Shoot to thrill, p.37
Shoot to Thrill, page 37
part #5 of Midnight Rider Series
I got us out onto the road and we were almost back to the paved road when Rosetta spoke up.
“What smells like sauerkraut?”
26
We were the first ones back to the park and Rosetta and I loaded Callie into Rosetta’s Caddie. Rosetta was smoke-smudged and there was a burn at the hem of her sundress from burning debris, but we thought that might make her story more plausible. She drove off for the emergency room with Callie and I turned to look at the other three.
Jo was sitting between Stacks and Noah who were both leaning against her shoulders, looking up at her doe-eyed. They were...panting. Jo sighed and shook her head. “I think the lotion and the patch wore off.
“Shit,” I said, looking around. “I think the lotion is in Rosetta’s Caddie.”
“I’ve got this,” Jo said. She looked down at the boys. “You know what would me make me so happy?” Both boys sat up straight, their eyes wide, focused on Jo. “I would be so happy if you both would get in the truck cab and lock yourselves in. Can you do that for me?” Both of them nodded like their necks were on springs and then they clambered over the sides of Lucy’s bed. I bolted for the front seat and pulled the keys out of the ignition just as Noah knocked me aside to climb in. I narrowly missed getting my finger slammed in the door as he pulled it closed behind him and punched the door lock down. On the other side of the truck, I saw Stacks do the same thing.
“I was the fastest,” Noah said to Stacks.
“So?” Stacks said. “It wasn’t a race. Besides, Jo and I are in love.”
“Nuh-uh,” Noah said. “She’s just joking around with you. Jo and I are in love.”
I shook my head. “This is just painful.” I leaned against Lucy’s bed, listening to them bicker in the cab. Jo swung a leg over the side and sat perched on the bed.
“So, you talked to me,” I said. “In my head.” I looked up at Jo. She nodded, keeping her gaze on the road, watching for the Jeep.
“I know,” she said. She looked down at me. “I’ve never done it before. But, I had to try.”
“I didn’t know that was something sirens could do,” I said.
“It’s not common, as far as I know,” Jo said, her voice growing soft. “The few sirens I’ve ever met have told me it can only be done when someone a siren cares about is in life-threatening danger.” I looked up at her. She smiled. “Most sirens aren’t in that situation that often.” She reached out and tucked a piece of my singed hair behind my ear. I caught her hand and turned it over to kiss her palm.
“You saved us, Jo,” I said. “You saved all of us.”
She shook her head. “No, these people that you love. That love you. That saved you. That saved us.” She slid down off the truck bed to lean against it next to me. “I know you don’t want to hear this,” she said, her voice dropping as she leaned her head against my shoulder. “I know you, Bane. You want to be a lone wolf, cleaning up this mess on your own, but you can’t do it.” I tensed beside her. I opened my mouth to argue and she put a slender finger against my lips. “Shut up, Bane. You know I’m right. Think about all the hell you told me that you and this crew have been through over the last month and a half. Honestly, do you think you could have made it out of those situations without them?”
I felt weaker as I thought about it. I would have been dead in St. Louis, Sicily, Triton, and Messina if I’d gone alone. Hell, I’d have been dead right here in Garnett if it wasn’t for the rest of them.
“Needing people doesn’t make you weak,” Jo said. “It makes you strong. Loving people, being willing to die for them, bleed for them, that’s something Hell will never understand. It’s your greatest weapon on this job. Don’t leave it in your fucking toolbox.” I could hear the seriousness in her voice, but when I turned to look at her, she was smiling. I leaned in and pulled her to me, brushing my cracked lips over hers. She grabbed me by the belt loops of my jeans and pulled me against her. I don’t know how long the kiss lasted. There were scenes from our past replaying in my head and when we broke apart, I rested my forehead against hers.
“You taste like sauerkraut,” Jo said.
“Well, you taste like an ashtray,” I said, kissing her forehead.
“I love sauerkraut,” Jo whispered.
“You make me want to take up smoking again,” I said.
There was whining coming from the cab and we both looked up at Noah and Stacks who had their faces pressed against the back window.
