Saint’s Passage: Elemental Covenant Book One Read online

  “Brigid, you push things too close to the edge.” He wanted to snarl. She’d fed from him last night, but she needed fresh blood, human blood. And he couldn’t give it to her. “Might not be a good idea to take Daniel with us if you’re this hungry.”

  “So we just leave him out here?”

  Carwyn shrugged. “Why not? At least we’ll know where he is if we need him again.”

  “That seems cruel, but at a level I’m fine with,” Brigid said. “Let’s go.”

  Carwyn started the Bronco and turned down the main drag of Liberty Springs. He could hear Daniel shouting in the background and saw him running after the Bronco as they pulled away.

  “Is he going to be safe here?”

  “I think he came here after he broke away from Scarlet the first time,” Carwyn said. “So she clearly stays out of this territory for some reason. He’ll be fine.”

  “Odd.” Brigid closed her eyes, her arm still wrapped around her middle.

  “Tell me what you were going to say before.” Carwyn tried to distract her from the ache in her belly. “There was something Didi said?”

  “What?” She opened her eyes. “Oh, what was it?”

  “I asked why Lupe would go back to Palm Desert, and you remembered something Didi said.”

  “Right.” Brigid took a deep breath and tried to straighten her torso. “Didi said Lupe had a friend coming to pick her up at the truck stop. Was very certain of it. I think she met someone in Palm Desert while she was there. Maybe she struck up a conversation. Maybe she went looking for answers. Maybe someone offered her advice.”

  “And you think whoever it was, they were in Palm Desert, so that’s why she came back?”

  “I’m thinking…” Brigid doubled up again. “I’m thinking the minute we finish at the blood bank, we need to get our next round of fast food.”

  “Fast food?”

  “Yeah.” Brigid sat up straight, her features strained. “I’m thinking tacos.”

  “Tacos?”

  “Yes. Definitely tacos.”

  * * *

  Brigid exited the alley door of the blood bank in Palm Springs feeling full, really and truly topped up, for the first time in a week. “You want to know one definite benefit to life in Dublin?”

  “Plentiful bars?” Carwyn was leaning against the Bronco, waiting for her.

  “Yes.” She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him full on the mouth, leaving a smear of blood on his lower lip. “Oops.”

  He curled his lip. “You can’t taste the chemicals?”

  “If I wasn’t so hungry, I’m sure I would, but right now?” She closed her eyes and sighed. “No. I don’t care; I’m not hungry anymore, and that’s all I care about at the moment.”

  “Fair enough.” They returned to the car and Carwyn started it. “Did you say something about tacos earlier?”

  “I did. Head back to the hotel, but park across the street at the filling station.” It had occurred to Brigid that the one place the hotel owner had mentioned Lupe going was the taco truck across the road. Strangers? Maybe. But most of those trucks were family affairs, many headed by mothers or grandmothers who might see a girl on her own and make a point of talking to her.

  “Because you’re craving tacos?”

  Brigid turned to her husband. “We’re in California. What else would we eat?”

  “Surfers?” Carwyn asked. “Hikers. A mountain lion if we stumble on one?”

  “Pretend you remember what it’s like to be human,” Brigid said. “Just for a bit.”

  “Fine.” He put the car in gear and drove away from the blood bank. “So we’re going back to the hotel to get tacos. How does this help us find a seventeen-year-old girl?”

  “We were working on the assumption that Lupe didn’t know anyone in Palm Desert.”

  “Except Beatrice said her phone pinged here.”

  “Exactly. So what if she got to know someone?”

  “You think she might have made friends with whoever was running the taco truck?”

  “She went more than once,” Brigid said. “Why not?”

  “I suppose it’s as good a guess as any.”

  * * *

  The taco truck parked across the road from the Desert Dweller Motor Lodge wasn’t open at one in the morning. The sign was turned off, but the lights in the truck were still dimly lit, and Carwyn saw someone moving around.

  “You want to approach them on your own?” Carwyn knew his sheer size could be intimidating. More than once, he’d let Brigid take the lead.

