by Holley Trent
“Oh, come on, Agatha,” he said, and brazenly leaned back onto his elbows and crossed his legs at the ankles. “There’s no love lost between you and the big guy, right? With the history you two have, you should want to see him suffer.”
“I’m not like you, demon. Not desperate like you. This is the best you can do? Borrow a little boy’s corporeal form for five minutes here and there? Maybe Bill and I aren’t on the best of terms right now, but neither of us has any desire to incapacitate the other. Live and let be, that’s the game. What did Bill ever do to you?”
He shrugged gallantly. “Just a means to an end, old broad. You’ll see.”
Gail slipped her hands down slowly and made a discreet pat of her pockets. Where was her athame? The body was just borrowed, so she could hurt him bad enough to want to abandon it. As far as the original owner? Well, fuck him, too. He’d heal.
Maybe.
Her knife flew from her jacket pocket straight into Shaun’s waiting hand. He grinned at her—that same grin that had her uttering “I do” to a minister all those years ago.
“Looking for this?” he asked.
“Fuck.”
He did that shrug again. “You should have killed me when you had the chance. Conscience does tend to foil the most bloody of plans.”
There was a loud crack at the field’s edge that made both Gail and Agatha startle. They turned to see a billow of dark black smoke, and several large trees ripped out of the ground as if a tornado had plowed through without making a sound.
“Claude!” Gail shouted. She couldn’t see anything through the smoke, couldn’t hear him over the din.
Check in, check in! She closed her eyes and tried to tune into any of the magic granted to her as a witch. The voices from her guides were too quiet to hear. Her gut churned too badly from fear and anger to listen to it. That emotional tether strung between the two of them thanks to the ring—that was still there.
Claude was agitated and overwhelmed, but thank the gods, he was alive.
Unfortunately, the distraction was all Shaun needed to get between Gail and Agatha. Tables turned, he grabbed her chin, yanked her head to the side from the back, and set the knife’s blade under her neck.
Agatha barely twitched, and Shaun said, “Nope. Stay where you are, or I’ll bleed her dry. You know I don’t wanna, but I will. Gotta give up some things to get better things sometimes.”
Gail pushed up on her tiptoes, trying to put some space between her throat and the knife and risked swallowing. Her mouth had become so dry, her tongue like cotton, but she wasn’t going to let him steal her words—not Shaun or the demon currently inhabiting him.
“Here’s what’s going to happen, okay?” he whispered against her ear. “I’m going to back away really slowly. We’re going to go to your ex-husband’s car and we’re going to get out of here.”
“What are you going to do to me?”
“Oh, I’m not going to do anything to you.” He tried to pull her backward.
She dug her heels in and tensed her body. She wasn’t going anywhere willingly.
He chuckled. “I can see why Shaun picked you of all the others. You’ve got spunk. Bait doesn’t usually have so much spunk.”
“What?” Agatha demanded.
He clucked his tongue. “Oh, Agatha. We were all hoping some important god would have come forward. You’re nothing. That’s why your own family has been plucking off your descendants for, oh, how many thousands of years?”
His body jerked as soon as the words left his lips, and Gail knew why. Agatha might have been out of practice, but if she got pushed, she would fight. For whatever reason, the goddess was trying to avoid it. What would happen if she really let loose?
Of all the times Gail wished she had the sort of invasive telepathy that sometimes plagued Claude and his brothers, now would have been the biggest. She pleaded to the goddess with her eyes.
We’ve got this, she tried to say.
And she realized that in her concern for Agatha, she’d found her calm place again. The anger had given way. The fear was still there, as it should have been, but now she could think.
She could fight smart, not like she had with Claude in that parking lot weeks ago. She’d used a little wild magic of her own back then, but now it was time to mix that with some of that uptight, clinical witchcraft she’d learned as a young adult.
That was what Claude had been trying to get her to do—to use both at the right times.
Her affinity was with air, just like Agatha, and she could make the wind do her bidding. She didn’t need grand theatrics, just good timing.
She whispered on the breeze, barely moving her lips, as these words were meant for Agatha only.
“He’s afraid of you.” Maybe he’d even seen her angry before and was afraid of what she was capable of.
Hurricanes were often given pretty names, but they brought wind that flattened entire towns and lifted water that drowned out all signs of life. That would have been just one of the weapons at her arsenal, should she choose to use it.
Gail didn’t know if Agatha heard because she didn’t react. She didn’t take her eyes from the knife at Gail’s neck.
But then Gail heard Agatha’s voice, and it was clear as day in her ear. “I know.”
A loud crack followed by a thud shook the ground near the trees, and this time Gail didn’t let her worry about Claude distract her. He’d want her to take care of herself in the way Laurette hadn’t been able to. He wasn’t always going to be able to come running. Sometimes, she’d be the one running to help him.
That’s why she grabbed “Shaun” by the nuts and sent enough electricity into him to down a rampaging elephant. He dropped the knife, and Gail ran toward Claude.
