“A favor?” I didn’t believe it. Not for a second.
“A simple favor. Some small thing, a trifle. I will do this for you, just to have you in my debt.”
“You are the most annoying man I have ever met.”
“Is that a yes, dear Elisabeth?” He leaned back, showing off the way his body looked, his eyes locked on mine. “I think I will hear the word from your lips, and my name. I want you to say my name.”
Arrogant bastard. I shook my head, ready to say no. Screw him, Samuel could die. To hell with it all, I was going home. I was going to get some sleep, home in my own bed away from bullshit vampire games. To hell with all of them.
My rage lasted two feet. Closer to the door, I realized if I could save a life by saying just a few words I should, even if it was the life of someone I didn’t like. Noble intentions aside, Samuel needed to live so he could help me figure out the Jeremy problem. I turned back to see LaRue hadn’t moved an inch while I walked then stopped. Seduction was his game, and he was better at it then I was, but that didn’t mean I didn’t know how to play.
When had I talked to Douglas? How long since sunset? When would Calvin get here? I judged the time, then changed to a focused stride. Not a sexy swagger, but the best option. LaRue would never believe it if I tried to strut, besides I’d probably trip and ruin the moment.
When I got in front of him I stopped, then put my knee on one side of his legs, then the other knee on the other side until I straddled him. My body was still away from his but his grin got wider.
My lips slowly moved into a smile as leaned in until I was almost touching him. I breathed the words like a lover desperate for air. “Yes, Jean-Laurent.”
His hands came up near my back.
My hands rests on his biceps, weighing them down toward the cushion as I angled my back away from him. When I spoke again my voice was hard. “But I will never sleep with you.”
My tone ripped the smile from his face, and I laughed, hopping off him and the lounge.
“Douglas is back,” I announced, glad LaRue had been too distracted to hear the car a minute before.
The two of them went into the basement first, Douglas carrying the kind of yellow plastic container I’d only ever seen used for pool chemicals. LaRue warned me at least five times that as the only person with a pulse, Samuel would go for me, so I sat on the top stair. If everything looked safe, then, maybe I’d go down. Maybe. I had a bird’s eye view into the basement so there wasn’t much reason to risk it.
LaRue trailed behind the other two. I’m sure he didn’t want to get messy. Douglas opened the cap on the jug and started pouring the blood down Samuel’s mouth. It went on for an eternity. Gallons of blood poured in and no change. Then, in an instant, the healing started. The dead gray flesh around the gapping yawn of his throat became slightly pinker. I blinked and it was red. The cross burns stayed black but the skin around them lost the gray, withered look. At his throat, the wound started to close, healing in layers from the inside out. First the muscles came back, then the sinew closed the hole, knitting it back together. The flesh, the skin, came last, growing over the new muscle tissue-thin and pale. It got thicker but not darker.
His body half-healed, black charred pieces of skin still bore the mark of all those crosses. He didn’t stir.
“It looks pretty safe down there,” I called out, breaking the quiet. Douglas looked up at me confused and LaRue sighed.
“We have healed the body. Now we call back the soul.”
Hopefully he was being dramatic. I hated to think your soul could just check out when it wanted to.
LaRue ripped open the other man’s shirt, completely exposing Samuel’s chest before placing his palms there. The magic started. It was everywhere and I fought not to close my eyes against the feeling. A thousand invisible pieces of magic rushed past me. Tiny, painless missiles, pulling my attention to them before they faded into nothingness. LaRue’s magic was softer than feathers but more substantial, heavier but gentle. When I stopped to concentrate on the brush I felt on my arm, it touched my leg, then my face.
It didn’t feel bad, quite the opposite, actually—like being caressed by a dozen hands at once with nothing erotic or urgent behind it. Distracting and pleasant, the experience broke when Calvin opened the kitchen door behind me.
“What did I miss?” he asked.
“Can’t you feel that?” I whispered, the occasion somehow solemn.
“Doesn’t feel like much to me.” He sat on the step beside me.
