Blackthorne (The Brotherhood of the Gate Book 1) (31 page)

Behind Houston yet another hulking demon arose from the depths of the barn, a twin for the monster on the front porch. The new demon headed straight for Houston, who rose grimly to take a defensive stance in front of Pearl, his hunting rifle up. He fired at the being’s massive red chest, one shot after another.

She couldn’t see her dog.

“Shit.”

After stuffing the pistol into the waist of her jeans, Rhi grabbed the sheathed sword. She floored the gas and steered the Blazer straight at the front porch of the house.

“One, two, three…” She threw open the door and hit the ground hard, rolling, feeling her clothes and flesh tear as the inertia dragged her over the ground. Her head hit the ground hard and she fought for consciousness. She focused on the twenty-foot high flames that shot up where the Blazer and the demon had exploded on impact.

Solid hands grabbed her and Pam jerked her to her feet.

“Do something, Rhi, please do something,” she sobbed. The other woman was covered with gore, a machete in one hand. Her body and face were marked with the all-too-familiar bites and scratches of Rhi’s nightmares.

Wincing, Rhi pulled in her strength and reached deep and hard for her power. The power to stop the monster in the air that held her friend’s daughter in its claws, a power that had slept in her body quietly for her entire life.

Above, Blackthorne desperately darted in and out at the creature. The blue flames of his sword flared, igniting a lost memory, and Rhi gasped as the power began to flow. Sheets of electric blue flame shot from her hands toward the dragon. Even as she felt it surge, she knew it was not enough.

The black dragon shrieked in pain, writhing in the air. Its vicious looking tail swung about, cutting into the man who hurtled in the air beside it. The blue nimbus that shielded Blackthorne’s body faded, time enough for the beast to hurl another glob of fire at the unprotected body of the knight. The liquid brimstone sizzled as it made contact and Blackthorne plummeted to the earth. The dragon made a graceful, gliding turn toward the mountains. The passing creature had speed of a jet.

“Catch him, catch him, catch him,” Rhi muttered and reached out one hand. Blackthorne’s descent stopped and she gently lowered his burned and broken body to the ground with her mind. She dropped to her knees when Pam released her.

The other woman stumbled away toward Bobby Wayne’s pickup truck where her mother struggled to get her wounded husband out of the cab. Pam’s mother, an older version of the skinny farm girl, helped the colonel lean against the side of the truck. After carefully checking him over one more time, she collapsed beside him, sobbing hysterically.

Pearl, who had regained consciousness, sat in the mud with Houston’s head in her lap. The bedraggled madam wept sooty tears as she smoothed his thinning gold hair. The look on her face told Rhi all she needed to know. The second massive demon lord was nowhere to be seen.

Ellie Mae materialized out of the rolling clouds of smoke to limp beside Rhi as she strode toward where Blackthorne lay sprawled in the mud. Behind her, she could hear Bobby Wayne telling Pam’s mother to stay near the truck with her husband while he secured the area. He jumped out of the truck and marched past her without a glance, his M-16 at alert, searching for straggling demons.

“They’re gone, Bobby Wayne,” she whispered. “They got what they came for.” She kneeled for a few moments beside her husband from another life, not daring to look to see if he was breathing.

A moan from the knight caught her attention. Hope flared and she hurriedly opened her eyes. The monstrous burns on his torso made her want to retch.

Pam returned to crouch beside her and examine his wounds. “Houston’s dead.” Businesslike, she ran her thin hands over Blackthorne’s body, checking for broken bones and being careful not to touch the gaping burns. “And so’s my cousin, Greg, and the housekeeper Rosa. My parents made it to the barn when that thing hit. Dad was able to get his guns out of the rack in the back of his truck. It’s the only reason they’re alive. But we didn’t make a dent in the demons. The bastards disappeared into the ground as soon as that monster flew away with Katie.” The single mother’s voice didn’t break when saying her daughter’s name. She was strong, sure, and deadly. “What do we do next, Rhi?”

Another moan escaped the unconscious man as the jagged cuts across one of his thighs began to knit together before their eyes. Hurriedly, Rhi ripped the heavy fabric off his fatigues to keep the cloth from being healed into the new scar.

