Ghost Killer (29 page)

HE SET HIS
cane aside. Stood solid and strong before her. His Clare. He used both hands to unzip
her jeans, move them and her panties—high-cut but white cotton—down.

Now her hands rubbed his dick behind his jeans and his breath came short and he’d
about give everything he had in his life for this moment to last forever.

Wait. Not yet. Not this moment, but soon, soon.

Together they unzipped his own too-tight jeans and he groaned when she freed him and
caressed him.

He had to have her mouth, found it slightly open and pressed his lips against her
plump ones, probed his tongue into her mouth. Clare, Clare, Clare.

She fell back and took him with her and he felt her cashmere sweater against his dick
and it was fine, but not as good as Clare. He pushed her upper garments above her
breasts, then touched her lower, tested her, and she was wet and hot and she moaned.
She couldn’t open her legs wide, but there was space enough for him.

But he didn’t enter her, got caught by the pure beauty of her . . . her eyes closed,
her thin sweater and tank above her breasts, her bra fallen to her sides and showing
rosy-tipped breasts.

That mass of hair spread on the quilt, framing her face full of straining passion.

He petted her, making her hotter, wetter, bent to kiss her lips, outline them with
his tongue, sweep through her mouth again. Kissed and nibbled and listened to her
whimper and slowly withdrew.

He’d put that sensual look on her face. She moaned for him. The most beautiful thing
he’d ever seen and heard.

Her fingers quested, discovered him and tugged. He went over her. Paused until she
opened wide, blurred eyes looked into his own.

Beautiful. Perfect for him. His.

He plunged into her and he said words he’d never said except to his family. “I love
you.”

She cried out and her body convulsed around him and that was the sweetest thing he’d
ever felt, the best, the most fabulous, and he lost control and surged, and she tightened
around him again, gasped, and he matched her gasps with groans of his own until they
spun away into darkness.

“I love you,” he said again.

*   *   *

For the second time that day, Clare thought she’d passed out, or at least her brain
had gone definitely fuzzy. From pure pleasure and three orgasms . . . and from hearing
Zach say he loved her. That had speared deep within her, to the bone, the words, the
sounds, to be part of her and never forgotten. She didn’t know what to do about them.
Thought she should say she loved him, too. Because she did. But this didn’t seem to
be the time, because she’d want him naked in bed so she could cherish him and discuss
every little detail.

She heard sloshing in the corner of the room, Zach using the basin to wash in. Considering
it, she just didn’t think she could, mostly because the water would be cold and she
wanted warm . . . since she’d be going into coldness soon enough. The cold of the
autumn night—a few degrees above freezing—and the petrifying ice of fighting the ghost—not
to mention the basic chill of fear.

“Clare?” Zach said, standing fully dressed beside her. She glanced at the clock on
the table. The whole explosive sex had taken less than ten minutes. Incredible.

With a little cough, she said, “Can you help me off with my boots.”

His smile was quick and wicked. “Sure.”

“I won’t be longer than five minutes,” she promised, then revised downward, “Three.”

“Fine.” His expression turned serious and she noticed lines on his thinner face. This
case took its toll on him, too.

She found herself saying her standard platitude. “The sooner we get done, the better.”

“Right.” He knelt and tugged at the laces on her boots. She sat and realized he’d
put a towel under her sometime and flushed because she hadn’t noticed. She thought
they’d left a towel on the bed, or maybe on the vanity that was within easy reach.

But her boots were gone and she yanked off the jeans, grabbed the hotel robe and bundled
it on, swept up the key and shot into the hall and down it to the bathroom.

The faucet in the sink took a little time to run hot water, and she looked at the
shower with longing, but absolutely no time for that.

Cleaning up and drying as fast as humanly possible, she bolted from the bathroom,
stopped only to test that the lock had caught. Then returned to their room.

Zach was gone.

So was the knife.

Lunging across the room to the outside door and across the balcony, she looked for
the truck. Didn’t even see tail lights.

Goddammit!

He’d done it again. Left her. Infuriating.

This time, though, she figured, he left her not because he was troubled in mind and
seeking answers for himself, but deliberately. To walk into danger instead of her.

A scrawl on the sheet of her notepad confirmed it.
I love you, Clare. Stay safe. Live well
.

Yes, infuriating. And terrifying.

They were supposed to be a team, and
she
the captain.
Goddammit!

Now she knew what that look earlier had been about, their lovemaking. He planned on
killing the ghost and dying himself.

Her heartbeat skipped in horror. Her breath simply stopped.

