I couldn’t help it. Even if I wasn’t already furious at them, I would’ve reacted like this. All the cover-up tattoos in the world couldn’t hide what the Valentines had done to me over the years—and I hated people staring at me like I was something to be pitied. I didn’t need any reminders to know how awful I looked.
After a silent ten-count, I turned and stalked back to the bathroom. No one looked at me on the way.
Not good enough. The damage was already done.
CHAPTER 8
Much as I wanted to at that point, I couldn’t spend the next twenty-four hours locked in the bathroom. Especially since it didn’t stay as locked as I would’ve liked. I took a few minutes to pull myself together, then put my damp shirt on and went back out.
Reun and the middle pair of Duchenes had left the suite, and the younger ones were either asleep or feigning it. Denei was kneeling beside Zoba’s bunk, talking to him in low tones. She wiped her face quickly before she turned to look at me. “I really am sorry—”
“Just don’t. Please.” I was too exhausted to fend off attempts to interrogate me about the scars, and too angry for sympathy, no matter how well-intentioned. I reclaimed my chair and breathed out slowly. Time to change the subject. “Is he gonna be okay?” I said. “I mean, that looked like straight-up blood in there. Don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone vomit blood, and I was a paramedic.”
Denei shook her head. “It’s the ver-géant making him sick. He’ll suffer until we get to Legba. And if that ain’t soon…” She broke off with a shudder. “I would’ve told you all this before,” she said. “Would’ve asked for help, instead of doin’ this to you. But I knew that brother of yours must’ve warned you off us, and…well, we jes’ didn’t have time to convince you. When Papa Legba summons, you’ve got two days to report.”
“And if you don’t?”
Her features darkened. “Then he collects his final payment.”
Great. I hated this guy already—and that just went a long way toward cooling my anger. At least about being kidnapped. Maybe I wouldn’t have agreed in time, since both Taeral and Sadie’s warnings had been pretty damned terrifying. But I still would’ve rather had a choice in the matter.
And I could definitely do without dying if I failed.
Denei rose and swayed with the train. “Zoba wants to tell you what happened to him last time,” she said. “Thinks you can handle it, on account of your…misfortune. He wasn’t sure before now.”
I bit back a grimace. Guess he wasn’t as out of it as I’d thought. “That’s got nothing to do with anything,” I said. “And I’m pretty sure he can’t tell me shit, since he can’t talk. How does he talk to you, anyway? I always wondered about that.”
“We’re linked.” She tapped a temple. “Him and me, Isalie and Bastien, Senobia and Rex. We come in pairs, y’might say.” The ghost of a smile traced her lips as she looked down at her brother. “Our bonds don’t turn off too easy. So he ain’t all that thrilled about me and Reun, know what I mean?”
Zoba made a sound that was halfway between affection and attempted murder.
“Anyway,” she said. “He cain’t tell you, but he can show you. If you’re willin’ to see.”
I frowned. “How?”
“Jes’ take his hand.” She stepped back from the bunk and gestured. “Know this, though. It will be intense—and it ain’t gonna be easy.”
“Intense?” I echoed.
“You’ll see it, and feel it, like he did. You’ll experience.” The corners of her mouth twitched. “I did too, when it happened,” she said hoarsely. “Me and Zoba, we share everything. Good or bad. Right, brother?”
He nodded, and then looked at me. And I saw that desperation in his eyes. The same fear and misery that ruled my life for sixteen years, until I almost killed myself escaping it.
I knelt and took his hand.
You do what you want to me. You ain’t goan have my kin.
The thought wasn’t my own, and the voice in my head wasn’t one I recognized. It was deep, thick Creole, and very angry.
And I was no longer on the train.
It was a vast old barn, empty except for the hay bales pushed against the walls, the big iron fire pit burning off to the left, and the man standing in front of me. Striking features, perfectly groomed moustache and goatee, long immaculate dreadlocks, his eyes hidden behind round purple glasses. He wore a pristine three-piece white suit with a wide purple silk scarf draped around his shoulders, and white wing-tip shoes. In his hands was a black cane tipped with a silver skull.
