He shrugged. “It was a freak accident. A man let off his gun in an upstairs window of a building nearby. That spooked the first horse, who reared and took off at a run. The clattering of the first cab scared the other two horses, who followed the first one around the corner.”
“And how did your father happen to be standing there? Was he doing anything out of the ordinary?”
Bishop’s eyes bored into Raleigh’s soul. “What makes you ask that?”
“Don’t you think it’s a relevant question? Did he just happen to be crossing the street at that time? Was his being there a freak accident, too?”
Bishop closed his eyes. “You are the first person I have ever met who asked that question. No, it wasn’t a freak accident. My father lived across the street from a huge warehouse that sold a lot of vintage furniture, sculpture, artwork, rare collectibles—that sort of thing. No one knew it, but the warehouse also acted as a clearinghouse for black market items from Hinterland. My father went there every morning at exactly nine o’clock. He crossed from his house to the warehouse just as the church bell chimed nine, and that’s when he was struck and killed by the three runaway cabs.”
Raleigh waved her hand. “Well, there you go. That proves it wasn’t an accident. Someone must have either set those cabs off or planned the whole thing to run him down.”
“It proves nothing,” Bishop returned. “It only proves no one can prove anything. No one will ever prove he was killed.”
Raleigh leaned her head back in the seat and closed her own eyes. Exhaustion dragged her down. She didn’t want to sit here any longer. She didn’t want to think about Hinterland until she had a good night’s sleep.
His voice interrupted her hazy dream. “You did very well today, Raleigh. I’m impressed.”
Her cheeks burned. “I didn’t do anything except get out with my life. That’s nothing to be impressed by.”
He shook his head. “You’re wrong. The Underlings are a fearsome and deadly foe. Anybody would do well to get away from them with their life. That’s more than any of my other apprentices have done.”
“You didn’t seem all that scared of them.”
He glared at her. “Me? Of course I was scared of them. The Underlings give me the willies.”
Raleigh had to laugh. The idea of him being afraid of anything made no sense to her. In her mind, he was an iron machine, impenetrable to human emotions and failings.
He went back to gazing into the fire. Its flickering light danced across his skin and eyes. “That’s the whole reason Soto sent the Underlings after us. He wanted to scare us away from his tent. He probably had the twen there all along.”
Raleigh stiffened. “Soto? Are you sure it was him who sent the Underlings after us?”
“He’s the only one who uses them. Some people think he invented them.”
“Then how are you going to track down the twen without coming up against the Underlings again?”
“I know someone who can direct us to Soto. We’ll go see them tomorrow and take it from there.”
Raleigh’s chin sank onto her chest. “I’m really tired, Bishop. I’m going to bed now. Don’t stay up too long. Dwelling on the past will give you bad dreams.”
He studied her from under his looming brows. “How do you know that? You look like you never had a bad dream in your life.”
She blushed under that unflinching gaze, but she couldn’t look at him. “I have bad dreams, too, sometimes. You can’t fight all these monsters without having bad dreams some time or other.”
“What bad dreams do you have?”
She shook her head and looked away. “You wouldn’t understand. Then again, you might. I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about it.”
He wouldn’t stop looking at her. “Tell me. I want to know.”
She blew air out between her pursed lips. “I lost my brother. That’s all. I lost him sort of the same way you lost your father, except no one says he was murdered. He just...vanished. One day he was there and the next, he was gone. He was a slayer, too. My father raised both of us to be slayers, and one day, Ethan just vaporized out of our lives. My father wouldn’t tell me what happened. He wouldn’t even talk about Ethan anymore. I had nightmares about Ethan for a long time afterwards.”
She dared not look up to see him staring at her. “When did they stop?”
Her head shot up. “What?”
“When did the nightmares stop?”
She couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore against the rising tide of buried emotion. “They didn’t. I still have them. I have the same dream that some ula’ree or kataract is running Ethan down and goring him to death, and I’m doing my best to kill the creature and I can’t do it. I can’t save him in time, and he dies. That’s it. That’s the whole dream.”
“But your brother never was killed by a creature.”
“I don’t know. That’s the worst part. I never knew what happened to him.”
Bishop said no more. The fire crackled and sank down on itself. Neither of them said anything.
Raleigh couldn’t sit in this black despair any longer. She launched out of her chair. “I’m going to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.”
He jumped to his feet. “Good night.”
She turned back at the doorway to find him standing closer than she expected. “Oh, by the way, I wanted to thank you for what you did for Dax. It was very kind and thoughtful. You’ve restored my faith in humanity.”
He snorted. “It was nothing. I can’t have that kid running all over the countryside when I might need him here to do some job for me.”
She lifted her eyes to his face, and a bright smile broke across her cheeks. “Now I know you really care about Dax. It was a very good thing you did, and I’m glad.”
He turned red, but for some reason, they couldn’t look away from each other. She searched his face and came to the curving lips tucked under his mustache. His lips twitched. She glanced up at his eyes to find him staring at her mouth.
Just at that moment, she realized for the first time how attractive she found him. He was the most intriguing, magnetic man she ever knew, and here she was, standing so close she could smell his breath. He smelled of cognac and tobacco.
