by E A Comiskey
She pulled into a spot at the far end of the lot. “I’m not sorry, Grandpa. I love you, and I appreciate your compliment. It’s more valuable for being rare. That way I know you wouldn’t have said it if you didn’t mean it.”
“Well, I ain’t never been one to stick my nose in someone’s backside and call it a bouquet of roses.”
“I respect that,” she said. “We should go inside and make a plan.”
“Got one.” He’d been waiting for the right chance to tell her. It was a good one, too. He’d been cooking it up for a good hour or more, and he was pretty sure she’d approve.
They carried in their belongings, which consisted of Burke’s fancy leather suitcase full of clothes and Richard’s plastic grocery sack full of dirty laundry, the bag of sandwiches and chips they’d picked up at the convenience store across the street, the leather book, and the two guns.
Burke had worried about someone noticing the guns.
Richard laughed at her. “In Tombstone, they think you’re a suspect if you don’t have a gun. You ain’t in Detroit anymore, kid.”
Once they had the food spread out on the tiny round table in front of the room’s one window, Burke asked Richard to fill her in.
He took one more enormous bite before he started. Had food been this delicious before he began this adventure? Even these nasty gas station sandwiches were fantastic. Add to that a miracle—his guts weren’t twisted in a knot anymore.
Earlier in the day, he’d spread a thin layer of Nathaniel’s magic balm on just about all the parts he could reach. Best decision he ever made.
His guts weren’t twisted, his ribs weren’t bruised, his hips didn’t hurt, and darn if he didn’t find a brown hair on his head that afternoon. The sight had been so startling he’d actually felt a thrill of fear. What did this new-found health mean? But he brushed off the fear as quickly as it came. He was getting exercise and fresh air and living life with a purpose for the first time in far too many years. It only stood to reason he felt fit as a fiddle.
“Okay, so we have to get the skinwalker in the light of the full moon, right? But we still have five days until then and we don’t want to tip it off that we’re looking for it. So we’ve got time to prepare. I say we get some decent rest and we can drive past this writer’s house tomorrow and get the lay of the land. Then we go to Sierra Vista and pick up a few things we’ll be needing.”
She took a long drink of her iced tea. “I was thinking that, too. We’re going to need something…you know…sharp.”
“But not a knife. Not strong enough. Maybe an ax,” he said.
Her face turned a sickly ashen color. “Yeah,” she said in a hoarse, squeaky voice. “That would probably do it.”
“But we need some other things, too.”
“Such as?”
“Communion wafer, kid’s blood—”
“Grandpa!” She pushed her chair back and began pacing, as she had in the little cabin in the woods.
He held out his hands. “What?”
“How are you going to get those things? We can’t hurt some innocent little kid! And how do we know if a priest is faithless?”
Self-satisfaction buoyed his already high spirits even further. “I have a plan.”
“Enlighten me!” she demanded, hands on her hips.
“Well, you don’t have to get all snippy with me.”
“Grandpa.” The single word carried a threat that he took at face value.
“Okay, okay. So, it’s like this, right? We need a communion wafer from a saint. There’s a catholic church over on Safford. They have mass every Sunday morning at eight.”
“How do you know that?” she asked.
“I lived here for years, remember? My boss, Fred McCurdy, went to mass every Sunday morning. Never missed a week, even when he was sick. Had to confess that he was workin’ overtime with that dish of a secretary, if you know what I mean.”
She sank down onto the chair across from him. “Let’s say you’re right and they’re having communion there. What are we going to do? Snatch a wafer from some old lady’s hand?”
“I reckon that’s the easiest way.”
She propped her elbows on the table and buried her face in her hands, leaving Richard to speak to the wild mass of curls facing him.
“I figure you can go in and make nice with one of them old ladies. They’re all saints, you know. Ain’t never done a thing wrong in their life ‘cept maybe have an impure thought or two about the milk man. Probably did a thousand Hail Marys and donated a king’s ransom to pay for it, too. They always sit in the front row. You can sit next to one and, when it’s time for communion, you just follow her up to the rail, snatch the wafer the second it touches her lips, and make a run for it. She’ll be too surprised and too old to chase you out of the church.”
She dropped her hands to the table. “All right. Let’s assume I go along with that bit of lunacy. What about the rest of it?”
“I reckon no one said anything about hurting a kid. Figure we can go up to the hospital and snatch a vial of blood.”
“Sure,” Burke agreed with a sigh. “That’ll be a piece of cake. And the stole?”
He chuckled. “That part’s easy. We’ll get it at Big Nose Kate’s.”
“The saloon?”
“Yup.”
“Do I even want to know?” she asked.
“Back in the day, the bartender there wanted to earn some extra cash, so he took some kind of six-week correspondent class to become a minister. Made everyone call him Reverend Sam, but we called him Three Cent Sam ‘cause he always gave you his two cents worth and a little more. Performed marriages for the tourists. Sixty bucks a pop. Wore big fancy robes that made him look like the pope. Kept a running tally of how many brides he had.”
One eyebrow arched up. “You mean how many he married?”
