SEDUCTIVE SUPERNATURALS: 12 Tales of Shapeshifters, Vampires & Sexy Spirits (13 page)

The woman called Honey Girl had a dark sadness in her eyes, but she smiled at me and gestured for me to sit.

I perched carefully on one of the crates by the fire while Chick bustled over to the spider frying pan propped on the rocks at the edge. She picked up a long-handled fork to turn the bacon, and Athena snatched it out of her hand. I noticed Athena walked with a pronounced limp.

“Don’t mess wit my skillet.”

“No, Athena, I surely won’t do that.”

Chick gave her a guileless smile that softened Athena’s expression. She gently touched Chick’s cheek. “Go on and sit yourself down.”

Chick scurried over to sit beside me. Meaira came with a bowl and a rag. She began dabbing at my face. When I didn’t wince, she asked. “And whose blood is this if it’s not yours?”

I shrugged. I didn’t want to tell them it belonged to my mother. I couldn’t put my thoughts around the words. Didn’t want to conjure the memory. But there it was anyway, hovering just at the edge of my mind. I felt hot tears filling my eyes again, and I clenched my teeth hard to fight them back. I was a coward, not a crybaby. But they wouldn’t be staunched. They spilled over and streamed down my face. One plopped onto my hand and mingled with the dried blood there. I must look a sight. The thought made the tears come faster. Meaira put her arms around me from one side and Chick from the other, and the two strange women held me while I cried.

* * *

Later I ate under Athena’s fierce eyes. Why she disliked me so, I didn’t know. But she watched the horizon fearfully—I assumed for murderers to swoop down on us. I watched for them, as well. I spent a restless night with the women, tossing and turning, starting to wakefulness in the grips of nightmares. Chick was there beside me, her luminous eyes full of compassion. On my other side lay Honey, who set her cool hands on my forehead and murmured comforting words in her sweet tone. Somehow I made it to morning.

Dawn found us back around the fire drinking Athena’s coffee. I offered to help with breakfast, and she gave me a withering stare. I didn’t know if she resented the implication that she might need help, or if it was just me she took exception to. I thought it was probably me, but I still didn’t know why. She made breakfast from last night’s meal, and then the camp became a hive of activity. I felt useless in the midst of it and tried to help. Chick kept a steady conversation, telling me that soon Aiken and the Captain would be here.

“Who are they?”

This question stilled all the women. They stared at me, then from one to another, none of them answering.

“A businessman, the Captain is,” Meaira began, hesitantly. “You understand?”

I nodded, though I didn’t think I did. “My father was a businessman. He was a banker.”

This produced another round of stares. “That not the kind Captain is,” Chick said. “He work the tables. You know. Cards. He won hisself a saloon.”

I raised my brows at this. My father had been a player of cards, although my mother had disapproved. Perhaps if he’d ever won she’d have considered it a business venture, too, but unfortunately, he hadn’t been very skilled. He understood the rules of gambling but not the concept of the game. He’d taught me when I was only eight, and by the time I was ten, I could beat him every time. He’d often joked that he wished he could smuggle me in with him. Many a night my entire family had settled around a table with a deck of cards and my daddy’s hope that practice would make perfect. For me it had, but for Daddy . . . I bit my lip, knowing he would never learn to win now.

“And Aiken,” I asked. “Who is he?”

“He the devil,” Athena said, turning her back on me and the conversation.

“The devil,” Meaira scoffed. “What will she think? No lass, not the devil. A man of business, as well.”

Athena snorted and jabbed a finger at me. “Well, he ain’t gon’ be happy to see her.”

The devil and a gambler who thought themselves businessmen. I still didn’t know where the women fit in, but Athena’s words inspired them all to move faster in their efforts to be packed up and ready.

It was close to nine in the morning when Honey stood up and shielded her eyes from the bright sun. The camp was tidy, and the women waited in a circle around the low fire.

“Captain’s coming,” she said.

“Is Aiken with him?” Meaira asked, looking very hopeful about the prospect of the devil’s arrival.

“Just the Captain,” Honey said. Meaira’s disappointment had a pale and shaken air to it. I wondered at her relationship with this Aiken.

I looked but saw nothing of either man. Honey must have excellent eyes or a sixth sense where the Captain was concerned. After a few minutes of staring, I made out a speck on the horizon. Possibly a man on a horse, but how could they be certain it was the man they called Captain?

