Demon Hunt (38 page)

Another sob hung in Rhi’s chest like a brick. The coppery smell of blood mixed with sulfur made her want to gag as she forced herself to look down at Blackthorne’s white face. He was battered and covered in a variety of blood but underneath the mess she could see the strong features that had haunted her dreams for a lifetime. Carefully, she imprinted the planes and lines of his face onto her memory. His vivid blue gaze seared into her brain.

“
I’m going to go home, if you’re okay,” she told him, still looking into his eyes. Silently, Blackthorne nodded. Rhi turned to Molay. “If you don’t mind cleaning this mess up. I seem to be bleeding onto the floor.”

She swayed for a moment. Molay reached out his hand.

Rhi turned to the sky so she would not have to see Blackthorne’s face. “I’m outta here.”

* * * *

Blackthorne watched as Rhi gracefully rose into the air, borne on the wings of her own power. Power should have been drained from her to the point of death at this juncture but wasn’t. His wife’s power was stronger than any member of the Brotherhood had ever possessed.

The heaviest of the snow was over and only a few flakes obscured his line of sight as she flew away from him, into the night, black hair fanned out in a cape behind her. Mute, he glanced down at his empty hand as it began to reach towards the retreating form. But there was only the moon, stars and black velvet sky of a Colorado winter night.

Molay sat down beside him to place a callused hand on his shoulder. “Brother. We have the cleanup of the century to get on with here. You have to heal. Let her rest. Then go to her.” The head of the order looked thoughtful for a moment before adding, “Preferably on your knees. We need that little girl, Blackie.”

Epilogue

Six Months later

Rhi stood at the lower end of Bennett Avenue, examining the business end of the donkey in front of her.

“
Pam, are you sure feeding this critter an apple is going to make it follow me?” She arched an eyebrow over the top of her Ray-Bans. The sun might not burn her to a crisp now that she was a changeling but its rays weren’t kind to Rhi’s very sensitive skin. A ball cap covered her head, her long black hair caught up in a jaunty ponytail. She had slathered on sun block with a rating of fifty SPF and had dressed in lightweight jeans and a long sleeved t-shirt in spite of the heat.

Cripple Creek’s Donkey Derby Days festival was in full swing and the highlight of the festivities was about to begin. Teams from each casino and various local organizations had gone to the temporary corral in the middle of the blocked off street to choose their ‘racehorse’ and make friends with it. The semi-wild little burros of the town were easygoing about their capture, most knowing it was temporary. The ridiculous humans would lead the animals up the main street of town in a race to the top. Then the donkeys would be fed treats and released to roam the town again at their discretion. The pampered animals lived very well on the town’s tab, but they were greedy for the treats offered by tourists and spoiled.

Pam, dressed in a halter-top and Daisy Duke cut-offs, held the loop she had tossed over their particular animal’s head as she inspected their catch.

“
Stick one of the other apples in your back pocket and it’ll follow you anywhere.” Pam glanced over her shoulder at the gathered crowd. “Look at them, anxious to see our blood, are they?”

“
Isn’t that cheating?”

“
Mommy, the donkey is stinky,” Katie complained. The tiny girl was perched atop Nicholas Boyd’s shoulders, waving her cotton candy at the street. Several other teams were gathered around their donkeys, sweet-talking the wild little animals and bribing them with everything from apples to Alpo. “Are you going to make them run, Mommy?”

“
Those donkeys are so fat, you’ll be lucky to get a good trot out of them,” the ex-Chief noted with a good-natured laugh.

Nick had resigned after refusing to elaborate to state investigators about the Great Cripple Creek Riot and Blizzard. The story of how a huge motorcycle gang staying in town because of the weather had torn the town and cemetery apart in a drunken frenzy was not something he remembered much about upon questioning.

