Blackthorne (The Brotherhood of the Gate Book 1) (4 page)

He looked again at the tiny house. The words “she’s been broken” made him wince. It seemed to be the girl’s destiny to be broken over and over, like Fate’s favorite toy.

“Fate didn’t turn him loose, Pearl, the council did…betrayed by my own brothers. And she’s here. I didn’t think the time was so near. I came because I felt something near my gate, but it didn’t feel threatening…just a presence.”

∙
•
∙

“You won’t catch me disagreeing with you on that one.” Pearl could make out the planes of his face in the dark and knew that they were marked with a variety of emotions. Even though she sometimes blamed him for the mistakes of the past, she was able to feel pity for him. But only for him. And only when she was in the right mood. “Are you going to stand out here in the dark all night? You’re going to look a little silly in the morning, covered with snow. We do have work to do.”

“Like what? We’re as blind as he is. We have no idea where the damned thing is. Then we can’t do anything until the new moon. If he gets to it first—all we’ll probably be doing is dying anyway,” he replied. He looked tired. And the sight of the A-frame probably made it worse.

“Quitting, Blackthorne? That’s what got you into trouble the first time,” she said as she stepped away to examine the blood in the snow. The wicked looking blade had reappeared in her hand. “We can at least hunt some of these beasties in the woods, keep them from eating the general populace, like whoever this poor slob was. Cut down on his workforce a little before reinforcements arrive.”

Blackthorne stood in Pearl’s wake for a moment and then trudged after her. He reached back to free his sword from its sheath. For now, there was work to do and maybe that would keep him out of mischief.

∙
•
∙

Inside the nearby house, Rhi slept but Ellie Mae sat near her feet at attention. The dog’s sensitive nose was picking up a strange scent. An uncomfortable scent. The golden fur on her neck stood on end and she stood and began to pace the floor. Ellie walked back and forth between the door and Rhi for several minutes until the smell dissipated, allowing the dog to resume her original position with a puzzled look on her wrinkled face. First the glowing box, now this. Mountain lions, bears, raccoons, she had smelled them all since moving here. The dog feared none of these animals. This new smell was to be feared. Here be monsters.

The sleep had engulfed Rhi and her mind wandered again. He was close—she could sense him. Then she felt his touch. Fire ran through her. His mouth was on hers and his callused hands stroked her skin. Where did a man get such thick calluses? Blue fire filled the room. His dark hair brushed her shoulder, and then he looked up to meet her eyes. His own eyes glowed with an unearthly blue light and she felt a moment of pure terror. Her lungs weren’t working right. She felt like a brick wall had been built on top of her chest. She began to cough and cough and cough. It wouldn’t stop. She fell away from his hands. She couldn’t get a breath of air and was sure that she was suffocating. Rhi shook herself awake, still coughing. Her lungs were on fire.

She headed for the kitchen for more water. Her hands were shaking so badly she almost dropped the glass. Had someone spiked the nachos she’d eaten earlier that evening with fairy dust?

“More like demon dust,” she muttered and went to double-check all of the doors. She roused the dog and they both stumbled to the bedroom, where Ellie Mae lay down peacefully beside her. The human occupant of the queen-sized mattress stared at the ceiling, trying to remember who the dream man could have been. He definitely wasn’t the most recent prospect chosen by her grandmother. He’d been blond, his body sculpted from hours in the gym in front of the workout mirrors, admiring his physique. The man of her dreams wasn’t a bodybuilder. He was muscled like a predator. She couldn’t decide whether to call it a nightmare or a wet dream, so she settled for ignoring it, and snuggled down next to the dog to sleep.

The sun rose in a glorious show of colors the next morning and Rhi was up with only a couple of hours of sleep. She shoveled the deck clean and performed her ritual of morning stretches and tai chi moves outside in the cold sunlight. The dreams and fears of the night before dissipated as she stood on the deck wrapped in a blanket over her workout sweats. She savored her aching muscles as she gazed at the mountains behind her house. Five inches of white magic covered them. The clean scent of the mountains flowed through her, purging the last shreds of the dreams from the night before. All of nature was magical to her but the Rockies pulsed with an ancient power like no other. She felt it more every day.

