SEDUCTIVE SUPERNATURALS: 12 Tales of Shapeshifters, Vampires & Sexy Spirits (12 page)

Too many things didn’t make sense. For the most part, Brendan went out of his way to be polite to Gracie. His behavior now . . . It wasn’t
normal
.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, turning back to Analise. He stared deeply into her eyes with touching concern. Even that bothered Gracie.

“I’m fine, I guess. It was scary.”

“It was exciting,” he teased. “Got our blood pumping.”

“It did more than that. I thought we were going to die, Brendan. That hole . . . It’s not right. It felt like something was in it.”

“You’re just freaked out, babe. It’s pretty out there. Wait until you see it in the daytime.”

“I don’t ever want to see it again.”

Brendan made a hushing sound. “I’d say you need to. You don’t want to be afraid of something like that, do you? Trust me, babe. We’ll go see it when the sun’s out.”

“I don’t think so,” Gracie said, putting a stop to it right there. “By the time the sun comes out, we’ll be gone.”

Analise shot her a grateful glance, but Brendan seemed distressed. “I made a mess of things, didn’t I?” he said, looking at Analise. “I wanted to surprise you for your birthday, and instead, I just fu— screwed everything up.”

“It’s not your fault,” Analise said grudgingly. “It was a cool idea.”

“You think so?”

Analise lifted one shoulder and Brendan stared at her with pleading eyes, and for a moment, Gracie was almost moved. They were young, but maybe he really did love her daughter. Maybe Gracie had let her own past influence her opinion of this kid. Yes, he was too old, already out of school, not smart enough for Ana by far. Not worthy of Gracie’s amazing daughter. She’d resented him, wished that Analise would kick him out of her life.

Brendan knew all that without Gracie ever having to say it, but he’d treated her daughter with respect, brought her home by curfew, and never gave Gracie an excuse to forbid Analise from seeing him.

Right up until he’d absconded with Analise and brought her here, of all places. To the one town Gracie never wanted Analise to go to.

As if hearing her thoughts, he shot Gracie a sly look that she didn’t understand until he moved his hand to Analise’s abdomen and asked,

“What about the baby? Is the baby okay?”

Diablo Springs: Chapter Eleven

May 1896

Colorado

I turned slowly. The mountains caged me in a valley filled with scrub in every direction. I had survived the violence of the outlaws, but I would not survive this. I’d left behind the flames that had chased me from my family’s burning camp, but I couldn’t stop running. The vision of my mother, slaughtered, crushed beneath the burning wagon, unborn baby dead inside her . . . It would haunt me forever. I knew I would always remember her, not as I’d known her alive, but as she’d been in death.

So I ran. I didn’t know for how long or how far. The sun had arced across the sky and night had fallen more than once, but time had no meaning to my pain. I didn’t know where I was, how to get back to where I’d begun. My only thought had been to flee, like a coward.

I didn’t even know if there were bullets left in the rifle I had taken from the wagon. At least I knew how to shoot it, though not with any skill. I even knew how to load it, if I’d had more bullets. But at that moment I didn’t care. The knife hung in the pocket of my skirt, sheathed in its heavy leather. It felt like an anchor, pulling me down into the depths of this horror. It banged into my leg as I charged across the desolate valley between the foothills, punishing me for my weakness with every step. My thigh would be black with bruises. I was glad of it.

Dusk hung heavy in the sky again, like a gray velvet curtain with a tiny, intricate pattern of rhinestones glimmering in the weave. I knew later the stars would be like diamonds glittering so bright they hurt the eyes. Where would I be when they came out? Where was I now? I hadn’t seen another living soul or even a sign of life since I’d left the camp.

As the silvery light crept over the lavender sky, my eyes caught on a wisp of smoke in the distance that had been invisible to me before. Had I run in circles? If I followed that smoke, would I end up back at the camp?

There would be nothing to find but death, and yet it was a destination. I reached the hilltop and looked down into a wooded valley. Aspen and cottonwood trees grew wide and sprawling in the pocket of lush vegetation. This was not where my family had camped. Pine trees scattered darkly over the foothills, but the grove where I’d hidden was nowhere to be seen. I couldn’t see where the smoke came from, but it wasn’t from the smoldering ashes of my family. It was a campfire. I smelled food.

