Three Times Burned: A Paranormal Fantasy (Remington Hart Book 3)

by H. Anne Henry

  “Where’s Stacey tonight?” I asked.

  “She’s out doing some Christmas shopping with her mom. They had some last-minute things they wanted to get. I told her I’m fine here since most of the work on the Crossroads map has been done.”

  I smiled. “I don’t think it’s the map that has her coming here every night.”

  Garret blushed and covered his embarrassment by going back to fiddling with something on the computer. “I’ll let y’all know if I see anything strange tonight.”

  We filed out the front door just as the weak winter sun dipped below the horizon. It was so early that most folks were just getting off work. Since they likely had the same plan as Stacey and her mom—head to Westview for some Christmas shopping—we chose routes that would take us away from the flow of traffic in that direction. Gabriel and I went west toward Summer Valley, Meredith and Dylan sticking close to town.

  There were plenty of people on the road at that time, so we had to keep to the speed limit to avoid annoying anyone. Even though we wouldn’t see much that way, we could still watch for cars on the side of the road or any hellhounds that happened to cross our path again.

  As the evening wore on, people were out less and less. It was only a few days until Christmas, so there were driveways full of cars where people were having parties or hosting their families for the holiday. Lights decorated most houses, and some went all out and did up their entire yards with the twinklers. In some ways, the festivities were good for us because all the extra light made for an easy scan of the landscape. And when people moved in groups instead of alone, it made them more difficult for the vampires to pick off without attracting unwanted attention.

  We had made our loop and were making our way back toward Dove Creek when my phone rang.

  “Hey, Garret. What’s up?”

  “Remi?” he said, his voice hushed and urgent. My heartbeat picked up before he spoke again. “Help… Get here quick.”

  There wasn’t time for me to ask what the trouble was before he disengaged the call.

  “Get back to HQ—fast,” I told my partner.

  Without questioning my request, he accelerated and picked up speed. Never was I so grateful he drove a muscle car.

  “That was Garret, something’s wrong. I’m gonna call Aric out in the armory,” I said it even as I brought up his number to dial. “There must be a reason he called me and didn’t use the comms.”

  Aric picked up on the first ring. “Remi, what’s going on?”

  “Get to the house now. Garret’s in trouble.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  I could hear his breath pick up as he rushed out the door.

  “I don’t know, but I’m going to call Dylan and get him and Meredith there. They’re closer than us.”

  “Understood. I’m hanging up now.”

  While I wasn’t comfortable with Aric going in to a probable shitstorm alone, we couldn’t leave Garret unprotected.

  I relayed the same message to Dylan so that he and Meredith could get there even faster than us. They were going to send out the alert to bring in Hugo, Casey, and Jason and Ty. If there was something going down at headquarters, it was likely we would need all hands on deck.

  The drive back felt like it took hours, even though it was only a few minutes. The Chevelle’s engine screamed as Gabe pushed it as fast as he was comfortable going. And even moving at triple-digit speeds, we were the last to arrive.

  Vehicles were parked haphazardly down the driveway in front of the old farmhouse, the urgency apparent the moment we got close: our headquarters was on fire.

  That wasn’t our only problem. Everyone who was already there was battling for their lives. Aric hadn’t made it inside, which meant Garret was still in there.

  Gabe had barely gotten the car into park before I leaped out of the passenger side. I drew an arrow and locked onto the vampire Meredith was fighting, and took the heart shot. Screw leaving them alive; we would deal with the repercussions of new hosts later.

  I ran closer to the fray, taking myself into range of hitting them with the Holy Light. From behind me, gunshots rang out, and I glanced over my shoulder to see Gabriel had smoked a hellhound that was baring down on me. I felt him sticking close behind me, protecting my back so that I could let the light do what it did best.

