[Bayou Gavotte 03.0] Heart of Constantine (2 page)

God, he was beautiful. She had seen him before, of course—pictures aplenty and occasionally in person—but never this close. What presence the man had. It wasn’t just the gorgeous high cheekbones and the copper skin of his half-Navajo heritage or his graceful build. He radiated power—intense, a little frightening, and fascinating at the same time.

“Got you!” cried the blond guy. “What could be better? Murder was bad enough, but now you’re drugging and raping innocent women. You’ve had it, Dufray. Face it, you’re dead.”

“Sure am,” said Constantine Dufray. Marguerite ignored the photographer capering about and stared up at the rock star, wondering if he recognized her. She’d seen him now and then at the Impractical Cat, the restaurant where he hung out, and she’d done her best to read his aura, but he’d become something of a recluse lately. He’d had the most awful bad luck at some of his concerts—even riots where
people were killed. Sure, he was one of Bayou Gavotte’s vigilantes, but would he try to murder his own fans? No way.

Go ahead
, a voice said dully. Who’d said that? Not the reporter or his sidekick, and Constantine wasn’t looking at her but up at the crow, which had fluttered down to a branch just above his head. The colors that surrounded him roiled and churned, fizzled and spat. His aura stretched and reached out toward her.

Accuse me. Get it over with.

Damn. She hadn’t heard a voice in her head for years. It wasn’t one of her favorite experiences. In fact, it ranked right up there with her worst. But this wasn’t someone’s secret wish sent out involuntarily. This was a voice that intended to be heard.

She found her tongue. “What did you say?”

The reporter bent down and shoved his recorder in her face. “Tell us about it, love. All the gory details.”

Marguerite pushed his hand away. “I’m not talking to you.” She’d known a few people who projected their thoughts, particularly when their auras were in turmoil, but nothing as clear and directed as this. It seemed that the rumors about Constantine Dufray’s telepathic abilities were true.

Accuse me
, the flat voice said again.
That’s what you’re here for, so just do it.
A maelstrom of bitterness and despair swirled around and above Constantine like a tight column of flame. The crow cawed loudly and skittered sideways along the branch. Marguerite knitted her brows, trying again to take it all in, and realized at last that she was on top of one of the Indian mounds, the only hills in Bayou Gavotte.

Oh.
Now
she remembered: Constantine’s impromptu concert on the field below. His first public performance in months.

“Can’t let him get away with it, love.” The blond wasn’t an Englishman, so the pseudo-Brit endearment only emphasized his obnoxiousness.

Marguerite frowned up at Constantine. “Get away… with what?”

Come on now, girl. Didn’t he prep you better than that?

“Prep me? I don’t understand.”

Constantine rolled his eyes casually, indifferently, but his aura writhed toward her, flickered and shuddered, its message utterly contradicting his behavior and making her head hurt again.
Drugging and raping you, to be followed by ritual murder.
His aura withdrew, and the pain went with it.
It’s all right, babe, you can play your role. I won’t harm you, I swear.

Constantine had
raped
her? A brief terror ran through her, but she shook it off and cleared her thoughts. Somebody must have drugged her—but Constantine? She didn’t believe it. She fought away the last of the fog, blinking up at him and his aura. She sensed pain and anger and an overwhelming despair, but nothing of the predator in that whirlpool of emotions.

The reporter blathered in her face. “He’s gotten away with brutal beatings, torture, and murder. You would have been next if we hadn’t gotten here in time.”

Marguerite dragged her eyes from Constantine and took a good look at the reporter and his smarmy grin. This was the kind of person whose aura she did her utmost not to see. Eagerness hissed and seethed in the reporter’s aura, as if he relished this opportunity.

Maybe it wasn’t an opportunity at all.
Prepped
, Constantine had said.
Play your role
. Maybe it was a setup… and he believed she was part of it.

Fury boiled up inside her—fury from years ago that would never go away. The media had destroyed her father. She hated reporters. She still wasn’t sure what was going on, but she refused to give this one what he wanted.

