Pirate's Alley (7 page)

“I wish I had suspected him, but no. I didn’t see anything to link him to Lily or to L’Amour Sauvage.” I looked over at Jonas, who had kept his eyes on the floor since entering the courtroom. His toast was so burned, I almost felt sorry for him.

I went through the rest of the story as I had rehearsed it, taking Alex’s advice to stick to the facts and not make any statements of opinion or emotion—until I got to the part where Jean received a direct order from the necromancer to kill me, and instead urged me to kill him first. And then I couldn’t help it. I cried. I would never, ever forget that act of sacrifice.

“Please, Ms. Jaco, spare us the female histrionics.” Hoffman’s voice was dismissive. “After all, it’s not as if Captain Lafitte really died.”

Female histrionics? I’d seen Jean’s face when my magic hit him. I’d watched him die. Maybe it wasn’t a permanent death, but he suffered as much as if it had been.

I’d give the First Elder one thing; he knew just the words to cut off this female’s histrionics. I’d been prepared to move cautiously, build a case against the First Elder, line up the proof that he was involved.

Forget it. Gloves? Off.

“Might I ask you a question now, Mr. Hoffman?” My heart still pounded but it was no longer from fear.

I heard Alex, or maybe it was Jake, hiss behind me. In my peripheral vision, I saw Willem Zrakovi lean forward. Even Sabine, queen of all faeries, who’d been studying her nails for most of the meeting, leaned forward with interest, and the faery guys whispered to each other behind her.

How far was I willing to take this?

Hoffman’s eyes danced merrily beneath the faux glasses propped on his head. “By all means. Ask your little question.”

Amused, was he? I kept my tone conversational. “Is it true that the whole time Adrian was being blackmailed by Lily Aleese to keep you from finding out about his vampire girlfriend, you already knew about it? Is it true that you were already in league with the vampires yourself, conspiring against the elves while the vampires pretended to be their ally?”

The heavy silence that followed was so deep my rabbit-racing heart was probably audible in Old Orleans.

Is this true?
Rand shot me a mental zing.
Do you have proof?

I’m sure of it. Somebody needs to question Jonas.
The more time I’d had to think about the First Elder’s involvement, the more certain I’d become. Adrian wasn’t good at keeping his mouth shut, for one thing, and he and Terri hadn’t been secretive about their affair. Plus, Etienne Boulard was a Regent; he would never have turned any wizard into a vampire without approval from higher up. Which meant either from his Vice-Regent or the First Elder.

Hoffman had sold out his own son. And with Lily dead, Jonas might be the only one who knew the truth.

“That is ludicrous.” Hoffman wasn’t twinkle-eyed anymore. “I should have you brought up on charges of treason. Return to your seat immediately. This council doesn’t want to hear your desperate lies.”

Get Jonas on the stand,
I told Rand as I grabbed my bag and returned to my seat. Jake scooted down next to Alex, putting me on the aisle. Good. The way things were going, I might need to make a run for it.

“I believe we’ve heard enough,” Hoffman said, straightening his stack of papers and setting his glasses on top of them. “I vote the council makes a recommendation on the proper punishment for—”

“Excuse me, Elder Hoffman. If I might make a request?”

Hoffman looked as if he’d swallowed a lemon. He turned his head slowly to the left. “Mr. Randolph?”

“I’m sure my mate was mistaken about her allegations. She’s just overwrought.”

I gritted my teeth and refrained from shouting at him, at least until I figured out his angle. Then I’d show him what overwrought looked like.

“No need to defend her—”

“But,” Rand interrupted, “I would be interested in hearing at least one other account before we decide the prisoners’ fates. These are serious charges, particularly against Jonas Adamson. I’d like the chance to question him using elven methodology, if I might.”

Jonas raised his head for the first time, staring at Rand in horror. Mace leaned back in his chair and looked thoughtfully from Hoffman to Rand to Jonas. If I was right, and the First Elder was conspiring against the elves and the vampires were playing both sides, Mace would want to know.

So, apparently, would Elder Zrakovi, who spoke for the first time. “Geoffrey, I think Mr. Randolph’s suggestion is a good one. It’s the most expedient way for us to conclude this matter and move on. Perhaps we should let the council vote on it.”

