Blackthorne (The Brotherhood of the Gate Book 1) (12 page)

Manius had always been cautious about his otherworldly powers but upon the news of Rhiannon’s return, he told his disciple he would be performing a noisy spell and bringing aboard some other “friends.” Fiends was more like it. The castle now was infested with what Manius called demons but what Troy recognized from old town mining tales as “Tommyknockers.” They were the demons that haunted the deepest shafts of mines dug too deep and too greedily. Legend reported them as beings who knocked on the wood beams of the old mines either to warn of impending cave-ins or to cause them. After seeing the bloated, twisted creatures—all sizes and shapes, rancid smelling and filthy—Troy couldn't imagine them warning anyone of anything.

Now, as he stood behind the mahogany captain’s chair of the 1800s era dining suite they had purchased in a Denver antique shop, he examined the beautiful silverware in the hands of his master and added some of that stuff to his mental pay off list. He might get Manius to throw in one or two demons as well. They seemed to have their uses.

“Should I get the car out for the evening, sir?” he asked in a carefully modulated tone. He had not used the word “sir” for most of his life up to this point, but after the pointed example Manius had made of Cassie, Troy found that he did not mind using the word at all. Lately, he had realized manners had given him an appearance of sophistication he could never have attained before.

Manius Black leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes, savoring the last sip of the golden drop of the nectar in his glass before answering the other man.

“Of course we’re going out tonight. Friends I have not talked to in
years
just arrived in town. It could be an exciting evening, my dear Troy. Be sure to dress accordingly. And afterward, maybe we can stop off for a bite?”

Troy turned to leave the room to prepare the car for the evening, feeling the heavy gaze of his master’s slotted eyes following his skinny form out of the room. He heard rather than saw the demons leave the hiding places under the grand table to gather around Manius, the little damnations whispering and caressing his legs. Troy didn’t turn around, not wanting to see the smile of satisfaction on the demon lord’s face as the man was attended to by his adoring “subjects.”

The casino was empty, the post-holiday season deflating many a wallet that would otherwise be entertaining itself up on Cripple Creek. The slim pit boss sidled up behind Rhi as she stood idly at her empty blackjack table. Her mind was going in all directions, trying to absorb all she had seen and read in the last couple of days. She had spent most of the day watching the large front doors, waiting for the mysterious Blackthorne to glide, she had to admit to herself, like a big graceful panther that happened to be stalking her.

“Don’t those fabulous legs get cold in a miniskirt at this altitude? Do fishnet pantyhose have any value in regards to warmth?” Steven queried, breaking into her train of thought. He was grinning as he took in the expanse of leg showing beneath her table.

“What? You’ve
never
worn pantyhose? Trust me, they aren’t very warm but money is. I’m hoping to make some tips, and showing a little leg never hurts. These tuxedo shirts and vests are about as sexy as my third grade Sunday school teacher, Miss Frazier,” Rhi answered, doing a little dance to better showcase her assets.

The dark-haired man leaned forward over the felt tabletop to examine the six decks of cards artfully fanned on display by their dealer. “All I have to say is that your Sunday school teacher must have been a hottie, because you do strange things to me when you show up in that starched white blouse and gold stitched vest. And I’m gay.”

Rhi burst out laughing, well aware of the dapper man’s status on the dating scene.

He continued. “It’s ten, why don’t we close this table down and let you get out of here? The Winter Fest is coming up and neither of us is going to get out of here early during that mess. So—got a hot date?”

“Dinner and drinks with Pam and Houston at Casa de Oro. If I wear this outfit, can I get some per diem money for advertising this hole in the wall casino?”

“Are you kidding? I can’t turn in a receipt to Max for per diem money. He thinks per diem is French for titty bar.”

They both laughed as they pictured the casino’s manager, a local “mountain” man who crammed his lumberjack physique into a suit for sixty hours a week to run their place of work. They had begun to close down the table, counting down the cheques and sorting the cards, when Pam’s familiar figure sauntered through the doorway. The wind blowing off Pike’s Peak into town made for a wind chill of negative ten but a defiant Pam still wore a red miniskirt and tights with a clinging black V-neck sweater, topped by an ankle length white coat made out of quilted goose down.

