SEDUCTIVE SUPERNATURALS: 12 Tales of Shapeshifters, Vampires & Sexy Spirits (37 page)

The words came through tears and pain and hurt so raw it scratched as they left her throat. But the words came, and I felt the weight of them settle over my soul.

I wanted to deny the accusation. I wanted to say Chick wasn’t dead, that she might recover, but I knew it was a lie. As if in protest, though, the small babe she carried moved in her womb, and we saw it skim beneath the surface of her skin like a ripple in water. They both managed to cling to life. Maybe there was hope.

I looked back at Athena. Staring into those angry black eyes, I said the only truth I knew for certain. “Aiken is dead. He’ll torment you no more.”

Honey and I left her alone with Chick and went downstairs to take care of business. It was barely nine in the morning and we had two bodies outside our kitchen door. Had this been another town, someone would have come to investigate. But guns were shot at random all through the day and night in Diablo Springs.

We didn’t speak as we heaved Jake Smith up and over his saddle. Nor did we talk as we did the same with Aiken. We led the horses out to the hot springs, taking them around to the far edge where the deepest end of the pool was. In the shelter of the jutting rock to the west, we bound their feet, stuffed stones in their clothing, and threw them in.

Perhaps it was guilt, perhaps it was the hurt of all that had happened. The shock that had been keeping me numb wore off now that the last deed was done. But whatever the reason, as I stood watching Aiken Tate sink, I imagined his eyes opened.

I clapped my hand over my mouth, but even before I could scream, he’d vanished into the murky depths below.

* * *

I waited for Sawyer for a month before I let myself even consider that he might not return. During that time I could do little but berate myself. I’d driven him away. Nothing I could do would ever change that. Still, I waited for him.

The town of Diablo Springs surged up around us, and business continued against all sense and reasoning. I tended bar because I thought it was what Sawyer would want of me. We hired a man to work the tables and throw the dice. We made money hand over fist, but there was no glory in it. No feeling of building something better. By the time I was ready to break into the storage room, I knew what I’d find. Nothing. Sawyer had taken it all . . . and my heart with it.

Upstairs, Chick held on to life with Athena tending to her like a newborn. And almost a month after we killed Aiken and Jake Smith, Chick’s baby was born. The delivery was long and hard, but Chick never seemed aware of it. The daughter she gave birth to was tiny and frail, but otherwise perfect in every way . . . except her resemblance to the animal who’d fathered her. Within hours after she was born, Chick quietly passed on to heaven.

Athena named the baby Misery, and as soon as she was able, she packed the squalling newborn up and left us. I gave her all the money I had saved, and she threw it back in my face, spat at my feet, and left on foot. I never saw her again.

We found Meaira dead one morning not long after, her wrists cut open and an empty vial of laudanum on the floor beside her. She’d left no note behind, but she didn’t need one. We knew. Instinctively, I understood that I would lose Honey, too, though not by death. She could at last return to her family, and I wished her the best.

It was not long after we buried Meaira that I realized I was with child. I wept for nearly a day afterward, tears of both grief and happiness. There was a part of Sawyer growing inside me, and if I hadn’t driven him away, I believed he might have rejoiced with me. Despite Athena’s curse, I hoped the baby to be a sign that life went on, and perhaps Sawyer would come back to me. But though I waited until my dying day, he never did.

Diablo Springs: Chapter Thirty-Five

The wind tried to pry Reilly from the boardwalk. The rain and floodwaters tried to wash him away as the Dead Light led them all to a place near the overhang of rock. The thunder boomed at increasing intervals until it felt like the earth was shaking from a quake. The lightning hissed in the sky above, branching into a thousand tributaries as it lit up the night.

Reilly held on to the dilapidated railing with one hand until he reached the bend that looped beneath the rock wall. There, the stone hillside offered a small bit of shelter where he and Brendan could crouch down out of sight. He could see Gracie and Analise huddled together and the Dead Lights hanging over the swirling black pool of the springs. There were no longer ravines and chasms. The water had turned it all into a solid, churning surface. Chloe sat on the ground nearby. Jonathan made sure they knew the gun was still on them.

“What do we do?” Brendan said in a low voice. “Jesus, she’s pregnant. And I brought her here.”

