“Interesting.” Etienne studied Ken a second before turning back to me. “What is it you’d like to know now, Ms. Jaco?”
“You grew up as a necromantic wizard before you were turned vampire. How did you first learn about your necromancy— who taught you how to use it?” Unless they pursued specialized fields like Adrian, attending formal schools, the majority of wizards obtained their educations the way I did, through private mentoring. Gerry and Tish had been my only teachers before college. But a specialized skill like necromancy might need specialized training with records I could use. It was a long shot, but worth a question.
Etienne laughed, and the soft glow from his desk lamp glinted on his fangs. “That was two centuries ago, Ms. Jaco. Rules were much more relaxed, and the Elders of my time did not try to exert so much control. We practiced our craft openly, and my father was likewise a necromancer. Today, your Elders are nothing but bureaucrats and politicians.”
Couldn’t argue with him there. I’d done enough research to know necromancy, like most wizards’ skills, was inherited. So most probably learned necromantic magic from their parents or mentors. That had been no help.
“What’s your relationship with Adrian Hoffman?” I wondered if he knew about Big Daddy Hoffman, king of all wizards. It would be easy to blackmail the First Elder by threatening to blab about sonny’s new vampire habit.
Etienne waved a dismissive hand toward the door. “Terri has a taste for exotic blood. She’ll tire of him soon and send him along, although she does seem quite taken with him. You needn’t fear for his safety. She didn’t become my assistant by being careless.”
I’d decided to tell Etienne about my encounter today. If he was behind it, he already knew. If he wasn’t, he might prove helpful. Jean trusted him. “The Axeman tried to kill me today. I managed to kill him—well, send him back to the Beyond with some nasty burns and a few bullet wounds.”
Etienne studied me over the expanse of his desk. “And you wish to know how long before he could be summoned again? How long you have before you must worry about him coming for another visit?”
Sharp vampire, but I guess Regents had to be. “Exactly.”
He nodded, thinking. “This is all theoretical, of course.”
Yeah, right. “Of course.”
“But I don’t believe, should your necromancer wish to recall the Axeman immediately, the normal recovery time would apply.”
Much as I suspected. “But he was burned.”
Back in our early days, when Jean and I were still trying to kill each other, Alex had shot him. It had taken Jean almost two weeks before he could build up enough strength to cross over from the Beyond again. And Jean was at least ten times stronger than the Axeman.
Etienne seemed to know what logic I was using. “He was burned, yes, and he might come back rather crispy”—he looked amused at the idea—“but he can come back at any time now if he is summoned and controlled by a necromancer. At least I would think so, not having attempted such a thing, of course.”
His navy-blue eyes told me he’d probably done that and much worse, but if it wasn’t during my sentinel-hood, I didn’t care. “Well, that wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but thanks. I guess.”
It was time to set a trap for the Axeman.
T
raffic was Saturday- night heavy, so it took me forty-five minutes to make it home from the Quarter, including a stop by Winn-Dixie for cat food. I also might have wandered down the candy aisle with all the other pathetic people who had no Saturday night plans. Chocolate would help in planning our Axeman setup.
Alex’s truck was still gone when I parked behind the house, and Eugenie’s place sat dark and empty looking. I hoped she’d found something fun to do tonight, and that someday we’d be close enough again to do things together. As for Alex, he’d expected to be late returning from his meeting in Jackson.
“Sebastian!” I yelled, rattling the plastic grocery bag on my way in the back door. He didn’t come running to attempt murder-by-tripping like he usually did. Probably napping. I couldn’t remember how old he was. Seemed like Gerry had him forever before Katrina, when I inherited him. He usually had plenty of energy where food was concerned, though.
Dumping the bag on the counter, I flipped the lights on my way into the front parlor. It was one a.m., and the pizza place across Magazine Street was dark. I looked through the mail I’d pulled from the box on my way in—a water bill, a catalog of overpriced cheese and fruit, and a postcard from Maple Street Animal Clinic reminding me it was time for Sebastian’s shots. Kiss another few hundred bucks good-bye.
