Nightwind (39 page)

hunger. He was thirsty, so thirsty his mouth was parched, but he knew it would be at least five to six

hours before the man came back. Idly, he wondered if Angeline knew how her servant mistreated him.

From the first moment they had laid eyes on one another, Syntian and the man whose name he had never

heard, had loathed one another. There had been a spark of recognition between them and Syntian had

understood by the look on the man’s face that he would do everything he could to make Syntian’s

imprisonment as close to being the hell of the Abyss as he could manage.

“I’ll see to him, Miss Angeline,” the man had cooed, his feverish gaze intent on Syntian’s face. “You can

count on that.”

When the man had come the next day to bring food and water, he had deliberately spilled the water and

placed the plate of food just out of Syntian’s reach.

“You are of the NightWind, aren’t you?” the man had sneered. “One of the so-called higher orders.”

Syntian had known at that moment that Angeline had failed to conjure one of his own kind and had

brought forth instead one of the minor demons the Christians classified as “unclean spirits.” This one

would have no powers not expressly given to him by his mistress. He could do nothing on his own.

Obviously, the man was ashamed of his failings and jealous of Syntian’s abilities.

“I’m not afraid of you,” the servant had bragged.

“Why should you be?” Syntian had offered. “I’m where I can’t get to you.” He had grinned viciously.

“For now.”

Syntian’s tormentor had backed away from the cage. His bravado had been short lived, but on

subsequent trips down to the basement, he had regained his confidence. No doubt Angeline had assured

him Syntian posed no threat.

“I can walk free,” he’d said once. “Out in the light. In the warmth.” The man’s taunt had struck a chord

of helplessness in Syntian and he knew it. He had turned the plate of food over on the floor and ground it

into the concrete. “And you can do nothing but sit there and dream of being free!”

“And killing you,” Syntian had responded.

For that remark, he didn’t get food or water for three days.

Syntian lifted his head and leaned against the bars. He wondered what Lauren was doing. If she was all

right. If she was beginning to show. A fleeting smile crossed his face. It had been four months. She would

be showing by now.

A groan of frustration erupted from him and he squeezed his eyelids shut to block out the face of the

man whose seed was growing inside the woman Syntian loved.

“After a few years have passed, maybe even before that, she’ll begin to realize you won’t be coming

home to her,” Angeline had told him. “She’ll need a man to help her raise the child and do you know

who’ll be right there ready to step in and lend a hand, Syntian?” She had laughed. “Why, Ben Hurlbert,

of course.” She had ignored his growl of rage. “He’ll be glad to take your place in Lauren’s life.” Her

brow had cocked in challenge. “In her bed. Raising his own child.” Her smile had been terrible. “A child

with which you were seeded, my demon. Did you enjoy that degradation, Syn? Do you remember

Hurlbert’s hands on you? His prick thrusting inside you? Remember it well, demon, for that is what

Lauren will be feeling!”

He had gone nearly insane with that taunt and had caused himself some minor damage that had taken a

full week to heal. And gained for himself a week of total darkness and cold in the concrete confines of his

cell. She had not even allowed him a rag upon which to lie and the floor chilled his bones and made him

stiff.

“But he’ll be good to her, Syntian,” Angeline had assured him. “After all, Benny loves her. He’ll see that

she gets what she deserves.”

“Just as you will get what you deserve!” Syntian had bellowed at her.

Angeline’s face had lost its humor. “Make no mistake about it, Syntian. On the day I know I am to die, I

will send you back to that hellish existence from which Maxine drew you.
That
will be my final revenge

upon you, my demon!”

Sitting there in the dark, his mouth so dry he could find no spittle to swallow, he knew to the very core

of his being that Angeline did not possess the power to do what she had threatened. The extent of her

ability was evident in the manner of fiend she had been able to bring forth. Thinking back on it, he

suddenly realized that it hadn’t been Angeline who had called forth Delbert, either. It had been another

woman who had broken her pact with the black man and lost him to Angeline.

