Wicked resurrection 5, p.14
Wicked: Resurrection 5, page 14
"You said someone grabbed your hand. And Owen was fast asleep." Nicole seized on the argument like a woman with a noose around her neck pleading for her life. "He was asleep. You can't deny that.""I don't know what happened. But--"
Nicole whirled around. Amanda's face was blotched with crying. The sight terrified Nicole; it was as if Amanda had given up all hope.
"And what about the rest of it?" Nicole added quickly. Her voice rose. "He doesn't have a mark behind his ear. He hasn't killed anything innocent or otherwise. He hasn't, Amanda. Admit it!"Amanda hesitated, and she felt Niki's desperate surge of hope.
"Maybe the book is wrong," she ventured, even though her heart was breaking. Because she didn't think the book was wrong.
Kill Owen? Her sweet little nephew? A baby?
She couldn't imagine doing such a thing. She couldn't even see herself doing it; who could? Her father, who was Owen's grandfather? Tommy? They'd sooner die. Maybe even sacrifice the whole world, rather than harm their baby--for he was theirs now, all of theirs. Maybe they didn't know who his father was, but Owen was child of their blood. We can't do it.
Only one witch she knew would be capable of killing a baby, to keep the coven safe.
"Where is Holly?" she wailed aloud.
"No," Nicole breathed. She went completely white. "Don't even speak her name. Please, Amanda."
"Niki," Amanda said. "If it must be done, then--"
Suddenly there was shouting. Amanda ran to the window. Niki trailed after, crying.
Below them, in the courtyard, a white Corsa slowed to a stop. The driver's side door opened, and Amanda caught her breath. If it was Holly----but it wasn't.
Kari Hardwicke stepped out. Kari.
"But she's dead," Amanda said.
Nicole gasped. A black cat hopped out of the car, followed by a second. As Nicole flattened her hands on the glass, the cat stopped and looked up at her. Amanda ticked her glance at her twin.
Nicole and the cat were staring at each other.
"Amanda," she ground out. "That's…" Nicole couldn't say Hecate's name. She had to be wrong.
It couldn't be her wonderful cat, the one Holly had murdered. It couldn't be, and yet, the delicate head, the way she flicked her tail… it had to be.
"Oh, my God."Amanda put her arm around her shoulders. The room felt icy. Nicole couldn't think. All she could do was stare at the apparition, a flesh-and-blood twin of her dead familiar, Hecate.
"Maybe she had kittens before she… died," Amanda ventured.
Nicole didn't answer. She wasn't sure her heart was still beating as she turned from the window and flew out of the bedroom. She didn't know if Amanda was following her. All her energy was focused on the little black cat.
She took the servants' stairs--the circular staircase had been destroyed--and raced from the back section of House Moore into the castle that had been revealed by the fire. She and the others had swept the floor clean of layers of ash and dust. If the great entry hall had been furnished, the fire had erased all trace. All that was left was stonework, including a long table like an altar, and a stone with a deep cleft in it.
She pushed open the stone front door and ran down the stone steps outside, skipping the last two and pushing past Kari, who was wearing all black, including a large pair of dark-rimmed sunglasses. Nicole scooped up the smaller of the two black cats and nuzzled her.Energy surged between them--faint, but present.
"It's you, it's you," Nicole sang, kissing the top of Hecate's head, her cheeks, and her front paws.
"Oh, Hecate, how?"
The cat didn't respond. Nicole kissed her over and over, loving her, crying tears of joy now. "Oh, my kitty, my Hecate." She cried a little more, and then she looked up at Kari.
Kari, who should be dead. Nicole had seen her cut nearly in two. A lake of blood had gushed out of Kari's chest. And they had left her there. Kari who was standing inside the gate without having been invited in.
"Someone saved you," Amanda cried. "Oh, thank the Goddess!"
"No one," Kari said flatly.
Nicole settled Hecate under her chin. Kari was heavily made up, with lots of blush and colored lip gloss. Slowly she took off her sunglasses, and Nicole jerked. Her eyes looked inhuman.
Dead.
"I died," Kari said.
