It took her a while to maneuver Deacon in through the door and to the bed. He sat heavily, tugging off his helmet. His face was pale and flecked with sweat. She helped him with his vest and boots, but when she went to unbuckle his belt he stopped her.
She stood there, hands on her hips, watching him fumble with the buckle. “You great lumbering idiot. I’m not trying to seduce you, you know?”
He gave her a sheepish look. “I know. But I’ve got it.” His voice was steadier now, though he was still sweating. “Could you give me some space?”
Camille went to the bathroom. She pulled off the sweatshirt and checked her shoulder. There were still a few scraps of shirt stuck to her, wisps of white against the pale of her skin. She worked them out with her nails, breaking her new skin open again, and by the time she was done she was sweating as badly as Deacon from the pain. She turned on the shower and stepped into the warm water, soaping her shoulder carefully and using a full mini bottle of the cheap motel shampoo on her hair.
Her yellow trousers were dirt-stained and smelled faintly of magic. She left them on the towel hook and put the sweatshirt back on. At least it was clean, even if it had the New England Patriots logo across the front. Camille was more of a Packers fan.
Back in the room, Deacon was under the sheets. His jeans lay on the floor beside him. “You don’t look so great,” she said, handing him a glass of water she’d filled at the bathroom sink. “Nice save, though. I was sure he was going to fry me with the next shot.”
“Are you injured?” he asked. He took a long gulp of the water. “I missed most of what happened in the woods.”
“I caught one of those fireballs with my shoulder,” she answered. “It’s healing. I’ll be good as new soon. How about you?”
“I just need to sleep. I’ll be fine tomorrow. I think I blacked out for a while. What else did I miss?”
“The other witch, the woman? She came bursting out of the building soon after we reached your truck. I took your gun, but by then she was out of there in her car. All I managed to do was get off a warning shot.”
“Did she have my son?”
“No. She was on her own. No bodies on the backseat, that I could tell.”
“Her trunk?”
“It was a hatchback, remember? No space. Anyway, I left you passed out in the truck and went in to investigate. The basement the trail led to? Empty. But I’m almost sure that they’d been there. Ash and Adeline. I found snapped handcuffs. A window had been broken. There’s a chance they got away.”
Deacon was silent for so long she was afraid he’d fallen asleep. Finally, he stirred. “That was a big risk you took. Searching that place by yourself?”
“Well, you know. Someone had to do it. And I’m supposed to be the tracker. I checked what I could of the building, but the dust was undisturbed except for in a kitchen area they’d been using.”
She sank into the room’s single armchair. She was tired. Her body might heal fast, but her shoulder still ached and all that demon healing drew strength from the rest of her. She pulled her legs up, tucking them inside the huge sweatshirt.
Deacon smiled. “My son used to do that when he was small. You have no idea how weird it is, working with someone who looks his age.”
“I was eighteen when I was Gifted,” she said. “It was a long time ago, though. If you close your eyes and rest, I’ll tell you.”
She got up and switched off the overhead light. By lamplight, the shadows under Deacon’s eyes looked darker and deeper. This was a man who carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. He reminded her of Lorenzo. Lorenzo had been older, of course, a real Renaissance man, although he had been only twenty when he was made vampire. And perpetually bowed down by the burdens he bore. Lorenzo had not died well — men and women like this tended to go down hard. Camille still missed him.
She sat down again, curling up in a ball with her legs tucked back under the sweatshirt.
“I lost most of my human memories when I became a demon,” she said. “You must know how that is. The transformation wipes us clean, a blank slate for our new life. Not even our names remain: it is customary for a demon Liege Lord or Lady to rename their children when they make them.
“But a few years after I became Camille Darkwing, I chanced upon a man who claimed he knew me. He had been a friend of my father’s. He had no idea I was preternatural. I told him a pretty tale about memory loss. I played with his feelings. I was ruthless. But he was willing enough to tell me my own story.”
