Remembered by Moonlight (28 page)

Cee Cee was grinning as she answered her ringing phone, letting her intended struggle and wheeze in protest. “Hey, Babs. You’re just in time to hear the news. Savoie popped the question. We’re making it legal.”

Silence then a rather stiff, “Congratulations. Tina and Oscar will be thrilled.” Him, obviously not so much. “Just calling to let you know we picked up something of yours last night without realizing it, but figured you’d want to know we had it before you started looking.”

Cale
. She let out a relieved breath. It took a moment for her to reply casually. “Could you just hang onto it for a while?”

“No problem. Oh, and another thing. You asked me to let you know if something pinged on an elderly black female name a Pelletier.”

Her mood instantly sobered. “What did you find, Alain?”

“DB at the address you gave me. KOD blow to the head. Thought she must have fallen, hit something, but no trace to support an accident. Treating it as suspicious. Place got tossed pretty good. No telling what anyone would be after. Her son IDed the body. Couldn’t provide any motive.”

“Thanks.” She disconnected and quietly relayed the news, first, of Cale’s safety. And then, to Max, that his neighbor had died. She wasn’t sure how he’d receive the news.

He reflected silently for a moment, then murmured, “She was kind to my mama and me when no one else was. I regret not going back to visit with her when I had the chance.” Stoic words to cover the way his quickly downcast eyes were shimmering. “Who would have done such a thing?”

“A better question would be what did she have that someone would want?”

His gaze flashed up. “Our things?” His puzzled stare cleared. “My father’s letters.”

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

They sat side by side on their still-rumpled bed staring down at the two faded envelops Max had retrieved from a box beneath it.

“You said we should read them together,” Max recounted, voice so quiet it was almost a whisper.

“Did you remember that? Just now?”

“I have dreams sometimes,” he admitted. “I’m never sure if what’s in them is truth or fantasy. But that, I remember. You said that after Mrs. Pelletier gave them to me, before you . . . went away?” He glanced up, brow furrowed. “Were you leaving me, Charlotte?”

“No. I was finding myself.”

“And what did you find,
cher?”
he asked carefully.

“That I didn’t want to be without you.”

He leaned over to touch a tender kiss to her cheek. “And you never will be.” Then he looked back to the letters, one addressed to his mother, one to him. He opened the one with the name
Marie
scrawled on it in a bold hand and unfolded the brittle message. The words lay bare emotions his father had never spoken.

My love, I’ve forgiven you for our rather abrupt parting. Such a surprise, you bad girl. What’s taken longer to excuse is the secret you kept from me. It pains me to say you were right not to tell me. What kind of provider would I have been for you or role model for the boy? How brave of you to realize that when I refused to see it. I couldn’t be there when things were hard for you and our son, so let me help you now.

I know you’ll want to throw the money back in my face. It can’t make up for all you’ve suffered because of my selfish actions. Use it, to spite me, to find that good life you deserve somewhere I’ll never find you. Someplace no one will find you. Be happy, that’s all I ask. I’ve done what I had to to see our son is safe. Like your decision to leave me, it tore out my heart to make these arrangements. We have to let him go, Marie. We can’t protect him from what’s coming. The only thing we can do is see he’s hidden.

It wasn’t easy for me to find you, but if I could so can a greater danger. Listen, my love, and don’t take this warning lightly. I know you’d never hear a harsh word against your sister. That endearing blindness is a luxury you can’t afford. She’s a monster. For every ounce of your decency, Genevieve carries a pound of bitter madness. She hid it well but you knew in your heart it was there. If I hadn’t escaped with you when I did, she would have killed you. The plans were already in motion. That’s why I was willing to take such desperate steps. Now that she’s learned about our son, she’ll stop at nothing to have him as a figurehead for her plans to control the future of our kind. I love him enough to forego the joy of having you in my life, but she’ll be willing to sacrifice you both to feed her insatiable ego. Don’t trust her. Don’t let her come near our boy. Her lies will be the death of him.

Try to think kindly of me if you think of me at all, Rollo

Marie Savorie was dead by the time the letters and money were placed in Mrs. Pelletier’s hands, and Max living as a ward of Jimmy Legere. Marie never knew of Rollo’s intentions or learned of the danger she’d faced.

