The Templar's Legacy (Ancient Enemy) (32 page)

I think I was more shocked than Dave had just been. Dave wasn’t like this.

He looks pretty serious to me. I think he’s right. If you need to marry Colette to get her family’s allegiance, then I don’t see how you have any choice. Right now, there is too much at stake. Besides, you can still keep Jen as your mistress.

Thanks
,
Spring. That makes everything all right.

Maybe everything is not all right, but it certainly beats burying your family and friends.

Holy mother of God, I couldn’t let that happen. Dave was right, I’d already played fast and loose with the lives of those who knew me, who loved me. I couldn’t put them in more danger.

Jen’s wide eyes were locked on me, her face vulnerable and young. I just wanted to hold her. I’d rather tear out my own tongue than say anything to hurt her. The thought alone made me want to vomit.

I said directly to Jen, “It won’t come to that. I won’t let it come to that. We’ll just have to take out the shadow and get my uncle back.” I wished I believed we could do it.

“And, we’re going to do that how?” asked Dave.

I pushed away the remaining doughnuts. “Come on, we’re going to go see Colette.”

It only took us a few minutes to pull into the hotel parking lot. We’d barely gotten out of the car when Colette hurried out of the lobby with a suitcase in hand. Her pinched face clearly signaled something was wrong.

“Colette, what’s up?” I asked.

“I ‘ave tracked the path of the fake Caduceus. It arrived in New York last night. Now she is heading over ze ocean to France.”

“Don’t you guys live in France?” asked Dave.

“Yes, that is why we must leave. We must follow her.”

“To France?” I asked. The inference was obvious, but I couldn’t follow the logic.

“Do not be stupid, Finn, if ze fake is going there, then so is your uncle. The only reason he goes there is to attack my family. Get in the car. We must go to the airport.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“
Oui
!” She stamped her foot. “Mark brings with him blood and death. Jacques has seen it. Now we must go!”

Blood and death. I didn’t ask who Jacques was. The words pulled up too many memories. It made my body shake and my stomach churn. Mark had thrown hired killers against my family. Is that what he would do with the Delacroix?

Why was my life now so drenched in blood?

“Jacques?” asked Jen.

“He is my half uncle. He has the sight of things coming.”

I shivered in the heat.

I started to get into the front seat with Jen, but Colette said, “Finn, ride in back with me.” I turned to Jen and shrugged. She gave me a stricken look that cut me deep, but I needed to keep on Colette’s good side, and I needed to know more. I climbed in back and Dave rode shotgun.

“So, what are you going to do when you get there, Colette?” I asked.

“I will protect my family.” Her intensity left me no doubt that she would give her life to do it. “You must give me the Caduceus.”

“I can’t do that Colette. I need it to protect my own family.”

Her face twisted into a snarl, but she caught herself and said, “Then you must come with me.”

“What?”

“If you are to be a member of our family, then you must be willing to come to our assistance.”

I had the choice of either talking about blood and death, or forced marriage. I took on the easier one.

“Uh, about that.”

“About what?”

I prepared to block a knife. “I can’t marry you.”

She looked surprised but didn’t attack. “Why is this? I know you think I am beautiful, and we have enjoyed our company together.”

“Well yeah—”

“Because he’s mine, you treacherous skinny little frog!” snarled Jen.

Dave laughed in delighted surprise.

Colette was less delighted. I thought she looked surprised before, but now her mouth dropped open and she looked between us. Her gaze landed on me and waited for an explanation. I thought I saw a measure of hurt there, which totally flabbergasted me.

I’m telling ya,
offered Spring.
You’re a prime piece of meat, dude. Practically ooze manliness
.
On top of that, you’ve got this whole “New Age Sensitive Guy” shtick down cold. Chicks dig that.

No, I think she’s playing me. You felt her mind. She’ll do whatever it takes to protect her family.

And she thinks you are a walking hunk of humble sexy. After you dance with me
,
baby, you never go back.

I snorted at Spring, caught myself, and shrugged apologetically at Colette. Internally, I steeled myself again. She’d pulled a knife on me twice and she had a 500 batting average for driving her point home.

