Demon Hunt, page 14
“I think the girls and I can handle it, Mr. Blackthorne.” Houston had made his way into the hall, his cowboy hat in hand. His reverence for Pearl was on the verge of making Rhi sick. “I’m going to bunk on Pam’s couch and I’m going to try to get Miss Rhi to go fetch her dog and come back to Pam’s for the night.”
“No, Houston,” Rhi protested. “Whatever is going on, it’s after me, not you guys. You’ll be safer if I’m at my house and you’re as far away from me as you can get. Pam should be going to her mother’s to stay with Katie and not risking herself over me.”
Pam heaved her purse over her shoulder and pulled out her pistol to casually check the chamber. The colorful bag had never been far from her side for the entire conversation. “Rhi, if there’s a battle over the fate of the world - I want to be there to fight instead of sitting back on my rear waiting for the end. I wouldn’t trust anyone else to do it right, plus who else will believe enough of this to back you up? Fate is the true goddess of this town and she picked me to play a part.” Pam’s face turned hard for a moment. “And the next time a boogie man tries to climb in a window and take a swipe at me, I’ll be ready.”
Houston nodded. “Well said, Marine.”
Blackthorne again towered over Rhi, who tried to slide past him. “Rhi can go to her house and care for her pet, Pam. Because I’m going go with her. And I am going to stay with her.” His tone brooked no argument, although Rhi spent several moments imitating a beached carp, opening and shutting her mouth to protest, but no words could squeak their way out. She squashed down the impulse to flip him off.
Pam lit up like the neon billboard on a new casino property and gave Rhi a thumbs-up sign. Rhi sighed. Trust Pam to be thrilled about the possibility of sex even though Rhi’s potential partner could see her as a midnight snack. It hadn’t occurred to her friend they might not make it home through the black-veiled back roads to their homes alive and uneaten. The feeding on aura story might be a load of fertilizer.
Chapter Twenty
The trip back to their parked vehicles almost disappointed the passengers of Pearl De Vere’s shiny black SUV. Nothing burst out of the bushes at the vehicle that trundled through the streets, and no hideous, slug-white beings peeped over the snowy hedges that lined the brick paved sidewalks of Cripple Creek.
The dark expression on Blackthorne’s face kept Rhi from protesting about his presence. As much as she hated to admit it, the thought of him in her house overnight made her bones melt.
Pam called to Rhi to follow her and Huston in the battered green pickup closely. Weary to the bone, Rhi nodded in reply as she broke her way through the crusted snow to the SUV, Blackthorne following behind. She glared at him when he veered off towards the driver’s side door. For a spilt second she glimpsed a twinkle of amusement on his face before he veered back to the passenger side and waited patiently for her to unlock the door.
They sat in silence in the truck, giving it a few moments to warm up. She took a second to worry about Ellie Mae and to wonder if the protections Pearl placed on the mountain included the dog’s kennel.
The wail of sirens startled her as she guided the truck over the washboard gravel of a side road to gain access to Teller 1. Pam slid her truck to a stop in front of them to allow every fire truck and emergency vehicle in Cripple Creek fly by at top speed. They were going in the opposite direction, leading out the other end of town, towards Gillette Flats.
“I would’ve thought they would have left some people at the disaster we snuck out of at the restaurant,” she mused. “What could be bad enough for them to drop that mess and run off?”
Blackthorne lounged in the passenger seat, sans seatbelt, taking in the details of her clean but cluttered vehicle. The fading sirens did not change his expression. “I’m not sure we want to know at this point. Let’s get you home. Pearl will find out what else Manius has been up to.”
Rhi noticed he had brought his sword with him. The weapon lay in the floor of the backseat, the hilt within hand’s reach. “Why aren’t you out beating the bushes for the skull? Why such patience?”
