The image in his hand was one he’d never seen before and was obviously antique, and yet the face that stared out from the page possessed features he would have recognized in a crowd of thousands.
Daphanie.
“Where did you get this?”
“From the New-York Historical Society. It’s a portrait of Manon Henri, dated 1796. Apparently, it’s owned by the Frick, but has never been hung.”
“Impossible.”
“I said nearly the same thing, but the society has documents that back it up. Several letters about Henri refer to the portrait. More than one man acknowledged her beauty in one sentence and called her the daughter of Satan in the next.”
Daphanie—the woman in the portrait, he corrected himself—had been painted from the torso up wearing an elegant-looking gown of the period that exposed the upper swell of her breasts above a rounded neckline. An elaborately folded and tied turban obscured most of her hair, allowing only a few, tiny pincurls to peek out near her temples. She wore a delicate string of beads around her neck and the same teasing smile he’d seen Daphanie wear at least a dozen times.
The resemblance left him stunned.
Behind him, Graham whistled through his teeth. “Holy shit.”
“I am afraid I have to agree with that eloquent assessment,” Rafe said, frowning down at the portrait. “I have never seen such a likeness. Daphanie could have posed for this just this morning.”
Corinne nodded. “I stared at it for like half an hour before I found the tiniest little difference, but you have to look closely. See, the woman in the portrait has a mole at the end of one of her eyebrows. You can barely see it, but it’s there.”
“Oh, you’re right,” Missy exclaimed, crowding closer. “Good catch, Rinne.”
Asher could only continue to stare, the uneasy feeling he’d had during the whole of Corinne’s story intensifying until he felt as if thousands of stinging insects crawled over his skin.
“This is wrong,” he murmured. “This means something very, very wrong.”
Rafe nodded. “I think you are right. This feels … significant.”
Asher looked back at Corinne. “What happened to Manon Henri after she came to New York?”
“That was the most difficult thing to discover,” she told him. “The background I had by dinnertime yesterday. The end of the story took me until just before Missy called. I think that no one wanted to talk about it. None of the principal parties involved left so much as a mention of it, but there was one letter that dropped enough hints for me to put it together.
“In September of 1797, Manon Henri was interred in an undisclosed location in lower Manhattan. The undisclosed part is kind of a laugh. I mean, even if they had disclosed it, most of the cemeteries in Manhattan were closed and the bodies moved back in the mid-nineteenth century. No one wants to state flat-out how she died, but I think it’s pretty clear that she was murdered.”
“By whom?”
“Again, no one wants to admit to it, but I’m guessing it was murder by committee. That summer, just before she died, rumors had been flying around the city about her activities. Witnesses claimed to have seen her drinking human blood, consorting with the devil, sacrificing babies … the whole nine yards. A century before and she’d have been burned at the stake. That made a few people nervous but what really sealed her fate was when people heard her talking about a nouveau régime and had her followers referring to her as la reine .”
“The queen of what?” Rafe asked.
“The world, according to her enemies. The last letter I read was written by the son of a man named Phineus Jay-Martin. The family were cousins a number of times removed of John Jay, the Supreme Court Justice. Anyway, in the letter, Phineus’s kid, William, refers to his father’s ‘gentlemen comrades’ and lets slip that Phineus and four of his closest friends—all prominent members of New York’s elite—were responsible for putting an end to the ‘evil harlot’s quest for power.’ They staked out the area that Manon was using for her ceremonies—pretty much where Eleventh Street and Avenue A meet today. At the time it was nearly on the water and completely outside the city. Her followers would set up a tent there and they’d perform the rituals at night when no one was around or likely to stumble across them.”
“Except for the ‘gentlemen comrades,’ one assumes.”
“Right. Though stumbling was the last thing they did. They kept watch on her for over a week, trying to decide what to do. Then on the night of September ninth, Manon Henri began to perform a ritual designed to call forth a particular entity called, among other things, Kalfou and invite it into her body. The goal doesn’t appear to have been possession, but power-sharing. Henri was offering her body as a host to Kalfou in exchange for him giving her unchecked magical powers. For a woman already said to spread the pox with a look and to kill animals by pointing at them, God only knows what ‘unchecked’ might have looked like.”
Asher flinched under a lash of memory. “Kalfou. D’Abo tried to call that name in the club when he wanted to curse Daphanie.”
“It would have been appropriate,” Corinne said, looking far from pleased. “Kalfou is the name of one of the Petro loa —the dark spirits of voodoo. Actually, he’s their king, you might say. He’s called the grand master of curses, charms, and black magic, and he’s the guy who can open the door to the other world to let all the bad things in.”
“Sounds like a real charmer,” Graham growled.
“That’s exactly what the ‘gentlemen comrades’ thought. They also seem to have suspected—as others have throughout history—that Kalfou was just another name for Satan himself, so William wrote that they felt they had no choice. They brought a small army of servants and slaves with them, and when the Société members were all inside and beginning the drumming to start the ritual, they collapsed the tent and set it on fire, killing all seventeen people inside. Reportedly, Manon was the only one to make it out, but as soon as they saw her emerge, they opened fire, shooting her twice in the stomach, four times in the head, and once in the heart.”