She wiped the sleep from her eyes and smiled tentatively at the rock star. “Sorry, Constantine,” she said. “Meditating’s not my thing. I must have dropped off to sleep.”

“Sleep?” the reporter shouted. “He drugged you! Don’t you understand? He was going to rape you. He brought this bizarre paraphernalia up here.” He waved a hand to where, several feet behind her, the photographer was taking shots of some firewood, a tin cup, and a copper mask. “God knows what horrors he had planned, but we’ve finally caught him at it. You’ll be famous, your picture on the covers of magazines and all over the web: ‘The Girl Who Brought Him Down.’

How dare they? “What are you
talking
about?” she said.

The crow flapped away, and for the first time Constantine faced Marguerite. She tried to stand, but her head spun, and she swayed. Instantly he was there with a hand, warm and strong, pulling her up and setting her firmly on her feet. His eyes were cold, a disturbing contrast to the heat of his hand.

A blue jay screeched nearby, and another joined in.
Grab your moment of fame and run with it, babe.

“Like hell I will,” she said.

“Don’t be afraid of him, love,” the reporter said. “We’ll get you away from here, keep you safe.” The flash went off in her face.

She wasn’t afraid. She was furious. “Damn!” she said, still shaky, but entirely sure of what she had to do. She put a hand on Constantine’s arm and leaned into him. “Where were you?” she said, putting on a plaintive voice. “I meditated for ages, but I got bored waiting for you. That’s why I fell asleep.”

Constantine’s cold eyes bored into her for a long moment. “Yeah, but on the wrong mound,” he said, his aura suspicious even as he played along. “I said Mama Mound, not Papa.”

The reporter huffed. This wasn’t enough for him. He wanted a story, and if they didn’t give him a good one, he would revert to the rape scenario.

“Whoops.” Marguerite managed a giggle. “It’s already morning, and we didn’t even…” She paused. Through her fury, a sensible core suggested this was crazy and almost certainly stupid, but she knew the media, and nothing less would work. “We didn’t even do it,” she finished.

Constantine let out a long whoosh of breath. His lips curled in his famous grin, but his eyes remained cool and distant. The storm of color was quieter now, although still dense with pain. She was no telepath, and she didn’t consider herself a reassuring sort of person anyway. The best she could manage was to squeeze his arm.

“Sorry, Nathan,” he told the reporter. He took Marguerite’s hand and swung it gently back and forth. “I guess there was a little too much meditating and not enough… doing.”

She poked him in the chest. “You
owe
me. You can’t promise a girl tantric sex and then not deliver. It’s simply not fair.”

Constantine put the question to himself and his spirit guide, which for the moment was occupying a crow: Why would this woman, who was participating in an attempt to destroy him, change her mind and protect him?

The most obvious answer: She’d decided sex with a rock star was worth more than whatever pittance Nathan Bone had offered to pay her. The next most obvious: She was working for someone else besides Nathan—most likely Constantine’s elusive Enemy—and this apparent about-face was part of the plan. The third possibility: She was an innocent pawn.

It’s because you’re horny
, the crow said in Constantine’s head, which made no sense but was entirely true. Gingerly, Constantine put an arm around the woman. His rage was well under control—she wasn’t cringing or clutching her temples—but since she’d mentioned tantric sex, it was all he could do to keep himself from wrapping his arms around her… breathing her in… consuming her.

Tantric sex? Hell, any kind of sex would do. Damn, she smelled good: sleep-tousled woman and the outdoors. The jays had gone about their business, and the crow taunted him from high in a pine. Lately, his guide had encouraged him to try having sex again—the last time had been eons ago, before the death of his wife—and the crow had been particularly persistent about this girl. Her name was Marguerite, and she’d done the faux finish on a few benches for the patio at the Impractical Cat. Constantine had made a point of avoiding her because her fresh beauty made him yearn. With his telepathic powers out of control, he couldn’t afford anything so maudlin—and dangerous—as yearning.

He shouldn’t be surprised she’d ended up selling herself for a media stunt. That was the way of the world. He suppressed a pang of disappointment. He must be getting soft.

No, just slow
, the crow said.
You should have done her when I told you to.