I’d been slogging my way through a reread of the Lord of the Rings trilogy for the last week, so I figured I might as well see if I could get Sam and Frodo closer to Mordor, maybe even indulge in a few Sean-Bean-as-Boromir fantasies. There was nothing else I could do about the Axeman tonight. Grabbing the book off the coffee table, I started toward the stairwell. I’d get out of these blasted heels, drag out my PJs, read a while, and get to bed early for a change.
A creaking sound overhead stopped me cold. It was the squeaky floorboard in my upstairs sitting room, which lay at the top of the stairs. Sebastian wasn’t heavy enough to make that floor creak.
I relaxed my shoulders and took a deep breath to slow down my heart rate, which had begun to jackrabbit in erratic spurts. My security wards were active, and no one knew the password, so I was being paranoid. I lived in a house that had been built in 1879. It settled. It creaked. When the wind blew hard, it moaned. I was just jumpy because of everything that had happened in the last few weeks.
The floor overhead creaked again, followed by a thump and the re- acceleration of my heart rate. Holy crap. That was not the sound of a house settling. I slipped out of the silly red heels, traded the book for my clutch bag, and tiptoed toward the back door. I’d drive my rental car to the Gator and hang out, see if I could find Rene or other suitable backup.
Chicken, yes, but better fearful and breathing than brave and dead.
I picked up the broken elven staff from the kitchen counter and, pausing on the back stoop, pulled my cell phone out of my bag and punched Alex’s speed dial. Voice mail. I tried Ken next, as I walked gingerly across the gravel parking lot. He answered on the first ring.
“It’s DJ,” I whispered. “Somebody’s in my house.” Not only in my house, but walking heavily down my stairs. I ran toward my car.
“Where are you?” Ken asked.
“Trying to get in my car. Where’s Alex?” I fumbled with the keys and dropped them in the gravel.
“Got held up in Jackson. Drive to my place now—stay on the phone with me until you get here.”
Runs raced up my hose from walking on the gravel, and I winced from the rocks poking in my feet, but I had the key at the lock. “Okay, I’m getting—”
Something jerked my head backward, throwing me off balance. Almost suspended by a fist in my hair, I looked up into the horrific face of the Axeman. I think he was smiling, but since the flesh hung off his burned, blackened face in gobbets, it was hard to tell. He looked mad, as in both angry and insane.
I screamed, but it was cut short by a meaty fist connecting with my jaw. My lip was crushed against my lower teeth, and the cell phone hit the gravel. I could hear Ken’s voice yelling through the phone as the Axeman slung me to the ground. I landed near the cracked staff, and grabbed it.
“You hurt me. Your friend shot me.” The Axeman dragged me across the driveway by my hair, back toward my house. His voice was as rough as the gravel under my scrambling feet. “You burned me.”
Well, it wasn’t like I’d been the one to chase
him
down. I panted for breath, and sharp pains shot into my abdomen. “Why are you after me? Who’s summoning you?” Give me a freaking name.
“Wizard. I’ll come back and kill him later. It’s your turn first.”
From the corner of my eye as we rounded the side of the house, I saw movement across the street in front of the darkened windows of Marinello’s Pizza—some guy walking a dog. I screamed again just before the Axeman shoved me inside my open back door.
Scrambling to my feet, I dashed toward the front of the house, but the Axeman lumbered behind me in big strides.
Using my hair again, he slung me toward the guest room and stairwell. If I lived through this, I was going to shave my head, unless he tore out my hair by the roots.
All the while he dragged me up the stairs, I held the broken staff like a sword and shot weak tendrils of fire directly into him—the most I could muster with the damaged weapon. What I wouldn’t give for one of the premade charms in my purse, lying on the ground in the driveway.
My legs had gotten scraped from being dragged across the gravel, so I left a swath of red along the carpet on the stairs. The Axeman grunted whenever the staff touched him, but despite the tattered rags of his jacket starting to flame again, he didn’t loosen his grip on my hair. Finally, I got a hand around one of the banisters at the top of the stairs and held on, but the wood splintered with a loud crack.
I used every ounce of magic I could summon and channeled it through the staff. With a roar of pain, the Axeman dropped me at the top of the stairs and careened to the middle of the room before collapsing to his hands and knees. Smoke rose from his burning suit coat.
