I noticed more intricate tattoos on the underside of her arm that circled her elbow, then traced down to her wrist. She saw me staring, so I casually looked out at a few of the bars that had college students spilling out into the streets on either side of the road.
“I can still feel a little pain.” I rubbed my thighs with both hands. “Not much, but enough for me to notice.”
“I never ever heal a person fully, not if I don’t have to. The body needs to remember how to heal itself,” she said. “If it doesn’t, then the healing can usually do more harm than good. Many times, and I’ve seen it happen,” she cut an eye at me, “the body forgets how to heal and ends up decomposing instead.”
“Decomposing, huh? You didn’t put a hex on me, did you?” I was half-joking, though partly serious, since I remembered how Stephanie had healed Rebekah and then we had to get Umara to break the link.
Stephanie must have recalled that as well, because her mood fell. From what I could tell, judging by the extended frown, she must have regretted what’d she’d done to Rebekah.
I found it odd that Stephanie hadn’t asked me about Rebekah, since from what I knew, Stephanie probably thought Rebekah had made it out of that warehouse alive.
“Witches do hexes,” she corrected me. “Druids do roots, and witch doctors…well, Philo has a gamut of things he does. But to answer your question, no, I didn’t root you.”
She must have noticed that I was somewhat skeptical, because she did something that surprised me. She offered me her arm, placing it on my left leg, palm up, the heat of her forearm warming my thigh.
Now to most people, offering a person your arm meant “hold my hand” or something like that. But to a Decanter, well offering me your arm meant something more personal, something more intimate. Where was this coming from? “You want me to decant you? Can’t say this has ever happened before.”
“I’ve got nothing to hide,” she shrugged, shaking her arm on my leg—a prompting to decant her. “You know about the man I killed. What other secrets do I have to hide, especially with Zakhar hunting me like this?”
“But your secrets—good or bad—make you who are you. I don’t like to decant people I know, not if I don’t have to. It takes away a part of them—the very part that makes them…them.”
She was looking sheepishly over her shoulder at me. “But you have decanted people before, haven’t you?”
I nodded. “A few. I used to decant everyone I met, wherever I went. Asia, Africa, South America. Wherever. Now I don’t. Too much information to process. I try to forget the decants when I can. Most of the time, it works. Their memories in my head reduce down to mere images more than anything else.” My right hand was clenched just beside temple, I realized, so I set it back in my lap. “Look, if you say you didn’t put a hex, or a root or whatever, on me, I believe you. Your word is good enough.”
For a span afterwards, Stephanie kept her arm in my lap, wondering if I’d change my mind. When she saw that I was unwavering, she nodded easily and put her hand back on the wheel.
Passing by the Mellow Mushroom—a delicious pizza parlor—and continuing on up Glenwood, we soon rolled past dozens of extravagant homes—homes that crossed well over the five hundred thousand dollar mark, though we still had a few more houses before we came to Umara’s place.
I changed the subject. “So the ankh…what’s the deal with that? Zakhar sent me after you to get it back, but what I don’t understand is why he can’t get it back himself. I mean, the guy followed you all the way from California to North Carolina to get it. And I don’t know what he does for a living, but surely he could buy another one if it really meant that much to him.”
Stephanie bit her lip as we pulled up to Umara’s three-story “estate,” as I would call it. Stephanie and I sat in the car by the road, and taking my cue from her, I unbuckled my seatbelt and stayed inside as she pulled her keys out of the ignition.
“The ankh,” she sighed, fluffing her hair out, “is a unique talisman. It’s the key to life, as I said before, but even more than that, it’s like a spider web.”
I was quiet, only nodding, certain that she was going to extrapolate.
“Life is all connected in some way, shape, or form. At least that’s what Shamans believe,” she shrugged.
“Yeah, but we all believe that to some extent.” I didn’t see how that made Shamans or ankhs so different from anyone else.
