“What do you reckon they want?” Remington muttered as they clomped down the stairs, guns at the ready, the golden mountain lion trailing behind them with soft padded thumps.
“Hard to say. But make no mistake, they’ll want something,” Colt answered as they swung open the fancy doors to the sidewalk. “You know vampires. They always have an agenda.”
A wash of dry heat, smelling of horse, dust, and the oily scent of creosote, tightened the skin on Colt’s face. It shimmered in the air, distorting everything beyond the massive shadow of the dirigible overhead that blotted out the desert sun.
A ladder, constructed of rope and wooden rungs, hung down from the lowest deck of the airship. It swung perilously close to the building, threatening to break a window or two. Colt shaded his eyes with his hand as a dark form emerged, then started to descend the swaying ladder. He narrowed his eyes against the backlit shadow, but couldn’t make out who or what it was, though from the shape and the boots it looked to be a man.
“About time you made it out,” a familiar voice shouted. “I was beginning to wonder if Marley had told me wrong about you coming here.” Winchester. A pair of tight-fitting, dark-lensed brass goggles obscured his face, and he was wearing his black oilskin duster and his favorite black Stetson.
The coiled tension in Colt’s shoulders and back slipped away as easily as taking off a coat. He slid his revolver back into the holster just below his hip, the weight of it as comforting as Winn’s voice. “What in tarnation are you doing on a vampire dirigible, Winn?” Colt called out.
China rubbed her furry cheek and chin up against Colt’s leg and he shooed her off. She answered with a low rumble in her chest and padded away to sit closer to Remington.
Winchester made it farther down the ladder and hopped the last few feet to the ground. The dust billowed up in a cloud around him as he pulled the dark goggles down to rest around his neck. “Was made an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
Remington gave their older brother a narrow-eyed look, glancing upward at the dirigible. “You in trouble?”
“No. Not yet. Seems the vampire royalty in Europe thinks they could use our help in tracking down a missing third of the Book. The Contessa says they sent her here to request our assistance.”
“Who they? Vampires? They want our help?” Disbelief tinted Colt’s tone.
Winn shrugged. “Simple matter of survival. If Rathe wipes out humanity, their food supply disappears.”
Remington grimaced and Colt saw his hands tighten reflexively on his guns. “Hardly seems like the best of reasons for us to forge an alliance with them,” Remington muttered more to himself than his brothers.
People were beginning to peek out from behind their closed doors. Across the street the tinny sound of a piano started up again. As odd as the dirigible was, nothing could get the hardy souls of Tombstone ruffled for long. A gust of wind blew, kicking up dust along the mostly deserted street and making the rope ladder sway. Colt peered up at the windows to Remy’s office and saw Lilly silhouetted there, looking down at the unfolding tableau on Allen Street, her arms crossed, nibbling her lip.
Of course, who were he or Remy to judge Winn? Colt cast a glance over his shoulder at China, who was now cleaning her face with a large paw. He was working with a damn demon, and Remington had paired up with a shape-shifter. Their pa would be twisting in his grave if he could see his boys working side by side with the very supernaturals he’d trained them to slay.
“Considering how little time we’ve got, if Marley’s calculations are correct, I don’t see much of an option. If we want to discover where all the pieces of the Book have been hidden, we’ll have to split up,” Winn answered. “You two any closer to decoding Pa’s message?”
Colt caught Remington’s gaze for just an instant, then turned his attention back to Winn. “Remy thinks it’s got something to do with either the Weaver’s Needle in the Superstition Mountains or a place called the Eye of the Needle on the outside of Phoenix close to McDowell.”
Winn rolled the sharp, waxed end of his mustache between his fingers, his dark brows bending together in concentration. Colt could almost see the gears spinning as he calculated in his head. “Phoenix,” he paused for an instant. “I could get you there in about an hour.”
Raw-awrr. From behind them the mountain lion growled, and Winchester gave it a pointed look. “What is that? And what is it doing here?”
“You mean who is that,” Remington corrected him.
Winchester nodded with understanding. “Shifter?”
