“Your truck.”
He grimaced, and I raised my hands, palms up. “What the hell, I’ve never wrecked a vehicle.” I didn’t count flipping my Jeep when I was under the influence of the Hoarfrost demon. In my mind, that wasn’t my fault.
He continued to grimace, but I could see through it, he was just making it look like this was hard. The thing about Dox was, he always came through. He was one of my better friends.
“Where are you going to take my baby?” He propped himself with his hip against the bar.
I Tracked Calliope, her vibrating threads a pleasant hum inside my skull, soothing away the last of the ache in my body. Now that was an interesting development. I shook it off and focused on the where of her.
“Pacific Northwest.”
Dox paled, as in his blue skin faded to a dull gray in a matter of heartbeats. That couldn’t be good.
“That’s ogre country. You don’t want to be going there, Rylee. There’s a reason you don’t find other supernaturals round about there.” He waved his hands—the size of frying pans—back and forth. “That is a seriously bad idea.”
I grunted. I’d never Tracked into that area before. The outskirts of it, yes, but never into the Pacific Northwest itself.
“Doesn’t matter, Dox. If that’s where the foal is, that’s where I’m going.”
He licked his lips, but the fear on him was obvious. So much so that he wouldn’t even meet my eyes. Shit, that did not bode well for us. Doran had said he’d been kicked out for being weak … damn, I wasn’t sure I could push him on this.
I stepped back. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll rent a truck.” Liam leaned over the bar, shook Dox’s hand. “Thanks for your help. Next time we’re here, I’d like to have another go at your beer. See if it still kicks my ass.”
The ogre watched us go, but didn’t stop us.
“I thought he’d offer some advice at least,” Liam grumbled as we grabbed the last of my weapons and gear from our room.
I counted my weapons and the few pre-made spells I’d had Deanna make for me before we left. “Doesn’t matter, if he was kicked out at a young age, he won’t be much help. My training with Giselle covered ogres. I probably know more than he does.”
Liam tried to phone a car rental company and promptly handed me the receiver. All I got was static and then, as Liam stepped away, the static faded and I could hear the ringing line. Shit, it looked like he was going to be the problem when it came to technology now. Next to him, I was almost normal. Almost.
While I spoke to the agent, all I could think about was that Dox didn’t think this—going into the Pacific Northwest—was a good idea, and he’d seen me in some of my worst situations and never batted an eyelash. Hell, he’d just seen me get an impromptu surgery in the back of his truck without so much as a ‘hey that’s not very sanitary, you know.’
I hung up the phone. “They’ll have a truck here in an hour.”
Liam flopped onto the bed. His hand drifted to the spot just below his heart, where his gun used to sit. I knew what it was to be without a weapon when you were so used to it.
“You want something to fill that spot?”
His eyes flicked to his hand. “You got a gun that would work?”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “Really, you want a gun?”
He shrugged, but his face sobered. Yeah, I remembered his last partner too, and the wayward bullet from Liam’s gun that had taken his life. No need to repeat that scenario.#p#分页标题#e#
“Maybe not. What else have you got?”
I dug into the new bag Dox had provided us with, now stuffed with all my weapons. Along with the black demon book.
I grabbed the tome, my heart icing over. “Hang onto that thought, I’ll be right back.”
Jogging out of the room, I slipped into the bar. Dox leaned against the bar, his eyes closed as if deep in thought. I cleared my throat.
“Dox, can you stick this in your safe?”
He reached for it, and took the burlap sack, his fingers barely touching it before his eyes flew open. “Do I want to know what it is? I can feel it through this. Something very dark and very ugly.”
“No.” I shook my head. “You don’t want to know what it is. Just lock it up.”
Without any more questions, Dox disappeared down the hall, holding the covered book just with his fingertips. I knew he had a safe, I just didn’t know where it was. Which was fine by me. I didn’t have time to read that thing yet, but my gut feeling was that I would need it, and soon. I left him there and headed back to the room. Dox seemed torn up by the fact that we were headed into ogre territory. I probably should have been more worried, but I wasn’t.