Nightwind (44 page)

vanished.

“Black blood into red!” Lauren whispered and pointed her hand at Syntian just as Sheriff Ben Hurlbert

thundered down the steps into the basement. He came to a screeching halt when he saw the cell, the two

people inside.

“What the hell?” he asked, his mouth dropping open. Then he heard a soft cry behind him. Turning, he

found Lauren Cree crumpled on the floor, her eyes wide and frightened. He ran to her and took her in his

arms. “Lauren!” he gasped, feeling her trembling against his chest. “Are you all right, darlin’?”

“Do something, Benny!” he heard her begging him. “She tried to kill him!”

Ben looked behind him, realizing there was a real situation here. He got hastily to his feet and hurried into

the cell. The smell that greeted him was enough to make him gag, but it did not impede his headlong rush

into the cell where an infuriated, bedraggled Angeline Hellstrom was violently beating Syntian Cree.

“That’s enough!” he yelled, grabbing Angeline’s flailing fists and pulling her away from the man on the

floor.

“He’s mine!” Angeline bellowed. “I won’t let her have him! I won’t!” She bucked in Ben’s clutch, but

was rapidly losing her strength. “He’s mine!”

Lauren glanced through the obstruction of her fingers as other feet pounded down the stairs and she saw

a blur of uniforms descending on the trio in the cell. She watched one officer helping Benny subdue

Angeline, handcuff her, as two more knelt down beside Syntian.

“How the hell did she build a basement on the coast?” one perplexed officer quipped, stunned to find

himself below ground. “My God, the sand is so porous, you’d think...”

“Never mind that, Perkins! Call an ambulance!” another officer yelled. “He’s hurt bad!”

Ben manhandled Angeline into the custody of two Gulf Breeze police officers, cursing as the woman

managed to deliver a nasty kick to his shin. He grabbed his leg, hopping about the cell as the officers

dragged Angeline out.

“Syntian!” Angeline shrieked. “You are mine! Do you hear me? You belong to me, you fucking demon!

I won’t let her take you away from me? Do you hear? I won’t!”

Syntian felt hands on him, assessing the damage. Blood was flowing into his eyes and his face was

burning with cuts and scratches. He put up a shaky hand and wasn’t surprised to see deep furrows

gouged into the back of it where Angeline’s fingernails had raked him. He breathed a sigh of relief that his

blood was no longer the ebon color of a NightWind’s, but the crimson red of a human.

“Lord, Mister,” one of the Gulf Breeze deputies whispered. “What the hell did you do to that woman to

make her slash you up like this?”

Ben Hurlbert hobbled over to Syntian and groaned as he hunkered down beside the man. He took in the

filthy clothes and grimaced at the unwashed smell of Cree’s body, cast a look behind him at the

excrement mounded at the rear of the cage. His mouth tightened. “You been here all this time?” he

asked.

It took all of his energy just to nod at Hurlbert’s question.

“In this damned cage?” Ben growled.

“Look at this, Sheriff,” a deputy said. He shoved a half-eaten plate of raw meat under Ben’s nose.

“Get that thing outta my damn face!” Ben snapped, pushing the plate away. His stomach churned and he

stared into the dirty face of Syntian Cree. “What is that shit?”

“It’s dog meat,” Syntian replied. He smiled sadly at Ben’s wince. “You’ll eat anything when you’re being

starved, Sheriff.”

“Is that what you were being fed?” the deputy asked with disgust.

He nodded again. His eyes searched Ben’s. “Is Lauren all right?”

Ben looked up, past the two deputies and found Lauren staring at him with what he thought was shock.

“Take care of him,” Ben mumbled and got to his feet, going to Lauren as fast as his injured leg would

carry him. He knelt beside her and took her into his arms again. “It’s over, Lauren, darling. It’s all over.”

Syntian felt her gaze boring into him. There was neither love nor concern nor emotion of any kind in the

stare she aimed his way. She was clinging to Ben Hurlbert, her arms around his neck, her hands caressing

his back.

The ambulanceattendants were cursing and frowning when they left. They had made a trip out to the

condo for nothing. The man they had rushed to help had refused a trip to the hospital and had only

grudgingly allowed them to swab his cuts and scratches. He wouldn’t even let them take his temperature

or blood pressure.

