The ride over to the courthouse wasn’t all that long, but the people in the van with him smelled bad, and he wanted as far away from them as he could get. The aroma was almost more than he could stand, and when the van finally stopped, it was all he could do not to knock the ones in front of him down and make a dash for the door.
Sitting in the courtroom, he looked around. Christ, it was as bad as he’d ever seen in a small town. There were chalk boards on the walls as well as above them, with cursive letters like you’d find in a kid’s class room. As they were all told to stand, Harold wanted to tell them that this wasn’t even right, but the judge, Judge Merkle, spoke before he could. It was a damned woman again.
“I want to thank the elementary school for the use of this room today. The renovations, from what I’ve been told, are coming along nicely for the new courtrooms.” She looked around the little room, then smiled. “I think I might have had second grade in here, a long time ago.”
Everyone laughed, and Harold rolled his eyes. Christ. This was getting more and more podunk all the time. And he wanted them to get on with it. As soon as the room quieted again, the judge lifted up a list and called off the first name. It wasn’t his. Harold stood up.
“Lady, if you’d not mind, I’d really like to get this done with. This joke or whatever it is has gone on long enough, don’t you think?” Judge Merkle cocked a brow at him. “If you don’t mind me asking, are you even the real judge? You see, I think there has been a mistake. I shouldn’t be here or in jail at all. I’ve made a mistake in voicing my opinion out where people can hear me, and I’ll atone for that. But this joke, I think it’s gone on long enough. Just get down off of that place, miss, and bring out the judge, the real one. I have things to do today.”
“The real judge? I’m afraid that I don’t understand what you mean. I’m the real judge.” Harold shook his head and told her she was a woman. “I’m well aware of my gender, sir, and I assure you, I’m a judge. Women can be them too, you know.”
“Not if you want things done right, they’re not. You see, the county lock up, they think it’s funny that I’ve been incarcerated, and now they have nothing but females around all the time. They’re pretty to look at, you see, but we both know that women just are inferior to men. They sleep their way to their positions, and that makes for bad things all the way around, especially for men in my position.” She asked him what his position was. “I’m so glad that you asked. I’m a man who gets things done. A man who doesn’t go for jokes like this one. And someone that doesn’t, nor have I ever, slept his way to the top. I got there by hard work and good work ethics. Women, all of them, they just don’t have the same kind of work ethics as men, and never will.”
“I see. And your name is Harold Bates, isn’t it?” He nodded, thinking it was good that she’d been told his name. “I’m also to understand that the reason that you’re here is that you insulted a doctor at the hospital, that you tried to disarm an officer—”
“I did not try and disarm him. All I was doing was grabbing for him to not turn his back on me. That’s not polite when someone is talking to you. Then he had to go and hurt me. I have a deep thrombosis of my arm. That’s a deep bruise, in case you didn’t know that.”
“I’m well aware of what that is, Mr. Bates.” He thought about correcting her on his title, but she spoke again. “Mr. Bates, you’re old fashioned, aren’t you? And a man set in his ways. Back in the fifties, but set in them anyway.” He wasn’t sure what she was meaning, but didn’t ask her. Instead, he was moved up to the front of the line to be judged. “I’ve been personally handed your file before I came out here today. It seems that you’ve been causing quite a ruckus around town as well. What do you have to say for yourself?”
“When will the real judge come in? I’d very much like to not have to repeat my story over and over.” She told him that she was all he was going to get today. “I don’t think that’s very fair, do you? I’m sure that you’ve done some amazing things to get this far in this town, but I don’t want some half-baked woman here trying to tell me what I’m to do. Or passing a sentence that is going to be all emotional, or some other craziness that only another woman can understand.”
“Mr. Bates, I think you should learn to keep your opinions and your rules to yourself if you want to make it in this world. You are in my courtroom, and today, I have the greatest pleasure of telling you that you will be remanded over to a trial. I have seen enough today that I don’t even need witnesses to come in and tell me what sort of man you are. You’ve shown yourself to be trouble.”
He was being dragged out of the room as she yelled for the next case. “Now wait one minute here. This isn’t right. You can’t do this to me. I’m an agent of the United States.” He was told, several times, to shut up. When he was sat on a bench, his legs and arm were shackled. Harold was sure that they meant to do both, but his arm was still in a sling from the other day. He looked at the officer that was standing over him. “This is the worst case of women’s stupidity that I’ve ever had to witness.”
“You keep saying that, mister, and someone is going to hit you hard enough to try and knock some sense into your thick skull.” He only snorted at him. “Look, I don’t know where you’re from, don’t really care, but you have to keep your mouth closed or they’re going to tar and feather you.”
“Yes, because that’s the way things work. Let me guess, some woman figured that out as a punishment, right?” The officer only looked at him. “You can’t seriously want to work with a woman, do you? In my day, women were treated the way they acted. If you were bad, then a slap or two was all right. Now days, a woman can beat up a man just as easily as a man can, and not even suffer any kind of jail time. I swear to you, women are the ruination of the world.”
