Witchy Woman - Book 2 - The Necromancer

by Pamela M. Richter

  Leilanie was smiling as she went into surgery.

  Omar decided to go out and celebrate. Soon he would have a grand harvest. Beautiful children with special abilities that he could train himself.

  He’d heard of a great Mexican restaurant not far from the hospital.

  Chapter 12

  Michelle awakened when Dondi came into her hospital room to give her some broth. The whole nightmarish situation crashed down on her. She had to get out of here.

  She obediently began taking spoonfuls of the soup as Dondi puttered around the room, filling the water jug and fluffing pillows. Gaining her strength back was the first priority for her escape. Right now she felt like death warmed over, exhausted, sleepy, and nauseous.

  Michelle looked up at the bag on an IV stand next to her bed. She could see it dripping one quick, fat, drop at a time into the tube attached to the needle taped to her forearm.

  “Dondi? What’s the IV for?”

  “Ah, there is glucose and some nutrients inside. Also pain medication.”

  “I’m so sleepy,” Michelle said. “I can hardly keep my eyes open.”

  “The pain medication is also a sedative. It helps you rest so you will recover quickly. If you have pain, I can adjust the dosage.”

  “No, no. I’m fine.”

  That’s what I have to get rid of, Michelle thought. Even if it caused her a lot of discomfort without the IV medicine, she had to get that needle out of her arm.

  Dondi waited until Michelle finished eating and moved the tray out of the way, picking up the bowl.

  “Can you hand me my purse over there?” Michelle asked, gesturing across the room to where her purse had been placed on a chair.

  Dondi nodded and brought it to Michelle. “Your husband, Omar, came to see you, earlier, but you were asleep. He’s downstairs in suite 307.”

  “That’s nice,” Michelle mumbled as she scrabbled through her bag. Of course, her cell phone was missing. She opened the wallet. Also missing were her credit cards, driver’s license, and the meager amount of cash she’d had in there. Omar didn’t want her to be able to contact anyone, or have any funds in case she got free. In a foreign country, she was practically stranded anyway.

  Michelle found the one-hundred dollar bill she had hidden in a little secret side pocket inside her purse. It was a start. Now she had to get her clothes. She’d seen inside the closet in this room. It was empty except for a few hangers. Michelle took a deep breathe. Her clothes were probably in Omar’s room.

  She’d have to wait until the middle of the night to sneak down the corridors to his suite, hoping she could get inside to find something to wear besides a paper gown that was totally open in the back. She had to get out of this blasted place. She wanted to be home so badly her eyes teared. She wondered if anyone was taking care of Lucifer.

  Dondi stated that her ‘husband’ was staying here so he could be near her. LOL, Michelle thought. He just wanted total control.

  “I’ll be right back,” Dondi said and left the room.

  Still searching her purse to find anything that could help her escape, Michelle noted a few black bobby pins at the bottom. She twisted one around the pliable tube that was attached to her IV. She could only use one hand to do it, and it was a little tricky to pinch the plastic tube closed, but she finally accomplished the task. That stopped the flow of medicine into her arm. Now she expected to be in some pain, but at least she wouldn’t be sedated. She didn’t want to fall asleep tonight.

  Michelle’s purse was large and as she scrabbled around inside something zapped her hand. It almost felt like an electrical shock of some kind, but maybe it was a an insect bite, she thought. She noted a tiny red spot on her palm when she inspected where she’d been hurt.

  She upended the purse on her bed and shook it, watching carefully to see if something deadly would skitter out. If there was a bug inside, she wasn’t going to reach in again; not blindly anyway. Damn, she thought, when she saw the huge, almost blindly brilliant diamond, roll out of her purse. It was the one Omar gave her; the diamond Wendy had held when she fell to her death from Omar’s condominium. There was no doubt this was the same diamond.

  Omar must have put it there, she thought. Maybe it was some kind of bribe to show the wealth he would bestow on her if she followed his wishes without question. That was certainly something she would never consider. Omar was evil and just plain nuts if he thought she could be swayed by expensive gifts.

