Bayou Moon te-2

by Ilona Andrews

  She smiled. Her fragile sharp-boned face, her sunken cheeks, her eyes drowning in pain, all of it lit, united and transformed by that weak smile, made radiant and timeless. William knew he would remember it to his death.

  He swung. The blade sliced cleanly through her flesh. Her head dropped to the floor and rolled, releasing a torrent of blood from the stump of her neck. It splashed onto the floorboards, and the roots stretched toward it. The vesicles pumped, sucking up the liquid in a cannibalistic cycle even as blood continued to flow from the wound.

  William picked up the journal off the floor.

  Her head lay on its side. She was still smiling and her blue eyes focused on him. “Thank you,” bloodless lips mouthed.

  The pollen had clogged his lungs, sapping his strength. William pushed to his feet and staggered to the door, half-blind, stumbling, exhausted, and weak. His hand found the handle, and he lay on it with his weight. It fell away before him, and he crashed into the hallway. The cool smoothness of the wooden floor slapped his cheek.

  The door.

  William dragged himself upright, shut it, and sagged against it. His lungs burned. The last whiffs of pollen swirled around him.

  William concentrated on the rising and falling of his chest. His hands flipped the journal open on their own. Long streaks of cursive lined the pages, too out of focus. He wiped the last tears from his eyes and brought the journal so close the pages nearly touched his nose.

  R1DP6WR12DC18HF1CW6BY12WW18BS3VL9S R1DP6WG12E 5aba 1abaa

  Gibberish. No, not gibberish, code.

  A rapid staccato of footsteps echoed through the hallway. He dropped his hand to his side, letting the journal hang along his leg.

  Cerise rounded the corner, Richard behind her. She raced toward him.

  “Are you hurt?”

  William shook his head and tried to tell her he was okay, but words wouldn’t come out. He dropped the journal into her hands. Understanding slowly crept into her face. She turned corpse white and tried to push past him. “Let me in.”

  “No,” he rasped. His voice finally worked.

  “I have to see her!”

  “No. She didn’t want you to. It’s over.”

  Richard caught her shoulders. “He’s right. It’s done.”

  “Let me see my mother!”

  She jerked from him, but Richard held on. “It’s over. It’s all over and she’s resting now. Don’t taint your memories. Remember her as she was. Come on. Let’s get William into the fresh air.”

  Cerise said nothing. Her shoulders slumped. She gulped and slid her shoulder under his right arm, while Richard pulled him up. Cerise’s arm wound her way around William’s waist. He thought of telling her he wasn’t that weak, but instead leaned on her and let himself be led out of the house into the sunlight.

  THEY had set the house on fire. It burned like a funeral pyre, belching thick acrid smoke into the air. The flames consumed the old boards with a loud snapping, snaked their way up the walls, melted the glass of the hothouse, and Posad’s plants hissed and wailed as the fire sank its teeth into their green flesh. Nobody arrived to stop the blaze, and even if they had, the fire had spread too far and too fast.

  Cerise refused to leave. William sat next to her. He felt her pain, sharp and brutal. There was nothing he could do, except sit next to her. She didn’t cry. She didn’t rave. She just sat there, radiating grief and fury.

  Soon the whole structure stood engulfed, no more than a mere skeleton of stone and timber wearing a mantle of heat. She sat on the edge of the clearing, reading the journal in the light of the raging blaze, until the roof crashed with the thunderous popping of ancient support beams, spraying glowing sparks everywhere, spooking the horses, and forcing the two of them to retreat from the heat.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  WILLIAM reclined, sinking deeper into the comfortable softness of the Mars’ library chair. Spider was gone. Gone somewhere in the Mire. Everything rode on that damn journal. It would tell him where Spider went and what he wanted from Cerise. Except the fucking thing was in code.

  Cerise took a spot by the window with the journal, a pen, and some paper.

  The library was crowded. The Mars kept coming in and out, radiating anxiety. William clenched his teeth. All of their tension made him jumpy. In the corner Kaldar brooded over a glass of wine. He, Richard, and Erian sat by the door, like three watch dogs.