“China McGee,” Colt and Remington said in unison.
Winn’s eyes widened slightly in recognition and his gaze darted to Colt. He at least had the decency not to let his jaw drop. “Not the same one who—” He waved his hand as if shooing the thought away. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”
Remington tried to hide his amused smile, but Colt saw it and punched him in the arm. That was the thing about brothers. They never let you forget anything, especially if it was embarrassing, and his first run-in with China had been a whopper, leaving him buck naked and tied to a bed. That had been several months before she sought him out dangling information about Diego’s safety-deposit box in front of him.
“It wasn’t my fault,” Colt growled. Raw-awrr the mountain lion growled again in retort.
“She begs to differ.” Remington holstered his guns and flipped his long jacket back over them. “Despite that, she’s agreed to go with me down to follow the clue Diego left about the map in Mexico.”
Colt gazed up at the black wings of the sigil on the dirigible. “You sure the Contessa would be all right with extra company?”
Winn smiled, and it lifted the ends of his mustache. “We already have Tempus on board. Thought we might drop it off for you. We’re flying to Europe.”
“And now Phoenix is on the way to Europe?” Colt knew it was actually northwest of where they were now, but if Winn and the Contessa were willing, it’d be a hell of a lot shorter trip than taking the train and a lot more comfortable than him and Lilly riding Tempus double.
“It could be. Are you up for it?”
Colt nodded. There was no use wasting time. “Let me go and fetch Lilly down here from Remy’s office and we can get going.”
Winn’s face darkened. “You still hanging on to that demon?”
Colt pulled back his shoulders a bit and set his jaw. Winn had a hell of a nerve throwing it at him when they all had uneasy alliances to deal with at present. “She’s with me until we find Pa’s part of the Book.”
The look in Winn’s eyes changed. There was only so far he could push as a big brother, and Colt had long ago passed the point of taking anyone’s advice but his own. “Just watch yourself,” he said simply.
The tension gone, Colt jibed back, “Look who’s talking. You better consider wearing extra starch in your collars. You might need it, considering the company you’re keeping.”
Winn’s mouth tipped up at the corner. “Fair enough, little brother. Go fetch your demon and let’s be on our way.”
Colt took the steps two at a time back up to Remington’s office. It occurred to him that in a very short time, he’d stopped thinking of Lilly as a demon at all, and as, well, Lilly. Not a mortal woman, but not a supernatural being to be destroyed on sight either. Somehow she’d wormed her way into the no-man’s-land between the two and straight into his heart.
If there was one thing Colt knew, it was that gray areas tended to be very dangerous, even deadly. Black-and-white always made quick reactions born out of gut instinct easier, and therefore safer. With Lilly he was treading dangerous waters in more ways than one. And he sure as hell didn’t know how to swim.
He opened the door to Remington’s office. Lilly’s curved silhouette was outlined in the window by the light. The bronze and copper threads in the brocade of her corset sparkled and the sunlight turned her hair into a fall of molten fire down her back. Colt’s breath hitched. He inhaled the scent of spicy
sweet, warm female flesh and cleared his throat. Damn, she was one hell of a woman. “Ready to go?”
She turned, her eyes a bit wide, her lips curving into a tempting smile. “You weren’t jesting. That really did take less than half an hour.” She jerked her head in the direction of the dirigible outside the window. “I notice it’s still here. Did you get rid of all the vampires, then?”
“Nope. We’re hitching a ride with them.”
Her mouth dropped open and she thumbed over her shoulder. “On that?”
Colt nodded and reached out to take her hand. “Yep. Let’s get going.”
Lilly shuffled back, clasping her hands behind the small of her back just above her bustle. “Oh, no. No. No. No. You didn’t say anything about air travel.”
Colt couldn’t resist teasing her. “Afraid of heights?”
The tremor in her lip was all the confirmation he needed that it was no teasing matter. His chest tightened with regret. Damn. He hadn’t meant to upset her. Colt walked toward her slowly, like he would a skittish mare, keeping his voice steady and soothing, his fingers a gliding touch up and down her arm. “It’ll be all right, Lilly. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. You can trust me to look after you.”
