Pyromancist (24 page)

Her small foot lifted. One step closer to the
edge. His soul twisted like the turbulent water at her feet. Even
before the apologetic expression washed into her eyes, he started
shaking his head. He took a step forward, his hand still reaching
for her, but she took another one back, her heel over the side, and
so forced him to stop.

He followed the hand that slipped into her
pocket. Her body rocked dangerously in the strong wind. Lifting
both his palms toward her, he called out her name, willing her to
come to the safety of his arms.

Clelia removed something from her pocket. It
was concealed in her fist. As she uncurled her fingers, he stared
at the object she revealed, and recognition set in too slowly. It
was a bullet. It dropped to the deck and rolled to his feet. After
recognition, comprehension followed, and when the awful and
wonderful truth hit him, his eyes shot back to hers.

As he watched, a tiny ball of fire erupted by
her feet. At first, the meaning refused to sink in, but as it did,
he saw that it had shocked her as much as him. It couldn’t be. He
had tasted her blood. His eyes widened as he realized the full
impact of what had just happened.

“I’m sorry,” her lips mimed, no sound
reaching his ears, and then she took her last step.

In the instant that Josselin saw her body
move, he jumped forward, his hands clawing the air, but she was
already beyond his grip, her fragile body a four-pointed star that
lived for a split-second on the wind before it connected with the
relentless water. He saw her bounce once from the impact before the
white foam and a black expanse folded around her and buried her in
front of his helpless eyes.

Josselin felt the weight of that entire ocean
crush down on him. He dropped to his knees, his arms lifted to
heaven, and uttered a cry that would rip the wings clean off an
angel. He gripped his hair and tore his fingers through the
strands, his body bowing to the deck, his forehead thumping on the
wooden boards.

Maya, who had been standing on the bridge,
rushed down the steps. “Joss, what the hell...?”

“No!” Josselin’s helpless cry lifted to the
air and dispersed with the salty spray in a tail behind the
vessel.

Lann peered over the bridge, looking baffled.
Bono came running. He stopped next to Josselin, his hands on his
hips, his breath chasing.

Josselin jumped to his feet. “Stop the boat.”
He tilted his face up to Lann. “Cut the fucking engine.”

Lann disappeared from view to execute the
command. Catching the look that passed between Maya and Cain,
Josselin shook his head. “No. No. I won’t accept it. Don’t give me
that look, do you understand? Bono, get the fucking lifebuoy.”

Bono glanced at Maya, who nodded. The boat
came to a slow halt. Josselin ran up the steps to the bridge for a
better view. Around them, the water was quiet, except for the swell
that was the after-shock of their movement. Despair braided his
intestines together so tightly he couldn’t breathe. Josselin went
back down, removing his shoes in the run.

“Maya,” he shouted, “I need you. I don’t care
if you have to clear a fucking path like Moses.”

Maya looked again at Cain, who shook his
head. She walked up to Josselin and laid her hand on his arm.

“It won’t help,” Maya said softly.

Josselin lifted his head and howled like a
wolf.

* * * *

Clelia had dived for oysters off the coast of
Île aux Moines enough times with Erwan to know where the reef
parted to give access to the beach. She knew the wind would carry
her body to the back of the boat, past the engines, and that
normally she would be pulled down and under the boat, crushed to
pulp, but she also knew where the currents crossed. This part of
the Gulf was the most dangerous. Slipstreams flowing as fast as ten
knots crisscrossed the bay. She jumped where the current was the
strongest, so that it would carry her away from the yacht. There,
the reef dropped to give way to an underwater cave. If she managed
to hold onto the rock by the entrance for long enough, the
slipstream caused by the boat would weaken so that she could reach
the surface and swim to the island.

For some, the water was much too cold, but
Clelia’s body was accustomed to swimming in the icy sea, even in
winter, and she was swim fit. Free diving had developed her lung
capacity. She could easily hold her breath until the yacht was well
past, until it was safe for her to surface.

