Jeanne C. Stein - Retribution

by Jeanne C. Stein

  Holy water? I recall it was one of the items Sophie requested. The crone’s house must double as a witch’s one-stop convenience store.

  The only things left in the bag are a dozen black beeswax candles. Sophie places one at each of the pentagram’s five points and the rest she arranges in a circle around Culebra’s cot.

  I watch her, fascinated by how calm and deliberate her movements are. She is in a room with two vampires who have sworn to kill her if she doesn’t perform the miracle of breaking Burke’s spell.

  She exhibits no fear, no concern. Her features are composed, serene. Deveraux, too, seems to have removed himself from her consciousness.

  She might be back in the garden with the crone.

  I glance at Frey, the steady rise and fall of his chest the only indication that life exists in that ravaged body.

  Can we trust Sophie? The question Williams asked, and Frey. The question I keep avoiding.

  The answer is as ominous as a death knell.

  We have to trust her. There’s no one else.

  CHAPTER 47

  SOPHIE STEPS BACK, HER GAZE SWEEPING THE room, the cot, the objects placed in front of her on the floor. She turns. “You three had better wait outside.”the floor. She turns. “You three had better wait outside: ‘

  Williams and I answer as one. “No way.”

  Only Sandra moves to the door. “I’ll be in the bar. I’ve reopened it and we have customers.”

  She hurries out, not looking back, obviously relieved to be allowed to go. She must have regretted agreeing to come here every day since Culebra came back from his “vacation.”

  Sophie frowns at Williams and me. “If you stay,” she cautions, “you must not interfere. No matter what happens. Do not approach me or Culebra. I won’t be responsible for what happens if you do. Understood?”

  Williams and I both nod that we do. Williams’ thoughts are concealed beneath a black layer of hatred toward both Burke and her sister. I suspect we’ll be watching for different things. If I see further harm coming to Culebra, I’ll interfere any way I can. He’ll be watching for any indication that Sophie is betraying us to her sister. Either way, agreeing is meaningless.

  Sophie must suspect our acceptance of her terms is a hollow gesture; still, she turns away from us and steps toward the cot.

  She makes no other move that I can detect, and yet all the candles spontaneously light, the flames leaping toward the ceiling like Roman candles before retreating to burn in a steady glow.

  The sight makes the hair stir on the back of my neck.

  She lays a hand on Culebra’s chest and begins to chant. She picks up the vial and dribbles a little of the holy water into Culebra’s mouth. It bubbles up like peroxide on an open wound. A thin wisp of smoke rises. Culebra gasps and my hands curl into fists. I take a step toward him.

  Sophie turns to me, her eyes clouded again. “Don’t.”

  One word, spoken in a voice that resonates to the depths of hell. It freezes me to the spot.

  Like her sister before her, Sophie has the power to immobilize.

  Why didn’t I see that coming? Why didn’t she use it on Williams when he attacked her?

  She watches me a moment, turns away when she’s sure I can’t break free. She returns to Culebra.

  The chanting continues. I strain to break the bonds holding me, but it’s no use. Williams. Can you move?

  His voice comes back, rough, angry. No.

  Shit.

  Then the rumble begins. Like distant thunder. For a moment I’m conscious only of the sound until, suddenly, darkness descends as if from a fast-moving storm. The room is plunged into night. The flickering candles cast grotesque shadows on the walls. Sophie’s shape distorts, her face turns ghostly, indistinct against the gloom. Only her voice is the same, strong, unwavering.

  My skin crawls.

  The room begins to shake. Gusts of cold air swirl around us, stinging my face like the gale of an arctic storm. The candles sway in the violent blasts of air. My guts heave. I feel as if I’m on the deck of a bucking ship, helpless in the face of a raging storm.

  Sophie’s voice carries over all. Only the tempo and volume increase. I don’t understand the words. All that I see are her eyes—bright, fever-lit, consumed by an inner fire. It’s frightening and compelling and I can’t look away.

  Sophie pauses in her incantations, pours another drop of holy water on Culebra’s tongue. This time, he groans, his back arches as if pulling against invisible bonds.

