Midnight Ash (A Blushing Death Novel) (21 page)

She evaluated me with a sad, understanding smile turning up her full lips. “Shhh, it’ll be easier now.”

SHIT!
She’d heard my thoughts.
I jerked my shoulder from her grip and stepped back.

“It’s all right,” she cooed.

“The hell it is,” I snapped.

She took a deep breath, slumping her shoulders with a defeated exasperation furrowing her brow.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude.” Her voice was melodic and filled with her apology but the phantom voice inside my brain didn’t like her in our head and didn’t like what I was about to do. Amelia didn’t belong in our head and we both knew it.
She
growled heavy in my mind until I thought I could feel my brain vibrate in my skull.

Stop that!
I ordered silently, surprised when she did as I asked. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and nodded.

Amelia didn’t need to know I was crazy and heard voices in my head. I shoved
her
and everything else deep and held out my hand. Amelia clasped my palm in hers. Her touch was gentle but her power rippled up my arm, making my hair stand on end. I could feel her rummaging around in my head, looking for something that was no business of hers.

“Did Jackson disobey a direct order from our Beta?” Amelia asked and then smiled as she adjusted the question. “Daniel.”

I opened my eyes and searched her silver gaze, trying to keep her out of corners of my mind that I didn’t let anyone see.
She
growled as Amelia dug too deep in the recesses of my head. The woman’s eyes narrowed on me in surprise and I focused my thoughts back on that day, letting her see the images that I wanted her to see. Yes, he did disobey Danny. I’d wanted him gone, though, and I allowed it to happen. He’d pissed me off and he was an asshole. I’d told him to go.

“You have to say it out loud for it to count but I’d leave the last out,” she said with an understanding grin as she glanced down at Jackson.

I made a mental note not to let her touch me again, ever.

“Yes,” I answered.

She nodded and left the rest of my thoughts to myself.

“As you see,” Dean bellowed over the small gathering in the center of the circle. “Jackson has disobeyed his better. Not only that . . .” His chest puffed out as he spoke. I didn’t like where this was going. I got a definite fight or flight vibe in my gut at the wave of scorching hot power that surged into me. “He disobeyed me. I pledged the Pack’s protection to this woman.” How far away was that house anyway? His voice carried well beyond the circle of the Pack.

I turned to look at the whispering pack of werewolves over my shoulder. Almost everyone had taken a step back, giving us room, giving Dean more room.

Could I run to that house and make it if I had to? Not if I had to out run a Pack of damned werewolves. Well shit! How do I get myself into these predicaments?

“I take that as a direct challenge to my authority,” Dean boomed.

My heart raced as adrenaline spiked through my system with the sound of his voice as his power covered me in his burning aura. I closed my eyes and tried to slow my heart, to calm my body and my mind. It didn’t work very well. Evidently, my Fairy God Mother was on a fucking break.

“Who wants to challenge me and become Gaoh?” Dean asked.

I scanned the crowd.

No one stepped forward to accept his challenge. Dean turned to Jackson who had been watching all of us very, very closely. His eyes narrowed down on me. He hadn’t noticed Dean turn to him. “And you? You want to challenge me, Jackson?” Dean growled through clenched teeth, his eyes flashing the bright blue of his wolf.

Jackson finally raised his hate-filled eyes to meet Dean’s. He flicked his gaze to me and back again, unable to maintain Dean’s eye contact. My guilt at Jackson’s suffering disappeared with that glint in his eyes.
She
growled through my mind with understanding. In that moment, I understood that if Jackson lived through this night, he’d be a problem on another night and another and another. She knew it, too.

“Gaoh,” he said through clenched teeth, venom and mockery in his voice.

My mind zeroed in on the imminent danger in front of me. I instinctively went for my gun.

Amelia’s peace wrapped around me, eclipsing my own empty peace, snuffing out my rage with her power, and curbing my instincts to react. I was calmer but I wasn’t dumb.

“STOP,” I growled at her. I didn’t take my fingers from the butt of my gun. The Smith & Wesson made me feel calmer than anything she could do. Some women light candles, others take a bath. I shoot things. Everyone has to have a hobby, right?

