Blackthorne (The Brotherhood of the Gate Book 1) (18 page)

For the second time that evening, Rhi heard him laugh out loud, which was unexpected coming from his fierce face. The fear she kept pushing back down into the recesses of her heart dissipated a bit.

“Maybe I could glow for you?”

“Yeah, glowing is good. But a macho color…not pink or yellow. You’ll look like a daisy.”

Houston had the grace to look scandalized during this conversation and got up to stand by the fire. He acted no different than he did at the restaurant, his poker face firmly in place…as if crawling bits of horror came through broken windows at him on a daily basis. But he’d lived in these mountains for a while. Maybe he’d seen these bits of nightmare before. “Rhi, I believe you were about to tell us something you’d read earlier today before we had our little fracas?”

Rhi was trying to look as relaxed as Pam was but slumping on the couch kept making her slide closer to
him.
She sat up, tried to maintain her dignity and lose the appearance that she was cuddling with a vampire. “I would’ve thought you would have read
Colorado Treasures,
Houston. You haven’t heard the one about the crystal skull?”

Houston looked disgusted. “Do you know how many of those damned books have been written? If there was that much treasure lost in this state, I couldn’t dig up my flower beds without hitting a conquistador helmet, the jewel encrusted statue of a saint, and a bar of Aztec gold.”

Rhi proceeded to relate the entire tale to her friends, occasionally glancing at Blackthorne to gauge his reactions. The fact that she was telling her friends in detail about a slaughter he had committed single-handedly several hundred years ago didn’t seem to faze the man she suspected was an honest-to-God knight of the Crusades. Pearl quietly entered as Rhi spoke and sat down a tray filled with steaming mugs and comfortingly human-looking sticky buns.

Rhi paused in her storytelling to look over at the mass murderer who sat at ease nearby. She knew exactly who the remorseful knight in the story had been. “You didn’t have to kill them all, you know.”

“Yes, I did. The only one in the whole gang who would keep his word and never tell or return was the priest. And it sounds like
he
even told. The rest of them would never give up that kind of treasure. Or the possibility of the kind of power the Gate held. They would have gone back over and over. The place reeks of power and they would have sooner or later figured out that that power could be harnessed. And they would have tried to use it in a minute. The greed of the Spaniards was unbelievable,” replied Blackthorne as he took a steaming mug from the proffered tray. “Thank you, Pearl.” He sat his big body back farther into the cushion of the couch and loosely crossed his legs. He might have shown some remorse in the priest’s account of the killings at the gate but regret didn’t show on his striking face at the moment.

The human occupants of the room looked at each other. The chances of them getting out of there alive were looking iffy. Hopefully Pearl didn’t have some kind of fetish about feeding her potential victims chocolate and coffee before disemboweling them.

Maybe making us drink this stuff is like a chef infusing meat with extra flavor?
Rhi thought morbidly.

Upon the completion of her tale, she took a deep breath and gave a voice to the thought that took her entire existence and shook it violently. “Is this real? And if it is…I think you and Pearl have some more to add. You must want something from us or we wouldn’t be here. What do I have to do with this?” There was a nasty certainty that she wouldn’t like the answer.

Pearl posed in the light of the fireplace, her hourglass figure perfectly framed by the flames. “Come on Rhi, if you’ve gotten this far with the tale. I think you could guess some of the rest.”

Pam started to look irritated and shifted in her seat but never lost her nonchalant attitude. “I’m not guessing at this anymore, guys. I have a little girl and would like to know if she’ll have a world to wake up to tomorrow. Start talking or let us go home. I have cats to feed and Rhi has a goofy dog to pet.”

“Rhi is the reincarnation of Raven, of course, and lived a life in the gold rush era of Colorado. She was a tuberculosis patient and a witch who lived with her mother in Manitou Springs down Ute Pass. Manitou was a mecca for TB patients back then because of the springs and the dry mountain air. And the high mortality rate of the TB patients kick-started a spiritual movement there as well. Rhi started all of this.”

“We know some of the history of the area, lady, stop treating us like greenhorns,” Pam said coolly. “How is Rhi responsible for this mess?” The glow of the fire threw outlines of her frizzy locks onto the wall behind her, giving the tall woman the appearance of being seated in the wriggling arms of a beast.

