Текст книги "Fury of the Demon"

Автор книги: Diana Rowland

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 35 страниц)

I pushed away all thoughts of boyfriends and exes and pieces of shit as I noted the white SUV in the warehouse’s parking lot. I continued past the building, frustrated that I couldn’t personally run the tag without jumping through hoops and calling in favors. Compromising, I stopped long enough to grab a pen and scrawl the tag number on a gas receipt. I could always give it to Ryan and Zack to check it for me later if need be.

When I reached the end of the block, I turned and came back. Still no sign of people anywhere. A golf cart was parked in an alley two buildings down from the warehouse, but I didn’t see anything else that struck me as out of the ordinary. I finally parked across the street, got out and swept an assessing gaze around while Eilahn did the same. Still no sign of people or obvious threats, so together we hurried across the street to the parking lot.

I placed my hand on the hood of the SUV. “Warm,” I murmured to Eilahn. “Hasn’t been parked here long.” Whoever it belonged to either had permission to access the complex, or had gained entry by illicit means, much as we did. Either way, it bothered me that it was parked by this particular building.

Uneasy, I headed into the shadowy narrow street that ran along the side of the building. I knew we were going to have to break into the warehouse, but I had no desire to be obvious about it and go through the front.

We were nearly to the rear of the building when Eilahn placed a hand on my arm. “Voices.” Her eyes narrowed, and now I heard them from around the corner of the warehouse.

A yelp of what sounded like shock.

Another voice, shrill with stress. “Hands up!”

A third, calmer voice. “No trouble here, sir.”

“That can’t be good,” I murmured and broke into a jog. Within two strides Eilahn overtook me, peered around the corner quickly before motioning for me to continue. I did so, then followed as she made her way toward an open door on the back end of the warehouse.

“No sudden moves! Let me see some ID!”

And a quieter, “It’s no problem. I’m cooperating.”

Wary, I put my hand on my gun to reassure myself it was there. We peered around the doorway and suddenly found ourselves with a prime vantage as two men stood near the center of the large, empty warehouse, facing a third who leveled a large handgun at them.

None of the men seemed to notice us in their peripheral vision, and I quickly processed details as Eilahn and I crouched to avoid becoming targets ourselves. Tall and gangly and with freakishly long arms, the gunman wore a baggy Apex Security uniform along with an expression that hovered between panic and bravado. His finger rested on the trigger in a mockery of any sort of proper training or trigger discipline, and his aim jerked back and forth between the other two: a young man with Hispanic features and a slender build, and a tall, broad-shouldered man dressed in a dark suit.

The wide-eyed younger man clutched what looked like a tablet computer to his chest with one hand and held the other up, fingers splayed. In sharp contrast, the suited man modeled utter calm as he performed a slow and careful two-finger extraction of something from his inside jacket pocket, most likely the demanded ID. As he did so I caught the hint of a bulge beneath his left arm.

A shoulder holster?Not that it made a difference. Even if the guard had seen a weapon it was idiotic and reckless for him to confront possible intruders without backup. Still, the situation needed to be defused before this twitchy rent-a-cop shot someone. I opened my mouth to tell Eilahn to call nine-one-one, even as a series of beeps abruptly sounded from the young man’s tablet. He jerked and gave a muffled cry, then fumbled and dropped the device.

The tense tableau shattered into chaos. The security guard startled, swung his gun toward the younger one. “Don’t move!” the guard cried with an excited, cocky edge to his voice. I’d heard that tone before, usually from rookie cops who were too hyped up by the power of the badge and gun, and in desperate need of a solid kick in the ass.

“Paul! Get down!” the dark-suited man ordered. In a fluid move, he dropped his ID and shifted his weight, made a twisting dive to put himself in front of the young man and take him down. A flash burst from the muzzle, and the sound of a gunshot slammed through the warehouse as the two men tumbled in a heap.

For an instant I thought the takedown had succeeded and the guard had missed, then I heard a horrible wet cough and saw blood spatter.

