Dead Drop (14 page)

Jeanne’s house was in an exclusive area of multi-million dollar homes–a showplace in an enclave of mansions. She wasn’t in Santa Cruz, proper, but that was splitting hairs. Some of the magekind kept a low profile; Jeanne never had, and nothing had changed about that. The witch was supposed to be home tonight. They had to do this when she was home, or they ran the risk of getting inside and finding out Jeanne had the talisman with her.

Palla parked downhill on Mockingbird Ridge Road so Wallace would be able to drive away with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of speed if she was pursued. He shut off the motor. She already had an extra fob, so he shoved his into his pocket. He wasn’t likely to be using it, but whatever.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Sure.” In her purse, she had a fake driver’s license, a hundred dollars in mixed bills, and an employee ID for a startup at an address in Cupertino. Registration and insurance for the car was in her name with an address in Los Gatos. Her cell phone was loaded with enough contacts, apps, files, and music to satisfy all but the most thorough review that she was exactly who and what the documents said.

He was glad, now, that Wallace had insisted on dressing like she belonged here. He didn’t think her shoes were practical enough, but she wouldn’t budge on that or on the jewelry or on dressing like she was going to a party. As she’d pointed out to him, a brown woman in an area like this had better look like she was either the help or someone with a damn good job in the tech sector.

He’d already dampened his magic and made himself essentially invisible to any magekind in the area, Jeanne included. Magehelds weren’t a worry yet. Being mageheld cut you off from all free kin. He couldn’t sense them. They couldn’t sense him. Wallace registered as vanilla as possible, too. Every contingency.

Three weeks of her working on controlling her magic had paid off. She had good control, and she could dead drop him essentially at will. She’d practiced on magic-infused objects, too, the way she’d need to with the talisman, or as close to without actually working with one. They’d memorized the layout of the house and rehearsed the plan for getting in and out. They were as prepared as they could be.

Wallace got out of the car first. He took a few seconds to settle himself before he joined her. Back when he’d decided to recruit her help, he hadn’t imagined he’d care about anything but her being his means of getting the talisman to Nikodemus. Three weeks of having her naked in his arms had complicated that. Getting naked with her. With and without a psychic connection. Sometimes sweet sex and sometimes not at all. Sometimes one or both of them thinking about him not being human. He’d slipped up once. Just once, and she knew he’d envisioned her pregnant by him. They hadn’t done anything about that.

Well before they reached the driveway, Palla felt the shiver of Jeanne’s power. Wallace put a hand on the back of his shoulder. She felt it, too. He brought Wallace into the dampening effect he already had on his magic just to be sure.

“Ready?” she said.

They started a low level link, two-way so they wouldn’t need to talk. She’d know when he’d located the talisman, and through her, he’d have advance notice of magehelds who were drawing on magic. The wards on the outside of the house were sloppy and easily disengaged. He recognized the work of magehelds out for every possible act of defiance. During his enslavement, he’d done shitty work like this whenever he could find a way around Christophe dit Menart’s commands.

They found the side door without trouble, and he had the wards and the physical alarms and locks disabled in ten seconds. Jeanne’s power was a familiar miasma. Sickening. Stronger than she’d been before, though. Significantly. He concentrated on his link with Wallace and between them located the magehelds. At least twenty. If Nikodemus didn’t have his hands full dealing with things up north, Jeanne and her twenty slaves would have been a prime target. Palla would have volunteered to lead the team sent to do the work.

Five more steps into the house, and a familiar echo of power rocked to him to his core. He froze in plain sight of anyone who might show up, stunned and thrown half back in his old life, his lost life.

Avitas
.

She was here.

Not alive, but not gone. The air quivered with her familiar energy, so real he felt he might walk back in time and find her, hold her again, and she’d be there, smiling. Find her, and he would be whole again.

Instinctively, he opened himself to her and there was howling, screaming madness where there had once been his blood-twin. He dropped to his knees, sliced open, trapped in the nightmare of her suffering. The harder he tried to remake their connection so he could help her, the more entangled he became.

Palla punched his chest with a fist while Avitas’s agonized screams echoed through him. Dying. They were dying, and he had to find her and stop their suffering.

Palla
.

They had not been whole for centuries, and that terrible wound bled anew.

“Palla.”

Someone touched his shoulder.

Not Avitas. Not her touching him or saying his name. Someone else. Why was anyone but Avitas touching him?

“Palla.”

He focused on the affront of that contact with an acuity of vision that meant he’d at least partially shifted. A human woman knelt in front of him–because he was on his knees, too, and she had her hands on his temples. A witch. She was a witch. Different from others in the way her magic worked. They watched, bemused by her temerity and waiting for the perfect moment to kill her for daring touch them at all, until her attempts to link with them worked. Her power flowed around him.

Wallace.

They were in Santa Cruz, and they were going after the talisman in which Avitas was imprisoned and his magic wasn’t dampened anymore and even with him regaining control of himself, it was too late. Even with the dampening restored, his lapse had betrayed him. And Wallace. He’d brought her here and put her in harm’s way, and now he’d need a miracle to get Wallace and the talisman out of here alive.

“Palla? Are you with me?”

He reached for her, set his hands on either side of her face. “Get out of here. Now.”

“Not without the talisman.” Her fingers curled around his upper arms, and she tugged upward, urging him to stand. No arguing. None.”

There wasn’t time to argue, she’d be killed for certain that way. “Then you need to let up on me.”

She did, and the screams tore through him again. He was dying with her. Subsumed. As insane as she was. So serious, the witch. Why wasn’t she attacking them? They repeated the old saying that had been so ironically common among humans back in the days when the wars between humans and demons were just getting started.
“
The only good witch is a dead witch.”

