Chills & Thrills Paranormal Boxed Set

by Flynn, Connie

  She finished just about the time he stubbed out his smoke in the sand next to the lean-to. "Have you ever heard of confabulation, cher?"

  "What?" She frowned as if the question was a non sequitur. "It sounds familiar, but I'm not sure what it means."

  "When the mind encounters events that don't make sense, it makes up stuff to fill the holes. It's very common among Alzheimer's patients."

  "I hardly have Alzheimer's, Zach."

  "No, but you've had a shock, which is another cause of confabulation."

  "I'm not making this up."

  She responded calmly, as if nothing would shake her conviction, and he realized he was wasting his breath. He turned to get his shoes and began slipping them on his feet.

  "Are you still going?" she asked with surprise. "I told you already, Papa's in the cave."

  "What about Maddie?"

  "What about her?"

  Zach reached for his jacket. It was caked with dirt, and so were his clothes. Particles of sand abraded every crevice of his body. He ached to get off this frigging island and have a shower. "She disappeared last night, too."

  "Oh, it's worse than I thought," Liz exclaimed. "Maddie's probably dead, her soul feeding Ankouer's power."

  It was all Zach could do not to roll his eyes. "Look, Liz, I'm going to check on the boat. While I'm out, I'll also search for bodies."

  "You're wasting your time." She looked around the lean-to, finally coming upon her shoes, which she picked up. "I need to read more of Mama's journal, anyway. I missed so much of my training by running away."

  "Reading that journal's the last thing you should do," he muttered.

  But Liz was already unbuttoning the pocket on her dirt-splattered overalls.

  Zach scooted from beneath the shelter and climbed to his feet, doing his best to shake away the gritty sand that plagued him.

  Just then Liz uttered a soft sound.

  "Liz?"

  "I'd forgotten about this," she said, displaying the chamois gris-gris bag. "Thank God, I didn't throw it away."

  She loosened the drawstring and pulled out the macabre voodoo doll. The red dots glared out of its coal-black face. "It looks like Ankouer," she whispered apprehensively.

  Oh, Liz, Zach thought sadly, turning away.

  "I'll search the island," he said.

  Too transfixed with the hideous effigy to acknowledge him, she slowly returned it to the bag, and he knew she'd read the journal despite his warnings.

  The morning was getting warm, and the day, was as bright as it ever got on Quadray Island, so he draped his jacket on a rock, then bent for his flask and tucked it in his rear pocket.

  "Don't go anywhere," he instructed. "And if you're not going to sleep while I'm gone, you might pack up."

  "Okay."

  But she had already buried her nose in the journal, and Zach doubted she'd heard a word he'd said.

  * * *

  Liz was frustrated. What she'd read so far seemed so much of the same.

  It starts. Ankouer has drank the souls of human sacrifices, and now he comes for me with his cold flame. Only the opal can defeat him, and then only if my heart is free of fear. But I tremble and shake at thinking of his approach.

  It was all the more painful, reading this now, knowing she might have protected her mother from this evil if she hadn't run away. But it was too late now, and her own night of reckoning was drawing near. She had to prepare. How ironic that she alone of all the guardians had received no training, yet she was the last of the line, the final hope.

  In the hands of a fearless guardian, the opal will snuff Ankouer's cold flame, and return him to the foul darkness of his own essence.

  How did a guardian remain fearless? Liz flipped to the next page.

  Ankouer comes from ceaseless need, and in his hands the fire stone feeds that need, unleashing his evil power on the-

  Keep going. Keep going. It had to be here. She knew it did. Finally her eyes hit something she hadn't read before.

  When the guardian holds the stone, it becomes like water on Ankouer's flame, and he begins to hiss the cry of death.

  Liz's heart leaped with anticipation. Here, this was what she'd been searching for. Quickly she scanned the page.

  To get to Ankouer's lair, she must first pass the gatekeepers who guard the narrow inward passage. The evil object, blacker than coal, with eyes aglow and a knife piercing his dark heart, defeats these foes.

