Dangerous Calling (The Shadowminds)

by AJ Larrieu

  “Sibyls are rare.”

  I looked at the wire we’d strung up along the front porch, the UV light bulbs hanging like weird ornaments from the eaves. “We’ll be there this afternoon.”

  * * *

  Diana didn’t have anything to pack. My clothes and Mina’s were both too small for her, so we gave her some of Shane’s T-shirts and cotton pajama pants. Hopefully Susannah would take care of her wardrobe once she got settled in Biloxi.

  “You sure Charlie won’t mind you taking another day off?” I asked Shane.

  “I’m not letting you go alone.”

  It wasn’t an answer, but I wasn’t going to argue with him. We were planning to get there and back before night fell, but I still felt safer with Shane by my side.

  We left immediately after breakfast. There was no point in risking darkness. Wasted Guy was sitting on the front porch and smoking a cigarette, waving at us as we left. He looked moderately less drunk. Maybe he’d slept it off.

  Diana sat in the back seat and played with a piece of ribbon from one of the guest room soap packages. As we left the French Quarter behind she stared out the window with her brow furrowed. “Biloxi. That’s on the beach, right?” She threaded the ribbon through her fingers and unwound it again. “I’ve never been to the beach.”

  Shane and I exchanged a look.

  “Diana, how long were you...” I was about to say trapped in that house, but I amended it at the last second, “...with Annette?”

  “Sixteen years this August. She got me out of the institution when I was eight.”

  The car swerved, just a little.

  “What?” Shane said.

  I didn’t turn around, but I could see her in the side-view mirror. She was still looking out the window.

  “Uh, what institution?” I felt vaguely bad for the question. Was this the kind of thing you weren’t supposed to ask?

  Diana didn’t seem to mind. “My parents thought I was crazy. I’d been in there two years when she found me. It was the visions—they thought I was insane or mentally disabled or something, and either way, they didn’t want to deal with me, so.” She shrugged. “I don’t even remember what they looked like anymore.”

  Sixteen years. I remembered the bizarre skeleton in the parlor. Sixteen years she’d been exploited by a violent and potentially unstable vampire.

  Maybe it was understandable that she was a little strange.

  “Did you...you know. Go to school?”

  “Annette taught me. I can speak French and Spanish and German and I’ve read everything in her library. And I can play the piano and the violin and the harp. I saw the old fiddle in your sister’s room. It was out of tune.”

  Shane opened his mouth but couldn’t figure out what to say.

  “So she pretty much raised you.”

  “I would’ve died without her. She trained me.”

  The surface of her mind offered up another memory, this one in a dark, plain room lit with red lights. Diana sat cross-legged on the floor, and Annette sat across from her.

  “Again,” Annette said.

  “I’m tired.” Diana’s voice was whiny, young.

  Annette’s pale eyes flashed, and there was threat in them. Diana called up memory imbedded in memory, scenes of Annette locking her in lightless, coffin-sized boxes for days, forcing her to sit in ice baths until she could quiet her mind, depriving her of food until she was too weak to move, forcing her to direct the visions.

  “Again.” Annette’s voice was harder.

  Diana’s vision went dark, a slow blotting-out of the bare room and the hardwood floor. It was replaced with the image of a dark-haired woman, tall and beautiful, selecting apples in a grocery store. Diana shut the memory down before it went further.

  “Good,” Annette said, voice sweet with praise. “Good. Now clear your mind and do it again.”

  Diana’s memory cleared, and she ushered us out of her head with gentle but irresistible force.

  “She taught me how to control my sight. I think I would’ve gone insane without her.”

  “But you’re going along with this whole—” plan to kill her, “—thing?”

  “Oh no,” Diana said, and at first I thought the fact that we were planning to kill what amounted to her abusive adoptive mother had finally occurred to her in a way it previously hadn’t. But when I twisted around to look at her, I saw a police car with its lights on gaining on us.

  “Shane,” I said. “Cop.”

