Justus (5 page)

“Look,” Paige said and
stepped over to her friend. “I know this looks bad, but I swear
there’s a good reason.”

Lena raised a well-manicured
brow.

Paige winced. “One that I
can’t really tell you about for your own protection.”

She waited for something.
Anything. Still Lena stared at her as if trying to see something.
What? Paige wasn’t quite sure, but she just hoped the woman she’d
considered a friend could see past this.

As if it were nothing, Lena
wrapped her arms around Paige in a giant hug.

“I trust you,” she whispered
and only squeezed harder.

She sighed and gave into the
comfort. It had been a long night and even longer morning. She was
beyond exhausted and drained emotionally. Knowing she had a friend
was enough to keep her going.

Lena leaned back to stare at
her. Paige wondered if she saw the guilt there that seemed to be
knotted in the pit of her stomach.

“I heard about the
suspension,” Lena said quietly. “Is that what this is about?”

Paige shook her head.

“I have a…” She frowned, not
quite sure what to call Justus exactly. “I have a friend that needs
some medicine. He’s very sick.”

“Why not bring him to the
hospital?”

“He…doesn’t trust
hospitals.”

Paige handed Lena the list of
medications she needed.

Lena scanned the list and
looked up at her in surprise.

“It’s for those hybrids,
isn’t it?” she whispered.

Paige cringed. It really
would have been best if she’d not guessed at all, especially
considering her friend’s fascination.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” Lena
beamed.

Paige sighed and gave a
nod.

Lena gave a little squeal of
delight.

“I knew you couldn’t stay
away from all those hunky men.” She grinned.

Hunky men. Paige’s cheeks
burned as she remembered what had happened the previous night. What
the hell was that? The man was half-dead, yet he tried to put the
moves on her. Not that she didn’t like it, it just was the very
definition of the wrong time and place.

The smile slipped from Lena’s
face as she continued to stare at Paige.

“Wait.” Lena frowned. “Why
would you need medicine for one of them? They have a doctor
there.”

Paige looked away.

“Oh my God!” Lena said.
“You’ve got one at your house!”

Paige looked around, hoping
that they hadn’t put up the cameras in the breakroom like they kept
threatening to do.

She held up her hand in hopes
of shushing her overeager friend.

“Is he hot? Are you doing it
like bunnies?”

Paige blushed despite
herself.

“Shut up,” Lena said with a
grin. “You are!”

She rolled her eyes in
frustration.

“He’s hurt,” Paige said
stiffly. “I think sex is out of the picture.”

The nurse she knew was back
in full force.

“Right,” Lena said and looked
down at the paper and then back to Paige. “It would be better if I
went.”

Paige nodded. She hated to
have her risk her job like this, but Lena was right. She was far
less likely to be questioned.

On a mission, Lena left and
Paige took a seat at the table.

Time ticked by slowly. It had
only been minutes but felt like hours. She jumped when the door
opened, and her friend popped back into the room.

“Here,” Lena said and wrapped
the meds in the jacket Paige carried. “I was able to get enough for
a few days.”

Tears prickled her eyes.

“Thank you.”

Lena smiled back at her and
then pulled her into another crushing hug.

“Be careful out there,” she
whispered.

Paige pulled back to look at
her friend.

“He’ll likely be gone before
trouble can even start,” she said.

Lena shook her head. “I’m not
talking about that. Things have gotten really weird around
here.”

“What do you mean?”

She looked around and leaned
in a little. “Something going on with the big guys here and not
just all that stuff with you. Not to mention all the crazies coming
in. It’s like some of the people around here have been huffing
paint.”

Thinking on it, Paige had
thought the last few weeks that people had been a little odder. It
wasn’t uncommon though for people to be a little off around the
holiday, and so she’d just attributed it to that. Now Lena was
warning her, and Rachel had said something as well. What the hell
was going on?

“Just make sure you get your
mystery man well, and don’t let people know,” Lena said. “More than
a few people around town would, I think, take a crack at one of
them if they were alone and outside their land.”