“Eilahn, get the gun!” I snapped out as I ran forward. She bypassed me in a flash of demon speed then used a cool spin-twist move to easily wrench the gun from the idiot security guard and drop him to the floor.

I slid to a stop and fell to my knees by the two men. The suited man jerked and struggled for breath as he lay face down atop the one he’d called Paul. A small dark splodge glistened on the back of his navy suit jacket, but the blood splatter on Paul and the floor told me the bullet had blown through.

“Bryce! No!” Paul’s eyes were wide with shock as he scrabbled beneath the man, trying to hold him and wiggle from beneath him at the same time. I siezed the injured man’s shoulder, tugged and rolled him onto his back, then bit back a curse as I saw his blood-soaked shirt and the dark red pool on the concrete. Blood bubbled from his mouth as he fought for breath. Paul scrabbled up and to his knees, horror filling his face at the sight.

“Eilahn, a little help here!” I called over my shoulder only to find the syraza already beside me. She dropped into a crouch and set the gun down—a .45 I absently noted—then ripped the bloody shirt open and covered the terrible exit wound in his right center chest with both hands. I shifted away to give her room and pulled out my phone to call nine-one-one. There wasn’t much else I could do for the guy at this point. A .45, I thought in disgust. For a security guard. Compensating much?

My eyes fell on the ID he’d dropped. Bryce Thatcher. StarFire Security. That was a top-notch personal security company with an excellent reputation. Was he Paul’s bodyguard? He’d sure as hell acted like one. There’d been zero hesitation to leap and take a bullet that would have no doubt killed Paul. I winced. And probably hadkilled Thatcher.

Bryce Thatcher. How did I know that name?

An electric jolt of memory zapped through me. The list of names in Tracy’s red journal. I jerked my eyes up to the young man. “His name is Bryce Thatcher?”

Eyes glazed in shock, he managed to focus on me and give a jerky nod.

“He does not have long,” Eilahn murmured with a slight nod to me that indicated she remembered Thatcher’s name from the list. Shit. This guy was named in a summoner’s journal and happened to be in thiswarehouse at this particular time. Finally a possible lead, and that dumbfuck security guard had to go and blow a hole in him.

Eilahn shifted her attention to Paul. “Give me your shirt.”

“Wh-what?” He gave her a baffled look, too rattled to understand her intent. She growled low in her throat as she stripped off her own shirt, packed the wound with it and held pressure.

“We need Mzatal,” I said.

Eilahn’s mouth tightened. “Yes, I cannot hold him long.” I didn’t need othersight to see her weave the potency strands for healing but I could tell it was rudimentary compared to a lord’s. “Three minutes,” she added. “Perhaps a minute more.”

Even EMS can’t help him at this point,I thought with grim certainty. I hit Zack’s number on speed dial, then stood and moved a short distance away, far enough to be out of earshot of Paul and the dazed guard.

Thatcher coughed up blood and frantically struggled to breathe. Paul groped for his hand, clung to it. “No—no! You can’t die.”

I turned away from the scene as Zack answered.

“Garner here.”

“Zack, I need Mzatal where I am—Tracy Gordon’s warehouse—as soon as possible,” I said, voice low and urgent. “There’s a man here who might hold some answers to the Mraztur’s plans, and he’s been shot. He’s close to death.”

I expected an I’ll get right on itor something like that. Instead there was only silence on the line. Dread curdled in my gut. While Eilahn’s ability to arcanely travel was drastically compromised on Earth, Zack was demahnk and didn’t have the same limitations. I knewhe had the ability to get Mzatal here before Thatcher died. Why hesitate?

“Please,” I said. “I know you can do this. It’s important.” I glanced back at the trio. Eilahn’s face remained clenched in a rictus of concentration. Paul clutched at Thatcher’s hand as if holding him back from the jaws of death.

My dismay rose as Zack remained silent. “If he agrees,” he finally said, voice oddly taut.

