Darknight (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 2) (24 page)

“Sit down,” she said, pointing to the sofa.

It seemed more a command than a request. But I didn’t protest, just took a seat on the couch. After a brief hesitation, Connor did the same.

Usually this was around the time when someone would offer coffee or tea, or at least water, but Marie didn’t seem too inclined to play hostess. Instead, she crossed her arms and stared down at us. “This will not get better,” she said. “This is not something we can ignore. The
yee naaldlooshii
will continue to kill until it is stopped.”

“His name is Damon.” Connor’s voice was quiet, but I could hear the edge to his tone.

“Once, perhaps.” Marie looked from him to me, where her gaze rested. “To become the
yee naaldlooshii
is to lose one’s humanity. And Damon is in an even worse case than those who have taken this darkest road before him, because he did not approach it with the proper respect. In arrogance, he reached out for a power he did not understand, one he underestimated, thinking it lesser than the magic that has lived in this family’s blood for uncounted generations. There is no going back from such a thing.”

“There must be,” Connor protested. “I refuse to believe that there is no way to bring him back to himself.”

For the first time her expression softened, and I realized she did care for Connor a good deal, even if hers was not the type of personality to reveal such a thing willingly. “For your sake, I wish it were possible. But it isn’t. The only release for Damon is in death. Perhaps then his soul can finally find some peace.”

I could feel Connor tense next to me, saw the way his fingers tightened on his knees. “You’re wrong.”

Surprisingly, she laughed. “How easily you say that, Connor. But I’m not. You think this is an easy thing for me, to say that the
primus
of this clan must be killed? It’s going to be terrible for all of us. He has no son, no child to inherit his gift. So you know what that means.”

Connor’s fingers went white-knuckled. “No.”

“Something else you don’t want to hear? Well, I’ll say it anyway. You’re the last of Jeremiah’s line. The power must pass to you. There is no other way.”

This pronouncement made my own blood go ice cold. For some reason I hadn’t allowed my mind to take this leap, to realize what the final consequence of killing Damon would be. Yes, there were many, many Wilcoxes, but they were all descendants of Jeremiah’s brothers and his one sister. It was different in my own clan, where the
prima
could be any girl of a given generation. But for the Wilcox clan, the
primus
must be Jeremiah’s direct descendant.

Mouth dry, I said, “Aren’t we getting a little ahead of ourselves? Maybe we should focus on how we’re going to track down and…neutralize…Damon before we start worrying about who his heir is.”

“‘Neutralize,’” Connor remarked. “That’s one way to put it. What, are you suddenly working for the CIA or something?”

“Do you want me to say it outright?” I retorted. I hated all of this — hated the brittle stillness that had come between us, hated that Damon had put us in this position in the first place.

Hated that killing him would result in Connor being the new Wilcox
primus
. I didn’t even want to think what that might mean for our relationship.

He didn’t respond, only stared off into a corner, not meeting Marie’s or my eyes.

“Killing a skin-walker is no easy thing,” she said. “Even a witch would have a hard time doing such a thing, but you, Angela, you are not just any witch, are you? A
prima
has the strength to confront the
yee naaldlooshii
.”

She seemed confident enough of that fact. I wished I could say the same. Yes, back at Damon’s house I had driven off the wolf-creature, but I certainly hadn’t hurt it. I somehow knew that if I had been alone, it would have torn my throat out just as it had done to all those girls who looked like me. It had backed away, because Connor was there. That tiny shred of mercy told me there was still a bit of Damon inside the skin-walker, even if most of its humanity had been lost.

“Assuming I do have that strength,” I began, making it clear from my tone that I wasn’t sure I had her same confidence on that point, “how do we even find him? I mean, there are probably a hundred government officials of varying types out looking for the killer wolf, and they’re not having much luck. And I somehow doubt he’s going to go back to his house.”

“No, he won’t,” Marie replied. “We have some family members there keeping watch just in case, but you’re right — I doubt he will return there now that his secret has been discovered. My belief is that he will take to the wild. We will have to lure him out.”

