Witches: Wicked, Wild & Wonderful (7 page)

“I—” She wouldn’t look at him, but only at her hands, clenched white-knuckled on the table.

“Unless there are others—” he prompted, hesitantly.

“No—no, there isn’t anyone but you.” She sat in silence for a moment, then glanced back up at him with one eyebrow lifted sardonically. “You
do
rather spoil a girl for anyone else’s attentions.”

He was genuinely startled. “
Mille pardons, cherie,
” he stuttered, “I—I did not know—”

She managed a feeble chuckle. “Oh Andre, you idiot—I
like
being spoiled! I don’t get many things that are just for me—” she sighed, then gave in to his pleading eyes. “All right then, move in if you want.”

“It is what
you
want that concerns me.”

“I want,” she said, very softly. “Just—the commitment—don’t ask for it. I’ve got responsibilities as well as Power, you know that; I—can’t see how to balance them with what you offered before—”

“Enough,” he silenced her with a wave of his hand. “The words are unsaid, we will speak of this no more unless you wish it. I seek the embrace of warm water—”

She turned her mind to the dangers ahead, resolutely pushing the dangers he represented into the back of her mind. “And I will go bail the car out of the garage.”

He waited until he was belted in on the passenger’s side of the car to comment on her outfit. “I did not know you planned to race him, Diana,” he said with a quirk of one corner of his mouth.

“Urban camouflage,” she replied, dodging two taxis and a kamikaze panel truck. “Joggers are everywhere, and they run at night a lot in deserted neighborhoods. Cops won’t wonder about me or try to stop me, and our boy won’t be surprised to see me alone. One of his other victims was out running. His boyfriend thought he’d had a heart attack. Poor thing. He wasn’t one of us, so I didn’t enlighten him. There are some things it’s better the survivors don’t know.”

“
Oui.
Left here,
cherie.
”

The traffic thinned down to a trickle, then to nothing. There are odd little islands in New York at night; places as deserted as the loneliest country road. The area where Andre directed her was one such; by day it was small warehouses, one-floor factories, an odd store or two. None of them had enough business to warrant running second or third shifts, and the neighborhood had not been gentrified yet, so no one actually lived here. There were a handful of night watchmen, perhaps, but most of these places depended on locks, burglar alarms, and dogs that were released at night to keep out intruders.

“There—” Andre pointed at a building that appeared to be home to several small manufactories. “He took the smoke-form and went to roost in the elevator control house at the top. That is why I did not advise going against him by day.”

“Is he there now?” Diana peered up through the glare of sodium-vapor lights, but couldn’t make out the top of the building.

Andre closed his eyes, a frown of concentration creasing his forehead. “No,” he said after a moment. “I think he has gone hunting.”

She repressed a shiver. “Then it’s time to play bait.”

Diana found a parking space marked dimly with the legend “President”—she thought it unlikely it would be wanted within the next few hours. It was deep in the shadow of the building Andre had pointed out, and her car was dead-black; with any luck, cops coming by wouldn’t even notice it was there and start to wonder.

She hopped out, locking her door behind her, now looking exactly like the lone jogger she was pretending to be, and set off at an easy pace. She did not look back.

If absolutely necessary, she knew she’d be able to keep this up for hours. She decided to take all the north-south streets first, then weave back along the east-west. Before the first hour was up she was wishing she’d dared bring a “walk-thing”—every street was like every other street; blank brick walls broken by dusty, barred windows and metal doors, alleys with only the occasional dumpster visible, refuse blowing along the gutters. She was bored; her nervousness had worn off, and she was lonely. She ran from light to darkness, from darkness to light, and saw and heard nothing but the occasional rat.

Then he struck, just when she was beginning to get a little careless. Careless enough not to see him arrive.

One moment there was nothing, the next, he was before her, waiting halfway down the block. She knew it was him—he was exactly as Andre had described him, a nondescript Asian man in a dark windbreaker and slacks. He was tall for an Asian—taller than she by several inches. His appearance nearly startled her into stopping—then she remembered that she was supposed to be an innocent jogger, and resumed her steady trot.