As for me, I was tied to the rafters above with my feet barely touching the floor. Shoulders aching, wrists throbbing, sweat trickling down my bare back. And I wasn’t me.
I was Zoba.
“What did you think would happen, child?” The man—Legba—spoke in the breezy, dulcet tones of the Caribbean. “There was a deal, no? Now the deal, it is broken. And you must pay the price for this.”
“The deal was me and Denei,” I said in Zoba’s voice, with no control over what came out of my mouth. “You cain’t have the young’uns. You get them…them t’ings outta them, or I will, me. You hear? I will.”
“No, child. You will not.” Legba approached with measured steps, reached out and forced my chin up with a finger. “Those who came to me before you—they paid with blood, no? And so shall you.” He shook his head sadly. Then he stepped back, held out the cane and shook it a few times. It wobbled and lengthened into something snake-like, almost graceful.
A bullwhip.
I sneered at him as Zoba’s shock and rage flooded me. “Yeah, you do that. You wan’ my blood? It’s yours, Big Papa. Hell, whip me t’death, if that’s what you be wanting. Do it. Long’s you let my kin go.”
“Death is not what I want from you, child. Not yet. Your purpose now is to live for me, grow strong for me, and feed me your knowledge. All of you. If I kill you now, I gain nothing.” He coiled the whip slowly in his hands. “But you must learn your lesson, child. There will not be a next time—because if there is, I cannot forgive it. In fact, all of you must learn this lesson.”
I tensed and lunged at him, but the ropes brought me up short. “Touch ’em, and I’ll kill you,” I snarled involuntarily. “Swear to Christ.”
Legba laughed. “Oh, child. As if Christ would lift a finger on your behalf,” he said. “Do you not know that you and your family are forsaken?” He made a half-turn and gestured, and the big barn door flew open. “Do not worry, though. I swear on my own name, I will hurt no one except you. This time.”
There was the sound of a brief scuffle from outside, and two empty-eyed men marched the rest of the Duchenes in, shackled at the wrists and ankles.
No! Zoba’s explosive protest screamed through my head. I could barely look at them. So painfully young, so terrified they couldn’t even speak. As they were herded toward me, Denei kept gathering the rest of them closer, trying to hold onto all four at once.
Her eyes met mine, and I heard her in my head. You don’ worry ’bout me. You jes’ survive this, hear?
And I answered with Zoba’s thoughts: Forgive me, cher. But you gotta shut me out.
No I won’t. Good or bad, remember?
Doan do this. Please, sister. Shut me out.
“This is touching, no? Unnecessary, but touching.” Legba turned that awful smile on Denei. “So you would feel his pain, child. You will wish you’d listened to your brother soon enough.” He shrugged and paced around behind me. “Such a shame,” he murmured.
And then the pain came.
It was worse than anything I’d ever felt. Like being bashed with a length of red-hot iron, over and over. At first I couldn’t even get enough breath to scream—and then I was determined not to. Well, Zoba was. His fierce focus on staying silent, on not letting the young ones know how much it really hurt, was an almost soothing sensation in a sea of anguish.
Before long, I didn’t have to scream. Denei was doing plenty of that for both of us.
I
didn’t even realize the whipping had stopped until Legba appeared in front of me, swimming in my blurred vision. He did not look happy. “I am not at all sure you’ve learned your lesson, child,” he said. “Have you?”
Speaking seemed an impossible task. I had nothing left. Couldn’t even hold my head up. But I was determined to have my say. “Yeah, I done got it,” I slurred harshly. “Goin’ straight to hell, me, and you drivin’ me there. But you got your pound of flesh, ain’t ya. Now you let…you let my kin go,” I gasped.
“So your answer is no. You have not learned, not a thing.” Legba lifted the whip and ran a hand down the length of it, squeezing out drops and spatters of blood. With a flick of his wrist, it became a cane again. Then his bloodied hand shot out and grabbed my jaw. “You should have screamed, child, while you had the chance,” he said. “Because those were the last words you ever speak.”