Steven gave the newest arrival the once over and whistled.

“I have razors in my shower older than you, little boy. And straighter.” Pam looked amazingly spunky for a woman who held down two jobs at two different casinos, clocking in sixty to seventy hours some weeks on her feet in a blackjack pit. Her daughter’s financial future and her own was close to being assured by her hard work and careful business acumen. But as soon as her property at Horse Thief Gulch was paid in full, Pam planned to cut back to thirty-five hours a week, the minimum needed to continue benefits, and devote her life to her daughter. Men need not apply to enter the world the woman had built for herself. Pam told Rhi repeatedly she had donated enough time, energy and cash to the male race.

“Still trying for that ‘burn the town down’ effect? You didn’t go to the funeral home in that outfit for Marie’s viewing did you?”

“I was one of the better dressed ones. Nate wore his snow mobile gear. And Sheriff Nick wore jeans and work boots but still looked yummy. Several folks still had on their casino uniforms. Anyway, my mother has Katie for the rest of the week in the Springs, the funeral isn’t till tomorrow and I have got to work it while I can,” Pam replied, extending one leg for inspection. “I’m wearing tights. I’m as warm as five-alarm chili. And might I add that
you
have enough leg showing to shame a Vegas showgirl.”

“
I
plan on changing into a nice pair of corduroy jeans. I can’t decide on whether I should wear my black leather boots or my running shoes. That hunted feeling keeps interfering with my sense of fashion.” Rhi busily sorted the cards into their boxes.

The other woman surveyed the almost empty casino slowly, looking for anything suspicious. “Anything exciting or, say, magical happen today?”

“Steve was looking at my legs, does that count? I just want to go to dinner and go home and get some sleep. And I don’t want any surprises anymore or visitors.”

Pam grinned evilly. “I guess then having Bobby Wayne keep an eye on the house is a good idea. Bobby’s becoming useful lately. I can even stand to be around him more than a few minutes, although if he starts making sense, send for a tastefully tailored straightjacket to wrap me up in. There’s a good chance he might shoot someone for shits and grins if a stranger shows up on that mountain. Not that we’ll ever know what happened. Bobby Wayne will have him off and buried in a shallow grave in the middle of the woods before they miss him. Now let’s get you off this table and dressed—we’re going out to be educated by Houston, but I am hoping for a good sloshing this time. If I’m attending a funeral tomorrow, I’ll be miserable anyway. I might as well be hung over on top of it all.”

“You know I haven’t been sloshed in a while. Mildly inebriated once or twice with you as the instigator but not sloshed. But I seem to watch you drink from the vantage point of sobriety an awful lot.” Rhi groaned inwardly at the thought of the aftermath of a good sloshing. However, the aftermath a good…never mind. “It’s on my to-do list, however.”

“No booze. No sex. No use and no lubrication, a girl could rust.” The other woman snickered evilly as Steve arrived to relieve Rhi. After a quick stop at the locker room to allow her to freshen up and change, they headed out the service entrance into the night air to make the short walk to Casa de Oro
,
the newest Mexican restaurant in town.

Rhi once again felt the shadows trailing them, staying out of the pools of light cast by the faux gaslight lamps lining the red brick sidewalk. By unspoken agreement, both tried to not look behind them. Banners that hung across the street advertising the upcoming Winter Festival snapped loudly in the dismal winter wind. A scurrying sound, as if giant rodents were rushing about in the darkness between the aging buildings, made the women skid to a stop and look at each other. Pam reached into her cavernous handbag and brought out what looked suspiciously like something similar to what Rhi had put in the glove compartment of her Blazer earlier in the day, except Pam’s gun was much bigger. Rhi felt a surge of weapon envy.

“A gun? You walked into the casino with a gun? Or is that a cannon?” Rhi exclaimed, examining the gigantic chunk of destruction in her friend’s hand.

Pam busily checked the gun and clicked off the safety. “What Steven doesn’t know won’t make me hurt him.” She did a 360-degree turn with it before facing her friend again.

“What are your feelings on gun control?”

The taller woman brandished her weapon, completely oblivious to the fact they were standing on a public sidewalk. “Sure I believe in gun control. She who has the gun has the control.”

