She glanced out the windows to see Colt bent over the rail, observing the crew and taking it all in. Lilly squeezed her eyes shut and gripped the settee’s arm harder, wishing she had the guts to go out and grab hold of Colt instead. A thick hard lump centered just below her throat at the top of her chest ached. If he fell ... she couldn’t bear to think of it. When had he become more to her than a means to an end? When had she fallen for this rough-and-tumble Hunter? She certainly wanted to escape Rathe, and for the longest time that had been her only goal. But being with Colt had changed that. The Chosen weren’t just a myth. He was a virile flesh-and-blood man who made the world alive in brilliant color, when for so long she had felt it was nothing but endless shades of gray.
She gasped slightly as the enormous airship thumped on solid ground, bounced up slightly, then made grinding noises as it scraped along the rocky desert soil.
“You can let go of the chair now. We’ve landed.”
Lilly pried open one eye and looked at the Contessa. “You’re certain we’re safe?”
The Contessa’s eyes twinkled with merriment. “The younger Mr. Jackson is waiting for you.”
As Lilly walked on unsteady legs with the Contessa out to the viewing deck to disembark, she could see they’d come to rest in a barren stretch of dirt and rock. In the distance she saw the town veiled in the layers of dust hanging in the hot, still air. Other than a few houses, the only other building was the old fort constructed out of the same reddish tan stone that littered the landscape. Half tumbled down, it blended in so well that it was hard to discern it from the desert.
Lilly, nearly giddy with happiness that her first airship ride was finally over, remembered to thank the Contessa for her hospitality before heading toward the narrow wooden plank walkway linking airship and earth.
Colt came around from the back of the dirigible, riding Tempus. The leather with cow-like blots of black on white made it look more like a real horse, but the click and whirr of its clockwork parts as it moved, its brass hooves and solid silver eyes gave it away as a machine. The mechanical horse came to a rocking stop and Colt slid off, jogging up the ramp to offer her his assistance.
Lilly grasped his thick forearms, grateful for his presence. “Thank you,” she murmured. He gifted her with a stunning smile that made her heart thump harder. She took ginger steps, watching where she placed her feet as she walked down the narrow planking thinking that falling at this point would be not only painful, but most embarrassing. She heaved a great sigh the moment her boot touched terra firma.
He left her side and mounted the paint, bringing it over to her. Lilly looked at Tempus with chagrin.
“Surely you aren’t planning on making me ride that beast right after I’ve already suffered through riding on an airship, are you?”
“Not unless you want to.”
Lilly nearly stumbled over her own feet in surprise. “Really?” She supposed she still didn’t trust anything she couldn’t understand, and unfortunately that still included Colt’s mechanical horse.
“We’re going into McDowell first and see if we can pick up some supplies and maybe a guide who knows these mountains. Then we’ll get on the horse.” He grinned.
Lilly resisted the urge to grumble and tried to retain her ladylike decorum. Just when she thought she had Colt figured out, he went and changed again.
“Can you walk with me?” she asked gingerly.
Colt hesitated. “I would, but Tempus doesn’t move unless the plate under his saddle is depressed by the rider’s weight. It’s a safety feature Marley created.”
“I see.”
“I can walk him beside you if you want.”
Lilly considered it for a moment. She wasn’t any more comfortable with the thought of the big mechanical beast stomping on her than she was of it potentially throwing her to the ground if she rode it.
“You go on ahead. I’ll follow.”
His brows bent down with disapproval. “I’ll walk with you.” Lilly materialized her favorite black fringed parasol and opened it against the broiling sun. The meager shade was better than nothing, and there was none to be had unless she planned to lie underneath a creosote or jonco thorn bush or up against the prickly trunk of a saguaro.
Only the sound of Tempus’s metal hooves clicking against the occasional rock punctuated the sounds of wind-rattled sagebrush. High overhead a hawk, searching for a meal, let out a screeching cry.
