Caught Forever Between (2 page)

Her hands curled into fists. “Maybe so. But it’ll even things out,” she said, voice strained. “Blood for blood.”

“Nothing
ever
evens out spilled blood, child,” Gabrielle said, weariness edging her voice. “But . . . so be it. Come to the bayou tomorrow night, after sunset. Bring your tattoo gun and your inks. Tell
mon filleul —
my godson — what it is you want. If he lets you set your gun to work on his skin, then all you’ll need do is give him a name.”

Glass crunched under the
mambo
’s sandals as she walked to the front door. She opened it, tinkling the bell. Glancing over her shoulder, she said, “Then you will get your justice, child.” Neon light from the street flickered across the dark planes of her face, creating a mask of ever-shifting colors. “As cold and brutal as you could ever want.”

“Wait,” Cass called as the
mambo
started out the door. “I don’t know how to find you. I need directions.”

Gabrielle nodded toward the counter. “You already got ’em.” Then she was gone.

Cass looked down at the counter. There, glowing on the polished wood surface, was a map — drawn by the
mambo
as she’d talked to Cass. She stared at it, heart pounding, sweat trickling between her breasts and along her ribs. Thunder rumbled and drumrolled. Heat lightning flashed white across the horizon.

Going to the back room, Cass filled a bucket with hot water and cleanser. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the sink — long auburn hair streaked with purple to match her dark violet eyes; eyes blue-smudged from lack of sleep instead of outlined with the usual black kohl; pale face, rose-tinted lips — a ghost startled by her own unexpected reflection.

Struggling for air, Cass looked down. Her fingers clutched the cold porcelain edge of the sink. Head bowed, face shielded by her hair, she refused to look up again. Didn’t want to see Alex fading from her eyes.

Cass pushed away from the sink and gave the mirror her back. After tying up her sweat-dampened hair, she fetched a broom, dustpan, and a roll of trash bags. She had a night’s hard work ahead of her.

Fixing her gaze once again on the dried blood, Cass memorized every streak and spatter, needling its design like a tattoo onto her heart. “Whoever Madame LaRue’s godson is,” she whispered, “he’ll never be cold enough or brutal enough for me.”

An evening breeze blew in from the street, bringing the smell of distant rain and the river’s odor of fish, mud, and decay. As Cass set to sweeping, an image gleaned from Helena’s heart right after Alex’s shooting burned in her mind: a tiger rearing up on muscular hind legs, claws slashing, fangs bared in a snarl, guarding a sleeping cub behind it. A figure — just a black silhouette, really — went down beneath those claws. But Cass recognized her Michelangelo bleeding on the floor.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

C
ass
stopped and switched off her scooter when she reached the end of the dirt trail. Lifting her shades, she glanced at the map she’d copied from the counter. The scooter’s motor clicked as it cooled, blending with the insect hum and buzz — the only sounds she heard. The air was thick with the smells of green things and wet tree roots and sun-heated swamp water.

She wiped sweat from her forehead as she looked up at the Spanish-moss-draped cypress. Beyond the dark trunks, the sunset blazed like a forest fire, searing the sky purple, orange, and red.

Sliding off the seat, Cass stood beside her scooter, squinting into the sunset-hazed darkness beyond the trees. She thought she saw a building of some kind ahead — maybe a swamp shack. Something tickled the back of her bug-spray-guarded knee, and Cass slapped the spot without looking, her gaze still locked on the barely discernible path through the cypress and along the edge of the swamp.

She shrugged her knapsack higher onto her shoulder, its weight pressing her sweat-damp velvet-and-mesh dress against her skin. Perspiration trickled between her shoulder blades, and her heart pounded so hard her body trembled with each beat. The humidity and heat sucked at each shallow breath as she drew it in.

Something rustled in the tall grass beside the swamp. Cass’s heart ratcheted up to warp speed. She stared, frozen, at the heat-yellowed sawgrass. ’Gator! her mind babbled. But nothing moved. Nothing she could
see,
anyway.