“I am fine,” he’d growled at them, pushing away the stethoscope. “I just want to go home.”

“You got to let us examine you!” the driver had argued.

“No, I don’t,” the patient had snapped. “Don’t you think I’ve been through enough?”

It hadn’t helped to have the Sheriff from over in Milton side with the stupid man. “Do as he says. He

ought to know if he’s all right or not.”

“There could be internal injuries!” the attendant had warned.

“I’ll take my chances,” the man had informed them as he pushed away their offer of help. “If I get to

feeling bad, I’ll have my wife bring me to the hospital.”

The driver had wondered at the look the man’s wife had given him, but he’d kept his mouth shut.

Throwing up his hand at what he thought was supreme foolishness, he’d ordered his assistant into the

ambulance.

“It’s his hide, Jake. Let’s get the hell out of here!” the ambulance driver said with disgust.

Ben chuckled meanly as the ambulance drove away from the curb. “They’ll catch hell for not having a

transport to Gulf Breeze Hospital. That’s a couple hundred bucks outta the coffers.” He turned to

Syntian and shook his head. “You ought to have gone with them, buddy.”

“I just want to go home,” Syntian repeated.

“You’re gonna press charges against her, ain’t you?” Ben asked, nodding toward the police car where

Angeline Hellstrom was sitting, glaring back at them.

“Of course he will,” Lauren said. She walked to her husband and put her arm through his. “I’ll bring him

to the station tomorrow.”

Syntian heard the coldness in Lauren’s voice and wondered if Ben did, too. There was an odd look on

the Sheriff’s face and he was looking at Lauren as though he couldn’t quite make out what she was

saying, then he turned his gaze to Syntian again.

“I guess I owe you an apology, Cree,” Ben said grudgingly.

Syntian’s brow lifted. “An apology for what?” He felt Lauren stiffen as he leaned against her.

Ben ducked his head then looked his rival in the eye. “For thinking you’d run out on Lauren.” He took a

deep breath. “Because of the baby.”

Syntian nodded slowly. “I understand. I guess it looked as though I had, didn’t it?” He slipped his arm

around Lauren and pulled her to him, feeling her body go even more rigid than ever. He looked down

into her blank face. “I would never leave this woman willingly, Sheriff.”

Ben felt acutely uncomfortable as he watched Cree and Lauren staring at one another. There might not

have been anyone else in the world except the two of them. He cleared his throat, gaining their attention

and smiled crookedly. “I guess you folks are gonna need a ride back home, huh?”

“That would be nice, Ben. Thank you,” Lauren said, moving out of her husband’s arms. She didn’t look

back at him as she walked to the Sheriff and took his arm. “I’ll sit up front with you so Syntian can lie

down if he wants to.”

Syntian opened his mouth to speak, but snapped it shut again as the Sheriff’s quick reply made it all too

clear he would enjoy having Lauren in the front seat with him.

“That’s a good idea, darling,” Ben agreed. He cast a superior look at Lauren’s husband, then ushered

Lauren into his police cruiser, leaving Syntian to climb into the back seat alone.

Ben shut Lauren’s door and hurried around to the driver’s side. He pulled out his nightstick and laid it on

the seat between them. “I never got a chance to tell you how sorry I was about your Mama, darling,” he

said as he placed his uniform hat on top of the nightstick. “I guess it goes without saying that you can call

on me anytime you need to talk.”

A muscle jumped in Syntian’s jaw as he caught the Sheriff looking at him through the rear view mirror,

daring him to comment. Deciding for once that discretion was the better part of valor, Syntian just smiled,

but he vowed if the man called Lauren ‘darling’ just one more time, he’d turn him into hamburger.

Lauren turned slightly in the seat, having intercepted her husband’s random thought. Her eyes narrowed,

letting him know she had heard his silent threat. When Syntian gazed innocently at her, she faced forward

again and ignored his presence behind her.

Syntian leaned back in his seat, half-listening to the inane conversation being carried on by the bumpkin

in the front seat, glowering at the back of Hurlbert’s head through the heavy protective mesh that kept the

front seat passengers safe from the prisoners they were transporting. He had been surprised, and

unpleasantly so, to learn Lauren had advanced enough with her study of the Book of Shadows to be able

to pick up on his thoughts. He made a mental note to be more careful around her from then on.