Max refolded the letter and tucked it carefully into the envelope. Then he sat still and quiet, Cee Cee holding his hand.

“You don’t want to read the other one?” she prompted.

“Not right now. Genevieve knew, Charlotte. My father must have told her about the money and the letters when they met in Baton Rouge. She had that sweet old woman killed to keep me from finding out the truth he’d written in them. She wasn’t a victim when we met at the cemetery. She brought those two with her, to dispose of an old woman and sacrifice themselves in her plan to gain our sympathies.” When he turned to Cee Cee, his eyes glowed, cold blue fire. “She
is
a monster. And she has to be stopped.”

Michael Furness straightened from his late-morning prayers as intuition brushed across the back of his neck like a breeze through the airless church. For a long moment, he didn’t move, waiting, finally surrendering to the inevitable.

“I didn’t know what she’d planned,” he said simply without turning. “I didn’t want to know. That’s my weakness, my sin. You’re here to punish me. I understand and forgive you.”

“We’re not here for your forgiveness,
priest.”

He stiffened. It wasn’t Max at his back. He’d find no mercy—in this world or beyond—from Nica Fraser, nor would he ask for it. He turned slowly, without fear to see the same four who’d come to him for the truth about what they were, now here for either answers or revenge. Or both. Silas MacCreedy, Nica Fraser, Charlotte Caissie and Max Savoie. The strongest and most talented of their kind here in New Orleans. He had nothing to give them but that apology. Or so he thought.

“We’re here for your help.”

Furness blinked at Max’s quietly delivered claim. That, he’d never expected. And in many ways, the request meant more to him than clemency.

“My help? After what I’ve done?”

“It wouldn’t have been my suggestion,” Cee Cee offered with her indomitable cool, squared up at Max’s side as always, “but Max believes in you, so here we are. I wouldn’t advise disappointing us.”

“Where is she?”

Furness met Max’s unfathomable stare. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t know or don’t want to say?” Silas asked, as icy as his counterpart and perhaps more dangerous.

“I don’t know. She plans to leave this afternoon. What she intends to do before then, she hasn’t shared with me.”

“And you’re all right with that?” Nica growled.

Hostility bristled from her. He was a heartbeat away from death at her unforgiving hands, and this time he didn’t think MacCreedy would restrain her. After all he done, or failed to do in their shared past, he couldn’t give her less than the truth now, even to save his own life.

“I have no say in it. I want none. She told me she’d come here to see you, Max, to help you regain your memories.”

The Shifter leader was unconvinced. “Not that she’s involved in a scheme to spike illicit drugs with substances to control and possibly kill our kind?”

Furness shook his head, truly horrified.

“Did she tell you the cost she planned to extort from Max to restore his past?”

He glanced uneasily at Cee Cee. “No.”

“That she wants the head of our friend and the lives of his entire clan?”

He paled. Things were worse than he’d ever imagined. But knowing Genevieve, he
should
have known. “She didn’t mention that, no.”

“Or that she threatened the safety of the child I carry if Max doesn’t return with her to Chicago? Did she leave that out, too? I’m guessing yes.”

“She’s insane,” he whispered faintly. He got no argument.

“Let’s go,” Silas urged the others, impatient with their quest. “He doesn’t know anything useful. He’s just a puppet.”

A puppet
.

Furness squared up his massive shoulders, assuming that fighter’s stance that always seemed at odds with his clerical collar. His voice rumbled like the wrathful thunder he’d call down during his sermons. “Perhaps before, but no longer. I don’t know her plans, but I know how to derail them.”

Max pounced on that. “How?”

“First, we need to get you out from under her control.”

“You can return his memories?” But Cee Cee’s hopes were quickly dashed.

“No. I’m sorry. He’ll have to resurrect those for himself once the link between them is broken.”

“How can that be done?” Silas demanded, still suspicious.

“You continually miss the truth about the greatest strength you have.” Furness shook his head. “You’ve learned nothing.”

“We know what we are, but our skills aren’t powerful enough to defeat her.”

