When the Sky Falls (Six Shooter and a Shifter Book 4)
When the Sky Falls
SIX SHOOTER AND A SHIFTER
BOOK FOUR
LUCÍA ASHTA
When the Sky Falls
Book Four in the Six Shooter and a Shifter series
Copyright © 2022 by Lucía Ashta
www.LuciaAshta.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, or events is purely coincidental.
Cover design by Mirela Barbu
Editing by Ocean’s Edge Editing
Proofreading by Geesey Editorial Services
About When the Sky Falls
Huzzah! I made it to my twenty-third birthday! Given how much dragon magic I have rolling through me now, doing its best to cook me from the inside out, this feat is no small thing. I’ve earned a hearty celebration and then some. I’m gonna party down at Sharmayne’s and let her ply me with as many of her cocktails as she wants. Her magic touch is exactly what I need after how nutty life in Traitor’s Den has been lately. I deserve every hypnotic, milky, swirling Moon Mixer she sends my way. Hell, I might get fancy and skip right on to a Roll in the Hay, maybe even a Sirens on the Rocks, and if I’m tipsy enough, end the night with a Dragon Slayer like a proper wild child. Who needs to be clear headed anyway? For one night, I can be one clown short of a circus. All the responsibility of being both sheriff and mayor of our fine, one-way town will still be waiting for me tomorrow.
It always is.
A night at Sharmayne’s oughta leave me loose and ready to finally take advantage of all the dragon shifter Rhett and the vampire Zeke keep trying to offer me—every damn day, all day long...and into the night. Their looks are heated enough that if all the power inside me weren’t already threatening to give me a good cookin’, their constant seduction would. Those men could sell heat to a roasting fire.
But trust me, what they’re sellin’, I’m lookin’ to buy. They say I’m their mate? Their queen? Well, bring it on. I’m wearing my favorite dancin’ boots.
Near on every free woman in the Den is looking to move in on them. Good thing they’ve only got eyes for me. And since I’m also the one stuck dealing with all the trouble they cause—and they get into trouble faster than a balloon at an overcrowded porcupine party—I may as well reap the benefits too. It’s past time to examine the goods...
Of course, just when I’m starting to get hot and heavy with my two guys, a knock on the door upends my world—yet again.
Why in tickled tarnation does nothing in our town ever go down the way it’s supposed to? ‘Cause plans are for losers, apparently. Even when they’re no-plan plans, my specialty.
Well, at least, I ain’t complainin’ none. Not one tiny, little bit. Not with who’s on the other side of my door.
Not till the sky starts falling, anyhow...
For Dalia Elisabetta.
My love for you is eternal.
♥
Life’s made for funnin’. Ain’t no point in pretendin’ not to live it just for the sake o’ others. That’s a fool’s way o’ wastin’ time. Once ya got what ya want, ya’d better hold on to it tight and ride it often.
COLETTE “MOMMA” RAY
Contents
1. Grab the Bull by the Horns and Ride the Bejeezus Outta Life
2. Liquid Courage for a Double Helping of the Best Kind of Trouble
3. Tigers Are Buck Nekked Under Their Stripes
4. Why Do Today What You Can Put Off Till Tomorrow?
5. The Air Itself Tucks Tail and Runs
6. When It’s Almost Certainly Too Much to Handle, Dive in Headfirst
7. A Blur of Movement, Righteous Anger, and Revenge Served Piping Hot
8. The Low-Hanging Idjit Fruit on the Family Tree
9. A Tiger Is Both Soft and Hard
10. Unleash the Beast, AKA, Is That a Snake in Your Trousers?
11. You Can’t Ride Two Horses, Let Alone Three, With One Ass, but Love Is Love Is Love
12. When Go-Time Is No Time
13. Hell’s Bells, It’s a Real Crunchy Pickle
14. Trouble of the Celestial Size
Read the Next Book
Sneak Peek of When the Dust Settles
Also by Lucía Ashta
Acknowledgments
About the Author
CHAPTER 1
Grab the Bull by the Horns and Ride the Bejeezus Outta Life
“Happy birthday,” Birdie shouted, raising a glass of Fruity Tooty high above her head, the currently neon pink cocktail sloshing with her wobbly movement to dribble down her arm. The drink changed colors depending on what Sharmayne infused into it on that particular day. While Birdie licked her hand, lapping up every spilled fizzy drop, a host of Denners chorused her cheer, though they slurred it until it sounded like they were wishing me a heppy burfday.
