Blackthorne (The Brotherhood of the Gate Book 1) (22 page)

“Pearl lives near her assigned gate in the Far East and has a bitter hatred for the child slavers who prostitute children. She has a nasty habit of hunting them down and killing the slavers. Negotiating isn’t her specialty.”

“What about the gates? Aren’t you responsible for this one?” she asked.

“When the gate’s about to be assaulted…I know. And I come. They aren’t easy to open, you know.” He shifted in the chair uncomfortably to face her with his steel blue gaze. “Do you think I could have the remote?”

The very normal male question seemed to startle Rhi for a moment. She silently pointed out the offending piece of electronic bric-a-brac sitting on the pile of books beside the chair. Then she took a breath. “If this is all real…you should make me a member of your club now so I can at least have a fighting chance. I know it gives you extra abilities. Like that flying show-offiness tonight.” Her face looked nauseous and a bit green.

“Absolutely not. It isn’t like in the movies. Becoming a Changeling is a painful process. And our needs can be disgusting. Do you know what I did before I met you this evening? I stopped at one of the casinos and charmed one of those mean-as-a-snake, blousy old ladies from Colorado Springs to walk outside with me for enough of a moment to take a pinch of her aura. I then sent her back in with no memory of me but a wobble in her knees and the implanted knowledge to never again talk to strangers. The Brotherhood’s priests claim we are not damned for using demon blood as we do, but I am not so sure.” He leaned back in the recliner, feeling like a normal man except he was talking about the taking of someone’s aura…a little theft of soul. Then of course there were the extra-long incisors that showed every time he opened his mouth too much. Blackthorne could become a blood drinker if he wanted to. Did he ever think about what it would be like, to not drink the aura but instead the very essence of life? They all did, at one time or another. Dancing with the devil.

Rhi continued to pet Ellie Mae. He was trying to scare her but it looked like all he was doing was grossing her out. Feeding on auras was not particularly icky but it was still uncomfortable.

“You had your chance 120 years ago when I was desperate. Now…I could care less.” He looked away from her to watch the blue flicker of the television.

The ex-knight of the crusades spoke one more time as she treaded toward her loft. “Did you know another of my vast powers is the ability to sometimes catch a thought or two slipping out of a human’s mind?”

Rhi slumped immediately. “Oh God.”

“Is that offer to cuddle still good?”

She fled into the bedroom and slammed the door behind her, leaving him softly snickering in her living room, in her recliner, watching her
television, with her blanket wrapped around him. She probably hoped the dragon stopped by for a snack so she could feed him to it. He heard the thought “jerk” over and over from her for several minutes until he finally called from the living room in exasperation, “Okay. I get the message,” and then he felt her mind finally drift off and she slept…alone.

Blackthorne sat back in the chair and stared at the screen of the television, seeing nothing but the laughing face of a girl with blue-black hair that hung to her waist and dancing green eyes that never left his face.

In Manitou they walked slowly together in the morning of the kitchen garden under the watchful eye of Raven’s mother, who was dressed in full mystic regalia. The older witch stood at attention in the kitchen window looking like a black widow spider on the verge of descending upon him at any moment. He was very careful to keep his expressions neutral when calling upon Mrs. Brennan’s magical daughter. It would not do to have the mother of the girl who had entranced him so see the slight fangs that were mixed in among his otherwise normal looking white teeth. She was, after all, one of the most powerful witches he had ever met except for her daughter, Raven.

The morning dew was still caught in the cobwebs of the night among the herbs and tomato plants. Still shy with him even though she was aware of some of his deepest secrets, Raven walked silently beside him, dwarfed by his tall body. Every few moments she would make a valiant effort to suppress a cough rising from her diseased lungs. With a quick glance back at the window where her mother stood…she wrapped her tiny fingers around the smallest finger on his hand. Her shyness enchanted him and her illness broke his heart. Then there were those marvelous flashes of spirit and mischievousness she showed such as when she told her mother that the tall well-dressed man at the door was there to call on her, not her healthy, blonde older sister. Jack Blackthorne had never believed that he was capable of falling in love…the war of good versus evil was his calling, not the soft attentions of a woman. But he was doomed to love Raven madly from the first moment he saw her in the meadow, his pale-faced flower in a sea of blankets and skirts, looking forlorn and lonely.

