Wayward Devils (Souls of the Road #4)

Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

T he monster hunter’s necklaces swung, a flash of gold, silver cross, turquoise beads, as he leaned in toward Lu.

I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Not over the pounding in my ears. I couldn’t see, exactly, what he held in his hand, not through my fury.

What I could see was that he was too close to her—killing close—and drawing nearer.

And Lula was not moving.

I willed myself to be there, in front of her, a wall between them, but I was no longer a spirit. If I wanted to protect her, I had to do it on my own two feet.

I broke into a run. “Hey!” I yelled. “Back off.”

Hatcher jerked away from Lula. She pushed off the building, smooth, fast, stopping to stand in front of him, closer to him than me.

As if she were protecting him.

As if she were putting herself between me and him.

What. The. Hell.

I was blowing air hard, the heat bogging me down, the heavy lunch in my gut working against me.

Lu pressed her hand into my chest, stopping me in my tracks.

“He’s going.” She said it loud enough for him to hear. “Go.”

Hatcher lingered, trying to figure out where he’d seen me before. He wouldn’t figure it out because I’d been a spirit when the jackass had tried to kill my wife.

I took another step forward, but Lu dug in her heels and kept me right where I was standing. She was plenty strong enough to do so.

“Go,” she ordered again.

Hatcher snick ed air through his teeth and dismissed me entirely. “Find me,” he said. “Or I’ll find you.”

I pushed. It didn’t matter how hard Lula pushed back. I broke past her.

The hunter was already out of my reach, still facing us, walking backward.

A gun. He had a gun in his hand. He took several steps keeping it trained on us, then rounded the corner of the building.

I started after him, but Lula was more than inhumanly strong, she was also very fast.

She grabbed my arm and was in front of me again, blocking my movement.

“Leave it, Brogan,” she said. “Leave him. It’s fine.”

“Fine? What did he want? Why was he here? What did he do to you?”

“Nothing. He didn’t do anything.” She shoved harder, her hand like steel against my flesh. “Let it go.”

I took another step. She made a frustrated sound and moved to the side to let me pass, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring at me.

I jogged around the corner, but the hunter hadn’t stayed alive this long by kicking hornets’ nests and waiting for the sting.

He was gone.

I could go after him. Chase him down. Maybe catch him before he drove off—

— pull him through the window and beat him bloody —

—but he couldn’t answer the question I needed answered.

What was wrong with Lula? Why the hell was she talking to the monster hunter who had tried to kill her? He’d had his chance, he’d had enough time. Why hadn’t he shot her?

I stomped back around the building. Lula was walking—not slowly, but not so quickly I would miss her—back to the truck.

She was angry. It showed in every line of her willowy body.

Just in case I missed her body language, the explosive slam of the truck door, as she ducked into the driver’s seat, clued me in.

I mopped my face, sticking thumbs in the corners of my eyes to blink out the burn of sweat.

A crow, or maybe it was a raven, cackled from the corner of the restaurant’s roof. I flipped off the bird or spirit or god or whatever it was and walked to the truck.

The engine was rumbling. Air-conditioning hadn’t been a given when the truck rolled off the assembly line, but Lu had the fan on full blast and both windows down.

“Lu,” I said.

“No.” She waited until I got the door shut to put the truck in reverse . “I’m angry. I don’t want to say something I’ll regret.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but Abbi tapped on the window from the back. She smacked the brochure against the glass and mouthed, please .

I grunted and smoothed palms across my jeans. “Abbi wants to see the Blarney Stone.”

“Lick!” Abbi yelled. “I want to lick the Blarney Stone. For luck .”

Lula tightened her grip on the steering wheel.

“It’s in Shamrock,” I said.

“I know where the stone is, Brogan.”

I adjusted the vent. Swampy air that smelled of asphalt puffed against my skin.

“Love,” I said quietly.

She pressed her lips together, then lowered her shoulders and relaxed her hands. “I do know where Shamrock is.”

“I know.”

“I know where the Blarney Stone is.”

“I know.”

We were silent, the rumble of the engine and rush of air through the windows filling the space.

“What just happened?” I asked.

“You barged in before I could get information out of Hatcher is what happened,” she said evenly. “Like I didn’t know what I was doing. Like I can’t take care of myself.”

She threw a look my way. “You don’t need to come riding to my rescue every time I’m doing something without you. I’m not the fragile one.”

I inhaled through my nose, exhaled through my mouth. Counted to ten.

