“Comfortable in the medical wing at HQ. I planted the suggestion in Aiko Sullivan’s mind that she was exposed to a hallucinatory toxin at the motel and that’s why she thinks her daughter looks different. We’re keeping her mildly sedated for the time being.”
“And the girl?”
“She seems content enough, not afraid, even with all the medical tests that we’re conducting,” Teodoro said. “But she’s worried about her mom and wants to know when she’ll be well so they can go home. She also keeps talking about Prejean. Believes him to be an angel.”
Close, little one, but no cigar.
Teodoro remembered the matter-of-fact sound of Violet’s voice, low and earnest, as she colored a daffodil blue in the coloring book he’d brought her.
I was a balloon with a broken string floating up to the stars, then the angel caught me and wrapped my string around his wrist and pulled me back down. It tickled in my tummy.
“An angel.” Slipping off her reading glasses, Underwood tossed them on top of the report she’d been reading. She rubbed the bridge of her nose between her thumb and index finger. “Christ. Does she know what Prejean did to her?”
“She does,” Teodoro affirmed, remembering Violet standing in front of the bathroom mirror, fingering her long red hair and peering into her new blue eyes, an expression of intense curiosity on her fair-skinned and freckled face. “But she’s at an age where anything is possible—pumpkins into coaches, mice into people, scrub-girls into princesses—so she accepts this change as magical.”
He called me Princess, but I told him my name was Violet.
Underwood sighed. “I doubt her mother ever will.”
“According to witnesses, Aiko Sullivan begged Prejean to save Violet after she’d been shot. If this is the price of having her daughter’s life restored, Mrs. Sullivan might be willing to accept that cost. In time.”
A muscle flexed in Underwood’s jaw and she looked away, but not before Teodoro saw grief ghost across her face, stark and aging. “You might be right. There’s virtually nothing a parent wouldn’t do for their child. Especially if it meant they could hold them once more.”
A grief and sentiment Teodoro sympathized with. Her son was murdered, like my Felicia so long ago.
Drawing in a deep breath, Underwood composed herself and looked at him again, her dark eyes no longer haunted. But Teodoro detected the ragged edge of loss in their depths, like sharp shards of glass in a broken window.
The waitress delivered Teodoro’s coffee and fruit platter, splashed more coffee into Underwood’s half-empty cup, then hurried away after they assured her they needed nothing else.
The mingled scents of ripe strawberries, cantaloupe, pineapple, honeydew melon, and grapes wafted into Teodoro’s nostrils, mingling with the coffee’s strong, fresh-roasted odor. It looked and smelled as though his concerns about the food quality had been unfounded. Plucking up a piece of cantaloupe between his fingers, he popped it into his mouth. Juicy and cool.
“Honestly, given our conversation so far, I don’t see why we needed to meet off-site. We could’ve had this conversation in my office,” Underwood said, her irritation making an encore performance.
“The first part, yes,” Teodoro agreed. “But this next part of the conversation requires either an audio jammer in your office or a meeting outside of HQ. I opted for the latter.”
Underwood picked up her coffee cup and took a sip. “Let’s hear it then, Dнon. I’m listening. What is this about?”
“Containing Prejean. Bringing him in. I suspect that you’re as unhappy about him roaming free as I am.”
Underwood snorted. “You must’ve missed the director’s memo. He declared Prejean and Wallace hands-off, surveillance only. My feelings on the matter are moot.”
“Why do you suppose Director Britto gave that order?”
“No idea.”
“Speculations?”
Underwood tilted her head and regarded Teodoro speculatively. “I think I’d be more interested in hearing yours.”
With his fingertips, Teodoro pushed the folder across the table to her.
Retrieving her reading glasses, Underwood perched them on the end of her nose, then flipped open the folder.
“It’s all in there,” Teodoro said, picking up a succulent chunk of pineapple. “The director sold his soul to the devil to save his son’s life. The boy was dying of brain cancer. Now he’s cancer-free and healthy—and usually seen in the hours between twilight and dawn.”