I rolled to my side and stilled, panting. Sebastian crouched under the sofa table a foot in front of me, surrounded by blood, his crossed blue eyes wide and dazed. An ax lay next to him, its blade red with blood and hunks of chocolate brown fur. I scanned his head and paws, which all seemed accounted for, but . . . “You chopped off my cat’s tail! You sick son of a bitch. Why would you do that?”
Still clutching the staff, I struggled to my feet, snatched up Sebastian, and ran toward the stairwell with him tucked under my arm like a blood- and fur-covered football. The Axeman was still on all fours, smoking and howling.
I raced downstairs, tripping as I rounded the bottom of the stairwell where it went into the guest room. Sebastian wriggled free and darted under the bed.
I hesitated, but heard the Axeman moving again, so I ran for the front door, praying I could get away and the lunatic wouldn’t take it out on my cat. It would take too long to track down my keys again in the dark driveway, so my only hope was getting to the coffee shop down the block where there would still be people out, topping off their eve ning with a latte. Surely the necromancer would have told his killer to avoid crowds.
I didn’t even think about going to Rand for help or trying to call him mentally, not until I almost bowled him over at the bottom of my front steps. But like with the attack at Six Flags, he’d know I was in trouble.
He grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the street. “Come on, let’s get back to my house.”
I balked, trying to drag him toward the coffee shop. “We need to get to where there are people. He’ll follow us.”
“No, we—” Rand looked up, eyes wide, and shoved me to the ground. He landed on top of me just as an explosion seemed to bring the world raining down around us. Something landed next to my face, and I squinted through the smoke to see a brass box just like the one I kept on my nightstand to hold jewelry. It took a second for me to register that it
was
my jewelry box.
“Wait . . . what . . .” I reached out for it, and gasped when it burned my hand.
“Dru— we’ve gotta get out of here.” Rand rolled off me, hauled me to my feet, retrieved the staff from the ground, and pulled me across Magazine Street, stumbling behind him even as traffic began piling up and sirens sounded in the distance.
I jerked my hand away from his and looked back at my house. Smoke billowed from the upstairs sitting-room window, creating a foggy, surreal scene as it settled over the streetlights. My vision blurred a few moments before I realized I was crying. Flames flickered through my roof, and another explosion sounded from the back of the house. My library, all of Gerry’s grimoires and spellbooks. Sebastian.
Anger, hot and deep, boiled up in my throat, and with a scream of rage I started back toward the house. It was part of me, everything in there was something I’d worked for, something I loved, all I had left.
The world tilted, and it took a second for me to realize Rand had picked me up and thrown me over his shoulder like a sack of mulch. I screeched at him as I struggled, beating my hands against his pale sweater that seemed to glow in the light filtering through the smoke. But he ran as if I weighed no more than a potted plant, only setting me down when he needed to open his door.
I shoved past him to run back toward the street, but he caught me.
“You can’t go back, Dru—look.”
I was looking at the burning roof, but my focus was drawn by movement from the front porch. A dark, bulky figure stood in the open doorway, backlit by the flames. My whole life was burning up and that freak stood there watching us, holding his ax.
Rand took my hand and pulled me inside Plantasy Island, closing and locking the door behind us. “Come on—upstairs.”
“No, are you crazy?” I fought through the numbness that threatened to shut down my brain. “He can trap us up there, or set fire to this place and burn us out. And I have to see about my cat. He’s going to kill Sebastian.”
“The cat will find a way out, better than we could. We can barricade ourselves in upstairs, and I have another transport we can use if we need to.” Rand’s face was illuminated in golden light from the bonfire across the street.
I followed him up the narrow stairway. There was a landing at the top with three doors opening off it. In the middle one stood Vervain, Rand’s mother and clan leader of the fire elves.
Her skin was glowing, and it had nothing to do with the fire.
V
ervain seemed lit from within, as if her blood were molten gold. I gaped at her, the shock of glowing skin finally sending my overloaded brain into full meltdown. She reached out a hand and only Rand’s presence behind me kept me from backing away on instinct.