Nightwind (38 page)

in the signatures on the last few documents that could be none other’s than Syntian’s handwriting.

“Do you realize how ludicrous this sounds, Mama?” Lauren asked. “How bizarre?”

Maxine nodded. “To anyone else, yes, it would. But you’re not just anyone else, are you, Lauren?” She

leaned forward. “Haven’t you felt the Calling? The pull that tells you you aren’t like everyone else?” At

her daughter’s perplexed look, Maxine jabbed her finger onto the tabletop to make her point.

“Haven’t there been times when you knew, you
knew
something was going to happen before it did? Or a

moment when you knew that if you but tried, you could change what was going to be? You may not have

acted upon that knowledge, but nevertheless you felt you could have done something if you’d just had the

courage to try. And haven’t there been times when you’ve looked at a person and known beyond a

shadow of a doubt that that person was evil or that he or she could do things no one else could? Have

you ever tried to deflect that evil or stop those people from doing something by just thinking of doing it?”

“Everyone has intuition, Mama,” Lauren explained away the feelings she had had since she could

remember.

“It goes deeper than intuition, Lauren. These are things granted to the women of our family by our

connection to Syntian. He gave us these abilities.’’

Lauren looked down at the table. “Even if everything you say is true,” she looked up and fused her gaze

with her mother’s, “even if Syntian is...is...” She couldn’t say it.

“Not of this world?” her mother finished for her.

The younger woman’s forehead crinkled with befuddlement. “How can he not be?” She shook her head

in negation of the possibility of such a thing.

“None of this is important,” Maxine stated. “Whether he is human or not is of no matter. The question is:

Do you want him back or will you allow Angeline Hellstrom to win?”

Lauren opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. She lowered her head into her hands and

started to cry, heart-rending sobs which shook her entire body.

For once in her life, Maxine Fowler took pity on a fellow human being and got up from the table and

went to take her daughter in her arms. She laid her head on Lauren’s and rocked the girl, shushing her

wracking sobs with soft words of encouragement.

“We can get him back for you, Lauren,” Maxine assured her. “Everything we need to do is written down

in the book.” She smoothed her daughter’s hair. “I can gather what we need and we can perform the

ceremony right here in this house.” She lifted her head and gazed about her. “There is no better place

than where Syntian, himself, has dwelled.”

Maxine knew there had to have been a room where he had performed magic of his own before Lauren

had come to live with him. She was almost positive it no longer existed for he would not have wanted his

wife to know what he was until he could no longer hide it from her.

“If he’s with her,” Lauren sobbed, craning her head back so she could look up at her mother, “why

hasn’t he tried to let me know he’s all right?”

Maxine’s face hardened. “She would have seen to that, Lauren. If I know her, and believe me I do, she

would have had a place already prepared before she summoned him the last time, a place from which he

couldn’t escape. She would have taken all the correct precautions to keep him from being able to leave

once he was within.”

A hitching breath shook Lauren before she could speak. “What kind of place?”

“A holding place, a cell,” Maxine answered. “A cage made of iron that has been strengthened with

incantations to keep him in. That would be the only kind of internment that would make it impossible for

him to get to her, too.”

Lauren’s face showed her confusion.

“Who do you think raped Inez and Karla, Anna Lauren?” her mother asked with characteristic sarcasm.

“Or frightened Louvenia Yelverton so badly she had to be committed to an insane asylum? Those women

tormented you, didn’t they? They caused you hurt and embarrassment and he would have gone after

them to punish them, to keep them from doing it again.”

Fear and shock flooded through Lauren. “No,” she denied. “He wouldn’t have done that. He couldn’t

have!”

“Oh, yes, he could,” Maxine told her. “You just think about it a minute and I’ll lay you odds you can

come up with other people who’ve been hurt or who’ve had sudden changes of heart since Syntian has

come into your life.”