“Mine’s in the Blazer,” Rhi admitted.

Pam looked at her in complete shock. “You have a gun? In your truck? Do you have a license for it?”

“No, but I’ll get one and yes,” Rhi looked sharply at her friend, “I do know how to use it.”

“Well, it’ll do a fat lot of good locked in your glove compartment, girlfriend. Maybe we can get the bad guys to chase us in that direction and wait patiently while you unlock the truck, get the gun out, and see if it’s loaded. You
did
load it didn’t you?”

“Uh…I don’t remember. Okay, you do the shooting and I’ll do the sweet-talking. Deal?”

The voice that came out of the shadows beside the old building holding the restaurant came within inches of bringing Rhi’s heart to a stop. Pam reacted immediately and pointed her weapon at the dark center of the form that arose before them.

“Girls with guns. Notify the town fathers we can all sleep safely tonight,” Blackthorne said dryly as he stepped forward into the light. The man was dressed for the darkness in black jeans, a black cashmere turtleneck, and a heavy black leather blazer. If he turned sideways, he would disappear into the shadows.
In spite of the Johnny Cash wear
, Rhi thought,
he looks so good my happy parts have started melting. No man should look that first-rate in jeans.

She purposefully brushed past him. “Why would there be a problem for us sleeping tonight? Do you know something we don’t?” A leather-gloved hand fell on her arm to stop her and then slid down her arm to wrap itself around her wrist. Not relinquishing her hand, he fell into step with her. Pam ambled behind them both, stuffing her weapon back into the purse.

The shadows whispered again before he answered her question, their voices sibilant in her mind, calling her away. His eyebrow raised a notch and she felt his hand clench hers tighter, as if he could hear them too.

“My, this is so sudden, Mr. Blackthorne. Do you think I could have my arm back?” she queried and gave her arm a little shake to try to break him loose. “I mean, I don’t even know you.”

“I think you know or suspect more than you want to admit,” he said, not releasing her arm as they approached the lighted doorway of the cantina. There was an odd comfort in his touch. The impulse she should be having was to run shrieking into the street.

A white sign was taped to the door of the restaurant announcing in large black Gothic script that the local Alien Abductees meeting would be held that evening in the back room of the Casa de Oro. Pam rolled her eyes at her companions and stepped through the door Blackthorne held for them both. “I don’t even want to know who belongs to
that
club.”

Rhi carefully examined the sign, still ignoring Blackthorne, who finally released her. He seemed determined to crash the party and she didn’t think he would pay attention if she told him to buzz off. “I read that they think Pike’s Peak is some kind of beacon for aliens…thus the large amount of sightings in this area.”

Pam wiggled her eyebrows back at Rhi and grinned up at Blackthorne. “Trust Rhi to have read about it and have an explanation for everything. I don’t think it’s the Peak. I think it’s the amount of booze and various pharmaceuticals that are ingested at high altitude by the aliens’
victims.
”

“This area attracts a lot of things that cannot be explained by books.” The deep tones of her current stalker rang through Rhi’s head and made the fine hairs on her neck rustle pleasantly. A deep panic swirled in her stomach. She wanted him. Badly.
Damn, I had sort of hoped that body part was permanently numb.
Shaken, she tried to regain her composure by looking around the cantina for Houston. The little man was enthroned alone as was his habit in the back of the room at a large table. Casa de Oro
had few restaurant customers this evening but the bar crowd looked lively. Through a wide doorway, Rhi could see the back room was frighteningly full. The Alien Abductees Club meeting was in full swing, the crowd denoting the fact that a large number of the population of Cripple Creek held the belief they had been taken at some point to the great beyond by little green men. Thankfully, the group shut the doors upon the arrival of the strange little woman known as Batty Betty, who was wearing a buckskin ensemble complete with a beaded eagle on the front of an honest-to-God Indian princess calfskin dress. She looked like an eighty-year-old Pocahontas dressed in Wal-Mart Indian chic. Before she passed through the doors to the meeting, she paused beside Rhi and Blackthorne.

“Hang on to her tightly, Blackie. He’s closer than you think,” she whispered loudly and flounced off toward her meeting leaving both Rhi and Blackthorne gaping at her.