[Anita Blake Collection] - Strange Candy (17 page)

Lisbeth gave a lovely smile, eyes shining. “Because she loves me,” she said, very matter-of-fact, very sweet, and as soon as she said it, Lisbeth knew it had been a mistake.

Jasmine laughed, then the laughter died. She stared down at the child, met her brown eyes, and did not look away. “No one loves you, Lisbeth; you and I both know that.”

“I hate you,” Lisbeth said, voice quiet and precise.

“I know,” Jasmine said. “Why did you kill Nicky?”

“Didn't.”

“Why, Lisbeth?”

“Why what?” the child said, voice sulky.

“Why did you kill Nicky?”

“I could have killed you last night.”

“Then why didn't you?”

“Get out! Get out!” She stood, screaming. Lisbeth began to beat the doll against the floor. Bits of plastic began to shatter onto the floor. One blue eye lay winking to itself, naked against the floor.

“Why did you kill Nicky?”

“Because he wouldn't let me do what I wanted to do. Just like you won't let me!”

“No,” Jasmine said, quietly, “I won't.”

 

JASMINE
waited the following night, waited until the children had been asleep for a couple of hours. Malcolm wasn't sleeping tonight. Vanessa was sitting up with him, keeping him awake, at Jasmine's request. He would be safe tonight, she could see to that.

Tomorrow night was another problem. Jasmine had made her decision; either Lisbeth was “tamed” tonight, or the child would die. There was one more possibility: that Lisbeth would kill her.

The thought flowed over her skin like a cool breeze, tickling the hairs on her arms, sliding down her spine like an ice cube. Fear; it was an old companion. Dr. Cooper wouldn't know what to do if she wasn't afraid of her patients.

Jasmine flowed from dream to dream; bright glimpses of color, motion, thoughts, feelings. She pushed forward like a swimmer, concentrating on getting to the other shore. Then it came, terror, it screamed along Jasmine's nerves, opened her mind, called to her.

She didn't enter the dream this time, she pushed at it from the outside, shoved the fear aside. Lisbeth's anger flared over her, but there was nothing for the girl to use to trap Jasmine. Outside of dreams, you were safe. “No, you can't. You're afraid of me, like all the others.”

Jasmine smiled. “You made the mistake they all make. Just because I'm afraid of you doesn't mean you shouldn't be afraid of me.”

Lisbeth began to gather her forces. Jasmine could feel it, like a thunderstorm building in the distance. She might break the dream, or at least change it. “How would you like to visit one of my patients?”

The girl hesitated, power swirling around her. “Patients?”

Jasmine explained what she did; by the time she finished Lisbeth was
smiling, that same angelic twist of perfect lips. Lovely and meaningless as a lifelike doll.

“Would you like to see one of their dreams?”

“Do you mean it?” Lisbeth asked.

“Yes.”

Lisbeth licked her lips, breath easing out. It was almost a lust reaction, anticipatory, and far too old for the child. But then in many ways Lisbeth was no longer a child; she had haunted people's dreams too long for that. “I'd like that.”

“All right.” Jasmine paused as if thinking. “We'll visit William. You'll like William, and I know he'll get a kick out of you.”

Lisbeth giggled, the first real little-girl sound Jasmine had heard her make.

“I can hold on to you and take you to his dream, if you stop fighting me.”

Lisbeth frowned at that. “What does that mean?”

“Just relax and let me do the work. Be the passenger for once instead of the driver.”

“You promise to take me to this William. Promise I'll get to see a real killer's dream.”

“Promise,” Jasmine said.

Lisbeth nodded, and lowered her protection. Jasmine felt Lisbeth's consciousness slide against hers, almost a faint bump as the child released all control. An adult empath would never have lowered everything, but Lisbeth didn't have the experience in dealing with people who were her equals. Until now she had had no equal. Ten was still very young.

William was asleep, and he dreamed, as he often did, of past glory. He was lying on a twin bed with a little girl. She was wearing blue shorts and a red tank top with cartoon figures on it. Jasmine remembered the clothes from photographs. This was six-year-old Caitlin, and it was William's version of a wet dream.

