Mysterious Ways

by Christine Pope

  For a moment, he didn’t reply. Then he descended the stairs from the altar, each step slow, deliberate. The entire time, his eyes remained fixed on me. Off to one side, Rafe made one of those rumbling growling noises in his throat again, but I didn’t know if he still intended to shift into animal form or whether he was waiting to see what Simon would do.

  “They are Castillos,” he said, his voice careless, although the angry glint in his black eyes gave the lie to his casual tone. “That means they have done plenty to me. Are you their spokesperson? Going to bargain for their lives?”

  “This is my family,” Eduardo said, stepping forward. During the fray, he seemed to have escaped the demons’ attention, possibly because of the magical gift that always sent him the best possible fortune. “I will speak for them.”

  Simon gave him a contemptuous look. “I don’t care what you have to say, old man. Be quiet, or you’ll suffer the same fate as your wife.” He glanced over at the coffin with its covering of lilies and roses, which miraculously seemed to have survived the fray unscathed.

  I ignored the rude words. Rudeness was the least of our problems right now. “What do you want, Simon?”

  Again he smiled. I hated that smile…as well as the glance that accompanied it, one which seemed to travel up and down my form, taking in the slim-fitting black dress and thin sweater, the kitten heels I wore. “I think you know exactly what I want, Miranda. Since you seem to care so much about these people, I’ll offer you a bargain. I’ll leave them alone…if you come with me.”

  “No!” Rafe pushed himself to his feet, then took a step toward us. “Miranda, you can’t agree to that.”

  “Shut up, wolf boy.” A casual swipe of his hand, and Rafe was flung backward, landing several feet from where Louisa lay. “This is Miranda’s decision to make.”

  I saw the murderous glitter in Rafe’s eyes as he began to push himself up from the floor, but unfortunately, I knew it meant little. His power might have been a strong one in most cases. Now, though, when faced with an enemy as powerful as Simon Escobar, he didn’t stand a chance.

  And there was Louisa lying still and quiet on the floor, her husband a few yards away. Cat, too, although now that the demons had gone quiescent, standing off while their master traded words with me, she had begun to stir, to painfully push herself up to a sitting position.

  They were my family now…and I couldn’t bear to let Simon hurt them anymore. The pain of what I knew I must do burned inside me, but I pushed it aside, just as I blinked away the tears that had begun to form in my eyes.

  I stepped closer to him. “Swear,” I said. “Swear that you’ll leave them alone, that you won’t touch anyone in the Castillo clan again. Swear it, and I’ll come with you.”

  Triumph flashed in Simon’s black eyes. “I do swear it, Miranda. As long as you’re with me, I won’t hurt a hair on their precious heads.”

  The ache I felt now wasn’t from the demons’ assault, but from the knowledge of everything I was giving up, Rafe’s love most of all. How could I live without him, when I now knew what it was like to be with someone I cared for so passionately?

  That didn’t matter, though. My feelings weren’t worth all the pain Simon was willing to cause Rafe and his family. I had to agree with this, or I could never live with myself.

  “All right,” I said, every syllable an agony, “I’ll come.”

  Another step forward, and Simon’s arm snaked around me, tightening on my waist. In a flash we were gone.

  But Rafe’s despairing cry echoed in my ears even as we disappeared.

  “Miranda, no!”

  9

  Left Behind

  Rafe

  He staggered toward the spot where Miranda and Simon Escobar had stood only a moment earlier, but it was too late. They were gone, vanished into the air itself; obviously, Escobar commanded the same powers of teleportation that Miranda did.

  How could she have gone with him? Did she really think that a fiend like Simon Escobar would keep his word and leave the Castillos alone?

  Apparently, she had. Rafe had seen the despair on her face, but also the sudden resolve, the way her lips had pressed together and her gaze had gone steady, unwavering. She’d made that pact with Escobar because she knew they were outnumbered and outmatched. The Castillos had strong witches and warlocks among their ranks, but they couldn’t hope to fend off the dark warlock’s powers, or the evil army of demons he’d summoned to assist him with his dirty work.