They couldn’t kill her. They’d made an oath to protect her. Why?

The witch dead dropped them. Him. Fuck–

The screams stopped. Wallace was unperturbed. Matter-of-fact. In control of her worry that things were going wrong so quickly.

“She’s set a trap, Palla.”

“Who?” The fog of the last few minutes thinned. He tried to hook into her, but he couldn’t touch his magic. His mind cleared. “Jeanne.”

“I think she tied the talisman to a ward, and it triggered when we came in.”

His stomach churned. He concentrated on Wallace because the trap hadn’t affected her. Her odd, inverted magic kept her safe from the maelstrom, and right now, she was keeping him safe, too. He didn’t like not being able to touch his magic, but if he broke free of her, he’d be vulnerable to whatever Jeanne had done. “I can’t protect you without my magic. Not in this house. It’s not safe here.”

“No joke.” She grabbed him by the arms again. “We are not leaving without her.”

He drew back, and she whirled on him, urgency in the way she set her shoulders. “Jeanne knows we’re here,” he said. “She’ll have given her magehelds a kill order.”

“Then we better move fast.” She tugged on his hand again. “I need your help, Palla.”

“Then stop what you’re doing.” He shrugged. “When I get too far gone, dead drop me again.”

She nodded, and a moment later, his magic was back. The screams started again, everything tainted by what remained of Avitas, but this time he remade a connection with Wallace, hooking in deep, concentrating on her and her serenity. She was his lifeline, a sliver of sanity.

They took the stairs, sharing their mental map of the house. Madness twisted through him, compelling. Alluring. His life could be whole again, the way it used to be. She was so close. Longing spread through him, joy that his nightmare was over and through all that, fear he would lose her again.

“Palla,” said another voice. Not Avitas. “Palla, snap out of it.”

Other. Not demonkind; magekind.

He knew the woman. Wallace Jackson, and he should have fucking killed her for being a witch– The center of his body turned to fire because he was oath-bound to her. Memories flickered through him interspersed with moments of clarity. Wallace Jackson. The two of them had been practicing for this moment. Him seconds from shifting into one of his true forms and taking the sex where they needed it to go. Wallace wasn’t Avitas and then in his head she was. She was Avitas and not, and he slid back to the insanity of his missing life. Her screams became his. Pleading. Heartbroken wails. Her calls for help.
Palla, where are you?

He stumbled. He’d made a blood oath to protect a witch? Why the hell had he done that when he wasn’t her mageheld? He moved up the stairs, the witch he was bound to protect behind him, steady, and yes, there was that oddness about her. There was a solidity to her, a stillness that puzzled him and drew him along the link he had with her. Not a normal witch.

Wallace. She was Wallace, and he had taken her to bed, and he had felt. He’d been so close to taking on one of his true forms and she’d considered telling him yes.

Long years as a mageheld had taught him there were thousands of ways for an enslaved demon to follow the letter of an order without carrying out the spirit of it. He’d find a way if he could, and if not, well then. Better if Avitas ended up bound by his oath to the witch than for him to do nothing. He kept moving, wrapped in magic that kept him unseen. Unfelt. Unheard.

“Palla. Slow down. Slow down. There are magehelds coming. Jesus. Stop.”

Here. In this room. The door was locked, and he drew power, more, more of it because Avitas was here.

“Palla. Wait.”

Like hell. He blew away the door. Vanished every molecule in his way. He strode in, heedless, because Avitas was calling for him, still dying endlessly.

He zeroed in on her. She was here. So close. There. On a table across the room. A box hardly larger than his hand. Seconds before he would have had the box in hand, the fucking witch lunged in front of him, blocking his way. He snarled, and only his oath whipping through him stopped him from killing her. The blowback took him to his knees. She bent over him–ready to kill him because that’s what witches did to his kind and then there was blessed calm. Silence.

Reality slammed back.

Wallace shoved the box in her purse. “You okay?”

“Yes.”

She’d done it. She had the talisman, and she’d cut off the magic inside.

“They’re coming. We have to get out. Now.”

Exactly the way they’d practiced.

“Well, well, well.”

Palla turned, his mind clear, his power on tap as he faced the witch who’d murdered his soul. His oath to Wallace burned through him, recognizing the danger she was in now. “Fucking witch.”

Five magehelds flanked her. They were big, and judging from appearances, strong enough to pose a challenge even to him. Two of them were pulling enough magic to have turned their eyes unnatural colors. He couldn’t feel a mageheld’s magic, but Wallace could, and there was enough of their link going that he got the echo of the magehelds.

“Palla. Isn’t that right?” Jeanne smiled. Hundreds of years lived beyond her natural life span and she was youthful still.

She had a cigarette in one hand, hand-rolled, because it wasn’t tobacco, but copa. The witch had managed her addiction for much longer than most. Magekind who’d been hopping their magic with copa for even half as long as Jeanne had been alive were either burned out, dead, or fast approaching the point where the drug would kill them.

He put himself in front of Wallace. Whatever happened, whatever Jeanne did or ordered her magehelds to do for her, Wallace wasn’t going to do the necessary, which was kill every single one of them before it was too late. Fine. He knew that about her, that she would never kill. Nothing wrong with him getting in a little vengeance while he made sure Wallace got out with the talisman.

Jeanne drew on her copa and let out a stream of smoke. Faded blue letters were tattooed on her hands and fingers, words of power–an affectation of the old French mages. Christophe dit Menart, Jeanne’s one-time lover, had done the same to his body. “I thought you belonged to dit Menart.”

“Dead.”

“I heard of that.” She let another stream of smoke from her lips and spoke in Irish. “Was it you killed him?”