Bloodstone

by Gwen Hunter

  Jane rushed across the loft to me and buried her head in my waist. She hadn’t cried till now. But I felt the loosening of the tension in her back and shoulders, the punch of the first sob. I didn’t have to tell her that her father wasn’t with us. She just knew. She was St. Claire nutty-weird. She pulled away and looked up at me once. “It’s okay, Aunt Tyler. It’s okay.” But it didn’t take a St. Claire to know she was lying through her teeth. Remorse roared down on me, an avalanche of guilt.

  Gently I pushed her away from me and left them, and went to stare out at the roof garden, now beneath eleven inches of fresh snowfall. I leaned my head against the glass. I fancied it was scarcely cooler than my own cold flesh. I finished off the third beer, seeing the bottle rise and fall in the window reflection, feeling the alcohol dull my system.

  “We got home just in time,” Isaac said behind me, breaking the silence. “On the way, the snowfall got so hard and heavy that we could barely see. The streets are impassable.”

  “Uncle Evan can drive as good as my daddy, though,” Jane said. “Not bad for a city boy.” In the reflection of the window, I saw him ruffle her hair.

  “What smells so good? I can eat a horse,” Evan said. Trying, trying so hard to be normal. What was normal? What did that mean anymore?

  “Tyler brought home Chinese earlier. I heated it up,” Aunt Matilda said. All cheery. Jocular. As if nothing had happened. As if I hadn’t tortured a woman, raped her mind, and then thrown away all I had gained when I lost Davie.

  If I hadn’t stopped to change from the blood-soaked suit, if I hadn’t showered, would those few minutes have made the difference? Would Wiccam have still been in the house? Could I have saved my brother? Or would he have shot Aunt Matilda with the shotgun? Killed her and me and still taken Davie?

  “Table’s set,” she said. “Go wash and we can eat right away.”

  They milled around, washing hands, getting chairs from the rack on the wall, pouring drinks. Then they sat. I stayed away. My hair was hanging down my back in snarls I hadn’t bothered to comb out, obscuring my face. Raggedy Ann. That was me.

  They ate, glancing my way occasionally, their expressions guarded as if they knew I watched their reflections in the window. Aunt Matilda filled them in on Floyd Feaster and Harry Boone. Evan told about the investigation into Gail Speeler’s wild accusations. It seemed I was in the clear, as far as torturing her went. I shuddered at the callous words—the truthful words—Evan used. Since neither Evan nor Isaac had backed up Gail’s claims and offered a different version of events, their story was accepted. She had been fighting with Isaac when they slipped and fell, Isaac hitting his head, Gail falling on the sharp tool with which she had threatened them. When Evan said this, no one looked my way. I didn’t look back at them. They had lied to protect me. I stared out into the dark at the frozen, falling snow.

  Moments later, the power went out, dropping us all into darkness. In the distance we heard a muted explosion, a transformer blowing somewhere nearby. Saying nothing, I moved through the dark, found a match and lit a tall taper. I carried it around the loft, lighting candles.

  “I don’t guess the heat works when the power’s out?” Evan asked. “I have gas logs downstairs in the workroom, but it’s going to be mighty cold tonight.”

  I remembered our earlier lighthearted plans. Was that today? Evan was going to bring Davie home, we were going to celebrate. Then he was going to let down my hair and try out my silk sheets. The memory resounded deep inside, touching only emptiness, the hollow place where my soul had once lived.

  “You can stay in the guest room at our place,” Isaac said. “It has a gas fireplace with a passive blower. You’ll be warmer there. And no one will be out in this storm. You won’t be abandoning the women folks.” I felt them all look at me. I didn’t exactly need protection, did I? I was a torturer of desperate and mentally ill women. Ashes and spit. Spit and decay. What was I?

  I was lying in the dark, alone, in the big bed, wide-awake. I hadn’t been able to close my eyes, though I had slept only a few hours a night for days. Tonight, I kept seeing the steel pick, light glinting off it as it pierced pale flesh. Blood welling up around the circular wound. I felt the grate of the pick when it hit bone once. I hadn’t noticed that at the time, I was so intent on her mind, but I had ground the steel into bone. The memory, buried in my own flesh, brought it back to me. And each time, I flinched on the mattress, jarring myself back to full awareness, one hand on the old scar on my shoulder, the scar that had given me the idea to torture Gail.