Happily, no knife appeared, she just leaned back in her seat, pursed her lips pensively, and pondered this new information. I couldn’t help but notice how innocent and pretty it made her. I’m an idiot, but holy hips and lips, that night of dancing was hot.

I tried to ignore my stupid hormones and think this through with the brain in my head. It had actually worked once. Colette obviously thought she needed the Caduceus for her family. Assuming she didn’t just try to kill me, that meant going to France. Apart from the mind-bending weirdness and logistics of that, maybe there was an opportunity here. I was suddenly in a much stronger bargaining position.

“Colette,” I said, interrupting her reverie. “Look, I’m willing to come and help you and your family, but not before you agree to some basic things.”

“Like, no stabbing any of us in our sleep,” said Dave from the front.

It was a valid point, but not helpful. I ignored him. “You’ve got to promise not to try and take the Caduceus from me. You’ve got to do everything you can to help protect my family, my friends and their families. If you promise to do that, then I’ll do everything I can to help you.”

She considered this for a moment and then gave me a curt nod. “I promise you, Finn, we will treat you as a guest and an ally. No harm will come to you, nor will we take anything of yours not freely given.”

I mulled her words over in my mind, looking for loopholes in her statement as if she were a demon offering me a bargain. It seemed pretty clean and solid. “Okay, then I’ll come and help you if I can.”

“
We
Finn,” said Jen. “
We
will help them.”

“Jen, she’s talking about going to France. You can’t do that. Your dad would put out a contract on me. You have to stay here.”

“I know what she’s talking about, Finn, I’m not an idiot, and you are not my father nor my guardian. What do you think
your
dad is going to do when he hears about this?”

That was not a happy thought, but the thought of Jen being shot again made me crazy. I couldn’t see my hands covered in her blood again. I couldn’t let that happen. “You can’t come! It’s going to be dangerous...”

“Don’t you start trying to tell me what to do, Finn! I won’t allow it. You’re not the only one with family and friends at stake here. I’m not leaving you alone with her. You need someone to watch your back.”

“Finn,” said Dave. “Admit you’re not the alpha in this relationship and let it go. On top of that, if you think you’re leaving me behind on this, you are stupider than you look.”

“But you need to stay here to protect...”

“If Mark’s going after the Delacroix, he’s not paying any attention to our families. If we haven’t heard from him, it means that he bought the whole fake Caduceus thing. Right?”

“But what if the illusion wears off, and he finds out he’s got just a chunk of steel?”

“Then we’d better be there to make sure he can’t get away.”

I’d seen my friends hurt and dying way too much. The thought of seeing it again started me panicking.

Finn, like it or not, they don’t answer to you, and you are not responsible for them. They’re adults now, and this is not just about you.

But
,
Spring! You don’t know what it’s like to...

Whoa
,
there boy. Have you forgotten where I live? I’ve been right here for every bloody minute. A lot of that blood was mine!

Yes, but...

But you’re scared. Got it. As far as I can tell, that is your native state. Finn, we’ll get through it together.

“Earth to Finn,” said Dave.

I pulled myself back into meat-space. “Sorry, what?”

“We’re all going to France, wanna come along?”

I stuffed my doubt into a double-walled bag of can’t-think-about-that-now and tried to grapple with this new reality.

“Well, I don’t see how it’s going to happen today. I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t walk around with my passport in my pocket, and I have no idea where my towel’s at.”

Colette was not going to let a little thing like unpreparedness stop us. We immediately headed for the airport. Since we were going to have a little time to spare to make our intended flight, I forced Dave to stop at an Apple store, so I could pick up a new iPhone. I’d hoodoo’d my way through the crowd there, feeling justified by my urgent need to be on that flight. After all, lives were at stake! Yeah, yeah that’s it—lives! It’s not that I just didn’t want to wait...

As I walked out of the store, I didn’t cackle over it, but I stroked my new Precious with huge relief. My Precious ended my excommunication from life, my electronic castration. I had the power to connect again!

With great power comes great responsibility, so I spent the ride to the airport anguishing over what I would or wouldn’t tell my parents.