The town, if it really could be called a town, was a collection of sad sun-bleached wooden shacks surrounding what remained of the old adobe fort. Stuck here and there was a twisted mesquite tree, the green leaves so small the branches almost looked feathery in the brilliant sunlight. Wood smoke from a cooking fire mingled with the smell of roasting meat, cooking beans, and dust in the air.
The few people Lilly saw were crusty frontier types. From the crude condition of their homes, their dusty denim and duck cloth clothing, and scattered tools, she guessed they were miners. Tied in the shade of one shack was a gray mule, its head hung low. Its long ears flicked away annoying flies in the heat, and like everything else in the town, it seemed tired.
In the part of the old adobe fort building that remained intact they found a small mercantile. It smelled of vinegar from the pickle barrel, and a thin layer of dust seemed to cover everything. Lilly sneezed three times in a row. She looked around while Colt picked out the supplies. Bolts of calico and canvas sat on the shelves. A straw bonnet hung from the ceiling, the ostrich feathers rather sad and droopy, alongside a saddle and a pair of boots. Harnesses hung between baskets, and a doll stared blankly at a random selection of dusty farm implements.
A dusty display of nails caught her attention. She glanced back at Colt and the storekeeper, and noting that they paid her no heed, picked up a few. You never knew when nails might come in handy. Some might call her collecting habit a vice, but a hardscrabble life of conning people for a living had bred into her the unbreakable need to be resourceful. She picked up bits and items as she came across them to bolster her sense of security. With quick fingers, she deftly tucked the nails in her reticule along with the copper wire she’d acquired at Marley’s.
She glanced once more just to be certain neither of the men had noticed.
“Got any fresh meat?” Colt asked.
The old store clerk’s salt-and-pepper walrus mustache huffed outward with an annoyed breath. “Fresh out. Won’t get more until next month on the wagon train.”
“What about tinned biscuits?”
“Nope.”
“Tinned beans?”
“Those I got.” The clerk pulled three dusty cans from the shelf and added it to the pile on the counter right next to the five-pound bag of salt, another of flour, some cured meat, and a few bits of hard cinnamon candy. “You wouldn’t happen to know of a guide for hire, would you?” Colt asked the clerk as he paid.
The clerk just shook his head, his enormous mustache making even a lip twitch indiscernible. There was a reason his establishment seemed to be lacking business, Lilly thought, and it wasn’t just because they were on the edge of practically nowhere. She knew they weren’t going to get very far this way. If they were going to get any kind of assistance, she was clearly going to have to intervene.
She sauntered up slowly to the counter, her lids half-shuttered, and gave the store clerk a stunning, but demure smile. “It’s too bad you don’t have any maps,” she said sweetly, with just a twinge of a pout. “Without a guide it’s going to be next to impossible to find.”
Colt forgotten, the clerk’s head swiveled as he fixated on her as if she’d just stepped out of thin air and he could see nothing else. “What are you lookin’ for, ma’am?”
“The Lost Dutchman’s Mine.”
The clerk burst out in a warm laugh. “Ma’am, if I had a map to that I’d be richer than Croesus. There ain’t a miner been through here yet has found it.”
She widened her eyes just a touch. “Oh, I
know
the gold isn’t real, just a story in the penny dreadfuls. But I want to see where that thrilling legend started. My darling here promised that he would take me to see the famous mine, as a birthday present.”
The clerk eyed Colt for a second, as if summing him up, then returned his gaze to Lilly. “Shucks. I don’t know if it’d actually help any, but Ol’ Pete probably knows those hills just as good as anybody. If it weren’t for more than just a walkabout out there for a day or two, he might be willin’ to go.”
“Really?” Lilly leaned in closer, her lips tilting just so. “Do you know where I might find this Pete?”
Two minutes later, with directions in hand, they stepped out of the mercantile with their supplies. It was like stepping into a woodstove oven after being inside the cool interior of the adobe building. The branches of a mesquite tree near the entrance to the mercantile burst into noise as they passed under it with the buzz and hum of insects. The dry air was so hot it tightened her skin and made her squint. Lilly put her hand up to her forehead, blocking out the sun, and looked for the dirigible. It glinted and flashed in the sunlight, like a lone, small, silver fish in a huge blue ocean, growing smaller and smaller as it drifted off to the east.