Drawing in a deep breath, she stepped onto the path. Dirt crunched beneath her Docs. Dropping her shades back over her eyes, she walked in between the trees and into the sun-gilded mosquito-laden darkness. The insect buzz and chirping, croaking frog song stopped abruptly, abandoning her to a thick, watchful silence.

With each grass-muffled step she took, Cass became more certain she
was
being watched. The hair on the back of her neck prickled, and her muscles tensed. She kept her gaze straight ahead and her pace even. She fought the urge to run, sensing that if she did, whatever was out there would chase her. And catch her.

After five long minutes, the back of a weatherworn shack on flood stilts appeared out of the twilight. Cass stopped several yards short of it. She removed her shades, then tucked them into a side pocket of the knapsack. A motorcycle was parked beside the towering oaks behind the shack — a Harley, Cass judged.

Off to one side was a cistern to catch rainwater, and on the other side was an outhouse as weathered as the shack. As Cass walked along the right side, she passed a tree stump holding an ax. She paused for a moment as unwanted slasher-film images popped into her mind; then, shaking her head, she circled around to the front of the shack. A porch with a dock extended to the swamp and the
pirogue
tied to it. A short flight of steps in front led to the porch.

“Hello?” Cass called, her voice loud and uncertain in the silence. “Madame LaRue?”

A single cricket chirruped, then fell silent.

“
Oui,
girl,” said the
mambo
’s familiar voice. “Over here.”

Breathing a sigh of relief, Cass glanced in the direction of the
mambo
’s voice. An engine chugged to life, filling the air with a mechanical hum. On the right side of the porch, Gabrielle LaRue straightened up from the generator she’d started. A blue scarf matching the royal blue dress she wore, covered her curls.

“I be right wit’ you,” the
mambo
said. Giving the generator one last glance, she descended the steps to join Cass. She looked Cass over from head to toe, then shook her head. “Ain’t you a sight in your red dress, girl? Mmm-mmm.” She shook her head again. “Nothing subtle about you, Cassandra Danzinger. You might as well be wearing your Michelangelo’s blood.”

Heat rushed to Cass’s cheeks, and she was grateful for the deepening dusk. “No, I . . . that is. . . . ” She lapsed into silence, wondering if Gabrielle was right.
Had
she chosen red to symbolize the thing she sought — to win her cause with the
mambo
’s godson?

Gabrielle glanced past Cass. “Introduce yourself, boy,” she said.

Cass whirled, the knapsack flying off her shoulder and thudding hard onto the grass-matted ground. In the lingering shadows cast by the cypress and oak trees, the
mambo
’s godson stood no more than a handspan away from her.

“Evenin’,
m’selle.
I be Devlin Daniels,” he said, his voice low, the rhythm of his words Cajun-spiced.

“Uh . . . evening,” Cass managed.

She quickly looked him over, her artist’s eye noting details. He appeared to be in his mid- to- late twenties, taller than Cass’s five-two by eight or nine inches, his body lean, muscular, and broad-shouldered. Tangled black hair fell just past his shoulders and swept over the left side of his face, almost hiding the left eye. He was bare-chested and barefoot, his black jeans torn and weathered almost gray. A
vévé
-etched
ouanga
bag on a leather thong hung around his neck, and through the blackness of his hair, she caught a flash of silver. Two sets of scars — thick and white with age — crisscrossed his chest.

His ash-gray eyes gleamed, capturing and reflecting the dying sunset behind her. Cass’s breath caught in her throat. Lambent eyes. Hungry and watchful — like something wild waiting in the brush, all glowing eyes and sharp teeth.

“Somethin’ wrong?” Devlin asked, leaning closer.

Cass shook her head, not wanting him to come nearer. But he did anyway, closing the short distance between them. The hair on the nape of her neck rose and her hands knotted. Survival instincts
insisted
she not run. She caught his scent, musky and wild and clean.

He slowly circled her several times, his shining gaze sweeping over her, nostrils flaring. She turned with him, heart pounding, refusing to give him her back again.

Was this a test? Or had he just been in the swamp too long? Maybe both?