“Fragile.” I pointed at my chest. “Six-four and built like a brick house. I’m not fragile.”

“It isn’t—” She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and made a point of paying a lot of attention to the next turn in the road. “You know what I mean.”

“I don’t.”

“Don’t do this, Brogan.”

“No, you said I didn’t understand. Enlighten me. You don’t want me to help you when you’re in danger? I know you can fight. I’ve watched you take down everything that’s come your way for nearly a hundred years. He tried to kill you, Lula. He shot Lorde. How am I supposed to stand aside and let you fight alone?”

“I just meant. You aren’t like me.”

“How? Because I’m fragile? Because my being here, solid in this world, is dependent on Cupid’s mercy, and without him I’d be nothing but a ghost?”

“No. It’s not…you’re not a monster. I am.” She wet her lips, unwilling to meet my gaze. “You’re human. No, listen. You are. Mostly. More than I am. It makes you…breakable.”

I did some more breathing, letting that settle between us. “You can be hurt too, Lula. He had a gun. He tried to shoot you before. You can be killed.”

“But I haven’t been killed. Not in all these years. You have. Twice. And I’ve only had you back for two months.”

I leaned an elbow on the edge of the window and stuck my head in my hand.

She shot me quick glances, trying to read my anger.

“We have gods following us,” she said in a rush. “Three. More than three, I’d guess. And a demon, and…I can’t, Brogan. I can’t see you hurt or dead. Not so soon. Not again. Not ever again.”

“This is new.” I chose my words like each was a round rock on a pathway and my feet were made of ice. “Me being here with you, alive, is new. It has only been a short time. I understand it’s different now that I’m alive. I know it must be harder.”

“Not harder,” she said quickly. “I want you with me. I always want you with me. But I need you to be safe. To keep you safe.”

“Okay.” I waited until she had pulled back onto Route 66, the narrow concrete road cutting through flat land only interrupted by split rail fences and barbed wire.

The windows were open, but even forty-five miles an hour couldn’t cool the air, though it did make it damned loud.

“Keeping me safe means what?” I half-shouted over the rush of wind. “That I can’t protect myself? That I can’t protect you?”

It felt ridiculous to even ask. I was a large human, built strong. I could handle myself in a fight and had done so all my life.

It bothered the hell out of me that she would think I was fragile.

“You protect me,” she shouted back. “But I don’t need it.”

“How does me standing beside you make you less safe?” I asked.

She raised a hand and put on the brakes, slowing the truck. Dust flowed forward, rolling in through the windows and covering the truck in a silty orange film.

“Listen.” She cranked the gearshift into park . We were in the middle of the road, of old Route 66, at a dead stop. No one was coming from either direction for as far as the eye could see.

“I should have talked to you about this,” she said. “Before. Before I agreed to talk to the hunter.”

“You agreed to talk to that asshole?”

So that’s why she’d been looking out the diner window. That’s why she’d been so tense. “He shot you, Lula. Why the hell would you agree to meet him and talk to him?”

The other question, of course, was why hadn’t she told me she was going to do this? Why hadn’t she wanted to do this together?

“He shot at me.”

“Well, he didn’t miss Lorde. Or don’t you remember her having to go to the vet to get stitches?”

“I remember.” She closed her eyes, then pressed pale fingers against them.

Some bug was chittering out there like bacon in a pan, and a bird I couldn’t identify hacked through a short warble.

I watched her, trying to read her distress. Ever since the monsters had attacked us all those years ago, turning her half-vampire, and me spirit, I’d been beside her, invisible, unable to talk to her, to touch her, to keep her safe.

In all that time she’d been determined to find the monsters who had attacked us, determined to kill them. I’d clung to the hope I would someday be alive again and could help her see that goal through to the end.

She’d never given up. Never given up on me. Never given up on us. There was no single soul on this earth as strong as her.

But even the strongest sword can shatter in battle.

“He has a lead on the book,” she said, her eyes still closed. “I agreed to hear him out.”

Fear, then anger, squeezed my heart until I couldn’t feel the beats. She had met with Hatcher without me on purpose .

It would be easy to yell. But I didn’t.

Inhale. Exhale.

“When?” I asked, my voice too low. I cleared my throat and did everything I could to hold onto reason. “When did he contact you?”

“After we left Eunice’s place. That first hotel.”

Days ago. He’d contacted her days ago, and she hadn’t told me.

It felt like the world was spinning out from under my feet, and I could find neither sky nor earth.