  “No, I think I want you there.” She opened the car door and Carwyn followed her.

  Brigid walked to the side of the taco truck and tapped on the window.

  There was a woman inside with long dark hair pulled back into a single braid. She said something in Spanish that Carwyn couldn’t catch and pointed to the sign in the window.

  Cerrado.

  Closed.

  Brigid tapped again, and a man appeared from the back. He was wearing a white T-shirt under an open flannel, and he slid the window back with a crack.

  “Don’t want to be rude,” he said, “but my wife told you we’re closed.”

  “I don’t want to order food.”

  The man glanced at her, then at Carwyn standing behind her. “If you’re not looking for food, we’re definitely closed.”

  Brigid flashed the picture of Lupe. “Do you recognize her?”

  The man shrugged. “Nope.”

  Carwyn’s voice boomed in the silent parking lot. “You didn’t look at the picture.”

  The man turned carefully.

  “You should look,” Carwyn said. “She’s seventeen. She left home with a twenty-year-old man. Her mother is worried sick and hired us to find her.”

  The man hunched down to look out the window. “She’s seventeen?”

  “Never been away from home. Never been on her own. Barely seventeen,” Carwyn said.

  The man looked at his wife and spoke in quiet, rapid-fire Spanish that Carwyn could barely pick up. The wife responded, clearly unhappy. Her arms were crossed over her chest. She knew Lupe, Carwyn was certain of it.

  “She might have lied about her age,” Brigid said. “Or maybe she didn’t. We don’t care. We’re not with the police. We just want to find her and bring her home.”

  The woman bent down and spoke through the window. “What if she doesn’t want to be found?”

  Carwyn took a deep breath. Lupe was safe. This woman knew where she was. There was someone looking out for her. The girl was safe.

  “We know yer keeping an eye on her.” Brigid stepped closer. “And believe me, I’m incredibly grateful. The last thing I want is for her to be on her own. But what she’s plannin’…”

  Carwyn stepped forward. “She’s a good girl with a big heart. And she’s passionate about protecting people.”

  The couple exchanged glances.

  “We know that,” the man said.

  “This thing she wants to do,” Brigid said, “it could put her at risk. I don’t know what she’s told you, but—”

  “Lupe’s not staying with us,” the woman said. “But we know where she is. She’s safe.”

  “She’s not going to be safe if she tries what we think she’s going to try,” Brigid said. “Please, consider that her mother is frightened to death. She knows about the detention center. She knows what Lupe wants to do.”

  The man stared at Brigid with hard eyes. Then he glanced at Carwyn. Back to Brigid. He stood up and said something quietly to his wife. She finally nodded.

  He scribbled something on a piece of paper and handed it through the window. “I’m Ruben Vasquez. My wife is Melanie. Our address is on the paper. Meet us there tomorrow.”

  “Night,” Brigid said. “We can’t meet you until tomorrow night.”

  Ruben frowned. “Okay, so tomorrow night. Meet us there, and I’ll try to get Lupe to come over.”

  Carwyn stepped closer. “You’re sure she’s safe?”
<
br />   “Very sure.” Ruben looked bored. “God, these women are gonna kill me.”

  Melanie snapped at him in Spanish as she closed the window. Carwyn couldn’t stop the smile as he grabbed Brigid’s hand and started back to the Bronco.

  “Do you really think she’s safe?” Brigid said. “I didn’t understand what they were saying.”

  “She’s at Melanie’s grandmother’s house,” Carwyn said. “Or I’m pretty sure that’s what she said. Either way, they know where she is. She found some good people to help her. I told you, a clever girl.”

  “A clever girl wouldn’t have left home with a twenty-year-old vamp addict,” Brigid mumbled.

  She was falling into a mood, and the only way to get her out of it was to plunge into the ridiculous. Otherwise she’d brood all day.

  “Don’t be so harsh, love.” He opened the Bronco door and helped her inside, patting her ass on the way. To be helpful. “Don’t you remember how out of your wits you became when we were first in love?”

