Wild Ride (6 page)

She put a beat-up deck of cards on the table. “Shuffle and cut,” she said, and he'd have argued, but his head hurt, and his chest hurt, and she looked like she could take him. Hell, this morning anybody could take him.

He took the cards and shuffled them, wincing at the harsh flap on the table, and then cut them. Delpha put the deck back together and flipped over the first card. “Yes.”

The card was old and worn, but it looked like a king on a throne holding a big sword. Ethan squinted at the writing on the bottom:
KING OF SWORDS
.

Glenda bustled in from the rear of the trailer, lit cigarette in hand. “How are you feeling, honey? That was a lousy welcome home you got.”

Delpha said, “King of Swords,” tapping the card. “He's finally come.”

Glenda lost her smile. “Oh. Delpha, I don't think . . .”

Delpha scooped the card up and slid it into the pack. The deck disappeared into her cape pocket. She looked at Ethan. “You are ill.”

No shit
, Ethan thought.

“You will be better,” Delpha said in that same voice he'd heard for years listening to her in the Oracle tent. She stood and said to Glenda, “You must tell him.” Then she left, nodding good-bye to Ethan.

Frankie flew after her. He didn't nod good-bye.

“Tell me what?” Ethan said when the door had closed again

Glenda smiled tightly at him. “I'm so glad you're home. Gus needs you on night-security detail. You can move into Hank's trailer or Old Fred's, they're both empty—”

“I don't want a job or a trailer, Mom.” Ethan tried to keep his voice polite. “I get a disability check from the government, and I can sleep in the woods. I just want to take it easy.”

Glenda ground out her cigarette butt. “What disability?”

“This and that,” Ethan said vaguely.

“Delpha said you were sick.”

Ethan could feel the time bomb in his chest. He changed the subject. “You know Gus could—”

“I'm worried about you,” Glenda said bluntly.

“I'm worried about all of you,” Ethan said. “You're smoking like a chimney, Delpha looks like she's half dead, and Gus's raving about escaped demons.”

Glenda stood up. “Fine. Don't tell your mother anything. That way she can just worry.” She went to the fridge and began to rummage inside.

Great. He looked around the cleanly kept interior of the old Airstream trailer—the barkcloth curtains, the faded red banquette, the general air of having been decorated in 1935—and saw his own future, except for the cleanly kept part. Not that he had a future.

He shifted on the banquette and his chest throbbed. Whatever he'd been hit with had quite a punch, and he was surprised it hadn't jarred the
old bullet into his heart. He picked up his Kevlar vest and saw a barbed metal circle, about the size of a bracelet, embedded in the front. He'd never seen ordnance like this, but it confirmed last night was not a bad dream. That and the ache in his chest. His butt kind of hurt, too, and he had to think for a moment before he recalled falling when trying to climb the gate.

“Hey, my rucksack—,” he began, but Glenda was ahead of him, slamming the fridge door with her hip.

“Gus found it when he opened the gate this morning. It's on the floor under the window.”

Ethan turned his attention back to the vest and pried the metal circle off. Some kind of shotgun round? The impact had been hard, but not too bad. He had a feeling if he hadn't been wearing the Kevlar, his chest would be hurting a lot worse, but the circle looked like it would have just torn up his skin with the barbs and been a bitch to pull off, not lethal.

He turned the circle over because it just wasn't right: it was too dark and not heavy enough for steel or lead. He held it up to the sunlight, squinting. The small barbs had flattened a considerable amount upon impact with the Kevlar.

Something bad was going on. “Have you been having problems with strangers in the park?”

“No,” Glenda said, messing with something at the sink. “But we need more security. We're getting a lot more people since we've rehabbed the place, and Gus can't handle it by himself at night anymore.”

“What wrong with Gus?” Ethan asked. “He's talking about demons. That's not good.”

“Nothing's wrong with Gus.”

“He can't hear.”

“He can hear. Just not well. Stay on his left and it's easier for him.” She came back to the table with a bowl, a bottle of milk, and a big orange box.

Ethan blinked. “Wheaties?”

“You love Wheaties,” Glenda said. “It's your favorite.”