Either way, I’d take it, especially after all the close calls over the past several months that suggested I might never see my twenty-third year. But here I sat despite all odds, downing my fourth Moon Mixer and rapidly getting drunk as a skunk with the rest of the townsfolk.
Tonight, I was off duty, going so far as to leave my sheriff’s badge at home, though not my girls— never them. After all, this was still Traitor’s Den, and just because it was my special day didn’t mean Denners would be considerate enough to stay out of trouble. No, Big Bertha and Big Wilma were nestled in my weapons belt, loaded and ready to go. But for the first time in many years I had real backup on the job. My three deputies helped me keep everyone in line, and even if that line was as crooked as a drunk zigzag much of the time, at least now I could delegate and I wasn’t the only one tending to everyone’s problems.
I took another sip of my Moon Mixer and grinned at the odd mix of people and creatures I couldn’t seem to help but think of as family, even if quite a few of them were the kind I might readily lop off the ancestral tree when I wasn’t feeling as generous—or tipsy.
“Thanks so much, y’all,” I announced loudly enough to be heard across the hundreds of Denners gathered. We didn’t all fit inside Sharmayne’s saloon, especially not since I’d now added a growing dragon and oftentimes also Kiki to my already substantial menagerie that used to consist solely of Tiger, who was still a very large cat who commanded more space than several humans. But that was, of course, before Rhett and Zeke came rumbling through the portal, kicking up dust and more trouble than they might be worth—I still hadn’t definitively decided.
Sawyer Zane was a rapidly growing boy who, despite already being as large as my parents’ hound dog, Butch, still hadn’t outgrown his momma: apparently still me. I wasn’t sure what I’d do once he grew to his full size. He wouldn’t fit in my studio apartment behind my parents’ house, but for tonight that particular could wait.
Sharmayne, along with my mom, Jony, Birdie, and Bobbie Sue, had finagled Durwood Toole and his small construction team to take a break from adding more jail cells to my office to tack on a sizable overhang to the back of the saloon. It didn’t provide much protection from the beating sun and the rare monsoon rain; however, rudimentary though the extension was, it was sufficient for us to crowd under the rooftop and enjoy the warm night.
“Happy birthday to our fine sheriff,” someone else yelled, the pronouncement wobbly enough to suggest that they’d missed the first round of congratulations and not even noticed it go by. From the voice, I suspected it was Buster Brane, but I couldn’t be sure, nor did I need to be. I was off duty.
At the fresh reminder that it wasn’t my problem if he were to pass out in the dust, I smiled good-naturedly, raising my glass another time. “Thanks again for showin’ up, y’all. The lot o’ ya might be harder to wrangle than a herd o’ startled chickens, but by and by you’re worth it.”
“Aw, honey,” my mom said, “that’s mighty sweet o’ ya to say.”
“Yeah.” I nodded a little too much, my head bobbing as if on a spring. “I think I might even love y’all.”
Silence greeted my admission. Love wasn’t a sentiment we Denners threw around lightly. But I was inching over the line of intoxicated enough not to care, and when someone slurred out a “We love ya too, Lo,” I laughed and several others joined me.
“It ain’t like we don’t got our share o’ troubles,” I went on, accepting the fresh Moon Mixer Sharmayne slid in front of me while whisking away the old. Like the previous ones, it was on the house tonight. “I know we got plenty o’ issues to sort out now that Uncle Tucker gone n’ stuck us here for good.”
