But even though that seemed the most plausible explanation, I couldn’t accept it. Something was wrong here, a dark, pulsing sensation of evil at the heart of the imposing house. Stepping past Connor, I drew off my glove and laid a hand against the doorframe.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
I couldn’t really answer, because I didn’t know for sure. The prima fire in my belly, usually coiled and quiet and quiescent, suddenly flared within me, and I felt it more strongly now, waves of malice, of ill intent. And somewhere within it, the foul coppery stink of blood.
Retching, I lifted my hand and backed away. Connor went to me at once, catching me as I stumbled on the step that led down to the driveway. “Angela! What is it?”
“Something awful,” I gasped. “I felt it. I don’t know what’s in there, but please, Connor — I think we should go.”
“Go?” he demanded. “We just got here!”
“I know that. But I think — I think we shouldn’t face whatever it is by ourselves.”
His hands tightened on mine. “If Damon’s in trouble, if he needs our help — ”
What could I say to that? Looking into Connor’s face, I realized he would never walk away if he thought his brother was in any kind of trouble. Unfortunately, from what I’d just felt, it seemed more that Damon himself was the source of the black energy I’d sensed. But I doubted I could convince Connor of that. All I could do was be on my guard.
“Okay,” I said reluctantly. “But we need to be careful — and we need to be ready to run.”
He nodded, although he gave me a strange look, as if wondering whether this was all simply more of my overactive imagination. “All right.”
So we went back to the front door. Connor laid his hand on the heavy bronze handle, clearly preparing to unlock the door using magic. Then his eyes widened.
“It’s already open,” he murmured.
The muscles at the back of my neck tightened further. Every instinct in me was screaming to run, to get out of there as fast as my feet would carry me, but somehow I managed to stand my ground, wait as Connor pushed the door inward.
A wave of stale, warm air greeted us, bringing with it the acrid scent I’d somehow sensed mentally before I even smelled it with my nose. Blood, metallic and strong, and beneath that the cloying odor of decay.
It was dim inside, all the blinds and curtains closed. Connor reached out and flicked the light switch in the entryway, turning on the pendant lamp that hung from the high ceiling.
“Holy shit,” he breathed, even as I raised a hand to my mouth to keep myself from gagging.
The place looked like a whirlwind had struck it. Furniture toppled over, lamps and vases smashed. But that wasn’t the worst. Lying on the floor, arms stretched toward the entryway as if she had been desperately trying to escape, was Jessica Lowe. At least, I assumed it was her — I thought I recognized the spill of long honey-colored hair. Mercifully, she now lay face down.
Even from where I stood, I could see the blood spattered across the wooden floor, the dark spray on the walls. The shirt she wore was shredded, claw marks showing clearly on her pale flesh.
“We need to go,” I whispered, laying a hand on Connor’s arm and beginning to tug him back toward the door. “We have to call the police.”
“No. Not the police. Not yet,” he whispered back. He didn’t try to free his arm from my grasp, but he did use his other hand to pull his cell phone out of his jacket pocket.
“What are you talking about? Something killed her!”
“I know that. But think about it, Angela. Think about how much attention this will bring on all of us. We can’t afford that kind of scrutiny.”
As much as I hated what he was saying, I knew he was right. The McAllisters obeyed the same rule — do what you must, but never risk bringing unwanted attention on the clan. It was the only way we’d survived undetected for so long.
I nodded mutely, my body tense, somehow knowing the threat was still here, although the house was completely still. Flesh crawling, I wondered if who — or what — had killed Jessica was watching us as we stood in the entryway. At least we could be out the front door in a few steps if necessary.
Had Jessica thought the same thing?
I shivered, and watched as Connor selected someone from his contacts list and waited while the call connected. “Lucas?” he said. “I need you to come out to Damon’s house now. We’ve — well, we’ve got a situation. And bring Marie with you.” A pause as he listened to Lucas’s response. “I don’t know. Just get here as quickly as you can.” He ended the call and turned toward me. “I think we’d better wait out in the car. Just to be safe.”
