Out of Mind

Chapter 20

Willow had found Mario outside the upstairs room at the Brandt house and had scarcely let him go since. “Sykes is a teddy bear,” she said as she and Ben walked through the few neon lights still on in the Quarter.

“Don’t let him hear you say that,” Ben said, smiling in the silver-green glow of early, early morning.

“I don’t expect him to remember little things,” Willow said, kissing the dog’s head and smiling at the tickle of his sprouting whiskers against her cheek. “He must have known how much I needed my buddy here.”

At Ben’s suggestion—to keep them away from the police station—Nat had conducted their interview in a comfortable office at Fortunes. After they had talked for three hours, Nat told Willow to keep herself available and suggested Ben get her home.

“My place or yours?” Ben said with a laugh while they strolled through the barely active streets.

Willow yawned, and clapped a hand over her mouth. “We’re exposed out here,” she said. “Any second one of these, whatever they are, could attack.”

“I think they’re more subtle than that,” he said. “Sykes suggested we go to his studio. We’d be in the Quarter, but Molyneux and his gang couldn’t find us so easily.”

“I’ve never been to Sykes’s studio.” Her sculptor brother, who had a solid reputation for his pieces, kept his whereabouts quiet unless he chose to show up on Royal Street.

“Do you know why he’s so secretive?” Ben asked.

“I’ve got a good idea.” But she didn’t know how much Sykes had explained to Ben.

“Do you really believe in the Millet Curse?” he said.

She paused, watching cut crystals rotate on pieces of fish line in a shop window. Myriad brightly colored spots spun in the semidark recesses.

“I don’t know,” she said at last. “When I was a kid and my parents first took off, supposedly in search of a way to circumvent the curse, I believed in it then. But that was twenty years ago, and Uncle Pascal is still running a business and family he never wanted to take on in the first place.”

“And if your parents didn’t have this conviction that the original reason for the Millets running from Bruges was because some poor innocent baby was born with dark hair and blue eyes, rather than the red-green combination, they would be here taking care of things?”

Willow thought about it. “Would they? Or are they free spirits taking advantage of a load of old bunk to shirk their duties?

“Three hundred years ago a Millet with dark hair and blue eyes married a woman who turned out to be a witch—or people said she was. And our family was chased halfway around the world. When do we get to let go of that and get on with our lives?

“I saw Dad a few months back when he heard about Marley and Gray getting together. He came to play the patriarch, and couldn’t wait to get away again.”

“But the reason Sykes is so private is because he knows he isn’t considered up to the task of taking over the family,” Ben said thoughtfully. “He’s the first dark-haired Millet in direct line to take over since the famous ancestor. Your folks have as good as told him he’s dangerous to the rest of you. Don’t you wonder how he felt when your father handed the reins to Pascal? That was the same as telling Sykes he’d been disinherited. Bypassed.”

Ben could have no way of knowing how often Willow suffered because of this very unfair situation, or how often she and Marley talked about it and tried to figure out how to put things straight. “Uncle Pascal doesn’t agree with it,” she said. “He’s always looking for a way out. I’m grateful Sykes is so strong. But he’s not superhuman.”

With a laugh, Ben said, “Isn’t he? I don’t think you’re right about that. Should I take you to his place and tuck you up?”

The sensation Willow got in her tummy and legs didn’t seem the right reaction to being offered comfort from a big brother figure. “I can just go to the Court of Angels.”

“We both know that.”

“Will Sykes be at his place?”

After too long a pause, Ben said, “No. Not tonight.”

“He gave you a key?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And told you to take me there for the night?”

“If we wanted to go,” Ben said.

“That’s a bit obvious, isn’t it?”

He looked at her without a suggestion of amusement. “It can be anything we want to make it.”

Willow walked on, slowly.

“It’s on St. Peter Street,” Ben said. “Near Dauphine. Why don’t you know that?”

“Sykes never volunteered the information. Things were strained when he found the studio and started spending a lot of time there, so I never asked. We’re going the wrong way.” She swallowed.

