Chapter 3
Colt scanned the array of wooden buildings in the booming mining town of Bodie looking for the local jail. It sat in the shallow bowl of the valley among the sagebrush, a small, peaked building with a lean-to addition sagging off to the right side of it like a child off the hip of a worn-out frontier wife.
The last place Colt ever thought he’d go willingly when he was in trouble was to the local jail. But that’s where his oldest brother Winn was, being that he was sheriff.
Colt trod up the sagging wooden steps in front of the door. The black iron knob was cold in his hand as he opened it cautiously, just a crack.
Click.
A gun cocked on the other side of the door, right about level with his left temple and just below the brim of his brown Stetson. His whole body tensed, waiting to see if he was going to dodge a bullet. What if Winn was out to lunch and there was some bored deputy on the other side just itching for something to shoot?
The doorknob yanked out of his hand. A large man with a head full of slicked-back black hair, a slightly crooked nose, and pair of dark blue eyes, far darker than Colt’s own, stared back at him over the barrel of a revolver.
“Damn, Winn, you went and growed a mustache.” Heavy and thick, the thing was as dark as Winn’s hair, twisted into sharp waxed points at either end and leaving only a bit of his bottom lip exposed. It made his brother look far older and fiercer than Colt remembered.
Winn grunted. “I’ve had it for two years.” He glanced over Colt’s shoulder in both directions, then uncocked the gun and slipped it into a worn hip holster. He turned his back on Colt.
“Shut the door,” he said in a low voice over his shoulder. He sat down in the chair behind the battered wooden desk that served as the sheriff’s office. Behind him was a wall littered with curling, yellowed wanted posters and an iron nail holding up a leather back holster filled with a Winchester rifle. The smell of wood smoke from the small pot-bellied stove burning in the corner under a huge copper boiler cut the smell of unwashed male and the sickly faint odor of vomit coming from the cells that lined the far wall, making it bearable. “What brings you to Bodie?”
Colt took the only other chair in the place and swung the wooden ladderback around to straddle it, resting his arms across the slender back. “Well, it sure ain’t the churches in town.” Colt snickered. Bodie’s well-deserved reputation as one of the roughest towns in the state of California meant Winn was fairly busy. “Do I need a reason to visit my brother?”
“Hell yes. You’d never come otherwise.”
“Not very charitable of you.”
“Not feeling in a very giving mood.”
“See? You need more churches in this town, would help give folks more to think about bein’ charitable. Hell, you about shot me without even seeing who was coming through the door.”
Winn glanced out the window, a longing look flitting across his face. Maybe bein’ respectable wasn’t all he thought it was cracked up to be. Maybe that tingle in Colt’s palm wasn’t just about a supernatural after his ass this time. Maybe it was because Winn was ready to go back to hunting.
He turned his piercing dark blue eyes back on Colt. For a second Winn looked so like their pa that it made a little shiver shake Colt’s insides way down deep. Colt wished he’d taken a slug of the whiskey Marley had given him.
Winn grumbled something underneath his breath about little brothers as he rolled his thick shoulders. “Look, I got a murder a day to contend with, sometimes more. I don’t need the trouble you trail in your wake, Colt.”
The truth stung. Being around normal people just wasn’t something a Hunter could do. Inevitably they’d get sucked into the troubles that followed like a dark cloud of dust. “Spoken like a true big brother.”
“Spoken like the town sheriff.”
Colt’s gaze flicked to the cells. Of the four, three were empty. Behind the black iron bars of the last cell, spread out on the robe bed and olive green wool blanket, the squatter lay facedown, his back raising and lowering in deep rhythmic breaths.
Winn followed his gaze and waved a hand in dismissal. “Don’t worry about Billy. He sleeps it off in there every other night. He’ll be out until daybreak. It’s safe to talk.”
Colt feigned a sigh. He hadn’t been planning on a reunion either, but he still needed Winn’s help. “I got marshals on my tail for killin’ a saloon girl out in Arizona Territory.”
Winn slumped back into his chair and rubbed his hands over his jaw, a small vertical crease forming between his brows. “Ah, hell. Why’d you go and do a fool thing like that for?”
Colt’s shoulders stiffened at the rebuff. “She was about to sink her fangs into my neck.”
Winn grunted with understanding and sat forward, bracing his elbows on his wide, scarred desk. “Still hunting, then, are you?”
Colt stared his brother down. “If you’re lookin’ for me to apologize, it ain’t gonna happen, Winn. It’s in our blood, far back as we know. And there ain’t nothin’ gonna change that. It’s what we’ve been trained to do.”
