Last Exit

by Catie Rhodes

  Desiree sat on the hood of the car, long legs swinging. In her lap was a spear with a knife affixed to the end. Amazon goddess. The kind of woman who’d leap out of a tree to cut her enemy’s throat. Our eyes locked, and she gave me a slight nod.

  I glanced back at Wade to find him watching me expectantly. Not too long ago, I’d have run for him, thrown my arms around him. But not now. Whatever passion that had lurked between us had crashed and died a fiery death. My eyes ran over the owl tattoo sleeve on his arm. We’d come so far and lost so much since the night we met. I swallowed against a Texas-sized lump in my throat.

  Wade blinked several times. He set his axe on the hood of the car and came to me, his steps hesitant. He pulled me into his arms. Into my ear, he whispered, “I may not be the kind of man you wanted, but maybe I can be the kind of friend you need.”

  I put my arms around his waist and hugged him back, the ache of disappointment in what could never be welling in my chest and then fading.

  He let go and stared into my face. “You look pretty good for a dead woman. Or was that screaming, crying call I got from Hannah a joke?”

  “I wasn’t crying,” Hannah yelled from behind me.

  Wade snorted. “What are we doing here?”

  “Oscar will be here soon to fight to the death. Go for his headdress and his sword. I can’t take over the hunt without those two things.” I glanced at Desiree and nodded, silently thanking her for coming.

  “What about killing his soul like I suggested?” Her eyes flicked over me, sharp with challenge. I gulped. Now I’d have to tell her how I both succeeded and failed.

  “I found the soul, but I didn’t have enough power to kill it. I called in help and got betrayed. Oscar’s got it now in this root-like thing.” My cheeks heated at how stupid I’d been.

  “It was a mandrake root,” Mysti said from nearby. “Some folklore names it as a vessel for spirits.”

  Desiree studied her as though she just might tell her to piss off. Mysti gave her a forty-yard stare right back. Power crackled off both women. Both used to being the wise one, the one everybody looked to for answers, they saw each other as competition.

  Desiree turned her attention on me. “So we’re going to take the headdress and sword. Once we do, you’re going to have to call the hunt. That takes a lot of magic. I’m assuming you still don’t have the full measure of your power.”

  I showed her the dram and explained my dilemma. She shook her head as though she was dealing with a tedious bank teller instead of facing death at Oscar’s hands. She lit a cigarette as though she had all the time in the world and squinted one eye at me.

  “So what we have here is a lot of ifs. If you drink the magic potion. If we get the headdress and sword.” She blew smoke in my face. "Here’s the problem. The Wild Hunt isn’t made up of humans. It’s spirit.”

  Mysti bristled. “Not necessarily. Other legends have the hunters as gods, like Woden. Sometimes the hunters are the fae.”

  The corner of Desiree’s mouth twitched. Whether out of anger or a desire to laugh, I couldn’t tell. “And we’re neither gods nor fae.”

  Mysti pressed her lips together in concentration. I’d come to know Mysti well. She liked being the expert. Desiree came off as a combination of femme warrior, full of confidence and easy knowledge. This must have challenged Mysti. She would want to one-up Desiree. I didn’t see a point. Oscar would come. We’d fight him. Then we’d live or die. Who cared who was right? Finally Mysti turned to me, eyes bright. Eureka. She’d found what she knew that Desiree didn’t.

  “If Peri Jean successfully sheds the scar tissue spell and absorbs the mantle, she’ll be the Gregorius Witch.” She gripped my arm. “You’ll call the hunt as an Old One. That’s how this will work. We will be swept up as your chosen court and hunt as such.” She gave Desiree a chilly smile. “Now you let me ask you a question.”

  Desiree’s lip twitched again. This time, she let it become a smile. “Go ahead.”

  “If you think we won’t win, why be here?” Mysti asked the question as though she might consider telling Desiree and Wade to hit the road.

  Desiree jabbed one thumb at her brother. “This is what he’s chosen. I’ll stand with him.”

  Mysti drew back. She understood that. She was loyal to her brother too.

