Out of Mind coa-2

by Stella Cameron

  “The eggs,” she said, startled by a sharp vision. “They had piles of eggs, and they ate what was inside, the shells, as well, and any little bones that fell.”

  “The eggs again,” he said.

  “I saw some Embran—I think that one looked like a human all the time.”

  “God, I hope not,” Ben said under his breath. “Mutating is bad enough. But all we need is to have no way to separate some of them from us.”

  “Wait.” She clutched his arms. “The Embran are dying and they say it’s our fault.” Her headache pummeled her temples again. “They want our world, Ben. They kept saying the answer to getting back their immortality is here. They told me they will take our world, and we’ll serve them—and suffer.”

  She held her head in her hands.

  “How many of them are there?” he asked quietly.

  “I don’t know. A lot, I think.” She sat forward and broke into a sweat. “We’ve got to get to Chris and Fabio! I was coming to tell you about them last night. Help me out of here.”

  “Not so fast,” Ben said. “Take it easy.”

  Willow scrambled to her feet, and he promptly lifted her into his arms.

  “Where are we going?” he said.

  “They’re in the conservatory, in bottles like I saw in my mind when I was in the courtyard trying to reach them. Or they were in the conservatory. Are the police in the house? Who’s there? We have to go now.”

  “Okay. Nat needs to know what’s going on. I was with him when you called me. He’ll think something nasty happened to me, too.”

  “Just come with me,” she told him. “Remember I told you about a blue light on the wall just before Chloe died and how I thought she looked as if she couldn’t see when she fell over the banisters?”

  “The light on the wall could have been the laser that was used on you. After you left Chloe she could have been blinded by it.” He finished her thought. “You said you couldn’t move at first—after the laser hit you. It could be that Chloe didn’t scream because she couldn’t.”

  Her feet touched the ground again, inside the kitchen of the Brandt house. Ben had pulled another of his speed moves and this time she was glad, if confused.

  “Keep quiet and listen,” he said. “We don’t need to speak aloud.”

  “No,” she agreed, still marveling that he was right. “Please let’s get to the conservatory. I’m afraid those bottles will be gone by now. They look like bottles of orchid fertilizer or something. They’ve got colored granules inside. Ben! There’s a little bird in there and it’s evil. It’s guarding the bottles, I think. I saw it the first time I came here, and it seemed harmless enough then.”

  “It probably is.” Ben laughed. “I think I can manage a little bird.”

  “Are there any police here?” she asked.

  “No. They were pulled once it was obvious you weren’t here. I think the house is empty.”

  Rapidly, with Willow behind Ben, where he had put her, they slipped from the kitchen into the corridor beyond. Ben’s hand shot back to hold her still. “Do you hear something?”

  She listened. “I think so. Raised voices. But they’re muffled. Ben, someone’s coming through the front door.”

  He flattened his back to the wall, one arm stretched protectively across her body.

  They could see into the gloomy hall, but the front door was indistinct. Willow saw shadows shift. A small light at the top of the stairs cast an anemic yellow swath that touched the foyer and the opening to the corridor leading to the conservatory.

  “It’s Rock,” she told Ben, squinting to see.

  “Wait. Don’t call out. See where he goes first. We can’t be too careful.”

  In his leather pants and muscle shirt, his keys making the faintest sound on the chain tucked into his pocket, Rock crept forward, not looking right or left, but making straight for the conservatory.

  “How does he know to go there? Did he tell you why he couldn’t be at the event last night?”

  Willow looked up at Ben in the shadows. She could make out the long mane of his hair sweeping forward when he leaned to see what he could.

  “What do you mean? You talked to him. I saw you. At the gondola—he sent for you, remember?”

  “You saw the man who took his place as boatman in a full mask and costume,” Ben said. “But I think Rock’s a resourceful man and he’s very protective of you. He must have had a good reason to duck out last night.”

  At last Rock disappeared. Holding Willow’s hand, Ben started forward again. “I don’t suppose you’d agree to go outside and call Nat, tell him you’re safe?”

  “No,” she told him shortly. “I’m not leaving you. And we need to do this alone. This is nothing the police can charge into. Soon we’re going to have to gather all the power we have between the psi families and work together.”

  “I’ve contacted Pascal and asked him to find Sykes,” Ben said. “Sykes has his shield up, probably to keep Pascal from interfering, but that means I’m shut out, too. Your brother has only got one thing on his mind. You.”

  “We need him,” Willow said.

  “He’ll check in and then we’ll have him.”

  Raised voices, jumbled together and angry, came from the direction of the conservatory. A crash, then a shriek of rage speeded Ben and Willow in that direction.

  “What are you doing here?” Vanity shouted. “You’re that man, Rock, with Willow’s crew. None of her people are here anymore. Get out. Now.”

  “You have made a serious mistake, traitor.” It was Rock’s raised voice. “Don’t you know who I really am?”

  Silence followed before Vanity made an enraged noise. “You came here in disguise. How dare you trick me.”

