Winn turned away from her as she bid the travelers a kind good-bye. She shook their hands, and waved to them while the horses gained steam and began to huff and chuff, ready to resume their journey into Bodie.
It didn't help that his little brother Colt, the hothead of the three and a self-styled outlaw, had come waltzing in that afternoon, determined to locate their pa's long-lost piece of the Book of Legend. Winchester had told his little brother the truth. Only a Darkin could access the Book where Pa had hid it. And, nothin', but nothin', was going to change his mind about taking up arms as a Hunter again.
White puffs of steam and darker smoke from the carriage's boilers mixed with the dust kicked up by the mechanical horses, creating a dark smudge in the otherwise cloudless clear blue sky as the stage clanked and rolled on down the hill into Bodie.
The vampire eyed him with a mixture of curiosity and respect mingling in the depths of her eyes. “You are not exactly what I expected, Mr. Jackson.” She clasped her bare hands together, the dark ruby ring winking on the ring finger of her right hand.
“What'd you expect?”
The corner of her mouth tipped up in a way that made his skin seem to shrink a size, and he had to keep himself from leaning forward to sample those tempting lips.
“From the legends we've been told”âher gaze raked him over, assessing himâ“someone bigger.”
Winn's lips twitched beneath the edge of his mustache. “Is that so?”
Her long, tapered fingers lightly brushed the velvet rim of her expensive little hat, which was sheltering her face from the sun. “
Da
. But then looks can be deceiving.” Even though she looked no more than twenty-five, she had to be an old and powerful vampire to be withstanding the intensity of the daylight.
“You got that right,” he muttered. Strip a bustle, petticoats, and corset off a woman and you were often shocked at what remained. But not with her. He could tell.
“His Majesty would like you to accompany us to his main palace in Europe and join in recovering the second third of the Book of Legend.”
“You know where another piece is?”
“We did. For six hundred years it had been stored within the royal castle. But recently it was stolen. If you are willing, His Vampiric Imperial Majesty's envoy and I would like to return this evening to discuss retaining your services.”
Winn pressed his lips together. He wasn't about to hire out to a vampireâimperial, majestic or otherwise. He didn't work
with
supernaturals, and he sure as hell wasn't about to work
for
them.
“Let's get one thing straight, Lady Drossenburg. If I decide to help you, and I'm not saying I will, it will be on my terms, and not because I give a rat's ass what your high and mightiness back home thinks. We clear on that?”
A fine little tic worked at the corner of her eye, but otherwise her face remained perfectly smooth. Clearly she was as uncomfortable with this little arrangement as he was. Good.
She bowed her head and dropped into an elegant curtsey, the pale dust marring the edges of her dark skirt. “Of course, Mr. Jackson.”
“We'll meet at the jail in Bodie. Ten o'clock tonight suit you?” There was no point in making it too early. He'd need time to prepare, for one thing, and for another he wasn't exactly anxious to go it alone with two vampires, possibly more. It might be a diplomatic mission, but he wasn't some stupid, average hick. He'd been trained by the best Hunters around, and a man didn't forget hard lessons like those.
She rose from the curtsey and lifted her chin with a defiant tilt. The blood-drop earrings at her earlobes danced with the movement of her head, calling attention to the smooth, supple skin just below her ear. “As you wish. We shall see you this evening.”
Winn nodded. He wasn't happy about the appointment, but saying so wasn't going to make the situation any better. With the coach gone, he had no idea how she planned to get back toâwherever she'd come from, or if she intended to walk the three miles into town. She strode, her bustle swaying, in a slow, graceful pace toward the open desert, away from Bodie. One second she was there, a dark mark against the too-tan landscape, and the next she turned into a spiral of dark smoke that dissipated on the breeze.
“Damn vampires,” Winn muttered to himself, looking at the mess she'd left behind. High overhead three buzzards, their naked pink heads barely visible, circled in the sky. He'd have to get a deputy to come out here with Mortimer Brewster, the mortician in Bodie, to collect the bodies of the Dalton gang before only their picked-over bones remained. Carefully Winn dragged the bodies closer to the rocks, making a tableau that looked more like the attack of a mountain lion.
Hoss groaned and stirred up a cloud of powder-fine dirt from the trail. Winchester grabbed him up by the collar of his shirt, hauling him to his feet. “Up and at 'em, Hoss.”