Twenty years ago. “Uh, thanks.” He put the strange round on the table, took the box, checking to make sure Mark Spitz wasn't still on it—Glenda saved everything—and poured a sufficient helping, his stomach
rumbling dangerously as he topped it off with milk. He realized she had to have run into town before he woke up to get the cereal and he had to blink hard for a few seconds. “This is sweet of you, Mom.”

Glenda rubbed a hand over his closely cropped hair and sat down on the other end of the banquette, firing up another cigarette. “Anything for you.” She took a hard drag. “So who shot you?”

Ethan collected himself. “No idea. But if there are people in the park with guns, we should talk to the police.”

“No police.”

“Mom, if somebody else gets shot—”

“No.” Glenda looked at her cigarette. “We just need better park security. We've got some people on during the day, but we need somebody on night detail with Gus. He doesn't want anybody. Says he can do it himself.” She smiled at him. “He'd be real happy to have you, though.”

Ethan closed his eyes. He knew they needed him, he'd known it since last night. He was stuck.

“Don't be like that, Ethan. It's an easy job. Our biggest problem is the frat kids coming here and stealing the FunFun at the entrance. We should have made him of solid iron. Give the little bastards hernias.”

“I didn't get shot by a frat kid.” More of the night before was coming back to him. The red dot, which meant laser sight. Night-vision goggles above a mask. Special round from a weird gun. Silencer. Professional. What the hell would a professional be doing here? Then he realized he was here and he was supposed to be a professional.

Glenda sighed as she exhaled smoke, and Ethan felt a stab of guilt at how exhausted she looked. He stood up, wrapping the blanket around him, and scooted past her and down the short hallway into the bathroom at the other end. The trailer was a lot smaller than he remembered it. His khaki pants and black turtleneck, still damp, were draped over the shower curtain. He put them on, bumping into the pink walls, and tried to be glad he was home.

He grabbed his boots and opened the door and looked down the hallway at his mother. She looked a million years old.

She took a final drag on her cigarette and stubbed it out. “We really need you, Ethan.”

Ethan gave up. “I know. I'll help Gus with security.”
I'll find out who shot me, too
.

Glenda nodded, still tense. “Thank you. We'll pay you, of course. We have money coming in again now that the park's fixed up. We should have a really good Halloween this year, too. We'll be okay.” She sounded like she was talking to herself more than to Ethan.

He pulled on the Kevlar vest and checked his Mark 23, Special Operations modified pistol, making sure a bullet was in the chamber. Technically dangerous and not recommended for amateurs, but he wasn't an amateur.

“Before you go . . . ,” Glenda began, and paused. “Sit down, Ethan. I have to tell you something. I'd wait until you were settled in, but we're running out of time and . . .” She looked upset. “Just sit down, please.”

Oh, hell.
He sat down and braced himself for whatever it was.

“Do you remember how, when you were a little boy, we used to have meetings here? Gus and Delpha and me and Old Fred and Hank?”

“Yeah,” Ethan said. “I was sorry to hear about Hank. I know you were close.”

“No, we weren't,” Glenda said. “He was a drunk. That's how he died, ran his car into a tree.” She watched Ethan. “On July twenty-ninth.”

Ethan straightened. July 29 was the day of the firefight. July 29 was the day he'd gotten his bullet.

“Something happened to you on July twenty-ninth, didn't it?” Glenda said.

“I didn't die,” Ethan said, his voice harsh. “What are you getting at?”

Glenda's expression had changed to worry. “What do you mean, you didn't die? You were in danger?”

“We got attacked high up in the mountains. Everybody on my team died.” He swallowed. “I don't want to talk about it.”

Glenda drew a deep breath. “Well, then, thank god Hank drove into that tree.”

“Mom—”

“Ethan, the five of us weren't friends, we were the Guardia.”

“A club?” Ethan said, just about ready to end the conversation.

“A team.” Glenda smiled at him. “It's a good team, Ethan, we do good work—”

“Charity?”

“No,” Glenda said. “Demons.”

