Deadbeat Druid by David R. Slayton

Author:David R. Slayton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Published: 2022-08-19T23:28:42+00:00

16

Adam

“Wh-What are you doing here?” Bobby stammered.

By the look on his face, he hadn’t absorbed it yet, and Adam did not look forward to the fallout when he did.

“Where else was I going to go?” Robert asked, shrugging as he leaned back into the cheap plastic chair.

“You look okay for someone stuck in hell,” Adam said.

Robert Senior’s skin had a sallow edge, but he seemed more animated than the dead in the hotel lobby.

“You mean for someone you murdered,” Robert said.

He gestured to the chairs.

“I’ll stand,” Adam said.

The hotel had been silent before. That didn’t change, but the air stilled. It tightened, not unlike the tension before a thunderstorm.

Out of the corner of his eye, Adam could see eyes staring out from the stained, peeling wallpaper.

“Please,” Robert said, eyes flicking left to right. He looked genuinely worried. “Have a seat.”

Adam took pity on him. The chair felt stiff against his legs and ass. He didn’t rest his full weight in case they had to run. Bobby sat woodenly, kind of slack, like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

The air in the room relaxed a bit, but Adam still sensed that the three of them weren’t alone. Wisps of smoke ran at the edges of what he could see. This place, the building, was watching them.

Adam crossed his arms over his chest, felt the salt in his pocket. Not enough for a fight, even if he had the magic to charge it, but maybe he could create a distraction. It was that or the gun, which would be useless against the dead.

“What’s this about?” Adam asked. “If it’s a trap, you’re really shitty bait.”

“Is that any way to speak to your father?” Robert asked.

“You spoke far worse to me when you were alive,” Adam snapped.

“You mean before Bobby Jack here killed me,” Robert said.

He turned, showed them the back of his head. The hammer wound was a round hole. The blood shone, wet and fresh, as if the blow was newly struck.

“Barely felt a thing, son,” Robert said.

Bobby’s anxiety, his grief and sorrow were like a wave. So much for teaching him to ward himself. Adam felt the hotel, the watching thing, tense like it licked its lips.

He wondered what bullets would do to a demon.

Adam pushed his will and drew his wards over Bobby. He had power enough for that.

The air shifted, swirling with thwarted hunger. So that was how it was.

In Adam’s chest, the warlock wound pulsed. Adam smiled.

“It felt that,” he said. “Good.”

He leaned toward their father, drawing the attention away from Bobby. “Back off.”

“It?” Bobby asked.

“You put Bobby through enough crap when you were alive,” Adam said. “Me too, and I’m not a little kid anymore.”

“You’re blunt like your mother, Adam Lee,” Robert said.

“And proud of it,” Adam sniped. “You didn’t answer my question. You wanted us to stop, so we stopped. Why the reunion?”

“I don’t understand,” Bobby said, still shaking off his shock. His feelings were so strong, so intense. Adam had to get him out of here.

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