Betrayals (Cainsville Book 4) (26 page)

“Bogarts have no ability to invoke curses.”

“Fine, if I catch you doing it again, I’ll be very unhappy. And you don’t want to make me unhappy.” She shook her head. “You’re no better than children, either of you. Sneaking about, playing detective, solving murders, jumping off bridges. You do realize it’s entirely the wrong time of year for swimming, I hope.”

“Our mistake,” I said.

“Go on and open the door, then,” she said. “Just this once.”

I looked to be sure she was serious. Then I reached out and turned the handle. It opened. I pushed and—

The door opened into an apartment filled with dust motes.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said as I stepped inside and looked around. “Were you expecting something else?”

I glowered at her. She only said, “When you agree to hear the elders out, all the doors of Cainsville will be open to you, Miss Olivia. Including the ones you’d rather stayed shut.” She snatched the scone bag from my hand and thumped toward the front door. “Close that when you’re done. You wouldn’t want to catch a chill.”

The elders agreed to the terms Gabriel had suggested. One week maximum, during which the lamiae would stay with Veronica
and a few others. They would be introduced in town as exchange students from Greece.

We were driving back to Chicago to get the girls when Ricky texted.

Still on for a hunt tonight?

“Shit,” I whispered.

“Ricky?”

“Mmm, yeah. We—”

“You’re supposed to go looking for that hound again to see if it can lead you to our rogue Huntsman.”

“Which we’ll have to postpone.”

“Absolutely not. It is connected to the case, and the case is our priority. You will meet with Ricky and find the hound. I will escort the lamiae to Cainsville. Melanie said only four of them are ready to go tonight.”

I shook my head. “You go with Ricky. Avoid the king-adoration.”

“That is primarily Pepper, and given her condition, I can hardly fault her for that. As for the others, I would appreciate it if you might take them aside and advise them that we have names and any other designation is … not complimentary.”

I looked over at him and thought of Gwynn. Of the boy with the rabbit, and the boy in the swimming hole, and the young man in the cave. A good boy. A good man. One who’d made a critical mistake.

I remembered the little girl telling me I judged them too harshly, that they—all three of them—were young and made youthful mistakes. There was more to them than those terrible mistakes. A lifetime more.

We did judge too harshly. I had to figure out how to tell Gabriel that, if he would listen. To tell him that my memories of
Gwynn—like Gwynn himself—were golden and bright, all up until the end, and even then, in his grief, he redeemed himself.

“I’ll speak to the lamiae,” I said.

Tonight we hunted a hound. Yes, the fact it had been at the drop-in center when Erin was murdered suggested a link between its “owner” and the lamiae killings. Yet a stronger reason drove Ricky onto the streets that night.

Someone had broken his hound. Someone would pay for that.

As for how Ricky would find a semi-spectral hound in a city of three million people … Well, that might take a bit of magic. Our hope was that the hound retained enough of its severed psychic bond that Ricky could find it again. Not so much magic, then, as faith.

As we rode, Ricky left his helmet off, which is perfectly legal in Illinois—he just wears one because he’s more interested in protecting that brain of his than in looking the part of the badass biker. He did, however, ask me to leave mine on.

Ricky rolled up and down the streets of the neighborhoods where the lamiae lived and hunted. He wore his Saints jacket, which meant we got our share of shouts and taunts from the local wildlife. Ricky ignored them until we’d been out for two hours without a trace of the hound, and a car veered into our path and forced us to stop.

“Hey, cracker,” a guy shouted from the passenger window. “You lost?”

“Yeah, Hardly Davidson,” another called from the backseat. “Redneck country is thataway. You come down here, we might decide that’s a mighty fine bike you’re riding. And a mighty fine bitch on the back of it.”

The guys in the car laughed. Ricky just idled there, the
put-a-put-a-put
of the bike engine filling the night. The laughter trailed off into awkward silence.

“Hey,” one yelled. “You hear us, blondie?”

Ricky said nothing.

“You deaf? Or just dumb?”

“He’s definitely dumb,” one said. “Dumbass cracker. You waiting for your posse, cracker? We’ll hear them long before they show up. Which means we can kick your ass long before they show up.”