  As she held the diamond, she found it felt ice cold, but also seemed to warm her hand. There were so many legends about diamonds, and crystals in general; how they were magic, how they healed, how they gave strength, and how they were commonly used in enchantment spells. Magicians peered into crystal balls to divine the future.

  The odd thing was, as she held the diamond in her closed palm, she felt a lot of her strength returning. It was like her body was filling with sparkling energy. Also, her pain diminished dramatically.

  Maybe the gem really did have magical powers. If so, it would be nice to know how to use it effectively to get out of this deadly predicament, because she knew that eventually Omar would deem her superficial. He’d get her eggs and get rid of her, since she could incriminate him in many of his nefarious, perverse schemes.

  The one thing Michelle didn’t recognize from her purse was a plain white envelope that had fallen out of it. Hoping to find some cash, she took it out. It wasn’t sealed and she pulled out a folded document. As she did so, some photographs fell out of the envelope. She shuffled through them, bewildered. Pictures of herself and Omar. On the beach at night. She was wearing a long, white, formfitting dress, that looked like a wedding gown made of satin. She had white flowers, like tiny Orchids, braided through a small tiara with sparkling diamonds on her head. The tiara was attached to a veil that hung just past her shoulders.

  She was smiling. Omar was beside her, wearing a tuxedo.

  Michelle unfolded the document and her eyes opened wide, shocked. It was a certificate of marriage. Michelle Montgomery and Omar Satinov. It was signed on the bottom. She recognized her own signature.

  Michelle heard the squeaking of rubber soled shoes. The nurse was coming back down the hallway. She quickly stuffed the document and pictures back into her purse and tucked her arm under the sheet, afraid Dondi would notice that the IV wasn’t dripping anymore.

  Dondi came back inside, setting a bowl of green Jello in front of Michelle. “Dessert.”

  “Thanks. You mentioned my sister is in the room next door?” Michelle asked, still in a state of astonished disbelief from her discovery of those photos, trying to act normal.

  Maybe Leilanie had clothes in her room that she could take to flee the hospital. Slim chance though, since Leilanie was about a foot shorter than she was.

  “Yes. She’s such a sweet girl. She just got out of surgery an hour ago. You can go visit her in a while, she’s asleep now.”

  Shit. It sounded like Leilanie had already been implanted with an egg, Michelle thought. Could this nightmare get any worse? It seemed, from the pictures, that she was really married to Omar. How could that have happened? Why couldn’t she remember something so important?

  Michelle closed her eyes and tried to see the pictures of herself and Omar on the beach and create it as a reality.

  Flash: She was shivering because the gown was cold satin. It was night and she had trouble walking on the beach in fashionable silvery white high heels that kept sinking into the sand. She had to hold on Omar’s arm to keep from falling over and he finally picked her up and carried her through the dark night.

  Flash: It seemed like a waking dream. Clouds were moving past the moon and producing shadows over the ground as Omar strode toward an altar made of wood, covered with flowers. Behind the altar were tall tiki stakes with flames burning atop them, illuminating the beach.

  Flash: Gazing around, Michelle saw a few people standing as witnesses in front of the altar in a circle, but realized she didn’t know t
hem. She could hear the rushing ocean waves in the background, otherwise all was silent. A man in a black suit was standing in front of the altar with a bible in his hands.

  She felt Omar lower her so she was standing in front of the dark-suited man. He looked like a real minister.

  “Ms. Satinov...Michelle...did you fall asleep?”

  Michelle opened her eyes and saw Dondi bent over her, peering at her anxiously.

  Michelle blinked away the memories and smiled at the nurse. “Yes. Just for a moment.”

  She was married! Now Michelle remembered parts of that night like a dream sequence. She recalled earlier that evening, feeling woozy and dizzy, wondering where she was and why she couldn’t move, as two women dressed her in the gown. She saw Omar, standing behind them, watching with satisfied and predatory eyes.

  She wanted to fight them, but she was so tired and sleepy, she realized she must have been given some powerful sedatives. There were still blank spaces to her memories of the night before.

  She remembered Omar whispering threats at her out of the side of his mouth, while simultaneously smiling at the camera. If she didn’t smile at the photographer she would be sorry. She had felt like a somnambulist, going through the motions, doing his bidding, just trying to stay alive.

