Wayward Devils (Souls of the Road #4)

Chapter 10

CHAPTER TEN

A bbi insisted we all take a nap, even Lula, since the bar wouldn’t be open for a few hours.

I hadn’t thought anyone could make Lula sleep, but Lu agreed to lie down beside me on the lumpy bed. She’d fallen asleep almost immediately. I suspected Moon Rabbit magic was involved, but didn’t ask.

Lu hadn’t been sleeping much or well. Neither had I.

I pushed at the pillow under my head, then dropped it beside me so I could prop my injured arm on it.

Lula lay curled on her side facing away from me. I placed my good hand on her hip and stared at the ceiling, shivering, but too hot to get under the blanket.

I blinked.

The room was darker, drenched in shadow, bars of late afternoon sunlight seeping through the curtains.

The pillow was still under my elbow. I hadn’t moved an inch.

Lula was gone.

Had she left me behind again? Was she making deals with the witches? Hunting the vampire of our nightmares without me?

Fragile.

I rubbed my hand over my face and wished I believed in a god enough to send up a prayer.

“It’s okay,” Abbi said. “She’s still here.”

The sound of running water came to me, and I rolled my head to stare at the closed bathroom door.

“Reading my mind?” I asked Abbi.

“You have loud worries.”

I rolled my head the other way. Abbi sat on the floor next to Lorde, petting the dog’s head.

“You have big ears,” I said.

She grinned. “I do. You should see them sometime.”

“I’d like that.”

Her hand paused in Lorde’s thick black fur. “Really?”

“I bet you’re a very cute bunny.”

She drew herself up. “Rabbit. And yes. I am a very cute rabbit. And powerful.”

Hado, still a little black kitten, launched out from between the couch pillows, landing squarely on top of Abbi’s head.

“Help!” Abbi half-yelled, half-laughed. “I’m being attacked. Help!”

Lorde jumped to her feet, barking at them.

Abbi dissolved onto the ground giggling hard enough to snort, while Lorde licked her face. Hado growled at Lorde with the volume of a much larger creature.

I sat and watched them, bemused. Lula walked up beside the bed and paused, as if unsure if she could touch me.

I took her hand but didn’t look away from the wrestling-giggling-barking match.

“Remind me to buy a camera,” I said.

“You have one,” she said.

“I don’t think so.”

“You do. Your phone. Where is it?”

I nodded at the bedside table.

She stretched over me, and I caught the scent of her perfume mixed with the overly sharp smell of the hotel bar soap she must have used.

She frowned at the phone, swiped the screen and tapped it. She caught me watching and smiled.

I loved her. I would always love her. No matter how we lived our lives, no matter the choices we made, no matter what our futures might be.

She leaned into me, turning the phone around so I could see the screen. She pointed the device toward the chaos near the couch.

Abbi snickered against the cheap carpet. Hado was perched on top of Lorde’s back batting her ears, which made Lorde bark and spin, tail wagging.

“Press this circle.” Lula’s breath was sweetened with mint. “It will take a picture. You can press it more than once.”

Since I was down a hand, she held the phone for me. I did as she said, the phone making a soft snick ing sound, imitating a camera click.

“Where does the photo come out?” I asked.

She raised an eyebrow because I may not have used modern technology much, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t observed her using it over the years.

“Here’s the gallery.” She tapped and thumbed and there it was. The gallery contained two photos, tiny copies of the menagerie across the room.

It was a wonderful reminder of what technology could do, but I was struck by a wave of sorrow. All these years, and I didn’t have a single picture of Lula.

I took the phone and fumbled my way back to the camera. I turned it and while Lu watched with a patient expression, I snapped her photo. More than once.

“I’m not even wearing anything nice,” she said.

She was wrong, of course. In the dark green tank top and jeans, with her red hair pulled into a braid over her shoulder and her pale skin pink and fresh from the shower, she looked like the goddess of summer come to lure mortal souls to an eternity of pleasures.

“You are always beautiful.”

“This shirt has a stain, and my jeans are ripped.”

“You don’t see yourself through my eyes,” I said.

She smiled, and it was real and whole. “Here.” She took the phone and leaned beside me, holding it at arm’s length. The screen now showed the both of us.

I was startled at how pale I was behind my tight, dark beard. Startled to see the bruised circles under my eyes. “Sheesh,” I said. “Look at that bed head. I should comb my hair.”

Her thumb tapped the circle.

“Your hair is perfect,” she said. “Messy. Alive. Just how I like you.”

I grinned. “Yeah? You like this?”

She rested her head on my shoulder and took one more picture. “I like this. Us.”

And oh, how my heart filled with joy.

Abbi and the beasts had finally settled down, Abbi on her back staring at the ceiling, Lorde resting her big head on Abbi’s stomach. Hado curled up by Abbi’s face.

“Are we going soon?” Abbi asked.

“We are,” I said.

“In a minute,” Lula said. “Brogan’s going to take a shower first.”