The declaration of his imminent arrival had a galvanizing effect on the other women, however. They all began to move about with feigned casualness, as if they’d risen on a whim to dust off their skirts or straighten the already neatly stacked crates by the wagon. But the tension hung thick in the camp. Athena clicked her tongue and looked around like a soldier at her troop.

Honey disappeared into the back of the wagon. When she came out, she’d touched up her makeup and changed into a dress that looked very fine for camping. Meaira slouched on a crate dejectedly. I noted the dark circles under her eyes and a grayish cast to her skin. She looked unwell.

Chick fussed with her hair and adjusted her dress over her underdeveloped breasts. Even Athena, though unconcerned with her appearance, busied herself around the fire. She retrieved her skillet from a crate and started cooking. By the time the Captain came into sight, the bacon was popping and Athena began cracking eggs in beside it.

He was a big man riding an enormous horse. The mount was a mottled blend of grays and white with brown mixed in at intervals, as if by mistake. My brother would have known the name of it. He would have run out to meet the rider, hopping alongside as he admired the horse. I swallowed thickly.

The Captain’s saddle was worn, dark leather. A workingman’s saddle, not a fancy tooled thing like the one my daddy’s boss at the bank had. The Captain wore boots and dark pants with a gold strip down each leg. They were faded pale and the cording sapped of color until it looked more lemon than golden. His work shirt was grayed and buttoned casually up over a broad chest. He wore no jacket. The hat on his head was low, keeping his face in shadow.

On the saddle behind him hung a string of rabbits. He untied them and dropped them by the fire.

Athena picked up the string and said sweetly, “Thanky, Captain.”

He gave a half nod and backed up his horse. As he turned, the angle shifted and the shadows cleared from his face. For the first time, I saw him full-on. He had eyes the color of the Mississippi River—all muddied browns and swirling greens. Dark, yet glimmering with light and current. I recognized him, of course. He was one of Lonnie and Jake Smith’s riders.

I’d seen him once in town. I’d been coming out of the dry goods store as he went in. We bumped into each other, and for a moment he held my arms between his big hands. I remember looking into those eyes, seeing the ebb and flow of the powerful tide of emotion and hot-blooded man-thoughts that swept across his face. I’d felt the sensation of his look as it skimmed over me and lingered on my breasts. I’d never seen a man like him before. He was hard and weathered, his face tanned. He smelled of a fresh bath, and his cheeks had been smoothly shaven but for the blond-gold mustache that curled over his lip.

He’d held me longer than was necessary, and I didn’t protest as I should have. My hands were pressed against the hard warmth of his chest and his heart beat steady beneath my palm. My imagination took flight with thoughts of him pulling me tight against the solid breadth of him. Bending me back over his arms as he kissed me. I didn’t really know what he might do next. I had an idea of what went on between barnyard animals but no clue how that really applied to humans.

He’d smiled at me then and the look had a hint of devil-may-care. It took my breath away while at the same time making me smile back. His attention focused on my mouth, and it seemed he was as fascinated by me as I was of him. He’d even leaned forward, ever so slightly.

That was when Mama had noticed us. She’d already walked out of the door, pushing Grandma’s chair and chattering about the new fabric she’d purchased. She hadn’t realized I wasn’t at her side.

“Sir, kindly release my daughter,” she’d snapped when she turned back to the store where we stood.

He’d dropped his hands instantly, tipped his hat at us both and stepped aside. I allowed my hands to trail his chest as I lowered them. He recognized the gesture for what it was. Even though I’d never been so bold with a man before, I wanted him to know that I liked his touch. I succeeded.

“Outside, Ella,” my mother snapped, angrily grabbing my arm. She’d marched me home where my father told me who he was. Sawyer McCready. A Smith rider.

He narrowed his eyes at me now, noticing for the first time that I sat near the fire. I held my breath, wondering if he recognized me, too. He didn’t say a word, just cut his eyes from one woman to another as he sat astride that huge horse.

“Captain,” Honey said, moving up to his side and setting her hand on his thigh. She had long, slender fingers, slightly darkened at the knuckles but smooth as the rest of her. “This young woman found her way to our camp last night. Her family’s been murdered.”