“I never seen the like—what’d you do to him?” Colt asked as he readjusted his hold on the supplies in his arms.
Lilly gave him a sultry smile as she unwrapped one of the lemon-fizz candies the store clerk had given her free of charge for her birthday. “Only what a succubus is designed to do. Just be glad I didn’t ask him for his soul while I was at it.”
“Was it true, what you said about it bein’ your birthday?”
“No. My birthday isn’t until September. But it was a sweet gesture of him, don’t you think? Want one?” She offered the open sack of candies to him.
Colt shook his head and muttered something under his breath about women, deceit, and wiles as he packed away the supplies in his saddlebags. Tempus stood absolutely motionless, his silver eyes never blinking. Lilly put the small paper sack of candies in her reticule and shivered despite the perspiration pooling between her breasts. The automaton gave her a case of the willies, not because it was a machine, but because at times it could be so lifelike, but had no emotion, no mind, no soul. Lilly knew better than to comment on Colt’s grumblings. Despite what Colt might think, he was just as dangerous to her well-founded sense of self-preservation.
Already she’d put herself in jeopardy with Rathe on Colt’s behalf more than once on this journey. And Rathe was only going to be so patient for so long before he called her back to his domain for a report. Lilly worried her bottom lip between her teeth.
There was no telling just how long Rathe’s patience would extend. Once they found that Book, he’d expect her to return to him with it—and Colt—in hand or there’d be hell to pay. Literally. Up until now it had been a calculated risk. Getting the Book had been more about her freedom than saving the world from Rathe. But knowing the Chosen were real, that Colt was a flesh-and-blood part of it, and that she loved him—even if she hadn’t told him so—had changed things. There was a chance the Chosen could overthrow Rathe, and by helping them she could gain her freedom and a chance to be with Colt. But there was an equal chance she’d get the Book, Rathe would slay the Chosen, and then he’d torture her mercilessly for ever having helped Colt in the first place.
The problem was, Lilly was caring less and less about her own well-being and more and more about the mission of the Chosen, and Colt in particular. Was becoming human again worth risking a world to be human in? If Rathe won, torture for both Darkin and human would be the rule, not the exception. And if the Chosen closed the Gates of Nyx, would they declare war on the Darkin who were left? And what about Colt and his brothers? If they lost, what horrible fate awaited them? She had a growing belief that in the end she’d be forced to choose between serving Rathe and helping Colt. And deep down she knew her heart had already put her lot in with Colt’s.
Colt finished buckling the saddle pack and pulled down the edge of his Stetson against the afternoon sun. “Ready to go meet our guide?”
Lilly offered him an encouraging smile. “The sooner we get going, the closer we’ll be to bringing together the Book.”
A sad look flitted across his eyes for an instant, then was gone just as quickly. Or had she just imagined it?
“You’re different from other Darkin, Lilly. You’ve still got a heart, a sense of right and wrong and a passion to do something about it. And as much as you’ve suffered so far, you deserve to be free from him. I’m sorry to have to ask your help when you’ve already done so much, but I need you to help me find the Book. I’ll do whatever I can to help you make a break with Rathe and find your sister, but I can’t make any guarantees, you know that, don’t you?”
His praise made a warm sparkling sensation fizz through her veins. While he hadn’t said as much, perhaps, like her, Colt was thinking of her as more than just a passing fancy. She reached up, curling a bit of her hair around her fingers, and nodded. “You just set your mind on getting your pa’s part of the Book right now. All that can come later.”
Much later, as far as she was concerned. A sharp sensation needled in her chest. He was such an honorable man in so many ways. One of the good guys, even if he looked like an outlaw. There had to be a way she could protect the man she loved from what Rathe had planned. But she’d better come up with it soon. Time was running out.