Blackthorne (The Brotherhood of the Gate Book 1) (27 page)

“I wonder how many women he’s killed since he got loose, Pearl? Do you care?” Pam towered above Pearl. “Or are all of those years piling up making you numb to the man that killed your sister?”

Houston edged closer, his hand in his jacket.

Pam’s harsh question lit a low flame in the other woman’s eyes.

“Of course I want him dead,” snapped Pearl. “I want him to suffer and then burn in Hell. But I didn’t know. I’m sure there was some kind of bullshit reason why it was done, Rhi. Nothing’s black and white or even lavender in this battle. And you’re a naïve little girl if you believe otherwise.”

“I believe that standing idle while a vicious bastard like Manius Blackthorne walks free to roam the world for a few years until it is time for the Brotherhood to put him to good use…that is a black thing, Pearl. I guess I am a naïve little girl. And you’re one of
them
,
’ Rhi accused. She hefted the shot glass in her hand to test its weight. She felt like throwing something at someone and eyed Pearl speculatively. Houston hovered protectively behind the madam.
Like I could do anything to the bitch, Houston.

“I was a woman first,” replied Pearl, one eye on the glass. “I’ll always be a woman first. That’s why they didn’t tell me.”

The glow of happiness from the night before faded from Rhi’s heart faster than a retiree could drop twenty dollars in a dollar slot machine. She grinned wildly at Pearl.

“At least the sex was good.” She threw back another shot and dropped a couple of bills on the bar. “I’m going to go to work now. And then I’m going home and packing. I think I’ll refuse to do any of this and see what happens. Make it one big crapshoot. Key West is nice this time of the year. You guys should be thrilled to see me go…this town might go back to its normal freaky self.”

Pam slowly nodded. “I have always believed that working on one’s tan is a high priority. You can go with me to get Katie in the morning in Colorado Springs. Hightail it outta here from out on the prairie. Nothing’s going to happen without you here to make it happen.”

“You can’t run from fate, ladies. It will come back on you hard if you run from it. If you face it, at least you can prepare,” said Pearl, still sounding calm. But a fine line had appeared between her brows.

“You have a wrinkle, Pearl. You ought to get that thing Botoxed,” said Rhi with a vicious grin.

She stepped up to stand face to face with the other woman, the threat in her stance implicit. “Be careful or you might start looking your age.”

Houston stepped warily between them and spoke into the hostile silence. “You can’t be serious about going to work tonight, Rhi. Let’s get you out of here.”

“I don’t want to drive down that hill in the dark and I don’t want to vary from my routine, Houston. I’d also like to say goodbye to Katie. We’ll go in the morning and then the town will be safe,” Rhi replied as she rose from her stool. “Manius can wait another 120 years for all I care.”

Pearl grabbed her arm when Rhi made as if to leave. “You don’t get it, do you? Your doom
will
find you. According to the oracles of the Brotherhood, you’re the one who will finally destroy one of the gates but it has to be on a certain date and a certain time. And that time is the 10,000-year anniversary of the gate’s existence. The day after tomorrow, the opening day of Winterfest. Or the gate will continue to be like the other twelve gates that exist. They can’t be destroyed every day. When the final battle comes, one less doorway for the bad guys to come through is a thing worth dying for.”

Rhi shook off the gloved hand and headed for the door, all of her friends in tow except for Pearl, who had taken Rhi’s seat at the bar and was nursing a fresh martini the bartender automatically handed her.

“You, Blackthorne, and all of your buddies stay the hell away from me, Pearl,” Rhi said, turning back on her one more time, a note of threat in her voice. “I might decide to see if staking one of you works as well at holding you in place as it did Manius.”

“You know where to find me when that doom of yours finally comes down to kick you in the ass,” replied Pearl, not taking her eyes off of the reality television show playing on a nearby screen.

“Don’t hold your breath.”

Houston looked back apologetically at the madam one last time before passing through the arched entrance.

Outside, the little man escorted Rhi and Pam to the Blazer. “I’ll come into town to drive home behind you, Rhi. Then we’ll head down to Pam’s mom’s place at first light. The faster you’re out of town, if that’s what you truly want to do, the better.”

“Am I doing the right thing Houston?” Rhi asked as Pam dug through her purse to make sure her gun was handy.

