Resurrection (12 page)

“Your family is into weird stuff,” she gasped as his lips trailed down her throat.

“And?”

She shook her head, not sure what he was looking for.

“Your friends didn't tell you anything else about me?”

“No.”

He pressed his lips to her ear. “They didn't tell you I was a warlock?”

“No,” she whispered.

“They should have,” he said, the fingers of his left hand caressing her throat.

Okay, that
was
weird. Weird that he should believe it, or say it, she didn't know which, but weirder that
she
should believe it. Then and there, she knew it was true.

The wind kicked up, pitching bits of gravel against her shins. She should leave, she should run as far away as she could, as fast as she could. She didn't want to, though. And somewhere deep inside a voice urged her to stay, that it was okay, that she knew him.

“Eli?” she whispered, although the name still didn't seem right to her.

“Yes?”

“Are you bad?”

“Baby, I'm the worst,” he purred.

And even though she knew she should run away, Nicole found herself tearing off his clothes instead.

 

A week later, “I made you something,” Eli said as Nicole slid into the 'vette.

Nicole eagerly took the box from him. She hadn't seen him at school since he had dropped her off at home that first night, and she'd begun to panic, wondering if he had dumped her. He had called fifteen minutes ago, and she had had barely enough time to throw on the sexiest outfit in her closet.

She turned the box over for a moment and stared at it before she opened it up. Inside was a silver bracelet with a symbol burned into it. It looked like a star with a twisty circle in the middle. “You made this for me?” she asked in amazement.

“Yes.”

She looked at the symbol more closely. “It looks like the tattoo you have on your chest,” she exclaimed, blushing. Twisty circle, star.

He nodded slightly.

“What does it mean?”

He cleared his throat. “It's for protection. Put it on.”

She did, and it fit snugly around her wrist. “It's beautiful. Thank you so much.”

“You're welcome,” he said.

She kept staring at the bracelet. “I—I was beginning to think you didn't want to see me again.”

He laughed, deep in his chest. “No, I'd like to see a lot more of you. Like, all of you. Again.”

She blushed again. Every time she tried to recall that afternoon in detail, it was fuzzy, as though she were seeing it through someone else's eyes.

“So, protection from what?” she asked, quickly changing the subject. And that made her think about what they'd done….

What did we do? Did we do
it? She couldn't exactly remember.

It was his turn to look uncomfortable. “Oh, a lot of things.”

“Like what?” she pressed.

“Mostly it is supposed to protect the wearer from possession. But, you know, I just think it's a cool sym
bol. If you don't like it, no big, I can get you something else.”

“Possession?” she asked. “Like, being possessive?”

He stared at her. Her lower belly tingled. Her cheeks burned. “You know exactly what I mean.”

She started to shake her head, but he caught her chin and held it.

“You're the one who asked about reincarnation. That's basically a myth. But possession…it can happen. It
does
happen. So…wear it.”

“Um, I—”

“
Wear
it. Or don't,” he said suddenly. “If you don't like it. Or me.”

He grabbed at the bracelet, but she was quicker, snatching her hand away. “No. I love it, really. Thank you,” she said.

“I'm just messing with you.” He laughed, all seriousness gone. “If you don't like it, I'll get you something else.”

“No, I do love it.”
And I love you. Oh, Eli, I shouldn't, not yet, but I do….

He nodded and started the car. She didn't know why but she couldn't shake the feeling that he really did take it all very seriously. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back. Her body was blazing. She was sure he knew it.

“Tell me about being a warlock,” she said.

“Maybe I will. If you're good,” he replied.

He was exciting, dangerous, and passionate. Over the next several months she pushed him to tell her more about magic, and she had the feeling that he humored her. He showed her his ritual knife and he lit a candle with his finger.

She tried to do that on her own. Tried to make shadows glow in a darkened room. She thought she made a needle swing on a piece of thread, but she wasn't sure.

