Bloodstone

by Gwen Hunter

  “Why?” both men answered at once.

  I looked at the cop. “Gut instinct,” I said deliberately, which seemed to fuel his amusement. I told them both about the attack at the show, adding details I hadn’t mentioned to Bartlock when we first met.

  “Cops’ll want you to see the school images,” Bartlock said. “And I’ve got a call into Asheville law enforcement about security film from the rock-and-gem show. Even without his face exposed on the school film, it may be possible to compare all the footage and see if it’s the same man.”

  “Without a face?” Quinn sounded skeptical, slightly insulting.

  “Physical traits, kinetic recognition programs, all sorts of things can be used.” Bartlock’s tone said it was all too technically sophisticated for us mere civilians. I wanted to shake both men. The “mine is bigger than yours” game was getting us nowhere.

  “You’re gonna help find Daddy, right?” We all turned to see Jane standing in the doorway, her face drawn, eyes large and fearful. “Right?”

  “Right,” I said. “All of us.”

  “No. You,” she said to me. “Daddy said you can do things, if you would only try. He said you were like him but you were scared.”

  “Like him how?” Quinn asked.

  “I’m his sister,” I said quickly. Davie had told no one but family about his gift. Not friends. Certainly not bodyguards even if they were on the payroll. The fact that he had told Isaac and Jubal was indicative of his trust in my friends and his worry for me. “You know I’ll help, Jane.”

  “No. I mean help.”

  I swallowed, remembering the bloodstained wall, the feel of body blows, aware of eyes on me, one set confused, one amused, Jane’s desperate. I held out my hand to her. She was so tiny I often forgot she was nearly a teenager. Forgot that Davie told her things most adults wouldn’t have, like there was no Santa Claus, no Easter Bunny and psychics really do exist, in the form of the St. Claires. “Yes. I’ll help.” Saying the words seemed to lift a burden from me I hadn’t known I carried. “Come on. I’ll tell you about it.” As my niece took my hand and we started toward the stairs, I looked up at the cop. “When you get security video, let me know.” To Quinn I said, “Jane will be staying with me until Davie is found.”

  “That’s not in my instructions,” Quinn said, his tone belligerent.

  My little beacon of omnipresent anger flared. “I’m not asking. Jane is my legal responsibility should something happen to Davie. I think this qualifies.” Quinn’s face fell, as if he hadn’t thought about how his life would change if something permanent happened to his employer. Not the brightest bulb in the Mr. Universe pageant lights. “Come on, sweetheart,” I said to Jane. “We need to talk.”

  It was after dark, snow still blowing, when Jane and I finished our discussion. The girl was gloomy, angry and looking for something to kick by then, all feelings I understood. Jane had seen Davie’s gift up close for too many years to think it was unusual, and though she had never seen me demonstrate mine, she believed all St. Claires were as strong as her father. She didn’t want to accept that I had only a fraction of my brother’s gift, and had been unable to pinpoint his location, inform the cops and rush in with guns blasting to save him. Just as her whole world was falling apart, her aunt Tyler was showing signs of being only human.

  Suddenly Jane was too big to cry and seek solace with the one who had failed her. When she realized I wasn’t the all-powerful being she needed, Jane stopped speaking to me. Instead, she pouted, her finger on the remote and gaze locked on the TV. Great. She was becoming a teenager just when I needed her to be a little girl again. My niece wasn’t her usual gentle, kind self, but I couldn’t blame her.

  The ringing phone and a request to return to the LEC to view the school’s security tapes saved me from groveling to get her attention, and I kissed the top of her head for apology. I left Isaac watching over her as Jubal and I dressed for the trip to the law-enforcement center. Bundled against the frigid cold, we stepped out the door to the service alley and slogged through twelve inches of fresh powder to Jubal’s car parked near the street.

  Winter nights come early in the North Carolina mountains, and though it was not yet six o’clock, it was dark, temperatures well below freezing. Breath billowed, pale clouds in the night. All sound was muted, even our footsteps in heavy winter boots, the world buried and still. Overhead, clouds were clearing and patches of black sky were visible, stars brightly massed.