“Utu,” Dean cautioned and her power receded, leaving me again with the cold emptiness I knew all too well. “Pass judgment and issue your justice.”

“Jackson.” Her voice carried over the wind like a feather blowing in the breeze and everyone breathed in a collective sigh as she spoke. “You have been found guilty of disobeying your Beta, and of causing your Gaoh to lose face before the Vampire Liege of the Northwest Territory. Your punishment is declared by Utu, Carrier of Justice. My judgment is final.” Amelia took a deep breath as if the proclamation took more than energy from her. “You will be silver spiked to this spot until the full moon, two weeks hence,” she declared without emotion.

A petite woman with soft
café au lait
skin, big brown eyes, and her long hair in corn-rowed braids down her back stepped from the crowd. She strode through to Amelia’s side with four railroad tie spikes wrapped in red velvet. The spikes were so long that they extended past the edge of the fabric, exposing the gleam of pure silver in the moonlight. They had to be at least two feet long and appeared light in the woman’s small hands. I quivered as the young woman handed them over to Amelia along with a long rubber mallet.

Jackson turned wide, frightened eyes up to Amelia. She gazed down at him with sorrow in her expression. When he saw sympathy in her eyes, Jackson chose to struggle.

When I heard the first plastic tie break, the gun was in my hand, cocked and ready to go without a thought or hesitation. He broke his bonds easily, snapping the plastic zip ties with his supernatural strength and shoving Amelia to the ground. She landed hard on her ass with a groan of surprise. The air left her lungs in a rushed grunt.

Jackson ignored Amelia and leapt straight at me. Everything happened in a few seconds but seemed to slow to a turtle’s pace as I watched him come at me. I squeezed the trigger and released a shot into Jackson’s shoulder. He flinched but wasn’t deterred. His eyes sparkled with the desire to rip my throat out.

Dean wrapped his hand around Jackson’s ankle mid-leap, as if snatching a butterfly from the air. He yanked Jackson back down to the ground in a heavy thud of strength and power. Jackson hit the earth hard and scrambled on hands and knees to get out of Dean’s grasp.

I aimed my gun more carefully this time. I wouldn’t shoot to wound anymore. I was shooting to kill.

“I will kill you if you don’t stop,” I said. My tone was unnervingly tranquil even to my ears.

“You have no authority here,” Jackson growled as Danny wrestled him onto his back. He wasn’t giving up without a fight. Jackson didn’t turn his eyes from me once as if he were remembering my face for future nights of horror.

“Maybe not, but I can kill you just the same,” I said, gracing him with a smile that was both empty and calculated.

He snarled at me again, straining his neck to the point that I could see muscles flexing beneath his sallow skin. The growl that rumbled in his chest and up the back of his throat was homicidal and determined.

Amelia took a silver stake in one hand and the mallet in the other, raising the mallet above her head. She swung the down, driving the stake through his forearm into the ground underneath him. I waited for his scream but it never came. He gritted his teeth, refusing to make a sound.

Danny stepped up beside me and snatched my hand as Amelia drove another silver stake into his bicep and then the ground until Jackson was pinned to the earth. The smell of burning flesh filled my nose as his blood trailed down his flesh into the ground. Amelia moved to the other shoulder and drove the second silver stake home. Blood bubbled up and ran over his shoulders, arms, neck, and finally the ground.

I stood next to Danny with my gun still in my hand and aimed at Jackson. My arm ached but I wasn’t going anywhere until he was immobile, no matter how hard Danny tugged at my hand.

“Why doesn’t he scream?”

“Screaming shows weakness. He would be susceptible to challenge. If he lost, he would be food for the pack,” Danny whispered near my ear.

Amelia moved to Jackson’s left foot and pounded the silver stake into his flesh, between bone and cartilage. Again and again the sound of her mallet on the spike thudded in the silence. There was less blood but the crunch of a silver stake chipping bone is different than going through flesh and muscle.

“What do you mean food for the Pack?” I asked, trying to sidetrack myself from the image of sweet little Amelia crucifying someone on the ground.

“He would be up for challenge to the death, forfeiting his life and magic to the Pack.”

It took a minute to wrap my mind around that one. “Do you mean you’d eat him?” I asked in a horrified whisper.

