Witches: Wicked, Wild & Wonderful (6 page)

“
Eh bien,
” he sighed, “I believe you. So there is something about that devours souls—and mutilates bodies as well, since you mentioned a ‘Ripper’ persona?”

She nodded.

“Was the devouring before or after the mutilation?”

“Before, I think—it’s not easy to judge.” She shivered in a way that had nothing to do with the cold.

“And you came into this how?”

“Whatever it is, it took the friend of a friend; I—happened to be there to see the body afterwards, and I knew immediately there was something wrong. When I unshielded and used the Sight—”

“Bad.” He made it a statement.

“Worse. I—I can’t describe what it felt like. There were still residual emotions, things left behind when—” Her jaw clenched. “Then when I started checking further I found out about the other five victims—that what I had discovered was no fluke. Andre, whatever it is, it has to be stopped.” She laughed again, but this time there was no humor in it. “After all, you could say stopping it is in my job description.”

He nodded soberly. “And so you become involved. Well enough, if you must hunt this thing, so must I.” He became all business. “Tell me of the history. When, and where, and who does it take?”

She bit her lip. “ ‘Where’—there’s no pattern. ‘Who’ seems to be mostly a matter of opportunity; the only clue is that the victims were always out on the street and entirely alone, there were no witnesses whatsoever, so the thing needs total privacy and apparently can’t strike wherever at will. And ‘when’—is moon-dark.”

“Bad.” He shook his head. “I have no clue at the moment. The
loup-garou
I know, and others, but I know nothing that hunts beneath the dark moon.”

She grimaced. “You think I do? That’s why I need your help; you’re sensitive enough to feel something out of the ordinary, and you can watch and hunt undetected. I can’t. And I’m not sure I want to go trolling for this thing alone—without knowing what it is, I could end up as a late-night snack for it. But if that’s what I have to do, I will.”

Anger blazed up in his face like a cold fire. “You go hunting alone for this creature over my dead body!”

“That’s a little redundant, isn’t it?” Her smile was weak, but genuine again.

“Pah!” he dismissed her attempt at humor with a wave of his hand. “Tomorrow is the first night of moon-dark; I shall go a-hunting.
You
remain at home, else I shall be most wroth with you. I know where to find you, should I learn anything of note.”

“You ought to—” Diana began, but she spoke to the empty air.

The next night was warmer, and Diana had gone to bed with her windows open to drive out some of the stale odors the long winter had left in her apartment. Not that the air of New York City was exactly fresh, but it was better than what the heating system kept recycling through the building. She didn’t particularly like leaving her defenses open while she slept, but the lingering memory of Katy Rourk’s fish wafting through the halls as she came in from shopping had decided her. Better exhaust fumes than burned haddock.

She hadn’t had an easy time falling asleep, and when she finally managed to do so, tossed restlessly, her dreams uneasy and readily broken—

—as by the sound of someone in the room.

Before the intruder crossed even half the distance between the window and her bed, she was wide awake, and moving. She threw herself out of bed, somersaulted across her bedroom, and wound up crouched beside the door, one hand on the light switch, the other holding a polished dagger she’d taken from beneath her pillow. As the lights came on, she saw Andre standing in the center of the bedroom, blinking in surprise, wearing a sheepish grin.

Relief made her knees go weak. “Andre, you idiot!” She tried to control her tone, but her voice was shrill and cracked a little. “You could have been killed!”

He spread his hands wide in a placating gesture. “Now, Diana—”

“ ‘Now Diana’ my eye!” she growled. “Even you would have a hard time getting around a severed spine!” She stood up slowly, shaking from head to toe with released tension.

“I didn’t wish to wake you,” he said, crestfallen.

She closed her eyes and took several long, deep, calming breaths; focusing on a mantra, moving herself back into stillness until she knew she would be able to reply without screaming at him.

“Don’t,” she said carefully, “Ever. Do. That. Again.” She punctuated the last word by driving the dagger she held into the doorframe.

“
Certainement, ma petite,
” he replied, his eyes widening a little as he began to calculate how fast she’d moved. “The next time I come in your window when you sleep, I shall blow a trumpet first.”

