She curled her fingers against the helmet so she didn’t throw it out of frustration as her emotions swelled. She was so tired of all the crap. So tired of always having to be on the defensive. Having to weigh and measure every word ten times over to keep from condemning herself by a simple slip. “My day starts at sunset and ends at daylight, which gives me extremely limited time to accomplish anything in the summer, so I can’t afford to waste even a nanosecond. Everyone knows I’m nocturnal, especially Sen.”
“Your point?”
“He got his kicks once today by making me drive two hours in the heat in full gear while my skin boiled. So I don’t give a flying effing fig what he wants right now. I’ll do my job. I always do, because I am not the animal that bastard thinks I am.” She lifted the helmet halfway and paused, shooting a glance loaded with warning at Storm. “And one more thing. About that little show of power at headquarters this morning? Don’t ever screw with my emotions again or I’ll make you regret it.”
She pulled on her helmet and stepped out of the truck before he could answer. The driver door slammed at the same time hers shut. When she reached the trailer, Storm was already there. She’d order him to get his hands off her bike if not for her helmet, which would muffle her words.
He cranked open the wheel chock that prevented the front tire from moving, then leaned the bike against his hip. Someone walking along the street wouldn’t notice the harsh flex of his shoulders as he moved.
She’d hit a nerve, but taking the words back or smoothing things over would destroy any ground she’d just gained with him.
When he had the wheel free to move, he toed the gearshift up one click to neutral, then rolled her bike off the trailer with the same graceful ease with which he seemed to do everything else.
The bike would roll for him as long as he didn’t straddle it and the motorcycle was within her energy range.
The minute he put the side stand down and backed away, she walked over and slung a leg over the seat.
Storm stepped in front of her and stood alongside her front tire, waiting.
Ignoring him wouldn’t budge that determined angle of his chin. When she did look up, she was glad for the black shield on her helmet that prevented her from having to meet his eyes.
Or so she’d thought.
He put a hand on her handlebar and leaned forward, eyes staring as though he saw right through the mirror shield. “Are you finished issuing orders?”
The quiet words would have sounded like a gentle caress if not for the low vibration of anger thrumming in his voice. She didn’t say a word, just gave a slight move of her head to indicate she was listening.
“Good. I have a job to do, too, and it’s not all about you. It’s about saving the world and all those humans who know nothing about what might hit this world in three days. I’ll be at Piedmont Park at midnight. Come prepared to work together, which means answering questions. Truthfully. Not playing a word game two-step. And as for the comfort spell I sent you at HQ, I didn’t do it to screw with your emotions or show off my powers. I did it because I didn’t like seeing you feel threatened and figured you didn’t want to give Sen the pleasure of knowing he’d rattled you.”
Her heart thumped an extra beat. Storm had been trying to do something nice for her when he’d used his power to calm her? That floored her. Kindness from strangers was not something she was used to, and she was sorry she’d misjudged him.
While he’d been handsome to her before, this set him up a few notches in her book.
Storm clenched his teeth before he spoke again. “I’m heading over to where the Birrn was killed to pick up a trail. I should know something tonight.”
No, no, no. She had to clamp down on her panic before he sensed it.
Going to the killing site would have been enough to raise her blood pressure without the way he swept a gaze over her that thawed out the frigid shield she used to keep all men at bay. His gaze scorched her. “You don’t like me using my powers on you … that’s fine. I’m much better with my hands anyway.”
NINE
The crisp smell of fresh-cut grass reminded Laurette Barrett of life as a child during a more hopeful time when mistakes hadn’t had such dire consequences. Long before she’d become a twenty-four-year-old woman who lived at the crossroads of adversity and fear.
Her granddad would shake his head at her and say, “You’ll survive this, Laurie girl.”
If he were still alive, she might. But he was gone, and her life was ruined.
Daylight was abandoning her by the minute, which made walking through the park that much more difficult, but she had Brutus by her side. When she’d been looking for a small dog with spirit, a nice lady at the Humane Society had jokingly told her she had a twenty-pound dog that was a cross between a terrier and a hedgehog.
Laurette had fallen in love at first sight with the patchwork mutt and named him Brutus to build up his self-esteem.
How was she going to take care of him if things got worse?
How was she going to pay any bills if she couldn’t make a living? Negative thinking had never solved a problem—she knew that. She’d survived on her own for seven years by not letting anything defeat her.
Surely she could figure her way out of disaster once more. But she was tired of getting so much practice at it.
Being played by a con man happened to everyone, even bright women. She wasn’t stupid, just too ready to believe the best in people.
Didn’t see that one coming, did you?
She laughed at her unintentional joke about her failing eyesight to keep from giving in to the panic that clung to the walls of her chest. Seeing much of anything was getting more difficult by the day. All she’d been able to see in the mirror this morning had been the flaming red hair she’d gotten from her granddad and vague dots of blue where her eyes were supposed to be. Putting on makeup had gone by the wayside.