The Smith brothers? Had I stumbled across their camp? The taste of vengeance rose up inside me, bitter on my tongue. I wrapped my hand around my daddy’s shotgun and, once again, I began to run. I bolted through the trees with branches snagging at my hair and ripping at my clothes, but still I didn’t slow.

I could hear voices as I drew closer, but not the deep drawl of any of the Smith riders. These were women’s voices.

Confused, I paused. Why would women be out here with murdering outlaws?

In shadowed twilight, I crept closer. I could smell the fire—made of cow pies based on the noxious odor—long before I could see the flames.

At last I was near enough to see them. Three women, clothed as I was in traveling dresses of indistinguishable browns and grays, sat comfortably by a fire. One of the women was Negro, another was a mix of races I couldn’t discern—she looked to have been made from golden wax—and a third who had a mane of rust-red hair, pale skin and an Irish lilt.

The Negro and Irish women were sewing as they listened to the golden woman speak. Her teeth flashed white as she smiled. She seemed to be telling a story, and the others hung on her words, pausing with needles poised for the next stitch as she drew the tale out.

Beyond her, another Negro woman, this one large and lumbering and black as the night, moved about the fire. She wore a handkerchief tied around her head and an apron that seemed to glow in this world of black and white. She didn’t give the speaker the attention the others did, but she appeared to be listening all the same as she fried bacon and tended something else that smelled heavenly. My stomach growled so loud I feared they’d hear me.

They camped beside a wagon with a tarp strung from the side to posts pounded into the ground. I crouched, watching them, afraid to step into the open. I didn’t see a corral for horses or any livestock that might pull the wagon. Were these women stranded? Perhaps victims of thievery? I thought of the Smith brothers again. Had they been here? The laughter I’d heard said no, but people had a way of rising to the occasion when tragedy struck, and they had each other to see them through.

When I looked back to the campfire, the golden woman had finished her story. She sat beside the young Negro woman, who looked, upon closer inspection, much younger than my seventeen. The larger woman still hovered over her skillets, scorched skirts perilously close to the fire, but the redhead was nowhere in sight. Their laughter drifted back to me, waking an ache so deep it hurt. There had been laughter at our campfire each night when Grandma, burdened though she was by her wheelchair, Momma, and I would clean up after our meal.

A snapping twig to my right caught me unaware and I spun around. I was face-to-face with the redhead. She gave a shout of surprise, eyes round as saucers, skirts bunched around her waist, knees bent in a squat. She stumbled backward and fell on her bare behind. Embarrassment rooted me to the spot. I looked away, sputtering an apology.

“Saint Mary and Joseph,” she exclaimed in a lilting Irish brogue as she struggled to stand, yanking her drawers up and her skirts down at once. In an instant, the women from the camp had surrounded us.

“Where you come from?” the large black woman exclaimed.

I opened my mouth to answer, but the Irish woman interrupted me. “You’re head to toe in blood, lass. What are y’ doing out here?”

The big woman had a knife in her hand, the kind my mother used to bone chicken. She waved it at me.

“She trouble. You get, trouble.”

The girl I’d guessed to be younger than me pushed forward. She looked no more than fifteen. A light rash of blemishes made a T of her forehead and nose, but it was her luminous eyes and dark lashes that gathered the attention. She would be an incredible beauty when she matured.

“She scairt,” she said. She laid a gentle hand on my arm and said, “Don’t be scairt. We won’t hurt you. I’m Chick.”

I stared uneasily from one unfamiliar face to another, afraid to speak.

“She look like somebody been at her with a whip. Somebody after you?” Chick asked.

I shook my head.

“She looks hungry, is what she’s looking,” the Irish one said.

“Don’t be feeding her like no stray dog,” the hefty one replied. “Mis’r Tate see you doin’ that he’ll have your hide.”

“That Athena,” Chick said softly of the woman waving the knife. From her tone I understood that Athena was the ruler of this small band of women.

“He wouldn’t dare lay a hand on her,” the woman who looked dipped in gold said, moving nearer to me. Up close, her skin was the color of light molasses and it gleamed in the weak light. I had thought Chick lovely, but this girl—woman—was breathtaking. She shined like a luminary. Her hair was cut very short, almost masculine, but there was nothing male about her curving figure and gleaming beauty. She spoke with fine grammar, not like the other girls.