“Ask him,” Jonathan screamed at Chloe.
“Ask him!”

As if drawn by the violence, the lights began to surge, moving over the water as they raced to the huddle of humanity on the shores. Two orbs that glowed bright as the North Star raced to join the third, creating a luminescent trinity.

Jonathan stared at them suspiciously. “I’m going to count to one,” he said. “And then I want answers.”

Reilly looked at Brendan. “Here’s your chance to make it up to Analise. It’s now or never, kid. There’s no big plan. You hit from this side. I’ll get the gun.”

They locked eyes for a second, and Brendan nodded.

Later, Reilly would play the next few seconds over in his head, but even then, he’d still have trouble understanding what had happened. He lunged at Jonathan, grabbing his gun arm and swinging it wide and away from Gracie and Analise while Brendan slammed into Jonathan from behind.

The swirling trio of lights separated and began to solidify. On one side a man took shape, hovering over Reilly’s shoulder, glimpsed in choppy seconds as Reilly fought to control the gun. On the other side, a small dark-skinned woman solidified, looking young and lost.

The gun clattered across the rock, and the three men rolled toward the embankment. Brendan caught himself at the very edge and clung to a rock while the churning current tried to suck him away.

Reilly couldn’t help, though. He was bigger than Jonathan, but Jonathan seemed superhuman in his rage. He managed to pin Reilly beneath him. The blows came fast about his head and face until stars joined the spider lightning behind his eyes. Reilly struggled to get his arms free, using his legs to try to unseat the other man. It wasn’t working.

He saw Brendan gain some traction and pull himself out of the water, but he was too slow, too late. At the same time, Gracie grabbed a big stone and started forward, but Jonathan twisted off Reilly before she could reach him. He dove across the slippery embankment and managed to get the gun again. Reilly was already scrambling to stop him, and Brendan had finally made it to his feet. The kid knocked Analise off her feet just as Jonathan swung the gun wide and fired.

Reilly would never know if Chloe had been his target or Gracie, but in the seconds that moved like lightning, he saw Gracie duck and shove Chloe out of the way just as the bullet reached her.

“No!” Reilly shouted, clambering to catch Gracie as her legs crumpled and blood blossomed across her chest.

Brendan had Analise in his arms as Reilly lowered Gracie to the ground. Jonathan cocked the pistol and aimed again, this time at Reilly. From the corner of his eye, he saw something flare—one of the Dead Lights—and suddenly the shape he’d seen before lurched forward. For one, incredulous moment Reilly saw the face on the man that had formed, felt the sharp bite of recognition as he saw the familiar features of his brother and then the gun flew out of Jonathan’s hands again. He didn’t have time to dwell on what had happened, though.

“Gracie! Gracie, talk to me,” he said, trying to rip her shirt to see the wound. Analise was crying for her mother, Chloe lay on the ground, and the glowing female who’d materialized hovered around her, seeming to embrace the older woman.

Just then, the third orb darkened and solidified and became man from the picture inside the Diablo—the one who looked like Reilly.

“Where is it, Sawyer?” Jonathan screamed at the apparition.

Reilly knew that if he lived through this, he’d never be able to describe it.

The form leaned forward, looking right at Jonathan. Reilly felt as if the storm itself had begun to throb in time with the glow that surrounded the hovering man. Whatever Jonathan saw in the shape, it compelled him. He took a step forward, reaching out. Reilly saw greed on Jonathan’s face. Greed and satisfaction. Was it communicating with the man he saw bathed in light?

Reilly stood transfixed until a movement turned him—Chloe scrabbling across the slick surface, the small female apparition helping her gain her footing. He didn’t understand what she was doing until Chloe stood with Jonathan’s gun in her hand. The glowing female curved her fingers around Chloe’s and helped steady her aim.

“It’s time to move on, you bastard,” Chloe shouted.

Jonathan was up to his thighs in the dangerous floodwaters, unaware of anything but the apparition and
his share
, whatever that might be.

“You hear me?” she cried.

Jonathan turned and Chloe pulled the trigger.

“That’s for my grandma,” she said. “Who you treated like an animal.”

