Flame's Dawn by Jillian David

Author:Jillian David
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 2016-01-27T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Hours later, the rays of dawn lit up the twisting roads near Santa Cruz. Barnaby pulled the bronze Nova into the local sundry store. He had changed the bloody shirt before leaving the apartment. No need to attract unwanted attention. With a light touch on Jane’s arm to alert her, he tucked his jacket more firmly around her shoulders and locked her in the car.

Leaving her alone was the last thing he wanted to do, but he had to get supplies and try to make her comfortable in this hellish situation.

A situation he’d precipitated.

If only he hadn’t connected with her in Vietnam, if only he’d followed through on his promise to find her in San Francisco, Jane wouldn’t be a broken and ill woman. He had one job—to search for her—and he couldn’t be bothered to do it.

Look what happened. She’d almost died. A minion still tracked her.

What a worthless bastard. And he didn’t mean the minion.

Inside, he picked up several weeks’ worth of dry goods and a few outfits he thought might suit Jane. Later this week, Dante would drop off a bag of women’s clothes and additional supplies at the store.

Even his old friend didn’t know the exact location of the mountain retreat, and Barnaby liked it that way.

With a bare nod at the young worker who raised her eyebrow at the order, Barnaby paid and hurried back out to the car.

His whole life, such as one could call it, was in this vehicle.

Did that include Jane?

What a wretch, but he couldn’t follow that thought to its terrible conclusion. He had to live in the here and now, as he had for the past 400 years.

If only he could stop this hamster wheel from hell. The urge, the kills with that cursed knife, the relief, the hope that he might have completed the contract, and then despair. Always ending on despair. Rinse and repeat.

If he’d returned to Vietnam, he might have found those scrolls. Might have broken the curse by now.

But then again, he wouldn’t have found Jane and saved her from Thompson.

Then again, if he hadn’t encountered Jane in the first place, the minion wouldn’t have been drawn to her and wouldn’t have hurt her.

Ah, shite. No answer worked.

Steering the car up the highway, he turned onto an unmarked dirt road. He prayed that the road was clear of debris, as it had been more than a year since he’d come up here.

After traveling several miles deep into the forest, he parked in front of his cabin. In the late morning light, the redwood-sided cabin thrust a porch off the steep mountainside and suspended it into the pale blue sky above the pine trees. The familiar lines of Loma Yorba’s rocky peak to the north soothed him. He so loved nature, loved having a place apart from his sick existence as an Indebted.

Sadly, though, the peace never lasted. Not as long as he had to kill criminals on demand.

Couldn’t rightly do that up here, alone in

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