He wasn’t what she’d expected. From what the
mambo
had said, Cass had half believed she’d have to sweet-talk the Devil himself to get her justice. But no horns sprouted from Devlin Daniels’s forehead, no cloven hooves, just dirty bare feet. She hadn’t expected him to be white, either. But why
wouldn’t
Gabrielle LaRue have a Caucasian godson? Louisiana was full to brimming with mingled cultures and bloodlines — one of the things Cass liked about the area.

Devlin finally stopped in front of her. Cass met his gaze. He held out her knapsack. She took it from him, noting his long fingers with their thick, curved nails.

“Boy,” the
mambo
said from behind her, voice stern. “Go on inside with yourself and put on a shirt. Mind your manners.”

Devlin stared at Cass through his hair for another long moment before loping away with an irritated snort. Turning, Cass watched him leap up the porch steps. The
mambo
’s godson moved with a quick, fluid, almost animal grace. Opening the screen door, he slipped into the shack.

A heartbeat later, the chirping-crrriicking-croaking-humming song of the insects and frogs lifted again into the sultry evening air.
They know the danger is past,
Cass thought, her mind still filled with the image of Devlin’s gleaming eyes watching her from behind the cover of his hair.

“That boy never did like being told what to do,” the
mambo
said. “But at least he knows
when
to pay heed.”

Cass saw amusement in Gabrielle’s eyes. “Which is more than you can say for most male creatures, ain’t it so,
petite
?”

Cass nodded, wondering why the
mambo
had said
male creatures
instead of
men.
Slinging the knapsack onto one shoulder, she glanced up at the shack. It remained dark.

“What if I can’t convince him?” she asked, hating how uncertain her voice sounded, how small. “What if he won’t listen?”

“Oh, he’ll listen, Cassandra, he’ll listen good ’n close.” The
mambo
started toward the steps. “But it’s up to you to make him see the fired bullets and the spilled blood. Up to you to make
my
Devlin hunger to right things for
your
Michelangelo.”

Cass followed Gabrielle. “And if I can’t? What then?”

The
mambo
glanced back at her, her eyes night-swallowed, expression cryptic. “Then whatever you do, don’t run from him. Hear me? Don’t run.”

Cass halted. She stared at the
mambo,
hoping she hadn’t heard right.

“There always be a price,” Gabrielle said, drawing herself up. “Justice ain’t never been free, girl.” Power as dark and deadly as the bayou emanated from the
mambo.
Her face was cold and regal, and Cass truly saw her for what she was, a voodoo priestess steeped in magic, able to summon shambling life or shape a cold and brutal death.

Cass’s gaze drifted back up to the lightless shack. She shivered, chilled, her fingers suddenly numb.
Make Alex live for the
mambo
’s godson. You do that and maybe he’ll open his eyes again.

Sucking in a deep breath of moist air, Cass said, “Devlin, what is he?” The steadiness of her voice surprised her.

“He be the last of the
coeur sauvage,
the wild heart of the bayou — the
loup garou.
” Swiveling around to face the shack, Gabrielle placed her hands on her hips, and said in a low voice, “Turn on some lights, boy. We ain’t got your eyes.”

Pale yellow light suddenly spilled from the shack’s windows and door. Cass stared at the
mambo,
wishing she could believe she hadn’t heard right, but Gabrielle hadn’t mumbled. She’d been quite clear.
Loup garou.
Werewolf.

“Go on up with yourself, child,” the
mambo
said, waving a hand at the steps. Her bracelets jingled.

“
Werewolf?
” Cass said, her voice strained.

Gabrielle chuckled. “Don’t be calling Devlin a
were
wolf. That boy, he a
wolf,
pure and simple.”

Cass’s gaze flicked back up to the shack. A shadow crossed behind the window, blotting out the light for a moment, then was gone. She swallowed hard, thinking of light-filled eyes and black hair, of justice in the form of claws, black and thick, and gleaming white fangs. In that moment, she realized she believed Gabrielle.
Why the hell not?
she thought.
If there can be vampires in the French Quarter, why not werewolves in the bayou?