Inferno (31 page)

If you’re looking for trouble, just look right in my face.

Yeah, this Cajun don’t run. Not for nothing.

And definitely not today.

He rose up in the darkness and glared straight in its face. “You want a piece of me? Then c’mon, bitches, and get some. But you better not come alone!”

In that moment, he felt the heat of perseverance inside him rise up and take hold. It flamed so bright that he no longer felt the cold at all. Oh hell no …

Lowering his head, he moved forward with determined steps. He had things to do and people to save.

Starting with himself.

He paid no attention to his haters. No attention to the dangers. He stayed focused on moving in a straight line as fast as he could. The voices became louder, but he did to them what he did whenever his mom started on one of her Olympic bitch sessions.

Ignored it for everything it wasn’t worth.

He had sixteen solid years of selective hearing training. And his teachers thought it was worthless.

Ha!

And in the end, the wolf was right. The mists faded harmlessly away without hurting him, and he finally found himself in the room with multiple doors.

All right, we’re here.

Each door had a small window in it. Nick went to the nearest one and glanced through it. The second he did, a monster jumped up and snarled in his face.

Screaming, Nick jumped back.

The monster pounded on the door, trying to get to him.

Nick panted in terror. Thank God no one had seen him act like a girl. Well, not Simi or Kody. He would have done that a lot sooner than either of them. But Casey would have screamed like he did, and then some.

“At least I didn’t wet my pants.” But that was as close to spontaneous loss of bladder control as he wanted to come. Ever.

He approached the next door with a lot more respect and caution. Looking in slowly, he frowned. It looked like a sunny beach. Water rolled against perfect snow-white sand. He could even hear birds singing.

Nice. Gorgeous. Inviting.

Definitely certain death. That had to be a trap. He’d seen this movie enough to know it.

Narrowing his eyes, he tried the next contender. But it was too dark to see anything at all. Since the dark had brought him here safely, maybe he should choose this one?

I was born from darkness
.

Might have the right symmetry.

Still, he hesitated. Better to check out the other two doors before making a decision. No need to rush this when his life was on the line.

Frowning, he stepped over. The next one was what appeared to be a meadow at dusk. Woods surrounded it. Since it was neither appealing nor scary, it might be a safe bet.

Definite maybe on this one.

Scratching his ear, he went to the last one and froze. Instead of a window, it was a mirror that reflected his image back at him.

This was the right door.

It made total sense. His biggest enemy was himself. Kyrian said that all the time.
We know instinctively what to do and still we don’t. Whatever you do, Nick, don’t get in your own way.

Nick put his hand on the knob, then paused.
What if I’m wrong?

“I have to trust myself to do the right thing.” And every journey began with a single step. Opening the door, he stepped through it and took a moment to get his bearings while the door closed.

The instant the latch clicked, the sunny sky above rumbled with thunder. Dark clouds rolled in and boiled, turning the sky into a deep, dark red. Bloodred.

Undaunted, Nick moved forward, across the vacant field that faded until it turned into New Orleans.…

Looking around, he scowled. “I know this place.”

It was where North Robertson ended near the North Claiborne bridge in the Ninth Ward. When he’d been a kid, he and Tyree and Mike used to play here. Tyree’s grandmother lived in the little white shotgun at the end of the road where the pavement stopped abruptly just short a few yards from the levee. Tall and heavyset, Tyree’s grandmother used to sit on the front porch in her rocker, shelling beans or knitting, or fanning herself with the big old Jesus hand fan she’d gotten from church so that she could watch them, and, as she so often shouted, “keep you godless heathens out of trouble.”

They’d play ball near the levee or pretend to be wilderness explorers in the vacant, overgrown lot across the street. It had a cement pad where either a house had been and was destroyed, or where someone had planned to build one and never had. Either way, it’d been a great place for them to sit and eat the cookies Tyree’s grandmother would bake for them on Sundays. And every time she brought them a batch, she’d say, “Now y’all boys be careful and don’t get bit by some hungry gator coming up over the levee ’cause it smell rotten boys with cookie sugar in them. I’d hate to have to tell your mamas you done got eat now.” They would exchange bug-eyed stares and keep watch for a gator that never came. Or tell each other they’d spotted one in the brush, and then they’d have to run for it or get eaten.

