I allowed a thin laugh. “Good or bad?”
“Good… Or, as good as it can be,” he answered. “I have news about the Triple Six trial. Do you want to talk privately?”
“No, that’s okay. Everyone else here is just as invested in it as I am.”
“My thoughts exactly. And if things move quickly enough, they may find out in the newspaper, anyway,” Solomon said. “The Creek County DA might be close to reaching a plea deal. Some high-powered trial lawyer out of Dallas came to assist, pro bono. Found some new strings to pull to get their attorneys to the table. Nice lady.”
I could see from the way he said it, she had used his well-collected evidence to move things along rather than shouldering a small-town detective out of her way.
“Say, isn’t your brother a lawyer in Dallas?” he asked.
“Yeah, he’s in corporate law, but something tells me he had a hand in this. So, what happens if they reach a deal?”
“It’s life without parole for all of them, which is better than the capital punishment they could receive if convicted and sentenced by a jury… Better for them, that is. But you or your brother won’t have to testify and there won’t be a change of venue due to the circumstances.”
“Sounds all very neat and tidy,” I commented.
After saying it aloud, I thought it really did feel like James was behind it. He would want our father’s killers to all go away with minimal fuss and without a court circus, which was what was bound to happen if too much truth came out on the witness stand. But if there was the guarantee of them all ending up in the slammer for life, I didn’t blame him for engineering the outcome.
“It should be… Which is what you want, right?”
I nodded. “That’s exactly what I want. Dylan, too. I’ll call him after I hit the road.”
“This is great news, mija,” Hugo said. “It will be good to have it behind you.”
“It’s not done yet… But you’re right. Just having those people locked away where they can’t be out in the world again hurting people will be a welcome relief. Even if I did still want a piece of them.”
“I needed to talk to Jocelyn, too,” Sol said. “Is she around tonight?”
“No, she’s working the swing shift today. Won’t be in,” Aric answered.
“Wish I could say it was more good news, but… Well, it’s not my place to share, so I’ll say no more. Which shop will she be working in?”
“Downtown Westview. She’ll be there for another few hours,” I said.
It hadn’t occurred to me before, but she and Creed would overlap by a couple of hours. That is, if he had gone straight to work as he said.
The detective glanced at his watch. “I don’t have any more calls tonight, so that works out well. Oh, and Remi, thanks again for the heads up about the hellhound situation this morning. We did get a few calls, but were able to reassure folks that everything was fine. It’s far easier with you all being out in the open.”
“It has been easier for us, too,” Hugo said. “So far.”
“I’ll get out of here. I know it’s time for y’all to get ready to head out,” Sol said.
“Thank you for coming to tell me about the trial,” I said.
He waved a hand on his way out the door. “Any time.”
As he was going out, Gabriel was coming in. They paused long enough to clap palms in a friendly handshake and exchange quick greetings.
“Why was Sol here?” Gabe asked when he joined us.
“Let’s head to the armory,” I said. “We’ll fill you in on the way.”
Since it was closing in on the time when we would need to get out into the field for the night, we could talk while we got ready. I told him about the possible plea bargain for the Triple Six as we crossed the yard in the fading light.
“In terms of simplicity, that’s the best potential outcome,” my partner said. “It’ll save you and Dylan a trip to the witness stand, and the whole story won’t have to be trotted out again.”
He wasn’t wrong. I hadn’t had a chance to mull it over, but the small, vindictive part of me that had been hoping for a death sentence across the board was shrinking in favor of reason. A life behind bars was no life at all.
Hugo entered the code and unlocked things as we talked, the conversation moving seamlessly to the hellhound incident that morning.
“I wanted to tell you that the silver bullets work,” I said, heading for the section of weapons that belonged to me.
“Who had to shoot one last night?” Gabe asked.
I strapped a trio of stakes into my left boot. “Actually, I shot one this morning outside my apartment building.”
My partner glanced toward our leader and I interrupted before he could ask. “Hugo already knows. Meredith had to come fix Creed’s arm afterward. I’ll tell you all about it later, but suffice to say they’re brazen enough to come into town where there are more people. And, the silver bullet idea was a good one on Garret’s part.”
“Let’s go check out the area tonight, see if we can figure out what lured it there. Did you get any details about where it was hiding?” Gabriel asked as he added a few bolts to his quiver.
“No, I didn’t look too closely. There were a few people watching, and Creed was hurt so we went straight inside after I killed it.”
“That’s okay, we’ll go do that now. Hugo, if it’s good with you, Remi and I will take town tonight?”
“Good. Aric and I will cover ground near the lake, where the two of you killed those other hounds night before last.”
I pulled my jacket on over the holsters for knives that I wore and double checked my weaponry. Stakes, throwing knives, silver daggers, holy water, extra mags… My handgun never left the small of my back, so once I zipped up my jacket, I was fully strapped with the addition of my bow and quiver.
“I’m ready when y’all are,” I announced.
“Slow poke,” Aric said, crunching a peanut M&M between his teeth. “Too much talking going on—I was ready ten minutes ago.”
“Keep talking like that and I’ll hide all the Dr. Peppers,” I warned.
