But instead, my heart had started to race, my hands closed into fists. Something wasn’t right because in that last moment of ecstasy, I’d felt a magical shifting. Like some sort of shield had come down when Nikolos lost control.
I tried to peel into the dimension around him and hit a wall—as I had in his store.
Nikolos had warded himself.
“Okay?” he whispered, sliding his hand over my stomach to cup my hip. He chuckled. “That was quicker than I liked.”
I bit my lip. I wanted to ask about the ward and I wanted to not ask about it—wanted to just roll into his body to sleep. Be held in a man’s strong arms for a little while and forget what awaited us out there in the dark. But I couldn’t stop the unease spilling into my heart and I couldn’t stop my trust from leaking out of it. I knew that if I asked him about this now, he wouldn’t tell me the truth. To have him lie to me here, in bed…it would kill me.
But there was something I could ask. “That first night at Elsa’s… why did you leave after seeing my ankh?”
He tensed for a brief instant then relaxed before rolling onto his back. “My first wife wore one—like mine. I’ve never seen ones like ours anywhere else… and hers was lost when a Dweller Demon took her body.”
Regret and shared pain washed over me. I hadn’t realized that had happened to her. I turned and hugged him close, too sorry for words. For him and for me because there could be nothing between us if what I suspected was true. “Don’t think about it. Not right now.” Tightening his arms, he kissed my shoulder. “Stay.”
I held him, let him hold me…a long time. I listened to his breathing slow and I waited. Waited until I was sure he was asleep. Then, I tried to peel the dimensions around him again. I couldn’t help it. I had to know. Sweat popped out on my forehead as I kept myself as still as possible and pulled at the shimmery air around him. Just like the ward in his store, it took effort, felt like I was trying to pry apart super glued sheets of metal. It was just as much a struggle to keep still.
When I managed to break through, my entire world just shifted.
Nikolos was warding his body. There was one of those thick silvery-looking watery layers about him. A body ward. I’d only heard of them before.
As I stared, a small glowing ball of light was sucked into that mass of souls around him. I closed my eyes when it screamed.
In that instant, I understood something that had been nagging at me this entire time. His presence here in Florida when the whole world had been his home—his life here, when this is where the Dweller returned. Not coincidence at all.
He’d warded himself to keep the truth from me. I hadn’t thought he’d known what those trapped souls represented. Had held onto the belief that maybe they were a mass of all his war victims. While a part of me knew he was probably a soul eater of some sort, I really had believed he was unaware of it. But he was using magic to keep me from knowing. I’d watched a soul—one he hadn’t taken himself—get sucked into that trap around him.
He was a fucking liar.
Chapter Seventeen
My hands were still shaking as I crept from Nikolos’s hotel room.
Fury had me seeing red, but the killer heartbreak threatened to send me to my knees. I’d left him there. Sleeping. Unaware that I’d picked up on his deception. His big, beautiful body still looking like something from my dreams while inside he was nothing more than a conman.
Shame flushed sharp and painful in my chest. I closed my eyes, lifting my face to the sky though the sun had yet to show through the faint cloud cover that had moved in sometime in the last couple of hours. Taking a deep breath, I let the still morning-cool November air chase away the heavy, ripping anger.
You’re so stupid, Beri!
The strength of my zigzagging emotions had pulled Phro and Fred outside. A responding anger simmered in Fred’s gaze. Phro’s hands were curled into fists. She glared at the door behind me. I just shook my head and slipped into my own room to grab the bag I’d packed the night before. It was a sturdy army-green backpack filled with food, bug spray, extra knives, two flashlights and the copy of that damned page out of the magic book. Not that I’d need it.
I was going into the swamp alone. Stunned and betrayed, I thought of the Dweller Demon’s words about me being born to protect. One born to light, one born to protect. Nikolos may have fooled us on some things, but I didn’t think he was lying about the host. My thoughts had led me to the realization that Castor was a relative of some sort. Family. Living—breathing—of my blood.