If he agrees?My annoyance flared at his hesitation. “If Mzatal doesn’t agree, let me talk to him. This is important!”

“If he doesn’t agree, I’ll call back,” he replied, then disconnected.

I stared at the phone as shock and anger battled it out for precedence in my skull then jammed the phone into my pocket and returned to crouch beside Eilahn. “Zack was hesitant about coming,” I said in a low voice, “but he said he’d bring Mzatal if he agreed.” And if Mzatal didn’t agree, there would be some wordsbetween us. Oh, hell yeah.

She gave me a tight nod, then narrowed her eyes and focused on Thatcher. “You must stay here,” Eilahn told him. “Do not go. Stay here.”

“Yes, god, Bryce,” Paul wept openly. “You can’t leave me. Please. I . . . I can’t take it there without you!”

Thatcher’s hand spasmed in his. Blood bubbled in his mouth as his eyes sought Paul’s. The attachment between the two was clear. Though Paul looked to be around twenty, he radiated an innocence that made me think of him as younger. Thatcher might have been Paul’s bodyguard, but there was something deeper as well.

“Please. Please,” Paul continued, voice choked with barely restrained sobs. “I can’t stay there without you. I can’t do it. I’ll die. You’re all I have. You have to live!”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the guard stagger to his feet, then stumble toward the door. I briefly entertained the notion of chasing him down and securing him, then discarded it. I doubted he was going to run and tell anyone he’d just shot a guy. If charges needed to be pressed later, I could track him down through the security company.

Thatcher’s hand clenched on the kid’s again, then his head lolled to the side. Dead, I thought in dismay, then saw that blood still bubbled at his mouth. No. Not dead. Yet.

A ripple of arcane touched me. I turned to see Zack and Mzatal by the front entrance.

I stood as Mzatal strode toward us. “Boss, he’s in bad shape. Can you save him?”

The lord’s gaze went to the dying man, eyes narrowing at the severity of the injury. “I do not know,” he replied and went to one knee beside Thatcher as he said something in demon to Eilahn. He removed the blood-soaked shirt from the wound and laid his own hands over it, face hardening with intense focus.

Eilahn crouched nearby, naked to the waist, and obviously completely unconcerned by it. Zack remained at a distance, face expressionless and arms folded over his chest. Paul shifted back as Mzatal knelt, then looked up at him and went still, mouth dropping open. I had to control a smile. Yeah, Mzatal had that effect on people.

“I will need your assistance, zharkat,” Mzatal told me, voice tight. “He is very nearly gone.”

I’d never worked with him during a healing before, and I struggled for several precious seconds while I sought the best way to support. The lords didn’t heal with sigils and wards. As far as I could tell from all I’d witnessed, they healed by drawing damaged flesh together with elegant sutures of potency and then “reminding” the body of its proper form in order to restore itself—encouraging the tissues to heal a thousand times faster than naturally.

But no matter the method, it still required potency, and I could at least help collect and prepare the patterned strands.

Mzatal drew from me and through me the instant I touched the pattern. I sucked in a sharp breath while I sought to maintain the balance of the flow of power. Through the support connection I felt his struggle to hold a spark of life in Thatcher’s body. Sweat broke out on Mzatal’s brow, though he remained motionless. The strands burned away as he tapped them, and I was hard pressed to keep up with the drain and help control the integrity of the structure.

Thatcher coughed up a gout of blood and drew a gurgling breath. Paul surged forward to seize his hand again. “Bryce, oh god, come on,” he pleaded, eyes on his friend’s face. “You can do it. Don’t leave.”

With the initial heavy drain past, I balanced the flow to Mzatal to fuel his effort. Like a shadow seen through a sheer curtain, I watched him locate critical bleeding and weave repairs, felt him urge Thatcher’s body to remember its healthy state and form.