A bark had her blinking to see Enzo lying flat half-in, half-out of the plank floor.
His tail wagged desultorily.
Zach called me. I am to stay with you,
he said mournfully.

“Zach called you.” Clare flung on clothes, stuck on socks, and thrust her feet into
boots. She sent her mind to check on the monster Emma. That one flowed down from the
canyon, but instead of heading toward her and Main Street, angled west.

“Where
is
he? Not heading up to Bachelor’s Loop. Emma would have stopped there.” Clare stomped
into her boots, tied her laces.

Anger sizzled all thought away. Her hand was on the door latch before she recalled
the body armor. Whirling, she saw his was gone, a good sign. She fumbled her own on,
leapt for the door, swiping the key off the vanity as she did and shot through it.

Enzo perked up.
We are going to hunt?

She snarled, then hissed, “Yes!”

How?

“I’ve got wheels.” Bless Desiree Rickman for her experience with hardheaded men. Clare
jammed the scooter key into her pocket. “You go find Zach, now!”

Yes! I will, Clare. I will find him and come back—

“Stay with him.” She ran down the stairs, carefully, quietly, holding on to the rail.
She didn’t dare fall. “Tell me where he is.” She glanced at her watch. “Go fast!”

I can run FAST!
Enzo said enthusiastically, joyously, and disappeared in a streak of spirit gray.

He sounded better. Healthier. More like the companion she knew, and that was great.

She
would
do this. Everything. Keep Zach from being killed. Save Caden. Save Creede. Save the
goddam world.

Her breath puffing out steam in the frosty air, Clare flat out ran to Tappings bar
and the scooter. Thank God for Desiree. Thank God.

Yes, Zach thought he’d stranded Clare. Protected her, was keeping her safe.

She didn’t
want
to be safe. Not at the cost of his life. How could she live with that! Bad enough
to try and live without him, a man who’d twined himself into her entire existence,
let alone exist in a world where her lover had sacrificed himself for her. Impossible
to survive with that knowledge weighing her down.

Her body shuddered with anger more than the cold. She was going to scream and yell
at him for this. Something she hadn’t done . . . in forever. Since she was a kid and
hadn’t gotten control of her temper. Throw a true tantrum. Let him know he’d done
something nearly unforgivable.

I have found him!
Enzo yelled into her mind.
He is at the old grave of Robert Ford.

Yes, that might draw the wraith that had been Emma Romano. Surely her own unmarked
grave would be in the cemetery just to the south of Ford’s empty site.

Clare’s anger barely had time to cool, even in the cold air, as her shaky hands opened
the door of the shed and she rolled the scooter out. Since all of her trembled with
rage, with terror, with adrenaline priming her for the fight—who knew what else?—she
took the time to draw in three steadying breaths, let them out, center herself. She’d
have to keep her balance while riding the scooter. Keep her head.

I will fight, too!
Enzo yelled, then screamed with pain.

She roared out of the parking lot, followed the sense she had of the knife . . . and
Emma, Enzo . . . the lost Caden. And Zach.

Tears froze on her face at the loss she’d already experienced, the hope she could
save them all, herself, too.
Extinguish
Emma.

Leaning into a curve, her emotions settled into three strong ones. Anger at Zach,
grief for Caden, and most of all, determination. This was
her
fight. How
dare
Zach take it from her.

How
dare
anyone believe that she wasn’t up to the job, no matter how new she was at it. No
matter what its demands or its costs.

Then she turned again, curved down over the machine for less wind resistance. Though
she wanted to rip open the speed, she kept it at the upper limits of what she knew
she could control . . . even as mist slicked the pavement.

Past the cemetery, heading north. There, there! A truck, two!
Two!
One was the elder Pais’s!

She screeched to a stop, but the wind had picked up and swallowed the sound. Flinging
herself off the scooter, she ran through the gate, up the gentle incline, slipping
on the wet clumps of grass, stumbling as her boots caught dirt or rock.

Then she saw them beyond the gravesite, at the top of the ridge, lost in a flurry
of a white cycling snowstorm that glinted silver. And lightning. “Goddammit!” she
yelled. Two men.
Two
, were here before her, trying to fight the damn ghost. When it was her job.
Her
fight. Neither of them heard.

Zach stood closest to the evil ghost, taunting it. He waved Clare’s knife at the specter,
shouted, “Come on, Miss Emma Romano. Don’t you want me?” His grin was reckless, baiting.

Clare stopped in her tracks. He looked like he enjoyed the danger, the fight. Because
of the adrenaline rush, no doubt. And if she was thinking at all, she was lost. Pack
the mind away, rely on instincts—baby ghost killing, ghost
seeing
instincts, but that’s what she had now. She prayed as she ran up the hill.