  Cat laid a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry, Rafe,” she said quietly. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll find her. But right now, Oscar and Louisa need us.”

  His hands clenched into fists, but Rafe made himself nod. Cat was right. They had no way of immediately following Simon and Miranda, and both Oscar and Louisa were hurt. And that didn’t count Father Francis, who was still lying at the rear of the altar, moaning faintly, although Rafe didn’t know for sure whether those sighs of pain he made were due to physical injury or because he’d just seen demons with his own eyes, and had had his personal reality turned on its head.

  Eduardo was already kneeling next to Louisa and had his phone out — probably to summon Yesenia. Rafe glanced down at Cat.

  “I’ll go check Father Francis,” she said. “You see if Oscar’s okay.”

  He nodded, then went over to where his brother-in-law lay and knelt down next to him. Oscar still hadn’t moved, and Rafe was almost afraid to reach out and feel for a pulse. However, when he laid his fingers against Oscar’s throat, he was able to detect a heartbeat — thready and too fast, but at least it was there.

  Up on the altar, Cat was bending down and asking the priest if he was okay, if he thought he’d suffered any serious injuries. Still looking nearly as pale as the white plaster walls of the church, Father Francis shook his head.

  “Bumps and bruises, nothing more,” he told her. “But what — what were those things?”

  Cat sent a panicked look in Rafe’s direction. Right then, he wished he had one of those pen-shaped gizmos from those old Men in Black movies, those devices that would erase troublesome memories of an otherworldly incident in the blink of an eye. But Rafe certainly didn’t possess that power, and he didn’t know anyone who did.

  He gave the faintest shake of his head, and Cat said, all wide-eyed confusion, “What things?”

  “Those — those creatures,” the priest replied. With a groan, he got to his feet. “Winged demons.”

  She looked at him as if she didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. Rafe had to admire her acting skill, especially her ability to summon it so soon after having another one of those fainting spells or attacks or whatever you wanted to call them. “I didn’t see anything like that. My sister fainted, but that’s not so strange, considering the strain she’s been under. You did stumble and fall, but I thought you must have tripped on the microphone wire.”

  Father Francis looked down at the innocent black cord near his feet and frowned. “I — I don’t think that’s what happened. And what about your brother-in-law?”

  Right — her story hadn’t included the reason for Oscar lying on the floor, clearly as out cold as his wife. Luckily, though, he moved right then, one hand going to his head. “What happened?” he asked.

  “Forgot his insulin,” Rafe said loudly enough for the priest to hear. “Like Cat said, we’ve all been under a lot of strain. But it looks as though he’s going to be okay.”

  Despite his recent injury, Oscar was staring at him as though he’d lost his mind. Rafe bent down toward him, pitching his voice low.

  “You’re going to be okay,” he murmured. “We’re just waiting for Yesenia to come.”

  “Why don’t you go along home?” Cat asked, putting a hand under the priest’s elbow and helping him to his feet. “The people from the funeral home will be here shortly, and we can lock up the church for you.”

  “I — ” From the way Father Francis frowned, clearly he found some issues with this suggesti
on. However, it seemed that he was still fuzzy-headed enough to nod absently and say, “If you’re sure.”

  “We are,” Cat said firmly. “You took quite a spill there. It’s probably best if you go home and put your feet up.”

  “All right.” The priest took one last glance at the survivors, brow puckering slightly. “Wasn’t there one more of you?”

  “She went to the ladies’ room to get a damp paper towel for Louisa’s forehead,” Cat replied. “That usually helps snap her out of these spells.”

  Once again Father Francis looked down at Louisa. It seemed that he had run out of protests, though, because next he said, “It does seem as though you have the situation under control — ”

  “We do.” Still with her hand on the priest’s elbow, she guided him down off the altar and toward the exit closest to them, the one on the east side of the church, which opened on a side street rather than the parking lot. “You take care, Father Francis.”