  Brigid frowned. “Are you joking just now?”

  “Stammering. Starry-eyed.” He almost closed the door but paused before he shut it completely. “It was as if your brains just fell out of your head.” He patted her cheek.

  “Are you barking?” Brigid asked. “When was this period of mindless adoration supposed to have occurred? I don’t remember it.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t though, would you?” He offered her a pitying look. “I mean, I can’t blame you, Brigid. There are not many specimens of manhood as fine as me. And I should know, I’m over a thousand years old.”

  Her nostrils flared as she tried to stifle a laugh.

  Yes! Success. Carwyn loved it.

  “Is that so?” she asked. “A thousand years?”

  “Over a thousand years.”

  “Bless me, I had no idea. I mean, I’d probably forgotten it when my brain fell right out of my head, you know.”

  She was playing with him, and nothing made Carwyn’s blood move like his wife in a playful mood. He shut the car door and walked to the other side. Brigid was waiting, her lips pursed and an evil light in her eyes.

  “So a thousand years, is it?”

  “Over a thousand—”

  “That’s right, over a thousand years.” Her accent was getting heavy and all her th’s were turning into t’s.

  He wasn’t a thousand years, but he was definitely a tousand.

  “So all that time,” she said. “It’s a right miracle you can get the engine going.”

  Carwyn had already started the Bronco. “Pardon?”

  “I mean, a tousand years! That’s just a miracle you can… Let’s just say that it’s a right miracle you can rise to the occasion at such an advanced age.”

  He snorted and laughed at the same time. “Aye, well I was built to last.”

  “I can see that. But tell me, do ya know for sure that it’s a question of quality build or might it be pure fossilization?”

  “Evil.” He laughed, reached across the cab, and pulled her into a hard kiss. “Give me directions to that empty house, darling girl. I’ll show you how fossilized I am.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Carwyn woke an hour before Brigid. Though the sun was still up, it was sneaking toward the horizon, and when he pushed open the door, he could see the slant of warm afternoon light crossing the bedroom where they were hiding.

  It was a brilliant idea, model homes. Brigid always seemed to find the ones that were bankrupt or nearly so. They were never disturbed by estate agents or workmen. She’d employed the technique half a dozen times or so since she wasn’t a fan of Carwyn’s technique for hiding.

  Which was digging a massive, comfy hole in the ground. He loved it. Brigid, not so much.

  He watched the light move and soaked up the warmth of the upstairs bedroom. The air was still and the desert around them utterly silent. He heard the wind whipping overhead, but that was all.

  Two itinerant nightwalkers in a human-run world.

  Carwyn had secluded himself for hundreds of years in his various hideaways. The small church in North Wales, his son’s home in the Lake District, his daughter’s home in South America. He’d retreated from the world enough that the stings and agonies of mortality touched him lightly. Those aches that he came in contact with were more spiritual than carnal in nature.

  Then he found Brigid.

  For Brigid, everything in the world was a wrong to right. She’d been a victim—been the one needing rescuing—but once she came into her power and tamed the fire that had burst from her when she first woke as an immortal, she was a force of nature beyond the element she wielded.

  There was no human agony that didn’t touch her, no injustice that was too small to confront. Brigid was a fighter, which meant Carwyn had become one as well.

  They couldn’t walk away from what they’d learned about Lupe and Daniel. If they did, Brigid would never forgive herself despite what she might have fooled herself into thinking.

  The sun slipped below the horizon, and Carwyn felt her stirring beside him. He gathered her in his arms and rested her cheek against his bare chest. He felt the second that human instinct took hold and her breath began again. The blood moved in her veins and her heart gave a slow thud.

  He closed his eyes and trailed his fingers down her spine, up and down, coaxing her back to life from cold sleep. He hated the thought of Brigid being chilled, but she was—just as he was—from the time she fell into sleep until the moment she woke.

