Defender (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 11)

by Christine Pope

  Wonderful. This just kept getting better and better. Kate tried to figure out what would be worse — to be taken by such a person and understand everything of what was happening to you, or to have your mind clouded by magic so you thought that what he was doing was something you actually wanted. Since both prospects sounded equally horrible, about all she could do was shudder.

  “I know,” Jack said. He lifted his right hand from the steering wheel and laid it on top of hers for a moment, gave it a reassuring squeeze. “I can’t sugarcoat this. About the only promising thing in Luz’s conversation with the null was that it sounded as though he wanted to be left alone, that he wouldn’t bring the fight to us unless we pushed it.”

  Kate was glad of the pressure of Jack’s hand against hers, the warmth of his skin. Too soon, though, he took it away, gripped the steering wheel with both hands. She could see why — they’d just turned off the main street they were following away from the freeway and off onto a dirt road, its surface turned into a washboard of ruts after too many years of summertime monsoon rains and no apparent maintenance to smooth it out again.

  “Will you do that?” she asked. “That is, would Luz and Connor and Angela let something like this go?”

  “I’m not sure,” Jack replied. They’d slowed down to a modest twenty miles an hour or so, but dust still plumed away from their tires at an alarming rate. Good thing Consuelo expected them, because there was definitely no way of sneaking up on someone out here. “Usually we all try to keep things on the down-low, no matter the cost, because a war between witch clans is the fastest way to let civilians know that something’s been hiding behind the scenes all along. On the other hand, can we really stand by and let this Joaquin person — and whoever else might be working for him — get away with this? To kill a prima and her consort, to murder the prima-in-waiting’s own consort? Those crimes are completely beyond the pale.”

  And those probably weren’t the only deaths on this Joaquin’s conscience. Kate still couldn’t quite figure out the connection, but it was becoming more probable to her that the warlock who’d murdered Jeff also had to be working for the null. Also, what had happened to Lucinda Santiago in all this? Caitlin’s communications with her had been cut off, and so no one seemed to have any idea as to her fate. Maybe the null had murdered her, too, deeming her to be of little use because, although she was the prima’s daughter, she wasn’t a strong enough witch to have been the prima-in-waiting.

  So many questions, so few answers. Even without the stakes being so impossibly high, Kate would have found the entire situation beyond frustrating, just because she wasn’t used to being kept so much in the dark. In this day and age, instant communication and information were pretty much a given. But not here. The man who had taken over the Santiago clan might as well be on the dark side of the moon for all they really knew about what he was doing now.

  The road curved, and then Jack turned down a narrow lane barely big enough to let the Jeep through. Here, the washboarding was so bad that he slowed down to a scant ten miles an hour. Even so, Kate found herself reaching for the “Jesus handle” above her head so she wouldn’t get jostled around too much. On either side were scrubby manzanita bushes and the stark shapes of saguaro cactus, and golden desert broom. There was nothing here that should have made her feel so uneasy, but as they pulled up in front of a low, sprawling adobe house, she felt it again, an uneasy churn in the pit of her stomach.

  Jack turned off the engine and climbed out of the vehicle, and Kate did the same. Dust swirled away from the Jeep, and the air smelled like sun-warmed dry grass. Cactus flowers bloomed on all sides, their colors a riot against the mellower shades of sand and rock. It was very warm, almost hot. And yet she couldn’t help shivering.

  “Consuelo’s lived here forever,” Jack said as he led her to the front door, which was adorned with a crucifix. “She doesn’t drive — some of the family here in Tucson takes turns coming out here with groceries. I think her sister has been pressuring her to sell this place and move to a condo in town, but she won’t hear of it.”

  Despite her uneasiness, Kate couldn’t help smiling. “Well, I have to admit that a witch living in a condo sounds a little funny.”

  His eyebrow went up. “But apartments are okay?”

  “For some reason, yes.”