  The power was still off, the house still dark, a darkness so dense and heavy it seemed to have a texture, a presence. I could hear the tick of the rooster clock, which ran on batteries, and the steady, deep breathing of Aunt Matilda, the lighter puffs of Jane’s breath as she dreamed.

  Dyno raised her head. I felt it at the same time. Someone was in the loft with us. I opened my mind, reaching out—and encountered only empty space. Dyno twisted and hurtled to the floor, racing to the bathroom, her feet delicate pads, nearly silent.

  From only feet away came a rasp of sound. Cloth on cloth.

  Tyler?

  I’m here.

  There’s someone here, in the loft. Aunt Matilda’s voice whispered in my mind. But I can’t find him.

  You get an emptiness, like a wide-open space.

  Yes.

  A smell touched me in the dark, chemical, almost sweet. I had no gun. No sphere of bloodstone to throw. Nothing but my mind. Slowly I turned my head. A shadow within the shadows loomed over the trundle bed. Touching Jane.

  Fury welled up in me so fast it took possession of my bones and viscera, my deepest being. I had learned today that I could use my mind as a weapon. That sometimes there seemed no choice but to lose myself in violence. Tears of rage gathered in my eyes, salty, acrid, bitter. The man rose up, lifting Jane, her mind dark and silent, filled with the smell of the chemical he had forced her to breathe.

  Lying in the dark, I coiled my mind into a fist. In it I shaped a tool, a pick, long and lethal with a razor point. I felt Aunt Matilda there, steadying the image.

  Are you sure? I asked her.

  I’m sure.

  Rearing back the weapon of my mind, I thrust out. Hard. Swift. And Aunt Matilda thrust with me, a violent, devastating blow.

  He dropped Jane. She fell, bonelessly, to the trundle, landing in a heap. The cloth over her mouth fell away.

  I sat up in bed, in the cold air, and pulled back the weapon. Struck again. Something howled, the sound grating down my nerves, a screech of fury and pain.

  I pulled back the image and struck again.

  A snake rose up beside me on the bed, hissing, a cobra, its hood open, tongue flicking. The image of my fist wavered. The snake struck. Its fangs sank deep into my shoulder, near the ancient, puckered scar. Acid spread, burning, into my bloodstream, poison, reaching for my heart. Aunt Matilda stabilized the fist-and-pick image and I struck again. But this time the image bounced off with a strident sound, like metal on stone. And the snake wrapped itself around me, coils slithering.

  I knew it wasn’t real. I knew it. Yet my breath faltered. Pressure tightened around my ribs, forcing the air from my lungs. Aunt Matilda!

  “Tyler!” she gasped.

  I realized he had both of us. And he was winning.

  In front of me, Jane moved. Rising slowly, drunkenly, she knelt on the foam mattress, supporting her weight with her hands. Wavering, a slow-motion specter, she stood, and held out her hand. “Daddy?” she whispered. “Daddy…” Blue fire blazed, crackled. Lightning shot from her fingers. Hit Adam Wiccam midbody. He fell. Clutching his chest. Gasping.

  The pressure on my ribs vanished. I caught myself with one hand on a mound of pillows. Aunt Matilda sucked in a hoarse breath. Another.

  Jane wavered, feet buried in the mattress to her ankles. “Daddy!” she screamed. She stumbled from the trundle and fell over the man at her feet, found her footing and reeled to the door. A flame lit
, with the stink of sulfur and the rasp of match-head to box.

  “Daddy!” She beat at the door, scrabbling for the knob and lock.

  I caught her. “Jane, no. No baby.”

  “Daddy! Daddy!” She fought me, scratching weals down my arm.

  “Let her go,” Aunt Matilda commanded.

  “But—”

  “Let her go.”

  I dropped my arms and Jane wrenched open the lock and the door. Cold air rushed up the stairs like an icy shroud, covering us. Jane scrambled against the flow, down the stairs to the shop.

  The power came on in a disorienting flash. Jane was standing at the shop’s front door, her bare feet on the frozen floor. Her eyes were wild, her hair standing on end, electrified. “Let me out,” she said. “Let me go to Daddy!”

  “You’ll freeze. You need shoes.”

