Once Broken (Dove Creek Chronicles) (9 page)

“Hey yourself.” I didn’t bother to acknowledge him with so much as a glance. I had bigger fish to fry than ones swimming in liquor.

Smooth Operator put a hand on my shoulder. “That ain’t very nice,” he complained.

I batted his hand away. “No? And here I thought I was being a real sweetie-pie.”

“Y’must be one o’them girls thinks they’re too good.”

I finally looked at the sloppy wannabe suitor. “No, I’m one of those women who thinks they don’t have time for your crap. Now move along.”

“What if I don’t wanna?” The drunk challenged, laying a heavy grip on my wrist.

Already irritated that I was having to try to shake him so that I could hold up my end of Jocelyn’s plan, I looked down at the offending hand and back up at the disgusting leer directed at me and said, “Let go or I’ll break your nose.” My tone should have told him that it wasn’t an idle threat.

Liquid courage mingled with stupidity kept the guy from backing off and he laughed derisively rather than let me go. Before his alcohol-addled reflexes could catch up, I balled my left hand into a fist and jabbed. His grip on my wrist relented as his nose cracked and blood ran red and sticky down his face.

“Bitch!”

Without dignifying the unimaginative insult with an answer, I bolted around the corner of the building and into the alley before the incident could draw an audience.

The stench of rotting garbage and mildew was strong in the air. I was slowed by the high heels Joss had chosen for me to wear, but I managed to move quietly. If I took them off, I was sure I would need a tetanus shot before I got ten steps.

I reached back with both hands as I went, drawing the pair of silver daggers I had hidden at the small of my back. As I darted from behind the cover of a Dumpster, I spotted Jocelyn with our quarry as promised. It was me who was arriving late to the festivities.

The vamp had Joss pinned against the brick wall and I could see the glint of fangs in the weak artificial light. Feeding in such a public place was sloppy; a mistake made only by the youngest or most desperate among the bloodsuckers. Lucky for us, he was vulnerable in his
inexperience. His bloodlust – along with lust of the baser kind – blinded him from my approach.

My aim was true as I released both knives. They sunk into the vampire’s back, one making a bull’s eye into the heart. Joss heaved the slumping body away from her and knocked him to the ground. The corpse barely withered as t
he evil inside fled back to Hell with a flash of red energy.

He really had been fresh.

It took several moments for the body to disintegrate, so we waited to make sure the coast was clear. The last thing we wanted was to have to explain the stiff who was wasting away right before our eyes.

Jocelyn released a heavy breath and rearranged her dress. “Cut it a little close, Remi. I, for one, could’ve done without the suspense.”

“I was fending off a human. A drunk one.”

“You don’t have any gum, do you?”

“No, why?”

“Honestly, the sacrifices I make . . . I got vampire cooties in my mouth, m’kay?”

I fought the giggle that rose up, but Jocelyn scowled.

“That’s it. Next time,
you’re
making out with the hell-spawn.”

I laughed heartily, but I didn’t agree. I didn’t have much confidence in my ability as a seductress, anyway.

“C’mon. We can make it back in before Dylan’s done singing.” I cajoled as we walked back around to the inviting side of the bar.

Joss appeared to be somewhat placated as we returned to the crowd, checking our hair and clothes as we went. Everything was back into place by the time we made it back to our spot near the stage. We were in time for a couple more songs before the band left the stage and jukebox music began to pour out of the speakers once more.

We went to refresh our drinks and Dylan found us at the bar a few minutes later. He looked troubled by something, but kept whatever it was to himself,

“Hey, Dyl. Good show.” I greeted my brother with a hug.

“Thanks, Rem. Lookin’ good.” Dylan caught the bartender’s eye and signaled for a beer. “Jocelyn, how are ya?”

“Better now.” Even over the noise, the purr in her voice was evident. She leaned against the bar in a way that couldn’t be ignored. At least not by Dylan.

“Y’all ready for another round?” Dylan peeled his gaze from Joss only long enough to include me in his question.

Jocelyn gave a little smile. “Sure.”

“Not for me. I’m driving,” I added.

Dylan ordered another frilly drink for Joss and turned back toward us. If he had forgotten his concern in the face of her charms, the spell was broken. A serious expression etched itself across his features where an easy smile had been.