A cloud of unmistakable maleness exuded out of his skin and his clothes. Even the scars on his face became him. They made him rough and strong and vulnerable at the same time.
She never met a man like him before, but she couldn’t hope he would find her as attractive as she found him. She wasn’t the kind of woman that men found attractive. A man like him couldn’t be interested in a woman who wore pants and guns and boots.
In the depths of her heart and soul, she nursed an ancient wound like his own. She gave up her womanhood and every possibility of happiness to become a fighter, a defender of the innocent and the ignorant masses of the Earth.
They could never know how lonely and cruel that path turned out to be. They could never know how she longed to be soft and beautiful and willowy. Then men might find her attractive and want to shelter her. Instead, it was her job to shelter them from dangers they never knew were there.
She lowered her eyes. Looking at Bishop hurt too much when she felt like this. She was his apprentice, his comrade in arms. That was enough. It was an honor and a privilege. She couldn’t expect any more.
She leaned toward the door. “I better go.”
“Raleigh?”
She looked up to see him standing closer than ever. He glanced back and forth between her mouth and her eyes. A hidden question nagged his countenance, but he didn’t ask. He didn’t move closer and he didn’t move away.
She waited, but he didn’t say anything. He did nothing at all until he lowered his eyes, too. “Nothing. Sleep well. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Chapter 15
Raleigh never got a chance to give Dax his next training lesson the next morning. He woke her at dawn and entered her room without knocking. He draped a magnificent gown across the c
hair by her fireplace. “Rise and shine! Time to hit the bricks. Bishop wants to take you into town, and he wants you to wear this dress so you don’t attract so much attention.”
Raleigh struggled out of bed in her nightdress to gaze at the gown. “I am not wearing that. You can tell Bishop I said so.”
Dax shook his head. “He’s taking you into polite society. It would never do to wear your old leathers.”
Raleigh made a face. “If I’m going, I’ll wear my usual clothes. I’ve never worn a dress like that in my life, and I’m not about to start now.”
Dax made for the door. “Then you can tell him that yourself. I’m not about to get my head bitten off delivering a message like that. I’m going to get the coach out so I’m not even in the same building when he sees you’ve disobeyed a direct order from him.” He called over his shoulder. “See you later. Get dressed and get to the kitchen. He wants to leave at seven o’clock.”
He shut the door behind him and left Raleigh standing there. The stone floor chilled her bare feet, but she couldn’t stop staring at that gown. So that’s what he wanted her to be. He wanted her to be some delicate society flower. She might have known. What was she thinking? He could never look sideways at a woman like her for anything but another pair of hands to hold weapons.
She turned her back on that dress and put on her old comfortable leathers. If he wanted her as his apprentice, he would take her the way he found her. She wasn’t here for lessons on style, and any polite society he took her to visit could take her the way they found her, too.
She carried the dress to the kitchen when she went to breakfast. She hung it on a nail behind the door. “Would you please send this back where it belongs, Mrs. Mitchell?”
Mrs. Mitchell shot her a wicked grin. “I know where it belongs, and it belongs upstairs.”
Raleigh’s eyes widened. “It does?”
She took down the dress and smoothed its folds. “It belonged to Mr. Bishop’s late wife.”
“His....?”
“He was married very young, and his wife died giving birth to their first child. This dress belonged to her.”
Raleigh sat down at the table in front of the plate Mrs. Mitchell set out for her. “Then I definitely don’t want anything to do with it. I don’t want to be associated with anybody’s dead wife.”
Mrs. Mitchell chuckled and hung up the dress again. She swung the door open so no one could see it. “Somehow I don’t think this has anything to do with you.”
Raleigh’s fork hung poised over her plate. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Mrs. Mitchell didn’t answer. When Raleigh peered around, she found herself alone in the kitchen. She chewed her food, but that dress occupied her thoughts. What was Bishop trying to do, dressing her up in his dead wife’s clothes?
She hadn’t half finished her breakfast when Bishop entered the kitchen from the other side. He stopped in his tracks and frowned at her. “What are you wearing your old clothes for? Didn’t Dax give you the dress I wanted you to wear?”
Raleigh wiped her napkin across her mouth and rose from her chair. She drew herself up to her full height right in front of him. Let him get a good, full view of her in her regular clothes. Her guns hung on her hips, and her vest hugged her chest. Her buttoned shirt cuffs hid her arms above the wrist. “He gave it to me, but I’m not wearing that.”
“I told him to let you know I was taking you into polite society. I need you looking appropriate.”
She squared her shoulders at him. “From what I saw yesterday, this is looking appropriate.”
He knit his brows. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She took a deep breath. Better get this out in the open now. “You’re a fighter. You’re a slayer and a bounty hunter, and I’m your apprentice. I’m not here to enter polite society. I’m a slayer, too, and if you don’t want to take me into polite society dressed like this, then don’t take me at all.”
“You’re the one who wanted to be my apprentice,” he shot back. “If you’ve changed your mind after yesterday, you can go home.”
“I haven’t changed my mind. I just haven’t changed my mind about my clothes. If you don’t like it, I’ll stay behind. I’m guessing you won’t need a fighter where you’re going in polite society.”