I didn’t know how to respond. To be so powerful that you couldn’t enjoy the experience of this magic; to miss the sensation all together, was a tragedy.
“Brought this like you asked,” Calvin said.
I turned to see what it was but then everything in the room sped up.
There was a noise, a howl and Calvin was gone. Below us LaRue backed up. Douglas and Calvin struggled to hold down Samuel. He moved like an animal, making a horrible noise. My heart raced. I remembered that noise.
I’d heard it on a hillside during the war, in the last minutes I’d spent with my natural tissue intact. I sat petrified, sure I should bolt, but rooted with fear. Another minute and my heart beat so hard it was going to break through my chest. It was coming. The thing that hurt me so much, that first vampire, who ripped the muscle off my leg, who crushed my arm until the skin and tissue fell off. I’d known it would come back, even though I’d watched it die, I’d always known.
Had I been holding my breath? Maybe, because now it barely came. I was breathing too much but not getting any air. Fear poured through my veins, stealing the warmth. I was cold, suffocating, and having a heart attack. Too scared to do anything, and still the noise kept going. Douglas and Calvin had closed Samuel in, holding him down where I couldn’t see him. It should have helped but it didn’t. The sound of pain and hunting kept on. The room started to spin around me.
Except then I was moving, fast, the house a blur. It didn’t stop until I was in front of the fire upstairs. Someone held me. I couldn’t hear the noise any more. I took great gulping lungfuls of air, trying to convince myself I was all right. It didn’t help. I could remember the noise and the pain my body expected to accompany it. I shook, nothing could stop me.
Whispers caught my ear while I panicked. What came next? When would the pain start? Gradually the voice soothed me. My heartbeat calmed from its frantic pace, then slowly my breathing came back. Somehow, there was enough air in the room, the fire was warm, and I twisted to wrap my arms tight around the person who held me. Another minute passed and I recognized it was LaRue.
“Jean-Laurent.” I whispered his name, then sniffled, wiping my face against his shirt. Somewhere in the middle of all that I’d been crying.
“You are safe.”
“I know. You’ve got me.” It was true. He’d been there, down on that floor, in the thick of Samuel losing his mind, but Jean-Laurent had come to me. Not to the man he’d known for years, who’d just come back from the dead, but to me, safe at the top of the stairs, away from it. Even though I was only upset because of what the screams made me remember. Embarrassment welled up inside me, but I didn’t let go of him. My head stayed neatly tucked on to his chest, like we were lovers who embraced each other all the time.
“I had no idea you would be affected so. I am terribly sorry.” When he said it, I believed him. All the bullshit and flirting and games between us didn’t add up to anything compared to the real regret and tenderness in his voice. He hugged me in front of the fire, like you would hold a child who’d just woken up from a nightmare. No lecherous grin, no sexual overtones, just him keeping me safe.
“I didn’t…” I couldn’t explain, didn’t know what to say. How do you thank someone for being decent when you’d never expected them to be? “That noise… When I was attacked I heard—”
He shushed me, an entirely parental gesture, then said, “Your heart beats too fast for explanations.”
I stopped, caugh
t. He was worried enough about me that he wouldn’t even let me try to explain. There was only one thing left I could say. “Thank you.”
The quiet moment stretched on, I thought about how he could be decent, even nice on occasion and he kept his own counsel. Finally, I extracted myself from his embrace, only a little sorry to be on my own.
“Do you need anything? Wine?”
Trust a Frenchmen to offer wine, not coffee. “I’ll be okay. What about…” I hesitated, not sure the thing downstairs was really Samuel. “What about them, down there?”
“Samuel has recovered himself. The other two are telling him of your exploits.”
“I don’t have exploits.”
“No? Did someone else sneak into a guarded location and steal him away from certain death?”
“It wasn’t like that,” I protested.
“Indeed.” The smile he gave me was arrogant and annoying. Typical LaRue, it helped me smile back.
“Can you tell I’ve been crying?”
