Blaze: Queen’s Birds of Prey: Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance (Queen's Birds of Prey Book 2)

by Kathi S. Barton

  “I’m going to sue them bastards.” Curt was starting to feel better now, so he made plans. “I don’t know how long that’ll take, but someone will surely put me up when they figure out how I’m going to get millions.”

  The longer he sat there in the reddening water, the more extravagant his plans got. By the time someone was pounding at his door, he had a mansion, a limo driver, as well as sixteen brides to help him ease his nights away.

  Getting out of the tub, he could feel each little cut again. Yanking the door open, he was greeted by not just the manager of the hotel, but the police too. He asked him what he could do for them.

  “There’s blood leading up to this room.” Curt told the cop that he didn’t know what he might be talking about. “There is also a great deal of blood on your legs, and the towel that you have is nearly soaked with it.”

  “I cut myself shaving.” The cop cocked his brow at him. “Yes, I cut myself shaving. I bet you’ve never done anything like that before.”

  “We also have a description of a man that broke into the Manning home. You fit the description to a tee, including the buckshot you currently have in your ass.” Curt told him that he didn’t know what he was talking about. “We’re going to match your DNA with the evidence that you left behind when you ran slipping and sliding in your own blood trying to get away from Mr. Manning.”

  “Yeah? I still don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m busy now, so I’m going to close the door and leave you to whatever you have.” The cop put up his hand just as he was trying to close the door. “I didn’t invite you in. Get the hell out of my room.”

  “He’s also not paid anything on his bill, Officer. He keeps telling me that his children are going to pay it. But Lord Bryson said that he wanted nothing to do with this man. And Lady Blaze, she said that she isn’t paying either.” The cop asked if Bryson was the man who had married Blaze. “Yes, that’s him. What a nice man he is too. Very generous.”

  “He’s not fucking generous to me, and I’m his old man.” The cop told him to shut his trap. “I will not. Why does my son get to be lord this and that when I’m told to shut my trap? That’s not right at all.”

  “Why don’t you go and clean up yourself so I can run you downtown to ask you a few questions? Oh, and by the way. I have no desire to have your naked ass anywhere near my nice clean cruiser.” Curt just stared at the man. “Go on now. You don’t want your hiney sweat to make you stick to it like it was a hot summer day, or to those cheap plastic chairs. Especially your balls. Damn, but that would hurt.”

  “I’m much too busy to be traveling downtown. Why don’t you ask me your questions now? That way I can have my dinner and get to bed. It’s been a very long day.” Curt could feel the blood as it ran down his legs. Glancing down to see what the officer was looking at, he realized that he was standing in a puddle of his own blood. “I should be more careful when I shave, don’t you think?”

  “I think I’m going to have to insist that you come with me, Mr. Williams.” Curt started to shake his head and started to get lightheaded. “Sir, are you all right?”

  “No. No, I don’t think I am. Just a little rest and some ice to put on my balls. Nothing too bad.” Gripping the door tighter, Curt thought that he could easily puke on himself. “You toddle on away and I’ll get things taken care of here.”

  “Your balls are going to fall off.” Curt asked him what he said. “I said that your balls are up and around your neck. You should really get them down where they belong before you shit yourself.”

  “What are you talking about?” The cop looked at the manager, then back at him. “You’re speaking gibberish, and I think that’s just mean. Go away.”

  “I’m going to take you to the bathhouse and then strip you down to your bones.” Curt held his head while the cop kept talking about how he was going to make a meal out of him. “Sir, you have to come with your Santa.”

  “You’ve made me sick. I just know it.” Falling to his knees, he felt the bite of all the places on his ass that had been shot. “I think that I need to lay down for a while.” The next thing Curt saw was someone standing over him. “My goodness, you sure are tall. What are you, a giant man? Do you have to climb your beanstalk every night after work?”

  Giggling at his own joke, he heard the man over him speak. Curt wasn’t sure, but he thought that he was telling him that he was going to kick his ass. Something like that. Curt told him that he wasn’t in the mood to fist fight him today. His ass hurt.

