by Nancy Gideon
“It’s not that simple. Jacques’s made a life for himself here. I don’t know how I’d fit into it or how he’d blend into mine. The work I’m doing is important in the North. Not for the Chosen and their politics, but for all of us. I don’t know how to bring our two worlds together without one of us having to make a terrible sacrifice.”
“Maybe there’s more of a place for you here than you realize. Let me work on that while you get that serum ready to go.”
“It’ll only take me a few hours. I’ve collected all that I need: human DNA from your friend Dev, Ancient from Nica, Shifter from Jacques, and my own Chosen. I’ve determined the percentages. I just need some more time in the lab.”
“Let’s go.”
Susanna hesitated, and Charlotte intuited the problem.
“Leave him a note. I’ll take responsibility.”
Preparing the serum using her computations was as easy as mixing a protein drink. When they went to the hospital and she stood at Mary Kate Malone’s bedside, Susanna looked at Charlotte. “Are you sure this is what she’d want?”
A slight hesitation, then a firm, “Yes. Do it.”
After the injection was given, Charlotte’s tension drained away on a sigh. Her hand stroked over the invalid’s blonde hair as she leaned down to murmur, “We’ll talk again soon.”
“I’ll leave instructions with the staff,” Susanna said. “I’ll receive updates online any time there’s a change.”
She suddenly noticed a priest standing in the doorway.
Charlotte made stiff introductions. “Dr. Susanna Duchamps, Father Michael Furness. I think each of you has something the other wants.”
“How did this happen?” Jacques raged at Philo Tibideaux. “He was secured, sedated, and now he’s just gone?”
Philo glanced to where MacCreedy and Nica stood out of earshot. “He didn’t just walk away.”
“What did he do? Fly?”
“Near as I can figure,” Philo continued uncomfortably, “Morris and some of the others took him.”
“What do you mean, took him? Where? Why?”
“It’s my fault. I was going on about keeping the monsters who kilt Tito outta our city, and how they’d be coming sure as shit for Savoie.”
Jacques’s hand fisted in Philo’s shirt, yanking him to his toes. “You gave me your word!”
“And I meant to keep it, Jackie—I did. But some a them got to thinkin’ that I was letting my friendship with you get in the way a takin’ care a business. So they decided to take matters outta my hands.”
Jacques shoved him away. “So what do the bastards plan to do?”
Philo’s expression grew grim. “They mean to make whatever sacrifice is necessary to protect our own.”
“They’re going to kill him?” The notion was too incredible to grasp at first. “Is that what they plan to do?”
Philo didn’t answer.
Jacques sank into a crouch, clasping his head in his hands. Then he snapped, “These were your men. You vouched for them.”
“They’re our friends, Jackie, yours and mine. We work with ’em, drink with ’em, bury our dead with ’em. They were doing what they thought was right.”
Jacques exploded up and began to pace furiously. “Where did they go? Where did the sonsabitches take him?”
Philo set his jaw. “I don’t know.”
Jacques rounded on him, eyes blazing. “Don’t know or won’t say?”
“What are you meaning to do? Go after ’em? Maybe let your new friends there tear ’em into little pieces? I ain’t gonna let that happen. I’m surely sorry about Savoie, but I’m not turning on our friends, our brothers. I won’t give you any names.”
“Morris will give them up.”
Philo gripped his friend’s arm. “And then what? Jackie, think this through. After all we been to each other, you planning to turn on your own for an outsider?”
Jacques threw off his hand. “They weren’t treating me as one of their own when I was bleeding on my floor right in front of them. Maybe to them I’m just an outsider, too. And maybe deep down, you’re thinking the same thing.”
He stormed away in fury and frustration, turning his back on seven years of friendship in favor of the calm and deadly pair that so recently had become a part of his life.
“They took Max. They’re gonna kill him.”
“Do we know where?” MacCreedy asked.
Jacques shook his head, ready to howl in aggravation and from a deep-seated fear that whatever they did, it would be too late.