Then, one night in his basement, while they were making out, she felt the room grow warmer.

“Did you do that?” she asked him, and he kissed the tip of her nose.

“Don't tell anyone,” he made her swear. “Not your friends, or your sister. No one.”

And she didn't.

Mumbai: Philippe and Anne-Louise

The whole city felt wrong to Philippe. He paced the small hotel room and waited for Anne-Louise to return. Ever since the swami's disappearance, and likely death, everything had felt…off balance.

Suddenly the door opened and Anne-Louise rushed inside. Her face was chalk white, and she started grabbing up her things.

“Allons-y,”
she said in French. Let's go.

“What's wrong?” he asked her.

“There's a Deveraux in the city.”

His blood turned to ice. “Why? Which one?”

“All I know is that it wasn't Jer,” she said in clipped tones.

“Eli, after Nicole? Who else is left? Their father is dead.”

“Philippe,
je ne sais pas.”
I don't know.

“We could fight.”

She kept packing. Ten minutes later they were downstairs and mingling with the Bombay crowd. Car horns blared; the crush of people was nearly stifling in the humid, pungent air.

Magical energy pressed in around him—dark and powerful, with a distinct feel of Deveraux to it. He let Anne-Louise lead the way while he concentrated on deflecting it, camouflaging them from its attention.

But the magic got stronger, and darker. It lay like a wet snake along his skin. Anne-Louise looked at him over her shoulder, and he nodded, once. She felt it too.

At the next busy intersection, she stopped.

“We can't outrun him,” she said.

“Then let's confront him out in the open,” Philippe said, still unsure which Deveraux it was. If it was Jer, he might be a friend…but that one was so changeable, it was difficult to know.

“Sanjay Gandhi National Park is a few blocks away,”
she said. “It's the largest urban park in the world.”

“Bien,”
he said. “Let's lure him there, and see what we can do.”

She turned and crossed the street.

Scarborough: Amanda

Her spell had worked.

Amanda sat huddled in the kitchen at four in the morning watching images of herself shimmering in the air. She watched herself as she dreamed, tossing and turning through nightmares. Finally she saw herself get up off the bed and walk through the house until she reached the study of the former occupant. She pulled some books off the shelf and then put them on completely different shelves scattered around the room.

It made no sense to her, but she continued to watch, fascinated, as her sleeping self left the study, climbed down the back stairs, and came to a stop before the same blank stretch of wall that she had woken up in front of before. She watched closely and was stunned to see herself reach out, push hard against a section of the wall almost above her head, and then step through an opening that magically appeared. Once through, the hole sealed itself and the vision ended.

Amanda stood, sweating and trembling as she
thought about what she had just seen. There was a secret passage in House Moore and her dreaming self had discovered it. When she woke up to see that same wall, was it before or after she had gone inside? She knew that she should tell the others. They had a right to know what dangers lurked in their current home.

She glanced at the clock on the microwave. It would be at least a couple of hours before anyone else was up. She grabbed a flashlight and headed for the wall. Once there, she slid her hand up and pressed, hoping that she was hitting the right spot. She wondered if there was any spell she was supposed to say and wished that she had thought to include audio on her little video spell.

She felt around for a moment, but the wall appeared to be completely smooth. After a moment, though, she must have hit the right spot because the hole opened before her.

I shouldn't go in there,
she thought, even as she was stepping across the threshold.
I really should get the others
. The portal closed behind her and her flashlight was the only thing to illuminate the darkness.

“Come on, feet. You've been here before; lead the way,” she said through gritted teeth.

She stepped forward hesitantly and then, as the footing seemed to be sound, more boldly. The floor
began to slope and then to turn and twist like a snake. After a minute she couldn't tell where she was in relation to the rest of the house or even if she was still within its walls. At last the tunnel emptied out into a large chamber, surrounded on three sides by doors. One door was charred and hanging off its hinges. The room beyond looked like some sort of giant cage.

