Knight's Curse (14 page)

He nodded. “It’s an obsidian Aztec artifact used for scrying. It once belonged to Quin’s ancestor, John Dee.”

Aydin looked pensive. “John Dee. Ah, yes, the sixteenth-century mathematician and philosopher. I met him once.” He stared at me so coldly I wanted to shrink beneath the table. Damn, he was convincing. “Dee’s power to communicate with angels was legendary and he’d owned several valuable artifacts the Vyantara wanted. I stole his shrew stone for the British Fatherhouse.”

Considering Aydin’s age, I should have guessed he’d have had an opportunity to meet the man. I’d read about Dee during my training and found his life of angel communication interesting, if not dramatic. I wondered if Quin was anything like his great-great-great-great-whatever.

“John Dee replaced the shrew stone with the Aztec version that’s rumored to be more powerful,” Gavin said. “It does more than scry. It amplifies a psychic’s vision to allow evocation of angels. The apparition can be witnessed audibly and visually.” He resumed his pacing. “It’s not just the artifact we need. We want Quin Dee, as well.”

Steal a person? I wasn’t comfortable with that. It was kidnapping and it struck too close to home. “Why not ask him to do it and pay him for his trouble?”

Gavin grinned. “We tried that. He hates us.”

Of course he did. What sane person wouldn’t?

“He’s a moral and spiritual man who inherited his ancestor’s skill for communicating with angels,” Gavin went on. “The Vyantara are the antithesis of his beliefs.”

Good for Quin. I was starting to like him already. “Even if we manage to kidnap the man, how will you force him to summon my…to summon Barachiel?”

“That’s
my
problem. You just focus on bringing both the artifact and Quin Dee to me.” He glared at Zee, who had clearly fallen out of favor. “Zee, I need you to prepare a room for our new house guest.”

Zee stared silently down at her lap, then suddenly launched to her feet and pointed an accusing finger at me. “She’s a liar!”

My heart jumped, but I concentrated on holding a neutral expression. “Excuse me?”

She held out a black stone the size of her palm. “The truth stone doesn’t lie.”

Aulmauracite? The meteoric rock was alleged to have the power to see truth, but I’d never seen one up close. Its surface went dull in the presence of lies, and would glitter silver in the presence of honesty. Someone was lying, and it wasn’t me. At least not right now.

“Zeppelin!” Gavin grabbed the rock from her hand. “It lost its shimmer because
you’re
the one who’s lying. Look at it.” He held it up and it sparkled. “Get out. Now! You have work to do.”

Glaring daggers at me, she stood and hobbled from the room.

Gavin rubbed his forehead. “I don’t have the patience for this.” He glowered up at the ceiling as if to blame someone else for his troubles. “I need a new housemother for this Fatherhouse. I can’t trust Zee anymore. She’s a witless witch who’s lost her focus.”

“She’s jealous,” Aydin said.

Gavin appeared genuinely puzzled. “Jealous of who?”

“Chalice.”

Aydin drove us to the Cherry Creek Shopping Center, where I was to “accidentally” meet Quin Dee in a bookstore, and then coerce him into having coffee with me. The plan was for me to drug his coffee so that he’d think he was sick, drive him home and, while he was passed out, I’d search his house for the Aztec artifact. Simple.

“Now that I know there are other knights, I want to meet them,” I said to Aydin’s profile as he drove us down I-25 to get from one end of town to the other.

He answered me with a quick nod, but I needed more than that. “Tell me where they are.”

Without taking his focus off the black ribbon of highway in front of him, he said, “Fifty knights live in the U.S. and Canada, and only a handful are still in Europe.”

I thought about Gavin and his obsession with the Hatchets.

“Every knight is protected by the Arelim,” Aydin said, as if sensing my concern. “Their identities are kept secret from the world and especially from the Vyantara.”

“What do the Vyantara want from us?” I asked as we strode across the shopping center’s frigid parking lot. Night had fallen and it was starting to snow. “Bond us all to gargoyles and turn us into thieves?” I was being facetious so his response surprised me.

“That’s part of it.”

I stopped to pierce him with a sharp look. “Are you serious?”