Her hands shook as she struggled to cock the gun. Once again, the apparition helped her. Jonathan looked down at the spreading blood on his shoulder. Angry, but not fatally injured, he took a step toward Chloe just as she pulled the trigger a second time. “That one’s for my mother.”

The bullet caught him in the arm and twisted him around for a moment. Furious now, he charged. Chloe was ready, though.

“This is for me,” she said, and pulled the trigger one last time.

The bullet hit him dead center, and Jonathan staggered back, looking down with shock at the blood covering his chest. Suddenly, the Dead Lights above them pulled together like a fiery sun. The female who’d helped Chloe, the big man who Reilly would swear had been Matt, and the last one who Aiken had called Sawyer, joined the others until the glow was blinding. The lights pulsed once, twice, and then with a crack of thunder, they vanished into the dark waters just as Jonathan fell back into the freezing embrace of the springs.

Reilly lifted Gracie in his arms, muttering terrified words as he carried her toward the house. Her eyes were closed, her breath ragged, but she was alive.

Brendan followed with Chloe holding on to one arm and Analise on the other. As Reilly made it to the door, he looked back, giving one last look at the dark waters that held so many ghosts.

Diablo Springs: Chapter Thirty-Six

By morning, the storm had blown over, leaving the wreckage of its fury behind. The Diablo had held strong against it, but the rest of the fading town had taken a hit. Reilly doubted anyone would rebuild. In the clear light of day, the springs shivered placidly, but already the water had begun to drain into the underground caverns that had been opened all those years ago by Gracie’s grandfather.

The bullet Jonathan had fired at Gracie had passed through the soft flesh of her shoulder and exited the other side without too much damage. He and Chloe had been able to staunch the blood and patch her up until they could get her medical care. Bill was still alive by some miracle, but in much worse condition, and it was touch and go throughout the night. They’d all slept together on the floor of the saloon, horse-dogs snoring in between human bodies. Safe and alive. Bill held on until the ambulance arrived and was now safely at the hospital and expected to recover.

It would be weeks before the water dried up completely and the full extent of the damage could be accounted for, but more than one body had washed up from the caverns during the storm. The Dead Lights had vanished, though, so maybe Diablo Springs had finally taken its last victim.

Later, they talked about the night they’d barely survived, each of them filling in missing pieces.

“I didn’t know he was pulling me here,” Brendan told them, “but that first time I drove out to the springs, I stayed all night and most of the next day. I missed work. I didn’t remember any of it later. Just that I had to come back and bring Analise.”

Aiken, ever the manipulator according to Chloe, had brought all the players to the game so that he could get what he wanted—the share of wealth he felt had been stolen from him all those years ago.

“When he—it—whatever was in the light touched me,” Gracie said, “I knew it was Sawyer and knew he was there to help. It was like he shared his memory with me. I saw Aiken murder him and toss him into the springs, never realizing that he had all of the saloon’s money packed around his body. He sank to the bottom, taking it with him.”

“I saw a woman,” Analise said. “Out there in the storm. She was young.”

“Chick,” Chloe said sadly but didn’t explain.

Michael, who’d been silent since they’d found him in the basement, finally spoke up. “When I found the ledger, I saw what had happened all those years ago. Chick was Chloe’s grandmother. She died when she took a bullet meant for Ella, Gracie’s great-grandmother.”

“Was she the reason for the curse Ella believe in so passionately?” Gracie asked.

Michael nodded. “And now the curse is broken.”

“How?” Gracie asked.

“You stood in front of the bullet meant for me,” Chloe answered.

Reilly felt a shiver go through Gracie’s body. Then she turned and looked at him. “I thought . . . in the middle of it all, I could’ve sworn I saw . . .”

“Matt,” Reilly finished. “You did. I still can’t believe it, but he saved my life.”

The words were almost hard to speak but saying them felt cathartic, the first step to healing.

“I think Aiken has been messing with my loved ones for a long time, Gracie,” Reilly went on. “It didn’t make sense until Brendan said Aiken had been in his head. I think he was in Matt’s, too. I took Matt’s ashes out to our old house this morning, and I buried them in the backyard, next to the dog.” Reilly’s mouth tilted at that. “I think he’ll like it there. He always loved that dog.”