“Listen,” Delbert had once told him. “If your mistress dies, see, you ain’t got no choice but to return to

the Pit. It draws you back, you know? There’s no reason for you to stay unless you’ve been bound to

another mortal. If’n that mortal breaks the pact between you and another woman steps in to bind you to

her, then you can stay. That’s what happened to me, you see?”

Just as it had happened to him, Syntian thought with misery. Maxine had broken the contract and he

had, unwisely and stupidly, signed his soul over to Angeline in order to keep from being sent back to that

horrible place again.

“You know what else? What can happen even though you’ve signed a pact with another mortal?”

Delbert had asked, reminding Syntian of something he had known all along but refused to think about. “If

the woman whose family drew you up, whose family originally bound you looses her Book of Shadows

or it gets stolen or destroyed by someone who don’t know what it’s for or how to use it, you get sent

back and you won’t
ever
return to the light!”

That was his greatest fear. That the Book of Shadows that belonged to Lauren’s family would somehow

be destroyed. If that happened, he would spend eternity inside the foul boiling of the Abyss. Once he had

been afraid Maxine would burn the Book, she had threatened to, but he had cajoled her into keeping it.

But he worried that one day the old woman would turn that Book against him and send him back, never

to be free again.

“Lauren,” he mumbled, lying down on his side and curling up on the cold floor. “Oh, Lauren.”

How he missed her, he thought with abject grief. Her laughter, her smile, her gentle touch that wanted

nothing from him except his love. Her tender nature that asked no evil thing of him; that demanded

nothing more than his strength and protection and security. He grieved for the time they had had together;

the loving they had shared in that brass bed he had had to search the world over to find for her. He had

moved mountains to find everything she had ever wanted, just because he wanted to see the pleasure

such material things could give to the woman he loved.

“I will find a way,” he whispered into the darkness. “I
have
to find a way to get back to you.”

But he knew his chances were slim.

“I will be backin half an hour,” Maxine told her daughter. “I have everything we need at my place. Do

what I told you, get everything together I listed, and when I come back, we’ll begin.”

Lauren looked at her mother with a steady gaze that held no emotion. “Doesn’t there have to be a full

moon or some such thing?”

Maxine laughed. “Only in fairy tales!” She patted Lauren’s arm, unaware that her daughter stiffened at

the touch. “That book tells you what you need to know and it don’t matter a rat’s ass when you do the

ceremonies if you’re good enough at your craft to ward off those demons that will try to come through

while you’re conjuring.”

If the thought of other hellish creatures coming into her world frightened Lauren, she didn’t show it. She

simply stared at her mother with a chilling attention that made the older woman uncomfortable.

“You rest until I get back. You’re going to need all your strength for what we need to do tonight.”

Lauren shrugged. “I’m all right.”

From the look on her daughter’s face, Maxine wasn’t sure, but she needed Lauren’s help to do what

had to be done and she couldn’t take a chance the girl would be useless later on.

“Go lie down until I get back. Will you do that?” She walked to the door and turned. “Will you?”

“I’ll think about it,” Lauren conceded.

There was something cold, and alien, in Lauren’s voice and in her manner, but Maxine didn’t have time

to think about it. She hurried from the house, and the presence of Syntian Cree within its walls, and drove

as fast as she dared to her house near the Blackwater River. She didn’t have all that much time to waste

in gathering together the things necessary for the ritual that evening.

“Just a few more hours, Angeline. Just a few more hours and you will know the wrath of the Fontenelle

women!”

Lauren had asked about a full moon. She doubted her daughter was even aware there was one tonight.

Not that it made any difference to what they were going to do that evening, but it was certainly going

help.

Lauren sat downon the sofa and stared across the room, seeing images that up until that morning had

meant nothing to her.