“Don’t you want me?” Zach danced,
danced
! How could he do that? “I betrayed my lover. I took
her
knife while she was gone. And I
planned
that. I stranded her, and I called you here. That’s betrayal, right? No man ever
leave you in bed when you still wanted him?”

That was
such
the wrong thing to say. Hell, why couldn’t Clare run faster? Her ribs hurt, she put
that out of her head.

“You know I can’t kill you with this knife, don’t you? I can . . . make you dissipate,
but can’t kill you. But you can take me. When was the last time you had a man?”

Zach lied with conviction. He
could
kill Emma. But not without dying himself. Sacrificing himself.

The funnel tightened, lengthened, swayed in no natural shape. Unnatural. Must be stopped.
It flung itself at Zach. He held up some sort of shield. Where had he gotten that?
And why didn’t Clare have one of those?

She shrieked to get the monster’s attention.

The snowstorm wobbled, aimed for her. Enzo harried it, Zach turned and froze, looking
horrified.

And Pais leapt straight in front of it.

Time seemed stuck in slow motion as Clare raced toward Emma, though she could see,
could hear the ghost as it lashed out at the ex-sheriff.

You betrayed MEEEE, one of your residents, one of your people!
Emma shrieked as she rained blows on Pais.

He stood his ground, leaned into her wind, his face frosted over, and Clare saw bleeding
bite marks
.

Her running felt like lumbering.

“I heard that!” he yelled. “You are
not
one of my people. You
took
a child on my watch. You are an abomination!” With a blue and shaking hand, he raised
his gun and fired.

The banshee shriek ice-picked through Clare’s head, then rose beyond her hearing.
She thought she heard a dog yelping. Enzo.

Act!

“Over here, Emma Romano!
Here!
” Clare screamed with everything she had.

Emma lashed out a serrated whip of snow, hit Pais in the chest, and wrapped around
his torso.

He crumpled, dead.

CLARE SAW PAIS’S
spirit separate from his body. Look down at it.

Emma surged toward that shade.

“Emma!” Clare yelled. She waved her arms. “Look at me, weaponless!” The storm tightened,
rolled down the slope to her.

“No!” Zach shouted. He ran on the far side of the snowstorm, jabbed it with the knife.
“Stand still, dammit.”

There’s a good spot this way, Clare. Right here. Stand here. In this depression,
Enzo said. She followed him.

Zach outdistanced the snowstorm, heading straight for her. As soon as he was within
reach, she grabbed the knife away from him. Then the thing who had once been Emma
Romano was on them, whirling them, separating them.

Angling the knife in front of her so it would cut and slice and
hurt
Emma before she penetrated the snowstorm more, Clare shouted mentally.
You are wrong when you accused Pais of betrayal. You killed an innocent man.

He betrayed me, like everyone else.

If anyone does anything against your will, it’s a betrayal?

YESSS!

Do you hear how crazy that sounds?
Clare sent anger, scorn, disgust down their link. The storm hesitated, a shade seemed
to drop out of the whirling mass, a small white wraith. Clare stepped into it, into
the cold, gasped. Trying to keep this bit blocked from Emma, silent, she crooned,
Caden?

Yes, it is me! You came for me, Clare. Enzo said you would. I am here, Clare, and
not eaten. Help me get away!

Narrowing her eyes, she
saw
the small threads that held Caden to the ghost. Three threads that pulsed with red
and sparkling life. Gritting her teeth, she touched one with the tip of her knife.
It separated. Caden whimpered. Cold began to hit her like hail pellets, bruising her.
She frayed the second, slit the third, and watched it tear away.

Nooooo!
Emma cried, and bit Clare.

Agony took her breath, dimmed her vision. Propping the knife at an angle against her
body she stepped further into the snowstorm that was Emma Romano, shuddered, then
went numb. That freed Clare.

Bombarded by slicing hail and wretched, guilty memories from Emma, Clare slashed at
the tethers that held other tattered, shrieking ghosts as they flew to her, then away—a
World War I veteran, a barkeep from the mining days.

One quick punch of recent memories from Linda Boucher, the third of the recent love
triangle. Sex triangle, truly, for she—and now Clare—knew that not one of those three
had loved. No love, only power games.

Her arm and the knife swept through the bindings with no control from her, no awareness.
The only thing she felt were frozen tear tracks on her face, her lips cold, cold,
cold.