Harold looked around and saw his employee. When he started to rise up to go to him, he nearly fell on his face. Yelling for Nash to come to him, he was dismayed to see that he was hobbling around with a cane. The woman next to him, he figured it was his fat wife, was telling him to come home now and not bother with him.
“He works for me. You go on over there and knit something.” She stiffened, and he laughed. “Look, lady, I don’t care if you are fat with a brat or just don’t know when to push your chair away from the table soon enough. Go away until us men are done talking.”
He should have seen it coming. Christ, the entire town was against him. But almost as soon as the words left his mouth, he was hit, twice. And when he was going down, his only thought was, he needed to get home before he had to really hurt someone. Or someone killed him.
Chapter 9
Chase caught himself staring off into space again. He’d been doing that off and on since his dad had taken Brandy Snow up to the spare bedroom over an hour ago. He looked up when someone came into the room, and smiled at Emerald.
“You should know that your dad is in a strange mood. I think he thought that we were playing with him. Once I explained to him that we weren’t, we had no idea, he’s been in this strange mood since.” He asked what he was doing. “Just staring at her. I’ve made sure that she’s comfortable and not too sick. She might have been had the dragons not intervened. Also, I think he’s a little freaked out about me too because of the way those men died.”
“If you want to know the truth, so am I. A little anyway. Not of you, but the way they were killed by the dragons.” She asked why. “I guess.... You know, I have no idea why I thought they’d just die when the ice hit them. I mean, they did, but.... Let me start over. I never saw anyone die that way before. And as long as I live, I don’t want to ever again.”
Emerald sat down on the chair and didn’t say anything. Chase wasn’t sure she was in any less of a strange mood either, not after the death of those vampires. And he was sure that he’d hurt her feelings too. Chase hadn’t meant to, but he was going to be honest with her about everything. When she sat there, he thought about the vampires and the dragons.
When Emerald h
ad said for them to kill them, he could see that the young vampires had thought, somehow, that it had been a joke. But when the dragons had reared back on their hind legs and drawn in air, he’d watched the vampire leader to see if he would run. Chase wasn’t sure what the dragons would have done had he run, but since he didn’t, the breath hit him first.
They were encased in ice in seconds. Not just encased, but he could see that it had filled their lungs too. Their bloodstream was stopped because of the cold…he knew this because he could feel it. The dragons, he knew then, were as much a part of him as they were Emerald. The vampire’s eyes were opened wide in shock, and Chase could see the man’s tongue as it had been helping him to form a word. A word that none of them would ever hear.
As the breath stopped blowing over them, the dragons turned their backs on the vampires. The three of them, each larger than a full-sized SUV, had swung their tails around quickly, knocking the frozen vampires over and shattering them into millions of pieces. There wasn’t even a piece of them left that was much larger than the dragons when they were small. They had shattered any chance of them every coming back from—
“Chase?” Dragging himself from his memories, he looked at Emerald when she said his name a second time. “Are you upset with me?”
“Upset? Why would you think that?” She said because she’d killed the men. “No, not upset about that at all. I don’t think that any of us are upset about that. I think that the dragons, that sort of scared us a little. They were so quick, so deadly, that I think that is what is preying on our minds. I know it is mine.”
“They would have died anyway, correct? Why not make it quick and mostly painless?” He nodded and asked her to come sit with him. “I’d rather talk to you. If I get too close to you, then you’ll touch me, and I’ll be lost again.”
“I love you.” She told him that she loved him as well. “Then why can’t I hold you? Let you know how much you mean to me?”
“You want to distract me again.” He laughed, and she finally smiled at him. “I don’t want to have your family at odds with me. I have come to love them very much, and when they look at me now, it’s as if they’re afraid of me. I don’t care for that.”
“Neither do I, and I’m sorry for that.” She nodded and leaned back on the chair. “How about we have them over for dinner tonight? That way, if they have questions they can ask them, and you can answer them. I’m sure they do. I have a couple of my own.”
“Dustin is making dinner tonight in anticipation of them coming over.” Chase got up and went to her, asking her what they were having. “Fried chicken and potatoes. I’m not sure what else, but he’s making bread for sure. I tried to get him to tell me what is wrong, but he said he has to work it out.”
“I think I might be able to help you with that. A man by the name of Bowery—I don’t know if that’s a last name or first—but he called here to find out if Dustin is ready to go on a couple of runs with him.” She asked what he’d told him. “Dustin told him no, but the man is making trouble for him, and a couple of the others working here. The gardener is a friend of Dustin’s as well.”
“Yes, so is the guy who is going to take care of the trees. Just the fruit ones. Apparently he’s also going to work with Fairaday.” Chase had heard that as well. “What sort of runs is he talking about, and what sort of trouble is he making?”
“He’s thinking on it, and so you know, he has no intentions of going anywhere that will get him into prison again. But I think he’s thinking of a way to make it stop. I’ve told him to talk to the local pack. They’d watch out for them coming around.” Emerald nodded. “I wanted to talk to you about Jamie and his wife. She said that she needs something to do. I don’t know what she’s capable of doing, but I would say pretty much anything she wants. And she has a law degree too.”