Even in the hot, sweltering, mosquito-infested summers, those had been good times. How he missed being that innocent and carefree. Back then he hadn’t even known they were poor. Hadn’t understood what his mom did for a living. No one in their neighborhood had looked down on them.

Pity life couldn’t always be like that.

As Nick came up to the back of the house where Tyree’s grandmother would hang her “unmentionables” and they’d chase lightning bugs, he smiled at the memory of a woman he couldn’t have loved more had he been related to her.

He hadn’t thought about this place in years. The last time he’d been here, he was eight years old and they’d come to pay respects to Tyree’s family after they’d entombed his grandmother in St. Louis #1 with her husband he’d never met.

Nick paused as his heart broke all over again for the loss of such a wonderful woman. He could still hear Tyree’s mother and aunts singing their mother’s favorite hymns. “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” … A chill ran over him as he saw a ghostly image of her still at the clothesline, fussing at him for slinging mud too close to her laundry.

His throat tight, he cleared it. “Miss you, Miss Mabel.”

Now don’t you be sad for me, little Nicky. One day, I’m gonna be up in heaven with them angels. But don’t you worry none. I’ll still have time to look down on my boys and smile with pride at the men y’all become.

His eyes filling with tears, Nick reached a hand toward the image of her, knowing he couldn’t touch her, but still feeling a need to try.

The image vanished instantly.

Blinking back his sadness, he glanced around. Why was he here? What was the point?

Was it because he was trying to find his way home, and this had been one of the first places where he’d learned to understand that word?

With no clue, Nick headed for the bus stop on Claiborne at Tennessee. At least he knew how to get back to his condo from here. It wouldn’t take him long.

But as he turned to walk down Tennessee Street, he heard something strange overhead. It wasn’t a plane or helicopter. He couldn’t place the sound. Not until he heard a loud screech. Looking up, he saw a huge bird coming straight at him.

No, not a bird.

It was a winged, armored demon. One that swooped down, blowing fire at him. Nick dove toward a parked SUV, but instead of landing beside it, he went through the door.

He rolled across the ground several times before coming to rest on his back. Aching all over, he stared up at a ceiling instead of the sky.

What the…?

No longer out in the open, he was in school between classes.

“Are you okay, baby?” Casey knelt down beside him.

Scowling, Nick looked around. Everything seemed normal. Just another day at St. Richard’s.

Was this real?

“Gautier?” Coach Heffron snapped as he paused next to him and glared down at the floor where Nick was spread out. “I hope you don’t stumble like that during the game. Get up, boy, you’re blocking traffic and embarrassing yourself and your team.”

Caleb stopped by his side and held his hand out to him. Nick took it and let his friend pull him to his feet.

“You all right?” he asked.

Nick wasn’t sure. He glanced from Caleb to Casey to the other students he knew so well. Brynna was at her locker, talking to LaShonda about shopping. Stone and Mason were glaring at him from their lockers. Madaug walked past, his nose buried in a notebook with pages spilling out of it.

It appeared to be right. Everything as it usually was. Nothing strange, other than how he came to be here.

“Yeah.”

Casey reached up to rub his head. “I don’t know. You took a bad fall.”

“Not hard enough,” Kody mumbled as she walked past them and the light caught against the heart necklace he’d given her. She cast a malevolent glare at him that added credence to this being real.

Maybe that was how the doorway worked. It just threw you right back into a normal day.

Casey snarled in Kody’s direction. “Jealousy doesn’t become you, bitch!” Then she leaned into Nick. “Ignore her. You’ve moved up in the world.”

Yeah, this felt normal.

Caleb handed him his nine-thousand-pound backpack.

Nick leaned in to speak to him so that Casey couldn’t overhear anything. “What happened with my mom and dad?”

He blinked innocently. “What about them?”

Opening his mouth to elaborate, he snapped it shut. The busy hallway filled with nosy ears was not the place to have this discussion. “Nothing.”