Pearl’s glance flicked for an instant toward Blackthorne and back again to Pam, who met her stare head on. “She started all of this by catching the eye and then the heart of an almost immortal knight who was sworn to protect one of the gates of Hell. The Brotherhood of the Gate had some archaic rules back then, including no women and a vow of chastity. Not to mention that nasty rule about not bathing…ugh. The knight…who was already a vow breaker because he liked soap and water…”

Pam broke in. “We know the knight’s Blackthorne, okay. Quit mollycoddling us and spit it out.”

“You can call me Jack, since we’re all so close.” He ended his sentence with a deliberate hiss that ran shivers up the spine of the woman seated next to him. Blackthorne looked hungry.
For what
was the question that nagged at her the most, because after that kiss outside and the whole bedroom episode, Rhi knew exactly what
she
was hungry for on this night. She would
never
be able to call the man by his first name. It didn’t fit. She couldn’t believe she had been alone in a bedroom with him and hadn’t gone nuts and ripped his clothes off. Pam was right. It had been too long.

The madam’s eyebrow rose about an inch, but otherwise her face gave away nothing. “Blackie broke his vows to be with Raven, whom he met on one of his excursions to Colorado to check on the status of his assigned gate…”

“You mean he didn’t have to stand next to it at attention for eternity?”

“No…the Brotherhood has other means to transport themselves,” Pearl replied, ignoring the sarcasm in Rhi’s voice. “They’re powerful sorcerers who can appear where and when they are needed, but it does drain them somewhat. They are sworn to guard the gates and mankind against the day of the last battle, which cannot be allowed to come prematurely. Jack left the order, giving up his place in the order to wed. He handed his duties over to his brother, Manius, another knight of the Crusades recruited into the Brotherhood. What he didn’t know was that Manius had located one of the lost Keys of the Gates, a crystal skull that would unlock the very gate Jack had handed over to him to guard. The long life of the Brotherhood had jaded Manius and he wearied of his duties. He had taken up secret pursuits to amuse himself that would not have entertained his brother or the leaders of his order, who had given Jack their reluctant permission to leave. Their permission to live a normal human life and die with his wife.”

Rhi sat trying to listen calmly and not gape at the man—or being—who might have been her husband in an earlier life. He certainly acted like he had some proprietary interest in her person by the way he towered over her whenever he was near. She thought of what Houston had said about Raven, her fate, and Manius’ comment that he
had
her before. She felt nauseated again.

“Manius was terribly jealous of his brother and wanted to harness the power of the skull to destroy the Brotherhood. He also had the idea that the skull would have the power to make him omnipotent. He had one problem with the skull, however. He couldn’t figure out how to use it. He came up with the idea to use one of the greatest witches of the era to look back into the depths of time to see how the ancients used it. He kidnapped his brother’s new wife,” Pearl continued, not looking at Rhi’s horrified face, “and tortured her for the information. Raven held out until we got there but died later after we escaped. She wouldn’t take the immortal blood Jack offered her.”

Rhi immediately objected. “I thought he had given everything up to live and die with, er, her or me or, Hell, whatever.”

Patiently, Pearl continued. “He couldn’t give up his powers to wed. Once a Changeling, always a Changeling. But we do sometimes weary of unending life and ‘retire.’ He had chosen to be with Raven and would will himself to join her in the hereafter when the TB finally claimed her. But even with the blood of a vampire, Raven knew her body was too weak to fight this war. Jack wanted to die with her but she made him swear to keep watch against the day that his brother returned to try to open the gates to empower the skull again.”

Rhi tried once again to slide away from Blackthorne, this time succeeding in reaching the other end of the couch. “I wouldn’t let you die with me because I wanted you to clean up a mess
you
basically made? Where’s Manius and the skull been all of these years and why is he after me now?”