  I reached for the door handle of Jubal’s SUV. Blurred shapes shifted in the corner of my eye. Silent. Not broadcasting an intent at all. I started to turn. They took form against the dark in a single instant. Men. One held a stick, swept up high, the other held something…a gun? Two men. Darting in from the night. I sucked in a breath to scream, a sharp hiss of warning. I shrieked and ducked beneath the first blow. Understanding came as I flexed down. We were being attacked.

  Jubal dove against his assailant. Kicked high. Missed, twisted awkwardly. Fell to one knee with a soft grunt.

  The man with the stick compensated for my dodge. Whirled, the pole whistling with the motion. A six-foot pole with leather hand grips. A bowstaff. Martial arts weapon.

  I lunged at him, bobbed beneath the whirling pole. Reacting. Not thinking. Hoping to hit his legs with my body and bring him down. Hoping it would give Jubal time to dispatch his attacker. And help me. The stick brushed over my scalp, along my body. Impacted my left elbow with a dull thunk. Pain crackled through me, electric heat. My arm went useless. I crashed into him.

  Touch brought it all clear. His thoughts blasted. Get her. Get her. Don’t injure her. He grabbed my good arm roughly, translating my momentum into a weapon against me. I fell toward the deep snow, a high drift beside a Dumpster, unable to catch myself.

  A single breath sighed on the night. Another blur of movement. Blows landed. My attacker vanished. I rolled into the fluffy deeps. Snow buried me.

  Shouts. The sound of flesh being beaten, a rapid staccato of thumps and grunts.

  A gun fired. “No!” I shouted into the snow. Fighting to get my good arm beneath me, fighting to regain my feet. When I finally stood, Isaac was poised in the darkness, hands in attack posture, our utility vehicles and the falling dusk his only backdrop. Footsteps sounded as the men ran away.

  “Jubal?” Fear laced Isaac’s voice.

  “I’m okay.” His voice was thin, pained. “Sore and embarrassed, but uninjured.” I spotted Jubal in the snow, on his side. He held an arm to his partner for a hand up. “Tyler?”

  “I’m okay, I think.” I massaged my arm and bent it slowly, testing its range of motion. It hurt like heck, but it wasn’t broken. My mind skittered through the past few moments. Something was wrong with all this. I settled on the timing. Alarm blossomed through me. “Jane?” I asked Isaac.

  “Locked in, security system enabled, with orders to open only to us.”

  Fear settled back, a crouched tiger ready to claw.

  Jubal tried to put weight on his knee and sucked air between his teeth. “They were skilled in some form of martial arts. Don’t know what kind,” he said, his voice rough with exertion. He stretched his knee and winced. “Maybe just street fighting. Down and dirty. Did they know to expect us? Expect you?”

  “Likely,” Isaac said. He rubbed a bare lower arm in the icy air, wearing only indoor clothes, though he didn’t look cold.

  “They didn’t even ask for our money. And why bring a gun and not use it first?” Jubal asked. “If they had stayed out of my reach and kept the weapon trained on Tyler, or just shot us—”

  “They came to take me,” I said.

  The two men looked at me, standing in the night, snow covered, shivering. “They would have had to kill me to take you, honeybunch,” Jubal assured me. Somehow the pledge wasn’t comforting.

  “A gunshot seldom kills like in the movies—bang, you’re dead. They might have had to fire several times. Quiet little town like this, cops would have been all over it,” I
saac said. “Maybe they weren’t prepared for that.”

  “They were supposed to get me but not hurt me.”

  Isaac looked at me in the dim light, his eyes bright in the darkness.

  “How did you know we were in trouble?” I asked, still putting pieces together.

  “He heard you scream,” Jubal said.

  “No. Jane told me.”

  “What?” I said.

  Isaac found my face in the dim light. “Jane told me there were two men waiting in the alley. She knew it. I was already in the alley when they attacked, just too far away to stop it.”

  “Not possible,” I said. “Jane isn’t from the matrilineal line of the St.—” I stopped. Lines from Davie’s letter suddenly struck home, as painful as the whack with the bowstaff. And as disorienting. Jane may need help soon. All indications are, her time is on her.

  “Well, scrofulous scabies,” I spit. I socked the nearest thing, which happened to be the Dumpster. A dull tone resounded down the alley. Pain spiraled up my good hand. “Spit and decay.” I cradled both arms across my middle, wanting to cry.

