Blackthorne (The Brotherhood of the Gate Book 1) (15 page)

“Enough.”

Blackthorne and his brother fell to the floor with a crash and promptly started to untangle themselves from each other. The hatred in each of the men’s eyes was evident. The rest of the room was frozen in time at the word of the woman standing in the doorway, whose eyes glowed a lovely and unearthly shade of blue. Her smile displayed two perfect dimples and yet another set of extra-long and pointy incisors.

The newest arrival gracefully slinked over to the two still struggling men. She extended a slim designer boot to administer a swift kick and separated them. All fires in the room obediently extinguished themselves at the wave of her hand. Houston stood nearby with his improvised club in one hand, not frozen, but still motionless. His mouth hung open and he stared at the auburn haired woman in awe. The recognition in his eyes was obvious.

Pam whispered in Rhi’s ear, “You know, I think I’ve seen that chick before…and where I think I saw her is giving me worse willies than that thing with the hole in its stomach.”

Manius got to his feet first with the help of his assistant and, with a wave of his own hand, not nearly as elegantly as the woman’s movement had been, the small fiends that had appeared through the window vanished. He looked ruefully at the woman standing before him. “They can’t help it, you know. They come when I’m threatened.”

“We both know you’re not going to hurt the girl and you aren’t ready for this, Manius. So why don’t you stop playing games, go home to that tacky mausoleum you’re living in and sleep this off?” she replied, coolly examining her left boot for damage as she spoke. She was wearing all black, as was Blackthorne, but her Versace slacks, cashmere sweater, and knee-length fur jacket oozed feminine sophistication.

Manius smirked at the woman as blood from his pulped nose ran down his chin. He ran his unnaturally long tongue through the blood and slurped, gulping the red liquid he had gathered. His was a smile that should have frozen the newest arrival’s bones with fear but she stood firm, unshaken, a chic blade held before an ugly darkness.

“Maybe I’ll take her and have my brother’s princess on hand when I need her. What do you think of that idea,
Pearl
?”

Behind him, Blackthorne was making his way to his feet, murder in his eye and his brother’s blood marking his hands. Rhi reflexively began to go back over the bar to him but Pam, who was reloading her gun and moving at the same time, blocked her by taking up an aggressive stance in front of her.

Pearl pulled a large gold cross from an inner pocket and waved it at Manius airily, whose eyes began to glow red again at the sight of the religious symbol. She also dropped the long, slender package she had been holding in her other hand on the floor with a loud clang and kicked it over to where Blackthorne crouched. Rhi pushed Pam out of the way long enough to see that the “package” was an actual broadsword, complete with ornate sheath and belt. He retrieved the sword and began to menacingly buckle it on.

“I am
so
taking up the Goth look when this evening is over,” Pam whispered loudly to Rhi, who she still had trapped behind her.

“Ditto,” Rhi replied, wondering where the nearest department store carrying silver crosses was located. “Do you mind moving? I’m too short to see everything.”

“Oops, sorry.” She scooted over a bit and shoved a case of beer over with one foot for Rhi to stand on. Not too proud to be nosy, Rhi jumped up on the box to get a better shot of what was happening.

“Damn you, Manius. This
The Exorcist II
crap is tacky. Although I always liked Richard Burton…he could drink a Viking under the table. By the way your skin looks fabulous. Did you have light in the coffin all of those years, sugar? Could you move? It’s a shame that you didn’t have an itty-bitty reading lamp. Just think…you could have read the classics.” The newcomer rattled on in a stunningly unconcerned fashion to the seething man in front of her.

Rhi raised her eyebrows at Pam and whispered, “Holy water and coffins? And how would she know how much Richard Burton could drink? She looks like she is about our age. He’s been dead for decades.”

For once Pam had no answer but her eyes were a bit wild as she watched the drama unfold from behind the uncertain safety of the bar.

The woman stalked the floor of the restaurant dramatically, conveying to all who watched that this was now her stage. Her graceful hand indicated the sword Blackthorne had fastened around his waist. “…and I don’t know why you didn’t wear that tonight, Blackie…he was kidding about the ‘Highlander’ thing. So start wearing your longer jacket, there’s a good boy.” She spoke in Manius’ direction, who managed to smolder and roll his eyes at the same time. “We won’t allow you to take her and you know it, Manius. We can all confront each other now and invite the National Guard up here to pick up the pieces of this town. And I am, frankly, tired of destroying this place. Or we can wait until there is a chance of getting what we each want. You want your pets freed to destroy your brothers and your precious skull to do that ‘world domination’ thing you are so enamored of and we want to destroy both your gate and the skull this time,” Pearl said, holding out one gloved hand to shake on it. “May the best, ahem,
person
win. And quit screwing with the girl…I mean it.”