Amanda, Richard, and Tommy gathered around. In Richard's arms Owen cooed. Nicole cast an agonized glance at him. Amanda was wrong. She had to be. Had to be. Had to be. Kari and Hecate must have been sent by the Goddess Herself, to stop them…"Died?" Tommy said. The other cat approached Nicole and sat down. It tilted back its head and gazed at Hecate. The two meowed.
"Tired," Kari murmured. She turned and headed up the stairs of the castle. Nicole took Owen out of his grandfather's arms and held him and Hecate both, trailing behind as Amanda walked with Kari up the stairs. It seemed natural for Amanda to take over the hostessing duties. Back home Amanda had been the sweet one, the thoughtful one. Nicole had been too busy starring in school plays and getting what she wanted with magic spells to think of anyone else.
Kari stood statue-still while Amanda opened the heavy stone door leading into the castle.
Tommy bounded up the stairs to help her. Without any reaction at all, Kari walked inside.
Amanda looked over her shoulder at Nicole, raised her brows and grimaced, and followed Kari in. Tommy went next. Richard put his hand on Nicole's shoulder, sliding it down to cup Hecate's chin. The cat allowed him to study her face.
"Is it really your cat?" he asked his daughter, making as if to take Hecate. "She ran away, right?"
Hecate hissed and dug her claws into Nicole's Irish wool sweater. Richard grunted and tried again. The cat retracted her claws just long enough to free her front left paw; then she took a swipe at Richard.
"I don't think you should hold her with Owen in your arms. She might scratch him."
"No," Nicole said quickly, but she immediately relented. Her father didn't know that Holly had killed Hecate. He'd been in a drunken depression then, brought on by the death of Marie-Claire, his wife-- Nicole and Amanda's mother. They knew now that Michael Deveraux had killed her.
"Go to Daddy, Hecate," Nicole told the cat.
But Hecate wasn't listening to her. She was staring at Owen, and the baby was just as transfixed.
Nicole waited for a sign.
Owen began to cry without breaking his gaze.
Don't look at him anymore. Don't, Nicole ordered the cat. Then Hecate growled in protest as Richard scooped her up with a soft pat on her head.
"I wonder how Kari got two cats onto a commercial flight," he mused."I don't think Kari did,"
Amanda said slowly, as she came up beside her father and her sister. "I don't think Kari's here."
Seattle: Dr. Temar
Dr. Nigel Temar awoke with a start and sat up, but instantly regretted it. His head felt like it was going to explode, and his mouth was so dry that his lips were stuck to his teeth. A quick glance at his atomic wall clock sent him flying back up again.
Two days! How could he have been asleep for two days? He ran into the other room to check on Kari. Her bed was empty.
And his head began to pound as the room tilted.
Comprehension dawned. She had drugged him, and then she had left.
"Oh, no," he whispered. "No."
He thought of Kari alone in the world, practically a zombie. He pictured her frightened, desperate… and if he was honest… very honest, he imagined someone taking an interest in her, and studying her… and finding out what he, Nigel Temar, had done. Reverse-engineering her.
Learning his methods and protocols… his secrets.
And hurt.
"Kari," he groaned, slamming his fist against the doorjamb.
Time was not his friend, but technology was. He knew he would find her, and this time it would be a lot easier than the last time. Before he had revived her he had stitched up her chest, after putting a GPS tracker inside it. Ghoulish, perhaps, but now he was glad that he'd done it.
"I'll find you," he whispered. He rushed to the tracking monitor, nestled among the many machines he had employed while raising her from the dead, and flicked it on.
There was no signal.
Scarborough: Nicole, Owen, Amanda, Tommy, Richard, Kari, and the cats Richard had seen many dead bodies in his time. Some of them were men--and women, and demons--he'd killed himself after joining the battle against Michael Deveraux and his allies.
Others were from Nam.
But he had never seen the dead walk.
Kari Hardwick was unnatural. He didn't like looking at her, let alone having her in the house.
The others seemed to have forgotten that Kari had abandoned them and fled to their enemy, Michael Deveraux. It was true that she had been killed in the battle at the Supreme Coven, but that didn't mean she was any less a traitor. She had turned on them once, and she could do it again, even if she was dead.
