River Road
Page 27
I wasn’t sure how long I could hold my circle, but enough to give me a couple of minutes to think. I collapsed to the deck with a thump, making sure not even a hair broke the plane of my protective cylinder.
Robert charged at me, and if I hadn’t been getting dizzy from blood loss and scared for my life his expression when he bounced off my invisible shield would have been comical. He fell on his ass and shouted at Libby to stop licking the deck. She finished the honey with one final sweep of her tongue, and finally focused on him. I could see the awareness creeping through her honey stupor as she turned glittering eyes toward me.
“You fool, break through it,” she shouted, then began coughing. Just a single cough at first, and then a strangled series of them. She held on to the rail, one hand on her burned stomach, and looked at the honey jar on the deck, then back at me as suspicion dawned. “What have you done, wizard?”
I smiled as Robert beat on the protective shield that surrounded me. Thank God she looked to be one of the mortal nymphs, or at least susceptible to poison. “Just a little belladonna cocktail, Libs. Did you like it?”
She charged at me, knife raised. It didn’t pierce the shield, but every blow made it harder for me to maintain. I fed more blood into the circle and prayed for the belladonna to work faster. Robert would fold like a pleated fan if Libby went down.
The nymph panicked. When she couldn’t break the plane of my circle, she screamed for Robert to do it. When he couldn’t, she went after him.
The focus of her rage centered on him. I reached out to stop her, but some spark of self-preservation made me jerk my arm back before I broke my own circle. She grabbed the knife I’d left next to Robert and arced it straight across his neck, sending a spray of blood running down my shield, onto Libby herself, and across the deck.
Robert fell, wide-eyed, and his shock and dismay flowed out of him and washed over my empathic senses as the enthrallment broke and he felt the hard slap of reality. He really hadn’t believed Libby would hurt him. I couldn’t find it in me to feel sorry for Robert, at least not yet. But knowing what Rene would see when he got here broke my heart. I could feel his presence in my head, frantic and getting closer.
Libby dropped to her knees, panting. The belladonna was working. Her hands and fingers spasmed, and her pulsating pupils dilated. Which would all be well and good except my magic was failing and I wasn’t sure how long I could stay conscious. I needed my freaking staff.
I let my circle drop, hoping Libby would be too far gone to notice, and scanned the deck again. It remained on the far side, near the wheelhouse. The damn thing had been following me around since I found it. Mahout had picked a fine time to abandon me.
Glancing to make sure Libby was still sitting near the wheelhouse, I pulled the chalk from my pocket again and drew a small summoning circle in front of me, quickly sending a ragged spike of magic into it and concentrating on the staff. I wasn’t sure it would work with an elven object; summoning enchanted objects is dicey. Still, the staff had claimed me. It might work.
My movement caught Libby’s attention, and she began crawling toward me.
The staff reached me first, sliding across the deck. Breaking the circle, I grabbed the staff, whipping it toward her and willing my few remaining shreds of energy into it.
Strong red ropes of flame flew out of the staff and wrapped around Libby’s arm as she reached for me. She screamed, or tried. Her voice was failing and the sound was little more than a hoarse whisper. She didn’t retreat. Even with her arm burning under the fiery threads, she grabbed the end of the staff and jerked it toward her. We each held an end of it, pulling in a weak tug-of-war that propelled us against the rail.
Even dying, Libby was physically stronger than me, and she knew it. She laughed and gave the staff one hard jerk that sent us both tumbling over the rails and into the cool, muddy water of the Mississippi.
I tried to hold on to the staff as I hit the water, but Libby was too strong and I’d spent too much of my energy. She dragged me with her as she dove toward the riverbed, until finally the currents from a passing barge swept us away from each other. The staff was gone, Libby was gone, and I was alone.
I struggled toward the surface, adrenaline propelling my arms and legs, panic causing me to want to gulp water in a bid for air. My lungs screamed for release, but there wasn’t any. Light shimmered through the water’s surface and I reached for it, but then I took a watery breath and everything began to fade.
