Wake of Darkness (32 page)

She swung her legs around and rose
from the bed, her feet landing silently on the wooden floorboards. The sun was
just beginning to set and night was quickly approaching. She must have slept
all day, exhausted from the night before. It had taken them hours to finally
calm down well enough to allow anything close to sleep to come. She clenched
and reopened her injured hand, stiff but virtually healed from the night
before.

She dragged her other, uninjured
palm across her clammy forehead and closed her eyes, taking several deep
breaths. She composed herself and walked slowly down the stairs; cicadas were
still singing in the approaching nightfall. It was comfortable, even in
December, as the sun set on the day. Alexander stood at one of the front
windows, leaning on his arm, surveying the street below. She approached him
without a word, laying her hand softly on his back.

“Bad dream?” He asked quietly,
without turning to look at her.

“Something like that,” she replied,
equally as quiet.

He reached down with his free hand
and pulled her close and kissed her on the top of the head. He inhaled deeply
as he buried his nose in her hair. She pressed her hand against his chest, his
heart beating against her palm through his thin shirt. She looked into his clear
green eyes.

“I love you,” she whispered.

His finger lightly traced her jaw
line. “As I love you,” he answered, his eyes sweeping over her face.

His hand slowly moved from her jaw
to her throat and around to the back of neck. She wrapped her arms around the
small of his back and pulled him forward, her lips instinctually finding his. Her
body was pressed between his warm and solid body, and the window, hard and
cool. He kissed her top lip first and then his tongue lightly traced the curve
of her bottom lip as a new need began to build in her chest. The gravity of
last night’s combat hit her with full force as she hungrily pulled him closer
and an errant tear escaped out of the corner of her eye.

He exhaled and she felt his lips move
to her jaw and then to her neck. A shiver of pleasure ran up her spine, making
the roots of every single hair on her head stand on end. She sighed as he
kissed her shoulder, the strap of her nightgown slid down her arm slightly. She
pulled him closer, her nails digging into his back; he couldn’t be too close. He
suddenly returned to her lips and kissed her with more passion as her hands
found his hair and held him there, returning his kisses with equal vigor.

He pressed against her and a flame
of desire coursed through her veins. She felt the softness of his hair beneath
her fingertips, the firmness of his lips against hers, the tightness with which
he held her close.

“Ahem!” someone interrupted.

Mid-kiss, Alexander turned his head
to find Jim standing behind them, wearing a grin the Cheshire cat would have
killed for. Sophie smiled sheepishly as she unwrapped one of her legs from
around one of Alexander’s hip.

“Good afternoon?” Jim asked with a
taunting look in his eyes.

Sophie laughed silently at herself.
“Yeah, good afternoon,” she answered. She swiped at her cheek where the tear
had traced an invisible line across her skin.

“Yeah, I’ll just…uh…go downstairs,”
he said, shaking his head and chuckling as he walked away from them.

Alexander turned back to Sophie and
laughed a soft, throaty laugh that nearly had her ready to jump him again, had
Laney not walked into the hall. Sophie groaned when Laney came into view and
slouched against the window pane.

“Oh, get a room,” Laney sighed
jokingly and followed Jim’s lead and went downstairs.

“Their times will come,” Alexander
assured her. “Then we’ll give them hell.”

Sophie laughed and laid her
forehead against his chest. He stroked her hair, running his fingers down her
spine and making every single hair on her body stand on end.

“Okay,” she said, sitting up and
rubbing her face with her hands and then running her fingers through her hair,
“I’ve got to get with it. This is ridiculous.”

“What is ridiculous?” he asked with
a smile in his eyes.

“The fact that I’m just now rolling
out of bed, and the sun’s going
down.
”

He chuckled. “Oh, that,” he replied
with a smile, still not wanting to let her go.

Catherina’s going to want you
guys to go with them in a few minutes. Better get ready,
they suddenly heard
Laney think from downstairs.

Sophie exhaled heavily. Alexander
tucked his finger under her chin and gave her a quick peck on the lips.

“What’s wrong?” he asked in a
whisper.

She shook her head and looked into
his eyes. “It’s just a lot different from what I expected,” she confessed. “I
didn’t realize how…” she trailed off and shook her head, lost in her thoughts.

He nodded. “We haven’t much time,”
he replied, and she hoped he just meant the present evening and not time in
general.

She struggled for a smile as he
kissed her forehead and jumped to his room to get ready. She reluctantly
followed his example and jumped back to her own room.

She went immediately into the
bathroom and yanked a brush through her tangled hair, pulling the waves into a
low, loose ponytail. She pushed her legs through a pair of dark wash jeans, a
black long-sleeved t-shirt, and slid her feet into sturdy motorcycle boots. She
grabbed her white leather trench as she swung the door open, where she found Catherina
talking to Alexander in the hallway.

Catherina stopped, and when her
eyes met Sophie’s, they looked puzzled. “Josephine and her sisters will be
waiting for us. Shall we go?” She asked him, while still looking at Sophie.

Sophie met her gaze steadily.

“Of course,” he answered
grudgingly, with a sideways glance towards Sophie before they followed her
downstairs.

Dante and Catherina followed Alexander
and Sophie out to the garage and the four of them slid into the Audi. Catherina
sat behind Sophie in the backseat, but the place may as well have been empty
for all the thoughts that Sophie
didn’t
get from her.

They drove without a word. Not a
single thought passed between them, partly because Catherina was in the car, but
her thoughts had always been silent to Sophie. Alexander steered the sleek gray
car with his usual, sure confidence; only the purr of the engine was in their
ears as they traveled to meet the sisters in the Quarter.

