Among the Shadows (The Ash Grove Chronicles)
Page 24
Then Melisande released it from her gaze. She turned her back on the struggling mass and moved away to seat herself on a sofa, bringing her legs up beside her and arranging the folds of her gown to fall becomingly.
Freed from her gaze, the shifter began to take shape again. More slowly than when Tan had seen the process before, and much less gracefully; ugly lumps of substance bubbled up, gradually smoothing out until the thing resembled a roughly human-shaped form sprawled on its side on the floor. Streams of brown and beige ran across the surface like rain on a windowpane, and clumps of hair sprouted on the scalp.
“I didn’t deserve that,” said the thing in a blurred voice. It hadn’t yet resolved into either Raven or Tanner.
“Still so mutinous?” Melisande narrowed her eyes, and the creature held up a shaking hand to stop her. There were only three fingers on the hand.
“Please!”
“Please what?”
“Don’t hurt me again.” The voice was Raven’s again, but broken in a way Tanner had ever heard him sound before. He almost felt sorry for the shifter. “I’ll do as you wish,” Raven whispered.
“I should think so,” said Melisande placidly. “Until my transformation is complete, I need to be more cautious than ever. Meaning that you, my sweet, must be at your most diligent in looking after my interests.”
“Your transformation?” The shifter was almost returned to Tanner’s form now, but it moved slowly and painfully as it got to its feet.
Melisande smiled and lifted her chin, imperious as a queen. “In a very little while I shall have nothing to fear from the girl, her brat, or the old man. Nor any human. Already the children and teachers of Ash Grove are giving their hearts to me, just as we planned, and the force of their adoration, magnified by the presence of that doorway between the two worlds, has given me strength I’ve never known before. As they continue to worship me, and as others beyond Ash Grove come to do the same, I can tell that my substance will change.”
Raven looked stunned. Evidently he had not been made aware of this part of her plan. “What do you mean, change? You’re become something else?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “A goddess.”
Chapter 20
“My strength is becoming amplified. Soon no living creature will be able to harm me, even with magic.” She flexed her slender fingers, regarding them proudly. “Already I can feel how my powers are growing. I am beginning to see the pattern in which the fabric of the universe is woven—and soon I shall be able to lay hold of the threads and weave them… or break them… as I please.”
Raven’s voice, when he spoke, was respectful. He had learned caution from his punishment. “What does that mean, exactly?”
She gave him a radiant smile. “I shall be able to change the past, the present, and the future as it pleases me, and with no more trouble than snapping my fingers.”
Gripping the bars of his prison, Tanner stared at her in shock. Was this just a delusion, a product of her giant ego, or could she be telling the truth? A Melisande who had the entire population of Ash Grove in thrall to her, who could become strong enough to change history, was a prospect that made his blood go cold in his veins. What would she do with that power?
But he knew the answer to that: anything that it amused her to do.
Raven also seemed less than overjoyed at this prospect, to judge by his face. He didn’t offer congratulations.
“Nevertheless,” she said, when Raven did not respond, “it’s dangerous to assume too quickly that I’m invulnerable. Go back to the Sumner girl and her father. I want to be certain I’m safe from them, that we haven’t overlooked anything.”
This time he didn’t put up an argument. “As you wish,” he said. Then, as if only mildly interested, “What do you intend to do with the boy?”
She scarcely glanced in Tanner’s direction. “Now that you’ve assumed his entire identity, he’s of no more use to me. Fetch Yuri and Karl and have them take him to the ceremonial chamber.” She wafted out of the room.
Raven moved toward the alarm panel near the door, pressed a button, and spoke into it briefly. Then he strolled back toward Tanner, regarding him without expression.
“What’s going to happen?” asked Tanner, even though he had a sick feeling that he wouldn’t like any of the possible answers.
“She’ll probably just slit your throat and have you dumped in the river,” said Raven. “Don’t worry, she won’t consume your soul. Cut-and-dried execution, that’s all.”