Behind her, Rhi could hear the chugging sound of Pam’s Dodge Dakota making its way up the road. The battered green pickup slid into the driveway. It stopped behind the newer Blazer, not quite touching the rear bumper.

“Look at me. I’m getting up with the chickens because of you. Have you been
outside
working out? Stupid question…of course you have,” Pam shouted as she hopped from the vehicle. She turned to unfasten the car seat of her three-year-old daughter, Katie. “I feel so healthy and wholesome I could puke. Please tell me there is coffee containing caffeine in that house.”

“Rhi. Tum det me now,” Katie demanded, struggling through the snow as her mother unloaded a backpack and a huge purse from the truck.

Rhi obliged the little girl, wading through a foot of fresh snow in moccasins to pick her up. The snow instantly spilled into her shoes and began to melt into her wool socks. Katie was better dressed than her rescuer, enveloped in a shocking pink snowsuit and boots. The outfit gave her all of the grace of a tiny feminine Michelin Man. Picking her up was like picking up a squirming pink pillow.

“I have caffeine and food that doesn’t require the use of a
microwave
,” Rhi shot back over her shoulder as she climbed out of the sea of snow to carry Katie in the house. She deposited the child on the couch to strip the snowsuit off her. An even pinker Nike tracksuit was underneath the snowsuit. Rhi blinked. The color was blinding. Freed, the little girl ran squealing over to where Ellie Mae lay by the warmth of the woodstove. Rhi started up the chicken sausage links and poured another cup of coffee.

Pam struggled in the door and kicked it shut behind her with a boot. The intoxicating aroma of pancakes, sausage, and strong black coffee filled the little A-frame.

“My God, that smells good.”

“This is what is known as cooking. These little knobs on the stove make it hot. Then we put the pan on the stove with meat products inside,” Rhi stated, miming putting links in the pan.

“I don’t suppose those are fat free,” the other woman said, pointing to the links of brown sugar and honey sausage that were cooking in the pan.

Pam rolled her eyes at the sight of a prettily arranged platter of sliced fruit and then took her coat and boots off to sit down at the breakfast table with her coffee. She started to dig through the box of books that sat on the floor off to the side in the kitchen.

“I thought you told me we burn off calories quicker at this altitude?” Rhi raised an inquiring eyebrow at her friend.

“Was I drinking when I told you this?”

“Of course.”

Pam leafed through several dusty books, exclaiming when something caught her eye. “By the way, if we get hopelessly snowed in for days on end, I think we should eat Ellie Mae first.”

“She’s a little stringy looking if you ask me. If anyone in this house is gonna qualify as an Alferd Packer it’s going to be me.”

“Who’s Alferd Packer?” Pam looked at her quizzically.

“I can’t believe some days that you are a Colorado
native
. Don’t you read? Alferd is the state cannibal, of course. He got caught in a snowstorm on the way to the gold fields in the late 1800s with a group of men and was the only one to walk out of the mountains alive several months later. Everyone noticed immediately that he looked very well fed for someone who had been lost in the mountains that long. He murdered and ate his companions. They named a cafeteria after him at the University of Colorado.” Rhi’s grin shone in the sunny kitchen as she tended her stove. “There’s a great cookbook that was written in Alferd’s honor I’ve got somewhere you might be interested in. It’s mostly pork dishes.”

“
Eww
. Sorry I asked.” Pam grunted as she began to dig again. “Nasty, dusty books. Can’t you ever bring home something interesting? Like a man, perhaps? Oh great. This is disgusting…a beautiful Bible with a dragon and skull printed on the inside of the cover. What were people thinking? Were there Hell’s Angels back when this thing was published? Isn’t this kind of sacrilegious?” She held the large book gingerly, taking care not to damage the gilded lettering and designs on the black leather cover. The Bible’s gilded pages, hand-sewn binding, ornate cover and illustrations were beautiful.

The book’s splendor was one of the reasons Rhi had picked it out of the dusty bin of books in a Victor, Colorado junk store. But she had missed the skull.

Rhi glanced at the flyleaf of the book Pam held up for her inspection. A beautifully rendered human skull took up the page. The colors of the skull were a strange combination of dark purples and shades of green. The purple outlined the eyes and mouth of the skull and ran in veins through the rest of the head, mottled in different shades of green. Gracefully wrapped around the skull was a small black dragon that stared directly out of the book at her with an emerald green gaze the exact same shade of her own eyes.