Maybe she's here to show them where we are. Or she's been programmed to kill us. Michael Deveraux forced Holly into a state of demonic possession and she tried to kill us. If Armand hadn't exorcised her, she might have succeeded. Maybe a warlock promised Kari that he would make her whole again if she betrayed us a second time.
Or if she smothered my grandchild in his sleep. At Richard's insistence Nicole put Owen down in his heavily warded crib for a nap. The baby lay upstairs, safe from Kari, before Richard sat down to interrogate her.
"Do you drink?" he asked her bluntly as he passed around cups of tea. He would have preferred straight bourbon, but those days were behind him. He had sunk into a terrible depression during the last days of his marriage, and then Marie's death. He wondered now if Michael Deveraux had engineered it, to keep him passive and weak. But the warrior in Richard was awake now.
Nothing would cross his lips that could diminish his power.
"Thirst," Kari said, taking a cup from him with bluish-white hands. Her cold, dead fingers brushed his, and it took all his self-control not to jerk away.
He took his seat with his own cup of tea and stared at his daughters. Nicole was pale and shaky.
Amanda was staring at Kari as though Kari were a lost puppy in need of help. Tommy sat protectively next to Amanda, but all his attention was focused on the two cats, who paced the room as though looking for something. Richard had realized there was something wrong with them as well.
"What happened to you?" Richard demanded. Amanda blanched; his little girl had always been so careful of other people's feelings. But he wasn't about to sit around chitchatting with a dead woman when he had a family to protect.
"Killed. Dr. Temar. Laboratory," she said. She shifted, and he saw intelligence in her dead eyes, if nothing else. She was speaking in halting sentences, but it had to be an act.
"He… reanimated you?" Richard pressed. His two daughters shifted uncomfortably. Nicole glanced upward, as if she could see Owen through the ceiling. Maybe she could. Richard knew he didn't fully understand all the things his daughters could do.
"Frankenstein." She didn't smile. Was she mocking them?
"How could he?" Richard asked. "Is it possible to do that with magic?"
Kari shrugged. Through the steam of her cup, she gazed down at Hecate.
The cat hissed. Richard stared for a moment until he could look into the cat's eyes. Damn, she's dead too.
"Dr. Temar is a witch?" Tommy asked uncertainly.
"No," Kari said. "Hecate. Technology. Experiments." She pointed at Osiris. "Then me."
Tears streamed down Nicole's face. Amanda reached out and took her hand. Richard felt the temperature in the chilly room raise by a few degrees.
"That's dangerous technology," Richard said. He couldn't help but think about what a nightmare it would be if that knowledge fell into the wrong hands. For the briefest of moments he considered returning to Seattle to find the doctor and destroy his work for the good of humanity.
But that would mean leaving Owen and the girls unprotected, and that was unacceptable.
"Dangerous," Kari repeated, studying her own hands.
"How did you find us?" Nicole asked."Hecate," she said. "Escaped."Escaped. Richard shook his head. How many of them had been trapped like lab rats thanks to this endless war of good versus evil? After the emergence of the dragon, their retreat appeared to have been honored. It had been tempting to believe that they were really safe, that their part was over. In his bones, though, he believed it had just begun. If nothing else, Kari's appearance and her state reinforced that for him.
"What was it like?" Amanda asked.
Kari swiveled her dead gaze to her. "Hell." She stuck her finger into her boiling hot tea, and didn't flinch.
"Fire, everywhere."
"Black fire?" Nicole asked. "Did Michael Deveraux send you there before he died?"
"White fire. Worse," Kari said. "Worse." She kept her finger in the cup. Richard was half-afraid it would burn off. "Burning, always. Suffering. Remembering. Torment. Penance."
"It really was hell," Nicole breathed.
Amanda began to cry. Nicole trembled too hard to hold her cup. Tommy just continued to stare at the two cats, but Richard didn't think he was actually seeing them."There must be something we can do, magic, to make you better," Amanda said at last."Magic brought Hecate," Kari said."Whose?" Richard asked quietly."Michael Deveraux's," Kari replied.
Richard clenched his fists. Even dead, Michael Deveraux was still a thorn in his side, the snake in the grass.
