Blackthorne (The Brotherhood of the Gate Book 1) (35 page)

Pam looked horrified. “
You
aren’t thinking of using Katie to open it?”

“Hell no, she’ll be out of here long before we even get underground.”

The taller woman joined her and added her own wiry strength to the struggle. “And how are you going to get her out of here? We’ll be down a tunnel, you remember.”

“Would you believe that I set up a ride out for her over a hundred years ago? And then
I
am going to open the gate so I can destroy the thing.” Rhi pushed up on the coffin lid as hard as possible. One more good push.
I am so going to hurl.

“Let me get this straight. Everything rides on
your
purity? You do realize that you are a
blackjack
dealer
, right? Hell, you probably got laid last night.”

“But was it technically adultery if I was married to him in a past life and didn’t divorce him?” Rhi asked.

The lid of the coffin creaked open, revealing a tiny shriveled body, dressed in rotting Victorian clothing. The long black hair still flowed down Raven’s shoulders and a huge cameo was pinned on her shirtwaist. Behind them, Ellie Mae whimpered slightly. A deathly cold settled in the hearts of both of the women who stood over the coffin.

“Pam, only someone truly pure of heart would face her own dead, rotted body. Now give me that pack.” Cringing, she carefully pushed the desiccated body to the side to make room. “Let’s not completely disarm ourselves. He will think we are either idiots or are up to something.”

»»•««

They stepped out into a maelstrom of snow and ice, which had descended upon the town with ferocious speed after Rhi had opened the coffin. The glowing lights of the casinos in town could barely been seen through the snow.

There was no sign of the half dozen members of the Brotherhood or Bobby Wayne’s group. Only Blackthorne, Molay, and Pearl stood outside, the madam having joined them by means of her large Suburban.

Slivers of snow stung Rhi’s face as she joined the group, still shadowed by Pam and Ellie Mae. Blackthorne was silent upon her arrival. His gaze swept over her once and then turned toward the sky.

“He should be here soon. Where’d everybody go? Do y’all really think he won’t notice them hiding in the woods?” she asked them as she tried to brush the flakes out of her eyes. Her hands, even in heavy-duty gloves, were freezing.
They’ll be warm enough soon,
she thought drearily.

“Of course he’ll know they’re hiding nearby,” Pearl replied. The famous lavender eyes glittered above the cashmere scarf she had wrapped around her head and face. “But he’ll be too arrogant to ask how many or what they are armed with, won’t he?”

“Great,” Rhi muttered. She pulled her backpack off again to dig out the Bible. “I am going to war with a pack of ancient knights who kill as casually as I step on cockroaches, a conspiracy nut and his buddies, a psychotic ex-marine, and an overly confident 130-year-old ex-hooker.”

“That’s 129,” Pearl replied absently before pointing upward at the swirling black sky. The smell of brimstone suddenly overwhelmed the clean scent of falling snow, and the roar of a descending dragon broke the silence of the storm. “They’re here.”

»»•««

Bobby Wayne Bedford peered through the pounding snow via his night vision goggles, not taking his eyes off the shadowed figure of Rhi Brennan. The fear and uncertainty he had been plagued with was purged with the knowledge of his enemy. Bobby Wayne knew what he was fighting for and the knowledge gave him a certain peace.

He was warm as toast, parked in his pickup in the driveway of an abandoned mining shack. Beside him on the seat lay what appeared to be a switchboard. It controlled the hundreds of pounds of explosives he had wired the graveyard with over the preceding days, at the request of Houston and Pearl DeVere. The thought of the fiery little pilot hurt.

“I’ll not lose another man,” Bobby Wayne swore out loud. He thought better of that after a moment and added a hasty caveat. “Or woman. Or dog.”

In warded houses and cars near the cemetery, he and fifteen of the more dangerous locals in his force patiently waited for the exodus of an army. The seven knights who had accompanied Molay to Cripple Creek were nowhere to be seen but he could feel their presence, powerful and ancient.

The survivalist had waited most of his life for the war he knew he had been born to fight. Everything centered upon the woman in the graveyard, who stood, ramrod straight, next to her husband.

“I hope you know what you’re doing, little girl.”

A tall shadow appeared beside the truck and opened the door.