Oh, sweet Jesus, she's lost it, too
. He should have come home sooner, the stress—

“Dreamland is a demon keep,” Glenda went on. “A prison for five of the strongest demons in the history of the world. The Untouchables. They can't be killed, so they have to be held. Here. They're trapped in ancient chalices, wooden cups, and imprisoned in five statues around the park, and we watch over them.” She paused. “I know that's probably hard to believe—”

“Did you . . . hit your head maybe?” Ethan said. He'd seen that in combat; head injuries were tricky things.

“No, Ethan,” Glenda said patiently. “This is real.”

“Any new medications?”

“Ethan.”

He stood up. “Look, if you and Gus want to have this . . . club—”

“It's not a club, Ethan,” Glenda said, her voice serious as death. “You don't join, you're called and the powers pass to you. Those powers saved you when the rest of your men died. You're the Hunter—”

“No, that is not what happened,” Ethan said, and, grabbing his rucksack, turned and walked out of the trailer.

I
t was chilly outside, and that felt good as Ethan walked down the path and out of sight of the trailers.

He didn't know why he was still alive, but it wasn't any damn mystical power. His mother was not going to take what had happened, the deaths of five brave men, and make it part of her fantasy, not now, not ever.

But she did need his help, there was a stranger in the park with a gun, and he was going to fix that for her. He stopped and opened his ruck and dug out the thigh holster rig he'd had custom-made before he shipped off to war for the first time and slid the Mark 23 into the holster with the ease of long practice. The gun rested comfortably on his upper thigh, right next to his hand. Then he walked down the narrow path to the midway, blinking in the bright sunlight, grateful there weren't any people around—

“Are you Ethan Wayne?” a voice to his right chirped.

Ethan tensed and then relaxed when he saw a pretty, wide-eyed blonde sitting on one of the picnic tables in front of the empty Beer Pavilion. She was bundled in a faded blue-green Parkersburg High letter jacket, but beneath that was a short skirt that showed off her long, lean legs, and her blond hair was gathered in some kind of cute fluffy thing on top of her head, and her smile almost hurt his eyes.

He'd come home to find solitude, but he wasn't going to be a hard-ass about it. Not unless she started talking about demons and asked him to join her club.

“I've heard about you,” the girl said, sliding off the table. “You were, like, the best quarterback ever. The high school still has your picture up. At least it was there when I graduated two years ago.”

Ethan winced. “Quarterback was a long time ago.”

She didn't seem fazed. “Your picture was real nice.” She came closer.
“You're even better in person. I'm Ashley Willhoite. My uncle was on the team with you. I've heard all about you.” Her eyes widened as she saw the ripped circle in the cloth covering the Kevlar, and she came closer to put her hand on it. “What happened here?”

“I got shot last night.”
Brilliant
, he thought as soon as he said it, but he wasn't used to women coming up and putting their hands on his chest.

Ashley stepped closer. “Shot! Are you all right?”

Ethan nodded. “Kevlar took the brunt of it.”

“Kevlar?”

“Body armor.”

She pressed her hand harder against his chest. “You poor thing. You were lucky you weren't hurt.”

“Nah. If the shooter had been any good, he'd have double-tapped me between the eyes, so—” He paused as he saw the disconcerted look on Ashley's face.
Got to work on the small talk.

“You should come to the Dream Cream for breakfast.” Ashley moved in closer, her big brown eyes gazing into his. “Cindy makes this wonderful waffle-and-maple-ice-cream thing, and she says—”

“I've got to search the park,” Ethan said, but he didn't step back. “Find evidence. Track down the shooter.” He had no idea what he was babbling about.

She batted her big brown eyes at him. “Are you sure?”

“Well—” The Wheaties weren't sitting too well in his stomach, so maybe some hot food would be nice. “What the heck.”

“Great.” She linked her arm in his and pulled him toward the front of the park.

Ethan tried not to enjoy her closeness too much. He concentrated on the Devil's Drop, the highest place in the park, a black Eiffel Tower–like structure with five arms stretching out from the top, ending in five tattered parachutes, still fenced off after all these years and looking really bad. He'd have thought that would be one of the first things to be redone. The seven-foot-high iron devil statue in front of the fence was in prime condition, though, leering and red and ugly as sin.