“It’s only an issue for the Gaoh, Beta, Namtar, and Damu,” he said. “But yes, the Pack would shift and absorb his power.”

I gripped the gun tighter.

Jesus H. Christ! This wasn’t fucking happening.

The whole evening gave me a headache. Danny tugged me aside, leading me toward the car. I let the gun drop but kept the butt firm in my grasp as Amelia drove the final stake into the ground. I’d been traumatized enough for one night. Plus, going home seemed like a really good idea.

Danny left my house for his afternoon shift at the fire station. I was glad to have a little time to myself before Amblan came over. I’d slept in and for the first time in a long time I slept without being awakened by crises or weird dreams. I just slept. As chaotic as my life had become, I felt relaxed, like nothing could touch me.

I sipped my coffee in the kitchen in complete and bliss-filled silence. The sun shone through the windows, filling my house with warmth and sunshine. I felt rested and rejuvenated. After Danny had left, I opened all the blinds and curtains, letting in as much light as I could. The dark didn’t seem very inviting to me for some reason. I’d finally found something in the dark that scared the shit out of me. I refused to admit that it was a tiny Asian woman, ninja or no.

Amblan burst through the front door all energy and vivacity, storming into the kitchen in her trademark baggy men’s jeans, T-shirt, and a zipped up hoodie. Her jet-black hair was gelled up in a faux hawk. She was still wearing her sunglasses as she hit up the waiting coffee pot. She didn’t speak as she poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down across from me at the kitchen table. The sunglasses remained on her face.

“Rough night?”

“You could say that,” she said, taking a quick sip of the steaming brew. “Girls suck!” she blurted out as she leaned back in the chair, her hands still wrapped in a protective, tight grip around the mug.

I took another sip of my own coffee. “I could’ve told you that,” I said with a faint smile, raising the coffee cup to my lips.

“I think you might’ve once or twice,” she said with a sheepish smile. She took her sunglasses off and tossed them onto the kitchen table.

“See what happens when you don’t listen to me,” I laughed.

She shot me a weak smile and relaxed into the chair. Her shoulders dropped and she drew her right foot up onto the chair with her, resting her arm on her propped knee.

“You know I’ve been seeing this girl, Bridget, right?” she asked with expectation in her eyes.

“Wait, is this the fire crotch or the dragon tattoo?” I asked just to get the picture in my head right. Fire crotch was the only thing Amblan had talked about for a week. It had surprised the hell out of her, and me when she mentioned it.

“Dragon tattoo,” she said with a small upturn of her lips. “I really thought that we had something and then last night I’m at the bar. I texted her to see what she was doin’. She said she didn’t feel well and was gonna stay in.” A tear ran down her cheek.

“She was just sick, Am, no big deal.”

“No, she wasn’t,” she snapped. I hated seeing that hurt look in her eyes and knowing that I couldn’t do anything about it. I loved her. She had been the only family I’d had for so long that I felt an overwhelming need to protect her.

“I found her in the back hall near the restrooms a few minutes later with her tongue down some skank’s throat,” she blurted out, setting her mug down on the kitchen table a little too hard. The hot liquid sloshed and spilled over the side.

I got up and grabbed a box of tissues from the living room for her. She snatched one and blew her nose, wiped her eyes and the kitchen table, picked up her coffee, and took another sip after she wiped the side of the mug off.

“I’m so sorry,” I said lamely.

“No biggie.” She shrugged her shoulder in a graceful, casual movement that reinforced her femininity no matter how hard she tried to hide it. She got up and glanced in my refrigerator. I hadn’t been shopping in quite a while with werewolves in and out of my house for days. She wasn’t going to find any food.

“Jesus, there’s nothing in here. It’s actually bare,” she said with her head still poking around at the half empty cartons of Chinese takeout and the quarter of a veggie sub that I’d left in there . . . a while ago. Come to think of it, I didn’t remember buying one.

“So, what did you want to talk about?” she asked, taking a container from the refrigerator. She opened it, took a whiff, the jerked her head back. Mouth drawn into a grimace, she put the lid back on and tossed the entire container in the trash.

“I made some arrangements and I just wanted to go over them with you,” I said as I opened the file folder on the table.