Graham winced. “That seems excessive.”
“Not if you believe Phineus’s statement that the first six shots didn’t kill her.”
“Holy shit.”
“William wrote that the men took her body with them and buried it in secret because they feared she had other followers who hadn’t been at the ritual that night and who might attempt to raise her from the dead. Each man swore to take the location of the body to his grave. It sounds like they might have been traditionalists, though, and treated her like any other evil creature by burying her at a crossroads with a stake through her heart.”
“Christ, I thought only vampires provoked those gruesome customs,” Rafe said.
“I think they feared her more than a vampire. The irony, though, was that because these were all New Yorkers and none of them spoke Creole, they must not have realized that in Haitian Creole, ‘Kalfou’ means crossroads. They’re apparently one of his major symbols.”
Asher felt his blood chill. All at once, he feared he knew exactly what D’Abo had planned. “Has anyone ever attempted to raise Henri the way the men feared would happen?”
“There’s no record of it, but I’d be surprised to hear about it. Like I said, none of them ever revealed where they’d put her body. Without that, a resurrection would be kind of a moot point, wouldn’t it?”
“Not if they decided to raise her spirit into someone else’s body instead.”
There was a long, tense moment of silence.
In the end, it was Corinne who spelled it all out. “That’s exactly what I was afraid of. I hoped I was overreacting, that it was just my writer’s imagination spurred on by all those hours at the archive and the story of the attack coming so close on the heels of the shock of seeing that portrait. But now I don’t think so. I think you’re right. I think Charles D’Abo was trying to get to Daphanie so that Manon Henri can come back to life and take possession of her body.�
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Asher turned immediately to Graham.
“I need your best tracker,” he bit out. “I don’t care if the monster behind this has gone to ground on the moon. I don’t care if he’s the bloody ghost of Christmas past. You’re going to find him, and we’re going to stop him.”
The alpha was already headed for the door. “That would be Logan. I’ll call him right now. He’ll bring at least two others, the best we have. We’ll start trails from D’Abo’s apartment, the Société, and the Callahans’ apartment. One of them will lead us to something.”
Rafe stepped into the doorway, blocking Graham and Asher from exiting. He must have caught the look in Asher’s eyes, because he hurried to explain himself before the Guardian removed him bodily from the path.
“We might already have the most vital clue we could wish for.” The Felix nodded at Asher. “Do you not still have the paper you discovered in D’Abo’s grip?”
If Asher could have done so he would have lifted his boot and kicked his own hell-cursed ass. As it was, he had to content himself with calling himself nine kinds of fool while he fumbled in his pockets.
He couldn’t have said what he’d been expecting to see. A neatly worded paragraph explaining everything and naming the villain in boldface type would likely have been too much to ask for. Apparently, even something as simple as a name was, too. Instead, Asher found himself frowning down at some kind of voodoo crossword puzzle and wishing he’d kicked D’Abo’s corpse when he’d had the chance.
“What the fuck is this shit supposed to mean?”
It didn’t even appear to be written in English, though if it had, it would have provided only marginal amounts of help. In the center of the small page an oddly arranged collection of letters formed what looked almost like a compass. He assumed the letters formed words, though he could make neither heads nor tails of them, couldn’t even tell which way they were supposed to be read, whether to shift his gaze left to right or top to bottom or another direction entirely.
The two longest lines of letters ran straight across two planes of the sheet, intersecting roughly in the center. The right angles they formed, however, were each bisected with another word that did not follow a straight line but curved in an elongated S-shape from one end to the other. At the tip of each of the straight-line words, a triangle had been drawn almost like an arrowhead pointing toward the edges of the paper. D’Abo had also apparently indulged his artistic senses by adding small star shapes in each quadrant and inserting two others in place of missing letters in the S-shaped words. The whole mess was completed by a circle drawn around where the central words met with two small circles contained within at the top.
“What? Was he high when he did that?” Graham demanded, peering over Asher’s shoulder to scrutinize the drawing. “That’s a complete piece of horseshit. How the hell is that supposed to help us?”
Rafe reached for the paper, and Asher handed it over without hesitation. It wasn’t as if the damned thing were going to provide them with any help.
The Felix examined the drawing for a moment in silence. He shook his head and cast Asher a look of apology. “I am sorry,” he said simply. “I had hoped for more.”
“Hadn’t we all?” Graham grumbled.
“Still, we cannot discount that there may be a meaning here that we are at present unable to discern.” Rafe gestured with the paper. “I will ask Erica to look at it. It may have a symbolic meaning, or the words may represent a spell. Magic often uses language of its own devising for such purposes.”
“Fine,” Asher bit out, “but I’m not going to sit around in the meantime and twiddle my damned thumbs. We need to get moving and find the mystery man. I’m not letting Daphanie stay like that.”
The other men followed his glance to the motionless, wide-eyed form on the bed. He knew they sympathized with him, knew they cared for Daphanie themselves, in their own ways. Both men considered her a friend, a part of the extended family formed by the bonds between their wives and their brothers-in-arms.