Then the snowstorm coalesced into a huge, lumpy ghost with shadows. Mostly Emma, and
those she’d consumed before becoming free. “I know you, Emma Romano,” Clare thought
she whispered, put more effort into the words so she might hear them with her ears
and not just her mind. “
I know you, Emma Romano!
” And she did. Emma had whispered to one of her clients that Robert Ford intended
to kill Edward Capehart O’Kelley, and that man had warned O’Kelley, who’d walked into
the saloon and killed Ford.

I know why betrayal hurts you. Because you are guilty of the betrayal of your lover.

And finally Clare’s mind and body connected and she recalled the right fighting pattern,
took the first step.

Yes, he died because of meee!
the specter screamed.
Because he used me and didn’t see ME. Didn’t care for me, and I loved him. And he
barely noticed me.

Clare wouldn’t hesitate. Slash, slash. She couldn’t tell if that hurt Emma, because
the ghost continued to carry on. But Clare got closer and closer to the central mass.

I KILLED myself
, Emma shrieked.
Now, during the full moon, now!

“It’s not now. It was then, over a hundred years ago,” Clare stated.

It is NOW!
”

“
Then,”
Clare insisted.

I killed myself. I died like Nellie Russell did, the one the subscription was for.
But NOBODY NOTICED!

And the storm calmed, chilled to grimy frost, and Clare seemed to have stepped inside
a snow globe—time out of time—the gray spirit dimension. She couldn’t sense Zach or
Enzo.

She saw the woman, a woman younger than she, heavier in body and features, long black
hair as dull as her eyes. She wept and wailed and wiped her face with an end of the
shawl she wore over a thin dress. Clare had to listen closely to words garbled by
sobbing. “I left Creede and killed myself up Willow Creek and nobody even noticed
I was gone!” She lifted chocolate brown eyes to Clare. “Do you know how that
feels
?”

“No,” Clare replied quietly. “No. I’m so sorry.”

Lonely sadness vanished in a flash, replaced by malicious glee. “It made me feel
murderous
!”

Clare held her ground, but let the knife fall by her side. Get close, within striking
distance of Emma’s heart. Clare knew how to deal a death blow, now. She thought she
swallowed, but didn’t feel it, her tongue, her mouth, the moving of her throat.

Cold, maybe too cold, and maybe this took too long. Usually helping ghosts on felt
like it took too long. Perhaps this time her heart would stop.

She kept the knife by her side, hoping it didn’t glow or hum or attract Emma’s attention
before Clare could strike.

Emma threw up her hands, paced a few steps, paced back. “No one noticed I was gone.
No one noticed I was dead and I waited and waited and waited and got angrier and angrier
and when those stupid
betrayers
had that fight near me, I
killed
them.” She fisted her hands. “And it felt
good
.”

“So you went on killing.”

“Yesss!” Emma hissed. “I felt potent and powerful and then I gobbled that bastard
and bitch up and they tasted good and I went through the canyon and all the old towns
that used to be here and
feasted
.” She licked her lips, and to Clare’s horror, the woman’s lips looked red with blood
and it dribbled down from the corners of her mouth, to cover her chin. Her fingernail-claws
shone richly red. “So many, many, many luscious ghosts. Those of my time—
now
—they know what happened to me.
Now
they regret my death, not finding me, not
missing
me. They regret it
deeply
.” She swiped her tongue over her mouth. “They didn’t last long, so old and ragged
as they were.” She tossed her head. “Some I shredded and they took their sorry selves
off to wherever.” She flicked her hand and wet blood flew from her fingertips, then
she smoothed her hands over her body. “Some are still with me.” She smiled with triumph.
“Made me a woman of
substance
, a force to be reckoned with.”

“I can see that.”

Emma sneered. “I swept up all the ghosts of all the times in my valley and my canyon.
Then got hungry again and there was that boy . . . that nice-smelling, tender boy
morsel.”

“Caden,” Clare said.

Emma shrugged. “Who cares about his name? But he evaded me. Even within my power,
he spun away.” Her gaze grew intent. “You smell delicious. My mouth waters.”

She floated toward Clare and her lips opened wider and wider and wider until all Clare
saw was a huge mouth, sharp teeth, and Clare took one large stride and stabbed under
her ribcage upward and into her heart.

Emma shrieked, screamed, wailed, the sound so high it hurt Clare’s ears. She spun
out of the storm that tried to keep cycling but couldn’t . . . the world shattered
and disintegrated around her as the snow globe flattened into two dimensions, turned
to browns, blacks, and sepia, and fell apart and blew away in sheets.