His frown deepened—if that was possible. “I should have known you weren’t up to this job. I should have known you would stick your toe in the ground the first time you had to confront anything remotely challenging.”
“Since when have I stuck my toe in the ground?” she shot back. “I confronted everything you found remotely challenging, and I held my own as well as you did, if not better, so don’t give me that static about not being up to the job. If looking right and wearing the right clothes is so important to you, then go ahead and go to your polite society alone. You don’t need me.”
She sat down and pulled her plate toward her. She bent over her food in an attitude of complete disregard for his existence.
Bishop seethed in rage across the kitchen. His mouth worked around unspoken words, but before he could explode at her, Mrs. Mitchell re-entered the room. She went about her work and paid no attention to Raleigh and Bishop hating each other across the room.
Raleigh didn’t budge. She took as long as humanly possible to stick a forkful of salt pork into her mouth. She chewed in long, luscious strokes of her jaws. The great, impenetrable Knox Bishop could go straight to hell as far as she was concerned. She didn’t need him or his domineering ways.
So he wanted to dress her up and make a dolly out of her? So he wanted to make her into his dead wife? He could go jump off a cliff before he would make a dent in her.
In the hidden recesses of her soul where she kept her most guarded secrets, she cherished an unspoken excitement. He wanted her—at least, he sort of wanted her. He wanted to make a woman of her. He wanted her enough to want to remake her into something he could understand, something he could find attractive. He didn’t find her attractive the way she was, but he wanted to.
While he stood there roiling in pent-up fury at her stubbornness, the coach jostled up to the door. Dax called out, “Whoa!” to the horse. The vehicle creaked and popped on the cobblestones.
Raleigh lifted her eyes to regard Bishop across the table. She locked her eyes on his contorting face, but she didn’t speak or shift in her seat. She waited for him to make the next move. She fired a shot across his bow. What he did rested with him.
All of a sudden, he flung his hands in the air and whirled away with a ferocious snarl. He stormed out of the kitchen, jumped into the coach and slammed the door, but the coach didn’t move.
Raleigh stuck one last forkful of food into her mouth and chewed it in no particular hurry. She’d won. She made him back down and she got what she wanted, but she couldn’t make him wait for her.
She set her fork down and went out to the coach. Dax glanced down at her, and his eyes bugged out of his head in wide-eyed awe. She gave him a twinkling smirk and took her place opposite Bishop inside. She shut the door, and the coach started.
Dax didn’t careen through the streets at breakneck speed this time. The horse trotted over the cobblestones at a leisurely pace. Raleigh saw individual faces pass on the streets outside, but Bishop looked neither right nor left. He glared straight in front of him at nothing.
Raleigh said nothing. She didn’t have to push her luck by baiting him. The coach tripped around corners, back to the center of town. It passed the Gingerbread House, but Raleigh didn’t see anybody she recognized.
Dax drove to a different part of town populated with huge, imposing buildings. The same shrouding mist gave them a ghostly black appearance. Not even lights shining in the windows brightened the place.
The coach rolled to a stop in front of another grand building even more impressive than Bishop’s house. Bishop got out without so much as a sideways glance at Raleigh or anything else, but he waited on the sidewalk while she got down and closed the do
or. He turned from one direction to the other and gritted his teeth.
When she finally stood next to him and tugged her vest down into place, he fixed his eyes on her. “If you’re quite ready, we can go inside.”
She couldn’t help but smile at him. “I’m ready whenever you are.”
He strode up the steps and banged on the big brass door knocker. He actually glanced at Raleigh long enough to meet her gaze, but he dropped his eyes and went back to staring at the door.
The door cracked open and an old man with fuzzy salt-and-pepper grey hair peeked out. Bishop touched his hat. “Good morning, Sultan. Would you please inform Ms. Cross I would like to see her?”
The man threw the door open and bowed. “Come right in, Sir. If you’d like to wait in the study, I’m sure Ms. Cross will see you right away.”
“Thank you, Sultan.” Bishop stepped across the threshold into a large hall rising to the ceiling high above.
Raleigh followed him inside, and the servant shut the door behind them before he disappeared. Elaborately carved figurines decorated the cornices around the hall, but they represented ghouls and gargoyles. They gave Raleigh the chills.
Something strange was going on in this town. Now that she knew an entrance to Hinterland existed right outside the city limits, she understood the dark ornamentation around the town much better. Those creatures up there no longer appeared to her like the nightmares out of some artist’s fevered imagination. They reminded her of the strange beings she saw in the market.
Chapter 16
Bishop let himself through a side door into a cozy room lined in green velvet. A fire blazed on the heart, and he stood with his back to it to drive away the chill. Raleigh took a turn around the room. Comfortable chairs, bookshelves, and decorative lamps made the place comfortable—a lot more comfortable than most places she’d seen in this town.
Almost the instant they got into the room, the servant returned and informed Bishop that Ms. Cross would see him now. The old man escorted Bishop and Raleigh up the majestic staircase to another luxurious compartment tastefully furnished and comfortably warm.
The Wolf's Bounty Page 10
