Wayward Devils (Souls of the Road #4)

Chapter 16

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“ A hundred miles out,” I said for the millionth time. “He’s a god. He could have dropped us at the honky tonk’s front door.”

Lula was driving, Lorde with her new favorite corn toy, lying between us.

Raven was nowhere to be seen.

“One snap and he could have had us in the bar.”

“Maybe he just wanted to give you a hundred miles to complain before we got there,” she suggested.

I huffed and squinted out the window. The landscape was dried out, life and color sucked down by summer’s fangs. I was tired, I was hot—had I ever not been hot?—the headache constant now.

Hollow. I felt as hollow as the landscape.

Strawberry angel food cake. How had I forgotten that ? Ricky had remembered. Even the stinking magical house had remembered. But me? No.

On the heels of that thought, I knew I was kidding myself. Had been kidding myself for years.

There wasn’t going to be a birthday party. Because she and I didn’t get to live lives filled with normal joys. She and I didn’t have a life with time for candles and cakes.

We weren’t people anymore. Those kinds of happiness weren’t ever coming our way.

Lu eased the truck into the honky tonk’s parking lot where half a dozen people lingered beneath the shade of the tree on the corner.

A small figure burst out of the group and ran toward the truck, waving.

“Hi, oh, hi!” Abbi popped up next to my window before Lu had even put the vehicle in park. “We really do need help. Did you bring Valentine? I don’t see Valentine. Is he hiding? Is Ricky here too?”

“No ghost, no Ricky,” I said. “Just me and Lula.”

Abbi stuck out her bottom lip, then brightened. “You came! That’s good. Isn’t that good?”

Her words hit like a small hammer on a steel pipe. Just a constant ringing rattle, echoed by pain. My headache was ramping up enough my stomach was about to get in on the act.

“It is,” I said. I fumbled with the door and stepped out into the heat. My lungs were on fire, and the sunlight speared my eyes, blinding me.

I blinked hard and dark spots swarmed to block out the edges of my vision. Abbi had either stopped talking, or the whole world had gone quiet and buzzy.

“Inside.” Lula cupped my shoulder and took my arm. She guided me toward the building.

I was going to argue, but if I opened my mouth I’d start heaving.

Then the light was gone, the heat was gone, all of it blacked out as we crossed into the Honky Tonk.

Cool, blessedly cool air enveloped me, and I shivered, not sweating, but suddenly too cold.

“Sit.” Lu pushed me down into a chair. “Drink slowly.” She placed a glass, wet, cold, in my hand.

I lifted it, drank. The water was sweet shade and soft rain. I wanted to gulp, but she squeezed my shoulder. “Slowly, Brogan. We have time.”

So, I took small sips and closed my eyes. Just for a moment, just until the hammering faded.

Soon her hand was gone, and a cool cloth draped across the back of my neck, leeching away the heat there.

I must have made a sound, because the cloth lifted and came down again, the other side cooler.

She pressed on the cloth, then dragged it over my shoulder and down my arm. I would know that touch anywhere, had spent a hundred years craving it.

There wasn’t a song playing, just the distant pleasant chatter of people caught in conversation. I couldn’t say how many of the witches were here. At the moment, I didn’t care.

The chair next to me pulled outward.

I opened my eyes and watched Lula sit, a glass of lemonade in her hand. She placed it on the table in front of me, the box with the witch’s diary that Ricky had wanted us to give to Cassia in the center of the table. Lu opened her other hand and offered me two small pills.

“Aspirin. For your head.”

“It’s fine. I’m fine.”

Her eyebrows rose, then the corner of her mouth lifted, bringing with it a full smile. “Ricky thinks we are the two most stubborn mules on the earth.”

“Has she met every mule on earth?” I plucked the pills from her hand, popped them in my mouth, and washed them down with lemonade.

“She says she can prove it with statistics.”

I grunted and set the glass back down.

She placed her hand over mine. I matched our palms, catching her fingers. “Lula…”

“No, me first,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’ve been…” She pressed her lips into a thin line, then took a breath and met my gaze.

“I’ve been afraid,” she said. “About a lot of things. How to keep you safe—us safe. I know, I know.”

She shifted in the chair, and I distantly registered music was playing now. The smell of hops and an orange-scented cleaner filled the air.

But right now, always, the only person I could see, the only person in the world for me, was Lula.

“I’ve missed you,” I said, squeezing her fingers gently. “I don’t like arguing. Thank you for coming back to me. For being with me. All these years, my love.”

She huffed and looked away. When she turned back, tears glittered in her eyes.

“I have been right next to you,” she said. “I haven’t left you. Haven’t gone anywhere.”

I just held her gaze. She glanced away again and dashed a hand across her eyes.

“I know,” I said, finding the exit off this stage. “We’ve both done the best we could. We both worry about the other. But we trust each other to make good decisions. To be strong and safe.” I waited a moment. “Right?”

“Of course we trust,” she said. “But I worry. Your wrist…”

“What about my wrist?”

“It could have been so much worse.”

“It could have. But it wasn’t. We’ll take that as a win and go forward. But,” I said, “if going forward means we’re alone or apart, then you and I will walk away from all of this—gods, witches, demons, and devils be damned.”

