“I think I better,” Carwyn said. “That’ll make it understandable when I drop out of sight. No one wants to deal with an explosive woman.”
“I like this jacket,” she said. “And I haven’t exploded for years. Yer goin’ to owe me. Big-time.”
“I appreciate you always, darling girl.” He rubbed his hands together. “Now, how shall we do this?”
“Wait.” She raised a hand and caught the eye of the hostess. “Eat first. Fight later.”
* * *
Brigid snarled and raised a hand to slap him, but he caught her wrist.
“Don’t even think about it.” His voice rumbled under the pulsing music of the club.
“You think you can accuse me of that and get away with it?”
Brigid was feeling… What was the American phrase? Full of piss and vinegar? She’d fed from the girl near the entrance of the club that had bragged of clean living, and Brigid had to admit a full belly of all-organic human blood really did hit the spot.
“Oh, I wasn’t accusing” —Carwyn sneered— “I’m telling you. I don’t share, Brigid.”
“But you think I do?” She bared her fangs. “You think I don’t see how you look at her? How you look at all of them?”
They were on their feet outside the booth, and every eye in the bar was on them.
Brigid could already feel her skin heating.
“You think I’m an eejit?” Carwyn said. “You think I don’t see how it is?”
“Oh, and how is it?” She yelled, “Do tell me, Father!”
“You’re half in love with him! Act like a lapdog. He says jump and you say ‘How high, Your Majesty?’”
“Take it back!” She rose on her toes, and tendrils of smoke started curling around her. She heard shuffling and saw humans running for the exit as her eyesight turned red.
“You’re gonna have to go fast,” Carwyn yelled in Irish. “I think I see someone with a fire extinguisher.”
“Kiss my arse, I hate those things!” she screamed back, also in Irish.
Carwyn let loose with a stream of unintelligible Welsh that Brigid had no hope of understanding. She yelled back, and the air started to crackle around her.
“Fire vampire!” someone yelled, and the entire bar erupted in chaos.
Brigid tried to keep the blast in a controlled perimeter, but as always, the fire unfurled outward, pushing flames away from her body and devouring anything in their path. The last thing she remembered seeing was Carwyn winking at her and mouthing “love you” as he flung himself backward and took shelter behind the bar.
* * *
Cold air bit her skin, glass rained down, and Brigid felt rain falling. She looked up out of a pile of rubble and saw the remains of Down West burning around her.
The rain wasn’t rain but an errant spray from a broken sprinkler system. A pipe was bent and shooting water across the giant hole in the ceiling above the spot where Brigid was crouched.
She stood up, naked save for a half-burned boot and a single sleeve, and gingerly picked her way through the rubble. Before she could make it to the entrance, a cold hand curled around her neck and flung her back into a charred booth.
“What did you do to my bar?” Scarlet screamed. “Are you a fucking newborn?”
Brigid’s fangs dropped, and her skin prickled. The fire crawling around her drew close, fluttering against her skin and teasing her senses.
Scarlet fell back, survival beating anger. “Just go. Go and do not ever come back here.”
“Smart,” Brigid whispered. “Where did he go?”
“The priest? I don’t know. He took off. Now get out of here!”
Brigid walked through what remained of the black glass door leading out to the street. She was hanging on the edge of control. The temptation to spread her arms and let the fire take over was strong. She’d watch the immortals around her blacken and twist in the vortex of her heat, their bodies charring in the warm light of elemental fire. She could watch as the building behind her turned to ash and crumbled.
It would feel so good.
The fire inside only ever lived on the edge of Brigid’s control. It swelled her veins and ignited her basest instincts. When the fire owned her, Brigid was every inch the monster humans saw in their nightmares.
She left the charred remains of Down West and turned right with no thought for her own nakedness or care for whatever eyes found her in the night.
A homeless man walking along Saint Padre Avenue stopped in his tracks, staring at her. He took the cigarette from his mouth and held it out with a trembling hand.
Yeah. That looked good. Brigid took the cigarette, lit it from her smoldering jacket, and took a drag as she continued down the sidewalk. “Thanks a million.”
“You’re welcome,” the old man said. “Say, do you need some help, young lady?”
Brigid turned. “I’m grand, but thanks.”
She realized she was putting on quite the show, but Carwyn had probably driven a good distance to get away from prying eyes, so she kept walking, grateful for the cloak of night. Luckily it was late. Other than a surprised coyote, she didn’t encounter another creature until she heard the familiar rumble of the Bronco engine down a side street.
She took off her single shoe and the jacket sleeve, tossed them in a nearby skip, and walked to the Bronco where her husband was holding out a blanket to wrap around her.
“Brilliant work as always, wife.”
“What were you yelling at the end there?”
“Prayers to Saint Jude. You looked terrifying.” He opened the car door for her. “Did you see Scarlet?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think she suspects anything?”
“About him? No, it was pure chaos. It’ll be a while before she realizes he’s missing.” She climbed in the car and saw Daniel Siva curled in the back seat. “If I had to kill my favorite jacket, at least the ploy worked.”
“We need to get some food in him,” Carwyn said. “Need to dry him out a bit and get him thinking straight. All he’s done so far is ask when Scarlet is coming to get him.”