Sabine reached a wrinkled hand to her microphone stand and slid it toward her. When she spoke, her voice was husky and made my skin crawl. English was not her first language. I definitely needed to do some faery research. “The entire delegation from Faery agrees with the elf. Let the necromancer speak.”

“I see no reason for it.” Vampire Vice-Regent Garrett Melnick’s blue eyes turned frosty, and he flashed fang. “We have the sentinel’s testimony against her fellow wizard. What more do we need?”

“I agree.” Hoffman gave Zrakovi a thunderous look.

“You’re right. He knew.”

Silence fell as everyone looked for the source of the voice, breathless and a bit squeaky. Jonas Adamson stood, his fists clenched at his sides.

“You will sit down!” The First Elder looked like a water balloon on the verge of a big, wet explosion, but on either side of him, Mace Banyan and Jean Lafitte jumped to their feet. Hoffman settled back and took a deep breath. I held mine.

“Fine, Mr. Adamson.” Hoffman put his glasses back on. “Have your say.”

Was it my imagination, or did Big Daddy Hoffman look nervous?

I leaned forward to get a better look at Adrian. He’d been stone-faced through the entire proceedings, but now he stared at his father with wide eyes. Initially, I’d thought Adrian and his father might be coconspirators, but that look told me he was a victim, too.

One of the wizard guards released the magical shackles, and Jonas made his shaky way toward the witness table. I dropped all my mental barricades to gauge his mood. He was scared and depressed. No kidding.

Rand edged around the table and walked from the dais to stand in front of Jonas. He looked over Jonas’s shoulder at me.
Ideas?

If Jonas felt doomed, the thing that would get him to open up without force was the possibility of survival.
Reassure him. Make him calm. Make him think that if he talks, we can save him. Don’t dig the memories out of him unless you have to
. I hated what Jonas had done. I had no respect for him as a wizard, and little sympathy for the chaos he’d created. But I didn’t wish that kind of suffering on anyone. Having elves dig in your mind and memories was painful, something I knew from hard experience.

Rand pulled a chair next to Jonas and sat down, reaching out his right hand and placing it on Jonas’s arm. Within seconds, the wizard’s posture relaxed, his shoulders dipped, his rapid breathing slowed. Even from one row back, I sensed the tension diminishing around his aura. Rand’s happy vibes were working.

“Jonas, was Drusilla Jaco’s account of the last two weeks of November accurate?”

Jonas nodded his head. “Yes.”

I wished I could see his expression, but I’d have to be satisfied with gauging Rand’s reactions.

Rand kept his voice low and calm. “Are there other things you can tell us that Ms. Jaco left out or was unaware of?”

I held my breath, grasping the strap of my messenger bag in both hands. I think half the people in the room held their breath. I prayed Jonas would talk and not make Rand pull the information from him by force.

“DJ only knew part of it, and Lily only knew part of it.” Jonas’s voice was surprisingly forceful. “The First Elder was in on it from the start, working with the vampires to join forces against the elves. If Lily got rid of DJ, he guaranteed the wizards would break the elven truce by blaming them for DJ’s death. If she survived, the First Elder agreed to have Adrian turned vampire so the wizards would feel obligated to side with the vampires against the elves anyway.”

Holy crap. I’d been right.

There was a split second of silence before the wooden railing in front exploded into a torrent of splinters and wood dust, and the whole room fell into chaos. Security rushed the dais, tripping over the council members who were trying to dodge flying bits of wood and waves of magic. Next to me, Jake cursed, shoved me to the floor, and threw himself on top. I landed on my right shoulder and my head hit something hard.

“DJ, you okay?” Alex leaned down to where my head was wedged under a chair, then didn’t give me time to answer. “Yeah, you’re okay. Jake, perimeter left. I’ll take right.”

“Gotcha.”

Just like that, they were gone. I stayed low and hazarded a quick look over the top of the chair in front of me, trying to figure out what had happened. Jean had leapt over the council table, blade drawn, prowling toward the prisoners. Their magical shackles appeared to have been broken, and the Axeman lumbered toward the back room, preventing Etienne from getting around him.

Jean wasn’t officially my assignment yet, so if he chose the present time to take revenge on Etienne, it was none of my business.