  He chuckled. Clearly, whatever was bothering her didn’t seem to be affecting him. Maybe that was merely because he happened to be a warlock trained in defensive magic, and he knew for a fact that nothing bad waited for them on the other side of the door. After all, Kate was a civilian, one who didn’t know very much about those sorts of things. She probably had a bad case of the heebie-jeebies now because of the conversation she’d just overheard. Some of the things Luz had said were enough to make anyone uneasy.

  “Consuelo?” Jack knocked on the dark wood of the front door. “It’s Jack and Kate.”

  No response. Kate tilted a glance up at him, and hoped her expression was merely one of mild curiosity rather than outright worry.

  He offered a shrug. “It’s a big place, and Consuelo is…well, she’s a big woman, and not as light on her feet as she used to be. It takes her more time to get from one place to the other than it does most of us.”

  What could she do except nod? Kate didn’t want to give voice to her disquiet, so she only said, “Ah, that makes sense.”

  Jack knocked again. “Consuelo?”

  Still no answer. Had she gone out? No, Jack had just said she didn’t own a car, had family members bring her groceries to her. But she could be in the bathroom, or on the other side of the house, or….

  Something that sounded like a curse in Spanish, made under his breath, and Jack laid both palms flat against the age-darkened wood of the door. His eyes shut. Once again his lips moved, but this time Kate thought he might be reciting the words to a spell.

  Then his eyes flared open, and he put his hand on the door latch and lifted it, and swung the door inward.

  Kate’s hands went to her mouth. Oh, my God….

  The place had probably always been somewhat cluttered. Now, though, it was a welter of books and papers and statues and incense burners and other bric-a-brac she couldn’t identify. Everything had been thrown around with enough violence that it looked as if hurricane-force winds had driven their way through the house.

  Jack charged into the front room, hands raised, as if ready to cast a spell of protection at the slightest sign of an attack. “Consuelo!”

  Only silence.

  He looked over his shoulder at Kate. “You stick right behind me. Understand?”

  “Yes.” No way in hell was she going to try playing the hero. She’d let Jack handle this. He was far better equipped to deal with whatever might be waiting for them in this empty house.

  Slowly, he began to move forward, through the wreck of antiques and religious icons. Kate wondered at that a little, even though she knew the de la Paz clan was fairly Catholic. She supposed she hadn’t expected to see such obvious signs of faith in the home of a witch, especially one who studied the darker aspects of the supernatural world.

  And then, from somewhere down the hallway…a low moan. Jack hurried in the direction of the sound, which seemed to be coming from a room off to the left, a space which had once apparently been a library but now looked like a mountain of discarded books.

  It was from under the pile of books that the moan came again. “Hurry,” Jack said, going to the source of the sound and beginning to claw books out of the way. Kate followed suit, grabbing volume after volume and tossing them to one side. She began to see the shape of a woman under those books, curled into a fetal position as if to try to protect herself from her attacker, her long gray hair loose from its bun and falling down to obscure her face.

  As Jack pushed the last of the books out of the way, she moaned again. He knelt down next to her. “Consuelo? What happened?”

  Another moan. Now that the books had been cleared away, Kate was able to see th
e terrible claw marks on the older woman’s face and throat, the mottling of livid bruises that made it almost impossible to tell what color her skin actually was.

  Jack scrabbled in his pocket for his cell phone. “I’m going to call Valentina. She’ll fix you up, and then you can tell us what happened.”

  “No.” The syllable came out as a harsh whisper. Consuelo’s eyes shut, and she shook her head almost imperceptibly. “What has been done…cannot be undone. It is well. I will be with mi esposo Esteban soon.”

  “Consuelo — ”

  “No.” Her eyes flared open briefly, the whites marred by a series of broken veins. “You listen to me, Jack. This — this is an evil you cannot fight alone. Go tell Luz. Tell her….” The words trailed off, and once again Consuelo’s eyes shut.

  “Tell her what?” Jack asked, his voice rough with urgency.

  But whatever it was that Consuelo wanted him to tell Luz, it had died with her. She did not move after that. All Kate could do was stand off to one side, her entire body paralyzed with worry. What if whatever had done this to Consuelo was coming back?