“Fuck, he’s well gone, isn’t he?”
“He is. Also, the sun’s up in an hour. We need to find an empty house or somewhere light safe that’s secure enough for him too. In about an hour, we’re both going to be dead to the world.”
“Do you have my phone?” Brigid asked.
“Swiped if off you when you started to steam up.”
“Good man. Give me a minute and I’ll find us an empty safe house. I can’t guarantee it’ll be comfortable, but I can guarantee it’ll be dark.” Brigid still felt jittery and on edge. “Then I’m going to need a bit of your blood. I could use a little grounding.”
“I’m yours.” He held out his hand and squeezed hers as they drove out of Palm Desert. “But let’s get safe first.”
Chapter Eleven
“Hello?” The voice echoed down the hall. “I heard something. Helloooo?”
Brigid’s eyes flickered open in the darkness. The walk-in closet had plush new carpeting with a thick rug pad. Lying on top of their sleeping bags and cuddled up to her mate, Brigid was far from uncomfortable.
A quick internet search the night before had given Brigid the address of a brand-new development on the edge of La Quinta. There was a news article in the paper about construction being halted since the builder had gone bankrupt, but pictures online showed four beautifully intact—and empty—model homes.
There were numerous reasons to dislike modern home construction in the United States. The McMansions cropping up across the American Southwest were far bigger than anyone needed, used non-native building materials, and were ecologically unfriendly. Plus they continued population booms in areas where the natural environment couldn’t support human growth.
They did, however, have enormous and comfortable walk-in-closets and spacious garages.
Carwyn and Brigid had hidden the Bronco in the empty three-car garage and secured Dan
iel in one of the king-sized bathrooms on the second floor before they looked for light-safe spaces to hide in.
Brigid had to do some convincing if she didn’t want to end up sleeping in a hole in the ground, but the walk-in closet in the main bedroom proved safe enough for Carwyn’s stringent standards after they set up a variety of security measures, makeshift locks, and alarms that would wake him should anyone trespass.
“Hellooooo?” Daniel rattled the chain where they’d attached his handcuffs in the bathroom. “Hey! If you’re really not going to hurt me, will you fucking let me go?”
Carwyn rolled over and threw one arm over her waist, snuggling closer as he let out a deep breath. “He’s been like this for the past hour. I think he knows we’re vampires.”
“And yet he has no fear. Where did we go wrong?” She closed her eyes and reveled in the steady warmth at her back. “You smell good.”
“Are you still hungry?”
“No, I’m fine. Feeling good actually. Are you going to need to hunt tonight?”
“I’ll see what I can find. I’m not to the point where I’ll eat anything, but I wouldn’t pass up a bighorn sheep if I can find one.”
“Mmm. Fuzzy.” She nuzzled into his chest. “Is that why your chest is so hairy? All the wildlife?”
“That and my wife hates it when I wax.”
Brigid cringed. “Don’t even like thinking about it.”
“Heeellooooooo?”
She groaned. “I suppose we should wake up and let him stretch his legs.”
Carwyn rolled up to sitting and muttered, “We gave him plenty of space in the bathroom and a variety of gas station sandwiches and bottled beverages. I don’t know what he’s complaining about.”
“Not feeling very charitable, are we?”
Carwyn raised an eyebrow. “The girl is missing, and he was partying with vampires in Palm Desert. You’d better be the one to talk to him because I’m liable to snap his neck.”
“Understood.” She stood and stretched her arms up and out. Her muscles weren’t tight. Her body didn’t need to be warmed up. Whether she was sleeping or not, she kept a fairly even room temperature. Still, the stretching was habit and it felt good.
Before she walked out of the closet, she turned to her husband. “He’s an addict. You know that, right? Just because it’s vampires and not drugs doesn’t make it any less an addiction.”
Carwyn took a deep breath. “When you were at your worst, would you have abandoned a child who was depending on you?”
Brigid thought back to the haziest days when heroin controlled her life. “I don’t know. I’d like to say I wouldn’t, but I honestly don’t know.”
Carwyn frowned, then nodded slowly. “Okay.”
It was so hard for someone who hadn’t been there to understand the desperation, the justifications, the fear.
Brigid changed the subject. “Have you already talked to Beatrice tonight?”
“I called her as soon as I woke and asked if she’d seen anything on Lupe’s mobile phone, but there was nothing.” He drummed his fingers on his knee. “What are we at? Ten days?”
“I think so. She’s got to have a burner.” Brigid was praying she had a burner. She threw some clothes on, walked down to the bathroom where Daniel was making noise, and knocked. “Daniel, I’m coming in.”
Brigid gave it a minute, then opened the door and saw Daniel Siva sitting with his back against the bathtub, his cuffed arms in front of him, the chain attached around the base of the toilet. He was pale and looked thin, but other than that, he was fine.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Forget me,” Brigid said. “Where is Lupe?”
His guilty eyes made Brigid’s stomach drop.
“She’s not home?”
“No, Daniel. She’s not home.”