  Shelly, who’d been watching the exchange from a short distance away, came over and gripped my arm. “Let’s go to the crossroads. Let Oscar find us there.”

  I nodded. “Good point. We don’t want him tearing up Dr. Danny’s Ghost Town.”

  “I don’t give a shit about that,” Shelly snapped.

  Desiree cut in. “We go to the crossroads because on this night, the veil is thin. It’s even thinner there.” She then addressed Shelly. “I take it you’ve called in reinforcements other than us?”

  Shelly nodded.

  “Who?” As leader, I needed to know.

  “The vengeful dead,” Mysti said. “Brad and I contacted them.” Brad watched from nearby.

  I raised my eyebrows at him. He raised his eyebrows and gave me one of his surly smirks.

  “We don’t have your talent, but we can do it,” His words carried a dignity that did not match his scraggly goatee and new tattoos.

  I nodded my thanks. “Good job.”

  Tubby joined us. “I made some phone calls.”

  His meth army. I forced a smile and patted his back. Had I been consulted, I’d have told him not to bring them in. But it was done. No point in arguing now.

  Finn approached. “Dr. Danny’s getting antsy. We need to go.”

  “I’ll ride with you.” Without waiting for a response, I turned and began walking.

  Finn followed me to his beat-up truck. He walked with his head down, his hands jammed in his pockets. We got to the truck, and Finn stood in front of the passenger door.

  “What is it?” I wanted to push him out of the way and just get inside. Any more drama, and I was going to start crying and not be able to stop.

  “Dillon’s upset, afraid of losing your respect for running with the kids.” He shuffled his feet in the dirt.

  I gripped his skinny arm. “She’d lose my respect if she didn’t take those kids and Jadine somewhere safe.”

  If I lost, I could only hope Oscar wouldn’t go looking for them. At one time, he’d coveted Zora’s gift of raising the dead. Though that gift seemed to fade more with each passing month, as Cecil had warned it would, Zora was still a powerful little girl.

  “Listen to me.” I stepped into Finn’s personal space. “If I fall, get in your truck and go. Don’t look back. Just meet up with your family and run.”

  He stared at me with sad eyes. “If Oscar kills you tonight, we’re all dead eventually. He’ll find us. Might take a week, might take years. But he’ll find us.”

  I knew. But I’d hoped Finn hadn’t realized it. Finn held open the door for me. I climbed in. Feeling someone’s stare on my back, I turned. Wade pointed at the car he and Desiree had come in. I smiled and shook my head.

  Nope. Never again. Not with a man who openly told me I’d never be enough. Even though I’d always love him in some small way.

  Finn drove us away from Boone’s Ghost Town as his wife drove his kids in another direction. I glanced back at the place and sent Dr. Danny a silent well-wish.

  18

  Finn parked on the steeply slanted shoulder of the crossroads. I got out of the truck and stared at the inky sky. Just like the first night we went there, both roads were deserted and still. No noise from animals of the night. No whisper of wind through the squatty trees. A full moon beamed down from a clear, starlit sky. But in the distance, thunder rumbled. The hunt was coming.

  Our rag-tag group got out of their cars and wandered over to me. We huddled in a circle. Brad stood next to Mysti and Griff. I was glad he had convinced Jadine to run the other way with Dillon and the kids. What a relief.

  Shelly and Finn stood together, arms around each other, both hollow-eyed an
d sad. Tubby and Hannah, heads close together, talked in low voices. Wade and Desiree, both tall and strong with fierce eyes, stood so close together they nearly touched. Though Wade had black hair and Desiree colored hers blonde, the family resemblance was hard to miss.

  They all waited for my orders. It was time for us to talk strategy. We had none. Until I gained full control of the mantle, we couldn’t actually beat Oscar.

  But I had the magic potion, as Desiree called it. I could just drink it right now. See if it killed me or fixed me. I tugged at it but couldn’t move it.

  A sadness so deep and sure it almost felt like peace spread through me. We were stuck. We couldn’t win. We couldn’t run. All we could do was try to go out with honor. Honor needed purpose.