“We carry our wounded and dead out of here and get ready for war, Pam. He won’t hurt Katie…he needs her. We are going to get her back,” replied Rhi. “We can’t call anyone for help and we can’t let anyone know what happened here other than a bad fire, Pam. Houston would understand.”

“The ‘balance’/end-of-the-world factor you mentioned?”

“Yeah, something like that. Take care of it, okay? Get Pearl to help you. I might be incapacitated for a few hours,” she replied. She sat beside Blackthorne, cross-legged, and took his head into her lap. Absently, Rhi ran her fingers through the softness of his hair as his hideous wounds from the dragon fire healed before their eyes. “Empty out Cripple Creek, except for whoever is willing and open minded enough to fight what might come, Pam. You have to do these things. I won’t be able to.”

Pam’s face cleared as her comprehension dawned. Rhi breathed a small sigh of relief. She needed her friend to function right now.

Manius Blackthorne took Katie to force Rhi to give him the skull. Unfortunately for the fallen knight, she was going to give the damned thing to him. But to give it back, she would have to become a Changeling and the Raven part of her soul knew what it would cost her.

Rhi hesitated for a second to say goodbye to her humanity, to having children of her own, to living a normal life with a normal man and dying in her own time and not one in a far distant era. Would she go to Hell for this?

Screw it, I seem to be headed there already.

The vein in Jack Blackthorne’s throat pulsed under her touch. His face was unexpectedly boyish in the dim light of the smoke and cloud ridden morning. She looked at her friend, yanked the Bible from the pocket of her jacket and handed it to Pam. “Keep an eye on this thing for me. I’m going need a bit more juice to pull this off and I might not be able to watch it as closely as I would like.”

The other woman nodded grimly. She tucked the book inside what was left of her own jacket and buttoned it up. Bobby Wayne suddenly reappeared to take up a guard position between Pearl and the couple beside the battered pickup. Rhi bent over her lover’s neck and, ignoring Pearl’s sudden call of alarm, bit deeply.

“
What is she doing
?”

She could hear Bobby Wayne’s shout fading and then she heard nothing but her lover’s pulse in her ears. It was a strong beat that seemed to shake the ground below them. She drank. And drank. The blood was hotter than lava and colder than the depths of the Arctic. She gagged but forced herself to continue to drink, choking down as much as her stomach could hold. Then her eyes saw nothing but darkness.

If taking the “gift” from Blackthorne didn’t kill her, they might all live long enough to make it to the weekend.

»»•««

Katie had tired of screaming. Then, jaded from watching too much television, she had gotten bored with the ride in the dragon’s claws. When the roof of the farmhouse had been ripped off above her head earlier, the little girl had been alternating between playing and watching television in her upstairs bedroom. She had been snatched out of her Disney Princess bed sheets before she could open her mouth or grab her stuffed pink elephant to cling to for comfort.

The sight of the shrieking housekeeper’s fiery fate had been concealed by the confining grip of the dragon. Katie had also missed the sacking of the ranch and the death of her cousin, Greg, a sheriff’s deputy from Eagle County visiting his grandparents. He had died in a storm of flames while covering the escape of Colonel Douglas and his wife from the house. The wounded colonel had been busy dragging his screaming wife behind him as she tried to break free to chase after her granddaughter.

Calm, Katie now amused herself by watching the swirling shapes formed by the morning clouds. The dragon easily flew above the concealing mists, up into the mountains from the smoking plain. As her captor descended, Katie could see the giant stone house her mother had always called “The Castle” waiting for them.

As light as a snowflake, the dragon touched down in the courtyard of the great stone house and carefully deposited his tiny prisoner onto her feet on the flagstones. It then took to the air again as a thin and sour looking man emerged from one of the ten-foot-tall front doors of the house and sidled toward Katie. His walk resembled the path of one of the snakes her mother had pointed out to her periodically on their hikes through the woods.

“Bye, bye.” Katie turned and waved at the dragon as it swooped in the air and disappeared behind the crest of the nearest mountain. “Stinky old dragon.”

Away from the heat of the beast that had carried her into the mountains, Katie could suddenly feel the chill of the day. She examined the pearl buttons of her sweater, trying to figure out how to fasten them. Giving up on the buttons, she examined her surroundings as she waited for the strange man to reach her. She wiped at her pink corduroys and sweater, vainly attempting to get some of the ashes off her clothes.