“Do I stink?”

“You smell good.”

“But?”

“You also smell like witch and vampire.”

I grunted. So she’d known, or could have known, exactly where I’d been and who I’d been with the moment she’d walked into the room.

“Might need some help with this,” I gestured at the brace.

She lifted her head off my shoulder. “Go on in. I’ll get some tape.”

She knelt next to our duffles and unzipped the side of hers.

I plucked the plastic bag used for ice out of the ice bucket on the top of the dresser and took it with me into the bathroom.

The room was still warm from her shower, and her perfume—honey and roses— hung sweet in the air. I inhaled, filling my lungs with the scent. Filling my mind with memories of her.

My body—my very flesh and blood body—responded to the sensation of warmth, heat, and the familiar scent of the woman I loved.

I chuckled. We didn’t have time for fooling around, no matter how much I liked that idea. Instead, I put my mind to reciting baseball stats to calm my blood.

I turned on the shower spigot, then tugged off my T-shirt. When I turned around, the bathroom door closed.

Lula stood there, her eyes filled with a hunger I hadn’t seen in a long time.

“Hey, handsome,” she said.

“Hey, yourself.”

She held up a roll of duct tape. I pulled the plastic bag out of my back pocket and put it over the brace on my arm.

We both knew there wasn’t time for us to linger with each other, to explore.

But we moved a little slower while she sealed the edges of the bag to waterproof my arm. We stood a little closer, breathed each other in, silent in our apologies, gentle in our touches, making promises to each other that we still had time. We were still here, alive, and were more than just two people grieving a past, craving revenge.

There would still be time for us, for our lives, for our future. Because we wanted more than revenge, hardship, and fear. Because we had not given up on hope.

The night sky was cloudless, stars simmering like drops of water on a cast-iron skillet. Bug song filled the air with constant, hard whirring that irritated more than soothed.

We had the windows down, Lula guiding the truck to an empty spot on the concrete and gravel parking lot. Lorde sat at my feet, and Abbi perched between Lula and me.

The tires crunched as Lu slotted Silver into the farthest spot and turned off the engine. Sodium lights burned dust into yellow cones, spotlighting cars, trucks, motorcycles.

The Buckin’ Bronc Honky Tonk was a flat-topped concrete box that could have been a repair shop before it had gone bar. And while it wasn’t big, out here between towns, it was popular enough to half-fill the lot, including a couple 18-wheelers parked in the pullout just down the road.

Neon pentagrams shone in the small dark windows, and the bigger sign across the roof line spelled out its name next to a stylized horse kicking up its back hooves.

Each letter O in the sign had an upside-down five-pointed star in the middle of it.

“Do you smell vampires?” Abbi asked between long sniffs.

“Yes, but I’ve smelled them since we hit Texas,” Lula said. Then to me, “What?”

“You didn’t tell me that,” I said. “You smell them?”

“I didn’t think…I forget, sometimes what it’s like to be human.”

“I’m not human.”

“Closer. You’re closer to it than I am.”

“I don’t think so.”

“No, she’s right,” Abbi said. “You’re a lot slower than her. You can’t see as good. You can’t smell as good. Oh! You can’t fight as good either.”

Lu pressed her hand over her smile and looked at me over the top of her fingers.

“Thank you so much, Abbi,” I said. “That’s just what I wanted to hear.”

“You’re welcome. C’mon! Let’s go talk to the witches. They like me.” She climbed over my legs, trying to get to the door handle. “I think they’re gonna have cookies and ice cream!”

“Take it easy,” I said, pushing her hair out of my face. “No, don’t jerk on the door, let me…just let me…Abbi, don’t put your knees…”

“Got it!” she crowed. She pushed, the door swung. I grunted, trying to protect my wrist and groin as she bolted out of the truck.

“Come on.” She jogged toward the building, pausing several feet away from the truck. “Cookies, Brogan!”

“This dessert obsession is going to get you kidnapped and murdered,” I muttered.

“I heard that.”

“How many?” I asked Lula as I patted the seat next to me, inviting Lorde up onto it so she could stretch out.

“Cookies? I have no idea.”

“Vampires.”

Abbi was waiting, but she wasn’t holding still. She tipped her head back and spun in a circle, watching the stars.

Lu paused, as if trying to hear something beyond the thick chirring of the night. “One. I think.”

“In the bar?”

She nodded.

I thought about the gun we’d put in the glove box, but I knew better than to take a weapon that could be turned against me in a fight.

Vampires were fast and strong, and while my dominant hand was fine, my other arm was in a brace. Leaving the gun behind didn’t mean I had to go into this empty handed. I got out of the truck.

“Abbi,” I asked, coming up next to her. “Can I have one of the gifts?”

She stopped spinning. “The coupons?”

“The feather or the rock.”

“Oh, those,” she said, relieved. She shrugged out of her backpack and dug around in it. She held the demon rock out to me. “Are you going to call on the demon? With the stone?”