“How many times have you met with him?”

She opened her eyes. The black of her pupils blew wide, then narrowed to dots in the honey gold of her gaze. “Once. Only once, Brogan. You just saw it. You just interrupted it.”

“What did he tell you? What did he say that was worth risking your life for?”

“I didn’t risk my life.”

“He had a gun,” I said evenly. “What did he say, Lula? Was it worth lying to me?”

The world was still rocking, and I couldn’t get a grip. I couldn’t keep the sound of betrayal out of my tone, my fear overwhelming all other emotions.

…The Hunter. Illinois. The bullet coming at her too fast, and me too slow, even in spirit form, too slow to stop it…

“No. You’re not even trying to listen to me.” She shifted the truck into drive .

I reached over and wrapped my hand around her wrist.

“Don’t,” she said, not looking at me. “Don’t Brogan.”

Her bones felt small in my mitt of a hand, but I knew one of the only good things she’d gotten out of the cursed life, gotten out of the monster attack, was that she was strong. Much, much stronger than me.

“You are scaring the shit out of me, love,” I said, pulling my hand away and instead reaching for the wheel. I held it.

Lula made a frustrated sound and sat back.

“I love you,” I said, grasping for reason in the fear sloshing through me. “I don’t want you hurt. Just like you don’t want me hurt.

“I want to understand what you did. What you’re doing,” I went on doggedly. “Why I…why you thought I shouldn’t be a part of it. I also want to break that shit heel’s neck.”

She refused to meet my gaze, staring out the side window, her hands in her lap.

I released the steering wheel. Fear wasn’t going to solve this, and anger would only push her away.

I cleared my throat and tried again. “Did he tell you something useful?”

Lula rolled her head and speared me with a look I’d last seen when we’d first been dating. When I’d acted like a dumbass.

“No. Some big lunkhead showed up and started shouting before he could say anything.”

I grinned.

She squinted at me. “You’re the lunkhead.”

“I know.”

“You barged in there without a clue about what was going on.”

“I know.”

“You ruined it, Brogan.”

I couldn’t keep the smile off my face, even though my heart was beating too hard. I was sick to my stomach, overheated, sweat pouring from my pits, down my back to pool at my belt line.

It was absolutely, miserably hot. Still, I smiled. “Sorry?”

That got a raised eyebrow out of her. “You are not.”

“Well, if you hadn’t lied to me…”

“I didn’t lie.”

“You just didn’t tell me what you were doing.”

She frowned.

“If you hadn’t kept secrets from me, because I’m so fragile , I wouldn’t have broken up your meeting.”

“This is not my fault,” she muttered.

“All right.”

Her eyes narrowed to golden slits. “I don’t think you understand how stupid that was.”

“Following my wife when she’s putting herself in danger? Can’t say I’d do it any other way, love.”

Ice. It was hot as the devil’s ass crack, and that woman looked like snow wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

“You don’t have to protect me from every little thing, Brogan. You can’t.”

“All right.” I sat back. “The same goes for you. I’m not fragile.”

She scoffed.

“I’m no more fragile than any other living human man, and since I’ve died twice and am still right here—alive, if you’ll notice—I can confidently say I am a hell of a lot stronger than most human men.”

“Brogan.”

I ducked my head, trying to catch her gaze. “I might only be alive because Cupid likes me that way, but that is a god’s favor, Lula. Even Death himself barred me from crossing the river to the great beyond. That’s two gods’ favor. Not many humans can claim that kind of strength.”

She shook her head.

“My body might not be as strong as yours, but I’m not fragile. My soul isn’t fragile. Nor is my heart. Because my heart beats for you, Lula Gauge. Always will.”

“But that’s what I’m worried about,” she whispered. “Your heart.”

I pressed my palm against my chest. “It’s doing okay so far.”

She put her hands on the wheel. “It’s getting you into trouble is what it’s doing, Brogan. Foolish trouble. Just like it always has. I need you to think. To be smarter than that.”

“Loving you isn’t foolish.”

She didn’t shake her head, but she didn’t look at me either. She just eased the truck forward.

Dust blew into the cab, then back out, hot wind rubbing sandpaper across my fevered skin.

“I love you, Lula Gauge,” I said.

But there was too much wind in the cab, too much heat. If she heard me, she didn’t show it.

She just kept her icy gaze on the road ahead and her foot on the gas.

For the first time in nearly a hundred years, she didn’t say she loved me back.