To my right, I could see Rand struggling to sit before he gave up and flopped back down, panting. His pale sweater glowed in the silvery moonlight, covered with big, dark splotches I knew were literally blood-red. “Rand, you okay?”
“Not . . . sure.” He wheezed on every exhale. “You got . . . staff ? Can you start . . . fire?”
I sat next to him, feeling around where we’d landed, and finally raked my hands across the staff. “I have it, but I don’t think a fire’s a good idea—not until it gets lighter and we can see where we are.” I didn’t know how many undead pirates Jean had in Old Barataria, but being found by the wrong ones could be worse than facing Mace Banyan. Although hopefully they’d take us to
Le Capitaine
before doing anything fatal.
Rand coughed, and his breathing had a whistling undertone. I didn’t like the sound of it. “I’ve never been to this part of . . . Beyond but I thought . . . always night.” The sentence had cost him too much breath.
“Jean told me once that at dawn and sunset, it lightens enough to see for an hour or two before it starts getting dark again. They never get sunshine, but they do get that kind of predawn and post-sunset grayness. When that happens we can see where we are. Till then, let’s stay put.”
Like either of us could go anywhere yet. Especially Rand, and I didn’t have the strength to help him.
“Cold,” he whispered, or maybe that’s all the strength that remained in his voice. I shifted closer and curled up next to him, holding my breath until the pain of moving subsided. Too bad I hadn’t had the foresight to bring a blanket from the cabin in Elf heim before we transported. While I was wishing for things, I wished that if I had to curl up in the outdoors, it could have been with someone else. Which was selfish, because if not for Rand, I’d probably be burned crispier than the Axeman. On the other hand, if not for Rand and his stupid elven Synod, the Axeman might never have been after me.
“Will Mace be able to tell where we’ve gone?”
Rand didn’t answer, so I shut up and let him sleep or be unconscious. I didn’t want to know which; there was nothing I could do about it. I prayed we’d be able to find Jean, maybe even Jake, and one of them could get word to Alex.
My heart clenched at the thought of Alex. By now, Ken would have called him. He’d know I’d been attacked in the driveway. Ken heard me screaming. Would they realize it was the Axeman since he’d burned the evidence? Would they think to look in Rand’s house and find Vervain’s body, or would the elves find it first and do damage control? Would Alex think I had died in the fire? Had Sebastian survived, or was he cold and scared somewhere, bleeding to death?
I pondered questions that had no answers and, shivering, burrowed closer and sought warmth from the wrong man.
***
I congratulated myself for not screeching in fright when I woke face-to-beak with a brown pelican the size of an overfed bulldog. He appeared almost as startled as I, and hopped atop a log lying a few feet away, turning his back to me as if by not seeing me, I might not see him. I wondered if that would’ve worked with the Axeman.
Rand and I had curved ourselves into a spoon, and I was almost warm. Almost. I eased from beneath his arm and, holding on to my ribs, twisted stiffly to look at him. He didn’t stir, so I poked him. “Rand.” I spoke in a hissing whisper, not knowing if there were pirates about. Finally, he moaned and flopped on his back.
In the gray predawn light, I couldn’t see what I looked like, but Rand looked like death personified. His skin had blanched almost as pale blue as the few parts of his sweater that hadn’t been stained red, which was pretty much only the shoulders.
I took a deep breath, gently pushed his sweater up to bare his stomach, and didn’t see the bruises and cuts I expected. There wasn’t enough solid expanse of skin to display them. “What the hell did he do to you?” If I’d had anything in my stomach to lose, it would’ve been gone.
Rand lifted his head enough to take a look, then dropped it back to the beach, even paler, if that was possible. “He had me on the floor, hacking with the ax. If you hadn’t come after him with the staff again, he would’ve pulled my guts out. Like my mother.”
I felt a stab of pity for him beneath my veneer of annoyance. I knew what it was like to lose a parent, suddenly and violently and right in front of you. Tish wasn’t my mother, but she was the closest I’d had, and the sight of her lifeless body lying on my porch still haunted me, drifting into my thoughts late at night when things were quiet. And Gerry. I’d watched him die as well. “I’m so sorry about what happened to Vervain.”
