Once again, Zrakovi had underestimated what I could do.
Now we had to wait on Rene or Rand to cause a distraction. Then Jake and I needed to get the hell out. I wasn’t going to Greenland to either rot in prison while my case was “under review” or “accidentally” get locked outside and go into permanent hibernation if Rand couldn’t fix this right away.
“Elder Zrakovi.” Rand stood up, and I took a deep breath. Here came the rest of whatever he’d been plotting this afternoon. “I have one more item of business I need to put before the council.”
“Can’t it wait, Mr. Randolph?” Zrakovi sounded tired. Good. I hoped he was exhausted and miserable.
“No, it can’t.”
Rand walked around the corner of the table, past Zrakovi, and opened the door. He moved out of sight for a few seconds, and when he returned he wasn’t alone. Betony Stoneman, head of the earth clan and new council member, was with him.
Between them, looking like she was a few loads shy of a full deck, was Eugenie.
CHAPTER 33
I sat up straight so fast it was a wonder I didn’t drop my handcuffs and give myself away. I looked at Jean, whose jaw was clenched tightly enough that the scar running along his jawline stood out. The temperature in the room dropped at least thirty degrees, and, across the room, both Sabine and Florian looked suspiciously at Christof.
How had Rand found Eugenie? And how much elven mental crap had he and Betony done to her? Her hazel eyes were glazed, and her pupils were the size of marbles.
“What is the meaning of this, Mr. Randolph?” Zrakovi stood up and looked appropriately appalled. Like what he’d done hadn’t been worse.
“Earlier today, I informed Ms. Dupre, who is carrying my son, that I’d made arrangements for her to spend the rest of her pregnancy living in Elfheim, under the best medical care and with a life much more luxurious than the conditions she lives in now, which are deplorable. She washes other people’s hair.” His snarling Elvis lip told what he thought of that occupation.
What a horrible thing. She made more money than I did. She had a house with working heat and a car, which was more than I could say.
When he began talking, Rand had let go of Eugenie, and now that he no longer touched her, awareness seeped back into her eyes. She turned her head wildly from side to side, finally spotted the door, and made a run for it.
Alex blocked her way, and she ran into him with an oof. He leaned down and put his arms around her, whispering furiously.
She looked at him, her brows drawn together in uncertainty. She trusted Alex, liked him, had been one of his biggest cheerleaders. Our world might be getting pulled apart, but bottom line? He was a good guy. If push came to shove, he’d protect her. I was sorry I had ever doubted that.
Alex led her to a seat, pulled it out, and pressed on her shoulders until she sat. Finally, she spotted me. Help me. She mouthed the words.
I nodded and gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile.
“I repeat, Mr. Randolph, please explain yourself.” Zrakovi was pissed. “This is a closed meeting of approved Interspecies Council members. We do not allow uninvited guests, especially humans. It is part of our bylaws, adapted at the meeting on Nove—”
“I realize that,” Rand said, wincing when I screamed at him: Rand! What the hell are you doing?
I felt his mental wards go up, which was strange. I shut him out all the time; he’d never done the same to me.
“Ms. Dupre not only refused my overture to improve her life and ensure the safety of my child, but she ran away. My fellow Synod member and new council member, Mr. Stoneman, found her hiding in the Hotel Monteleone, where I believe she awaited a chance to reach asylum in the Beyond. I know for a fact that there are those who have encouraged her to abort the child, including some in this room tonight.” He looked pointedly at Zrakovi.
“Should anything happen to my son before he is born or after—anything—I will hold the wizards personally responsible, and will advise those on the Synod and among our people that our long-standing truce is at an end.”
Holy crap. Rand was threatening Zrakovi with war, and he was doing it in a way that threw me under the Ittoqqortoormiit-bound bus. He’d made it clear he knew Zrakovi had threatened the baby, and the only way he could possibly know that was from me. I’d be in Greenland until I hibernated permanently.
As if he heard my thoughts, Zrakovi turned to me with a look that would’ve curdled Christof’s gallon of Blue Bell pralines and cream. I didn’t need my empathy to read the promise in that expression. It promised I would live badly and die worse.
