SEDUCTIVE SUPERNATURALS: 12 Tales of Shapeshifters, Vampires & Sexy Spirits (14 page)

The long steps between afternoon and twilight gave me too much time to think. Sawyer’s words played through my mind, keeping time with my progress. He said he hadn’t ridden with the Smiths for over a year. Was it true? I hadn’t actually seen him among the riders who had killed my family. Nor were the murderers with him now. And the women . . . They’d been genuine in their surprise when I’d asked about the Smith brothers.

Sawyer had ridden with them once, though. And if not a murderer, it at least made him a thief. An outlaw, all the same.

The tears I’d refused earlier would be denied no longer. They burned my eyes and slid down my cheeks, but they didn’t slow my steps. I didn’t know what I would do now, but somehow, quitting would mean that I’d failed my family even worse than when I’d let them die. My mother had always said I possessed an inner strength that would keep me going when times were hard. I hadn’t believed her, but now I felt her whisper to my heart,
You can do it, Ella
.

The words of encouragement didn’t slow my tears, but my steps became more certain. Maybe I
could
survive this. But all around me only open terrain and encroaching darkness waited. I was scared. I couldn’t pretend otherwise.

Sobbing, I stumbled in the widening stream to nowhere and howled with grief and heartache as I plowed determinedly forward. I cried so loudly that at first I didn’t even hear the hoofbeats of the approaching horse. It was not until the animal came to a stop abreast of me that I noticed it. Although it was fully night now and only the black silhouette showed, I knew who the rider was: Sawyer McCready. Captain McCready.

I slowed to a stop, staring at the powerful man and horse. My face was wet with tears, my shoulders still shaking with my anguish. But I managed to hold my head up and glare at him.

“I hope you brought my gun and knife since you’ve sent me out here to fend for myself,” I said.

His mouth dropped open with shock. The reaction brought me a flush of satisfaction. Then he said, “
You
attacked
me
.
”

“I was just protecting myself.”

“Yeah? So was I.”

I heard him click his tongue, and the horse came closer. He stopped beside me and looked down.

“You’re going to get yourself killed out here,” he said, his voice dark as whiskey.

“What do you care?”

In the silence that followed, I bit my tongue. He was right: I
was
going to get myself killed. If a bear or mountain lion didn’t decide to make a snack of me, then perhaps Indians or even the Smith brothers would see me dead. But I’d go down fighting, as my daddy used to say.

“I didn’t murder your family, Ella, and I’ll be damned if I’ll have you out here dead weighing on me. I’ll take you back to camp. Tomorrow we’ll be moving on, and when we get to a town, you can find your way home from there.”

My nose was running and I had no handkerchief. Feeling foolish, I lifted my skirt and wiped it. I thought I saw a flash of a smile, but it was gone so fast, I might have imagined it.

“Why would you help me?”

He looked down, shook his head, then met my eyes again. “Because I’m a damn fool. Because I know what Lonnie and Jake are and you shouldn’t have had to see it.”

The truth of his words made me want to start crying fresh tears, but I bit my lip and nodded.

“You got nothin’ to fear from me,” he said. “But I won’t sit out here all night trying to talk sense into you.”

That made me want to snarl back, but for once, I managed to hold my tongue. I looked around at the clustered darkness, the black woods in the distance, the deep valleys between the foothills. Swallowing, I peered into his shadowed face, wishing I could read him. Wishing I knew what to do. How could I trust this man? How could I not?

“Come on, Ella. It’s late.”

He kicked his foot free of the stirrup and reached down a hand. With a deep breath, I took it.

Diablo Springs: Chapter Twelve

This was how the morning went.

First Gracie damn near gave him heart failure when he heard her horse-dog barking like a killer was on the loose, and then Analise had topped it with a bloodcurdling scream from her room. They’d both been so shaken up that he couldn’t doubt they’d seen something. He’d wanted to scoff at Chloe’s claim that a spirit from beyond had been in the room, but he really couldn’t.

Especially after what happened later.

Gracie left for the doctor’s—without saying good-bye—and the storm morphed into a full-fledged monsoon, which she was out driving in, behind the wheel of a car that was no match for the rising water and gusting wind.