Is this where the dragon came from?

She stepped away.

In the center of the room was a table containing a candelabra and several ancient-looking manuscripts. A chair was pushed out from the table as though its last occupant—probably
her
, she realized—had left in a hurry. One manuscript lay open on top of the rest. It was giant, at least a foot tall and about five inches thick. By the feel, it was made of some sort of animal skin. She marked the place with a finger and flipped back to the beginning.

“Ye Prophecies of ye Magus Merlin.”

She shuddered. The island that Nicole had been trapped on was supposed to have been Avalon, and the spirit of the dark wizard Merlin was said to still haunt it.

She turned back to the page she had marked, and tried to read. It was in an ancient language that she couldn't decipher. She put the book down, closed her eyes, and then touched each of them with her finger
tips. “Goddess bless what I see, bless my eyes and let them read,” she said.

She opened her eyes and looked at the manuscript, and was a little surprised to see that it had actually worked. It looked like it was in English now. She wrinkled her nose. Old English. At least that was better than whatever it really was.

“And ye Ciety naymed Seattle shal be layid to Ruinne when ye Monsterums of Ye Eryth & Sea are freeyd by Ye Dark Wyzarde.”

Amanda blinked and reread it three times. “But that's happened; that was us, or Michael. It's true!”

She continued to read.
“Ye Moste Powerfyl Witch of Hr Tyme shal be tormenteyd by Daemons from Evry Realym & a Wyzard Priest shal free Her.”

“Holly and Armand!” she gasped.

She flipped back a page and could clearly identify other prophecies that had come true before their eyes. She found prophecies dating back centuries, dealing with wars and scientific breakthroughs and everything of importance that she could think of: the discovery of penicillin, the general theory of relativity, even the stock market crash of 1929.

She was about to check to see if there was anything about Isabeau and Jean, the Cahors and Deveraux ancestors who had started the whole curse, but she wanted to know more about the future than the past.

About Owen.

She skipped forward again, but before her eyes the letters changed, rearranged. Her seeing spell must have worn off. She frowned, about to recast it, but the shadows around her seemed to have crept closer, pushing in against the circle of light cast by her flashlight. With a shiver she decided that maybe the better course would be to leave and take the book with her.

She tucked the book under her arm and started back the way she had come. She shook the flashlight as the light started to become weaker. She had put fresh batteries in not that long ago, but that didn't seem to matter.

She made it back to the entrance and then stood for a moment, beginning to panic as she realized she had no idea how to exit the tunnel. She slid her hand up the wall, trying to approximate where it would be on the opposite side to trigger the portal to open.

Nothing happened. The flashlight winked off and then on.

Oh, no, I am not getting trapped in here.

Somewhere behind her she heard a low rumble. A growl? A cave-in? She was more certain than ever that she didn't want to know what other creatures Sir William had chained up down there. She moved her hands all around the rock wall, searching for some trigger to make it open.

The growl—it was definitely a growl—grew louder. Amanda glanced down the corridor but could see nothing in the failing light. Her flashlight flickered once, twice, and then went out.

Tommy!
Her rational brain knew that he was too far away to hear her through the stone walls, even if he had been awake.

Call to him.

She wasn't sure if the voice was inside her head or outside. It seemed to echo for a moment before fading away in a high-pitched trill.
He won't hear me,
she thought.

Call your thrallmate.

Okay, that definitely wasn't her subconscious whispering to her. “Thrallmate” was a word she had never heard, let alone used.

Now!

Tommy!
she thought in a panic.
Come to me, Tommy, find me.

And then she pushed with her mind, really pushed. It was as though she were free outside the tunnel, ascending to the upper floor and touching Tommy on the cheek where he slept in his bed. He rose, still asleep, and followed her as she took him by the hand and led him down, down. Then they were standing on the other side of the wall. She lifted his hand to the place that would open the portal, and…