Jo sighed. “I don’t say this often, mostly because I wouldn’t mean it if I did. Being a siren, it goes with the job.” She looked up at me. “But I do love you, Bane.” I started to answer her and she shook her head. “I know you love me too, that’s not the point.” I snorted and she continued. “The fact is, there is something so much bigger, well, the potential for something bigger between you and Gabe.” Now I was going to have to argue with her. She narrowed her eyes and shook her head. “Don’t be an ass, Bane. Just shut up and know that I’m right. If you could both just pull your heads out of your asses long enough to recognize what it is and what it has the potential to be…” she held up a hand to stop me from interrupting, “even in the small amount of time you have left, it might be enough, just enough to get the job done.”
The roar of an engine behind us made us both turn. The Jeep was approaching. Jo looked back at me. “You have another shirt?” I nodded and went back to the toolbox. I could feel Jo’s hand on my back, picking out grass, dirt, and wood splinters while I searched. I couldn’t find the bag of clean a-shirts from Rosetta’s so I grabbed the first dirty one I could find and turned around. Jo shook her head, smiling.
“You never did have two clean shirts to rub together,” she said on a sigh.
I rolled my eyes. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
The Jeep doors flew open and Tags was the first one out. “Where’s Rosetta?”
As soon as they were all out of the Jeep, I explained Rosetta’s plan to take Callie to the emergency room, tell them that she’d been out for a drive in her convertible, she’d seen the smoke and she’d turned in. She’d heard Callie calling for help, gone into the house to get her, and dragged her out. Which would explain why Rosetta had burn marks on her dress and was covered in ash. Of all of us, Rosetta had the best karma and it could take a hit for lying if it was necessary. Which, in this case, it definitely was. Plus, she had that old-lady-Sunday-school-teacher vibe going that would probably keep people from asking too many questions.
Gabe pulled a new shirt out of the saddlebags on his Triumph and pulled it over his head.
“He even dresses like you,” Jo whispered in my ear, taking in the white a-shirt Gabe was pulling over his chest. I narrowed my eyes at her and she winked.
Rosetta rolled up ten minutes later. Her face was clean and she’d changed dresses. She had a backseat full of water bottles and she started tossing them to us.
“Where’s your lotion?” I asked her before she got out of the car. I’d seen a lot of shit today, and I wasn’t sure if I could handle Rosetta acting like Stacks and Noah around Jo.
She tossed me a dish soap bottle full of blue-tinted lotion. “I’ve already re-applied.” Jo took the bottle from me and went to sweet talk the boys in the truck cab into putting it on.
I looked back at Rosetta. “How’s Callie?”
Rosetta nodded. “Smoke inhalation and shock. She has a third-degree burn on her leg from some debris, but she’s going to be ok. They gave her a pretty heavy sedative because she was babbling and not making any sense. With any luck, when she wakes up, she won’t want to remember and she can move on.”
“I kind of feel bad for her and the historical society. I know they really wanted to save that place,” Mick said.
“Yeah, but it’s probably better if humans forget about it,” Gabe said. “We don’t need more innocents ‘crossing the threshold’.”
I frowned. “What do we need to do to make sure that place can’t ever become a Hellgate?”
Gabe shrugged. “I think we did it. The house is gone. No contractor in their right mind would build on top of quicksand. We’ll probably have to keep an ear out to see if they’re planning any development on the property…”
“With a demon-possessed contractor,” I said.
Gabe nodded. “In the meantime, I’ll talk to the Order. There are probably some protections we can put in place to seal it off.”
I sighed and leaned back against Lucy again as Stacks and Noah climbed out of the truck cab, looking pissed. I turned my head to look at them. “Hey there, Romeos. How ya feeling?” Simultaneous middle fingers.
