Night Series Collection: Books 1 and 2 (60 page)

“You’ve only answered half my question.” Bubba tapped his foot.

Asher spared me having to make the declaration. Rather than shield my body with his as was his usual wont, he took a full step to the side. Asher understood that to show me any kind of physical support now would weaken me in the eyes of my brethren.

“Understand that I am here for none of you other than Pandora herself.” His deep voice cast a spell over the throng. All eyes were glued to him as his large black wings unfolded from his shirt. Standing slightly behind him, I finally understood how he’d kept them hidden. A netting of magic, like a heat wave, shimmered down his back, exposing the vertical slits for a split second—the wings grew from within the slits. He flapped them once, startling everyone but Luc and me.

I wasn’t aware Luc had ever seen his wings, but at some point he must have because he didn’t look the least bit surprised.

Some gasped, others jumped to their feet. Claws came out and fangs were revealed. I jumped in front of Bubba to stop his attack.

“Angel!” Furious voices spat.

Shoving Bubba back so that he stumbled over his feet, I snarled at him. I might be smaller, I might look weaker, but I had three centuries worth more power than he did.

My voice was guttural as I said, “He’s no angel—he’s a death priest. And I’ll kill anyone who makes an attempt on his life.”

I scowled at all of them, letting the power of my demons spark through me. I leaked it in a tidal wave of fury.

The weaker ones immediately curled in on themselves, knowing they were no match for me. Bubba and Kane alone stood like towers bearing down on me. I never broke eye contact.

Luc snapped, “The Priest is a powerful ally. He’s been working with Grace for months now. We. Can. Trust. Him.” The way he enunciated each word, I knew it wasn’t easy for him to say.

“You keep the fuck away from me,” Bubba hissed, red eyes gleaming like unholy fire at my priest.

There wasn’t much more to say after that. Luc dispersed the crowd with orders to begin the takedown of the carnival. For the unforeseeable future,
Carnival Diabolique
was officially on hiatus.

Bubba was the last to leave, tossing me an evil glare before marching off. Releasing the shaky breath I’d been holding the entire time, I dropped my head, finally free to let the adrenaline buildup have its way with me. My fingers shook so hard I had to grab a bench top to keep them still.

Asher’s warm hand traced my lower back. I leaned into his touch, feeling immediately more at ease.

“That went well,” he murmured with a chuckle in his voice.

“You think?” I glanced sidelong at him. “Because I’m pretty sure Bubba’s gonna want you and me for his late-night snack.”

He laughed. “Pandora, you demons are a violent, nasty bunch, but deep down”—he touched my chest, right over my heart, with his finger—“you all love one another fiercely. He’ll come around so long as I prove to him I’m worthy of you, never doubt it.”

I scoffed. “I wish I was so sure.”

Luc walked up to us, hands in his pockets. His blond hair was pulled back in his miniature ponytail, his face impassive. He wasn’t looking at me. Ever since the kiss in the room, things had been cordial but aloof. “We roll in an hour. Anything you can’t pack, we leave.”

Then he too was gone.

I had not one but two trailers to pack up. I wasn’t really packing anything up so much as securing it so that when we moved, the entire contents of our house didn’t crash down on me.

Asher worked silently beside me. At one point, he indicated the hole in my bathroom wall.

I snorted. “Hopefully the next place has an Ace Hardware. No time now.”

Neither one of us talked much after that. So much had happened in just a matter of days that I needed a moment to process it all.

I felt a lot like Luc did. Whoever this Triad was, I wasn’t sure we were any match for them. And leaving as we were was a start, but the demon in me was galled by the thought that we were tucking tail and running.

That wasn’t what was actually happening, but to my demons it felt no different.

Good on his word, Luc rolled us out of there an hour later. Fast as we worked, we still had to leave a few things behind. Like the tents and rides.

Bubba glamoured everything so that no humans could come and mess with it, also so that the weather couldn’t rust or damage things. But that was the very best we could do in such a short amount of time.

Asher drove ahead of me in my actual home, I pulled Kemen’s, and behind me were Luc and Vyx.