Still scanning the road, he frowned. “The spell I suspect Raven used to hide the skull is the spell of Speldin’s Tower. A Bible holding the original spell Raven used to force the spirit of the skull to remain in bondage has been concealed somewhere. I suspected several times my baby brother figured out a way to break the spell in the last few years, but Pearl kept telling me he was screwing with us. It’s one of her favorite expressions. But she was right - you’ve been bound to it. For a hundred years we have waited for the skull to pop back up, but it will come to you and no other.”
“Then why hasn’t your brother taken me and waited for the skull to show?”
“It doesn’t work that way – fate will bring the thing to you. If you’re in a cell, chance could be cut out of the equation. Manius will move to take it and you after he knows you have the skull in hand. He wasn’t trying to kill you, you know. He likes to mess with me – it’s all a game to him. How long were you married?”
Rhi almost slid the vehicle off the road upon the sudden drastic change of subject. She took a gulp, knowing she discussed her marriage with a man who loved her in another life. She answered with as little emotion as possible. “Seven years. I was young and stupid. I stayed with him long enough for him to spend most of the money my parents left me. It seems I have a knack for marrying the wrong man.”
“I’ll say,” he replied, with enough grace to sound rueful.
They drove along in silence for a few moments until Rhi glanced upward and flinched. A shadow obscured the moon, a monstrous ebony wing outlined in the silver orb. The wing ended in a reptilian head the size of a snowplow. Red, glowing garbage-can-lid sized eyes could be made out as the creature raced through the air.
Reacting more to the appearance of Pam’s brake lights than to the horror in the sky, Rhi slammed on her brakes to avoid running into her friend’s truck. Her SUV skidded sideways on the slick road and Rhi compensated by cranking the steering wheel in the other direction and pumping the brake pedal. They slid to a stop, inches from Pam’s bumper.
Houston, already out of the passenger side of the pickup, held one of the rifles from the window rack.
Rhi began to open her door but Blackthorne grabbed her arm at the last moment. She was getting thoroughly sick of being grabbed by the arm.
“Stay in the truck!” he commanded and jumped out with his sword in hand.
Pam got out of her truck and scanned the sky with her gun aimed upwards. Rhi wondered if Pam was aware of how many people died in Cripple Creek’s heyday as a result of being hit by falling bullets during celebrations. Then she realized that she was being ordered around again and alighted from the truck. The others had gathered in the trail of light put out by her headlights as Blackthorne spoke. He sounded disgusted.
“Now that’s just silly. What a jackass.” He waved off Houston and the rifle. “Don’t shoot at it - I don’t know if that’ll make it explode or what. They’re volatile creatures. I haven’t seen one in a few hundred years.”
“I have news for you, oh ancient one. I live in Cripple Creek, Colorado, and I know my jackasses. That is not a donkey - shouldn’t we be running right about now?” Houston broke off as Rhi approached, her face pale but determined.
“What do you mean, showing off?” she asked as she neared, staring at the sky. Her angry gaze forestalled any arguments. The distinct smell of sulfur had replaced the fresh scent of snow filled forest.
Blackthorne looked up at the sky as he answered. “A dragon. He called up a dragon. What an idiot. To think that I trained him. He knows better.”
Rhi’s mouth hung open for a moment as Pam excitedly scanned the skies.
“God - the one night I don’t have my camera in the truck!” Pam exclaimed, still holding tightly to her gun.
Rhi started to babble but the sight of Blackthorne floating up into the air to stand in the crown of a tree near the road made her stop. He scanned the area from his perch for the offending magical reptile.
“He can fly, Pam. He’s floating for you. Now if he would glow a little.”
Pam didn’t bother to appear startled. “He’s a good vampire - of course he can fly. He danced on the ceiling earlier with his brother - why are you surprised? I wonder if he’s like a fairy?”
Houston wore an expression of wonder on his face. “Fairy?”
“Yeah. Can we hold him upside down and sprinkle his dust on us and we can fly too? That would be so cool.”
A dragon is swooping around town and Pam wants some fairy dust, Rhi thought. I wonder where I can get a bottle of tequila at this time of the night? I think I’m out. She addressed her friend. “Do you think we can turn a guy who weighs a solid 210 upside down and sprinkle him on someone?”