“I was thinking on that. There are some classes that she can take that will bring her up on pack law. And there are any number of paranormal laws that she could learn as well. She could be the attorney for the family, as well as the pack and kiss.” Chase liked that idea. “Jamie is going to be a stay at home dad, did you know that?”
“Yes, he told me that he wants to be calm for a little while. I guess he’s been thinking about it for a long time.” Emerald moved to lean her head on his shoulder, and he adjusted her so that she was leaning on his chest. “Bates is in the hospital. He tried to talk to Jamie when he was in the courthouse today. His boss wanted to meet with him and his doctor to figure out a long-term plan for him and his family. There was some confusion about where he was supposed to go, and Jamie and Kristie ended up at the hearing for Bates instead of the actual courthouse. Anyway, Bates said some mean things to Kristie, and then tried to grab her. Jamie hit him with his cane a couple of times and Bates went down. I wish I could have seen that.”
“That man needs to have a good talking to. And I think that his boss is in town now as well, to not just talk to Jamie, but Bates as well. Something about unauthorized charges that came up on his card. There are some that think the man is insane, but I think it’s more than that. I think he has real issues with women.” Chase asked her what she meant. “He has it in his head that women should be home, pregnant, and waiting on their mates hand and foot. Something old school. He had words with the judge on his case about it too.”
“Yes, I heard from Lynn just a little while ago.” They both looked up when his dad and Miss Snow entered the room. Emerald sat up and Chase stood. She was nervous, he could tell, but no more so than his dad was. “Hello. Are you feeling any better?”
“I’ve been talking to your dad.” Dad led her over to the other couch and she sat down, but neither of them looked to be very comfortable. “Those men, they’re dead, he told me. That they attacked your family. I’m sorry about that, but I’m so glad that you all were there. I don’t know.... Well, I do know what would have happened. I would be dead had you all not been there for me.”
She started to cry, and Chase had a feeling she had been for some time now. As his dad tried to comfort her, he looked over at him and he could see the panic in his eyes. Dad was out of his element with a woman, and while it was funny, it was sad too. Chase knew his dad would come around, but it would take some time for them both.
“It’s all right. We’re all fine. None of us were even close to being harmed by them.” Chase glanced at his dad when he didn’t speak. “What else have you been talking about? Dad is quite the talker when he wants to be. I’m sure he’s told you a couple of things you might have a question about.”
“He told me that I’m his mate. I know what that means, but he’s a vampire.” Dad cleared his throat but still didn’t speak. “He said that he’s not like those other men, and would rather die than to harm me.”
“That’s true.” She didn’t say anything, so Chase continued. “Where are you from, if I can ask? I mean, I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before. And I’m sure you might have family that might wonder where you are.”
“I’m not from here. I’ve been traveling around the country for a few months now. My parents are gone, and I needed to get away.” She looked at his dad, then back at him and Emerald as she spoke again. “They were very controlling, my parents, and I like being able to get out and about on my own. Then about three days ago, someone just appeared in my camper and knocked me out. I was hurt by those men. They bit into me all the time. I wanted to die. I thought that they were going to kill me.”
“I’m sorry about that. I truly am. They’re not going to be able to hurt you anymore…no one will again. As part of our family, we’ll all protect you like our own.” She nodded and looked around again. “Did you have any other family that we can call? Someone that needs to know that you’re all right?”
“No. I don’t have anyone left.” She stood up and walked around the room. Dad sat down, and Chase thought he looked exhausted. “I don’t know what’s going on. As I said, I know what a mate is, but Franklin tells me that he had a mate befo
re. Your mother. I thought, I’m sure that everyone does, that you only get one mate. But he’s sure that I’m his. I don’t want to be here if he figures out that I’m not what he thinks.”
“I understand. Yes, but my mom has been gone a very long time.” She nodded as she touched her fingers to the armor that stood against the wall. “You’re his mate. Of that you can rest assured. As for it happening only once, that is usually true. But sometimes the fates have a different idea in mind, and that’s the way it works, I guess. What is it we can help you understand?”
“I don’t know.” She looked at his dad, and he could see that Dad was more confused than she was. “He’s a nice man and he did save my life, but there are things going on that I don’t...it’s like I’ve been awakened from a bad dream, and I can’t tell if I’m still asleep or this is my reality.”
“You know that it’s all real.” Chase wanted to tell Emerald to go slower, but she stood up and went to the woman. “You also know that we can’t, nor would we, lie to you. You’re just afraid to believe your luck now.”
“Yes, that’s it. I can’t be this lucky. No one can, but especially me. I’ve had it rough all my life…terrible, as a matter of fact, and now not only am I safe, but I have someone that will love me, and I’m not sure what to do.” Emerald told her that she was and did. “But from what I know, they love forever, vampires do. But I don’t have forever. I only have a few years, comparatively speaking.”
“You have forever.” When she shook her head, his dad stood up and nodded to her. “Yes, you do. As do the rest of us. We’re immortal. The same as you are now. I meant to tell you. I should have, but I’m not…I don’t have my head on straight just yet. But I’m getting there though. A man like me, he doesn’t usually get two chances at love. I’m powerfully glad that you’re mine.”
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