Beth Janacek’s face flashed across Lauren’s mind, as did the face of the teenage girl who had almost ran

her down on the street. Agnes and Anna Black. Thad and Nina Atherton. Henrietta Malone.

Maxine saw the wheels of realization turning in her daughter’s mind. “He’s been protecting you, Lauren.

That’s all. Given his nature, those who hurt you the most were simply eliminated. Those he could control,

he just planted a seed in their minds and let it grow. Suddenly, everything is right in your world.”

“Beth,” she whispered. She closed her eyes. “He killed Beth.” The face of the teenager slipped like

sewage across Lauren’s mind. “And that young girl.” Her hand came up to her mouth as though she

could silence the thoughts inside her tormented being.

“And he would tear Angeline Hellstrom apart if he could get to her, I can tell you that,” her mother

vowed. “She’s keeping him from you and by now, I would imagine he’s beyond feeling any kind of

human restraint and has reverted to the beast he was before our first ancestor called him from the Pit.

Angeline knows if she should slip up and he should ever get free, there would be nothing left of her but

pulpy ooze.” Her lips tightened. “And it couldn’t happen to a nicer person!”

There had been too much, Lauren thought, too much information being fed to her. The circuits of her

mind were beginning to shut down. She felt the overload coming, the glitch in the system that would make

that system crash. Already she could feel the program that was her consciousness starting to spool.

Flashes of faces, facts, voices were tumbling past her mind’s eye in a blur. Soon the screen would go

blank and there would be no way to ever store data again.

“Lauren?”

She pulled out of her mother’s arms and got out of her chair on the opposite side, away from the hand

her mother had reached out to soothe her.

“Honey, everything’s going to be all right. We can get him back for you. I will
not
let Angeline win

again!”

Lauren stared out the bay window, her gaze sweeping over the lush gardens that had seemed to spring

up almost overnight after he had brought her to this house. She took in the fishpond, the gazebo, the

brick patio she had always envisioned having. Her eyes moved past the exact Adirondack outdoor

furniture she had dreamed of owning. Her inner gaze saw the furniture, the linens, the curtains, the

dishware, the appliances, the color of the carpeting throughout the house: All of it just what she had

wanted and had been shocked to find upon entering the house for the first time.

“He knew just what would please me,” she mumbled as she put a trembling hand on the bay window

that had been in her notebook of dreams, as had the white tile table at which she had been sitting. She

smiled at the birdhouses along the back perimeter of the yard. “Down to the very shade of gray I

wanted.”

“What?” Maxine asked, pushing her daughter’s bow-back chair under the table. “What did you say?”

“It was all here,” Lauren said softly. “The pattern of china, the stemware, the pots and pans, the

silverware.” She slowly shook her head in amazement “And I never questioned it.” Her voice was

incredulous. “Not once. I just accepted it.” Her gaze fell on the wicker porch swing in the gazebo. She

remembered long evenings of sitting there, not once bothered by the pesky mosquitoes that were a way

of life in the South. “Everything was perfect. Everything. Down to the most minute detail.” She shook her

head. “Not even a pigmy rattler in the pine straw.”

Maxine exhaled a long sigh. “He only wanted to please you.”

“He did,” Lauren said with wonder. “I thought him the most wonderful man in the world. The perfect

husband. The kindest friend. The most gentle lover.” She leaned her head against the coolness of a

windowpane. “And all of it was a lie.”

“Not all of it,” Maxine told her.

Lauren’s head jerked around and she glared at her mother. “What wasn’t?” She flung her hand at the

immaculate kitchen, a kitchen she had dreamt of having. “Everything in this house is a lie!”

“He loves you. That isn’t a lie.”

Her daughter’s face turned severe. “And I loved him. What does that say of me?”

Maxine reached out and took Lauren’s shoulder in a hard grip. “Do you want him back?” When the

younger woman didn’t answer, she shook her. “Answer me, Lauren. Do you want Syntian returned to

you?”