I drove silently, at first intending to have nothing but silence and the tapping of my fingers on the wheel. But after a while the thoughts in my head began to get to me. Popping in a cassette tape, I listened to the sounds of Mozart for a while. But that was only making me feel more anxious and paranoid. So I swapped it out for
Ride the Lightning
by Metallica and felt a little better.

The hard, crunchy riffs helped to take my mind off the depressing fact that because of some supposed prophecy written by an unheard-of quack, I was now on the run and forcing the rest of my family into hiding too.

Along the way, we stopped at our many plots of land, depositing things at each one. Lightening our load with each stop, Luc’s thinking was that by not placing all our eggs in one basket, if one place got compromised, not everything would be lost.

We drove all day and all night, and though sleep would have been nice, it wasn’t necessary for us. We stopped only for gas and to make the occasional drop-off. By the time we reached the Arizona border two days later, all we had left were our homes.

Asher was concealing us in his shadow as best he could, but as strong as he was, even I recognized that he was stretching himself thin between thirty trucks and trailers. At the next stop, I got out.

“Luc.” I gestured to him as we took turns refilling our tanks.

Jogging over to me, he nodded his head. The skin under his eyes was dark and I knew he was tired. It made me wonder how long he’d gone without sex. In fact, all of us looked haggard and worse for wear.

In ten minutes, I’d single-handedly managed to turn my family’s lives upside down. Didn’t exactly make me feel good about myself.

“What’s the matter?” Blue eyes roamed my face.

“Maybe we should trace to Florida from here. Ditch the trailers for now.” Years ago, Luc had acquired swampland. It was infested with mosquitos and gators and snakes, but that also meant that not many people, humans or otherwise, traipsed through there. It would be a good place to stay for a while. At least until we could decide where to go from there.

He shook his head. “No. Asher and I talked, and we’ve decided that there’s a good chance the Triad’s got trackers with them. They know how we like to move. Best way to keep them off our scent is to travel like humans and not use our powers.”

Luc wasn’t referring to hounds, but magic tracers—witches who could latch on to the energy field left behind whenever magic was used. “But Asher’s cloaking us in shadow.”

Gazing up at the dawn sky, he nodded. “I know. But now that the sun’s coming up, we can’t keep traveling that like that anyway.”

Rubbing at his eyes, he sighed.

“We need to lighten our load even more then.”

“I’m all ears.”

Vyxen walked up to us. Glancing at me for a second, she shoved a yellow bag of M&M’s at Luc before getting back in their truck. Not only wasn’t she wearing her crazy wig today, but she was also wearing gray sweatpants and a gray work-out shirt. The green of her eyes had been muted and was normal-looking, and her brown hair was slicked down and tucked behind her ears in an elfin bob.

If I hadn’t known her for who she was already, I would never have pegged her as Envy. Seeing her gave me an idea.

“How many of us are paired off?”

Narrowing his eyes, he nodded. “Buddy up. Good idea. That’ll kill half the load right there.”

“’Bout a mile back there’s a range of mountains that would serve as a truck graveyard. When we can, if we can, we’ll come back for them.”

Waving his finger in the air, he lifted his voice. “Listen up, everyone!”

Those outside their trucks turned to him.

“From here on out, we’re buddying up. I don’t care who with, but choose a partner. We’re going to drop our final load off. Now, if everyone’s gassed up, let’s get the hell out of Dodge.”

The partnering-up commenced. I sensed Asher behind me.

Smiling, I turned just as his arms wrapped around me. I rubbed his back as he leaned into me.

“Admit it, you just missed me,” he whispered and there was a definite chuckle in his words.

Kissing his cheek, I felt the press of several sets of eyes, but I didn’t care enough to hide my affection for him. “Absolutely, Priest.”

“So which one are we keeping?”

I loved how proprietary he was sometimes. Tugging at the tips of his hair brushing his neckline, I jerked my chin toward Kemen’s trailer. “That one.”

“That one’s falling apart, Pandora. Wouldn’t you rather be with your books and music? I know how much you love that stuff.”

My heart melted that he knew me that way. Getting gifts was great, but when your partner took the time to actually know you, to recognize what made you tick, those were the real gifts and something that could never be bought.

“I’ll transfer over a few things. And I can fix Kemen’s trailer.” I fluttered my fingers over his plain black T-shirt.