“Not if I can help it.” I had no idea what kind of magic the demon stone carried, but there was power in it. Hopefully, it would be something I could tap if we needed it.

Lu brushed her hand across my arm as she walked forward.

Abbi sprang into action and bounded past her. I stayed back with Lorde beside me, watching them, searching the shadows and the fall of light around the vehicles for danger.

Lula moved like a song, fluid and flowing, each part of her shifting in rhythm, the moonlight white of her skin, the fire of her hair, the long, lean lines of her slicing through the night.

It was impossible to look away from her. Impossible not to be caught by her beauty and strength.

And those jeans. There was something about seeing that woman in denim that made my mouth go dry.

She knew it, too, and gave her ass a little extra swing just before she reached the door.

Yes, I smiled.

The music was loud enough—something with a slow country beat—I could hear it through the door.

“I’m going, too,” Abbi told Lula. “I’m going,” she said to me, as she pointed at the 21 and older only sign. “I’m not really a little girl. I’m older than any of you, and I want those cookies.”

“Bars don’t have cookies,” I said.

“They will,” she insisted. “Because there are witches here and they love me.” She grinned, showing off her square front teeth, her round face tipped up, eyes absolutely huge.

“Maybe they’ll give you carrot sticks, little bunny.”

Her eyes somehow got bigger. “Or carrot cookies ,” she breathed. “Go, go.” She pushed Lula’s hip. “Go in.”

Lu cast me a quick question, her eyes glittering like a predator in the darkness. I nodded.

She opened the door, and Lorde slipped up to walk with her, striding into the glow of yellow, green, purple and pink; into the loud, soulful country song—into a room filled with witches.

Just like a scene from a movie, the music abruptly silenced. Every head turned our way.

Lorde woof ed softly.

“About time,” Cassia called from the bar. “That was very dramatic, Jerry,” she said to a man standing behind a sound system on the far side of the empty dance floor. “You can turn the music back on now.”

He threw her a salute, and a different song filled the place, this one with a little more twang. I recognized it: “The Redheaded Stranger,” sung by John D. Loudermilk.

“You’re the redhead,” I told Lula. “That makes me the raging black stallion.”

She choked back a laugh and cleared her throat.

“Come in,” Cassia said. “Have a seat.” The witch waved at an open table that would let us keep an eye on the door and most of the room.

Abbi was already halfway across the room, headed straight to Cassia at the bar, elbows out as she held onto her backpack straps, an absolute picture of determination.

“Do you have—”

I gave a soft whistle. Abbi paused and looked back at me. I pointed toward the table. She rolled her eyes but stomped that way. “Cookies?” she yelled over to Cassia.

Half a dozen people stood up. Cassia pointed to a woman with pixie-short hair who looked way too young to be in a bar.

“Go ahead, Pru. Just bring a variety.”

Pru sprinted to the door. “I’ll be back in a second,” she said breathlessly. “Hang on.”

Okay, that was weird.

“Cookies are on the way, Moon Rabbit,” Cassia said. “Now. You two.” She pointed at Lula and me. “Sit. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

Lula looked like she was going to argue, but I caught her elbow and guided her to the table where Abbi had already claimed a chair.

“They’re bringing me cookies,” she said triumphantly. “You heard that right? Cookies.”

“We heard,” Lula said.

“Everyone heard.” I positioned a chair so I could watch the bar. Lula sat opposite, her eyes on the door.

“All right everyone,” Cassia said to the room at large, “let us begin.”

I tensed. Lula tensed. Abbi sat up straighter and stopped swinging her feet.

Everyone in the room—maybe forty people in all—lined up on the dance floor, five lines, seven people long.

“What’s happening?” Abbi whispered.

I glanced at Cassia. She sashayed out from behind the bar, plunked a pink cowboy hat on her head, and centered herself in front of the people.

“Hit it, Jerry!”

“Oh,” Abbi said, as the slow mellow tones of bass and sweetly pitched steel guitar filled the room. “I like this song.”

The people on the dance floor seemed to like it too. It was “Neon Moon,” sung by Carrie Underwood. I’d heard it on the radio more than once while driving the long, lonely Route.

The line dance was intricate and hypnotic, an easy roll and swing, each person separate but joined, linked in those steps, that movement, that song.

They sang along to it, too—not everyone, but most of them—humming, harmonizing, riffing on the melody, and making it something more. Something magic.

It was beautiful. I couldn’t look away, didn’t want to miss a single move as I tapped my thumb against the table.

Lula had lost the hardness in her body language and was swaying to the soft vocals, a rapt expression on her face.

Even Lorde was sprawled on the floor, eyes closed, sleeping happily.

Why was she so relaxed? Why was I? Witches , a part of my mind reminded me. We’d walked right into a coven of honky tonk witches.

They were dancing. Singing.

They were casting a spell, springing a trap we’d walked right into.