  Michelle looked at Dondi, trying to act rational after the overwhelming revelation of her marriage to Omar.

  “You said my husband came to see me after the surgery, while I was asleep?”

  “Yes. Oh, I totally forgot. He told me that he had friends looking after a cat named Lucifer. Is that really the name of a cat?”

  Michelle smiled for the first time. “Yes. He was a gift to me, and already had that name. He can be a little devil, though.”

  “So now you don’t have to worry about the cat,” Dondi said. “And your sister is doing well, too.”

  “Was Leilanie’s surgery successful?”

  “Oh my, yes. The doctor says she’s fine. They implanted three eggs, because sometimes all the eggs don’t attach to the uterine wall.”

  Oh my God, Michelle thought. Triplets!

  Chapter 13

  Sammy, Rod’s pilot, located a rental space for the Lear Jet by communicating with ground control while they were still in flight, several hundred miles from Guadalajara airport. When they landed he was directed where to taxi the jet and tie up.

  They deplaned and started a long walk to the main airport building. It was early evening and the sky was massed with pink and purple clouds as the sun lowered in the sky. The air was warm and humid, without a hint of a breeze.

  “These things are huge,” Heather said, waving her arm around over her head at a swarm of mosquitoes. Of course Lucifer was thrilled and tried to whack at them with his little paw as Heather carried him on the walkway to the passenger terminal. “Thank God the trade winds mostly keep them out of Hawaii.”

  “Reminds me of a swarm of bats, they’re so big,” Mike said ducking and swinging at the attacking blood-suckers.

  “Don’t mention bats,” Heather warned.

  “Why not?”

  Heather looked at him sideways, “Reminds me of Dracula. Which reminds me of Omar. Don’t you think he’d be a perfect Dracula, if they ever did another movie? He’d fit the part flawlessly. Nasty. Scheming. Devious. Treacherous. Deadly. Conniving...” She ran out of words.

  Mike smiled, “Now that you mention it. A scary guy, for sure. And he looks the part.”

  Rod and the professor were not smiling as they finally went through the double glass doors into the airport terminal. They’d had more experience with Omar Satinov.

  As they hurried through the terminal, Heather remembered Michelle mentioned that the first time she’d seen Omar up close he’d been wearing a cape. Michelle said he reminded her of the fictional character, Dracula, since he was so handsome, with that black cape and his black hair with the perfect silver threads running through it. Heather could imagine Omar wearing that cape, raising his arms, and flapping off like a giant bat in the night sky.

  She really didn’t believe in vampires, but Omar could suck the life out of anyone, if he chose to do so. He had those creepy, mesmerizing eyes. Once he caught your gaze it was almost impossible to look away.

  The Guadalajara airport was huge and crowded as they went inside and tried to decipher all the pointing signs, printed in Spanish. They had to rent a car and do a currency exchange. Most everyone spoke English, which was a definite plus, because they were in a hurry. Visiting hours at the fertility clinic, where they needed to go, were limited.

  Heather was afraid they wouldn’t get there in time to see Michelle. She was still juggling the cat, trying to get Lucifer into his travel carrier, but was again unsuccessful, so she just carried him in her purse, like she’d seen Michelle do in the past. He seemed content to stay there, although he preferred being carried around on Rod’s shoulder.

  “We need balloons, a cake, and a big bouquet of flowers,” Vincent said. “If we come in a little late, maybe they’ll be lenient about the time, since we’ve traveled so far.”

  Mike was studying his cell phone. “I got a return email from Dr. Franz a few minutes ago. He’ll let me see Michelle any time we get there, since he believes I’m her doctor. I said I was traveling with Michelle’s father, who is very anxious to see Michelle, too.”

  What if Omar’s there? Heather thought. That would be uncomfortable. He knew who they really were. But then, they all knew who he was, too. A real Mexican Standoff.

  Sammy, Rod’s pilot, was the designated driver on the trip to the clinic. The rental car had GPS, luckily, so getting there didn’t look like a problem, even though it was quite a long way from the airport. Except they quickly found themselves dead into the evening rush hour traffic. The snarls were like any other big city.