His knuckles brushed my cheek. “He really meant a lot to you, didn’t he?”

“He was the only one who never demanded I be anything other than me. Kemen accepted me for who I was. He was my only real friend.”

Kissing me tenderly, he whispered, “You’re not alone anymore, little demon.”

The heat of those words rolled through me like molten silver, filling me from my head to my toes.

“Moving out!” Luc cried, then got into his truck and started it up.

“I guess that’s our cue.” I sighed because my butt was in no hurry to sit down for another twelve hours. “Hey.” I fisted his shirt as he started to move away. “Don’t shadow us anymore. If they do have tracers, we can’t afford to leave a scent.”

“See you in a bit.” His dimple poked out.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love that thing?

An hour later we’d made our final, for real this time, deposit. Good to my word, I’d transferred my bookcase and shelves, along with my two acoustic guitars, to Kemen’s trailer. It made the living room much less roomy, but it was definitely beginning to feel more like home.

Asher had offered to take over the driving, and I wasn’t about to argue. Curling up in the seat next to him, I allowed myself to become hypnotized by the road and desert landscape, by the blue of the morning sky and the red of canyon rock, how it glistened and gleamed when the sun struck a vein of metal inside it.

“Priest?” I finally whispered.

“Hmm?” He turned to me.

“Do you think they’ll hate me for putting them in this situation?”

His smile was warm. “Little demon, why are you desperate to hang the cares of the world across your shoulders?”

I scowled. “I do not.”

He nodded. “You do. You blame yourself for things you cannot change. Luc understands that truth; the others do too.”

Roadkill that once must have been a deer but was now just a mealy mass of red stuff on the side of the road zoomed by my peripheral vision.

“I don’t like that Bubba looked at me that way.” I sighed and shifted on my seat, butt completely numb after three days of nonstop driving. “I’m such a freaking softy. It’s my one fatal flaw.”

Gripping my knee, he gave it a tender squeeze. “Every last one of them is as human as you, Pandora. The only difference is you’re the only one brave enough to accept it. They don’t hate you—if they did, you’d know it.”

I laughed, rolling my eyes and sighing. “You’re so good at that.”

“What?” He chuckled.

“Letting me be me. Thanks for not making me feel like shit about it.”

He snorted. “Nephilims—you are a crazy bunch.”

But I wasn’t offended, because I knew Asher was only teasing me. Tucking my hair behind my ear, I closed my eyes and drifted off.

I didn’t wake again until I felt the truck slow down.

“We’re here,” he murmured.

Rubbing the sleep from my eyes and realizing just how exhausted I must have been if I could actually fall asleep in that scrunched-up position, I yawned and looked around.

Green moss dangled from fat tree limbs. Tall grass swayed, brushing against the side of the door as we slowly wound our way through the dirt trail to a clearing about five hundred yards back.

The sun was sinking below the marshy horizon. Gators drifted like logs through the water, their glowing eyes reflecting back at me. A giant blue dragonfly with wings that easily spanned the length of my palm—looking like it’d stepped foot straight out of the Jurassic era—zipped by our windshield. Already I could see the haze of mosquitos buzzing about.

“Home sweet home.” Even though we’d not been back here for sixty-something years, nothing looked like it’d changed. There was no civilization encroaching on this land; it was as wild and untamed as it must have been thousands of years ago.

Thankfully our wards had held. The grass we’d cleared to make our glade was still as short as it’d been in the fifties. At the time, our family unit had only been twenty-five strong. In hindsight, it was a good thing we’d dumped our trucks. There was now more than enough room for us to park wagon-circle style.

Getting out, I slammed the door, stretched my arms above my head, and lifted up on my toes, tingling with the sudden rush of blood to my extremities.

“Kane, Lilith,” Luc barked, back in boss mode, “get some generators going; string up some lights.”

“I’ll get the chow tent going too.” Corriene cracked her neck from side to side and then sauntered off, lifting the hatch of her trailer and pulling out a large bundle of nylon fabric.

“Well, come on, dear.” I waggled my brows at Asher, who looked no worse for wear, even though we’d traveled almost half a week straight. “Let’s go play house.”