Authors: Nancy Gideon
“He’s right and you know it. Are you afraid for her safety or afraid she won’t come back to you?”
Right to the heart. The daring assassin didn’t know any other way to strike.
“Both,” he admitted quietly.
“She loves you. You know that.”
“I know she loves who I was, but I don’t know who that is.”
“Maybe Silas can help you with that. He’s a Reader, the strongest one I’ve ever seen. He might be able to go into your mind and find those memories for you.”
“If I agree to let Susanna go? Is that the price I have to pay?”
“No,” Nica stated frigidly, “because I thought you were my friend.” She surged up out of the chair, shoving past MacCreedy.
He arched a brow as he looked after her, then placed the beers on the table. “Rub her the wrong way, did you?”
“No. Just being a dickhead.” Jacques picked up his bottle and drained half of it. “I can have Susanna ready to go tomorrow, but there’s something I want you to do for me.”
“Name it.”
“Try to read Savoie. I need to know if he can come back to lead us before I risk everything I have for nothing.”
MacCreedy regarded him for a moment, then stood. “Let’s do it.”
Seeing them readying to leave together, Nica hurried
over. MacCreedy told her brusquely what they planned.
“Amber,” she called to the other waitress. “Fill in behind the bar for me.”
“Did you promote her without telling me?” Jacques asked.
“No. I promoted me to manager, and I’m making her my assistant.” She stared at him impatiently. “Do you have a problem with that?”
“I guess not. Are you sure I even need to come to work anymore?”
“Only if you want to, boss. And to sign the paychecks.” She linked her arms through theirs. “I’m going with you in case my man needs a little psychic backup.”
But when they got to the docks, they found Max Savoie gone.
Twenty-two
C
harlotte opened the door to her apartment to find a breathless Susanna in the hall.
“I found it.” She was laughing and crying all at once.
“Found what?” Charlotte took her arm and pulled her inside.
“The key. It works. It opens everything.” After collapsing onto the sofa, she tried to explain. “The key to our species. I had Nica take me back to Dovion’s lab this afternoon so I could double check the data. There’s no mistake. We’re all one. Shifter, Chosen, Human, all derived from Ancient DNA. We’ve always believed that it was just Shifters and the Chosen. That’s why all attempts to recombine were futile. We were missing the human element. Balance is the key: a triangle. The Alpha for Ancient with its three corners.”
Charlotte stared at her. “Then you can heal Mary Kate.”
Susanna nodded. “And our children.” Her voice broke. “Our children will survive.”
“My son and your daughter. Your daughter who’s Chosen and Shifter.”
Susanna blinked damp eyes. “Yes.”
“Then you’ll be staying here in New Orleans,” Charlotte said as if it were a fact.
“It’s not that simple. Jacques’s made a life for himself here. I don’t know how I’d fit into it or how he’d blend into mine. The work I’m doing is important in the North. Not for the Chosen and their politics, but for
all
of us. I don’t know how to bring our two worlds together without one of us having to make a terrible sacrifice.”
“Maybe there’s more of a place for you here than you realize. Let me work on that while you get that serum ready to go.”
“It’ll only take me a few hours. I’ve collected all that I need: human DNA from your friend Dev, Ancient from Nica, Shifter from Jacques, and my own Chosen. I’ve determined the percentages. I just need some more time in the lab.”
“Let’s go.”
Susanna hesitated, and Charlotte intuited the problem.
“Leave him a note. I’ll take responsibility.”
Preparing the serum using her computations was as easy as mixing a protein drink. When they went to the hospital and she stood at Mary Kate Malone’s bedside, Susanna looked at Charlotte. “Are you
sure
this is what she’d want?”
A slight hesitation, then a firm, “Yes. Do it.”
After the injection was given, Charlotte’s tension drained away on a sigh. Her hand stroked over the
invalid’s blonde hair as she leaned down to murmur, “We’ll talk again soon.”
“I’ll leave instructions with the staff,” Susanna said. “I’ll receive updates online any time there’s a change.”
She suddenly noticed a priest standing in the doorway.
Charlotte made stiff introductions. “Dr. Susanna Duchamps, Father Michael Furness. I think each of you has something the other wants.”