  “Here,” Aunt Matilda offered the boots Noe often left at the door. Jane slipped the oversize boots on and accepted the throw handed her from the chairs. I opened the door and followed my underdressed niece into the storm.

  The streetlights were back on, little blobs of brightness illuminating white mounds and swirling snow, and Jane’s dark hair, black in the night, bobbing before me. Cold like needles and red-hot pokers burned into me. My sock-covered feet froze instantly, an agony. My lungs ached with each breath, the cold so severe it ripped away my defenses. I saw Jane ahead of me. She was at a car, a little all-wheel-drive Camry parked in the middle of the street, its lights making twin halos of brightness on the falling snow. Its engine was running, a constant thunder of sound.

  Jane raced to the back, banging her fists on the trunk, screaming, “Daddy, Daddy!”

  Aunt Matilda appeared at my side. “Here are the keys,” she said, “from his pockets.”

  I ran to Jane’s side, fingers so cold I feared dropping the key ring. If I did, I would never find them again. Not in the dark, not with hands that had lost all feeling. Shivers caught me.

  I tried the first key, then the second and third, my fingers like wood, ungiving, unyielding. On the fourth try, the key slid in and I fumbled the lock open. The lid rose and the light inside came on. Davie was curled in the trunk, naked but for a dirty blanket. Behind him was the body of Detective Jack Madison, a bullet hole in the center of his forehead.

  “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” Jane screamed, the sound oddly dead, absorbed by the snow.

  “Davie!” Was he dead? I touched his face, so cold it was like stone. I’m too late.

  A faint scrabbling at my mind, dreamlike. “Brat?” Something shattered its way through me, cracking, breaking, falling away. “Davie!” I reached inside the trunk, tried to get my arms around him. He didn’t move. He was asleep, or drugged, unable to help.

  Isaac appeared from the darkness and carefully pushed Jane and me aside. He braced himself against the back fender and bent forward, lifted my brother out, holding him like a child. Davie woke, flailing wildly. An elbow caught Isaac in the nose, and Davie tumbled free, into a drift. Blood splattered the snow, crimson on white, melting and freezing at once. Blood from Isaac’s nose. Blood from Davie’s hand, unbandaged and bleeding.

  My dream… I stopped. The thunder of the engine filled the street. I looked down at my hands, snow falling and melting on the flesh. Though they weren’t bound, they had been useless to help my brother. And Davie, lying in bloody snow. Jane…Her face was white as death in the cold light. This wasn’t my dream, yet it was.

  “It’s okay, man. It’s just me. Isaac.” The big man knelt and again lifted Davie, carrying him through the snow to the front door of the shop. Isaac mumbled in Texan tones as he plowed through deep drifts of snow. Something like, “Damn psychics won’t let a man get a decent night’s sleep. Bust my nose open. Ain’t fair, a man just tryin’ to do the right thing.” I thought I heard Davie laugh, a weak chuckle. Yelping with joy, Jane followed. I trailed behind her.

  Inside the shop, Evan closed the door behind us and led us up the stairs to my loft. He was talking on the cell phone to the cops, once again calling for assistance. How many times in one day? Oh, wait. It was tomorrow already. I caught Jane at the top of the stairs as she wobbled and nearly fell, and steered her inside. With my other hand, I caught the escaping Dyno and tossed the cat across the room to the trundle bed.

  In the loft, which felt like a furnace after the cold of the street outside, Isaac set Davie on my bed and covered him. I found the electric blanket and plugged it in. “Jane, get dressed,” I said. “Warm socks. Layers.”

  “But—”

  “Now. Then you can help me with your daddy.”

  “Okay.” She stumbled again and Aunt Matilda caught her by a shoulder. She helped the girl to the closet and clothes that would warm her. Davie’s shivers were so bad they were shaking the entire bed. I gathered the top sheet around him, and then covered him with the electric blanket, which I tucked under him. Lastly, I threw the down coverlet over him.

  Isaac and Evan were standing, watching me. “You want the cops to get here and see you like that?” I asked.

  They each looked down at their exposed skin, Isaac in white long john bottoms and no shirt, and Evan in ancient gray jogging pants and a V-necked, short-sleeved T-shirt with rips at the underarms, his chest bandage visible through the thin fabric. Both wore socks and no shoes. They turned to the roof garden and disappeared.