“Not like Shamans, we don’t. To a Shaman, there are no opposites—no opposing forces. Stop is not the opposite of go. Up isn’t the opposite of down. A shaman sees ‘up’ and realizes that without an ‘up,’ there is no ‘down.’ One exists because the other exists, and so one force is actually thankful for the other, if you look at it like that. Everything equals everything else.” She locked her fingers together several times to demonstrate, then set her hands between her knees, though not before adjusting the steering wheel up so that it would not limit her mobility in its lowered position.
“And so the ankh is connected to his how?” I asked.
“Because it’s like the key, you know—the web of life incarnate in one tiny talisman.” She pinched her fingers together, peering through the gap. “And here’s the thing—the reason he can’t take the ankh away from me, the reason he either needs you or someone else to take it from me…” She rested her head against the headrest, frowning, “it’s because he’s bound to it. Bound and connected to it…just like me.”
Curiously, I turned to her. “When you say you’re ‘bound’ to it, you mean—”
“I mean that Zakhar and I are both directly connected. Well, he, me, and the person who carved the ankh out in the first place.” Stephanie turned to me, her face almost glowing. “Lyle, this ankh,” she tapped her pocket, “this one is different. It’s not like other ankhs that paranormal fences have—the ones that are in the ten to thirty thousand dollar range. Those are more like just decorations with a little bit of power. The best ankhs,” she whistled, just thinking of the price, “we’re talking Marcus Driscoll kind of cash, the kind of money that only Leprechauns and fairies can come by.”
“What makes them so special?” I asked.
“The fairies and Leprechauns?”
“No, the ankhs. What drives the price up on an ankh?”
“More like what drives it down,” she said, as if I should have known. “The people who handled it. If you ever see a fairy handle one, they’re usually wearing specially enchanted gloves to block the ankh’s binding abilities. Thing is, some of the enchants on the gloves are too weak to hold up, and a little bit of the ankh’s power seeps through, kinda’ like having a hole in an umbrella.” She crossed one leg over the other. “Once people start putting their hands on it, a sullied ankh decreases in value faster than driving a brand new car off the lot.”
“And you decreased the value by handling it?” I asked.
“Had I known whose it was, I would have just left it alone,” she admitted. “My boss sent me to kill Mikhail, Zakhar’s brother. But I didn’t know why. I found the ankh, and kept it for myself. All this time I figured that I could at least make a couple grand off of it, maybe a little more. Zakhar’s got money, but not enough for a pure ankh. Not even close.” She sighed. “The thing is, Zakhar couldn’t kill me even if he wanted to. Not now at least. He knows it, and I know it.”
“What makes you think that?” I asked.
“That’s a philosophical question,” she remarked, shifting her head a bit to look at me. “Imagine if I were driving a car at a hundred miles an hour—”
Not unlikely after the insane way she pulled out in front of that guy then flipped him off.
“And while I was driving,” she continued, “I had Zakhar as my passenger. If he kills me, then he’s dead too. Unfortunately though—and this is where this analogy breaks down—if I kill him, then I kill myself. But,” she looked at me, “if someone else were to kill him...”
I held my hands up at chest level, surrendering. “This i
s between you an Zakhar. The guy already has it out for me. Maybe if he sees that I’m not a threat…”
“You really think Zakhar cares whether or not you’re a threat?” She sat up in her seat, leaning towards me, speaking uncomfortably close. I didn’t back away, not wanting to draw attention to her proximity. But she had to know that she was intruding in on my personal space, didn’t she?
“Maybe he doesn’t care,” I mentioned, “but…wait.” I’d just realized something. Zakhar had destroyed my apartment, trying to kill me. If his killing Stephanie would in turn kill him, then he must have known that I wasn’t connected to him, which was why he had no problem coming after me. But how did he know I hadn’t touched the ankh? Could he feel whenever someone was connected to the talisman?
“If Zakhar gets the ankh back, then what happens?” I asked.
“A Shaman’s dream,” she said, moving even closer to me. I could smell her minty breath, cool and sweet. “It’ll enhance his ability to make connections like you wouldn’t believe. With it, there’s no place to hide. All connections around him are understood. He can even figure out what your next moves will be.”