  “Shit.” His eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, and he pulled over. “Maybe it’s not for us.”

  “Were you speeding?”

  “I was going the limit.”

  Gravel crunched as Shane slowed to the shoulder. I held my breath, hoping they’d pass us by. No such luck. The cruiser pulled up behind us, lights still flashing. Shane put his hands on the wheel and left them there.

  “Maybe the taillight’s out.”

  Shane gave me a look. The officer used her bullhorn. “Sir, keep your hands on the wheel.”

  “Is that a cop? It’s a cop, right?” Diana craned around in the back seat.

  “Don’t worry.” I said.

  The cop got out of her cruiser. She had her hand over her gun, and it was making me nervous. I dipped into her head, afraid I’d find panic and a hair-trigger. If I did, she was going down. I could drop her in the road and we could drive away as if nothing ever happened.

  Her mind was weirdly calm—nothing in there but the present. She was on her radio, calling in our license plate, but that was all. She approached the window and knocked on it. Shane rolled it down.

  “Was I speeding, officer?” Shane’s brows drew together.

  “We have reports of a stolen vehicle of this make and model in the area. Can you prove ownership of this vehicle?”

  “Sure, registration’s in the glove box—” Shane reached for the handle.

  “Put your hands on the wheel.”

  “I’m just going to—”

  “Hands on the wheel!” The cop drew her gun and pointed it at Shane’s chest. My jaw dropped. Diana watched the whole thing with the kind of detachment most people have watching action movies. Either she’d seen it all in a vision, or she’d watched Annette kill so many people, the sight of a gun had no impact on her at all.

  “Okay, okay.” Shane put his hands on the wheel and looked straight ahead. “Relax.”

  “Step out of the vehicle.”

  Shane opened the car door slowly and slid one foot out. It took everything I had not to pull from the cop. I could knock her out in an instant. Only the knowledge that she’d called in our plates stopped me, but fear and fury tangled in my chest and rose until it stopped seeming like a bad idea and starting feeling like the only idea. My fists clenched. She was going down. I pictured her limp body on the side of the road and let the pull loose like a yank. The cop shook her head in confusion. I smiled, satisfied. It wouldn’t take much. I sank the pull deeper, deeper—

  “Cass, no.” Shane, clear as church bells in my head, cut through the emotion. “Don’t.”

  I blinked. The pull unraveled and the fury cleared. Had I really been about to pull her to death? My hands were shaking.

  “Turn around and put your hands on the hood of the vehicle!”

  Shane did as he was told. “This is a misunderstanding,” he said.

  The cop ignored him. Diana was hyperventilating in the back seat.

  “My registration is in the glove box.” Shane’s voice was calm. “You can get it yourself, if you want.”

  “Shut up.” The cop patted Shane down and found the Swiss Army knife he kept in his pocket. “What’s this?”

  “It’s a pocketknife,” Shane said, with just the edge of a smile. “I’m pretty sure they’re not il
legal.”

  “I’m confiscating it.” She took out a pair of cuffs.

  I watched, stunned. This was ridiculous. This wasn’t happening.

  “Hey!” My brain finally kicked into gear, and I got out of the car. “We didn’t steal this car. We have proof—you can’t just do this.”

  But she could.

  Half an hour later, all three of us were in holding cells in a police station at the very edge of the city.

  Diana sat on the end of a bolted-down bench and stared at the wall. I paced the room and watched her to make sure she was still breathing. I couldn’t tell if she was stoically accepting the situation or going into a terror-induced fugue state. The emotions coming off of her didn’t feel like panic, so I went with the former.

  Our cell had one other occupant, a girl who couldn’t have been more than nineteen and smelled as though she’d consumed an entire fifth of tequila before arriving. Ten minutes after they put us in, she threw up in the metal toilet in the corner.

  “Whassa matter with her?” Drunk Girl said, looking at Diana.

  “She’s fine.” I went back to pacing.