He reached out to gently grip MacCreedy’s shoulder. Silas didn’t flinch or try to withdraw beneath it. “Not alone in and of yourselves,” he instructed, holding that doubting stare with his own. “But together we can. That’s always been the secret. Strength in Knowledge. Strength in unity.”

“We tried to free Max’s mind and failed,” MacCreedy argued.

“Because you were missing an important component.” Before they could ask, Furness volunteered, “You didn’t include
my
energy. Genevieve never saw me as anything but a lowly Shifter. But we are of Ancient blood, and together nothing is beyond our reach. Together, we freed Ms. Fraser from her controller in the North, and together, if you’ll trust me, we can block Genevieve’s ability to see through Max’s eyes and stay one step ahead of us.”

“Trust you?” Nica echoed. “You don’t ask much, pretender.”

“It’s the only way I know. We must act soon. She’ll sense what we’re doing and try to stop us.”

Silas spoke for them, his tone grim.

“Let the bitch try.”

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Eyes closed, Max inhaled deeply and let it out slowly. Seated on the front pew, he felt Cee Cee on one side of him and Silas on the other. Nica stood behind where she could keep an eye on the spiritual man kneeling at his feet. Following Furness’s quiet verbal cues, he relaxed and let himself lose touch with the physical world around him.

“What I’m going to ask you to do is not to reach outward as you did last night when you paid your unexpected visit.”

Max could sense the smile in the priest’s voice and returned it faintly.

“Turn your focus inward. That’s it. Calm breaths. Relax. Hear the sound of your breathing in your ears, feel it move in your nostrils.”

“I don’t see anything,” he murmured, uncertain as to what to look for.

“There’s nothing to see. Relax. Your body is heavy. You can feel it fall away.”

His lips parted as he drifted from tactile stimulation. He drifted in darkness, the sensation not unpleasant but oddly disconnected, much like the child his beloved carried. He heard Furness speaking as if from far away.

“Hands here and here and here. Lightly. Concentrate.”

The faint press of fingertips seemed to push inward, through flesh, through bone until tiny pulses of something that wasn’t light or heat spread within his mind, stretching, joining, weaving together into a strong, encapsulating net.

“Feel that? Your friends surround you, protect you, become you. Absorb their warmth, their energy until it pulses like a heartbeat.”

A faint throb began within that endless darkness, strengthening with each collective beat. He wasn’t alone. The uneasiness faded. Blackness gave way to a shimmering kaleidoscope of colors, dazzling, darting as if he were pressing fingertips against his eyelids.

“Now you know the feel of those who are with you. Look around, Max. Is there anything that feels out of place, that doesn’t belong? Slowly. Carefully. Keep looking.”

Out of the corner of his internal eye, he saw what couldn’t exactly be called movement. More a flex of energy like an oily bubble gathering size, beginning to expand and contract.

“She’s here,” he whispered.

“Force her out, all of you together. Concentrate. Fill the space. Give her nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.”

Sweat broke on Max’s brow. His breaths grew quick and shallow as he struggled with the unwieldy mental exercise. Crowding, pushing, squeezing as if between thumb and forefinger to remove something foreign and noxious from beneath the skin. When she tried to evade him, his friends blocked her escape, filling the space of his subconscious like foam insulation to prevent her from leaking through. Until no place remained for her to go but out. Max gave that final, exhaustive push.

“Michael! What are you doing, you fool?”

With a gasp, Max slumped weak and woozy in the pew, drained but free.

“You dare to betray me?”

A fearsome sight in her fury, Genevieve stood at the end of the aisle, eyes agleam with unholy rage, translucent skin pulled taut against shifting bone. She swept toward them, shape changing, blurred by supernatural speed. Her screech became a roar. Seeing Nica altering her own form into a beast of matching ferocity, she veered sharply away from Max’s slack form where the other female stood guard behind him. The focus of her attack turned instead to the mother of his child who’d moved to stand in aisle, blocking access to her mate.

Furness had time to whisper one thing in Cee Cee’s ear before the raging creature lunged. Something so unbelievable, so unheard of, Cee Cee was knocked to the floor before she could take in its significance. By then, Silas had thrown himself into the mix, grabbing the writhing monster about its thick furred neck to roll with her down the aisle until she managed to bite and scratch her way free.