She nodded again, then wiped her fingers on her pants. “We do this together. I won’t lose you, Brogan Gauge.”

I drew her in as I leaned toward her. “You have never, not for a moment, lost me. I’m not going to let that happen. And neither will you.”

Then she was there, everywhere, and I was lost in her, in the scent of her perfume, in the softness of her lips.

The kiss began as a question and warmed into memories, promises. It ended slowly, gently, with yes, forever, yes.

“Yay,” Abbi said, not loud, but right next to me. “They’re happy again. Good. Now we can go steal the little girl and poke the bad vampire.”

I felt Lula’s smile on my lips and opened my eyes. Her gaze was golden, sunlight and life, and I smiled as I fell again, always, helplessly in love with her.

“Wanna go poke a bad vampire?” I whispered.

She didn’t draw away, so close she was all I could see, all I wanted to see. “I want to save a child,” she said. She squeezed my fingers, and then gently unwove our hands. She moved her chair closer and sat back.

Her hand rested on my thigh, and I inhaled a full breath, finally feeling home again.

“You still like strawberries, right?” I asked her.

“I’ll always love strawberries.”

“Me too,” Abbi said. “I love strawberries.”

“Why?” Lula asked.

The door opened, exhaling a wash of heat and the scent of hot tar and dust. Cassia walked in, the heels of her boots matching the rhythm of the song playing in the background.

“Thank you for coming.” She wore practical clothing—denim jeans, a light tank top under a light overshirt. Her sunglasses were propped on her head. She pulled out a chair and sat with us at the table.

Her gaze lingered on the box on the table, but she didn’t ask.

“We plan to save Rhianna tonight.” She pressed her hand on the table, fingers splayed. “Dominick knows we will use the full moon to increase our magic. He knows we will come for Rhianna, so we don’t have much in the way of surprise.”

“You know where she is?” I asked.

“At his ranch, near Amarillo. It’s huge, though, with enough land around it, anyone can disappear out there. Lots of people have.”

The music rolled into a different song, something about rivers and lost loves.

Variance was suddenly next to our table. I flinched, then scowled, angry at my reaction to the vampire’s speed.

“I can take you to him,” he said.

“That sounds like a terrible plan,” I said. “He wants you there. Wants you close enough that he can kill you.”

“Neither of you know the layout of the ranch.” His gaze ticked to me, and the fury there was palpable. “I was there for three months.”

“Do you know where he’s keeping her?” I asked.

“She is my daughter.” He didn’t raise his voice, but the words hit.

Vampire.

“Your daughter’s going to need a father to come home to.” I leaned forward. “If all you’re doing is getting yourself killed, nobody wins.”

Cassia cleared her throat. “We have an inside man. That is what we needed to tell you. He’s agreed to guide you in tonight.”

Variance’s pupils were pinpoint, a killer’s focus, and his face was stone. “Try and stop me from saving my child.”

“How about I try to stop you from walking into a trap?” I said. “How about I try and stop you from committing suicide?”

“Variance and I will go,” Lula said. “He knows the place. And Rhianna will know him and trust him.”

“You mean he goes with us,” I countered. “I’m not staying behind.”

All eyes turned to me, and before I could say anything, Abbi spoke.

“You have a broken wrist, heat exhaustion, and you’re slow. Like, I’m a rabbit and, you know, magic, so I’m fast. Vampires are fast, too, and so is Lula. None of us have broken anythings.” She wrinkled her nose. “And you’re slow.”

“I’m not that slow. My wrist is fine. I’m going.” I picked up the lemonade and drained the glass. There was not a single chance in hell I would let Lula walk into a nest of vampires without me at her side.

The silence in the room told me exactly what they all thought about that.

“We have weapons,” Lula told Cassia in such a way that I knew she and I would be having words over my decision later. “We’re ready when you are.”

“Then that’s it,” Cassia said. She stood and touched Variance’s arm, but he didn’t respond. Probably because he was still wondering if killing me might be a good warmup for the night.

“The four of you will find Rhianna and bring her home. Once she is safely on her way here, get Dominick’s blood. We will do all we can to help, but we will have to do it from our land. If we step into his territory, he will know.”

“Wait.” Lula lifted the box and offered it to Cassia. “A friend of our says this contains information that can help heal vampire bites.”

Cassia’s eyebrows lifted, but she accepted the box. “Thank you.” For some reason she looked my way. “That is…thank you.” Then she waved, and a few people standing by the bar started toward us.

“I don’t like you, Brogan Gauge,” Variance said, not done with the fight.

I shrugged. “I don’t care.”

His gaze slipped to Lula, and whatever he found there didn’t make him any happier.

“Variance,” Cassia warned. “This is done now.”

He turned and strode to the bar.

“What kind of weapons do you have?” Abbi asked. “Are they Ricky’s?”

“I’ll show you,” Lula said.

“Go ahead,” Cassia said to Abbi and Lu, as a woman and man paused by our table. The woman handed Cassia her doctor’s bag, and the man spread out a cloth filled with dried herbs. “We have a few loose ends to tie off.”

“I’ll get out of your way.” I made to stand.

“No. Sit. You’re part of our loose ends. Let’s see if we can finish healing your wrist.”

I was about to argue, but Lula threw me a look.

“All right,” I said. “What do you need me to do?”