Lisbeth sighed. “Oh, this is great.”

The child was crying, saying, “I want to go home now, please.”

“Not yet,” William said, voice soothing, as his hand rubbed the tiny bare leg. “Not yet, soon. If you do everything I say, I'll take you home.”

“You said there were kittens here. Where are the kittens?”

“I'll show them to you.”

“I don't want you to touch me. Don't!” The child's fear stabbed outward like her words. A sharp gut-jerking cry.

Lisbeth hovered as close as Jasmine would allow, soaking up the terror. Feeding off the child's small body. The cries for help, the pleading; Caitlin would ask about the kittens William had promised to show her just seconds before he placed one hand around her slender baby neck and squeezed. He would crush her windpipe. He was a very strong man.

Her small, nude body lay beside the man, dead. Her head was thrown to one side; eyes mercifully closed. She looked like a broken doll, skin perfect and flawless.

Jasmine brought herself and Lisbeth into the dream. The broken little girl vanished, and William was suddenly fully clothed again.

He stared up at her, fear plain on his face, his fear crawling along Jasmine's body. She enjoyed his fear, enjoyed making him suffer.

Lisbeth said, “He's afraid of you.”

“I know.”

“I been good,” William said. “I done everything you told me to. Why should I be punished? What'd I do wrong?”

“Oh,” said Lisbeth, “he's so afraid.” She walked closer to the bed, and he shrank back from her, eyes shifting from Jasmine to this new little girl.

“I'm not here to punish you, William. I want you to help me.”

“Anything, anything you want, Dr. Cooper. You just name it.”

Lisbeth reached for him, and he jerked away as if she had burned him.

“Did you enjoy William's dream, Lisbeth?”

“Oh, yes, it was great.”

“Would you like to see another?”

Lisbeth turned, eyes shining, genuinely excited. “Oh, please, yes.”

Jasmine nodded. “She's yours, William.”

“Wh-what!” he gasped.

“It's the girl that needs punishing, not you. I'm giving her to you.”

“You can't scare me,” Lisbeth said.

“Is she real?” he asked.

“Very.”

“You think threatening me with him will scare me. It won't. I can make him disappear.”

“I control this dream, Lisbeth.”

William grabbed her wrist. She turned, completely confident that she would destroy him. Jasmine held William's mind and protected it.

The first trickle of fear rose out of Lisbeth. Fear for herself. She struggled to get her hand free. “You won't let him hurt me. You're not bad. Only bad girls let people get hurt.” The fear was still in check, because she believed what she said. Jasmine was a teacher, a doctor, an adult, and would not really hurt a child.

“I'm not a good girl, Lisbeth, never have been.”

William dragged her against his chest. “NO!” Lisbeth yelled it, anger still stronger than fear. “You can't scare me. You can't make me behave. I'm not like the other children.”

“No,” Jasmine said, “you are not, and neither was I.” Jasmine vanished from the dream, leaving Lisbeth to the man's tender mercies. She did not want to see it happen, but she was drawn to feel it. Fear at last, full-blown and wonderful. Lisbeth terrified. Lisbeth feeling the only thing she could feel, her own pain. Dr. Jasmine Cooper hovered on the edge of the dream and fed off the fear, the lust, the horror. She drank the sweet breath of evil, and it filled her up. Jasmine, like the child, not only was attracted to darkness but fed off it.

She broke the dream before William was finished but long after Lisbeth had begun to cry. Jasmine woke and went down the dark hallways to Lisbeth's room. She opened the door to find the child gasping and sweat-soaked. She cringed when she saw Jasmine.

“You're like me, aren't you? You're like me.”

“Yes, Lisbeth, I'm like you.” Jasmine sat down on the edge of the bed.

“I don't want to be punished anymore.”

“Then you've learned your first lesson. I'll show you how to stay alive, Lisbeth. They won't kill you now, not if you let me teach you.” Jasmine leaned close to the child, whispering so the monitor wouldn't hear her, “I'll show you how to feed off them, so that they don't know. You can do what you like with them within limits. You can torture and get paid for it.”