Blackthorne landed beside her. Hearing her words, he looked baffled. “Sprinkle? Never mind - I don’t want to know. It’s gone to hide in whatever cave or mine shaft Manius has found for the thing. My brother is trying to freak you out, Rhi.”
“He’s succeeding. Where’d he get a dragon?”
Blackthorne shrugged. “He raised it from one of the planes of Hell, I’m sure. The ones in this dimension don’t like to show themselves to modern man - too many weapons can kill them easier now than in the old days. They sleep the eons away in a cave on top of their treasure. And besides, it didn’t look like a good dragon. Damn it! The evil ones are the hardest to control. The only good part of this is that Manius might not have meant for us to see it. Let’s get to your homes - now.”
“Good dragons?” Pam called as he led Rhi back to the truck. “There are good ones? Can I get one?”
“Does anything intimidate her?” he muttered under his breath.
“No. When she dies her headstone will read: She had a damned good time. How many people will be able to say the same thing? Can you?”
He didn’t reply – instead he just reached to help her into a running vehicle for the third time that night.
The caravan headed out once more, this time with Blackthorne and Houston driving. Pam hung out the opened passenger side window, trying to get another glimpse of the dragon. Rhi had enough of being tough for the evening. She didn’t want to crawl into Blackthorne’s arms and cry - she wanted to curl up in a fetal position and suck her thumb. He could fly. Before the dragon, she could cling to the hope that the events of the evening and the past few days were a hallucination brought on by the residual effects of altitude and second-hand smoke. That explanation was gone. She was stone cold sober and he could fly.
The road to Horse Thief Gulch stretched too far and Rhi glimpsed so many shadows in the air and in the skeletal winter woods her hands shook again. Finally, in self defense, she leaned her head back and closed her eyes.
“Tired?”
She snorted and pulled the hood of her coat over her head. “Tired? No. Losing my grip on my sanity? Hell yeah.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Chief Boyd stood on the edge of a clearing off of Four Mile Road, his hand on his gun even though he was surrounded by three fourths of the Cripple Creek Police Force, all available state troopers, the fire department and every EMT who could be gathered up on short notice.
The smell of fire, gasoline, and unspeakable burnt meat permeated the air and gagged him. He controlled the urge to add to the chaos by throwing up and mentally girded himself to look around. The chief stood in the middle of a battlefield or a terrible accident and until he knew which one it was, he was keeping one hand on his gun. Of course it was connected to her. That much he was sure of. His gun might be useless.
Four-wheel-drives, bits of snowmobiles and body parts littered the area, pieces of each even hanging in the snow filled evergreens in a bizarre parody of holiday decorations. A crater the size of a Mac truck dominated the remains of a bonfire party. Snowmobile tracks crisscrossed the site. He pointed his flashlight down, revealing the broken top of a bottle of whiskey lying at his feet. One of his younger deputies approached the chief, carefully stepping around patches of something the chief made a point of not looking at too closely. The kid couldn’t have looked more shell shocked if he were on cleanup duty on the beaches of Normandy after D-Day.
“Sir, it looks like they got a hold of some dynamite - maybe some of the old, unstable stuff people find sometimes cached on some of the smaller old claims.”
The chief shook his head in disbelief. Damage control would be a bastard on this one. “They would have had to have found a crate of the stuff to make a hole this big. Did someone dump it on the fire thinking it would act like fireworks? Stupid rednecks. The stuff would be sweating nitro if it were really old. It should have blown up when they carried it here. And what about the wreck on the trail?” He didn’t want to think about what really had happened and no one would believe him anyway. How could he protect his town from something no one would believe and he can’t explain anyway?
The deputy tried to answer over his gag reflex. “There’s blood, sir, but no bodies. It’s going to take forever to sort everyone out and account for everybody. The footprints are a mess. Half covered with snow already and it’s started snowing again. We have a team coming up from Colorado Springs to help out.”