He moved slowly to the fire pit and pulled something out of it. Something that looked like oversized tongs with a pair of curved-down scissors at the end of it. The blades glowed an ominous orange.
I blinked, and he was in front of me, forcing my mouth open.
Guiding the blades toward my tongue.
Zoba let go of my hand just before Legba cut his tongue out.
The real world rushed back in. Everything seemed louder—the hum and rattle of the train, the whispers among the Duchenes, my own harsh, unsteady breathing. My face was damp, and not just with sweat.
I sensed Denei looming near, about to touch me. “You all right, handsome?” she said.
“Fine. I’m fine,” I gasped, shuffling away on my knees so she wouldn’t. I could still feel the echoes of Zoba’s pain, hear the screams locked away in his mind. “Jesus.”
They all seemed to know not to speak to me until I could pull myself together. When I did, I looked straight at Zoba. “I’m going to free your family,” I said. “I swear I will. If it’s the last thing I do.”
On the verge of a smile, he made a small, indistinct sound. But I understood him just fine.
Thank you.
CHAPTER 9
Oh, boys…I think it’s time for target practice.
I woke from the dream with a stifled gasp. It’d been months since the last time I had it, but this time was more vivid than it had been in years. The deep Colorado woods, the bright full moon, the caravan drawn around the campfire. Orville Valentine drunk and looking for a reason to beat me again. Target practice—the signal for me to run, so my brothers could hunt me down like a dog and shoot me.
Hodge and Morris never missed. At least, until that night.
The dream was slow to fade. I could still smell the woods, feel the branches scratch at me and crunch beneath my feet. Hear the frantic pounding of my heart, and sense the rage in me overtaking the fear. It was the first time I’d defied them all, and the last game of target practice they forced me to play.
Of course, I paid for that defiance in bruises and blood. All because Orville had tried to take the only thing that’d ever been mine—the moonstone pendant. At the time I didn’t even know what it was, but I was still willing to die to protect it.
As the memories filtered back to the dark corners of my mind where I kept them, the light of reality pressed against my closed eyes. My body ached vaguely, and my mouth was desert-dry. There was a constant low-level vibration moving through me.
Damn. I was still on the train.
I cracked my eyes open reluctantly. Cold daylight flooded the windows of the suite, showing Zoba and the two youngest still asleep. I’d somehow managed to slide down and curl over awkwardly in the chair, in a position that strained the hell out of my back and left the arm I’d slept on dead asleep. I couldn’t even move my fingers.
I groaned and started the painful process of straightening myself out. I’d just managed to sit up more or less straight when the bathroom door opened.
And Orville Valentine walked out.
This time my gasp wasn’t so stifled. It was damned close to a scream. No way in hell I was still dreaming—the surge of sparkling pain through my arm as it tried to wake up attested to that. Orville, six and a half feet of grinning, bearded devil stuffed into filthy flannel and jeans, was approaching me with murder in his eyes.
To keep the promise he’d made to me ten years ago.
“Not if I kill you first, you son of a bitch,” I snarled, forcing myself straighter in the chair. I didn’t stop to question the impossible logic of him somehow being on this train. I was already reaching for the knife I usually carried, even though I knew it wasn’t there. “Stay the fuck back, or I’ll—”
“Gideon!”
The female voice, nowhere near Orville’s bear-growl tone, acted like a splash of ice water. Senobia was scrambling down from the bunk with panic in her eyes. I drew a breath to warn her off, to keep her away from that monster.
Then I realized Orville was gone.
“What the hell?” My body relaxed without the permission of my mind, which refused to believe he’d never been there. He must’ve ducked back into the bathroom, or hid behind the bunks, or gone into the next room. Gradually, I accepted that no one could’ve moved that fast. It hadn’t been real.
But that didn’t make me feel any less freaked out.
“Okay,” I said, breathing out slowly as I looked at Senobia. “You did not just see a big, scruffy redneck asshole standing in the middle of this room, right?”
