Lost (31 page)

Onyx's guys
were all shifting around now, trying not to be obvious about it, but
doing whatever they could to put extra distance between them and the
water.

"I know
what you're all thinking. Poison doesn't work on hybrids, right?
Don't ask me how, but this poison does. Pretty painful way to go too,
based on the way your buddy screamed before he died. That means that
my friends don't have to fight fair. They don't have to trade blows
with you, they just need to break the skin. One stab, and you're a
goner."

"You're
bluffing. They don't all have that ability, or none of us would have
survived your ambush."

"No,
you're right, not all of them can do that, but enough of them can.
Besides, they don't have to kill you all with poison. They still
outnumber you. They just need to kill
you
with poison, Onyx.
Inject you with a dose of hybrid-killing venom and then the rest of
you will be easy pickings."

I waited a
second to see if any of his people would crack, but they seemed too
scared to make a move on their own.

"The best
part of it is that even if you do manage by some miracle to beat my
friends, it still won't do you any good. I'm telling you the truth
when I say that you won't be able to track us back to where we came
from. You came all of the way out here for no reason."

"You're
lying. You wouldn't have ambushed us if we weren't a threat."

"Oh,
you're a threat all right, just not for the reason you think. You
were never going to find us—you never will, not until my
friends are ready for us to be found—but there are plenty of
other reasons for us to come after you. Do you really think that
Celeste would pass up a chance to take you down, Onyx? We almost got
you, too. If you'd been a split second slower or if your boat had
been a little more to one side then you would have spent your last
few seconds writhing in agony as the poison burned its way through
your chest. Heck, I shouldn't get ahead of myself, that's still the
most likely result of all of this. It's kind of exciting, isn't it?"

Some of his
guys were looking back at Onyx now rather than at the water like they
were supposed to be. They wanted him to take my deal. It was always
possible that I was one of those rare people who could lie even to
another shape shifter without being caught, but it wasn't likely.
Besides, the lamias had already been under the water for more than
six minutes and they'd seen their friend go down from the venom. It
was hard to argue with facts like that. I decided it was time to play
my last card.

"Of course
I could be lying about all of this—I'm not, but it's always a
possibility. But even if you manage to kill us all, you're still
going to have to make your way back through the bayou on foot. Have
you seen the size of the alligators around here? Do you really want
to be another man or two down as you try to swim past those monsters?
There are really big snakes too. It might be interesting to see what
the venom of a thirty-foot water moccasin would do to a hybrid. It
probably still wouldn't kill you, but I'll bet it would put you down
for several hours at least."

That did it.
Every single one of Onyx's men knew that he wouldn't stop in enemy
territory for them if they got bitten. He'd leave them behind which
would mean that the alligators would get them before they fought off
the poison enough to be able to defend themselves again.

"I think
we should take his deal."

"Me too!"

The chorus of
voices that piped up once the first of Onyx's bruisers broke the
silence made it sound like there were two or three times as many
people standing around him as there actually were. I had Onyx, and we
both knew it. His power was nothing short of impressive, but without
some foot soldiers to watch his back even he wouldn't be able to take
on more than half a dozen lamia. They'd wait until he was focused in
one direction and then they'd rush him from all sides.

He could still
kill me and I could see that he wanted to, but that wouldn't
guarantee his safety and might even cause his men to turn on him. For
a second I played with that idea. If I told his guys that I'd give
them safe passage in exchange for taking Onyx down it might be enough
to convince them to attack him en masse, but there was no guarantee
of that and I didn't want to overplay my hand.

"How do we
know that you won't just kill us as soon as we step into the water
regardless of what you say?"

I shook my head
at him. "Careful, if you keep that up you're going to start
insulting the honor of my friends. They don't like that. If you push
them too far, then they'll refuse to negotiate with you."

I was riding
the ragged edge of what I could get away with from the standpoint of
misdirection. That was the biggest reason that I wasn't trying to get
them to turn on each other.

It wasn't a lie
to say that Set and the others would take a dim view of Onyx calling
them liars, but I was very carefully not telling Onyx that the lamias
were particularly sensitive to losses right now because each fallen
lamia was one less who would be able to help cloak the enclave from
the Consumed.

Onyx and I
locked gazes for nearly a full minute before he finally nodded.
"Fine. This is how things are going to go down. I want your
friends to promise that they will let us go, and then they are going
to all move back behind you and show themselves so that we know we
have a clear shot out of here."

"Set, is
that agreeable to you?"

There was a
second there where I was afraid that he hadn't been able to hear us,
and then Set stood in the water, appearing less than three feet from
the edge of the island I was on, in a spot where I would have sworn
the water wasn't deep enough to hide a seven-foot-tall lamia.

"Broadly,
yes. They must turn around and head back the way that they came. They
must not stop, they must not return. If they do, we will know and we
will ambush them again. Next time we will not fail."

Onyx looked
like he wanted to use his power on Set to put the lamia in his place,
but everyone there knew that would just result in Set disappearing
underneath the water again. What was more, I was pretty sure that one
or more of the other lamias were already creeping forward, preparing
to strike from behind if Onyx took the bait Set was offering him.

"Fine,
move your people back out of range and we'll leave."

Set nodded,
hissed something more complex than I was expecting, and then sank
back down into the water. Five minutes later he reappeared more than
twenty yards away from where he'd last shown himself. He pointed off
to his left and then slapped the water.

Fifty yards
away the first lamia rose out of the water at the same time that Set
dropped back out of sight. As soon as that lamia was sure Onyx and
the rest had seen him, he in turn slapped the water and then sank out
of sight as another lamia stood up.

