Siobhan spun on her heel, sidestepping a tourist couple who almost collided with her. “Are you handicapped in some way? I mean, were you dropped on your head several times as a child?”
Shane seemed ready to say something in return, but instead flushed and bit back the reply. She remembered, then, him mentioning a foster mother, and her own mouth snapped shut. People with foster parents didn’t usually come from the most stable upbringings.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“You don’t know anything about me,” he told her, shaking his head. “So don’t pretend you can hurt me, okay, sweetheart? You can’t.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
“Yeah, well, we’ve got a virgin to save. Let’s go be heroes or some shit like that.”
Shane had been sucker-punched. He’d had his nose broken
five
times since becoming a bounty hunter. Once, he’d been stabbed with a fucking
trident
. And only a month earlier he’d taken a bullet meant for someone else. He knew all about pain, and he thought of himself as a tough guy.
One sentence from a pint-sized bundle of sass who was perched mighty tall on her high horse and it felt like he’d been kicked in the stomach.
He’d actually
been
kicked in the stomach several times, making him pretty damned familiar with the feeling.
No, he’d never been dropped on his head as a child like she’d politely suggested. He had, however, received his first lessons in taking a punch like a man before the age of nine. And the Cassiopeia-shaped constellation of scar tissue between his shoulder blades? Well, to say he related to Bender’s cigarette-burn speech in
The Breakfast Club
was putting it mildly.
Shane had been twelve when he was taken away by the Office of Children and Family Services, and even then it hadn’t been the abuse that had drawn the county’s attention to him. Nope. He’d skipped school one too many times, and they wanted to know why his father thought fixing car radiators was a better way for a twelve-year-old to spend his days than learning state capitals.
“Who the hell needs to know what the capital of Alaska is?” his father had sneered. “Boy this useless ain’t never going to go there. He needs a
skill
. If he can do something, maybe he won’t be such a disappointment.”
The black eye Shane had sported from being a
disappointment
the previous evening when he delivered a beer too slowly was what iced the OCFS cake. He was removed from his parents’ home and never saw them again. They didn’t fight to get him back.
A middle-aged manicurist named Wanda Malloy had raised Shane. She was a no-nonsense lady, and it was from Wanda he’d learned to respect the hell out of a tough woman. He was one of three foster kids Wanda took care of at any given time, and while others came and went, Shane remained constant. He acted out, and she punished him. Her bullshit tolerance was so low he learned fast to not bother testing her.
She’d also taught him even a fuckup like him still had something to offer the world.
He finished school, not with any stellar results but at least he’d done it. Wanda was there to watch him get his diploma.
When Wanda was killed by a rogue vampire, Shane’s whole world was shattered.
He never went to college, not that he’d planned to. He got married to a cocktail waitress named Heaven, and ten months later she left him and went to Los Angeles to try her hand at acting. She took their pug with her, and it was the only thing about his marriage he missed.
Alone with his demons, he went to a dark place and never really came back again.
To this day he was still in that dark place.
But one turn of phrase from Siobhan had brought back a wave of unwelcome memories. Things he thought long buried. Like the butter-yellow wallpaper in Wanda’s kitchen or the crocheted slippers she wore in winter. Her wheezy smoker’s laugh and the way she smelled faintly of nail polish remover. Somewhere a family was cultivating tiny memory shards like that. Things that would haunt them for years after a cult of psychotic druids killed their daughter.
“What’s the plan?” he asked, his voice steeled.
Siobhan wasn’t looking at him anymore, and he let her keep a half-step lead. She felt bad, he could tell, but he didn’t have the skill to lessen her guilt.
“I know where the ritual site is. Since they’re not bound by the timeline of my birthday, I think they’ll move fast. If they think there’s a possibility something might interrupt the rite, they’ll want to do it as soon as possible. I was hoping to catch them before they got someone, but the city is too big and…”
“And you guys have that fun, fancy
travel by light circle
thing.”
“Exactly.” They were off the bridge, and he followed her to a parking garage where they took an elevator to the lowest level, an empty and shockingly dark space.
“This place is a rapist’s wet dream,” he said, shaking his head.
“It’s also a handy place to
travel by light circle
,” she countered, repeating his words with no small amount of sarcasm.
She pulled him between two large concrete pillars and stood close. Close enough the heat from her body radiated against him, and he was hard-pressed—so to speak—to not recall the way she had writhed under him the night before. He sucked in a breath.
Siobhan removed the long knife from her boot sheath and didn’t so much as flinch as she cut open her finger. Bright blue light illuminated the parking lot like a second sun. When Siobhan dropped to her knees, her head was precariously close to Shane’s crotch, but she didn’t seem interested in giving him a blowjob right then. Instead she traced a small circle around them, bracing herself against his legs to complete it.
When she stood and sheathed the blade, Shane’s heart was hammering.
“Hold on tight,” she instructed.
He looped both arms around her waist and tugged her against him, making her gasp, but she didn’t try to wriggle free of his hold. “Just doing what the lady tells me.”
“Do you always follow directions so…literally?”
“Tell me to do something else and find out.”
“Shut up.”
“You asked for it.” He dipped his head and kissed her.
Chapter Eleven
The next thing Shane knew he was throwing up on the sidewalk.
“Idiot,” Siobhan said, but she was laughing as she said it. “You’re lucky we didn’t end up trading tongues in the transport.”
“
Hurrruffff
,” Shane replied, seeing his SpaghettiOs dinner for the second time that night.
She gave him a gentle kick in the ribs. As gentle as a kick in the ribs could be, anyway.
