by Cherry Adair
It wasn’t funny hearing that several people had died from what sounded like rabies. Jack walked down the stony street between the small houses, back to Inez’s. But if the bat thing was true, the deaths had nothing to do with the Omnivatics or Ophidian’s comet.
He shook his head. Christ. Bats?
Sara was waiting for him outside Inez’s tiny, one-room house. As soon as Jack saw her, he moved faster. She wasn’t a crier, but when she did cry, her nose got pink and her cheeks very pale. “What’s the matter?”
“Alberto died two hours ago. The Council just notified Carmelita.” She looked up, her big brown eyes swimming with tears. “They won’t release his—damn it, Jack, they won’t release his body for burial until they know definitely what killed him.”
He wanted to fold her in his arms. He wanted to have the right to comfort her. He didn’t, and he didn’t. “I think I know what killed him.”
“You do?” She swiped at her cheeks with her fingertips.
Jack produced a Kleenex out of thin air and handed it to her. “I’ll tell you when I tell the Council. Are you ready to go, or do you want to stay here while I go tell Edge?”
“Carmelita has Inez. I’ll go with you.”
THIS TIME, WHEN THEY appeared in the Council Chamber, they teleported directly to Duncan Edge. He sat at the big desk under the spotlight, writing in an enormous leather-bound ledger, and glanced up as Sara and Jack materialized before him. “What do you have for me?”
Sara cleared her throat. Her chest felt tight, her throat raw with grief. “Would it be possible for me to see Alberto before—before?”
“No,” the Head of Council told her impatiently; then his gaze softened as he got a look at her. She hadn’t had a chance to fix her makeup, and it must be pretty obvious she’d been crying. “Yeah, all right,” he said, less harshly. “I’ll make sure you’re protected before you’re taken in to where his body is being held.”
“Thank you,” Sara said with utmost sincerity. She wanted a moment to say good-bye to a man who’d treated her like a daughter for almost twenty years. Plus, she’d be able to tell Carmelita that Alberto was being well taken care of. Sara hoped that the Council would release him for burial soon. Carmelita would need closure. And so would she.
Edge materialized two chairs in front of his desk and indicated they should be seated. “Okay. What do we have?”
“Two villagers died, both within twelve days of onset of their symptoms. The village elder believes both victims were bitten by local vampire bats.”
“Vamp—Silas?” Duncan Edge said quietly.
“Yes, sir?” The man’s voice came from the pitch darkness behind the bright light. Did he sit there in the darkness all day and night just waiting for an order from Duncan Edge? Sara wondered. What a boring and crappy job that must be.
“Have Santos’s body tested immediately for any trace of anticoagulant.” A ball of fire appeared between his fingers, and Edge rotated it absently while he considered this new possibility. “While vampire bats are sanguivorous, they usually feed on the blood of cattle, horses, pigs,” he mused, adding two more balls of fire to the one already leaping between the fingers of his right hand. “Pretty damned rare for them to feed on humans unless there’s absolutely nothing else around. And that rain forest is filled with mammals. Let’s see what the tests tell us. Anything else?”
“We were returning from San Cristóbal—Sara was piloting Baltzer’s helicopter—when we experienced a whiteout. This was no ordinary whiteout,” Jack told Edge. “Cold is my power to call, Sara’s is fire, yet neither of us could get rid of it.”
“Because your powers didn’t function?” Edge demanded.
“Because,” Jack told him flatly, “there was nothing there.”
Edge’s dark brow rose. “An illusion?”
“Yeah.”
“The engine stalling wasn’t an illusion,” Sara pointed out.
Jack glanced from Sara to Edge. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
“You believe it was all an illusion?” she asked him. “That doesn’t make any sense. To what purpose?”
“Hell if I know,” Jack responded. “What I do know is that chopper could easily have crashed with a less capable pilot. But if, as I suspect, a wizard caused the illusion, he or she must also know that we wouldn’t have been harmed in a crash. We would obviously have teleported out in time.”
“Maybe someone wanted to crash Grant’s three-million-dollar chopper.”