I finally saw the source of the flying splinters. Hoffman, half hidden behind his seat on the dais, flung Red Congress magic like errant bolts of lightning, exploding furniture, lighting, and whatever else he happened to hit—all to keep Zrakovi and Elder Sato away from him. He flung a curse I thought was aimed at me, but it hit Jonas Adamson square in the chest. His body stiffened and toppled like a felled tree. At least, unlike Lily, he went quickly.

The room plunged into darkness when one of Hoffman’s bursts of magic knocked out the last of the fluorescent lights. Everything quieted for a few seconds before a brilliant yellow glow lit the room from the direction of the dais.

The blond representative from Faery stood atop the council table, cupping his hands in front of him. Above them floated a ball of swirling light so bright it hurt to look at it directly.

The room had been stunned to silence, everyone mesmerized by the floating orb. Everyone except Etienne and Melnick, whom I saw disappearing through the door behind the dais. They were making a run for it. The Axeman had already disappeared, and I didn’t see Adrian. Behind the vampires slinked Geoffrey Hoffman, a gleam from the faery light bouncing off the back of his bald skull. I’d lost track of Jean.

Damn it, either that back room was getting awfully crowded or they’d set up an escape transport in case everything went south.

I fumbled with my bag and pulled out Charlie. “Time to go to work, my friend,” I muttered, scuttling like a cockroach between the row of chairs to the far wall, then hugging the edge until I reached the door.

Things slowly came back to life. Zrakovi wrenched his gaze from the faery light and scanned the room, stopping when he reached me. I pointed at the door and held up the staff, but didn’t wait for his go-ahead. In my experience, when it came to the Elders, better to act and ask for forgiveness later than to ask for permission beforehand and wait for them to weigh all the political pros and cons.

I slipped through the door and spotted the interlocking circle and triangle of a magical transport just as Jean Lafitte lunged into it, joining Melnick, Etienne, and First Elder Hoffman. The Axeman had already disappeared.

He was the least of my concerns. The vampires and Hoffman weren’t getting away that easily, and I didn’t like Jean’s chances against all three of them.

As Melnick uttered the words “Realm of Vampyre” and they began to dematerialize, I threw myself into the transport with them. Time for a field trip.

CHAPTER
6

Usually, the experience of transporting is unpleasant but benign. One gets squeezed through some kind of magical vise and then pops up in a new place or time.

Then again, one usually isn’t in the middle of a fight while transporting, so I couldn’t say for sure whether Garrett Melnick sank his fangs into the skin above my collarbone before we left the magical fourth floor of the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court Building or as we landed on a grassy field, presumably in the Realm of Vampyre. Or somewhere in the ether, in between space and time.

All I knew for sure was that it felt as if lit gasoline raced through every vein and my blood burned like hellfire itself. I hit the ground on my back and he followed me down, pulling at my neck with his fangs. Then he raised his head and spat out a mouthful of blood on the ground beside me. His brown eyes glowed a little in the dim lights that surrounded whatever type of clearing we’d landed in. It had the look of a bizarre amphitheater.

He spat again, and used his right hand to scrub the blood off his lips. “You taste utterly vile.”

I gave myself a half second to be offended, and another half second to be grateful. Then, because I still had a firm grip on Charlie, I zapped him with a nice shot of elven fire, right in the ass.

He rolled off me, hissing, fangs bared, and my skin stung with the power flowing off him. I’d thought Etienne gave off a lot of power, but he was an infant compared to Melnick. The guy might look like a fun-loving, playful man who should be wielding a mean electric guitar and screeching indecipherable lyrics, but he wasn’t the Vice-Regent of Vampyre by accident.

Still, my first vamp feed had been disappointing. “And you hurt like hell. I thought vampire bites were supposed to feel good.”

Pointing the staff at Melnick, I climbed to my feet in time to sidestep a pair of flying pirate boots. Jean sailed past me and landed heavily, still holding his cutlass with its wicked curved blade. Etienne had tossed him like a football spiraling downfield on a Hail Mary pass.

“You’ll pay for crossing me, Drusilla Jaco.” Melnick’s words dripped with melodrama, but his delivery sent another wash of power across me. I did not want to see him and his pointy fangs again. Ever.

He faded into the shadows of the arena—more arena than amphitheater, I’d decided, with stone columns rising on multiple levels along three sides. The fourth edge seemed to drop off into a black abyss.