  Shane was only a few feet away through a cinderblock wall. I couldn’t see him, but at least we could mindspeak.

  “It has to be her,” I sent.

  He was sitting down on a bench identical to Diana’s, just against the other side of the wall. “I was thinking the same thing.”

  I felt him slump against the cinderblocks.

  “The officer—you think she worked mind control on her?”

  “Probably.”

  “Then we’ve got to get out of here. We’re sitting ducks in these cells.”

  “Shane! Cassie!” Hallelujah. It was Lionel. His voice was faint, and he was straining himself to reach me, but it was him. I felt Shane stand up.

  “Lionel! You got our message?”

  “Landline was cut. I only just got word. Your winged friend called in a favor with one of his old buddies in the NOPD.”

  “So we’re getting out of here?”

  “Should be any minute.”

  “Thank God.”

  “Diana—” I began, then the lights went out.

  “Shit,” Shane said.

  Footsteps sounded on the stairs. I knew better than to expect one of the officers.

  “Whoa, lady, that is one sweet coat,” Drunk Girl said.

  I had to agree. If Vogue had a special edition on vampire fashion, Annette would’ve made the cover. She was wearing a long-sleeved black shirt, black cigarette pants, a black trench coat and black sunglasses. The coat curled around legs. Her boots had spike heels. She was wearing gloves. The exposed skin of her face was luminously pale, and she stood in the shadow of the light coming through the single high window. I stood protectively in front of Diana.

  “Fuck.” Shane rattled the gate next door.

  “Pick the lock.” I barely kept the panic out of my mental voice.

  “Trying. This thing is a beast.” He slammed his hand into the gate in frustration.

  Annette grasped the steel bars of our cell in both hands and yanked the gate free.

  “Holy shit!” Drunk Girl backed into a corner. Where the hell were the officers? Why weren’t they flying down here, weapons drawn? I hoped the answer wasn’t that all of them were dead.

  Annette threw the gate down the hall, where it clanged and slid, crashing into a black garbage can in the corner. She blinked her unnaturally pale eyes in the dim light. They reddened around the edges the closer she got to the sunlight.

  I wanted to run. God help me, I wanted to flee as she walked forward. Diana backed up until she hit the wall and flattened her palms against it. Annette held out a black-gloved hand toward her.

  “Dia. Come home.”

  It took a moment for Diana to respond. She shook her head twice and went still, then shook it again, harder. She set her jaw and didn’t break her gaze from Annette’s.

  Annette’s terrifying eyes flashed with some mixture of anger and hurt. “You’re with these people by choice?” Her voice was soft with disbelief.

  “I’m done. I’m not going with you.”

  Annette walked past me as though I wasn’t even there. I was such a nonentity to her, such a lack of threat, she could afford to ignore me completely. She stopped a few feet from Diana.

  “I went to a great deal of trouble to retrieve you today. You aren’t thinking clearly. Come home, and we’ll discuss this.”

  No one could mistake it for a request. I gathered my power, allowing myself to pull a tiny boost from Drunk Girl. In the cell next door, Shane finally disabled the lock, and the gate creaked as it swung free.

  “Careful,” I sent him.

  “Don’t worry about me.” His tennis shoes were silent on the linoleum. I held my breath.

  He came into view behind us, holding what looked like a pair of bolt cutters. He must have lifted them from the station. I kept my gaze on Annette, willing my heart to slow, willing her not to turn.

  I forgot all about Drunk Girl. She took one look at Shane and her eyes went wide. It was enough. Annette turned, saw him, and launched herself right at him.

  She’s going to kill you. The memory of Diana’s words was a sliver of ice in my chest.

  Diana screamed, or maybe I did. It was hard to tell. Shane threw up a defensive block, but Annette was too powerful, and he went down beneath her. Diana ran at her, beating at her with an open palm with all the effectiveness of a flyswatter on a bulldozer. I was so panicked, I almost did the same thing. Drunk Girl lost control of her bladder and shrieked in a continuous high note of terror, then fled through the ruined gate. All three of them rolled across the floor, and Susannah’s words came back to me.