Paige nodded, swallowing
once. Some people already had.

Lena’s name came over the
loud speaker, making them both jump.

They walked to the door and
stopped.

“Thank you,” Paige said
quietly. “You be careful too.”

Lena beamed happily.

“You bet your ass.”

* * *

Paige drove home in
silence, the vital medicine still tucked away inside her
jacket.

The road hummed as she rolled
along thinking about what Lena had said. It wasn’t often that she
even came into town. Even grocery shopping was something she didn’t
spend a lot of time on.

She groaned a little.

Shopping.

She still needed to stop by
the store. The road to the store was just ahead. She could stop in
for a moment before heading home.

Bright red and blue lights
flashed behind her. Paige stared through the glare in the mirror as
she slowed her car to a stop. Nervous, she glanced over to the
meds. Maybe they knew already and had sent the sheriff to come and
pick her up.

The sheriff climbed out of
the car and made his way to her window. She pressed the button, and
the window rolled down. Cold air rushed inside.

“Well, hi there, Paige.”

She gave the best smile she
could to the mostly obnoxious man.

“Hey, Roy,” she said
casually. “Don’t think I was speeding, was I?”

Roy gave a loud laugh. His
rather large stomach jiggled as he did so.

“I think my gran drives
faster than you.”

Heat filled her cheeks. One
time. One time when she was sixteen she’d been a little extra
cautious on her driver’s test. Who said fifteen was too slow?

“Very funny,” she said and
rolled her eyes. “What did I do then?”

“Nothing,” Roy said, flashing
his light into her car. She noticed he lingered on the backseat.
“Just wanted to make sure everything was fine with you.”

She shook her head and tried
to play it cool as his light scanned the front of her car. The beam
lingered just a tad too long on her breasts, filling her with the
urge to take that light from him and knock the overinflated ego
down a peg or two.

“Everything’s just fine,” she
said. “Has there been some sort of trouble?”

“No, no. Just trying my best
to stop trouble before it starts. You know, proactive policing. I
read about it.”

He pulled back the light, and
she gave a sigh of relief.

Roy dipped down to look at
her through the window. His arms rested on the open window.

“We was real glad to hear you
weren’t working for those…things anymore. Humans should stick with
humans, I think.”

Paige swallowed and
nodded.

“They aren’t safe,” she said
simply.

He nodded his
understanding.

“Can’t rightly expect the
Devil’s work to be safe,” he said and scratched his growing beard.
“Have you heard from them?”

The way he stared at her was
like he was testing. Maybe they had been watching her. Or watching
the hybrids.

She tossed the thought of
lying around in her head. Her next response could very well cost
Justus his life.

“They did,” she said simply.
“They offered me a job again.”

He raised a brow.

“I refused,” she said.

Roy gave her a wide, gummy
grin. “Atta girl. People who side with them get hurt. Look what
happened to poor Kelly.”

Bile rose in her throat. Sad
was the last thing she thought of when Kelly came to mind. The
psychotic woman was an attempted murderer. She’d betrayed
everything it meant to be a nurse for her anti-hybrid crusade.

“Well,” he said, stepping
back. “I best let you go. Watch out though. One of those freaks is
loose in the woods. We’ve had sightings. Hope they kennel that
bastard. Who knows what kind of rabies you can get from ‘em?”

Paige pressed her lips
together hard and nodded. Now was not the time to spout something
off.

Roy stepped even further
back.

“Call if you need anything,”
he said.

Paige gave another smile.
“Thanks.”

As quickly as she could
without raising suspicion, she eased back onto the road.

Her eyes followed the pompous
windbag in her mirror.

Lena was right. Things were
getting crazy. And she had a feeling they were going to get
worse.

Chapter Seven

Justus woke with a
start. His throat burned, and he could feel the sweat dripping from
his body.

His eyes blinked open and
adjusted to the darkness around him. Something about the situation
wasn’t right.