He nodded and motioned for me to keep walking. “Each knight is special in her own way, and that will make all of them valuable to the Vyantara. You have heightened senses, someone else has phenomenal strength, another reads minds, maybe uses teleportation, or telekinesis, and I’ve even heard of one who can do what I do.”

“Invisibility. How very cool.” I had assumed the knights’ abilities were exactly like mine. I didn’t know they would be so diverse.

He opened the double glass doors at the mall entrance and waved me in ahead of him. “Invisibility, shape-shifting, throwing lightning, causing storms—”

I chuckled. “Sounds like superhero stuff.”

“It is.”

We walked side by side, silent and serious, until we reached the mall directory. I wasn’t a superhero. Super
thief,
maybe, and it wasn’t something I was proud of. “So what do they do with these superpowers that I assume were inherited from their fathers?”

“You assume correctly.” I watched him study the directory, his eyes scanning through the list of shops and restaurants. He sounded casual while answering my question, yet the words he used were grave. “Some of them work for the police, the FBI, and even a few have set up their own private-investigation businesses. Others are firefighters, search and rescue, soldiers in the military, bodyguards, any kind of job that involves protecting people. But they use their powers in secret to take down criminals from beyond the mortal realm.”

Of course. The idea of ridding humanity of the diseased evil that fed on them sent an unexpected thrill through my heart. Fighting the good fight. What a glorious job.

Aydin’s eyes widened and he pointed to something on the list. “There it is. Level two.”

I’d already lost interest in our assignment and wanted only to continue this conversation. So the Hatchets were vigilantes. That sounded like a lonely and dangerous pursuit, but an exciting one. It was illegal, too, which made them just as criminal as me.

“According to Geraldine only a handful have teamed up together,” he said. “The majority are independents, trained by their mothers.” He chuckled. “Armies of one.”

Trained by their mothers.
I envied them. And it bugged me that Aydin didn’t seem impressed by my sister knights’ good works. How dare he pass judgment? “You disapprove?”

He shot me a surprised look. “And you care?”

I glared at him. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

One corner of his mouth lifted in a cynical smile.

Was he being smug? I gasped and tossed him the same surprised look he’d given me. “You obviously don’t respect what my sisters do.”

“Oh, so now they’re your sisters?” He smiled and frowned at the same time, making him look devilish. Very sexy. “You, the lone wolf, who has no one and prefers it that way.”

“I never said I preferred it that way.” In reality, I hated being lonely, but I’d never had a choice.

I narrowed my eyes at him. He was starting to piss me off.

“Are you saying you’d join your sisters if they needed you?”

“Damn right I would.” I folded my arms and gave him a sideways glance. Seeing his mollified grin, I finally got it. He was baiting me. “Okay, now I see what you’re doing. This is a test.” Being tested meant I wasn’t trusted, and that hurt.

He lost the frown but the smile remained. “Guilty. I need to be convinced you’re serious about getting involved. The Hatchets’ lives are at risk.”

I felt only slightly better knowing he wasn’t the insensitive prick I’d almost believed him to be. “Explain.”

He stepped over to a tiled bench surrounding a square planter filled with some kind of variegated ivy. Sitting down, he patted the space beside him, but I stayed where I was. I hadn’t forgiven him yet. “Chalice, the problem reported by the Arelim to Geraldine is the knights’ lack of unity. These women can’t join together as a unit because if they do, they risk detection by the Vyantara, and by those from the supernatural realms. The knights are less effective alone than they could be as a team, and they’re more vulnerable to attack. The Hatchets haven’t fought together since their crusading ancestors did.”

“So what does that have to do with me?”

He peered up at me and winced. “You’re making my neck hurt. Sit down. Please.”

I plopped down beside him, but left a good foot of shiny tile between us.

“You’re immune to cursed and charmed objects.” He pointed to himself. “And so am I. As an immortal, magical objects have no effect on me.”

“What about Ruby?”

“She’s an
animate,
a magical curiosity that has personality, but no power.”

“She’s not enchanted?”

He wobbled his open hand like the wings of airplane. “Yes and no.”