But she couldn’t blame lack of vision for allowing Chuck to swindle her. That man had the ability to sell ketchup Popsicles to women in white gloves.
Especially because they were women.
If using her hadn’t been humiliating enough, Chuck had accessed her meager bank accounts and depleted every dime she’d had.
When they first met, she thought Chuck would be the perfect salesman for her large outdoor pottery urns. Her grandfather had told her that as long as she had her pottery with her signature design painted on the side, she would be secure in this world. He’d also said she’d meet a man she could believe in, a stranger who would show her an unexpected kindness in her darkest hour.
Stupid her to have believed for even a minute that would be Chuck. But it’d seemed so perfect and fit her grandfather’s prophecy. A man like Chuck showing up right as her sight was starting to fail.
Wish you were here, Granddaddy. He’d never steered her wrong while he was alive, but he was gone and she had to figure this one out on her own. And without turning to another man. The one thing this had taught her was that no one could be trusted.
She was alone in the world and no one cared.
If only she could save her sight, she could continue to sell her art. She could still shape the large outdoor urns with her hands, but painting the intricate patterns and whimsical letters on each one—her signature patterns—wouldn’t be as possible. If she did figure out how to clear that hurdle, she still needed to find clients and deliver the pots. She had no one to help her.
She’d tried to train herself these last months by painting the designs blindfolded. She doubted someone looking for abstract art would spend lunch money on her last disaster. Without her eyesight, her career would be the first casualty and her independence the second. She didn’t know how to do anything else.
Best’s disease. That was the name of the thief that had caused her blindness. She’d never even heard of it until her diagnosis. Now she knew everything about the macular degeneration that had no cure.
In the last couple of months, she’d
gone from seeing well enough to drive with thick glasses to a blurry world that no lens could bring into focus.
At the rate things were changing, she’d be completely blind in only a few more weeks.
With no savings and no way to keep working, she’d end up on the streets, where she’d be at the mercy of men who made Chuck look like Galahad.
Her heartbeat sped up, thumping louder and louder in her ears. She felt light-headed and sick.
An urgent whining broke through her panic attack. Brutus tugged on his leash, pulling her forward and out of her downward spiral.
Laurette blinked to clear her mind and wished she could sharpen her sight as easily. Because of the foggy shadows, it took her a few moments to realize she was standing off the jogging path, in the grass. Brutus jumped up against her legs, his whole body moving when he wagged his stubby tail.
She took a breath to calm her nerves and dropped down to hug him. “You’re right. I said let’s take a walk and not think about it for awhile.”
He must have taken that as a sign to take off and drag her over the footbridge at the south end of the park. She squinted through her glasses to see, but all she could make out was the creek running beneath the bridge. She saw undulated globs that were probably piles of plants and mud.
Brutus pulled her down the foot of the bridge and across the grass to where he sniffed clumps of rock and mud along the bank. She could tell he practically went on point at one spot when he yanked his head down.
“No, Brutus. We can’t take anything from the park for our garden.” That was all she needed at this point … an arrest record and a fine she couldn’t pay.
When he refused to leave, she knelt next to him to see if she could discern what had gotten his attention.
One rock seemed to shine as though catching the last bit of light before the sun set. Wait a minute … She stared at the goose-egg-shaped stone for the longest time, mesmerized until Brutus barked—well, more of a yap—breaking her attention.
She could see that rock.
Clearly.
No, she couldn’t see one rock when everything else was a rush of colors and shapes. She was imagining things.
“Right. Time to go.” Before she had any more hallucinations that ended up with her in a straightjacket.
Laurette stood up and turned away. But she couldn’t leave. She felt the strong urge to glance back at the rock.
The stone was now very clear. And sort of bright-looking.
Laurette rubbed the heel of her hand over her eyes. Was she losing her eyesight and her mind?
That rock had not glowed. Am I really seeing that or not?
She stared at the stone again. The shape seemed like that of a soft lump of red-orange lava with purple and yellow ribbons. All the colors shifted, moving as though molten.
Brutus dropped down in front of the rock with paws outstretched as if told the “down” command.
Yeah, right. Like that would happen in her lifetime.
Pick up the stone and prove to yourself it isn’t molten and that you’re not nuts. While she couldn’t take it home, there was no law against holding a rock for a few seconds to convince herself she wasn’t going bonkers.
She squatted down and touched the rock with one finger, quickly, in case it was hot. Not injurious hot, but a comforting warmth. That made no sense. She closed her eyes and let her fingers curl around the smooth shape, lifting it into her palm to identify the rock with a sculptor’s touch.
She could swear the stone moved as though it was a living thing.
When she opened her eyes, the colors in her hand glowed.
She glanced around the park, but something was odd about how everything looked blurrier than before through her glasses. She used her free hand to slip her thick glasses off, and her breath backed up in her throat at what she could see.
Everything.
A young man threw a Frisbee for his dog halfway across the field. The Border collie leaped high to snatch the toy from the air. A young couple sitting on a blanket fifty feet away played with their baby, who had a new front tooth.
