Frost Burn

by Erica Stevens

  “It’s better than brutal, uncaring, homicidal monster.”

  Julian gave him a dark look, but there was little he could say to that, it was true. Of course, there were those who did know they had a choice about killing and didn’t care. He’d never believed he had a choice until he’d met Cassie. She’d made him understand there was true good in the world and real love. Even if Cassie could never be his, he knew he could be a better man because of her.

  Approaching the bar, he gave a young kid with a Mohawk a scathing look when he bent low to try and see down Quinn’s loose fitting, black button up shirt. The kid nearly tripped over his own feet as he backtracked away from him.

  “Don’t scare away my customers, not all of us are thieves,” Quinn admonished. “I have bills to pay.”

  He rested his elbows on the bar and leaned toward her. “I’m only a thief of hearts.” He knew she was trying not to, but eventually she lost the battle and a small smile tugged at the corner of her upper lip. “A smile, at me?” he teased. “Now was that so tough?”

  “Yes.” The smile faded as she placed her drinks onto her tray. She lifted the tray from the bar and walked away from him.

  He rested his elbow on the bar as he turned to watch her go. “Can I get you something to drink?” the small brunette waitress he recognized from the previous evening asked him. He glanced around, but didn’t see the redheaded bartender from last night anywhere.

  “I’m good,” he told her.

  “You just ask for me the next time you need something.”

  “Thank you…?”

  “Angie,” she supplied.

  “Thank you, Angie.” She fluttered her lashes as she smiled up at him. It was nice to finally have someone smiling admiringly at him again. Even as he thought it, his eyes were drifting away from her and back toward Quinn. He couldn’t help but admire the sway of her hips as she vanished into the poolroom again. Tuning out the noise of the pool games, he focused on the drunken conversations going on in the room.

  A loud shout caught his attention; he stepped away from the bar as what sounded like a chair breaking drifted to him. Chris lurched forward and disappeared into the room when more shouts resonated. People in the barroom turned toward the sounds; none of them moved as the distinct thwack of a fist connecting with cheekbone echoed throughout. The crack of splintering wood drew him more rapidly forward. It was followed by the loud bang of someone being thrown into a wall.

  Some humans shouldn’t drink whiskey, he thought as he approached the backroom, but then he had always enjoyed a good fight himself.

  Stepping into the doorway, he shook his head when he spotted a group of younger kids fighting with a group of cowboys. He was tempted to let them kill each other but Quinn, Chris, Zach and Melissa were in the middle of it, trying to break up the brawl. The dozen or so men fighting threw punches over the top of their heads and around the sides of them. One of the men let out a squeal that sounded more like a little girl than a grown man in his thirties. The squealing man held his arm; he reeled away from the group and fell into the wall.

  Julian smiled grimly as he realized Quinn had given him a good zap. Melissa grabbed hold of another guy and shoved him away, nearly knocking him on his ass. A punch to Zach’s jaw caused him to stagger back a step. He countered it with an uppercut that caused the man’s eyes to roll back in his head before he slumped lifelessly to the ground. The kid was new to the group but he had moves, Julian decided. He strode forward to put an end to the fight before someone got injured.

  Quinn ducked a punch thrown at the man to her right, but it had been so off the mark it nearly caught her in the jaw instead. Anger slid over Julian’s skin as another man yelped and jumped away from her. Chris punched a young man in the stomach, the man’s arms pin-wheeled as he fell backwards over a table. Bottles and mugs of beer slid over with the man when the table flipped over on him. His legs kicked in the air, as he tried to right himself from the tangled mess of the table and drinks. Julian would have laughed, but he’d stopped finding anything amusing about this situation when Quinn had almost been hit.

  Reaching the fray, Julian seized hold of a man’s fist and shoved him carelessly back. The guy bounced off of the jukebox before hitting the floor. Another one jumped onto his back and grabbed hold of his neck in a chokehold that might have affected his breathing, if he’d required air. Instead, he laughed at the man clinging to him before seizing the man’s arm and pulling him forward. Julian jerked him over top of his head before ducking a punch aimed at his eye.