His voice spoke softly to the room.

“Raven.”

»»•««

The various law enforcement branches of the Pike’s Peak region were winding up their inspection of the accident site when the first fireball rolled though the sky. They saw a brilliant white ball of flame wind its way down the highway of black velvet heaven before striking an empty cruiser that sat off to one side of the gravel and ice covered road.

The sheriff had been reviewing paperwork in his Bronco, trying to ignore the work of his men as they painstakingly picked up the pieces of people Nick knew he probably had more than a passing acquaintance with. The flare of the first meteor gave him some warning and he looked up in time to see other meteors streaking through the sky. Some were headed toward the lights of town and some hit in the forest, setting snow covered trees aflame with light. He paused for a second to digest this newest shock and then hit the siren. The Baptist fundamentalists that had decried the arrival of gambling in the mountains were right, it seemed. Hell had made its way to town. Nick had no way of knowing that this Hell was powered by the grief and anger of one woman, who brought on the storm of light with her dreams and her awakening power.

»»•««

Rhi once again writhed in her sleep as her fear, anger, and newly awakened powers fueled the flame storm in the sky. She couldn’t wake up. She was chained to her nightmare.

The drip-drip of the condensation on the walls of the cellar was an almost homey sound. The thirst for that one little drop of water that slid down the wall where she could see it out of the corner of her eye was agony. She prayed for death again. But God didn’t seem to be listening to her today. Death should be easier, she thought, if one is so far down the road already. Her body, soul, and heart were a pile of rubble that her husband’s brother had torn his way through, looking for answers to his questions.

She faded in and out until once again small filthy hands held her down on the cold stone and a metal cup was pressed to her lips. Why they felt she needed to be held down was beyond her. Raven Blackthorne could barely lift her head, let alone rise up to smite her captors. She weakly fought to keep from swallowing, but a larger hand held her mouth shut and the hideous red liquid made a burning path down her throat. Enough to keep her alive for a little while longer. The thinned demon’s blood they fed her was not strong enough to provoke the change. The noxious stuff barely kept her breathing. It had been days…waiting for Jack to come for her. But her husband didn’t come. And his brother, who would have never known of her existence if not for Jack, stood nearby…the lust that crept over his handsome face made her want to retch but there was nothing in her stomach to bring up. How many times could he take her unwilling body before he tired of her pain? She wanted to scour herself until she bled because of Manius’ touch but she could never truly be clean again.

The crystal skull was on a pedestal in a wall niche behind her tormentors. The torchlight of the stone dungeon lit the quartz crystal to an unholy green sprinkled with a purplish red. A flare of hope sparked in the one eye she could still open. She extinguished the thought before Manius noticed and beat her for the spark. A small dragon fluttered nearby and Raven called to it silently. After days of forced trances, she knew what the skull was capable of. She would not be able to keep it from Manius for much longer. Besides, the only person in the stone house capable of opening the gate was Raven herself. She doubted Manius could find anyone else without ill intent in his heart to open the damned thing for him or to sacrifice himself by closing the gate afterward behind them. She wondered for a moment what Solomon had done with the demons that he had freed to build the temple in Jerusalem after the building of his magnificent city and temple was done. Killed them all? Sent them to his mines in Africa to be worked to death as they dug for more treasure to fill his coffers?

As her bloodied mouth babbled obscure bits of arcane knowledge, her mind busily wove a spell, and she watched the small dragon fly unnoticed to the skull and lift the relic in its claws. The creature then fluttered away up the staircase nearby. She placed a picture in the mind of the dragon along with a command. As she finally lost consciousness, the sounds of shouting and clashing swords rang in her ears. Finally, her husband had come for her.