“Well couldn’t I just do something unexpected?” I asked. “Something random would surely throw him off his game, right?”
Stephanie sat back. “Random is not so random when it can be predicted.”
That had a chilling reality to it, but I had another question for her, one that came to mind about how it had all begun in the first place. “If Zakhar is so dangerous, and the ankh is his, then how was he not more powerful to begin with?”
Stephanie looked at me. “You mean how was I able to get the ankh from his brother, Mikhail?”
“Right.”
“Mikhail was a threat to my boss,” she said. “Two fairies in the same city just don’t mesh well together, you know? My boss heard about this up-and-comer Mikhail, and he sent me to set a root on the guy. I got close to him…doing the eye-batting thing that you guys love so much, and after a time, I set the root. Only, Mikhail’s body rejected the root, and he went into shock. I tried to revive him, but his condition worsened too fast, and since there was nothing natural nearby, I couldn’t replenish my Empyrean reserves.”
That was Stephanie’s way of saying that Druids used the earth and all natural resources to replenish their strength. After a time of draining from the ground, they could use their powers more effectively. Otherwise, they would run out.
“So this Mikhail, he was a fairy?” I asked.
Stephanie nodded. “And my boss wasn’t having it. Not even my boss could make an original ankh, and when my boss found out that Mikhail was working on one, that was the last straw.”
“I take it that your boss never found out that Mikhail actually made the ankh and that he had given the ankh to his brother Zakhar,” I said.
“I don’t know for sure. I was gone out of California before I found out anything else.”
Stephanie’s savory scent of mangoes filled the car, and I was doing my very best not to be intoxicated by her, though I was failing miserably. “If touching the ankh binds you to it, then why didn’t you warn me not to touch it when you set it on the table at the coffee shop?”
That brought her closer to me again, this time, even closer than before. “Didn’t think I needed to.” The breath of her words whispered on my lips.
My heart was thumping so hard that I was sure she must have heard it. “Not warning me about the ankh, that was dangerous, Stephanie.” My voice was as soft as hers. “How can I trust you?”
Her fingers spidered gently up my arm, igniting tiny explosions inside of me. Then she offered me her wrist. “Find out for yourself.”
As I reached up and touched her hand, I felt every part of me trembling. My palm eased along hers, then settled on her smooth forearm. I could decant her if I wanted to. It was what she wanted. What could it hurt? What was stopping me? And even more so, what was keeping me from doing what every part of me already wanted to do?
That was when I got my answer. A voice, soft and subtle from the stone.
CHAPTER
SIX
Hearing Rebekah’s voice just as I was about to lock lips with Stephanie made me feel like such a jerk. How could I move on from my feelings for Rebekah so quickly? Or had I truly moved on? Maybe I was still coping with the loss. Or maybe I was only trying to do what Rebekah had asked me to do so many times—move on with my life and not look back.
But I couldn’t do that, could I? It surely seemed like I could, being here with Stephanie crammed in this car like we were. I’d definitely call whatever had just happened with her “moving on”—an emotional make-out session…an intense, emotional make-out session.
Regardless, I had to make a move in the opposite direction to keep from settling in this awkward limbo with Stephanie—a place between indifference and desire. Easily, I released her arm and moved slowly away from her. She did the same. That’s twice I’ve rejected her, I recalled, this time knowing that I’d been more abrupt than last time.
“I don’t think I can do this,” I said, taking in a tight breath, staring stalely at the cars parked along the curb in front of us.
“Obviously,” Stephanie stated. She got out of the car, but ducked her head back in and said, “You coming?”
Still, shaken up, I climbed out of the car and crossed the long, tree-shaded yard to Umara’s place. Despite my rejection, Stephanie reacted as if nothing had happened.
The front door to the house opened smoothly after we’d rung the doorbell and stood on the porch for a good five minutes. I knew Umara was at home, because she had made it a practice not to be out late if she didn’t have to.
