Cruel Angels Past Sundown by Hailey Piper

Author:Hailey Piper [Piper, Hailey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: epub, ebook, QuarkXPress
ISBN: 9781639511280
Publisher: Dead Sky Publishing
Published: 2023-06-05T00:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN:

Heavenly Need

THE SHED STOOD behind Slim’s Respite, a flimsy low-roofed bundle of wood kept aloft by a few nails and some counterweight of roof and wall that Annette didn’t understand. Dust caked the surface, patterned by handprints.

Slim crouched ahead of a shut narrow door, where he fiddled with a padlock. The bending made his breath hard, and blood oozed through Treasure’s scarf, bound around his thigh. Gloria crouched beside him, her hat pressed low.

Alive. Not skulls burned out, not ashes, but alive.

Annette charged toward the shed. The wind rumbled north of town, hints of Mortimer’s predicted dust storm, but Slim’s and Gloria’s voices came clear without the saloon blocking them off. They must have kept quiet until Balthazar passed.

“—can’t cut out his tongue,” Slim said. “Can’t touch him, can’t shut him up.”

“You watched me shoot him,” Gloria said. “You watched. Four bullets, not a scratch.”

“Four is nothing.” Slim clutched a key in one hand, but its jiggling and scraping didn’t seem to please the unhappy padlock. “What I got in here will be bigger, better, if this bastard would turn.”

“I hunt men, Slim. He’s something worse.” Gloria shook her head. “Much worse.” Her eyes glittered in looking past Slim’s shoulder, toward Annette, and she stiffened to her feet. “Who goes?”

Annette glanced down at herself. Couldn’t Gloria see? The skin had paled, and the arms wore dark residue from fingers to wrists, but this dress was the same, with its dried stains down one side. Annette’s hair, her face—didn’t any features matter? It was the night hiding her. In daylight, Gloria would see.

Would Slim and Gloria act the same as Sylvia, casting Annette out as a marked demon? Balthazar was powerful, but she refused to believe he could ravage their souls the same as their bodies. More than that, Annette had to believe she could crawl out of Saber’s sickness and find herself again.

And believe this night would end.

“It’s me,” Annette said, taking another step. If Gloria had drawn her gun, it didn’t show in the dark. “Annette.”

“Butterfly.” Gloria swept her arms around Annette’s shoulders in a hard embrace and stroked her back and hair. “Knew I didn’t lose you.”

Annette stopped herself from reaching back, her hovering, her trembling hands like two confused flies left buzzing with nowhere to land. Red-brown splotches coated her fingers and congealed beneath her fingernails. While blood had splattered Gloria’s clothes in her line of work, none of it had been Annette’s fault, and she didn’t want to change that now.

She shrank from Gloria’s arms. “Why haven’t you two run?”

“Our big bright man would notice the two of us mounting up,” Gloria said, tilting her head at Slim’s Respite. The stables stood slanted-roofed beside the saloon, where Big Pete sheltered alongside a few townsfolk horses and Gloria’s white gelding. “Besides, I wouldn’t leave you. And Slim here allegedly has a plan. He keeps some secret inside, ought to turn the night around for us.”

“Not mine,” Slim said. He yanked the key from the padlock, blew twice into the keyhole, and jammed in the key again.

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