To Kill An Angel (21 page)

Vicious barking drew three pairs of eyes toward the mine’s entrance.  The hell hounds growled and spit and voiced their disapproval, but never once did they attempt to come into the mine.  There was something about the dark interior that kept them at bay.  At that moment, I didn’t care what it was.  I was simply thankful for it. 

Again, thoughts of God and angels and destiny drifted through my mind, but this time I was so consumed with Bo and the hell hounds, I gave them little thought other than to acknowledge the intense feeling of gratitude that flooded me.  

Of course, Annika and Lucius were the first to recover.

“In all ma years, I’ve ne’er seen anathin’ like it,” Lucius said, his brogue thick in his awe.  He stood and brushed the dust from his bare chest and shoulders.  “The question is, lasses, how the devil are we goin’ ta get outta here?”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“What about Bo?” I asked, reaching out to gently brush a strand of hair from Bo’s scorched cheek.

“He should heal fairly quickly,” Lucius said as he walked to the mouth of the mine, inciting more vicious growls from the hounds.

Even as Lucius spoke, I could see the charred tissue around Bo’s left eye, the more burned of the two, beginning to give way to healthy pink skin.  Our situation was still too precarious for me to relax very much into the relief that I felt over his progress.  We were in serious trouble and we all knew it.

“Why can’t they come into this mine?”

It was Annika who asked this question, but I looked to Lucius for an answer as well.

Lucius paced to the dirt wall of the tube and dragged his fingers along it, bits of dirt and dust flaking off and falling silently to the mine floor.  He sniffed his fingers and then leaned in to get a better look at the mineral composition of the shaft.  Straightening, he sniffed his fingers once more and then touched the tip of his tongue to them.

“This is a salt mine,” he announced.

Annika glanced back at me and we both shrugged, neither of us having any idea why that would make a difference.  Lucius must’ve figured that out that we were lost when neither of us spoke.

“Hell hounds can’t pass over a salt line.  The mouth of the mine must still have enough salt in the dirt to keep them out.”

“But why salt?”

Lucius shrugged.

“I don’t know.  Something about the purity of the mineral, of the rock salt.”

“I guess that means Devon is here.  I mean, why else would those things be guarding this mine?”

“No reason I can think of,” Lucius replied.

“My question is this: why would Sebastian put him in a mine like this?”

“Maybe he was afraid something would be able to get to him elsewhere.”

I looked down at Bo.  His eyes were closed, but I could see his color improving, lightening from sooty to his normal pale pink.  Despite the fact that he was on the mend, I still didn’t want to leave him to go search the mine.

“Would you two mind walking a little farther in to see if you can locate Devon?”

They both agreed quickly.  Obviously they didn’t mind being in each other’s company, which made me believe that if Annika was trying to make Bo jealous, it wasn’t her sole reason for being so attentive to Lucius.  But, really, who could blame her?  It was Lucius after all.  What’s not to like?

As they strolled off into the inky blackness of the mine shaft, I turned my attention briefly to the hounds pacing at the boarded entrance and then back to Bo.

His eyes were open and he was watching me.  One corner of his mouth lifted and he spoke in a dry, raspy voice.

“Hi, beautiful,” he said, reaching up to brush my cheek with his fingertips.  My heart melted right inside my chest.

“Hi, handsome,” I responded, returning his grin.  Looking into his healing face, hearing his familiar voice, feeling his incredible touch, I felt like all was right with the world and that we could take on anything, any
one
, and win.  As long as Bo was near, no odds seemed too high to overcome. 

 “I’m sorry about all this,” he said, regret and the heaviness of responsibility shining in his eyes.

“It’s not your fault.”

“Yes, it is.  If I had stayed away from you, none—”

“I’d be miserable,” I interrupted quickly.  “I wouldn’t trade you and the time we’ve spent together for anything.  Anything!  Do you hear me?”  I was adamant and I wanted to make sure he got the point.

Bo grinned.

“Me neither.  You’re the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

I couldn’t help but smile.  I would never tire of hearing him say things like that.

“I think we happened to each other.”

Bo opened his mouth to say something, but then snapped it shut as if he thought better of it.

“What?” I prompted.

“Nothing.  I…” He trailed off, obviously having changed his mind about telling me.  Unfortunately, that just made me all the more curious to know what it was.

“What, Bo?  Tell me.”

He raised himself into a sitting position, bringing his face within an inch of mine.  Even beneath the smoky odor of fire that clung to his hair and clothes, I could smell his clean, citrusy scent and it made my abdominals tighten in response.

Bo searched my eyes as he deliberated telling me.  He was so close I could see the golden flecks that made the near-black of his eyes look so warm and chocolaty.  His were the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen.