  William kept running the pattern in his head. He’d memorized a page and a half of code. It was a code, he was sure of it. It had a pattern. For one, the numbers ran in sequence.

  R1DP6WR12DC18HF1CW6BY12WW18BS3VL9S R1DP6WG12E

  The numbers repeated themselves, but rarely with the same letters—R1, P6, R12, C18, and then F1, W6, Y12 … Or was it 1D, 6W? They differed by 6. Except for the first interval from 1 to 6, which differed by 5 … But then there was the second sequence—3, 9, 15, 19. Sometimes the numbers would run the entire sequence, and sometimes they ended and a different series started over.

  He had hammered his brain against the pattern, ever since he saw it. Codes weren’t his thing, but he knew the basic premise: figure out the combination of letters and numbers occurring most often and try sticking the most often used letter of the alphabet in its place. But he was a hunter, not a code breaker.

  Erian swung his legs off the chair and paced, measuring the library’s length with long strides. His voice was quiet. “It’s been three hours. She’s not going to break it.”

  “She’ll break it,” Richard said. “It was Vernard’s life’s work, and she was his favorite grandchild.”

  “Yeah.” A bitter edge in Erian’s voice set off an alarm in William’s head.

  “What is your problem?” Kaldar kept his voice low. “Did she spit in your breakfast?”

  Erian pivoted on his foot. “It’s over. Why don’t the two of you get it? The feud is done, we’ve won, we’re fucking done.”

  “It’s not over until we have Gustave and Spider’s head,” Richard told him.

  Erian swung his hand, his face slapped with disgust. “The whole damn family went mad.”

  Richard rose smoothly, crossed the library, and pulled a large leather volume off the shelf.

  “What is it?” Kaldar asked.

  “Grandfather was exiled under Article 8.3 of the Dukedom of Louisiana’s Criminal Code. I just realized that I never thought to check what Article 8.3 was.”

  Richard unlocked the leather flap securing the book, flipped the cover open, and riffled through the yellow pages. He frowned. “Found it.”

  Richard raised the book, showing them the page. The red-lettered heading read “Malpractice and Corruption of Vows.” A long list of subsections crawled down from it.

  “Subsection 3,” Richard read. “Page 242.”

  The pages rustled as he turned them. “Malpractice. Unlawful Human Experimentation. Gross Disregard for the Integrity of the Human Body. Intent to Create an Aberration.”

  “How is that different from what the Hand is doing?” Erian asked.

  “The Hand is not supposed to exist,” William said. “If captured, the Hand’s agent receives no support from Louisiana. They cut him loose because their magic modification is illegal.”

  “Grandfather was convicted of using magic to tamper with the human body, which broke his Physician’s Oath.” Mikita walked into the room. “Mother says they had a conversation about it once. He knew they would come after him, but he did whatever it was anyway. He said it was too important to quit.”

  “What was the nature of the research?” Richard asked.

  “He was trying to find a way to teach the human body to regenerate itself. He said that humans had all of the power to heal themselves and take care of any illness. That they just needed to find the right switch inside their bodies.”

  To break an oath and risk everything, his cushy blueblood life, his position, a man had to be driven. A man like that, a man with the purpose, wouldn’t have let the swamp stop him, William thought.
No, he’d keep working on whatever it was. Here. In the swamp.

  Looking for a way to teach the body to heal itself.

  To regenerate.

  His memory forced an image of a monster in the moonlight, its wounds knitting together. Pieces clicked together in his head. A self-healing, indestructible monster. In his life William had seen dozens of different animals, but he’d never met anything like the creature. It wasn’t a cat, a wolf, or a bear. It wasn’t even related to any of them.

  If it wasn’t natural, it had to be made. And who would be better to make it than a man like Cerise’s grandfather.

  If the monster was made, Spider would want to get his hands on it, pull it apart, find out how it came to be.