Adrenaline blazed through Tanner, and he reached through the bars to grab Raven’s arm. “Tell me how to get out of here. I know you can help me.” If Raven’s pride had been stung enough by Melisande’s stunt, he might just be in the mood to get some of his own back.
But Yuri and Karl were already striding through the door, along with two guys built like pro wrestlers, and there was no more time for persuasion. Raven pressed a few places on the bars in a sequence Tanner didn’t catch, and one section slid open like a door, allowing the two musclemen to seize Tanner’s arms and steer him out. Raven stood aside.
“Come on, Raven,” Tanner urged. “Why let her win everything?”
Raven’s face was unreadable. “Don’t bother begging her to spare you for your child’s sake, if you were considering it,” he said. “Displays of emotion don’t work with her. As you should know by now.”
Tanner struggled furiously against his captors, but their grip didn’t budge. So much for hoping to escape by physical force. As they dragged him through the hallways, he cursed the sparse interior decor for not providing anything that might be useful as a weapon. And damn Raven for not helping him. After the way Melisande had treated him, the shifter might have felt a little more solidarity with Tanner.
But as his ushers forced him into a basement chamber he’d never seen before and tied him to a chair cut out of stone, he realized: Raven had helped him. Displays of emotion don’t work. Tanner needed to appeal to Melisande’s interests, if he could think how.
The chamber was a big bare room of what seemed to be granite, with grooves cut deeply into the stone floor, leading like rays away from the stone chair that Tanner was tied to. He realized, with a sickening lurch in his belly, that they were probably there to channel blood neatly away.
The succubus entered, carrying a knife. She had changed her clothes: now she wore a white vinyl bodysuit in the ’60s mod style, and her long hair was bound back in a thick braid. A crazy urge to laugh seized him. Of course. Every fashionable succubus should have a special outfit for murder, waterproof for easy cleanup.
“Afraid you’d get my blood on your gown?” he asked recklessly.
She set about sharpening her knife on a whetstone. “As a matter of fact, yes,” she said idly. “I’d hate to have to throw it away because it got stained. It would be wasteful.”
There was his opening. “So would killing me,” said Tanner, trying to match her cool, composed manner. “Are you so certain you want to get rid of a useful bargaining chip?”
“I don’t see that you have anything to offer me.” She moved forward with the knife, and Tanner couldn’t stop an instinctive lunge against his bonds. But the rope held, and two of his captors still gripped him by the shoulders. He wasn’t getting out of here unless he could talk his way out.
“If you let me go free, we’ll leave North Carolina,” he said. “Even America, if you want. I’ll take Joy and Rose and Steven far away, where you’ll have nothing to fear from us. I swear it.”
“Don’t be absurd. You’d never abandon your friends, knowing that leaves them to me. You have a certain gallantry, like the knights of legend.” She smiled. “I named you well, Sir Tristan.”
“I don’t care about them,” Tanner lied. “I’m a dad now—that changes things. I’ll do whatever I have to to make sure Rose grows up safe, even if that means letting you win.” He prayed that she’d buy this. As selfish as she was, she might be ready to believe equal selfishness of him.
“Raven isn’t very reliable, though, is he? You said yourself it’s almost like he’s trying to protect Joy. She seduced me away from you, after all. Maybe she’s doing the same with him.” Nervous energy was sparking his thoughts; he was inventing lies and excuses faster than he would have thought possible. A less likely seductress than his sweet Joy he couldn’t imagine, but he was gambling that Melisande still didn’t understand just why he had changed allegiances.
Sure enough, it seemed he’d touched a nerve. With an exclamation of annoyance she flung the whetstone aside so that it clattered into a corner. “What is it about that chit of a girl that draws you and Raven toward her?”
He thought, She’s tender and brave and honest, and where she loves, she gives all of herself. Thinking of her, of the chance that he might get to see her again after all, spurred him on.
