Hellfire (4 page)

“Did you see a healer?”

“A healer?
You mean a doctor?” Crap, she knew absolutely nothing about this guy, other
than the fact he was Eddy’s friend, and she’d trusted Eddy as long as she’d
known her. As pragmatic as Eddy Marks was, Ginny couldn’t picture her being
close friends with someone into all that mystical stuff, but a
healer?
Next thing, he’d probably be offering herbs and
magic crystals. She shook her head. “I haven’t had time.”

He nodded. “I will look at it
later.”

“You?”
She laughed. “Dr. Alton?” She glanced at him one more time before looking back
at the road. “What is your last name, anyway? All you told me was your first.”

He hesitated a moment too
long. Ginny shot
him
another quick look and he turned
away. Then he looked back at her and smiled. “Artigos,” he said.
“Alton Artigos.”

“That’s different. What
nationality?”

He shook his head. “I’m not
sure. It’s an old family name.
Probably changed over the
years.
Greek, maybe?”

“Yeah,” she said, watching the
road ahead.
“Maybe.”
It came to her, just how little
she really knew about Alton Artigos—if that was his real name. She really
needed to call Eddy and find out a little more about this guy. Working for the
Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Department had turned her into a total cynic when it
came to men, but it was her dating history that had really taught her the
truth—the nicest looking guys could hide some pretty ugly secrets.

Then he chuckled. She wondered
what he was laughing about, but she remembered the sound of his laughter.
They’d laughed a lot that last night when he’d walked her home from town.

Before he’d
sent her to Sedona.

She really needed to ask him
about that. In fact, she needed to ask Alton Artigos a lot of things.

They drove in silence through
town. Ginny spotted a Burger King about the time her stomach rumbled. She
didn’t hesitate and pulled into the parking lot. “I haven’t had a thing to eat
all day. Let’s stop here, okay?”

She turned off the ignition
without waiting for his answer, and Alton followed her into the restaurant.

Alton wasn’t certain what it
was about Ginny Jones that threw him so totally off balance, but one thing he
was sure of—walking behind her and watching the shift and sway of that
perfectly heart-shaped bottom atop her long, long legs had suddenly become one
of his favorite pastimes.

She was so tall and lean and
moved with such a fluid grace that she mesmerized him. When he stood behind her
in line, the top of her head came almost to his chin. Even Lemurian women were
not as tall. He liked that about Ginny.

Liked the fact she looked him
straight in the eye without backing down or turning demurely away as a Lemurian
maiden should.
Liked the intelligence swirling in her
fascinating tiger’s eyes.

“You want a Whopper?
Cheese on that?”

Alton blinked.
“A what?”

Ginny laughed.
“Earth to Alton?
I asked if you wanted a Whopper with cheese
or would you rather have something else?”

He shook his head. He had no
idea what she was talking about.
“Whatever you’re having.”
He dug in his pocket for the wallet Ed had given to him. He still wasn’t
certain if he had their currency straight in his mind, but…

“I’ll get it. You can buy when
we go somewhere expensive.”

She smiled at him. He loved
the way her eyes twinkled and her full lips spread into a wide smile. Loved the
glossy, dark red color she’d painted on her full lips, and…
oh,
my.
Loved hamburgers and French fries.
The tray
Ginny grabbed carried a raft of scents that made his mouth water. He’d had
these once before when he’d been out with Ed Marks. Alton followed Ginny to a booth
in the nearly empty restaurant. He slid into the seat across from her.

Ginny handed him a wrapped
burger, picked up the two bags of fries, and dumped them out on the open paper.
Then she proceeded to squirt a huge glob of red catsup next to the pile.

Luckily, he’d had similar
meals and knew what to do with the fries. He dragged one through the catsup,
popped it into his mouth, and sighed. It was so easy to forget demons when
faced with a really good French fry.

This was fast becoming his
favorite Earth meal. Lemuria had nothing like this.
Nothing
at all.

They ate in silence for a few
moments. Then Ginny took a swallow of her drink and wiped her mouth with a
napkin. Her golden eyes gleamed.