Deacon had relaxed, listening to her steady voice. Good. She was going to need his help the next day. Besides, the sentinel had been willing to break his oaths and kill for her. That wasn’t something she took lightly. She took a sip of water and continued her story.
“It was 1929. The Wall Street crash burned through the entire world. Until the crash, I lived a fairytale life in Montreal. My father was a banker. An important man. I was an only child, and up to the crash I had everything I wanted.
“Overnight, everything changed. My father hanged himself. My mother and I were soon on the streets. Those were dark days. Everyone was just as desperate. The man telling me the story? He closed his door in our faces. He’d been carrying around the guilt ever since.”
Deacon’s eyes were closed. But when she paused again, they fluttered open. “What happened next?”
“The man I met tried to track us down a few years later. My mother had died of pneumonia by then,” she replied, “but I had disappeared. That was the end of his story, but not the end of mine. Because in 1932, Étienne Darkwing found me, alone and starving in a cramped attic bedroom. That’s my own memory, one of the few things I’ve kept. He offered me the Gift. I took it.”
Her voice trailed off. Deacon’s breathing grew deeper and she realized he’d fallen asleep. She touched her shoulder. It felt almost whole. Demons healed fast, but they could only heal injuries inflicted after their transformation. Old scars — human scars — those remained for all eternity, grisly reminders of a mortal life cut short.
Camille had no scars. Her skin was smooth and soft, completely unbroken. Starvation leaves no outward marks. But emptiness had marked her inside, leaving a deep well of hunger that nothing ever seemed to fill. She was hungry now, her body depleted by the healing process.
She turned her back resolutely on Deacon, curling up further in the armchair and willing herself to sleep.
She woke halfway through the night with Deacon shaking her. “Change places,” he said quietly. “I’ll take the chair now.”
She sank gratefully into the lumpy double bed, her back stiff and her neck aching. Deacon switched off the lamp and she heard a grunt as he made himself comfortable. But her mind was already drifting and she let sleep carry her away once more.
When she next woke up, the early morning sun was making its tentative way through the window. Deacon was just walking in, and as the door banged shut she smelled coffee.
“You brought breakfast?” She smiled, delighted.
“It’s not much.” He looked embarrassed. “Coffee and donuts.”
“Nectar and ambrosia.” She reached out to take the cup he handed her, and inhaled the steam. “Perfect.”
He took a sip of his own coffee and looked around the room. “Why this place, Camille?”
“You were a little out of it last night. I had to make a snap decision. I chose anonymity. This place was cheap. I paid in cash.”
He frowned. “You think we’re being watched?”
“I don’t know what to think. I think those witches found Ash and Adeline a little too easily. It can’t have been a coincidence. They may have used a tracking spell, but they’d need personal items for that. Hair, or nail clippings. Clothing. There’s no way they got hold of that.”
But a widespread surveillance of traffic cameras? That was possible. Crazy hard work, but possible. And she knew only one person who could carry off a job like that.
“Jude,” she said out loud. “Dian
a’s techie? He got me the traffic cam feeds. He had the truck’s description.”
“Do you think he gave it to the witches?” asked Deacon, a half-eaten donut in his hand.
“I don’t know. If he did, someone told him to. But that’s not Diana’s style. Why would she send me after Adeline and then undermine her own orders? No, that doesn’t make sense. There’s something else going on, and until I can figure it out, we should keep a low profile.”
“If it keeps us free and moving, and able to track down my boy, then I can do low profile,” he said. “But are you sure you’re not getting yourself into something you’ll regret?”
“You’ll stand by me in Court, right? Like you promised? Help me win my freedom?”
Deacon nodded.
Camille smiled. Not a sweet, gentle smile. Her Huntress smile. “Then no regrets. I’m in this to the end.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Diana
Diana had been up at dawn, unable to sleep any longer. When the sun found its way through the trees and splashed against her bedroom wall, she changed into black leggings and a dark gray tee. She laced up her running shoes and slipped quietly out the glass door that led from her room to the wraparound porch encircling the sleeping wing of the lodge.
