Daughter Of The Blood Part 9

Alain raised a brow, and she flushed, feeling unaccountably guilty. As if she had taken something that wasn't hers.

"I wonder if we should bother trying to read Louise and Mathilde's bodies," Georges said. "It doesn't sound as if we can trust D'Artagnon."

"They probably burned up in the fire," Maurice ventured.

"Oui, monsieur, they did. And they were tasty," said a silky voice from the shadows.

"Who's there?" Izzy shouted, whirling around.

"Caresse," Alain said, smiling. "She's Andre's mate. And a friend."

"Have you found Andre?" Izzy cried.

Branches bobbed; red eyes glowed from the darkness. They disappeared. A few seconds later a sinewy, naked woman with dark skin, golden eyes and platinum-blond hair sauntered into view.

"C'est la jolie maitresse," she said. "Oui, Isabelle. He was badly hurt, but he's getting better. We have sent for a bokor to hurry it up. She's coming to our place."

Her features softened as an idea came to her. "We could shelter madame from all her enemies there. You can leave some bodyguards and make some more magic there, oui?" she asked Alain. "Make some healing magic for Andre, too?"

"The thought to take madame to your camp had occurred to me," Alain admitted. "But it could be very dangerous."

"We know it's dangereuse in the bayou," Caresse retorted. "It would be so much better if we could shelter her in the mansion. But the Bouvards do not welcome us. C'est la vie. They do not welcome her, either."

"You're very clever, Caresse," Alain said. "You give madame a place to stay, which of course must be heavily guarded. And so, your wolf pack is protected from Le Fils and Esposito's henchmen."

She winked at him. "It is clear to me why you are the diplomat."

Izzy took a breath and said, "Did you...did you really eat them?"

Caresse chuckled. "What do you think, ma belle?"

I think you didn't answer my question, Izzy thought.

Caresse swung back around and whistled. A half-standing, hunched wolf form padded from the same dark place she had appeared and stared at Izzy. The black fur, the almond-shaped, golden eyes....

"Andre!" she cried, running toward the wolf. She rose on her tiptoes and threw her arms around its neck.

"Not my Andre," Caresse said, amused. "A pack mate. We call him Lucky. When Andre cannot run, he is our alpha."

"Oh." As Izzy took a step backward, the creature's eyes glittered with good humor.

Another darted from the darkness. Then another slunk from around a tree trunk; a fourth appeared behind it. A fifth. These were more like regular wolves. Of all of them, Lucky was the most like Andre-something more than a wolf, something like a monster.

Caresse said, "We should go to our place, us. Now. The swamp is full of Le Fils's vampires and demons. More are on their way." She beckoned Izzy and the three Devereauxes to follow her.

Izzy said, "Shouldn't we perform wards, or-"

"We've been performing wards the entire time we've been with you," Georges said. "We won't stop now."

"As for us, we'll travel strong," Caresse said.

She chuckled low in her throat as she dropped to all fours. Fur sprouted along the ridge on her back. Her ears stretched; her entire head elongated. She was transforming into a wolf before Izzy's eyes, as Andre had.

But where Andre had changed into something else, Caresse became a full wolf. She gazed over her shoulder at Izzy and chuffed like a dog.

Beside Izzy, the three Devereauxes were also changing into wolves.

Glamours? she wondered. Or were they actually werewolves?

Then she looked down at her own body and saw a strange superimposition, like a ghostly reflection, of paws and fur...paws that were padding along the bayou's damp ground. She touched her face with human hands, her own fingertips. But when she looked down, she saw paws, on the ground. A powerful glamour indeed.

And so I'm on the run again, she thought. I haven't stopped running for over two weeks. And people-or things-have been trying to kill me for over two weeks.

When will this end? And how?

Dawn was washing the darkness from the sky when Izzy and the others came within sight of the werewolves' compound. The smoke from the bayou fire was dissipating. The whump-whump-whump of the copter rotors had left the sky, as well.

Slowly each wolf transformed back into a human being, and Izzy recognized the pack from New York City. Izzy was startled to realize that Claire, the woman with the cornrows who had served on occasion as Jean-Marc's driver, was the silver wolf that had trotted beside her during the night.