They parked a few streets away from
the sisters' home. The four slowly emerged from the car, glancing around
defensively.

“Four hundred eighty-five,”
Catherina softly commented as they neared the home of Josephine and her
sisters.

Sophie and Alexander stopped short
of walking up the cement stairs to the building decorated with wrought-iron
balconies and hanging ferns with the number
485
above the door. Catherina
mounted the stairs in front of them and came to a stop outside of the closed
door.

“Josephine,” Catherina called
softly, barely above a whisper.

The door slowly swung open by itself,
and they stepped inside. Sophie looked around with an uneasy caution that Dante
and Catherina didn’t seem to share. A chill ran up her spine. Again, she was
aware of the influence of Alexander’s thoughts mingled with her own as she
looked around. She looked for exits, escape routes, and overhanging landings. She’d
never been this observant before she met Alexander, but he always had been. So
the habit quickly became hers as well. Her eyes trailed over an ornate railing
and watched as three women floated down the staircase before their eyes. The
one in front had to be Josephine.

It is,
Alexander confirmed
without looking at her.

He and Sophie stood off to the side
of Catherina and Dante as the sisters approached their group. Sophie watched
them with the eyes of a stranger, half-expecting something pivotal to happen.

“Hello, Catherina,” Josephine
greeted, her voice heavily laden with a French accent. “Hello, Dante.”

“Hello, Josephine,” Catherina
replied, as Dante bowed slightly to her.

Josephine then turned her eyes to
Alexander and Sophie.

“Ah, Alexander. It is
very
pleasant to see you once more. It has been
too
long,” she greeted with a
coy smile.

“Josephine,” he replied shortly,
nodding.

Her eyes fell on Sophie with a
knowing look on her face. “And
you
must be Sophie,” she surmised,
looking her up and down.
La belle dame sans merci.

Sophie nodded in response and
looked quickly over to Alexander for an interpretation.

She called you ‘the beautiful
lady without mercy.’ I told you news spreads quickly.
He smiled at the
thought, and began to translate the rest of the meeting for her.  It was really
quite convenient; although Sophie couldn’t help except wish that she'd taken
French in college when she’d had the chance.

“Alexander’s new companion,” Josephine
stated, looking at the two.
Il est á droite,
she quickly thought:
He
is on the right hand.

The other sisters exchanged a look
before turning back to their visitors.

“It is a pleasure, I am sure,” Josephine
continued, still looking at Sophie. “These are my sisters, Claire,” she said
indicating the one on the right, “and Pauline,” gesturing to the woman on the
left.

Josephine was the tallest of the
three and graceful in the way only dancers are. Her light brown hair was cut in
a bob and her dress clung to her waif-like figure, giving the impression of a
1920s flapper.

“Welcome to our home,” Claire
continued where her sister left off. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your
company?” she inquired simply out of politeness; they knew exactly why Catherina
and the others were there.

Claire was the most feminine of the
three, her voice also thick with a French accent. She was voluptuous and her
soft jet-black corkscrew curls were piled high on her head, wound up in a
scarf. All three wore long white dresses from another era, but Claire was the
only one who also wore large earrings and bright red lipstick.

“The Council has spoken,
oui
?”
Pauline asked quickly in a distinctly Cajun accent, before anyone else could
speak.

Pauline was the smallest of the
three, barely pushing five feet tall and had an olive tone to her skin; dark
eyes and red hair. Her voice had that uniquely Cajun twang to it, one which
made it difficult for hearers to decide if she were from New York or North Carolina, or somewhere in between.

“Indeed,” Catherina answered
carefully.

“And you came back here? You
brought that fiend here?” Pauline demanded in her husky, appealing voice,
glaring at Catherina.

Josephine raised her hand to
silence her sister, without looking back at her. “Exactly
why
have you
come back here? Do you perhaps wish to secure our assistance in this matter?” she
asked.

“No,” Catherina replied.

“
Tout de meme”
—All the
same—“What is your business here with us?” Claire asked harshly.

Apparently Sophie and Alexander
weren’t the only ones who had a problem with Catherina.

Pauline jerked her head in Sophie’s
direction quickly.
Ça va sans dire
raced through her mind:
It goes
without saying
.

Sophie stared at her for a moment
until she realized that of course Pauline and the others could still hear her
thoughts; she’d only blocked Catherina from her mind. Pauline smiled in answer,
the movement almost completely indiscernible.

“Do you wish to drag us into this
fight as you have done with these two?” Josephine asked Catherina accusatorily,
gesturing to Sophie and Alexander. “And the rest of your family?’

Catherina glanced quickly over her
shoulder, a cold look in her eyes as they swept over Alexander and Sophie.

“No…,” Catherina answered.

“Then what is your business in our
city?” Claire asked.

“Our business does not concern you,
apparently,” Catherina answered briskly, finally pushed to anger. “Out of
courtesy
to you, our sisters, we come to warn you of the impending danger which will
surely reach fruition during our stay in this fine city of my youth.”

She's lying.

Mais oui, Sophie; we know.
Josephine
locked eyes with her for the briefest moment.

“And exactly what is it that you
know?” Catherina asked aloud, having heard only Josephine’s side of the silent
exchange.

“We are aware of the situation, I
assure you,” Josephine replied cryptically.

Catherina sighed. “Then we shall
leave you,” she replied with an uncharacteristic bow of her head.

“Please excuse us if we refrain
from meddling in affairs which do not
directly
impact us,” Josephine
briskly said.