He closed his eyes, but not so quickly that I didn’t see the hurt in them. “She was already dying. She’d be glad she went like that, fighting to save us and not just fading into the afterlife.”
I didn’t like Vervain. She hadn’t done a thing to stop my mental abuse at the hands of the Synod—had participated, in fact. And what role she’d played in Rand’s little bond-withthe-wizard project, I didn’t know, although I was grateful for the end to the loup-garou saga.
No one deserved that kind of death, and I had to admit she’d come through at the end, for Rand if not for me. She’d stood in front of us and taken the first hit of the Axeman.
“Does this mean you’re Synod now?” I wanted to ask how old Vervain was, and what kind of afterlife elves believed in and how it related to the liberal interpretation of the JudeoChristian faith I’d been brought up in, but that was the kind of leisurely conversation best saved for a time when we weren’t so desperate and his grief so fresh. Not that I could pull emotion from him. Where Rand and emotions were concerned, I had to guess just like a normal person. It was really irritating.
“The Synod position falls to me now.” Rand shifted a little, pulled a seashell from beneath his head, and tossed it aside. He might look worse than last night, but he wasn’t wheezing anymore. “Doesn’t mean Mace won’t come after me—after us— until he formally acknowledges me as the head of my clan and you as my mate. Then he won’t dare.”
Now that we were talking, we’d aroused the curiosity of the pelican, who did a 180 on his log and watched us with bright eyes as if to say, “Daylight’s wasting, people.”
I’d address the use of the word
mate
later. Rand needed to be very clear on what our relationship was—and wasn’t. But not now. “Do you think you can stand, or do you want to stay here while I look for help? We need to move while we can see.”
“Any idea which way to go?”
I climbed to the top of a slight rise in front of us, toward the pulsing sound of the sea. Pushing the tall marsh grass aside, I tested each step to make sure I didn’t hit anything I’d sink into up to my knees, or worse. During my adventures with the merpeople last month, I’d rolled around in enough wetlands mud to last a lifetime.
The Gulf of Mexico stretched before me, blue-black and churning. Just below the rise was a narrow strip of sand, and riding the waves to my east were two tall ships, their masts supporting sails dyed a deep blue, elaborate rigging outlined against the gray sky, cannon visible from their decks. The ships lay too far offshore for me to identify their flags, but I’d bet they bore the colors of Cartagena, from whence Jean claimed his marque. Basically, it gave him license to plunder Spanish ships and claim it as an act of war rather than the piracy it was, but I wouldn’t be sharing that opinion.
“I say we walk east along the beach.” I turned back to find Rand wavering on his feet. I was impressed to see him upright, although he still clutched his belly.
“Need help?”
“Just don’t go fast.” He hobbled behind me down the slope to the sand, which was hard-packed and made for easier walking. “Do you know where we’re going?”
I pointed west. “I figure the ships are this way, so their master probably is as well.”
“Why do you think he’ll help us? Jean Lafitte is a common thief.”
I realized the arrogant question had come from several feet behind me, so I stopped and waited for Rand to catch up. “Let me make this clear. Jean won’t help
us
. Jean will help
me
. You’re just part of the package, and if you’re smart you won’t mention anything about bonding. In fact, if you’re really smart you’ll keep your mouth shut altogether.”
Jean had no claims on me, but I instinctively knew that however pissed Alex was about this whole ridiculous nonmarriage, Jean would be equally so, and more apt to do something about it. Something that might involve a long-barreled, muzzle-loaded
pistolette
.
Jean had proprietary feelings toward me—not that I was his great love or anything. I think he considered me a desirable potential conquest with good political connections. Not so different from Rand, when I thought about it. The difference being, I liked Jean. Rand, not so much.
His face took on an obstinate, haughty, mulish look I was beginning to know too well and dislike intensely. “Lafitte needs to know you’re mine now. When he comes back to the city, it’s not appropriate for him to spend time with you.”
I’d started walking again, but turned on Rand so quickly he stumbled and had to do a painful sand-dance to regain his balance. “I am not
yours
. I belong to nobody but myself. Got that? This farce of a bonding does not give you the right to say who I spend time with. In fact, it gives you no rights at all.” If Alex, whose good opinion I cared about, couldn’t dictate my friends or behavior, the elf sure as hell couldn’t.