“You’d be a
lot
safer. I’d be a lot happier,” she said crossly, pulling the dagger loose with a snap of her wrist. She palmed the light switch and dimmed the lamps down to where they would be comfortable to his light-sensitive eyes, then crossed the room, the plush brown carpet warm and soft under her bare feet. She bent slightly, and put the silver-plated dagger back under her pillow. Then with a sigh she folded her long legs beneath her to sit on her rumpled bed. This was the first time Andre had ever caught her asleep, and she was irritated far beyond what her disturbed dreams warranted. She was somewhat obsessed with her privacy and with keeping her night-boundaries unbreached—she and Andre were off-and-on lovers, but she’d never let him stay any length of time.

He approached the antique wooden bed slowly. “
Cherie,
this was no idle visit—”

“I should bloody well hope not!” she interrupted, trying to soothe her jangled nerves by combing the tangles out of her hair with her fingers.

“—I have seen your killer.”

She froze.

“It is nothing I have ever seen or heard of before.”

She clenched her hands on the strand of hair they held, ignoring the pull. “Go on—”

“It—no,
he
—I could not detect until he made his first kill tonight. I found him then, found him just before he took his hunting-shape, or I never would have discovered him at all; for when he is in that shape there is nothing about him that I could sense that marked him as different. So ordinary—a man, an Asian; Japanese, I think, and like many others—not young, not old; not fat, not thin. So unremarkable as to be invisible. I followed him—he was so normal I found it difficult to believe what my own eyes had seen a moment before; then, not ten minutes later, he found yet another victim and—fed again.”

He closed his eyes, his face thoughtful. “As I said, I have never seen or heard of his like, yet—yet there was something familiar about him. I cannot even tell you what it was, and yet it was familiar.”

“You said you saw him attack—
how,
Andre?” She leaned forward, her face tight with urgency as the bed creaked a little beneath her.

“The second quarry was—the—is it ‘bag lady’ you say?” At her nod he continued. “He smiled at her—just smiled, that was all. She froze like the frightened rabbit. Then he—changed—into dark, dark smoke; only smoke, nothing more. The smoke enveloped the old woman until I could see her no longer. Then—he fed. I—I can understand your feelings now,
cherie.
It was—nothing to the eye, but—what I felt
within
—”

“Now you see,” she said gravely.

“
Mais oui,
and you have no more argument from me. This thing is abomination, and must be ended.”

“The question is—” She grimaced.

“How? I have given some thought to this. One cannot fight smoke. But in his hunting form—I think perhaps he is vulnerable to physical measures. As you say, even I would have difficulty in dealing with a severed spine or crushed brain. I think maybe it would be the same for him. Have you the courage to play the wounded bird,
ma petite
?” He sat beside her on the edge of the bed and regarded her with solemn and worried eyes.

She considered that for a moment. “Play bait while you wait for him to move in? It sounds like the best plan to me—it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve done that, and I’m not exactly helpless, you know,” she replied, twisting a strand of hair around her fingers.

“I think you have finally proved that to me tonight!” There was a hint of laughter in his eyes again, as well as chagrin. “I shall never again make the mistake of thinking you to he a fragile flower.
Bien.
Is tomorrow night too soon for you?”

“Tonight wouldn’t be too soon,” she stated flatly.

“Except that he has already gone to lair, having fed twice.” He took one of her hands, freeing it from the lock of hair she had twisted about it. “No, we rest—I know where he is to be found, and tomorrow night we face him at full strength.” Abruptly he grinned. “
Cherie,
I have read one of your books—”

She winced, and closed her eyes in a grimace. “Oh Lord—I was afraid you’d ferret out one of my pseudonyms. You’re as bad as the Elephant’s Child when it comes to ‘satiable curiosity.’ ”

“It was hardly difficult to guess the author when she used one of my favorite expressions for the title—and then described me so very intimately not three pages from the beginning.”

Her expression was woeful. “Oh no! Not that one!”

He shook an admonishing finger at her. “I do not think it kind to make me the villain, and all because I told you I spent a good deal of the Regency in London.”

