Eleventh Grave in Moonlight (Charley Davidson #11)(81)

“How do we kill The Dark One?”

“You don’t.”

Fury arced out of Mrs. Foster, then her expression changed. Morphed into one of absolute cruelty. “Bring him out.”

Him? Who him?

I lay there, begging to get off the merry-go-round, when two men dragged out a third man who was tied and gagged. They dropped him a few feet away from me, and my vision darkened around the edges. The image before me had my head spinning even more. This was not real. This was not happening.

It was Reyes. Unconscious. Beaten and bloody and bruised.

Tears sprang to my eyes. It was the picture. The one I’d gotten ahold of a year ago. The one taken by the monster that had raised him.

He was a kid again. Bound with ropes. His hair mussed. His mouth gagged. His face swollen and discolored and bloody. And I lay in stunned silence.

We were gods. Reyes and I. How could this happen to us? To him? There was no way they could get him. Not Reyes. Not unless … unless they Tasered and drugged him. It had worked on me. I bit back the rage swelling inside me.

Reyes groaned, coming to, and I heard the pressure from the ropes as they strained and stretched. Was he fighting against them? I tried to look up at him, but we were suddenly in an industrial-sized dryer, tossing and tumbling. That last hit must’ve knocked something loose. I begged for the timer to go off, because this sucked.

“Shut him up,” Mr. Foster said.

I lost sight of Reyes through the shuffling of feet. Then I heard a struggle and another loud crack, but I felt no pain that time. They’d hit Reyes. I cried out to him and, naturally, received another blunt object to the cranium for my efforts, but this time I managed to focus on him.

I saw him through the throngs of legs. He fought the restraints when they hit me. And because of that, they’d hit him again, too.

“Reyes, stop,” I said.

“Shhhift,” he said. Or tried to say.

“Cut out the abomination’s tongue,” Mrs. Foster ordered.

Two men grabbed hold of Reyes’s face and tried to force open his mouth as I shot forward. I didn’t get far. Reyes clamped his teeth shut so a beefy man—it was always the beefy ones—started hitting him, his fist landing punch after violent punch.

Until my stomach lurched.

Until my heart cracked.

Until my head exploded with the pain I felt drowning every cell in my body.

The man stopped at last when Mr. Foster raised a hand.

Then I heard Reyes’s voice. Soft. Barely audible. And yet as clear as if he were whispering it in my ear. “You have to know.”

I looked over at him. He’d passed out again. When one man forced his jaw apart and another walked forward with a knife, Mr. Foster said, “No! I want him lucid when it happens.” He turned back to me, blocking my view of my husband. “How do we kill it? Answer or he will only suffer longer.”

I heard it again. “You have to know.”

I tried to see past the evil evangelists to get to Reyes, but the harder I tried, the thicker the air became. Time slipped. People around me sped up and then bounced back to normal speed. Then they slowed down. It had to be Reyes. “Go,” I said to him. “Get out of here.”

He stopped time and looked across at me, a mischievous sparkle in his eyes. “Well, I would, but the police are on the way, and it always looks better when the hostages are tied up and beaten bloody.”

Relief washed over me. So much so I almost hurled. Which I felt was a strange reaction to elation. But a part of me, like nine-tenths, was horrified.

“Reyes, you’re just letting them beat on you?”

“I’m sorry, Dutch. I didn’t know they were going to get you, too.”

“It’s okay. Wait. How did they get you?”

“Taser. Then drugs.”

“Me, too.” I still couldn’t balance and kept falling on my face. “That Taser crap hurts.”

“Not as much as it hurt watching them hit you.” His shirt was almost torn completely off him and hung in shreds.

“Wait a minute,” I said, not buying what my husband, a.k.a. the son of Satan, a.k.a. the best liar on this plane, was selling. “They Tasered you? Just out of the blue, they walked up and got the jump on you.”

“I may have let them, but it still hurt.”

“Reyes, seriously, they want you dead.”

“Why didn’t you try to summon me the moment they came for you? I would have felt it.”

“And taken you away from guard duty? You know she comes first. Speaking of which—”

“Osh is with her, now.”

I let out a sigh of relief then gestured toward Shawn. “Is he okay?”

He turned to him then back to me. “He’ll live.”

“Thank God. But, Reyes, why? Why did you let them hurt you?”

He looked away. “You were right. They need to be behind bars. I didn’t realize the extent of their crimes, Dutch. I would never have let them live this long.” When he looked back at me, his expression was somewhere between admiration and guilt. “I’m sorry I’m so hardheaded.”

“That’s okay. I can be a little stubborn at times, too. Wait. Have you seen a little girl about three years old?”

He gestured with a nod. I followed his gaze to a beautiful little girl being held by an elderly woman. Dawn Brooks. Dawn and the woman were the only people whose expressions weren’t pure delight. The woman looked scared, actually. Nervous. For us. And I was oddly grateful.