She knew he meant her to see him, he was standing directly beneath the streetlight and right in the middle of the sidewalk. She would have to swerve out of her path to avoid him.

She started to do just that, ignoring him as any real jogger would have—when he raised his head and smiled at her.

She was stopped dead in her tracks by the purest terror she had ever felt in her life. She froze, as all of his other victims must have—unable to think, unable to cry out, unable to run. Her legs had gone numb, and nothing existed for her but that terrible smile and those hard, black eyes that had no bottom—

Then the smile vanished, and the eyes flinched away. Diana could move again, and staggered back against the brick wall of the building behind her, her breath coming in harsh pants, the brick rough and comforting in its reality beneath her hands.

“Diana?” It was Andre’s voice behind her.

“I’m—all right—” she said, not at all sure that she really was.

Andre strode silently past her, face grim and purposeful. The man seemed to sense his purpose, and smiled again—

But Andre never faltered for even the barest moment.

The smile wavered and faded; the man fell back a step or two, surprised that his weapon had failed him—

Then he scowled, and pulled something out of the sleeve of his windbreaker; and to Diana’s surprise, charged straight for Andre, his sneakered feet scuffing on the cement—

And something suddenly blurring about his right hand. As it connected with Andre’s upraised left arm, Diana realized what it was—almost too late.

“Andre—he has nunchuks—they’re
wood,
” she cried out urgently as Andre grunted in unexpected pain. “He can kill you with them! Get the hell out of here!”

Andre needed no second warning. In the blink of an eye, he was gone.

Leaving Diana to face the creature alone.

She dropped into guard-stance as he regarded her thoughtfully, still making no sound, not even of heavy breathing. In a moment he seemed to make up his mind, and came for her.

At least he didn’t smile again in that terrible way—perhaps the weapon was only effective once.

She hoped fervently he wouldn’t try again—as an empath, she was doubly-vulnerable to a weapon forged of fear.

They circled each other warily, like two cats preparing to fight—then Diana thought she saw an opening—and took it.

And quickly came to the conclusion that she was overmatched, as he sent her tumbling with a badly bruised shin. The next few moments reinforced that conclusion as he continued unscathed while she picked up injury after painful injury.

She was a brown-belt in karate, but he was a black-belt in kung fu, and the contest was a pathetically uneven match. She knew before very long that he was toying with her—and while he still swung the wooden nunchuks, Andre did not dare move in close enough to help.

She realized (as fear dried her mouth, she grew more and more winded, and she searched frantically for a means of escape) that she was as good as dead.

If only she could get those damn ’chuks away from him!

And as she ducked and stumbled against the curb, narrowly avoiding the strike he made, an idea came to her. He knew from her moves—as she knew from his—that she was no amateur. He would never expect an amateur’s move from her—something truly stupid and suicidal—

So the next time he swung at her, she stood her ground. As the ’chuk came at her she took one step forward, smashing his nose with the heel of her right hand and lifting her left to intercept the flying baton.

As it connected with her left hand with a sickening crunch, she whirled and folded her entire body around hand and weapon, and went limp, carrying it away from him.

She collapsed in a heap at his feet, hand afire with pain, eyes blurring with it, and waited for either death or salvation.

And salvation in the form of Andre rose behind her attacker. With one
savate
kick he broke the man’s back; Diana could hear it cracking like green wood—and before her assailant could collapse, a second double-handed blow sent him crashing into the brick wall, head crushed like an eggshell.

Diana struggled to her feet, and waited for some arcane transformation.

Nothing.

She staggered to the corpse, face flat and expressionless—a sign she was suppressing pain and shock with utterly implacable iron will. Andre began to move forward as if to stop her, then backed off again at the look in her eyes.

She bent slightly, just enough to touch the shoulder of the body with her good hand—and released the Power.

Andre pulled her back to safety as the corpse exploded into flame, burning as if it had been soaked in oil. She watched the flames for one moment, wooden-faced; then abruptly collapsed.