She vaulted the railing and made her way through the dew-slick grass to the jogging trail that looped its way around the property. She did a few stretches and then set off at a leisurely pace, feeling her taut muscles warming and relaxing into the rhythm of her feet. She picked up the pace after a while, running faster and faster until the trees blurred by. As she ran, her head cleared a little and she began to sort through her worries.
The priest and the girl had disappeared completely after the New Haven fiasco. Jude was working hard on a jumble of leads. Things like traffic cameras, and rental car reports. Hopefully today he’d finally find something she could use.
And then there was Camille. The Darkwing demon’s last contact had been the day before. The sentinel’s son had been in touch, and Jude had helped her to trace the call. Since then, nothing. Silence. Diana had tried Camille’s phone at night, but it went straight to voicemail. Diana hoped Camille was behaving. The last thing she needed was Deacon making a formal protest against the pack in Court.
Deacon, Deacon, James, James, killed his wife, what a shame. Diana stumbled and almost fell. Her ghosts were gathering once again, chanting in her mind. Shut up! she told them. Up, up, up, they echoed. Shame, shame, shame. She looked around wildly, almost expecting them to be real, these phantoms that followed her, plaguing her. She ran faster, trying to put the mocking voices behind her. But they were in her head. There was no escaping them.
She tried to block out the voices, latching on to the one good thing she could think of: Del’s message. Diana hadn’t told Jude about that one; she was keeping it to herself. “I love you.” Del’s last words were a small seed of hope that maybe Diana could do things differently.
But Del’s words weren’t enough to keep the ghosts away. Shame, shame, shame. She thought she saw shapes around her. Deacon’s dead wife, her ruined face in a phantom’s snarl. An old man from Poughkeepsie. A girl from Long Island, eight summers past. The witch and his wolf, Rose’s parents. A multitude of shadows, their long-dead faces an accusation. Shame, shame, shame. The ghosts joined hands, whirling around her, but when she turned her head there was nothing there. She ducked her head and concentrated on the rhythm of her feet.
She was losing it. She knew it, and she wondered if anyone else had noticed. She was slowly losing her mind, giving in to the guilt that ate away at her inside. The guilt had started after Emily Deacon’s death, and now the shadow voices were her constant companion. It was as though every human and every preternatural she’d ever killed wanted a share in her torment.
Shame, the dead cried, mocking her. “Shut up!” Diana gasped, and this time the voices obeyed, and by the time she reached the lodge her heart had stopped trying to escape her chest.
She checked her watch as she went through her cool-down stretches. She’d beaten her own time this morning. She knew the voices had pushed her, but she locked that thought away. It had been just a run. Just another run, one of many. Nothing strange had happened, she had just been out training, as she did every day. Every single day. Because when you led the Hunt, you never stopped training, ever. You had to stay ahead, or you were dead.
Inside, she made her way to the games room. Jude was already there, head bent over his work. He jumped as Diana walked in, startled. Something flitted across his face, an expression gone so fast Diana wasn’t even sure it had been there. But she sensed a sharp spike of guilt from him.
Unbidden, Shade’s words of warning slithered down her back and nestled in her stomach. Snakes. Diana forced herself to give a nonchalant smile.
“Up early, I see? Good to see that someone in my pack is taking this seriously.” She put just the smallest emphasis on “my”. A subtle warning. If Jude was working with anyone behind her back, he’d pick up on the implied threat.
“I’m not much of a sleeper.” He smiled politely. “But I’m glad you stopped by. I might have something. I was having no luck with rentals, even though the priest had to have switched cars after New Haven. So I figured he was using false ID. First I pulled up a list of all cars rented out on Saturday within a 50-mile radius. Then I checked all the rental agencies. I managed to hack into some of the security feeds, and I sent ground teams to the others with photographs of the priest.”
He pulled forward one of his laptops and clicked on an email. “I just got this from the Huntress I sent to check Waterbury.”
