Mack (King #4) (20 page)

“Did you happen to see his leather jacket at the cabin?” I asked.

King rubbed his forehead and groaned. “I laid it over him when we buried him. That was his favorite jacket.”

“And you buried him…?”

“In that ancient burial ground. It was the only place that had ever given him peace without having to kill.”

Crap. It was one thing to have to watch Mack die, but it would be an entirely different breed of horror returning to the scene of the crime and watching King dig him up.

Seriously. I need to track down whoever erased my memories
. I was beginning to wonder if they’d only been doing me a favor.

~~~

Unwilling to once again brave the “deplorable conditions” of commercial airlines—King’s words—or risk his necessary “supplies” for the ritual being touched by anyone, we made the nine-hour drive back to that cabin in the desert. For the first hour of the trip, I had to listen to King curse the gods of ancient Greece because his helicopter was somewhere on the East Coast. Then the next four hours, the car—a black Mercedes sedan with tinted windows—was filled with a dreadful silence, interrupted by his phone ringing every five minutes.

“If you’re not going to answer it, why don’t you shut it off?” I finally asked around five in the afternoon, on my last leg of any civilized emotions.

His blue eyes, with eagle-like intensity, remained focused on the road. “I am waiting for a very important call.”

“I see.” I glanced his way and noticed how he had a blue light all around him.

“What do all of the colors mean?” I asked.

He looked at me for a brief moment and then brought his eyes back to the road. “Every Seer is different, I’m told, but red is anger, hate, rage, and pain. Black is death. Green is life.”

“What about blue?”

“Sorrow and regret.”

“That’s what I thought.”

His phone rang again and the name “Mia” popped up on the screen of the center console.

“Avoiding her is only making it worse,” I said. “She’s probably worried.”

“I am aware of this,” he replied coldly.

“Just answer it. Tell her what happened. I’m sure that the not knowing is torturing her.”

King sneered. “This, coming from you, is rich.”

“Why?”

“Haven’t you wondered why you cannot remember your past?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“Because you couldn’t take it anymore—this truth you speak so fondly of. It was too much for you.”

He had to be messing with me, but that look on his face said otherwise. “So what did I do?”

“Fifty years ago, I tracked you down in London. Your Seer gift was just beginning to awaken, as were your memories. This is how I always knew you were coming—your thoughts become quite loud. And because you’re connected to Mack, and I to him, it’s not hard for someone of my particular skill set and background to find you.”

I bobbed my head and looked out the window at the winter sun dipping below the horizon without fanfare or glitz. Quiet. Melancholy. Just like me. I didn’t like where this story was going.

He continued, “But this time, before I took your head, you didn’t fight, you didn’t cry. You simply begged me to give you a moment. You said you couldn’t bear it anymore.”

“Bear what?” I asked with a dreaded sigh.

“I wasn’t sure what you did at the time—but now I know that your gift is healing. You healed yourself the only way you could: by making yourself forget everything. Mack, me, your past.”

I was completely stunned—yet, I kind of wasn’t. Probably because somewhere in the back of my mind, I already knew what he’d just told me.

“But I didn’t forget—not really,” I said.

He shrugged. “It is like I told you; some emotions are meant to be felt. We cannot truly erase them.”

I finally understood. I’d tried to block it all out, but it hadn’t worked. I was a Seer. Ancient. Powerful. Connected to everything. And asking myself to forget Mack was like asking myself to forget my own soul or who I was. At the end of the day, I could never change or destroy what was inside my heart. It was part of me. So seeing Mack, gazing into his eyes, had restored the piece of me connected to him. It could never be erased. It had only been buried below the surface, just waiting for the right catalyst. My memories—those moments in time that were stored in my brain—well, those were gone.

I laughed out loud, chuckling toward the ceiling of the car and smacking my knee. “It’s ironic, isn’t it? I tried to heal myself, but ended up being more broken than ever.”

“You simply wanted to be free of your own pain,” King said. “I can relate. Regardless, after that, you couldn’t remember a thing. I ended up sparing your life and using your gifts for a while.”

My jaw dropped. “Well, that was kind of rude.”

He shrugged. “Waste not, want not. I ended up killing you anyway.”

“Gee. Thanks.”

“You may have forgotten your past, but you were still just as stubborn and disobedient as always. You ended up crossing paths with Mack one day—you were supposed to be out at a job, but decided to show up at my townhouse in London. I quickly got rid of you.”

“Didn’t it bother you? Killing me over and over again?” I asked.

“No. I was fighting my own demons. And, as you’re aware, there’s nothing I won’t do for my brother. He is my blood. We’ve also established that lost memories or not, you are a hazard to him, which is why I still intend to kill you after we’ve brought him back and you’ve healed him.”

I hissed out a breath. “You’re a ruthless asshole, you know that?”

He dipped his head. “So I’ve been told.”

“If we bring Mack back, he’ll be free from my father’s curse. And I never vowed to kill him, only to free him. My curse or promise or whatever you call it will be ended, too.”

“Are you certain?” he asked.

I gave it some thought. “It has to be over at that point, King.”

“I am not willing to risk it.”

Seriously?