  If he could, Carwyn would wrap her in tissue paper and place her on the nearest shelf. As fearsome and unconquerable as his mate was, he had to fight every protective instinct when she walked into danger. It was as if when God had given him this woman to love, the Almighty had plucked Carwyn’s own heart from his chest, re-formed it into a delicate crystal, and placed it in Brigid’s hand.

  He held her and started singing, filling her mind with the sound and scent of him as she woke. She took a deep breath and stretched against him, her right arm sliding around his torso. She flexed her hand and gripped the muscles on his lower back.

  “Carwyn.” Her voice was rough.

  “Hmmm.”

  “What is that song?”

  “It’s a very rude drinking song if you insist on knowing.”

  “Not Irish.”

  “No, it’s Scottish.”

  She smiled against his skin. “The best drinking songs are.”

  “As you and Gavin know.”

  “We should go to Scotland for a visit,” Brigid said. “Visit Tavish and Max and Cathy.”

  “That’s an excellent idea. But we have something to finish here first.”

  Brigid looked up, and Carwyn didn’t know what to make of her expression.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Why is it taking me so long to find this girl? Even now, when we’ve tracked down where she’s staying, I’m half convinced she’s going to slip away again and we’ll be off on our wild-goose chase.”

  “She’s a clever one, Miss Lupe Martínez.”

  Brigid sat up and leaned against the wall. “She’s human. She’s seventeen. And she’s never been away from home before. It’s ridiculous that it’s taken us this long to find her.”

  “I suppose that since she didn’t know how to be evasive, she’s taken us by surprise. The girl reminds me a little of you.”

  Brigid snorted. “Hardly.”

  “Think about it.” He sat up and braced himself on the wall opposite her. “She’s stubborn, holds the world on her shoulders, and has no fear. She’s a lot like you, darling girl.”

  “I wouldn’t have left home when I was her age. I was too afraid.”

  “You might have if a clever, handsome boy came along and convinced you that you could save the world.”

  “Bollocks,” she muttered. “I was barely hanging on to my own sanity. I hardly had the time to entertain saving the world.”

  He grabbed her foot and tried to distract himse
lf from the thin black chemise she wore by playing with her toes. He’d painted them a ridiculous neon green the week before. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think one of the best ways to hang on to sanity is focusing on any and all problems other than your own.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Are you trying to say something?”

  “I said what I said.” He pinched her toe. “Take what you want and throw the rest in the bin.”

  “I’m not avoiding your idea to quit Dublin, Carwyn, I’m just thinking about it practically. Look how long it’s taking me to find Lupe. Maybe I need the security of an organization if I’m going to be effective. Maybe I need the backup and the support.”

  “And maybe you could find those things in other places if you looked. I’m not entirely useless as a partner, am I?” He batted his eyelashes. “I know I’m not as pretty as Tom Dargin, but I do have a rough sort of charm, don’t I?”

  Brigid laughed. Tom Dargin was Murphy’s oldest vampire son, and he’d been a bare-knuckle boxer and trainer in his human life. His face looked exactly as pretty as you’d expect a bare-knuckle boxer to look if they’d been turned into a vampire.

  “Tom.” She sighed. “Oh feck, I miss everyone.”

  Carwyn’s heart sank, but he forced himself to rally. “If you want to go back to Dublin, then we go back to Dublin after this. But we have to see this through.”

  “And by seeing it through, you mean grabbing Lupe tonight, taking her back to her mother, and catching a freighter to Dublin?”

  “Pause that.” Carwyn crawled over to Brigid and looked her straight in the face. “You’re not serious, are you?”

  “We were hired to find the girl, not to take on the US government,” Brigid said. “I’ve been thinking about it, and it’s just not something we can do. Not right now, and not in Ernesto’s territory. Who are we? We’re nobodies here. We don’t have any role or jurisdiction.”

  “It’s the middle of the desert. No one has jurisdiction out here.”

  “We could start an international incident.”

  “Sounds lively to me. What’s the problem?” He sat back on his heels. “Are you serious? You’re going to leave those children in a detention facility?”