“No, it’s what Pa trained
you
to do.” Winn pointed a thick index finger at him, the crease between his brows deepening further, the ghosts of the past flickering in his eyes. “I’m not interested. I’ve chosen a different life.” Winn had never gotten over that demon attacking Colt when Colt had been fourteen. Winn had dispatched the demon, nearly gotten killed in the process, and never done another day of hunting since, something Colt couldn’t fathom.
“You ever wonder how many murders in this town might be caused by something supernatural prowling around Bodie?”
Winn huffed and stared out the window, refusing to meet Colt’s gaze. “I try to stay the hell out of anything unnatural. It’s hard enough to get a conviction from the crooked judge in this district without introducing a lot of hocus-pocus into the trial.”
“But you know it’s a possibility.”
Winn glared at him. “Doesn’t mean I want to wallow around in it like a pig in mud.”
“Still trying to be shiny clean, the perfect gentleman, ain’t you? Well, I got news for you, brother.” Colt leaned forward, tipping his cowboy hat slightly off his forehead. “Marshals are the least of my worries. Hell is coming to Bodie, if it ain’t followed me here already.”
Winn’s eyes narrowed, his bottom lip flattening into a taut line beneath the level of his dark mustache. “What’d you do?”
“Seems that saloon girl weren’t no ordinary vampire. ’Course I didn’t realize it until later. She was Rathe’s girl. His baby girl, to be precise.”
“Sweet Jesus on a shingle,” Winn breathed. He rubbed his palms back and forth through his slicked-back hair, making it stand up in awkward black spikes and tufts. “He’s gonna want your head for his collection.”
“And he’s going to do some damage getting it.”
Rathe was evil incarnate. There was no need to compare him to Lucifer. The archdemon Rathe was more like Lucifer’s ugly badman big brother—the one you didn’t mess with. No Hunter with half a brain beneath his hat would be stupid enough to go against Rathe alone and believe he could survive.
Usually there wasn’t enough left of his victims to bother with. But Rathe liked trophies. In particular he had a penchant for keeping the severed heads of his most important victims and shrinking them down into macabre watch fobs he gilded and kept strung on a fancy gold watch chain. Winn rubbed his hands over his face and sat forward in his chair, pinning his penetrating blue gaze on Colt. “Tell me you’re not still searching after Pa’s damn part of the Book.”
Colt just stared hard at his eldest brother. There was no use in repeating the words that had passed one too many times between him and Winn. His older brother couldn’t see any point in risking his life for the Legion. But Colt knew different. Pa had confided in him, and his old man’s journal was part of something bigger and more important—the Book of Legend—the guide that could help him and Hunters like him ultimately defeat the darkness creeping in upon the world.
At least he hoped like hell it was. He’d believed it for so long now, he couldn’t be absolutely sure it wasn’t just his eager imagination, spoon-fed Hunter legend and lore from the time he could toddle, but hadn’t really known what it all meant until the day Winn had saved him.
“Supernatural beings aren’t just goin’ to disappear because you and Remy stick your heads in the sand. They’re goin’ to keep coming, bigger and badder, and if the uptick in what I’ve seen lately is any indication, all Hell’s gonna break loose soon. ’Sides, I think I know where the Book is—for
sure
this time.”
Winn groaned, rolling his eyes. “Dammit, Colt, you say that every time.”
“Yeah, but this time is different.”
Winn leaned his head back over the top edge of his chair, closing his eyes. “How?”
“I want you to tell me the truth.”
His brother cracked open an eye. “What the hell are you talking about, boy?”
“I know you know where Pa’s portion of the Book of Legend is,
and
what I have to do to get it.”
Winn was staring hard at him now, blue eyes blazing, lightning in a dark, stormy sky. “How’d you figure it out?”
“I’ve followed every clue I had, and it all leads to you, big brother. I think Pa’s Book is hidden in the mountains around Bodie and you’ve been protecting it. It’s in the Dark Rim Mine, ain’t it?” Colt pressed.
Winn stood up from his chair, making the wood creak with protest as it skidded back hard on the wooden floorboards. He scowled. “Even if it was, you’d need a demon to open it for you. Pa made sure nothing human could open it and nothing supernatural would want to. And don’t you even think about bringing a demon to my town.” Winn pointed an accusing finger in Colt’s direction.
“So now that I’m hunting here, instead of somewhere else, it’s a problem?”
