Dark Lily: Shadows, Book 4 (17 page)

“That’s sick.”

Emily chortled out a puff of smoke. “Oh, do have a care, dear. Leshad doesn’t exaggerate when he tells you there are countless ways to prolong death. I believe he kept one man alive for, what was it, Leshad, five days?”

“Eight,” Leshad said. Did he sound impatient? Annoyed? Like a tightly sprung trap about to snap? “Can you sense Caleb?”

Emily crushed out her cigarette. “I could a moment ago. He’s moved out of range.” She took hold of Gaby’s calf and squeezed. “I don’t suppose there’s any point in asking you that question?”

Gaby covered a wince with a smile. “My mind’s still cloudy from your tea.”

“Hmm.” Emily looked past her. “Shall I go outside and see what’s what? The rain’s moved on, as evidenced by the moonbeams currently pouring through the windows. I should be able to pinpoint both Caleb and Python visually.”

“The muscle’s of no concern to me,” Leshad told her. “Caleb is. I want him and Stone returned here still breathing.”

“Your wish, my command,” Emily replied.

Gaby waited until she heard the latch click to regard her leg. “Your psychic has exceptional physical strength, Leshad. Her fingers almost went through my skin.”

“I doubt that,” he returned dryly. “However, I’ll grant you she’s deceptively strong.”

“Amenable too,” Gaby noted. “As barracudas go.”

“So very like your grandmother then.” She knew he was prowling in the shadows. Watching, gauging, debating. “I blinded her, you know, years before I mutilated and killed her.”

Gaby clamped down on a swell of revulsion. “Yes, she mentioned that.”

“Did she now? And what state was she in when that happened?”

“I’d say the state you left her in, except I think time in the grave might have contributed to her present appearance. You said you saw her.”

“Once. I’m not a fan of ghosts, unless they can revoke curses.”

“Are you sure Madeleine’s curse was real and not an empty threat?”

“Of course I’m sure. You’re stalling.” A gloved hand whipped out of the darkness. It shackled her arm and spun her around. Gaby felt the hard outline of a mask brush her cheek. “That’s the truth, isn’t it? You’re buying time, hoping your lover will swoop in and rescue you.”

Gaby’s composure faltered, but she would not let him feel her terror. Leshad was touching her, and she still couldn’t put a dent in his wall of will.

She twisted her head just far enough to see the edge of his mask. “Mitchell wanted you to come to Bokur Island. You and CJ Best. People who aren’t on the island know about his plan.” Or would if Ryder told them.

Leshad yanked her closer. So close she should have been able to feel his heart beating against her shoulder. Her own beat faster when she realized she felt nothing at all.

“I know what’s inside your head, Gabrielle.” Even his whisper was shrouded. “You think I’m mad, and sooner or later that madness will destroy me.”

Gaby locked away her fear and loathing. “It’s your belief that counts, not mine. You’re convinced Madeleine’s curse is a threat to you in some large way. Maybe it’ll bring about your death, or it might cause you to lose your wealth and power. It could send you tumbling into a pit of snakes. I don’t know, I don’t care, and I’m not enough of an expert on voodoo to tell you one way or the other whether Madeleine can remove her curse from beyond the grave. But one thing I am sure of. You shouldn’t have killed her until you found out.” She snapped her head around farther. “And you shouldn’t have come to Bokur Island.”

“No?” It startled her that he sounded vaguely amused. He stroked her cheek again. “Tell me, dear heart, what should I have done? Walked into Crucible’s office with my hands up and said, ‘Here I am. You win. Do your damnedest’?”

Gaby caught a faint whiff of sulfur and behind it the smell of kerosene, both well-hidden under the spicy scent of night flowers. She recalled her mental distress signal and let relief ripple through her. Message received, it appeared.

To distract Leshad, she shrugged. “I imagine Crucible’s a decent man. I’d say go for it— Ouch!” He hitched her arm up higher until pain speared from her elbow to her shoulder. “But that would be stupid, so I won’t. I’m curious about Emily. Who she is, how you found her, why she’s helping you.”

“I pay her to help me, as I pay all my employees. Nothing else about her is any of your concern.”

“Why a full moon then?” she asked. “Do you think it gives you some kind of extra power?”

“Not at all. I just like the drama of it.”

“If you enjoy theatrics so much, maybe you should have been an actor.” Gaby realized she’d gone too far when he grabbed her ponytail and snatched her head back.

“You have an irritating mouth, bitch. So did your grandmother. Conversely, I’m told your mother’s mouth was amazing. And her tits were even better. Stupendous, I believe Caleb called them. Downright mesmerizing to a man whose brain resides in his testicles.”