  Hitting the next bloodsucker I saw with a blast, he vaporized just like the one I had taken out at Jack’s a few weeks before. I didn’t stop to admire the show, instead finding another target. Aric was tangled with a female vampire who was dangerously close to getting her fangs into him, but her bloodlust proved to be my advantage. I cast an orb of Holy Light at her from behind, taking her out before she ever knew what hit her.

  “Go!” I yelled at Aric. “Get Garret out of there!”

  Hugo and Casey both looked toward the house, too, just then realizing the heightened urgency of the situation. I moved to eliminate their foes so they could help Aric, but couldn’t get within range. Hugo lopped the head off the leech he was tangled with, so at least he was able to break free. He entered the farmhouse at a dead run, just behind Aric.

  It was excruciating not to be able to get close enough to help, to have to watch from the sidelines as they ran headlong into danger.

  My pain was only just beginning.

  A familiar silhouette appeared against the backdrop of the flames. At first, I thought I was imagining him like I had at Jack’s, but my eyes weren’t deceiving me this time.

  The bolt from a crossbow whistled by as my partner wounded a vampire on my flank.

  “Rem, look alive! What’s the matter?” he called.

  I had tunnel vision as I zeroed in on Creed. Had he come to help us? How was that even possible?

  But I watched him sneak around the corner of the farmhouse to the side, pointing back toward where we were all knee deep in the fray, giving orders to… a hellhound?

  Without giving any more thought to the situation or contemplating the whys, I trusted what I was seeing. Sprinting through the brawl, I relied on my partner and my allies to cover me.

  Halfway to him, Creed saw me coming. He turned tail and ran, gunning for the backyard between the house and the armory. I drew an arrow and aimed for the middle of his back.

  “Stop or I’ll shoot!” I yelled.

  He stopped and raised his hands, then turned to face me. A smile slowly spread across his face.

  “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” I demanded.

  Chapter 14

  “Don’t you see? I’ve set you free,” Creed said.

  The smell of old wood and newer furniture burning filled my nose. Groans coming from the framing and metal roof nearly blocked out what he had said. Sparks rained down around us, threatening to catch us in the flames just like the old farmhouse. I barely tracked the raised voices carrying from around front.

  The tip of my arrow didn’t waiver from where it was trained on Creed’s heart. It was a stand-off that took me back to a similar turn of events, when I had learned Creed wasn’t who I thought he was and had been forced to shoot down his partner in the process.

  And here we were again—another side of him showing itself. Another shocking revelation.

  Fool me twice, shame on me.

  I wished to God I had never found him and Eden in that house way back when.

  “Free?” I questioned. My mouth felt dry, my tongue too thick and cottony. I swallowed hard. “I don’t understand.”

  “This place.” He waved a hand vaguely, as though the Amasai headquarters had meant little more to him than a nondescript shell of a building. And maybe it hadn’t. “With it gone, you’re free to choose where your loyalty lies.”

  “But I had chosen. I made that choice years ago. And again a few weeks ago.”

  “Things change. Surely you see that, now that we’re together. You no longer have to fight for your dead husband because you can have me. I love you and I want us to be together, on our terms. We were meant t
o rule—not serve.”

  When those last words dropped between us like lead bricks, I knew.

  Valan had gotten to Creed.

  “No,” I told him, fighting the quiver in my voice. “If you go down this path, you walk it alone.”

  Hurt showed itself in his dark eyes, momentarily blotting out the manic high he was riding. He shook his head, disbelief elbowing the fleeting pain of rejection aside like he couldn’t grasp a reality in which I would respond with anything but devout appreciation for his acting as my liberator. I was supposed to be in awe of his attempt to break the Amasai from the inside out.

  “Don’t do this, Remi. Don’t deny me.”

  The last time he had forced my hand, it had ended in a slap. This time, the consequences were so much more dire than an unwanted kiss.

  Looking back, Creed had shown me exactly what he was capable of.

  I answered him by lifting my chin and pulling my bowstring taut. “Give yourself up,” I begged.

  He reached for the gun in his holster.