“Maybe.”
“Keep track of all these anomalies.” The fireballs between Edge’s fingers sparked white-hot, and jagged bits of lightning snap-crack-popped along the silver threads in his robe as he shifted. “They might or might not be connected. But everything should be taken into account. What did you find out in the village?”
“Apparently, young girls keep going missing. Some return. Similar story to what we heard at one of the police stations in downtown San Cristóbal. I’m not sure how missing and exploited young women tie in with wizards dying after being bitten by vampire bats in the jungle.”
“What else?”
“Something about a cave just outside the village that everyone is terrified of.”
“If it’s filled with biting bats, I’d be terrified too,” Sara muttered.
“The young women apparently wear some sort of amulet to ward off evil. Some of them have come back, although apparently they could show up miles from where they were abducted. The girls who do return are ostracized and held in contempt because they allowed themselves to be caught by—Sarulu? Yeah, Sarulu, and—”
“Is that what Rojas told you?” Sara asked with a small smile. “The girls were taken by Sarulu?”
Jack leaned forward. “Yeah. Know who he is?”
“He’s not real,” Sara told the two men. “Sarulu is a myth. Not to be unsympathetic, but I suspect the girls ran off with their boyfriends, then changed their minds and came home. They’re using the myth to their advantage.”
Edge’s eyes glowed as the balls of fire passed between his bare hands. “What kind of myth?”
“Legend says that without Kasipoluin, the rainbow, it would rain without end. But the rainbow goes to Juya, the rain, and tells it to stop. The story goes that the rainbow is really the tongue of a rainbow-colored snake that lives in the earth like a root, deep inside a cave—Sarulu. His tongue is rainbow-colored and three-pronged. Since snakes are the enemy of the rain, and rain is the enemy of the snake, the rain strikes the snake with lightning bolts when it comes out of its cave. Legend claims that rainbows always come from the boa.”
“Either of you see any large, rainbow-colored snakes hanging around the village?” Edge asked wryly.
“Ah, man.” Jack squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Why the hell does all this shit keep coming back to snakes?”
Chapter Ten
It was a relief to teleport out of the Council, away from Duncan’s sharp eyes, to her suite at the hacienda. The second they’d materialized, Jack toed off his dirty boots and his socks, leaving a dark pile on the white wool flokati area rug. Then, with a grunt of satisfaction, he flung himself backward in an overtly male pose on her snowy duvet, his hands stacked beneath his head against the pile of pillows, looking for all the world like some pasha of old. If pashas lounged in art-deco boudoirs. She’d designed the white-on-white room to suit the tropical surroundings. Sara hadn’t envisioned Jackson Slater in it.
Jack defined sexy—his hooded gaze, his kissable mouth, the dark fall of hair over his forehead. She swallowed, unable to look away. He looked completely relaxed and ridiculously male.
“Go to your own room, Jack. I want to take a shower.”
She was hot and sticky and longing to immerse herself under cool jets with mounds of her favorite ginger-citron soap. Without him hovering nearby. Unfortunately, Jack seemed in no great hurry to leave.
He gave her a lazy grin. “Go ahead. I won’t look through your things while you’re in there.”
It wasn’t her things she was worried about. “You can look at whatever you like. There’s nothing in here I don’t want you to see.” Except me naked in the shower. She didn’t feel safe with him a mere door’s-width away when she was naked and vulnerable.
His lips twitched as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. “Really?”
“Yes.” She removed her shoes and opened the louvered closet doors to put them away, enjoying the coolness of the aged Brazilian walnut floor under her bare feet. “Rea—oh, hell. Harry.”
“Harry? Shit.” Jack pulled his feet onto the bed, suddenly wide-awake. He wasn’t smiling now. “You mean that damn monster snake is in here?”
The boa was stretched sinuously atop a row of Jimmy Choos. “He likes my shoes.” Harry’s forked tongue darted out and in, tasting the air as he turned his triangular head to look at her. Sometimes she swore Harry had a brain. She gave him a little stroke between his eyes.