  “Guess not,” I said. I went to the kitchen and put the kettle on. I could feel his thirst as I got Davie a glass of water, tossed in a straw and crawled onto the bed. Cradling his head, I placed the straw against his mouth. He was so cold he could barely pucker his lips. He sucked air with the water, but the moisture filled his mouth. Nothing ever tasted so good. Nothing. He drained the glass with little slurping sounds. I put his head back to the pillow. I could smell him, a rank stench. I caught images of him, tied. Beaten again. He had been kept hungry, thirsty, not given access to a toilet. Not since he had been moved from the closet room long, long hours ago. He had soiled himself.

  “Sorry ’bout the sheets, Brat,” he croaked.

  I kissed the top of his head. “Shut up.”

  Warmth filled me, so light, so fragile, so delicate it was almost ethereal, almost the touch of God’s hand. Almost the presence of El, in all his glory. Almost. I touched Davie’s head, brushed back his slick hair, assuring myself he was real. I had him back. Against any odds, I had my brother back.

  Jane raced over, wearing a running suit with a pair of my mint-green long johns hanging out beneath. She crawled up the bed and snuggled down with her father, kissing his face.

  “I heard you. I heard you breathing,” she said.

  He sighed, the sound of escaping terror. Uncertain disbelief. Sleep pulled at him, drugged and sluggish. He closed his eyes.

  Jane and I clutched hands across Davie, fingers digging tightly. Holding each other, Davie between us, his shivers threatening to dislodge us both. Sirens sounded far off, moving slowly closer. Davie jerked suddenly. Panic, blinding fear.

  Brat? Baby?

  We’re here.

  You’re safe.

  My brother was safe.

  Sirens came closer, climbing the hill until they sounded from out front. Blue-and-red emergency lights flickered in the windows, brightening the tin ceiling. I hugged Davie and Jane tightly one final time, and met Jane’s bright eyes over his shoulder. Her happiness blazed out, filling me with her joy.

  Hard boots pounded up the stairs. Ready to meet the cops, I stood and surveyed the room. And only then did I realize Adam Wiccam was no longer here.

  19

  Tuesday, 5:59 a.m.

  Aunt Matilda and I sat in the empty waiting room, down the hall from the room where nurses were changing Davie’s dressings and doing all sorts of things to him that I didn’t want Jane to know about. Exhausted, she had fallen asleep, her head in my lap, her breathing soft, cyclical puffs of sound. We had turned off the lights to let her sleep and the room was dim, with a startling brightness flooding in throu
gh the open door. It was quiet at last, and I knew Aunt Matilda and I would have to talk.

  “Well?” I said. I could hear the challenge in my tone and the resulting amusement in her mind. I cleared my voice and tried again. “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Aren’t you going to say anything about the St. Claire gifts and how I need training so I don’t go off like a loose cannon and beat people up with my gift and do evil deeds?”

  “Do I need to say that?”

  No. She didn’t. “Ashes and spit! It’s not fair.”

  “To be given gifts and then have the responsibility to use them wisely?”

  “Rot and decay, Aunt Matilda!”

  “I don’t have the power to make you do anything. You know what you need to do—it’s all your choice. You know that. In the way of our people, you know it.”

  “I can’t use the cards. I just can’t.” That sounded stupid even as it came out of my mouth, but it was the truth. My mother had ground it into me. Evil could come of the Tarot, and if it came, I couldn’t control it. It would control me. “I just can’t. I’m sorry.”

  The older woman blew out a breath, the sound tired, the kind of soul-deep tired that comes from years, not merely physical exhaustion. She was wearing a sweater in the cold, sterile hospital, and she picked at it now, pulling at a loose length of yarn. It looked odd not to see her arms bare. “I’ve been thinking about the cards. We didn’t always use them, you know.”

  I watched her face in the too-bright light. She kept it turned away, her focus on the frayed thread. “There are records, older records, that detail other training methods. One that uses a scrying bowl, much as Daniel the prophet used, or Nostradamus. One method uses painting, brush and paper and watercolors to focus the images. One uses dreams.” She smiled, the motion scarcely a tightening of her eyes. “I think you may respond well to that method. But I think there is also one that uses stone.”

  I sat up straight in the uncomfortable chair. Jane’s head lolled in my lap and her breathing caught. I steadied her and relaxed back into the seat. “Stone?”