With his daughter.

He snorted. A daughter. Poor kid. The only thing worse than not having a father was having Reilly Alexander for one. Jesus, she was screwed no matter what.

He’d showered and dressed, then came downstairs to find Chloe, Jonathan, and the priest sitting at one of the tables in front of the oh-so dry bar, playing cards and drinking coffee. They seemed like a parody of the many portraits surrounding them. Chloe’s dark eyes followed his anxious wandering from window to window, making him even more irritable. She seemed a little shaken up herself. Gracie’s sharp reprimand must have done the job.

“Where’s”—
Abe the Vampire
—“Bill?” he asked, looking around.

“He’s not a fan of bacon, eggs, and toast,” Jonathan answered with obvious disdain as he played his card. “He went to the store to stock up on gluten-free products, free-range whatever, and organic vegetables before the roads wash out.”

Reilly almost laughed. Bill had his work cut out for him if he thought he’d find a good selection here.

But the mention of the roads washing out worried Reilly anew. He stared out the window, willing Gracie’s safe return. At last, he went to the porch to find the rain had finally cooled things off. The wet wind felt good after the sweltering heat inside, and he took some deep breaths, trying to settle down and quit worrying about Gracie. As she’d pointed out, she’d done just fine without him for the past seventeen years. Chances were she’d do fine without him for the next seventeen, too.

That should have made him feel better.

He took another deep breath and went back inside. “I’m going to try opening all the doors upstairs,” he said. “See if that gets the air circulating.”

Jonathan jumped to his feet. “Want some help?”

“Opening doors?” Reilly asked, glancing over his shoulder as he walked away. “I think I can handle it.”

But Jonathan tried to follow him anyway. Reilly turned on him with a hand up before he got too far. “What do you want?”

“Just to talk to you,” he said, surprised.

“About?”

“I like music. I was a big fan of your band. You’re famous.”

Badlands had played the kind of music that resonated in smoky bars with drunks who had too much to forget. Mr. Rogers here didn’t exactly fit in their demographic, but weirder things had been known to happen…like Reilly and Gracie Beck ending up in Diablo Springs at the same time.

Reilly narrowed his eyes at Jonathan. “Name one song.”

“Dead Lights Calling,” he said instantly.

Reilly shot him a bored look. That one had topped the charts and made them a household name. A one trick pony. Ten years after the band had broken up and it still got play time. “Try again.”

“Dark Water Gold.”

Reilly shut his mouth. That one had never been released as a single. Maybe Jonathan really had been a fan.

“You think it’s there?” Jonathan asked.

“What?”

“Gold in the old springs. That’s what the song’s about.”

The tension drained out of Reilly and he laughed. “That’s not what it’s about.”

“
Treasure’s calling me from under it all
…” Jonathan sang off key.

Reilly had written Dead Water Gold years before his brother shot himself. Now he wondered if he’d known even then. A darker song had never been put to music.

“It’s about suicide, Jonathan. The treasure is the joy of having it all over and done with.”

Jonathan’s face went slack. “That can’t be true. It’s such a beautiful song.”

Reilly laughed again. “Okay. You got me. It’s about buckets of gold in a dried up hole.”

Flushing angrily, Jonathan went back and sat at the table and Reilly felt like an asshole. The guy was harmless, wearing a wounded expression and a baby-blue sweater he had to be roasting in. As ridiculous as it felt, Reilly probably was the most famous person he’d ever met and he’d just treated the guy like crap.

Christ, he needed to get out of here. Without another word, he turned and headed for the stairs again.

As Reilly passed through the entryway, he caught sight of an iron doorstop shaped like a hound taking a piss. He pulled it from the corner and used it to prop open the front door. Rain whisked in on the damp wind, but the cold air was worth it. Upstairs, he opened all the bedroom doors and immediately felt the chill pouring out of Gracie’s room and into the hall. Pleased, he turned to head down again but a tickle danced over his spine a second before he heard the whisper of the first door closing.

He spun in time to see the second door swing shut and watched as one by one, they all closed. Frowning, he went back to Gracie’s room and opened the door again. He used a stack of books he’d found on the dresser to prop it open before doing the same to the others. Yet again, each door clicked shut before he made it down the first few steps.