  Liz glanced at the gris-gris sack, secure once again inside the plastic bag. Odd that until now she'd forgotten that Harris had given it to her, along with his message that the doll alone was not enough. Look into your heart, he'd said, Izzy's heart.

  The guardian shall walk into the darkest, blackest part of him. Blind and cold will she be, but onward she must go, offering the opal to heaven, and praying for protection with the fullness of love in her heart. Do not hate, guardian, do not hate. Ankouer loves hate like we love sugar and it feed his evil.

  Was it possible to face evil with love? Liz wondered, reading on.

  But alone the guardian cannot prevail. A defender whose love be pure, one who must battle his own demons on the way, shall stand by her side. If he fails, the guardian shall surely die. If he triumphs, the two shall fulfill the meaning of the verse.

  Below this passage was the quatrain she'd come across early in the journey. She'd been skipping repetitive passages, but she was now too caught up in her swirling thoughts to move on. A defender whose love is pure. Without one, she would die.

  Papa had been her mother's defender. He'd failed to defeat his demon in the form of sultry Maddie Catalon.

  These new thoughts came with a certainty Liz didn't question as her mind moved on to Zach. His love was pure, she knew, untainted by the doubts she'd harbored. But his demons? What are they? His three former wives? His distant son? The flask in his back pocket? Or was it his sudden and complete rejection of ideas he'd once considered?

  She couldn't blame him for believing she'd followed her father off the deep end. Were positions reversed, she didn't doubt she'd come to the same conclusion. Yet, even believing her mind had snapped, his love for her remained. It had survived the news that she had died. It had survived her fury at him for accusing her father.

  A rueful smile crossed her face. How important it had seemed to preserve the image she'd built since leaving Louisiana. How important to defend her father, no matter the circumstances. With this new perspective, her former intensity seemed childlike and self-absorbed.

  Through time, nearly thirty years, Zach had loved her, and contemplating the strength and endurance of his love made her feel safe, something she hadn't felt since putting foot in Port Chatre. Something she certainly had no reason to feel at this crucial moment. But to ask him to confront this horror as her defender. Lord, it was too much, just too much.

  As she mulled over the challenge she'd just accepted, and the consequence to Zach that she hadn't considered until now, her eyes fell back to the quatrain.

  Beasts lay panting on the trail.

  The two keep the one at bay.

  When the two join as one,

  The soft overpower the strong.

  Still as enigmatic as ever. In the name of heaven, what did this mean? Its title—The Key—implied it had great significance.

  Where was the interpretation for this puzzle? Liz leafed through the book, hunting for additional references. When she arrived at her mother's final entry without finding one, she repeated the action, this time from end to beginning.

  Finally, she accepted the truth. There wasn't one. The interpretation was up to her. Out of the blue, Harris's words ran through her mind. Look for what Izzy knew. He'd said it was in the book.

  In the book. What did Izzy, that clueless little girl, know that Liz did not? What? It was in the book. Once again Liz scoured the pages, hunting for something she knew as a girl.

  Then it was there, clear as day, written again and again on every page in her mother's hand. Love. I
zzy knew love. Izzy understood love. And only love could defeat le fantome noir.

  * * *

  Zach went directly to the spot they'd left the boat, praying the storm hadn't blown it into the bayou. To his immense relief, it was still there. After pulling it a couple more yards from the water for good measure, he headed along the shore in search of Frank and Maddie.

  The island wasn't much more than a mile around, and the lack of vegetation made the trip easy. Every now and then he turned his eyes inland, looking for a crumpled body. Each fruitless search led only to the small mountain rising from the island's center. When, he finally got back to the beached boat, he was convinced Frank and his mistress were no longer there.

  More pieces that didn't add up. Liz had hysterically declared that the tornado picked up her father, but Zach would've sworn the twister wasn't big enough to lift a grown man from the ground, much less carry him completely off the island.

  With a smoothness born of habit, Zach reached for his back pocket. Not until he recapped the bottle did he realize what he'd done. On an empty stomach? Well, he needed something, that was for sure.