“Oh yeah? Arrangements for what?” she asked, closing the trash and sitting down across the table from me. She jerked the file folder to her.

“My death.”

Amblan turned her muddled eyes up to stare at me. “What are you talking about?” Her voice hid a twinge of anger around the edges that I didn’t understand.

“I’ve taken some precautions in the event that something happens to me and I wanted you to know what they were.” The first threat of a tear pushed at the corner of my eyes. I took a deep breath. “This is important to me.”

I’d gotten pretty good at holding back my tears. The alternative is, of course, to stop crying. I was working on that, too, without much luck.

“Why would you need to do this? Are you sick?” She watched me a little too closely. She wasn’t capable of reading my mind. She was, however, capable of reading
me
.

“I’m not sick. There’s nothing wrong,” I said, pulling myself together. “I have all the beneficiary information, service information and contact information. There are a few people on that list that are essential to contact in the event that something happens to me. I’ve made all the appropriate notations in the file.” I pointed to the Post-it tabs I’d placed in the important places. She refused to look at it.

“What the FUCK is going on?” she screamed at me, shoving the file away, her eyes no longer sad. She glared at me with an anger that I very rarely saw in her and never, ever, directed at me.

We’d lived together for more than a year but I’d tried to keep her out of my madness . . . keep her safe.

“I didn’t ask questions when you were laid up for a week with three broken ribs or when someone tried to run you off the damned road. I didn’t ask questions all those times you left the house with an eight-inch blade hidden in your boot,” she snapped.

I gasped.

“Yeah, that’s right, I saw it,” she bit out. “And I never questioned the closet full of weird shit that you thought I didn’t know about.” She had a flare of fire in her eyes. “I especially didn’t ask questions when I came across Danny performing minor surgery on you in your bedroom as he dug a fucking bullet out of your arm. I never asked a question each and every time you ended up in the hospital.” She took a deep breath and collected herself. “What’s going on?” she asked me directly. “You owe me that much.”

I sat in the chair still holding my coffee mug, watching her anger flare through her light brown eyes. She wanted me to stop lying to her. She knew there was something I hadn’t told her and she’d let it go until now. The only problem was that I couldn’t tell her. I wouldn’t risk her.

“Just please take this information for me,” I said, without taking my eyes from her angry expression.

“No!” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not doing shit until you tell me why. Why’ve you planned out your own fucking funeral?”

“Amblan, I just want to be prepared,” I answered with a heavy, exhausted sigh.

“What’s going on?” she begged, her voice strained and desperate in a way I wasn’t prepared for. She sounded so small and lost.

“Amblan, you’re the only normal I have in my life and I want to keep it that way. You don’t need to know everything and, trust me, you don’t want to know. It’s safer for you, if you don’t.” My voice quivered and my hands shook. I couldn’t believe I’d said that much.
Please, God, let her accept that and be done with it
.

She sat back down across from me in a heavy plop. She met my eyes and stared at me for a long moment before, sliding the file folder toward her with two fingers. She focused down at the folder and then back up at me with softer eyes.

“It must be hard to be on the outside all the time,” she said with a slight shake of her head as she leafed through the papers.

“No tougher than your life,” I said as I took a bigger, thankful drink of my coffee. As I swallowed the now cold coffee, I watched her and realized how lucky I was to have a friend who would accept me and my baggage, sight unseen. Accept me when I kept things from her because she trusted that I knew what I was doing. That was a rare gift.

“Thank you,” I said with a relief-filled smile, knowing “thank you” didn’t seem like enough. She blew me a kiss and that was it. Fight over.

The phone rang, startling us both. We laughed and were back to our regular selves. No burdens and nothing horrible lurking between us. I smiled to myself as I sauntered to the phone, shaking my head in disbelief. I needed more normal in my life. Definitely, more normal. I picked up the receiver and was still smiling when I answered. “Hello.”

“Hey, Kid, it’s Derek. I got a lead for you,” he said, sounding winded, like he’d been running.

“Derek, you all right?” I asked with a twinge of fear. It was broad daylight but Midnight Ash scared the shit out of me and I wasn’t taking any chances.

“Yeah, I just had to duck out before he saw me. Listen, I need to see you. Meet me for lunch and we can talk about it,” he said as his breathing normalized.

