The weight of my failure nearly overwhelmed me. Whatever I’d intended, I’d most certainly sealed our fates with my brash plan. Had I really thought I could outsmart Aiken Tate?
“It your baby, Aiken,” Chick sobbed. “It yours cuz ain’t no one else wit me then. We was away on the trail. You ’member?”
Aiken looked dumbfounded, and I had a moment to wonder if Chick told the truth. Why hadn’t she said so before? Would it make a difference?
Aiken frowned at her. “Baby?” he sneered. “Ain’t no baby of mine.” He faced Jake again and said, “Are you going to kill her or fuck her?”
Glaring at me, Jake snorted. “Both.”
He lowered the gun and then whipped my face with it. It felt as if my cheek had exploded and I reeled back, crying out with the pain. I realized as I lay crumpled on the ground, that I was calling Sawyer’s name.
Jake leaned over me. “He ain’t going to save you, girlie.”
Then he yanked my skirts up and tore my undergarments away. My rage became something wild and living.
I had survived too much to give in to this monster. Aiken stood watching with cold enjoyment as Jake fumbled his britches open. I felt the hardness of his belt, the stiff leather of his holster and something else ... My hands were pinned at my sides, but Jake’s knife sheath was just at the tips of my fingers.
He loosened his pants and pulled himself free. I forced myself to relax against the rocky ground and spread my legs so that he slipped between them, bringing my hands within gripping range. My fingers curled around the smooth hilt of his knife, and I slid it free just as he shoved into me. My shout was of humiliation, of violation, but most of all, of rage. I came up hard with the knife, slamming it into his side just beneath his ribs and then yanking it out as he sat straight up, reaching for the wound. Before he could react, I’d buried it to the hilt in his heart. His face contorted with pain and shock. He wavered, still between my legs, his erection not yet aware that the rest of him was dead. I pushed him back and wiggled away as he fell over.
Aiken stared at me like he couldn’t believe what he’d seen. I couldn’t believe it, either, but I wouldn’t cower. I faced him brave and bold and utterly defenseless. I realized too late I’d left Jake’s knife embedded in his chest.
Time simply stopped.
His foot still ground Athena’s face into the dirt. He still held Chick’s throat clenched in his left hand. And I stood before him.
“Let her go,” I ordered.
A bemused smile tipped his mouth. “No,” he said, but then he pushed Chick away and pulled his gun in one swift movement. All sense of time and place left me as I saw Chick stumble over Athena’s inert body at the same moment Aiken cocked his pistol. I heard the sound of the shot crack the air, smelled the smoke, tasted the gunpowder at the back of my throat, and then something slammed into me with a force that knocked me backward. I felt as if I were being smothered. My skirts had somehow tangled around my face as I fell, and I fought to get free, waiting all the while for the paralyzing pain and the blood that would spill with my life.
I heard a sound I didn’t understand as, at last, I tore free of the fabrics that caught me like a web. I struggled up and out and only then did I realize what had happened. Chick lay sprawled beside me, the back of her blue dress stained with blood. The sound I heard was Athena, keening like an animal as she clawed her way over to Chick. Her face was bloody where she’d sacrificed the skin of her cheek to get free.
I heard myself screaming, “No, no,” over and over as understanding filled me. Chick had pushed me out of the way and taken Aiken’s bullet.
I spun to face Aiken, thinking I would rip him apart with my bare hands for what he had done. He didn’t hesitate or mourn the sweet girl that lay at our feet. He raised his gun again and pointed at my chest.
“Don’t do it, Aiken.”
Honey’s voice rang out in the same instant the gunshot boomed loud around me. My hands went instinctively to my heart, trying to protect against the hard flash of death. But there was no blood to hold back. No pain to endure. Stunned, I locked eyes with Aiken.
As if rehearsed, the two of us turned our heads to face Honey. She stood on the porch, my daddy’s rifle in her hands. A small wisp of smoke drifted from the barrel.
