by May Dawson
He didn't glance at me—those green eyes stayed fixed on the horizon—and I realized just what I'd said. I stopped next to a shiny silver Lexus SUV. "This is an unexpected find."
"What's your real dream car?"
"A Corvette."
He pressed his hand to the passenger seat window. "This one has a third row. Let's pretend to negotiate and take this baby home. I'll find you a Corvette for your birthday."
"You think I'm going to live to nineteen?"
"You're too stubborn to die, Firestarter." He leaned against the car, doing his J. Crew pose again. "Like Levi pointed out. You and I are an awful lot alike."
"It's a scary thought."
He reached out, resting his hand on my waist, and pulled me against his body. "Oh, it's damned terrifying. But no wonder I love you."
I grinned despite myself. We weren't saying it for real yet, but we were brushing up against the edges of love, and I felt something in me give with relief. I hadn't screwed up everything between Ryker and me. What was between us was too powerful to be broken by my clumsiness.
"You are so cocky," I accused.
"Just your type."
I wrapped my arms around his neck, tilting my head back, and he kissed me hard.
"Yep," I said. "Can't deny it."
Someone cleared their throat to my right. "May I help you?"
"We'd like to buy this car," Ryker said.
"Ah, okay. I can arrange a test-drive?"
Ryker kissed the corner of my mouth. "Nah. We like to dive right in."
31
I drove the Lexus back while Ryker took the Rover. I pulled into the driveway behind a familiar car. Olivia had flounced her way across the yard to sit in that car, when she was more willing to pass out from heatstroke than hang out with me.
As I threw open my door, Ryker came up alongside me and swore. “What are they doing here?”
“Maybe they’ve realized they’re actually on our side?”
Ryker said, “That would be nice.”
But he didn’t sound hopeful.
He strode toward the house, his pace urgent, as if he were afraid of what he’d find.
Just then, the front doors burst open.
Levi wrestled Nash. Nash swung around, looking for a second as if he were going to pin Levi against the side of the house. Then Levi caught him low in the stomach and shoved him off the porch. Nash fell down the steps, rolled, and jumped up to his feet. Blood streamed down his face.
“What the hell is going on here?” Ryker barked. To Levi, he demanded, “Is Nimshi all right?”
But Levi was already swinging around, as if he were going to charge back into the house. Nash looked around, his eyes narrowed above his bloody nose. As Ryker ran towards the house after Levi, Nash jumped him. The two of them rolled across the gravel, jockeying to get on top and to get a punch in.
The front door burst open.
Olivia ran out of the house, jumping down the porch steps.
Zane was on her heels, and he jumped the steps after her. Olivia made it another step or two. He grabbed her shoulder, wrenching her around.
“You’re going home with us!” Zane barked.
“Get your hands off her!” Nimshi slammed into Zane from behind, knocking him into the dirt. Zane scrabbled in the dirt, but Nimshi rolled Zane over and pinned him. Nim cocked his fist back.
Ryker threw himself away from Nash, his eyes wide with concern, and tackled Nimshi away from Zane. The two brothers rolled over and over.
“What the hell are you doing?” Nim barked at Ryker, looking as if he’d punch him next.
“Saving your ass! You touch a Hunter, the Council will make you a marked man.” Ryker rolled to his feet and then leaned down, offering Nimshi his hand. Nim glowered at him but took his hand, and Ryker hauled him up.
“Oh, he’s already ours,” Nash promised. He touched the corner of his bloody lip thoughtfully. “Your pet demon signed his death warrant in the house, when he got between me and my sister.”
“I’ll tell the Council I asked for his help,” Olivia promised her brother. “Because I was afraid of you. Because you came after me, betraying everything you’re supposed to be as a Hunter—”
“I’m here because I want to protect you, you stupid twit,” Nash said. His chest heaved with effort from the fight. “Come with us or we’re finished. You choose.”
“That’s not cool.” Ryker stepped between Nash and Olivia. He put his hand up as if he were trying to calm the situation down, but Ryker was definitely not the diplomat of the four brothers.