“But I’d be immune if she was, right?” I squinted as I tried to puzzle this out. “Even though I’m not immortal like you.”

“Your angel side combined with your bedeviled side is what protects you from the effects of magical objects.”

It all sounded great except for the bedeviled part. And why hadn’t Gavin ever told me any of this? “How am I
bedeviled?
”

“Because of the curse that bonds you to Shui.”

“I intend to break that curse.” I leaned sideways to get closer, emphasizing my point. “Does that make me a handicap to this great plan of yours?”

He sounded less confident when he said, “No. In fact, you must be free of your bond before you can help unify the knights. Your freedom won’t affect your immunity, though. It’s your one and only benefit of bondage to Shui.”

“Why is my immunity so important?”

“Because we need you to reclaim all the collected objects in all the Fatherhouses around the world. Or nullify them. Our goal is to reduce the Vyantara’s power as much as possible.”

Now that would be a task and a half, but I was willing. I’d always felt guilty for stealing those things in the first place and hoped this might bring me the closure I needed. “You’ve got a deal. But I get the feeling there’s something else.”

“There is.” He blinked and looked away, his gaze returning to the directory. Staring at it blankly, he said, “You’ll have to teach the knights about curses and charms, how to identify them, how to deactivate them and how to use them.”

I didn’t think I’d heard him right. “Did you just say how to
use
them?”

“I know how you feel about magic, Chalice, but sometimes you have to fight fire with fire. The knights aren’t immune like you are. Right now they’re helpless against any magic that can be used against them.”

I mistrusted magic, with the exception of Ruby. And Aydin, of course. But I still held magic responsible for every awful thing that had happened in my life, and I associated it with the people who forced me to steal. Now Aydin was asking me to endorse its use? I stood up and backed away. “I can’t believe you’d ask me to do this.”

“There’s a lot about magic you don’t understand.” He was clearly frustrated, his body tense and his jaw rigid. Though he had gradually introduced me to the benefits of magic use, he anticipated how I would react and was ready for it. “Why do you think I introduced you to Ruby? I knew you two would hit it off. She’s a sentient creature, Chalice. I think I’ve already convinced you that magic isn’t always a bad thing.”

I thought about the bejeweled frog, the charming Jakkaryl I’d met at Elmo’s, Aydin’s magical breath of change and my stubbornness wavered. “Help me understand.”

“There’s offensive magic and defensive magic,” he said slowly, as if to make sure his words sunk through my thick skull. “It’s okay to use defensive magic to protect yourself, and we need your sister knights to know how it works. You’re the only one who can help them.”

“Why can’t you do it?”

“I can. Someday.” He stood to face me, his chin just about even with the top of my head. “But as a fellow knight in the order, it’s
your
voice and leadership that will bring your sisters together. A new war is coming. A new kind of Crusade. And we have to be ready for it.”

So that’s what all this was about. But neither Aydin nor I would be any good in this war if we didn’t break the curses that bound us. We couldn’t help the Hatchets if we became gargoyles that served the enemy.

This is where my life had been headed all along. Even my exposure to curses and charms could serve to protect my sisters, and myself.

Aydin tilted his head. “Are you all right? You look…different. Like someone just flicked on a light switch.”

I gave him a small smile. “Maybe someone did.”

Aydin’s cell phone rang. “Yeah,” he answered. “Already? Okay. We’ll be there in five.” He closed the phone and tucked it in the inside pocket of his jacket. “The Vyantara have someone tracking Quin. He just pulled into the parking lot.”

I TOOK A DEEP BREATH AND JOINED AYDIN AS
he made quick strides toward an escalator. Quin Dee loved bookstores and he made a weekly visit to one in his neighborhood every Monday night after work.

Aydin and I separated at the top of the escalator so that we wouldn’t be seen together. I’d only seen one picture of Quin that was a fuzzy rendition of a DMV photo. But I felt sure I’d recognize him once I saw him inside the store. Gavin had said he wasn’t very tall, average build, brown hair, glasses—aka boring. I liked boring. Boring was safe.

I entered the store and, after perusing the front tables loaded with recent releases, I lifted my gaze to troll the room for Quin. Gavin had said the man liked science fiction and philosophy. I spotted him browsing the psychology section.