Lisbeth's breathing had slowed to almost normal. “You are just like me.”

Jasmine nodded and reached a hand out to the child. Lisbeth came to her, small arms hugging her. They sat together in the dark, holding each other. Lisbeth couldn't love, not really. But every child needs love, whether they can give it or not.

“You won't leave me?” Lisbeth asked in a small voice.

“I won't leave you. You can come visit me during holidays.”

“You're still afraid of me, aren't you?”

“Yes.”

“But now I'm afraid of you.”

“Yes.”

The child leaned her back against Jasmine, small hands holding the woman's arms around her. Every child needs to be held.

She rested her chin on top of Lisbeth's head, and rocked her gently, comforting herself as much as the child.
From one monster to another
, Jasmine thought,
I'll show you how to stay alive. I'll show you how to drink tears and spill blood. We'll carve them up and feed off their fear, and no one will know but us.

Jasmine glanced up at the room's monitor.
Are you there, Bromley?
she thought,
are you there?
Maybe he knew, maybe he had always known.
Why did you keep me alive, Bromley? Why?

She hugged Lisbeth, and felt the first hot trails of tears on her own cheeks. Jasmine whispered into the child's hair, “Monsters beware, here be dragons.”

J
ESSAMINE
Swordwitch stood among the ruins of Threllkill village. The forest had moved in to reclaim the small clearing. Twenty houses it had been at its largest, a tiny inconsequential place, but it had been home.

One of her mother's roses had gone wild. It climbed over the broken chimney, pale pink flowers clustered against the sun. The air was thick with its scent, cloying sweet. The black-limbed cherry still stood against the shattered pile that had once been the garden wall.

Jessamine felt her mother's magic pulse through the wild growth. An earth-witch's touches stayed with the plot of land. Mother would not have minded that an orange-flowered trumpet vine strangled her garden or that wild grass grew where she had tended her strawberries.

The thought that her mother's body could still be there, hidden in the green growth, came suddenly. She caught her breath, eyes darting for a glimpse of white bone amidst the wilding strawberries. But there was nothing left of her mother save the roses and the cherry tree. Scavengers
had long since picked apart the bones. Twelve years was a long time this close to the forest.

“What happened here, Jessa?”

She jumped, startled, and turned. Gregoor leaned against a soft green mound that had once been a part of the kitchen. “I'm sorry, my thoughts were elsewhere.”

He snorted. “I could see that.” He gestured, arms wide. “What destroyed this place?”

“Old age, an act of the gods.”

He frowned and crossed arms tight over his chest. “Are you going to tell me the story behind this place or not? You drag me out to the wilderness. Tell me nothing. You accept a job without consulting me and then tell me I don't have to come along.” He pushed a hand through his short brown hair. “Jessa, we've been swordmates for a year. Don't I deserve some type of explanation?”

She smiled at that and walked over to stand against the leaf-covered wall, beside him. Her hazel eyes looked at a place somewhere over his head, while her strong, small hands stroked his hair. “In Zairde there are no peasants, only the poor. We were poor, but I didn't know that as a child. We had food, shelter, toys, love. I did not think we were poor, but we were not rich. My mother was the village earth-witch. She never used her magic for personal gain or to harm, unless attacked. Even then she was squeamish of the kill. She wouldn't understand my entombing people in living rock.”

“You've only done so twice, and both times it saved our lives.”

She smiled down at him. “Yes, there is that. But I stand here with my mother's magic still strong in the earth and I shield myself.”

“Why?”

“I'm afraid, Gregoor.” The summer wind stirred her dark hair. “I promised my mother I would never use my power for evil. I have broken that promise many times.”

“You're afraid her disapproving ghost will haunt you.”

“Yes.”

“Jessa.” He hugged her to him. “Please tell me what happened here.”

“One day an old sorcerer and his son came to spend the night. I had never seen a truly old sorcerer, for they can live a thousand years. But this one was old. His son was young and strong and handsome; the village girls watched him out the corners of their eyes. During the night the old sorcerer died.” Jessamine's hands stopped moving. She stood absolutely still. “The son accused us of poisoning his father. He destroyed our village with fire and lightning, storm and earthquake. My father and my brothers were all killed. When it was over, only my mother and I crawled away.”