“But—but—Andre, these things follow formulas, I didn’t really have a choice—anybody French in a Regency romance has to be either an expatriate aristocrat or a villain—” She bit her lip and looked pleadingly at him. “—I needed a villain and I didn’t have a clue—I was in the middle of that phony medium thing and I had a deadline—and—” Her words thinned down to a whisper, “—to tell you the truth, I didn’t think you’d ever find out. You—you aren’t angry, are you?”

He lifted the hair away from her shoulder, cupped his hand beneath her chin and moved close beside her. “I
think
I may possibly be induced to forgive you—”

The near-chuckle in his voice told her she hadn’t offended him. Reassured by that, she looked up at him, slyly. “Oh?”

“You could—” He slid her gown off her shoulder a little, and ran an inquisitive finger from the tip of her shoulder blade to just behind her ear “—write another, and let me play the hero—”

“Have you any—suggestions?” she replied, finding it difficult to reply when his mouth followed where his finger had been.

“In that ‘Burning Passions’ series, perhaps?”

She pushed him away, laughing. “The soft-core porn for housewives? Andre, you can’t be serious!”

“Never more,” he pulled her back. “Think of how enjoyable the research would be—”

She grabbed his hand again before it could resume its explorations. “Aren’t we supposed to be resting?”

He stopped for a moment, and his face and eyes were deadly serious. “
Cherie,
we must face this thing at strength. You need sleep—and to relax. Can you think of any better way to relax body and spirit than—”

“No,” she admitted. “I always sleep like a rock when you get done with me.”

“Well then. And I—I have needs; I have not tended to those needs for too long, if I am to have full strength, and I should not care to meet this creature at less than that.”

“Excuses, excuses—” She briefly contemplated getting up long enough to take care of the lights—then decided a little waste of energy was worth it, and extinguished them with a thought. “C’mere, you—let’s do some research.”

He laughed deep in his throat as they reached for one another with the same eager hunger.

She woke late the next morning—so late that in a half hour it would have been “afternoon”—and lay quietly for a long, contented moment before wriggling out of the tumble of bedclothes and Andre. No fear of waking him—he wouldn’t rouse until the sun went down. She arranged him a bit more comfortably and tucked him in, thinking that he looked absurdly young with his hair all rumpled and those long, dark lashes of his lying against his cheeks—he looked much better this morning, now that she was in a position to pay attention. Last night he’d been pretty pale and hungry-thin. She shook her head over him. Someday his gallantry was going to get him into trouble. “Idiot—” she whispered, touching his forehead, “—all you ever have to do is
ask
—”

But there were other things to take care of—and to think of. A fight to get ready for; and she had a premonition it wasn’t going to be an easy one.

So she showered and changed into a leotard, and took herself into her barren studio at the back of the apartment to run through her
katas
three times—once slow, twice at full speed—and then into some Tai Chi exercises to rebalance everything. She followed that with a half hour of meditation, then cast a circle and charged herself with all of the Power she thought she could safely carry.

Without knowing what it was she was to face, that was all she could do, really—that, and have a really good dinner—

She showered and changed again into a bright red sweatsuit and was just finishing dinner when the sun set and Andre strolled into the white-painted kitchen, shirtless, and blinking sleepily.

She gulped the last bite of her liver and waggled her fingers at him. “If you want a shower, you’d better get a fast one—I want to get in place before he comes out for the night.”

He sighed happily over the prospect of a hot shower. “The perfect way to start one’s day.
Petite,
you may have difficulty in dislodging me now that you have let me stay overnight—”

She showed her teeth. “Don’t count your chickens, kiddo. I can be very nasty!”

“
Ma petite—I—
” He suddenly sobered, and looked at her with haunted eyes.

She saw his expression and abruptly stopped teasing. “Andre—please don’t say it—I can’t give you any better answer now than I could when you first asked—if I—cared for you as more than a friend.”

He sighed again, less happily. “Then I will say no more, because you wish it—but—what of this notion—would you permit me to stay with you? No more than that. I could be of some use to you, I think, and I would take nothing from you that you did not offer first. I do not like it that you are so much alone. It did not matter when we first met, but you are collecting powerful enemies,
cherie.
”