  If Cerise realized that a monster her grandpa made was running around the woods, she’d move heaven and earth to kill it and kill Spider. That’s the way her mind worked: she took care of her responsibilities, and she paid her debts. Spider had twenty agents with him. They had … the Mars, and at least seven or eight of Cerise’s relatives were out of commission. Twenty lethal, trained, magically enhanced freaks against maybe thirty-five regular people. Nothing regular about the Mars, but even if the lot of them pulled every magic talent they had out of their asses, it would be a slaughter. Cerise would be in the front line, and she would die.

  His mate would die.

  William’s hands curled. The skin between his knuckles itched, wanting to release the claws.

  They would all die: Richard, Erian, Ignata, Makita, even the idiot Kaldar. None of them would make it. He couldn’t stop them from fighting, and worse, he needed them desperately, because he couldn’t take on twenty agents alone.

  He felt trapped, like a dog on a chain.

  He could be wrong. There was no link between the monster and Vernard. Not yet.

  “Done,” Cerise said.

  They looked at her. Her eyes were haunted and wide, as if she’d seen something that wasn’t fit to be seen.

  “It’s a simple substitution cipher,” she said, her voice flat. “It’s very difficult to break unless you have the key.”

  “What’s the key?” Kaldar asked.

  “A Gaulish lullaby. He used to sing it to me when I was little.” She pushed from the table. “I think we better call a family meeting.”

  TWENTY minutes later the Mar family assembled in the library, and Cerise read the journal in a flat voice in air thick with human breath.

  “ ‘ The art of medicine, as ancient as the human body itself. It began with the first primitive, who, plagued by ache, stuck a handful of grass in his mouth, chewed, and found his pain lessened. For ages, we followed in that primitive’s footsteps, holding fast to the notion that the introduction of a foreign agent into the body was the only path to cure. We invented medicines, ointments, potions, splints, casts, slings, and endless devices to facilitate healing, yet we have never focused on the healing process itself. For what is healing, if not the body’s self-correction of imperfection? What is the role of medicine if not to push the organism onto the path of regeneration?

  “ ‘On this day, I, Vernard Dubois, a man and a healer, state that a human body possesses all of the means to heal itself, to cure every malady and every defect without intrusion of a surgeon or a physician. I make this claim, believing that one day I and those like me will become obsolete. It is in the name of that glorious day, I now embark on the path of research and experimentation. It is a path strewn with rocks of self-doubt, mistakes, and persecution. Let it be known that I forgive those who would condemn me, for I comprehend the reasons that drive them to act. Misguided though they may be, they hold the interests of humanity close at heart, and I bear them no ill will.

  “‘Of the Gods, I ask forgiveness for my past transgressions. Of my wife and my daughter, I beg forgiveness for my future ones. I pray that one day you may understand the reasons for which I must continue.’ ”

  She kept going, reading pages of formulas and equations. Some heads nodded—Aunt Pete, Mikita, Ignata. Most people looked the same way he did: blank. As best he could gather, Vernard had found some kind of microscopic algae that spurred regeneration. The algae emitted magic that changed the body, accelerating the healing. Vernard got it to work on mice, but failed when he tried it on anything larger. Once inside the body, the magic algae died, and he couldn’t get enough of it into his test subjects to make a difference. He’d tried feeding it to them, he’d tried injections and blood transfusions, but none of it was fast enough.

  Cerise stopped. “There is a page here with one word: EXILE. The next entry reads: ‘We’ve reached the swamps. In the grove behind our new dwelling I found a peculiar moss, red and similar to fur in appearance. It spread across the grove’s floor, forming an irregular mound in the middle. Upon examination of the mound I found a rabbit’s corpse underneath, partially digested. The moss has an enormous eno concentration. The young man who fancies Gen—I think his name is Gustave—informed me that locals call it the burial shroud and avoid it with superstitious fear.’ ”

  Cerise paused, swallowing with effort, and kept reading.

  William zoned out, listening to the words but not understanding. There was something about the moss and the gastric juices of some sort of cavity and combining the moss with the previous plant he’d screwed around with. Finally he raised his hand, feeling like he was ten years old, sitting behind the school desk. “Can you explain it to me?”

  Cerise paused.