  Rip out her heart.

  I didn’t have a weapon. I could lift one from the station, but that was risky, and a gun was too dangerous in a fray like this. I chose the best weapon I had. I reached telekinetically into her chest.

  I let my power slip through the wall of muscle. My mental touch was light, an assessment. Her heart beat like any heart would beat, the rush of blood through her veins as regular and fragile as any human’s. She should die like any human would when I tore it out. I tightened my grip.

  I couldn’t hold on.

  It was like trying to sink my fingers into a bucket of Jell-O and pull out a specific, indiscernible chunk. Her flesh slid through my telekinetic grip and reformed around it, pushing my matterless force aside like a river charting a new course through sandy earth.

  I’d never felt anything like it. The physical world just didn’t behave that way—I’d never found anything that could slip out of my mental grasp so easily. I scrabbled for a better grip, but she only turned to me and smiled.

  She threw Shane—just threw him, like you would throw a used tissue. He hit the metal grate of the cell with a clang and crumpled to the ground, knocked out. In the next instant she was on top of me.

  “You,” she said, “are just an inconvenience.” A patch of sunlight hit her cheek, and the skin there reddened and blistered. She hissed in annoyance and shifted out of its path. She wrapped her fingers in my hair and looked directly into my eyes. “Don’t move.”

  The words had the feel of a demand. Worse, I obeyed them. I wanted to. Some small part of me resisted, but it was a moth in a hurricane, exactly like the time she’d cornered me behind the old kitchen at the B&B. I knew I should struggle, but I couldn’t make my body participate.

  Annette’s fangs extended. It was like watching a grass shoot break the earth in a time-lapse video.

  I went oddly calm. This definitely wasn’t the way I’d pictured myself dying. Shane still wasn’t moving. He was alive, I could tell that much, but he wouldn’t be for long. Diana was crying and pulling on Annette’s arm, but t
he vampire paid as much attention to her as she would a fly. This was it. Annette was going to kill me, and then she was going to kill Shane and take Diana back to Shadow House. We were out of time.

  She smiled, bent her head and pricked my throat with the sharp points of her teeth. Warmth trickled down my neck. Blood. Annette tightened her grip on my shoulders and leaned closer, running her tongue from my shoulder, where blood soaked my collar, to the base of my throat, where the holes she’d made seeped. She hadn’t nicked a major artery. She was going to take it slow.

  I didn’t understand why until she started drinking my blood.

  She’d been impossible to read before, a blank space in the world. Once she latched on to the wound in my neck, I finally had a window into her head—and she had a window into mine.

  I could feel her sifting through my memories, turning them over like a child handling river stones. Shane, Lionel, Ian. Ian interested her the most. She saw his face, saw my memory of his arrival, his wings, the news report about what he’d done. I couldn’t keep her out.

  The only benefit was, she couldn’t keep me out, either.

  Want. The only thing in her mind was want. Her awareness of the pulse in my throat was painful in its focus. Flashes of memory pulsed as she drank from me. A cat twining around her ankles beneath a full-skirted dress. A smiling man consulting a pocket watch before holding out his hand to her. Diana, younger, crying while Annette stroked her back and fought down the hunger, the desire to strike. There was nothing but desire, nothing but need, nothing but a gaping, endless emptiness. It left me reeling.

  She continued to drink from my wound, continued to sift through my memories. I tried to push her out, but it was like pushing through fog, formless and impossible to attack. It was only when she watched my night with Shane after her assault on the B&B that I found the strength to rebel.

  It was instinctual. It must have been. I called up a ball of light a few feet above us. The orb was white light, like a common light bulb, and Annette only shielded her eyes. It was an irritation, an inconvenience to her, and a moment later her tongue lapped at my throat again.

  From the corner of my eye I saw Shane stir and struggle to stand.