  His frown didn’t disappear, but at least he did go out through the exit as she’d suggested. Once he was gone, she let out an exaggerated sigh of relief.

  “That was close.”

  Despite his overwhelming worry for Miranda, Rafe couldn’t help but smile at his sister. “Pretty good acting there, Meryl Streep.”

  Cat shrugged. “Well, I couldn’t tell him the truth.” She came over and knelt down next to him. “How are you, Oscar?”

  “Okay,” Oscar replied. “I think that bastard broke a couple of ribs, though.”

  “Well, try not to move,” Rafe said. “Yesenia’ll get those ribs fixed as soon as she gets here.”

  Oscar’s gaze moved toward his wife, who still lay without moving a few feet away, Eduardo next to her, smoothing her hair back from her brow. “Louisa?”

  “She’s breathing,” Eduardo said. “But other than that….”

  The words drifted into silence, and Oscar shut his eyes for a moment, then expelled a breath, wincing slightly as he did so. “She’ll be all right,” he said after a long pause. “She has to be.”

  Yes, she did. Rafe didn’t want to think of what would happen to their clan if Louisa’s injuries were serious enough to prevent her from functioning as their prima. This was always a difficult time, that short period when a prima took over a clan but hadn’t yet chosen her successor. In general, the new prima usually had someone in mind, but if Louisa had already made her selection, she hadn’t spoken of it. They’d been a little busy the past few days.

  Cat went over and brushed the hair back from her sister’s face. Louisa’s eyes were shut, her face slack and pale. Rafe could just barely see the way her chest rose and fell, but how much did that mean? Malena was also breathing, but she was in a coma, completely unresponsive. Despair congealed somewhere in his center, cold and heavy and unrelenting.

  But he had another sister he needed to look after.

  “What about you?” Rafe asked Cat, and she blinked at him.

  “I’m okay,” she replied. “My head hurts a little, and I feel kind of woozy. But it’s not a big deal.”

  “You collapsed, too,” he pointed out.

  “I know.” She paused for a moment, gaze moving to the stained-glass windows on the wall beyond him, to the sunlight that streamed through them. “I think it was the demons.”

  “They’re what made you faint?”

  “I think so.” Another hesitation, as though she had stopped to try to put the pieces together as best she could. “I’m not sure how, but I wonder if my sensing that weird pressure has something to do with my ability to see ghosts, to communicate with them. I know that ghosts and demons are two different things, but they’re both not from this plane, if you know what I mean. There’s a wrongness to the demons, though. Maybe they create some kind of weird feedback loop when they come into this world, and somehow I can sense it.”

  This all sounded plausible to Rafe. He wanted to believe Cat’s hypothesis, because at least then these weird episodes she experienced would have some meaning to them. “And so you actually fainted this time instead of just getting a headache because they were so close?”

  “I think so. Maybe. I never experienced anything like this until Simon Escobar came to Santa Fe, so it makes sense.”

  Fucking Escobar. The anger still seethed deep within Rafe, overriding even the concern he felt for his sisters, for his wounded brother-in-law. “We have to find him, Cat.”

  She laid a hand on his arm. “We will. You found him the last time, right? And we know that Miranda has the ability to hold him off, because she did it before.”

  Rafe wished he could share his sister’s confidence on that particular point. When he’d come on the scene at the estate in Tesuque, Miranda hadn’t looked as though she was holding her own. No, she’d looked a couple of minutes away from being a rape victim.

  Worry churned in his gut, sour, acid. He had to put that image out of his mind, because otherwise he’d convince himself that that was what was happening to Miranda right now, and he couldn’t bear it.

  “I hope so,” he said, his voice tight.

  The doors at the far end of the chapel opened, and both Rafe and Cat got up from where they’d been kneeling next to Louisa. Yesenia came hurrying in, her hair, which she usually wore pulled back in a long ponytail, windblown and messy, her expression strained.