His face drained of color. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Brigid crouched down to eye level with him. “You took a seventeen-year-old girl away from her family and out to the desert to help you on some mad mission to break into a federal detention center. And now you don’t know where she is?”
“I left her at the hotel, okay? She had plenty of money. She should have gotten a bus back to LA. Hell, with as much cash as I left with her, she could have taken a taxi back home.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Fuck!”
“Daniel, why did you leave her at a hotel?”
“I went by my mother’s house because I had some camping stuff there, okay? Where this detention center was, I figured we’d have to be camping, so I went there to get my stuff. And fucking Warren found me.”
“Warren?”
“One of Scarlet’s people.”
“So Scarlet was watching your old house? You didn’t think she’d know you’d come back to town?”
Daniel shrugged. “It’s been three years. I thought she’d have given up looking for me by now.”
Brigid crossed her legs and sat in the doorway. “That’s not the way it is with our kind. We can get possessive. Territorial.”
Daniel glanced at Brigid’s mouth. “What are you planning to do with me?”
“I’m not going to bite you if that’s what you’re hoping.” She couldn’t help but feel sorry for the boy. He looked strung out and desperate. “You’re going to tell us where the hotel is, where the detention center is, and what the plan was. I suspect Lupe thought she was going to go through with whatever you had planned without you.”
The seriousness of the situation seemed to finally break through. “That’s nuts. She’s a kid. There’s no way—”
“Does she seem like a flighty girl to you, Daniel? Someone unserious? Immature?”
His mouth settled into a line. “No.”
“I suspect you and she both know what’s happened in some of those detention centers, don’t you? Sexual abuse. Physical abuse. Children disappearing with no record of where they went.”
“I know all that. Why do you think we were going to—?”
“Why do you think she would have turned back when the stakes were so high?” Brigid stood up. “You had a plan. She was carrying it through because it was important. That’s the kind of person she is. Does that surprise you?”
He swallowed hard. “I guess not.”
“What was the plan?” Brigid asked. “What was the next step?”
“There’s a place out in the desert,” he said quietly. “Kind of a squatter’s community. It’s called Liberty Springs. People go there in the winter when it’s not too hot. It’s off the grid. Good place to disappear if you need to. I called some friends there, and they were going to help us get the kids out, get them someplace safe. The Springs is only a few miles from the place the girl was talking about.”
“Did Lupe know this?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “I gave her the numbers out there, but that was just in case she got lost or something, you know? I didn’t expect her to go out there on her own.”
“Does she have a phone?”
“Yeah. One of mine.”
Brigid walked over and hauled Daniel to his feet. “I need the phone number, I need the name of the hotel, and I need you to clean yourself up. Take a shower. Eat something. You’re going to help us find Lupe and bring her home.”
* * *
They parked in front of the Desert Dweller Motor Lodge, and Brigid was not pleased by how many giant trucks were parked along the curb. “It’s a trucker hotel?”
Daniel was sitting in the back seat, freshly showered, having just downed a double hamburger and a large amount of cola. Brigid could tell by his scent he needed about a dozen more burgers and a lot more water before he’d even be approaching the healthy young man he’d been before Scarlet had ensnared him again.
“It’s just a place. It’s cheap and you can use cash and no one asks any questions, you know?”
“What room were you in?” Brigid was hoping beyond hope that they would knock on the door and find a frightened but safe
Lupe still waiting for Daniel.
“207.” He nodded toward the sprawling two-story building. “’Bout halfway down that side there.”
Carwyn, who had remained mostly silent since they’d taken off, finally spoke. “Young man, you should pray that she’s in that room waiting for you.”
Daniel didn’t say a word.
They approached the building, and Brigid kept her radar out for any immortal eyes. This was exactly the type of place an opportunistic vampire would look for a quick and easy meal, so it was entirely possible that Scarlet’s people had spotted Daniel here and not at his mother’s house as he suspected.
“Anything?” Brigid asked quietly.
“Nothing I’m picking up.”
Carwyn’s radar was far more attuned than hers in situations like this. She walked up the covered stairwell, pushing Daniel in front of her, and followed him until he came to the door of room 207.
He knocked.
Nothing.
Knocked again.
Dead silence.
“You smell anything?”
Carwyn shook his head. “Nothing. There’s no human behind that door.”
Brigid’s heart sank. Dammit, damn, damn bollocks, and damn. “Okay, let’s go to the front office.”
Carwyn nodded toward Daniel. “Do you want to take him with us, or…?
“You know what?” Brigid glanced back at the young man, who looked like a sword was hanging over his neck. “Take him to the car. I’ll talk to the front desk myself.”
She ignored Carwyn and Daniel as they retreated to the Bronco and she walked to the office, which was fronted by a faded carport and a dusty green carpet on the sidewalk. She pushed open the door and heard the clang of bells as she entered the room.
There was a half-sleeping man in a white undershirt and a cowboy hat sitting in the lobby, propped near a corner television where reruns of a detective show buzzed in the background. Behind the desk, a tired, middle-aged woman with dark red hair and a stained blue T-shirt was texting on her phone. She glanced up when Brigid approached, then looked at her phone again.
Saint’s Passage: Elemental Covenant Book One Page 9