  He’s in pain. I struggle to break free of Sophie’s hold. I can’t. Did I make a mistake bringing her?

  What choice did I have?

  Sophie continues the chant. The wind increases, whipping her hair around her face. A small cut appears on her cheek, followed by another and another until her face is streaming with blood. It drips onto her clothes, onto Culebra, a crimson stain that spreads until they’re both covered with it.

  Still, she persists. Her voice carries with it power and energy. Yet the opposition she’s fighting is powerful, too. I’m watching a clash of titans. Two mighty forces in a battle of wills.

  The howling wind shrieks, filling my head until I think my eardrums will burst. Head and heart pound with the pressure. I want to press my palms against my ears but my arms refuse to move.

  The charm around my neck gives the first warning. A fiery blast of white-hot heat. I can’t protect myself from it. All I can do is cry out.

  Suddenly, there is another sound. A voice. Shrill, furious.

  “You are my sister,” Belinda Burke’s scream rattles the walls and shakes the floor beneath our feet. “If you break this spell, you break the bond.”

  Her image floats in the air above Culebra’s cot. Not the image of Simone Tremaine or the younger Burke Frey and I battled months ago. This is the true image. An old woman, face contorted in anger, body stooped and bent. Her eyes burn red and focus with mad intensity on her sister.

  “Stop. Stop now. You can’t win.”

  But Sophie doesn’t stop. The chanting continues. Tears stream down her face, mixing with the blood. She picks up the vial and flings it into the apparition.

  Hell breaks loose.

  CHAPTER 48

  THUNDER IS IN THE ROOM WITH US. MORE THAN sound. It takes shape, reverberates off the walls, beats at our ears, shakes the ground. Hell rides with it, the face of the witch hovering, waiting to draw us down into the darkness. I’m so afraid, my teeth grind together, my flesh puckers and draws tight. My hands rise in an instinctive reflex to shield my face. The spell that bound me to the spot must be broken, but it doesn’t matter. I couldn’t run if I wanted to. It’s all I can do to keep my balance on a floor rearing and rolling beneath my feet.

  Frey’s chair skitters against the wall. He’s flung out of it. The chair breaks apart as if made of balsa wood.

  Frey doesn’t awaken.

  He’s lucky.

  I glance at Williams. He’s been pushed against a table at the back of the room. I can’t tell if he’s broken free. His thoughts are no longer on his hatred, they center now on his fear. His eyes are on Burke.

  She reaches out a skeletal hand to touch Sophie. “Sister.”

  One word.

  But Sophie doesn’t waiver. Her voice rises like the perfume of incense—thick, pervasive, somehow comforting. Her hand is again on Culebra’s chest. Shielding him. She is not looking at Burke; her eyes are closed.

  Burke shrieks and holds out both arms. She scoops them as if to draw Sophie up.

  I can’t let that happen. I look to Williams for help.

  His eyes meet mine, but he refuses to move. He won’t help. These are your friends, his expression says, not mine.

  I move toward Sophie alone.

  Burke turns burning eyes on me, full of fire and rage. She snarls and her right hand becomes a sword. The force of her fury is directed at me. She lashes out with the sword, breathes smoke and flame, blinding me.

  I shield my face with my hands,
feel the tip of the sword slash both forearms. Pain runs the length of my arms. The charm blazes inside my blouse, the smell of burnt flesh, my own, fills my nostrils. The floor beneath me is buckling, caving downward.

  Still, Sophie’s voice is there. She does not stop.

  But something changes.

  In the instant that Burke turns her attention to me, the timbre of Sophie’s voice swells, grows more powerful. She raises her eyes and arms, and in her hands she holds the goblet. She holds it like a supplication, an offering. She draws her own power inward, summoning the force of the elements whipping around us.

  Burke senses the shift. She turns her face away from me, howling.

  The thunder no longer answers.

  In its place, deathly quiet.

  Burke realizes her mistake. I was a decoy.

  Sophie’s voice drops to a whisper. The goblet trembles in her hand.