A deep vertical line creased Underwood’s forehead between her eyes as she read. “Dear God. He had his son turned.” Her gaze shot up to meet Teodoro’s. “By a vamp from Renata Alessa Cortini’s household? That means he’s in debt to the goddamned Cercle de Druide.”
Teodoro spread his hands, palms-out. “And Prejean is a True Blood . . .”
“Who the Cercle would do anything to protect, no doubt. Shit and hellfire.”
“The director has compromised the integrity of the SB. Sold us out.”
“For his son’s life,” Underwood murmured. She rubbed the bridge of her nose again. “While I can understand that, he should’ve resigned. Looked for a low-level street vamp to bribe and not dealt with a web-weaving Elder. Jesus Christ.”
“You could take this to the Committee,” Teodoro said, nodding at the folder, “and let them deal with Britto. They’d demand his resignation, at the very least. Might have him imprisoned for treason. Or maybe even disappeared.”
Given the cold natures of the mortals and vampires composing the Shadow Branch’s oversight committee, Teodoro imagined that the second option would be Britto’s fate. “But that doesn’t guarantee they’d order Prejean brought in or put down.”
“Why not? He’s a cold-blooded, murdering sociopath with the ability to transform human beings, for God’s sake.”
“He’s still True Blood. And we programmed him. The vamps on the Committee will definitely take all that into consideration. Maybe they won’t allow Prejean to remain free, but his care and confinement will be given over to other vampires. Trust me. They won’t punish him for his sins.”
“Shit and hellfire,” Underwood muttered. She flipped the folder closed. Meeting Teodoro’s gaze, one eyebrow lifted in a cynical arch, she said, “I don’t imagine we’re having this conversation just because you wished to enlighten me. You obviously have a solution to this problem in mind. Let’s hear it.”
“I think I know a way to bring Prejean in and guarantee his death,” Teodoro said, leaning forward against the table’s edge, his hands clasped together on its surface. “But I need Purcell.”
Underwood frowned. “Purcell? He’s in New Orleans on surveillance duty.”
“Officially, yes. But he hasn’t checked in with the regular surveillance team, and they seem to be unaware that he’s even supposed to be in New Orleans. All of which makes me wonder—what did you actually send him to do?”
Underwood looked at him for a long moment, her face unreadable. But her thoughts? Ah, her thoughts were an audio book on Dolby.
Does Dнon already know, and is he just playing games with me?
Unexpected questions, intriguing questions. Just what was the SOD up to? Teodoro decided not to waste time ferreting out the truth with an endless exchange of words and go straight to the source.
Underwood’s eyes unfocused, and her lips shaped a startled O as Teodoro delved into her unguarded, unshielded mind. And even though he was capable of ravaging its delicate contents like a black bear pawing open a camper’s food-filled ice chest, his touch was light, his thoughts a gentle breeze fluttering through new wheat.
It took just a split-second to find what he was looking for. It wasn’t hidden. It was forefront in her mind, lacing a skein of darkness throughout her dreams, her memories. Underwood’s dead son, Stephen.
And etched with bitter acid into her memory, a recent headline.
VALERIE UNDERWOOD ACQUITTED IN MURDER-FOR-HIRE CASE; MOTHER OF TWO WEEPS AS VERDICT
READ, THANKS JURY.
But Underwood hadn’t believed her daughter-in-law innocent, no. She’d made arrangements for another kind of justice altogether to drop in on her son’s wife—or crawl in through her window in the dead hours of the night, fanged retribution in latex and leather—in a conversation with Purcell.
So you know how Prejean’s programming works? How to activate it?
Yes, ma’am. I do. Anything you’d like me to have Prejean say to your daughter-in-law?
Yes, thank you. Have him tell the bitch that Stephen sends his regards.
Teodoro finished his fruit platter—a plump strawberry—while he thoughtfully regarded Underwood, his mental fingers still deep within her psyche. Her mind was on standby, her face blank, like that of a sleepwalking child.
He had to admit, he admired Underwood’s plan for her murderous daughter-in-law. It’d be next to impossible to tie Underwood to Valerie’s sure-to-be-bloody and terrifying death at the hands—or fangs, actually—of Dante Baptiste. If anything, law enforcement officials might suspect that Valerie Underwood had reneged in the payment for Stephen’s murder and that she’d ended up paying in blood.
