American Quest (20 page)

“You do drive fast, babe.” Forte patted her knee.

She grinned. “One time? My mama? She asked me to take one of her friends to her weekly bridge game. Thought it kind of weird cuz Mama could have just as easily given her a lift herself, bein’ as she’s already goin’ there. But no biggie, so I pick this woman up—I think her name was Pearl. And Pearl is just this angry, cranky old bat. And she’s spewing the entire way. Doesn’t like radio or radio people, which I am. Doesn’t like the way I’m driving. Doesn’t like this; doesn’t like that. But I think it’s cool that Mama’s lookin’ out for her friends, making sure they get a lift to her bridge game and all. But later when I talk to her, Mama says, ‘Shannie, you were great with Pearl! Your driving rattled her nerves so bad she kept her gob shut through our entire game. Can you pick her up again next week?’”

Forte draped an arm over her. “Your mom was great. You remember before she got sick? That night when she had us over for dinner? The woman was, like,
always
late. We went over to Shannon’s mom’s and knock on the door and there’s, like, no one home. We’re standing out there on the porch and finally she drives up, and she’s all smiles and gets us inside, and then she starts sweeping, but she’s sweeping like it is
her military mission. Still got her coat on and her purse on her shoulder, but she’s sweeping the floor like crazy.”

“Mama hated dust.”

“And then she brought out the good stuff, all those pictures of you when you were a tyke! She’s all, ‘Look at little Shannie in her bloomers! And here she is with a pinto bean stuck up her nose.’”

Shannon threw her hands over her face and tilted her head back. “I know! She was so bad! Here I am, trying to charm the hot rocker boy and Mama’s gotta dig out that bean picture!”

Jamie swiveled to look back at them and grinned. “Looks like you charmed him, anyway.”

Shannon eyed the sign as Bruce pulled into a gas station. “What is it? Four Pillars of Humanity Quickstop? It’s about time! Last quest I was on, the driver refused to ask for directions and we were circling Mount Holy Grail for hours and didn’t even realize it.”

Bruce snorted. “Last quest, huh?”

“Oh, sure. Haven’t I told you guys? I’m addicted. Unquestionably a questaholic.”

Bruce pulled over and hopped out. “Switch.”

Jamie scooted to the driver’s seat and Bruce jogged around to the passenger’s side.

He shut the door. “The truth is, I would have hit that gas truck back there, too. The van slowed down on its own. Jamie, I think we need your radar skills at the driver’s seat.”

She blinked at him grimly. “Fair enough.”

Jamie pulled the van back out, crop fields running beyond the shoulder and a smattering of housing developments in the distance.

“What do you mean the van slowed down on its own?” Forte said.

Bruce shook his head. “When Jamie said to slow down, I never hit the brakes or anything. I didn’t have time to react. The van just kind of eased up suddenly.”

A loud crack tore overhead.

Shannon gasped. “What was that? Sounded like someone just chomped us with a nutcracker!”

Another crack.

“I think it’s hailing,” Jamie said.

The sound erupted all around them, and then suddenly hailstones were pelting the van like buckshot.

Jamie leaned forward. “Oh my God! I can’t even see!”

She slowed the van to a crawl and the hailstones thundered so loud it sounded like artillery fire. Suddenly, the windshield cracked. Jamie screamed.

“Pull over!” Bruce cried.

Plum-sized ice bore down upon them. Jamie eased the van to the side of the road and stopped.

The hail stopped.

Bruce and Jamie frowned at each other and Shannon and Forte clutched hands.

Bruce craned his neck, opening the door to get a good look outside. “What the—?”

There was no hail on the ground. The crack in the windshield seemed the only evidence that something had happened. Bruce shut the door.

Shannon cleared her throat from the backseat. “Questers take note. For those of us present who thought maybe we were on a wild-goose chase, I think it’s safe to assume we are probably on the right track.”

Bruce nodded. “It would appear that way. Try it again, Jamie.”

She shifted the van into gear again, but as soon as the tires started moving, the clamoring hail recommenced. When Jamie stopped again, the hail stopped again.

They sat in silence for a long moment.

Bruce shifted. “Well we can’t just sit here all day.”

“If I keep driving, we’re likely to get in a wreck.”

Bruce thought about this. Jamie was right, but they had to keep going. They couldn’t stop moving forward for
any
reason.

“Say that thing you were saying in the woods that night. The thing about the malevolent lip.”

“That? It didn’t work, remember? That was just something I made up.”

Bruce swung a thumb toward Shannon. “Well you must have made up something pretty powerful because she started saying it up onstage in front of hundreds of people.”

Jamie’s cheeks flamed. She turned her round blue eyes toward him and he could see her reluctance.

He touched her elbow. “Come on, Tink. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. We need to try, though.”

Bruce reached into the glove compartment and retrieved Jamie’s little velvet sack. Handing it to her, he said, “Give it a shot.”

They all got out of the van and walked to a patch of grass. Jamie took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She spoke the words she’d recited amidst the jeering maples in the Maine forest:

She opened her eyes and looked nervously toward the horizon.

“I appeal for assistance,” she said, swinging the sack forward. “I call to the North.”

She paused, darting her eyes, and took a breath. “To the East.” She stopped again.

Forte gently took the sack from her hand and waved it. “To the South.”

He handed it to Shannon, and she swung it in the final direction. “To the West.”

Jamie nodded. “The unburdened sumpter with faith shall fly.”

Bruce put his hand on her shoulder. “Good job. Let’s try this again.”

They piled back into the van. Jamie turned the key and swung the gearshift. The wheels turned. A single amoeba of a cloud blackened and stretched over the sky and a light trickle fell toward them.