  “There is a plant that looks like moss,” Petunia said, scratching at her eye patch. “We call it burial shroud. It’s not really a plant, more like an odd cross between plant and animal. It’s native only to the Mire and it needs magic to survive. Burial shroud feeds on corpses. Its spores settle on the carcass, and then its shoots pierce the dead animal’s skin. It then siphons the liquids from the corpse through its shoots, takes what it needs, and dumps the rest back into the body.”

  “Like a filter?” William frowned.

  “Just like that,” Petunia nodded. “These shoots are very, very tiny, but there are so many of them, they can filter all the liquids from a carcass several times within one day. With me so far?”

  He nodded.

  “Vernard needed a fast way to introduce his miracle algae into the body, fast and in large numbers. He stumbled onto burial shroud and tinkered with it until he managed to get his algae inside the moss and used magic to get it all to play nice. So, he ended up with burial shroud full of regeneration algae. Makes sense?”

  William nodded again.

  “Then he built himself a casket and lined it with burial shroud. Let’s say you put a person into the casket. The burial shroud will attack and start pulling liquids out of this person. It will take some proteins and other things, and dump the rest back into the body. But!” Petunia raised her finger. “As it returns liquids to the body, it will add the miracle algae to it.”

  “It would hurt,” William said.

  “Oh, yes. It would hurt like hell, but if you’re dying or getting old, you wouldn’t care.” Petunia grimaced. “Keep going, Ceri. I’m guessing your grandfather experimented with putting creatures into the casket.”

  Petunia proved right. Vernard had designed five test subjects: a cat, a pig, a calf, someone he called D, and E. Before he could stick them into his coffin, he made them drink some sort of herbal concoction he called the remedy. Cerise’s face jerked as she read the ingredients.

  “ ‘One-quarter teaspoon crushed redwort leaves, one tube of fisherman’s club in full bloom, one-quarter teaspoon minced burial shroud, one cup water. Let steep for twenty hours.

  “ ‘Today I’ve taken the cat, subject A, and slit its side to cause massive bleeding. I’ve placed it into the Box and shut the lid. I will check on it tomorrow. Tonight I must go fishing. I promised Cerise, and one must always keep a promise given to a child …

  “‘The cat is alive. The gash has healed completely, and a new pink tissue marks the location of the wound I had inflicted. I’ve b
eheaded the cat, and upon dissection, found its heart still beating. The pulse continued for nearly six minutes and stopped, I suspect, because the body ran out of blood.’ ”

  The cat wasn’t the only victim. William growled in his head. He could see where this was heading. Once Grandpa started putting things into the damn Box, he would crawl into it himself eventually. First, the cat, then the pig, then the calf …

  “ ‘The calf lives. The bones of its broken leg have healed. It stands renewed in the back corral, together with the piglet. It is time for a true test. Tonight I enter the Box.’ ”

  Ignata buried her head in her hands. “Oh no. No, Vernard, no.”

  “ ‘Words fail me. At first I felt the agony of each sting puncturing my skin. My world shrank to a red daze and I floated in it, buoyant in my pain, twisted, battered, mangled by it, and yet somehow supported and made whole. The pain tore the very fabric of me, unraveled it strand by strand, and wove it back together anew. As it consumed me, I found deliverance in its red mist. I found strength and vigor. The universe had opened like a flower to my mind, and I saw its secret patterns and hidden truths. I stand before the Box now. My mind is clear, but the insight has left me. The secrets gained have slipped away, beyond the veil of consciousness. I can feel them, yet they pass through the fingers of my mind like smoke coils. I must return to the Box …

  “ ‘It’s easier to breathe. The budding arthritis in my hands troubles me no longer …

  “ ‘I ran three miles in the morning to test myself, and discovering myself free of fatigue, I ran three more …

  “ ‘The visions of the red daze haunt me. I must enter the Box again …

  “‘I shall speak nothing of what I glimpsed beyond the red curtain. I must understand it before I commit it to the page …

  “ ‘ The scar on my shin is gone. I’ve had it since I was a child …

  “ ‘And then I picked her up into my arms and danced across the house, danced and danced. She laughed, throwing her head back … Gods, I haven’t seen her laugh like that since we were twenty …’ ”