Alton swallowed and carefully
wiped his lips with his napkin.

“Why did I come to Sedona?”

He hadn’t expected that.
Didn’t think she’d make the connection between his compulsive suggestion and
her trip.

“Because you
have cousins here?”

“Cousins I haven’t seen for
years because we’re not all that close. Then all of a sudden you walk me home
one night and I have this overwhelming need to fly to Sedona and hang out with
cousin Markus and the twin brats. Why? What did you do to me?”

Alton sighed. Eddy and Dax had
suggested he bring Ginny in on everything, but he hadn’t really thought of how
he was going to do it.
When in doubt…

Honesty generally worked best.
He’d learned that the hard way when he was a kid and tried to
lie
his way out of trouble. Lying just got you into more
trouble.

“I wanted to keep you safe and
I wanted you gone. You were a distraction I didn’t want or need, but my
compulsion put you in worse danger. I’m sorry, Ginny. That was not my intent.”

“You arrogant son of a…” She
glared at him. “I knew you did something. I knew it! You hypnotized me, didn’t
you? I can almost hear your—”

“Not really hypnotism.
More of a compulsion.”
He reached across the table and
gently took her hand, the one that was wrapped in white gauze. “This never
should have happened. It’s
all my
fault.”

Ginny looked at his hands
supporting her injured one. Then she raised her head and stared directly into
his eyes. “I don’t understand. How could I be a distraction? I hardly know you.
And what do you mean by a compulsion? How could you compel me to do something I
don’t want to do? Why did you want me to come here? And what is going on with
the animals?”

Alton glanced around and
realized the restaurant had emptied out entirely since they’d been eating. “I
have a story to tell you that you will find unbelievable. Open your mind,
please, and accept what I say. I’m not going to lie to you, Ginny. Your life is
in danger. Many lives—an entire way of life—are in danger unless we prevail.”

Ginny slipped her hand free of
his grasp and sat back in her booth. She folded her arms across her chest and
her dark brows knitted together in a very attractive frown. “Why do you sound
like you’re frickin’ nuts?”

He smiled. Then the absolute
impossibility of the situation caught him by surprise. He burst out laughing.
“Maybe because I find myself wondering exactly the same thing?”
He reached for her hand again, the uninjured one this time. She let him take
it. He gently squeezed her fingers. Ginny didn’t pull away, something that
pleased him more than it should have.

He gazed directly into her
beautiful eyes and tried his best to explain. “Just a little over a week ago,
some strange things began happening in Evergreen. Eddy told me that it was
right after she went out for coffee with you, that very night, that she first
discovered Dax.”

Ginny’s eyes went wide. “She
told me Dax was a friend from college. That you were a…”

Alton nodded. “I know. She had
to come up with something quick, something to explain two men who couldn’t
possibly exist. In fact, Eddy found Dax unconscious in her potting shed. He was
badly injured, a man on a mission, very much in need
of
help.”

Ginny sputtered and he said,
“Bear with me, Ginny, and I promise to answer your questions after I tell you
everything. Will you just listen?”

Ginny stared at him a moment.
“Okay. But that means I get to ask you a lot of questions.”

He smiled. “I promise to
answer all of them.” He squeezed her fingers and took another sip of his drink.
“Dax is not human. He was a demon, cast out of Abyss, the place you call Hell.
He was hired as a mercenary and promised he would receive his place in Eden,
your Heaven, should he prevail. His job was to fight a demon invasion in
Evergreen. He enlisted Eddy’s help and the two of them, realizing they couldn’t
stop the demons on their own, eventually came to my world—”

“Whoa!” Ginny shook her head
so hard her thick black curls slapped her cheeks. “Not human?
Your world?
That’s a little bit too much to—”

Alton held up his head. “Ask
when I’m done. There’s more.”

She glanced at their clasped
hands, raised her head, and glared at him. “If you’re just puttin’ me on, I’m
gonna be so pissed.”