“Hey, is everything okay? I saw y’all leave earlier and come back in.” He looked between Joss and me.

I took the last swig of my Red Draw to cover my surprise; I hadn’t expected Dylan to notice we were up to something.

“Yeah, fine. Just needed some fresh air is all.” I lied. To my disappointment, he didn’t look satisfied.

“It’s probably none of my business, but who was the
guy?”

A small sigh of relief parted my lips as he glanced at Jocelyn. The green-eyed monster was more easily slain than the fanged one we had felled in the back alley.

Joss offered a wicked smirk. “An ex-boyfriend of mine. I was teaching him a lesson,” she answered. Her lie was more creative than mine and even earned a laugh from my brother.

“So are you all done teaching for the night?” Dylan asked her.

“Nah, I can still teach
you
a thing or two.” The purr returned.

Beginning to feel like the third wheel, I made to bow out gracefully. The sticky moment had passed and Dylan was becoming more interested in what Joss might or might not teach him rather than the disappearing act we had pulled.

“If y’all don’t mind, I’m gonna call it a night,” I said.

Dylan had the decency to look disappointed, bless his heart. Jocelyn looked like she wanted to slit m
y throat; she hadn’t yet figured out that I was trying to do her a favor.

She tapped a purple fingernail against her glass. “As soon as I’m finished with my drink.”

My brother, as I had hoped, rose to the occasion. “I can take you home if you’re not ready to leave.”

Jocelyn glanced toward me, I assumed to make sure that arrangement would be fine with me. I winked. Her
murderous look from before changed into one of gratitude.

“Let’s close this place down.” She raised her glass as she accepted Dylan’s offer
.

“Thanks, Dyl. I’ll call you about the job on Monday.” I hugged him good-bye. “Y’all don’t have too much fun without me.”

“We won’t,” Dylan promised.

“We will,” Joss answered at the same time.

I laughed. “’Bye y’all.”

chapter six

The property was exactly how I had left it. As Dominic had left it.

The surveyor’s stakes still marked the layout of what would have been the foundation of our house. A few had washed away during the flash floods that we were prone to having in the springtime, and the twine strung between them had been tugged and blown away by the wind long before, but I could still picture it.

Maybe it was cliché to say that it was our dream house, but that’s what it was. Or, at least, that’s what it
would
have been. I had come to accept that it would never be, but sometimes I liked to imagine what it would have been like. Just as Dominic and I used to do while we made our plans and talked about the future.

I could not believe that three years had already passed. It was three years to the day since that very place had run red with my husband’s blood. Three years since I had been whole.

I tipped the bottle to my lips and drank deeply, not for the first time that night.

I fought with it, just like I did every year. That deep, visceral need to crawl into myself and just . . . Stop.

Stop everything.

Stop thinking.

Stop hurting.

The logical part of me knew that drowning my hurts in cheap whiskey wouldn’t solve anything. The emotional part of me didn’t care.

With each sip, everything became more pleasantly fuzzy around the edges. I could feel the heat in my cheeks from the blood rushing hot just under my skin. The fist that held tight around my heart unclenched just a little.

Tired of standing, I perched myself on the hood of my jeep to sit for a while. I wasn’t so far gone that I would consider driving in my state, so I made myself comfortable.

The night was muggy and the breeze negligible, so my black tank top clung to my skin. I pulled my hair up off of my neck with one hand took another swig of the whiskey with the other. The sting of amber heat chased its way down my throat and into my belly, and I savored the burn.

Nocturnal sounds surrounded me as I sat with my hazy thoughts. Chirrups of crickets, croaks of bullfrogs near the stock tank a little way off, the bays and yips of a pack of coyotes a mile or two away all blended in a familiar harmony that was interrupted only by
footsteps that fell too unabashedly to be anyone trying to sneak around.

I turned my head in time to see Alex materialize from the inky darkness. His expression didn’t change upon seeing me. 

“I thought I might find you here.”

“You want me to put a feather in your cap?”

“I’m not wearing a cap.”

So literal. Why always so damn literal?

“Do you care for some company?”

“Sure,” I said, patting the empty expanse of hood next to me. “Misery
loves
company.”