“That’s for my baby brother,” she said. Her hands shook as she struggled to open the chamber and load it again. I saw Aiken think about how he could get the rifle away from her, but already the feeling must have drained from his fingers as his gun clattered to the ground. Blood spread in a seeping circle from the first bullet she’d put through him, and I knew it was shock more than aggression that kept him standing. She slammed the chamber shut and pointed it again.
“This is for me,” she said softly, and pulled the trigger again.
CHAPTER 33
Reilly had seen violence. He’d been raised on it. But he’d never seen cold-blooded murder. Bill lay bleeding on the floor, and Jonathan, the man Reilly had thought harmless, held the gun pointed at Analise.
His daughter, who he’d only just met.
“I want what’s mine. I want the money. I want my share.”
“Wait,” Gracie said, trying to protect Analise. Brendan had moved in closer, looking for an opening. The dogs growled and snapped.
“I’ll kill those dogs,” Jonathan warned.
Reilly saw Gracie consider the odds of them getting to Jonathan before he could do any harm. Jonathan cocked the gun and kept it trained on Analise’s head.
“I’ll kill her first, though.”
Gracie told the dogs to stay. Then she held her hands out, placating him as she tried to reason with him. “There was money. A long time ago. My grandmother gave it to me when she sent me away. Fifty thousand dollars. I never knew where she got it, but she gave it to the woman who took me in. She used it to raise me, to help me and Analise get started in life. It’s gone now.”
The look on Jonathan’s face made Reilly’s stomach plunge, and a tightness gathered in his belly. It was a look of desperation. The look of a man who’d banked everything on door number one, only to find nothing behind it.
“It’s not gone,” he said through gritted teeth. “It’s here. He stole it from me.” Jonathan waved his free hand at the pulsing light, speaking to it like it was a person. “We was partners, and then you brought her here to make a mess of everything. You let them gun me down like a dog.”
He centered his aim at Analise’s face, and Reilly took another step, gauging the distance, thinking if he could just move fast enough, he might be able to get between Analise and Gracie and the bullets.
“Get back,” Jonathan said. “I will kill both of them without even thinking about it. I want to kill them. I’ve wanted it for a long, long time.”
Reilly froze.
“Now,” Jonathan said to Gracie. “I want you follow Sawyer and you tell him to give me my fucking share.”
At their blank looks, he used his chin to point at the glowing orb.
“Sawyer,” Chloe breathed. The glowing orb danced and drifted, seemingly with purpose, until it dipped down and touched Gracie.
Jonathan made a sound that crossed anger and excitement. “Is he talking to you? Did he tell you?”
Gracie looked past him to Reilly. Fear gleamed from her eyes, but her voice was steady when she answered. “Yes,” Gracie said. “He told me. We need to follow him.”
Reilly didn’t know if she spoke the truth or if she meant to trick Jonathan, but his ship was bound to hers, no matter where she decided to sail. He’d been a fool and lost her once; he’d die before he let that happen again.
The storm outside slammed into the house, growing in intensity, and rain hit the roof in a never-ending bombardment. The orb passed through the wall and out into the raging tempest. Jonathan shoved Chloe’s frail body out front while he took Analise in the same tight, indefensible clutch that he’d held Reilly in when he’d brought him down the stairs. Gracie stayed close to her daughter. R
eilly was still looking for a way to intervene without getting them both killed, but hadn’t come up with anything yet.
The dogs charged the door as soon as it closed, barking wildly as they watched Gracie and Analise move away.
“Somebody does something I don’t like, I pull the trigger. I just need one of you. The other’s security. You hear me?”
They heard. They all heard.
Gun still aimed at the women, Jonathan shot a fierce look at Reilly. “This is as far as you go.”
Reilly didn’t move fast enough, but Brendan did. The kid managed to push him just as the gun went off. He felt the bullet part the air where his head had been. Tangled in their momentum, Reilly and Brendan went down in the slippery mud and rolled down a slope, bouncing over rocks and jagged edges until they banked against the side of a boulder. They couldn’t see Jonathan anymore, but Reilly hoped that meant Jonathan couldn’t see them, either.