That sounded like an excellent plan to me. I had just opened my mouth to reply when I heard a hideous growl, and a dark blur of a shape launched itself at me.
No time to think, no time to do anything except call on the power within me to flare up and outward, a flash of golden glowing light bursting away from me and knocking my attacker back a good three yards. It got to its feet, growling, and as I stared at it, a sick, choking feeling rose in my throat.
Yes, it was a wolf, a huge thing with gray matted fur and sharp bloodstained teeth showing between its snarling gums. But those were not the eyes of a wolf staring at me. No, they were black, utterly black, so dark you couldn’t see the pupils.
Damon Wilcox’s eyes.
All this went through my mind in the endless space between one heartbeat and the next. Before I could even blink, Connor had leapt in front of me, shielding me with his body. He stared down at the wolf, horror clear in every tense line of his frame.
His words, when they came, broke my heart.
“Don’t hurt her, Damon. Please. I love her.”
A low guttural growl, and the wolf — Damon — crouched lower. I stiffened, gathering my own strength to strike, should the need arise, should he leap for us, teeth bared to tear yet another throat. Then it made the oddest whimpering noise as it stared up at Connor. A shudder went through it, almost as if some part of its mind was trying to get it to move backward while its wolfish instincts were telling it to attack.
Stained teeth flashing, it leapt forward again. Once more I moved purely on instinct, somehow knowing that Connor had neither the magic nor the will to confront his brother. My hands went up, even as I focused the energy and flung it forward, this time using it as a weapon rather than a barrier.
A horrible yiping howl, and the Damon-wolf went flying backward, hitting one of the overturned tables. I heard a terrible crack, and thought maybe I had broken its ribs. But no, it got to its feet and shook its head, and I saw that the force of the impact had split one of the table legs in half. The wolf growled, and I raised my hands again. Beside me, Connor was taking in deep, gasping breaths, his body halfway blocking me still, as if he wanted to act as my protector but knew I was far more suited to this fight than he.
Once more I had that sensation of time stretching out, of a second seeming to take hours to pass. I heard my own ragged breathing, the low snarling growl emanating from the wolf’s throat. Those black pupil-less eyes met mine, and in them I saw a terrible hunger, a need that would never be slaked. Although the house was stuffily warm, my body went ice cold. Could I push the creature back a third time if it attacked again?
But after that one long, hideous pause, the Damon-wolf let out a sound halfway between a bark and a snarl, and slunk away, a dark incongruous shape against the gleaming wood floors and expensive rugs. Broken glass crunched under its paws, and then it was gone.
Neither Connor nor I moved. We only stood there, huddled together, bodies tense, sure it would come back at any moment. Then, from far off, I heard a drawn-out baying that could only have come from the creature. Somehow it had gotten outside, had moved off.
And then, much closer, the rushing sound of tires in the driveway. The thunk of one car door shutting, then another, and a few seconds later Lucas Wilcox’s tall form filled the doorway. Behind him I co
uld see Marie, expression impassive as always, although I caught the slightest widening of her eyes as she took in the destruction around us, the limp form of Jessica Lowe’s body on the floor.
Lucas, however, was not nearly as reserved. “Fucking hell!” he exclaimed almost the second he walked into the entryway. His gaze fell to Jessica, and I saw his mouth tighten, and the glitter of sorrow in his dark eyes. “Poor kid,” he added softly. To my surprise, he went and knelt next to her, laid a hand on her head, then seemed to murmur some words, although I couldn’t make out what they were. Then he pushed himself to his feet, expression grim. “What happened?”
I opened my mouth to reply, since Connor seemed more or less stunned, still grappling with the realization that his brother had succumbed to an evil he couldn’t begin to contemplate. However, Marie forestalled me, saying,
“Damon sought power where he should not. I warned him, told him not to stray down paths he couldn’t begin to comprehend. But he ignored me, and has become the yee naaldlooshii.”