For one brief, rebellious moment, Lauren almost said no. Hurt and anger and what she thought of as the

infinite betrayal had turned her tender heart rock-solid in her chest. Spite entered her gleaming eyes and

her mouth turned bitter with regret and revenge. She pulled away from her mother’s touch and glared at

the woman.

“Yes, I want him returned, if for no other reason than to send him back to the hell from which he

sprang!” she hissed. This time she was the one to reach out and grip her mother’s shoulder in a painful

clutch. “Is that possible? Can we do that? Can we send him back?”

Vindictiveness shot over the older woman’s lined face and a pitiless smile began to stretch the contours

of her wrinkled lips.

“Oh, yes,” Maxine said in a low, throaty voice. “We can do that. We can send him back, never to return

if that is what you want.”

Lauren’s head came up and she squared her shoulders. Her gaze was fierce, implacable. “What do we

need to do?”

The plate offood slid across the floor toward him with a tinny grating sound that set his teeth on edge.

He glared at the new bondservant Angeline had conjured. This one was cautious, considering what had

happened to Delbert, and would come no closer to the cage than he had to. He pushed the plates of

food and bowls of water only as far as Syntian could stretch out his hand to take. He didn’t make the

mistake of pushing them to the very bars of the cell.

“Throw me the water bowl,” the man grumbled, leaning on the broom handle.

“Get it yourself,” Syntian snarled. He was sitting at the back of the cell, well away from the man. As

quick as this one was, he could move out of Syntian’s reach even if he came right up to the bars and

Syntian took the chance of lunging at him as he had done once before when Angeline had relented and

removed his shackles.

The man’s slit of a mouth stretched into a thin, humorous line. “You can do without for all I care,

NightWind.” He turned and leaned the broom handle against the basement wall, then started to climb the

stairs.

“Wait!” Syntian called out. His thirst far outweighed his need to be contrary. He scooped up the plastic

water bowl and got to his feet, carried it over to the bars and flung it toward the man.

Angeline’s new servant stared down at the bowl for a moment then craned his head around to look at

Syntian. “You wanna play games? You can do without until I come back this evening,” he chuckled.

“Maybe by then you’ll have remembered who is the prisoner and who is the warden!”

Fury shook Syntian and he gripped the bars, pulling on them as he had done nearly every day for the last

four months he had been held captive. “You son-of-a-bitch!” he yelled as the light to the upstairs world

closed off once more and he was pitched back into the darkness. “You pond scum!” He heard an

amused guffaw come from above stairs and he slammed his fists against the bars then spun around to

glare into the interior of the cage.

The place smelled, he thought with rancor. It reeked. Not as bad as the Pit, he remembered with a

shudder of revulsion, but bad enough that Angeline had not been down to torment him for more than two

weeks. He had begged her to have someone come to clean out the excrement in the south corner of the

cell, but she had refused, reminding him he was little more than a beast and beasts did not mind the smell

of their own waste.

“Why are you doing this to me?” he had shouted at her. “What would just a gods-be-damned pail hurt,

Angeline?” He had pleaded with her, beseeching her to allow him at the least the dignity of a slop can in

which to relieve himself.

“You are being punished for killing Delbert, Syntian,” she had informed him. “No chamberpot. No eating

utensils. No drinking utensils.” Her laugh had been filled with contempt. “You acted like an animal and

now you are being treated like one. I removed your manacles; do not ask for more!”

His bellow of rage had shaken the very iron bars onto which he clung, but she had been adamant and the

stench worsened every day. His own body odor was vile for he had not been allowed to bathe since

being confined. His hair was plastered greasy to his head and his fingers were caked with dirt, his nails

filthy. He kept them chewed down as close to the quick as he could. His face was smeared with grime

plastered to his flesh.

Syntian slid his hands down the bars and sat heavily on the floor, buried his face in his dirty palms. Even

the smell of the meat in the tin plate a few feet away held no allure for him although his belly rumbled with