Manius took the offered hand and bent slowly to kiss it, being careful to maintain his distance from the cross in her other hand. The owner of the hand raised an eyebrow and managed to look mildly annoyed, as if he offered her an impertinence at a cocktail party instead of emerging as a threat to the world.

“Oh, I don’t want the world. I only want the Brotherhood and Blackthorne on their knees, plus a good chunk of the globe to amuse myself with. I definitely want Manhattan, LA, and Western Europe. I would rather not have the Arabian Peninsula, Israel, most of Russia, Mississippi or Utah. Too much work and body odor,” her opponent replied with a flourish of one hand, taking a handkerchief from his assistant and pressing it to his bloody face.

The woman vampire looked affronted. “Why don’t you want Mississippi? There are some great restaurants in Biloxi, you know.”

“I’ll endeavor to sample them as soon as I am done here, Pearl. Things are a bit busy at the moment,” Manius replied and bowed to her extravagantly. “Until we meet again, lady.”

He turned to leave the devastated bar, all of the patrons still frozen in time. He paused in the doorway to examine them all. “
Pearl
, you still look delicious, you know. Maybe after the war, we can finish
our
little bit of business. I do so like the women of your family.”

A spasm of fury and hatred rippled across the woman’s face, extinguished immediately. The only sign of her discomfort was a slight wrinkling of distaste on her pert nose. “That was
business
and I didn’t know you were a monster back in those days. Besides, Manius, honestly…you weren’t that good. It’s called
foreplay
, sugar.”

The well-dressed man looked affronted. And then he was gone. Rhi pushed past Pam’s extended arm to tumble over the bar and arrived at Blackthorne’s side when the room came to life again. He pushed her hand aside and stepped back, his face streaming blood. Sirens began to howl outside on the street and the patrons of the restaurant stood looking around in bewilderment. Pearl grabbed Houston by the arm, who still stared at her in stunned fascination and ran for the back. Blackthorne was on her heels, dragging Rhi, and Pam brought up the rear, waving her gun in the air.

Strangely, no one but Betty, who looked up momentarily from her work to smile and wave, seemed to see the group pass by. Not the biker/alien abductee who struggled to rise from the ground, not the policeman who stood in the alleyway outside of the back door, whom they hurried directly past. Rhi could see Nick Boyd, the sheriff, alighting from his Bronco and trudging through the snowdrift to the restaurant, and heard him mumbling about “those damned alien freaks” and “…had better not be involved in this, damned woman…” under his breath. The rugged sheriff didn’t look up as he walked past. She wanted to call out to him for help. She wanted to scream that people who had glowing eyes were abducting her but she couldn’t make her vocal cords work. There wasn’t time to dwell on this problem because she was then being stuffed into a sleek black Chevy Suburban.

Pam reached for her seatbelt once seated in the SUV but then seemed to think better of it. “I guess this is kind of a moot point now, huh?”

Rhi did not answer, instead concentrating on the man in the passenger seat, who maneuvered the broadsword to avoid banging the door or his legs on the scabbard. She wanted to see how he would manage to draw it if they were attacked on the way to wherever they were being taken. Blackthorne caught her gaze and shook his head as she slowly lowered her hand to try the door handle. His eyes gave off a slight blue spark that brought a shudder to her spine, and she lowered the offending hand. “What were those
things
in there? Where the hell did they come from?” she asked him, shuddering at the thought of the creatures.

“Usually they’re harmless. A piece of spite, a shadow in a dark room, a bit of bad luck that knocks in the night and you explain away as ‘the house settling.’” His face grew grim. “They’re Tommyknockers…gremlins.”

“Tommyknockers?” Rhi and Pam exchanged glances. They had both heard tales of the small demons that had the run of the mines.