“I’ve been having dreams for a while now, more than just the one about the orphanage,” he confessed, holding my gaze. 

The bottom dropped out of my stomach.  The dream about the orphanage is when I’d first heard him say Annika’s name.  Bo having other dreams couldn’t possibly be a good thing.

“How long has this been going on?”

“On and off for as long as I can remember, which is what?  A little over three years?”

I nodded, saying nothing as I willed panic away.

“At first I thought they were just dreams.  Mostly anyway.  That’s why I wasn’t completely honest with you when I told you about the night I saw you, the night you and your sister wrecked.”

I hesitated.  “What do you mean?”

“Well, when I saw you that night, I think I’d seen you before.  Several times in fact.”

“When?  Where?”

“I think I’ve been dreaming about you on and off all my life.”

My chest swelled with pleasure and relief at his words.

“Really?”

Bo reached out with his hand again, lightly dragging his index finger across my forehead, down my nose, and around my lips to my chin.

“Your face was so familiar to me, as if I’d seen it every day for as long as I could remember, though I knew nothing about you that would suggest that we were acquaintances.  But, deep down, I had no doubt that I knew you.  Really knew you, like you were the missing piece of my life.  When I saw you through the windshield, I was so consumed with finally getting to see you outside my dreams, finally getting to touch you and smell you that I couldn’t walk away.  It was so surreal that you were actually
real
.”

I doubted he could’ve said anything that would have thrilled me more.

“Why didn’t you tell me before now?”

Bo shrugged, seemingly absorbed with tracing the details of my face. 

“I didn’t want to scare you.”

“Scare me?  Why would that scare me?”

“I don’t know.  It scared me a little when I saw you.  I thought maybe you were an angel come to take me away.  But I didn’t care.  I was willing to risk it.  I knew that I’d die happy if I could just touch you one time.  Just one time,” he repeated quietly.

I was struggling for words to adequately describe the wings he’d given my heart when the intimate scene was ruined by the return of Lucius and Annika.

“Alright you two love birds, break it up.  We’ve got some planning to do,” Lucius said as he walked around us and came to a stop a few feet from the prowling hell hounds that waited just outside the mine.

“Did you find Devon?”

“Present and accounted for,” Devon said from somewhere to my left.

 I closed my eyes in relief.

“Devon, thank God.”

“Thanks for coming for me, Ridley.  I assume Savannah called you?”

“Yes.  She was hysterical.”

I could almost hear Devon smiling.

“I see this wasn’t exactly an easy extraction,” he observed, no doubt referring to Bo’s bedraggled appearance.  “Are those things what got a hold of Bo?”

“Yeah.”

“What are they?”

“Hell hounds.”

“Hell hounds?”

“Hell hounds.”

“
Dam
—”

“And the worst part is that we still have to figure out a way to get out of here in one piece.”

“Why didn’t they come in after you?”

 “Salt,” Lucius replied in answer.  “Rock salt.  They can’t tolerate it.”

“Seriously?”

“So it would appear.”

“Well, lucky for you, I might just have a solution to your problem,” Devon crowed proudly.

“Our problem?” Annika asked.  “Now it’s your problem, too.”

“Yeah, yeah.  Whatever.  You know what I mean.”

“So what’s this big solution then?”

“Come on,” Devon said.  “I’ll show you.”  His voice echoed back to us as he turned toward the depths of the mine.

Bo stood without much difficulty and the four of us followed Devon into the belly of the mine.  Despite my sharper eyesight, I still found it difficult to see and that alone was very disconcerting.  We had no sources of light and it was like being swallowed, one step at a time.

“When they brought me in here, we went further down into the mine at first.  Just around the bend from where they ended up staking me to the wall there’s a big pile of stuff and a bunch of buckets.  I had no idea what it was, but now that you mention rock salt...  It’s kind of clear-ish white like that,” Devon explained.

As soon as we rounded the corner to which he was referring, it was impossible not to see the enormous mound of white gravel.  It looked like a pile of hail.

“So what’s the plan then?  We get a couple buckets and throw the stuff at them as we run?  We’d have to have a dump truck load to make it all the way back out of the woods,” I observed in exasperation.  In my opinion, this was no solution at all.

“Now hold on there, lass.  This just might work.  We wouldn’t have to make it that far.  The hounds are shackled to this area.  They can’t just roam about freely.  All we have to do is make it out of their territory and we’ll be home free,” Lucius said encouragingly.

His words brought the first bright ray of optimism into the dark interior of the mine.  I bent to pick up one of the buckets.  It was fairly large and would hold quite a bit of rock salt.  If we could each carry two of them…