Again Thatcher coughed, but this time he followed it with a clearer breath. Through Mzatal, I felt his tenuous connection to life strengthen as the sense of drowning in his own blood decreased. Paul gripped Thatcher’s hand, yet his gaze remained on Mzatal, an almost worshipful expression on his face. He knewMzatal was doing something miraculous to save his friend.

Thatcher’s face twisted in pain. “God . . . Oh, god,” he rasped, breath noisy, but without the horrible death-rattle gurgle of before. “P-Paul . . . okay?”

Tears spilled down the young man’s face as he gave his friend a tremulous smile. “I’m okay. You saved me.”

Even my cynical ass could appreciate the poignancy of the moment, but I didn’t have much chance to do so as a movement by the back door yanked my attention. At first I thought that perhaps it was emergency services, summoned by the damn security guard. It would be a bit of a pain to deal with cops or EMS right now, but—

I stared, mind in denial for several precious seconds as, impossibly, Katashi’s senior summoner strode into a warehouse on the outskirts of a small town in south Louisiana. Tsuneo, the treacherous asshole who bore a tattoo of Jesral’s mark on his hip, and who had performed a hostile summoning of Gestamar several months back. Beside him loomed another man I recognized from my brief time as Katashi’s student: Tito, not a summoner, more of a thug type with a sensitivity to the arcane.

Anger flared. “You!” I shot to my feet and moved to get in front of Mzatal and the others. I drew my gun even as Tito pulled his to put us into a great little standoff.

Tsuneo’s gaze hardened at the sight of me, but in the next instant his face went slack with shock as he not only saw Mzatal but felthis aura.

What the hell was Tsuneo doing here? For that matter, what were Thatcher and a computer nerd doing here? Was everyone here for a frickin’ arcane flash mob?

Moreover, was Thatcher also a summoner? Was Paul? Even more vital for Thatcher to live through this so we can question the hell out of him,I thought grimly.

I heard a hiss-growl from behind me, and the hair on the back of my neck lifted as Mzatal’s aura flared, dark with fury. He stood and stepped forward with hands still dripping blood, radiating Bad Mojo like a sun about to go supernova as he faced the traitorous summoner. His left fist remained clenched at his side as his right opened in a stance I recognized all too well. Lowering his head, he moved toward the interlopers.

Shit!I kept my gun leveled on Tito and risked a quick glance back at Thatcher. He still breathed, but I knew he was far from stable.

As Mzatal advanced, Tsuneo took a stumbling step back and looked around wildly as if trying to come up with a miraculous defense. He apparently concluded there was none because his next move was to run like hell for the exit.

Mzatal lifted his right hand and called scintillating blue-white potency to it even as Tsuneo darted through the door and out. Tito frowned, apparently balanced upon a razor’s edge decision of whether to fire or run.

Mzatal rendered the decision moot. Face stone-hard and focused, he hurled the potency at Tito like a lightning strike. The man screamed and dropped the gun as the burst impacted his belly and spread over him in a rippling cascade of light. He jerked heavily for several seconds, then crumpled to lie twisted and utterly still.

The deadly potency flickered and died as Mzatal continued forward. Behind me I heard Thatcher’s struggle for breath, and Paul’s agonized entreaties for him to hold on, to stay.

“Boss!” I yelled, holstering my gun. “You’re losing Thatcher. Let Tsuneo go! We’ll track his ass down later.”

Mzatal took two more steps then stopped, his hands clenched at his sides, violently seething potency boiling off of him. Yet he still didn’t turn back toward me and the man dying on the floor. I knew he wanted to pursue Tsuneo, exact revenge for the injury to Gestamar and the insult of the summoner’s betrayal and allegiance to the Mraztur.

“Boss,” I urged. “Mzatal, please! We need Thatcher alive.” Behind me, the wounded man’s breath grew more labored.

Mzatal remained lord-still for several more agonizing seconds while I fought the urge to grab him and pull him back to finish the healing. Finally he turned, met my eyes for a powerful instant before striding back to Thatcher. I let out a ragged sigh of relief as he knelt and placed his hands back on the mess of the chest wound.