“Stop.” Levi’s voice rang out authoritatively. “We grew up together. I know you just want to look out for Olivia. We can figure this out.”
The doors flew open again. Jacob had his hand on Yale’s shoulder, shoving him out of the house in front of him. Yale had a hard look in his eyes, like he wanted to turn around and try to knock Jacob out. But he held a bloodied hand up to his mouth and staggered slightly on his feet, so when Jacob gave him a push towards the stairs, he went.
We had all looked back towards the doors. I barely caught the flicker of motion out of the corner of my eye.
Zane set towards Nimshi determinedly, a flicker of metal shining in his hand. I lunged after Zane and grabbed his elbow. He side-stepped, off-balance, and the sun glinted off the long blade in his hand. Quick as a flash, Levi grabbed Zane’s shoulders, yanking him back.
“Get away from him,” Ryker barked, putting himself squarely between Nim and Zane. “He’s our goddamn demon. You don’t get to kill him.”
“We just came here for our sister.” Zane held out a placating hand. “I don’t want to fight you.”
“Then walk away,” Nim said. “She’s welcome here as long as she wants to be here.”
“Getting awfully high-handed with our place,” Ryker muttered to him. Then, more loudly, he said, “He’s right though. Olivia wants to be here, Olivia can stay here.”
“No, she can’t,” Zane said. “She’s making us look bad.”
“Wow, what a vote of brotherly concern,” Olivia muttered.
“I’m not losing my status as a Hunter because I’ve been mixed up with you,” Yale said. His voice was thick, either from the blood in his throat or because he was sullen with anger. “I don’t know what’s come over you. The Ryker and Levi I knew didn’t truck with demons.”
“Well, he’s a demon and he’s an asshole, but he’s our brother,” Ryker said. “And you need to leave him alone.”
Nimshi’s eyes caught mine. “I’m finding this oddly touching.”
“Don’t,” Ryker said. “I still haven’t ruled out killing you ourselves as an option on the table. But these assholes aren’t going to.”
Nim rested a hand on Olivia’s shoulder. “Are you all right?”
She nodded, but she was rubbing her wrist, as if she’d been hurt when her brothers tried to drag her out of the house bodily.
“How could you do this?” Levi asked, looking at each of the brothers’ sullen faces in turn. “We’re friends.”
“If we were friends, you would look out for Olivia. You wouldn’t drag her into your mess.” Zane spit a bloody glob into the grass at my feet.
“Right here,” Olivia said. “My own person.”
“You’ve never been able to look after yourself in our world, why would you start now?” Nash snapped.
“Get out of here,” I told Nash, as I stepped forward next to Olivia. “That’s the only way this ends peacefully. You walk away.”
Yale looked past me to Olivia. “Come with us.”
“No,” she said. “They need our help. And even if the rest of you have turned into a bunch of self-centered bastards, I’m going to do what I know damn well is the right thing. Instead of what you want me to do.”
Yale, Nash and Zane glanced at each other. I could see in their calculating gaze that they were trying to gauge how much of a chance they had.
Yale shrugged Jacob’s hand off his shoulder. “
Let’s go. Leave these demon-lovers to it.”
As his brother headed towards the car, Zane took a step away. He glared at Levi over his shoulder as his ducked out of his reach, and fell in beside Yale.
Nash watched his brothers head up the driveway. He glowered at all of us, but he finally took a step back too.
“This isn’t over,” Nash promised us.
“You better hope it is,” Levi told him.
The three brothers walked away. Only when their car had backed too fast down the driveway and disappeared did Olivia stop watching them and turn to me, her eyes wide and stricken.
I hugged her, and I felt her lean her head down on my shoulder as she tried to hold back tears. Her chest shuddered with the effort.
“It’s okay,” I said. “They’re gone for now. They’ll come around.”
I had no idea if what I was saying was true or not.
32
"I can drive," Nimshi offered as the five of us piled into the car.
"Not a chance," Ryker said.