He tipped his hat back on his head and squinted up at the darkening sky. “Yes. Since we don’t know now who’s on what side or what is whose agenda…I’ll feel a lot better with you a long way from that gate, sweetheart. But look on the bright side.”

Pam, who was curling her long legs into the passenger side of the Blazer, stopped and grimaced. “There’s a bright side to this?”

“At least Rhi doesn’t have the skull already. That might complicate matters,” Houston stated, turning to trudge through the churned snow toward his own vehicle.

“I agree with that thought,” Pam said as Rhi climbed behind the steering column and then closed and locked the door. “You might have someone come after you as it is but if you have the skull…” Her words trailed off when she noticed the look on her friend’s face. “Oh shit.”

“Of course I’ve already got the skull. I stored it in a nice safe place for myself several decades ago and it slithered back to me. I’ve had it since you came to breakfast the other day and my former self is in here,” Rhi rapped her knuckles on her forehead, “telling me how to set the damn thing loose.”

“Let me get this straight. You are giving yourself instructions from the 1800s?” the other woman asked in exasperation. She wiped a speck of non-existent dust from the barrel of her gun.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay as far away from me as you can?” Rhi’s heart and head ached. She was going to lose everyone in one fell swoop. Blackthorne, found, was lost to her again and she would have to leave her new home and friends, including Ellie Mae.
She can live with Pam or Bobby Wayne. It’ll break both of our hearts but I can’t be on the run with a 110 pound bloodhound. It might be a bit conspicuous.

“Tomorrow you’ll be gone, Rhi. I can stay the course until I see this truck headed across Kansas tomorrow.” The sadness in the woman’s face showed for a moment before she sat up to stare out the windshield. After a moment’s contemplation, Pam began to examine the environs of the Blazer with a panicked glance, in particular the glove compartment and the Rhi’s gym bag in the floorboard.

“No, Pam, I’m not carrying
it
around with me. Do you think I’m nuts?”

“I don’t know. I think I would be two sandwiches short of a picnic at this point if I were in your shoes.” Pam pulled on her seatbelt. “Is it somewhere safe?”

“Safest place I could think of,” she replied, weakly grinning at the thought of her hiding place. She slid the Blazer out of the icy parking lot, almost flattening an aspen tree on the way out onto the road.
He’s gone.

“I’ll miss your cooking and your dog. But I’ll not miss your greenhorn driving skills, Rhi,” quipped Pam as she was slung around the truck. “How many shots of tequila did you knock back in there?”

She didn’t bother to answer.

Further down the road, Rhi’s already frayed nerves broke a few more strands when she spotted pale figures in the twilight darting through the trees with the speed of small sleek predators. They were easily keeping up with the speeding Blazer.
Trust me to dump my knight and then get eaten by the competition immediately afterward.

“It looks like we’ve got admirers this evening, Pam.”

Pam looked over at the darting forms. “Do you think Manius will make any kind of move on you unless he
knows
you have the skull? He’s going to sit up there in his castle, eat goose liver pate’ and sip on something expensive. He’s waiting for you to bring the thing out of wherever you stuck it a hundred years ago. Can’t you put it back where you found it and then forget about it?”

“I don’t think I can, Pam. It’d probably come crawling back to me after a while. It’s been calling and I think that if I don’t answer it…the thing might start calling someone else. And someone else might not be as nice as me. Like it or not, I think I’ve become the freaking skull’s guardian. And it’s not even a good looking piece of bric-a-brac.” Another figure slid through the snow off to the left. The fear and heartbreak Rhi was feeling gelled into anger. She squelched the compulsion to go four wheeling through the snow and squish the lot of them underneath her snow tires. It might get the truck dirty. Surely no engineer in the Chevy factory had planned for the damage demon blood would do to the truck’s paint.

“Good enough for me. Not to sound mean and it’s not that I won’t miss you, but take the thing as far away as you can, okay?” Suddenly, Pam let out a squeal. “Ooo. There’s one in the road. Hit it, Rhi. Hit it.”