  “I’m flattered that one look at my real head is all you need to identify me,” Rock said. “That saves time. You underestimated me, Vanity. Worse yet, you underestimated our leader. You think we are all fools and you can control us. I have communicated with the Protector. It was he who told me about you. I am to take you back to Safeplace. He has already decided how to make you wish you hadn’t made your own plans. You should not have followed me to New Orleans. More than that, you should not have tried to take the place I earned. I was the one who fought for the right to come here for the cause, not you.”

  “Rock is Embran,” Willow thought. “And so is Vanity.”

  Frustrated that she couldn’t see inside the conservatory, Willow dropped to her hands and knees and shifted forward, but Ben’s hand on the back of her neck held her where she was.

  Vanity’s strident voice broke in. “The Millets are getting closer to finding the key. We know they have one of them—”

  “I also know,” Rock interrupted her. “I saw it in their shop. How did you find out about them?”

  “The same way you did. I have my spies who let me know what our Protector discusses. If we don’t stop these humans, they may find all the keys eventually, and then they will be more difficult to stop. We have to capture their secrets first. We must get those keys and find their precious angel.”

  Willow started to get up, but Ben stopped her.

  “They won’t get to their legend,” Rock said. “Before they can, we will have overcome them all, and the legend will be in our hands. I believe the answers we’re looking for are there. Zibock and I are convinced there is a formula that will restore us. You forget that we have the Millets’ ignorance on our side. Thanks to the woman who was with Jude Millet in Belgium, the Embran know what we’re up against and what we must have. The Millets are still trying to guess about us. They know nothing, not even the significance of the keys.”

  “I wish we had those—as many as it will take to reach the angel’s secret.” Vanity took a noisy breath. She sounded as if she could scarcely breathe. “Still, we don’t know how many keys there are. But we are all getting weaker. Who knows how many years we have before we can’t fight anymore. There have been too many mistakes made.”

  “Not by me,�
� Rock said. “Bolivar was too easily distracted. Thirty years he wasted here indulging himself. But I am single-minded. I have done what I was sent to do.”

  “How did you know I was working to undermine Willow’s business and get her here in this house?” Vanity asked.

  “Have you forgotten what good friends Willow and I are?” Rock laughed. “And how closely we work? I can read, Vanity. And I have my ways around doors. The information is all there, written down.”

  “Rock’s been there, right where I work, planning against us all the time,” Willow said. “He opened the tattoo parlor within days of my move-in. Ben, he’s one of them.”

  “Did you kill Chloe Brandt to implicate me?”

  He laughed again. “How perceptive of you. And it certainly brought a lot of attention you hated. The Brandts were a clever choice for your purposes. Dysfunctional is the word humans use, I think. But I only took moderate pleasure in disposing of the woman. No challenge there. Once I was sure she couldn’t make any noise, there wasn’t a fight. She tried to cover her face and stood there while I cut her. No challenge at all.”

  With her hands rolled into fists, Willow looked up at Ben, and he shook his head. “Don’t let anger distract you.”

  “So you took Willow Millet to the Protector?” Vanity said. “And now you are golden. Has she given the Protector important information?”

  “I can’t tell you about it.”

  Willow nudged Ben. “He’s not going to tell her they didn’t get any information from me.”

  “We can’t be sure Rock knows you’re back,” Ben said.

  The woman hissed with frustration. “What happens to us now?”

  Rock’s voice became silky and completely unlike that of the man Willow had known. “You will be punished, but you will get another chance. You are resourceful and we need you. Let’s go and get our next orders. There has been one change I know of. The Protector has given up on infiltrating mankind with single emissaries. Our numbers on earth will grow faster in future. We will be everywhere among them. First New Orleans, then wherever the Protector decides after that. The humans will be allowed to relax, to grow complacent, but not for long. Our everlasting lives depend on the secrets they are hiding from us.”

  “They are already searching for the legend. They are curious about the keys. If they connect the two it will be very dangerous for us,” Vanity said.

  “Yes,” Rock agreed. “But we should return to Safeplace Embran. There are signs we are breaking down, you and I. I have brought us something to help us on our way.”

  Cracking noises followed, and cooing, like the cries of large doves.

  “What are we going to do?” Willow asked.

  “Stop them. But it may be even trickier than we expect. There was someone else with Vanity before Rock arrived. We heard another voice. But I’m only hearing Rock and Vanity now. Someone must be hiding in there.”

  “We can’t take them all on by ourselves,” Willow said.

  “I intend to manage nicely on my own until Sykes and the others get the message.”

  “I want you to know something.” Willow reached for his hand. “I shouldn’t have sent you away. I should have had the confidence to trust your love.”

  He crouched beside her. “You sound as if you’re saying goodbye. Nothing is going to happen to either of us.”

  “I can’t live without you, Ben.”

  His hug gave her some courage. “Tell me one thing,” he said, and his arms shook with emotion. “Admit we’re Bonded forever.”

  She felt tears on her face. “Forever,” she told him.

  Ben stood again, and with his back still to the wall, he slipped to the doorway, took a cautious look into the plant-filled spaces of the conservatory and crouched low. “Please stay here,” he said. “Get outside as soon as you can and call Nat. See who else you can reach. Make sure Nat knows to wait for a signal from me before coming in here.”