More annoyed by the mysterious draft working against him than anything else, he went back to the hall, expecting to see piles of books toppled onto the landing in front of each doorway.

That’s when shit got weird.

The hall was uncluttered, dim . . . quiet . . . and for the first time, Reilly felt uneasy. An air of expectancy hung in the hushed corridor . . . unnatural and somehow unmistakable. It followed him as he retraced his steps to Gracie’s room, squirming beneath his skin, seeping in his bloodstream. He had to fight the urge to keep looking over his shoulder.

The knob on Gracie’s door turned easily, and the door swung back on silent hinges. The books he’d used to prop it open had returned to the top of the desk where he’d found them.

“What the fuck,” he muttered as he checked the other rooms and discovered all the things he’d used to hold the doors open had settled back in their original places.

Eyes narrowed, he surveyed the hallway, the vacant rooms. He even looked in the closets. Nothing moved, nothing jumped out and said,
Boo
. Determined now, he dragged the heavy nightstands from each room in front of the doors and wedged them in the doorframe to hold them open. Satisfied, he backed down the hall, gaze shifting left and right as he watched for movement.

The doors gaped at him, trapped by the bulky furniture. They wouldn’t be closing this time. He was grinning as he started downstairs.

He almost made it to the ground level before he heard the rapid
boom-boom-boom
of the doors slamming with such force the whole house seemed to shake.

He froze, turning disbelieving eyes up as the front door banged shut behind him. He looked down. The cast-iron hound was back in the corner. Chloe, Jonathan, and the priest stood at the foot of the stairs, watching him.

“Guess we have a ghost,” he said lightly, like he wasn’t just a little freaked out by it.

Chloe lifted her chin, vindicated. “Was there ever any doubt of that?”

“I’m joking.”

“I’m not.”

He was saved from answering by the sound of a car outside. “Not a word about this to Gracie or Analise, got it?”

“You think you can hide a haunting, Nathan?”

With an angry, dismissive glance, he hurried past them and out to the porch in time to see Gracie’s car turn the corner, splitting the flood waters on the street into geysers that sprayed four feet high on either side. She wasn’t driving fast, but the car was too low, the water too high. A gust of rainy wind hit the vehicle just as the tire hydroplaned and the car spun into the ditch on the other side of the road.

With a muttered curse, Reilly charged off the porch and into the downpour. He reached the car as one of the back passenger doors popped open. A blond kid with eyes like glacial ice and a bandage on his head crawled over the seat and out the door. He reached in and caught Analise’s hand, helping her scramble out of the tipped car. That had to be the boyfriend—
idiot
—who’d brought Analise to Diablo Springs in the first place.

Reilly opened the front side door and saw Gracie fighting gravity to get over the gear shift and out of the car. He reached in and helped her climb the steeply angled seat and escape. They’d have to tow the car out once the storm passed.

She was shaking, and for once, she didn’t push him away. The dogs leaped out with no trouble, all but the little dust mop Gracie called Romeo. Reilly reached behind the seat and caught him by his scruff. The little beast tried to bite him, but he finally got it out. They were all drenched by the time they reached the front door, but no one appeared to be injured.

“Thanks for the help,” Gracie said, taking the little dog from him and tucking it against her body.

Her face was pale, her eyes shadowed. Her ponytail drooped and dripped. The rain had made her shirt nearly transparent, and the lacy bra he’d guessed at when he’d first seen her last night showed through all too clearly. Her nipples pressed hard against the wet fabric, pebbled by the cold. He made himself look away only to find Jonathan had come out and was unabashedly staring at her breasts. Reilly caught the other man’s eyes with a look that should’ve drawn blood and moved his body between them, shielding her from Jonathan’s sight.

“I’m going to go up and change my clothes,” Analise said, giving her mother an anxious look.

“I’ll come with you,” the blue-eyed idiot said with a smile that grated on Reilly’s stretched nerves.

“She can change her clothes by herself, Brendan,” Gracie told him in a hard voice.

“It’s a little late to worry about me being alone with her, isn’t it?” Brendan answered cheerfully.