“The what?” Connor demanded, seeming to come out of his stupor.
Her eyes were a warm brown, striking against her black hair. They appeared calm, seemingly untouched by the horrors around us. “A shapechanger — what some call a skin-walker.”
“Oh, come on,” Lucas said, shaking his head. “That’s just a legend. You’re not suggesting — ”
“She doesn’t have to suggest,” I broke in. “Connor and I both saw it. A huge gray wolf…but with Damon’s eyes.”
Beside me, Connor shuddered, but he didn’t say anything to contradict me. Somewhere inside, he might have wished he could deny what we had seen. Luckily, he was not the type to challenge the evidence of his own eyes.
“Yes,” Marie said. “It is usually the eyes that give it away.”
Lucas looked baffled, scared, and angry all at the same time. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation — ”
Marie turned her cool gaze on him. “There is one, and it is that our primus has given in to a great evil. His was always a questing soul, and this time it sought power in the very worst place it possibly could.”
“So what do we do?” Connor asked, voice tight. “How do we help him, make him get better?”
“You cannot help him.” Her tone was implacable, impersonal as a judge handing down a sentence. “Once a man has destroyed the humanity within himself in exchange for these powers, there is no redemption. All we can do is stop him before he takes any more innocent lives.” At last she glanced down at Jessica’s prone body, expelling the smallest of breaths as she did so. Even as Connor shook his head in denial, she went on, “Would you hesitate to kill a rabid dog? That is what your brother has become, Connor.
“The only thing we can do is put him out of his misery.”
16
Doppelgänger
I drove us back to town, since Connor was in no shape to get behind the wheel. Lucas and Marie stayed behind at Damon’s house, calling for reinforcements to get the place cleaned up by any means necessary, magical or otherwise. Apparently they planned to have Jessica’s body moved to a location near one of the previous wolf attacks, to leave her there and have the authorities think she was just another victim, one who hadn’t been discovered as quickly as the others. It wasn’t so very far from the truth.
As Connor and I prepared to leave, though, I saw a flicker out of the corner of my eye, and realized it was Jessica, standing in the middle of the hallway and watching as Lucas and Marie began tidying up as best they could. Well, the one thing most of the ghosts of my acquaintance had in common was sudden, violent death. It shouldn’t have surprised me that Jessica remained in Damon’s house, her soul shackled to this world by the very obsession that had led to her death.
I wished I could speak to her, but she disappeared the second I turned toward her and our eyes met. Time for that later, maybe, although the thought of having to return to that house anytime soon made my flesh crawl. And I said nothing to Connor as I took the FJ’s keys from him and got into the driver’s seat. He had enough to deal with right now without being informed that his brother’s house was now haunted.
We were about halfway home when he finally spoke. “You’re not saying it.”
“Saying what?” I asked, although I thought I knew.
“‘I told you so.’”
“What good would that do?” I lifted one hand from the steering wheel, reached down to lay it on top of his where it rested on his knee. At least he didn’t try to move it away…but neither did he try to touch me in return, only sat there, not responding at all. A nervous quiver went through my stomach, but I told myself he was just in shock, trying to process everything we’d just seen and heard. “I’m so very sorry, Connor.”
“Are you?” he asked, staring straight out the window at the buildings and cars passing by. “I mean, you never liked Damon.”
Well, he didn’t give me much reason to, I thought. I would never say such a thing to Connor, though. Not now. He loved his brother, and even if I couldn’t fully understand that love, I had to respect it. “I didn’t agree with his methods,” I said carefully. “But I would have been willing to meet him halfway, for your sake.”
A brief, curt nod, and Connor shifted in his seat, pulling his hand from beneath mine. I didn’t try to prevent him from doing so. The last thing he needed right now was me clinging to him. I was here, and I’d listen to anything he had to say, but I wouldn’t force myself on him. Somehow I knew that would only make things worse.