  How had it come to this? How had Zach Fortier—son of Port Chatre's mayor and biggest employer, football star, homecoming king, everybody's fair-haired boy—how had he come to this? His life had promised great rewards. Nothing bad ever happened to Zach. Everyone said so.

  But his father had died. Then his brother. His once-vibrant mother was a sad, empty shell. Three wives turned their backs on him. His children saw him as a walking checkbook. And the woman he'd loved all his life, the woman he'd once given up for dead, had either joined her father in his insanity or was covering up unspeakable crimes.

  Had the whole tornado thing been a fortuitous smoke screen that came up just in time to allow Frank and Maddie to escape without pursuit?

  That's when the pieces clicked. Drugs. He'd rejected the idea earlier, but it had to be drugs. Catherine and Ellie had probably gotten hooked, and eventually died from their indulgence. Jed and the prisoner had been tricked into or force-fed an overdose. And Frank, who was probably little more than a courier, had known what happened all along.

  A lost fact wiggled in the back of Zach's mind, having something to do with blood test results, but it failed to surface and he spent no time digging it up. He'd given more than two years to the search for his brother's killer, and the mental tug of war caused by the conflicting evidence he'd uncovered over the last three days had exhausted him. It was time to face the truth. Either Frank Deveraux was an accessory to murder, or Ankouer really did live in that ominous mountain.

  And those alternatives led to only one logical conclusion.

  With heavy footsteps, he trudged back to the alcove to ask Liz some hard questions, scared to death that they would produce some equally hard answers.

  She was sitting on a rock, reading, and lifted her head at his approach. At first she regarded him with a fuzzy gaze, then gave him a delighted smile.

  A brilliant smile—warm, inviting, full of triumph—and begging for a response that was beyond him. Every muscle in his face felt the brutal pull of gravity.

  "Zach," she cried, leaping up and rushing toward him. "We have to hurry. There's so much to do."

  His heart ached so bad he couldn't answer.

  "Did you hear me?" Her eyes filled up with urgency.

  "I heard," he replied flatly. "And you can cut the act."

  "Act? What are you talking about?"

  "You can't kid me anymore, Liz. I know you helped your father escape."

  Chapter Twenty-one

  "Helped him . . ." Liz stared up at Zach with dismayed astonishment. "You can't believe that."

  Clearly he did, because his voice turned harsher. "How did they get off the island, Liz, him and Maddie? And why didn't you leave with them? There must be a reason. He wouldn't leave you behind. So what are the three of you hiding?" At this he looked up at the mountain. "And what in God's name is in that cave?"

  "Papa hasn't escaped," she told him. "He's still on the island. Ankouer took him just the way I told you."

  "Stop lying to me, Liz," he countered, turning back to look at her. "You've been up north so long you think all Southerners are superstitious fools. But your ruse to make me think your pa's gone insane isn't working anymore. And then there's your sudden reversal. None of it rings true, Liz. Do you have any idea how nutty you're acting?"

  She nodded. He'd squinted his eyes against the glare from the hazy sky, which made him look as hard and mean as he sounded. But this wasn't Zach. This was a hurt and tormented man, and not without reason. She dropped her gaze to the volume in her hand, then extended it toward him.

  "Read this, Zach, please. It will ans—"

  "Somehow your pa's responsible for your mother and grandmother's deaths," he interrupted. "Jed's death . . . that escaped con's. I'm going to prove it and bring him to justice." He took a frustrated half-step away from her, then turned back and fully met her eyes. "I love you, Liz, more than I can find words to say. But I swear, I truly swear, if you helped him, I'll take you down too."

  "Please, Zach, listen to—"

  "No! I've heard too many lies already. Maybe you can excuse your pa for killing two people you supposedly loved, but I can't give up on Jed." He chuckled bitterly. "Tell me, cher, how is it you can forgive him for murdering your ma and grandma, but you can't forgive me for finding it out?"