“How did this happen?” Jacques raged at Philo Tibideaux. “He was secured, sedated, and now he’s just
gone
?”
Philo glanced to where MacCreedy and Nica stood out of earshot. “He didn’t just walk away.”
“What did he do? Fly?”
“Near as I can figure,” Philo continued uncomfortably, “Morris and some of the others took him.”
“What do you mean, took him? Where? Why?”
“It’s my fault. I was going on about keeping the monsters who kilt Tito outta our city, and how they’d be coming sure as shit for Savoie.”
Jacques’s hand fisted in Philo’s shirt, yanking him to his toes. “You gave me your word!”
“And I meant to keep it, Jackie—I did. But some a them got to thinkin’ that I was letting my friendship with you get in the way a takin’ care a business. So they decided to take matters outta my hands.”
Jacques shoved him away. “So what do the bastards plan to do?”
Philo’s expression grew grim. “They mean to make whatever sacrifice is necessary to protect our own.”
“They’re going to
kill
him?” The notion was too incredible to grasp at first. “Is that what they plan to do?”
Philo didn’t answer.
Jacques sank into a crouch, clasping his head in his hands. Then he snapped, “These were your men. You vouched for them.”
“They’re our friends, Jackie, yours and mine. We work with ’em, drink with ’em, bury our dead with ’em. They were doing what they thought was right.”
Jacques exploded up and began to pace furiously. “Where did they go? Where did the sonsabitches take him?”
Philo set his jaw. “I don’t know.”
Jacques rounded on him, eyes blazing. “Don’t know or won’t say?”
“What are you meaning to do? Go after ’em? Maybe let your new friends there tear ’em into little pieces? I ain’t gonna let that happen. I’m surely sorry about Savoie, but I’m not turning on our friends, our
brothers
. I won’t give you any names.”
“Morris will give them up.”
Philo gripped his friend’s arm. “And then what? Jackie, think this through. After all we been to each other, you planning to turn on your own for an outsider?”
Jacques threw off his hand. “They weren’t treating me as one of their own when I was bleeding on my
floor right in front of them. Maybe to them I’m just an outsider, too. And maybe deep down, you’re thinking the same thing.”
He stormed away in fury and frustration, turning his back on seven years of friendship in favor of the calm and deadly pair that so recently had become a part of his life.
“They took Max. They’re gonna kill him.”
“Do we know where?” MacCreedy asked.
Jacques shook his head, ready to howl in aggravation and from a deep-seated fear that whatever they did, it would be too late.
“Silas can find him,” Nica insisted. At her mate’s perplexed look, she explained, “You linked psyches with him to free me. You know the pattern of his thoughts.”
“What if that pattern’s gone?”
The three of them sat in Jacques’s trailer in near darkness.
Jacques wouldn’t have believed such things were possible. He knew the Chosen had strong mental abilities, but discovering them in those he’d thought were like him was unsettling. He’d always known Nica was somehow different. Discovering she was part of the early race generally thought to be pure myth was startling, but he’d go with it because it explained that uncanny insight she displayed. But finding out Silas MacCreedy was of that same ancient blood was even more disturbing.
It was some consolation that MacCreedy seemed as uneasy as he was with these mysterious powers. Nica had to work to get the usually level Silas relaxed and receptive. With his coat and tie off, shirt collar open, and sleeves pushed up, the Shifter cop took a deep breath and let his mate coax him into closing his eyes.
“I’m right here, lover,” Nica soothed, beginning a gentle massage of his temples. “Just let your thoughts empty. Breathe. That’s it. Now concentrate on Max. Breathe in his scent.” When Silas’s breathing altered encouragingly, she urged, “Look through his eyes. What do you see?”
“Nothing. Darkness.”
“What do you feel?”
“Motion. Vibration. A vehicle. He’s in a vehicle. A big one. Lot’s of open space. A van, maybe.”
“Good. What do you smell?”
“The river, but it’s faint. The city. He’s still in the city. Stop and go.” MacCreedy began a slight rocking as if he were a passenger, too. “Sirens. Ambulance. Hospital? Circle?”
“He’s at Lee Circle,” Jacques interjected, excitement beginning to build.
“What is he thinking? Is he awake?”