  Burke blinks, opens her mouth. “No.”

  Her face contorts. Her body shrinks into itself. She holds up her hands. “Don’t.”

  But Sophie raises the goblet higher.

  Burke releases a sigh, a death rattle. An acknowledgment.

  She has been tricked. She turns dead eyes on me.

  Then she is drawn into the goblet.

  Sophie holds it against her chest, shielding it.

  It’s then I know.

  Sophie’s eyes find mine. The message she sends is both admission and appeal.

  I can’t let it go. Too much has happened. Too many deaths.

  I reach for the goblet.

  She could fight me. She could render me immobile with a thought.

  Her breath catches. Her eyes fill. Still, she refuses to move. Gently, softly, I place my fingers over hers. One by one, I remove them from the goblet until her hand falls away.

  The goblet falls to the floor.

  With a burst of light, it shatters, sending particles as fine as sand through the air.

  The only sound now is the ghostly echo of Burke’s scream.

  CHAPTER 49

  THE SILENCE IS MORE DEAFENING THAN THE thunder.

  The candles sputter and extinguish as one.

  The charm grows instantly cold.

  When I look around, I see for the first time that not only Frey’s chair but every bit of furniture in the room has been reduced to shards of broken wood. It’s a wonder Williams and I weren’t staked by flying debris.

  Suddenly, Culebra sits up on the cot. He looks around, his eyes full of questions.

  Then he frowns and looks at me.

  “What in the hell have you done to my bar?”

  CHAPTER 50

  IT TAKES A MOMENT TO REGISTER—CULEBRA SITTING up, speaking.

  I don’t pay attention to what he said. I’m at his side in two seconds, searching his face for reassurance that he’s all right and back with us.

  He returns my stare with a bewildered frown. “What’s going on?”

  I touch his cheek. It’s warm, color flooding up from his neck at whatever emotion he reads on my face.

  “Do you remember?”

  A flash in the depths of his eyes. It comes flooding back—a shared memory. The helplessness, the spell, dangling on the edge of death.

  He remembers.

  A sound from the corner.

  Frey.

  I’d almost forgotten Frey.

  I turn around.

  In the pile of rubble that was a chair, Frey struggles to his feet. When he straightens, a rush of relief loosens another knot in my stomach.

  His hair and face are morphing back to normal. The white streaks fade, the deep claw marks fill in. He’s shaking his head as if to clear it, but I can tell by the way he’s moving that he hasn’t suffered any permanent physical damage. He meets my eyes and smiles, and I know he’s going to be fine.

  Two down.

  Williams hasn’t moved from his place against the back wall. He’s watching me, too, trying to figure out if I know the truth—that we were paralyzed by our own fear. It isn’t until this moment that I understand Burke’s power drew strength from that fear. She cast the spell, but it was our own weakness that forged the chains that bound us. It makes me ashamed. If I had stopped Burke in the restaurant, many lives would have been saved.

  I turn away from him. I have my own guilt to deal with. Let him come to the realization on his own.

  Now there’s only Sophie.

  She’s slumped on the floor at the foot of Culebra’s cot. Her face is drained of color, of emotion, a blank slate from which two dark eyes stare dully at nothing. She looks so young, so fragile. It would be easy to forget that there is a powerful witch concealed in that childlike body.

  A witch who just allowed her sister to what—?

  I realize that I don’t know what happened to Burke. And I need to.

  I kneel down beside her.

  She raises her eyes to meet mine. Immense sorrow and deep regret are reflected there.

  “Where is she?” I ask.

  “Gone.”

  “What does that mean?”

  For Christ’s sake, Deveraux snarls. Leave her alone, will you?

  I ignore him. Take one of Sophie’s hands in both of my own. It’s cold, colder than mine, and it raises gooseflesh on my arms. “Is she dead?”

  “Is that what you want?”

  Yes. “I want to know my friends are safe.”

  “They are.”

  “Then she’s dead?”

  This time, I see the shift in Sophie’s eyes. Resolve replaces the dull ache of loss. “She can’t hurt anyone.”