Those eyes snapped to me again, and I felt them drilling into me. I inched my hand down to my pocket and eased it in. My father’s knife lay heavy and warm against my thigh. It wasn’t the shotgun—they’d taken that from me last night— but it would do. My fingers closed on the smooth metal, and I slowly pulled it out, keeping it hidden in the folds of my skirts. He was still watching me, and I knew I would have to act fast before he figured out why I looked familiar.

Hands behind my back, I pulled the knife from its leather sheath and I charged. I’d moved so quickly and unpredictably that no one thought to stop me. It didn’t occur to me that they might. I was focused only on one thing—this man who’d helped slaughter my family. One way or another I would be dead soon, either by starvation or murder, but I wouldn’t be a coward anymore.

I didn’t hesitate as I took a running leap up and over one of the crates on the ground by his horse and hit him square on as he sat horseback. I knocked him off-balance and ruined any angle I had at bringing my knife down in a fatal blow. We fell off to the other side, and my blade glanced his arm. He cursed and rolled with me, the weight of him far too much for me to fight. That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try. I kicked and bit and swung wildly with my knife until he got me pinned on my back, both hands captured by one of his. I had the satisfaction of knowing he was breathing heavily as he looked down at me. I stared defiantly back and saw the dawning of recognition.

“Ella,” he said.

He remembered my name, though my mother had only said it once. For a moment, this distracted me. He’d remembered my name. But I remembered why I wanted him dead.

“You murderer! They were good people,” I shouted. “You killed them. You killed them as they ran.” I was shrieking, but I couldn’t stop. I screamed at him again and again. “Murderer.”

He wrestled the knife from my hand, easily twisting it out of my grip as I cried out with rage. He sat astraddle my body, looking at the long wicked blade I’d nearly skewered him with. His expression crossed between disbelief and anger. I waited for him to bury it to the hilt in my heart—I welcomed it. He looked at me, those muddy eyes cold, and then he backed off and stood. I flipped over and took off running. I heard him curse again and the others scream in surprise. I hiked up my skirt and ran for all I was worth. I didn’t know if he was following me or not until he tackled me, sending me sprawling on the ground, my mouth full of dirt and grit.

Roughly, he turned me, lying on me to keep me pinned to the ground. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he shouted at me, his face inches from mine. He was hurting me.

“My parents,” I shouted back. “My brother. My grandmother. Why? They were leaving. They were leaving.”

I was sobbing, hysterical with fear and anger and hurt.

“Go ahead and do it,” I told him. “Spill my blood like you did theirs.”

“Who are they? Your parents? Who were they?”

The correction caught and silenced me.
Were.
My family had to be spoken of in past tense now. “My father was Conrad Beck.”

Sawyer knew the name. I saw it in his face. I waited for him to deny it, though, expecting only lies from the likes of him.

“I don’t ride with Smith anymore. Not for almost a year.” He stood up and reached down to offer me a hand. “I didn’t kill your family.”

I didn’t believe him. I’d heard Lonnie sit on the witness stand and swear he hadn’t touched Louise Franklin, even though more than five witnesses saw him rape her before he’d murdered her. I hadn’t believed him, either. Just because I didn’t see him do it, didn’t make him innocent.

Sawyer offered his hand, but I stayed where I was, glaring my hate. He stared back at me for a moment and then walked away. He had my knife, but my rage was far from gone.

“Get the hell out of here,” he said over his shoulder.

That stopped me. I looked around at the same desolate nowhere I’d journeyed through for days without seeing another sign of life. I didn’t know where I was now any more than I had last night when I’d stumbled across the women. Where would I go? What were the odds of me finding another camp, another living soul who would help me? My father had taught me enough about gambling to know they weren’t good.

Sawyer didn’t wait to see what I would do. He showed me his back, which I thought both brave and foolhardy considering I still wanted to kill him. When he reached the camp, the women fussed around him, tending to his wounded arm and bringing him food.

I put my face in my scraped and bloody hands, wanting to sob until all the pain inside had come out. But what good would that do me? I wouldn’t stay out here like a hungry dog waiting for scraps. I wouldn’t let him see that he’d broken me. Wincing, I pushed to my feet. My knees were as skinned and torn as my hands, and my ribs felt bruised and battered. But my anger fueled my steps. I followed the stream that I’d found last night with a determination rooted deep in my desperation.