,” Nathan remembered. The man never forgot anything, nothing from his lifetime or from the lifetimes of the ancestors who had lived before him and Damien. “You said she wanted to spend your honeymoon here in the house on the lake.”

      And like a damn fool Damien had wanted to give her everything she wanted. “I should have told her no.”

      “But it was where you met….”

      

      The first time he’d seen her had been on the rocky shore of the Lake of Tears. For years he had hated coming to the Victorian house on the lake, and he had only visited when absolutely necessary to meet with Nathan. If not for his cousin, he would have sold the estate long ago. But Nathan had convinced him it was Damien’s legacy and that he was honor bound by their people to care for the lake and the property.

      Damien