I’ve heard a person’s life flashes through his mind when he dies, that he sees his loved one’s faces and a fast reel of special memories, both good and bad. I’ve heard a shining light beckons you to let go and be at peace.
I only felt cold, and saw nothing.
CHAPTER 34
Burning. Pain. Choking.
Somehow, I was alive. My lungs burned as they rasped air in and out, an elephant sat on my chest and crushed it with pain, and I choked and coughed out water. Then, to make sure I was as miserable as possible, someone slapped me hard enough to jar my teeth.
I have teeth. I’d barely had time to register the presence of molars before someone rolled me roughly to my side and pounded on my back. I coughed out more water, gasping to fill my lungs with oxygen minus the two parts hydrogen. I’m breathing.
I opened my eyes and saw the world tilt as I was rolled on my back again, and the image of Libby’s face came back in full Technicolor. I tried to pull away but my arms and legs were heavy and I couldn’t move.
“Be still, DJ. You hear me?”
I frowned, and focused on the face. Not Libby. Rene. He knelt over me, water dripping off his skin. He nodded, and I couldn’t tell if the water trailing down his face was from the river or his own tears. I opened my mouth but my voice was gone.
“You’ll be okay, babe, just keep suckin’ in air. Saw you go over the side with that bitch Libby, but you got swept in a ship’s current.” He smoothed the hair away from my face, and pried one of my eyes open. “Stay awake on me. You want I should call an ambulance? I found the staff and put it here by you.”
I mouthed the word no, but couldn’t get any words out.
“Where’s Robert? Did he shift?”
Oh, God. Robert. I thought Rene knew from our mental exchanges that Robert was dead. Maybe he wasn’t, though. Maybe there was a chance he was still alive. “Boat.”
“He’s on the la Mer and didn’t go in after you? I’ll kill the sonofabitch.”
I managed to shake my head, or at least I think I did. “Hurt. He’s … hurt.”
Rene disappeared. I tried to turn my head to see where he’d gone but couldn’t. I didn’t have the strength.
I don’t know how long I lay there, concentrating on pulling air in and pushing air out. I heard cicadas behind and around me, and a ship’s horn passing on the river. The sun seemed low, and then it was dusk, and I couldn’t stop shivering. I thought I heard someone crying.
Time passed, and I managed to roll to my side again. I opened my eyes to see a man standing among the trees at the edge of the clearing beyond the cinderblock building. Long blond hair, good cheekbones. What the hell was Eugenie’s boyfriend doing here? I closed my eyes as a spasm brought on another coughing jag. When I opened them again, he was gone. Great. I was hallucinating a hippie landscaper.
I sensed someone on the pier behind me and tried to sit up. I couldn’t do it, not yet. A sharp pain in my belly took my breath away as I rolled onto my back again. When I looked up, I tried to scream.
A huge wolf, red fur thick and bristly, stood over me. His eyes were a bright yellow-gold, and I knew them.
“Jake?” I coughed again, my voice no more than a whisper.
The wolf looked at me again and bared its teeth. This wasn’t like Alex when he was Gandalf. I wasn’t sure how much of Jake was reachable in there. Maybe it would help to touch him. I lifted my left hand as slowly as I could; it shook from the effort. The wolf growled and snapped at it, a sharp click as his jaws clamp
ed shut. I snatched it back, which sent another sharp pain into my gut.
“Jake!” Alex’s voice boomed from somewhere behind my head. Oh, God. Jake would kill him. “Jacob Warin. I know you can hear me. Move away from her. This doesn’t have to go south, man. Back off.” The sound of his chambering a bullet seemed impossibly loud. I knew the bullet was silver.
The wolf’s upper lip curved away from the sharpest, whitest teeth I’d ever seen, and he took a step toward my head, toward Alex’s voice.
“Jake, it’s okay,” I whispered. “Run. Let Alex take me home.”
The wolf turned his head and looked down at me. The high-pitched whine seemed absurdly small coming from such a large animal.
“I’m okay.” I tried to breathe without coughing and startling him. “You go home now.”
He lifted his head at the sound of approaching sirens and ran toward the woods.
