Blackthorne (The Brotherhood of the Gate Book 1) (2 page)

“Shit.”

She stopped in the middle of the street to look in her rearview mirror. No car but hers. She pulled up a bit and opened the door to lean out. A pile of snow lay in the street. The frozen snow on the roof of the truck must have slid off when she took off up the hill.

“This is getting stupid,” Rhi muttered as she closed the door and took off.

Snow blew across the road as Rhi passed Mt. Pisgah Cemetery. The interior of the truck reeked of the cigarette smoke that clung to her hair from the casino, plus the spicy tang from the leftover burrito she had forgotten in her truck the night before.

She drove past the wood frame houses, treasures from another age, now painted and prettied by casino employees. The evergreens in the yards were humped over with the weight of the new snowfall. She made a point of not looking at the hulking black and white menace of the cemetery’s forty-acre hill to her left. At night, the place truly gave her the creeps. She already had her share of that emotion for the evening.

When Rhi had first arrived in town, doing all of the “touristy” things was foremost on her list, including a tour of the graveyard. A migraine headache had appeared between her eyes the moment she had stepped past the cemetery’s gates. It increased each step she made herself take until she was forced to excuse herself from the tour. She hadn’t returned.

Irresistibly drawn, she snuck a peek to one side. The snow made the thousands of gravestones and mausoleums appear as if a malevolent crowd was gathering on the hill.

A wind gust suddenly forced the truck to the side of the road. Rhi barely avoided slamming on the brakes.

“Oh shit again.”

As her truck went into a controlled skid on the ice, Rhi gently pumped the brake pedal. The truck finally halted in the middle of the gravel road, cockeyed. Scared, she waited patiently for the muscles in her neck to loosen up.

Another loud crash from outside the vehicle shook her to the bone.

This time, Rhi didn’t stop to look. Assuring herself that it was a
block of ice kicked up by the wheels, she drove as fast as she dared to get away from the hill of the dead.

“Why am I letting a snowstorm freak me out?”

Did she check the cargo space before she got in the truck? Probably not.

Many times, Rhi’s men friends had informed her in an irritatingly superior male manner that only women were freaked out by this particular urban legend…men would never waste their time checking to see if something or someone was hiding in the back of their SUV. But for a woman alone in the dark, it seemed like a reasonable fear. She was frightened tonight. Of what, she had no idea.

Silent voices of warning had haunted the blackjack dealer for her entire life. At first, her strange gift was a novelty in her family. The little girl who could find lost objects or tell an adult if a business deal was going south was considered an asset. But when Rhi was seven, the voices told her that her family’s gardener was evil. He did things to children, made them go away forever. She told her mother, who promptly told her child to stop making up such horrible stories. Rhi carefully avoided the friendly gardener from then on. The day he was found hung by the neck in his house, surrounded by the souvenirs of a dozen child abductions and murders, was the first day Rhi’s mother looked at her child in fear.

When Rhi went into convulsions during seventh grade English because of a vision of her parents’ death in an automobile accident, her father and mother seriously discussed committing their daughter to an institution. Ignoring her sobs and pleadings, the pair left Rhi with her maternal grandmother while they went on an already planned business trip, deciding to address the issue when they returned. Their car was destroyed in an accident involving a semi-truck and its tired driver later that day. Rhi continued to live with her grandmother, who swore her to secrecy and demanded that the child ignore and suppress her gifts.

Rhi had managed to suppress them for most of her life by isolating herself as much as possible. She had actually begun to believe that her “feelings” were past her, a lost part of her childhood. But now, in this strange little mountain town, the voices were back and they were shrieking. She was not about to dismiss them but was not ready to embrace them either.

She finally arrived at her small A-frame, which perched on the side of a hill off of Horse Thief Gulch. She sat in the driveway for a moment as her green eyes scanned the darkness.

The feeling of menace from the road did not follow her up the hill. Relieved, she examined the picture postcard scene her home made in the clearing.

The house was lit by strategically placed light timers in a deliberate effort to make her more comfortable coming home to an empty house a quarter mile from any neighbor.

The nights in her home used to thrill her. Her house was in a lonely spot, which was okay with Rhi at the beginning. She was well acquainted with the art of being alone, and she purposefully chose a home that gave her that gift. Millions of stars shone brightly down on clear nights, unobscured by the pollution of city lights. The noises of the woods were musical, unblemished by the sounds of civilization.