“Well, I sure as hell am not going to let you murder me again, King—and has it ever crossed your mind that this is all your fault? That in your quest to protect Mack, you’re actually being extremely selfish? You can’t stand the thought of losing him, so you destroyed him. You keep killing the woman he loves—and by the way, you no longer have the excuse of being an evil disembodied bastard. I mean, for fuck’s sake, King, how would you feel if Mack kept killing Mia in the name of brotherly love? But somehow, Mack still loved you. And he forgave you. Again and again. Probably out of guilt because of what he did to you three-thousand-fucking-who-cares years ago. But you! You just keep hurting him with your high-handed ‘I know what’s best for my brother’ bullcrap, which is probably why he wanted to die. He couldn’t take watching me bite the dust anymore and he couldn’t turn his back on you.” I threw up my hands. “Just let the fucking man live in peace, King! Let me and him figure out how to fix this.”

King glanced at me with those cold blue eyes, but didn’t say a word.

“Fine,” I said. “But then don’t ask me to help you win back Mia. She can divorce your evil ass for all I care.”

King snapped his mouth shut and growled.

“Oh. Did you forget about that?” I asked. “Your wife who’s going to be heartbroken? You’ll be lucky if you ever get near her or your son again.”

A long, frigid moment passed.

“Perhaps,” King cleared his throat, “we can come to an agreement of sorts.”

I huffed and crossed my arms over my chest. “Yep. That’s what I thought.”

Point for Teddi.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

When we pulled down that long dirt road shrouded in an eerie, foreboding energy meant to keep curious eyes away, I now had the distinct impression that King’s little tricks weren’t the only thing safeguarding these grounds.

“There are many souls watching over this land,” King said, reading my thoughts.

His Mercedes rumbled down the road, the wheels crunching and grinding the dirt.

“Stay out of my head!” I barked over the loud noise. “And how the hell did you and Mack find this place to begin with?”

“The place has power and is considered to be one of my possessions. I protect this land, and in exchange, the souls who reside here assist me from time to time.”

“Like some kind of ghost brotherhood?”

King smiled in a sinister sort of way. “Something like that.”

“So why did Mack want to be buried here?”

King’s smile faded.

“Tell me,” I prodded.

We pulled up to the rickety shack, and King turned off the engine. “Because he wanted to be with you. We buried your bodies here—a few anyway.”

I blinked at him.
Jeez. How morbid.
And why did you even care where my body went?

King stared ahead, his eyes locked on the cabin, though he clearly wasn’t looking at it.

I waited. “Why, King?”

“Because this place is where souls who die with honor are laid to rest.”

I stared at the side of his face, unable to truly believe what this man had just said. “But you hunted me. You ruthlessly murdered me.”

He cleared his throat. “I did what I had to do to keep my brother alive. And I would do it again. But that doesn’t mean I discounted the love he had for you.”

I looked away and my eyes followed a little dust devil spinning next to my door. This was possibly the strangest confession I’d ever heard. King had ended my life and then taken great care to bury me somewhere he clearly felt was special.

“Errr. Thanks. That was very thoughtful of you. In a very cold-blooded kind of way.”

“Don’t mention it.” King nodded but didn’t look at me. Regardless, the torment in his eyes was obvious. “Let us get to work.” He opened the car door.

“Wait!”

King had already gotten out, so he bent over and looked at me through the open driver door.

“I can’t,” I said. “I can’t watch you dig him up.” The thought of looking at his pale, lifeless face was too much.

“I understand. I will return shortly.” He closed the door, and I watched that tall frame—now dressed in black jeans and a thin black sweater—disappear behind the cabin. From where I sat, yes, still wearing my stupid Vegas sweater, I saw nothing but a plain dirt field with rolling hills off in the distance. My guess was that there was a cemetery back there that could only be seen by certain people. Kind of like the inside of that cabin.

This place is so freaking weird.

Over a half an hour passed until King returned, the sleeves of his black sweater pushed up and his jeans covered in dirt. The icy look on his exotically sculpted face, a face I still saw as Mack’s, was undecipherable.

I popped open my door and hopped out. “Did he have it?” I asked anxiously.

King nodded his head of thick black hair.

“Yes!” I slammed the car door and did a little celebratory air box. We were going to get Mack back.
But what’s with Mr. Dark and Dreary over there?

“Please, don’t tell me you have bad news,” I said.

King shook his head, and that was when I noticed deep blues shedding off him as if he were melting.

“Whatthefuck?” I whispered under my breath.

King ignored me. “Come. I have him wrapped in cloth. We can perform the ceremony outside behind the cabin. Please grab the cooler from the trunk. It’s underneath Mack’s duffel bag.”

Cooler. There’s a cooler of…Don’t think about it!
“You need to consider changing your profession, King. This is just not right.”

He dipped his head. “Rome wasn’t built in a day, Miss Valentine.” He disappeared behind the cabin once again, and I went to pop the trunk. Of course, I had to snoop in the bag.

I unzipped the thing and found clean clothes. It was a touchingly sweet thing to do, bringing fresh clothes for his brother. It was a sign of how much he cared.

I shoved the clothes back inside and zipped up the bag, going for the…the…cooler of…

Supplies. They are just supplies. What sort of people were these Incas that they’d make this blood part of the—

Any day now, Miss Valentine
, I heard King’s voice resonate inside my brain.

I blew out a breath, prepared for anything. Okay, that was a lie. I wasn’t prepared for this at all.