  “What?” Isaac asked.

  “Jane’s mother. She was a St. Claire. Had to be. And Jane’s about to come into her gift.” Though my headache struck like a snake, sending fangs deep into my neck and skull, I reached out and touched Jane’s mind. She was afraid. “Come on. She’s alone.” A siren sounded in the next block. “And she called 911.”

  “I’ll stick around and talk to the cops,” Jubal said. “They’ll want a report.”

  “Okay. I can give them mine when we get to the law-enforcement center,” I said. “Right now, Jane needs me.”

  We trudged back up the alley, me knocking snow off my clothes, Isaac taking up the rear, keeping an eye on possible return assault. Inside Jubal and Isaac’s loft, Jane sat on the oversize leather sofa, dwarfed by the cushions, eyes huge in a pale face. She focused on us, her gaze sweeping from Isaac’s knuckles to my elbow. Her breath was rapid, shallow. She knew what we were thinking, what we were feeling. Fear swirled through her, so intense it crowded out even tears. Confusion. Desperation. And I didn’t know how to help.

  My own coming of age had been simple, an easy transition. I had started my menses one morning, sensed my step-father’s muddy thoughts about breakfast, felt my brother’s desire to get out of town, had seen through his eyes the suitcase already half packed at the foot of the bed. And I passed out. When I came to, the row between Dumont Lowe and Davie was over and Davie was gone. I had dimly felt a residue of anger, hurt, frustration and violence in the air. And an emptiness where my brother once lived.

  “He left you?” Jane asked, a single huge tear pooling, falling from her right eye. “Did Daddy leave you because you started to bleed? ’Cause I’m bleeding and he’s gone from me, too.”

  I raced across the room and gathered my niece in my arms, filling my mind with assurance and tenderness and memories of Davie’s love for us both. Banishing my remembered fear and fury and ancient feelings of abandonment and worthlessness, I cuddled Jane in my lap, wrapping my arms and legs around her. “No, baby. You didn’t cause your daddy to go away. He got taken. It’s all different.”

  “But he left you.” Her throat clogged with misery, both hers and mine.

  “He didn’t know that I needed him that morning,” I whispered. “He never knew.” And suddenly I realized the truth of that statement. Davie would never have run away from home had he known that my time of gifting was upon me. A time when no St. Claire was ever left alone. The certainty was almost shockingly painful, the way a bandage hurt when ripped off to reveal an almost healed wound. I hadn’t been worthless, a sisterly pain, a nuisance. It wasn’t me he was running from. Davie had loved me. Still did.

  A joy I had denied myself for years welled up inside. Jane laughed through her tears, sensitive to my happiness. My niece and I rocked on the couch, sharing the certainty of Davie’s love for us.

  Deep in a hidden part of me, I knew I would have to be careful, oh so careful, of my thoughts and feelings from now on. Forever. And I wondered how Aunt Matilda did it, how she lived knowing so much about the others around her and hiding so much more.

  With the exception of one recurring vision—the nightmare-prophecy—the long-ago trauma and grief of Davie’s leaving had shut down my responses to others and helped me create my wall, the barrier I shut between my mind and the ones around me. How could I take that experience and help Jane with her coming of age? I had no idea. The wall was my constant companion, which had both benefits and drawbacks. I was more protected from the minds of people around me than most St. Claires. But the wall was also the reason my gifts had never developed strong and pure, like some of my line. Even if I could give Jane a wall like mine, did I have the right to deprive her of her heritage?

  “Hot cocoa?” Jubal asked. The scent of chocolate was strong on the air. Jubal thought hot cocoa could heal the world, especially if it had miniature marshmallows floating on top. We sipped the sweet cocoa, warmth spreading through us.

  When the chocolate was gone, I took Jane across our shared, narrow rooftop garden to my place and helped her with the other part of coming of age, offering supplies and demonstrating how they worked. Explaining how often she would experience the menses. We started her own calendar, to mark the expected evil day, with a code, so if a boy happened to see it he would not know what it meant.