I counted them
all, one by one as they each revealed themselves and then disappeared
again. They'd stationed themselves in one long arc that covered
nearly a hundred yards. As the last surviving lamia dropped back out
of sight, Onyx turned back to me.

"I was
going to ask you to give Celeste a message for me."

"What
message would that be?"

He pointed at
the slender guy who had just pulled himself out of the water minutes
before. "That piece of trash belongs to her. If she doesn't show
back up at the house in three days, I'll start killing one of her
people each day. It shouldn't take me much more than a week and a
half to kill every man, woman, and child she's tried to protect from
me for the last two decades. After that I'll pack up my things and
leave town. She can have her freedom or she can have her pack, but
she can't have both."

"What made
you change your mind about that message?"

"I
realized that the snakes can pass it along just as well as you can."

Onyx hit me
with his power again and the pain was even more intense than the
other times he'd used it on me. I would have said that wasn't
possible, but this time the pain wasn't the only thing on my mind.

I'd been
expecting him to use his power on me again. A guy like Onyx was
almost incapable of passing up a chance to double-cross someone. Even
more important, he had to be itching to reestablish his authority
with the rest of the surviving hybrids from his pack.

Even before the
lamias had moved back out of ambush range, I'd started moving. I'd
made a big show—which had only involved a little in the way of
theatrics—of staggering around as I forced myself back up onto
my feet.

That moved me
several feet closer to the shoreline and I sprang towards the water a
split second before Onyx had stopped talking, but even as I went
flying through the air I knew I'd failed. I hit the water, inch-deep
though it was, with my shoulder, but that wasn't enough. My hip and
feet landed in mud, which meant that almost all of my body was still
out where Onyx could see me.

Even more
ironic was the fact that as I bounced once and then came to a
stop—still not far enough out into the water—I realized
that my plan never could have worked in the first place. The pain had
driven all of the air out of my lungs, so I wouldn't have been able
to stay under the water for any stretch of time even if I'd made it
as far as I'd been hoping.

I could feel
the end approaching. Onyx had overestimated just how much strength I
had left. Once again, there was no good way to tell time once all of
the external stimuli disappeared. My pulse had gone thready and
irregular; I figured that I only had a few more beats before my heart
was going to give out entirely.

Dying didn't
feel anything like I expected it to. One second I was there consumed
by pain, covered in mud, and then something was pulling me down into
the darkness, a lukewarm, terrifying black that pressed in on me from
all sides.

It took me
nearly two full seconds to realize that the pain was gone. My lungs
were now the only part of me screaming for relief.

Something had
grabbed me and pulled me under the water, only it hadn't let go of
me. It was still dragging me through the water at such a fast speed
that I couldn't seem to get my feet underneath me. Visions of giant
alligators burst over me and I reached forward with my free hand,
raking my claws across something hard in an attempt to free myself.

It was the feel
of my claws scraping across lamia claws that helped me start to
regain a measure of control over myself, but even that might not have
been enough to stop me from fighting if the lamia towing me hadn't
picked that instant to shove me hard towards the surface of the
water.

I surfaced
coughing and gasping for air, and would have gone back under if Set
hadn't surfaced at nearly the same time. He grabbed hold of me,
steadying me at the same time that he looked at Onyx. We'd come up
far enough away from where we'd gone under the water that Onyx didn't
see us immediately.

Onyx looked at
the two of us, and I saw his eyes start to tighten as he summoned up
his ability, but before he could send another jolt of pain through my
body, his eyes went wide in understanding. I should have been too
disoriented to understand what was going through his mind, but it was
as though I could read his thoughts.

The time
between when Set had slapped the water and when the last of the
lamias had risen to show themselves for a split second before
disappearing again hadn't been long. Maybe a minute and a half at the
most. That shouldn't have been enough time for Set to cover the
twenty yards between where he'd been and where I'd been without
making enough turbulence in the water to be seen.

It should have
been impossible, and yet Set had done it. Even worse, it was proof
that the lamias were much faster than Onyx had believed. It meant
that he had no way of guaranteeing that the rest of Set's people
weren't mere seconds from reaching Onyx's island again.

Onyx could
easily kill me if that was what he wanted to do, but doing that would
require precious seconds he couldn't afford to spare. He turned and
ran, the rest of his people mere feet behind him.

I collapsed two seconds later.

Isaac Nazir
The Lamia Enclave

I woke up a few
hours later battered and more exhausted than I should have been, but
still alive and once again safely back inside the enclave. After
everything I'd been through, I just wanted to go back to sleep and
put off dealing with whatever the universe was going to throw at me
next, but after fifteen minutes of trying to sleep, I finally threw
in the towel and rolled out of bed.

I wouldn't have
thought that the introduction of just one more person into our living
space could have made any kind of huge difference in the look and
feel of the room, but I would have been completely wrong. The wolf
who had been with Onyx, the one who'd been chained by his wrists to
the boat and almost drowned earlier, was stretched out on our couch
and looking even worse than when I'd last seen him.

Now that I was
close enough to really study him I was struck by the fact that he
looked undernourished in a way that was hard to achieve for a shape
shifter. Usually if we weren't getting enough food we were in
constant danger of losing control of our beasts. The fact that
someone had gotten away with starving him like that was pretty strong
evidence that he was about as submissive as they came.

As interesting
as that particular tidbit was, it was the bandages across his chest
that were the most astonishing. I didn't remember him taking a claw
to the chest, so that probably meant that Onyx had cut him while I'd
been under the water. Apparently Onyx had figured that a dead wolf
would serve just as well as a live wolf when it came to sending
Celeste the message that he wanted her back in New Orleans.