Winn’s fingers on his opposite hand snaked down his side, fingering the holster of his pistol. “Hell yes. A big problem. I don’t need to be dealing with any demon possessions. It’s bad enough here with the drunk miners going after one another and shootin’ each other for the slightest offense.”
“Then they’d probably be too soused to notice it anyhow. ’Sides, I’ll keep it right by my side, and if it steps a toe out of line, I’ll send it straight to Hell.” Of course, that’s where all supernaturals ought to be. There wasn’t one he’d met yet who’d convinced him that there was anything worthwhile or decent about them. They were monsters. The whole lot of them. And once he was done with the demon, he’d send it back to Hell just on principle alone.
“Why don’t you come along?”
Winn snorted, and sat back down. “Look. I’m not going on any fool errand for some dusty old pages the old man thought held the secrets of the universe. I’ve got the afternoon steam stage coming in at one. We’ve already had it held up four times in a month. The Black Gulch Mine’s entire payroll is on that stage.” He unconsciously rubbed his left thigh, which still bore the rope-like scar of the axe blade. “I’ve got real responsibilities here.”
And real fears, Colt thought, but he kept his teeth clamped shut and the words to himself. Winn had never been the same after the attack. Colt tugged his hat down tight around his forehead and stood up, swinging the chair back around to prop it against the wall where he’d found it. “Suit yourself.”
He glanced back at his brother and saw his face had gone all sternlike.
“Just be careful. You know you can’t trust a demon.” Winn’s words were simple enough, but Colt could hear his brother’s real concern underneath. They’d lost every male member of their family to hunting through the ages. It wasn’t a legacy he liked to ponder on too much.
Colt shrugged. “Who said anything about trusting one? I just need to find one and use it to open where Pa’s part of the Book is hidden.”
“It’ll want your soul,” Winn warned.
Colt grinned. “That’s just too damn bad. I don’t feel in a very givin’ mood.”
Winn grinned in return, the smile so similar Colt swore he could have been looking in the mirror—all except for the fat mustache with the pointed tips and the shorter haircut. A log in the small woodstove under the boiler crackled and popped, sending a shower of sparks up the flue. His brother’s gaze flicked to Colt’s hip. “You packing silver?”
Colt gave a single curt nod, surprised at the unspoken permission Winn was giving him to go hunting in Bodie. He turned the knob on the door, ready to leave. “Always do.”
“Good.” Winn took a deep breath, his broad chest expanding, and let it out real slowly, his blue eyes steady. “Colt, if you need help, holler.”
Colt nodded, knowing he could count on Winn if things went to hell, then walked out the door to find a demon.
Chapter 4
“Hope to hell this works.”
While Colt had gotten rid of a lot of demons, mostly by hitting them dead center in the forehead with one of Marley’s demon killer bullets or with various other means combined with sheer dumb luck, he sure as shit had never summoned one. He looked at the instructions he’d dug out of a moldy old book he’d borrowed from Marley.
The high desert seemed immense in the darkness, with only the stars, a thick half moon, and his small campfire for light. Down in the floor of the valley Bodie crackled with life, but out here among the sagebrush and spindly creosote the desolation closed in, scented with wood smoke.
Colt lit four candles, one at each point of the compass, holding the fifth lit candle in his hand as he sketched a pentagram in the powder-fine dirt at his feet and enclosed it in a circle.
Marley had told him summoning a demon was about the stupidest thing he’d ever heard of, but had helped him find a reference to it nonetheless.
Colt eyed the lines in the dirt. The book had said it would hold a demon, and that the demon couldn’t get out of the circle until it was released by the summoner or until sunrise, whichever happened first. Sure didn’t look like much protection to him, but what the hell. Hunting came with risks.
He drew in a deep breath, letting the Latin words hum and vibrate through his chest and across his lips as he spoke them slowly and deliberately, lending his own sense of urgency to them.
A shimmer in the air, rather like the warping of a mirage in the desert heat, rippled just above the circle, followed by a curl of black smoke that grew denser until it began to form a physical shape.
At first he mistook it for a trick of the firelight. His breathing hitched as the shape solidified into a feminine form with generous uptilted breasts and gracefully sloped pale shoulders. He glanced up and found himself face-to-face with a demon far more beautiful than any had a right to be. Damn.
She looked like she’d just risen out of bed, her deep red hair a silken, fiery cloud that tumbled loose and wavy down her back. Her pale skin flushed a rosy pink, which set off her unnaturally deep green eyes. They sparkled with pleasure and delight, as if she were truly pleased to see him, and tangled his gut into a fierce mix of wariness and attraction.
