And he stared right back.
Tingles brushed over my skin, the tension robbing the room of the easy humor it just contained.
“Jan—Kitty,” Ash corrected himself, his voice low and cracked.
“Ash.” She replied with almost no emotion, but her throat bobbed, her hand fluttering slightly. “It’s been... a long time.”
“It has.”
Awkward silence pounded in my ears. I knew there was a history between these two. Feelings, unrequited or possibly requited, but whatever happened separated the lifelong friends.
“You look well.” Ash motioned down her. Tall in her heels and formfitting black knee-length dress, she reminded me of a fashion model, not the madam of a brothel.
“As do you,” she replied.
Silence.
“Fuck, if we have to wait for you two to get through a full sentence, we’re going to be here forever.” Warwick gestured between them, irritation furrowing his brows. “You both are sorry—apologize and move on. You two have avoided each other over hurt feelings for years. We are a family. The only one I ever really had. My brothers. No matter if things got messed up for a bit. Don’t fuckin’ let go of what we’ve been through. What you are to each other. I’ve had it with you guys and being in the middle of this stupid grudge.”
Ash scowled, glancing away, Kitty doing the same.
“So... figure it out! Before I decide to kill you both for my peace of mind,” he grumbled, stepping for the door. “But not right this second. Ash, come with me.” He banged through the front door, his massive frame clomping angrily down the path.
Ash hesitated for a moment, glancing at Kitty before he followed Warwick out the door.
Kitty spun around and marched out of the room, a door down the hall slamming.
I stood there alone in the room, feeling the years of pain, anger, and embarrassment they stubbornly built between their friendship.
In a short time, they had become like family to me too. And I hoped they could work it out. In this world, family, trust, and love were scarce. You held on to these and fought like hell to keep them.
A család nem egy fontos dolog. A család a legfontosabb. That was a phrase my dad said a lot.
“Family is not an important thing. It’s everything.”
Chapter 23
The rumble of motorcycles echoed in the cold night air. The waxing gibbous moon was a deep orange, lighting the dark streets.
Tomorrow, the harvest moon would be full.
Tomorrow, it would be my twentieth birthday.
The day of Samhain. The anniversary of the fae war.
The day my mother died.
And the time I brought Warwick back to life.
Tucking into Ash’s back to block the cold, I pulled my hands into my sleeves, pushing the anxiety I always felt when the day of my birth was near. Something nipped inside, scratching at my intuition, warning me. I had no clue what, but I felt something was imminent—peril looming over me.
Warwick signaled in front of us to turn. The wounded captive was tied, gagged, and slightly sedated behind him. Warwick wanted Vincent with him, not trusting the man or the situation we were riding into.
Earlier, Warwick and Ash had placed the note in a location. Circling around later, they found a response waiting. We were to meet at the Fiumei Road Graveyard. Midnight.
Bandaged and with a shot of morphine, Vincent didn’t put up a single fight when we tied him to Warwick’s bike. I tried to ignore the deep feeling in my bones he was close to death, battling and fighting against the line, trying to stop it from taking him. Like a skipping record, it scratched at the back of my neck, stirring up something in me.
Something unsettling.
Warwick slowed, pulling up to the graveyard, the only light coming from the dull bike headlights and the moon. Ash parked next to him, the guys getting the hostage off the bike as I yanked the gun from my waistband, unlatching the safety.
Nerves scaled up my esophagus, and my eyes danced around the open space, the creepy headstones casting shadows that seemed to move. On high alert, I trained my senses to take in every little thing, my gun up and ready to protect us.
“Sense anything?” Warwick’s link stood next to me while he was still busy getting Vincent off the bike and standing on his feet.
“No.” But it was a lie. I could feel energy crawl over me like bugs, but that wasn’t what he was asking about. He meant living people.
I felt the dead.
Reminding me of the Bone Church, currents tapped at my skin, their curiosity mounting, raising the hair on my arms, affecting my equilibrium. Ghosts swarmed and circled around. Steadying myself, I tried to block it, my teeth grinding together, fighting back the nausea. They sucked at my energy, brushing past me.
“Back off!” I commanded, my body blistering with authority. It took a couple more times for them to retreat .
A neigh of a horse jerked my head toward it, my finger tight on the trigger. Silhouettes of six horses trotted across the graveyard, five of them carrying men, pointing guns at us, the sixth horse for their leader.
Ash and Warwick yanked out their weapons, creating a standoff.
“This can go really easy. Him for the bag.” Warwick gnashed his teeth.
“Let him go,” one demanded.
“You drop the bag first,” Warwick said back, tension already skating through the night, riling the spirits with more energy.
Fuck, why did they have to pick a cemetery?
“Show me,” I replied. “I want to see everything is still in it.”
The one who spoke before slid off his mount, holstering his gun and tugging something from his arm, holding it up. The headlights from the motorcycles lit up the gray canvas bag. He opened it up, showing me the inside. I could make out a black leather-covered notebook inside.
My dad’s journal.
“We don’t give a shit about some diary full of cryptic nonsense. But if you want it back, we think there should be a reward for it.”
“One of your men isn’t enough?” I scoffed, motioning to a dazed Vincent, who was so drugged out, he stumbled around on his feet.
“Money is always first in the creed of thieves.” The man, who had taken lead, pulled something out of his pocket, making both Ash and Warwick step forward, ready to discharge.
A flame ignited the darkness. I flinched, and lead dropped into my stomach. The man held a burning torch near the bag. A spark. One flame and everything my father wrote would be in embers. The last bit I had of him would be gone.
He touched the flame to the bag. “Better decide if it’s worth it now.”
“No!” I jolted, rage surging through me. Bile coated my stomach, fear surging my adrenaline, sending shock waves out into the atmosphere like a boom. Electricity zapped in the air, crackling and hissing. The healed earth over the graves fractured and splintered, the ground rumbling.
The horses bucked, whinnying and thrashing, feeling the spirits probably as much as I did.
“What the fuck?” I heard a Hound yell, but everything felt far away as more spirits rushed for me, while my focus was on the one about to scorch my last bit of hope into cinders.
“Get them.” The order spilled from me without a thought, surging over the spirits.
They reacted to my order. Some rushed for the man starting to burn my pack while dozens of others moved to the other men, scratching and clawing at their bodies, frightening the hell out of the horses.