Flame Unleashed (Hell to Pay) (20 page)

Ruth would have gone for his throat, but Odie kept a firm hold on her waist. His body had gone taut like a rubber band about to snap. If she were mortal, his grip would have hurt. Right now, it felt like kindred hatred barely held in check.

“Get. Out,” Odie growled.

“From this gathering of friends for Barnaby’s passing? Why, I wanted to give my last respects.”

“You’re not doing anything of the sort. Leave now,” Odie repeated. Although his voice sounded flat and grim, his muscles quivered in hard tension.

“And what about my other friends?” Jerahmeel ignored Odie.

The sharp scent of sulfur invaded Ruth’s nose as Jerahmeel seethed. All she wanted to do was kill this creature.

He pointed a perfectly manicured finger at each person in the room.

To Dante: “You’re a traitor.”

Hannah. “You’re worthless.”

He pinned Peter with a black glare. “You shouldn’t even be alive.”

“And my dear, you’ve broken your promise never to use your power again.” Allie recoiled as Peter stepped in front of her.

Never had Ruth been so furious, so powerless, to act.

“Well, then. I will be on my way. For now. I expect to see you,” he pointed at Ruth, “very soon. There’s nothing holding you here anymore.”

“You killed him,” she whispered.

“No, I only hastened his anticipated
dénouement
. And remember, I didn’t touch him. Rules, I have to stick with the rules.” His laugh scraped her ears like nails on a chalkboard. “Ahem.
Pardonnez moi
. I will be leaving.”

Another steam of sulfur, and he disappeared. They all stood in stunned silence until Allie grabbed Peter’s arm.

“Emma!”

“Hell.”

Allie and Peter dashed out of the room, Ruth and the others following closely behind. At the end of the corridor, a stiff and wide-eyed Javier clutched at Emma while he stared down a looming Jerahmeel. The baby whimpered. Gene hovered nearby with an expression of horror.

“Oh, what a precious little one,” Jerahmeel said, reaching for the baby.

“No!” Allie dashed forward and grabbed Emma, cradling her daughter to her shoulder.

“No?” Jerahmeel seethed. “You, a mortal, said no to me?”

Smoke rose from his fingertips.

Holy hell.

Ruth felt a surge in her mind like nothing she had ever experienced before. Superimposed on the image of Emma were the faces of her own children as precious infants. She would be damned if he hurt that baby.

As Jerahmeel pointed toward Allie, the woman flinched, still clutching Emma.

Allie’s pain echoed in Ruth’s own mind. Jerahmeel was burning into Allie’s head, but without touching her, damn it. The terror on her friends’ faces chilled her blood as each person froze in place.

Desperate to stop the pain, Ruth stepped forward, touched Allie’s arm, and entered the woman’s mind. There, she found it, a red-hot drill of smoking light destroying Allie’s consciousness. Instead of digging deeper like she typically did, Ruth’s mental presence shifted sideways and hovered in front of Jerahmeel’s piercing attack.

Like a diffusing screen, her power scattered the pain across her mental shield and away. Dimly, she recognized that she had never done anything like this before. The last two times her power had jumped up several notches had been with extreme emotional stress. Could that be what truly triggered the evolution of her power?

No matter, she would hold the shield here as long as it took to dissuade Jerahmeel. If what the Cajun said was correct, Jerahmeel simply showing up here had to have taken an immense expenditure of his power, to say nothing of him using that power to harm others. So, if Ruth could hold on long enough, Jerahmeel should have to stop and regroup. But how long could she endure the fiery onslaught?

God, it hurt as her mental shields heated up, protecting Allie.

Holding still while standing in a blast furnace wouldn’t hurt this much.

“
Merde
, this is shit.”

Like a vacuum sucking out oven-hot air, he withdrew, leaving Ruth hovering in front of Allie’s mind. Then Ruth slipped out, a pounding headache all that remained of her efforts.

“Baby!” Peter said sharply to Javier.

The Spaniard grabbed Emma as Allie’s knees gave out on her. Peter helped his wife to the ground.

Odie stepped forward, a look of rage so intense it bordered on deadly. He went toe to toe with Jerahmeel, a dreadful mistake, poking the not-so-sleeping bear.

“I believe I asked you to leave.” God bless his courage, but he was foolish. And so brave.