“And how exactly are we supposed to do that?” Connor asked. His tone was openly skeptical. I had the feeling he would try to throw up as many roadblocks to her plan as possible — anything to keep the current situation from progressing to its logical conclusion.

Her gaze shifted to me and settled there. I tried not to react, to hold myself still, but I didn’t know how successful I was. Not very enjoyable, being pinned in place by such an unwavering stare.

Still watching me, she said, “The same way you attempt to catch any wild animal.

“With bait.”

H
er plan was simple
. Damon, even in his current state, still seemed to be fixated on me, on having the McAllister
prima
in his power. So the easiest thing to do would be to put me in harm’s way, so to speak, and bring him to me that way.

“No way,” Connor said at once. “You’re not doing that to Angela. Haven’t enough people been hurt already?”

“And more will be hurt if we don’t stop your brother.” Marie gave me a chilly look of appraisal. “Can you do it, Angela?”

I thought of all the pictures of the dead girls I had seen. No, the papers hadn’t published any crime scene photos. They’d actually shown some restraint in that. But those faces flashed through my mind, each one a life and a future cut short. Could I really allow the killings to keep happening, just because I was currently scared shitless?

Voice firmer than I’d hoped, I said, “I’ll do what has to be done. But it can’t really be as easy as just standing in the middle of the woods somewhere and shouting ‘come and get me.’”

A thin-lipped smile. “No, it’s not that easy. And that’s why we need your help, Connor.”

At that he stood up, fists clenched at his sides. “Are you kidding me? You want me to help lure my brother somewhere so you can murder him?”

“How can you murder something that isn’t human?” she asked calmly, unruffled in the face of his anger. “As I said yesterday, this is more like putting down a rabid dog before that animal can cause any more misery or harm.”

At first Connor didn’t reply, but only stood there, color flaring along his high cheekbones as he stared at a spot on the wall, refusing to look at his cousin. I waited quietly, knowing he’d have to wrestle through this himself. Goddess knows I would hate to be placed in a similar situation. I had no siblings, so I couldn’t quite understand that kind of bond, but what if Marie had been asking me to do the same thing to Sydney, or my Aunt Rachel?

A little shudder went through me at that thought, and I wished I could put my arms around Connor, tell him how much I loved him and how I knew no one should ever be put in such a position. But because Marie was standing there watching us, and because I could sense he wanted no interference from me, nothing that would keep him from making this decision on his own, I kept still, and waited.

Time ticked by, unbearably slow. At last Connor shifted and met Marie’s patient gaze. “What do I have to do?”

She didn’t quite let out a breath, but I saw the tense set of her shoulders ease slightly. So she hadn’t been as sure of him as she wanted us to believe. “As Angela pointed out, we’ll have to do a little more than have her simply offer herself up to him. He is still canny, watchful. There are very few people he trusts. And you are no longer one of them, Connor, because he knows you love this girl, and have put her before him. Since the solstice, he no longer trusts me, either, because he thought I should have warned him that there was a possibility Angela would bond with a Wilcox other than the
primus
. But the one person he still trusts implicitly is Lucas.”

It clicked into place then — Connor’s features shifting to those of Lucas. That gift of illusion, of taking on someone else’s form. It was the one thing that might draw in the Damon-wolf. Might.

“So I pretend to be Lucas, offering up Angela as a sort of gift?”

“Exactly. It would make sense, because the one thing Lucas hates more than anything else is disruption. Angela was the catalyst that made Damon turn to the magic of the
yee naaldlooshii
. So it doesn’t require that great a leap to have Lucas think that by turning her over to the
primus
, somehow he’ll get his old friend back. Everything returned to the status quo.”

Connor ran a hand through his hair, clearly turning the idea over in his mind. “Maybe. That is, I know in real life Lucas would never do such a thing, but Damon would…and he does have a tendency to believe that everyone thinks the same way he does.”

Marie did not exactly reply, but she did give the barest of nods. “So you will do it?”

“I — ” A long pause, so long that I wondered if he was going to reply at all, or throw his hands up and walk out then and there. After all, this was the moment when he would have to commit to her plan, as much as every cell in his body must be protesting it. At last he murmured, “Yes.”