“Best not let him hear that talk,” Athena said, still waving the knife. She glared at me with a loathing that went deeper than our short acquaintance. I didn’t know what I’d done to earn it, but I was smart enough not to ask. “He have your hide,” she told the golden girl. “Honey or no Honey.” Another pointed look at me, as if I had caused some great trouble by stumbling in half-starved and desolate.

“Why don’ she talk?” Chick asked Athena, whose expression became harsher by the minute. I thought I’d better say something before she ordered me away.

Swallowing my fear, I asked, “Are you stranded?”

“Stranded?” the Irish one repeated. “No, girl.”

“Then where are your horses?”

“Mis’r Tate got them,” Athena said suspiciously.

“Do you . . . Have you seen the Smith brothers?”

“Who?” Athena demanded.

“Lonnie and Jake.”

“Don’ know no Lonnie and Jake. You get hit in the head?”

I didn’t think so, but I’d fallen enough times during my mad dash that I could have.

“Why you covered wit blood?” Chick asked, reaching a hand out but not touching me.

I wasn’t ready to answer that. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready.

“My name is Ella,” I said. “I’m lost.”

The golden girl approached and laid a gentle hand on my arm. “Are you hurt, Ella?”

I shrugged, and tears filled my eyes. I didn’t want to cry, but I didn’t want to be lost and alone in the world, either. Whether it was wise or not, I couldn’t pretend that I was not in desperate need of help.

The golden girl said, “Bring her over to the fire. Let’s get her cleaned up.”

Even though I wanted that, wanted the fire, a taste of whatever smelled so heavenly, a rest, I couldn’t so easily forget the fear and apprehension that I knew would never leave me.

“Why are you out here? A group of women . . . alone?” I heard the words, knew I’d formed them, but hardly recognized the directness, the hard tone. They seemed to have come from a different girl than the one who’d woken up just a few days ago, mad at her father for taking her away from her friends. But I would never be that girl again.

The women looked at each other. No one answered.

I stood my ground, yet inside I was shaking. It was part fear, part anticipation. If they told me they were the Smith brothers’ women, I don’t know what I would do to avenge the deaths of my family. I didn’t think I had the courage to hurt them, but I would not eat the food or lay in the blankets by the fire of the men who had destroyed my life.

The silence stretched. Finally, the golden girl whispered, “What terrible thing happened to you, child?”

Despite my resolve, her kindness and apparent ignorance of the horror that had befallen me was my undoing. “My family—” I hitched in a breath. “Outlaws killed them.”

This made Athena pull her neck in turtle-like. She looked around with big eyes as if expecting the outlaws to charge them at any moment. It wasn’t an unreasonable assumption. I wasn’t certain they wouldn’t.

“I thought you were them.”

“You thought we was them? What was you gon’ do? Kills us?” Athena asked, hands on her hips and scorn on her face.

I raised my chin. “Yes.”

That caused looks to pass from one woman to another.

The redhead said, “Sure, and now you can see we’re no such thing as outlaws. Why don’t you put your gun down, lass? Won’t be no need of it.”

I followed her glance to the rifle still clutched in my hands. I’d forgotten about it.

“’Less they followed her,” Athena said.

They all glanced out at the scrub and brush. “They couldna made it past the Captain,” the redhead answered.

This seemed to be enough reassurance for them all. I didn’t have such faith in this captain, whoever he was. One man would not stand against the Smith brothers.

The golden girl reached for my hand and guided me closer to the fire.

“That Honey,” Chick said softly. “Honey Girl, cause she’s sweet and creamy—that what Aiken say.”

Chick followed me and Honey Girl, chattering to my back. “The call me Chick, on account I’m small and soft. I told you that Athena; she take care of us.” The big woman glared at me so there’d be no confusion.
I
wasn’t one of
us
.
“And this Meaira. She from Ireland.”

The last said in awe. I felt it, too. I knew that my daddy thought immigrants were a sea of trouble that flowed steadily on our shores. My family could trace its heritage back to England, or so he boasted. Our ancestors had come over a hundred years before, which, according to my father, no longer made us immigrants.
We’re settlers
, Daddy was fond of saying. The distinction was not quite clear to me, but I was sharp enough to understand that somehow the distinction existed. I imagined for Chick anything beyond the ocean was a wonder.