Demon's Web (16 page)

Shara realized her pouting and self-examination and stood to return to her quarters. When she exited the ballroom, Mani was there waiting in the hallway. He had been leaning against the wall, his one foot crossed over the other. He became upright when he saw her emerge. She stopped as she saw him, unsure whether to continue or wait to see what he had to say. If anything.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For kissing you. For taking advantage of the moment to do what I had only dreamed about. For leaving as abruptly as I did.”

Shara was quiet for a moment, absorbing all of his words and the contriteness with which he said them. “You had dreamed about kissing me?” she asked, amazed he had thought about that.

Mani became flustered. “Yes. Of holding you, and kissing you, and getting to know you better.”

“Why did you leave then?”

“Because I became scared about how I felt about you. I wasn’t prepared for it.”

She moved up to him. Her voice was soft, almost shaky. “Do you regret kissing me?”

Mani’s eyes widened and he shook his head repeatedly. “Fuck, no. I don’t regret kissing you in any way. I just didn’t want to come across as a chauvinist or anything. I didn’t want to disrespect you.”

She placed her hand on his arm. “You didn’t. I appreciate your consideration, but it is misplaced. I actually am glad you kissed me.”

“You are?”

She grinned. “Yes. I had been wondering what it would be like.”

Cautiously, he leaned down to her. “Can I do it again?”

“Yes.”

Without touching her, he gently pressed his lips against hers. When she didn’t run away or back up, he reached for her and slipped his arms around her. She moved her own arms about his neck. As soon as she did, his kiss became deeper. He pushed his tongue against her lips and she willingly let him in. He was in heaven for the first time in his life. A location he never thought he would be.

Shara could feel the closeness grow between them. She had thought about him since the moment she met him years ago. She knew his visits were few and far between over the past couple of decades, but she was so excited when he came for a chance to even glimpse him from afar. This was her dream come true. Better even than her dreams, because this was actually happening. It wasn’t a fantasy. It wasn’t a hallucination and, if it were, she hoped she would never wake up from it.

“Get a room,” Mel teased as he led Clarissa away from the ballroom.

Shara and Mani guiltily backed away from each other, Shara glancing down in embarrassment that their kiss had developed into something more.

Mel stopped by Mani long enough to give him a warning glance not to hurt Shara. Mani instantly understood the silent warning and nodded. Once Mani and Shara were alone again, Mani brushed her slightly swollen lips with his thumb. “Can I see you again?”

She nodded then did something she never thought she would do in her entire life: she became bold. “Would you like to walk me to my room?”

He held out his arm to her and she linked her arm to his to begin walking towards her accommodations. Once he saw her safely there, he nodded and began to bow out. Shara shook her head. “I was hoping you would come in and stay for a while.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” She held the door open for him and he entered willingly. Smiling softly to herself, she closed the door behind them.

Chapter 15

Nathan held Trinity, gently stroking her hair. It was quiet moments like these which saw her through most of the days she endured alone. Her captors allowed them one cage now, when they were together. Nathan reminded her often of her promise to keep trying to find whatever they were looking for so they wouldn’t hurt him anymore. But then they would remove him from her confinement for days on end. Sometimes he would come back without physical damage, others he would be heavily bruised and bleeding. She would wash his cuts, covering them the best she could. She would lie next to him and tell him everything would be okay. She would do as they commanded, so long as they didn’t kill him.

He hadn’t been with her long when the door opened. Axiso pulled Trinity off the bed and towards the door. Nathan tried to reach for her as she was pulled along, but he was unsuccessful. Trinity was thrown into the meditation room, as she has long since come to know it by. She was tired. She wanted to be in the comforting arms of Nathan. After over five years, you would think they would get a clue she was not going to be able to hone in on whatever it was they wanted her to find.

However, there was a table in the room this time. Something different. With curiosity, she examined the contents. Some hair and a necklace. The unseen booming voice jarred her out of her focused inquisitiveness.

“Use them to help you focus on what you are searching for.”

“But these are personal items. This is hair. I don’t understand. I thought I was looking for a thing, not a person.”

“You are looking for what I
tell
you to look for. Don’t worry yourself about the whos and whats of what you are searching for. All will become clear when the time comes. Focus and tell me where to find my desire.”

Trinity had the fight taken out of her so long ago she didn’t bat an eye at the command and immediately sat cross-legged on the floor. She had the hair in one hand and the necklace in the other. Through the training the voice had given her over the years, she knew the basics of focusing: opening her mind and searching for that elusive thread which called to her. She heard it on a few other occasions over the years, but she was not prepared to have it almost attack her senses as it was doing now with the items she held. They served almost as a tuning rod, drawing the call to her as never before.

She almost dropped the necklace but had been smart enough to wrap it around her palm. The hair stuck to her now-clammy skin while beads of sweat broke out upon her brow. Images, moments in time, flashed behind her closed eyelids, most of which did not make any sense. Some, however, confounded her. Images of her brother, Logan, laughing or hammering a nail in a board. Places she had never seen or did not recognize filled her senses. Sounds and smells so foreign to her she was as confused as ever as to where she was being led.

“What do you see?”

The voice caused her to focus more intently on something recognizable, even if it wasn’t familiar to her. A sign, a sense of place that she could tell him about.

“Green and white awning. Lots of tables. Music in the distance. People talking. Some getting louder as others fade. The name of New Orleans is singing in my head. By the river. She is alone.”