He leaned forward over the table. “I mean, how many he had. Man was a legend. Musta bedded more women than Solomon. When he died, they put his robes on a mannequin in the saloon in tribute. It’s up on a balcony where nobody sits. If I can get to the steps without being seen, the rest’ll be easier than taking candy from a baby. I tell you, that man didn’t have a lick of faith in a thing beyond the next glass of whiskey and the pretty girl serving it.”
“This is a weird town.”
He cackled in joy. “Yeah. You know, I kind of miss it.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Burke
Her grandfather had been sawing logs for at least two hours, but Burke couldn’t sleep. Her body was tired, but her restless mind simply wouldn’t settle down. Finally, sometime after midnight, she stood up and padded out onto the second-floor balcony that ran along the front of the hotel.
The desert breeze was soft and fragrant. Very faintly, in the distance, she could just catch the beat of music. Apparently, the wannabe cowboys were night owls.
Her phone rang, startling her so she nearly dropped it over the railing. “So much for the mighty hunter and her nerves of steel,” she whispered into the night. She looked down at the caller ID. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
As if it had a mind of its own, her thumb swept across the green button. She lifted the thing to her ear. “What could you possibly have to say to me?”
“Hello to you, too, Bebe.”
If she gripped the phone any tighter, it would crush in her hand. “You don’t get to call me that anymore. You can call the underwear model whatever you want, but you don’t get to call me by your stupid pet names.”
“Come on, don’t be that way,” her ex-husband crooned. He had a deep, masculine voice that had always made the hairs on her neck stand up in the most delicious way. “We had good times.”
The bright moon, a perfect circle with one little slice taken from the side, came out from behind the clouds and painted the world silver. A coyote howled. The music in the saloon played on.
“We did. Then you left.”
“Aw, Burke.”
“Did you call me in the m
iddle of the night to reminisce?”
“I miss you,” he said.
She grunted. “Like Russia misses the Romanovs, no doubt.”
“Really, Burke.” He didn’t say anything else.
She waited, not quite strong enough to hang up on him, but more than happy to enjoy making him squirm.
“I want you back.”
“Well, we don’t always get what we want, do we?”
He laughed a sexy, low rumble that stirred in her belly. “Okay. I get it. You’re mad.”
“Do you really think that?”
“Well, aren’t you?”
“My God, it’s been four years.”
“I can’t believe we lost so much time together.”
She walked the length of the balcony and wandered down the steps, not giving much thought to where she was going. “We didn’t lose anything. You threw our marriage away.”
“I know. I’m sorry. Let me fix it.”
“After all this time you think…” she trailed off. The obvious truth stopped her in her tracks. “She left you.”
“It’s not like that, Bebe.”
It was her turn to laugh now. Sweet, genuine joy bubbled up out of her. “That’s hilarious! She left you!”
“Burke.” Colder now. Angry. No pet names.
“I’ll tell you all about it. Let me come over. I’m catching a flight out of—”
“You can’t come over.”
“Come on. Just hear me out.”
“Okay. Fine,” she said, wandering again. A little fire pit in front of the lobby was surrounded by squashy patio chairs. She headed in that direction. “You can come over, but I’m not there.”
“Where are you? You’re out in the middle of the night? With who?”
She sank into one of the chairs. The cushion, still warm from the day’s sun, was soft and luxuriant. The fire pit made a perfect place to prop her feet. It had taken a few moments, but her mind had finally kicked into gear and it was churning out some pretty terrific stuff.
First, came the realization that a week ago she was sitting alone in her house and she probably would have let him come. If nothing else, a visit from her ex would have alleviated the all-encompassing boredom of her days.
None of that bothered her, though, because that was a week ago. In the past seven days, she realized that she didn’t need him. For as long as she could remember, she’d doubted herself, her ability to exist in the world without someone guiding her. She had her mother, a force to be reckoned with. Then she had her teachers, protecting the soft-spoken girl who was always at the top of her class. After school, she got married and, while she worked creating software in a quiet office, isolated from the world, he took care of selling her creations and investing the money.
She gave him credit. He had been honest and wise with her money. It had been so carefully managed, in fact, that when he left, she was able to lock the outside world away and spend her days jogging on her treadmill and doing a whole lot of nothing.
But then Stanley Kapcheck whisked her grandfather away from the world of safe and normal and she went chasing after them, and now she was taking care of them. She was on an adventure. She was no longer cowering from the world. She was saving the dang world and, quite frankly, she was rather enjoying it. At least, she enjoyed it during those moments she wasn’t beat up, or terrified, or arguing with her grandfather about his special brand of ignorant racism.
“Burke? Are you seriously giving me the silent treatment?”
His voice pulled her out of her thoughts. She’d actually forgotten she was holding the phone to her ear.
“What?” she asked, trying to remember what they’d been talking about. “Oh. No. No, I’m not giving you the silent treatment. I was just thinking.”
“I get it, Bebe. There’s a lot to think about when it comes to you and me.”
“No. There’s not.”
“But, Bebe,” he was getting whiny now.