Andre caught her easily before she could hurt herself further, lifting her in his arms as if she weighed no more than a kitten. “
Ma pauvre petite,
” he murmured, heading back towards the car at a swift but silent run, “It is the hospital for you, I think—”

“Saint-Francis—” she gasped, every step jarring her hand and bringing tears of pain to her eyes, “One of us—is on the night staff—Dr. Crane—”

“
Bien,
” he replied. “Now be silent.”

“But—how are you—”

“In your car, foolish one. I have the keys you left in it.”

“But—”

“I can drive.”

“But—”

“
And
I have a license. Will you be silent?”

“How?” she said, disobeying him.

“Night school,” he replied succinctly, reaching the car, putting her briefly on her feet to unlock the passenger-side door, then lifting her into it. “You are not the only one who knows of urban camouflage.”

This time she did not reply—mostly because she had fainted from pain.

The emergency room was empty—for which Andre was very grateful. His invocation of Dr. Crane brought a thin, bearded young man around to the tiny examining cubicle in record time.

“Good god almighty! What did you tangle with, a bus?” he exclaimed, when stripping the sweatsuit jacket and pants revealed that there was little of Diana that was not battered and black-and-blue.

Andre wrinkled his nose at the acrid antiseptic odors around them, and replied shortly. “No. Your ‘Ripper.’ ”

The startled gaze the doctor fastened on him revealed that Andre had scored. “Who—won?” he asked at last.

“We did. I do not think he will prey upon anyone again.”

The doctor’s eyes closed briefly; Andre read prayerful thankfulness on his face as he sighed with relief. Then he returned to business. “You must be Andre, right? Anything I can supply?”

Andre laughed at the hesitation in his voice. “Fear not, your blood supply is quite safe, and I am unharmed. It is Diana who needs you.”

The relief on the doctor’s face made Andre laugh again.

Dr. Crane ignored him. “Right,” he said, turning to the work he knew best.

She was lightheaded and groggy with the Demerol Dr. Crane had given her as Andre deftly stripped her and tucked her into her bed; she’d dozed all the way home in the car.

“I just wish I knew what that thing was—” she said inconsequentially, as he arranged her arm in its light Fiberglas cast a little more comfortably. “—I won’t be happy until I
know
—”

“Then you are about to be happy,
cherie,
for I have had the brainstorm.” Andre ducked into the living room and emerged with a dusty leather-bound book. “Remember I said there was something familiar about it? Now I think I know what it was.” He consulted the index, and turned pages rapidly—found the place he sought, and read for a few moments. “As I thought—listen. ‘The
gaki
—also known as the Japanese vampire—takes its nourishment only from the living. There are many kinds of
gaki,
extracting their sustenance from a wide variety of sources. The most harmless are the “perfume” and “music”
gaki
; they are by far the most common. Far deadlier are those that require blood, flesh, or souls.’ ”

“Souls?”

“Just so. ‘To feed, or when at rest, they take their normal form of a dense cloud of dark smoke. At other times, like the
kitsune,
they take on the form of a human being. Unlike the
kitsune,
however, there is no way to distinguish them in this form from any other human. In the smoke form, they are invulnerable—in the human form, however, they can be killed; but to permanently destroy them, the body must be burned—preferably in conjunction with or solely by Power.’ I said there was something familiar about it—it seems to have been a kind of distant cousin.” Andre’s mouth smiled, but his eyes reflected only a long-abiding bitterness.

“There is no way you have any relationship with that—thing!” she said forcefully. “It had no more honor, heart, or soul than a rabid beast!”

“I—I thank you,
cherie,
” he said, slowly, the warmth returning to his eyes. “There are not many who would think as you do.”

“Their own closed-minded stupidity.”

“To change the subject—what was it made you burn it as you did? I would have abandoned it. It seemed dead enough.”

“I don’t know—it just seemed the thing to do,” she yawned. “Sometimes my instincts just work . . . right . . . ”

Suddenly her eyes seemed too leaden to keep open.

“Like they did with you . . . ” She fought against exhaustion and the drug, trying to keep both at bay.