I wandered over to the religion section and found a book called
The Big Book of Angels.
Lovely. I carried the two-pound tome in the crook of my arm and wound through the aisles, closing in on Quin.

Peering at him from the corner of my eye, I saw he was deeply engrossed in a book called
Anger, Madness and the Daimonic.
Whoa. Heavy stuff. He didn’t notice my look of surprise at seeing him up close for the first time.

The photo I’d seen had lied. This man was eye candy and not a bit boring from the female perspective. Broad in the shoulders, slim at the hip, he looked like a guy who spent a fair amount of time in the gym. He needed a haircut, but the way his nut-brown hair curled over the white collar of his shirt gave a rustic edge to his
GQ
appearance. Neat to a fault, his jeans were creased down the front and his loafers looked just out of the box. He wore a tan suede sports jacket opened to reveal a gray sweater-vest, and he smelled…yummy. It was more of a soap smell than a cologne smell. Clean, fresh, expensive.

I let my angel book slip free and fall to the floor by his feet. “I’m such a klutz,” I said, bending to retrieve the book.

He quickly crouched down to reach it first. “Hey, I’ve read this one.”

“You have?” I asked brightly, turning on a multiwatt smile that nearly burned my eyes from the inside. “Any good?”

We stood up at the same time, our gazes locked. He cleared his throat and pushed his wire-rimmed glasses higher up the bridge of his nose. His grin was all teeth. Such a happy guy. “It’s very good. Are you interested in angels?”

“Who isn’t?” I asked, blinking up at him, then worrying I might be laying it on too thick. “I mean, everyone believes in angels. I saw one once.” Lie, lie, lie. But this was a lie I could make myself believe if I used my imagination.

“You saw an angel?” His grin was still in place, but the beginning of a frown made his eyebrows curve into an interesting shape. “Where?”

So I made something up about an angel appearing in front of my car, forcing me to slow down at an intersection just as a bus ran a red light.

“That doesn’t surprise me,” he said, his eyes bright with interest. “I’ve heard similar stories from people whose lives were saved by a guardian angel.”

If he only knew. “I think my guardian angel follows me everywhere.” Though in truth I didn’t think I had one. “I was on vacation when this happened.”

“Really? Where?”

“London.”

He grinned. “That’s where I’m from.”

“You have an amazing accent. So…European.” I let the smile reach my eyes, which I thought were my most alluring feature in spite of my tinted contact lenses. He’d probably think me a freak if he saw their
real
color. Turquoise and gold were what you’d find on a piece of jewelry, not in someone’s eyeballs.

He looked suddenly uncomfortable, as if he’d just received disturbing news. I hadn’t heard anything, and an awkward silence followed.

His smile looked less playful and more polite. Wasn’t this the part where he was supposed to ask me for my phone number? If so, it didn’t happen.

Throughout this exchange, Aydin hung out in the science-fiction and fantasy section. He wasn’t close enough to hear us talking, but I’m sure he must have caught the gist of our conversation from our facial expressions and body language. I’d giggled in all the right places, touched my hair and gazed up at Quin through my eyelashes. I slid a look in Aydin’s direction to see if he still watched, and he did. Outright. It made him look like a stalker. I scowled at him and he seemed to catch himself, returning his attention to the book in his hand.

Quin spun around to see what had attracted my attention.

“Have you seen the display of new releases in the science-fiction section?” I asked, seeing that Aydin was no longer in view. I hoped it didn’t mean he had
literally
disappeared. I needed his help.

“You like science fiction?” Quin asked, but he didn’t sound interested. I doubted my answer would matter to him one way or the other. He took a step back and glanced toward the cash registers at the front of the store. “Me, too. Hey, I’ve gotta run. Nice talking to you.” He flashed me an apologetic smile and walked away.

Hey, I wasn’t done with him yet. How dare he ignore my feminine wiles? Starting to panic, I moved quickly to catch up with him. “I have an idea. Let’s go out for coffee and we can talk more about angels.”

He barely looked at me when he said, “Another time. It was very nice meeting you.”