  “I don’t want to shoot you!” I shouted.

  Gabriel appeared at my right side, and Creed froze.

  “She may not want to,” he said, leveling his crossbow. “But I do.”

  My brother flanked me on the left. “What he said… only with an axe.” He twirled both axes in his hands and set his stance.

  If Creed so much as twitched a finger toward his weapon again, it wouldn’t be up to me to spare him or not.

  He glanced at the men on either side before zeroing in on me. “This isn’t how I wanted this to go,” he said, raising his hands in surrender.

  I couldn’t fathom it going any other way, except it not happening at all.

  “That makes two of us,” I said.

  Gabe took a few steps toward him, I assumed to disarm him so we could turn him over to the police. He didn’t make it that far, though, before the rushing wind gust sound came from behind.

  Without a second thought, I dropped my bow and called up the Holy Light to a bright sphere in my left hand.

  My partner recognized the disruption and stepped back even with me and Dylan, the level of his bow never wavering even as Valan materialized next to Creed. Dylan holstered one of his axes and brought up a palmful of Holy Fire.

  Yescha had told me that any one of the three of us had the power to defeat Valan and here all of us were together. For the first time in all our encounters, I didn’t fear the ancient vampire.

  My newfound bravery wasn’t put to the test, though, as he bared his fangs at us in a triumphant leer.

  “Love what you’ve done with the place,”

  He latched onto Creed and with that same wind-tunnel whoosh, they were gone.

  I vanished the light within my grasp and retrieved my bow. Without pausing to dwell on what had just happened, I took off for the front of the house.

  “It’s bad, Rem,” Gabe said as he rushed to catch up to me.

  “How bad?” I questioned, even as I ran.

  “An ambulance is on the way. Hugo was hit when they were getting Garret out. Both of them are too much for Meredith.”

  Without asking more questions, I broke around to the front of the house. We were in the clear as far as our attackers went, but the consequences were just starting to show themselves. I snapped my bow into place on my back and slowed to a halt.

  Garret was laid out in the grass, clear of the flames and debris, someone’s jacket folded under his head as a makeshift pillow. He was unconscious, his skin red and angry in a few places, but the burns weren’t extensive. Aric was next to him, sitting up but leaning heavily on his knees, his head down.

  On the other side of Garret, Hugo lay prone and unconscious as well. Meredith was hovering over him, her face drawn and grim. She looked up when I approached.

  “I got him breathing again. But the doctors will have to do the rest,” she said, her eyes red.

  I dropped to crouch next to her. “They will—he’s going to be okay,” I told her. “What happened?”

  “He and Aric went in to get Garret out. It took a while, so Casey went in after them. They had almost made it when a rafter fell. If it weren’t for Casey, both of them would be…” she trailed off when she couldn’t say the word.

  I glanced up to where Casey stood, his back turned to us. He had his face in his hands and his broad shoulders slumped. There was no heroic relief in his stance, only misery and defeat.

  Reaching out, I took Meredith’s hand in my own. There was nothing more I could say or do except stay to make sure they made it into an ambulance without any further attacks. I took one of Hugo’s hands, too, and said a silent prayer, begging for him to pull through.

  I stood back up and heard sirens wailing in the distance, closing in by the second. There were a few dissonant notes, indicating a few different sources. The ambulances and firetrucks were all arriving together.

  Dylan and Gabriel were both still standing guard, weapons in hand in case the vampires hit us while we were weakened. I went to Casey, putting a hand on his arm to get his attention.

  “You okay, big guy?”

  He dropped his hands from his face and nodded. “I’m fine.” His voice was scratchy and quiet, but that was the only physical indicator of him being affected by the fire. “I tried to cover both of them, but I…”

  “I know, Case. I know you did everything you could. Hugo and Garret are alive because of you.”