A leering figure had erupted from the earth in the center of the road. A figure from a hundred legends, it rose into the air, naked and winged with ten-inch long horns on its bare head. The horns dripped nasty looking goo onto the ground where it sizzled in the snow and mud, allowing steam to escape into the air. The thing waggled a two-foot long forked tongue through dirty razor-sharp teeth at the oncoming vehicle. Rhi hit the gas and wondered if Turtle Wax was all it was advertised it to be. Whump. The demon hit the grille, probably cracking the metal. Blue sparks spurted from the truck itself as the entire body of the vehicle glowed with electric blue light.

“Gosh, do you think some well-meaning member of the Brotherhood has put a hoodoo on my truck?” Rhi asked. She was starting to enjoy herself.

“Duh. You think they did it to my rattletrap? Let’s plow through those things,” Pam replied, her devil-may-care persona returned to the fore. “Look back at that one. You lit up its world.”

The demon they had plowed over rose into the air to flutter haphazardly in their wake, looking a little ragged. In the rearview mirror Rhi could see that one wing was not working properly because pieces were missing. A little trail of smoke issued from its body.

“Come on. Do we at least have the time to back up over it?” Pam inquired sweetly as she spread crimson lipstick onto her wide mouth.

“Nope, we’ll get written up at work for being late if we wait any longer. Maybe we can run through here on the way home.”
I’ll worry later about whether I’m getting bloodthirsty or not
, Rhi thought to herself.
I’ll worry about a lot of things later. One less demon to worry about. Shit
. “Did we check in the storage area before we jumped in the truck?”

Pam wiggled her eyebrows. “Nope. Check the storage area behind the backseat where darkness lingers and urban legends are told of axe wielding killers hiding and waiting for the right moment to jump out? Like on this nice deserted stretch of gravel road in the Rockies…” her tone faltered for a moment and both women stared at each other in panic. Rhi slammed on the breaks as Pam hurtled over the seat with her gun in hand. Nothing crouched behind the backseat of the Blazer.

“I don’t feel silly at all right now.” Rhi announced loudly as she slipped the truck into gear and headed back toward town, away from the eyes that had instantly appeared in the woods when they had slid to a stop.

“Me either.” Pam crept back in her seat and fastened the seat belt, laying her gun in her lap. “Paranoid and proud, girlfriend.”

»»•««

Houston pulled up to the third A-frame on the hill above Horse Thief Gulch. A neat barbed wire fence surrounded the snow-filled yard. In the exact center, on a direct line with the front door, a thirty-foot tall flagpole stood proudly, decorated with the Stars and Stripes.

“I would have figured this guy for a Union Jack, not Old Glory,” he remarked to himself as he climbed out of the pickup. The gray shadows of the night were padding into the woods but the darkness didn’t touch the yard of the survivalist, Bobby Wayne Bedford. Floodlights blazed everywhere, powered by a huge generator located under the shed roof and padlocked into an iron cage. The yard was as bright as a summer noon and the snow looked as if someone had smoothed it down. God alone knew what Pam’s eccentric tenant had wired the yard with.

“It’s the wrong day for it. I fly the Confederate colors every other day,” a hoarse voice whispered behind him, making Houston come the closest he had ever come to having a panic attack. Bobby Wayne Bedford had appeared out of some conveniently placed bushes near the fence to stand behind him, a shotgun to his neck. Carefully, Houston raised his hands and turned to face the other man, who kept his shotgun trained on Houston’s face.

Bobby Wayne looked back at him through haggard, bloodshot eyes ringed with black.

Like a man who has been out on patrol for days. Maybe he
has
been out on patrol. Maybe he has seen what I’ve seen. That would explain the gun in my face.
Houston would have to handle this carefully or the survivalist might crumble like an old saltine.

“I’m feeling a little wary today, neighbor, so why don’t you hold your hands out where I can see them after you get rid of that gun under your jacket?” Bobby Wayne waved the barrel of his weapon toward the snow bank. “Toss it over there.”

“Now, Bobby Wayne, that’ll get my gun wet,” he replied in an exasperated tone. “And if those things in the woods come at us right now, I would think you would want me to have my gun.”

An expression of surprise flashed across the other man’s face and he slowly lowered his weapon. “There aren’t any of those critters in the woods up here, Houston. They don’t like this mountain for some reason. It might be that dog, Ellie hates them and I think they hate her. I can see we need to talk. How about some coffee?”

As if he had never put a gun to Houston’s head, Bobby Wayne made a friendly motion toward his home where a distinct, mournful howl arose from inside.