“Silas can find him,” Nica insisted. At her mate’s perplexed look, she explained, “You linked psyches with him to free me. You know the pattern of his thoughts.”
“What if that pattern’s gone?”
The three of them sat in Jacques’s trailer in near darkness.
Jacques wouldn’t have believed such things were possible. He knew the Chosen had strong mental abilities, but discovering them in those he’d thought were like him was unsettling. He’d always known Nica was somehow different. Discovering she was part of the early race generally thought to be pure myth was startling, but he’d go with it because it explained that uncanny insight she displayed. But finding out Silas MacCreedy was of that same ancient blood was even more disturbing.
It was some consolation that MacCreedy seemed as uneasy as he was with these mysterious powers. Nica had to work to get the usually level Silas relaxed and receptive. With his coat and tie off, shirt collar open, and sleeves pushed up, the Shifter cop took a deep breath and let his mate coax him into closing his eyes.
“I’m right here, lover,” Nica soothed, beginning a gentle massage of his temples. “Just let your thoughts empty. Breathe. That’s it. Now concentrate on Max. Breathe in his scent.” When Silas’s breathing altered encouragingly, she urged, “Look through his eyes. What do you see?”
“Nothing. Darkness.”
“What do you feel?”
“Motion. Vibration. A vehicle. He’s in a vehicle. A big one. Lot’s of open space. A van, maybe.”
“Good. What do you smell?”
“The river, but it’s faint. The city. He’s still in the city. Stop and go.” MacCreedy began a slight rocking as if he were a passenger, too. “Sirens. Ambulance. Hospital? Circle?”
“He’s at Lee Circle,” Jacques interjected, excitement beginning to build.
“What is he thinking? Is he awake?”
MacCreedy’s head moved from side to side. “Confusion. Can’t think clearly. Danger. Darkness.” His breathing quickened.
“How many are with you?”
“Hear voices. Familiar but don’t know them. Five, maybe six. Crossing tracks. Going to . . . the park?”
“Audubon? Riverside? Armstrong?”
“Audubon,” Jacques declared.
MacCreedy’s rocking grew more manic. His voice took on an almost childlike singsong. “Jimmy, help me. Jimmy, save me.”
Nica looked to Jacques in question.
“Legere. Max’s mentor. He’s dead. Why would he—?”
MacCreedy gave a sudden lurch forward, dropping to his knees, his palms flat on the floor. He took several huge gulping breaths, then lifted his gaze to Nica’s. “He’s out. He’s loose. I lost him.”
“Where? Where would he be going?”
A revelation struck Jacques. “I know. We need to hurry.”
MacCreedy remained slumped on his knees and forearms, trembling from the telepathic effort. When Nica’s hand touched his head in concern, he panted, “Go. I’ll be fine. Go!”
Nica’s little sports car ripped out of the Quarter toward St. Charles in the Garden District.
“Where to?” she asked without looking at her passenger.
“Lafayette Cemetery. Turn on Washington.”
“I thought Legere was interred in St. Louis Number One?”
“He is. But Max is confused. He’d go for the familiar, for protection. Dammit, this is my fault.”
“They’re
your friends. You trusted them.”
“But I knew how they felt about Savoie. I just never thought—”
“That they’d betray you?” She did a quick downshift, then reached over to press his hand. “It wasn’t personal, Jacques. It was business. Remember that.”
It was cold comfort.
An old white panel van sat parked on the wrong side of Washington near the locked gates of Lafayette No. 1. Nica parked behind it.
“Looks like this is the place,” she said with a soft purr that had the hair standing on Jacques’s arms. “Hand me that bag under the seat, would you?”
He passed her the roadside emergency kit and watched as she flipped it open and plucked out the jumper cables, flare, and lug wrench. When she caught his look, she showed her teeth in a feral smile.
“A girl’s got to be prepared.”
At that moment, Jacques was very glad he was with her and not against her.
They got out of the car and, quickly shifting into the deadly predators they were, went over the eight-foot stone wall and landed without a sound.