Footsteps crunched behind my head and Alex leaned over me. “Sounds like an ambulance—I don’t know who called them. You going to come out weird on blood tests or anything?”
Crap. “Yeah, call Zrakovi,” I whispered. The Elders would have to send a Blue Congress team to fuzz up hospital tests and falsify medical records. “Help me sit up first.”
He slipped an arm behind my back and lifted me to a seated position. Pain shot through me in sharp waves, and I cried out before I could stop myself. He lowered me again. Cool air hit my skin as he jerked up the bottom of my sweater. “Shit, you’re bruised to hell and back. Wouldn’t be surprised if you have broken ribs.” He pressed on my abdomen and I jolted from the agony. “Did someone do CPR?”
I tried to think. Rand was in the woods … no, I’d imagined that. “Rene,” I rasped. “On the boat. He needs to get out of here before—”
The ambulance siren died and vehicle doors slammed. “Just keep your mouth shut and let me do the talking,” Alex said. “Your assault is now part of an ongoing FBI investigation.”
CHAPTER 35
I was debriefed in a freakin’ ass-out hospital gown, pumped full of painkillers that made me want to giggle at everything. The Elders brought in extra chairs and put a silencing charm on the room so no one could hear from the outside. A ward on the door convinced doctors and nurses not to enter. We were sealed up like a prete-filled Fort Knox.
Alex had shown up first, in full enforcer regalia.
“Is that a gun in your shoulder holster or are you happy to see me?” I grinned at him.
He stopped in the door and crossed his arms. “You drugged out?”
“Yup, big-time.”
“Good. You deserve it.” He came in and pulled a chair next to my bed. “Sexy lingerie.”
I looked down at the blue and white dotted cotton gown that tied at the neck. “Yeah, and it’s air-conditioned in the back.”
He laughed. “So, what’s the verdict?”
I tried to remember the numbers. “Thirty stitches left leg, forty-five right arm, sixteen class-A contusions—that’s bruises—and a hyperextended knee. I don’t know how I got that. Oh, and two cracked ribs from merman CPR that hurt worse than the rest combined.”
“Impressive.” Alex nodded. “I guess you’ll be earning that new salary.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” I closed my eyes, frowned as his words sunk in, opened them again. “Huh?”
He smiled. “I wanted to get here first to tell you, but pretend you’re surprised when Zrakovi breaks the news. You’re the new sole sentinel of Southeast Louisiana.”
I felt the drugged-out high drain from me. This was what I wanted, right? Why did I feel like crying all of a sudden? “You’re being transferred?”
He took my hand and squeezed it. “Nope, I’ll be your number-one security consultant—and neighbor, of course. The Elders are setting up a new prete security division and I’ll be running it. Jake will work for me so I can ease him into field work. And we’re talking about bringing someone from NOPD in—probably Ken Hachette.”
His eyes were bright and he’d smiled more in the last few minutes than in the last year. “I can tell you’re happy about it.”
“Yeah and—”
The sound of raised voices preceded Elder Zrakovi and Adrian Hoffman into the room. They stopped speaking abruptly at the sight of Alex and me. “DJ, Alex.” Zrakovi, dressed in a spiffy black suit and striped tie, greeted us, then looked around the room. The navy-suited Hoffman ignored us, and we returned the non-salutation. That man deserved to be horsewhipped, in my opinion, and I might have just enough drugs in me to share that opinion, should he look at me wrong.
“We’ll be debriefing here, since you won’t be going home until tomorrow and business calls us to Edinburgh,” Zrakovi told me. “Ah, here are the others.”
Jake had stuck his head in the door, and Zrakovi motioned him in. Behind him, looking like he’d rather be just about anywhere else, walked Rene Delachaise. I almost didn’t recognize him in dark jeans, a white shirt, and a black sports coat.
You okay, babe?
I smiled at him and nodded.
We admittin’ we still got some of the brain thing goin’?
“Hell no.” I wasn’t aware I’d spoken aloud until everyone except Rene turned to stare at me. I coughed a little, holding on to my ribcage. “Sorry. Painkillers.”