Ricky turned to me. I lifted my visor. His eyes glittered with frustration over not finding the hound. He wasn’t spoiling for a fight. That
is
another side of Arawn, but there was none of that tonight—just a glimmer that said he wanted to work off his frustration.

“Go ahead,” I mouthed.

He put his hand on my knee, telling me to hang on tight. I leaned into his back and wrapped my arms around him. Feet planted, he began wheeling the bike backward.

“You running away, boy?” one called.

Ricky just kept backing up the bike. Two guys leaned out the window.

“You think you can reverse all the way outta our neighborhood? Is that some dumbass cracker code about not turning your back? If you keep going, we’ll—”

Ricky stopped the bike. He laid one hand on my leg and tapped it with his fingers, counting down. Three, two …

The bike shot forward. The guys yelled something. One leapt out of the car, as if we were going to ram it. Ricky leaned down nearly flat against the bike, with me holding on for dear life, feeling the rush of the wind, the delicious, incredible rush, my eyes squeezed shut and then—

And then Ricky sat up, fast enough that I was glad I was holding him tight. The front end of the bike popped right onto the trunk of that big old Cadillac, and then we were airborne, shooting over the car. And I laughed. I couldn’t help it. It was terrifying and exhilarating and absolutely mad, and I hugged Ricky tight and I laughed.

The bike landed with a jolt. Ricky hit the throttle and we were gone, zooming along the empty streets at impossible speeds, and it was like I was back in that vision, behind Arawn on the horse, holding tight and laughing with sheer joy.

He veered down a dark side street about a mile away and then turned into an even darker alley. His hand went to my leg, squeezing it, his fingers trembling as he turned back and mouthed, “You okay?”

I grinned at him. Just grinned and then tugged off my helmet, hopped off the bike, grabbed him by the shirtfront, and pulled him into a kiss. And God, that was a kiss, his frustration over the failed hunt for the hound mingling with the thrill of the jump and the triumph of his fuck-you escape.

A breathtaking, mind-blowing kiss, and when it ended, I was sitting in front of him on the bike, no idea how I even got there. I kept kissing him, hands in his hair, straddling him as I leaned back onto the bike. I slid my fingers to his crotch, rock-hard, and murmured, “Yes?”

“Fuck, yes,” he said, his breath ragged.

I managed to get out of my jeans more easily than I’d have thought possible on a bike. Then he bent to kiss me again and that kiss, that kiss …

It was like being in the forest after the hunt, the smell of loam and pine needles, the smell of night and sweat and the hunt, those times when I’d swear I heard the hounds and the horses as
he kissed me, as he pushed into me, hungry from the chase. This time, though? This time I wasn’t lying on the ground, and when I closed my eyes I didn’t feel the thrum of the idling bike under me. I felt as if I was still on the horse in that vision, except it wasn’t Arawn with me—it was Ricky, stretched out over me, pushing into me, and God, oh God …

Fuck, yes, indeed.

I said that aloud, when we finished, and Ricky gave a ragged laugh, burying his face against my neck, saying, “Yeah …” He straightened, and then turned off the bike with another chuckle, saying, “Guess I should shut that off next time.”

“Mmm, definitely not.”

I reached up and pulled him down into a kiss, and we stayed there, locked together, until I realized it might not be the most comfortable position for him.

“Sorry,” I murmured. “Probably getting a little tired of holding up the bike, huh?”

“What bike?” he said, and kissed me again as I laughed.

A couple of minutes later, we were off the bike and on the blanket from his saddlebags, lying half naked in a grungy alley.

“If you close your eyes,” he said, “you can imagine that faint eau de garbage is actually a nearby swamp. I
did
catch a whiff of something decomposing. Just need a big pile of deer shit nearby and we’d be right at home.”

“You say the sweetest things.” I craned my neck and looked up at the sky. “I think that’s a star up there. Or is it a plane?”

“A star. Blinking and moving fast. They do that in the city.”

He pulled me against him, and I snuggled in, the heat of his body perfect against the chill night air. I closed my eyes, and when he kissed me I could smell the forest, see it, feel it and hear it all around me, and then I was there, not just imagining it but
lying in a forest glen. I could feel the warmth of him still on my skin, but he was gone. I didn’t jump up. I just stretched out on my stomach, toes brushing the grass.