  “I’m sure that it does.” He felt sick all of a sudden when the angel told him to lie still. “I’m going to give you something, Curt. You hold onto it, and I promise you that you’ll live forever.”

  “I think that old man killed me. He had a shotgun.” There was a question or two asked of him, but he couldn’t understand it. “Jesus, I think that you need to speak English to me. I can’t understand angel talk.”

  “You’re off your rocker.” He didn’t think that was any way for Jesus to talk to someone, and told him that. “Jesus? I don’t think that anyone has ever called me that before. Thanks, buddy. Okay, I’m going to give you something for pain, then we’re going to put you in the ambulance.”

  Curt was still having a hard time understanding the man. First he was tall, then he was shorter. Twice he’d been dressed in white, then he was that policeman again. Closing his eyes, his balls began to feel less like someone had them in their grip tight enough to make him shit himself. Feelings that he’d only gotten, he realized, when he was high.

  “I need to get me some of this shit. My dealer, he never sells me shit this good.” Someone, Jesus or the cop, asked him what his dealer’s name was. “Jesus smokes weed? Well, hallelujah. I guess a man in your business needs to be able to chill out once in a while. It must be a real bitch trying to make the world a better place. You just give everyone pot and I tell you, they’ll all be too stoned to be pissed off about anything.”

  The bump, or whatever it was, shook him out of his nice buzz for a moment. Then there were loud noises and flashing lights. At some point someone touched his balls and Curt screamed, but after that, he didn’t have any more pain. At least nothing like he’d had at the house.

  “I had me some pizza at the house I was going to rob, Jesus. I don’t think that I’ll be in trouble for being there, what with me not being able to take anything. I’m gonna sue them, you see. Then I’ll be as rich as my son, who is not really my son. I have a daughter who is not my daughter too.” Curt giggled at what he was thinking. “I had me a pillowcase full of crap when that kid screamed loud enough to wake the dead. You’d think that the old fuckers would have died from it rather than pull out a mother fucking shotgun and tear into my ass. My private parts are going to be nasty after this. I hope I can find someone to go down on me after this. Might have to put that on my list of things to sue the old geezer for.”

  He dozed off and on, trying to remember what he’d been doing and why he was in such an uncomfortable bed. Finally giving up, there was another loud noise and then he saw the cop again with Jesus. This was one fucked up dream he was having.

  Chapter 8

  Bryson woke to the phone ringing. He hadn’t given out his new number to anyone but the family, so he sat up in bed when Joel said his name. His first thought was his sister. That Curt had gotten her.

  “Are you listening?” Bryson told Joel that he was now. “Good. Curt has been taken to the hospital. He’s in surgery. Since the hospital knows that you and I are related, they called me when they didn’t know how to get in touch with you. They want you to come down there, please. He’s in surgery, like I said, but they need to talk to next of kin.”

  “Do you know what happened to him.” Joel laughed. “It’s that bad? Do I even want to know?” A smile tugged at his own mouth when Joel laughed harder. “This has got to be good.”

  “He was caught robbing
a house over on Mantel Street. Mr. Manning is in his eighties, I think. Anyway, they had their granddaughter spending the night with him and his wife. Curt went into the little girl’s room, looking for shit to hock, when she saw him. Of course, the kid has a pair of lungs on her that sounds like a bull horn at a crowd. You should hear her singing at the plays they put on at—” Bryson heard Mercy tell Joel to get to the fucking point. “Right. Anyway, he has an ass full of buckshot, and his privates are shot to hell as well.”

  “He robbed someone and got shot?” He felt his own laughter burble up from his throat. “He was shot by an eighty year old man when his granddaughter screamed? I do hope to Christ this is true. If so, then I hope someone recorded it all. I’d love to see this.”