Alex moved to sit next to me, but didn’t dignify my sarcasm with an answer. I looked at him for a long moment before downing another mouthful of whiskey.

He’s a serious man. Tall and rangy, with a swarthy complexion and the kinds of scars that suggest he led a violent life. His dark hair hangs to the middle of his back, and his brown eyes are deep set and sharp. At any given moment, Alex looks wary and calculating, as though he can never let down his guard. He looks like a predator when he walks, even as a human on two legs. I realized I had no idea what made him that way; he was still a mystery to me.

“How is it that after three years, I still feel like I hardly know you? I mean, I know I can trust you. I know you make a habit of showing up right when I need you, but I don’t know
you.
Why is that?” I questioned.

“You’ve never asked to know me.”

“You’ve never given me the chance,” I said, indignant. “I didn’t even believe your kind existed until the night you saved my life. My world got turned on its head and here you were in the middle of it . . . So aloof, so . . . So forbidding. I understand why now, but at the time it was intimidating.”

“You aren’t intimidated by me now,” he said.

I noticed that his tone was patient but it was mingled with something else. Amusement, maybe? It was like he was waiting for me to draw my own conclusions but could already guess what they were.

I shrugged. “I’m not the same person anymore.”

“Clearly.”

Arching an eyebrow, I changed tack. “So
Alex
. . . I’m assuming that it’s short for Alexander, but I don’t even know that for sure.”

“Alexandros.”

“What?”

“My full name is Alexandros,” he repeated.

“Oh . . . Alexandros,” I said quietly, trying it out. “What is that? Greek?”

He looked mildly im
pressed. “Yes, but how did you—?”

“I studied history in college.” I punctuated my brief explanation with another gulp from the bottle.

“You shouldn’t drink so much of that.”

“Yeah? Why not?” I challenged, brusque in my near-drunken state. “I’ve got nowhere to be. I’ve got my trusty werewolf here to look after me. I don’t see a problem.”

“It isn’t good for you,” he answered as he plucked the bottle easily from my hand and set it aside. “Your wounds are deep. They will never heal if you continue to allow them to fester.”

I looked at Alex for a long moment. He was right and though I wanted to scorn his rationality, my hazy brain came up short of a rebuttal.

“We were talking about
you
, not me.” I settled for redirection.

“What do you want to know?”

“Where were you born?” I rattled off the first question that came to mind. Alex’ origins had long been unknown by me, and none of the other Amasai seemed to know. I wondered if anyone had ever even asked him.

“Macedonia. After the great King Alexander died and before the Romans took hold.”

“King Alexander, as in Alexander the Great?”

“Yes. I was named for him.”

“That means you’re very—”

“Old, yes,” he said.

“But you’re still in Purgatory.”

Alex’ smile was rueful. “It was a time of war. I killed many men.”

“How did you die? You must have redeemed yourself somehow.”

I watched the wry expression fade from Alex’ face and immediately regretted the question. “That is a story for another time,” he said. He wasn’t angry with me, that much I could tell, but that didn’t mean he would tell me what I wanted to know.

I stopped prying into his past. “The other night, you stepped between me and Valan. Why?”

“He would have killed you.”

“But I was about to kill him,” I argued.

“He wasn’t as weak as he let on.”

“How do you know?”

“Valan is ancient, older than me. He knows every form of trickery. You’ll need more than a few silver needles if you ever face him again.”

I tried very hard not to feel foolish. There was no way I could have known what Alex just told me, but I had also run into the melee headfirst without stopping to think about the implications.

“Where do you think he’s been? We haven’t seen him around here in years.” Three, to be exact.

“That, I cannot say.”

“How is it that you’ve never killed him?” I asked, thinking that if both the vampire and the werewolf were so old, they were bound to have faced each other more than a time or two.

“He has a talent for disappearing at just the right moment. He would rather save his skin than stand and fight. And the last two times I’ve seen him, I was protecting you,” Alex said. He didn’t say it as an accusation, but as a matter of fact. To him, there would be more opportunities to destroy Valan and he had the luxury of patience on his side.

“Gabriel and I would probably be dead if you, Meg, and Gio hadn’t shown up when you did. I shouldn’t have questioned you like I did.”