  I climbed up on a rock so everybody could hear. Before I could speak, the sound of car engines drifted to the crossroads. A freezing wind whipped through, so strong it peppered dust against my skin. Something was coming. I tensed, hoping I hadn’t run out of time.

  Two sets of headlights appeared, coming toward us. They flickered out but then reappeared stronger than ever.

  Brad came to stand beside me. “It’s Cecil.”

  My respect for him went up several notches. Right then, I let go of my worry that Brad would never make it as a Gregg. He was going to do just fine.

  The car, a 1950s four-door Chevy with cat-eye fins, drew abreast of us and shut off. Cecil got out. He wasn’t the Cecil I had known. This Cecil had a full head of black hair and a layer of muscle. He looked like somebody you crossed the street to avoid. He also floated several inches off the ground.

  His dark eyes settled on me. “You ready to fight, girl?”

  I came close to Cecil, ignoring the cold radiating off him and pointed at the dram. “I still haven’t done it. The Wanderer said I had to find the root of the scar tissue. I can’t drink this until I do.”

  Cecil, still my mentor and elder even as a ghost, said, “Don’t give up until you’re dead. I brought you an army. They’ll buy you the time you need.” He gestured at the ghost car he’d come in.

  A moon-faced man with slicked-back black hair got out of the passenger side of Cecil’s car. This was Samuel Herrera, the fraternal twin of my great-great grandmother, Samantha. He flipped the car’s seat down. Samantha Herrera and her mother, Priscilla, climbed out.

  Another ghost car, one I recognized, rolled to a stop behind Cecil’s. The Nova had been my car until a bunch of bullies burned it up. The driver’s door cracked open, and a very young man with longish black hair got out.

  “Daddy,” I whispered and ran to him.

  He held out his arms, and I hugged him as best as I could. Usually, he had a smile for me. Not this time. His sad eyes met mine. “It’s time for you to meet your destiny.”

  “You say that like it’s the end.” I fingered the cold dram of potion hanging on my chest. Would I lose myself in all this?

  “It is the end of my little girl.” One translucent hand touched my face, sending a chill through my body.

  Eddie Kennedy got out of the car’s passenger side and approached, young and strong again, but just as see-through as Paul. He carried a huge sword, its blade blue like ice. I tried to hug him, but my arms passed through his form. He laughed.

  A van pulled up behind the Nova and parked. The door swung open, and Chase Fischer climbed out. In death, he’d gone back to being a teenager. I ran to him, studied the face I’d once loved with all my heart. He pulled a ghostly sawed-off shotgun out of the van and winked at me.

  Heart full, I looked around at all the people who’d come to help me. One was missing. Memaw. Her absence hurt. But she must’ve had her reasons.

  The headlights of another car approached. This one was of our world and looked like a generic rental sedan. It passed the ghost cars and parked behind Finn’s truck. I glanced at Tubby to see if this was who he’d called. He shrugged at me and shook his head.

  Tanner slowly removed himself from the car and softly shut the door. He stared at me, solemn, so like the first day I met him.

  I launched myself at him, unafraid of his rejection, and threw my arms around him. He staggered against the car but wrapped his arms around me. His earthy smell surrounded me, and I was home. I laid my face against his chest.

  “You should have stayed away. You’re going to get hurt.” For the first time, I admitted out loud that I expected to die tonight.

  “Bullshit,” Tanner muttered. “If I had known sooner, I’d never have gotten on the plane to California.”

  “I tried to call you.” Accusation hardened my voice. If Tanner still cared, why had he ignored my calls?

  He dropped his gaze and kicked at the ground. “My phone went missing at the airport.” He tried to laugh, but it just came out as a snort. “Before cellphones, I probably had fifty telephone numbers memorized. Now I don’t know a single one. No way to tell you what had happened.”

  “Then how’d you know I needed you?” I hated the note of disbelief in my voice. But a lost phone was too convenient.

  Tanner frowned. “I had this…I don’t know.”

  Our eyes locked. The vision of him on the plane. It hadn’t been just a dying wish.