She looked back once to see the demon trying to free himself from Shaun’s body, but without even touching him, Agatha pulled his head hard to the side, and he fell immediately to his knees, eyes bulging and lips parted.
“Come and get me, motherfuckers,” Agatha shouted to the sky, and it seemed to open up. Energy roiled around her and her grin went wide.
What had she done? Something long overdue, probably, but Gail didn’t have the luxury of time to worry about it.
She turned her head back toward the trees and ran harder. She saw Ross straddling his uncle and worried that Claude would be another person not getting up any time soon.
If ever.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Claude didn’t know what Gail had just done, but whatever it was had sent a cold chill through him. She hadn’t drawn on his magic at all, but because of the way they were connected, he could feel her. He could feel her strength and confidence.
Her fear.
Fear was good because fear meant she was alive.
Now he could fight for real.
Though it was difficult from his position on the ground, he managed to give Ross a hard blow to the jaw that knocked his nephew’s head back.
“Just fucking die,” Ross said, spitting blood onto the ground beside Claude. “Let me have my glory!”
Yeah, right.
It would have been one thing if this were just about power, but Ross and Shaun had gotten greedy.
They only had to look back to the Salem witch trials to know how that worked.
“You can’t wield what you weren’t born to have,” Gail said. “Stolen power is corrupt power.”
Claude couldn’t help it, but he closed his eyes and sighed his relief.
His girl. His reine.
“Oh, yay! Another hero speech,” Ross said. He bounded to his feet to face Gail.
Predictable. Ross could be distracted by a good argument because he had an ingrained desire to win all the time. But his mind didn’t always make connections where it should because he had never matured in the realm of problem-solving. He was perpetually stuck at age twenty, where the most important thing to him was his immediate gratification.
“Claude.”
Papa’s voice whis
pered through Claude’s mind, and he turned to look to his father to find him still frozen in place against the tree Ross had knocked him to. He’d never seen his father so weak, and the fact he could rendered so powerless and so human was all at once amusing and frightening.
Because Ross was, or at least had been, mostly human, he could weave the sort of magic that could stop a demon in his tracks. It was the simple matter of drawing the right symbol onto that demon’s flesh. Few knew the symbols beyond the demons they worked on, their lords, and paranormals like Clarissa who made it her business to know them.
Whatever Ross had done to Charles had him facedown on the ground and not moving. He was alive, though Claude couldn’t tell how long he’d be that way.
Claude moved stealthily backward toward his father and mouthed to Gail, “Keep him talking. Confuse him.”
She blinked her understanding, turned a curious face toward Ross, and asked, “What do you have against heroes? What has anyone here ever done to ruin your life more than you already had on your own?”
Claude pressed his hand to Papa’s chest, bolstering their psychic connection. It weakened with each passing moment, and Claude couldn’t say for sure if they’d ever be able to reestablish it, should they want to.
“Besides Ross, she or Agatha are the only ones who can undo this,” Papa said, and his gaze darted to Gail and back.
Where was Agatha anyway? The last time Claude had seen her, she’d been in the field rolling up her sleeves and shooting a stare at Papa frosty enough to wither his boy-parts.
“Agatha must be otherwise distracted. Shaun must still be out there.”
“Well, there you have it. You can’t undo it because it’d be like uncocking a trigger on me just to pull it on yourself.”
Shit.
Claude looked at Gail. She had Ross good and distracted, keeping his back turned to the demons behind him. He gestured wildly while explaining some fine point of treachery, and Gail, bless her, alternated her expressions between awe and fear. If she were acting, she was doing a damned good job of it.
He turned back to his father, but scanned the ground around them.
Ross would have needed a dagger or athame to trace those symbols on his father and grandfather. Claude would need to use the same one to undo them.
“What are you doing?” Papa asked.
“Don’t worry. My intention isn’t to leave you pinned here. I won’t do anything reckless, if only for the sake of my brother.”
“And your woman?”
Claude chuckled as he spotted the glint of silver on the leaf-strewn forest floor. He nudged the knife over carefully, quietly, with the toe of his sneaker. “Don’t you get it? This is our last chance, and I may be wrong, but I don’t think I am.” He knelt, slowly, and picked up the dagger. “She’s not meant to be mine unless she knows her power.”
“Impossible.”
Claude shook his head and pressed the tip of the knife to Papa’s sternum.
The big man didn’t even flinch, but he had to be perfectly aware that Claude could end him with just one careless flick of his wrist.
But he wouldn’t. Papa knew he wouldn’t, even if he didn’t know why. It wasn’t because he was weak, but because he believed in second chances. Or third—well, fifth chances, in his and Gail’s case. Clarissa had thought him redeemable three years ago and pulled him into her little family. She couldn’t absolve him of his numerous sins, but she made him feel like he wasn’t worthless because he’d committed them. Life was but a series of interconnected choices, and at any time, he could decide to make better ones. Ones that would help, rather than harm, decent people.
Decisions that would benefit the greater good, and not just Number One.
He would always be a monster because it was written in his DNA, but he could be a better monster—even if being better was far more difficult than being bad ever was.
“The prophesy. Remember it.”