Sucking in another shaky breath, I tried to force my emotions to the back of my mind. I’d always been able to do that before. Granted, this sense of betrayal was stronger than anything I’d felt before. But I simply had to pull myself together. “Phro, I need you to stay with Elsa a while longer.”
She shook her head. She’d cut her hair into a smooth cap, the ends of which slapped her cheeks with the movement. She smoothed her hands down a surprisingly conservative blue pantsuit. Her spirit hands were shaking in anger just as mine were.
I closed my eyes for a second before hardening my heart and glaring at her. “I can’t leave her alone here. I’ll have Fred. Besides, you can just blink to wherever I am when Blythe wakes and comes in here. She has a key.”
“She’s sleeping with the necromancer,” Phro drawled, amusement lowering her lids to half-mast. “Thought you might be interested.”
“Great. Just damned great.” I didn’t want more drama, but I did hope her fun didn’t end with the eye-opener mine had. “If you want, wake her up yourself when I’ve had enough time to get pretty far. I don’t want to deal with that man in the next room. Not yet. I’m afraid I’d kill him.”
“I still may,” she hissed. “What happened?”
I held up a hand. “Not now.” My eyes burned so badly my vision blurred. Blinking, I swallowed the hard lump in my throat and backed away from her. “Later.”
I didn’t bother to take Nikolos’s truck. The town was so damned small I could reach one of its bazillion bait shops within five minutes no matter which way I went. I knew the rest of them would catch up, bring the mirrors and the other stuff needed for the spell. I just needed to get away from Nikolos for a while and to find this Castor person.
I stomped through the early morning mist, my gut churning too much for food, even though I’d need it. My sturdy all-terrain boots made a lot of noise on the sidewalk but only because I wanted them to. The steady pounding lent purpose to my intentions.
There were few people on the street this early. Of course, it was still mostly dark. I followed the path Nikolos and I had taken the day before, passing the street with Tandy’s house.
Another wave of shame swamped me. I worried for her body. We hadn’t called it in because we didn’t have time to deal with the authorities. It went against everything I believed in, leaving her lying there. I’d placed her in the bed after brushing glass from the sheets. I’d covered her—felt her pulse beating beneath her sun-damaged skin. The lady might not be too bright about sunscreen but she’d been friendly and more helpful than she’d realized. She’d told us about Caster being friends with Sally from Sally’s Bait Shop.
We’d taken both of the mirrors from her house, cutting away the patterned sections and wrapping them in towels.
As I rounded the corner to Sally’s, two things hit me. Fred’s disappearance and the smell of sausage cooking. I turned a circle looking for him, but there was nothing. Not even a hint of shimmer in the air. Dammit! I was tired of this!
The sausage was probably for the fishermen who were getting ready to hit the water. I was planning to rent a swamp buggy from one of them after talking to Sally.
Sally’s looked little different from the other shops. Maybe a bit more color with the red bench next to the screened front door and the green flower pot beside it. The store was certainly busier than the others. Through the big square window over the bench, I could see several people moving about inside.
The swamp buggy haggling turned out to be harder than I expected.
“You can’t go out in that swamp on your lonesome.” Fisherman number one muttered, settling his baseball cap tighter on his head. He squinted at me with one bloodshot eye. The other wasn’t open yet.
“Yeah, can’t let a woman go in there alone. Not unless she’s from around here and knows how to spot danger. You need a guide.”
This came from one of the other five men lined up for bait and beer. They stood between narrow rows of shelves cluttered with anything a traveler might need. Boxed food past the expiration dates, canned goods that probably suffered the same fate, toilet paper and deodorant. A few of the men could use a dose or two of the latter. There were small sections devoted to hunting and fishing supplies. Sally herself hadn’t put in an appearance yet.
“Where’s the owner?” I asked.