He shook his head and I hoped he wasn’t lying.
“Okay, let’s go down there then.” I got up and started to walk toward the basement, passing between him and the fire, grateful for its warmth. For the second time in the night, he caught my hand, his touch just as gentle as the first.
“Are you certain, Elisabeth? I could bring him to you.”
“No, I’ll be okay.” I squeezed his hand and walked away, determined to open the door to the basement myself.
20
Douglas and Calvin had Samuel out of the coffin and in a chair. They lounged, like a pair of guys standing around bored, while Samuel sat looking miserable. The photos I’d picked up on my way down the basement steps felt heavy in my hand. If someone in the room was going to benefit from their peace and calm, it shouldn’t have been me.
“I know how this works,” Samuel announced. “I’ve watched it. Hell, I helped in Morocco, that time outside of India. All I’m asking is—”
“Elisabeth has bought your safety.” LaRue’s voice didn’t give him anything, not how I’d bought it or why.
Samuel’s mouth popped open, fangs out, and I tensed in case he came at my throat. But he didn’t move, just glared at me like I’d tried to kill him instead of save him.
“Tell me of you capture,” LaRue ordered, ignoring Samuel’s posturing.
“The man who made the threat is a studio security guard, detailed to keep Jeremy Steel away from women, as part of some supernatural pact. I don’t think Steel knows about it because in the time I tailed the guy, he never acknowledged him. One night, Steel disappears out of town and the guy misses it. He freaks out, heads to a vault built into a room in the back of one of the sound stages.”
“Which one?” I interrupted.
“66F, does that help you?” Samuel sneered.
I shrugged, not willing to get drawn into a fight. Samuel didn’t want to share what he knew even though I’d carried him, literally, through so much. I needed to know what the studio was doing and how it involved my sister’s boyfriend, but mentioning her was a bad idea.
“You arrived at this room, and then?” LaRue sighed, which made Samuel cringe.
“It was filled with magic—charms, books, everything in the place crawling with spell work. A human couldn’t have followed them through the door but I made it in.” His eyes told me the human in that sentence was me. I didn’t bother to interrupt or offer a defense. Maybe he was right. “They were worried about a gem—maybe a garnet, maybe an amethyst, something dark. Anyway, when they saw it, they relaxed and turned to go. I thought I was clear but something else in the room must have let them know I was there. Guy got behind me and slit my throat.”
“From this you could not recover?” LaRue looked doubtful, like someone could slit his throat ten times and he’d still kick their ass.
“There was a cross, golden on a rod. It caught me. I couldn’t move. The blood just poured out of me and I couldn’t do anything.” His voice shook, his bravado gone. The memory of being helpless hurt him more than anything. I stepped forward from my place at the end of the stairs, careful to keep LaRue, Douglas, and Calvin between us. I stretched out my arm, the photo frame heavy in my hand.
“Thought you’d want this back, found it in your hotel room,” I said.
He snatched it, held it tight for half a second, and then slipped it away, all without a thank you.
“A treasure trove of magical items, including a cross so powerful it immobilized you. A man so weak he’s controlled by some stone. All of this held by a shadowy organization wise enough to bind you in crosses, but not aware enough to end you.” LaRue listed the details while leaning back against a coffin. Samuel was in his chair. Normally, LaRue sat while everyone else stood. “How does any of this involve my precious Josephine?”
“It doesn’t,” Samuel said flatly. “She was just there. They threaten and bribe the women around Steel all the time.”
“Why? If he’s being controlled by the stone or whatever the hell it is, why not just tell him to stay away from women?” I shook my head, angry with the way the facts didn’t work themselves out. I had too many questions and Samuel wasn’t giving me any good answers. “There’s something you’re missing.”
“I’m not missing anything, sister. Maybe the stone won’t work once he gets the right girl. Maybe the stone eats women. I got no idea. I just know the one woman I have to worry about is safe. That’s all that matters.”