Claire had been one of the werewolves to sneak into the DeMarcos home and corner John Cratty. Rather than allow the wolves to rip him to shreds, Cratty had ended his own life with a bullet from Izzy's Medusa. It had been a horrible, ghoulish undertaking-and yet Izzy was incredibly glad to see Claire. Izzy was cast adrift in a sea of strangers, and Claire was a familiar face.

As she a.s.sumed her human shape, Claire grinned at Izzy and said, "ca va, jolie?"

"I've been better," Izzy answered.

Claire made a moue and patted Izzy's shoulder. "We'll treat you well here. Not so much like a queen as like a friend. You saved Jean-Marc's life. That counts big with us."

"Thank you," Izzy said. "But it was really Andre who made it happen."

"Well, he is taking a lot of the credit," Claire replied with a l.u.s.ty chuckle.

"Tais-toi," Caresse told Claire, but her voice was warm. "He does go on, that man," she said, grinning. "He can't wait to see you, chere."

A tall wooden fence lined with bones and skulls and painted with symbols-swirls, stars, skulls, figures of people-marked the perimeter of the werewolves' compound. Izzy wasn't sure what they were bones and skulls of, and she didn't want to know.

The three Devereauxes stopped there. Alain explained that they had placed Devereaux wards around the fence upon first arriving in New Orleans, and they periodically refreshed them. They were going to do that now-and add more, as well.

The werewolves lived in Cajun shacks along the banks of the bayou. Izzy wished she could call them picturesque, but they were ramshackle structures patched together out of mismatched pieces of wood, and topped with corrugated tin roofs. The closest she could get was "functional."

Caresse took Izzy's hand and said, "Let's go see my man, you and me, chere."

As they neared a shack hanging over the water, a toddler in a diaper and a T-shirt that said I Love NY appeared in the doorway. He burst into tears when he saw Caresse and held his arms out to her.

"You," she said lovingly as she hoisted him up and settled him against her hip. "All night I'm gone and I'll bet you never cried one time."

"He never stopped crying," said a familiar voice.

The voice issued from the overstuffed depths of a red velvet sofa, incongruous in the extreme in the rustic shack. Andre was lying on it, his wildman hair streaming over his shoulders, a colorful quilt pulled up under his arms. He was wearing several necklaces of small bags, and a pile of small stone hearts painted red were gathered in his lap.

On a chair beside the sofa, surrounded by colorful gla.s.ses containing candles, a wizened, dark-skinned woman in a black kerchief sliced through the air with a knife. She was dressed in a shapeless tie-dyed shift decorated with beads and feathers, silver charms of skulls, hands and crosses. The chair was draped with colorful strings of fabric. Incense wafted from a mosaic censor at her feet.

Her gestures were identical to those of Michel and D'Artagnon, when they had cut the evil emanating from the box containing Julius's remains.

Izzy reached around her neck for Andre's gris-gris, walked over to the sofa, and draped it over Andre's head. Then she leaned down and kissed him on the cheek. The woman completely ignored her as she continued to slice the air.

"Andre, thank G.o.d," Izzy breathed, and she knelt down beside him on the floor. "Thank you," she amended. "You saved the day."

"Ma belle," he said happily. "Heard we won."

She nodded. "But Jean-Marc was badly wounded. He was still unconscious when I left."

"If anyone can pull through, it's Jean-Marc. He's a very strong man," Andre said. "For a while I thought he might be a werewolf. But no such luck."

"Claire was disappointed when she first met him, too," Caresse said with a lilt. "Of course, she was in heat at the time." She was carrying a gla.s.s. Izzy realized she was parched, and started to reach for it gratefully. But Caresse handed it to the old woman, her voice low and reverent as she spoke to her in French.

"That one, she's always in heat." Andre chuckled.

The woman gulped the water down noisily. It dribbled down her chin and splashed onto the bodice of her dress. She kept drinking.

"They were attacked in the bayou," Caresse told Andre. "It was Le Fils."

"Vraiment," Andre agreed. He looked at Izzy. "The worse shape the House of the Flames is in, the better for that vampire, him. He's attacking tourists now, barely trying to hide his tracks. The voodoo drums are talking. They say he's up to something in that old convent."

"A convent? That's where Michel went to search for Alain," Izzy told them.

"Probably more like Michel went there to join Le Fils," Andre said, making a spitting sound. "Don't trust Michel de Bouvard, chere. He's a bad man. And that Bouvard mansion is a bad place."