“Yes, Tommyknockers. Here in Cripple Creek they’ve always been stronger because of the proximity to their true home, Hell. Now that Manius is back, they’ve been freed. He’s building an army.” His voice was velvety and gruff…she could almost reach out and touch it. Blackthorne turned away again to stare ahead.

Rhi looked out at the night, which now had a thousand hidden eyes in her mind.

Pam leaned over to whisper in her ear, “At least he seems to be in touch with his feminine side. He is the first straight guy I have ever seen jump right into the passenger’s seat while allowing a woman to drive.” She straightened up with a yowl of pain as Houston dug his elbow into her side to shut her up. “Yow.”

“Would you please shut up and not piss the scary people off?” Houston flinched as Pearl glanced into the backseat via the rearview mirror and flashed her eyes to blue for a moment to light up a broad wink.

“
I’m
in the passenger’s seat so I can jump out and kill anything that comes at us out of the dark, not because I allow myself to be talked into going to see movies with subtitles,” Blackthorne noted to the full bench of the backseat. They all cowered like third graders under his glare.

The captives were silent in the back of the truck as it pulled away from the curb and up the street
.

The turn on Bennett revealed the same misty couple in Victorian garb Rhi had spotted before, standing under one of the lampposts. The young woman sadly raised one lace-gloved hand as they drove past. Rhi gasped when she realized the couple had become a bit more transparent than when she had seen them last. The mottled green of the faux-painted lamppost showed clearly through their bodies. Her eyes met Pam’s from across the seat, and Pam shook her head slightly. She was right. Transparent ghosts were no biggie after the creatures in the bar. She tried not to swallow her tongue as she kept the scream trapped in the pit of her stomach. The gaslights of downtown faded away.

The Suburban glided through several more back streets to arrive in front of one of the more ornate and well-preserved Victorian mansions in town. A magnificent three story Vernacular Queen Anne painted in varying pastel shades of lilac towered over the other houses on the street. The yard was well kept, with an ornamental garden and small pines garnished with snow. The wrought iron fence was a bit tall for the typical fences of Cripple Creek. The spear-like points of the bars of the gate looked particularly sharp to Rhi’s eye. She caught a spark here and there on the fence of blue light that matched the color of her captors’ eyes.
Why should that surprise me?

Houston finally worked up the nerve to address the woman who drove the Suburban as they pulled in through a mechanized gate into the oversized carriage house. “You would have
this
house. After all, you were a good friend of the original owner, Charles Tutt. Or did he build it for you in the first place?”

Both Rhi and Pam looked in askance at their friend as the SUV rolled to a stop in the thoroughly modernized garage/carriage house. The woman they knew as Pearl turned in her seat to examine the wiry little ex-pilot.

“Charlie liked to be tied up, after I dressed him in a corset and some rouge. And you are a little too well informed for your own good, Mr. Houston. Maybe
you
need to be tied up…but I would probably let you leave off the dress.”

Houston looked undeterred. He raised one eyebrow at her little speech but otherwise portrayed no shock at the mention of their driver’s sexual habits. “There’s not much that shocks me anymore, ma’am. Seeing and meeting you is worth it, even if you decide to kill me.”

Her violet eyes glowed once again with electric blue light. “
I
don’t randomly kill people, sweetie. I like to pick and choose. I think you already know that, though, or you wouldn’t be bold enough to bring the whole subject up.”

Blackthorne sat in the passenger seat, nursing his bloody knuckles. As they all began to climb out of the vehicle, he caught Rhi’s stare and held it. Her heart hurt every time she looked at his face. The pain in his eyes took something out of her that she could not define.

Pam nudged Houston from behind—hard. “Are you going to let us in on who your girlfriend is? I have a feeling that I don’t want to know but you know my curiosity.”

Houston looked nervous and wiped tiny beads of sweat off his forehead before answering. He glanced at Pearl, who stood waiting for them all in the door to the dogtrot leading to the house.

She waved her hand at him, giving him permission to speak.
Like a queen granting a boon
, Rhi thought. Blackthorne stood behind Rhi, his large hand possessively wrapped around her arm once again. She was sure her skin would melt if he ever made contact with it directly. The heat of his hand through her coat was enough to make her break out in a sweat.
Do his hands smoke against skin like his brother’s? Were the fingerprints on my skin in my dreams those of Manius Blackthorne or those of Jack Blackthorne? Am I foreseeing something terrible or has it already happened?