  At last Jack pushed himself to his feet. When he turned toward Kate, his face appeared utterly without expression, bleak, as though he didn’t dare let himself betray any reaction to his cousin’s death.

  Kate whispered, “I’m so sorry….”

  He held up a hand. “She made her peace with it. But we have to figure out what happened here. So much for thinking the warlock wouldn’t strike in broad daylight. He must have decided it was worth the risk, since Consuelo’s house is so isolated. Her nearest neighbors are far enough away that they probably wouldn’t have seen or heard anything.”

  “What was the warlock trying to find?”

  A long pause as Jack surveyed the damage around them, the lifeless body of the woman on the floor. “I have no idea. Consuelo collected a lot of rare texts on dark magic, so maybe there was something here he specifically thought he could use. I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to figure out what went missing — I know Maya had encouraged Consuelo for years to get all this in a database somewhere, told her she’d ask one of the cousins who was computer-savvy to help. But Consuelo always said no, that these were works of power and not something to be trapped in a computer. Maybe she had records written down somewhere, but considering the shape this place is in….” He stopped there, the way his hands hung limp at his sides a better indicator of the helplessness he currently felt than anything he might say.

  Kate went to him and put one arm around his waist. “Well, we can worry about that later. Who should we call? I know you said Consuelo didn’t have any children, but….”

  “Ana, her younger sister — she lives here in Tucson. It’s often her kids who bring out Consuelo’s supplies. I don’t think I have her phone number, though.”

  “Who does?”

  “Luz. The prima has the contact information for everyone in the clan.” Once again Jack stopped. He pulled in a breath. “Jesus. I deal with this sort of thing every day, but….”

  “It’s all right,” Kate said. She hugged him closely. “I understand. It’s different when it’s someone you know.”

  A bitter smile twisted his lips. “Yes, I guess you’d know that better than anyone else. All right, I’ll call Luz. Do you want to wait in the car?”

  At once Kate shook her head. “I’ll stay with you…and with Consuelo…until her relatives can come.” She hesitated, then added, “Whatever did this…it’s not coming back, is it?”

  “I have no idea. I don’t feel anything off. That is….” He went quiet for a minute, clearly trying to figure out the best way to articulate what he was feeling. “I can feel that it was here, sort of how you can smell the stink of chicken carcass in the garbage even after you’ve taken the trash out. But it’s gone. It did whatever it needed to…got whatever it wanted.”

  The room was stuffy, verging on hot, but Kate couldn’t help shivering anyway. “Whatever that was.”

  “Yes. The problem is, I’m not sure we really want to find out what the warlock took…because that means he’d be using it against us.”

  17

  Consuelo’s sister Ana, and Ana’s daughter Isabel and son-in-law Manuel, arrived within the half hour. Jack was glad to see Manuel with them, because, while he might have been able to get Consuelo’s body into the back of his Jeep with only Kate’s help, it would have been difficult. This way, Jack and Manuel were able to manage the unpleasant task while Ana, Isabel, and Kate stood off to one side Both Ana and Isabel wept; Kate was dry-eyed but pale-faced, clearly far more upset than she wanted to let on. Not that she didn’t have every right to be upset. She didn’t know Consuelo, true, but she’d also been first on the scene when her estranged husband was murdered, and no doubt coming here had only brought back those painful memories. This crime scene hadn’t been nearly as brutal, true, but it still was the last thing either of them had expected to see when they entered the house.

  It would all be handled very quietly. Jack couldn’t recall the name of the de la Paz cousin who owned the funeral home here in Tucson, but that was where Consuelo would go, until her services were held a few days from now. There would be no inquiry; the victim had been in her late seventies, and extremely overweight. No one would question her death, and none of the clan members would speak of it as anything except the sort of everyday tragedy one might expect of an elderly relative who lived alone.

  And the monster who had murdered her would get away.

