Then he gripped the Thing by the throat with his free hand and lifted them both from the studio floor.
The Thing within Daphanie hissed and struggled, but Asher’s grip compressed her windpipe, slowly cutting off its supply of oxygen. He clenched his teeth at the sight of his woman struggling for air. He wanted to release her or soothe her or breathe for her, but instead he continued to squeeze, exerting very careful pressure until the Thing dropped the pipe to claw at the hand around its throat. Asher heard the clang of the metal hitting the floor and eased his grip just enough for the Thing to draw breath. Then, before it could recover enough to go for him again, he shifted his grip to compress her carotid artery until Daphanie’s body went limp against him.
Asher returned them to the floor with a thump, pressing Daphanie against his chest with one arm and reaching for his cell phone with the other.
Damn it, that was the second time he’d had to knock his woman unconscious. If it came down to a third, he was going to get very cranky.
Sixteen
Common signs of possession include speaking in tongues (i.e., any language not known by the victim in life); feats of unnatural strength; unnatural signs of aggression; violence toward close friends, family members, spouses, or children; rapid, drastic, and unexplained changes in core physical appearance (eye color, facial features, skin color, or condition), and the occurrence of unexplained phenomena in the victim’s presence.
To quote one expert on the phenomenon, “There are a lot of things to look for, but when it comes right down to it, you just know it when you see it.”
—A Human Handbook to the Others, Glossary
Rafe and Graham took the news calmly, but with a good deal of obvious unease. Asher couldn’t blame them. This time he might have phoned a warning, but it was the second time he’d carried the same unconscious woman into the alpha’s house in less than a week. She had regained consciousness once, only briefly, long enough to open her eyes and gaze unseeingly up at her concerned friends. Asher had been relieved not to see the malevolent force that had last occupied her gaze, but frightened not to see any sign of Daphanie, either.
Missy sprang immediately into action, tucking Daphanie’s still unconscious form into the same bed she’d occupied a few days before and sitting vigil by her side while they waited for Erica’s return.
The witch took one look at the insensible woman and grasped the silver amulet she wore around her neck.
“This isn’t good,” she whispered.
Asher resisted the urge to mention that he’d already figured out as much.
“We need to know exactly where we stand, Erica,” Rafe said, his tone as grim as Asher felt. “What’s happened to her?”
Erica laid a hand across Daphanie’s forehead. Asher already knew the skin felt clammy and feverish and that she seemed to quiver constantly, a sort of low vibration, like a tuning fork run amok.
“It’s much stronger than before, the curse. This has taken on characteristics that make it very nearly a form of possession.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Possession traditionally refers to a foreign entity taking up residence inside another person’s body,” the witch explained. “There are many forms of the phenomenon, from something as subtle as hearing a voice in the back of one’s head to a host’s complete psychic and physical transformation. But the form most people think of is one in which the foreign entity completely takes over the host’s consciousness, basically assuming control of that person’s thoughts, feelings, and actions.”
“I’d say that’s a pretty good description of what happened at the studio.”
“Yes, but you said that when she stirred after you brought her into this house, she didn’t renew her attack on you.”
“No. She didn’t renew anything. She just lay there. She opened her eyes, but it was as if she weren’t there.”
Truthfully, it had looked almost as if no one were there, and that scared Asher more than anything.
“Exactly. That’s very significant,” Erica said. “The type of total submersion of the host personality and the violent outburst you describe would normally be the hallmarks of a traditional possession, but we already know that what is affecting Ms. Carter is more akin to a curse.”
“Do we know that for sure?” Missy asked. “Is it possible that we might have been mistaken before?”
Erica shook her head. “I don’t believe so. I can feel the taint of the magic in her. It’s definitely a power rather than an entity that is affecting her.”
“What difference does that really make?” Asher asked. “Either way, some outside force is making her do things she wouldn’t normally do.”
“It makes a great deal of difference. Because it is a curse and not an entity possession, it won’t be dispelled with an exorcism. If it were that easy, I would already have begun a ritual to drive the entity out. A curse is much more complicated, and a voodoo curse such as this one still requires that you find the bokor responsible for laying it and destroy whatever object he has attached to Ms. Carter’s spirit.”
Rafe’s mouth tightened. “Believe me, Erica, we have been working quite diligently to accomplish that very thing.”
“Good, but you must work faster. I would say the good news is that she’s fighting it, but a battle like this can cause almost as much harm as the possession itself, if it goes on too long.”
“How long is too long?” Asher demanded.
Erica shrugged. “It’s difficult to say. Such things depend on the individual. A weak person can be depleted in minutes; a strong one could last days.”
“Daphanie is strong,” Graham vowed, clapping a hand on Asher’s shoulder. “You know she is.”
He did. But then, the force possessing her was strong as well. The question was, which would prove stronger?
“What can we do?” Missy wanted to know. Always practical, she focused on Daphanie’s immediate needs. Asher felt a rush of gratitude.
