Dust of the Damned (9781101554005) (18 page)

Or in again.

The locking bolt clicked. The guard opened the heavy door that rocked back slowly, like the door of a vault, on stout hinges. Unexpectedly, a pleasing odor, a homey odor, wafted into the dank hall from beyond the door, and as one of the guards led the company into the room beyond while the other closed and locked the door behind them, Zane was surprised to find himself in a large room outfitted much like the first floor of a cozy albeit modest house in your typical frontier town.

One in which supper was being cooked. The smell of fried liver lay thick in the pent‑up air.

There were two rooms partitioned off from each other by a crude-hewn set of stacked cupboards, a sitting area with comfortable chairs and a fainting couch to the left, and a kitchen with a cloth-covered table and a black range to the right. Two lumpy old women in shapeless dresses, heavy shoes, and aprons were cooking in the kitchen while—Zane blinked and felt his hand edge toward the butt of the Colt Navy slanting across his belly—a sleek black puma lounged on a braided rope rug before a snapping fire in a fieldstone hearth.

In front of him and the warden, the burly guard stepped back, pivoted on his hips to face the cat, and cocked his Winchester loudly.

The deputy warden made a gurgling sound in his throat and pointed at the beast sitting there as though on a sunny slope, slowly flicking its tail, yellow eyes shiny with reflected fire and lamplight. “She…G‑goddamnit! She’s not supposed to do that!”

The old woman forking beef liver around in a sputtering pan turned to see the cat, and said in a scolding tone,
“Elain-ahh!”

Throaty laughter sounded a half second before the cat on the rug sort of melted, waxlike, shifting its shape to become a beautiful, blue-eyed brunette with gold hoop earrings and a high-busted, full-hipped figure in a green velvet dress trimmed in wolf fur. Lounging on the rug before the fire, her long legs curled beneath her, Elaina Baranova threw her head back and laughed her hoarse, husky laugh, showing all her white teeth glistening like porcelain between full, red-painted lips. Her blue eyes, which owned a Slavic slant in a heart-shaped face, shone like polished marble.

“Miss Baronova, you’ve been warned countless times against shape-shifting, and if this…”

“I do apologize, Lieutenant McAlpine,” Elaina said, though her exotic eyes were riveted on Zane with the zeal of a stalking huntress, “but a girl gets bored, you know. I don’t shift my shape regularly but just to get the guards’ goat.”

Her lips stretched pleasingly. “Zane.” She almost whispered it, scrutinizing him as though he, too, were a figure that might shift and be suddenly gone or merely a figment of her imagination.

“Hello, Elaina,” Zane said. “Been a while.”

Her bosom heaved behind the dress, the cleavage-baring neckline of which was fringed with wolf fur as black as the puma
she’d just been. She slid her eyes from Zane to the others, her gaze lingering on Angel.

“Well, you certainly bring a crowd, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Angel said coolly, her own eyes appraising the strangely beautiful woman before her. “He does.”

Chapter 17
    

ELAINA BARONOVA

Elaina’s long, slanted eyes narrowed with a feline-like knowingness as she said, sliding her gaze from Angel back to Zane, “She’s jealous.”

Angel snorted. “Like hell. Uriah and I are after Charlie Hondo and the ghouls who broke him out of here. We’d just like to ask you a few questions, if—”

“Red.” Zane looked at her sharply. “Let me handle this.”

“Handle what? I certainly never expected to see you again, not after I ended up here on a handful of rumors and innuendo that spread like a wildfire around New Orleans.” Tears shone in Elaina’s eyes, and her lip trembled a little as she said, “Crowd or not, it is good to see you again, Uriah.”

McAlpine turned to Zane. “How well do you two know each other, anyway?”

“Lieutenant, let us have a minute, will you?” McAlpine began
to object but Zane interrupted him with, “I know it’s against regulations. But I believe Miss Baronova has some information about the folks who busted Hondo out of here, and if we want him back in his cage, I need a moment alone with Elaina. It could be the difference.”

McAlpine slid his eyes between the pair, then drew a sharp, resigned breath. “All right, all right. It’s against regulations but I don’t hope to be here much longer, anyway. And I reckon things couldn’t really get much worse than they already are.”