Maybe the door had reset the past?

Maybe everything had been a dream. How would he know?

Stone “accidentally” bumped into him as he headed for class. “You look even more like a freak in those clothes, Gautier. You should go back to your trailer trash wear.”

Caleb shook his head. “Ignore him, Nick. He’s just jealous you’re the hero and he’s a loser.”

Nick scowled in confusion. “Hero?”

“The game? You scored the winning TD Friday night after Stone fumbled the ball. Don’t you remember?”

Okay, it must have dumped him forward in time.

Caleb arched a brow at Nick. “Maybe you ought to go to the nurse.”

“I’m fine.” Sort of. Since he wasn’t sure which period it was, never mind the day of the week, Nick walked with Caleb, who didn’t seem to think it odd that Nick was with him. Hopefully this was one of their shared classes. But since they were in the back hallway of the school, there was no clock for him to check the time.

Caleb went into Richardson’s stark, bland room. Great … Couldn’t the dimensional doorway have dropped him back later in the day? No, he had to be in the hag’s class.
Figures
. But at least it was study hall and lunch.

Richardson narrowed her beady eyes at him and his new clothes. “What are you wearing, Mr. Gah-tee-aa?”

Nick bit back a caustic retort at her deliberate mispronunciation of his last name. She hated Cajuns and in particular she hated Cajun French, especially if you mixed it with English. Which was why it was a moral imperative that he break out his most charming grin and thickest accent.
“Pourquoi, cher, je voulais pas m’obstiner avec toi. Ça me fait de la peine that you take issue avec mon linge. Je fais le mieux que je peux
.”

Why, hon, I don’t want to argue with you. It pains me that you take issue with my clothes. I do the best that I can.

Oh yeah, she was madder than the devil now. Her face was so red, it matched her tacky eyeglasses. “Sit down, Gau-tee-yah, before I write you up.”

Nick winked at her.
“Je t’aime, itou.
”

“Stop baiting her,” Caleb mumbled under his breath.

“Can’t help it.”

“For my sake, try.”

Nick sat down and opened his books to do homework. He’d just started when someone threw a wadded piece of paper at him. Scowling, he looked to see Ben, another friend of Stone’s, glaring at him.

“What pimp did you shoot for that outfit, Gautier?”

Letting out a breath in frustration, Nick didn’t comment as he returned to work and saw the riddle they wanted him to solve for English:

It can be stolen, but never bought.

It can be given, but never taken.

It can be stepped on, but cannot walk.

It can fly, but has no wings.

It can sing, but has no voice.

It can be broken, but still it works.

It can be left, even while it follows.

And though it’s easily commanded, it can never, ever be demanded.

What was any of that crap supposed to mean? Gah, how he hated homework.

As usual, class dragged on until he was ready to scream. The twenty minutes he had to wait before they could go to lunch seemed like an eternity.

He didn’t relax until they entered the cafeteria. But his relief was short-lived as other people started making comments about his new non–Hawaiian shirt look.

“You think he went gay?”

“Nah, I think he was always gay.”

Nick batted his eyelashes at the all-male table of Stone’s cronies as he stopped after their comment and pursed his lips. “Why, I know all y’all looking for new boyfriends. But I’m happily taken.” He looped his arm in Caleb’s and prissed off with him toward the food line.

Caleb gave him a stoic stare.

“What?” Nick asked innocently.

“Since I’m your boyfriend, the least you could do is buy my lunch.”

Nick scoffed at him. “Chivalry is so dead.
You
should buy mine.”

Caleb rolled his eyes as he plopped a wad of mashed potatoes onto his tray and moved down the line.

Once they’d paid, Nick headed for Casey, who was at a table with two of her friends.

She scowled as he sat down beside her. “What are you doing?”

He exchanged a confused stare with Caleb. “Having lunch with my girl?”

Frowning even more, she looked at her friends. “Which one of you is dating the loser?”

“Ew! Not me.”

“As if!” Stephanie raked a sneer over Nick’s body. “I’d go all-girl school first.”