  He bit back a bout of laughter at the young kid trying to hit him. Leaning back, he easily dodged the blow and drove his fist into the kid’s stomach. He barely hit him, he would have killed him if he’d hit him with his full force, but the blow lifted him off his feet and threw him into a table. The table broke beneath the force of his weight when he crashed down on top of it.

  “Enough!” Quinn yelled as more men from the bar jumped into the melee.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a chair swinging toward him. He swung his hand up and grabbed hold of the chair before it could crash down on his back. Jerking it from the man’s grasp, Julian placed the legs against the man’s chest and shoved him backward. Humans were idiots, he realized as Quinn shattered a younger guy’s nose before kicking another so hard in the nuts that even Julian winced for him. The kid grabbed hold of his crotch, his eyes rolled up in his head before he slumped over backwards.

  “Hey, stop!” the high-pitched command came from Angie as she tried to separate two men double her size.

  Quinn leapt forward to help Angie but the two men continued to swing at each other over top of Angie’s head. Quinn let loose with a rapid fire of right elbows to the man’s face that would have crushed his cheekbone if she’d decided not to hold back. He was certain she’d still cracked the bone.

  “Enough!” Quinn shouted again. “If you all don’t stop, I’m going to ban every single last one of you!”

  Julian sidestepped another man, but a big group of humans were shoved up against him by a large man wielding a table as a weapon. When he’d entered this fight, he’d shut off his ability in order to keep himself protected from images he didn’t want to see from everyone involved. It wasn’t always the best thing to know who was cheating on who, what went on in a person’s bedroom, all of the little neurotic thoughts about looks and weight, or who was stealing from their family for drugs. He had enough weight on his shoulders trying to keep his more malevolent impulses in check, without having the added weight of knowing a bunch of things he cared nothing about.

  This time, the images inside of one of the people who were shoved against him broke through his walls and played out before his eyes in a macabre dance of the doomed. Something volatile and evil slithered over his skin as blood and death came to life within the synapses of his mind. He’d been and seen many things, done many things over his lengthy life, but what broke through his defenses now was something worse than he’d ever been, and these images came from a human.

  The screaming of women and children echoed in his ears with enough force to stagger him forward a few steps. Stars exploded behind his eyelids; it felt as if his head were splintering apart from the barrage. His attention was drawn away from the fight enough that a punch landed on his jaw, knocking his already pounding head to the side. His vision blurred as his fangs extended. The blow didn’t have him teetering on the edge of murder, but rather it was the horrific images flooding his mind. Blood, so much blood, it brought out the part of him that had once thrived on brutality and death.

  Maybe not this kind of tortuous twisted death, but death nonetheless.

  Struggling to regain control of himself, his shoulders hunched up as his head bowed down. There were at least ten humans scrambling over him. So many of them he couldn’t begin to pinpoint who emitted the visions in waves. His muscles bunched as strength surged through them. With a snarl, he rolled his shoulders and flung his arms backward, throwing all of his
pig pile companions onto the floor. He spun toward the group that had been pressing against him. Apparently, he’d knocked them over too as he spotted Quinn, Angie and Chris amongst the mass of those he’d tossed aside.

  His eyes were riveted upon the men scrambling to get to their feet. It was one of them that had caused what he’d seen in his mind, one of them was a coldblooded killer. He took a step toward them in order to find out exactly which one had to be put down.

  Before he could grab the first one, a short man with a thick gray beard and shaggy gray hair standing out around his head like Einstein’s stepped into the doorway. The man braced his legs apart as he glared into the room. The leather belt at his waist appeared to be losing the battle against the belly hanging over top of his jeans. He lifted a gun into the air and fired a shot; the bullet slammed into the ceiling above him. Bits of wooden debris and dust rained down around the man. He didn’t move as he lowered the weapon and pointed it into the room.

