Summon Toren(32)

Toren grinned at the automatic 'we' she used. She was already including him. “You need to eat,” he called to her.

“Yes daddy.”

Toren smiled and went into the bathroom. A shower? He’d never had one of those. He opened the medicine cabinet and stared at the contents. His eyes landed on a pair of scissors and almost immediately the idea hit him. Then he saw a razor and another idea decided it.

Toren showered, truly at awe with the amazing feeling of the hot water. Hanging around humans was probably wearing off on him through his mercury properties. And he liked what he experienced so far.



** ** **



Sam made her way to the office at the back of the house where her computer was. She learned as she went just from observation that her Daddy must be well. His cane was leaning against the office wall and the air smelled like his pipe smoke. Dumb fool was already smoking, begging for a relapse or maybe pneumonia this time. She settled into the office chair. Did that mean the rest of the hands were up and about too? She wouldn’t need to waste money on that new guy if that was the case. And really, they couldn’t afford it. At all.

She logged on to the comp and drummed her fingers rapidly on the desk. Fifteen minutes and she got all she needed to know. The storm had somehow gone around them before the worst of it hit. Worst? She hoped neighboring ranches faired as lucky as hers. Now all that was left was checking on the other hands and getting the ranch running again.

"What the hell you doin, girl?" Her Daddy's hard voice made her leap from the chair and spin to face him. "I'd think you'd know better than show your whoring face here." He turned his back, noticeably thinner and more frail than before.

She swallowed the unwelcome sob the nasty words brought, forging ahead to deal with the problem. "What are you talking about?"

The old man whirled on her, nearly falling in his anger. "You have the gall to speak to me? After you've spent the last week holed up somewhere fuckin a new hired hand? Look at yourself. Not even the decency to wash his stench off you."

She gasped and swallowed another sob, but she couldn't keep the single tear from rolling out of the corner of her eye. A deep breath stiffened her spine and she met his flinty dark eyes head on. "For your information, there was a fire at the second hay shed. I dragged a calf out and the smoke nearly killed me. The hand took me to the line cabin until I got well enough to move. Nothing happened that shouldn't have." The flames of his mouth on her skin burned through her mind but she resolutely put them away. "And how dare you question my integrity?"

The old man's gaze burned her with devastating intensity. "Integrity? Hah. What a laugh. You're just like the bitch that birthed you. Spread your legs to anything with a dick."

Wounded to an unimaginable depth, Sam couldn't hold the tears back any longer. She jerked her gaze up at the soft knock and her heart froze right in her chest as Toren stalked into the office. With no hair.

He halted just inches from her father, fury radiating off him until he seemed to glow with it. He looked a foot taller despite his now bald head, towering over the old man. "Mister, you don't know me and I don't know you, but you are not going to talk to Samantha that way. Apologize to her." Sam’s heart stuttered at the highly unusual male defense she knew her daddy would scorn without a doubt.

The buzzard dragged himself up to his full five foot ten and thrust his bony shoulders back. "Boy, you better get the fuck out of my house and off my ranch before I shoot you."

Not the least effected, Toren leaned his face down closer to his. "You can fill me up with all the lead you like, human, but you will apologize to my woman or I will choke your scrawny neck."

The heart-stopping and amazing threat wouldn’t go over well, Sam knew and before she could shout a warning to Toren, her Daddy flipped his ever-present Derringer out of his sleeve and pulled the trigger.

Sam screamed in panic but the gun only clicked and the old man stared at it in shock.

"Jesus,” Sam gasped, barely realizing she’d snatched the snub-nosed .38 from the desk drawer and aimed it at her father. “Daddy, you better be glad that thing misfired." Her voice trembled as bad as her body and without a word she returned it to the drawer shaken to the core.

Without his weapon, her father cowered before Toren who stood like a determined bull, his stance as dominant as ever. The old man's shoulders sagged and he turned, slow, and shuffled from the room, all the piss and vinegar gone.

“Let him go,” Sam muttered, worried Toren would still demand the apology. She just wanted her father out of her sight and away from…Toren. She didn’t want the hired hand getting in the middle of her shit, that was just…unheard of. Wasn’t his business, hell, wasn’t good business period. And that’s what Toren was, business. Had to be.