Out of Sight

by Stella Cameron

  Small strings of gummy material streaked his beard and little…bones?

  Finally, he shoved the entire shell in his mouth and crunched, gulped, then sighed with pleasure. “Now you,” he told her.

  Poppy figured this was part of a test and she had better manage to at least make a start on her sickening meal. She raised the egg, surprised at how heavy it was, and opened her teeth on the end.

  “Soon you will oversee the production of our young,” Zibock said. “You will be able to get the secret to our renewal from your kind. We will work together.” He laughed again, his body quaking.

  The doors to the hall flew open and several of the nondescript people she had seen before marched into the room. Among them was one with a head resembling a bloated, hard-shelled insect although the rest of the body appeared human. She tried not to look at the thing.

  “Protector,” the one in the lead said, “we understand there are problems with some of our subjects. They have been unable to remain with their host humans and have emerged again and terminated.”

  “What?” Zibock pounded a fist on a column and the gold chains attached to his hands rattled. He paced, throwing his robes behind him each time he turned. “An error has been made. There is something we did not get quite right. By the honor of our predecessors, we cannot afford to waste more time. Bring them all in and we will regroup.”

  “But they are all over New Orleans,” the man said.

  “And every one of them can be located on our system,” Zibock thundered. “Get started.”

  “There is another unexpected occurrence.” The spokesman snapped his fingers and the creature with the bug head went back to the door. It opened and a figure shot into the hall, propelled by a female Embran whose ears jutted from the top of her head.

  “There,” the woman said. “She was trying to find a way inside. She will not say why.” With that she threw Wazoo forward and she sprawled on the carpet.

  “Wazoo?” Poppy threw aside the red bowl, the egg and her silk covers to rush and help the other woman up. “How did you get here? Are the others—”

  Wazoo pressed a finger to her lips, silencng Poppy, but her heart beat fast and she felt the first hope in too long.

  “What others?” Zibock asked, advancing on them. He pulled Wazoo from Poppy’s grasp and studied her. “You are a different kind.”

  Drooping as if she was ill, Wazoo didn’t say a word.

  “You are of the New Orleans sect. The one as old as time.”

  Coughing, Wazoo sagged.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Zibock asked.

  “We think she came to take the Protector’s new partner away. Her movements were stealthy. It was only by chance she was seen,” one of the helpful minions piped up.

  Zibock threw up his hands. “Foolishness. We are unperturbed by this voodoo or whatever it is you people practice,” he told Wazoo.

  He looked at Poppy. “You disappoint me. I had thought you would be flattered at my offer to take you as my partner.”

  “She didn’t know I was coming,” Wazoo said.

  “I cannot dally with you now.” He indicated Poppy. “I note that this one rushed to help you, which suggests she was glad to see you. Take them both to the indoctrination cell and lock them in. Do not go near them. I will decide what is to be done when I have dealt with our other problem.”

  “One of our subjects told me he could not meld,” a man said. “It happened at one of the gatherings for your representative. Twice the subject attempted to enter and assume the body of one of the guests but he encountered resistance and had to make sure he could not be found afterward.”

  “What do you mean? He couldn’t meld? He met resistance?”

  The creature appeared nervous. “He followed the man into a small room the humans always have and walked at him to become one with him. Instead of entering the other’s body and brain, he was met with a blow that threw him back. He said the other one had a mark on his face afterward but he remained impenetrable.”

  Poppy remembered the story of Liam at the rally gathering and had no doubt that event was what this Embran spoke of. They could not take over the bodies of paranormals. But who did they mean by “your representative.”

  Ward.

  Instantly she saw again the yellow flash from his aura and knew what it meant. Ward was insane, and capable of inestimable cruelty. It didn’t automatically make him other than human, but she had not considered that humans could be conscripted by Embran.

  She felt sick and weak.

  “I would have spread the powers of the Embran before you,” Zibock told Poppy. He turned to his creatures and shook his great head and rolled his eyes like an animal in agony. “Get these two. Both of them.”

  The others bowed and backed away, until one looked up and said, “Not all will return. More than one have terminated. They lost their hold on the hosts, separated again, and…they terminated.”

  “The fools!” Zibock pointed to the doors. “Get as many as remain. And secure these two.”

  It took only one of the Embran to drag Poppy and Wazoo from the hall and along corridors, turning and turning until Poppy wondered how big this place was.

  She considered trying to use the strength in her hands on the Embran. But who knew how many more would come to replace him, and perhaps she and Wazoo would be better trying to figure out another escape.

  The next corridor ended at a door with a small window. “Like a prison,” Poppy murmured.

  The lock was a broad band of steel that slid through a bracket and buried deep into the metal doorjamb. “Simple but effective,” the Embran said, opening the door and pushing the two women into a brightly lit room. The walls and floor were covered with some soft material in pure white. There was no furniture.

  “Sleep,” the Embran said, pointing at the floor. “You will find it comfortable.”

  He took a step backward and as he did so, he burst from the simple men’s clothes he had worn to assume the form of a huge spider with fangs. “I will return,” he said in the same voice as before. “But in time the Protector will also return—to deal with the indoctrination. Afterward you will be changed for the better. Think of that while you try to sleep.”