“Don’t do anything stupid.”
Claude shook his head again. “I’m not. Do you remember what Charles told you last year? That you have to be willing to give up things if you want greater rewards?”
Papa’s forehead furrowed infinitesimally—the tiniest bit he could move. “I remember.”
“That’s all I’m doing. I’ll free you. You deal with Ross and tell Gail how to rouse Charles.”
“Why can’t you tell her yourself?”
Claude didn’t answer. He glanced at Ross to find him placing an affectionate hand on Gail’s cheek, and gritted his teeth.
She had him under control, at least for the moment, though Claude didn’t want to think too hard about how she was doing it.
Taking a deep breath, Claude turned back to his father and carved out the ancient rune. Each swipe, each draw of the knife tracing the bloody symbol, brought him as much pain as Papa had likely felt when the symbol had been carved the first time.
Each tug was more painful than the last, and Claude felt as though his blood had been replaced with tiny needles and his nerves doused with accelerant and set ablaze.
He smelled burning flesh.
He smelled ozone and brimstone.
And with that last, torturous yank, he smelled death.
He felt it, too, just before he blacked out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Claude stepped forward into the mist, scanning the barren, gray void for signs or life—or evidence of death. From every direction, there was the same scene: gray skies, soil that yielded nothing, and unceasing fog.
The quiet laughter behind him made him turn, startled. He’d know that voice anywhere.
Maman waved a dismissive hand at him, picked up her skirts, and called back, “Follow me.”
“Where to?”
“Everywhere and nowhere, just out of this mist. Of all the places you could imagine, you’d go for the trite imagery from old stories. You’re not at the crossroads, boy. You’re in your own head. I’m just carrying out the pretense so your brain makes sense of things. If I pretend to lead you somewhere else, your brain will accept the change of scenery and get me out of this mess.”
“So, I’m not dead?”
She rolled her eyes and resumed walking. “Come on.”
They didn’t say anything for a long while, and then she pointed ahead. “There. My old house in New Orleans. I see that old rocking chair is still there on the porch. See it?”
He did. He didn’t know why he did, but it was there, and the street he remembered from his odd childhood.
Maman settled into the chair, and Claude lowered himself onto the second step. Lacing his fingers over his knees, he watched horses pull carriages down the avenue, women hauling baskets of food and wares to the market, and children on the heels of their mothers, trying desperately to be helpful.
And there was that cat. That little black cat that wouldn’t stop following him around after Laurette was killed.
It sat across the street, peering at him, and suddenly he understood.
“You never told me I had a familiar.”
“You were going through a lot of changes at the time. I didn’t think you’d be so fond of inheriting a pet to tend. I gave her to Laurette, but she was meant to be yours.”
He called the cat over by tapping his fingertips against the wood of the step. It streaked across the road and immediately rubbed against his legs as if he’d been gone on some long trip and she was happy he was home.
But that was just in his mind. That cat didn’t really exist anymore.
“You’re lying to yourself,” Maman said. The porch floorboards creaked as she tipped her chair back and forth, back and forth. “You know how it works. That cat’s as real as I am.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I stick around on this plane because it suits me. She sticks around because she needs access. She skips in and out of your realm as needed. It’s not so hard to find a cat to inhabit. Throw a rock and you’ll hit one.”
The midnight black
cat mewed at Maman, and she did that dismissive hand wave again.
“Settle down. I didn’t mean nothing by it.”
“Hey. Since you’re here, you want to tell me what you did to Gail’s ring?”
“Didn’t I when I gave it to you?”
“I think you omitted some critical information.”
She huffed, “Oh, nothing serious. I just fixed it so you can always find each other, whether you’re in the waiting room, the woods, or one of those stupid shopping malls she can’t stand. You’ll never be able to hide from each other.”
It was a good thing Claude didn’t see that as a problem.
“Why am I here? If I’m not dead, what is my status?” He figured he should ask the obvious question if she were going to be so forthcoming. What was his body doing while his soul was away?
“You’re in a bit of a coma. Traumatic impact is all. You passed out, and then your father upped the ante and damn near tore a hole in the universe. Damn, he’s fine when he’s mad. Mmm!”
“Maman.” He groaned.
“Hush. It’s the truth. You think I picked him just because of his power? Please. A woman’s got needs. And he liked those needs very much, too, contrary to what—”
“Maman!”
“Since when are you a prude? I could have sworn your daddy was a sex demon.”
“Is he … you know.”
“You’ll find out soon enough. My concern wasn’t with him, though. It was with you. Coming to you this way is easy for me. I don’t have to rip time and space for you to hear me, because your consciousness is afloat. Easier to communicate.”
Claude grunted and looked down at his hands. “What’s going to happen now?”
“Oh, I imagine you’ll wake up, some lady who’s been waiting too damned long for you will kiss you silly, and then probably slap you for that dangerous stunt. After that, who knows?”
“No more predictions? Your seer didn’t foretell anything beyond this?”
She shook her head. “The prophesy is complete. Whether you and Gail choose to stay together at this point is your choice.”