“Dinah,” I touched her handle, “how was Easter taken?”
“She was sleeping,” Dinah said. “She’d eaten at a place, a restaurant in London—”
Peter cut her off. “I was nowhere near London. I was coming back from a job in Montreal. Pulled off the side of the road to sleep.”
Cowboy nodded. “I was sleeping too when they took me. Like I said, I’d been out on the range for almost the whole year, keeping myself hidden. That week before I was caught me and my boss, we’d been driving cattle for a week and finally had a break back at the ranch. Texas, to be exact.”
They both looked at me. “I was in Montana.” They didn’t need to know why I’d been in the hospital. I’d spent the last year forcing those memories down deep to protect my loved ones. Because even if I had never fully understood what the facility wanted from us, I’d known they would use every tool at their disposal to force us into line.
Including hurting those we loved.
Trapping them.
Torturing them.
An image of my son, the one I’d seen in the darkness, danced through my mind. It struck me that he must have been chasing something. I could see that now in the way his knees had been splayed on the ground.
“I heard that you and that Irish bastard Fannin took up together,” Peter said. “Were you with him when you were taken?”
My jaw ticked and my heart hurt at the thought of Killian. Of how he’d let me down. I didn’t think he’d betrayed me; he wasn’t that man. But he’d let me go so easily. It felt like a betrayal.
Twice. I’d been fooled twice by men that I’d stupidly given my heart to.
“Yes, he was there when I was taken,” I said.
“Fuck, then they got you both.” Peter shook his head.
I mimicked him, shaking my head. “No, they didn’t get him.” And this was the part that hurt, the rage and betrayal I’d had to stuff down into the currents of the river inside my mind to keep from doing as Peter had done, flinging myself at every opportunity to escape. “He let them take me.”
8
We drove for nearly two hours with no more than a handful of words exchanged between us.
It seemed that my little bombshell that Killian had allowed me to be taken was enough to keep the two men quiet. Peter at least knew of Killian, how in the abnormal world, he was known for his sense of justice, and his willingness to fight for those who weren’t strong enough to fight for themselves.
It was one of the things I loved about him, and the thing that hurt the most about him just letting me go without a fight.
“I’m not going back there,” Peter said as we finally found a road with a sign pointing to the interstate.
“You want me to kill you?” Dinah asked. “If the time comes?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“Me too,” Cowboy said.
Dinah grumbled. “Damn it, and who gets to kill me? Huh? Nobody ever thinks about the gun’s feelings on this topic, do they?”
I laid a hand over her. “Do like Eleanor.”
I’d had two guns at one point. Dinah and Eleanor. Eleanor had held the soul of my mother, and when she’d been forced to shoot at me, she’d deliberately backfired, killing herself instead of me.
A sigh grumbled out of her. “My point is that no one in the last year has so much as wiggled my trigger.”
“You’ve misfired before.” I put heavy emphasis on that one word. Dinah was not supposed to be able to shoot without having someone pull her trigger, but she was, for lack of a better explanation, trigger happy. She’d shot on her own enough times that I knew she could.
Another grumble, but she went quiet after that.
The clock on the dashboard said 10:01 p.m. There was no radio.
“There.” Cowboy pointed at a sign as we came up to it. A hospital was a few miles away. “What do you think the chances are we can get in and out?”
I looked at him and shrugged. “Not bad.”
“Liar.” Peter laughed.
The silver-gray dog lifted her head to stare at the Magelore and let out a low grumble. I put a hand on her head, and she calmed immediately.
Cowboy cleared his throat. “I’ve tied her to you. She’s not trained, but she’ll always understand your commands. And she’ll always come back to you. Even if something happens to me. She’s your dog now, through and through.”
I nodded. “Any idea on her breed?”
“Cane Corso, and pit bull, I think,” he said, running a hand over her head. “She was used in dog-fighting matches. She’s tough and had more than a little bit of a mean streak in her.”
Peter barked a laugh. “A fitting pair.”
I’d already surmised that much from the little I’d seen of her while I was down there. No one had been able to get close to her, and I wasn’t sure why they’d kept her. She sure as shit wasn’t a therapy dog. Then again, she hadn’t been there long.
“They fed the bad ones to me,” Peter said. “She can smell that I’m a predator. That’s why she don’t like me. That mush you brought me was bullshit, but they never told you that, did they?”
Now it was my turn to laugh. “I knew what they fed you when I didn’t. The only reason I brought you that fucking mush was me trying to get through your thick skull to make you see we could work together.”
I lifted a hand and touched the bite on my neck. It had healed, but I would always have a weakness for him now, for believing him. That was the way a Magelore worked, manipulating everyone around them.
“You really married?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yes. Though I’ve no idea if she’d still be waiting. Human, not abnormal.” He shot a look at me. “Some of them have a thing for abnormals, turns them on.”
I didn’t care about that.