One of the odder parts of the devastation from the riot was a section in the back of the historical Mount Pisgah graveyard marked by a perfect fifty-foot diameter circle of flattened earth in the center. The coffins and tombstones buried in the vicinity had been tossed several yards away from the spot in either direction. Strangely, several large men were present in the graveyard at the same time the state investigators appeared. They were in the process of destroying the crime scene by mending and replacing tombstones and reburying coffins. Their presence had a strange effect on the investigators, who turned away from the cemetery and forgot that they ever saw them.

The mob had burned down two casinos and three houses, killing four local citizens and wounding dozens, including several hysterical tourists who insisted that the bikers were monsters.

The locals who witnessed the incident swore by everything holy that the culprits were bikers and nothing more, even in the face of the fact that a group of 50 men in a caravan of trucks and Harleys had escaped without notice into a snowy Colorado night. The combination of snow and motorcycles itself was a virtual impossibility, as was the fact that all of the casino security tapes from the time of the brawl had all been erased by some kind of power surge. But the chief’s tardiness in sending for outside help during the storm, no matter how cut off communications were, was considered inexcusable.

The gaze of the beautiful woman with auburn hair who acted as the chief’s attorney kept the investigation low key. She also acted as the town’s public relations officer throughout the aftermath, soothing and charming the reporters and any variety of law enforcement officials who showed up to check out the mess. They walked away with blissful expressions and the boring story of a drunken brawl in a town that had many years before been the capitol of drunken brawls.

The entire incident had gone away in the eyes of outside authorities. In town, however, the stories of the battle were told nightly down at the Dancing Elk and embroidered upon with great relish.

“
If you think you’re going to marry me, you might want to start being a little more supportive of my goals, Nick,” Pam replied. “I’ve been trying to win this damned race for five years and I’m getting that trophy this time if it’s the last thing I do.”

Rhi grinned at Nick. “You do know you’re marrying one scary woman. Who owns a dragon, no less.”

“
Now, that is something we do need to talk about, girls,” Nick replied. He jogged a bit to bounce his daughter-to-be on his shoulders. Katie screamed with laughter. The night flights of the dragon with Pam on its back hadn’t been witnessed yet by anyone other than a few night owls who didn’t trust their eyes or their minds.

“
Jethro stays right where he is, Nick.” Pam put her hands on her hips and assumed the ‘nag’ position. “You might want to give some thought to building me a bigger barn. He makes the cats nervous. And make it fireproof while you’re at it. And I’ll need a herd of cattle or sheep - buying a side of beef every other day for my baby is getting pricey.”

“
Woman, you do realize I’m unemployed, don’t you?”

Rhi shook her head, well aware that Boyd was suffering about as much as a prince in his family’s kingdom possibly could. The chief didn’t find being unemployed overtaxing because of a generous trust from by his great-great grandmother. He also could rest comfortably in the knowledge that as soon as things died down, the town fathers would put him right back into his job. The temporary chief would insist upon it. The new man had already tired of the position, being more interested in hunting down the few remaining demons that had escaped into the mountains.

In the meantime, Boyd amused himself with guarding the peace and privacy of the shell-shocked women of Horse Thief Gulch day and night. During his exile, he became close to Pam Douglas and her daughter, a fondness that culminated in a marriage proposal two weeks prior to the race. The most traumatizing part of the entire thing for Pam, other than the fact she was a head taller than her groom, was that with both of her parents busy rebuilding the family farm, Pearl had taken over planning the wedding.

As Pam and Boyd’s romance blossomed, Rhi wandered the hills alone, ghostlike, and locked herself in her cabin for days at a time with her books. Molay called on a regular basis to check up on her and to report on Blackthorne’s recovery from the battle but other than that, the Brotherhood and Rhi’s healing husband stayed away.

“
Nick, there is plenty of room out here for him to roam about without anyone getting a look at him and Jethro obeys Pam like a trained police dog,” noted Rhi. “It’ll be fine. If he gets too big, I’ll take him somewhere ‘else’ and Pam can visit him. I’m keeping an eye on Jethro too.”

