Authors: A. E. Jones
Griffin’s roar echoed over the courtyard. Now that their leader was dead, the guards ran toward the house. Griffin lumbered over to me and lay down. I held my breath until he bumped his enormous head against my shoulder.
I reached up with trembling hands and stroked his mane. His fur was rough, and I tried to feel around to discover how badly he was injured, but did not move too much for fear I would spook him.
Several minutes later, Jean Luc found me sitting in the same spot, petting Griffin. His eyes widened. “Are you okay,
ma petite
?”
“I’m fine. He has a wound on his chest and shoulder. From his breathing, he’s either going to sleep or is about ready to pass out. But just to be safe, you better get a tranquilizer ready. Is Jason okay?”
“Yes, he’s with Talia. She’s taking care of him.”
“Have Talia call and get us a doctor until we can fly Sabrina here. Call Misha and have him arrest Doctor Jensen. He’s the traitor.”
“How do you know?”
“William’s mole told him something about Jason that only Griffin, Jensen, and I knew.”
“Will you be okay until I get back?”
I nodded. “We’ll be fine.”
* * *
“Griffin and Jason are both out of surgery and doing well,” Jean Luc announced.
I slumped back into my chair and placed my head in my hands. “I don’t think my heart can take much more of this.”
He sat down next to me and patted my hand. “It has been a stressful time for all of us.”
“Can I see them?”
“They are in recovery. The doctor will let us know as soon as we can see them. It is going to at least be a couple of days before either of them can travel.”
“So this doctor Talia brought in is good?”
“Yes. Sabrina is on her way as well. Her flight should be here shortly, and Will and Talia are picking her up at the airport.” He studied me for a moment before continuing, “What else is bothering you?”
“You know me too well. In the past few hours, the name Thomas Wilson has been screaming in my head. I can’t get it to shut off.”
Jean Luc squeezed my hand. “Maybe you should not be trying to shut it off. What if you relax and concentrate on the name? It might tell you something. You did say you saw Hilliard’s face when you flashed on his name.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe your Thomas Wilson will be revealed to you as well.” He hesitated. “I may be able to help you, if you would allow me?”
“Through your thrall?”
“Yes.”
I knew my smile was lopsided, but at least it was a smile. “No woman is an island, right? I would appreciate your help.”
He smiled, showing a little fang. “Excellent. Close your eyes and concentrate for a few moments on the name. I will stay right here with you.”
Okay. I wasn’t going to fight it anymore. Jean Luc ran his thumb over my wrist where he had bitten me, and I relaxed. His voice whispered along my subconscious, and I let go. I don’t know how long I thought about the name Thomas Wilson, but after a while, an image emerged in the back recesses of my mind. I drew it to the foreground and gaped when I saw a familiar face.
I opened my eyes and looked up at Jean Luc. “Well?” he asked.
“Will you go with me to Mesquite? I need to see an old friend.”
* * *
I dialed Misha, and he picked up on the first ring. I didn’t even have a chance to say hello.
“How are they doing?”
“They’re both good. Jason’s going to need you, Mish. He’s angry, and I probably won’t be his favorite person for a while. You and Jean Luc will have to help him until he can look me in the eye again.”
“We can do that.”
“Have you been able to find anything out about the boy Charles Hilliard saved forty years ago?”
“Yes, hold on.” The sounds of typing came over the phone. “Hilliard rescued a teenage boy by the name of James Thompson from his burning house. But the rest of the news isn’t good. Thompson became a serial arsonist as an adult and the fires killed several people over the years.”
“Where is he now?”
“Dead. He was killed in one of his own fires.”
“Damn,” I muttered.
“What does this have to do with the case?”
“Nothing. I was just wondering what happened to him.”
“Okay. I want you guys to come home as soon as you can. You got it, little one?”
“As soon as I clear up some unfinished business.”
Chapter 47
I stepped up to the door of a silver trailer gleaming in the Nevada sun. I had come full circle.
I looked over my shoulder at Jean Luc, who’d insisted on remaining, and baking, in the car. He nodded slightly in encouragement. Squaring my shoulders, I knocked. Running Wolf opened the door and smiled knowingly at me.
“Hello, Thomas Wilson.”
“You’ve come at last.”
My mouth dropped open. “You knew I was supposed to see you? Knew your name has been rattling around my head for
months
?”
“I know about the Key, if that’s what you mean.” He grinned and pointed to a couple of lawn chairs sitting under the awning.
We both sat.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. “Why the subterfuge with the name?”
“There was no subterfuge. I’ve never cared much for my white man’s name, so I use it rarely. When I met you, I could feel your power, but I also sensed your confusion. You didn’t understand what was going on.”
“I still don’t. Would you please,
please
fill me in?”
“The Key is a conduit of good. It will help you fight the true evil that wishes to take over the world. It serves as a balance.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me that?” I pushed.
“For two reasons. One, you weren’t ready. Somehow you had found your way to Mesquite, but you didn’t know why. My job was not to find you. Yours was to find me.”
“What is your job?”
“To welcome the Key to their powers. My name was the one you were to seek out first.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t meet you first. I already met someone else.”
He scowled. “That was not supposed to happen. You must have needed him to help you with something, right?”
“Yes, he—”
“Wait. Don’t tell me about him. I’m not to know about the names you are given.”
“I don’t understand. What are the names for?”