  42

  “You can’t go on any longer,” Ben Fortune said.

  Sykes wrenched his arm from the grip of Poppy’s oldest brother, who had accomplished, as only he could, an almost immediate transfer from Kauai in Hawaii, to New Orleans, together with his wife, Willow. Willow was Sykes’s younger sister.

  “Please sleep for a little while,” Willow said softly, her red hair caught back in a band and her green eyes luminous in an unnaturally pallid face. Even her weeks in Kauai hadn’t been allowed to tan her skin. She was naturally very slight and ethereal but her appearance made her look ill today.

  Sykes sat on the edge of a couch in the living room at his St. Peter Street house. He couldn’t face the chaos at the Court of Angels anymore. He covered his face with his hands, scrubbed them back over his hair and looked up at these two frantic people.

  “She’s been gone almost twenty-four hours. With every hour we’re less likely to find her alive. I need to do my own thing and that doesn’t include sleep. Please give me a little space. I’ll join the rest of you soon.”

  “You’ve got an idea,” Ben said promptly. Another big, dark-haired man with navy-blue eyes that could skewer you, he moved in closer to Sykes. “Come on. Don’t keep anything from me.”

  “Just accept what I’m asking, okay?” Sykes said. “There’s something I need to do on my own.”

  “Dammit!” Ben shouted.

  “No, no.” Willow found her husband’s hand and pulled him gently. “We’re not helping. Come on.”

  Ben looked ready to argue some more, but instead he turned on his heel and left the house hand-in-hand with Willow.

  Waiting only long enough to hear the front door close, Sykes shot to his feet, went to lock the door and ran to his studio at the
back of the house.

  He arrived in front of the angel on her plinth. Each time he looked at her, she appeared more detailed, more finished. Frustration overwhelmed him, brought a film of sweat out on his exhausted body.

  Yanking the respirator over his head, he went for a fine-point chisel with a carbide tip and a hammer, pulled on shock-resistant gloves and leaned over the little figure. Almost all of her appeared perfect, all but the tips of the fingers on her right hand and a shapeless mass above this area.

  Why was it so resistant to his efforts?

  He took up a hammer and began work on the hand.

  Twenty minutes later there was almost no change.

  Sykes’s heart slammed in his chest. The thud echoed at his temples. It all took too long and told him nothing.

  He took the hammer and smashed in down on the rough piece of stone above the hand. Immediately he stood back, horrified. The piece cracked. As he watched, part of it began to break away. He tore off the respirator. The beautiful figure was nothing like the pieces he chose to make, mostly for private consignment, but she was exquisite.

  It was there. The ball that could only be the Harmony balanced at the end of the now-completed hand. Step by step he drew close and stared down on it. There was no angel in the courtyard like this. No ball all but suspended in air above an elegant hand.

  Bringing his face very close, he examined the ball and almost stopped breathing. A single digit curved down from the top of the ball. Closer, he looked. What he was seeing was a claw with a talon and he could tell that the rest of whatever should be above the ball lay in crumbled pieces on the floor.

  He had probably destroyed the final clue to what they must have to find the Ultimate Power.

  The sound of quiet whining broke through the churning of his mind.

  Mario sat looking up at him.

  “They left you behind,” Sykes said. The dog had come with Ben and Willow. “I want you to go. Go home.” He heard his own ridiculous rant at a dumb dog and shut up.

  The dog whined again and Sykes saw something glitter in his teeth.

  One of the keys? He checked the pouch he now carried in his pocket at all times, praying Mario had the seventh and final one they needed. “Damn you,” he hissed. “How did you get it.” One key was missing from the pouch.

  “Give it to me.” He made a grab for Mario and missed. Kicking up his feet, breaking into a run fast enough to make his legs resemble locomotive wheels, he took off.

  “Stop! Right now. Right where you are.”

  Mario didn’t stop, and he didn’t make for the locked front door. Instead he leaped from chair to counter in the kitchen and launched himself through an open window.

  Sykes tore after him, dashing to the front of the house and down the lane after the little renegade, pelting through the streets and dodging people who grumbled at being shoved out of the way.

  Then he knew where Mario was going.

  Back to the Court of Angels. The gate would stop him.

  The gate wasn’t closed, dammit. And Mario leaped through a gap that should have been too small. Going after him so fast he would have fallen if he had tried to come to a halt, Sykes yelled at the dog repeatedly, tracing him between the planting beds, the angels, the fairies, the rustling bamboo—and the excited and unmistakably familiar whispering of the Ushers.

  The entire courtyard took on a hazy mauve glow.

  Pascal, David and Marley came from the back of the shop. Sykes saw them from the edge of his vision. Liam Fortune was there, then Ben and Willow. But Sykes didn’t stop—until Mario leaped at the patched wall in the row of storage spaces at the back of the courtyard. He planted all four feet, fell down and made another jump as if he were trying to batter the wall down.

  “Got you,” Sykes said, reaching to snatch up the dog.

  Too late, Mario rushed into the storage room to the right and before Sykes could make any headway, the red monster had disappeared behind the wall that hid the entry leading to the hidden room.