Regardless of my personal tribulations, traveling with Colette proved a very interesting experience. She’d tried to talk us out of it, but come hell or high water, we were all going. Fortunately, she seemed genuinely anxious for her family and didn’t put up too much resistance. She forced David (without hoodoo) to give her back her cross. While in the car, she produced three extra passports from her bag and handed them out to us. The names on the passports were all different, but all had her face on them. I didn’t see how this was going to be much help, but Colette wasn’t sharing her cunning plan. We walked up to the counter behind Colette. A little hoodoo and each of us was given a ticket and wished a pleasant trip.

Heady stuff. I felt like a coke addict.

We strolled through security unmolested and made our way to the gate. I tried to be nonchalant, but my back was twitching with dread, and my shoulders wanted to protect my ears. I was sure that I’d hear sirens, whistles, and dogs at any moment. Jen, who walked beside me with her hand in mine (that was so cool!) seemed a bit nervous as well.

Dave, of course, was another story. He was giddy. He practically crowed, “That was so cool! Who needs psychic paper?”

“What is this, psychic paper?” Colette asked.

“It’s something from
Doctor Who
,” I said. “It’s a science fiction show from England. The Doctor has a wallet with a piece of blank paper that shows people whatever the Doctor wants them to see.”

“Oh.” I watched her file that carefully away under, “Do Not Care.”

We picked up coffee at Starbucks, and when we each had our expensive cup of caffeinated goodness, Colette walked up to the people sitting in the single cozy corner and politely suggested they would be more comfortable sitting in the concourse. They easily agreed and cleared out.

Dave was so excited, he could barely sit still. “I can get used to this!”

I just sat down and kept my guilty reservations to myself. Jen sat next to me, and we scooted our chairs together. Her warmth next to me made me feel better. My hand found hers again.

As soon we’d gotten situated, Colette took over. “If you are all coming to Paris with me, then I must teach you how to protect yourself in a fight.”

“Sounds good,” said Jen.

I leaned forward eagerly to Jen. “You need to teach me whatever you did when you and Dave just strolled into Smith’s lab.”

Jen frowned a bit. “I don’t know if I can. It was sort of a Not-My-Problem field, but I did it by instinct.”

I translated this from nerd to English for Colette. “That reference comes from
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
. In the book, when you are in an NMP field, people don’t pay any attention to you. Kind of like invisibility.”

Colette looked at Jen, impressed. “You can do this?”

Jen smiled smugly and nodded.

“This is very advanced. If you can do this, then perhaps you will not be such a burden in a fight.”

“Gee, thanks,” said Jen.

Colette either didn’t get, or just didn’t acknowledge, the sarcasm. She sort of shrug-nodded.

“Can you teach Dave and me how to do it?” I asked. Dave still had one gold pendant and the bear.

“What I did in that fight might be easier to learn,” said Colette.

I looked at her with interest. “Right! I’ve been meaning to ask you what you did to Smith. Unless they’re blind, nobody misses with a gun that many times from that range.”

“This is true. In concept it is simple but harder to perform. You must open up yourself to God’s glory, and perceive him in everything around you...”

“Aren’t there like chants or mystical hand signals we can make to help?” I asked.

“No, God does not care what you do with your hands.”

“Wow,” said Dave. “That’s a load off of my mind.”

Jen and I laughed, but Colette just looked annoyed. I clamped down on the laugh and tried to look appropriately studious.

***

Two hours later, we were on the plane, leaving Columbus. The first leg of our flight was a short hop to Detroit, then it was on to Paris, another plane change and then on to Toulouse, France.

I sat back in the big first-class chair and anxiously tried to actualize my understanding of Colette’s instructions. Jen had picked it up very quickly and tried to help, but Dave and I were the class dunces. It was simple, they said, just feel the light and energy around you, then create a construct to deflect it. When you did it correctly, you could change the angle of the light around you and shift your apparent location in a way that made you very difficult to hit. Very simple to say. I could say it almost from the first time I heard it. The doing was a bit more frustrating and difficult. It reminded me of my absolute failure to move the Caduceus from Smith’s dead body while I was in the cage with Colette. Of course, that brought back all those feelings of desperation and panic.