“Mr. Randolph, those are harsh words. I’m sure when you’ve had a chance to calm down and realize someone has given you false information, you’ll—”
“My words aren’t idle, Zrakovi. My information wasn’t false and you know it.” Rand reached toward Eugenie, and she edged away from him so fast she’d have toppled off her chair if Alex hadn’t caught her.
“There’s only one way this situation can be rectified.” Rand’s voice dropped into a smooth, reasonable timbre. “Only one, and I request that you make it tonight, right now, or else I will consider the elves no longer a participant in any interspecies negotiations. I have already obtained the support of my fellow Synod member Betony Stoneman for this move, and as the air clan is currently without a leader and the water clan leader is not yet an adult, that is all the approval I need.”
Shit. Rand had Zrakovi over the proverbial barrel and he knew it. Z was fidgeting so badly he was practically dancing in his chair. “Well, there’s no need for such measures, of course, Mr. Randolph. What is it that we can do for you?”
Zrakovi might never recover from this humiliation, and when my gaze met that of good old Uncle Lennox, his delight couldn’t be more obvious.
“I demand that Eugenie Dupre be turned over to me for the duration of her pregnancy. She’ll be placed in protective custody in Elfheim until the child is born, at which time she will be free to return to her little life of washing hair and painting fingernails.”
I’d hated Rand before. I hated him when he treated Eugenie so badly before we bonded. I hated him when he’d taunted her with it afterward. But never like I hated him now. All this scene needed to be perfect was him to trot out the nonsense about me helping him raise Eugenie’s child.
“Well, of course, that seems perfectly reasonable.”
“No! You can’t do that. DJ, help me.” Eugenie jumped to her feet and Alex again tried to soothe her, whispering, rubbing her back.
Rand, this is wrong. Please let me talk to her. We’ll find a compromise.
He ignored me.
The temperature dropped again, and I glanced at Christof. His face had grown the color of a snowball, and his green eyes shone silver. He was the scariest damn thing I’d seen since the Axeman came after me, Aragorn or no Aragorn.
Sabine leaned over and whispered something to him, and the temperature seemed to level off. Not warm—I could still see my breath condensing—but at least not growing colder.
We were going to have to take Eugenie out of here with us. That’s all there was to it. Jean had already offered her sanctuary.
In fact, I hoped Jean had plenty of room, because his house was going to be crowded. The Elders had no reach and no authority in Old Barataria, and whatever question I had about leaving had been answered by my elf. He wasn’t going near Eugenie without her permission, and I was going to make sure of it.
My future landlord seemed to be engrossed in a series of nods and gestures with his infuriated faery friend.
Christof lowered his head and, beneath the table, I could see him raise his hands, palms up.
A loud pop sounded in the room, and everyone looked around. Another, this one lasting longer, made us all look up. A wide crack zigzagged across the ceiling, and I experienced a horrifying few moments of déjà vu.
Oh, God, please tell me Christof wasn’t going to bring down the ceiling.
; CHAPTER 34
Christof was going to bring down the ceiling.
This time, instead of a crash of plaster dust and lathing, Sheetrock and roofing materials and snow rained down. Lots and lots of snow. And pandemonium. Sabine screamed and tried to levitate, but the stuff on top of her was too heavy. Florian pushed himself free and tried to dig her out. Zrakovi was completely buried, and I saw Alex wrapping his arms around Eugenie and pulling her free.
Jake had grabbed me before the first part of the ceiling fell and had shoved me to the ground, our handcuffs lost in the scramble. Now, we both climbed to our feet, looking around. Somehow, everyone in the room floundered under Sheetrock and snow, subroofing and nails—everyone except Christof, Jean, Eugenie, Alex, Jake, and me.
How had he done that?
Jean rushed to Jake and me, herding us toward a ladder that had dropped down from one of the holes in the roof. “Courir! Dépêchez-vous! We must fly.”
“Where’s Eugenie?”