  “I was at Malena’s house when you called,” she said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be quicker.”

  “It’s all right,” Eduardo replied. He’d been sitting in the front pew, listening to Cat and Rafe talk, watchful gaze never leaving his eldest daughter’s slack face. “We know you came as fast as you could.”

  She nodded, then went and knelt next to Louisa, her expression growing grave as she ran her hands over the prima’s body, sensing the energies deep within and how they might have been disrupted. “I can’t feel anything intrinsically wrong with her,” she said. “Her mind has been taken far away, just like Malena’s. But she breathes, and her heart sounds strong. I think the best thing to do is take her home and put her in her own bed. Perhaps if she is given enough time to heal….”

  Yesenia stopped there. While she didn’t quite shake her head, Rafe could tell she was mystified by this strange malady, something that seemed to have no real source. From what she’d said, there didn’t seem to be any real reason why Louisa should be in a coma…or Malena, for that matter.

  But magic could be unpredictable, and none of them had any real idea what type of terrible spells Simon Escobar had been using. The very blackest kind, obviously, because no witch or warlock who walked in the path of light would stoop to summoning demons, or using magic to inflict harm on another.

  And, thanks to more of that dark magic, Rafe couldn’t even reach out to the one person who might know something about all this. Miranda’s father, Connor Wilcox, had never used these sorts of foul spells, but his brother had delved into all kinds of forbidden magic. At least Connor might have been able to offer a few words of advice on how to deal with it, to counter it, even though he himself had avoided falling into those traps.

  “All right,” Rafe said, and let out a weary breath. “Go ahead and see what you can do for Oscar.”

  Yesenia nodded, then went over to Oscar and knelt at his side, running her hands over him just as she had with Louisa a moment earlier. When she was done, she nodded. “You have cracked two of your ribs and strained your back.” With a faint smile, she went on, “All of which is easy enough to fix.” She brought her hands down closer to the injured ribs, a warm, faint glow emanating from her palms as she used her power to send the healing energies forth into her patient. After a moment, she laid her hands against his back, again waiting for the magic to do its work. When she was done, she sat back on her heels. “How do you feel now, Oscar?”

  Cautiously, he pushed himself to a sitting position, hands flat against the wooden floor. “I feel — well, I still feel as though someone used me for a punching bag, but the worst of the hurt is gone.”

&n
bsp; “You will probably be stiff and sore for a day or so,” she told him. “But at least you won’t have to worry about those ribs or your back.”

  “No,” he said, gaze moving past her to Louisa, who still lay as quiet as though she was dead, although Rafe knew she breathed. “Now I can just worry about my wife.”

  Looking solemn, Yesenia got to her feet and went over to Eduardo, laid a hand on his shoulder. “And how are you, Eduardo?”

  “Sore in heart but not in body,” he replied. “The demons did not attack me, for whatever reason.”

  Because of his inborn luck, Rafe guessed, and also probably because that same magical talent offered no outward threat to them. He recalled how the demons had pushed back hard enough on Miranda that they’d sent her flying. Apparently, she hadn’t been hurt by their attack, but he had to wonder whether Escobar would give his flying monkeys a chewing-out for daring to strike the woman he wanted.

  The woman he wanted….

  Once again, worry rose in Rafe, sick and foul in his mouth. The mere thought of Miranda in Simon Escobar’s hands made him want to retch.

  “Well, that is something,” Yesenia said, bringing Rafe back to the moment. “Rafe, can you and Eduardo carry Louisa to her car? I don’t think Oscar should be lifting her yet, not when he’s so newly healed.”

  “Of course,” Rafe said automatically. He might as well be of some use to his sister, since he’d certainly been no help to the woman he loved. During the demon attack, the beast had risen in him, wanting to be let out, wanting to go for Escobar’s throat, but he’d hesitated just a moment too long. He still wasn’t sure why exactly, although he knew deep down that his wolf form couldn’t have prevailed against the dark warlock. The first time, he’d gotten lucky. That was all.