The old cemetery was a lush, tranquil spot during daylight hours. In the deep midnight shadows, it whispered with long-dead ghosts. Row after row of vaults created a maze of gleaming marble, ancient brick, and crumbling stone, many of the family tombs neatly fenced in like the elegant homes in the surrounding district. Nica gestured for him to head down a long row of wall ovens, then she trotted, low and sleek, down the wide main drive.
Unlike St. Louis No. 1, with its narrow, hard-packed paths, Lafayette Cemetery was parklike, with old spreading oaks reaching across wide avenues with late fall branches twisted and gnarled like arthritic bones. Paved aisles were edged by grass slick with gathering fog as cool, night air met warm, resting earth.
Jacques moved swiftly, gaze darting through breaks between the mausoleums, senses keen as he searched for any sign of Max and the van’s occupants. If he could find them before Nica, he’d have a chance to talk them down from unnecessary violence. These were friends he was chasing, not enemies. But he couldn’t allow them to harm the potential savior of their race.
The night was still with no breeze to carry the sound of hurried breaths, scuffling footfalls, or the scent of nonresidents roaming the city of the dead. Darkness was relieved by the pale, eerie glow of silent figures staring down at him in spectral disapproval, monuments honoring the departed shaped like angels, lambs, saints, and children at prayer.
Jacques didn’t hear Nica. She moved as quiet as a cloud across the fingernail moon above. But now he could detect the presence of intruders who weren’t worried about stealth. Because they didn’t know they were being hunted.
A crunching of gravel brought Jacques sharply about. He peered through the narrow opening between two centuries-old mausoleums and saw furtive figures skimming down the next row, searching hurriedly just as he was. He ran parallel to them back toward the central drive, catching fleeting glimpses every now and again. Then he heard a trickle of loose stone from above.
As Jacques lifted his head, he saw eyes flaming red and a jaw stretched wide baring lethal fangs. There was no time for talk or reasoning before he was struck to the ground by the plummeting assailant.
With one hand, Jacques gripped a thickly corded neck, pushing snapping teeth away as his other groped wildly about, finally closing around a weighty cement urn. He swung hard, hearing bone crack as contact was made. Suddenly freed, he scrambled up, getting a brief look at the crushed features of Rohm Bentley. They’d spent many a late night together over cards and stories, stories they’d never share again. Jacques forced himself to look away and moved on.
He’d barely gone three running strides before another figure slammed into his back, knocking him facefirst into a marble wall etched with a list of the generations housed behind it. Blood spilled from a split in his brow, staining both stone and shirtfront as he was dragged back and up onto his knees by the huge hand crumpling his windpipe.
Just as his vision began to fade and spark, he saw an image glide out of the shadows, long weighted whips whirling overhead before spinning in a deadly arc. The pressure abruptly disappeared from his throat, allowing him to suck a sharp, sweet breath of air as his attacker fell back, broken neck tangled in jumper cables.
Jessie Vaughn, who’d taught him to spear fish from his flat-bottomed pirogue, would never return home to his mate and three children.
Jacques wobbled to his feet and focused on stealthy shadows moving rapidly up on Nica. Using all his strength, he wrenched one of the metal pickets from the grillwork fence surrounding the Bartlet family and hurled it like a spear straight through the jugular of Bobby Tibble, whose head he’d held over a planter box outside Pat O’Brien’s after one too many Mardi Gras hurricanes. In the darkness, his lifeblood flew like ropes of Krewe beads.
Jacques dropped down onto all fours, stomach roiling, blood and tears blinding his eyes. And then he saw a flash of movement, a sinewy figure springing up to the top of one of the tombs, leaping with the fluidity of spilled mercury from one to the next and the next.
“Max!”
Jacques staggered to his feet, rushing in pursuit.
He heard just a whisper. Like a fierce bird of prey, Nica swooped down from the concrete cross atop one of the crypts, leaping over his head and onto the man lunging at him from behind. He heard them both fall but didn’t look back as the sound of Nica’s snarls overtook brief panicked cries.
Finally, Jacques paused, breathing hard, gaze flying the length of two shadowed paths, seeing nothing. Then a ripple like dark smoke from a chimney.