He managed to look pale and pretty and stubborn all at the same time, in a beat-up, bloody sort of way. “You saved me last night. If you’d really wanted out of our bond, you could’ve let the Axeman kill me.”
Stupid, stupid elf. He’d known the night I refused to use the broken staff on him that I didn’t have it in me to intentionally hurt anyone except in self-defense, much less let anyone die when I could stop it. “I would have done as much for anyone. It just happened to be you.”
We trudged along in silence, the darkening sky causing me to speed up as much as Rand could keep pace. Ahead in the distance, fires burned and the sound of music occasionally seeped through the thunder of waves that send tendrils of foam closer to our feet.
“Qui êtes-vous?”
A man emerged from the inland shadows, a rifle and bayonet trained on us. He was short, swarthy, and had bad teeth. I knew this because he was grinning. Had pirate written all over him.
W
hat does a half-dressed wizard, accompanied by an injured elf, say to an undead pirate on a fast-darkening beach in coastal Louisiana, circa 1814?
After staring at him a moment, I decided humor was best avoided. “Do you speak English?
Parlez-vous l’anglais?
”
“Bah.” The man spat in the direction of our feet.
“Pas l’anglais.”
I tried to conjure up some of the pidgin French I’d learned from Jean.
“Où est Jean Lafitte? Il est mon ami.”
Well, he was sort of a friend. Mostly.
“Le Capitaine?”
Short and Swarthy treated me to an ebonytoothed grin, and did a slow visual crawl across my overexposed, bloody, dirt-encrusted body. He probably thought Jean had developed really bad taste in women, but shrugged and motioned with the rifle for us to go ahead of him. Rand wisely kept his big elven trap shut and stumbled alongside me, holding his stomach.
After what seemed like a half mile of walking in sand and mud, we approached a village of thatched huts and shanties, around which milled crowds of people. It was mostly men of all shapes, sizes, and colors, with a few women scattered in. No kids. The village seemed to go on forever, which confirmed my suspicion that Jean had quite an undead entourage in his little paradise à la Beyond. The historical undead seemed to exist in the Beyond at the height of their success or power in their human lives, which meant Jean would be in his early thirties, at the peak of his pirate command. None of them, other than possibly his brothers, would be famous enough to have much of a life outside the Beyond, but all the pirates lived here, fueled by his memories as he was, in turn, fueled by those of humans.
The silence of shock spread across the crowd, and all activity— mostly gator-skinning, dancing, fistfighting, and drinking— ground to a halt as our pirate escort herded Rand and me into a clearing. A carpet of reeds and grass covered the muddy ground, with trench-encircled bare patches serving as fire pits. I couldn’t help but think of all the old movies I’d seen, where the hapless woman is captured and surrounded by tribal warriors—just before discovering the warriors were also cannibals.
Mr. Shorty spewed a stream of French that was way beyond my limited comprehension, then beat a retreat. Everyone else stepped back as well, drawing my attention to a man they’d left alone in front, facing us.
Crap. My heart bottomed out at the sight of our official welcoming committee of one. Dominique You was olive-skinned, hook-nosed, and allegedly Jean’s half-brother, although I could see no physical resemblance beyond a certain arrogance in his walk and a sharp intelligence behind his eyes. I’d hit him with my best confusion charm once upon a time, and he seemed to hold it against me.
After the War of 1812, when Jean had spurned his presidential pardon and gone back to pirating, Dom had gone straight and done well for himself. But he didn’t share Jean’s fondness for a certain blond wizard. Maybe I was such a bloody, ragged mess he wouldn’t recognize me. I’d tell him my name was Adrian Hoffman.
“Far from home, are you not, Made moiselle Jackal?”
So much for not being recognized. For some reason, Dom thought I was untrustworthy and a bad influence on Jean Lafitte, which was ridiculous. The man was an immortal undead pirate, for God’s sake.
“We need to see Jean right away.” I might look like something a bad gale blew in, but I wanted Dom to know I wasn’t the naïve girl he’d first met in the weeks after Hurricane Katrina. He still scared the crap out of me, but I had the sense not to let him know it.
“And you have brought with you . . .” He studied Rand, annoyance puckering his face as if he’d bitten into a lemon. “
Qu’est-il?
What is he?”