Even well on my way to drunk, I sensed the change in attitude surrounding me. Since Tucker tried to escape the Den and inadvertently closed the portal forever, tensions had been riding high. Tempers were quick to flare, and I’d had to resort to locking Uncle Tucker in one of my jail cells for his own protection. Most Denners wanted to give him a swift punch to the gut, and those who didn’t wanted to do him worse. Even little Frances made regular visits to the jail, under the supervision of her mother Rosalee Durns, just to snarl and glare at the man. Like me, she’d never know a world beyond Tucker’s spelled bubble. Unlike me, it seemed she hadn’t come to peace with her fate.
Dewey Gunner shoved back his chair wit
h a grrrrk and stood unsteadily. “I say we whip ‘im, hang ‘im, and while he’s busy dyin’, we shoot ‘im full o’ holes till we can see right through him. Would serve ‘im right for what he done to us. Thanks to what he gone n’ done, I ain’t never gonna get back now to tell my wife n’ kids I didn’t leave ‘em on purpose.”
My dad rose, leaning his large hands on the table we shared while he did his best to glare at everyone gathered around us at once. “My brother may well’ve earned that sentence by bein’ a stupid idjit, but either way, just ‘cause he’s a rotten turd don’t mean we can’t find our way to forgiveness.”
Dewey was the first to boo … until my dad swiveled the full force of his pissed-off bear-shifter glare at him. Dewey gulped and shut his mouth, while my dad added, “Either way, whether ya wanna consider forgiveness for a man who was maybe ignorant o’ all exactly he was doin’ while he was doin’ it, that’s a discussion for another time. Bad enough my baby girl here ‘bout died tryin’ her darnedest to fix this town for y’all. I won’t have her celebration ruined by all that unpleasant business too.”
My dad paused to sweep his stare across the saloon patrons, spread out in all directions beneath the dim lights glowing orange thanks to the unlimited reservoir of power provided by Tucker’s original spell. “You got a problem with what Tucker done? Well, join the motherflutin’ club, why dontcha? There ain’t a single one of us here who likes bein’ a prisoner. It ain’t that Traitor’s Den can’t be a fine place to call home, it’s that we ain’t been given a choice. I know, I get it. Trust me on this, I ain’t never’ve chosen a life like this for my baby girl here. I’d’ve given her a choice, ‘course I would’ve. We all want our freedom to do as we please. ‘Course, we don’t got it, but don’t change our wantin’ it just as much if not more. But tonight ain’t the night for problems, ‘specially one as rip-roarin’ big as this one. Tonight is for countin’ our wins.”
“And what wins might those be exactly?” Jim Bob One asked from his chair, leaning back onto its back legs, not bothering to stand up.
When my dad’s brows lowered, Jim Bob One hastened to add, “I mean, other than that our Loretta’s fine and dandy now, o’ course, and that ain’t no small thing, I realize that nice and good.”
“See that ya do,” my dad growled while Sharmayne wove her way between tables like a bobcat with the scent of its prey.
Sharmayne slipped up behind Jim Bob One and slammed his chair down to all fours. He yelped and craned around in his seat, but when he saw the bar matron glowering at him from above, he hemmed nervously. “Won’t be messin’ with your chairs ever again, Shar. Dontchou worry ‘bout that.”
She frowned but nodded sharply and turned to swipe some more empties from neighboring tables, handing them off to Ellie Mae Sanders, who was helping her keep everyone stocked.
“Seems like y’all need remindin’ of all our wins,” my dad said. “Seems like ya shouldn’t, but there ya have it anyhow.” Another pause, during which tension nearly crackled in the air.
“…since it seems like my daughter survivin’ ain’t enough for the lot o’ ya.”
“That’s not what I meant, Levi,” Jim Bob One interjected.
