Devil's Eye (7 page)

A grumble of thunder seemed to echo in response.

Dad?
Maybe she’s delirious.
“Say what?”

“
My father’s the sea god. He may not win Father of the Year, but he tries to avoid letting his kids drown.”

Mick blinked at her. “The sea god. Like
the
sea god? Like major character in Greek myth, Poseidon, the sea god?”

“
That’d be the one.”

“
He…they
exist?”

She arched a brow at him as she rolled to her knees and tried to stand “You turn into a wolf and you’re asking me if gods exist?”

He put a hand under her elbow to steady her. “Well it’s not like they’re one of the common Races sitting on the Council. So that makes you…” He trailed off, searching for the right word.

“
A demi-goddess, technically. Which sounds a lot cooler than it actually is.” She lifted the hem of her shirt, and he saw the case still wedged firmly behind her belt. “C’mon. We need to find the car.”

Chapter 5

T
he
cemetery was a half hour’s walk from the pond they’d surfaced in on somebody’s Garden District estate. Given their need for haste, Mick had shifted. A big ass dog stuck out a lot less than a bare-assed man, no matter how attractive that ass happened to be. And that was all anyone would see if they looked out at the empty street. A dog and a bedraggled woman without enough sense to get out of the rain.

Sophie wanted to run. The need to get back to the car, to make a plan, was gnawing at her. But after their ordeal in the catacombs, she simply couldn’t manage it. She’d pushed herself too far. The way her head pounded and her vision blurred, she was doing well enough to put one foot in front of the other without stumbling. Mick helped with that. He was so tall as a wolf, she could easily lean on his shoulders to steady herself. She felt somewhat better having him pressed close, her fingers threaded through his ruff. He was solid.

As they neared the back edge of the cemetery, Mick’s ears pricked up, his body going stiff. Sophie stopped, creeping forward as he did, following the unspoken order for silence. On the other side of the fence, the foliage rustled, and she dove for the cover of some bushes. Mick flattened against the ground.

“
Anything?” The male voice carried faintly over the rain.

“
Nah. If anybody else was standing watch, they bailed when the catacombs flooded again. Raines says the sensors aren’t picking up any signs of life down there. Whoever they were, they drowned.”

Sophie chanced a peek through the branches. She couldn’t see much. Just a moving blur, a deeper black within the shadows of a nearby tomb but it was enough to identify them.
Shadow Walkers.
The Council’s special ops division.
We must have triggered some kind of alarm,
she thought.

“
Who drew the short straw to go down and see that the artifact is still in place?” asked the first voice.

“
Nobody yet. Matthias doesn’t want anybody down there with the hurricane this close. The threat’s been contained. We’ll come back and check it once the storm’s past.”

Their voices faded. Sophie didn’t move, hardly dared to breathe. Nothing short of a Hunter was more deadly than a Shadow Walker. Able to travel by shadow, they could infiltrate virtually anywhere, pursue any target without being seen. If she and Mick had surfaced on this side of the catacombs, they’d be dead, or at the very least arrested. The Council wasn’t big on trials for those accused of treason.

The metal case holding the Eye pressed into her belly, a damning piece of evidence if ever there was one.

When something cold nudged her hand, she nearly screamed. Blood flooded her mouth from where she’d bitten her lip. Mick cocked his head in what she supposed was a canine version of
Sorry
, then tugged her toward the cemetery.

“
They’re gone?” she whispered.

He nodded.

They skirted the edge as quickly as possible, circling around to the car. Once inside, Mick back in his skin, Sophie tossed him her jacket to cover up with, and pulled away from the curb.

“
Gods that was close.”

“
This is far more exciting than the vault,” came a voice from the backseat.

Sophie shrieked and jerked the wheel as she glanced into the rearview mirror to see the demon looking bright-eyed with interest.

Wresting the car back into her lane, Sophie bit back the curses on her tongue. Instead she said, “We have to decide what to do with the Eye. Given its capabilities, we can’t possibly give it to the kidnapper. I don’t know what he wants it for, but the potential for the apocalypse is just too high.”

“
We need a counterfeit,” said Mick.

“
That would be great if we had weeks to plan and find someone to make a forgery, but in case you’ve forgotten, there’s a hurricane coming and we’re down to less than four hours.”

“
I know a guy.”

Sophie glanced over and blinked at him. “You
know
a guy who can create a forgery of this artifact that’s good enough to risk Liza’s life on?”

“
If anybody can do it, Olaf can.”

‘
You trust him?”

“
With my life. If he didn’t evacuate, he’ll do what he can.”