“No, cher. But I’m guessin’ you did.” She glanced back at Rex and Zoba, who were starting to stir at the commotion, and faced me with a frown. “Sometime the dust makes you see things for a while,” she said carefully. “Hard things.”
“Great. You mean that shit Denei drugged me with?”
She nodded. “If y’all want, I can make you another remedy.”
“Is it actually going to help? Never mind, don’t answer that.” I sighed and scrubbed my face with the hand that didn’t feel like it was stuffed full of firecrackers. Christ, if I sat here much longer, I was going to start sobbing like a baby. I really didn’t need hallucinations of the Valentines following me around right now. “Gotta take a…I mean, use the bathroom,” I murmured, lurching up on unsteady legs. “Excuse me.”
I still half expected to see Orville in there, waiting for me.
CHAPTER 10
The two-hour layover that morning at Chicago’s Union Station was my chance to get the hell away from everyone, so I could try to process everything that’d happened. In less than a day, I’d gone from the relative safety of a place I was just starting to feel comfortable calling home, to an unexpected and life-threatening trip halfway across the country with people I barely knew. No one knew where I’d gone, and I had nothing but what I was wearing.
I didn’t even have the moonstone anymore. I’d left that with Daoin in Arcadia, since it technically belonged to him. Without it, my magic wouldn’t be as strong, and it would drain faster than usual.
If being the DeathSpeaker wasn’t enough to control Legba, we were probably all dead.
When we got off the train and into the waiting area, Denei gave me twenty bucks to get some breakfast and said they had some things to pick up. I declined to go shopping with them—the increasingly freezing weather outside and my lack of so much as a long-sleeved shirt had something to do with it. Mostly, though, I was still pissed. Reun offered to stay with me, but I really didn’t want to be around anyone for a while. Not that I could help it in a train station with hundreds of people milling around, but at least none of them had drugged or kidnapped me.
I found a Dunkin Donuts and got a cup of coffee, and a pile of frosting with a donut buried somewhere beneath it. The cashier gave me a strange look when I asked for five bucks in quarters back. I had a reason—my next task was to somehow find a payphone. I couldn’t call Taeral and Sadie. Taeral didn’t have a phone, and I’d only ever called or texted Sadie from my cell, where her number just said “Sadie.” But I did have one phone number memorized. And he was the firs
t person I should call, anyway.
I’d wandered around the station for twenty minutes when I finally spotted a phone in a hallway leading to restrooms. It wasn’t a particularly inviting hall. There was a kind of New York alley vibe—one dim, stuttering light, about a third of the way down, and the rest of the scant illumination leaking around the corners of the barrier that separated the men’s from the ladies’. Torn flyers for long-past events taped irregularly to the walls, faded stickers and random graffiti done with marker and pen on the metal phone box. And of course, the vague air of eau de bathroom.
The place also seemed deserted. I hadn’t passed anyone on the way down here.
With a vague sense of unease, I grabbed the receiver, dropped a quarter in and dialed Abe’s cell. A prerecorded female voice asked me to please deposit a further three dollars and seventy-five cents for the first three minutes.
“Highway robbery,” I grumbled as I pushed quarters into the slot. Guess I was only talking for three minutes, if Abe even bothered to pick up. He wouldn’t recognize this number.
The phone went through an endless series of clicks and pauses before it finally started ringing. That damned well better not have counted toward my three minutes. I rested an arm on top of the phone case, caught movement to my right, and watched a wiry man in frayed denim turning down the hall. I stared at the phone and sensed him walk behind me. But instead of continuing to the bathroom, he stopped just beyond me and struck a classic awkward-wait pose.
Great. What were the chances of two people needing a pay phone at the same time?
I turned my back to him and ducked my head. There’d been five rings already with no answer. I was about to give up and hope the damned thing gave me my quarters back when there was an echoing click, and Abe said, “Captain Strauss,” in a who-the-hell-is-this tone.
“Morning, sunshine,” I said. “How’s everything—”
“Gideon, why the hell are you in Chicago?”
Return of the Hunters (The DeathSpeaker Codex Book 4) Page 4