Boyd strode over to examine the ruins of Melon’s Scout. “I know this one - the brain dead kid from the gym - Melon. Let’s find out what happened here, guys. First, there’s the Alien Club mess downtown, which no one can seem to remember much of. And we can’t find the gun that went off in the middle of a restaurant. Now this.”
This was all too familiar. The fireside tales of his grandfather danced through his head for days as he made his preparations. How could any of this insanity have happened before and then the tale just be forgotten? He filed these thoughts in the back of his mind for later. The police chief of Cripple Creek climbed into his warm truck to make a call. She told him she would try to keep it from escalating … if this was her version of damage control, God help them. It had turned into a hell of a night in the Centennial State.
* * * *
Manius stalked from one end of his oversized living room to the other, holding an ice pack over one eye. Just because he was immortal didn’t mean he couldn’t be pounded into chopped steak. It took him less time to heal than a mortal but it still hurt.
His brother’s loss of control wasn’t a bother. It amused him to rattle his brother - the presence of Rhi took all of Jack’s reason. But the mess at the scene of the massacre of the snow mobile party put the lord of the castle in a fury. According to the police channels he monitored on the ride home, there were bodies in the woods that hadn’t been turned into chunks of flesh and charcoal like the rest of the victims.
Several small, nervous-looking demons hovered near the blazing hearth. One of them squeaked in terror as Manius approached them. The broken blood vessels in the vampire’s eye were overwhelmed by his glowing fury. “You were supposed to have the Great Beast burn all of the meat, my friends! The food must not look chewed. You’d been fed - do you want to be seen enough for someone to realize that you are real? Their disbelief is our weapon! You left some of the dead you fed on in the woods!”
“We hungry - save for later,” the leader spat out, drops of spittle falling from his bulbous lips to the parquet floor to sizzle on the tile. “Dragon cover most of mess - burnt food no good. There plenty fresh food there …”
Manius resisted the urge to blast them all back to Hell, which would then entail him spending more power he did not have to spare to raise more demons. And he would have to go out into the middle of the woods to do it. He changed tack. “Well, you’ll have to eat the food that I bring you for a while. When I have the power of the skull, there will be plenty of food for all who are loyal to me, little one.”
He petted the first one on its’ bald scalp, running his hands over the points of the ears. “And those who are not loyal to me - or half-ass a direct order…” he picked up the demon he had been petting and tossed it into the fireplace. The flames burned higher for a moment as the demon sat directly in the fire, looking confused. Manius waved a hand at the creature and it popped like a giant kernel of popcorn, disappearing in a puff of smelly smoke. The others skittered away. Making an example of one was a better use of his resources.
“Troy!” he barked.
His assistant stepped up to his master, ignoring the fleeing demons.
“Yes sir?”
“Go fetch some air freshener for this room - it stinks. Maybe some fresh breeze scent,” Manius ordered and left for the comfort of his suite. He strode down the thick carpets covering the floors of the hall, still clutching his ice pack. His head was killing him - not only from the fight but also the effort to control the demons.
Controlling the Dragon was taking its toll on him as well. The effort it took to force the huge spirit of the night to return to the old mining shaft Manius picked out to hide it in almost made him black out. The life forces he had bloated himself with at the massacre were precious. He didn’t mind a mass murder here and there or a jaunt in the night air for the creatures, but he had given his servants strict instructions to cover up the mess they left. The demons could appear to only the few who wouldn’t be believed.
He thought earlier about sending the Dragon to turn loop de loops over Rhi’s house before he had become so exhausted. But there was no use in rubbing it in. The recent events he created would feed upon themselves and generate plenty of fear in town. He’d have ample time to repay his brother and terrify the girl later. Everything would be perfect this turn. Now, he needed a hot bath and maybe a sitcom rerun to calm him down.
There were enough spies watching the town and the girl. He would know the moment she touched the skull. There was no use in getting worked up about it. Jack was worked up enough for all of them.