“All right, say an hour,” I said, looking down at my pajamas. I needed a little time to be presentable.

“Make it 45, I’m starving,” he said with a chuckle. “You know the place?”

“Yeah, I know the place.” Of course I knew the place. There was a microbrewery in the Short North that he loved. I mean really loved, like ate-there-three-or-four-times-a-week loved. That seemed to be the only place we ever met to hang out.

I arrived ten minutes late but Derek had already ordered so I didn’t feel bad about it. I slid into the booth across from him without a word as he shoved the last bite of burger into his mouth and grabbed his napkin. He continued to chew as the waiter came over and asked if I wanted anything. I ordered an iced tea and a salad.

He finally swallowed then stared at me with an expectant expression crinkling the corner of his eyes.

“So, what have you got?” I asked, suddenly annoyed.

“What? No, hello? No, how ya doing?” he asked with a grin that was supposed to be cute. It wasn’t.

“What’ve you got?” I asked again with a flat, unfriendly tone.

“Well, we’re a little cranky today, aren’t we?” he asked with a grin.

I gave him my best empty stare.

“All right, all right, Kid. I get the message. I checked the flights like we talked about,” he said as the waiter laid my iced tea down in front of me. “Other than the usual traffic in and out, there were only a few private jets listed at the airports. Only one gave the tarmac crew the creeps,” he said with a shit-eating grin on his face.

“The creeps?” I asked as I slipped the straw into my iced tea.

“Yep. Apparently, there was one guy on the flight,” he said, shoving a handful of fries in his mouth.

“Only one guy? That’s not helpful,” I said, rolling my eyes as I took a long drink of my iced tea. He just smiled at me with that
I-know-something-you-don’t
twitch at the corners of his lips. “Wait, why did one guy give the ground crew the creeps?” I asked.

He winked at me and touched his forefinger to his nose in a gentle tap. “Because there was one guy and seven coffins in the cabin.”

“That would definitely freak me out if I was on the tarmac taxiing them in,” I said, shaking my head with wide eyes.

“Yeah. So, here’s what I figured out. I talked to an air traffic controller and he told me that that particular plane came from San Francisco but the flight plan originated in Tokyo.”

“This lead keeps getting better and better,” I said with a smile as the waiter finally placed my salad down in front of me. “Did you happen to get a name?” I asked as I lifted a fork full of lettuce to my mouth. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually eaten. That was probably bad.

“The passenger’s name was Simon Tacoma. I can’t find any information on him at all. No social, no driver’s license, no passport. It’s like he doesn’t exist,” Derek said, looking off into the distance, trying to work through it in his head.

Living forever made it difficult in the modern world. When something weird like no social and no identification popped up on those pesky computer screens, we humans tended to notice.

“They don’t live by the same rules we do,” I said with a sad, understanding smile. “They exist in our world but not really. It’s getting more and more difficult for them to slip under the radar.”

He nodded, a pensive look on his face as he took a swig of his beer.

“Did you get an address?” I asked.

“No, I couldn’t dig that up.” He looked like he felt guilty, like he hadn’t done enough.

“No problem, Jade and I’ll find it,” I said, shoving another forkful of lettuce into my mouth.

“How?” He had a good cop glare, I’ll admit, but I must’ve been immune. I just smiled and shrugged my shoulders innocently. I wasn’t about to tell him that Jade was a world-class computer hacker.

He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Well, do you need any more help?”

“I’ll let you know,” I said, not committing to anything. He had a particular gleam in his eye that I didn’t like.

“Come on,” he huffed, annoyed. “I know what that means. You’re going to leave me out. I’m more qualified to help than Jade is. What the hell?”

I leaned into him and lowered my voice to almost a whisper.

“That may be true but Jade knows the score,” I hissed. “She knows when to hang back and when to stay out of my way. I don’t see that as one of your strong suits. This is my world. You do what I say and everyone stays alive. I don’t need your macho bullshit trippin’ me up. Get it? I’m knee deep in that Alpha male horseshit already,” I huffed. My face flushed with anger and my eyes blazed with the fury percolating down deep in my gut. There wasn’t room in the supernatural world for any cowboy antics, except for maybe mine.
Yippie ki yay
. . .