Chapter Thirty-Nine – Kris

 

We’d made contact with our asset.

That was at least a start.

The ride out to the safe house was as rough as sandpaper, and Hunter and I huddled together for warmth beneath the tarp as the temperature continued to drop. His arms encircled my waist and pulled me close, and I put my head against his chest.

Our contact had skinned a shifter alive to save his own ass. I couldn’t tell if the shiver that ran through my body was because of the cold, or if it was a shudder that ran through the length of me as I thought about what it must have been like to inflict that kind of horror on another sentient creature.

“You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?” Hunter whispered over the noise as we bounced along the dirt farm road.

“Aren’t you?”

“Trying not to,” he said.

We both lapsed into a long, quiet silence, continuing to shiver as our bodies huddled against one another. Suddenly, a thought popped into my mind.

“You said the White Feather did something to hurt you in the past.”

“Yes, they did.”

“What did they do, Hunter?”

He didn’t say anything, but his arms seemed to slacken a little for a moment.

Shivering against the cold, I pulled myself closer to him, tightening my own grip on his warm body. “You don’t have to tell me,” I said finally. “If it’s too hard.”

“No,” he said with a long, pained sigh. “It’s not that. It’s just something I haven’t thought too much about. Tried not to, at least. It was nearly a century ago, Kris. So far in the past no human is alive to even remember it. Not truly, anyway.”

“Well, you still don’t have to tell me.”

I laid my head against his chest, and his hand came up to stroke my hair. His fingers played at the nape of my neck, and I snuggled in closer to his warmth.

Finally, after what seemed like hours but couldn’t have been longer than a few minutes, he spoke. “Her name was Natalya. I loved her.”

I stayed there in the darkness, eyes open and staring. The pickup bounced again as it went over a pothole, but Hunter held me tight and secure against his body and barely let me move a fraction of an inch.

“She was human,” he said. “And I cared very deeply for her. But, I went west to fight in the war, and she stayed in Russia to try and keep her government together. And when I came back, she was dead, the White Feather having killed her.”

“Are you sure it was Cid?” I asked after a moment’s pause. “That was a long time ago, after all.”

I felt him shake his head as his fingers continued to play with my hair. “Not for sure, but I can practically feel it in my bones. But, he’s certainly capable of it, especially after what he ordered done to his own soldier.”

“What is he?” I asked.

“Haven’t the faintest idea. If I knew, I’d tell you. But he’s old. Very, very old. Older even than me.”

Another long pause, one where I drifted in and out of concentration as I lay against Hunter’s chest, listening to his heartbeat. To think, this time last year, I’d never have imagined I’d be this close to him. Both physically, and emotionally. Hell, we hadn’t even kissed yet, and I still couldn’t keep him out of my thoughts.

Yet…geez, where were my priorities?

“Kris?” Hunter asked, stirring me from my thoughts. “I, um, have a confession to make…”

Before he could finish his thought, the truck began to slow, taking another turn as it slowed further. Soon, it had come to a complete stop, and Simmons had killed the engine. Hunter lapsed into silence as Simmons got ready to climb out of the cab of the truck.

I patted him on the chest. “Can this wait, Hunter? I think we’re here.”

Hunter didn’t reply at first, but eventually I felt him nod. “Yeah. I think so.”

We both threw off the tarp as our contact went around to the back and dropped the truck bed. Hunter and I got to our feet and went down to the edge, hopping off into the dirt.

Simmons had brought us out to an old farmhouse that had been abandoned for some time. It looked in severe disrepair, but solid enough that it might keep the wind off our asses if we used some blankets. Definitely not the Ritz, but I’d slept in worse. That was for damn sure.

“Welcome to Chez Simmons,” he said, mispronouncing it as only an American could. “I got some cots, some hots, and a place you won’t get your ass shot off. No electricity, though. Couldn’t finagle getting a ginny out here without raising too much suspicion.”

“Thanks,” I said. “It’s appreciated.”

“And, tomorrow, maybe I can figure out what exactly this ritual is all about, and how we can maybe stop it.”

“Wait,” I said as I came to a stop. Simmons turned back, looked at me, his face clouded in confusion. “You mean you don’t even fucking know what the ritual is? What Cid is doing?

Simmons shrugged. “Told you, Cole, I’m just some dumb grunt who got wrapped up in something bigger than him. I’m a fucking human, lady. I know silver kills some of y’all, other things kill others of y’all, and magic’s fucking real. What the fuck else you want from me?”

“Maybe to get closer to him?” Hunter asked, taking a step forward. “Figure out maybe what’s going on, so we’re not completely in the dark when it comes time for us to stop this.”

Simmons took a step forward. “Get close to him?” he growled. “I fucking skinned a man who can turn into a goddamn coyote so I could get close to him! I’ve practically been giving that sick fuck lap dances since all this started, trying to weasel my way into his good graces! You think I like doing this shit? Only thing else I could do is swallow for the motherfucker!”

“Then you should have opened wide,” Hunter growled as he stepped forward.

Simmons’s fists came up at that, and I had to jump between the two of them.

“Hey!” I barked, hands up between the two of them. “Both of you fucking cool it. We’re running short on time here. Cid’s clearly playing this close to his vest, and we’re just going to have to go with the basic knowns and unknowns, all right?” I looked up at Hunter, catching his eye. “All right?”

Jaw still clenched tight, Hunter sighed, stepping back.

“All right, Simmons?”

“Yeah, Cole,” he said, taking a step back. “Yeah.”