The mask and Leshad’s breath grazed her ear. “I’m immune to such temptations myself, but I might take you as a final insult. Unless you change your attitude and apply yourself to solving my problem. The choice is yours, my dear.” His gloved fingers fondled her earlobe and made her shudder. “Or it will be when Emily and Caleb return with your lover, and Python builds that fire.”

“Screw you.”

His hideous voice dropped to a satiny caress. “I don’t think you’ll want to wait eight agony-filled days to change that response, do you? Human flesh being absurdly vulnerable to molten heat, I don’t think you’ll want to wait even eight minutes.”

As the smell of wood smoke and kerosene collected in the air outside, Gaby drew a subtle veil around the interior of the shack and wondered what it would feel like to become a ghost herself.

Chapter Nineteen

Mitchell detected the fire long before he actually saw it. Smoke from rotten wood, old paint and dead plant matter coalesced under a canopy of dense heat.

When he got within sight of the burning shack, he immediately recognized the man who stood knee deep in the shoreline weeds. Harley Ficket clutched a rusty can of kerosene and a fistful of wooden matches in his trembling hands. He stared for a long moment, then turned and plowed into Mitchell’s chest.

Harley jumped back. His mouth opened and closed like a codfish. “I didn’t mean to do it,” he spluttered. “I promised Fred I wouldn’t. We spit and all. But there I was, down at the still, and this voice started up in my head. It told me to come here with my matches and my can.” Shoulders drooping, he extended his wrists in a forlorn gesture. “You’re gonna arrest me, aren’t you?”

“Might later.” Mitchell sidestepped him to scan the trees. Too much Spanish moss covered too many places for a gunman to hide.

Out of the black, a silenced bullet whizzed past his head. He shoved Harley into the weeds.
Yep, way too many places
, he thought.

“Run,” he ordered the younger man. “Get to town. Tell Fred what you did, what’s going on.”

“I swear, Chief, I didn’t mean to—”

“I know, Harley. Go.”

Fred’s cousin swallowed and took off with jackrabbit agility.

More bullets peppered the air. Mitchell whipped out one of his guns, a GP35, and cocked it. “Where are you, bastard?” he muttered.

His answer came in the next hail of bullets. The shooter shifted position behind a tangle of hanging moss. Not a viable target, not yet, but hired muscle tended to be predictable.

Mitchell traded the bushes for a clump of trees. He kept one eye on the shack, which was seriously starting to burn, and the other on Leshad’s man.

“Come on,” he said. “Pick a side and move.”

The man swung around the tattered moss to his right and squeezed off three shots.

“Gotcha, sucker.” Already on one knee, Mitchell fired four times. He figured he took the guy out with the second shot.

Rather than check for a pulse, he simply took the man’s gun. Leshad’s gorillas were paid to pit their lives against any opponent. Sometimes the gamble paid off, and sometimes it didn’t.
Case in point
, Mitchell reflected.

He focused his mind on the “old friend” he’d mentioned to Fred, the tracking device he’d used to locate Gaby, then shifted his attention to the swamp shack ahead. The building was rapidly being devoured by greedy orange flames.

Gaby was in there with Leshad. And he knew damn well she’d stay in there until the flames consumed both of them.

“Give me something, Celia, Madeleine, Billy.”

When they didn’t, he headed for the rear of the structure, the part that followed the curve of the waterway. Gaby wasn’t sending him anything either. That meant she was either unconscious or otherwise occupied. He went with the second option, because he needed to believe she wasn’t ready to join her ghost friends just yet.

Accustomed now to the sounds of the swamp at night, he picked up on the rustle of undergrowth behind him right away. Whirling into a crouch, he aimed for the center of the quivering bushes.

“Don’t shoot.” Hands raised, CJ Best stepped into a patch of moonlight. Fingers of smoke and low fog twined around his body. “I want to talk to you, to help you. You’re Mitchell, right?”

Mitchell looked past him, checking for further movement in the shadows. “Talk fast, Senator,” he suggested.

“Leshad’s in that shack with Gaby.”

“Know it. Where’s Emily?”

“I knocked her out. I’d have killed her except she’s a woman. I find killing women distasteful.”

“You’re a real Southern gentleman.”

“Hardly. I poisoned the man in the van outside your grandfather’s Bywater mansion. I’d have eliminated the second one as well, except a female jogger did it for me.”

“Lucky you.” Mitchell nodded at the shack. “Where’s Leshad holding Gaby?”

“In the front. I don’t know how far her capabilities extend, but I think she might be trying to affect Leshad’s perception, to cloud his senses so he won’t realize there’s a fire. I applaud her effort, but any screen she erects won’t last long.”