During this time, Hoffman had been sealing the room and people had been finding seats. Alex shifted his chair closer to the bed. I felt like a half-dressed, waifish queen surrounded by her factotums.
Rene cleared his throat and shook his head. Act right, you.
“We’ll keep this short,” Zrakovi said. “Drusilla, tell us what led you to suspect the nymph Libetta? Mostly, I’m looking for clues we should have picked up on earlier so that we’ll not make the same mistakes.”
I tried to sort through the events of the last two weeks. “I didn’t take her seriously, for one thing. Since she answered the phone at the River Nymphs’ office—did you know they had brought in satyrs as male escorts, by the way?”
Zrakovi frowned.
“Painkillers,” I said. “Well, since she answered the phone, I assumed she was one of them. I didn’t follow up to see if she was legit till I’d already figured out it was her.”
“How could you have figured it out faster?” Zrakovi asked, and I shifted a reptilian gaze to Adrian Hoffman. I had a bus I wanted to throw him under, but you couldn’t tank a guy in public just for being an asshole. I’d be writing a report full of buses, though.
“I honestly don’t know who knew what, and when. The thing that tied it together was linking Libby with Melinda Hebert, and unless the wizards change the marriage rules so non-wizard spouses submit to blood tests—there’s no way to know. Doug Hebert lied about what his wife was, probably out of fear of reprisals from her family, and he charmed her necklace to help her hide it.”
Zrakovi made some marks in his notebook, and I wondered if he had to write reports for the Congress of Elders like we had to write them for him. I bet he did. Poor guy.
“Mr. Warin”—he realized both Alex and Jake had snapped to attention—“Mr. Alexander Warin. What happened when you met Libetta after intercepting Ms. Jaco’s phone call?”
Alex shifted in his chair. “She tried to enthrall me, got piss … uh, got angry when it didn’t work, came after me with a knife. I shifted, thinking I could chase her down better, but she hexed me. Not really sure what she did, but I couldn’t shift back. DJ found me an hour later and reversed the hex.”
“He turned pink,” I said. Alex kicked the bed, jarring my ribs. “Painkillers,” I gasped.
Zrakovi stared at me a moment, then went back to his notebook. “Ms. Jaco, why did you decide to go without backup to confront Libetta?”
“Uh.” Now things were getting dicey. “Alex was still out from his hex reversal, Jake had gotten tied up at the Villeres’, Rene was on his way. I didn’t realize”—I mentally apologized to Rene—“that Robert Delachaise had been enthralled and would help her.”
Zrakovi looked at Rene, who sat next to him. “My condolences on the loss of your brother, but I have to ask—did you know what the nymph had done, or that your brother was helping her?”
Rene’s anger rose fast, like a tidal wave. “No. Robert was a victim here, just like the wizard. Wasn’t like Denis Villere, who knew what was goin’ on and kept his trap shut. If you gonna hold my brother accountable, you gotta hold them accountable too.”
I frowned as Zrakovi put a conciliatory hand on Rene’s arm. I hadn’t known that Denis was involved. “You are right, Mr. Delachaise. We have issued an explanation and apology to your father, although I know that will be of little comfort, and we also have given the Villeres the choice of relocating back to their former homestead in the Atchafalaya Basin or going into the Beyond. Their business dealings have been curtailed, and they will no longer be allowed in Plaquemines or St. Bernard parishes, near you or any of your family.”
I felt Rene’s anger morph into deep pain, and I knew he was trying not to cry in front of a roomful of wizards.
“Does Rene have to stay for the rest of this?” I asked. “He’s been through enough, and he’s been a big help in repairing the river breaches.”
“I told you, Willem,” Hoffman said. “I suspect she has done elven magic with a non-wizard. It can’t be tolerated.”
Zrakovi gave Hoffman a look that would curdle cream. I laughed, at least until Alex kicked the side of the bed again.
“Yes, Mr. Delachaise. You can go. We all appreciate the work you’ve done with Ms. Jaco to restore the river water. I heard this morning that two elderly humans had died in Plaquemines, but that number would have been much higher if you hadn’t been willing to assist.”
I smiled at Rene as he eased around Adrian Hoffman and headed for the door.