He heard the man shout, “You follow me and I will kill her just like I should’ve done before. I’ll kill them both, and I’ll like it.”
Reilly’s mouth was dry. Jonathan moved like a man who’d been born with a pistol in his hand, and Reilly didn’t doubt that when he got what he wanted, he would kill the women. He would kill everyone and think nothing of it.
He cast Brendan a look. The kid stared back, eyes hard and determined. He looked like he’d just woken up from a bad dream.
“He means to kill them, no matter what happens,” Brendan said. “Fuck. That animal’s been in my head. I didn’t even know he was there.”
Understanding finally came—all the little idiosyncrasies in Brendan’s personality, the passive-aggressive attitude, the sense that two men had looked out from those blue eyes, but this wasn’t the time to dwell on revelations. Reilly needed to think if Gracie and Analise were going to survive this. Nothing else mattered.
Reilly couldn’t see Jonathan or the women anymore, but as he clawed his way up the incline he’d just plummeted down, he saw the bobbing light they had been following. It moved toward the springs where other lights waited. Dead Lights, dozens of them, hanging over the rising black waters like stars pinned low in the sky.
“Follow me,” he said to Brendan.
He and the kid fought the storm as it tried to sweep them off the slippery planking that led to the springs, keeping the orb in their sights while trying to remain hidden. They needn’t have worried. They couldn’t see five feet in front them. The flood waters had breached the surface and raced fast over their feet.
They moved swiftly, though, and in minutes, they’d caught up enough that they could hear the conversation.
“Jonathan,” Chloe cried, the storm tearing her words out and hurling them into the night. “I know you’re still in there. Listen to me. Don’t let Aiken use you this way.”
Reilly could make out the murky outline of Jonathan’s silhouette. He still had the gun pointed at Analise.
“Will killing me bring you peace?” Chloe demanded. “You don’t belong in this world. You had your time.”
“My time was stolen. My share was taken. This is my time.”
CHAPTER 34
July 1896
Diablo Springs
Aiken’s bullet had lodged itself somewhere in Chick’s body, but we could not find it to remove it. We were able to staunch the blood and then finally stop it, but her eyes never opened again. Carefully, we took her upstairs and laid her on the bed she’d been so proud to call her own. Athena grew silent and protective and refused to let us help bathe the blood from Chick’s frail body. She wrapped Chick in clean cotton strips and took up vigil beside her bed.
As Honey and I left the room, she looked at me. “Death. That all you is. Death. You take all I live for and kill it. I curse you now. No child of yours will walk proud in this world. No child will be blessed with good, only bad. I curse you.”
The words came through tears and pain and hurt so raw it scratched as they left her throat. But the words came, and I felt the weight of them settle over my soul.
I wanted to deny the accusation. I wanted to say Chick wasn’t dead, that she might recover, but I knew it was a lie. As if in protest, though, the small babe she carried moved in her womb, and we saw it skim beneath the surface of her skin like a ripple in water. They both managed to cling to life. Maybe there was hope.
I looked back at Athena. Staring into those angry black eyes, I said the only truth I knew for certain. “Aiken is dead. He’ll torment you no more.”
Honey and I left her alone with Chick and went downstairs to take care of business. It was barely nine in the morning and we had two bodies outside our kitchen door. Had this been another town, someone would have come to investigate. But guns were shot at random all through the day and night in Diablo Springs.
We didn’t speak as we heaved Jake Smith up and over his saddle. Nor did we talk as we did the same with Aiken. We led the horses out to the hot springs, taking them around to the far edge where the deepest end of the pool was. In the shelter of the jutting rock to the west, we bound their feet, stuffed stones in their clothing, and threw them in.
Perhaps it was guilt, perhaps it was the hurt of all that had happened. The shock that had been keeping me numb wore off now that the last deed was done. But whatever the reason, as I stood watching Aiken Tate sink, I imagined his eyes opened.