My dad scoffed, but otherwise didn’t respond to him. “We came mighty close to havin’ a full-on dragon mother enter our town, huntin’ for my girl.”
En masse, most Denners pinned a glare on Rhett, who sat on one side of me—Zeke on the other. The townsfolk might have selective memories when it suited them, but not a one of them had forgotten that we wouldn’t have most of the problems that landed in our laps if Rhett hadn’t brought a dragon egg into the Den—and Zeke had been the one to take it in the first place, though by his account only to protect it.
Rhett, folding his arms over his chest and leaning back in his chair instead, which his large frame dwarfed, didn’t so much as flinch under everyone’s unspoken accusation.
My dad continued: “Now, I don’t know exactly what a dragon mother is, but I do know I ain’t wantin’ to be findin’ out none.”
“Here, here,” Bluebell said in a tinny call. “She’d be a right sour beast, I’d bet.”
My dad nodded. “Then, we had a host o’ dragon shifters, again comin’ after my girl, and I gotta say, y’all showed your true colors then, fightin’ like you was born to it.”
Without meaning to, my attention drifted to Bobbie Sue. Since I was off duty, she was on, sitting off to the side, a glass of sparkling water in front of her. Even in the shadows I could make out the color tingeing her cheeks and neck. She’d been one of the few to run before Eliza Rain the ice queen came smashing into our town. Bobbie Sue had also had decent reason to run.
“We coulda lost a lotta our numbers that night,” my dad added. “But all we lost was Birdie, and thanks to this community and the way y’all rally when you got no choice but to do it”—he glanced at Henrietta Hammer, who frowned back at him as if she were still peeved Bluebell had fetched her to bring Birdie back to life—“we didn’t lose Birdie after all. So there’s two wins right there. We still got Birdie and Loretta among us, and I for one am pleased as punch ‘bout that.”
After a look down at my mom, who beamed up at him, he rubbed at the scruff covering his chin. “I think that’s all I got in me for tonight.” Then, without further ado, he sat, and I was left trying to decide if he drew his speech to an end because he couldn’t think of any more victories or if it was because he’d spoken more this night than he normally did in a whole week.
When no one seemed to know what to say or do next, Birdie shoved her chair back, almost fell, giggling as Cole steadied her and she accidentally landed in his lap. Once more, she pushed her Fruity Tooty over her head, and once again, it spilled. This time, she didn’t seem to notice. “To Loretta n’ me! For livin’ and celebratin’ and ... I dunno, grabbin’ the bull by the horns and ridin’ the bejeezus outta life!”
Some laughs and cheers circled the crowd, whose communal alcohol level was adding up.
Birdie punched her glass into the air again. “For nearly dyin’ but then comin’ out of it hotter than ever, with a rockin’ patch o’ dragon scales nobody else got—save for Sawyer Zane, ‘course—but not sure he counts since they were his to begin with. So…” She stopped to drain her Fruity Tooty, then burped loudly, eyes glassy as she grinned. “To my girl Lo, for bein’ the best friend someone like me could ever have. Now, get in your birthday suit, girlfriend!”
I rolled my eyes … until I noticed Cole’s gaze on me from behind Birdie, running up and down the length of me. His eyes were heated, making it all too easy to guess where he’d gone with the suggestion of me getting naked.
Meanwhile, from either side of me, Rhett and Zeke also seemed to have noticed his attention. A low growl rumbled through Rhett’s chest while Zeke slid to the edge of his chair as if he were about to bolt out of it, and once he was on his feet I wouldn’t bet on him not using his fists to remind Cole that I was no longer his girlfriend and that he should instead pay mind to the woman who clearly did want to claim that title. Birdie was all but wriggling in Cole’s lap, trying to get him to look at her.
I’d been avoiding Birdie—Cole too for that matter—and I knew I couldn’t put off forever the talk I had to have with both of them.
Which reminded me of the other situation I’d been putting off…