“A better question would be, what happens if Raven betrays you? He’s scared enough of you now that he may decide it’s safer to ally with the Sumners. And if he tells them your secrets, they could become even more dangerous to you. Let me go, and call him back, and that won’t happen.”
She pursed her lips in thought. “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I don’t like the idea of giving you what you want, even though I’d gain from it. It’s too generous, after all you’ve done. I don’t think I could live with myself if I simply gave in to your wheedling.”
Holy crap, was there no limit to her egotism? “Goddesses are admired for being generous,” he said in desperation. “And think of what kind of future I’ll have, living without you. You said life with Joy and the baby would bore my brains out. So send me back to them. Let me rot in domestic hell until I’d give my soul itself to come back to you. You’ll have your revenge on me then.”
The idea intrigued her; her green eyes gazed thoughtfully into space as she mulled it over. “There is a certain elegance to that,” she admitted.
He was so close. Keep calm. Stay on top of it. Then came a brainstorm. “If you don’t like how things work out, you can always call a do-over. You said yourself that soon you’ll be able to change the past. So what’s the harm in trying things this way?”
He hoped he wouldn’t regret saying that; it might put a lot of dangerous ideas in her mind. But the important thing was getting free. Once he was able to tell Joy and the council what was going on, she could be stopped before she gained that much power.
Her lips curved in a smile. “That’s true,” she murmured. “I can always go back and change things if I’m dissatisfied.” She set aside the knife and then came to crouch in front of the stone chair where he sat, his heart revving like a motorcycle engine. “I’ll let you go,” she said, and then, as he sagged in relief, she added more sharply, “but not before I show you something. You’ve betrayed me before, Tristan, and I won’t let that happen again. So take this picture with you.” She placed her index finger on his forehead, the cool touch alighting in the very center. “See what I will do if you try to work against me,” she whispered. “See it now.”
The scene before Tanner changed. He was no longer in the stone chamber in Melisande’s stronghold but standing in a ravaged landscape under an overcast sky the color of lead. The grassy ground was gouged and torn up, revealing dirt and red clay, and leafless trees and bushes lay on their sides with their roots bare, like the bodies of fallen soldiers.
They weren’t the only bodies.
People lay everywhere, crumpled and unmoving. He recognized them as he looked closer: Bobby and Donna were sprawled as if unconscious, their eyes open but filmed over, with expressions of horror frozen on their faces. Dr. Aysgarth, in one of her power suits, looked strangely out of place in the ruined landscape, lying white-faced and still. Near her was William, his eyeglasses shattered, one hand stretched toward Maddie, who lay awkwardly with one arm flopped across her forehead. The only sound was a shrill wind through the bare branches of the fallen trees.
“Keep looking,” came the succubus’s voice.
He dreaded what he would see. But he couldn’t seem to look away. He took a few halting steps forward, past the bodies of more friends, past the corpse of Steven, grey and staring-eyed and gaunt, and found his worst fear.
Beneath the trunk of a tree Joy lay pinned to the ground. Her eyes were closed, her face so pale that her freckles stood out in sharp contrast. Her hair stirred under the touch of the wind, but otherwise she lay completely still.
Kneeling beside her, he touched her cheek with tentative fingers. The minute he felt the coldness of her skin he knew, if he hadn’t already, that she was dead.
Her right arm was still crooked protectively around a bundle in a yellow blanket. His heart in his throat, he reached out to draw back the edge of the blanket. A baby’s tiny dimpled hand came into view, and it too was bloodless and unmoving.
“Do not forget what you see here,” said Melisande’s voice. “This is what I will do if you betray me. Turn against me, and I will kill everyone you know.”
The emotionless words brought him to himself. He was back in Melisande’s house, tied to the stone chair, with the succubus staring into his eyes.
His mouth was dry as chalk. “I won’t forget,” he said hoarsely.