I clapped my hand over my mouth, but even before I could scream, he’d vanished into the murky depths below.
***
I waited for Sawyer for a month before I let myself even consider that he might not return. During that time I could do little but berate myself. I’d driven him away. Nothing I could do would ever change that. Still, I waited for him.
The town of Diablo Springs surged up around us, and business continued against all sense and reasoning. I tended bar because I thought it was what Sawyer would want of me. We hired a man to work the tables and throw the dice. We made money hand over fist, but there was no glory in it. No feeling of building something better. By the time I was ready to break into the storage room, I knew what I’d find. Nothing. Sawyer had taken it all ... and my heart with it.
Upstairs, Chick held on to life with Athena tending to her like a newborn. And almost a month after we killed Aiken and Jake Smith, Chick’s baby was born. The delivery was long and hard, but Chick never seemed aware of it. The daughter she gave birth to was tiny and frail, but otherwise perfect in every way ... except her resemblance to the animal who’d fathered her. Within hours after she was born, Chick quietly passed on to heaven.
Athena named the baby Misery, and as soon as she was able, she packed the squalling newborn up and left us. I gave her all the money I had saved, and she threw it back in my face, spat at my feet, and left on foot. I never saw her again.
We found Meaira dead one morning not long after, her wrists cut open and an empty vial of laudanum on the floor beside her. She’d left no note behind, but she didn’t need one. We knew. Instinctively, I understood that I would lose Honey, too, though not by death. She could at last return to her family, and I wished her the best.
It was not long after we buried Meaira that I realized I was with child. I wept for nearly a day afterward, tears of both grief and happiness. There was a part of Sawyer growing inside me, and if I hadn’t driven him away, I believed he might have rejoiced with me. Despite Athena’s curse, I hoped the baby to be a sign that life went on, and perhaps Sawyer would come back to me. But though I waited until my dying day, he never did.
CHAPTER 35
The wind tried to pry Reilly from the boardwalk. The rain and floodwaters tried to wash him away as the Dead Light led them all to a place near the overhang of rock. The thunder boomed at increasing intervals until it felt like the earth was shaking from a quake. The lightning hissed in the sky above, branching into a thousand tributaries as it lit up the night.
Reilly held on to the dilapidated railing with one hand until he reached the bend that looped beneath the rock wall. Ther
e, the stone hillside offered a small bit of shelter where he and Brendan could crouch down out of sight. He could see Gracie and Analise huddled together and the Dead Lights hanging over the swirling black pool of the springs. There were no longer ravines and chasms. The water had turned it all into a solid, churning surface. Chloe sat on the ground nearby. Jonathan made sure they knew the gun was still on them.
“What do we do?” Brendan said in a low voice. “Jesus, she’s pregnant. And I brought her here.”
“Ask him,” Jonathan screamed at Chloe. “Ask him!”
As if drawn by the violence, the lights began to surge, moving over the water as they raced to the huddle of humanity on the shores. Two orbs that glowed bright as the North Star raced to join the third, creating a luminescent trinity.
Jonathan stared at them suspiciously. “I’m going to count to one,” he said. “And then I want answers.”
Reilly looked at Brendan. “Here’s your chance to make it up to Analise. It’s now or never, kid. There’s no big plan. You hit from this side. I’ll get the gun.”
They locked eyes for a second, and Brendan nodded.
Later, Reilly would play the next few seconds over in his head, but even then, he’d still have trouble understanding what had happened. He lunged at Jonathan, grabbing his gun arm and swinging it wide and away from Gracie and Analise while Brendan slammed into Jonathan from behind.
The swirling trio of lights separated and began to solidify. On one side a man took shape, hovering over Reilly’s shoulder, glimpsed in choppy seconds as Reilly fought to control the gun. On the other side, a small dark-skinned woman solidified, looking young and lost.
Bad Boys of the Night: Eight Sizzling Paranormal Romances: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set Page 194