“Good. I am still analyzing the pattern of his attacks and trying to determine the most logical place where he will strike next. And perhaps a vision will come to me, but I can’t will that to happen. If it’s meant to be, I’ll have a clear seeing.” Her shoulders lifted. I could tell she didn’t much like admitting even that slight deficiency. Tone brisk, she added, “For now, go home. I hope I’ll have a location for you tomorrow.”

“Okay,” I said, and finally reached out to take Connor’s hand in mine. He didn’t resist, and I felt a tiny flicker of hope. Maybe he had begun to resign himself to the situation. “You know where to find us.”

We left then, and walked back through Marie’s quiet neighborhood to the busier streets of downtown. By then it was almost noon, and people were hurrying to lunch, or maybe to do some shopping.

My appetite had deserted me, and I guessed Connor felt the same way.

After we were back in the apartment, I asked, “Why Lucas?”

He shot me a mystified look. “You heard what Marie said. He and my brother have always been friends.”

“No, I know that. I’m just wondering why. Lucas seems like such a nice person — ”

“And my brother isn’t,” Connor finished for me.

Oh, shit. “That’s not what I meant — ”

“It isn’t?” He smiled thinly, and again the resemblance between the two brothers struck me, although most of the time it wasn’t that obvious. “Well, Lucas has an interesting gift. Luck.”

“Luck?”

“Not about everything. He’s never been married, always says he hasn’t met the right one yet. I know he’s had a lot of girlfriends, both civilians and not, but it never works out. Not that he doesn’t keep trying.”

“Like trying to pick up my cousin Margot?”

Despite everything, he flashed a quick grin at me. “Never thought I’d say I was glad to see a McAllister being so standoffish. She never even gave him a chance to get close, and thank God for that. We’d already had enough scenes that evening.”

That was true. It was hard for me to even imagine someone thinking of Margot in that way, but I had to remind myself that being a clan elder was all about power, not age. She was probably a little younger than Lucas. “You were saying about his luck?”

Connor shrugged and went into the kitchen, then extracted two bottles of water from the fridge and handed one to me. I smiled my thanks at him; it was cold, but very dry, and all that talking had irritated my throat. “But with money, finances? He has a sense. He just knows. The Wilcoxes have always done well for themselves, but the last thirty years more than ever. When things went sour with the last stock market crash, he’d told everyone in the family to move their investments into safer things like T-bills a month before it happened. I was in college, but I remember friends dropping out because their families had just lost everything and couldn’t afford to keep paying tuition. But we Wilcoxes? We sailed through it like nothing happened.”

“That is a pretty handy gift,” I admitted. “Better than talking to ghosts, that’s for sure.”

“Yeah, you could say that. So you can see why my brother would want to keep Lucas around. And also, with Lucas there’s no agenda. As you said, he seems like a nice person — because he
is
one. When you’re always looking over your shoulder the way my brother is, having someone like Lucas around makes a lot of sense. He’s always been very loyal to Damon. You and I know that he’s too good a person to really turn you into some kind of burnt offering, but Damon doesn’t. He’ll believe that his friend is doing his best to help him out.” A grimace twisted Connor’s mouth, and he added, “If Damon is even capable of rational thought anymore. I can’t imagine that he would knowingly have killed any of those girls. Especially Jessica. He might not have loved her, but he would have been protective of her.”

I shivered. Yes, I could see that. Jessica was willing to sacrifice herself to provide a Wilcox heir, and Damon would respect that, would take pains to make sure she was safe. The skin-walker spell truly had to have driven him out of his mind for him to kill her.

“So,” Connor continued, “logically I know Marie’s plan makes sense. And I know why we have to do it, but….”

The hopelessness in his voice broke my heart. I set my bottle of water down on the kitchen table, then went and put my arms around him. “I’m sorry, Connor,” I said, and I meant it. No one should have to go through this torture. Not even Damon Wilcox.

It seemed that Connor heard the sincerity in my tone, or maybe he simply felt it vibrating through our bond. Whatever it was, this time his arms went to encircle me as well, and he crushed me against him, clinging to me the way a man might cling to a life raft in a storm-tossed ocean. I stood there and offered whatever wordless comfort I could.