Levi ducked his shoulders to fit into the passenger seat. "It's like a clown car."
"You think everything feels like a clown car," Ryker said.
"It's not the car's fault," Nimshi said as he climbed up into the car. Jacob settled in beside me. Nimshi reluctantly kept going into the third row. "You're built like a moose."
"Maybe he can drive when we get to Connecticut, since he knows where we're going," Levi said.
"I've got GPS," Ryker said. "I don't need Nim."
"Ryker's kind of a control freak about driving," Levi explained.
"Levi once rolled over not one, not two, but three tombstones when we were trying to burn a geist in a cemetery," Ryker said to no one in particular.
"I was a teenager," Levi said.
"Yeah. Your reflexes were sharper than they are now, old man, and you still destroyed a bunch of shit."
"Let's not talk about being old around Jacob," I chided teasingly, since he was the oldest of the four brothers.
"It's a burden, being the old wise one," Jacob said, resting his hand on my thigh. "Trying to bring a little discipline to this outfit."
As we turned around and drove down the driveway, my mom came out on the porch and waved goodbye.
I waved back, and even Ryker raised his fingers from the steering wheel in a salute.
"This has gotten so weird," Ryker said.
"I like having her around," Levi said. "She can cook. She's sweet."
"She has a nice reading voice," Nimshi offered.
"Maybe you guys can just replace me with my mother," I said tartly.
Ryker made the sign of the cross in my general direction. "We like you in a very different way from your mom."
"But it's really cool?" I asked. "My two worlds are colliding and it's okay?"
"Yeah," Levi said. "It's good. I don't know how it's going to work out, but we don't want you to lose your old life."
I nodded. I thought maybe having my mother around would be a burden. But I felt relieved to have my mom safe in the Hunters' house.
Ryker picked up his Gatorade from the center console and pinned it against the steering wheel, twisting it open one-handed.
"Having her around is going to make it a lot harder to have group sex in the hot tub," I said.
Ryker choked on his Gatorade. I grinned as he coughed and dropped the Gatorade back into the cupholder.
"Blue up my nose," he said. "It burns."
"You're an interesting family," Nimshi said.
I glanced at Levi, curious if he picked up on the wistfulness I sometimes saw in Nimshi. Levi met my eyes evenly. His deep blue eyes sparked with interest, and I wished I could talk to him in private.
"Speaking of which," Ryker said, "I'm dying to know more about where something like you comes from."
"You'll see for yourself," Nimshi said. "The horror story that is upper-class life in the suburbs of New York."
"Did you have a pony?" Levi deadpanned.
I slapped my hand over Jacob's. "I have a pony!"
Jacob's lips quirked up. "You have a stallion you don't even know how to ride."
Ryker and Levi exchanged a glance. Ryker crinkled his nose.
Levi said, "Gross, guys."
"Oh, you might be surprised," I promised Jacob, ignoring the rest of them.
Nimshi leaned forward. "Is this guy bothering you?"
"Always," I said.
Nim dangled something over my shoulder, and I caught a glint of metal out of the corner of my eye.
"And here I thought you were going to be some help on the heist," Nimshi said to Jacob. "I guess I'll have to do this all on my own."
I grabbed the silver watch from Nimshi. Jacob slid his fingers down his wrist, searching for his watch and finding only his usual leather cuff.
"Light fingers," Jacob said. "You just keep upgrading my sense of your moral character."
"Oh, come on," Nimshi said, as I handed Jacob's watch back to him. "It was just a little test. You know you love stealing stuff."
"I do," Jacob admitted. "It's why I don't mind going on this little mission to stuff your soul back into your body, even though I'm willing to bet a demon's still a demon."
"Half," I said. The guys were quick to protect Nimshi's humanity when someone else derided him, but when they were around him, it seemed as if all they could see was the demon.
"Yeah, I don't know," Nimshi said. "I don't know any other half-demons like me. And I don't have any before-and-after's to compare half-demon-with-soul and half-demon-without."
"I'm surprised you admitted that," I said.