But none of them could possibly understand how he felt, how seeing her helpless and vulnerable while he had been sworn to protect her cut like a killing blow to the abdomen. None of them could understand how the sight of her made him so weak he could barely summon the strength to stand and so enervated with rage that he could have lifted Atlas’ globe with one hand.
Whatever he had to do to save Daphanie, Asher would do it. He didn’t care if it cost him his own damned life. He was no good without her anyway. She had already ruined him for his solitary life.
“Of course not,” Rafe agreed, clapping him on the back. “We will waste no time. While Erica sees what she can discern from the message, we will gather the Silverback trackers and commence the hunt. One way or another, Asher, we will find him.”
“Right. You and Asher come with me. We’ll join Logan’s group.” Graham glanced at Missy and Corinne. “You two should stay with Daphanie.”
Missy cast her husband a sharp look, and he shook his head. “No, don’t argue. I’m not excluding you from the hunt for my own male-chauvinistic-pig reasons. Daphanie will need to be watched carefully and protected from both physical and magical attacks. I’m trusting you to see to that, Miss.” His voice softened. “Plus, she is your friend. If she wakes up before we return, she’ll feel better having you with her.”
Missy nodded, her expression easing. “Of course. This building is warded so tight, it’s a wonder light can get in, so I’m not worried about a magical attack reaching her while she’s inside; but we’ll make sure that no one can physically get to her. I’ll ask Samantha and Annie to set up a guard outside, just in case.”
Graham pressed a quick hard kiss on his wife’s mouth. “Good idea. I’ll catch Sam in the office on our way out and fill her in.” He turned back to face Asher and his face wore an expression of fierce resolve. “Don’t worry. I promise you, if the man responsible for this is still in Manhattan, the pack will find him. If he tries to leave, the pack will find him. There isn’t anywhere he can hide from us. We won’t stop tracking until he’s found.”
Asher nodded once, rage already clouding his vision. “And when he is, you can all stand back, because I’m going to kill him with my bare hands.”
Twenty-one
A werewolf on the trail of an enemy is an amazing thing to witness, though not many humans get the opportunity. The Lupine’s acute sense of smell allows him to track a person’s or an animal’s movements twenty times more easily than the best-trained bloodhound in the world.
Plus, since a Lupine can be fully aware of the source and behaviors of the creature he’s tracking, he can make educated guesses to stay with a trail, while an animal, with its limited cognitive abilities, would likely be forced to give up the chase.
—A Human Handbook to the Others, Chapter Five
Daphanie screamed her frustration, then screamed again when no one took the slightest bit of notice. Admittedly, since not a single sound emerged from her throat, it must have been easy to ignore her, but that didn’t make it any easier to deal with.
She wanted to talk to Asher. She wanted to tell him that she was all right, that she might be trapped inside her own body, but her mind was whole and healthy and missing him with a ferocity that was hard to bear. She wanted to speak his name and feel the heat of him as he leaned over her. She wanted to smooth her hands over the lines of worry on his face, the ones that only got deeper with the passing of every minute in this ridiculous nightmare.
And she wanted him to kiss her good-bye so badly it felt like a knife blade twisting in her heart.
Instead, she had to listen helplessly while he and Rafe and Graham marched out of the room on a maddening quest to save her from the forces of evil.
God, she felt like she was trapped not just in her body, but in the plot of a bad made-for-TV sci-fi movie. How the hell had this happened to her? How the hell had she gone from ten days before, when she’d thought The Others referred to a creepy Nicole Ki
dman movie, to this? How had it happened? And how could she make it unhappen?
“She hasn’t said a word?” she heard Corinne ask softly, and Missy sighed as she made her way back to the bedside.
“She hasn’t even twitched a muscle.” Missy reached out to fuss with the blankets, tucking them more securely around her friend. “If her eyes weren’t open and blinking every once in a while, I’d think she was in a coma.”
“Would Annie know if that were the case?”
“I’m sure she would, if she were here. Unfortunately, she’s been in Germany for the last week attending some kind of scientific symposium. She was supposed to be back sometime around now, but I haven’t heard from her.” Missy gave a short, unhappy laugh. “I’m almost afraid to call her in case she’s not home yet. If she can’t come, I don’t know what to do.”
“If she’s not home, you’ll call another doctor. We’ll find out what’s going on, Miss, and we’ll find a way to help Daph. You know we always find a way.”
“God, I hope you’re right.”
Daphanie heard the sound of Corinne rising and the soft glide of skin on skin as she took Missy’s hand.
“I know I’m right,” the reporter said, injecting her voice with the sort of confidence Daphanie associated with her. It was funny how she’d never considered before now that that kind of confidence could take effort to be achieved.
“Come on, though. I’m sure you’ve been up here with her since the moment Asher brought her through the door. You look ragged enough for that to be true. Come downstairs with me and get something to eat.”
Missy shook her head, her fine blond hair shushing against the shoulders of her top. “I’ll eat later. At dinner.”
“It’s past dinner, sweetie. When was the last time you looked at the clock? It’s after seven.”
“Seven? That’s impossible!”
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