Admirable or not, Underwood’s plans interfered with his own. Teodoro had thought—erroneously, it turned out—that Underwood had sent Purcell to New Orleans to snuff Baptiste. Teodoro could’ve worked with that scenario. Could’ve tweaked Underwood’s memories into believing she’d turned the mission over to Teodoro to keep herself safely distanced from any fallout.
But since Underwood was actually avenging her murdered son, Teodoro wouldn’t be able to sway the SOD’s deep-seated desire for payback, to reap a little revenge in her murdered son’s name. Couldn’t tweak it in a way that wouldn’t leave doubt buried in her subconscious like a worm wriggling beneath rain-wet soil.
Her hunger to avenge her son was the driving force rolling her out of bed in the morning and pressing her foot against the gas pedal of her Lexus on her drives in to HQ.
A shame really. He understood that hunger for justice, that fire, well. It was what drove him even now.
Teodoro wanted the young Maker to remember everything that was about to happen to him with exquisite, diamond-cut clarity. But whenever Baptiste’s programming was engaged, he remembered nothing, not even his own actions.
That wouldn’t do.
Teodoro sipped at his coffee and mulled over his options. And realized he only had one. Setting down his coffee cup, he drew in a deep breath of the bacon-greased air and went to work.
A moment later, Underwood blinked, then opened and closed her mouth, confusion twisting a frown across her lips. “What . . . what was I saying?”
Teodoro arranged the proper amount of concern on his face, furrowed his brow. “Are you feeling all right? You seemed to lose focus for a moment.”
Underwood blinked again. She rubbed one temple with her fingers, pain tight at the corners of her mouth. “A bit of a headache. I’ve got some Excedrin at the office.”
“You look a little pale,” Teodoro agreed. “Maybe you’re coming down with something.”
Shaking her head, Underwood picked up her glass of water and drained it. Setting the glass down, she said, “I don’t have time to be sick, so that’s simply not an option.” She gathered up the folder, Teodoro’s questions about Purcell gone from her memory. “Thanks for this, Dнon. I’ll make sure the Committee knows that the director has been compromised and that Britto is called on the carpet for it.”
“Glad I could help, ma’am,” Teodoro said, sliding out of the booth and scooping up the meal check at the same time. “I’ll get this. You can get the next one.”
Underwood snorted. “Thank you, but I’m hoping there won’t be a reason for another clandestine meeting.”
Teodoro chuckled. “Me too, ma’am. Me too.”
Teodoro was stepping outside the door when he heard the clatter of dishes against carpet and a panicked cry from the chubby waitress clearing dishes from the last booth on the right.
“Someone call 911!”
Teodoro slipped out the door and strode across the parking lot to his shining cranberry Prius. He didn’t need to look to know that the stroke had left SOD Celeste Underwood facedown on her emptied plate, maple syrup gluing her dark cheek to the stoneware.
Climbing into the Prius, Teodoro belted himself in behind the steering wheel. Through the cafй’s main window, he watched frantic activity taking place beside the booth he’d just left. He started the car’s engine.
He’d liked Underwood, despite her prickly manner, had enjoyed working with her for the last decade, and he regretted what he’d been forced to do. But in the grand scheme of things, her life meant little. After all these centuries, he finally had an opportunity to take from the Fallen the thing they most wanted—just as they’d once done to him.
Soon the Princes of Gehenna would have no choice but to slay their precious, long-awaited creawdwr as madness reshaped him into the Great Destroyer.
Pulling from the parking lot onto the highway, he aimed the Prius for the Shadow Branch’s underground facilities. He had a gift for Violet—a new box of crayons.
20
HARD NEWS
NEW ORLEANS
CAFЙ DU MONDE
March 28
TAKING A SIP OF his cafй au lait, Field Agent Richard Purcell folded back the front page of the Times-Picayune and scanned the headlines. A smile stretched his lips when he spotted a paragraph on page 4
detailing the blazing conflagration that had destroyed the home of local rock musician Dante Prejean the night before. One life was lost—that of Simone Martinique.