Onyx, coming out of nowhere. Staying. Seeming to belong to no one but her. Watching her every move,

appearing to know just what she was saying to him. Syntian’s surety that he knew just what the animal

needed and wanted. The cat’s sudden disappearance when she and Syntian had married.

“A familiar,” Lauren whispered. “He was my familiar.”

“No,”
an inner voice whispered back.
“He was Syntian!”

“Louvenia drew this thing,” Reed Yelverton had told Lauren once after his wife had been committed to

the Chancel Sanitarium in Louisiana. “She keeps drawing this horrible-looking monster.”

And she saw that monster, didn’t she, Syntian? Lauren wondered. Did you let her see you as you really

are or did you conjure for her a nightmare image that would snatch away the woman’s sanity?

“Inez swears there was someone there, but there wasn’t anybody in that room,” Montez had told

everyone when his wife was hospitalized.

“Karla keeps babbling about this invisible monster what attacked her,” Mrs. Cooper had said sadly

when Lauren had met her on the street and expressed her sadness at Karla’s troubles. “Can you imagine

that? The incident was so terrible for her, she just can’t make herself think of that bastard’s face.”

But you didn’t let her see your face, did you, Syntian? Lauren questioned. If she had seen your face, she

would have been able to identify you and you couldn’t have allowed that.

Only briefly did she wonder if Beth Janacek or the VanLandingham girl had seen his face before he had

slaughtered them.

“What did you do to the Black sisters?” she asked aloud. “And the Athertons and Mrs. Malone? What

spell did you put on them to make them suddenly like me?”

She lay down on the sofa and curled into a ball, her hands protectively wrapped around the life growing

in her belly. She thought fleetingly of Benny. Of how that good friend, if he really was a friend and not a

conjuring of Syntian’s, would feel knowing how he’d been used.

“You have a lot to account for, my demon,” Lauren whispered.

Angeline held herhandkerchief to her nose as the cell was hosed down. Devlin, the name she had given

her new minion, was laughing gleefully as he flicked up the nozzle of the water hose and blasted the water

over Syntian, driving him back against the far wall of the cell. She watched Syntian stumble under the

onslaught of the water pressure, throwing his arms up to protect his face as he cowered at the back of

the cell.

“He doesn’t like that, does he?” Devlin chuckled as he held the steady flow of cold water on Syntian’s

upper body.

“That’s enough,” Angeline warned him. “Just clean the floor of that foul smell.”

Devlin frowned, wishing he could do more than just drench the uppity bastard in the cage. He grinned at

the malevolent look that was shot his way as the prisoner, as Devlin liked to think of him, glared at him.

“You look a sorry sight,” Devlin taunted. “Wouldn’t no mortal woman want you looking like that.”

Syntian swung his gaze to Angeline, hating her with every fiber of his being. He found her studying him as

though he was a specimen under a glass and he looked away.

“I thought you might like to know Lauren was in the hospital for a few days.”

His head snapped up and he rushed to the iron bars closest to Angeline, reaching out to wrap his fingers

around the uprights. “Why?” he asked, flinging his wet hair out of his eyes. “What happened?”

Angeline shrugged. “She fainted. Not all that uncommon an occurrence for pregnant women, Syntian.”

Syntian’s heart was slamming in his chest. “Is she all right, now? Is the baby all right?”

“She’s fine,” Angeline snapped, annoyed at the disgusting look of concern on his wet face. “Her mother

took her home this morning.”

“Maxine,” Syntian whispered, fearing the word. He clutched the bars tighter. “Would she tell her about

me, Angeline? Do you think she’d tell her?”

Angeline’s mouth twisted. “There’s no telling what that bitch would do, but I don’t think she’d tell

Lauren about you. If she did, she’d have to tell her about the Book and I
know
she wouldn’t dare do

that.”

His ears perked up. “Why not?”

“Because of the Book’s power. If Lauren was to ever try any of the incantations...” She stopped, her

lips drawing back over her teeth. “Oh, no, you don’t,” she hissed. She pointed an angry finger at him.