He and Caresse crossed themselves. Izzy did, too.

Caresse said to Andre, "We have to get Jean-Marc out of there, mon amour."

"Oui," said Andre. "Chere," he said to Izzy. "You're their lady. You can tell them that you want-"

The sound of a crashing gla.s.s cut him off.

Caresse pointed at the old woman. "'Dieu!" she shouted. "Look at Mamaloi!"

Izzy whirled around on her knees, narrowly missing a chunk of gla.s.s that had clattered to the wooden floor. The old woman had dropped the gla.s.s. Her back was ramrod straight and her head was tilted slightly back. Her arms were flung to each side, as if she had been crucified.

Her eyes were milky white.

Her mouth dropped open and a low, sinister, very masculine voice rumbled out of it. Her lips didn't move, and yet the voice poured out of her mouth. The words were French.

Caresse said, "The loa says, 'Le Fils is the little fish. The gator uses him for bait. Once you're in the water, he'll snap you in two!'"

"Who is the gator?" Izzy asked, wondering what a loa was.

Caresse spoke in French, directing her questions to the old woman. The voice poured out of the puckered, wizened mouth as if in answer, but the woman's lips still did not move. Though she kept her stiff position, her milky, unfocused eyes seemed to settle on Izzy, and cold fear swept up Izzy's spine. What was looking at her? What was talking to her? And how did it know the answers to her questions?

"'Catch the little fish. He'll take you to the gator,'" Caresse translated.

"But the gator will snap her in two," Andre argued. "She don't want that, Caresse. Make that loa explain, him."

"Where is Le Fils?" Izzy asked. "And Michel?"

Caresse spoke again to the old woman.

"Michel is in the French quarter. He is fine."

The voice poured out, and Andre grunted. His face turned gray and a muscle jumped n his cheek. Caresse remained silent and he said, "Tell her, bebe. She needs to know."

"Le Fils is killing Matthieu de Bouvard des Flammes," Caresse said. "Alain's chauffeur. Right now. This moment." Her eyes widened as the gravelly voice croaked more words. "Mon Dieu, Andre. You hear that? He is torturing him to death. As a sacrifice."

Afraid she was going to be sick, Izzy closed her eyes and pressed her fist over her mouth. "Can we stop it? Can we help him with magic?" she asked. "Alain!" she shouted, rising.

Caresse put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her back down to the floor.

"Don't yell, chere. This is Mamaloi's loa," Caresse said again. "The voodoo G.o.d is speaking through her. It would show disrespect if you left the room. The loa might stop speaking altogether."

Alain, venez ici, Izzy thought, slipping into French. Vite.

He heard her, and rushed into the room, followed by Maurice. The two stood still, listening. Alain swayed on his feet, blackly silent. Maurice swore under his breath and asked a question in French. Izzy heard the word Malchances.

"He is asking Mamaloi's loa if the Malchances are working with Le Fils," Andre told Izzy.

There was no answer.

"She's afraid to say," Maurice ventured.

"We don't know that," Caresse countered. "Could be the loa doesn't know."

Maurice said to Caresse, "Please, ask her about Esposito. He was a bokor, but he was involved in the Dark Arts. Ask her loa to explain-"

The deep voice inside Mamaloi rose to a shriek as her entire body convulsed. She flopped in her chair like a dying fish; Izzy reached out to help her, but Andre grabbed her biceps and said, "Stay away, chere."

Foam bubbled from her mouth as her body shook and shuddered. Then she collapsed, falling back in her chair. Her head lolled backward, and her breath rattled out of her thin body as if she were dying.

"Mamaloi!" Caresse cried, putting her arms around her. She cradled the old woman's inert body and said, "Mamaloi, reviens-ici. Mamaloi, tu va bien, eh?"

There was a moment when everyone held their collective breaths. Then Mamaloi opened her eyes and cleared her throat. Her eyes were back to normal as she blinked at the group staring at her, each in turn. Then she said to Caresse, "J'ai faim."

Caresse smiled at the woman and stroked her cheek. "She says she's hungry," she told Izzy.

"Guess her loa didn't want to talk about Esposito," Maurice said, sounding frustrated.

"Or couldn't. Or was afraid to." Alain's voice was strained with despair. "Madame," he said to Mamaloi and continued on in rapid French. The old lady's natural voice was papery soft as she replied.