Jeremy had told me he’d keep Gina safe, away from the city. Did that mean keeping her away from the people who would feed her to something? I didn’t know enough about magic to understand how spells like that worked, but I knew enough to be scared.
“How can you be sure?” LaRue asked. Beside him, Calvin nodded, the first movement I’d seen from him or Douglas.
“Because the whole time I tailed those guys, all the conversations I listened to, not once were they worried about a vampire. Or an older woman, or an actress. No.” He shook his head. “The only women they worried about were young. That’s why they threatened your wife, because she looks about seventeen. When they figured out she was a vampire, they didn’t care. They moved on to the next girl on the list.” He jerked his head at me with an evil smile. “Her sister.”
I flinched, pressing my lips together and taking a quick breath through my nose to ensure I didn’t speak. I wanted to spit at him, to yell in rage. He hadn’t needed to tell LaRue that.
A slow mean smugness spread on his face. “So she is your sister, huh? I thought she looked like you but they didn’t get her name and neither could I. Must rub you all kinds of wrong, him fucking her.”
I took two steps forward and slapped him as hard as I could before I stopped to think. My hand left a red welt across his cheek, his skin still fragile from what he’d gone through.
“Elisabeth,” LaRue cautioned.
I stepped back, practically biting my tongue from the effort not to curse Samuel out.
Samuel stared at LaRue. “She’s not in this to help you. She’s in this to keep her sister safe.” He turned to me with a sneer. “Ain’t that right? Keep little sister safe and sound while she whores for Hollywood.”
I itched to hit him again—fuck that, to take out a gun and shoot him. I still had the crosses in my car. He needed a few more burn scars. He needed—
Samuel’s head rocked backward and when it came forward again, the side of his mouth was wide open in a gash that dripped blood. I hadn’t done it. I hadn’t even felt who did.
“You will show more courtesy to my guest.” There was no mistaking that LaRue had just given him an order.
Samuel nodded.
The wound was slowly closing on his face but he didn’t move to touch it or stop the blood. LaRue’s words cut faster and deeper than my bullets would have. I watched fascinated and repulsed as the blood thinned to a trickle and the skin healed. In a minute, there was nothing there.
LaRue crossed his arms. “Her reasons belong to her b
ut mine are clear. Calvin, find Josephine. Keep her safe. Douglas, assist Samuel with the removal of those burns.”
He turned to me and offered me his arm like we were going to walk down the aisle in a church. I took it, clueless on what came next but sure I wanted the thugs to think of me as his equal.
“We have much to discuss,” he said the words to me, but they were to them, putting me above them, making me more than another one of the lackeys.
He didn’t speak again until we were upstairs in the parlor, in front of the fire. Calvin came up the stairs after us, slipping by without a nod to me. That part of the distance between servant and master didn’t appeal to me.
“Your sister,” LaRue began, pulling my consciousness back to his body by the fire. He’d rested one hand on the mantle. A small gold music box waited there for him to open it. When he did, it would play the song he and Josephine both loved, a song that had once made him weep for her when she’d been away. “Tell me about her.”
“She’s not a whore. This guy caught her eye. They’ve had a few dates. It’s not serious.” I sank into the chair, thinking about the woman my sister had become. Or maybe was becoming. “She worries me but I think she’s got her head on straight. She’s just young—not even nineteen and she trusts everyone so much.”
“Josephine was trusting once.” He looked into the fireplace; his eyes serious, shoulders drooping. “She married the wrong man and his touch nearly killed her. She never lived to see nineteen.”
The raw pain in his voice spoke to my own fears. I wished for a way to comfort him the way he’d taken care of me. I crossed the room to put my hand on his back, “Jean-Laurent, you saved her. She’s safe from him.”
“You’ve never seen someone die of fever, the sweat and reek of infection. They brought in puppies to draw the milk from her breasts.” He shook his head, probably forcing the memory away. “A moment, Elisabeth. If I could…”
Hollywood Dead: Elisabeth Hicks, Witch Detective Page 20