A whine floated over on the breeze. I lifted my head and squinted. Another whine came. Then a sigh. A deep, shuddering canine sigh.

The hound.

I rose and hurried to the edge of the clearing. I could hear the hound, sighing and shuffling, as if moving about. I jogged toward the sound and spotted it near a cabin. The hound guarded the door, and while I could see no sign that it was bound in any way, it
felt
bound, as it looked into the forest as if longing to run. It was a perfect fall night and yet the hound couldn’t enjoy it, and I felt the grief and the frustration and the sadness of that as it paced and then, with a sigh, lay down in front of the cabin door.

When I started forward, the hound lifted its head and peered into the darkness. Its red-brown eyes glimmered as it searched, as if sensing me but seeing nothing. Then it stood and whined and tried to come to me but stopped short and gave a growl, ears pricked forward, seeing me and …

No, not seeing
me.
Not sensing
me.

“Forest,” Ricky whispered, and I was back in the alley, Ricky pulling from the kiss, saying, “The hound is in the forest. Guarding a cabin. You …” He grinned and pulled me into a tight hug. “You found it. Thank you.”

“Um, you … saw … what I was …?”

He grinned again as he rose. “Forest. Cabin. Hound. That
is
what you were seeing, right?”

“Yes, but how …?”

“No idea. Hound radar plus omen vision, I guess. We should have skipped the riding around and gone straight to bike sex.”

“I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the bike sex that did it.”

“Of course it was. Anytime we need to figure something out, we’ll start with bike sex. If that doesn’t work, we’ll keep trying until it does.”

I laughed as I pulled on my jeans. “As for a location, though, all I got was forest.”

“I know where to go.”

W
e
were about a half hour south of the city, long off the highway, on roads I’d never seen before until, finally, Ricky brought the bike to a stop at the side. I could see forest across a moonlit field. He tilted his head, considering, and then squeezed my thigh, telling me to hang on, before he turned the bike into the field, rolling slowly over the rough ground. When we reached the edge of the forest, he idled there and I tugged off my helmet. I could feel tension strumming from him as he looked into the woods.

“Wrong place?” I said.

“No, just wrong.”

As I leaned against his back and looked into the woods, I felt what he must. Uneasy. Unwelcome. This wasn’t like other forests—no sense of invitation, of adventure, of voices whispering in the dark for us to come play. I looked at this stretch of woods and I felt that ancient sense of the forest as alien territory. Dangerous territory. The dark unknown.

As I shivered, I tumbled into a vision. A cabin. Not the one from my hound vision. This was a home in the forest, the door bolted shut, the shutters battened tight. I was inside, fumbling
with a lantern, desperate to ignite it as a girl’s voice whispered, “Something’s out there,” and I could feel that, beyond those closed shutters. Something out there, something in the night. That primal fear of what the dark brought, what the forest brought, when the sun dropped.

I snapped back to reality with a shudder, still feeling the terror of our ancestors, shut in for the night, praying for morning, knowing that beyond their door lurked danger, that unshakable fear that would, even today, make children beg their parents to check under the bed, look in the closet, please don’t turn out all the lights.

I rubbed my arms, reminding myself that I had a gun and a switchblade, and I was no peasant cowering in the dark. I knew what was out there. I’d faced it. Overcome it. And yet … well, logic and confidence only gets you so far against those primal whispers.

A dog started crying. Not the hound. Just a dog.

Ricky murmured, “Bad omen?”

“Yep. Better late than never.” I was twisting to look around when I spotted a raven gliding silently across the moonlit field. It swooped toward us, as if to fly into the woods. Then it veered sharply and instead came to rest in a dead tree twenty paces from the forest’s edge. It hunkered down, feathers ruffling, head pulled between its shoulders.

“Uh, yeah …” I said. “Let’s see … Overwhelming sense of foreboding. Omen of impending danger. Freaked-out Cŵn Annwn raven. Do you get the feeling—?”

“That this is definitely the place?”

“I was thinking more along the lines that the universe is sticking a big Do Not Enter sign outside that forest.”

“That, too.”

“So …” I waved at the forest. “Shall we?”