Rhi used to love to spend an evening on the deck beside the flaming fire pit, a glass of good cabernet in her hand, admiring the stunning night sky. But tonight as the whirling snow formed patterns in the dark, the mountains that once offered her solace felt menacing.

Rhi’s huge red bloodhound, Ellie Mae, stuck her head out of the heated doghouse. The dog pen was a fortress…caged on all sides and the roof to keep the mountain lions out. Rhi would have preferred to keep the dog indoors all day while she was gone but with her hours and the big hunting dog’s need to smell the air and watch life on the mountain, she built the most secure, luxurious kennel she could afford to safeguard and keep her beloved dog happy.

The animal’s deep, melodic baying could suddenly be heard. Rhi grabbed the leash and a large cardboard box from the passenger seat and stepped out of the truck. Making a run for the kennel, Rhi leashed Ellie and picked her way through the snow to the front door, balancing the cardboard box on one hip. She unlocked and threw the door open so Ellie could inspect the premises.

“Pity the fool hiding in our house, huh girl?” Rhi grinned as the dog nuzzled her mistress’s hand after finishing her inspection. Ellie Mae strolled to the overstuffed couch and stretched out.

“I’m glad someone’s comfy,” Rhi muttered as she placed the heavy box on the kitchen table, stripped her clothes off, and dropped them on the bench by the door and picked up the fresh clothes she kept handy in a box under the bench. She pulled a fresh-smelling oversized gray sweatshirt and thick black leggings over her shivering body, topping it off with thick woolen socks. She needed to put on a few pounds—she was too bony to maintain her body heat. More sweets. Definitely. She put some water on the stove to boil for hot chocolate. She stirred up a healthy portion of Swiss Miss and topped it with a dollop of whipped cream, grabbed the mug and a hairbrush, and glanced out the window. The woods were silent, as usual.

“Nothing to see here,” she said.

Brushing her black waist-length hair, she flipped a switch with the other hand to turn on the gas fireplace and joined Ellie Mae in the living room.

The new goodie box of used books and odds and ends from the antique store in Victor was a temptation, and she contemplated delving into the depths of the battered parcel.

Nope.

She picked up the remote.

Rhi met the mournful brown eyes of Ellie Mae and grinned. “Animal Planet tonight? Maybe Emergency Vets will be on?”

She turned on the set for the dog’s viewing pleasure and sat back in her chair with the cocoa and a book. Savoring the warmth and spicy scent of the room, Rhi allowed herself a small smile of contentment.

The chance to head west was a godsend, especially since the town and the mountains of Colorado had haunted her dreams since childhood. As she sat alone with her dog, the wind howling outside, the gas fireplace lit and her little house glowing with warmth, once again Rhi felt that she made the right choice. Yet something about the foul feel of the air wouldn’t allow her to relax completely.

A cup of cocoa later, she was sound asleep.

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•
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In the kitchen a soft red glow rose from the box of books on the kitchen table. A low humming sound flowed through the house, awakening Ellie Mae. The dog opened one eye to observe the glow outlined in the entrance to the kitchen. Hackles rising, she gave a low growl and watched as the glow and sound retreated to disappear into the box.

The dream came again, as it always did when Rhi was troubled. The town was burning. The black smoke smelled strongly of rotten eggs and stung Rhi’s eyes.

The tall red-haired woman who was half carrying, half dragging Rhi, ignored the crowded boardwalk. Instead, she steered them both through the filthy center of Meyers Avenue. The buildings on each side of the street were not the circa late 1800s brick facades that had been turned into casinos, but instead were weathered wood frames, most of them burning. Ashes fell on both women as the ominous sound of thunder shook the hillsides surrounding the town. The fires seemed to have reached a cache of dynamite in one of the mines, but Rhi knew better. Monsters and men wrestled beneath the mountains, beings of such power there would be little protection if they burst free.

Her name is Pearl,
Rhi thought
. The most famous madam west of St. Louis. She’s my friend. What are we running from?
Suddenly, Rhi realized that her body was more than hurt. To her horror, she realized she had been somehow, somewhere, terribly violated. The injuries of the rape she couldn’t recall made each step agony.