Her eyes sparkled with unshed tears. His stomach clenched tighter and he hoped she wasn’t going to cry. He wasn’t sure he could handle that. Considering how very real, and debilitating, his own fear of water was, he should have known better than to joke about this. Her fear was clearly very real to her.
“It’ll only be an hour. You’re a strong woman. Think of all we’ve already made it through. This can’t possibly be as bad as three hellhounds or that spider.”
She gave him a tremulous smile.
“I know you can do this.” Colt wrapped her into his arms. Lilly laid her head down on his chest. Her heart was beating hard and fast, but with fear, not desire. Colt’s own heart recognized the frantic pace.
He stroked her hair, doing everything he could think of to soothe her frayed emotions. “I’ll be right there beside you the whole time.”
Lilly lifted her head and stared into his face, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. “I’m sorry to be such a milk-water miss about it, but I just—” Her voice cracked and her throat moved as she swallowed. “When I was very small my father told me to climb to the top of a tree or I wouldn’t get to eat for a week. I was terrified of heights, but I did it, knowing it would be worse if I didn’t. And while the crowds gathered and discussed how to get me down, he picked their pockets. In the end, I was up there, petrified, my fingers turning numb, for four hours, not knowing if I was ever getting down. I truly believed I was going to die up there.”
Colt winced. “Sounds like a character from a Charles Dickens novel.”
“Unfortunately, not much better,” Lilly said as she shrugged, but her shoulders sagged a bit more, curving into him, absorbing the solace he offered her. It was tempting as hell to just hold her, comfort her, and let them both believe he could and would protect her from anything, that they could freeze time and stay in each other’s arms without the rude intrusion of the world, but he knew it was impossible.
She wasn’t a real woman—not yet. Any ideas he had about living a life beyond his quest for the Book were purely fantasy. She was still tethered to Rathe, and Rathe still wanted his head as an ornament for his watch chain. Winn and their fast one-way airship ride to Phoenix were waiting, and their time to find Pa’s part of the Book was dwindling fast.
“We really should go,” he said softly into her hair.
Lilly raised her head, her gaze falling to what lay outside the windowpane. She heaved a resigned sigh. “What’s the worst that could happen? It’s not as if I’d die if it did indeed crash.” Resolutely she slipped her hand in his and he squeezed it tight, although her comment did give him pause for thought. Just how reliable was the dirigible? He’d never actually been on one before.
They tramped down the stairs and out into the bright Arizona sunshine. Colt didn’t miss the long, lingering gaze Remington gave Lilly or the deep, throaty growl that rumbled around China’s pursed lips, even though now she’d transformed back into her human female form.
Winn had snapped the dark goggles back into place, the brass edges of them glinting gold in the afternoon sun. He dug deep in the pockets of his duster and fished out two pairs of similar goggles, handing one to Colt and the other to Lilly. “You’ll want those once we get up in the air. The sun seems even brighter up there, and there’s some dust.”
Lilly and Colt dutifully pulled the goggles on, and Colt made sure his hat was down good and firm on his head. Winchester started up the rope ladder and Colt prodded Lilly to follow.
“You can’t climb up after me. You’ll see up my dress.”
He grinned. “Better me than half the population of Tombstone, don’t you think?”
She nibbled her lip between her teeth.
“I just figured you’d feel safer with one of us before you and one of us after you. That’d be twice as many hands to catch if something happened. But you’re welcome to climb up after me if you want.”
Her lips twisted into a little moue of displeasure but she grabbed hold of the rope ladder. “Have it your way.”
Colt chuckled. He could only dream of having his way with her. It wasn’t ever going to happen. “Keep climbing and don’t look down and you’ll be just fine,” Colt directed.
Colt leaned over and took Remington’s hand, giving it a good hard shake, then pulling his brother to him. “Be careful. And don’t trust the shifter,” he said into Remington’s ear.
Remington pulled back and nodded. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do up there.”