Jessa took a deep, shaky breath. “My mother, as the village earth-witch, took our grievance to the Zairdian courts. They did nothing. Two days after they declared the sorcerer's son innocent of wrongdoing, an assassin killed my mother.” She looked down at him, meeting his eyes.

His brown eyes were wide, astonished, pain-filled. “Jessa.”

She placed fingertips over his lips. “It was a very long time ago, Gregoor. A very long time ago.”

He gripped her hand. “What happened to the sorcerer who destroyed this village?”

“He died.” She smiled down at him. It was a smile he had seen before—a slow, tight spreading of lips that filled her eyes with a dark light. He called it her killing smile. “He was the first wizard I ever killed.”

“And that is why we specialize in assassinating wizards?”

“That is why I do. I do not know why you do it.”

He stood eye to eye, no taller, no shorter than she. “I do it because you do it.”

“Ah,” she said and gave him what no one else had received from her in twelve years—a smile full of love.

“You took this job so you could come home, then?”

“I took this job because the sorcerer I slew had a mother, as I had a mother. It seems she has gone mad. The entire province wants her dead. The sorceress is Cytherea of Cheladon.”

“You have sent us to kill Cytherea the Mad, Jessa…”

She stopped him with a gesture. “She seeks her son's killer, Gregoor, and has killed hundreds seeking me. I think it is time she found me.”

 

THEY
came to the first town at dusk. A gibbet had been erected in front of the town gates. Three corpses dangled from it, moving gently in the summer wind. They had been hung up by their wrists, and there was no mark of ordinary violence upon them. No hangman's knot, no knife, no axe had killed the three.

Gregoor hissed, “Mother Peace preserve us. I have never seen anything like that.”

Jessa could only nod. The corpses, one man and two women, had been drained of life, magic of the blackest sort. The flesh was a leathered brown, like dried apples. Their eyes had shriveled in their heads. They were brown skeletons. The women's hair floated around their faces that were cracked with horror, mouths agape in one last silent scream.

Jessa shook her head: that was nonsense. The dead did not retain the last look of horror. The jaws had simply broken and gaped open, nothing more.

“Come, Gregoor, let us get inside.”

He was still gazing at the dead. “This is Cytherea's work?”

“Yes.”

“And you have set us the task of killing her?”

“It would seem so.”

Gregoor pushed his horse against hers and grabbed her arm. “Jessa, I am not a coward, but this…Cytherea drained their lives like you or I would squeeze an orange dry.”

Jessa stared at him until he loosened her arm. “We have killed sorceresses before.”

“None that could do this.”

Jessa nodded. “She took their lives when she took their magic, Gregoor.”

He caught his breath. “I am only an herb-witch. I can't tell. Did she steal their souls?”

Jessa shivered. Though she shielded her magic, protected herself, she could still feel the answer. She understood now why she had thought the corpses were screaming silently. “No. Their souls are still there, trapped in their bodies.”

“Verm take that pale bitch.”

Jessa nodded. “That is the plan, Gregoor, that is the plan.”

They were challenged at the town gates. A woman called down, “What do you want here, soldiers?”

Jessa answered. “A room for the night, food if you have it to spare, and stabling for the horses.”

“Don't you know that you ride into a town that is cursed?”

Jessa kept the surprise from her face. “Cursed? What do you mean?”

The woman gave a rude snort of bitter laughter. “Did you not see the gibbet and its burden?”

“I saw three corpses.”

“They are the mark of our curse. You would do better to ride on, soldiers.”

Jessa licked her lips and eased back to speak with Gregoor. “I don't feel a curse, except on the corpses, but I am shielding myself.”

He looked surprised. “You've been wasting energy shielding yourself, for how long?”

“Since we entered the edge of Cytherea's blight.”

“Blight. What are you talking about?”

It was her turn to be surprised. “Look around you. Look at the plants.”

The summer trees hung with limp black leaves. The grass was winter dead at the side of the road, crumbling and brown. It was utterly silent.