“You shouldn’t leave this unlocked,” remarked the sheriff as he climbed in beside him. Nick Boyd appeared to be half frozen as he cradled his rifle in his arms. He peered out into the snow.

“I knew you were coming,” replied the other man easily. “How was flying in the snow with Granny?”

“It would have been cold, but Nana decided to drive here.”

Bobby Wayne grinned. “Nana?”

“Shut up.”

»»•««

A single man was astride the dragon when it alighted nearby. Troy swung his leg over the creature’s back and slid to the ground. He sauntered over to the group, vainly reaching for an elegant, nonchalant attitude he did not possess.

Pam confronted him as soon as he got close enough for her to push the barrel of her gun in his face.

“Where is Katie at?” she demanded.

He moved the gun aside and stepped closer to her. “You know, you shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition, Pam. Maybe you should have listened in school a bit more and partied a bit less. But then, if you weren’t a party girl, you wouldn’t even have the little bastard, would you?”

A hard, bony knee shot up into his groin with a
thunk
that made every man present wince. The dragon looked on benignly without moving. Rhi could have sworn she saw a bit of a grin on the creature’s hideously huge mouth.

“Where’s Katie at, asshole? Is that a better use of the English language? If this is a double cross to get us to bring the skull out in the open, you’re going to catch the worst of it, you know,” Pam said. “Looks like your dragon doesn’t care what I do to you, so this might get nasty.”

Rhi smirked at the man who was now rolling on the snow-covered ground. “See? I told you that you’d get to rack somebody like I did.” She leaned over to examine him, noting that the front of his pants were now wet. “Wow…I think you might have burst something on the poor guy. Whoops, never mind…he pissed himself.”

“Would you two ladies stop entertaining yourselves long enough for me to ask this idiot where my brother is hiding?” Blackthorne bent down to lift the smaller man up by the back of his parka.

Rhi placed a restraining hand on his arm. “Wait.” She pointed toward the wrought iron gates of the cemetery. The approaching headlights belonged to a sleek black luxury version of the US Army’s Humvee. The new arrival was making its way through the gate and up the hill toward them. The snow fell around the huge vehicle, avoiding the metal. The tires and wheels were spotless, even though the gravel road through the cemetery was marked every foot or so with several slush and mud filled potholes.

“How
does
he do that? I can never keep a vehicle clean up here,” mused Pearl thoughtfully.

“I should have known he wouldn’t ride here on a dragon, it might muss his hair,” said Blackthorne, still dangling Troy from one hand, held straight out from his side. His brother’s sidekick was struggling vainly, trying to take a swing at Blackthorne or anyone he could get near. Suddenly he was unceremoniously dumped onto the near frozen ground where Pam stood over him, one of her boots holding him face down in the snow.

After parking near the foot of the hill, Manius got out from behind the wheel, waving at the group as he stepped to the back door of the vehicle to remove Katie from, of all things, a car seat. Katie was beautifully dressed in a tiny mink parka and the smallest Ugg boots Rhi had ever seen. She looked like an ad for BabyGap.

“Hi Mommy,” the little girl sleepily called as she was carried up the hill by her captor. Behind them, an ominous dark presence rose up from the ground to follow the pair, their forms obscured by the falling snow. Large and small, an army of perhaps a hundred demons in varying shapes and sizes darted in and out of the crowded tombstones, slowly advancing. They stopped short as Manius Blackthorn approached with Katie Douglas balanced on his hip.

He was dressed as if he were going to an afternoon football game in Broncos Stadium, in a turtleneck, wool slacks, and a sheepskin coat. Manius’ pulled together look ended with the sword buckled around his waist. His handsome face was haggard and wasted from the effort of controlling the army behind him and the dragon parked on the hill above. Rhi shuddered at the thought of what he would do when he had a legion of demons to do his bidding and the skull with which to control them. The ancients had used them to conquer the world and build the monolithic structures that baffled modern scientists. Blackthorne’s younger brother would probably be as stupidly ambitious as his predecessors.

“Really, Troy, you should try to keep your mouth shut when you’re near this woman,” he noted with a weary grin as he approached.

“We thought you’d changed your mind,” Rhi said, nervously eyeing the arm with which he held Katie. His hand clutched a frightening shape. An ornate dagger was curved against the little girl’s stomach. She was perfectly positioned for a deadly drop onto the large, wicked-looking blade. “Is that a knife in your hand?”