“She’ll be right along,” one of them slurred. “But I can take you where you need to go. And where is that exactly?” His breath already stank of beer and it wasn’t even fully light yet.
I curled my lip and leaned close to him. “I don’t need a guide. I said it once. Won’t say it again.”
“Now, see here—”
“Leave the poor girl alone, Ragger.” A woman, about forty-five or so, came waddling into the room. She had wide hips encased in painfully tight jeans and wore a faded T-shirt that hung on her surprisingly slim upper body. She turned to fit those hips through the narrow opening behind the counter. She gazed at me, surprise lifting her eyebrows. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
I pursed my lips. “Let me guess. It’s not my height, is it?”
Sally—for that’s who she had to be—placed her elbows on the counter and leaned over to prop her cheeks in her palms. “Hon, it’s your looks. Spittin’ image of Castor, ain’t she Ragger?”
Ragger turned his bloodshot eye to me and really looked this time. The toothpick he’d been gnawing on fell from his lips as his gray eyebrows squeezed together. “Now that you mention it, she does look a lot like him.”
“If you weren’t so hung over, you would have seen it instantly.” Sally laughed—a low sexy sound that told me why so many men were hanging out in her store this early. Her black hair had been piled on top of her head and a few strands curled around her forehead, giving her the feel of someone ten years younger. I would have smiled—liking her—but my heart still felt like it had been dipped in cement. It laid heavy and cold in my chest.
“What is it you need?” she asked, still staring at me with a gaze that seemed to read beyond the outside package.
“A swamp buggy, extra gas and few other supplies.”
“You been in swamps before?”
I met her eyes and nodded. “Even been in this one twice.”
She relaxed her shoulders, stood and slapped the counter. “Well, why didn’t you say so to begin with? You can’t pay attention to these old drunks in here. They’re just after their morning guzzle and peek. They all want me.” She winked at me, then rolled her eyes as Ragger grinned and leaned over the counter, batting the lashes of one eye at her.
I pushed him aside. “Do you have a buggy I can rent?”
She pointed toward the back. “Let me ring these old men up. You get whatever supplies you need.
I picked up two jugs of water, a box of crackers—after checking the expiration—a first aid kit, and batteries for the flashlights. Since we were on the tail end of the rainy season, I bought a good slicker with a hood that would hopefully allow the water to run off the edge and not into my eyes. I got to the end of the paper products aisle and stopped when I came upon a huge supply of Summer’s Eve.
“They’re for the skunks.”
I turned to find Ragger eyeing the wall of feminine douche boxes. He laughed and scratched at a scabbed area on his arm. “We take that with us into the swamp. Gets rid of the skunk stink if they get ya.”
I’d never heard of that, but I’d learned long ago that locals knew the best remedies. I added a couple of boxes to my basket, thought about the one time I’d been hit by a skunk and added two more before bringing everything up to the counter to Sally.
“You want a sausage biscuit for the road?”
I nodded, offering her a smile. “Smells good. Thanks.”
“You need directions to Castor’s?”
I didn’t bother to ask what she was talking about. “He looks that much like me?”
She rang up the seven pastel boxes without batting a lash. “So much it makes my hair stand on end. I’ve known him all his life. Know where he comes from—know he doesn’t have family. What do you know?”
“Nothing. I came here for something else entirely and have heard nothing but his name. Is he famous or something?”
She loaded my things into plastic bags. “Sure is. But only in Alligator Flag. Wanna hear the story?”
I hefted the bags, shaking my head when she offered to help carry. “If you can make it quick. I’m trying to get ahead of some people, if you get my drift.”
“I do.” She came around the counter and turned sideways to fit through the narrow end again. Grabbing the nosy Ragger, she shoved him behind the counter. “Watch the registers a few minutes. Stay out of the chaw.” She didn’t wait to catch his grimace—just headed toward the back of the store. On the way, we passed through a small kitchen with a tiny eating area. Several men in high water-resistant gaiters sat munching sausage biscuits. Back here, I could smell the warm yeastiness of the bread. My mouth watered. Real southern biscuits. My favorite.