She rolled her eyes. “I told you not to call me that. I’m not your pet. I’m not your Bebe. I’m not your wife and, thank God, things didn’t work out like I planned so I’m not the mother of your children. I tell you what I am, though.” A weight lifted from her shoulders and dissipated into the night. “I am completely over you. I don’t need you. I don’t want you, and I can’t think of a single reason why you should ever call me again.”
“I get it,” whininess turned to ice. “You met someone.”
“You know what? You’re right. I did. I met someone. He’s funny and brave, and kind, and he taught me about the kind of person I want to be, and right now, I need to focus on my friend and what he needs.”
“Your friend, eh?”
“Yes. My friend. Look up the word. Learn to be one. Maybe you’ll be less of a selfish asshole after that.”
“I expected more from you, Burke.”
She rolled her eyes again and stood to walk back to her room. “No. You expected less. You wouldn’t even know how to handle the woman I am today. I gotta go.” She jogged up the steps. “It’s late. Goodnight.”
“Burke. I—”
She clicked off the phone before she found out what he was going to say. It didn’t matter. He was the past and she was focused on the future, a future in which she was determined to do all the good she could.
Snuggled under the covers, she realized her ex-husband had done her a favor. Having talked to him, she’d settled a few lingering questions, and she could finally settle down enough to go to sleep.
She dreamed of chopping up a monster with an ax. The task was gruesome and her heart raced with healthy fear, but she was strong and confident that she had done the right thing. She was a hunter, and the world was better off because of her.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Richard
The writer’s house was straight out of a southwestern design catalog—a low, sprawling adobe-and-glass structure that seemed to have sprouted up from the reddish dirt of the Dragoon Mountains. The driveway twisted between enormous clumps of prickly pear cactus and majestic mesquite trees, their tiny leaves creating a dancing kaleidoscope of sunlight inside the car. In the distance behind the house, cattle ranged on the hillside.
No dog barked at them. No person came around from the back of the house to see who had arrived. The windows showed only a reflection of the high desert landscape, no sign of movement or light. The clearing around the building was tidy, landscaped with rocks and succulents that required little care. A cord of wood was stacked to one side, an ax still stuck in a stump as though it had recently been used.
Burke turned the SUV around without hesitating, keeping up the pretense that they had simply taken a wrong turn off the beaten trail and were trying to find their way back.
Richard twisted in his seat and watched the house recede through the rear window. Oh, the freedom of being able to twist around without pain! He thought maybe he saw the twitch of a curtain behind that inscrutable glass, but it was impossible to tell at such a distance. It could just as easily have been a trick of the light.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Finn
Phlegm was building up in his chest, strangling him, suffocating him. It hurt to breathe. Every few minutes, little involuntary chuffs burst out of him, hardly enough to dislodge the mess within him. He longed for a good, hard coughing fit, but it seemed he couldn’t muster enough energy for that.
He rolled onto his side, huffed and wheezed for a moment at the effort, then settled once more into the soft mattress. “Sara?” he asked. His voice trembled like an old man’s.
“I’m here, Finn.” She came into view with a pretty smile on her face. Apparently, whatever ailed him wasn’t contagious. She looked bright and fresh as a spring daisy. She offered him a glass of water with a bendy straw and he sipped, more out of instinct than desire. “I was just taking a peek out the window. I thought I heard something, but it must have just been some tourists that took a wrong turn. They left right away.”
As a young man, he watched his mother waste away and die in the care of doctors. She’d felt a little off. They ran tests that left her exhausted and frightened, gave her a diagnosis that scared her so much she couldn’t speak of it without having tears spring to her eyes, and then they treated her with poison that made her vomit and faint. Her hair fell out. Lesions opened on her skin. Then after all that, she died anyway. She died in the hands of doctors.
In all the years since then, he’d avoided the doctor at all costs. Illness rarely affected him and, on the rare occasions it did, he quipped to concerned friends that he’d visit the doctor when he was at death’s door.
It was hard to face the truth, but it was harder to continue drifting off to sleep wondering if he would wake again.
Pushing the words out of his mouth was a powerful act of will. “I need to go to the hospital.”
Sara set the glass on the table and brushed his hair away from his forehead. “You’re so strong, Finn. Much stronger than you give yourself credit for.”
“I’m sick, Sara.”
“Shhh. None of that kind of talk. You know what I’ve been wondering? I want to know about the woman who taught you how to make love. She must have been—”
Like lightning striking, his wish was suddenly granted and he was sent into a wild spasm of hacking coughs that ripped through his body.
Sara held the trash can for him to spit into.
He fell back against the bed again. Better. He could breathe now. “Sara, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I’m sick.”
“No doctors, Finn,” she insisted. “I’ll take care of you. I won’t leave your side until this is all over. I promise.”
She twined her fingers through his. He gazed at their clasped hands, hers young and flawless, his covered in brown age spots that hadn’t been there two weeks ago.
“Are you killing me?” he asked. He’d thought of the possibility a few days earlier, but he’d lacked the courage to ask. Now, whatever was wrong had reached a point where such fears seemed trite by comparison.
“Oh, Finn. I want you to live. I want you to be bursting with life. I love your vitality. You have no idea how much it turns me on.”