~~~

Like before, King created a circle of blood with little symbols around it. Only now I realized that it wasn’t some satanic circle of resurrection, but a compass or a sundial meant to properly orient the chalice.

“So it’s like a combination lock,” I said aloud, completely fascinated.

“Precisely,” King said, once again down on his knees, fine-tuning the strange etching on the side of the chalice, which wasn’t really what I would call a holy grail or anything of the sort. It looked like a miniature wineglass made of metal.

Mack’s body was only a few feet away, wrapped in a white sheet. I could barely breathe anytime I looked at it. Truthfully, I could understand why I would heal myself and wipe away my memories. Some things were simply too painful to live with for an eternity, and watching Mack die was one of them. I guessed that was part of the reason he didn’t want to stick around either. He’d had to watch me go more than once and several of those times by his brother’s hand. Yet, he always remained loyal to King, despite all of the horrific things he’d done while cursed. Maybe because Mack was in no position to throw stones. And his heart was just really, really big.

King rose, dusting off his hands. “All right. It’s ready.”

I handed him the cooler, and he repeated the same bizarre ritual as before with the blood, the necklace, and the chanting. But this time, something different happened. The sky above us turned a deep purple and the wind kicked up, filling the air around us with several hissing dust devils.

“What’s happening?” I said loudly over the noise.

“The spirits are unhappy. They don’t want to let Mack through.”

I guessed if anyone would know that, it would be an ex-ghost. “What do we do?”

King mashed his lips together, and then his eyes locked on me. “Come here. Give me your hands.”