The Casquette Girls (63 page)

So much for the element of surprise.

Suddenly, everything felt right. I knew I had made the right decision – I couldn’t let any more lives be put at risk. Now I just needed to stay alive until all
the vampires were contained.

No problem, Adele. Just stay alive.

“I can almost smell the freedom!” Gabe boasted, which I found ironic given we were now in the room where he had been imprisoned for so long.

I quickly scanned the battleground-to-be. The room was gigantic, with an angular ceiling that peaked in the center. There were six dormer windows on one side and the asymmetric five on the other. The fifth window was bricked up. That was my target: t
he lid to Pandora’s Box.

Thick floor-to-ceiling beams rendered the large room useful for nothing but storage space, but it had remained fairly sparse. The only metal objects I had to work with were the crude, antique gardening tools piled in a corner. Each one was my weapon, but each one could just as easily be turned and used against me. I approached the first of a couple dozen long wooden boxes that resembled caskets. Some were stacked high on top of each other, and others were alone on the floor.

“The infamous
cassettes
,” I whispered.

My foot nudged a heavy chain from the lid, sending squeaking mice scattering across the room, and a wave of supernatural energy through me. A vision flashed through my mind:
The open sea. A cassette about to go overboard. I heard a scream. Mine. No, Adeline’s.
I was seeing the scene through her eyes. I could feel the rush of her heartbeat and her fear that it might be Gabriel in the box. She had been scared
for
Gabe just as much as she had been scared
of
him. But she hadn’t entirely trusted him—the slave driver in the sugarcane field, the pirate massacre, saving her life after the lethal vampire bite—it was impossible to know whether those events weren’t entirely self-serving
.
Was he just protecting his food supply? Using her to get to her father
?
The image vanished, and, as I came back to my senses, I realized Gabe was waiting on me. He had asked me a question, and my blank expression seemed to be frightening Nicco.

“Come on, Adele. Do it,” Gabe said, his tone now serious.

“Do what?” I asked coyly, trying my best to invoke some of Adeline’s allure.

He answered with a heavy backhand that sent me sailing across the room. I hit the northern wall with a loud thud and landed hard on the metal stake hidden in my corset. Inhaling sharply, I rolled to the side in pain, but when I saw Nicco’s fangs come out, I forced myself to jump up.

“I’m fine, Nicco!”

It was exactly the reaction I wanted from his older brother.

“Don’t bother trying to help your little girlfriend, Niccolò,” Gabe yelled. “It will only make things more painful for her in the end.” He launched at me again, but I quickly sidestepped, and he crashed into the wall. He fell back in a drunken stupor.

“It doesn’t look like she needs my help
.” A little laugh slipped from between Nicco’s lips as he jumped on top a shaky table and crouched in a pseudo-referee stance.

I’m glad this is humorous to him.

Unfazed, Gabe picked himself up and began to circle me. “There is something about you that looks a little like Adeline, I’ll admit.” His eyes seemed to have trouble focusing on me, so I bounced away like a boxer. He blinked and shook his head. “But you’re nothing alike,” he spat and took a swat, missing me completely. He looked baffled and forced himself to refocus. “You’re so innocent, so sweet…”

It was just the provocation I needed to plant my feet. With a quick flick of my wrists, I pulled one of the chains from a
cassette
and sent it whacking across his chest, throwing him against the wall. The sound of his cracking bones made me want to rush to help him, but I forced myself still. He slumped down to the floor.

Nicco stood on the table, knowing my action would cause an aggressive counterattack.

“Nice shot,” Gabe said with an almost genuine flair. He attempted to stand but stopped, holding his rib cage. His strength and speed weren’t his only failing attributes – his bones were taking their sweet time to regenerate. “
What
did you do to me,
witch
?” He lunged at me, but the chain popped up, and he tripped back down, landing face first.

I took a few steps backwards, shocked by my attack and still uncertain of the extent of my powers.

He looked up from the ground, fuming, and then charged at me, yelling through the pain. The look in his eyes made me gasp.

Just before he grabbed me, the chain jerked up and lassoed him. I watched in astonishment as he was hurled back across the room into the wall again.

Holy shit,
I though
t,
trying to hide the fact that I was visibly shakin
g.
Before guilt could set in, I remembered that in this very room, he had forced Lisette Monvoisin to murder her own triplet, to literally suck the life out of her.

My fingers slowly twirled. The lasso tightened, and the chains wrapped themselves around him three more times as he yelled obscenities at me, in shock that his perfect body was failing. I forged the ends of the chain together, trapping him.

Confidence grew inside me with the defeat of one vampire.
Thank you, Désiré
e
.
The moonshine had definitely kicked in. Without it, I would have stood no chance. I hoped they would continue to arrive one at a time.

I walked back to Nicco, who sat down on the table, making us nearly eye-level. “What are you doing,
bella
? How can I help you if I don’t know the plan?”

“It’s really better this way.” I did my best to keep a wily smile from forming. “I’m just trying to protect you.” My hidden grin transferred to his lips as he heard his own words used against him.

I took a deep breath. “And now we wait.” The calm in my tone made my voice unrecognizable to my ears.

He gritted his teeth, knowing I wasn’t willing to divulge the plan any more than he was willing to give up the past. At this point, I
was
trying to protect him. I rested my hand on his leg, and his jaw relaxed. The less he knew, the better, because things were about to get
beaucoup
awkward for him. The only way for him to not betray his family was for me to fall – a reality each of us kept pushing to the back of our minds.

“Little girl,” Gabriel said with a strange mix of ecstasy and threat in his voice. “You are really,
really
going to regret this in about ninety seconds. And brother, when I get free, you’d better run.”