“Alex got her to Christof,” Jake said. “They’re already at the ladder.”
The ladder. Were they nuts? I ran to the back corner and looked up into a black sky dropping snow on my head so fast it already felt frozen. Eugenie’s feet disappeared out of sight and, satisfied, Christof nodded at Jean and ran back to excavate his queen.
“You must climb, Jolie. Tout de suite.”
We were going to have a talk about that tout de suite business, and soon, but for now I grasped the metal rungs of the ladder, wincing at the cold. Couldn’t they have used a wooden ladder, for crying out loud?
My feet kept slipping, but there was no danger of falling because Jean was right behind me with his hand on my ass, pushing me upward. We’d be talking about that, too.
Finally, I reached the top where Rene waited, hand outstretched. “C’mon, babe, move it.”
With Jean’s help, which gave a whole new meaning to assistance, I managed to climb onto the roof. A gust of wind would have knocked me off but for Rene’s grasp on the back of my sweater.
Jean climbed out, followed by Jake.
Then the five of us stood and stared at each other. We’d gotten to the roof. I sure hoped they had a plan to get us down. And where was Alex?
I turned and grabbed Rene by the lapels because I figured he’d be the least likely to take offense at being manhandled. “How the hell do we get down? Did you think that far ahead?”
“Hold on, babe. It’s coming. You’re gonna love it.”
“What’s coming?”
As if on cue, City Park sprang to life around us. The lights blinded me at first, but eventually I could make out shapes. Alligators the size of single-engine planes, built out of bright green lights with yellow teeth and eyes, rose over the snow, suspended in midair, their lights casting colorful shadows on the white mounds beneath them. Beyond them, in the snow-covered, frozen pond, rose the green humps of a sea serpent. Purple and silver fairy lights strung along the twisted limbs of the massive live oaks created surreal vistas everywhere I looked.
A red and green Tyrannosaurus rex ran back and forth across the main road through the park, a neat trick I remembered from the last Celebration in the Oaks light show. Now, the dinosaur ran over snowbanks. Music from the nearby carousel tinkled. Christmas music from the Cajun Christmas Village wafted through the snow, carried by the gusts of wind.
This was beautiful and I’m sure if I survived I’d appreciate it, but in the meantime, my feet had gone completely numb, as had my ears. I was in dire need of my lost babushka flag scarf.
And I was hallucinating, because I could swear the nearest light-covered live oak had changed position.
“The tree is moving!” I screamed at Jean, who’d fixed a broad smile on Papa Noel, the Cajun Santa, who rode his red-lit sleigh across the frozen lake, pulled by eight grinning green-lit gators.
“Yes, Jolie. We must climb down when the tree grows near,” he said, as if, duh, I should’ve known the escape route lay down the trunk of a moving three-centuries-old tree.
I was almost jerked off my frozen feet by Rene, who shoved me toward the edge of the roof. Holy crap; the tree had arrived. I reached out and grabbed hold of a branch the girth of a half-dozen baseball bats, grown warm from its covering of lights.
Whoever had come up with this bright idea for an escape needed to be horsewhipped, and I knew just the wizard to do it.
I crawled across the widest limb and stopped when I reached the trunk, which was wider than my SUV I blew up last month. I needed a strategy.
“C’mon, sunshine, follow me.” Jake skirted past me, and quickly figured out a way to dangle his legs off one branch and slide onto the one below it. Luckily, live oaks had a dense array of limbs so the method even worked for my short legs. The lights kept the snow off so it wasn’t as miserable as it might have been.
Also, live oak branches grow all the way to the ground, so we were able to slide off the last one straight into a fluffy snowbank.
When I struggled out of the snow, I almost tripped over a sweating Adrian Hoffman, deep in concentration as he twirled his fingers in intricate movements and chanted words that were incomprehensible to me. He was doing all of this—running the whole freaking City Park light show using his pretty Blue Congress magic. Which he shouldn’t be able to do anymore since he’d been turned vampire.
“Pretty cool, ain’t it, babe?” Rene wrapped his arms around me from behind, sharing some shifter body heat.