Nick rolled his eyes. “Yes, a dragon as a pet is a great idea. Let’s all get one. But Pam’s dad doesn’t like the thing any more than I do.”

“
You’re wrong, Nick,” his fiancée informed him archly. “Daddy was nervous with him at first. But any animal that took out the thing that burned his house and killed Gary and Juanita is okay with Dad in the end. Are you listening to me?”

He looked over her head towards the other side of the intersection. “My replacement’s here.” He snorted. “And she made him give her a ride. It’s good to see someone else walking a mile in my shoes.”

One of the police department’s Broncos had appeared at one of the blocked off streets. A uniformed Bobby Wayne Beaufort hopped out of the driver’s side door. He quick-marched to the other side of his vehicle, opened the door and stood at attention as Pearl gracefully alighted. Rhi was surprised that he didn’t yank off his shirt and arrange it on the street so she wouldn’t get her driving moccasins dusty.

Pearl was spectacularly dressed, as usual, in tan slacks and a designer silk tee. An off-white scarf had been wrapped a la Jackie O around her head and huge sunglasses hid her eyes. She looked as glamorous as a woman could manage on a street filled with sweaty tourists and donkeys.

Rhi knew why the madam hadn’t left with the rest of the Brotherhood after the cleanup and the messing with the susceptible minds of outside law enforcement was complete. She was waiting for Rhi.

But Rhi was not one of those people. They had used her without mercy, and they were responsible for the death of her dog. The angry thoughts ran through her mind as she squared her shoulders and prepared for Pearl’s approach. For a split second when her eyes closed, an ice blue gaze flashed at her, along with a devilish grin. Then the image swirled away down into the corridors of her memory. He was always with her, a presence that made ripples of anticipation run up her backbone on a regular basis up to the moment she remembered he was gone. She hadn’t seen Blackthorne for six months, not since she fled his hurt gaze on the battlefield of Mt. Pisgah.

Pearl stepped past the barricade to cross the street with Bobby Wayne following behind like an obedient puppy. She paused for a moment at the pedestal marking the center of the intersection. A life-sized bronze statue of a huge bloodhound stood at attention atop a square marble column. The long ears and soulful gaze were too real for Rhi, who ached every time she saw her dog’s honorarium. A similar column and a bronze likeness of Houston, cowboy hat and all, marked the intersection at the other end of the street up the hill. The local police had one problem with the statues: vandals routinely left bottles of tequila and shot glasses at Houston’s feet and steaks and squeaky toys near the feet of the dog.

“
Oh, look, you’ve got Martha!” the madam exclaimed as she approached. Pearl patted the donkey on the head and the little burro reciprocated by nuzzling her sleeve. “She’ll do nicely, Pam.”

Pam’s eye took on a wicked glint. “Do you know every man, woman, child and donkey in Cripple Creek, Granny?”

“
How is the cleanup going?” Bobby Wayne asked Nick conversationally, wisely changing the subject. “Catching anything up near the girls’ place?”

“
Don’t worry, Bobby, there will be plenty of demons left in the hills for you to hunt. There are a few good old boys, like Earl and Clay, who are getting one or more a day, but I suspect we’ll be killing these things for a while.”

A pleased expression on his face, Bobby Wayne seemed about to return to his truck when sight of a large figure emerging from the alleyway behind the group rooted him to the spot.

* * * *

Blackthorne saw her back first, small and straight and dressed in a new ‘Donkey Derby Days’ t-shirt. Her face, turned to the side to better examine her donkey, was pale and thin. Rhi resembled her past self more than ever before.

She abruptly twisted towards him and Blackthorne felt his heart constrict like it always did around her. He held up his palms in a placating manner.

“
Rhi, let me talk to you for a minute and I’ll go away, okay?” He would never understand how the woman had managed to get such a tight grip on his soul, but her hold was absolute, alive or dead, with him or not.

The dark eyes never left his face. Rhi’s square little jaw set itself and she nodded her head. “What?”