Purcell remembered how the scene had looked when he’d arrived about an hour after the fire had been doused and the fire trucks had finally left.
The plantation house has burned down to its foundation. A couple of fire-blackened walls poke up into the night like fingers scorched to the bone. Several huge old oaks look like torched skeletons—leaves gone, gnarled and twisted branches crisped black. Smoke hangs in the air, a lung-coating reek of incinerated wood, molten metal, and irretrievable loss. The wet street gleams in the moonlight.
The newspaper stated that witnesses had mentioned hearing shattering glass and explosions, suggestive of Molotov cocktails. The survivors denied hearing anything.
Of course the bloodsuckers denied hearing anything, Purcell mused. They would take care of the problem on their own, leaving blood and ruin in their wake.
And Prejean—the little fucking psycho codenamed S—would bathe in the shit, a knowing smile curving his lips, his pale, pale face incandescent with a devastating beauty.
A beauty Purcell’s heart had hardened against years before. S’s sexy spell wouldn’t work on him. Never had.
The chug-chug-chug of powerful ship engines echoed from the Mississippi, and the cool morning air smelled of river water and mud and sweet pastries as Purcell sat back in his chair, eating his beignet with its liberal dusting of powdered sugar, and watched the pigeons hopping around the cafй’s covered terrace, heads cocked to one side as if they hoped to force crumbs to the pavement with a hungry pigeon’s version of the Force. Pigeon Jedi mind tricks.
Breaking off a couple of pieces from the beignet, he tossed them in front of the optimistic pigeons. Well, look at that. It worked.
Chuckling, he polished off his beignet and brushed sugar from his hands. He scooted back his chair, scraping it across the pavement and causing a few pigeons to hop away madly. Just as he stood, his cell phone vibrated in his trouser pocket. He pulled it free and looked at the caller ID. Unknown. Frowning, he answered the call.
“Purcell. And who is this?”
“It’s Dнon, Purcell. Are you sitting down? I have some hard news.”
The fact that a field interrogator was calling him with hard news instead of SOD Underwood shuffled unpleasant possibilities through Purcell’s mind with all the faster-than-the-eye speed of a deck of cards in the hands of a Vegas blackjack dealer. But the
ace of spades in that deck was the most likely possibility: Underwood’s little plot had been discovered and she was in deep, deep trouble.
And, maybe, just maybe, so was he. The beignet in his belly turned to stone. He planted his butt back in his chair.
“I’m sitting,” he said roughly.
“SOD Underwood died of a stroke this morning.”
Purcell stared at the splay-toed pigeon prints in the powdered sugar scattered on the pavement. His pulse pounded in his temples. That card hadn’t even been tucked into his deck of possibilities. Underwood, dead?
“A stroke?” he repeated like an idiot, not sure of what to say.
“Yeah,” Dнon sighed. “A massive one. The attending doc said she went quick, if that’s any consolation.”
“Fuck.” Purcell trailed a hand through his hair. Now what? Should he continue with the mission, for Underwood’s sake? See her daughter-in-law into her well-deserved grave?
But even as those thoughts were zipping through Purcell’s mind, Dнon said, in a low, European-flavored voice, “Underwood told me about the gift for her daughter-in-law that you were going to deliver for her.”
Fear curled a cold hand around Purcell’s guts. He went still. “She did, did she?”
A low, rueful laugh. “I didn’t pluck it from her mind. Christ, Purcell. Why would I even be looking?”
Good question. A damned fine question, and one Purcell was going to examine in minute detail and in every kind of light later. Once he’d figured out what Dнon wanted.
“That I don’t know,” he admitted. “So how come you’re breaking the news?”
“So we could discuss mutual concerns.”
“Those being . . . ?”
“Terminating Prejean and fulfilling Underwood’s last request.”
Laughter from tourists strolling along Decatur street headed for the French Market carried like music on the still air. “Keep talking,” Purcell said.
A grin stretched across Purcell’s lips and excitement crackled like crazed lightning through his veins as he listened to Dнon’s urbane voice lay out his plan for S and his traitorous FBI squeeze, Heather Wallace.
Etched in Bone (Maker's Song #4) Page 18