The bandit shook his head and wobbled. “What happened?”
“You were damn lucky, Hoss. Damn lucky. This time.”
“Where am I?”
Winn clenched his jaw, waiting to see exactly what Hoss remembered as he walked Hoss back toward town. He didn't want to have to glamour him, but he would if he needed to. Pa's theory had been that the best way to take down a Darkin was to know what made them tick and learn how to use it against them, so he'd trained Winn to cast a glamour, and a few other things he preferred not to think on too much.
“Where's the boys?”
Winn gazed at Hoss through the corner of his eye. “You were hiding up in the rocks waiting for the stage, weren't you?”
Hoss stumbled slightly. Winn caught him by the upper arm and kept him walking.
“The stageâ”
“That mountain lion must have had its fill 'fore it got to you.”
Hoss looked at him, his bloodshot eyes narrowing with suspicion. “There weren't no mountaiâ” Winn locked gazes with Hoss, and the man went blessedly mute.
Winn carefully modulated his voice, keeping it low, slow, and even, letting the power well up from his gut and resonate in his throat as the glamour took over. “A large mountain lion attacked you and your gang before the stage with the Black Gulch bankroll came through. You were knocked unconscious after your gun backfired and slammed your head up against the rocks. And because it was so traumatic you're never going to hold up that stage again.”
“... backfired ... traumatic ... never again ...” Hoss repeated softly, his eyes glazed.
Throwing a glamour over the man made a kind of sickening feeling slosh about in the pit of Winn's stomach. He didn't like resorting to Darkin tricks, hadn't even when he was a Hunter. But it was better this way, he assured himself. Better for Hoss. Better for the town. There was no need for these folks to be afraid of vampires, or even know they existed.
The walk back into town was slow going and damn hot. But thirty minutes later, Winn trudged up the sagging wooden steps of the Bodie jailhouse and led Hoss inside.
“Now you're going to sit down here for a bit till that sunstroke wears off you, you hear?” Truth was Winn was a might concerned the glamour might wear off before Hoss was fully functioning again, and he might relapse and remember everything. Winn needed to keep a close eye on him for a bit.
Hoss shook his head again. His eyes cleared as the glamour faded, and he dutifully sat down in the only ladder-back chair on the front side of Winn's large, scarred desk.
Winn sat in his office chair and opened the left side drawer of his desk, pulling out a brown glass bottle of whiskey and a shot glass.
“You mind if I have some of that?” Hoss eyed the bottle longingly and licked his cracked lips.
“Yep. I do.” Clearly Hoss was back to normal and good to go.
Hoss scooted to the edge of his seat and closer to the bottle. “But I'm mighty parched.”
Winn refrained from bodily just shoving Hoss out into the street and instead jerked his head toward the door. “Plenty of saloons in town. Go take your pick. Just make sure you tell Brewster to go take care of your boys up there first. No need for the buzzards to pick them clean.”
Hoss got up from the chair, not needing further encouragement. The door swung shut behind the older man, and Winn kicked back a slug of the old Kentucky Red Eye, letting it sear a path down his gullet and chase away the chill in his stomach. He thought twice about taking another shot. If the vampires were coming, he'd have to have his wits about him for certain.
Winn set the shot glass on his desk, then leaned forward and scrubbed his hands over his face. He pulled on the hard waxed ends of his mustache.
It had been bad enough that his little brother Colt was bent on stirring up demons, but now there were vampires to contend with, and who knew what else might be dredged up by Colt's danged obsession with the Book of Legend.
Pa had hid his piece for good reason. The three brothers who had started the Legion of HuntersâCadel, Haydn, and Elwinâhad hacked the Book apart for good reason. And as far as Winn was concerned, he had one damn good reason for keeping himself out of hunting.
If that was even possible. He rubbed at the tight rope of scars across his thigh. Perhaps he'd been deluding himself for the last ten years. Ever since he'd had the run-in with that demon who'd nearly drowned Colt, and got an axe imbedded in his own leg for his troubles, he'd realized he wasn't cut out to be a Hunter. There was too much at risk. He poured another jigger of whiskey into the glass and swirled the tawny liquid around.
It reminded him of the contessa's eyes, so clear and pure a color they were almost translucent amber. They were very unusual. Very pretty. But where there were Darkin, Hunters died. Where there were Darkin, the loved ones of Hunters died.