“I’m going to take those as trophies if you don’t put them away,” Rosetta growled. “We all feel like crap right now, no need to get dramatic about it.” She huffed and faced Jo. “Just the same, I know that we’d all be toes up and hurtling toward Hell right now if it hadn’t been for you, Jo. Hattie will be so proud.” From the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Jo smiling and swiping at her face. Rosetta was right. If it hadn’t been for Jo, we’d be dead. And if it hadn’t been for Festus, we would have had no idea what the Wolftamanus was. I looked around and saw Festus, leaning against the park’s only tree, smoking a cigarette.
“What, you haven’t had enough fire for the day?” I asked, crossing over to him. He smiled but didn’t say anything. “Hey,” I said, lowering my voice, hearing the others talking to each other behind me. “How did the demons not sense the soul stone?”
Festus blew out a cloud of white smoke. “I hid it,” he said. “Just like I hid your rust-bucket truck in St. Louis.” He shook his head and looked up at the sky. “If they’d have found that, we’d all have been killed.”
“Wow, well, thanks for that,” I said. “What about that Wolf thing? Do we need to worry about it being in the ground in Garnett?”
Festus took another drag on his cigarette. “Wolftamanus,” he said, “and it’s not in the ground anymore.” I raised an eyebrow at him. “It’s back in Hell by now, or at least, it’s on its way there.”
“And once it’s back in Hell, can it get out again?” I asked.
Festus shrugged. “I mean, it got out before. It was buried in Salvation, Missouri for decades. It could get out again.”
“Would that be something you might be able to check on from time to time?” I asked. “You know, so we don’t find ourselves up to our asses in Hellgates one day?”
He gave a non-committal grunt. “I’ll see what I can find out.” He put his foot up on the bench to dust off his pant leg. “I’m going to need to come up with an alibi for where I’ve been if I want to keep walking and talking, so I need to be on my way.” He met my gaze. “I of course don’t have the paperwork yet, but unofficially, you killed two demons at the museum, the demon in the woods, and two in the cellar…”
“And Furcas, Furbas, whatever his name was,” I said. “Was he worth more than a regular Empty-House high-ring demon?”
Festus rolled his cigarette butt and watched it drop to the ground. “Perhaps. I won’t know how much until I see the paperwork, but that’s another twenty-five souls, if not more.” He ground the butt under his heel and grinned up at me. “That’s only two hundred and thirty-three left.” His eyes flashed red for a moment before returning to normal. “Let’s beat them at their own game.”
I nodded. “It’s a stupid game.”
“And we’re winning,” Festus said. He glanced over at the rest of the crew and then with a final nod at me, he turned and went around the tree. I followed him, but he was gone, not even leaving behind footprints in the freshly mown grass.
“Festus take off?” Gabe asked when I rejoined the group.
I nodded. “Said he had to cook up an alibi so he won’t get road-hauled when he gets back to the office.”
“I don’t even want to think about what getting road-hauled in Hell would be like,” Mick muttered.
“Well, this has been fun and all,” Vince said, “but we need to get back on the road and check on our...things.” He cut his eyes to Jo. Mick sighed beside Vince and moved past him over to Jo.
“Thanks,” Mick said, holding out his hand. Jo shook it. “You’re ok. Just...you know.”
Jo sighed. “I won’t be killing any innocents, Officer.”
Mick nodded and turned away. He smacked a confused Vince on the chest. Vince gave us all a confused nod and they climbed back up into their Jeep.
“I didn’t want to say too much in front of them,” Tags said as we watched them turn the corner and disappear, “but the last couple of hours, I’ve heard the demons talking.”
“Anything juicy?” I asked. “Like how they’re going to fricassee the demons that were clawed out of their meat suits by the black-eyed kids while they were trying to open a new Hellgate?”
Tags rolled his eyes. “Yeah, top headline. No, it’s nothing that specific. They just...they sound...excited. They keep saying something about time.”
I thought of the count Festus had just given me. “Well, maybe they’re pissed. According to Festus, I’ve only got two hundred and thirty-three souls left to save.” I tried not to grin, but the look of relief on everyone else’s faces made it hard not to.
“As excellent as that is,” Tags said. “No, they would be pissed if that was what they were talking about. This is happy excitement.”