“Keep her warm. Keep her hydrated.” Erica hesitated. “I wish I could offer something more, but none of my potions or protections can do anything with the curse as long as the ouanga —the power object—is still out there.”
She left a subdued group behind her in the little guest room.
“I think our search for D’Abo just took on a new urgency,” Graham murmured, his eyes fixed on Daphanie’s still form.
“But what if Rafe is right and D’Abo isn’t the one behind this but is being used as a dupe to throw us off the track?” Asher could barely speak, but he forced the words out from between clenched teeth. He felt helpless and hobbled, unable to save his woman, unsure he even understood how to save her. It made him want to rip something into pieces.
Small, bloody pieces.
“Even if I am right, I still believe finding D’Abo is our best chance to discover the identity of our mastermind,” Rafe said. He turned a serious expression on Asher, and when he spoke again, his tone had taken on the solemnity of one speaking a vow. “We will find him, Asher. And when we do, we will see that he pays for what he is doing to your woman. You have my word.”
Asher gave a small, viciously controlled nod. It never occurred to him to contradict the Felix’s calling Daphanie “his woman.” What point was there in denying the truth? Their relationship may have begun as one of a Guardian protecting a human, but he believed that the events of the night before demonstrated how far past that things had gotten.
He pushed the memories from his mind. If he let himself linger on the feel of Daphanie in his arms, he would be too distracted to do what needed to be done to keep her safe.
He looked at the Felix calmly. “How do we find him?”
“You and Graham have already been to his place of business without success, so I suggest we begin at his home.”
“We tried to get his address from one of his employees, but no dice,” Graham said. “I checked the phone directory and tried a few search sites online but no luck. D’Abo is
apparently a man who values his privacy.”
“Give me a moment.”
Asher watched while the Felix drew a cell phone from the pocket of his trousers, flipped it open, and punched in a number. “Hello, my friend. I will apologize in advance for my rudeness, but I’m feeling a bit pressed for time. I had hoped you would be able to provide me with a piece of information.”
There was a brief pause. “Nothing so complicated. I need an address, a home address, for an individual with some concerns for privacy. Charles D’Abo.”
Asher looked at Graham and raised an eyebrow. The alpha shrugged.
They both waited.
“Thank you, compadre . I owe you one.” The Felix flipped the phone closed. “Four eighty-nine East Eleventh Street.”
Asher just stared.
“Apartment three A,” Rafe added helpfully.
“How did you do that?”
“I didn’t. My friend did.”
Graham cursed. “Misha. Damn it, I should have known.”
“Yes, but I did, so all is well,” Rafe said. “Dmitri Vidâme. There is no information he cannot get, except for that which he already has at his fingertips.”
“And he got D’Abo’s home address that quickly?” Asher asked in disbelief. Hell, if he’d known the information could be had in the space of seconds, he would have had it by now. There was more to the story than money, though he knew Vidâme had a lot of it. If not most of it. “That’s impossible.”
“Not for Misha,” Graham said, his tone distinctly envious. “One of the hobbies he apparently picked up over the last thousand years—well, okay, the last thirty—was computer hacking. And it turned out he had a talent for it, plus enough money to buy the kind of machines that make the guys who run supercomputers turn a little green. I should have gone right to him. It would have saved us a lot of time.”
“There is no point rehashing our decisions,” Rafe said. He slid his phone back into his pocket and waved toward the door. “The important thing is that we act on the information now that we have it. Gentlemen?”
Asher held up a hand. “Just a minute.”
Turning back to the bed, he nodded at Missy. “Would you be willing to stay with her until she wakes? I don’t like that she’s still unconscious, but I don’t want to delay, either. If we were to miss a chance to find D’Abo…”
Missy smiled and shooed him away. “Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of her. You heard Erica; Daphanie is a fighter. I know she’ll be fine. And I’ll be with her when she wakes up. I’ll tell her where you went. In the meantime, you just go find this D’Abo character and put a stop to this. It’s the best thing you could do for her. For both of you.”
“Thank you.” Asher leaned down and pressed his lips to Daphanie’s clammy forehead, tasting the salt of fevered sweat, even though her skin felt chilled through. It frightened him.
“I’ll be back soon,” he whispered, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “I promise.”
Then he straightened, gave Missy a last brief look of thanks, and followed the others out of the room. He didn’t care if he had to tear Manhattan down brick by bloody brick. He would find Charles D’Abo, and when he did, no power of man or Other would stop him from killing him.
That was another promise, one he made to himself.
* * *
“We should probably have a plan,” Graham said as they stood outside the small condo building gazing up at the third-floor windows. “One that goes a little further than just knocking on the man’s door, waiting until he answers, and then telling him to knock it off.”
The sun had just begun to set, painting the block with alternating splashes of golden light and dusky shadow. Asher wished it would just go dark already. He was guessing that the designation “3A” indicated that D’Abo occupied the building’s front apartment, which made it a lot trickier to go with his original inclination, which was to spread his wings, lift himself through the air, and launch himself through one of the available windows. He would have the man’s throat in his hands in a matter of seconds. Less than a minute after that and it would all be over. Daphanie would be free of him, and of the bloody curse.