This couldn’t be happening.
Laurette pushed her gaze to Tenth Street, which separated the park from a residential area. She wouldn’t normally be able to see that street from here. Car headlights burned crisply against the twilight darkening the city.
She’d never had vision this good, even with glasses. Even before her diagnosis.
The rock sat in her hand, pulsing with a vibrant energy.
Her head wanted to argue that this couldn’t be happening, that rocks did not restore eyesight, but her heart didn’t care.
She could see.
Testing her theory, she opened her fingers away from the rock, then scanned the busy park activities again. She couldn’t see as clearly as before but still better than she had with the best glasses she’d ever worn.
“What am I going to do, Brutus?”
He gave her a yap and danced around, happy.
Laurette closed her fingers once more around the rock and the world came back into sharp focus. She hooked her eyeglasses through the scooped neck of her sleeveless top.
Was this really happening? Or was she losing her mind?
If insanity was taking over, she’d use that as a basis for her defense if she got arrested for taking a piece of city property, because she held a miracle.
And she wasn’t telling anyone about this rock. Or ever giving it back.
TEN
You’ve got one minute, then I’m leaving. With your surprise.” Evalle muttered the warning on her second hike past the back side of Grady Hospital in downtown Atlanta, where heat hovered in the eighties at close to nine at night. What she wouldn’t give to use her power and stir a breath of wind, something to blow away the stench of urine oozing through the humid air in this spot.
Where was that ornery Nightstalker?
The temperature dropped ten degrees to a comfortable chill.
“What happens in one minute, E-valle? Not like you gonna leave ’till we talk.” Grady’s deep Southern voice brushed past her ear like charred wood scraped against rough concrete.
Evalle stopped on the sidewalk running along Pratt Street. She didn’t turn around. A waste of time, since no one stood behind her. “I’m in a hurry, Grady.”
The translucent form of a thin male took shape, wavering in front of her. The coffee-colored skin on his jaw was covered with gray whiskers that stopped just below a slash of cheekbone. His creased nose had failed to dodge a fist or two that had left their marks. Bony elbows interrupted the long arms sticking out from his red-and-black plaid short-sleeved shirt.
The air continued to cool, a welcome change.
From what Grady had told her, he looked the same way now he had the day he’d died homeless on the streets at age sixty-eight, a decade and a half ago.
When his head came into focus, sharp eyes with two chips of coal for pupils glowered at her before his gaze dropped to the denim shoulder bag hanging against her hip. “What surprise?”
“Not until we have a deal and shake.” Negotiating with Grady was like dealing with Charon on the River Styx. If you didn’t set the price before you got on the boat and refuse to pay until he ferried you safely to the other side, he’d dump you in the river and leave you to drown.
Grady lifted his stubborn chin. He was a wily old bastard who gave up nothing for free. He, like all Nightstalkers, was the metaphysical remains of the less fortunate who’d died on the street. They would do anything for a craving. Sometimes it was drugs or food, but usually it was alcohol, and in Grady’s case, there was only one thing he wanted.
Mad Dog 20/20.
All a Nightstalker needed was one quick handshake with any powerful being—and they could take human form for ten minutes.
“Whatya got?” He eyed her bag.
“Clock’s ticking.”
“I’m listenin’.”
“I need information on two Cresyls and a Birrn demon that
were running around town this weekend. Got anything on them?”
“Maybe.”
“I can’t play this game right now, Grady. My butt’s in a sling.”
“With who?”
“Everybody if I don’t find out who sent the demons.”
“Who’d you piss off this time?”
“I didn’t do anything.” Other than being born an Alterant. “But a demon mauled a human. The body’s in the morgue and word is going to be out by tomorrow morning, if it takes even that long. If I don’t come up with evidence to prove the demon mauled that human, everyone’s first default will be that an Alterant did it. Not a good thing for me. You got anything on the attack or not?”
“Why would a Cresyl attack a human and not eat the body?”
She wanted to choke him and his game of twenty questions. But then, she hadn’t mentioned that it was the Cresyl who’d killed the human. Grady definitely had information. “That’s what I’m trying to find out. It’s tied to the Birrn, I think.”
“That don’t make sense.” Wrinkles on Grady’s face piled together in a frown. “Cresyls belong to a German practicing dark arts and the Birrn to Nigerian black majik. What makes you think they’re connected?”
He probably knew why and was testing to see how much information she had. “I’ll share if you do. Got information or not?”
“Maybe.”
He could be the most obstinate of ghouls, but he was one of the better preternatural informants because of that annoying trait. Hoping to nudge him along, she bluffed, “If you can’t help me, just say so.”
“Didn’t say that, but I still don’t see why you’re in a jam, ’less you got mouthy with somebody. That I’d understand.”
I will not let you bait me. But Grady had that look, the one that said he wouldn’t budge until he got his questions satisfied. “Things have gotten a little more difficult for me than normal over the past eight weeks since those nine Beladors were killed in North Carolina.”
Blood Trinity Page 12