She kept down for as long as she could, and
when she sensed she was close to blacking out, she surfaced slowly,
knowing the air in her lungs would expand and give her more oxygen
as she ascended. The noise of the yacht had gone silent. They had
probably cut the engine to search for her. Her heart tripped over
its own beat as she thought about Josselin, but she put it out of
her mind, reminding herself to focus on Erwan and her escape.

In the distance, she could see the yacht. The
engine started up again and then it turned back, but she was
already through the reef and making her way with strong, sure
breaststrokes to the beach. She would reach it before they had a
visual on her. It wasn’t a populated beach. The coast was rocky and
the currents too dangerous for bathing. The private stretch of land
where she came ashore belonged to a foreigner. On it stood the
ruins of a once glorious chateau next to a large pine tree.

By the time Clelia made it to dry land, she
was panting. Her mouth tasted of salt and her limbs ached from the
strain. Even if she needed to catch her breath badly, she didn’t
stop before she made it to the disintegrating building. Josselin
wasn’t a fool. He would search the islands, starting with the one
she was on, the one closest to where she had gone overboard. Bono
was probably on his way to the mainland to start up his helicopter
as she was digging around the protruding roots, trying to locate
the box Erwan had mentioned.

The earth was disturbed in the hollow between
two roots that encompassed a network of smaller ones. Clelia found
a flat rock and started digging until she felt something hard. The
box wasn’t deep. Erwan had left it in a hurry. She lifted the metal
lid and found a plastic zip lock bag inside. Its contents included
a passport, money, and a letter from Erwan.

The worst of the fatigue wearing off, she
started feeling the cold, and shivered in her wet clothes. With
trembling fingers, she removed the passport and discovered her
photo inside, but the passport belonged to Cléane de Villiers.

How did Erwan manage to obtain a false
passport? When did he plan all of this? His letter didn’t provide
the answers she wanted, only a schedule of the trawlers that would
pass during the next few weeks, and a message of love, wishing her
well, saying that he was praying for their safe reunion.

Huddling behind a collapsed wall, Clelia
checked the roster for the ships. The next one to pass through the
Gulf was on its way to South Africa.

Chapter
Fifteen

Josselin knew Clelia was alive. Despite what
Maya and Lann said, he could feel it. Her heartbeat pulsed in his
chest at night as he lay in foreign hotel beds, recalling her face,
her voice, the way her body molded to his and the truth of the
cold, hard bullet he clutched in his fist.

After Clelia’s escape, he had taken a leave
of absence for the first time since he took command of Cain’s
taskforce. Cain had encouraged it, no doubt guessing the depth of
his feelings for Clelia. Josselin had asked for three months–he
said he wanted to travel for a while–and Cain had granted him five.
Four of those precious five months had already been wasted. He had
little time left. Now, he finally sensed that he was on the right
track.

The dark angel from his dream was real. She
had saved him from blowing his brains out, accepted his kiss and
fled on his command. At first, he couldn’t recall what had
happened, his memory dimmed by his drunken haze. All he initially
had to reconstruct the events of that night were flashes. Sometimes
he had a vision of an angel’s face. When Clelia left him with his
own bullet, he finally saw what he couldn’t see before, why he was
alive instead of a corpse decaying in a grave right now.

The kiss of his imagination was real after
all. The sensation of her lips on his had remained in his
subconscious. His mind didn’t recognize her, but his body had. As
his memory returned, he recollected telling her to run away as fast
as she could. Yes, it came back in agonizing bits and pieces. It
was a mistake, the worst he had ever made, and he was determined to
set it right. He would find her, and when he did, he would never
let her go again.

Night after night, he lay awake, shamed by
the knowledge that she had witnessed his weakest moment, yet, had
not used it against him. How easy it would have been to betray him,
to confess to Cain that he was nothing but a weakling who wanted to
end his suffering with his own revolver. If she was anything less
than an angel, she would have told him when he locked her up in his
childhood house, used it to bargain for her freedom. An eye for an
eye. But she kept it to herself, while he betrayed her in every
imaginable way. He betrayed the love he had seen in her eyes by
taking her hostage, by submitting her to his ghosts, by trading his
hauntings for her peace and by rejecting the redemption she
offered, but he wasn’t going to make those same mistakes again.