"I would like to think I'll be different with a soul," he said. "But what is a soul?"
Levi groaned. "Philosophy? I'm turning up the music."
He snapped on the radio. Irish rock played. And though I don't know what the horizon will bring/I'll take my sword and I will still sing.
Ryker tapped the beat on the steering wheel. I hid a grin, knowing he would never admit to loving this song.
And so we headed through the dark night, toward a silver moon.
And God only knew what kind of trouble.
33
We stopped to stretch our legs and gas up at a station in Maryland. A bell jangled over the door when we walked in, the store brightly lit but empty at first glance. Tinny, cheerful music played.
"Beef jerky." Jacob said, snagging a bag from a display. "The best junk food."
"I think you're confused about what best means when it comes to junk food." Ryker grabbed a bag of crunchy Cheetos.
I grabbed it back from him, stuffing it back onto the display. "You're not smearing orange crumbs all over my steering wheel."
"Fine. You drive." Ryker flashed me a devilish grin and grabbed the Cheetos again.
"Seriously?" I asked.
"I trust you." The corners of his lips quirked up.
"You never let me drive," Levi said.
"I like her a lot better than I like you," Ryker said.
"I've literally put my life on the line for you dozens of times, but I don't rate driving the car?" Levi pulled a bag of spicy almonds off a wire rack, shaking his head. And then grabbed a dark chocolate bar. He looked at me and shrugged. "We all burn a lot of calories."
"I let you drive when I was shot, didn't I?" Ryker asked Levi.
Levi pulled a face. But before he could say anything, Nimshi held up his hand.
"Did you hear that?" Nim asked, cocking his head to one side.
I could feel Ryker shift with some snarky comment on his lips, but all five of us listened intently.
A dog barked in the distance.
Another dog bayed. The sound raised the hairs along the back of my neck.
"We've got company." Nimshi ran for the door to the convenience store. "How do you lock these things?"
"Are those your hell hounds?" Levi bolted for the door, stopping alongside Nimshi. As he closed the slider lock on the door, I could hear him muttering the words
of a spell.
"Oh good," I said. "Now it will come in handy that you know spells to seal doors."
"Already has." Jacob winked at me.
"I don't want to kill any dogs," Ryker said as half a dozen dogs came running into the parking lot. There was a big Rottweiler, two mutts of questionable ancestry, a very agitated poodle, and a pair of sad-eyed hounds who plopped themselves down in front of the door and howled. The Rottweiler threw himself against the door, snarling.
"They could be someone's pets." Levi said.
"And when they aren't trying to kill us, I'm sure they're adorable." Jake said. The Rottweiler slammed itself into the door again, which began to shatter.
Just then, the doors to the Employees Only section burst open.
"No one checked that the back door was locked?" Jacob grabbed my arm and yanked me toward the refrigerator cases.
"Hell hounds don't have opposable thumbs," Nimshi snapped.
Jacob pulled open the door to the refrigerator case and pushed me in. I stared between him and the display of chilled Gatorade bottles without understanding.
"Everyone, into the cases," Jacob ordered. "It'll hold them up for a second so we don't have to hurt them."
I climbed up into the case, my back pressing into the display, and closed the door behind me. Chilly air blasted over me.
"I've got no faith in this plan," Nimshi said brightly, climbing into the case beside me.
"You want to kill Lassie?" I asked, just as the dogs burst into the room. Ryker jumped into the case on the other side, just barely closing the door in time before a dog slammed into the case. The dog's nails scraped over the glass, and it growled deep in its throat, focused on Nimshi. It snapped at him, exposing white teeth, but it couldn't break the glass. Not yet.
Nimshi winked at me, his expression a bit too cavalier for the moment. "No soul, remember?"
Jacob still stood in the center of the room, and I pounded on the doors, desperate for him to get to relative safety, too. The dog that was snarling at Nimshi turned wild eyes on me at the sound, diving toward the glass. I felt the hard edge of the shelves against my back as I pressed myself as far as I could into the refrigerator.