I quickly resumed balancing the pattern and the flows, then looked back at the crumpled body of Tito. No doubt he was dead.

Shit. This was a mess.

Welcome to Earth, Boss, I thought with a sigh.

Chapter 11

I’d have downed more coffee if I’d known the day was going to descend into chaos so thoroughly. Now I had to figure out a way to clean up this clusterfuck.

“Zack.” I kept my voice low, but I knew he could hear me. “Maybe you should get hold of Ryan to help take care of—” I grimaced, lifted a chin toward the corpse. Under other circumstances Mzatal could have disposed of the body with a potency-fueled cremation. Yet I felt his reserves through our connection, and I knew he didn’t have the strength to do so and still have a chance of saving Thatcher.

Zack remained silent and still for several heartbeats, but finally gave a slight nod and pulled out his phone. He thumbed in a text message, sent it, then moved over to the dead man, crouched and laid a hand on his chest, face filled with a look of such unbearable sadness that I had to turn away. I heard him murmuring something over the body, but I was too far away to make out the words. The rhythm and lilt of it led me to believe it wasn’t English, though it didn’t sound like demon either.

Thatcher drew a steadier breath. Paul still clung to his friend’s hand, his eyes red and puffy in a face wracked with shock and desperation.

“What were you two doing here?” I asked.

It took a few seconds for Paul to realize I was talking to him, and another couple for him to focus on me. “It . . . it was my stupid idea,” he said, voice cracking. “This is all my fault.” His eyes dropped to Thatcher again. “I’m sorry, Bryce. Oh god, I’m so sorry.” His face twisted, and I reached out and seized his arm.

“Stop it,” I ordered. “He’s going to be all right.” I filled my voice with as much absolute certainty as possible. It helped that I truly did believe Mzatal would save the man’s life. “Why did you come here?” I pressed.

Paul’s eyes flicked up to Mzatal, and a whisper of hope crept into them. He swallowed, visibly struggled to be strong. “It was going to be at ten-seventeen a.m.,” he said and cast a worried look over to where his tablet lay where he’d dropped it. “There was going to be a wiggle in the feeds at ten-seventeen.” His lower lip quivered for an instant before he firmed his mouth and regained a bit of control. “I told him I wanted to come check it out. Made him bring me.”

I look at him in bafflement. “A what? A wiggle in the feeds? What the hell does that mean?”

“It’s, uh . . .” The grief on his face melted away as he focused on finding words to describe whatever it was. He opened his mouth to speak, then shook his head. “I do stuff with computers,” he explained, apparently giving up on providing details. “Lots of, er, deep level stuff. And I’d noted some, well, wiggles, shifts in the data patterns and streams. Always after the fact though. I figured out some of the parameters and extrapolated to predict one for today right here. I just wanted to be here to see what happened.”

I struggled to parse his explanation. Data patterns? Streams? “You do stuff with computers?” I echoed. “That’s it?”

A trace of insult crossed his face at the slight. “Yeah. That’s it.” His brow furrowed as he looked around, reallylooked around at us all for the first time. Zack and I probably looked normal enough, but Eilahn crouched shirtless near Thatcher’s feet, and there was no mistaking Mzatal for ordinary. And, of course, there was that pesky dead body not all that far away.

His attention returned to me. “Who areyou people?”

“We’re . . . ” Shit. Now I was the one at a loss for how to explain things. “We’re the good guys, trust me,” I finally said lamely. “So, you don’t do any, er, arcane or ‘magic’ type stuff?” I even did the quotey marks with my fingers, which didn’t at all help how silly I felt asking him if he did magic.

Paul turned wide eyes to Mzatal again, and it was clear he knew something “magical” was happening to save his friend. He shook his head slowly, voice dropping to a rough whisper. “No.”

“What about him?” I asked, jerking my head toward Thatcher. “What’s he do? Does he do anything arcane?”