  No. Jack refused to believe that. Sooner or later, this murderous warlock and the dangerous entities he controlled would make a misstep. One person couldn’t go up against an entire clan and hope to win. The death of Jeff Nichols wasn’t anything that affected them directly, and so there had been no need for any of them, except Luz in her role as prima, to get involved with that crime. But Consuelo was one of their own.

  Jack said a few comforting words to Ana and Isabel, thanked Manuel for his help. They drove off in Manuel’s Ford Explorer, leaving Jack and Kate alone once again.

  He looked over at the house. It appeared innocent enough, just a shabby adobe structure baking in the midday sun. No one looking at it would be able to tell that someone had just been violently attacked within those thick walls.

  “What now?” Kate asked. Her voice sounded tight to him, like she was doing everything in her power to stay calm and controlled, even though he knew that inwardly she must be freaking out. Was she beginning to wish her path had never crossed his, that she had never discovered the darkness lurking behind the world of bohemian witches and warlocks she’d first encountered in Jerome?

  As he gazed down into her clear hazel eyes, turned golden in the bright sunlight, he realized he couldn’t let himself think such things. Yes, she was troubled, but he didn’t see anything of regret in her face. Whatever happened next, she wanted to meet it at his side. And he loved her all the more for that.

  “We’ll head up to Scottsdale, talk to Luz. With any luck, Connor and Angela will still be there. Luz made it sound as if they planned to stay over for a late lunch, so I’ll call as we’re driving and tell her to keep them until we can get there. It’s only an hour and a half away.”

  Kate nodded. “All right. Besides….” She stopped there, her wide, friendly mouth pursing slightly.

  “Besides what?”

  “Well, I was just thinking it would be a good idea to head someplace that wasn’t the house. Just in case there’s something around here, something that might…follow us.”

  At once he took her hands and pulled her to him, sensing she needed the reassurance of his touch right then. “I think it’s gone, Kate.”

  “But do you know that for sure?”

  He hesitated. To be honest, while he didn’t sense anything lurking around the property, how much did that really mean? His skills lay in defensive magic, in fighting something that had already made itself known to him. If a presence was strong enough, he could feel it…sometimes…but his
skills in that area certainly weren’t infallible.

  “No,” he said. Her lips tightened, and he could see her swallow. He went on, “I promised myself that I would never lie to you, Kate, and I’m not about to start now. I don’t feel anything here right at the moment, but I’m not an expert. You’re right that it’s probably smart to go elsewhere first. Even if it’s waiting here, watching to see what we do next, it’s not going to be too happy to discover that we’re headed straight for the prima’s house…especially when the prima in question has her counterparts from up north visiting. So let’s get going.”

  Kate nodded and followed him over to the Jeep. He waited until they were off the narrow lane that led to Consuelo’s house and partway to the freeway before he called Luz again. This time, the call went to voicemail, which told him she was probably in the middle of her convo with Connor and Angela. Jack hated to leave this kind of a message on voicemail. He didn’t have much choice, however, so he quickly explained what had happened with Consuelo, and said that he and Kate were on their way up to Scottsdale and they’d very much appreciate it if the prima and primus from northern Arizona would hang around until they got there.

  After that, there wasn’t much to do except head north on I-10 and be glad of every mile he put between them and Tucson. As they were passing through Picacho, he looked over at Kate and said, “Sorry.”

  She shifted in the passenger seat and sent him a quizzical glance. “Sorry for what?”

  “I don’t know…dragging you into all this.”

  To his surprise, she smiled slightly. “As I recall, you kind of got dragged into it first, because of Jeff. Things just…happened…after that.”

  That was one way of putting it. Still, he wished vehemently that none of this was happening, that they’d met some other way. For God’s sake, he’d had the most spectacular sex of his life with her the night before. They should’ve gone out to brunch, visited the art galleries in Tubac, enjoyed the day together, come back to barbecue and an evening of leisurely lovemaking. Instead, he’d brought her — inadvertently, yes, but still — to yet another crime scene, to a place where she’d had to watch someone die in front of her eyes.