“It won’t have to.” Mitchell sized up the building. Harley had ignited the fire on the south side. As soon as Leshad sensed the danger, he’d cut and run. The question was, would he take Gaby with him or consider her a loss and murder her out of spite?

It wasn’t a difficult question. Leshad was insane and volatile. He’d kill Gaby and find some other way to achieve his goal.

“West wall,” Mitchell decided. He glanced at CJ. “You want to help, get inside and shoot the prick.”

“I’ll try,” CJ said. “But truthfully? I can’t shoot for shit when I’m rattled. And I’m plenty rattled at this moment. I might be able to draw him away from her. Something anyway. FYI, the boat that brought us here is tied up at the old ferry dock. Sign’s still there. I’m not a caring man, Mitchell, but Gaby’s my flesh and blood. That has to count for something in the end, even to a bastard like me.”

Mitchell stuffed the gun of the man who’d shot at him earlier in CJ’s waistband. “Here’s your chance for a little redemption. You helped make Gaby. Now you can help close out this nightmare. Choice is yours.”

“I hate that snot-slick fucker.” His expression grim, CJ glared at the shack. “Do you really believe we can finish it here?”

“Just do your part, Senator, and let me do mine.”

CJ hesitated, then nodded. “On three?”

Mitchell did a fast count, and they separated. A faint aureole outside one of the side windows helped, but he’d already made his decision. Trusting CJ not to turn on him—a fairly hefty gamble, in his opinion—he used the butt end of his gun to shatter the filthy glass.

Heat from the fire blew him back a pace. Thick black smoke all but choked him. He vaulted through the opening, kicked aside burning crates and debris and, bending low, ran for the front of the shack.

Everything crackled, floorboards, walls, broken furniture, rafters, even the dried leaves. He spied a long table, buried his mouth in the crook of his arm and worked his way toward it.

A voice shouted, wood splintered, more glass crashed. Mitchell ignored the sounds and followed the signal from his tracking device.

An ice slick of sweaty terror broke out on his skin. It sizzled when he spotted Gaby twisting and fighting in what had to be Leshad’s grasp. Terror gave way to overwhelming rage, but even with that emotion grinding him down, he admired the knee Gaby brought up between her captor’s legs.

Leshad lost his grip. As he stumbled backward, Mitchell saw CJ creeping through the smoke. Unfortunately, so did Leshad.

A knife appeared in Leshad’s gloved hand. He plunged the blade in and out of CJ’s sternum. CJ’s eyes widened briefly. He staggered forward and landed face down on the floor next to Gaby.

She must have retaliated with her mind, an instinctive and unsustainable response, because Leshad doubled over in pain. Mitchell pulled his other gun.

“Do it,” Gaby shouted. “Do it now.”

Bruised and outnumbered, Leshad melted into the smoke. But he was there, somewhere. Watching. Thinking. Probably not fully believing.

Mitchell could see Gaby well enough and CJ next to her. Steely eyed, he raised the gun in his right hand and shouted, “Compliments of Crucible, Leshad.” And taking aim at Gaby’s chest, he squeezed the trigger.

* * * * *

CJ recognized the bony finger of death that beckoned to him. He knew his blood was spilling onto the filthy floor of the shack. How fitting was that? How poetically just?

He believed Stone would get Gaby out. Might destroy Leshad, but—well, maybe not.

To oppose Leshad was suicide. Why had he done it? Ironically, that wasn’t a question CJ could have answered in thirty years, let alone the thirty seconds left to him on earth.

In his faltering peripheral vision, he regarded Mitchell Stone. His breath, already fluid in his lungs, stopped dead when he realized the weapon in Mitchell’s right hand was pointed at Gaby.

The blast came swiftly, leaving CJ incredulous. He’d given his life for his child. Out of guilt and loathing, yes, but he’d done it nonetheless. And the turncoat fucker had killed her.

Still stunned, CJ slid a dying eye to Gaby. Blood stained her cotton top. And like the fire, it was spreading fast.

“You caused this, Caleb.” An ancient female figure appeared. She had a ravaged face, glistening eye sockets and a body no graveyard ghoul would want.

“You sold what little soul you possessed to a maniac with no soul at all. Now that maniac’s accomplice seeks to connect with your weak mind.” He recognized Madeleine’s horrid features as the apparition floated closer. “She calls herself Emily, but that’s not her real name. Use your mind. Tell her to go to hell. It’s where she belongs. Tell her Gabrielle is dead, and my curse holds strong.”

“Gabrielle is dead,” CJ repeated in an obedient monotone. “Your curse holds strong. Madeleine…”

But in those precious last seconds before death, when his vision and his mind miraculously cleared, it was no longer Madeleine he saw. It was a wooden doll with a ferocious painted face. And a dying black flower in his hand.