“But we haven’t actually met yet. You don’t even know my name.” I offered him my hand, which is something I rarely did because my skin was so sensitive. “I’m Cherise,” I said, using one of my aliases.

He barely touched my fingers. “Quin Dee.” I’m not positive, but I think he wiped his hand on his pants as if to clean off my cooties. Talk about weird.

He practically ran ahead of me then, rushing to the cashier at the front of the store. I stopped to look for Aydin, who was still in the science-fiction section. Catching his eye, I aimed a bewildered stare at Quin, and then I shrugged and shook my head. Aydin signaled for me to come to him, then looked behind him and to either side before vanishing completely.

Surprised Aydin would disappear like that in public, I glanced around the store for witnesses. The few shoppers around me were too focused on their browsing to notice his vanishing act. Quin hadn’t seen anything, either, his attention solely on paying for his book and avoiding me like a disease.

I threaded my way through the aisles until I arrived at the spot where Aydin had ghosted out. There on the floor was the pile of clothes that had dropped from his body when he lost physical form. I gathered them up, hoping I didn’t look too conspicuous with a load of men’s denim in my arms, not to mention the size-ten tennis shoes that clearly weren’t mine. A boy of about eleven or twelve gave me an odd look before going back to the graphic novel he was reading.

I couldn’t see Aydin but hopefully he’d stay with me when I walked out. The unpaid-for angel book was still in my hands so I dropped it on a stack of children’s books before making my exit.

Quin stood on the escalator, heading down, so I followed him. He was about halfway to the shopping center’s east entrance when he stopped to rub his temples. His knees wobbled and he held out one arm for balance while taking careful steps to a bench. He sat down and held his head in both hands.

It took me barely a second to realize Aydin had gotten inside Quin’s head and must have suggested something that made the man sick.
Oh, Aydin, you bad boy.
I had a fairly good idea what my accomplice expected me to do now.

I approached the bench and watched Quin struggle to stay upright. “Are you okay?” I sat down beside him.

“Huh?” He dropped his hands from his face to stare at me. “Who are you?”

“I’m Cherise, remember?” I smiled and laid a concerned hand on his shoulder. “I happened to be walking behind you just now when I saw you collapse.”

He squinted at me as if he had trouble seeing. “Oh, yeah. I’m okay, I just need to sit for a second. My head hurts like a son of a bitch.”

“Can I help you to your car?” I hugged Aydin’s clothes to my chest. I still needed him to keep doing what he was doing. “Is it in the east parking lot?”

He nodded and winced. “Damn. It’s like I’ve been drugged or something.” He gave me an accusing look.

I raised my hands in a pose of surrender. “Don’t look at me.” And why would he even suspect me of such a thing? I was just a girl looking for a cute guy to go out with. Though drugging him had been my original plan, he had no way of knowing that. I reached for his arm. “Let me help you. Then I promise to go away. Deal?”

He nodded and stood, appearing more stable now. I led him outside and he directed me to his car. I popped out one contact lens as we walked across the asphalt lot. With my protected eye closed, I saw Aydin’s ghostly form behind Quin, his right hand inside the other man’s back like a puppeteer operating his dummy.

Quin’s car was a late-model, silver Acura. Sweet. “Are you sure you can drive yourself?”

He nodded while auto-unlocking the driver’s side door. Aydin’s ghost leaned into him. Quin grabbed the open door as his knees buckled. “Oh, man. I can’t do it. I can’t drive. I hate to ask, but would you mind?”

“I’d be happy to,” I told him, and helped him into the front seat on the passenger side.

“My house isn’t far.” He sounded breathless, as if Aydin were squeezing his lungs, which he probably was. “Just about five miles, in Cherry Hills. I’ll call you a cab when we get there, and, of course, I’ll pay the fare.”

He was coherent enough to give me directions and in less than ten minutes we pulled in the driveway of his charming, two-story Cape Cod. Very fifties. As I helped him to the front door, supporting him with his arm draped around my neck, I half expected June Cleaver to welcome us at the threshold.

The outside of the house was clean, and by clean I mean no specters hung out in the shadows. And no angels, but never having seen an angel, I can’t say I’d recognize one.