“Where are the little birds, the brownkins? There are always brownkins.”

“Not here, not anymore.” Jessa wanted to ask him how he had not noticed, but she knew the answer. He was an herb-witch, a maker of potions; his magic was a thing of incantations and ritual. Her magic was tied to the earth and what sprang from it. This desolation wounded her in a very private way. This was blasphemy. And Gregoor had seen nothing in the summer twilight.

“If you will distract the guard, I will spy out the curse, and see if it is safe to enter.”

He nodded. “They might not be happy to see more spell casters after Cytherea.”

“Yes, I would rather not be advertised as an earth-witch.”

He rode over to the gate. “What has happened to your land?”

Jessa turned inward and did not hear the rest. She listened to the rhythm of her own body, blood flowing, heart pumping, breathing, pulsing. She came to the silence deep in her own body where everything was still. Jessa released her shield and swayed in her saddle. It took all she had not to cry out. The land wailed around her. Death. The land was wounded, dying. It was not just the witches on their scaffold that Cytherea had drained, but the earth itself. She had taken some of the life-force of the summer land. It would not recover. The town was doomed. It could not survive where no crops would grow. There were no brownkins because the birds had fled this place; everything that could had fled this place. Everything but the people. And they would leave soon enough. When autumn came and there were no crops, they would leave.

The destruction was so complete that it masked everything else. Jessa was forced to turn the horse so she could look at the town, concentrate on it, and see if it was indeed cursed. Her eyes passed the corpses and three sparks of life fluttered in the corpses, bright and clean. The souls wavered and struggled. Jessa turned away and stared at the walled town.

She stretched her magic outward, no longer flinching from the earth-death around her. The town was just a town. There was no curse. A curse would be redundant after what Cytherea had done to the land.

Jessa rode up beside Gregoor. She whispered, “There is no curse on the town. We can enter safely.”

The guardswoman called down, “What was your lady friend doing so long?”

Jessa answered, “I was praying.”

The woman was silent a moment. “Prayers are a good thing. Enter, strangers, and be welcome to what is left of Titos.”

There was one small tavern in the town, and they were the only strangers. The windows were shuttered, though the summer night was mild. An elderly woman muttered in her sleep, dreaming before an unnecessary fire. Jessa wondered if they thought fire and light would keep out the evil, like a child crying in the night. The place stank of stale beer and the sweat of fear. The tavernkeeper himself came to take their orders. He was a large beefy man, but his eyes were red-rimmed as if from tears.

The tavern sign had said simply, “Esteban's Tavern.” Jessa took a chance. “You are Esteban?”

He looked at her, eyes not quite focused, as if he were only half-listening. “Yes, I am he. Do you wish to eat?”

“Yes. But more than food we would like information.”

She had his attention now. His dark eyes stared at her, full of anger, and a fine and burning hatred, like the sun burning through glass. “What kind of information?”

Gregoor brushed her hand, a warning not to press this man. But Jessa felt a magic in the room, untapped but there. It was not coming from the tavernkeeper. “A gibbet stands outside your town gates. How did it come to be there?”

Large hands knotted the rag he had stuck in his belt. His voice was a dark whisper. “Get out.”

“Excuse me, tavernkeep, I meant no offense, but such a sight is uncommon.”

“Get…out.” He looked up at her as he spoke and there was death in his eyes, death born of grief.

Jessa knew about such grief and how it ate you from the inside out until there was nothing left until you died or satisfied your vengeance. She spoke, low and clear, “Where is your wife, tavernkeep?”

He threw back his head and screamed, then flung their table to the side and advanced on Jessa. She kept out of his reach, a knife in her hand, but she did not want to harm him. The magic she had felt flared and crept along her skin: sorcery.

The old woman by the fire was standing now, leaning on her walking stick. One hand was clawlike in the air before her. “Enough of this.” Power rode her voice, a lash of obedience. The big man stood unsure, arms drooping at his sides, tears sliding down his cheeks.

Jessa sheathed her knife, unable to do anything else. Very few people could have forced an obedience spell upon Jessa.