“Shush.” As Manius spoke, he ran a gloved hand through Katie’s golden hair. The sleepy child smiled back at him and rested her head against his shoulder. “You’ll upset the baby.”

Pam kicked Troy out of the way and lunged toward the pair, only to be caught around the waist by Blackthorne.

“Hold up, Marine,” he commanded her in a whisper.

Manius examined the shadowy twilight expanses of the graveyard, made even more obscure by the falling snow. “I know your buddies are out there, brother mine. You can have your shot in a few minutes. The young ladies, my assistant and I will be going down to the gate unescorted. You can try to deal with whatever comes back up…of course after I allow Miss Douglas to leave with her daughter following the opening of the gate.”

“I have to open the first door to the tunnel,” replied Blackthorne dryly. “Rhi can’t open it.”

“I can open it,” Rhi said, interrupting a staring contest between the brothers that threatened to go on for way too long. “I took the words from your mind in the night. And I’m freezing my rear off out here so let’s go.”

Incredulous, he turned to her. “You speak of trust and then steal the words of opening from my mind as I sleep? What’s happened to you, Rhi? Is there nothing left of Raven in your soul but her power?”

I can’t let you go with me.
Her mind wailed.
I’ll never be able to do this if you’re there.

Blackthorne spoke once more as the women and his brother made their way toward the crypt. “Why does
she
get to go?” he demanded pointing at Pearl, who had quietly joined the little group.

“I like to have someone along who possesses a decent sense of style,” replied his brother blandly. He then addressed the women standing at the doorway. “All weapons will be left here, please. Especially that tacky sword of yours, Pearl.”

Rhi removed a buck knife from a sheath around her waist and a gun from the holster under her arm and placed it in the growing pile beside the open door. She suppressed a nervous giggle as Pearl and Pam each relieved themselves of weapon after weapon. After a sizable pile of ordnance had appeared, both women nodded at each other in appreciation and turned to face the door.

Manius stood waiting with the sleeping child on his hip alongside Rhi, a limping Troy, and Ellie Mae. The dog had ambled along, unnoticed, beside them. On the rise beyond the doors, Blackthorne stood like a menacing thundercloud, his huge broadsword drawn.

“This isn’t over Manius,” he said.

“Not by far, brother,” Manius replied. Rhi jumped in terror when he shifted Katie on his hip, rubbing the dagger against her little body.

“Would you please watch it?” she snapped at him as she took the Bible from beneath her coat.

“Is that where it’s been all of these years? In a Bible?” Manius patted Katie’s curls again as he descended the stairs. “I should have known. You were always such a little puritan.”

The lines making up the gateway on the back wall of the tomb blazed into brightness as they gathered at the base of the stairs.

“Want to pay your respects?” Manius asked with a smirk.

“I would’ve thought that you wouldn’t succumb to such an easy line,” Rhi replied with a roll of her eyes. “I guess I have overestimated you. Now can I get to work or would you like to miss the moonrise?”

She walked with a slight stagger of bravado past the coffin, purposefully allowing the wretched knight to observe a frightened woman covering her terror with false audacity. Let him believe that she was frightened and weak.

Hell, I
am
frightened,
she thought.
But I can’t afford to be weak. Not today.

Holding the book under her arm, Rhi placed her hands on each side of the gate over the top of the gold filigree that represented the locks.

“
Like the dew on the mountain, like the foam on the river, like the bubble on the fountain, Thou art gone, and forever
.” Rhi spoke the words she had stolen and stepped back. The wall faded to nothing, leaving only the jeweled gate, which swung open, revealing a large tunnel that was roughly the same diameter as the tomb. A wide staircase, eerily lit by an unsourced red glow, led downward.

“That didn’t sound like an ancient incantation,” Pam remarked from behind her.

“
This
gate was built by my…by Blackthorne after Raven died,” she replied and stepped forward, trying not to think about the man who stood waiting outside the tomb. She had not said goodbye to him, for fear he would see what was in her heart. “It’s a quote from Sir Walter Scott. I used to like his writing. I used to like a lot of things.
This,
” she indicated the tunnel in front of them, “used to be a hole in the ground with a big rock sealing it off. Shall we go down?”