We pulled into the alley behind our building, and I parked the SUV. At least I was more or less used to driving the FJ by that point, so there wasn’t any fudging or having to back up and try again, which had happened once or twice as I was familiarizing myself with the vehicle and the cramped parking space I had to squeeze it into.
Connor got out and I followed him, trailing behind as he unlocked the rear door to the building and let us in. We walked upstairs in silence, and still said nothing as we entered the apartment.
In the back of my mind, I’d sort of been hoping that he might find some kind of equilibrium once we were back home and in familiar surroundings, but if anything, being in the apartment only seemed to worsen his mood. He unbuttoned his coat and flung it over the back of a chair rather than hanging it up properly. Not a big deal, of course, but I knew Connor, knew that he was usually careful about such things.
As I was taking off my own coat and putting it away, his gaze fell on a couple of paintings that he’d stacked up against the wall in the hallway. He’d brought them over from the studio the day before, wanting to see them from different angles and in different lighting. Now, though, his brow darkened as he stared at them, and before I could do or say anything, he’d driven his booted foot right through one of them.
“It’s all bullshit!” he growled, kicking away the ruined painting. “All of it! What the fuck was I doing, sitting here and making a bunch of fucking paintings when my brother needed me?”
Aghast, I could only stare at the wreckage of what a few seconds ago had been a summer-toned landscape of warm grass and tall, cool pines. “Connor — ”
I could tell he was about to do the same thing to the second painting. Without thinking, I reached out with my mind, whisked it out of harm’s way, sent it winging across the room until it settled safely against the wall under the windows.
“You’re getting pretty good at that, aren’t you?” he snapped. “Where did all this come from, anyway? Last thing I heard, about all you were good for was talking to ghosts.”
The rasp of his voice as he said those hateful words was so similar to Damon’s that I wanted to put my hands up to my ears so I wouldn’t have to hear it anymore. But that would be a childish gesture, and ultimately futile. I drew in a breath, then said, “It’s like I told you before — the prima’s power is there against the time when it’s needed.”
For the longest moment, he didn’t reply, only glared at me, and I couldn’t he
lp wondering what his next attack would be, what burst of anger I would have to deflect. But something in him seemed to crumple, and all of a sudden his shoulders drooped. He raised his hand to his hair, ran his fingers through it as if somehow that would clear the fog of anger from his mind.
“I’m sorry,” he said at last.
Relief pulsed through me, and I went to him then, pulling him against me and wrapping my arms around him. He clung to me, and I whispered, “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
Except I really didn’t think it would be.
* * *
I made us grilled cheese and tomato soup for dinner — ultimate comfort food — and we went to bed early. No lovemaking that night, but I held him close, tried to reassure him with my presence until he finally fell asleep in my arms. He’d had one terse phone call from Lucas saying that the house had been cleaned up and Jessica “taken care of,” which meant her body must have been left somewhere to be found.
Maybe once upon a time the Wilcoxes could’ve made a person evaporate in a puff of smoke or whatever, but these days everyone had too much of an electronic trail. Sure, people did disappear from time to time; of course they did. In Jessica’s case, though, there would have been a lot of questions asked. She was from a prominent and well-connected family, and she’d been seen in public with Damon. It wasn’t a risk the clan members were willing to take. After so many other young women had been killed, her death in exactly the same manner wouldn’t cause nearly as much uproar as a mysterious disappearance might.
Horrible that her poor body was just dumped somewhere, though. I didn’t want to think about that, nor her pale face watching me from the shadows of Damon’s entry hall. There had to be some way to get her to move on, to relinquish her hold on this plane of existence. That had never been my power, though. I could talk to ghosts, but they had to be the ones to decide it was time to move on. It had happened once or twice in Jerome, so I knew it was possible. I just had never been the one to help them make that transition.
Darknight (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 2) Page 24