* * * * *

The cop in Mitchell took over. Cold, calculating, no emotions conveyed, no expression allowed. Start the game. Finish the game. Do what the situation required.

Jesus, he hated cop logic.

Spinning on his heel, he squeezed six shots from his second gun into the smoke and flames. But the man in the mask was long gone.

“Damn it.” With no time for what-ifs, Mitchell stuffed his weapons, grabbed Gaby’s wrists and hauled her from the floor. “You’re not going to burn, baby.” He kissed her hair. “No way in hell.”

Very little air remained in the room. He was down to smoke and desperation at this point. Ignoring the smear of red on her tank top, Mitchell searched for a way out.

The wall ahead was a barricade of solid, snapping flames. The remnants of the front door took shape behind them. Perfect. Only one exit left.

Braced for intense heat, he went for it. Three strides, one hard kick, and they were out. Still surrounded by the deafening roar of the fire, but no longer in danger of being fried.

“Gaby?” He laid her on a bed of grass and weeds, and fumbled to locate the pulse in her neck. For a moment, panic flooded in and tied his stomach in knots. Then her hand covered his and eased his fingers lower.

“Wrong spot, Mitchell,” she murmured. “You’re a good cop, but a lousy medic.”

The relief that gripped him would have scared the hell out of him under different circumstances. Under these, he simply set his forehead on hers and dragged air into his abused lungs until they felt semi-clear. Then he took her face in his hands and stared into her blurry eyes. “What the fuck were you doing in there?”

“Playing mind games. I seized an opportunity.”

“After you planted a seed.”

“A small one. Seeds take root easily in Harley Ficket’s brain.” Reaching up, she set her mouth on his. “I’m fine, Mitchell, really. Your if-they-take-me plan worked. I think. Hidden vial, small pop, lots of blood, my blood. Totally believable. And we’re both alive.”

“CJ isn’t.” He brushed the hair from her face. “Is Leshad heading for the old ferry dock? Can you see?”

“I see a boat. I can give you a shortcut.”

Drawing her to her feet, he wrapped his fingers around her neck. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m good. Fred’s on his way.” Smiling, she tapped her temples. “See him, feel him, hear him. Go.”

Mitchell dropped his gaze to the just-in-case blood stain they’d rigged to appear on her top, told himself to deal and captured her lips with his own. “If Emily circles back—”

“I’ll handle her,” Gaby said. “But I don’t think she’ll hang around now that Leshad’s plan has fallen apart. Rats run, Mitchell, at the first sign of trouble. Even when they’re psychic.”

One more kiss, and Mitchell left her. The fact that Leshad’s plan had failed didn’t necessarily mean Mitchell’s had succeeded. He hadn’t bargained on Emily. Neither had Gaby. So now they moved to the chase. Them running, him pursuing.

Problem was, Mitchell reflected as he struck out for the river, he wasn’t sure who either of them really were.

* * * * *

The shack collapsed in a shower of crimson sparks.

Gaby’s brain longed to do the same. Between Phoebe’s paralytic drug, Emily’s doctored tea, the creation and maintenance of an illusion and finally, her own
death
projected into as many receptive minds in the area as she could manage, she was done. She didn’t know if she’d hit or missed Emily’s mind, but she knew she hadn’t come close to touching Leshad’s.
Can’t touch a man who’s never been on the island
, she thought as Fred thundered into sight and high-stepped through a patch of brambles. Of course Leshad had sent a ringer. Superstition must have won out in the end. Too bad she hadn’t realized that sooner.

“You’re alive!” Apparently delighted, Fred danced her around. “Mitchell got you away from those people.” He winced at the smoldering shack. “Er, sorry about the fire. Guess Harley didn’t get my message.”

“No, but thankfully, he got mine.” Staring past him into the dark, Gaby reset her internal radar. For Mitchell first and foremost, but also for Emily and her accomplice.

“Who are you?” she said, pushing her mind out into the night. She set a hand over Fred’s mouth to quiet him. “You’re not Leshad.” She’d determined that much. “You were only acting on his behalf. Impersonating him very, very convincingly. You have to be someone he’d trust, someone with a mental wall of iron and enough psychic energy to make me believe.”

Emily’s drug would have aided the ruse, but still.

A foggy letter floated out of its pocket to bob in her mind’s eye. C. As that eye cleared and comprehension dawned, her hand fell away from Fred’s mouth. “Canard, of course. Jubal Canard. Leshad would never come to Bokur Island. Even obsessed and desperate, he wouldn’t come here. We knew that, all of us, and we—I—still believed. You’re good, Jubal. Even setting aside the effects of Emily’s drugged tea, you are scarily good.”