Coyote smiled at Trinity as she said those words. In all truth, he no longer fully needed her to find the wench who held the stone in her heart. He was now aware of who it was and where it was overall, but he didn’t know Jasmine’s whereabouts and he couldn’t afford her to be followed to see where she would be before she could be taken. He wanted, needed, to know Trinity was truthful. He needed to affirm she was broken and his to command. There might come a time very soon when she would have to choose, but with his hold on her she would choose him. Whether as the disembodied, commanding voice or as the youthful form of Nathan, that was still to be seen. Either way, though, she belonged to him.

Coyote sent the Rougarou on their way to bring Jasmine to him. Unbeknownst to Trinity, the wedding reception was still occurring. He had planted some seeds of suggestion and doubt to Jasmine so she would return home first, enabling Logan to have a few more private moments with his parents. He made sure he whispered these thoughts to her during their dances while he was also busy obtaining some strands of her hair. The dancing dips allowed him to slip her necklace from her without anyone noticing.

“You have done well, my child. A more difficult test will be coming soon. Axiso will return you to your room. Rest. For you will need to be totally refreshed for what is yet to come.”

Trinity stood and replaced the items back on the table. She needed to scrape the hair from her sweaty palm to totally get it off of her and it took her a moment longer than she anticipated as it clung to her stubbornly. She was anxious to return to her cell and see Nathan. Excited almost.

She was, therefore, totally disappointed to arrive only to discover Nathan was taken away again while she had been gone. She spun on Axiso. “Where is Nathan? Where did you take him this time? You just brought him back.”

The only Rougarou she knew by face and name shook his head. Without a word he closed the door after locking her in the cage. Trinity found the still quietness unnerving. She wanted Nathan there. She wanted to feel his arms around her, his hands gently combing her hair while her head rested on his lap. She wanted to hear his baritone voice with that odd little accent tell her everything was going to be okay, even though she wasn’t sure she believed it any longer.

How long had she been captive, with only this building of wherever she was to see? Over the years, she only had Axiso, Nathan and the disembodied mechanical voice telling her what to do as companions. She had come to rely on those three, wondering if her family even missed her any more or if what Nathan said was true: that they probably gave up looking after the first few months and moved on with their lives without her. She rebelled against such an idea at first. For months she kept hope her parents or her brother would locate her and bring her home. She kept trying to reach out to them but never got an answer, never received any sense of hope. Nathan told her she couldn’t rely on them. They only had each other, he mentioned often, and in time she began to believe him.

He was a prisoner as well. Weeks before she arrived, he told her, he had been captured. However, until she came, he was always treated ruthlessly, never sure of his usefulness to his captors, never sure if he would live to see another day. How often had he whispered to her that she was his savior? Because of her, he felt they found a purpose for him. He told her often he was alive only because of her.

“I have seen you come back from the dead. Over and over again,” she once stated.

“True. I can regenerate, but my immortality comes with a painful cost and there are ways to kill me so I can’t return.” He tilted her chin up to meet his eyes. “You won’t let that happen, will you?”

“No! Of course not,” she stated emphatically. “I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure they don’t hurt you.”

He gave her a smile and pulled her into a big hug, his scheming mind seeing her resolve for freedom being chipped away. He would give her a reason to live and a will to continue to do as she was told without a fight. He would break any resolutions she had to escape by causing her to develop feelings for Nathan, to protect him, care for him, maybe even fall in love with him. Coyote didn’t care as long as his alter ego did the trick and he was able to get the desired results from the young, foolish child.

Admittedly, there was a small part of Coyote who also enjoyed this situation. He hated Mel for getting involved by training and helping to protect the guardian of the gem and preventing him from acquiring it for himself. He detested Mel and Clarissa for defeating him and each and every obstacle he sent them. Each of his schemes to get the stone: setting the neighboring wolves to attack Clarissa’s family; conniving to set up Jes’Sakkid in hunting for the gem; securing Xon to search for the stone; sending demon after demon to hunt Clarissa down; making deals with the Rougarou to capture Jasmine, only to fail and capture Trinity instead; and now using Trinity all this time to hunt for the stone her mother had protected. Yes. This was the perfect revenge for them circumventing him from his goal for so long. Break Trinity to nothing more than a shell of a being who wanted only to be with him, then spurn her when the time was right and know none would ever suspect it was Coyote pulling the strings until it was far too late.

Chapter 16

Jasmine needed some air before she entered her safe haven of a home in the French Quarter. The revelations of the evening were a bit much to take in and Coyote’s insinuations didn’t help. True, he didn’t say anything in particular, but it was his tone which put so many doubts in her mind. She wasn’t cognizant of the idea her powers had been dampened in order to help hide the natural abilities of the gem. She was still trying to comprehend everything she had learned in the past few hours, if for nothing else but to ground her sense of self.

The chicory-scented coffee and the sweet smell of the herbs and spices of the city wafted over the light breeze as she walked along the Mississippi River. The lights of the city sparkled in the swift moving water. She looked up at what few stars could be seen as a result of the city lights, but they were pretty none-the-less. Jasmine was so caught with her own thoughts she never sensed them until they appeared on either side of her. She started to scream for help, but she was gone from the spot she occupied before the first sound left her throat.

She found herself in an isolated room, a sickeningly sweet cloth being held against her nose and mouth. Blackness quickly enveloped her in its blessed stillness. As she fell unconscious, the Rougarou caught her crumbling form, lifting her with ease to the waiting gurney.