He canted his head toward a curtained doorway in the middle of the back wall. “You have five minutes. No weird stuff. If she were to loose some spell she’s privy to, it wouldn’t do much good for us to have her locked up in the first place, would it?”

“Elaina?” Zane said.

“Anything you want, Uriah. Just wish we had more time.” She quirked her lips devilishly as she glanced at Angel, who regarded the witch blandly.

Elaina walked to the curtained doorway, her long, green crinoline skirts rustling softly across the floor carpeted in a deep, plush, wine-red rug without any design whatsoever, due, most likely, to the government’s fear that Elaina and the other two sorceresses might turn one into a talisman of sorts.

Zane followed the Russian witch through the curtain and found himself in a room not nearly as well outfitted as the two he’d just left. In fact, it was a jail cage with two large cots in it, all appointed with heavy skins and furs. There were only two windows, hardly larger than rifle slots, high up in the walls.

The curtain had just barely fallen back into place before Elaina spun around, hair and skirts flying, and flung her arms around Zane’s neck, pressing her soft lips to his. At first, he
resisted. But even with Angel in the next room, he couldn’t resist an embrace from his old lover Elaina Baronova, witch that she had turned out to be. A deadly witch, he well knew. But one who he hoped was still in love with him.

They’d met when Zane had taken a riverboat to New Orleans hunting Cajun ghouls and ended up spending the long, rainy winter there.

As he mashed his own lips against hers, feeling her suck at him gently, her saliva warm and tasting as he remembered it had when they were about five years younger and holing up in one of the brothels owned by Elaina’s father, himself a medium, who had built a nice stake before the War operating a circus and traveling carnival show throughout Louisiana and Texas that specialized in fortune-telling.

She pulled her head back slightly, then rubbed her nose against his. “Did you come to spring your witch, Uriah Zane?”

“I came to ask for your help.”

Vaguely, he was wondering if she’d noted the change in him, but nothing registered in her eyes, and he thought that a good thing. Maybe he’d suppressed it so far that not even a witch of Elaina’s caliber could detect it.

“Anything for you, Uriah.” She leaned into him, pressing her breasts lightly against his chest and resting her wrists on his shoulders. “You know that. You tried to save me once, made a genuine effort to make an honest witch out of me, and I was too pigheaded to listen. Thus, I am fated to remain here with those two old crones whose powers can’t hold a candle to mine, for the rest of my life.”

She brushed her lips once more across his. “Or until you rescue me.”

Zane placed his hands on her wrists, gave them an affectionate squeeze. She was as wicked as they came. She’d wielded her powers with aplomb in New Orleans, gaining power over her father’s competitors and even casting a spell to turn one into a spider, which she then crushed beneath her shoe. So she’d been incarcerated here in Hellsgarde, a prison reserved for only those most diabolical of witches who, unable to resist their own powers, had proved beyond rehabilitation. She’d have been hanged if there’d been a judge brave enough to pass sentence on her.

Still, Zane felt a pull toward her. Before he’d known what she was, they’d had a wonderful couple of rainy months in each other’s arms.

Knowing he didn’t have much time, he leaped to the point of his visit. “Who helped those three wolves rescue Charlie Hondo, Elaina? Who’s the dragon-speaker?”

“Something tells me you already know the answer to that question, Uriah.”

“Ravenna?”

“That’s right.” Admiration shone like guttering candles in Elaina’s long eyes. “The god Elyhann has taught her very well. Makes me jealous.”

“Oh, you didn’t do too bad.”

She stepped back and crossed her arms on her breasts. “Dragon conjuring. Even I have to admire such gall. Elyhann never cast such spells my way, and that truly does gravel me, Uriah. Oh, the fun I could have had!”

“Maybe you didn’t ask.”

“I shouldn’t have had to ask. Ravenna… I have to admit that her harsh upbringing in Mexico, where witches are tolerated even less than here, made her riper pickings for Elyhann. Whatever
the reason, if you’re going after Charlie Hondo, Uriah, tread carefully. Ravenna has used the black powers of the meanest demon in Hell to her best advantage. There will be more tricks up her sleeve besides dragons.”