He feigned horror. “You monster. You wouldn’t.”
“Try me,” I grinned.
It was a welcome change of pace to leave the armory with some levity, even under the shadow of uncertainty we experienced each night. We parted ways at the end of the driveway: Gabe and I going left into Dove Creek, Hugo and Aric to the right toward the lake.
“I just need to call Dylan real quick, while we’re on the way in. I told Sol I’d let him know about our dad’s trial.”
“Sure thing,” Gabe said. “I’m just gonna go park at Bobby Sue’s like we usually do, so we can cover some ground on foot tonight.”
“Perfect. I’ll just be a minute.”
I pulled out my phone and hit my brother’s name in the recent contacts. He answered after only a couple rings, and I told him what the detective had asked me to relay. His relief was palpable enough to travel over a wireless connection, the momentary silence heavy in the air.
“Dyl? You still with me?”
“Huh? Yeah, yeah… still here. I was just thinking about how I didn’t wanna testify, and now I won’t have to if it works out.”
The ordeal had been horrific for all of us involved, but Dylan had had the added torment of not only coming to find our father’s lifeless body in my grip but to have witnessed Diana’s murder and been taken hostage by Cerise’s sycophants. It didn’t strain logic to understand why he wouldn’t want to relive that night.
“One other thing, then I have to go… Solomon was on his way to see Joss. He said he didn’t want to tell us about it since it wasn’t his news to tell, but it didn’t sound good.”
“Wonder what it is?”
“No doubt you’ll find out soon enough. But I wanted you to know in case she needs a shoulder.”
“Thanks, Rem. Y’all be safe tonight.”
“Always. Talk to you later.”
&nb
sp; Gabe swung his car into the narrow parking lot of Bobby Sue’s Diner and chose an empty spot that faced the sidewalk. “Do you think Joss is okay? I can’t imagine she’s in some kind of trouble.”
“No, I don’t think it was that,” I said as I popped the latch on my seatbelt. “It didn’t sound terrible or urgent, but Sol said it wasn’t good news.”
“Then I guess we’ll find out if she wants us to.”
The diner didn’t get a big dinner rush on Mondays, so there was no one around when we got out and got our bows and quivers into place. It was getting dark so early, people didn’t seem to be out as much. But the coming Friday marked the beginning of the holiday shopping season, which meant that would soon change.
The small apartment complex I lived in was about three blocks in front of us, the two-story buildings just visible above the rooflines of the houses in between. We started walking, and I recalled what had happened the last time my partner and I had come this way. I was certain I would never be able to erase the image of him bleeding and unconscious on the pavement while Valan threatened me.
My steps stuttered for a few paces before I fell back into rhythm.
“All right there?” Gabe asked.
“Yup. Fine and dandy.” He gave me the side-eye, and I shrugged in return. “What?”
“For one, you just said ‘fine and dandy.’ And second, you’re obviously not.”
“My brain’s just all over the place right now,” I admitted. “The Triple Six trial… Creed… this hellhound thing. I guess I’m jumpy. And then I thought about when you and I came this way a few months ago.”
“Let’s take a minute, then,” he said, pausing on the sidewalk. “I don’t want you to get hurt because you’re distracted.”
“I can usually tune it all out…”
“I know you can. Let’s talk through the hellhound attack this morning. Maybe that will help you get your thoughts in order. Unless there’s something else you want to talk about?”
“No, that’s good. That’s what I need to focus on, anyway,” I said.
I took him through the order of how things happened, how we noticed the smell of the thing and flushed it out rather than it coming after us, how I incinerated it with the Holy Light, Creed’s broken arm… Every detail I could recall.
“Do you know exactly where it was hiding before it attacked Creed?”
“Not exactly since I was so far away, but there’s only one place it could’ve been.”
“Let’s go check it out, if you’re ready.”
“I’m ready.”
We resumed our short trek, and while my thoughts were still weighty, I didn’t feel as scattered as when we set out. And Gabriel was right: Distraction could lead to disaster if we ran into trouble.
We had to cross the parking lot to get to my building, where my Jeep was parked but Creed’s Escalade was not. Like I had expected him to come back when he ran out on me as fast as a chicken with a fox in the coop?
I led the way around the side of the building where we had killed the hellhound. There was an alcove under the stairs and between the entries to the lower level apartments where our mailboxes were located, which was the hidey-hole I assumed the beast had used. Gabe pulled out his phone and turned on the flashlight to see better and poke around inside it.
“I wonder if they’re susceptible to sunlight like their vampire owners,” he said.
“I’m not sure. From this angle, we were never in direct sunlight since it was so early, but this faces north and isn’t in full sun at all this time of year. It might have chosen its spot well.”
He muttered something to himself that sounded like ‘inconclusive,’ while taking his mental notes, and I couldn’t have agreed more. There was a lot of inconclusive going around.
Shining his light in all the corners, he came to an abrupt stop. He plucked something from under the small bank of mailboxes and studied it for a moment.
“Rem, come here. You need to see this.”
Chapter 9
I left my post outside the alcove, watching for intruders of either the human or vampire variety, and turned to Gabriel to look at what he had found. He held up an arrow.