“Don’t think I will forget this,” Jerahmeel snarled. “Consider yourselves all marked.” He grinned at Ruth. “And you,
mon chèri
, are mine. Don’t take too long to come to me, or others will suffer.”

She staggered a step backward. Hanging out with the Lord of Evil was the last thing in anyone’s best interest.

He disappeared, slowly this time. Not the crisp entrance and exit he normally demonstrated.

How much had the attack on Allie cost him? As if to answer, the hunger to kill started up again, almost as soon as he was gone.

“You feel it?” Odie asked.

“Need to kill,” she gasped.

Javier and Gene nodded. Already, they searched the hallways for prey. Anything to slake the intense need.

“Is Allie okay?” Ruth said.

Peter helped Allie to stand.

“Emma?” She wheezed and rubbed her temples.

“She’s fine,
señora
.”

Javier returned the baby to Allie’s arms, but he hovered nearby, keeping watch over the cooing bundle. Remaining on guard duty. Odie had picked good fellow Indebted for this assignment.

“This madness has to stop,” Ruth said.

“How?” Peter said, his voice hoarse.

“Give him what he wants.”

“Absolutely not.” Odie grabbed her by the upper arm and shook her. “You don’t know what you’re offering.”

“Well this”—she swept her other arm out to the group of people—“is no option. Should we wait for him to come back? And then what? You think he has pleasant plans for them?”

“So, let’s say you give him what he wants. What’s to say he won’t hurt everyone, anyway?”

God, Odie was right. She had zero guarantee that Jerahmeel would leave her family alone, even if she sacrificed herself.

“What if we did what I originally suggested? What if we went to his lair?” Odie said.

“How will that help?”

“He’s weak right now.”

“Not after we all kill in the next few hours.” She peered out the window into the street, looking for a criminal to feed the knife.

“What if all of us didn’t kill?” He pulled her focus back to his earnest face.

“What are you talking about?”

“What if we kept him weak, off-balance, long enough to get into his lair?”

“And then?”

He pressed his mouth into a grim line. “I’ll think of something.”

“You’ll think of something? That’s a horrible plan.”

“You have a better idea?”

“What if I can get into his mind enough to confuse him or distract him?”

“Could work ...” Odie rubbed his chin.

“
Amigo
, if you do this, we should hurry,” said Javier. Already, he and Gene were looking at the exit, right hands stretched down toward their knives.

“I agree. We need to call all the Indebted and tell them to hold out for as long as possible. No kills for at least two days.” Odie thumbed on his cell phone. “I downloaded most of the numbers last night. How about you two?” He glanced at Peter and Dante.

“Between the two of us, we’ll call anyone in North America, if Javier and Gene can call those outside the continent. How does that sound?” Dante said.

Peter darted a quick nod, still focused on his wife and baby.

“Excellent,” Odie said.

Ruth turned back to Allie.

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Fine now.” White lines tensed Allie’s shining eyes.

Ruth gazed down at the child in Allie’s arms. Emma made smacking noises with her perfect bowed mouth and nuzzled into her mother.

Intercepting a glance between Peter and Allie, Ruth saw a shocking depth of despair. Their expressions, sad and resigned, suggested they didn’t believe they’d survive. Fear for their daughter etched pain across their faces.

Dante and Hannah murmured in a corner to each other. By the Swede’s wide, tense stance, he would protect her with his last drop of blood. But the normally unshakable man had a furrowed brow that belied his usual brash confidence. He was scared. These mortals could never run far enough. Jerahmeel would eventually find all of them.

This family—her family actually—was in danger. Helpless, they had no way to fight Jerahmeel. Helpless, like Odie’s sick children, like those men dying in the Civil War.

But Ruth was not helpless. She had something to give. The years of acting, hiding her true self, using her power, could be the key. Maybe she could use her gifts to fool Jerahmeel. All she needed was one chance.

Ruth turned to the two Indebted, both on their phones already.

“Javier. Gene. Can you keep them safe?”

“Until we have to kill,
señora
. But one of us can keep watch at all times. We’ll hold out as long as possible.” Javier sketched a light bow.

“Good. Odie, let’s go. We need to make plans.”

His lips pressed into a grim smile, but no happiness reached his eyes. “That’s my girl.”

Hannah came up and gave her a quick hug. “Come back to us, please. I only just met my multiple-great grandmother.”

“Thank you, Nurse Ratched, for trying to help,” Dante said, his voice rough.