“Yes,” Ben said, turning her around. “So we are.” He didn’t keep the pleasure out of his voice.

He wanted her to himself tonight—but then, he’d wanted that for a long time. What hadn’t changed was Willow’s own uncertainty about whether they could be happy together for very long.

“I’m going to call Nat first thing and find out if Blades came to any conclusions about Chloe Brandt’s wounds. And the cause of death.”

“Yes.” She wanted to know, but wished she didn’t have to think about it constantly.

Even passing drunks were subdued. A man sat on the curb with his feet in the gutter, a bottle hanging between his knees. Stillness blanketed the Quarter, still heat. A storm could be brewing.

“We’ve got the same issues between us, Ben,” Willow said.

“I wish you’d let me in on exactly what they are. It’s time we didn’t have any issues at all. I’m thinking of getting us both away from here. Start over somewhere. White picket fence, a couple of kids—”

“Don’t joke.”

“Who’s joking? I want to see if you like Kauai, too. My house is on the beach at the most secluded spot in an amazing bay. If I see someone nearby, it’s an event.”

He turned her left on Dauphine.

“How long would it take you to get bored?” Willow said.

“Go there with me and ask that.”

“Maybe I will one day.” She glanced up at the side of his face, all angles in the shadows, his hair shining black and tied at the nape. She couldn’t imagine a woman who would get bored being with him in a secluded Hawaiian cove.

Power moved with Benedict Fortune, and grace, but most of all, mysticism.

“You’re coming into your own fast,” he said as if he heard what she thought.

That wasn’t beyond possibility. Willow frowned.

Out of the stillness came a current of air. Strong, direct, aimed where it tossed Willow’s hair aside. She looked at Ben again, but he hadn’t noticed. She took a deep, calming breath and carried on walking without so much as a check in her pace.

This time the uninvited visitor slithered over her skin with a dozen soft caresses.

Willow jolted the length of her body, so hard she ached.

“What?” Ben swung her toward him. “What is it?”

She couldn’t speak, only point, at her cheek, her neck—and then low on her stomach.

Ben gathered his forces. Turning all of his energy into his core, he became rigid. A deeper glance around showed him there were fewer of the undead abroad at this time of night—they preferred the perceived challenge of moving among their counterparts in the daylight. Those he saw skimmed along, not quite touching the ground, their eyes fixed on nothing he could see.

There it was, and this time clearer. A winged creature, he thought, and playing some kind of game with him, popping out from behind Willow as if to peer at him, only to dart back.

“Nothing to worry about,” he told Willow. He couldn’t worry about whether his voice sounded even remotely normal. Keeping her distracted was the aim. Being her strength where she had little was his chosen responsibility.

Her eyes grew larger and she winced, rubbed the middle of her back. This creature wasn’t keeping its attention on her neck anymore.

Mario growled and squirmed in her arms. He wriggled until she set him down. Ben saw Willow’s dress shift over her thigh and rage twisted at him. She was helpless to stop this sly molestation.

Mario surprised him by closing his teeth on one of Ben’s pant legs. He pulled him away a few feet and closer to a boarded-up shop front with a sagging, padlocked gate across the doorway.

Ben walked back to Willow, but the shadowy creature soared straight up from behind her, then swooped. It’s absolute lack of sound unnerved Ben.

“You okay?” he asked Willow.

She said “no” so quietly he barely heard her.

“Be very still,” he told her. “You’re okay.”

The thing zipped toward the padlocked gate. It was fast, but not as fast as Ben. All of his vitality sheathed his center. He shifted, dived sideways and over the gates. He must not take a nanosecond too long.

The last thing he expected was to find himself inside an abandoned shop. The actual front doors were gone and wooden crates had been piled, waist-high, across the entrance. Already he had decided what he must do, and tonight. Going forward, he would have at least one advantage against this will-o’-the-wisp with tiny glittering fangs. It would carry his mark.

The opposition zipped over the crates and Ben followed.

The attack came without warning.