Her eyes held steady on his, assessing. “That’s right,” she said. “You won’t. That vision, and my face, are the last things you’ll ever see.” She raised her voice. “Hold him still,” she commanded his captors. “He won’t like this.”
For a second the meaning of her words didn’t register. Then, when he felt her fingernails dig in, he understood, and a scream that he tried in vain to fight echoed off the walls of the stone chamber.
* * *
It was mid-afternoon by the time Joy and Gail pulled up to the house at the end of the dirt road. The yard was sparsely tufted with grass, dun-colored at this time of the year, and a pecan tree’s bare branches were hung with bits of glass, flattened silverware, and shards of pottery and glass, so that when the breeze arose there was a clinking and clattering and glints of light from the reflective surfaces. It was charming in its way, but anything more different from the professional, efficient Dr. Aysgarth Joy couldn’t imagine, and a whisper of anxiety touched her. What—or rather, who—would they find here?
The house itself was of clapboards painted the green of pistachio ice cream. A big front porch featured a mismatched group of battered lawn chairs, and a porch swing swayed gently from chains that sounded a rusty chirp each time the swing moved. There were metal pinwheel lawn ornaments and a flag with a faded image of the solar system. Everything except the house itself seemed to be moving and changing whenever the wind blew.
“I don’t have a good feeling about this,” said Gail, echoing her own thoughts. “We need a general, not a Eudora Welty character.”
Joy was finding this Gail more tightly wound and humorless than the one she’d known before, and she missed her old friend. “It’s way too early to get defeatist,” she said briskly, and ascended the porch steps to knock on the screen door.
There was no sound of footsteps approaching, so she jumped slightly when the door opened and a woman looked out at her through the screen door. She had a wild, wavy head of white hair that fell past her shoulders, but it must have been premature—or artificial—because she couldn’t have been older than forty-five. She wore bright magenta lipstick that matched her skirt, which was full and fell almost to her ankles. Her skirt and peasant blouse bore exotic sequined designs, and long beaded earrings dangled and winked at her earlobes. “Can I help you?” she asked, in a strong, distinctive voice that told Joy who she was, as unlikely as it seemed.
“Eleanor Aysgarth?” she asked.
A magenta smile answered her. “That’s me. Did Maybelle refer you? I usually don’t take new clients without an appointment, but I’ve had a cancelation this afternoo
n. Come on in and get comfortable.”
Joy and Gail followed this surprising vision inside the house. Inside, the walls were painted rich shades of red, purple, and blue, and drapes of opulent embroidered fabric muted the sunlight, giving it a mysterious atmosphere enhanced by the soft lighting of table lamps draped in scarves. The fragrance of spices and incense greeted them, as well as soft background music composed mostly of chanting and an occasional bell. Joy felt as if she had wandered into Aladdin’s cave, especially when their hostess showed them to a seating area of plump floor cushions gathered around a low table that held a crystal globe in a metal stand. “Actually, we’re not clients,” she said.
“Really? I could swear I’m getting a seeker’s energy from you. You’ve come here for answers, unless I’m much mistaken. I offer a variety of readings depending on the complexity of your question and your budget.”
“So you’re a psychic?” asked Gail, as she plunked down awkwardly on a velvet cushion. Her tight skirt made it difficult to find a graceful position. “I guess that’s one option for theater majors. You probably get lots of opportunity to draw on your acting skills.”
Their hostess lit pillar candles with a lighter and placed them at the corners of the table. “I’m used to skeptics, Ms.—?”
“Gail Brody, and this is my student Joy Sumner.”
“Ms. Brody.” This other Eleanor Aysgarth still had the straight posture and imposing presence of the school principal, but they looked completely different on this gypsyish figure. “I’m not interested in proving myself to you and your friend. If you’d like a reading, I’ll be glad to help you. If not, I’d just as soon you didn’t waste my time.” She did have a trace of a southern accent, Joy noticed, but you could tell her voice was a tool of her trade: she spoke in strong, resonant tones that must be very impressive when she was delivering portentous news.