Diana scanned the email. Visual ID confirmed. Subject hired the following vehicle. There was a license plate and description of the rental car. She raised her eyebrows. “This is all very well, but is this all you have to show for four days of work? You’re killing me, Jude. Get me something I can use!”
“I will. Soon. I’ve circulated his car’s description to all our allies in this state and the next ones. And I’m sweeping the roads for signs of him.” He gestured at a map open on his largest laptop. “Military satellite. Good stuff.”
She was leaning over his shoulder, looking at the map, when she caught another spike of guilt. More subtle this time; better contained. But unmistakable. She moved her head closer so her mouth was right by his ear.
“Jude?” she asked softly. “You wouldn’t be hiding anything from your Mistress of the Hunt, would you?”
Jude flinched. He turned his face slightly so he faced her sideways. When he spoke, his voice was as soft as hers. “Just whispers, that’s all.”
“What sort of whispers, Jude?”
“I’ve heard comments. About Adeline. Word is out that she’s gone. The others are asking what’s so special about her. Why she’s been kept apart. Why she hasn’t joined the pack yet. Why our Liege hasn’t declared her rogue and washed her hands of the whole thing. You have to admit, the Lady is showing a rare leniency.”
When Diana didn’t answer, he blurted out, “They’re saying you’re soft for the girl. Adeline. That you’re shielding her. You and the Lady. There are murmurs about conspiracies.”
“That’s it? That’s what’s bothering you? You should have come to me sooner. I’d have put an end to the rumors immediately.”
“I apologize, Huntress. I know I should have. I just felt bad repeating pack gossip.”
Diana felt relieved to find out his guilt was over something trivial. Jude was a valuable pack member. Too valuable to replace easily. She sighed noisily. She hated dealing with the endless pack politics and bickering. But this was important. Rumors could snowball if you let them. “All right,” she said. “Summon the pack and I’ll talk to them. One hour from now, in the gym.”
The sparring arena was built like an amphitheater, with risers all around. It was the best place to address the pack, and the usual meeting spot. Diana went to her room, stripping off her jogging clothes and letting the shower
wash away the sweat and unknot her muscles. She thought she heard an echo from the ghosts in her head, whispering sh-sh-sh under the water. “I can’t hear you,” she said firmly, and turned off the water to towel herself dry.
She changed into shorts and a black tank top. The day was already warm. She was tired of the heat. Today it felt especially oppressive and she wondered if they would finally get some rain.
Her cell phone rang. It was Shade’s private number. “My Lady,” she said respectfully.
“Huntress. Daughter. I have had no fresh news from you.”
“I have none, my Liege.” Shade didn’t want to hear stories of rental car trails and parleys. Shade wanted results.
“Diana.” Reproach. Disdain. Anger. All in one utterance of her name. Diana waited. Apologies were a waste of time.
“You have a week,” Shade said eventually. “A week to bring me the girl, Rose. And a week to bring me Adeline. Alive, Huntress. I need Adeline alive.”
“Why?” It burst out, unguarded. She tried to amend her question. “If you declare her rogue, we’ll have the Court’s resources at our disposal.” Her heart was thudding in her chest. No one ever spoke to the Lady like that. No one ever questioned her orders. And the last thing Diana wanted was for Del to be declared a rogue and be hunted down like a beast. But she had helped hide Del for a year now, and she needed the truth.
“You would have me declare her outcast?” Shade murmured. “Interesting. I thought you liked the child.”
“I do….” Diana’s answer was barely a whisper.
“She is valuable to me. But you already know that. You have shielded her well, all this time, at my request. I want her back alive, Huntress. If she dies, it all starts over again, and I weary of that game.” Diana’s mouth was suddenly dry. What starts over? she wondered. What game? She wet her lips with her tongue.
“Get her back,” Shade said abruptly. And then the line went dead.
Diana put her cell phone down on the desk in her room. Her hand was shaking. She checked the time. She had twenty minutes before she was due to address the pack. She sat on the floor in lotus position and tried to clear her mind.
Heart Blade: Blade Hunt Chronicles Book One Page 18