  “Curt was slipping and sliding around their kitchen trying to get away from Mr. Manning with his ass hanging out of his shot up pants, and his balls too. I guess once he got outside, Curt was shot again, this time in the back of his legs. I have no idea how he made it back to the hotel where he’s staying, but that was where the police found him. The fucker could set off an airport scanner, he’s so full of lead.” Both of them were laughing so hard now that Bryson was glad that he could lay back. His ribs felt like they were being crushed, they were so unused to laughing this hard. “That little granddaughter, about six or so I guess, she was yelling at Grandda to pop him again, begging him to shoot him full of lead. There Curt was, on the ground, with his nuts leaving enough DNA that Jimmy told me that it was like he was a fountain in the yard, just sprouting blood.”

  “Oh my god, you have to stop.” Joel said that Curt had been in the bath when Jimmy caught up with him. “A bath? I bet that was a lovely color. Do you suppose Curt thought he could just get away and no one would see his ass hanging out and report it?”

  “He kept saying that…. Oh Christ, Bryson, he told Jimmy that he cut himself shaving.” The last word had been said with so much laughter in it that Bryson could almost see his friend rolling on the floor with it. As it was, Bryson rolled over and fell on the floor himself. “He cut himself shaving? What a fucking moron. I swear to you, Bryson, I wish that I could have been there for the entire event. I might not ever be able to look at the man in the face again.”

  Bryson didn’t think that he’d ever be able to do that either. Getting up quietly so as not to wake Blaze, he was downstairs in the kitchen when she came into the room with him. After kissing her on the mouth, Bryson told her what he was doing.

  “I know the Mannings. He’s about eighty-seven. His wife is a year older. Christ, I would love to have been there. I’d have been egging him on myself.” She decided to go with him, but she couldn’t stay long. “I have to meet Mercy downtown about some paperwork that needs to be filed. I’ll meet you for lunch someplace. The guy won’t be able to get himself out of this one. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I do. I have some things I need to get taken care of downtown too. Then Dawn needs me to go with her to have her name changed. There isn’t a birth record of her that we can find.” Blaze said to give her a day or two and she’d have one there. “Why do you think that it wasn’t filed? Or did Curt have something to do with that?”

  “Witches didn’t adapt well to human ways, so there might not be one there at all. I’ll take care that it’s in her real name too.” Bryson thanked her and they left for the hospital. They were driving to the hospital in separate cars so they could go do their business afterwards, so Blaze reached out to him. Did you call the hospital?

  I did. He was still in surgery when I told them we were coming in, but was about to be moved to recovery. They told me also that he might have to have some rehabilitation when this is all finished. The nurse didn’t say why, but I have a feeling that it’s more serious than I thought. Blaze said that it was just what he deserved. I agree. And I’m going to try my best not to laugh at him when I see what happened to him. He just doesn’t mean anything to me anymore. I’ve also called Dawn. She told me that she’s not coming in. She might later, but not today.

  I don’t blame her. He might not be her father, but he did think about selling her to someone for a debt that he incurred. The nerve of some people. Bryson agreed with her as they arrived at the hospital. “All right. Let’s go and see what sort of mess he’s gotten himself into this time.”

  They walked hand in hand up to the surgical unit. There must not have been much going on, because there wasn’t much in the way of staff around. Just as he was going to ask at the desk how Curt was doing, Blaze pulled him back against the wall and pressed her body up against his. He started to tell her that now wasn’t the time when three very large muscular men walked by him. They didn’t bother walking up to the counter as he’d been about to do, but nodded once at the women there and moved on down the hallway.

  Blaze told him not to move. Afraid now, he did just as she asked him to do. Before he could figure out what was going on, a blast of hot air took his breath away. Piper, as her phoenix, stood in the hall where the three man had been. There wasn’t even a smudge on the floor where they’d been standing.

  The women at the desk were gone too, but it was because Blaze must have done something to them to take them to the floor. They were being pressed down by magic, Bryson supposed, as there wasn’t anyone or anything touching them that he could see.

  “Call the police, then wait five minutes and call security.” Nodding, he pulled out his cell phone. “Tell them only that Piper is here and where we are.”

  “All right.”

  He was as scared as he’d ever been, but made the call. As soon as he told the person that answered the phone that Piper was there, he could hear the fear in their voice as well. But the man was calm.

  “Do we need to come there with vests on?” He told him no, as far as he was concerned things were taken care of. “All right, Lord Bryson. We’ll be there in less than five minutes.”