“Why? Why would Ravenna help the Hell’s Angels?”

“Charlie Hondo, you know, is a rakish ole devil. There’s just something about a man who gets a nasty need for a shave every full moon. But Ravenna is a girl of opportunity, if she’s anything, so I doubt it’s merely sex or love. I really couldn’t tell you, Uriah. But if he threw in with Ravenna to get him out of Hellsgarde, I’d bet my papa’s last whorehouse that their partnership goes beyond the prison break. They’ve partnered up for a good, dark reason. She needs Charlie, and he needs her.”

She dug her fingers into her arms. “It give me the shivers just thinking about it. So much power in a vessel even less restrained than myself.”

“You know that Charlie and his pards turned several hours before the full moon rose, don’t you?”

Elaina winked. “Like I said, Ravenna has some mighty powers, Uriah. Takes quite a woman to haze a dragon around the skies and to allow shapeshifters to shift at will. I’m betting that her powers are a little sapped, however. If you’re going to catch up to them, it had better be soon, before she has time to replenish herself. No witch in human form, not even Ravenna, can stay strong forever.”

“You have no idea where they’re headed or why?”

Elaina’s eyes became oddly uncertain as they dropped to Uriah’s chest. The skin above the bridge of her nose wrinkled. “I tried to tap into that, but without my cards and amulets it’s very difficult. The guards even scour this place for spiders! I did
get a feeling, though, Uriah.” She looked up at him, her eyes still apprehensive.

He waited.

“I felt that she’s been sent by Elyhann herself. That Elyhann wants something…”

“What?”

“I don’t know—maybe his favorite, dead son, Eurico—”

“Eurico?”

“Yes,” Elaina said. “The Lord of Darkness. The long-dead werewolf god, slain by a demon even greater than himself. His death is what caused the werewolves on earth to lose their power—long, long ago—and for the humans to get the upper hand and run them into the proverbial hills.”

Zane stared at her, wondering if she were mad as well as demonic.

She gazed back at him, her eyes owning an uncustomary graveness. “If they find what they’re looking for… and if what they’re looking for is the final resting place of Eurico… ” The tip of her tongue flicked across her lower lip, and her eyes became so fearful that Zane felt a cold, heavy stone drop in his loins. “… And if it’s true, as legend has it, that Eurico, with the right spell, could be reborn into another vessel, a werewolf vessel… it might not mean the end of the world, Uriah, but the start of so much darkness and chaos that we, all of us—humans, magicians, and even some ghouls—will be wishing it were.”

Zane pondered this. “You think Hondo and Ravenna are out to resurrect the Lord of Darkness?”

“I don’t know.” Elaina pursed her lips. “Like I said, my resources are limited here. But if they do resurrect Eurico, it’ll mean a return to the old days when the werewolves ruled the
earth—night
and
day—and humans—even witches without the power to defy the snarling hordes—will be back cowering in caves.”

Zane tugged at his beard. “Personally, I don’t much care for cave life. Why, just the other day I found a whole cave full o’…” He broke off his own uncustomary nervous chatter. “Oh, well. ’Nough o’ that.” He kissed the witch’s cheek. “Thanks, Elaina.”

He began to turn away, but she placed her hands on his face and looked sadly into his eyes. “I’m so sorry, Uriah.”

Zane frowned. Then he saw it in her gaze.

He hadn’t buried the wolf in himself as deeply as he’d thought he had.

“But it’s really not as bad as you think,” she added.

A little later that same night but forty-five miles to the southwest, on a cot in the bowels of the Saber Creek Station, Charlie Hondo said as he closed his hands over the breasts of the witch bouncing up and down atop him, “Ravenna, dear, it’s kinda hard to give you the full attention you deserve with your dragon staring in the window at me like he’s fixin’ to turn me into a pile of smoking ashes.”

Ravenna stopped bouncing up and down on her knees and shook a thick tangle of hair from her eyes as she turned to the window. Two smoldering eyes shone a few feet beyond the open shutter, the beast’s devil-like head silhouetted behind it.