“Good,” I said, turning back to him. “Now, if you’ll lead the way, I’m fucking starving. We can go over what we know and don’t know while I’m cramming some food in my mouth.”

“Hope you like MREs,” Simmons said. “’Cause, other than that, it’s rice and beans from here on out.”

“I’m a fucking connoisseur of MREs, Simmons,” I breathed. “Let’s get to it.”

Fifteen minutes later, we were sitting in the middle of the single room that made up the house, aside from the kitchen., shoveling a meal-ready-to-eat in our mouths. Between the three of us, a camping lantern burned, casting its eerie yellow light up in our faces. Two cots were pushed off to the side, along with blankets and pillows. In the corner was an empty bucket and a roll of toilet paper.

“No running water, I take it?” Hunter asked, nodding to the bucket.

“Middle of goddamn nowhere Mexico, man, what more do you want? HBO?”

Hunter shrugged. “Just clarifying, is all. Believe me, I grew up in worse.”

“Oh yeah? Where at?”

“17th century Scotland.”

Simmons’s face dropped. A second later, he’d regained his composure and just shook his head. “Man, I got no idea if you’re even telling the truth, but something’s screaming that you are, even though your accent ain’t shit.”

Hunter laughed. “It’s worn off over time. Besides, I spent a large portion of my life elsewhere, namely in the States. Accents of the area have changed, but I haven’t changed with them.”

“How about you?” Simmons asked, nodding to me.

“America,” I said. “Born and raised.”

“Oh yeah? How old, though?”

I stabbed my plastic spork into my MRE. “Studio 54 was fun. That answer your question?”

He grinned. “Could’ve fooled the fuck out of me. Both of you.”

“All right,” Hunter said after chewing and swallowing down another mouthful of packaged lasagna. “We’ve been fed. Now, what do you know, good sir? What can you tell us?”

Simmons sighed. “How much do you know? Let’s go from there.”

I nodded. “Not much. But here’s what we’ve got.”

I laid out everything we knew so far.

That they pushed out the cartels, that there were digs for something culminating with some specific dig north of town, and that the men I’d killed had said something about the “blood of the line”. We knew what Cid’s goal was, from Simmons’s own intel work, but we were in the dark as to how.

“That’s where you come in,” Hunter said. “What’s new since you’ve gone dark?”

Simmons told us about the golden mask they’d uncovered the day before. About how he’d taken Rodrigo to the outskirts of the state with his girlfriend, sent them packing despite Cid’s order to murder them both in the desert.

“You just released them?”

“Well,” he said, shaking his head, “after Marquez, I couldn’t handle any more. Those people are slave labor, you know? Taken out of the towns around here, forced to go to work.” He waved a hand at our surroundings, a simple, tired gesture. “How do you think I knew this place was deserted?”

I sighed, shook my head. “Anything else?”

“There’s a big amphitheater northwest of town. That’s where they’re doing it.”

“Doing what?” Hunter asked.

“It, man. Whatever it is. The, I dunno, ritual. I was just told to have them move it up, that the stars were aligning or some shit. That he had everything he needed.”

“No clue what kind of ritual?”

Simmons shook his head. “All I know is, it was important it happen there. When we found that spot a few months back, you could really tell it brightened Cid’s day.”

“How so?” Hunter asked.

“He only ordered a child’s hand cut off when the boy was caught stealing some dried beans.” Simmons let his head hang down between his knees. When he looked back up, he was shaking his head. “I didn’t have nothing to do with that one, though. Swear to God.”

“What else do we have?” I asked.

“He’s got a home outside Del Noche, even though he doesn’t spend much time there. Mostly down at the dig sites, up until recently. But, when he told me to get the ritual readied, he had me call up there to tell them.”

Hunter nodded along beside me as I bit my thumbnail. “Anything else?” I asked.

“Talked to some of the guards stationed up there. Didn’t want to ask too much and get people looking at me funny ’cause of it, but they say there’s a wing of the house, specifically one of the rooms, none of the guards are allowed in. Some of the staff is, but no one with guns or anything.”

“Interesting,” I said. “Wonder why. You hear anything else? What kind of staff?”

“Housekeepers, I think. Like maids and stuff. Other than that, though?” Simmons shook his head. “Not much else that I can think of.”

“So, we’ve got something in his house,” I began, nodding, “we’ve got an important posting in his home, and we have a deadline of tomorrow night to stop something we don’t understand.”

“Not much to work with,” Hunter said.

“What’re you talking about?” I asked with a grin. “This is more than plenty. Simmons, you’ve been to Cid’s hacienda, right?”

He shrugged. “Yeah. I mean, I’ve been up there a couple times.”

“Can you draw it for me?” I asked, waggling my eyebrows as I stuffed the last of my MRE in my mouth. I turned to Hunter, examining that beautiful jawline of his in the yellow light of the camp lantern.

Briefly, I remembered how wonderful it had been to feel his arms around me on the ride out here. How right it had felt to even pretend to be in a relationship while we were at the offices. Remembered how he’d saved my life less than twenty-four hours before. How he might have just saved my soul back in Del Noche.

And here we were, maybe flying to our deaths tomorrow to save a world that would never let us exist if it really knew about us. I might never get a better time than tonight.

Hunter caught me staring and turned slowly in the light. “What do you need?” he asked.

“While Simmons is doing that, would you mind doing me a favor, if I asked nicely? I need some demolitions work done, and you’re just the expert I’m looking for.”