Alex held up a hand as if to say that he understood. “Your father was a handful as well. Trouble always had a way of finding him, as it does you.”

“Yeah, well apparently it’s
in the genes. I didn’t ask for all of this, y’know.” I waved a hand vaguely at our surroundings, though I wasn’t referring to the empty lot. In that moment, it represented the life I had been living before. The life that had come to feel like a dream from which I had been awakened.

Or maybe this was the dream. One long, crazy dream.

“He left,” I said, quiet and cold. “He knew what was here and he left.”

“John did his duty for many years. Do you not believe he deserves a break?”

“A break from the life, sure. But he took a break from his family, too.”

“To protect you.”

“Helluva lot of good that did.”

“You are a strong woman, Remington Hart. Your father believes it,” Alex paused. “
I
believe it.”

In the light of only a half moon and the Milky Way, Alex’ deep brown eyes were merely pools of darkness. Still, I found something there that I hadn’t seen before: Tenderness and understanding.

I leaned toward him and pressed my lips to his before any thought for stopping myself occurred to me. For a breathtaking moment, Alex returned my unexpected kiss. I lifted my hands to reach for him, but he caught me by the wrists and pulled back. The next thing I knew, he was off the hood of the jeep and standing next to me.

“I cannot do this. I am sorry, I just . . . Cannot. I am not a living man, Remi.”

My lips were left cold in the wake of the halted kiss, but my cheeks burned with humiliation and wounded pride. Even through a haze of alcohol, my bravado wasn’t enough to protect my injured feelings.

“Yeah . . . Right. I shouldn’t have done that. It was inappropriate,” I said, shamed to have acted in a way that offended him.

Alex looked sympathetic, but that was the last thing I wanted from him. I slid off the jeep, less gracefully than he had, but I still managed to land on my feet. I drew myself up and squared my shoulders before I marched to the passenger side.

“I’m ready to go home now.”

TWO NIGHTS IN A ROW OF
drinking was taking its toll. I hadn’t drunk myself stupid – though I was debating that after coming on to Alex – but I had a headache fit for a hangover.

I had done my remembering. This was the day I went back to normal, just like the previous two years. I believed that a time would come when it would be just another day, but I wasn’t there yet. 

I found a bottle of aspirin in a desk drawer in the office, helped myself to two, and got back to work.

The last day of the month, we were busy with customers coming in to retrieve their pawned items. Many came in at the beginning of the month for loans, so it just happened to work out that way. Things were going smoothly, and
Aric and I were getting people in and out without any major breaks in our pace.

Late in the afternoon, not long before I would be leaving for the day, Hugo stopped in. He spoke with
Aric for a few moments before turning his attention to me. When he asked me to go into the office, I sensed that he wasn’t asking me to talk business. I fidgeted with the hem of my blouse as I went, wondering if word had already gotten around about the night before. Was it too much to hope that Alex was a gentlemen who didn’t get kissed and tell?

“How are you, Remi?” Hugo asked as he shut the door behind us.

I blinked. Not the question I was expecting.

“I’m fine, why?” I hadn’t intended to sound so defensive.

“I only wanted to check on you,
mija
. Yesterday was a difficult day for you,” he said.

Hugo
had witnessed firsthand how much I struggled through coping with Dominic’s death. He had offered me structure: A scheduled job and a cause to hold onto. His tutelage had helped me connect the dots from the reality of Dom’s death to my father’s involvement with the Amasai. And it had been my father who trained him when he joined the Amasai, so in a way he helped me feel as though I was staying in touch with my mostly absent dad.

Some people stuck their noses too willingly into my business
and it did nothing but annoy me, but Hugo’s quiet support was reassuring.

“It gets better each year.” It wasn’t a lie, even though I omitted the part about how I’d drank a little too much and made a fool of myself.

Hugo motioned toward an empty chair and I took it. He pulled up a desk chair across from me and followed suit. “We haven’t had much time to talk lately, but you know if you ever need anything . . .”

“I know. I appreciate it.” I
did
know. Even though our comings and goings were more frenetic these days, I didn’t feel neglected. I knew Hugo would be there when I needed him.

“There is one thing you can do for me, if you don’t mind,” I added. Taking Dylan’s job application off the desk, I handed it to Hugo. “My brother is looking for a job.”