Paul looked back over at me. “He’s my bodyguard.” The sudden look of stunned realization that swept over his face was almost comical in its unabashed extreme. “Oh my god. He saved my life.”

I sat back on my heels and processed all he’d told me. According to Paul, neither of these two were arcane practitioners, though I knew he could easily be lying. Fortunately, I had a Mzatal-shaped lie detector, and as soon as he wasn’t otherwise occupied in major tissue and organ repair, I’d ask him to assess Paul and find out for sure.

But if Paul was telling the truth, and Thatcher wasn’t a summoner, then why on earth did Tracy have a bodyguard’s name in his journal? Maybe he’d planned on hiring one? Maybe Thatcher had actually worked for him at one point? Only the man bleeding on the floor could answer those questions.

I abruptly noticed that the blood on Paul wasn’t all Thatcher’s. “Your arm is bleeding,” I gently pointed out. Looked like the bullet had scored his left upper arm after exiting Thatcher’s chest.

Paul blinked and looked down at the shallow wound. I fully expected him to freak a bit at being shot, especially after being so upset about Thatcher, but to my surprise he simply gave a somewhat distracted frown. “Oh. Yeah. Guess it is.”

I took a closer look at him. Now I saw that his nose was slightly crooked, with a bump on one side that told me it had been broken. A thin scar ran along one cheekbone, and another one cut through an eyebrow. He’d taken damage before, I realized.

Falling silent, I continued to weave support while I wondered about this pair. Why did a computer nerd need a bodyguard? And how the hell had he used a computer to trace what he called a “wiggle” to this precise spot and time if he didn’t know about the arcane? Sure, Tracy—and obviously Tsuneo—had tracked it, but they were summoners. More questions to be answered.

“Enough,” Mzatal said after a while, voice drawn and lacking its usual resonance. He lifted his hands from Thatcher’s chest. Raw, angry tissue sealed the ugly wound, and though Thatcher’s skin still held a sickly pallor, he breathed slowly and with relative ease.

Blue-green potency flared on Mzatal’s hands as he burned the blood cleanly away. I felt his profound exhaustion, but there was no more I could do for him at this point except worry. I reached for his hand. He took it, gave it a soft squeeze, conveying reassurance, affection, and gratitude in the simple gesture.

“Is he going to be okay?” Paul asked, face twisted with concern.

Mzatal met the young man’s eyes, remained silent for several heartbeats before answering. “He will recover, Paul Ortiz,” he told him. “Now breathe.”

Paul drew in a ragged breath and gazed up at Mzatal in utter awe.

The side door creaked as Ryan entered. He swept his gaze around the warehouse, taking it all in. His eyes briefly met mine before moving on to rest on the corpse, and I watched the emotions crawl over his face as the implications hit home. Mzatal had killed a man, and now Ryan, a federal agent, was expected to help cover it up. Ryan had dealt with a lot of grey areas in the past year, including faking a story about the death of Tracy Gordon. But this crossed another line.

Yet when his eyes returned to mine, they offered reassurance. It reminded me of the old saw, “A friend will help you move. A best friend will help you move bodies.” This was a horrible scenario fraught with all sorts of issues, but at the end of the day I knew he’d help me clean up the mess we were in.

I stood, legs a little shaky from managing the support for so long. “We need to get these two back to the house,” I told Ryan with a nod toward Paul and Thatcher. “And take care of . . .” I gestured toward Tito.

He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Right. Zack gave me a summary in his text. I’m thinking.”

“Wait. House?” Paul scrambled to his feet to stare at me in horror. “What house? I can’t go!” Terror suddenly flooded his face for no reason I could pinpoint. “We can’tgo,” he gasped, then fumbled in his pocket and pulled out his phone. “We can’t go! Oh, god. I need . . . I need to make a call!”

“No!” I lunged to grab his arm. “No. Paul, please, you have to trust me. Your friend needs more care.” I searched his face. Sweat dotted his upper lip, and his breath came in short panicked gasps. “And you’re somewhere you don’t want to be,” I said. I hadn’t forgotten what he’d said to Thatcher when he thought the man was dying: I can’t take it there without you! I can’t stay there without you. I can’t do it. I’ll die.