  It’s not the answer I wanted to hear. “She’s still alive.”

  That gets a reaction from Williams. Moving faster than I can stop him, he yanks Sophie to her feet. He looses the vampire with a snarl. “Where is she?”

  This time I recover quickly enough to meet his beast with my own before he can do any real harm. With one hand, I grab the back of his neck and fling him away. Don’t touch her.

  He hits the wall, stumbles, loses his footing. He’s back on his feet in an instant, hands twisted like claws, snarling. But when he looks at me, instead of attacking, he stops. For the first time since I’ve known him, Williams hesitates. He isn’t flouting his contempt or screaming at me. His fists open, his body loses its rigidity, his vampire face disappears. He meets my eyes, a terrible calmness replacing the fury. The words he hurls at me are filled with hate. “The witch lives. You can’t protect them. Both will pay.”

  Before I can respond, he turns and leaves through the door that leads to the bar.

  A different chill crawls down my back. Williams’ threat hangs in the air. It isn’t finished.

  I make sure the beast is contained before turning back to Sophie. She shrinks back from me anyway. “I’m sorry if he hurt you.” I keep my voice low. “We both have concerns about Burke. We need to know what happened.”

  She peers into my face. I don’t know what she sees. I don’t know what she’s looking for. I appeal to Deveraux. What’s wrong?

  He hesitates a heartbeat before answering. I told her who you are, he says.

  I don’t know what that means.

  She recognizes you now. She knows what you are. The chosen. The one.

  I’m too shocked to do more than gape at her. What did she recognize? What did I do?

  Deveraux is chuckling. You beat down that old-soul vampire like a dog. You met Burke head-on. You hide your power well. I wouldn’t have suspected it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. You don’t seem the type, really. Too—ordinary, I guess.

  I don’t know whether that’s a compliment or an insult. It’s too ridiculous. I put steel in my voice. Listen, in a minute Culebra is going to start asking questions. He’s the one Burke almost killed. You’re going to have to get Sophie to talk to us. He’s going to be as pissed as Williams.

  He’s already as pissed as Williams.

  Culebra’s voice at my elbow makes me jump. I’d forgotten he could get into my head
as easily as Williams. Since Williams didn’t seem to be able to hear Deveraux, I assumed Culebra wouldn’t hear him, either.

  I was wrong.

  Culebra stands beside me, eyeing Sophie. What’s going on? I thought she was a witch.

  You want to tell him, I ask Deveraux, or should I?

  CHAPTER 51

  “I’LL ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS.” SOPHIE FINALLY inserts herself into the conversation. Color is returning to her face.

  Culebra extends a hand and helps her to her feet. I’m amazed at how quickly he’s recovered. For someone who’s been in a magic-induced coma for the last three days, he’s showing remarkably few ill effects.

  He puts a hand on the small of Sophie’s back and steers her gently toward the door. “Let’s go to the bar,” he says. “I could use some food.”

  Frey and I follow. I shut the door behind us, casting one last look at the debris. I hope the rest of the bar fared better than this.

  Sandra looks up when we appear in the doorway. She rushes to Culebra and Frey and hugs first one, then the other. I suspect her relief is as much the hope that she can go home now as it is her happiness to see them back among the living.

  But looking around the bar, at the dozen or so assorted vamps and human hosts sharing drinks and either making or concluding their dining arrangements, it strikes me that no one here has a clue about what went on in that back room. We’re just four more customers and the glances our way reflect only curiosity. There isn’t anything to indicate we were just involved in a fight that might have killed us all. Even the blood that stained the clothing of Sophie and Culebra is gone. Dissipated by the magic of a broken spell.

  There’s no sign of Williams, either. Did he leave through the back door? Is he already on his way to San Diego?

  Culebra stops at the bar, murmurs something to the human barkeep and ushers us to a table. When we’re all seated, he leans forward, hands flat on the table. His eyes shine with something that looks a lot like tears, the gruff-ness I’m used to gone completely. He looks from one of us to the other.