“I thought wizards lost their magic when they were turned vampire,” I whispered, not wanting to break Adrian’s concentration. At least that’s what Etienne Boulard had told me.
“He says he’ll lose it eventually but it takes a few decades,” Rene said. “Come on, let’s get to the transport with the others before he runs out of juice.”
I turned to follow Rene, but before I’d taken two or three steps through the deep snow, there was a loud crack and everything went black and silent.
“Rene?” I whispered. “Adrian?”
Nothing. Just wind that screamed like a woman in pain, and heavy snow, and bitter cold.
Something shuffled to my right, where Rene had been, and I stumbled blindly toward the sound, holding my hands in front of me to feel for what I hoped would be a nice merman.
Instead, another loud crack sounded, from my left again, and a sharp pain lanced through my left calf. My leg buckled under me, and I hit the snow as another shot rang out. Because it was definitely a shot. In the pitch blackness, that last blast had been accompanied by a flash of red fire.
I dug inside my jeans and pulled Charlie from his makeshift holster inside my Harry Potter pajamas. Don’t glow, I told him. We have to stay hidden. But if you can help keep me warm, I’d appreciate it.
Later, I’d worry about how Charlie knew what I meant and what I needed. For the moment, he was not only failing to glow, but had heated up with a delicious warmth that spread through my arm and into my body. My feet were still frozen, but by holding the staff two-handed, I thought I could avoid hibernation.
I couldn’t see, though, damn it. I crouched in the snow and listened, sorting out wind and snowfall from cracking branches and distant traffic.
I reached out with my other senses, sifting through the input. Fresh, clean snow, wet wood from the trees, gunpowder. I noted those and pushed them aside, looking for energy signatures. Rene’s wonky shifter aura, or the buzz of Adrian’s wizard signature.
I felt both, although they were faint. The strongest aura I read was wizard, off to my left, where Adrian had been. I moved slowly, trying to make myself a small target in case the shooter had night-vision equipment, and praying the wizard I was moving toward was Adrian and not Zrakovi.
The aura was strong now, and I stopped again, trying to pinpoint it. Ahead and just to the right. I crawled now, not wanting to make myself a big target by standing up. Charlie touched the ground with each movement of my hand, melting the snow with a faint sizzle.
Here. I laid the staff besid
e my knee and felt around me in a wide sweep of my arms, touching something warm to my right—something that grabbed my hand and twisted my wrist violently. I couldn’t avoid a sharp intake of breath.
“DJ?”
Oh thank God. “Adrian? What happened?”
“Somebody shot at me, so I dropped the lights. He’s moved back toward the transport.”
Damn it, who was the shooter? “I’m hit, too—left calf. You okay?”
“I’m a bloody vampire. Bullets don’t do much.”
Right. I’d forgotten.
Rand!
Silence, but not an I’m-injured-and-unconscious kind of silence. He was still shutting me out. He wouldn’t be out here with a gun, either. For one thing, it wasn’t his style. Plus, he wouldn’t risk hitting Eugenie.
Zrakovi wasn’t the shooting type. He’d send someone else to do it. Like Alex. Alex wouldn’t be out here shooting blindly, though.
Lennox crossed my mind, but why? Letting us all escape would make Zrakovi look bad, opening the door for my uncle to ride in on his white Bentley and save the day.
No point in worrying about the shooter’s identity, only his location. “Let’s try to go toward the transport,” I whispered. “Rene’s out here somewhere, too. I lost him when the lights went out.”
Which worried me. He hadn’t been that far away, so what if the shooter got him? Of course, like vampires, shifters healed from most things. “D’you know if the bullet was silver?” I asked Adrian.
“I don’t think so.” He shuffled alongside me, also crawling. “You think the transport is this way?”
Hell, I wasn’t sure anymore. I could have crawled around in circles. “Let’s try it. We can’t do anything except freeze sitting here.”
He stood up, and I tried, but my left leg kept giving way on me. “Here, try this.” Adrian bent down and pulled my left arm around his shoulder. “I’ll help you.”
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