Not just any arrow—one of mine. No one else would carry silver broadheads with wooden shafts.
“That could have come from anywhere,” I said. “I do live right upstairs.”
“Look closer. It’s bloody. Two of the wings on the head are bent.”
So it was an arrow I had shot and it had hit my target. That much was obvious. But what had been my target? If the hellhound had carried the arrow here…
“It’s from the vampire I hit in the gut the other night, isn’t it?”
“I think he sent this hound after you in retaliation. It might be time to rethink our strategy. If every time we leave a vamp wounded, it comes after one of us, it’s not worth the risk.”
I nodded in agreement. That hadn’t been a factor when we were discussing the plan not to eject the demons from their hosts. Still, I wasn’t sure it was worth throwing out the entire playbook because I had called the wrong play.
“What if we leave nothing behind? Leave nothing to track. This was an early misstep.”
One I could chalk up to being distracted by what the bloodsucker had been wheezing on about. I had been more focused on the information our interrogation had divulged than on cleaning up after ourselves. But to be fair to myself, my partner hadn’t thought about the arrow, either.
“You have a point,” Gabe said, coming out of the alcove and back onto the sidewalk.
He stuck the arrow in his own quiver, where it stood out like a giant among men. I guessed that was the idea—in mine, it was identical to all the others and I might pull it by mistake.
Squatting down, he took his light and studied the smudge of blood the hellbeast had left on the edge of the sidewalk and in the dormant yellow grass. It was a red so dark it was nearly black, and looked oily and sludgy. The kind of stain that would take a good pressure wash from the maintenance crew to be cleaned off, and even then I wasn’t sure that would get rid of it.
“You said the body incinerated when you hit it with your light?”
“Yeah, it completely withered away.”
Gabe righted himself and switched off the light, put his phone back in his pocket.
“Next time we come across a hellhound, can you try killing it with just the light?”
“You bet. With a gun in my other hand.”
He chuckled. “Better safe than sorry.”
“Do you wanna walk for a little while, see if there are any other hounds that found a place to hole up for the day?”
“Yes, definitely. If you’re good for that?”
“My lid’s screwed on straight now. Promise.”
As long as I didn’t think too closely about the possibility of an encore performance from Valan.
The thing was, though, in gaining more control over the Holy Light, I felt less afraid. My only hang-up was if the ancient vampire got the drop on my partner again. I knew I could handle a threat to myself alone.
We made a strategic loop through the apartment complex, eyeballing all the alcoves and other areas that would have provided protection from the sun during the day. Though we didn’t know for certain the hellhounds had to avoid the rays, it was a likely assumption.
Once we all-cleared the quartet of buildings, we moved on to the neighborhood that lay between the rentals and the city center. Christmas lights were already showing up in the rows of neat little houses, but for every eave and fence that sported the twinklers, another porch still held pumpkins and little hay bales as though the owners were resolute in hanging on to fall until they had had their fill of turkey.
“So how is Creed doing after everything that’s happened?”
I hesitated, a noncommittal sound coming from the back of my throat. “It’s…” It sucks. He suddenly doesn’t want to be around me. I think I overstepped. “Complicated.”
Gabe glan
ced at me. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry. When I asked earlier what was bothering you, Creed was on your list.”
“No need to apologize. You’re not prying. But I feel like I’m always unloading my baggage right onto your doorstep, and that’s not fair to you.”
“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want to help. Besides, I vent to you, too, when I need to. I know your ear is always available,” Gabe said.
We reached the row of identical buildings that held all the entities relevant to running our small town: post office, city office, activity center, among others. They were all dim for the night, only street lamps and security lights inside on at the increasingly late hour. I paused in front of the city office, under one of the steel awnings that overhung the sidewalk.
“And it is, but you don’t have many occasions to exercise that tit for tat. You have to admit, I have far more problems to bend your ear about than you do mine,” I insisted.
“That may be the reality of your situation now, but there may come a time when it’s me who’s in need more.”
“Doubt it,” I muttered. “You always have your crap together.”
His lips turned up ever so slightly. “Mostly,” he agreed. “I stayed after you for a long time to open up to me—I’m not afraid of what’s there and I asked for it. So don’t feel like you’re some kind of burden to me, because you’re not.”
I shook my head and blinked hard a few times. “I don’t deserve you. Not after the way I treated you for so long.”
“Let’s not go there. I wasn’t always the easiest to get along with, so let’s not dredge up past sins.” He put an arm around my shoulders and gave me a squeeze. “Come on… Miss Ginger’s is open for a few more minutes. Let’s hurry and get some coffees to go since it’s getting cold out here.”
* * *
The next couple days sailed by without us seeing any more sign of hellhounds, but we wound a couple vamps to the point of being incapable of harming the humans they were hunting. It remained to be seen whether they, too, would seek revenge for their injuries, so we all stayed on our guard in case of any more demon dogs lying in wait.
There was still an uncrossable chasm that lay between Creed and me, but he was at least being polite about it. As in, not running from the room when I tried to talk to him. But I gave him his space. I knew what it was to want time and room to breathe, think, and process.
Three Times Burned: A Paranormal Fantasy (Remington Hart Book 3) Page 7