“I’m guessing none of them are made out of any of his relatives.”
“He hasn’t said. Shoo, Harry.” Sara waved her hands. Harry blinked yellow eyes, and kept flicking his skinny black tongue at her. Sara turned her head, her gaze settling on Jack. “Will you—”
“Not just no,” Jack told her shortly, his attention focused like a laser level on Harry. “Hell no. I’m not touching it. Lock the damned thing in there and throw away the key.”
“I don’t like him watching me. Come on, Jack. Harry weighs almost seventy pounds. I’m not sure I can pull him out of there myself.”
Jack shuddered. “I wouldn’t touch him if he weighed seven ounces. Trust me, I’m not your snake go-to guy.”
“All right, buddy.” Sara bent and hefted Harry up with both hands, then gave a little grunt as his weight dropped onto her shoulder. He hung down almost to her feet, front and back, like a scarf. His smooth skin against her neck felt cool and dry and not in the least unpleasant. “You can’t stay in here, big boy, you know that’s a no-no.”
“Christ almighty. You talk to it like it’s a cute, fluffy puppy. Get that thing off your neck before he decides to start squeezing you to death.”
“He’s a sweetheart.” Sara stroked Harry’s head with her fingertip. “You’re just not giving him a chance.”
Jack made a rude noise behind her.
“I’m guessing you don’t like snakes,” she said with a smile. She’d noticed as much when they were in the jungle. It was odd knowing he had a little chink in his machismo. She carried the boa across the room. He curled his back half around her hips as she walked and raised his front half so he could flick at her face with his tongue. “See? He’s kissing me.”
“He’s tasting you to see if you need more salt.”
She huffed a laugh as she opened the door and stepped into the tiled hallway. Unwinding Harry from the complicated knot he’d made around her body, Sara set him on the floor. “Go look for a rat or something.” After a moment’s hesitation, Harry silently slithered away over the cool tiles.
Stepping back into the room, she closed the door. “He’s harmless.”
“He’s a wild animal. And a predator. Harmless, he’s not. Not only does he have freaking teeth, he could squeeze all the air out of your lungs in a second flat.”
Sara smiled. “That’s a slight exaggeration. But Harry’s really used to people. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. I’ve known him since he was a baby.”
“Well, I haven’t, and I don’t like the way he looks at me.”
“He’s not looking at you now. Go away, Jack. I really want that shower.”
He lay back, hands under his head again. “Take your time. We need to talk about that whiteout.”
He wasn’t leaving. Sara straightened her brush on her mirrored art-deco dressing table, then pushed a silver dish holding hairpins a few inches over. She debated telling him something she couldn’t stop thinking about. At least if she said it out loud, she could hear how ridiculous it sounded; then she could stop wondering if it could even be a possibility.
“I think you know that I’m responsible for the whiteout,” Sara said flatly, removing the diamond-studded gold hoops from her ears and placing them in a crystal bowl. “I was too embarrassed to admit my deficiency to Duncan Edge.”
Jack took up a great deal of space. The room was predominantly white, making him appear larger and darker and a lot more dangerous to her peace of mind. Oh, hell. He’d be dangerous to her peace of mind if he were in the middle of the Grand Canyon.
“It’s not a deficiency, Sara. It’s lack of practice or the willingness to try.” He lifted his head an inch so he could peer at her over the well-defined muscles of his chest and abs.
Sara closed her eyes briefly, regretting her confession. “I can’t risk trying. When I’m—” Damn. She shouldn’t have brought this up. It had nothing to do with their assignment, and she’d promised herself to keep things impersonal.
“Because when you’re … ?”
She sat down on her padded dressing-table stool facing him. “When my emotions are high, my powers tend to go on the fritz,” she reminded him. “I’ve told you about this, Jack. Don’t you remember?”
The unpredictability of her powers was just one of the reasons she didn’t like to use magic for anything other than fun, simple things, like changing clothes with a thought, or shimmering short distances for expediency. She tried never to teleport, the longer version of shimmering. Too much could go wrong.