“Let us help you,” I urged.

All color drained from his face. “No. You don’t understand.” He shook his head and struggled to twist free of my grip. “Please,” he said, voice breaking. “I need to call.”

My skin prickled at the odd fervency in his voice. I glanced over at Mzatal to see him regarding the young man with narrow-eyed intensity. “Why?” I asked Paul. “Why do you need to call?”

“I j-just do,” he said. I felt a tremble go through him. “It’s where we need to be.”

I stared at him in confusion. “What will happen if you don’t call?”

He gulped and cast a panicked gaze around him. “They’ll be looking for us soon if we don’t call in. I can’t just gowith you. I have to get back. To work.” Emotions warred on his face, and I didn’t need to be a mind reader to know there was some serious turmoil going on in there.

“ Whowill be looking for you?” I asked.

He made an unintelligible response and pulled against my grasp. His eyes darted this way and that like a cornered animal seeking any possible escape, even if it meant off a cliff.

What the hell was his deal? “Paul, it’s all right,” I said as calmly as possible. Whoever “they” were, he had some heavy duty fear associated with them, and Mzatal would get farther by reading him than I would by pushing the question. “You don’t have to answer me right now, but you do need to listen.” I kept a firm grip on his arm and turned him to face me more. “Thatcher is still in bad shape. If he doesn’t get more healing, he’ll die. He needs to stay with us to get that healing.” I let that sink in for a few seconds before continuing. “I won’t keep you against your will, but do you really want to leave your friend? Or allow him to die?” Yeah, I was playing horribly dirty, but I only felt a little guilty about it. Okay, shit, I felt a lotguilty about it since it was like telling a kid that the bogeyman would take him away forever if he didn’t eat his vegetables.

His mouth dropped open as a look of undisguised horror temporarily replaced the fear. “No. No! He can’t die!”

“Then come with us,” I said. “I promise you’ll be able to leave whenever you want.” Or rather, I’d let him leave afterI found out why he wanted to go so badly.

He drew a breath and relaxed a bit, and for a shining moment I thought he’d accepted the pure genius of my argument. Yet in the next instant he yanked in wide-eyed desperation against my grip as the fear returned.

I bit back a curse. “Boss, I need some help here.”

Mzatal moved to us and, without any preliminaries, gripped Paul’s head between his hands. Paul’s face abruptly went slack, eyes glassy as he succumbed to Mzatal’s influence. I released Paul’s arm and rested my hand on Mzatal’s back as he worked, offering what support I could. The healing of Thatcher and the potency strike on Tito had drained him, and it showed in his pallor and the lines of tension on his face.

Mzatal’s eyes narrowed. “He carries a pervasive influence that is not a direct manipulation,” he said. “It is insidious, as though he has been steeped in an energy that has contaminated all parts. Very different from conscious manipulation and challenging to clear.”

“Who did it? A lord?”

Mzatal shifted his grip on Paul. “No. His fear is of Big Mack.”

“He’s afraid of a burger?” I asked, baffled.

Mzatal’s brows drew together as he deciphered the meaning from me. “No. Big Mack is a man.” He returned his attention to Paul, and I held back further questions. Fortunately, Mzatal provided an explanation before I went too far into my vision of a scary hamburger clown wreaking havoc. “It is one named Farouche.”

“He must mean James Macklin Farouche,” I said. “These guys work for StarFire Security, which is owned by him.” I frowned. J.M. Farouche was a prominent Louisiana businessman and philanthropist. The security company was only one of his many holdings. “ That’swho he’s so afraid of?” I asked, unable to fully hide the note of disbelief in my voice. “Everything I’ve ever heard about him is that he’s a great guy—gives tons to charity, treats his employees well. His family has lived around here for a couple hundred years. In fact he still lives on the Farouche plantation.”