“Get up, you great big pussy.”
Shane clambered to his feet, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and leveling her a hard glare. “A warning would have been nice.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. You were too busy sexually assaulting me for me to get around to an in-flight safety demonstration.”
“I’m starting to think your family had the right idea wanting to sacrifice you.”
They stared at each other. She broke first, showing a half smile in spite of her best efforts to remain stony. “Yeah, well. You fucked that up. In a manner of speaking.”
Shane snorted. “Where have you taken us, you crazy woman?” He tried for nasty, but his tone made it sound endearing. He was failing on every level, and this chick was turning him into a big old softhearted mess. This was terrible.
“We’re near the gateway. It’s over there.” She pointed.
To a Bath & Body Works.
“Are you shitting me?” He stared at her, doubting her sanity. Certainly she was playing a trick on him. Some sort of druid hazing ritual. “You’ve
got
to be shitting me.”
“Sir, I shit you not.”
“I think I hate you.”
Siobhan smirked. “It’s not actually the store. The store is just an entry point.” She took his hand and dragged him towards the building.
“Am I going to throw up again?”
“Probably not.”
“You don’t sound too sure.”
“I’m not.”
“That’s comforting,” Shane said with a groan.
“Hey, if you want comfort, get a Snuggie.
Sweetheart
.” She opened the door, and before he could protest she yanked him through.
Instead of being bombarded with the smell of fruit-scented candles and hand sanitizers, Shane walked headlong into a peach-colored fog. His hand tightened on Siobhan’s reflexively, and she squeezed back, passing assurances without words.
The air was warm and glittery, the sparkly haze made him uneasy, but the heat comforted him and cast a drowsy spell over his senses, subduing the edge of worry. The atmosphere itself was lulling him into a false sense of security.
Shane blinked a few times, trying to get his bearings, but as soon as he thought he understood the weird pastel environment, it had vanished. What was on the other side wasn’t soothing at all and gave him no illusions of comfort and safety.
They were on the edge of a circle of elder trees, standing between two of the big trunks and looking into a clearing in the middle where a large stone slab was mounted on two smaller slabs. A group of men in thick black cloaks was struggling with a slender, tall blonde who could have been a Sears catalog model if not for her librarian-style glasses. What was with all the hot virgins? If all the so-called pure girls looked like this virgin sacrifice and Siobhan, Shane would have to reconsider his stance on deflowering them. For the sake of humanity, of course.
“Let me
go
, you freaks.” She wrested one hand free and landed a punch squarely inside the hood of the man nearest her. For such a skinny thing, she had a
lot
of fight in her.
Shane was guessing girls in New York were a lot tougher now than they’d been the last time these guys had tried to sacrifice one. Unfortunately for this spitfire she was outnumbered, and their surprise at her fervor was short-lived. It didn’t matter how tough you were, getting coldcocked over the back of the head with a stone knife hilt was going to knock you out. The girl went limp and was positioned on the large gray slab.
The men set about ripping her clothes off, tossing her jeans and sweater to the ground. Shane couldn’t watch anymore.
“Hey, Red. Got any bright ideas here? Otherwise I’m just going to start shooting them all.”
“You can’t.” Siobhan shook her head, but her gaze was focused raptly on the scene before them.
“I have two guns here saying I can.”
“No, you don’t get it.” She directed his attention to a white ring around the ceremony site. “They’ve already sealed themselves in.” To prove her point she threw a twig at the clearing. The branch bounced off an invisible barrier and came flying back towards them while a wave of energy shimmered in the wake of the assault. “Now imagine what would happen with a bullet.”
Shane whistled.
“So what’s our plan of action here?”
Siobhan looked at him and bit her lower lip. “How much blood are you willing to let me have?”
As far as weird requests went, Siobhan knew this would probably stand out as a memorable one for Shane.
“My…blood?” he asked, his voice quavering. “What are you going to do with my blood?”
“They’re inside an unbreakable circle,” she said.
“And?”
“That circle is directly on top of the gate.”
He looked like he was itching to reach for a weapon. “
And
?” Clearly he was still stuck on the whole
give me your blood
thing.
“If nothing can get in, nothing can get out. Not until the ritual is complete or the circle is broken.”
Shane didn’t bother saying
and
this time.
Siobhan sighed. “They are standing on top of a gateway to a dimension full of monsters. And they. Can’t. Get. Out.”
His eyes widened as he caught up to her thought train. “You’re going to open the gate.”
“Yes.”
“What about the girl?”
Siobhan looked at her replacement who was passed out cold and stripped bare on the altar. “The high council are cowards at the core. They’ll open the circle to save themselves, and if we do this right, we’ll be able to get in and grab her before whatever comes out has a chance to get her first. It’s the only way we’re getting over that line.”
Shane whistled again, a low, impressed sound. “You’ve got bigger balls than I do.”
Pulling her knife out, she tried to lighten the mood. “I think we both know that’s not true.” She held out her empty hand, and he gave her his arm with only the slightest hesitation.
“Try not to kill me,” he warned.
“Try not to die,” she countered before she slit open his arm.
Chapter Twelve
Siobhan was a banisher by nature. Her job was to take whatever got past the gates and send it back from whence it came. But the gateway worked in two directions. Calling them to her was just turning the ritual on its head. The problem was she didn’t have the blood she needed, which was why she had to borrow some.
Shane looked woozy as the blood seeped from his arm and wet the ground beneath their feet. She released his arm, and with her ceremonial knife in hand, she tracked the blood as it flowed towards the white circle her father and his cohorts had laid down in salt.