This time there was a noise, a high-pitched sound like a sonic dental drill. Ben threw his hands in front of his face and launched himself through the air, changing direction instant by instant. He focused, using the third eye he reserved for extreme danger. The effect mimicked military night goggles, and he saw a shape move, black with a green outline, diving at him. Only his speed could save him from the thing’s bite, and he didn’t doubt that with it, bite to kill was the order of the night.

With absolute clarity he understood how inconvenient he was, how important his removal must be to this creature and whoever was behind it. He was certain it didn’t act alone.

They wanted Willow.

Ben slammed into a wall covered with empty glass shelves and they shattered. His enhanced sight saw the shards explode, rise like a space shower against a darkened universe and scatter, in slow motion. He held a hand in front of his eyes. Pricks, like delving ice spicules, peppered the side of his face and one arm. He felt fine trickles of warm blood on his skin.

The high buzz screeched from behind him in the stuffy space. Ben whirled, both forearms crossed in front of his face. Eyes, all light but white, colorless, zeroed in on him and shot forward so fast Ben barely resisted blinking. He couldn’t afford to blink—any more than he could afford to die with Willow a few yards away and completely vulnerable without him.

As the creature would have collided with him, Ben pitched a scant few inches to the left, and it passed him by. The whining grew louder and now he recognized an angry note. Rage.

This was personal.

Without pause, the wings shot upward, rotated the small fleshy mass hanging below, and came at him again. Blood slid into the corner of his eye, but there was no time to wipe it away.

The whining drone became wild, disjointed, a scream. It came at him again—eyes blazing—and Ben held his position, his head almost touching the ceiling, his body folded and ready to spring.

Ben extended his right forefinger and concentrated on its tip. He saw the minutest pause in the thing’s flight, before the wail continued and it came for him again. It was less than an inch away when he feinted to the left and jammed that forefinger into tissue behind one wing. Sickeningly, it dented and fizzed.

He hadn’t expected the curdling scream that followed, or the flash of flame that flared, and just as quickly extinguished itself. With a zipping sound, the creature changed visibility. It could be seen with the human eye. Fluid squirted from between the wings, bathing all of it.

One side disappeared from human sight, the other remained visible to anyone. It was the fluid that rendered it impossible to see with normal eyes, and he had burned out part of whatever reservoir stored the stuff. He could hope the damage never healed.

Swooping, the creature repeatedly brought itself to a level trajectory, then fell away again. For one wild beat in time Ben wanted to make pursuit, to attempt to take the enemy down for good. But if he failed and was left too wounded to act, Willow would suffer and he wouldn’t allow that.

He heard another sound, a whimpering like a wounded animal—and he smelled burning skin, or fur or flesh.

In one thrust, he returned to Willow.

She stared at him just as she had before he’d left. When he smiled, she smiled back. He waited, expecting her to say she knew he’d been gone. Instead, she reached out and touched his bleeding face, her expression turning to one of horror. “Ben. You’re bleeding.” She searched in every direction. “What hit you?” She grabbed his right arm and held it up where she could see the wounds there.

“Let’s go,” he said. “We’re not far from Sykes’s place.”

“Don’t you need to be seen by someone?”

“Sure, I need to be seen by you.” He felt less flip than he sounded. “A shower will take care of everything.”

“Ben. Something really bad just happened. We can’t walk away and pretend it didn’t. I know you were gone again.”

So much for being fast enough to fool her completely this time. “You’re too observant.” He touched her hair. “Too talented and getting more so by the hour.”

She ignored that. “Was it the same as the last time?”

“More or less,” he said.

She grabbed him convulsively. “Those wounds could kill you. They’ve killed before, haven’t they? They killed Chloe Brandt.”

“Not these. I slammed into some glass shelves. Our ugly buddy never touched me. It tried—but failed.”

“But it’s still here.” She turned in a circle until Ben stopped her.

“It’s got something else on its mind right now,” he told her. “Like pain. Let’s take advantage of that. We need to figure out what we know and what’s next—and get some sleep. And we’ve got to stay out of jail because bars may keep one of us in, but they won’t keep that little monster out.”