Years ago, his mother's blue eyes had gone wide with shock, her hand shaking and slick red with her lifeblood as she pulled it away from the spot the bullet had struck. Winn's legs wouldn't move. He couldn't even speak. The demon he'd meant to shoot had laughed, then turned into a black smudge in the air. The bullet had passed straight through it. His mother had sunk to her knees and fallen forward in the dirt, her honey-colored hair coming loose from the twist she always kept it in.
Time had seemed insanely slow as he stumbled toward her, falling beside her. “Mama?” He'd turned her over, but it was too late. Her eyes were open, but they were hollow. All the life in them was gone.
His stomach roiled at the memory, bile rising up in the back of his throat. Winn struggled to bring his shaking hand under control. He slammed the glass on the desktop, making the whiskey slosh over the rim. He cupped the back of his head with his hands and closed his eyes, breathing out in a slow, steady stream to calm his raging heartbeat.
His pa had spouted off the platitudes of it not being his fault. He hadn't known what the demon could do and that it took special bullets to wound one. He'd meant to do the right thing. But the distance between what Winn had meant to do and what had actually happened was from Bodie to the moon. Winn had never stopped blaming himself. His world was black and white. He'd killed his mother, and he'd only been twelve. Only he and Pa had known.
The disaster with the demon almost drowning Colt ten years ago, then hitting Winn with an axe that almost cost him his leg, had been the last straw. Much as Pa wanted him to be a Hunter, he wasn't fit for it. He wasn't about to be the reason he lost his brothers too.
That vampire was just going to have to find some other poor sap Hunter to help her.
Chapter 2
The heavy thud of boots on the worn wooden steps outside the jail two hours later was the first clue Winn had visitors.
He pulled the pistol from his hip holster, cocked it, and held it level to the top of his battered desk, far more wary than he had been when his day had started. His brow furrowed and his eyes grew dry as he refused to blink. The seconds seemed to stretch in the late afternoon heat.
The door flew open as it was kicked inward. Winn's shoulders relaxed when he recognized the silhouette. His little brother Colt formed a dark shadow in the doorway, the bright sunshine outlining him. A smaller silhouetteâthat of a woman whose backlit red hair turned to flame in the sunlightâwas close on his heels. Colt and the woman looked as though they'd been dragged behind a stage, maybe even trampled by the horses. Their torn, dirty clothing was splattered with dried blood.
Winn's heart stopped beating for a second as he tried to ascertain if it was his brother's blood or someone else's. By the pissed look on Colt's face he guessed it might be a bit of both. But he was relieved his brother was still standing.
Colt pulled the woman in with him. The dirty blue calico hung limp and ragged from her shoulders, and her hem was torn clear up to the thigh, exposing long, shapely legs in torn fishnet stockings. Colt had his hand manacled about her wrist, and she didn't seem to be resisting. Who the hell was she, and what had she done to his brother down in the mine while he searched for the Book?
Winn shoved his Stetson back to get a better view. “What happened?”
Colt threw him a dirty, accusatory look. “We found the damn door. We got in. We got the wooden box open. There was nothin' in it! Nothin' but this scrap of paper.” He threw the yellowed bit of paper on Winn's desk. “And we nearly got killed for our troubles.”
Winn picked it up, unfolding the aged, brittle parchment with care. His eyes narrowed as he angled the paper first one direction, then the other, looking at the odd words scribbled into a spiral, trying to make sense of it. “It's in code.”
There'd always been the chance that Pa would have taken extra precautions when he'd hidden his part of the Book down in the depths of the Dark Rim Mine, but apparently he hadn't trusted Winn enough to be completely honest about the location of the Book, or what would have to be done to reach it.
Fire erupted behind Colt's eyes, and the air shivered with his palpable rage. “No shit, Winn. What'd you do with Pa's part of the Book?”
Winn's gaze lifted from the page, boring deep into Colt. He counted slowly from ten to one in his head to keep from cuffing the boy for his attitude. “I didn't do a damn thing with that Book. Pa just said to keep watch over the thing. I haven't seen it since he hid it down deep in that mine when we were kids.”
Unspoken hostility eddied between the Jackson brothers, making the air crackle. “You're tellin' me somebody else got to it first?” The accusation was there, hanging between them unspoken, and it cut Winn to the core that his brother thought he'd do anything to hurt him.