Aydin trailed us into the house, his hold still on Quin. I eased the angel whisperer down on the living-room couch and Aydin merged with him completely. Seconds later, he slipped out of the unconscious Quin.

I waited while Aydin passed through a wall to go outside. Minutes later he returned through the front door as his fully clothed, flesh-and-blood self.

I gave him an apologetic look. “I tried to get him to go out with me for coffee, but he wasn’t interested.”

“Fool,” he said to Quin’s sleeping body, then grinned. “I think he was tipped off by one of his angel friends that you were bad news.”

That threw me. There’d been no indication that Quin was having psychic communication with anyone or anything. “How do you know?”

“I get mental snapshots when I enter a person,” he said, sounding as if his invasive tactics were embarrassing to admit. “It’s hard to describe, but I could sense him communicating with someone inside his head. I didn’t hear a response from whomever he linked to. Quin seemed to accept what he was told without question.”

“So he’s been warned about me.” But if he knew anything, surely his angel friend had informed him I was a Hatchet knight, and therefore an ally. That must count for something. “He knows the Vyantara are involved?”

Aydin shrugged. “Probably. I gave him a hypnotic suggestion to sleep, so he won’t be waking up for a while. Which means we have the run of the house to look for the artifact.”

“But what about Quin?” I was still bothered over the whole kidnapping thing. We wouldn’t steal this man and take his life away from him like ours had been taken from us. Conscience aside, it simply wasn’t right. “We have to protect him.”

Aydin hesitated, his expression sheepish.

“You’re not thinking about letting Gavin have him, are you?”

He didn’t look at me when he said, “I don’t think we have a choice.”

I recalled my own abduction, the memory making my heart bang against my ribs. “Of course we have a choice! There’s got to be a way to keep him safe. To hide him, disguise him, something!”

“Okay, maybe.” Aydin sighed and sat on the couch beside Quin. “But I hate to use the Elmo card. If Gavin ever found out about Elmo’s Coffee Shop, it would be over for Elmo. I’d never forgive myself.”

Elmo’s? What a great idea. I’d been inside the tidy little room at the back of Elmo’s shop and it would be perfect, except I doubted Quin would think so. The dirt floors might offend him, but his freedom would be worth a bit of dirt.

“There could be a problem getting Quin over there.” Aydin stood from the couch and rubbed his hands together. “Oh, hell. We can figure that out
after
we find the artifact.”

Since I’d already removed both contact lenses, I slipped out my nose filters next. Inhaling deeply, I caught the scent of Italian spices, probably a recent meal prepared in Quin’s kitchen. There was also that yummy soap he used, the delicious smell coming from a bathroom down the hall. I identified metal, like tin or maybe solder. There was a distinct scent of other metals, as well, and I assumed he had a workshop in the house. Another odor sent a jolt of recognition through me. A memory sent me back a couple of weeks to my failed heist at the Grandville estate.

“She’s here.” I turned slowly in place to determine where the smell of old decay was coming from. It was Geraldine. “Part of her is in this house.”

Aydin appeared from the hallway, his arms loaded with bedding. He’d apparently been searching a linen closet. “Who is?”

“Geraldine.” I took a deep breath and held it. Yes, that was the same moldy odor I attributed to the hand I’d found in Atlanta. “It’s definitely her.”

Aydin dropped the linens. “Where?”

I closed my eyes and focused. “Basement. I think Quin has a workshop down there. He makes things from metal.”

Aydin grabbed my wrist, and as much as his calloused hand hurt my skin, I let him tug me to a staircase leading to a lower level of the house. “Show me,” he said.

I knew we should be searching the house for the artifact, but I had a strong feeling we’d find it in the basement. Quin was too orderly to separate his treasures. As we neared the bottom step, I caught a whiff of old blood. It smelled human, and then again it didn’t, which troubled me. I tried to sniff out the obsidian piece we were looking for, but solid stone rarely has a scent unless it’s been coated with something, like blood, or dirt from being freshly dug from the ground. The closest thing to dirt I found was clay, a standard component in Colorado soil.