Paige still wasn’t back.

Fear raced through him. She
could be out there with the same men who attacked him. They
probably wouldn’t show mercy to anyone who helped people they
considered tools of the Devil.

He struggled to stand. The
stitches on his leg pulled. He could feel the burn and knew that
there was no way he’d be able to put any sort of weight on it.
Still, he had to do something. She needed him.

Justus reached over his head
to the table just behind him. There had to be a phone or something.
Everywhere at the lodge he’d seen phones. He didn’t really have any
number to call besides the emergency line. It wasn’t the best idea,
but he would do what he needed to protect her. Paige had taken him
in when there was no one else. If she needed him, he would be
there.

His hand landed on a piece of
paper, and he pulled it out to where he could read it. The phone
numbers for Titus and Rachel were both written clearly.

Was that her plan? To get him
well enough and then drop him with them again?

When he’d first briefly seen
Paige, she had been working with them. Maybe she still was? But
then, why would she have a card? It didn’t make sense.

Lights from a car flashed
against the wall. Instantly, he could smell her, and it set him at
peace. He wasn’t quite sure why he hadn’t smelled her in the lodge.
Perhaps some sort of residual effect of Vanessa’s meddling. It
didn’t matter. Her Vestal scent was unmistakable now.

He could hear her light
footsteps up the porch and then to the door.

He snapped his eyes shut and
waited for her to enter.

Justus couldn’t really
explain why he wanted to pretend. Maybe he wasn’t used to having
someone pay so close attention to him. It unnerved him. She
unnerved him.

He could hear the door click
open and listened as she stepped into the room.

Her smell grew stronger. Heat
radiated from her as she sat down next to him.

Gently, her fingers found the
tape on his side. He could feel the tremble in them, and without
thinking, reached out to hold her hand.

She gasped, and he knew she’d
not expected him to be awake.

“You’re trembling,” he said.
His eyes sought hers in the darkness. Dark mossy green stared back
at him, wide-eyed and scared.

He leaned up slightly and
grunted at the pain.

“You’ll hurt yourself,” she
said and placed her hand on his bare chest. He could hear how fast
her heart was beating and wondered why his own matched it.

“What happened?” he
asked.

Paige was quiet as she pulled
out vials and a few packages of wrapped syringes.

They stayed this way until
she’d laid out all her supplies and looked over to him.

“They are looking for you,”
she whispered.

Fear pierced his hard armor.
He tried to stay strong, but only one thing scared him. The Group.
If they had found him, his freedom was over. Hers as well. A Vestal
like Paige was hard to come by. He’d know. His time with them had
demonstrated that repeatedly.

Over and over, they tried
with him, tried to find someone that would bring out the animal
instinct of hybrid and Vestal. Each time was a total failure. Then
they’d given him to Vanessa. He shivered at just the thought of
her. It was sad that he counted himself one of the lucky few who
had only been subjected to her needs on a few occasions.

“You have to run,” he said
quickly. “If the Group finds you here, they will do things to you.
Things I won’t be able to protect you from. Someone like you isn’t
safe.”

Paige frowned at him.

“Who? You mean the Horatius
Group?”

His heart slowed a little as
he stared back at her confused face.

“Who did you mean?” he
asked.

Paige continued to stare at
him.

“The men who shot you,” she
said. “The sheriff is in on it. Likely there’s more than even the
ones that saw you.”

Justus sighed. The Horatius
Group was a whole different matter from local bumpkins. They’d only
gotten lucky that he was starving, exhausted and desperate.
Otherwise, it’d been trivial to disarm them.

He settled back into the
couch.

“We’re fine,” he said. “I hid
my tracks.”

“No,” Paige said. “These guys
are serious.” She waved a hand. “Remember? They probably poisoned
their bullets.”

Justus looked over to her and
frowned. “Are you saying I can’t handle them?”

She sighed loudly. “I’m
saying they already shot you twice.”

He snorted loudly.