Acid burned in Amanda's stomach. Watching Kari, hearing her talk about hell, how could there be a place so terrible? Why would the Goddess allow Kari to suffer so? And now, knowing what Amanda knew, how could she send Owen there?
But he's a baby. How can a baby go to hell?
The tears streaming down her cheeks were for the innocent baby upstairs and not for the wretched Kari. If there was something she could do for Kari, she would, but she had a feeling Kari was beyond hope and beyond saving. The same couldn't be true of Owen, could it?
Goddess, what am I supposed to do? she prayed, clutching Nicole's hand. Then Tommy took her other hand and squeezed tightly. He didn't know.
Where is Holly? She would cut through her own feelings like a laser. She's good at making tough decisions.
As Amanda stared at Hecate, though, she shivered. Holly might be good at making hard decisions, but that didn't mean she always chose the right thing to do.
And Amanda thought then and there to reveal what had been happening to her. These people who loved her most deserved to know----to know--What was I just thinking about? she thought with a start. The last minutes were blank. She thought back, frowning, trying to piece the conversation together, and add in her private thoughts.
It was as if a veil had fallen—
"Amanda?" her father said.
She stirred herself. "Sorry," she said. "What?"
She had the strangest feeling—
"One way or another this has to all stop," Tommy declared. "We can't keep living like this." He glanced at Kari. Or dying like this.
Outside of Mumbai: Holly, Alex, Pablo, Armand, and the Temple of the Air Holly jerked awake with a start.
She sat up and looked around the cave at the others. Alex and Armand were gone. Pablo was sitting up, his head cocked to the side as though listening for something.
Holly tried to stretch out her own mind, to see and feel what she could not see. She pushed and strained at the edges of her consciousness but to no avail.
You need to empty yourself before you can see and hear beyond what your eyes and ears can perceive, Pablo said inside her head.
More and more Pablo had taken to communicating this way. She knew it was because he didn't entirely trust Alex.
That's okay. Neither do I, she replied.
She tried to do as Pablo instructed, empty herself of thoughts, fears, dreams, everything. She inhaled deeply and then expelled her breath, imagining all those things being carried out on the air escaping her lips. She did it twice more until she felt… nothing.
And then she heard… everything.
The burst of sound and voices inside her head paralyzed her as for one terrible moment she thought she'd become possessed again. Panic set in; she began to choke on her fear. Then Pablo's voice, in her ear, outside of her head, cut through the chatter and the static."Be still. Listen for the sound that does not belong," he instructed, his hand on her face. "Listen for disorder. And imbalance." They breathed together, and she listened.
Slowly she could start to cycle through the different sounds. Maeve and Stanislaus were awake and making love. Holly squirmed, wishing she could purge those sounds from her brain. In another part of the cave, Janet was praying to the Goddess for strength, but to do what, Holly didn't know. Somewhere a long way off a dog was howling.
"You are close," Pablo whispered. "I sense it too."
Finally she heard it, and she knew instantly that she had found the sound that didn't belong: Somewhere in the darkness a man was praying to the Horned God.
The Temple of the Air did not pray to Him. He was their enemy.
Holly shot to her feet with a cry. Pablo leaped up beside her, and together they raced toward the sound.
"Danger! Traitor!" Holly yelled. "A warlock!"
An unseen wave of pure evil smacked against her, throwing her to the ground. Next to her, Pablo gasped and fell as well.
"Where, Holly?" Alex shouted, as men and women clambered to their feet, grabbing weapons, intoning spells. Alex's hair was tousled as if from sleep. He grabbed her hand and helped her up.
Pablo looked at her, and she looked around the cave as the coven prepared for battle.
"Where's Armand?" she asked. "Armand handles the demons. If a warlock was praying, demons will answer." She stared into the darkness, conjured a fireball. "Where's Armand?"
"Where's the warlock?" Alex demanded, almost shaking her. To the others he cried, "Fan out!"
"Demons," she whispered, as the group moved into attack formation. She was losing it.
All these months traveling with Alex. Every coven they had attacked had been weak and had fallen with hardly a cry. Every demon they had faced had focused its energies on Armand, and she had come to believe in some strange way that they were his area of expertise, his responsibility.