“For many reasons. Don’t fight the names when you receive them. These men and women may help you in your day-to-day work, or they may have done something that tipped the scales to good.”
“That’s what I believed, but the man I met had what he called a ‘heroic moment,’ which only led to more pain and misery.”
“The path to good is not always a straight line. If it were obvious, evil would find a way to destroy it.”
“What was the second reason you didn’t tell me?”
He hesitated before answering. “You’re not who I expected.”
My heart raced. I asked the question even though I already knew the answer. “Who did you expect?”
“Over the last year I have been having dreams of a white man with eyes the color of turquoise.”
“Dalton.”
“You know him?”
“Yes.” And I proceeded to tell him the story of Dalton’s torture and how I saved him by erasing his memories. Then I asked Running Wolf about the prophecy and whether or not he could interpret it, but he knew nothing.
“What do you think it all means?”
He grasped my hands and closed his eyes. A strange tingling ran along my palms and up into my arms. After a moment, he opened his eyes.
“I don’t know what this means. The Key should not pass from the host unless he or she dies. You have the memories and knowledge of the Key, but yet, I don’t sense the full power of it.”
My chest tightened. “Do you think it’s still in Dalton?”
Running Wolf didn’t answer immediately. “Possibly, but without his memories of it, he most likely will not be able to use it.”
“But that’s the one thing I can’t give back to him. It could kill him.”
He studied me for a moment before answering. “At some point, you might not have a choice.”
* * *
I hit speed dial on my cell while Jean Luc sped along the highway toward Vegas. “Misha, I need a favor.”
“Name it.”
“I want you to do some more research on James Thompson, the arsonist. See what happened with the rest of his family. Check to see if he has any children.”
“Got it. I’ll call you back if I find anything.”
I clicked off the phone and stared in the general direction of Jean Luc’s profile for a moment.
“Are you following a hunch?” he asked.
“Something like that. Running Wolf said good does not always follow a straight line.”
He nodded and turned to me for a second before looking back at the highway. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I think. Sort of. This whole Key business is overwhelming.”
“It is a large burden to bear.”
“You heard what Running Wolf said?”
Jean Luc actually looked a bit chagrined before answering, “Yes.”
“Don’t worry about it. If I hadn’t wanted you to overhear, I would have asked you to leave. So you heard about Dalton?”
“Yes. What do you plan to do about it?”
“Nothing for as long as I can. If I’m able to interpret the names and the reasons why I’m receiving them, then we may not need to endanger Dalton again.”
“We are all here for you,
ma petite
.”
I smiled. “I know, and trust me, I will be asking for help from now on. It’s too important not to. Now let’s talk about you for a minute.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what is the deal between you and Talia? Why did you break up?”
“There was no breaking up.” Jean Luc shrugged. “We are not teenagers, Kyle.”
“Excuse me, oh ancient one. Let me rephrase that. Why are you no longer together?”
“I helped Talia when she was newly turned. I was her teacher.”
“I bet you were.”
“Kyle!”
I raised my hands in surrender. “Sorry, go ahead.”
“Talia is very independent. Once she learned to master her vampire skills, she needed to discover if she could take care of herself.”
“How long ago?”
“Twenty-five years.”
“Okay, and now she can obviously take care of herself, so you can get back together again.”
Jean Luc sighed. “It is not so simple.”
“What?” My mouth gaped open. “I never thought you would be a hypocrite, Jean Luc.”
“What do you mean?”
“Were you not the one who sat on a barstool not too long ago when I was pissed at Dalton and declared there was nothing more simple than love?”
“Yes, but—”
I held up my pointer finger. “Ah, ah, ah. It isn’t any different in your world than mine. I may be clueless about my own love life sometimes, but not others. When Talia saw your bite mark on my wrist, the look she gave me was not one of a detached woman. She was jealous. And when she saw you for the first time in the hotel room? She closed down.”
“
Oui.
It was not the face of an interested woman.”
“You silly vamp. She was protecting herself. That’s what females do when we’re faced with the males we love and are scared to tell them.”
Jean Luc’s eyes widened, and he grinned. “I think I may be staying in Vegas a little longer.”
“A great idea. How long have you been working for Nicholas?”
“One-hundred and twelve years. Why?”
“Have you ever taken vacation?”
“No.”
“Even if you only got one week of vacation each year, you still are eligible for over two years of vacation. I definitely agree you should stick around Sin City for a while.”
An hour later, when we’d reached the Vegas strip, my phone rang. It was Misha.
“That didn’t take you long.”
“Sorry I didn’t catch this earlier, but I was only looking at Thompson’s history.”
“What did you find out?”
“Thompson had a son named Robert Hanson. He goes by his mother’s maiden name, so I didn’t make the connection at first.”
“Where is he?”
“Here’s the interesting thing. He’s one of Nevada’s lead arson investigators. He has single-handedly stopped a dozen arsonists over the past five years. Last year, he received a commendation for catching an arsonist who planned to firebomb a school bus full of kids.”
My heart sped up till I couldn’t breathe.
“Kyle, are you still there?”
“Yeah. I can’t believe it.”
“Me either. Apparently his father’s background had the opposite effect on him. Fate has strange plans.”
“It does have a way of coming full circle.”
I hung up as Jean Luc pulled in front of Talia’s house. A limo was parked in the driveway. When we got out of the car, the tinted window rolled down. Nicholas was sitting in the back.