  For Jane’s sake, I carefully, studiously, forced away the memory of my own first menses, with no one to help me but the lady working in the one-hour photo at the pharmacy down the street. My distress, annoyance, embarrassment at becoming a woman and having no one to share it with. No one to help me. Feeling Mrs. Langston’s pity even through the wall I had already built.

  Then, because it only happened once in a woman’s lifetime, that coming of age, and because it should be a joyous experience that marked a wonderful change of life and not just the beginning of a forty-year curse, I invited everyone back to my place and opened a bottle of wine, allowing Jane a tiny sip, toasting her womanhood. Jubal and Isaac lifted my finest crystal with us. And if the wine helped Jane to finally rest, then that was all to the better.

  An hour later than we planned, Jubal and I left again for the LEC. Isaac, the most capable among us, remained in my loft, watching over and defending my niece, who had nodded off, snuggled in the soft sheets and down pillows of my big bed.

  6

  Monday, 6:23 p.m.

  As well as look at surveillance videos, I knew I would have to give a statement about the attack in the alley. It wasn’t going to be the total truth. There were things best left out of any account, like Jane’s involvement and Isaac’s presence at the scene.

  Jubal was a brown belt in tae kwon do, having taken up the sport when he met Isaac. But Isaac was a martial arts master, registered with the Kukkiwon in South Korea. He was a deadly weapon with his bare hands. If defending us in the alley resulted in injury to the attackers, it could lead to a criminal or civil lawsuit being leveled against Isaac, forcing him to prove he wasn’t guilty of anything except defensive moves. That was much less likely if Jubal was my only defender.

  On the way over, Jubal shared his version of the events in the alley, which omitted any mention of Isaac. I didn’t like it, but I was going to corroborate his statement. I told myself it wasn’t a total lie, as I hadn’t actually seen Isaac touch anyone, being buried beneath a snowdrift at the time. But I refused to see misery come to anyone because of helping me. And there was no way on earth I was going to mention my niece’s name to the cops.

  Evan Bartlock met us in the airlock door in front of the LEC, wearing his overcoat, an unlit cigar between two fingers, as if he had been ready to light up. He tucked the cigar into a pocket and led us in without a word.

  A cop I didn’t know met us inside, skin sagging into folds at his jowls as if his flesh was melting from his bones or he had lost a hundred pounds overnight. A five-o’clock shadow darkened the drooped flesh, top
ped by a balding pate with a three-strand comb-over. His tie was spotted with grease stains. Overall, he looked unkempt and dead tired. Hound-dog eyes took us in with a glance and pointed for me to sit. “Tyler St. Claire?”

  I nodded, suddenly aware of my clothes. Snowmelt had dampened my knees and gloves, and my boots were dark with melt and mud. My hair had come out of its piled bun and hung in untidy strands down my neck. I should have changed and combed my hair. Feeling disheveled myself, I took the seat he pointed to.

  “Detective Jack Madison. The officers at the scene took a statement from…” He looked at Jubal and asked, “Jubal Bernard?” Jubal nodded. Madison sat down with a soft squeak of desk-chair wheels at the desk nearest me and moved his mouse, bringing up a screen on his boxy, worn-out PC. “Why don’t you tell me what happened in the alley. Start with date and time, please, recount the event, and then describe the persons involved.”

  I gave my amended and altered story. When I finished, Jubal spoke and Madison typed, two-fingered and fast, asking questions as he did. At the end of the narrative, Jubal shrugged and said, “That’s all.” Madison looked at him a long moment before glancing at me. He stared at his computer screen, his mouth turned down. Both index fingers tapped the desk in front of his keyboard, a pensive rhythm. “And they just ran away?” Wary, I nodded. “After firing a gun at you? And they didn’t try to rob you?”

  “I don’t know who they fired at. I was buried in a snow-drift at the time. I just heard a shot. They attacked, knocked me into a drift, fired a gun and ran off. And they didn’t say anything. Not a word. Nothing. Not give me your wallet. Not your money or your life.”

  Bartlock gave a soft snort from somewhere behind me and I could feel his amusement at my use of the old robbery phrase. I didn’t turn and look, but his humor warmed me. Madison wasn’t amused by anything.

  “Why do I get a feeling there’s a whole lot more you’re not telling me?”