  She didn’t answer, and he didn’t wait before leaving her.

  Chapter 36

  The Embran, Ben thought, didn’t know quite as much as they thought they did. For one thing, they didn’t know that with some help from him—and Mario—the Millets already had three keys, not one. The failure to find the right angel frustrated him. He and the others would keep looking, that’s all.

  “How will the Millets become complacent as you suggest with one of their own missing?” Vanity asked. “They will continue searching for Willow.”

  “And they will find her when Zibock sends her back,” Rock said with an unpleasant laugh. “All memory of what she has experienced will be gone by the time she returns to the surface. They will think she has suffered an attack of amnesia and wandered away or some such nonsense, but they will not discover where she has been.”

  “And she will accept this?”

  “In time. She can’t change it.”

  Ben wanted to laugh. He had witnessed Willow’s struggles to remember her experiences, but they were getting clearer rather than so distant they showed any sign of disappearing.

  He would warn her not to let anyone outside the Millets and Fortunes know the truth yet.

  Hidden by plants, Rock and Vanity were at the far end of the long conservatory. Ben launched himself invisibly in the opposite direction, planning to come on them with no warning. In the nanoinstant he took to reach an open closet and slip inside, his other sight caught what hadn’t been obvious with human eyes. Under a table draped with a long oilcloth, a man with long blond hair. Absolutely still, his arms wrapped around his shins and his head on his knees, his outline shivered as if he were in the process of, but never quite transforming into something else.

  “You’re trying to hide something,” Rock said, almost growled at Vanity. “Move out of the way. What do you have there?”

  “What do you mean?” Vanity said.

  “Save it. Get away from the cage. You’re hiding something.”

  “Let’s concentrate on what’s important.” The man beneath the table spoke up suddenly, his voice echoing. He emerged from his hiding place, but Ben didn’t recognize him. A tall, elegant man in a brown silk shirt and black pants, he had disturbingly light blue eyes.

  He continued to fade slightly, only to return to sharp image. And he sauntered between the tangle of foliage toward the other end of the room.

  “Well, if it isn’t Vanity’s slave.” Rock laughed at the man. “Hello, John. I knew you were listening. The same as you’ve known I’ve been here in New Orleans all along.”

  “I thought you were—”

  Vanity cut the man off. “Rock, you and I will join forces and do as much as we can now. We can go back to Zibock with enough to make him even more happy than you already have.”

  “Sure,” Rock said. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  Ben winced. The answer had come too quickly.

  “When will the Millet girl be returned?” Vanity said.

  “When I give the signal, Zibock will send her back,” Rock said promptly.

  Ben smiled to himself. Rock didn’t know Willow had been found unsuitable for the Embran’s purpose. He also didn’t know she was already back and in this very house. Ben wondered about this Zibock’s plan. It seemed he was playing Vanity and Rock off against each other.

  “Perhaps you should wait until we leave,” Vanity said thoughtfully. “I have collected a number of human specimens. We could take them back to Zibock. They may be useful—or not.

  “Until Willow returns, the humans will be obsessed with finding her and we’ll be safe. Then her return will distract them further. The longer we put off having them concentrate on finding us, the better. They’re going to find out something about where we come from eventually.”

  “They don’t have to,” Rock said. “And remember we can wipe their memories clean. If any of them get through, we will deal with them.”

  Only you aren’t so good at getting rid of memories yet. In short bursts, zipping from one gap between plant displays
to another, Ben worked his way toward the other three.

  Using his third eye, he could see them completely. Rock, in his thick-soled shoes and black leather pants, stood a little apart from the other two. His head was in its human form again. Vanity wore a sleeveless top and tight jeans. John’s elegant clothes made them an odd set.

  A mark on the back of Vanity’s left shoulder made Ben stop breathing. It was a festering burn, and he had little doubt how it had happened. In the moment of battle with the batlike creature in that empty shop, he had used his defensive gift. Vanity was that creature, and she carried his scar no matter what form she took. He smiled at her arrogance in assuming he would have no opportunity to make the connection.

  He would never forget how that burn had damaged the source of her invisibility and left one side of her bat body fully revealed to his human eyes. Had she repaired herself at all, he wondered, or was she still only able to squirt the fluid, the source of her shield from ordinary sight, on one side, never to be completely invisible again?

  Once more he concentrated his powers solely on searching out Sykes. Still there was no hint of him and Ben ground his teeth together. Without reinforcements, he would have his hands full here.

  Vanity spoke in a soft voice unlike her own. “Rock, I have a better idea for us. I’ll go to Zibock alone and take my little people. You stay here and keep watch on the Millets.”

  “You don’t decide my actions for me,” Rock growled.

  He tore the chain from his pocket and his fingers furled around a black cylinder. Instantly, a blue beam shot across Vanity’s eyes. She stared into the light, unaffected, and ripped the laser from his hand. “You can’t stop me. We know how powerful you are, but there are two of us and only one of you. John, whom I call Servant, not slave, has abilities you know nothing about.”