  "He didn't do it, Zach. You've got to believe me. Our lives, his life, depends on it." She gestured toward the mountain. "Ankouer has Papa up there. He's using him to bait me . . . bait us." She stepped closer and tapped his chest with the journal. "Read this, please, please read this. Then you'll understand that if we don't stand together we're all doomed."

  "Stop it!" he roared. "You're beginning to sound like your father!"

  Liz felt the battle going on inside him. What unpalatable options he faced in trying to make sense of their situation. Either she was a criminal in league with her equally criminal father, or, also like him, she was going insane. And then there was the third one, which she was sure he'd also considered, the option she knew to be true. Ankouer did exist and was behind every inexplicable event they'd gone through.

  "Just read what Mama had to say," she said in a whisper, pressing the book in his hand.

  "Nooo!" He whirled and flung the book away, then stormed toward the place it fell.

  Liz raced after him.

  "Don't," she cried. She swooped down and rescued the volume just as he was preparing to stomp on it, narrowly escaping getting her fingers crushed. She pulled it to her breasts and glared up at him. "Don't you ever do that again," she said with a hiss in her voice. "This was my mother's."

  "It's making you crazy, Liz."

  Liz shook her head sadly. It was no good arguing.

  It amazed her that she understood his pain almost better than he did. He felt betrayed by her, possibly betrayed by life. The young Zach she'd loved had a clear and predictable future. He'd marry her, run his father's cannery, maybe someday become mayor of Port Chatre and after that, possibly state politics. They probably wouldn't have lived in luxury, but they would have had comfort, ease and respect. Lots of love. Good times.

  But none of that came to pass.

  The silence between them stretched on for a long time, but finally Zach said, "We need to take our supplies to the boat so we can leave."

  "We can't leave yet," she replied firmly.

  "Yes, we can, Liz, and we are." At that, he slipped the ever-present flask from his back pocket and took a long drink. After replacing the cap, he said. "And you're going to stick to me like glue, you hear? If you even try to get out of my sight, I'll tie you to me like a puppy on a leash."

  She didn't doubt he meant it, and she supposed she could outwardly rebel. But why bother? Ankouer wouldn't let them leave the island, no matter what Zach thought or did.

  He had waited a few seconds for a response, and when she didn't say anything, he shrugged, t
hen turned, tucking away his flask at the same time.

  The misty sky reflected darkly in the metal of the flask and caught Liz's attention. A second later the image disappeared into Zach's pocket. But in that instant, by some nebulous thought process, Liz saw what Zach's demon was. Unlike her father, who had only one, his were many. Dozens of losses, large and small, stacked one upon the other until they got so heavy he tried to numb them with liquor.

  He'd probably managed to cage his anguish for most of his life, but Jed's death had finally forced the door open. Regardless of the reason, the demons swarmed around him now, and instead of dealing with them, he'd opted to keep them at bay with the contents of his flask.

  He'd never defeat them unless he threw away his crutch, and that seemed so unlikely Liz dismissed the possibility as quickly as it arose.

  She wanted to deny her part in his downfall, but wasn't able. One of the many abrupt changes in her makeup. Ever since her buried memories had resurfaced, she'd felt as if she'd somehow finally learned who she really was. An involuntary laugh escaped her throat. Of course she knew. She was the Guardian of the Opal . . . the last guardian.

  "Something funny?" Zach asked.

  While she'd been lost in thought, he'd been busy returning loose supplies to the crates. "Something crossed my mind, that's all."

  "Well, instead of daydreaming, would you come over here and give me a hand? Stuff's scattered all over the place."

  Liz sighed sadly, shaking her head as she walked to join Zach. When she got there, he was rearranging items inside one of the crates, almost pointedly ignoring her. She watched him for a moment, then turned away and circled the camp, picking up stray items.

  No, Zach wouldn't defeat his demons, at least not in time. He couldn't even face his biggest one, namely her. This meant she'd have to battle Ankouer alone, her only weapons a tiny, freakish voodoo doll and the gift of love from Izzy Deveraux's heart. No guardian had yet defeated Ankouer, and none without a defender survived her battle. But this time . . .