“Chill out,” Nicco said, pushing himself off the table, seeming to enjoy the humility that had been forced upon his older sibling. He traipsed over to Gabriel and stooped to his face. “She locked you in a chain, bro. It’s not like she set you on fire.” He tousled his brother's hair.

“And how do you think this is going to end for you, little
bro
? The two of you are going to ride off in the moonlight together?”

“Something like that,” Nicco grumbled with a swift kick to his brother’s foot. He walked back to the table in discontent. We tried not to let the question cripple us, but how quickly the energy in the room changed.

“Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock,” Gabriel taunted like a broken record.

At first, the childish words escaped my ears, but soon I had to hold myself back from kicking him in the face to shut him up.

“Tick. Tock.”

A spark buzzed from my finger.

“That’s it,
bell
a
.
Stay angry!” Nicco yelled, just as the girls burst through the door.

“Where is he?” shrieked Martine Dufrense.

Lisette whipped around the room and came straight for me. I underestimated her speed, and in a flash, her pale hand clutched my throat. “Have you no sense, girl?” she screamed in my face, lifting me from the ground. “Do you not remember what I told you about Gabriel?”

“Kill her now, Lise!” Gabe ordered from across the room as Martine frantically tried to release him from the magical chains.

“Gabriel, why don’t you get Lisette to break the curse,” I screamed. “She’s the one who cast it, after all.”

She squeezed my throat tighter, digging her sharp fingernails into my skin.

My vision spasmed; tears squirted out as she tried to crush my windpipe. I couldn’t focus enough to cast magic, and I knew it was just a matter of seconds before I passed out. But then she became distracted by something next to me, and her grip loosened a tad. I turned my eyeballs as far as I could, but saw nothing. Her gaze continued to follow an invisible tracer as I clung to her wrists, supporting my dangling body enough to sneak half a breath.

One. Two. Three.

I shoved my feet into her chest and pushed against the wall with an animal-like grunt. She fell back, and I dropped to the ground on my tailbone, wheezing for air.

She wasted no time coming back at me, but this time Nicco intercepted and threw her across the room.
Gabe shouted at him in the background. I rejoiced as my lungs sucked in large gulps of air, but just as I caught my breath, Martine grabbed my waist, scooped me up from the floor, and slammed me back down onto one of the
cassettes
.

“Dammit!”

The rotten wood collapsed beneath me, breaking my fall, but the stake pounded into my back a second time. My shout echoed through the room as Martine hovered over me, practically salivating. She had the same dopey smile on her face as Gabe. Unfortunately, I had no emotional strings to pull with her.

I eyed the spade. She saw the direction of my gaze and sprang for it. But, instead of attacking me with the iron tool, she took a dramatic spin, as if performing on stage, and began humming a French lullaby.

Without thinking, I lifted my hand to the heavy spade – it jerked to and fro, but she grasped it like a tango partner. I spun her around, faster and faster, but instead of becoming worried, she squealed in delight and began to sing the lullaby lyrics operatically, louder and louder.
Jesus, no wonder she and Gabe get along. So freaking dramatic.

In her rapturous state, she didn’t even notice the metal twisting around her wrists into a makeshift pair of cuffs. Adrenaline surged through my system as I stood up and focused harder on the metal. The spade began to float, spinning the singing diva into the air, until the old gardener’s tool plunged itself into the ceiling beams. I was halfway across the room when the singing abruptly stopped and Martine realized she was now stuck hanging from the rafters.

Nicco was sparring with Lisette. Any human witness would have thought they were killing each other, but for vampires they were barely roughhousing. As I watched them more closely, I could see that they were both wavering, although Lisette far more than Nicco. They both seemed tipsy, while Martine and Gabriel looked like drunks flopping down Bourbon Street at dawn. Circus music started playing in my head as the insanity ensued, accentuated by Gabriel’s foreign profanity and Madame Dufrense’s intermittent shrieks of laughter.

“Lise, I see three of you!” Gabriel yelled. “How do I see three of you? It’s like your sisters are back. What kind of witchy hex did you put on me?”

“Je vois six!”
screamed Martine, swinging herself from the ceiling as if she was under the Big Top.

Lisette fumed at the mention of her sisters and hurled a ceramic statue of an unfamiliar saint at Nicco, who was staring in disbelief at Martine, the trapeze artist. It split over his head into large chunks, causing me to tense up.

As the pieces dropped to the floor, he shook them off with a dangerous smirk, and then cracked his neck twice, ready to pounce.

“Niccolò!” Gabriel yelled, growling beneath his chains.

Nicco looked back at his brother and then rolled his eyes and stepped away, as if deciding not to assert himself over a drunk girl who was acting crazy. The fact that Nicco wasn’t slamming her into the wall made my chest swell with some bizarre sense of pride.

Gabriel continued to yell provocative things at both of them, easily switching back and forth between Italian and French. Between the languages and his slurred speech, I could only understand a fraction of his banter, but it didn’t take a genius to fill in the blanks.

“You disgust me,” Lisette sneered at Nicco. “How could you betray your brother?” Her voice escalated to a scream and, despite Nicco’s gentlemanly showmanship only a moment ago, she snatched up another statue and lifted it over her head.

A lethal protective instinct flared inside me when she threw it.

Nicco dodged the flying saint and watched it smash against the wall. When he looked back at her, his jaw tightened, as did mine.

One of the thick rusty chains slid off a
cassette
and slunk to my feet, slithering like a snake as I moved towards her.

My empathy for the original casquette girl was wearing thin. “How coul
d
yo
u
betray your sisters?” I yelled back at her with what was left of my voice. The chain slid from my ankles to hers. “You make her death in vain!”