MacCreedy’s head moved from side to side. “Confusion. Can’t think clearly. Danger. Darkness.” His breathing quickened.
“How many are with you?”
“Hear voices. Familiar but don’t know them. Five, maybe six. Crossing tracks. Going to . . . the park?”
“Audubon? Riverside? Armstrong?”
“Audubon,” Jacques declared.
MacCreedy’s rocking grew more manic. His voice took on an almost childlike singsong. “Jimmy, help me. Jimmy, save me.”
Nica looked to Jacques in question.
“Legere. Max’s mentor. He’s dead. Why would he—?”
MacCreedy gave a sudden lurch forward, dropping to his knees, his palms flat on the floor. He took several huge gulping breaths, then lifted his gaze to Nica’s. “He’s out. He’s loose. I lost him.”
“Where? Where would he be going?”
A revelation struck Jacques. “I know. We need to hurry.”
MacCreedy remained slumped on his knees and forearms, trembling from the telepathic effort. When Nica’s hand touched his head in concern, he panted, “Go. I’ll be fine. Go!”
Nica’s little sports car ripped out of the Quarter toward St. Charles in the Garden District.
“Where to?” she asked without looking at her passenger.
“Lafayette Cemetery. Turn on Washington.”
“I thought Legere was interred in St. Louis Number One?”
“He is. But Max is confused. He’d go for the familiar, for protection. Dammit, this is my fault.”
“They’re your friends. You trusted them.”
“But I knew how they felt about Savoie. I just never thought—”
“That they’d betray you?” She did a quick downshift, then reached over to press his hand. “It wasn’t personal, Jacques. It was business. Remember that.”
It was cold comfort.
An old white panel van sat parked on the wrong side of Washington near the locked gates of Lafayette No. 1. Nica parked behind it.
“Looks like this is the place,” she said with a soft purr that had the hair standing on Jacques’s arms. “Hand me that bag under the seat, would you?”
He passed her the roadside emergency kit and watched as she flipped it open and plucked out the jumper cables, flare, and lug wrench. When she caught his look, she showed her teeth in a feral smile.
“A girl’s got to be prepared.”
At that moment, Jacques was very glad he was with her and not against her.
They got out of the car and, quickly shifting into the deadly predators they were, went over the eight-foot stone wall and landed without a sound.
The old cemetery was a lush, tranquil spot during daylight hours. In the deep midnight shadows, it whispered with long-dead ghosts. Row after row of vaults created a maze of gleaming marble, ancient brick, and crumbling stone, many of the family tombs neatly fenced in like the elegant homes in the surrounding district.
Nica gestured for him to head down a long row of wall ovens, then she trotted, low and sleek, down the wide main drive.
Unlike St. Louis No. 1, with its narrow, hard-packed paths, Lafayette Cemetery was parklike, with old spreading oaks reaching across wide avenues with late fall branches twisted and gnarled like arthritic bones. Paved aisles were edged by grass slick with gathering fog as cool, night air met warm, resting earth.
Jacques moved swiftly, gaze darting through breaks between the mausoleums, senses keen as he searched for any sign of Max and the van’s occupants. If he could find them before Nica, he’d have a chance to talk them down from unnecessary violence. These were friends he was chasing, not enemies. But he couldn’t allow them to harm the potential savior of their race.
The night was still with no breeze to carry the sound of hurried breaths, scuffling footfalls, or the scent of nonresidents roaming the city of the dead. Darkness was relieved by the pale, eerie glow of silent figures staring down at him in spectral disapproval, monuments honoring the departed shaped like angels, lambs, saints, and children at prayer.
Jacques didn’t hear Nica. She moved as quiet as a cloud across the fingernail moon above. But now he could detect the presence of intruders who weren’t worried about stealth. Because they didn’t know they were being hunted.
A crunching of gravel brought Jacques sharply about. He peered through the narrow opening between
two centuries-old mausoleums and saw furtive figures skimming down the next row, searching hurriedly just as he was. He ran parallel to them back toward the central drive, catching fleeting glimpses every now and again. Then he heard a trickle of loose stone from above.
As Jacques lifted his head, he saw eyes flaming red and a jaw stretched wide baring lethal fangs. There was no time for talk or reasoning before he was struck to the ground by the plummeting assailant.