Dressed in nothing more than a short black silk nightgown that dangled by miniscule strips of black satin ribbon over her bare shoulders, she—it, he reminded himself—was showing more skin than he’d ever seen of a woman outside of the sheets. Her long, bare legs were so creamy smooth he bet silk would be jealous. A seductive, knowing curve shaped her full lips into a come-hither smile that could bring any man to his knees.
“Aren’t you just a tall drink of water?” As if the sight of her weren’t enough, the low, husky quality of her voice danced across his skin, making him hot and hard at the same time. “What’s your pleasure, cowboy? I assume you summoned me for a reason.”
Colt struggled to collect enough moisture in his mouth to get his tongue to work properly. “I want you to open a door for me.” His voice cracked and he cleared his throat to cover it.
Her eyes grew half-shuttered, the emerald color still unnaturally bright through the fan of her thick, sable lashes. “A man as strong as you could open any door for himself, I’m sure.” She stepped forward and met with an invisible barrier, then glanced down at the lines he’d drawn in the dirt. “The circle only lasts until daybreak. Then what?” Her long, tapered fingers skimmed along the barrier, depressing the pads of her fingertips, as if it were glass.
The momentary break in her gaze on him snapped some sense into Colt. He wasn’t going to take the chance that Marley was wrong about that circle holding a demon. He leveled his revolver at her. The metallic click of it cocking sounded louder than it should have in the air between them, but then Colt wasn’t packing just any ordinary revolver. It was a Hunter model designed special for his pa by Samuel Colt himself, and the very gun he’d been named after.
The demon eyed the gun, caution flickering across her features. “You’re a Hunter, aren’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The corner of her mouth rose higher in delight. “A polite one.”
“Yes, m—” Colt caught himself. She was already wrapping her charm or spell or whatever the hell it was around him again. He glanced away, deliberately trying to keep her from getting a hold on his common sense.
“You just want me to open a door? That’s an odd request, coming from a Hunter.” She crisscrossed her arms around her narrow waist, which made her breasts press together, drawing his attention to the dark shadow between them. “Why do you
really
need me?” Her voice drizzled like warm honey over him, smooth and sweet, and oh so tempting. Damn. Perhaps he should have covered his ears too.
“Only a demon can open the door,” he replied. He refused to make eye contact with her now or look at how the firelight danced across her pale skin. He focused instead on the flicker of the candle flames that marked the edges of the circle.
“Ah. So you want me to unlock this door for you?”
“Yes.”
“And what will I get out of it?”
Colt moved on instinct, flicking his gaze upward, cocking and pointing the barrel of his gun at the center of her forehead in the same instant. “How about I don’t blow your sweet ass back to Hell right here, right now?”
Her eyes turned hard, assessing, taking in the measure of him like he was a raw chunk of gold and estimating what he’d be worth. “Tsk, tsk. No need to be rude. After all,
you
are the one who summoned
me
. And as a Hunter, surely you know no demon works for free. There’s always a price.”
Colt hesitated. “What do you want?”
The demon paused, dropping her lashes just a fraction and looking at him in a way that oozed sexual appeal. “A kiss.”
“That’s it?”
“A kiss for opening the door,” she amended, her full lips opening just a fraction, drawing his attention and filling his mind with curiosity about what it would be like to kiss her—not just slow or quick, but soft and deep.
He ran his finger along the edge of his stubbled jaw, trying to ignore the snap of energy that fizzled and sparked in the air between them. Every normal male reaction in him said hell yes, but his brain was pulling back on the reins with a determination he couldn’t ignore.
“Surely a kiss isn’t too much to ask.” Her voice was fine and smooth, and seared a path right to his belly just like aged whiskey.
“That’s what worries me. Every other demon I’ve ever met has asked for my soul.”
Her sensual mouth curved into a subtle smile, just a bare uptilt of the lips that made his heart pound hard first in his chest, then down lower in his groin. “Well, perhaps I’m different from any other demon you’ve met.”
Colt eyed her up and down. She sure as hell had that right. His mouth suddenly seemed desert dry.
She shifted, turning and putting her back against the solid invisible barrier of the circle. The barrier pressed against the curve of her ass, making the silk there look like it might have been painted on her skin. He swallowed hard.
“Surely you’ve kissed a girl before?”
“’Course I have.”
She glanced over her shoulder with a long, lingering look. “Then what’s stopping you?”
“You’re not a girl. You’re a demon, and if I kiss you I’m sealing a pact between us.”