The moment the rain touched the van it evaporated.

“Master, I have news to report.”

“What is this, Isolde? No rhyming lyric? Have the canteshrikes shunned you to the extent you now shed their ways?”

His words affected amusement, but Isolde heard the menace beneath them. Smelled the smolder of his fury. Good. Let him act with haste.

“I have failed thee.”

Enervata breathed in very slowly and turned from her without exhaling. Isolde’s eyes traveled to Sileny and then to Hedon and his gaping nostrils. Strangely, at this moment he neither gorged himself nor clutched a pint jar of honey wine. In fact, he even stood on his two feet instead of wallowing on the couch. Perhaps losing his brother had changed him.

Neither Hedon nor Sileny met her gaze.

Rafe was not here. Isolde felt a strange sharpness in her heart. As much as she hated Rafe, she had hoped he would be nigh in the moment of her death.

She addressed Enervata’s back. “The quest is underway. Signs have filtered through and the male, Bruce, has already acquired two of those he seeks, in addition to the guardian. They journey now to Dayton, Ohio.”

Enervata’s back remained to her. His only reaction was the bristling of the black hair that tufted his tail.

“As stated, I have fail—”

“I heard you, Isolde!”

He faced the window, and for the first time, she noticed his mien. The bronze skin sheathing his sinewy muscles glowed with a layer of sweat.

Someone had been here. Someone upon whom he had expended significant physical exertion.

He turned, and when he did, she saw a pool of blood glistening at his chest.

A Pravus under Kolt, then, perhaps even a lieutenant. This was good news for Isolde. If Enervata had unleashed his fury by extracting information from one of Kolt’s minions, he may not be so inclined to drag out Isolde’s death.

Enervata spoke deliberately, and though his black stare leveled at her, he did not address her directly.

“Hedon, kindly relay to Isolde the new development with the Macul of Corrupted Compassions.”

When he spoke, Hedon sounded gruff and, for once, stone sober. “Kolt has been working on a philanthropist named Jonathon Raster. Well-known bloke. Liable to win the Nobel Prize. We think Kolt might be on the verge of corrupting Raster, and if he succeeds . . .” Hedon swallowed. “The impact on humanity ought to be a good sight devastating. Enough power in it for Kolt to take the throne then if he pulls it off. Enslave humanity. Us too, of course.”

Enervata stepped toward her with savagery in his eyes. She saw his desire to spill her blood. His tongue spilled from his lips in a doglike pant. He spoke through his teeth. “So you see, Isolde, today is your lucky day. We must now divide our efforts and break Kolt’s philanthropist. We cannot lose another single Pravus lieutenant.”

Isolde wanted to laugh. Wanted to throw back her head and scream. To have assembled the courage to face her death, request it, practically, only to be thwarted by this.

Enervata growled. “Hedon shall be devoted to watching this Jonathon Raster and ruining Kolt’s plan. You shall continue to follow the quest and prevent any further progress.”

“I am unable to suppress the signs. They prevail though I know not how—”

“Silence!”

Enervata’s claw struck her face and she tumbled to the marble floor. Before she could gather herself another blow came, a kick, and with it she heard a snap as her left wing broke.

“I knew of your failing, Isolde! Hedon reported it to me!”

He knelt where she lay, teeth gleaming at her ear. “I almost killed you. Do you know that? As much as I cannot spare another single resource, I intended to kill you the moment you arrived. The only thing that saved your life was your immediate confession.”

This time she did laugh—a shuttering, moist gurgle that he likely mistook for weeping. She found in this laughter that her rib was broken in company with her wing.

Enervata grabbed her hair and yanked backward. “Explain to me now how you failed.”

Isolde shuddered. “I repressed the signs. But there are so many spirits attempting to get through. They use tricks now that I cannot anticipate. Speaking through random vessels in a crowd. It is too much
for me. I have failed and shall continue to fail.”

Enervata struck her again.

Hedon cleared his throat. “Suppose we pay a visit to the girl in Blue Ash afore they even get there, eh, master? I can be there in a jiff. Stop her heart like I did the driver of the gas truck once I’s done with him.”

“Yes, Hedon, you managed to kill a driver on an interstate off-ramp. And what was your intention? To cause the van to ram the truck and destroy them all!”

“At first! So shocked I had to do something. But I had to keep Bruce alive to keep the bond-recherché intact, so I slowed the van and sent a hailstorm instead. All happened so fast when I saw what they were about that I thought it better to rush back here and report than to—”

“Shut up. I grow so very weary of your puling.”

Enervata wiped his knuckle on his chest, adding Isolde’s blood to the existing stains. He would have employed extreme means in order to extract the information about this philanthropist, Jonathon Raster. Isolde knew many of Kolt’s Pravus, and wondered which one had shed the blood that now mingled with hers on her master’s chest. Jachai perhaps, as she knew Hedon had been watching him. But she dared not ask. Whoever the Pravus was, he likely met an unthinkable end. The specter of smoke still lingered in the air.

Enervata stood. “Why do none of you choose to think? If you can’t even suppress signs, what makes you think you’ll be able to get at the girl in Blue Ash? Don’t you think perhaps she might be a bit
protected
?”

Isolde put her hands to the floor and pushed up, wincing.

“Sileny, bring me my dagger,” Enervata said.

Sileny scurried, stepping first toward the Rococo cabinet and then pausing. She turned and left the room.

Enervata’s dagger. The only instrument that could pry through the spell of immortality he had cast centuries ago. Perhaps he would end it for Isolde after all.

Her heart thundered. If only he would move with haste.

Where was Sileny? Why had she not taken the dagger from the Rococo cabinet where it belonged?