“Well, that just leaves me open for all kinds of things, now don’t it?” Colt’s gaze drifted to China for an instant and he saw a longing there, mixed with enough anger that he didn’t envy Remy one little bit. He’d rather take his chances with a succubus than a shape-shifter any day. He grinned. “Happy hunting, brother.”
He scrabbled up the rope ladder, giving particular appreciation to the view he had of Lilly’s curvy derrière. The rope ladder swung in the breeze and Lilly gave a high-pitched squeak, but she continued climbing.
Colt grasped onto her ankle to steady her and she nearly kicked him in the face for his trouble. “You’ll be fine. We’re almost there.” The broad silver expanse of the dirigible’s underbelly looked even bigger up close. Colt could see the individual ribs that formed the frame beneath the stretch of the fabric just above the broad, flat expanse of the gondola bottom only ten feet or so above his head.
Winchester disappeared over the edge of the gondola deck for a second, then leaned over to offer Lilly his hand. “Hold on and I’ll help you up.”
Colt’s hold loosened out of shock and he slipped a little on the ropes. He made a mental note to stop gawking at the airship and hold on tighter. Winchester had never offered a helping hand to any supernatural before. Not that Colt could remember, at least. There must be something all-powerful amazing about the vampire Contessa to have changed his attitude so drastically. A mixture of worry and curiosity swirled in Colt’s gut. His arms burned with the effort of climbing. He sincerely hoped the vampire hadn’t glamoured his brother.
Lilly’s tiny black button-up boots disappeared over the edge as Winchester helped pull her onto the deck. Colt kept climbing. He waited for a few seconds to see if Winchester was planning on helping him up as well. “Hello? Anybody still up there?”
Winchester leaned over the edge, his goggles pulled down loose around his neck. “What’s taking you so long, little brother? You’re holding up the circus.”
Colt grumbled beneath his breath and reached the top of the ladder, then used the last bit of strength he had left in his arms to boost himself through an opening in the half wall surrounding the polished teak deck of the dirigible’s gondola. For his trouble he came nose to toe with his brother’s boots.
Winn looked down at him
with a genuinely amused smile. “Took you long enough,” he chided.
Colt pulled the goggles down to his chest. “If you wanted me up here faster, you could have helped.”
“And risk making you look bad in front of these lovely ladies? Not a chance.”
Colt glanced to the side and saw the tips of Lilly’s scuffed and dusty little black boots right beside a pair of knee-high black boots that were polished so highly they gleamed like Oriental lacquer. His gaze traveled up an equally shiny dress of taffeta the blue-black color of raven wings with a tightly nipped waist, puffed shoulders, and a high neck to find a pair of piercing whiskey-colored eyes peering back at him. The woman’s dusky beauty was both dark and alluring, but the undercurrent of danger surrounded her like a cloud of expensive perfume.
“Another Mr. Jackson, I presume?” she asked. Her Eastern European accent made “Jackson” sound more like “Yakson” to Colt.
He sprung up from the floor and dusted off his hands on his denim pants before he took her gloved hand, covered in fine black kidskin, and kissed it lightly on the back. He flashed her a smile. “The youngest, and the most handsome, at your service, your ladyship ...”
Winn unceremoniously took the young woman’s gloved hand out of Colt’s. “Lady Alexandra Porter, Contessa Drossenburg,” he said, his tone tinged with a ripple of irritation Colt could feel, “my little brother, Colt Jackson.” Colt didn’t miss Winn’s emphasis on “little” as if it somehow referred to his anatomy and not just the age difference between them.
“So this is the Contessa.” She had to be an old vampire to be out this long in the bright desert sunshine even if the whole gondola hung in the perpetual shade of the dirigible’s balloon.
The woman gave the slightest inclination of her head. “It seems we are to transport you to Phoenix, along with your charming companion.” Her voice was like warm rustling silk, smooth but husky and inviting at the same time.
“Yes, we’re much obliged, ma’am, um, Lady Drossenburg,” Colt corrected himself, unsure of exactly how to address a vampire noble.
The Hunter Page 16