Winn's gaze shifted, landing squarely on the woman beside his brother. He hadn't seen her before, but he knew a Darkin when he saw one, even if the telltale scent of sulfur hadn't followed in her wake. Her eyes were unnaturally green, like fine, clear emeralds. An ethereal beauty, she was too perfect to be a mere mortal. Dollars to pesos, she was a succubus, a demon designed to tempt men into giving away their very souls in exchange for physical pleasure. Just the kind of thing Rathe would dredge up to tempt a womanizer like Winn's youngest brother. “Not someone, some
thing
.”
Colt shifted his stance, stepping slightly in front of her. Damn. The hair on the back of Winn's neck pricked both with irritation that his brother would actually protect a Darkin rather than just kill it outright, and with the knowledge that she'd already gotten to Colt and Winn hadn't been there to stop it. “She's been with me the whole time.”
He bet. “This the demon you summoned to help you out?”
Colt gave one quick nod.
Winn huffed out a disgruntled sigh and coolly assessed the succubus from head to toe. Damn demon. His fingers tightened on the butt of his pistol. He ought to just shoot her and send her right back to Hell on principle alone. But that was Colt's job. Not his. He wasn't a Hunter. Not anymore.
“You sure know how to pick 'em, I give you that,” Winn muttered. He released his grip on the pistol.
“Point is, she don't know any more about this code or the location of the missing piece of the Book than we do.”
Winn picked up the scrap again, turning the page sideways, then upside down. “It's written in a circular fashion. Starts at the center like a spiral and coils outward.”
“Like a spring.” The demon's voice snapped both men's attention to her. “It's like a lock, and you're holding the key to the spring in the lock.”
“Huh,” Winn said, the one word conveying a host of unspoken I-don't-give-a-damn-what-you-think messages loud and clear. The sooner his brother got rid of the demon, the better.
“So what do you think it says?” Colt pressed, the impatience giving his voice a raw edge as he leaned in on the desk, the demon standing slightly behind him. Baby brother always had been rash, impetuous, a ladies' man, and prone to taking stupid risks. The demon's presence confirmed it.
“Have no clue. You're gonna have to have Marley pick this one apart.” Their friend Marley Turlock was a bit of a mad genius. He could figure out just about anything, and when he couldn't, he was brilliant enough to invent something that
could
. Only problem was that his inventions tended to fall into two distinct categories: brilliant and disastrous.
Colt's brows dipped down below the level of his brown Stetson forming the tip of a V between his blue eyes. “He's not a code breaker.”
“He's not, but Balmora is.”
Colt released his hold on the demon beside him and pushed his Stetson up at the brim with his index finger. “Balmora?”
“Some fancy-pants contraption he's been building for the British government.” Colt wouldn't have heard of it before. Marley rarely talked about an experiment still in the development stages, especially when he was working on it for a paying client. Winn had only seen it once, halfway completed.
Colt leaned in, planting both fists firmly on the scarred expanse of Winn's desk. Confidence radiated off of his little brother, that certainty that he knew exactly what he was doing and believed in it with all he was worth. For a moment Winn envied him.
“Come with us. If the Darkin have found Pa's piece of the Book and moved it, there's no telling how fast this is gonna unravel.”
Winn shook his head, spreading his hands wide on the surface of his desk. The image of the vampire contessa's face flickered in his vision, superimposed on the inside of his eyelids when he blinked. He had a lot more to deal with than Colt could possibly imagine. Vampires didn't tend to travel around in small groups. He sincerely doubted it would just be the contessa and the royal envoy. By tonight there was going to be an entire contingent of vampires swarming down on Bodie, and he was the only thing standing between them and the population. “Can't. Got an important foreign dignitary showing up this evening.”
Colt shoved away from the desk. “Can't be bothered with the supernatural when you've got such important matters to tend to, eh?”
Anger simmered below Winn's skin, making it tight over his wind-chapped cheeks. Colt didn't know half of the shit he'd been through or doneâthings so dark they still lurked in the recesses of his conscience, waiting to stab at him whenever he thought he was past such behavior.
“Don't start with me, boy. I was hunting before you were walking.”