Then she targeted Cee Cee once again, snarling, “I will tear that child from your womb!”

Protective instincts surged wildly. Cee Cee didn’t think, she acted. She met Genevieve’s leap with the fierce swipe of a clawed hand, slashing grooves across the other’s face, blinded her attacker with her own blood. Howling, Genevieve stumbled and reeled, trembling hands covering the gaping wounds. Her unnatural shape fell away, leaving the frailty of her own form. She went down, wailing, to her knees.

Breaths seething, lips curled back from sharp teeth, Cee Cee seized the back of her neck, drawing perilously close to the injured female’s throat.

“You listen to me, you heartless bitch,” the detective snarled in an unrecognizable timbre. “I’d have your head if we weren’t in church and Max hadn’t already lost too much. That reprieve won’t last beyond this moment. Get out of our city and stay out. If I hear of you ever threatening me or mine again, I will lead an army against you and yours that will not be survived. We aren’t afraid of you. But you should be very, very afraid of us.”

A hard push sent the woman sprawling.

“Get the fuck away from my family!”

Genevieve crawled until she found the strength to stagger to her feet. By then, she’d neared the door and her escape. She turned to them, beauty in shreds but temper majestic.

“You’ve won nothing from me except time,” she spat, lurid gaze touching upon each of them in turn. “Use it to feel safe and to grow careless.”

A fitting exit would have had her disappearing in a villainous puff of smoke. But Genevieve had no magic other than intimidation. She ran, fleeing the building, leaving only threats behind.

His strength slowly returning, Max blinked up as his mate approached him. She was fierce and glorious, even without the fangs and claws.

“What the hell did the priest say to you?”

She laughed, breathless, scarcely believing the change that had taken hold of her. “He said underneath we’re all the same.”

Silas stared up from where he sat on the floor. Nica knelt beside him, binding a gash in his arm. “The same what?”

“The same being,” Furness told them. “That’s what Dr. Duchamps discovered. All the differences between us after generations of genetic separation only mask our similarities. We’ve never lost our abilities. They’re still there to be channeled, to be honed. We’ve simply forgotten what we are. At least, that’s my theory.”

“One helluva theory,” Silas murmured.

“One we need to explore if we’re going to protect our people,” Max concluded. He reached up to draw Cee Cee down beside him. His other palm covered the hand she pressed to her abdomen. He stared into her eyes, adding, “And our future.”

“What did she mean, what we hold dear?” Silas mused. “Our freedom?”

Cee Cee felt the first movement of life stir with a vigorous flutter, and she wasn’t certain that’s what Genevieve meant at all. She took a stabilizing breath and looked to the disheveled priest. “First things first. I need to get married while I can still fit into a decent dress. Can you do that for me, Father?”

A tremulous smile spread upon his face. “I would be honored.”

“Is now the right time?
”
Max brought her attention back to him with his quiet question.

“Are you trying to back out, Savoie?”

His smile spread slow and sizzled. “Wouldn’t dream of it, Detective. This is New Orleans,
sha
. How long could it take to throw a party?”

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Two days.

Brigit was horrified to think Cee Cee would be walking down the aisle in something off the rack, but reluctantly admitted the choice was stunningly elegant. In between conferences behind the closed doors of Jimmy’s office while the city’s preternatural citizens battened down against possible outside threat, bride-to-be placed herself in the fashionista’s hands to be waxed and plucked and cut and curled and gel-nailed in a whirlwind of visits to the finest salons. Helen had the kitchen in a round-the-clock frenzy of preparations for the reception, and Silas and Nica had a private plane all gassed up and ready to take the newlyweds to that dream destination.

To Cee Cee, it felt like a dream, a dizzying, delightful dream anchored by glorious bouts of reality under the sheets each night with her soon-to-be husband. He was taking everything in stride, arranging for his two-week absence from Legere Enterprises International, attending wild debaucheries planned by Jacques and Giles, and steady, dependable and totally kissable whenever Cee Cee could steal a moment of his time. But Genevieve Savorie’s threats troubled her thoughts. She learned how it felt to live under the shadow of fear and found it intolerable.