Provided that he and the others were incorrect in suspecting that someone else was involved in the curse laid on Daphanie.
Damn it, so much for his preferred plan.
“I agree that merely asking the man to desist from bothering Daphanie is unlikely to meet with success,” Rafe agreed, jingling the change in his pockets as he gazed up at the façade of the building through narrowed eyes. “However, I have not yet discarded the idea of approaching him head-on with a brisk knock on his door.”
“Come again?”
Rafe looked back at his companions. “At the moment, we find ourselves in a unique position. D’Abo is by all accounts an intelligent, if fatally arrogant, man. He knows that a large number of people in the community heard him make threats against a human woman at a club last week, but since then, Daphanie has not seen him, nor sensed his presence, and no one else has reported seeing him near her. Unless he is the figure behind the attacks, he should be completely unaware of their occurrence. That gives us the chance to gauge his reaction when we ask him if he is behind it.”
“His reaction will be to deny it,” Graham protested. “You pointed out that he’s not an idiot, and besides, you’re the head of the Council. He wouldn’t admit it to you if he’d done anything.”
“Yes, but you will be able to examine his expression, his mannerisms. Men often end up betraying themselves in the little things when they take it upon themselves to lie.”
“What if he denies his involvement and he’s telling the truth?”
“Then we play to a different advantage. We let him know that we believe someone may be framing D’Abo for the attacks. An innocent man would appreciate the warning and might be able to provide us with some idea of who could bear a grudge against him strong enough to make him want to share that theory. It is a win-win situation.”
“‘This word … I do not think it means what you think it means,’” Graham quoted.
Asher couldn’t help agreeing, for more reasons than that The Princess Bride was one of his favorite movies.
The alpha persisted. “You’re forgetting about the third possibility. What happens if he is lying about not being involved, and we have reason to believe he is lying. Do we show our hand and expect him to experience a change of heart leading to a confession?”
“Of course not. If he is lying and we all agree that he is lying, then that casts matters in an entirely different light. If that turns out to be the case—”
Asher finished the thought. “If that turns out to be the case, I’ll kill him.”
Seventeen
Most Others possess senses infinitely superior to those of us humans. Vampires have acute night vision, naturally, and astonishingly good hearing. The sidhe of Faerie are said to have a sense of taste so acute that they can taste a drop of poison in a cask of wine. But it is usually shapeshifters who take the prize as the most well rounded of the super-sensers. Like their animal counterparts, most shifters have increased powers of hearing, sight, and smell. A famous story tells of how one particular Feline shifter in Lithuania smelled Napoleon’s army coming before the French had even crossed the Vilnus.*
—A Human Handbook to the Others, Chapter Four
As it turned out, D’Abo had nothing at all to say about Daphanie’s troubles. It was hard for a man to speak when his tongue had been cut from his mouth.
Rafe and Graham had smelled the blood almost at the same time, before they had even reached the building’s second-floor landing. Asher saw them stiffen and exchange glances, heard them curse, and watched them sprint halfway up the next flight of stairs before he knew what was happening. He continued in ignorance until he skidded to a halt behind the others and saw Rafe finesse the door open with his elegant hands and a set of stainless steel lock picks. Clearly there was more to the Felix than met the eye.
He saw the blood the instant the door swung wide. It would have been impossible to miss. The place looked like the set of a horror movie, one of the slasher flicks that owed less to the psychology of fear and more to the liberal application of corn syrup and red food dye. The apartment didn’t smell like sugar, though.
It smelled like death.
The three men stepped inside and shut the door behind them. Better not to alert the neighbors or the police until they’d had a chance to look around. The human authorities would only complicate matters.
The apartment opened out of a compact entryway no more than three feet long, leading directly into a small living room. The white and exposed brick walls were decorated with an eclectic mix of African and European art, personal photographs, and ribbons and smears of cast-off blood.
Charles D’Abo lay on his back in the center of the floor, his legs resting on a printed black-and-white area rug and his torso on the gleaming, golden hardwood. His eyes were open and staring, his lips parted as if in a silent scream. Blood had spilled from each corner, leaving him with a macabre red smile painted nearly from ear to ear.
“We’re late,” Graham growled, his nostrils flaring as he sorted through the mingled scents of blood, fear, and human waste. “The blood’s cold. He’s been dead for hours.”
“I suspect since last night.” Rafe crouched beside the body and examined it impassively. “The blood is congealed where it’s puddled on the floor and the spots on his clothes are mostly dry.”
Asher bit back a scream of frustration. Every step he’d taken in this thrice-damned mess had ended up being three steps behind, and now here was their best lead lying dead and silent on his living room floor. It made him want to kick something. He contemplated the body, but he thought Rafe or Graham might start to question his sanity if he went around assaulting the dead.
He assaulted the sofa instead.
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