Sally talked as she slapped a slice of sausage onto the half of one biscuit before slathering the other half with a yellow substance from a label-less jar. Mustard, I hoped. “Okay, short story is that this swamp is famous for more than its Cypress trees.”
I knew exactly what made this place famous. “VonBrahm.”
She nodded, grabbed a soda and bagged up the food—guess she wasn’t charging me for this stuff. She headed toward the back door and I followed her through.
The sun was rising fast. I was pretty sure Nikolos and the others were awake by now. “Talk faster.”
She walked faster, too. “Right before we all learned what Victor VonBrahm was doing in that swamp home of his, a dying man came stumbling out of the trees. He was carrying a redheaded toddler. A boy. The man was damned sick—dying in fact. I was just past twenty but I remember it like it was yesterday. He told us he’d killed Victor. Told us a lot of things we hadn’t known about that monster.” She shook her head, hurried toward a big open-topped, red vehicle that looked like a Hummer without the upper half. “This one is the best. Just put new tires on it.”
I recognized the government regulated tires from my last trek into Big Cypress. The entire thing looked sturdy. “Perfect.” I swung the bags into the back and held out my hand for the keys. “I already know about VonBrahm. Most of the world does.”
She held out the keys, then hesitated. “We never reported the story of the boy to the press. We hid him here. In this town. We all raised him. He’s…” She broke off, a huge smile plumping her cheeks. “He’s special.” She tilted her head, studying me as she placed the keys in my hand and wrapped my fingers around them. “Like you. You’re here to stop what’s happening. I know it. You’re here to protect him.”
I froze, shame flushing my cheeks hot. I didn’t say anything because she was wrong. I was nearly positive Castor was the host. Positive that our destinies were about to collide…
And I was very much afraid that in the end, I might be the one to take his life.
I was deep into the swamp when I had to stop the buggy and catch my breath. Sally had pulled a map from the glove box and drawn a line showing me how to get to Castor. The closer I got in the jarring swamp buggy ride, th
e more I felt as if someone was reaching inside me—stirring things around and painfully pulling them out through a small, small opening. The sun had risen—the heat intense. But the magic… as before, it messed with my senses. I was close and the evil in this part of the swamp sat upon my skin like something alive. When I closed my eyes, it felt as if ghostly claws reached out to strip the goodness from me and pull me deep into whatever dark abyss lay in wait.
I sat in the vehicle, my hands shaking before swiping at the tears I hadn’t even realized I’d shed.
There was something not…wholesome here, something resentful. Funny how panic can be instantaneous and painful. The hair on my nape rose as every nerve ending jumped to life. I climbed out of the vehicle and stood as silent and still as possible, trying to take in the world around me—sense any movement.
Fog hung heavy in the air and felt sticky on my skin, despite the chill creeping back through the air. I’d never been in this swamp in the morning and the silence was eerie. It felt like all the birds and animals held their breath in anticipation of something big.
Or maybe they were just scared shitless like me.
Rubbing the goose bumps on my arms, I stared at an egret perched on a stump less than a hundred feet away. These were not normally social birds so I took a moment to see if his stillness was the result of a larger predator. I’d already passed one alligator.
I slowly rolled my gaze over an enormous taproot on its side. It had lain there long enough to withstand the thousands of slivery roots that overtook the soil around the cap rock underneath.
I’d tried exploring this swamp in the past. I’d told Blythe I was found here but I hadn’t told her all of it. That I’d been wandering—dirty, lost and barely two years old. That all I’d had on me was my name sewn into a ratty blanket and this ankh around my neck. That the people who had found me planned to keep me until I’d scared them enough to dump me at a children’s home in Jacksonville.
I touched the ankh, hoping it would give me the strength to take the next step.
Dweller on the Threshold Page 26