The dream held Rhi, refusing to let her wake. She knew she was asleep and fought to open her eyes. She failed.

She stared at the ground in fascination as the voluminous skirt of her dress dragged through manure, rotting garbage, and pools of urine. Pearl struggled along with Rhi’s arm over her shoulder. Rhi did her best to keep up with the other woman but couldn’t seem to catch more than a tablespoon of air in her lungs at a time.

Pearl looked at her encouragingly and said something but there was only silence. Rhi tried to speak to the other woman but instead coughed and felt the blood run down her chin. She clawed the air for breath and was rewarded with a thimbleful of air.

Rhi and Pearl fought their way through the crowds of fleeing miners and dance hall girls. Suddenly a man barred their way, holding a sword, a weapon that simply did not fit into the time and place. He spoke to Pearl but Rhi couldn’t hear his voice. Pearl shook her head angrily several times before relenting. Reluctantly, she handed Rhi over to the man, who was also filthy and bleeding.

He took Rhi in his arms after tucking the sword into a scabbard at his side. Pearl gathered up her skirts to trot behind him. They made an unlikely group and normally would have gotten a bit of attention, but the citizens of Cripple Creek were too busy trying to salvage their possessions and run from the fire to notice the trio. Pearl was dressed in her tenderloin district finest, with all of her charms on obvious display. The man with longish silver and black hair, dressed in blood-splattered miner’s clothes, thundered along with Rhi in his arms. She looked down at herself and realized she had been on fire at some point. Her dress was ripped and scorched off in places. She also saw wounds, which she then noticed covered her benefactor and Pearl as well. A particularly nasty bite oozed near Pearl’s jugular. Deep bites and scratches were evident and their clothing was in tatters.

The man spoke. She tensed. He wanted something. If only she could hear his voice. Pain creased his features, brought on by what?

Her lungs were on fire…it was agony to make a sound but she finally heard her own voice. “I can’t…you can’t be trusted, Jack.”

If she were any kind of a witch at all she should be able heal herself, she thought. Why did she think of herself as a witch? She knew there were no such beings as witches.

Another massive explosion rang through the mountains, making the ground roll beneath them. A geyser of ash and dirt spewed into the air from the hillside behind Meyers Avenue. Losing consciousness, Rhi’s eyes slowly closed on the view of the burning town and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains shining in the distance. She laid her head against the shirt of the man carrying her, listening to his heartbeat. Sangre de Cristo, the “Blood of Christ” mountains. Blood…she had seen enough blood today.

∙
•
∙

Ellie Mae watched as her mistress struggled in her sleep. The blanket covering Rhi fell to the floor. The dog crept nearer to nuzzle Rhi’s hand. Then the dog lay down again, ever watchful.
Ellie Mae looked threateningly toward the kitchen doorway but the sound and the glow seemed to know better than to approach Rhi’s guardian tonight.

The woods surrounding the house should have been silent. Instead, the trees whispered and moaned. Farther down the hill, the falling snow was obliterating small prints that resembled those of barefoot children. There were hundreds of tracks in a circular pattern, cutting off suddenly at the foot of the hill. They so wanted to be near her. Rhi was close enough to taste.

The ringing phone shattered the dream into a thousand mirrors. They all showed the face of the mountains named for the blood of a savior. Rhi clutched her head. The headache was a railroad spike driving through her skull. The phone continued to ring while she lurched around the room.

Where was the damned thing?

The noise finally stopped right as she found the phone on the counter. She stood for a moment with the phone in her hand before dumping it and making her way the bathroom. She dug in the cabinet for her migraine medicine.

Shaking, Rhi slid to the floor with the bottle in one hand and a cup of water in the other.

The dreams had become gentler when she first moved to the Rockies. They were just misty mountain pictures and scenes of days gone by that took on the tone of old-fashioned daguerreotypes. Sepia-toned visions of the towns of Cripple Creek and Manitou Springs down Ute Pass. The man and the red-haired woman hadn’t shown their faces for months. The stink of late 1800s Meyers Avenue still clung to Rhi’s skin. Was she in for a session of the dark dreams? Would the image of a stone house in the mountains and a battle of gore-covered monsters be next?