  He nodded, and I gave his arm a pat before returning to my brother and partner. A pair each of firetrucks and ambulances pulled into the driveway, parked in an organized formation, and moved in a coordinated effort to aid in our emergency. They had cut the sirens, but red and blue lights still flashed, casting odd shadows around the farmhouse. There was no hope for it to be saved—the firefighters’ task would be to prevent the fire from spreading, not to save the old house.

  “Creed can compromise the pawnshops. With Garret down and his computers here destroyed, I’ll have to do a manual reset on-site.”

  Speaking those words was surreal. We had plans and safety nets in place for scenarios where a catastrophic event threatened our security, but I never expected to need to enact them.

  “I’ll go with you,” Gabriel said. “It’ll be dawn soon, but better to not take chances.”

  “Joss is at the downtown shop. I’ll go to her,” Dylan told us.

  “Good,” I agreed with him. “She knows how to do the reset. You go on ahead because it’ll take you some time to get there.”

  “I’ll call ahead and warn her,” he said.

  We exchanged a long look that didn’t require either of us to say what we were thinking. It communicated all the becarefuls and Iloveyous needed.

  Gabe and I waited to see Hugo and Garret off. Brooke, the paramedic who had picked up my dad and then patched a few of us up after the zombie attack, led the triage effort. She was checking out Garret and interjecting a few calming words to Aric here and there. Her partner was going over Hugo’s injuries with Meredith, talking through it as he and another medic loaded him onto a gurney with careful, well-trained movements.

  Casey made his way to where Gabe and I stood.

  “I’ll stay here and keep an eye on the place for a while,” he told us.

  Gabriel nodded. “Good idea. I’ll text you the instructions for changing the passcode on the armory.”

  He seemed re-energized at the prospect of having something productive to do. And the firefighters would be at their task for some time yet, so he was doing us a favor.

  “Let’s get going,” Gabe said. “I’ll drive you.”

  I loaded up into his passenger seat and clicked my seatbelt into place. He pulled out and gave the emergency vehicles a wide berth as he took us down the driveway.

  “Let’s go to the shop here first. If anything’s gonna happen, it’ll be there. Creed won’t attack us alone and there’s not much night left.”

  My partner nodded and sped toward the heart of our little tow
n. I picked up my phone and called the night shift manager at the Westview shop in the newer part of town and told him we had a security breech in our payment system. I knew it would be safer for him and any other employees to just not be there, so asked him to close down. Aric was scheduled to be there during the day, so we didn’t have to worry about that. He wouldn’t be working anywhere until Garret was out of the woods.

  Gabriel swung into the Dove Creek shop as I was finishing the call. We both took a hard look around before getting out of the car, but the coast was clear. The same protective sigils and warding litanies that protected HQ protected the pawnshops, too, yet we had been compromised before by our living and breathing foes.

  Worse than the brute forced of the Triple Six, though, Creed had a much more subtle way in. He had worked at all three of the shops and knew every security code and computer log-in we had.

  The amount of damage he could do was unfathomable—he had already shown that.

  We used the rear employee entrance and found Jackie in the office. She looked up from her work and flashed an automatic smile.

  “Hey there, Remi.” The smile faded when she took in our composed expressions. “Everything okay?”

  “It will be,” I assured her. “Listen, you’re not in any danger, but our security system has been compromised. To be safe, I want you to go ahead and go home for the night. I’ll let you know as soon as we’re back in order.”

  “Does this have to do with the Amasai?” she asked.

  Since we were forced out into the open, it was no use trying to hide it from her, but I wasn’t sure how to answer.

  “Yes,” Gabe said honestly. “But like Remi said, you’re not in any danger. We just need to do a few things to make sure it stays that way.”

  Jackie blew out a breath. “Okay, yeah… I get it. You two be safe. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

  She got her purse from the desk drawer and hooked the strap over her shoulder. We followed her to the back door and waited until she was in her car. With a tentative wave, she pulled out of the parking lot and went on her way.

  “What needs to be done?” Gabe asked when we returned to the office.