“Max!”
He took a running step and the stone beneath his feet cracked, splitting open for a jarring drop into a buried vault hidden beneath tangled ropes of ivy. His feet broke through aged and weakened wood, landing atop he didn’t want to consider what . . . or who. It took him a dazed moment to take stock of his situation, wedged midchest between two slabs of stone caving downward, arms pinned to his sides.
And then he heard a soft rumbling growl.
Jacques couldn’t turn toward the sound, but he could sense Savoie somewhere close behind him.
“This is your doing, LaRoche.”
As his gaze came up, a pipe slammed against his jaw. Pain burst through his brain like fireworks, bright and explosive, settling into dizzying pindots of color.
Morris came into view. “You think you’re something, don’t you, with your fancy new friends and that manipulative little whore, stripping me of my job and my pride right in front of everybody. You’re not much now, are you? You should have minded your bar and your own business. Now I’m gonna have to finish it because Tib didn’t have the heart to.”
As Morris raised the pipe to deliver a skull-cracking blow, a hiss sounded behind him, followed by the blinding phosphorescent flash of the road flare. It struck Morris in the back, igniting his shirt, sending him in tight circles, arms flailing. Nica knocked him to the ground and crouched down, knee on his sternum, her smile coldly vicious, her mouth wet and red.
“I got to wondering on the drive out here,” she began. “Why keep Savoie alive? Why didn’t you just kill him and take him out to dump in the swamps? He was worth more alive than dead, wasn’t he?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Morris moaned.
“Frost said he had someone on the inside, and that someone was you, wasn’t it? How much did it take for you to betray your own kind?”
“It wasn’t like that. They caught me on my Patrol, told me no one had to die if I’d let them have Savoie. They gave me a card with a number on it. I was gonna throw it away, until he brought them back.” He screamed wildly to Jacques, “Why did you bring them back? You’re gonna kill us all!”
“Oh, yeah, right. You were just doing your duty to your clan, removing a dangerous threat,” Nica sneered. “For a tidy profit. That’s what this was about. You were turning Savoie in for cash.”
Morris surged up suddenly, fea
r lending him the strength to topple her. He’d scrambled a few yards when the lethal shape of Max Savoie sprang and flattened him to the ground, separating head from shoulders in one swift killing blow.
Nica gripped Jacques under the arms, twisting his torso, pounding on the stones with her heels until they gave way, increasing the opening far enough for her to pull him out. He crawled onto the grass, weaving up to his feet only to be taken down on his back again with Max crouched over him drooling blood, eyes flaming gold and red.
Instead of struggling, Jacques caught his face between his hands, holding him away, keeping him still. “Max, you know me. Look at me. I’m your friend. I’m here to help you. I’m here to take you home.”
Panting, snarling with each breath, Max hesitated. And that gave Nica enough time to come up behind him, seizing the side of his neck in a fierce compression that had him dropping across Jacques in a motionless heap.
“Vulcan neck pinch,” she confided as she lifted Savoie’s slack weight off Jacques, then hoisted Max up over her shoulder. “I’ll put him in the car while you call for a cleanup crew. We make a pretty kick-ass team, boss.”
Jacques was silent. The asses they’d kicked had belonged to friends whose faces would haunt his dreams.
Twenty-three
Dawn pinked over the river as Susanna let herself into the apartment. She hummed with an excitement she couldn’t wait to share with Jacques, news that would change their future.
Even cut short by the terse message Charlotte received from MacCreedy, the meeting with Father Furness proved one of startling hope and opportunity. Imagine, the burly priest, a leader of the Naturalist movement in New Orleans with a network and contacts even more sophisticated than the ones she’d tapped in the North.
Furness was surprisingly knowledgeable, and after several enthusiastic hours of discussion, he’d made her a dream offer: a place within their network to conduct her research, unmolested by fear or ignorance. Her own lab, funded by a cause she believed in, to further the health and safety of those she cared for. Unrestricted avenues to explore with a database and technical support equal to what she was used to.