Then she was in a white room on an old iron bedstead. There was blood everywhere. The final coughing fits of her life had left their mark. Her lungs had nothing left to give. Jack kneeled beside her and held her hand. Pearl, with a heavily bandaged neck and an arm in a sling, sat in a nearby chair, clad in a demure gray wool dress. The madam had been crying. Her face was ravaged and deathly pale, her vivid eyes stained with tears.

“Raven. God forgive me. I’ll be right behind you…I’ll never let you be alone.” Jack clutched the translucent skin of her hand and rocked back and forth, his grief evident.

A voice in the darkness of her mind spoke sharply to her, forcing her to speak as well. The voice demanded something terrible and unfair. She had no choice but to listen to the command spoken in the tones of a stern father. Raven ran her tongue over her blistered lips. “No, Jack. You can not follow me into the peace of death. You have to stay.”

“I failed you. I failed…” Tears ran down his face as he violently shook his head, almost crushing the bones of her hand in his grip. “No, if you won’t take the blood to stay with me…I’m going to die with you. I want out of this war.”

She hardened her heart, or at least, she hardened what was left of her heart. She needed her husband so badly, and now the voice was sending her to her rest alone, without him by her side. “I can’t take the blood, you know that. I’m too weak. But you can’t die until you make this right, Jack. You weren’t free to wed. And now you have to stay. I love you but…you have to let me go alone.” The words coming from the tiny girl were weak but held a gossamer strand of iron. “It’s not fair but then I guess God doesn’t have to be fair, does He?”

“I love you, Raven,” he protested in a whisper.

She wanted to die, wanted to die, wanted to die. How much was she to bear? “Jack. Swear you’ll wait.” Raven writhed in the coarse white sheets provided by the Sisters of Mercy. The sisters had faithfully changed the bed every day, not meeting Jack’s pleading stare as they bustled around the stark room, filling the air with the sound of their rustling robes.

He hesitated.

“Jack, please. You must promise me this. I need to hear you swear.”

The words wrenched their way out of his mouth. He was angry. How could she ask this of him? She had no choice. “I swear.”

She heard the words he spoke but they seemed to be far away as she flew through the night sky into the fields of stars that waited. A cry of loss roared in her wake. She wept as she passed onward with the tendrils of his sorrow clinging to her like cobwebs of light. His love was still with her and so was the deed done by his kin.

While Rhi lay caught in her nightmares, outside, the skies opened up and wept for her, pouring frozen white tears onto the little mountain town, following the meteor shower so closely that some who were up to witness it later said the snow was on fire that night.

Rhi bolted up in bed and was caught by two large, scarred hands. Half still caught in the nightmare, she gasped frantically for air, too winded with horror to scream. She fought Blackthorne’s hands off and scuttled to the other end of the bed where Ellie Mae sat at attention. The hair on the dog’s neck stood on end, but she didn’t interfere with her mistress. Rhi clung to the dog’s huge neck and finally got enough air in her lungs to sob. Her lungs didn’t want to work correctly for a moment, possibly still holding the memory of the death before.

The clean smell of linen and warm hound filled her, replacing the scent of sulfur from her dream, but the metallic taste of her own blood lingered in her mouth. She wondered dazedly who was weeping so loudly somewhere in her house. Never in her life had she heard such sounds…great, wracking gasps of tears and pain.
Oh. That’s me. It’s me crying.
Never in her lifetime…but in another lifetime the woman she had been
had
cried as she cried now. Rhi now knew without a doubt that she had been raped by the brother of the man who sat at the foot of her bed staring at her, his face grim. The man who had drawn her into his world in the past, loved her, and left his sworn duty to mankind for her. And he had the audacity to be angry with her? His brother had
raped
her. And if Blackthorne had never loved her, never married her…none of this would happened. And even though in her heart she knew it was not fair, one thought kept coming back,
He didn’t come for me in time. He didn’t save me.
Her fury boiled and it was all she could do not to spit in his face.

She leaped from the bed and padded down to the kitchen, deliberately ignoring the man standing by her bed. The dog observed him guardedly from her perch atop several snowy white pillows. The folds of Ellie Mae’s eyes were wrinkled up in concern. The insightful hound sensed Rhi’s distress.