Because it was so late, I expected to see her come to the door with her brilliant brown hair, highlighted with blond streaks, curling past her shoulders as she tied up her burgundy satin nightgown. What I saw was quite the contrary.
Her hair was tied back into a ball, accentuating her golden skin and the sharp lines of her chin and cheeks. Though she was in her mid-thirties, about ten years older than me, no wrinkles lined her face. Her hazel eyes were hidden behind green gadget goggles that cranked out minute mechanical grinds as the lenses focused.
Her olive vest sported pockets galore, and her even darker green cargo pants weren’t much different. Though I couldn’t see any of them, Umara probably had countless devices tucked away in her get-up.
“Come in,” she said, though not before scanning both of us. She held up her arm and punched in a few numbers on a wristwatch. Nothing visibly happened, but I knew that was Umara disarming the devices that might spear through my heart or even Stephanie’s.
Umara ushered us down a long cheery-hardwood finished hallway, past expensive vases and curios filled with artifacts, and into a room down on the far left. There was something eerie about this room with its moonlight glass ceiling and zebra-upholstered seats—the eerie feeling being that it was the last place Rebekah and I had visited before we met Marcus in the warehouse off Yonkers Rd.
Umara stood off in the corner next to a mahogany desk and folded her bare arms across her olive vest. The person I saw sitting on the couch halted me in my tracks. I looked from the couch then to Umara, then back to the couch. “Carter?”
“Heh, heh heh,” Carter laughed, his thick shoulders bouncing. My vampire ex-roommate rarely retracted his fangs, and tonight was no different. And unlike the movie vampires, all of Carter’s teeth were fangs—tiger-sharp fangs used only for shredding flesh. Human flesh, to be more specific.
Also, unlike Carter, he still wore the same old clothes—the thick hooded sweatshirt with the dull crimson “V” from V for Vendetta, even though it was probably close to seventy degrees outside. His jeans were torn in some places, exposing his vampire-pale white skin, and the hems of his jeans were frayed, especially in the backs where he’d undoubtedly given chase to some unfortunate citizen who had, in the end, slithered his way through Carter’s digest
ive track.
Carter had confessed to killing over a dozen police officers—officers that apparently Rebekah had killed inadvertently when she’d summoned æther. But since Carter had made the confession, there was no way that the Wake County Sheriff’s Department would have ever let him out, not even on bail.
“How’d you…how’d you get out of jail?” I asked him.
“I got out,” he said, scratching his bearded stubble with a talon of a fingernail.
His response didn’t really answer my question, but I had to admit, I was still a little afraid of “man’s prime predator,” so I chose not to prod him. If he said he got out, then that was all I needed to know. “Well, you look…well.” I cringed when I said it, because since he’d been in jail, he’d actually gained weight. I just shut my eyes, not wanting to envision what that implied.
Carter rubbed his belly. “I gotta’ gut since I been in.”
Since he’s been in? He’s always had a gut. Once again, I knew to keep my opinion to myself.
“I suppose you don’t watch the news,” Umara said from the corner of the room. “Carter broke out a few days ago. Coincidentally, the police are looking for him. But here’s the thing. Since he had no identification on him when he turned himself in, and his fingerprints were not on file and virtually non-existent, no one in jail even knew his real name.”
“Called me somethin’ like John Doe,” Carter said. “I ain’t much on runnin’ my mouth, so I didn’t protest or nothin’ like ‘dat. But if there was a name I would choose for myself, it sho’ wouldn’t be no John Doe.” He sniffed, then nodded towards Stephanie. “This that Druid Healer that came through and did a number on my girl, Rebekah?” He sniffed again, this time it was long and predatory.
Stephanie staggered back, but I came to her defense. “She’s with me, Carter. What she did to Rebekah, putting a root on her, that was to protect her brother. Stephanie actually helped us at the warehouse with Marcus, but she was gone before you arrived. She’s cool, okay?” When Carter didn’t answer, I said it again. “Okay, Carter?”
Elemental Damage: Confessions of a Summoner Book 2 Page 4