“The Brotherhood of the Gate’s high council decided to imprison Manius underground instead of destroying him when he was finally caught. It seems there’s a prophecy that he will have something to do with destroying one of the gates and if there is a chance of completely eliminating it they had to take it. Less to deal with come Judgment Day. But someone dug him up a few years ago and released him…the idiot has had time to get addicted to television and lead Jack around the world on several wild goose chases. We’ve been terrified he would figure out where Raven hid the skull. Or rather, the Brotherhood has been terrified. I knew better. Raven…” Here Pearl paused again, as if afraid to pick at the scab covering the past that Rhi hadn’t known existed until today. “Raven concealed the skull while a captive in the Castle. She didn’t live long enough to tell us where, or maybe she didn’t trust us enough to tell us where. She hid it by magical means. Manius wants you, Rhi, because only you can find and release the skull.”

I’ve seen it.
The thought scurried like a rodent through her mind and a small but commanding voice spoke into her thoughts,
Don’t shout your thoughts, they can hear them when you do that.
Rhi quickly suppressed the image of the skull, stuffing it into a metaphysical drawer.
I still don’t know for sure what side these people are on. And where’d that other chick in my head come from?
It was high time she began to protest this story, even though she knew it to be true.
“I don’t know where my spare car keys are. How and when am I supposed to remember something from another life that I’m not sure I had? Did you say
a
gate to Hell? Is there more than one?”

Blackthorne finally made a motion for Pearl to let him speak. He cradled his cup of coffee in both palms and stared into its depths. “The skull will come to you by the appointed time. Which is midnight, three nights from now. It’s fated, as it is fated that you will either be the instrument of destruction for the Cripple Creek Gate or the one who reopens the Pandora’s Box that has destroyed several civilizations. I didn’t understand at first. I thought whatever spell you had cast in the past would lead to my brother’s downfall. I never believed for a moment you would be reborn until I was told by the Brotherhood that your presence had been felt here. And Manius will never let the skull go. If he can’t have this one, he’ll search for another. Lust for the power of the skull has corrupted my brother, giving him a bloodlust beyond what the blood pollution of a demon can give. He thinks he will empower the skull by opening the gates and be able to command the forces of Hell itself to do his bidding as Solomon did in the building of his temple. Manius has forgotten what lives on the other side of those gates. There are many Gates and each has a different aspect. Open this one and you might open them all…we don’t know.”

“Not to sound like a newbie at this game, but if the gate is so hard to open, why do you guys bother to guard them at all? It seems to be a little idiotic,” Pam asked the man curiously, not turning a hair at the idea that he was responsible for the deaths of a squad of Conquistadors a few hundred years ago.

“If you had a nuclear bomb that you were fairly sure could not be tampered with or set off, would you feel comfortable allowing anyone to play with it? No. You would hide it and guard it,” Blackthorne replied. “Not a lot of information remains from the times the gates were used on a regular basis. It was a chaotic world when the Brotherhood was formed to guard the gates. There could very well be other ways to open them and use them. We don’t know.”

Pam stared back at him, uncertain. “You mean to say that someone could get the idea to write runes on the gate and it
might
open up?”

“That is exactly what I’m saying. The ancient world was built by the labor of demons brought through the gates by the ancients. They thought they had power over the forces of Heaven, Earth, and Hell. And being mankind, they, of course, got greedy. I could never understand the desire for such power over others. Life is complicated enough on its own. Why do I want power over the lives of others as well?” He studied the contents of his cup again, looking very human.

Except for those extra pointy teeth,
Rhi mentally deliberated.
And his inhuman sexuality…or maybe that’s just my hormones talking. And since it is time for naïve questions…

“Where did those demons come from tonight if the gate’s shut? Or is it cracked open just an inch? And how does your brother control them?” She put an emphasis on the word brother to aggravate Blackthorne. A quick examination of his face told her that her barb had shot home.

“The gate is not cracked open. But control of the gate if opened means absolute control of whatever comes crawling through it,” he replied. “The skull also has powers that are beyond our knowledge, a lot of that lore died with the ancients. Manius,” here he paused as if the word brought a foul taste to his mouth, “has raised his demons the hard way, by black magic out of one of the Hell cracks that litter this area. It takes a great deal of power to control that many of these things, however. Manius feeds his power by not only drinking blood but by generating fear as well. He drinks human fear like we drink essence.”