His eyes kindled. “Practice would certainly help with that. But this wasn’t your doing. None of the examples you gave me bore out the theory that your powers are affected by strong emotion.” He sat up on one elbow. “However, I do believe that something, or someone, caused that whiteout. It’s the why of it we need to figure out. And, like Edge said, we need to determine whether that has any relevance to what we’re looking for.”
Sara rose from the stool. “I don’t see how it could possibly be related to dead wizards, or rainbows, for that matter,” she told him, walking to the window. She held the filmy white sheers out of the way. The ever-present sunshine bathed the garden in the incredible hues of Technicolor. Backed by the lush green of the jungle only a few hundred yards away, the manicured garden filled with almost fluorescent-hued flowers was a view she never tired of.
A small flock of scarlet macaws swooped in, their rainbow-colored wing and tail feathers spectacular in the sunlight.
She turned away. Rainbow-colored snakes. Rainbow-colored birds. Myth and reality. “The one incident alone is enough evidence to support my theory.”
He pushed himself up, shoving several pillows into the small of his back. “Hell, sweetheart. You can’t still believe you caused the fire that killed your parents? We got copies of all the police and insurance reports. Pored over every page, every notation, every photograph for days. And you and Baltzer had done it before me. I thought we proved to you conclusively that it was an accident. Nobody caused the fire. Especially not you.”
Sara hadn’t forgotten that day. It had turned from shit to sunshine because Jack had been with her. He’d obtained every report he could get his hands on. They’d read and reread them one rainy day at home in Tahoe. He was right. They hadn’t found anything any of the investigators had missed. They’d ended up naked in front of the living room fire, making love as though their lives depended on it.
He’d proposed to her the next day. Sara hadn’t believed her own capacity for love until she’d fallen for this scruffy geologist who’d claimed to love her more than he’d ever loved another human being. Six months later, they’d hated each other’s guts. Thank God they hadn’t gone through with the wedding; the divorce would have been brutal.
“It was due to faulty wiring,” Jack insisted. “An accident—a hideous, life-changing accident. Nothing more nefarious than that.”
Still, she knew there was something missing from those official reports. Something that none of the investigators could have seen or known: her attempt to teleport her parents to Timbuktu bec
ause she—at that moment in her life—hated them as only a teenage girl could.
“I could read ten times as much paperwork, and I’m telling you—I had a monster of a fight with my mother before school that day. I refused to speak to her all afternoon, refused to eat dinner with them, and sulked in my room until I went to bed. If it wasn’t for Grant, I would have died in the fire with them.”
“Maybe you’re mistaking regret that you and your mother didn’t make up for guilt. Do you even remember what the fight was about?”
Sara rubbed her temples with her fingertips. “I think I’ve just blocked it out because that day was so horrendous.”
“It was a terrible thing to happen, but it’s totally changed who and what you are.” He was sitting up now, completely focused on her, his voice the gentle, comforting sound she’d come to depend on, the voice she still missed.
“Of course it did! I was barely thirteen. My entire life was turned around by their deaths.”
“And because of that, because you think that emotion adversely affects your magic, you ignore half of who you are.”
She glared at him. This part, she didn’t miss. At all. “I’m one-hundred percent who I am. I just choose not to use magic.”
“Even though half of you is Aequitas?”
“The other half of me isn’t.” Her father had been a wizard, but he wasn’t Aequitas. She pressed her temples with her fingers again as a sharp, insistent pain made her bite her lower lip.
“Come over here. Let me see what I can do about that headache.”
She hesitated. In the old days, his hands were all that could stop the hideous headaches that developed whenever she thought about her past. Torn between wanting to safeguard her heart and wanting Jack to work his magic, she walked over to the bed, sat down, and presented her back to him. Dropping her head, she closed her eyes as Jack moved behind her, his hard thighs bracketing her hips. The brush of his fingers against her nape made her tense her shoulders in anticipation. “Relax,” he murmured, stroking his palm soothingly around her nape. A deep shiver traveled down her spine as he brushed her hair aside.