“How beautiful,” Rhi exclaimed and took the proffered book to examine the picture closely. “What on earth is it doing in a Bible? From the quality of the picture, it had to be printed as a part of the book…and what about the caption below?” She squinted to decipher the stylized script. “‘
Behold, I stand at the door, and knock.’
Where have I heard that one?”

“Revelations,” the other woman said and then took a gulp of coffee, trying to ignore Rhi’s questioning glance. Pam grimaced.

“Okay…I’m a very fallen Catholic, if you must know. And things like my mother forcing me to memorize Bible verses are what made me fall.” She took the Bible and stowed it back in the box. “Bibles give me the willies and this one is creepier than the rest.”

The sausages were looking good and the pancakes were warming in the oven, so Rhi took her coffee in hand and walked to the breakfast bar to face her friend. She glanced cautiously over at Katie who had managed to find cartoons on the television.

“The
accident
last night—have you hear anything else?”

“Nope, but we probably will this morning. They’re sending someone out to talk to me today since I knew Marie. I left a note on the door at home. They’ll be here in a few minutes.”

“Great. You’ve invited the cops here and I only have enough sausages for us.”

“If they send the cop I think they will, I doubt he will break bread with us. He thinks casinos are the root of all evil. His family was one of the opposing forces a few decades ago in voting in gaming. Like my Maw Maw always said…cards are the devil’s play pretties,” Pam said and pointedly held up her empty plate in front of Rhi’s nose.

“Okay, okay. No wonder you’ve been divorced twice, demanding little creature.” Rhi turned back to the stove with the plate and filled it with food. “Who is this old fart who hates gaming?”

Pam grinned wickedly.

“I haven’t heard him called that before. It’s not what I think of when I look at Nicholas.”

“Nicholas? Is he some old miner turned cop?”

“No and quit saying old. He’s thirty-nine if he’s a day and all I think of when I see this cop is him naked.”

Rhi dished out lumberjack-sized portions of food for her guests and sat her creations down on the breakfast table with the coffee pot, orange juice, butter, and syrup.

“Come and get it while it’s hot,” she grumbled as Pam and Katie both rushed up to stuff themselves. Rhi was in the act of taking her own place when Ellie jumped up, voicing the bloodhound’s bass howl at the sound of a knock at the door.

Pam looked up at Rhi knowingly as her hostess went to the door.

“The testosterone level in here is about to go up a few notches.”

Rhi ignored her friend and opened the door to welcome the local representative of the law into her home. She was greeted by a six-foot-four-inch bundle of nylon and down, which topped off a nicely filled pair of Levis and hiking boots. Her guest lowered his hood to reveal a craggy bronzed face covered in a neatly trimmed brown beard. Hard gray eyes narrowed at the sight of Rhi, whose body was lost in giant woolen socks and baggy sweats, her black hair gathered into a heavy braid which hung over one shoulder. Her eyes were probably bloodshot from her restless night in front of the television.

“Looks like we’ve got us another eastern carpetbagger moving in to suck us dry,” his deep voice rumbled.

Rhi stepped back when he pushed forward into the house without an invitation. His eyes took in everything, she noticed.
Perhaps he should take a picture of my belongings
, she thought, as her newest guest examined the well-furnished little home.

“I happen to be from the South. Where I come from those are fighting words,” she snapped and turned her back on him and sat down to her breakfast.

“Ms. Douglas found someone to feed her child something besides frozen entrees?”

“She can clean too,” Pam said around a mouthful of pancakes. “Sheriff Nicholas Boyd, Rhi Brennan. Rhi Brennan, Nicholas Boyd.”

Katie looked up at her mother then dug back into her quickly emptying plate of food, ignoring all stimuli in the room but the syrup coated plate in front of her.

Good-looking men made Rhi jumpy. She often wondered if she would ever get to a point when she didn’t wonder about the monster potential in every man she met. She had no idea why she felt this way. Dating for her had been a disaster over the years with her inability to give her heart or her trust.

Ellie Mae ambled over to the new visitor and gave his jeans the once over with her nose. He kneeled down to scratch her ten-inch long ears.