  Heather felt like screaming and kept glancing at her watch, sure it had stopped, and then comparing it to the time on her cell phone to make sure it hadn’t.

  Mike was gazing out the window. “I’ve always wanted to visit Guadalajara. Look, you can see the twin spikes of the famous Cathedral.”

  Heather ducked to look out of the car window. She was pretty much squashed, trapped between Mike and Vincent in the back seat. The view was beautiful and foreign to her in the early evening, but the drivers around their car seemed frantic, whizzing around them dangerously, almost giving her a headache.

  Mike continued looking out the windows with bright eyes. “Guadalajara is the second largest city in Mexico. With the second largest population. It’s also the birthplace of Mariachi music...and Tequila. The night-life’s supposed to be fantastic.”

  “Who needs Google?” Heather said, smiling at Mike and bumping shoulders with him. She wondered about the hotel rooms Rod had arranged for all of them. He had deep pockets; probably reserved a room for each of them individually. If she wanted to stay with Mike tonight she’d have to sneak into his room.

  Rod pointed at a shopping center and Sammy skidded into a detour off the freeway. They piled out, going inside an enormous store that seemed to have everything. Rushing around, they were able to find flowers, a box of assorted chocolates, a big cake, and a bunch of balloons, inscribed with ‘Get Well’ messages to take to the hospital.

  When they finally made it to the clinic it was after nine o’clock. They had missed visiting hours. Since there was almost no street parking, Sammy circled the block while everyone else got out.

  It seemed like an expensive area, Heather thought as she looked around the street. There were beautiful boutique fashion shops on either side of the clinic. Green leafy trees bordered the sidewalks and almost hid the clinic. Behind the clinic was the gigantic main hospital building.

  Rod led the way up the pathway to glass double doors, which were now locked. He stabbed his finger on a red button beside the door that said, Emergencia.

  A woman’s voice said, “Guadajarala Clinicia. Puedo ayudarle?”

  They could see her through the glass doors, standin
g behind a reception desk across an enormous marble lobby.

  Rod pressed the intercom and said, “Can you speak English? We came to see a friend.”

  The woman shifted immediately to English. “It’s past visiting hours, but you can come here tomorrow at eight a.m.”

  “We came all the way from Hawaii. Just arrived from the airport,” Rod said. “Can you please make an exception? It’s for Michelle Mont...” he paused and said Omar’s last name, “Satinov.”

  Heather saw Rod’s look of distaste when he had to give Michelle Omar’s last name, so the receptionist would know which patient he referred to.

  Rod went on, “Dr. Mike Kapahu, Michelle’s doctor from Hawaii is here, and so is her father.”

  Mike leaned over and spoke into the intercom, “Dr. Franz and I have been communicating. He said I could see Michelle when I arrived.”

  “I’ll page Dr. Franz,” the woman said. She buzzed the door and they all went inside.

  Heather noticed that Lucifer had lowered his head within her purse so he wasn’t visible. Could the cat really be that smart, she wondered? She’d seen Lucifer do the same thing when she and Michelle went grocery shopping where no pets were allowed, but she’d always assumed that the cat was just napping. This time she knew the animal had done it on purpose. Her estimation of Lucifer’s intelligence took a big leaping bump.

  They sat down in large comfortably upholstered chairs in the lobby. Heather was too nervous to pick up any of the glossy magazines on the glass table in front of them. They were all in Spanish, anyway.

  After what seemed an interminable wait, a doctor, with the typical white coat and stethoscope around his neck, emerged from a bank of elevators at the side of the reception desk. He was small with a dark, neatly trimmed, beard. He quickly went over to them.

  Heather saw Mike take a deep breath and stand up.

  “Dr. Franz?” Mike said, holding out his hand.

  “Si, yes. And you are Dr. Kapahu?”

  “Please, call me Mike.” He turned to make introductions. “This is Professor Vincent Middleton, Michelle’s father. He’s come from California to see Michelle. And Rod Nakamura and Heather Winters, both friends of my patient. We’re all eager to see Michelle.”