Prophecy (Residue Series #4) (13 page)

I’d known Mrs. DeVille my entire life. I’d watched her drive children to tears and adults to their breaking point. She cowered to no one…unless they wore a Vire uniform.

I was at the makeshift door by the time the sound of breaking glass reached me.

“Resist,” said someone with authority, “and you’ll face the full penalty for your actions.”

In the words of Vire language, this translated to: death.

In the seconds it took for me to put the cut-out of the wall on the ground, she was already countering with a whimper. “We aren’t resisting.”

By the time I was leaning out the cut-out, I felt something sweep along my shoulder, diverting my attention.

It was Jocelyn. She was holding out the Vire uniform.

Good idea
.
Might be of use.

I dressed as quietly as possible and then motioned for her to stay here.

It was almost incomprehensible to me, but she listened and agreed.

Good
, I thought,
just hope she stays that way.

I could focus now on the DeVilles, who were clearly about to see their necks slit.

“Please don’t hurt us,” Mr. DeVille was saying as I pulled the mirror aside, cautiously so that it wouldn’t draw their attention.

I determined by the distance of their voices that they were coming from the next room, the front of the store, but I was still gambling that no other Vires were clearing out the other rooms.

A deep voice with a hint of an Indian accent broke in and what he said wasn’t comforting. “You have aided and abetted felons.”

Have aided and abetted…in other words, in the past.

They don’t know we are here.

“Were you involved, Mrs. DeVille, in the attack on our Vires in the Louisiana bayou?”

“No!” she quibbled. “We weren’t! We honestly weren’t!”

Following a pause, the Indian said simply, “I do not believe you.”

Mr. and Mrs. DeVille exhaled anxiously, loud enough for me to hear.

“We will take all actions necessary to prevent it from reoccurring.”

“Please-” Mr. DeVille pleaded.

“However,” said the Indian, cutting him off, “leniency for your actions will be considered if you give us information on the whereabouts of Jameson Caldwell and Jocelyn Weatherford.”

The mirror was now out of the way and I had a full view of the room. There were no Vires in here, but through the door, directly on the opposite side, were the backs of two men dressed in the same ridiculous uniforms that were now so familiar to me.

I left the bedroom and slid the mirror back into place, keeping Jocelyn safe as best I could.

Safe
, I thought,
we should have left the second I knew the DeVilles hadn’t gone into hiding
. They should have, should have been on a riverboat. Only Jocelyn and I were supposed to be here right now, and the place was meant to appear vacant. But no, Mrs. DeVille had a stubborn streak, and it was about to get her and her husband killed.

I had no weapon, and the junk collected in the backroom didn’t offer anything that wouldn’t break on me with the first strike. I’d have to go in without. That was virtually suicide, but I didn’t have much choice.

The Indian was waiting on the DeVilles to answer as I entered the room, hoping my Vire uniform would buy me enough time to assess the situation.

I stepped up beside the two Vires in the doorway and took a sweeping glance at those present in the front of the store.

There were about thirty Vires in all and the DeVilles shoved inside this small shop. But no one in the room drew as much interest from me as the one with the turban on his head. He stood, stately, with a moldavite-encrusted robe, hands properly crossed in front of him.

Sisera. One of The Sevens, who was noticeably out of his territory of control.

I didn’t wait to find out why, because Sisera’s voice had ceased and he was staring across the room at me with a peculiar expression.

I struck the first Vire in the knee and he collapsed.

The Vire beside him turned, but not fast enough. I took out his knee just as efficiently. The two of them squirmed on the ground, clutching their legs, as the next Vire came at me.

He was a big boy with a torso the size of a dump truck, but he went down pretty swiftly when I swept his legs and crushed his windpipe with the edge of my palm.

By then, my presence was known and whoever had the ability to levitate used it before I could take out another one of them. I was slammed against the wall, where something round protruded into my back. Vaguely, I remembered a framed picture being mounted there, but the sight of Jocelyn in the doorway ended all rational thought.

Instantly, she saw me, and I fought the damn Vire whose restraint kept me against the wall. She ran, fast – in my direction – only to be jerked backwards. And that was when I saw the Vire holding her from behind.

I’d never seen a lamb being led to the slaughter but this was what I knew it would look like as she stopped in the doorway.

“NO!” I shouted. “Let her go, Sisera. This isn’t your province,” I proclaimed.

Sisera strolled leisurely across the room until he was standing directly in front of me. “I’d tell you to bow, Jameson Caldwell, but I am fairly certain you cannot follow my command.”

I wouldn’t bow anyways.

“Sartorius won’t appreciate you overstepping your bounds, Sisera,” I said in another appeal to his intellect. My statement was true, and it was the only logical argument I could make.

“Not that it is any of your concern. You will be dead soon enough. But for the rest of you,” he called over his shoulder, addressing the Vires accompanying him, “Sartorius no longer controls this province. After the debacle of your escape, his authority has been revoked.
I
control the province now.” Sisera ambled to Jocelyn with a speculative stare fixed on her. “You two have caused enough turmoil. It will end here. Unceremoniously.” He tipped his head toward the Vire holding her, a casual, indifferent gesture, as if we were nothing, less than nothing.

“Sartorius is setting you up,” I called out. “Kill Jocelyn or myself, and you’ll never find out how.”

I was wrong. I did have another angle to work.

Sisera came to an abrupt stop, his translucent pasty skin turning whiter, his dark eyes locked on the floor as he considered my warning. It was enough of a sign that the Vire holding Jocelyn didn’t follow through with Sisera’s first command, and that was what I’d been counting on.