Just before Clelia had jumped overboard, they
all witnessed her art. It had to have regressed so far it didn’t
even come through in her blood. A coldness invaded his soul on that
day when he realized the danger she was in. That chill had never
left. It now inhabited his heart. She was the prey Lupien was
after. Finding Erwan was no longer of essence. Finding Clelia
before Lupien did was the only thing that could save Josselin from
his agony. Even if he knew Clelia was alive, he didn’t share this
knowledge with anyone. He had a damn good reason for keeping it to
himself.

Lupien would not stop until he had Clelia in
his claws. This much Josselin had since learned from the little
information he could dig up on Lupien. Lupien and Cain were similar
in one regard. They were both determined, unstoppable. If Cain
discovered that Clelia was alive, she would be hunted by two of the
most powerful men in the universe, one wanting to kill her for the
good of mankind, the other for evil. In both instances, Clelia was
doomed. There was only one way to save Clelia. He had to kill
Lupien. In order to steal her art, Lupien would have to turn her
heart black, destroy her light and her purity. She was
inexperienced, a virgin firestarter, and fertile ground for evil
predators like Lupien. If Lupien succeeded, not only would he be
the most powerful force on the face of the earth, but Clelia would
be lost to Josselin. Forever.

Josselin tossed and turned, considering his
self-assigned mission. Find her. Find her and save her. Make her
his. Claim her. His destiny was, for the first time in his life,
clear to him. Clelia was as much a part of him as his quest was.
The one couldn’t be separated from the other. Clelia was his quest.
His quest was Clelia. She was the answer to everything, to his
happiness, to Cain’s life mission. Find her, and they could save
the world from Lupien. Lose her, and all was lost.

What Maya couldn’t see, Josselin felt. Clelia
had gotten away. They combed the bottom of the ocean and didn’t
leave a rock on land unturned. For weeks Josselin roamed the woods,
watched her house and even his, set her dogs loose in the woods in
the hope they’d pick up on a scent, until he had to admit she
wasn’t there. For a month they hunted Lupien, tracked him all the
way to Spain, where they lost his trail. Josselin would have felt a
hell of a lot better if he could have killed the bastard before
continuing his search for Clelia. At least his angel would have had
one devil less on her tail.

At first, Josselin suffered in agony because
had nothing else to go on, nothing to show him where to start
looking for his witch. Then one day, he sat at the harbor watching
the boats and the fishing trawlers coming in. By the way his heart
started beating faster, he knew he had guessed right.

Only one trawler had passed in the week
Clelia jumped to unequalled danger. Its destination was Cape Town.
He begged leave from Cain, and no one in his team was suspicious
when he set off for South Africa. They thought he was running to go
lick his wounds. Any fool could see how Clelia affected him. If not
for the knowledge that she was alive, he would have gone stark
raving mad. Maybe it was Cain’s fear of losing Josselin to that
madness that made him agree to let Josselin go.

From Cape Town, Josselin managed to pick up a
trail to Johannesburg. The trawler had docked in Hout Bay. A cooler
truck had taken the boat’s fish cargo from there to Johannesburg.
In fact, Clelia could have gone anywhere after going ashore. It was
pure luck that the truck driver was back in Hout Bay to transport
another batch of fish at the same time that Josselin arrived in the
harbor town. He had to cut the idiot’s finger and suck his blood to
learn the truth, because the man stubbornly refused to cooperate,
denied that he had ever laid eyes on a tiny, Japanese woman.

The driver had such a fright at the sight of
Josselin’s knife parting his skin that he spilled the beans. He not
only confessed to taking Clelia to Johannesburg, but also to
robbing her of her money, which turned out to have been the sole
reason for letting her hitchhike a ride with him. The petrified
driver swore he never laid a finger on her, and if his blood hadn’t
confirmed his confession, Josselin would have sliced his throat
right there and then.

Now, Josselin was lying in the bed of his
Westcliff suite, so near, and so far, feeling for her in the night,
his fire angel, willing her to come back to him.