  “Everybody out, now!” he barked.

  Julian stepped forward to try and stop the men from leaving the room. The man in the doorway leveled the revolver at his chest. The shot wouldn’t kill him, but it would hurt like hell, and he really didn’t have the time to explain why he wouldn’t require an ambulance afterward.

  “I’ll shoot you, Billy Joel. I swear I will,” the older man told him in a voice made gravelly from years of cigarette smoke.

  Julian shot Chris, Lou and Melissa a look when they began to laugh; Zach snickered beside him. “I’ve killed people for less,” he growled at the newcomer to their group from the corner of his mouth. Zach’s smile slipped away, he took an abrupt step away from Julian’s side.

  The group of fighters scrambled to gather their unconscious friends and escape the poolroom. Julian took another step forward; a wave of the gun still aimed at his chest stopped him from going any further. He raised his hands in the air as he memorized the faces of every man scurrying past the guy with the gun. He wished Luther had decided to come out tonight instead of trying to do more research; he’d have been able to diffuse this situation far better than Julian could.

  “Oh for crying out loud, Clint,” Quinn muttered as she stalked forward. “Put the gun down.”

  “How do I know he didn’t start it; he looks like trouble,” Clint retorted.

  “He didn’t start it,” Quinn told him. “And you’re thinking of Billy Idol. Not Billy Joel.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “One is an eighties rocker that his look is definitely based on…”

  “I told you this is all natural,” Julian retorted.

  “The other sang Piano Man,” Quinn continued as if he’d never spoken.

  “Oh.” Clint dropped his arms down and slid his gun into the holster at his side. “I like that song.”

  “Most people do,” Quinn replied.

  “Are you girls ok?” he demanded.

  “We’re fine,” Quinn assured him.

  His gaze went past her to Angie. “Fine,” she replied with a small smile.

  “What happened here?” Clint inquired and pulled a piece of gum from his pocket. He shoved the gum into his mouth as his gaze traveled over Julian, Melissa, Chris, Lou, and Zach.

  “Some townie kids trying to prove their might, pissed off some cowboys,” Quinn told him. “These guys were trying to help us break it up.”

  Clint’s brown eyes searched over them before he gave a brisk nod. “Thanks for the help. You’ve earned yourselves a free drink. Can you clean this up, Quinn?”

  “On it,” she assured him.

  She rested her hands on Clint’s small shoulders and turned him toward the main room. The people out there hastily became preoccupied with their alcohol and friends again when Clint’s eyes fell upon them. Julian stalked across the room as the last of the people involved in the fight scrambled out the door.

  Pickup trucks, cars, and motorcycles were firing up as he pounded down the steps and into the dirt parking lot. His gaze ran over all the people jumping into their vehicles. Taking five giant strides forward, he grabbed the arm of a man trying to climb into a jacked up Jeep.

  “Hey.” The kid’s voice was slurred due to his swollen jaw and missing front tooth, but Julian was already turning away from the flashes of beer helmets, girls and football the kid emitted.

  He grabbed hold of a man with a cowboy hat next but swiftly turned away from the cubicle and computer that filled his mind. Dust kicked up around him as more vehicles fled the parking lot, he managed to grab hold of another kid, but all he saw were images of textbooks. He spun to try and find someone else only to discover he was now alone. The last pickup kicked up rocks and dust with a squeal of tires. One of the kids in the back of the truck swore at him before tossing a beer bottle his way. He jumped back as glass shattered around his feet and liquid splashed over the bottom of his jeans.

  There were times he really wished he were still a killer, he realized as he stepped away from the broken shards of glass.

  Chris jogged up to his side. “What are you doing?”

  Julian stared down the deserted road as the red taillights of the pickup faded into the distance. “One of the men involved in the fight is a killer.”

  “So are you,” Zach said.

  The look he gave the kid caused Zach to blanch. “They were nothing like me,” he said. “They have to be stopped.”

  Chapter Nine

  “Do you know everyone who was involved in the fight?”