She blew out a long breath. “Well, it’s not necessarily a great plan, but it’s
a
plan. Where are we going?”

He directed her back to the interstate until they were headed toward Slidell. As they hit I-10, he fell quiet.

In the silence, Sophie’s mind turned over the events of the night, settling on Mick’s rescue from the catacombs.

“
What did you mean back at the pond?” she asked.

“
What?”

“
When you said you weren’t going to lose another one.” When she looked over at him, his face was hard. “Did you lose one of your Pack?”

“
Not exactly.”

He stopped and stayed silent for so long, she didn’t think he would explain.

“
When I was seventeen, I was sent to pick up an order of herbs and other supplies for our pack healer. Usually she’d go herself, but one of the women was due to give birth any day and she didn’t want to leave, just in case. When I got to the guild, the herbalist didn’t have our order ready yet. There was a girl, a child really. Five, maybe six. She wanted to play. Was bugging everybody there to play Hide and Seek—really insistent. Nobody else would pay any attention to her, so I followed her out into the swamp. She didn’t stand a chance. I could smell her easy, but I played along, pretending I couldn’t find her.

“
We were more than a mile away from town when the attack came. Her entire clan was slaughtered while we hid in the swamp playing a child’s game. Then she stepped out from behind a tree and looked at me with these grave brown eyes and said, “It’s over,” and started crying. I didn’t realize what she meant until I scented their blood. She knew it was going to happen.”

“
She was a Seer?” asked Sophie.

“
Yeah. I don’t think they’d realized it yet. She was young to manifest that kind of gift. So nobody listened to her.”

“
That’s horrible. What did you do?”

“
The only thing I could think of. I took her back home to the Pack. She was just a child. I promised we would keep her safe until my Alpha could decide what to do with her. He wasn’t thrilled with me, but when I explained the circumstances, he agreed that she could stay. Then he sent me off to another witch clan he knew, to see if they would take her in.”

He stopped again, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. “While I was gone the same people who attacked her home came after my Pack. They were after the girl. It wasn’t that they just handed her over, but . . . to them she wasn’t Pack, so nobody even
thought
about protecting her. They were too busy protecting their own.”

“
Was she killed?” asked Sophie quietly.

“
Or worse. Her body wasn’t found in the clan compound during the aftermath.” Mick paused again.

“
When I got back, the Alpha confronted me. He said I’d brought death straight to our Pack’s door because I’d brought in an outsider. So I was banished.”

“
So you’ve made your own Pack. Your own rules about who counts, who deserves protection,” she said. He had protected what he deemed his.

Mick shrugged.

“
What was her name?” asked Sophie.

“
Isla. Her name was Isla.”

They lapsed into silence.

“
I was like you once,” said the demon.

Startled, they both glanced back at it.

“
How’s that?” asked Mick.

“
I was not always as you see. I have known loss. Once I was a merchant, and my business took me often to the seaport, nearly a full league away from my home, my wife and child. I was not there when our city—our home—was invaded by foreigners from across the hills. By the time we even realized the city was under attack, they were already dead.

“
I was crazed with grief. But I was no warrior. The path I chose was not one of honor, but of revenge. I made a bargain for the power to destroy those who had taken my family, and in exchange I was bound to the Eye ever after.”

~*~

“
Hurricane Roy has picked up speed yet again. Meteorologists are predicting landfall in as little as four hours. Freeways are clogged as citizens try to evacuate ahead of this category four storm that threatens the Crescent City. With Katrina not long in our memories, panic is setting in as more and more locals head for the high ground to wait out the storm. Local officials speculate about the strength of the new levee—”

Sophie turned off the car and stared at the sign above the shop.

“
OCC?” she asked. “Really?”

“
Not
that
OCC. Olaf’s Custom Cycles.” If the situation hadn’t been so dire, Mick would’ve laughed at the expression of disbelief on Sophie’s face.

“
Your forger makes motorcycles?”

“
Among many other things. There’s a market for them down here.”

“
Doesn’t look very open.”

“
He’s here.” Mick pointed at the wisps of smoke curling up from the back of the building. “And he’s at his forge. That’s exactly what we want.”

He got out of the car and headed for the side door rather than the boarded glass of the showroom. It took five minutes of pounding before a light came on above their heads and a small panel, like something from an old speakeasy, slid back, low enough that Mick was glad he was still using Sophie’s coat to cover himself. The panel slid shut with a snap, and there was a rattle of chains and locks on the other side. Then the door swung open to reveal Olaf, who stood all of four foot seven inches, looking up at him with one pierced eyebrow arched.