He grinned. “Not putting you
on, Ginny. I am not human, either. I am Lemurian, from the—”

“No.” She shook her head so
hard her dark curls bounced and she covered her eyes with her bandaged hand.
“Please. Do not tell me that Ed Marks was right and there really is a lost
world of Lemuria. I don’t want to hear that at all.”

He really shouldn’t be
enjoying this so much. Gently he tugged her hand away from her eyes. “I know.
Eddy’s had
to,
as she puts it, eat some crow, though
we never thought of Lemuria as lost. It’s been in the same place in a separate
dimension from yours, deep inside the volcano you call Mount Shasta for many
thousands of years.
Except when the volcano erupts.
Eruptions tend to cross dimensions. Then we move everything to Sedona and wait
until stuff settles down again.”

He looked down at Ginny’s long
fingers nestled against his longer ones. Her dark, chocolaty skin against his
fair color emphasized their differences as nothing else could. She was human.
Mortal.
He shouldn’t feel this way about her. Attracted by
her beauty, her sense of humor,
her
beautiful golden
eyes.

He was the closest thing to
Lemurian royalty they had. She was a 911 dispatcher in northern California. He
was immortal, already thousands of years old. She was, according to Eddy, only
thirty-one. He shouldn’t be looking at her and hoping against hope that she
would believe
him, that
she would fall in with his
story, no matter how absurd it might sound to her.

He shouldn’t care so much.

He raised his head and looked
at her. She watched him warily, like an animal held in thrall by a predator’s
eyes. He didn’t want her to fear him. Didn’t want her to think he was nuts. “I
would like to take you there, to Lemuria, someday.
If I can
ever go back.”

“If?
Why can’t you?”

“When Eddy and Dax and Bumper
and Willow found their way through the dimensional portal into Lemuria, they
were arrested and put into jail. When I helped them escape, I went against the
edict of our ruling body, the Council of Nine. For ignoring their ruling, I
most likely have a death sentence on my head, but I believed Eddy and Dax when
they told me that the fate of many worlds rested on the battle they were
fighting.”

Ginny was shaking her head
now. He couldn’t lose her, but all of this had to be more than any mortal could
accept. She tilted her head to one side, and it was almost as if he could see
her mind processing what he’d told her, trying to figure out what, if any, of
his tale was true.

“Those weird reports we had in
Evergreen, the ceramic and stone figurines turning up in pieces around town,
that big battle where people destroyed all the statues from the cemetery. Was
that part of this so-called demon invasion? What about the garden gnome that
ate Mrs. Abernathy’s cat?”

He couldn’t have stopped his
smile if he’d wanted to. “And the gargoyle that was supposed to stay put on the
old library building but kept flying away, and the bronze statue found in
pieces inside Eddy’s house. We discovered that demons from Abyss were slipping
through a dimensional portal to Earth. Unable to exist in their natural form
outside of Abyss, the demons needed avatars, but they had to be something of
the earth. Stone figurines, ceramic, metal, concrete…”

“The bear?
That bear that attacked me? It was a demon?”

He nodded. “Actually, it was a
bunch of demons, working together. That’s part of what makes this invasion even
more sinister. They’re working
together,
under the
orders of a powerful demon we’ve been calling the demon king, for want of a
better name. We thought it was marshaling demons as an army, but we discovered
that it was actually bringing them to Earth’s dimension as a source of power.
They came through the portal and found avatars so they could remain, but once
the avatars were destroyed, the demons turned back into wraiths. Their energy
was absorbed by the demon king. Eddy was finally able to destroy the gargoyle a
couple of nights ago. It was a horrible battle. We could have died if not for
Eddy.”

Ginny leaned back in the
booth. Her hand slipped free of his. He flexed his fingers and thought of
reaching for her again, but she was shaking her head, laughing as if he was
telling her a really funny story.

“You’re nuts, aren’t you? I
swear, Alton, you almost had me
going,
at least until
you said Eddy was the one who destroyed the gargoyle. Eddy has the softest
heart on Earth. She couldn’t destroy anything, even if her life depended on
it.”