“Where’s my mommy?” she demanded, turning her face up to him as he reached her.

“She is on her way, young lady, you can count on that,” the man replied with a wry smile. “Now, let’s get you some clean clothes and a little breakfast, shall we?”

“But I already had breakfast,” the child objected immediately. She then leaned toward him and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “And then I rode on a
dragon.”

“I know,” he whispered back. “And dragon riding takes a lot out of little girls, I’m sure. We’ll get you some more breakfast. Then we’ll go see
your
room. I made up a special room for you to wait for your mommy in. There are toys and a TV and books. But you have to be
very
quiet, okay? The master needs his sleep and he will be a bit cranky if we wake him.”

She considered that for a moment.

“Like my mommy after working a lot?”

“Exactly. My name is Troy.”

She held her arms up to the man as he reached out for her. “I’m Katie.”

∙
•
∙

Troy thoughtfully looked down at the handful of pink and gold in his arms as he walked into the house. The child’s velvet blue eyes got as big as dinner plates at the sight of one of the smaller demons sitting on a sideboard in the hall across from the dining salon.

“Is that a monster, Mr. Troy?” She asked the question in a tiny voice, showing him the first sign of discomfort. Trust Pam Douglas to have a kid with the constitution of a Navy Seal.

Troy considered his answer carefully. He had to keep the child secluded from Manius, who was likely to become irritated at the slightest sound from the girl and feed on her to shut her up. And Katie Douglas was not only Manius’ hostage to lure Rhi Brennan to the Gate. The girl was also Troy’s insurance in case things went badly for his master. It was not likely the other Blackthorne brother would forgive him for his previous bad acts unless the little girl was unspoiled and traumatized as little as he could manage under the circumstances.

“Yes, that is a monster, Katie, and there are a bunch of them in this house,” he replied. “You can never leave your room unless you are with me or they will eat you up.”

Fear crept into the child’s face and she clung to him as he carried her through the halls. Horrid little faces peeped out at them from behind furniture and curtains. Scurrying sounds could be heard behind them, claws scrambling across the polished stone floors. Katie buried her face in his sweater.

“But they can’t come in your room, okay?” he said as he maneuvered to open the door to the room he had prepared for Pam Douglas’s daughter. They were greeted by the sight of an elegant, turn of the century bedroom decorated in several shades of yellow and gold. A fire burned in the grate, cutting the chill of the courtyard, and the television already blared in an opened armoire in the corner. Stuffed animals and books were scattered throughout the room and a monstrous pile of little girl’s clothing lay on the bed. A silver tray, loaded with pastries and fruit, sat on the ottoman. Troy hesitated for a moment. He hadn’t brought up the tray. He carefully deposited the child on the ground, where she stood as near to his leg as she could get. The little girl examined the room’s contents warily, looking for more monsters.

“Enough food for a week and enough clothes for a year, not two days, but then again, he is nothing if not a shop-a-holic,” Troy muttered.

A figure rose from the wingback that faced the television. “Of course I’m a shop-a-holic, my dear boy. Now…” Manius crouched down to be eye-to-eye with his new guest. He was dressed in a velvet smoking jacket and silk pajamas embroidered with tiny gold bees on a black background. “Hello, Katie.”

Still wary, the little girl eyed him thoughtfully. “Hi. Do you know when my mommy is coming? She sent a dragon to tum get me, you know.”

“A dragon, you say? How marvelous.” Manius smiled back at her cannily. Troy struggled to conceal a shudder. “Your mommy has been delayed but I am sure we will see her tomorrow night, darling. Until then we will have to amuse ourselves as best we can.” He picked up the little girl and brought her over his chair in front of the television. “Do you like the Home Shopping Network?”

“No. Do you have Nickelodeon?” Katie hopped out of his arms to examine the tray of goodies. “I need some milk. I’m not allowed to drink sodas.” She pointed at the offending cans on the tray.

Troy braced himself. He was not sure he could watch Manius feed on the little girl and maintain his sanity.

Manius raised an eyebrow. “You heard her, Troy. Get her some milk.” He sat back down and picked up the remote with a sigh. “Nickelodeon it is.”