This was typically exasperating bird logic—advice so incomprehensible that Constantine couldn’t bring himself to follow it. The last thing he needed was a turncoat girlfriend. When Marguerite’s roommate, an older woman, had been found dead a few weeks earlier near his property on the bayou, he’d congratulated himself on ignoring the bird’s pestering. Nathan had done his best to implicate him in the death—without the slightest justification, as the police had confirmed. Not that speculation about Constantine was unusual: He was a rock star and a vigilante, and even two years after the fact, some people still suspected him of poisoning his drug-addicted wife—but someone was systematically feeding Nathan with nasty accusations. Fortunately, it turned out that Marguerite’s roommate had committed suicide with her own prescription meds. Someone had run over her when she was already dead—probably some poor fool driving too fast in the dark.

Nathan’s take on the incident was that Constantine had planted the idea of suicide in the woman’s head, reinforced it, and caused her to die only for his own amusement. He’d been accused of doing just that to a Baton Rouge police officer several years earlier, not for amusement but because he’d sworn revenge against the cop for beating up his friend Leopard. He’d been young, arrogant, and newly famous. If he’d listened to his spirit guide’s advice, he wouldn’t have boasted of supernatural powers but instead used them
secretly. Either way, the cop would have died, which was all that mattered.

Now, and probably forever, he had to deal with the repercussions. Nathan would say—and his superstitious, trash-hungry public would relish believing—that he was thumbing his nose at the cops while he preyed on Marguerite. No matter how horny he might be, he could never risk sex with her now.

He ignored the bird’s exasperated huff and smiled down at Marguerite, saying in his supposedly sexy rocker voice, “I’ll make it up to you, darlin’. I promise.”

“Fine,” Nathan said, pouting. He’d been sending impatient glances in the direction from which he’d come. He must be expecting someone else to show. “I’ll make it a nervous wreck story instead, just like his wife: ‘Before and After Sleeping with Dufray.’ Better make sure you get away before he kills you, too.”

Marguerite rolled her eyes. “What is
wrong
with you? That stuff is all hype.” She picked up the blanket she’d been lying on, shook off the bits of grass sticking to it, and folded it. “Constantine’s a honey.”

Now the crow was totally cracking up, cawing raucously both high in a pine tree and inside Constantine’s head. “Don’t ruin my image, girl,” he said, grabbing the recorder and stomping on it, then going for the photographer, who froze midprotest and meekly handed over the camera.

“You know I’ll tell the story anyway,” Nathan whined. “If you don’t erase the pics, I won’t accuse you of destroying my property.”

“Uh-huh.” Constantine scrolled through the photos, deleting those of Marguerite, and telepathed a threatening
message to both men to keep their cell phones in their pockets. “Who sent you up here this morning?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Nathan pulled out his phone anyway. He never did respond well to telepathic suggestions.

“Your source eluded you again, did he? Better tread carefully, Nathan.”

Nathan grinned. “Is that a threat?”

“A friendly warning. Whoever this guy is, he doesn’t want to be found out. He’s using you to get at me, and if you learn too much about him in the process…” Constantine ran his index finger across his throat. “Let’s start over, shall we?” Might as well get the inevitable pics over with; the girl wasn’t playing befuddled or frightened anymore. Rather, she frowned from him to Nathan as if she disapproved of them both.

She wasn’t playing
, said the crow.

She is now
, Constantine told the bird.
Calling me a honey, talking about tantric sex.
He returned the camera to the photographer and strolled over to the weird little spread on the lawn, which he’d just begun to examine when Nathan had shown up. A ring of stones enclosed four pieces of scrap lumber, two logs, and the broken leg of a chair. Underneath the wood lay a small pile of kindling and pine straw, and to the left were a mason jar three-quarters full of a dark liquid, a metal cup enameled with a red-and-yellow Celtic knot design, a white plastic bowl decorated with Chinese characters, and a tall copper mask in the shape of a bird of prey, with decorative feathers and turquoise ceramic beads strung along the sides and hanging from the bottom edge.
To the right a soft chamois cloth was spread on the grass. In the chamois was the clear imprint of a knife.