  After hanging up, he asked if both Piper, who’d shifted back to her human self, and Blaze were all right. Both women nodded at him, and Piper smiled. He didn’t think that the smile was meant to calm, so he looked at Blaze.

  “We’re going to have to talk to your sister.” He asked if she’d done this. “Yes. Not directly, but she called the people who Curt owed money to, and they were more than willing to take care of this. Those men would have killed everyone in that operating and recovery room.”

  Bryson stared at where the men had been. When Piper turned his head to face her, she told him not to think about it. He thought he was going to be sick. Bryson told her that.

  “No, you’re not. Look into my eyes, Bryson. Just look.” He did and saw it—saw what would have happened if the men she’d killed had entered the operating room. “See what she would have caused to happen.”

  The men entered with their guns out, firing. A spray of bullets hit not only the three nurses in the room and the surgeon, but the equipment as well. Moving into the recovery room, they pulled Curt off the gurney and to the floor. His screams, begging them to allow him more time, were echoing throughout the room even as all three of the men shot him, each with a single bullet to the back of his head. When the oxygen tank was hit Bryson felt the heat of the explosion as if it had really blown. The aftermath of it tore out a great hole in the side of the building. All the people, including himself and Blaze, were blown from the building. The others were dead, including the three men.

  When he was able to tear his eyes from Piper, he had to sit down on the floor. Piper asked him if he was all right.

  “I don’t think so. She could have killed all those people. Didn’t she think what would happen?” Piper only shrugged. “What do you plan on doing to her?”

  “I’m not. You are. That’s why I showed you what could have happened if Blaze hadn’t felt the men coming down the hall. There wasn’t any time to plan, so we simply took them out.” He nodded. “You’re going to have to do something about Dawn, Bryson. If yo
u don’t, then she’ll keep trying until a lot of people are dead.”

  “Yes, I will. How do I go to her now?”

  Suddenly he found himself in a room that he’d not been in before. He knew the things lying around—they were his sister’s. But the things on the wall scared him a great deal. Bryson looked at Piper when she whistled.

  “She knew what she was all along, didn’t she?”

  “I’d say that’s about right.”

  The books on the shelves seemed to call to him. Picking up the first one that he saw, he read the title to himself. How to Conjure the Dead. “Did you know this before you brought me here?”

  “I had an idea. She took us telling her that she was a witch too calmly. I was only just last night talking to Remi about it. So I made a few calls to the WC. They’ve not only stripped her of some of her magic, but they took her immortality too. She can be killed now. However, this…. No, we didn’t know about this.” Piper bent and pulled up a rug that lay in the middle of the room. There was a circled shape on the floor. “She’s well beyond just finding out that she could do this shit.”

  “What do I do now?” Piper said that she wasn’t sure. “I’m not sure either. I mean, what else might she have done to manipulate things in her favor?”

  “That is the big question now, isn’t it, little brother?” He looked at Dawn when she walked into the room with them. “It’s not like you to go snooping around where you’re not supposed to. Whatever am I going to do with you?”

  “You could have killed a great many people today, Dawn. Why would you do that?” She just smiled at him. He could almost taste her insanity. “What else have you done? What other lives have you taken?”

  “Well, it will include yours soon enough. Not to mention those birds. Christ, they’ve been a pain in my ass since they became involved with you. I saw the way that they were, and I thought I could do so much better. I think I did too. But keeping you out of trouble has been a full time job. Not that you were ever in serious trouble, little brother, but you were kind of nosey. I had to keep erasing your mind so you’d not know certain things. Then there were my parents. While Curt did kill my mother, I did dear old Dad in. That’s how I got all the magic. You see, the birds were partly right. Mom did give it away, but not to me. She gave it to Dad, just like I knew she would. So in order to get it all, I killed him for the power. And damn, but it was a real blast of power.” Bryson noticed that Piper was gone and he was all alone with Dawn. “You really shouldn’t block me from messing with your brain pan, Bryson. I need to fix you up so that I can start all over with Curt. I will hurt you.”