  Quinn barely paid Julian any attention as she kicked her shoes off and walked toward the kitchen. Her feet ached, her jaw was sore from a punch she’d taken. The only thing she wanted to do was lie down and sleep until sunset tomorrow. Instead, she had an extremely angry, large vampire hovering in her doorway. She grabbed a can of soda and the whole bag of peanut butter cups before slumping into one of her wobbly kitchen chairs.

  She opened her soda, before peeling the wrappers from ten peanut butter cups and placing them on the table. She methodically began to eat each one as she tried to ignore Julian’s nearby presence. Maybe if she ignored him for enough time he would simply go away. She knew it would never happen, but she was going to enjoy her snack before she had to deal with him.

  She popped the last candy into her mouth and lifted her right foot into her lap. She rubbed at her foot and braced herself. He’d left her alone for this long, she knew it wouldn’t continue, and she was right. He pulled out the chipped white chair across from her and plopped into it. Quinn bit on her bottom lip as she waited for the chair to break apart beneath him.

  “So do you know everyone who was involved?”

  “I know most of them,” she admitted. “I’m sure there were a few I missed or don’t know. Clint and Angie would probably know the ones I don’t. I can always ask them.”

  “Good, we have to find the people involved.”

  “Most of them will be back to the bar, eventually. Whenever there’s a fight some of the people involved go to Hawtie’s for a week or two to give Clint a chance to calm down. The rest either go to the bonfire usually held a couple of times a month, or they go to the Mitchum’s.”

  “What are Hawtie’s and the Mitchum’s?”

  “Hawtie’s is the strip club on the other side of town. Mitchum’s is an old movie theatre the couple bought and renovated.”

  He folded his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair. It groaned beneath him but still somehow held his weight. “What goes on there?”

  Quinn dropped her foot down to lift her left one up. A groan escaped her as she rubbed at the sore extremity. “I don’t know. They have parties every weekend there. I always assumed it was normal party stuff, but I’ve never been.”

  “Maybe it’s a key party?” he suggested with a wink.

  She frowned at him. “What’s a key party?”

  “It was something that was popular in the seventies with the swinger crowd.”

  “Do I want to know what they did with those keys?�
��

  He gave a small laugh. “The men put their keys into a bowl and the women picked them out later. Whoever’s key they picked was who they spent the night with.”

  Quinn’s eyebrows rose. “Seriously?”

  “Yep.”

  “That sounds… awful. I don’t think that’s what goes on over there. I hope,” she added in a mutter. “But way to date yourself with that reference.”

  “Dewdrop, I was already old in the seventies.”

  She shook her head at him and lifted her soda. She held his eyes over top of the can as she took a swallow and dropped her drink back down. “You do emit an ancient aroma.”

  “And what is an ancient aroma exactly?”

  “Kind of musty with a hint of mushrooms, and…” she paused to scent the air. “Vinegary.” It was a complete lie, he smelled delicious enough to eat or at the very least lick. The fresh scent of soap and the peppery scent of power emitted from every one of his pores.

  He smiled at her as he dropped his arms and leaned toward her. “I may smell like an ancient vinegary mushroom, but I can assure you I don’t taste like one, if you ever decide you’d like to take a bite.”

  Despite her best intentions, her mouth dropped and her body flushed at his words. “I… uh… never,” she sputtered in protest.

  “Again your mouth is saying no, but your eyes are saying yes.”

  She almost threw her can at him, but she thought he might enjoy that too much. “You’re an ass,” she muttered.

  “I’m an ass who you’re tempted to kiss.”

  Her hand fisted on the table. “Stop.”

  “As you wish Dewdrop, but for future reference I’ve never turned down a kiss before.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you haven’t,” she retorted. “I bet there have been thousands.”

  “Not thousands, but I like that you have so much faith in my prowess with women.”

  “Ugh! Seriously, how are you still alive?” she demanded.

  “Luck, plus I’ve got skills. You’ll take me to those places tonight.”