Flat on her back, Clare saw murky, oily smoke fountain upward.

I will take her now.
A sparkling net of stars wrapped around the diffuse spirit of Emma and she disappeared.

You did well, child.
The soft and comforting voice came to Clare’s mind. Her eyes focused on great blue
crystalline eyes in the mist. More disembodied eyes. This time not the Other, was
all she could think, since his/its had been purple.

You did well. You have been doing well. Remember.

Darkness fell across her vision, though she wasn’t, quite, unconscious. She simply
couldn’t move.

Terrible swearing in a voice she didn’t recognize as Zach’s for a long minute, since
he honored his promise to his dead brother and didn’t usually curse.

Zach propped her shoulders up, held her. “Clare, Clare darling, wake up.”

Yes, that was his breath, hot on her face, and she dragged in her own and it hurt
and she realized she hadn’t been breathing deeply. Ice seemed to fracture around her
lungs.

Clare!
Enzo. She felt the slight nudge of his nose. That, too, should have been cold, but
wasn’t, it was nearly warm.

Then Zach hauled her up, pulled her against him, and, yes! Heat. Her mouth opened,
closed, then he stroked her face. Kissed her with warm lips, withdrew, and a tiny
moan came from her.

“I love you, Clare.”

She leaned against him and tears came to her eyes and dribbled down, hot, hot, hot,
and all the ice around her, in her, crackled away, breaking off.

She didn’t break with it. Surprising.

And she managed to turn her head and the night shifted from too dark to moonlit. Tipping
her head up, she reveled in the sight of the full moon ringed with dark colors shining
through the mist.

We WON. We WON! We are heroes.
Enzo danced around them, zoomed into the hill and out.

Zach began slowly limping with her, and her feet dragged and stumbled, but he kept
walking, one step at a time, and then she could lift and flex her feet and move stiffly.
After a moment, she realized they headed for Pais’s body.

“We won,” Zach said, “at the cost of a good man.”

More tears came; they still felt warm, so Clare let them run down her face. “Yes.”

Enzo galloped to the dead Pais, sniffed him, then returned.
But he IS a hero, too. And he went fast and not much pain and to a good place.

“Real-ly?” Clare asked. Her tongue felt thick.

Yes
, Enzo said.

She gave him a sharp glance, as did Zach.

Enzo gave them back doggy eyes. Clare sighed.

You told him not to follow, and you told him to go away. He disobeyed,
the phantom Lab said.

It wasn’t like Enzo to make judgments, but Clare supposed that his own experience
had shaded his personality. The Other could be a hard taskmaster, she was sure.

Zach squatted by the body. “Huh. Interesting.”

“What?”

“He’s wearing a body camera.”

Standing by herself, she wobbled on her feet but didn’t fall. “Yes. In-ter-est-ing.”

Zach rose and took her arm. “Should sure let us off the hook for killing him. We weren’t
anywhere near him and the camera would show that.”

Sirens screamed in the distance.

“And I’m thinking that he’d left a phone message or delayed e-mail for his grandson,
the sheriff.”

“So hard.”

The death of a hero was always hard, and dimmed the sheer glory of surviving.

*   *   *

Getting Clare warm and functioning came first for Zach and the deputies, then the
sorting out of the vehicles. It didn’t take more than a moment’s thought to know Desiree
Rickman must have brought the scooter for Clare, and she’d kept quiet about that nugget
of information.

Zach didn’t know what he felt, except love for Clare and wrung out. He thought Clare
might be numb, too, since she hadn’t really reacted to his statement of love, and
she sure hadn’t reamed him out for betraying and stranding her. Yet.

Or she might be waiting for privacy to do that, and they didn’t get any.

A several-hour interrogation by the deputies came first, then a worn sheriff who’d
returned after handling the details of his grandfather’s death, which was hard on
them, too. Clare seemed nearly transparent to Zach, but she didn’t fail, flinch, or
walk out until the sheriff’s office was done with them. She’d only smiled once, when
a deputy told them that Caden had awakened in the hospital and demanded to go home—then
to see the pair of them.

The video of the whole fight looked odd, but he and Clare were in the clear.

When they staggered back to the hotel, opened the door to see the lit room, the ordinariness
of the small place hit Zach with the shock of disconnection.

“Tired,” Clare said. Her sentences continued to be shorter than usual. She hadn’t
directly looked at him since the whole fight had gone down.

“Me, too.” He hesitated. “Can I help you undress?”

She shrugged, stood head down, and moved slowly.

Soon they were together and spooned, facing the window that showed clear sky and bright
stars.