“Well, that can’t be good,” I said. I looked around us. We’d probably already been in the park for too long. I thought of the black-eyed kids. Had they been following since Crossways and we were just always one step ahead of them in Toledo, Prosper, and Ft. Hope? Had they only caught up to us because we’d been in Garnett for awhile? How long would Mattie Mae’s spell push them back? I looked over at Stacks. “It was lucky you still had that spell on you.”
Stacks snorted. “Lucky nothing. My trailer burned down and this is now my only pair of jeans. I just hadn’t cleaned out my pockets since you gave it to me.” He looked down at himself. “What’s lucky is that she wrote it on heavy paper and I was the first one fished out of the quicksand. A minute longer in that sludge and I wouldn’t have been able to read it.”
“Wait,” Noah said. “Mattie Mae said the spell just blew the black-eyed kids into the next county. They could be on their way back here...and what about the orphan kids?” There was a note of pity in Noah’s voice.
Rosetta shook her head. “With no house to haunt anymore, they should just move on. They weren’t malevolent.”
“But they were beating on the demons with the black-eyed kids…,” Noah said.
“They joined forces with other kids,” Jo said, gently. “They probably thought it was a game.”
“So, what was blocking Walter?” Stacks asked. “The demons?”
“My money would be on the seer that they later beheaded and used to find Callie,” Gabe said.
“I’ll call Walter when we’re on the road and find out if he’s still clogged up,” I said.
We all paused as we heard sirens in the distance, getting closer.
“I think that’s our cue to hoof it,” Rosetta said. “Stacks, Taggert, let’s load up.” Rosetta focused her gaze on me. “We’re heading back to Ft. Hope for now. Where are you going, or do I want to know?”
I shrugged and glanced at Jo. “Taking Jo back home and then we’ll see what Walter says and see if he’s got anything to hunt.” I looked around. “I think it’s best if we keep on the move, what with this soul stone burning a hole in my pocket.”
“And before that,” Stacks called from the Caddie’s backseat, “you still owe me research on gods and Nergal! Get on the ball, Bane!” I gave him the finger. He frowned and motioned me over to him. I raised an eyebrow and he sighed. “Get over here.” I wandered closer and his expression turned serious. “Bane, I’m not in Messina anymore. Not until I have a place to stay that I can secure. There’s no one watching the store right now and it’s scaring the shit out of me. I’m going to try to work something out with Tessa and Marge and get back there as quickly as possible, but I need data if I’m going to figure out what’s happening. Please. Just, please make it a priority.”
I sighed but nodded. “We’ll keep an ear out. I’ll call you if we find anything.” I thought for a minute. “In exchange for the ‘god intel’, can you look into this Wolftamanus thing? Festus says it’ll be halfway back to Hell by now because of the spell they were using to start the Hellgate process. Can you find out if this is something we’re going to have to keep worrying about?” He nodded. “Oh, and I’m pretty sure they’re a fake company, but check into Shady Lane Developments in Toledo, just in case I need to make a demon-away house call?”
“Fine,” Stacks said, crossing his arms. “But I feel like you’re getting off light on this deal.”
“Then, it’s a good deal,” I said with a grin.
I turned around to see Rosetta hugging Jo. I was worried until she pulled back and kissed Jo on the forehead. “That’s from Hattie. I know she’s not your real mother, but…”
“I’m lucky to have a mother as real as she is,” Jo said.
Rosetta patted Jo’s cheek. “Call her some time, please? Use a payphone if you’re nervous about getting her involved in anything. Or hell, call me and I’ll get a message to her.” Rosetta dug in her purse and scribbled her number for Jo. We waved to Stacks, Tags, and Rosetta as they took off. Gabe winked at me, pulled on his helmet, and took off after them. Noah, Jo, and I piled back into Lucy. We were fairly quiet on the drive back to Toledo and Noah stayed in the truck when I walked Jo to her door. I followed her in and we checked the hex bags and salted tape.
She looked around the apartment and sighed. “I guess I’ll have to move again. Now that demons know where I live.”
“Where will you go?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Somewhere else in Toledo.”
“You won’t move towns?” I asked. This was surprising.