“How’d she get you out to her place, Cree?” Hurlbert asked, studying Syntian in the mirror. “She call

you or what?”

“She told me she sent her limo driver, Delbert, to get him,” Lauren answered. “The black man shot him

full of something. Didn’t he, Syntian?” She didn’t turn around to look at him, but kept her eyes on the

Sheriff’s profile.

“That right, Cree?” Ben asked, squinting at the look on his rival’s face. At the slow nod from the man in

the back seat, Ben shook his head. “Damned messy business.” He reached out to pat Lauren’s hand.

“Damned messy,” he repeated.

Unaware that his hands were balled into fists on his lap, Syntian tore his gaze from his wife’s smiling face

and looked out the window at the lowering night. They were passing over the bridge and the tollbooth

was just ahead of them. He wondered why the Sheriff had taken the long way back to Milton then slowly

turned his attention back to the man. The answer was there in the way the bastard was looking at Lauren:

He wanted more time with her.

“I just don’t understand why a woman would do such a thing,” he heard Hurlbert saying. “Seems to me

there are too many fish in the sea to be casting your rod for just one.”

“I’ve been thinking,” Syntian growled, bringing the Sheriff’s eyes to him once more in the mirror. “The

last time I saw you was at McGuire’s Irish Pub, the night before Delbert kidnapped me.” At the other

man’s instant frown and quick glance, Syntian drove the spike further in. “That was Raja DeLyle you

were with, wasn’t it?”

Ben’s head snapped around and he stared at Syntian, nearly driving them off the rode with his shock. He

wasn’t aware that Lauren had turned once more in her seat and was glaring at her husband with spite.

“Raja’s an old friend of mine,” Syntian said, fusing his gaze with Lauren’s. “And every other man that

has a cock and knows how to use it.”

“That’s enough!” Lauren hissed at him.

“I...I didn’t see you there,” Ben stammered.

“But I saw you,” Syntian said. “Tell me, Sheriff: on a scale from one to ten, how would you rate fucking

Raja DeLyle?”

“I said that’s enough!” Lauren shouted at him. She glanced at Ben and saw that he was gripping the

steering wheel hard enough to pull it off the column. “What Benny does is his business, Syntian, not

yours.”

“I was just curious.”

Ben looked over at Lauren and found her looking back at him with apology. “I knew it was wrong when

I did it, Lauren, but life can be real lonely at times.”

Syntian rolled his eyes to the heavens. He was about to make another scathing remark, but the Sheriff

beat him to it.

“To tell you the truth, Cree: I’ve had better.”

The smirk slipped off Syntian’s face and he found Lauren studying him with a malicious grin. If there was

any doubt in his mind that she knew what he had done, and how he had done it, that doubt had dissolved

with her snort of spite as she twisted around and stared out the windshield.

Once they had entered East Milton, Ben pointed to a convenience store up ahead. “You want something

cold to drink, Lauren?” he asked.

Lauren nodded. “I think I would.”

Ben glanced in the rear view mirror. “How ‘bout you, Cree?”

“No,” Syntian grumbled.

Bright light flooded the interior of the car as Ben pulled up before the convenience store. He got out,

leaving behind him an awkward silence in the patrol car. Finally it was Syntian who spoke.

“Are you mad at me?” he asked.

Lauren watched Ben enter the store’s restroom door and closed her eyes, mumbling softly to herself.

“Lauren, talk to me,” Syntian pleaded. “If you’re angry because I—”

“Angeline is the one I am angry at, Syntian,” she answered, opening her eyes.

“Something’s wrong,” he countered. “I can feel it.” He sat forward, slipping his fingers through the mesh.

“Won’t you even look at me while I’m talking to you?”

Lauren was relieved to see Ben coming out of the restroom. She didn’t want to be alone with Syntian

right then. She watched as Ben paid for two sodas then elbowed his way out the exit. She heard his

boots crunching on the gravel in the parking lot. “We’ll discuss it when we get home,” she said as Ben

got back into the car and handed her a cold Mr. Pibb.