  “What the hell’s happening?” Ben cried. “Why are you chasing our dog?”

  “Your damn dog has stolen one of the keys. If he loses it, we’re finished. More finished than we already thought we could be.”

  Sykes made for the gap but when she saw him squeezing in there, Willow went after him. “Let me go first. I’ll be faster.”

  He stood back and then followed her.

  All but Marley made the trek through the narrow tunnel and down into the foul-smelling room on the other side.

  “Don’t you frighten him,” Willow said, facing them all. “If you do and he drops it we could lose it anyway. And you’re not to frighten Mario anyway.”

  “Patience,” Sykes muttered to himself.

  He stood quite still, his hands to his head, and closed his eyes.

  “My God are you ill, man,” Ben said.

  “Sit down,” Liam commanded. “Take some deep breaths.”

  Sykes waved them away. He heard his name, very faint, very distant and in a cry begging him to hear. “I think Poppy’s trying to reach me,” he said and sent an answer. Poppy, where are you? If she was as far away as he thought she might not have the power to keep the channel open.

  All the others remained silent, watching him.

  He kept his eyes closed and concentrated. The hand that settled on his arm squeezed tight, a very big hand and he knew it was Ben.

  “Nothing,” Sykes said. “But if I did hear her, she’s…” He couldn’t finish.

  “She’s alive,” David said. He had shed his sunglasses and, with a fine brush of auburn hair showing, there was little doubt about his identity.

  “Yes,” the rest of them chorused.

  “The Ultimate Power could be all the help we need now,” Pascal said.

  Sykes turned back to the dog. “Get the key from him,” he said.

  “Not that it’ll do any good,” Liam said. “Not without the Harmony.”

  Mario leaped to the ledge where the box of papers had been. He began to scratch at the wall. His movements became frenzied and he barked, and barked, gouged at the plaster and howled.

  “Get that key,” Pascal said. “Before he swallows the thing.”

  Liam took hold of Mario to pull him away, but claws on one of the dog’s paws were stuck into the plaster. Prying open Mario’s jaws, Liam reached inside his mouth. Slowly, he removed his fingers. “He’s already dropped it. Or swallowed it.”

  And the claws remained stuck in the plaster.

  Pushing her way past the men, Willow put an arm around her dog to support him and worked his foot free—and with it a chunk of wall.

  “Mario,” Willow reprimanded. “Naughty boy.”

  Sykes aimed his flashlight on the hole Mario had made. “What if he’s managed to get the key in there?”

  “It was probably gone before he made the hole,” Liam pointed out.

  David went closer and looked. “There’s glass in there. Colored glass.” He hooked out more plaster, but carefully, making sure nothing fell inside. “There’s those lead lines. Stained glass.”

  On his hands and knees, Sykes searched among the debris on the floor.

  David continued to break away the wall.

  “Sykes!” Liam said urgently. “Look at this. Have you seen anything like it before?”

  Liam focused his flashlight on the big opening David had now made.

  Getting up slowly, Sykes went to stand beside David. What he saw, created in vivid green, purple and gold, was a stained-glass window depicting an angel, the angel standing in his studio.

  “She was meant to show me what to look for,” he murmured of the piece in his studio. Carefully, he broke away more pieces of plasterboard until a full view of the angel came into view. Liam and Ben went to help and gradually the whole piece was revealed.

  The claw Sykes had seen in his studio belonged to a red griffin.

  “A griffin?” Willow said. “I don’t understand.”

  “I do,�
� Sykes and Ben said together and they raced to get out of the room with the others scrambling behind them.

  Leading the way, Sykes went to the stand of bamboo and parted it, pushing his way through. “There it is,” he said, pointing at the red stone griffin.

  He scraped soil away from its base and others joined him. The statue was buried deep and they worked frantically.

  At last it came free of the earth with a sucking sound. The light was failing yet a gold ball attached to the base of the griffin glowed.

  Sykes carried it into the shop, into Pascal’s office and put it on its side atop the desk. He took out the bag of keys while Ben worked the Harmony loose. “They moved it,” he said. “They were afraid it would be taken so they hid it.” He shook the five keys he still had onto Pascal’s blotter.

  A clink at his feet made him look down into what looked like Mario’s grin. His mouth was open and he panted as if laughing. On the floor lay the key he’d swiped earlier.

  “Don’t you say anything mean to him,” Willow said. “He wanted us to see the window.”

  “Or smelled a mouse in there and fancied a snack.” Sykes gave her a small smile. “I’ll have to wait to congratulate him.”

  The keys fitted into tiny locks at the top of the ball and had to be moved from one to another to find the right ones, the ones that clicked open specific segments.

  “Will we break open the last one?” Pascal said.

  “We could jeopardize something.” Sykes clicked another key.

  “But—” David came closer. “Those are the keys? I didn’t see them before. I thought they’d be big.”

  Sykes sighed. He began to struggle against defeat.

  David reached inside the neck of his sweater and pulled a leather cord over his head. On the cord hung a key that matched the other six. “My mother gave this to me years ago. She said Dad gave it to her the night I was…that night. When I came here, she said I could show it to him if he didn’t believe I was his son, but he does.”