The soft pink tip of her tongue slicked a slow, glistening trail over her top lip. “That’s right. You kiss me. I open your door.”
“What about my soul?”
She shrugged. “It’s not part of
this
accord.”
“But you want it.”
Hunger flared in her eyes. “Of course I want
you
.”
Colt leaned forward, then abruptly stopped and shook himself. What the hell was he thinking? She was a demon, and there was no way a demon was going to just blithely go on its way without his soul. But for that brief space of a second, she hadn’t seemed like an unnatural thing at all. She’d seemed like the most enticing woman he’d ever met.
He stepped back a pace from the circle and tried to think on something that didn’t have to do with how she looked. Not that the distance was going to do him any good. The smooth, warm wood of his revolver usually soothed his nerves when he was on edge, but not tonight. He began to pace.
“What kind of demon are you?”
“Does it matter? Or were you looking for something particular?”
Colt turned, pacing back the other way. “Nah. Guess it don’t matter much.”
“You’re stalling, Hunter. Why is that? Do we have an accord? My help for your kiss?”
Colt’s brain spun trying to think of all the possible ways this could go wrong, and there were plenty. But he’d battled far worse all on his own than one lone demon who looked like sex personified. He stopped pacing and stared hard at the demon. “Why would you help me?”
“Maybe I like you.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“Maybe I’d like to.”
Colt stepped closer to the invisible barrier formed by the circle that held her his prisoner, pulled by some magnetic attraction he couldn’t resist. Up close her skin was even smoother, almost the texture of rose petals, and damn, but she smelled just as good.
“I thought demons all smelled like sulfur.”
Her husky laugh made him want to lean in and sample her lush mouth. “Only certain demons.”
“And you’re different.”
“I’m a lover, not a fighter, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“So how do you steal souls?”
“Oh, I never steal them.” She batted her eyelashes at him in absolute innocence. “Men give them to me willingly.”
“Why would they do that?” Even as the words left his mouth, gut deep he knew why. She was the damn near sexiest thing he’d ever been this close to.
Her lips formed a beguiling Mona Lisa smile and her words came out a sultry whisper of promise. “Because I can do things for them. I can offer them pleasures no mere mortal woman can.”
He bet. “Good enough to kill ’em, huh? You must be one hell of a succubus.”
She shrugged her delicate, creamy shoulders. One of the slender ribbon straps slipped, sending the edge of her gown tipping precariously low. Both hands itched to touch her.
Ah, hell.
He swallowed hard. “Your charms are wasted on me, demon.” Colt was hoping God didn’t plan on striking him dead right then and there for that whopper of a lie. “I only need you for one thing.”
“I have a name, you know.”
Colt’s tongue tied into a knot. “Name?” he choked.
“I was a mortal girl before I became what I am now. My name hasn’t changed just because I’ve become immortal.”
He stared hard at her. Ever since the day that demon had come for him as a boy, he’d never thought of them as anything other than creatures of the damned who had no soul. But this was different. She was different.
She gave a dramatic sigh, leaning her head back against the barrier of the circle. “It’s Lilly Arliss.”
It took a moment for him to control his thoughts enough to find words to answer her. “But that’s so normal.”
She gifted him with a feminine smile that fisted through his chest and took away his ability to breathe. He thought he might have even seen a glimmer of admiration in those eyes. “You have no idea how much that means to someone like me.”
“Some
thing
.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Some
thing
like you.”
The pleasant curve of her mouth disappeared instantly, the intoxicating sensation she was causing evaporating like fog, leaving a chill behind. “Now you are wasting my time, Hunter.”
“I’ve got a name too. Colt Jackson.”
She crossed her arms, her eyes hard and glittering like cut emeralds. “And why should that matter to me when I am no more than a means to an end for you?”
There wasn’t a damn reason why it should, but at the same time Colt desperately wanted it to matter to her. Perhaps more than any other woman he’d ever met.
“Even now you’re probably thinking of a way to send me back to Hell as soon as you’ve finished with me.” She huffed. “You’ve no more honor than any other being, human or supernatural. At least my offer was genuine.”
That stung. Colt’s shoulders tensed. He had honor, dammit. Probably more than most men. His life as a Hunter had been built upon caring for those who didn’t know what nasty uglies there really were out in the world. But considering how ruthless his reputation might be on the other side, he thought she might have a reason to see his actions in an unflattering light.
“What if I let you go when you’re done with helping me?” The minute the words left his lips, he wondered why he’d even offered. What was he thinking? Letting a demon go free? What the hell had compelled him?