Peter cleared his throat. “Be safe. For us.”

Allie lifted up her baby. Ruth dropped a light kiss on Emma’s smooth forehead, inhaling the clean baby scent. The smell of possibilities, of life. Blinking hard, Ruth turned to a silent Odie. The stark, desperate expression on his handsome face frightened her.

As they hurried toward the parking garage, she stopped short.

“Family? You knew? That would have been good information to have.”

“You would have known if you’d kept up with your genealogy. The power comes down from your daughter’s lineage. There are letters and notes describing unexplained powers in that line.”

“So it’s from Charlotte?”

“Yes, both Allie and Hannah are descended from your daughter.”

“What about William’s line?”

He took her hand in his. “He had no offspring.”

“Why not?”

Her heart thumped. Ridiculous to be so concerned; he had died over a hundred years ago.

“Mumps in his teenage years rendered him sterile. He married but never had children of his own.”

“That’s too bad.”

“I feel bad for your son, but not for your husband. All he wanted was to continue the male line, and it stopped with your son. Quite the comeuppance for a man as shallow as your husband.” He stopped himself. “My apologies, I shouldn’t talk poorly about your former spouse. It’s not my place.”

“But you’re correct. He was a real horse’s patootie.”

He brushed a kiss over her lips. “So?”

“Sounds like we’re going to the gates of hell.”

On the flight to Portland, Odie kept reviewing and discarding plans to destroy Jerahmeel. Guns and grenades wouldn’t work. Destroying the lair itself wouldn’t work. Coercion wouldn’t work.

The only option? Going right into the lair and annihilating him directly.

Ruth’s job: get Jerahmeel to take her to the lair, deplete his energy, and keep him distracted by whatever means necessary until Odie arrived. The “whatever means necessary” part had Odie worried. But Ruth had refused to back out of the plan.

Odie’s job: find the lair, ensure Ruth’s safety, and deal Jerahmeel a death blow. Somehow. The research suggested that Jerahmeel could be killed with a thrust of an Indebted blade into his heart, so that was their plan. Then, Odie had to get Ruth and himself out of the lair, alive. Unfortunately, he had zero idea of what to expect in the den of hell.

What had he gotten them into? His plan had an excellent chance of one or both of them dying. Or more likely, in Ruth’s case, Jerahmeel could enslave her forever, force her to stay with him by using the threat of harm to her family. She would exist as the gruesome creature’s plaything.

Jerahmeel could also go right ahead and destroy Ruth’s family and be done with it. The remaining Indebted would be forced to kill even more frequently to maintain Jerahmeel’s energy supply.

So many innocent lives were at stake. So much opportunity for failure.

And the plan involved Ruth acting as bait. Even in Jerahmeel’s weakened state, he would still be able to maim, torture, and destroy anyone to get what he wanted. If he attacked Odie, fine, Odie expected to be punished for eternity.

But if Jerahmeel focused his fury on Ruth? Odie rubbed his chest to relieve the pressure built up there at the thought of her smooth skin torn into shreds. She’d heal quickly, only to endure even more torment. Jerahmeel was a sick enough creature that he wouldn’t destroy her quickly, but drag out her pain until the end of all time.

Their plan hinged on Jerahmeel’s obsession with Ruth and Odie’s ability to predict Jerahmeel’s behavior. Bad odds.

As they drove from the private airstrip in Portland to Barnaby’s home overlooking the Columbia River, Odie’s mind churned. The ponderosa pines shushing in the breeze should have relaxed him. This trip to Barnaby’s immaculate Tudor mansion should have been a homecoming of sorts for Ruth.

Instead, the act of opening the heavy wood door unleashed a firestorm of emotion. They were about to spring the trap.

How could he ask her to climb into the devil’s den?

Odie wanted only to destroy Jerahmeel and exact retribution for his daughters. He had what he wanted—a partner in the plan and a sexy romp in the sheets. Exactly what he wanted, right?

At what point had she become more to him?

The moment he had first met her.

Oh, no. He wouldn’t name that emotion, but his feelings for Ruth made him want to lock her safely away and insist she didn’t partake in this dangerous plan.

Odie’s plan hinged on timing and luck. Could he fulfill his promise to send her into the pit of hell and then get her out again? He had no guarantees, just centuries of research and a dogged determination to succeed.