  “I saw you on the plane with Dave and Neecie. Did you feel me watching you?” My heart sped at the words. I didn’t understand how it had happened or why. “You said you loved me. Then Neecie said…”

  “It doesn’t matter what she said.” He cut me off. “When she understood I intended to fly right back to Texas and find you, she confessed to throwing my phone away at the airport in Austin.”

  I drew in a sharp breath. “Bitch.”

  He met my angry gaze. “I knew you were in danger. Felt it. I blew them off and got back on the next plane to Texas, rented a car, and…” He gestured at the night sky. He’d just known where to come.

  I thought back to the night I’d laid in the back of Tubby’s Cutlass, dying. I’d written off that moment when I’d been with Tanner on his flight to California as a dream. It had been something more.

  I threw myself at Tanner again. He squeezed me hard, inhaling deeply.

  I grabbed his hand. “My daddy is here. Come on. You can meet him.”

  “Isn’t your father dead?” Tanner studied me, maybe wondering if I’d lost my mind.

  “Yep.” I dragged Tanner over to where I’d last seen my father and the rest of my dead family.

  My father’s ghost stood near Mysti and Brad. Gripping Tanner’s arm, using precious energy to pour some of my ability into him, I dragged him in front of my father.

  “Tanner, this is Paul Mace, my daddy.” I realized as I said the last word that Daddy looked like a kid standing in front of Tanner. I guessed he was. He hadn’t even lived to be twenty-five.

  Tanner held out one trembling hand. Daddy made a show of shaking it, smiling and nodding.

  One last beam of headlights cut the night. By the time it rolled to a stop, I’d identified it as a Mercedes. Only one person in the world would drive a Mercedes to a death match. Rainey Bruce got out of the car and went around to the trunk without speaking to any of us.

  My uncle Jesse got out of the passenger side and stretched. Jesse, my father’s twin, gave me a window into the future Daddy never got to live. Short gray hair, the beginnings of middle-aged thickness around the middle. He hugged me hard.

  Tubby hurried over. “Thanks for coming, dude.”

  Jesse and Tubby did some complicated handshake, and I realized who Tubby had called to help us. He’d told me Jesse came into his billiards hall for a beer most every day. The two men must have become friends of a sort.

  Rainey race-walked back to me, a huge pistol in one hand. “I’m furious with you. How could you not have called me the minute this problem started?”

  She gave me no chance to answer and instead pulled me to her and held me tight.

  Thunder boomed in the distance. Beneath it, the hunt shouted and their hounds bayed. They’d be here soon.

  I l
et go of Rainey and stared into her dark eyes. “Because I didn’t want to watch you get killed.”

  She muttered something tough under her breath but hurried back to her husband. I took stock of the living members of our army. They were under my command. The thought of losing any of them raised a horror worse than any other. I couldn’t live with it. We had to win this thing, one way or the other.

  I climbed back up on the rock I’d chosen earlier. Cecil’s loss swam in my head. He should have been the one doing this. He’d have been better at it. I swallowed the flood of sobs threatening and cleared my throat.

  “These last few days have resulted in terrible loss, but we can end it tonight.” I prayed I was telling the truth. “Hear that thunder? Oscar and his huntsmen will be here soon. Half of you need to fight off whoever Oscar has with him. I’ve seen…” But I couldn’t make myself call the names of all the people who’d hated me in life and still hated me in death. It was like the All-Dead Asshole Hour. So I just finished with, “Whoever fights them needs to be careful. If they kill you, they’ll take your soul and use it to make themselves more powerful.”

  My gaze fell on my father. The fury I saw on his face gave me an idea. “What if everybody who isn’t alive fights the huntsmen?”

  Daddy nodded. The rest of the ghosts agreed. They’d hold off the huntsmen and the motorcycle men. Maybe give the rest of us a chance to get that headdress off Oscar. Between us, we had some real magical firepower. Maybe we could combine it to call the hunt, even if I hadn’t yet taken the potion to kill the scar tissue spell. It might not be a good plan, but it was better than nothing.

  I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “Okay. Then the rest of us are going to fight for the headdress and the sword.”

  Plans went fast after that. We talked about disabling Oscar’s horse and who would do that.