Sisera spun on his heel, his head lifting in interest, as he approached me again.

“Convince me that you speak the truth and I’ll consider delaying your death.”

The irony was, in that instant, when I was only trying to conjure up enough evidence to preserve Jocelyn’s life, the truth actually came to me. I had known Sartorius was setting up the rest of The Sevens, but I hadn’t figured out how he would do it, not until now.

With my response formulated in my mind, I opened my mouth to deliver it when I saw the movement. It came from behind Jocelyn. No, from behind the Vire holding Jocelyn, from down the long hallway that led back to the door that we’d come in through last night. They struck with damn good precision, taking out the one holding Jocelyn and yanking her back out of the room before she could fall into the mess they were about to create.

I thought there might be an army coming down that hallway, but I was wrong. Only two entered, and that wasn’t enough.

They were going to need me.

I put my hands against the wall, trying to pry myself from it, as the two of them made their way through the room, dropping one Vire after another. They worked in tandem, their swords swinging with impressive accuracy, so that the last Vire fell only a few seconds after they started. He must have been the one holding me back, because when his heart was punctured, I slid down the wall and slammed into the counter below.

The DeVilles sprinted by me, in a frenzy to get to safety.

Launching myself onto my feet, I ran for Jocelyn, who I found plowing through the junk the DeVilles had collected in the backroom.

“Jocelyn,” I called out, marching for her.

She paused long enough to recognize that I was in the same room as her. She spun around and we collided in the middle, only for her to crumble to her knees, clutching her stomach, as she had done in the shack and in bed.

“It-it’ll…pass…,” she fought to say.

I held her, keeping my eyes on the entrance to the other room. Voices were muffled, but they seemed calm. Maybe Sisera was dead by now?

When she took in a breath and began to stand, I knew she was stronger, healthier again.

“Did they hurt you?” I asked, adding for clarification, “The Vires?”

“No,” she said with a shake of her head before gesturing me back to the stack of junk. “Come on. We need something to fight with….”

“So that’s what you were doing.”

She nodded and continued on.

“Jocelyn, there’s nothing here that will help us.” I glanced at the door. “Besides, I think the fight’s over.”

She froze, listening, and then straightened up. I could tell there was no way she planned to walk into that room doubled over in pain, even if it still lingered. She was far too proud. Sure enough, she went for the door, and I had to slip around her to make sure I went in first.

Sisera wasn’t dead.

He stood where he had been; the two people who had taken down his entourage, swiftly and without injury, stood in front of him, their backs to us.

He seemed to be defiant, but – this shocked me more than anything else, more than anything I’d experienced in my life – Sisera was scared.

Sevens feared no one; they acted immune to it, as if they knew something that the rest of us didn’t. But his eyebrows were creased and beads of sweat were saturating the turban at the top of his forehead.

“Do you have any last words?” his attacker asked. This was another surprise, because I recognized his voice. It was English, or at least I’d always assumed it to be.

Even while staring into the face of death, Sisera would not submit. “I do, Eran Talor,” he said tauntingly and then grinned. “Incantatio-”

At the very same time Sisera began his cast, Jocelyn spoke up. “Eran?”

As Eran turned, the person beside him, the one who fought next to him, dressed in black leather with cut outs in the back between the shoulder blades and wild brown hair, stuck a sword through Sisera’s heart, ending his cast.

And there it was…the death of the very first Seven. It was impossible, unbelievable, surreal. Shockingly, we were the only ones to witness it, this death that would go down in our history books as the day the first one fell. Still, all I could think was…
Damn, I’d like to have been the one.

And then the person who took the life of Sisera – a Seven, an untouchable, someone who seemed to be impervious to death – turned around, and I found that the one who had done this was our high school clairvoyant…Maggie Tanner.

Eran didn’t seem to notice Jocelyn or me marveling at what had just taken place. He made sure Sisera was dead, which from my account a few feet away, the rapidly decomposing body he’d left behind looked to be, and then strolled back to us.

“We keep showing up in the same places, don’t we?” Eran remarked casually, his accent only slightly thicker from the exhilaration of the fight.

“Yes, we do,” I said, still trying to wrap my head around what was happening.

“We were tracking him.”

“Tracking?”

By that point, Maggie had joined us; after wiping the blade off on Sisera’s body like a Viking warrior, she sheathed it and came to stand by Eran, smiling as if condemning a Seven to death was a daily occurrence.

“Nicely done.” He leaned sideways to whisper this into Maggie’s ear, as if they were the only two in the room.

“Thank you,” she murmured, gazing up at him, and then turned back to Jocelyn and me. “After we split up at Lacinda’s, Eran and I went back to the Ministry, found this one leaving, followed him here, and…well, you see the result.”

I laughed, unintentionally. This was all just so damn surreal. And then something came to me, in a flash, like it had been sitting at the back of my mind waiting for this moment to come forward. “So you are the allies,” I said more to myself than to them.

“Allies?” Eran remarked, and then appeared to seriously consider it. “Yes, we could be.”

“I think they are,” Jocelyn mumbled. “Maggie was the ally The Sevens said they had captured when they coerced us into that truce. They said they didn’t need a truce because they already had what they needed.”

Maggie frowned at the memory, and I was left with the sense that her ego had been damaged for being caught.

“They offered up a truce?” Eran asked, doubtfully.

“A false truce. It was used to manipulate us.”

“Of course…,” he muttered, and, once again, I got the impression that he knew The Sevens better than most did in
our
world.