And killing before you could talk
, Winn added silently to himself. Hardly the kind of thing a child should have been expected to do. And yet his pa would accept nothing less than Winn's total immersion in the Hunter life.
“Which is exactly why we need you to come along.”
“He's right. Rathe is planning something,” the demon said.
Winn glared at her. Rathe was an archdemon lord, and just hearing his name made Winn twitchy. He thought he was showing an amazing amount of restraint considering he hadn't shot her in the forehead already. Between that and not killing the vampire this morning, he briefly wondered if he had been out of the game long enough to have completely lost his touch. “And I'm supposed to trust you?”
Colt stiffened, his skin turning ruddy. Winn knew he'd struck a nerve. There was a hell of a lot more going on between his little brother and the demon than Colt had admitted. “We've got a deal. She's going to help me get the Book.”
Deep down Winn's stomach shrank to the size of a walnut. He knew it. The demon had already got her hooks into Colt. His glare shifted to his little brother. “Dammit. Didn't I tell you not to give your soul for that Book?”
“I didn't. She wants our help.”
Winn rolled his eyes and gave his head a small shake. When the hell was Colt gonna stop thinking with the head in his pants and start thinking with the one under his Stetson? “They all say that, brother.”
“She wants to get away from Rathe. She wants to return to being human again.” Colt looked so damn sincere, like he actually believed the tripe he was spouting off.
Winn glanced at the demon. “Is that true?”
She stepped around Colt, her lithe body built for seduction. Winn could hardly fault his brother. Colt might be a Hunter, but he was human. Things would have been much easier if he'd just summoned up some ugly sonofabitch with forked tongue and tail.
The creamy skin of her throat flexed with a heavy swallow. It didn't take a lawman to know she was scared and desperate. Two things that were not a smart combination when going up against a powerhouse like Rathe. “No one has ever tried it before, but the way I see it, if anyone could find a way to break Rathe's hold on my soul, it would be the Chosen.”
The word made Winn's insides curl, like paper to a flame. It seared his gut, burning hot and quick. The Chosen. Those stupid rumors were never going to die. It was like some damn religion among the Hunters. Well, he wasn't some hero. Hell, he barely considered himself civilized most of the time.
Colt grunted and scraped his scuffed brown boot over the gritty wooden floor. “Told you before, Lilly. We're not the Chosen.”
So the demon even had a first name. The slight widening of her eyes in surprise was quickly narrowed as she balled up her fists. “You don't
think
you are. Big difference. Doesn't mean you're not.”
Interesting. The fact that she was willing to go head-to-head with his brother meant he actually respected her. Respect for a Darkin wasn't exactly trust. But it was damn close. Whatever had happened down in the Dark Rim Mine had tested them both and forged a bond of trust between them. Winn wasn't about to trust Lilly, or the contessa, or anything else non-human, but he trusted Colt. And if Colt thought she was necessary to his plans, he'd support his brotherâChosen malarkey or not.
“Either way, don't matter,” Winn said, clasping his hands over the back of his head. “You two need to get to Marley on the double. I'll see what I can do about tapping into a lead on the second part of the Book for you, but I'm not going on any fool's errand to fetch it back.”
“You know we're going to need more than just Pa's part of the Book, don't you?”
Winn snorted. Maybe he'd given Colt too much credit. “Now she's really got you addled, boy. The parts were never meant to be brought together. That's why the Legion separated them in the first place. It's too damn dangerous.”
Colt shook his head slowly, his eyes deadly serious. “That's where you're wrong. If what I think is happening is true, then we need to get those other pieces. Pa told me this might happen.”
That got Winn's attention.
There was precious little his pa hadn't drilled into him about hunting. He was itching to know what Pa had told Colt, but he didn't dare ask in front of the demon. “We don't even know where the two other thirds of the Book are located.”
“A lead is all we need.”
Too bad even the vampires didn't know where the other third of the Book was located now. It would have made Colt's search easier. Winn stared at him long and hard. Damn, but his little brother's confidence was infectious. He didn't want to hunt, but could he really stand aside knowing Colt needed his help?
He knew his baby brother well enough to know Colt's course had already been set. Like a runaway locomotive on a straight stretch of track, there was no changing his direction. The best Winn could hope for was to remove as many obstacles in Colt's way as he could and pray it was enough to keep his brother alive.
“If I find anything, I'll send word through Marley,” Winn said simply.