Love Beyond Sanity (14 page)

"How do you know all of this?" Jason's head whirled.

"Always the doubter. Let's say I have a curse. I just know a lot of shit."

"So what are we going to do?"

"We're going to hold down this fort until Marina, Charma, and whoever they found return. Then all of us are going to wait for the rest of the crew to land from Europe. They don't know it yet but their plane is about to be diverted from Portland to Newark. When they get off the plane, Leonardo will just know where they have to be and they'll come. Hopefully we'll all be alive then."

"I just sent my parents away."

Drew nodded. "Good." His companion looked up at the ceiling. "Stand against that railing, Dr. Randall. I don't want you to get blasted."

Jason barely had time to react before the ceiling of the elevator exploded above them.

"You can climb, right?"

Jason, openmouthed, nodded.

"Good, because we have to get to another floor and set ourselves up to buckle down for a few hours. In a matter of moments, this place will be filled with two demons, all of their minions, and every living person here will be a potential enemy."

Jason put his foot on the railing and hoisted himself up. "Why are you smiling about this?"

"I love a good fight, and I can't think of a more appropriate place to fight down two psychotic otherworldly demons than a mental health institute, can you?"

Chapter Nine

Sebastian narrowed his eyes at the explosion. What the hell was that? He sniffed the air. Jason Randall, the Outsider with the ability to stop the hearts of would-be attackers, was on the move. How had the man known he needed to run?

Hissing through his teeth, he turned around to face the ten minions he'd brought with him. If he needed to, he could come up with each of their names, but in these circumstances where there were a large number of them, he was just as happy to think of them as a unit.

"We'll take the stairs." Without bothering to turn around, Sebastian walked to the doorway marked 'stairwell' and began his ascent. How had Jason made the elevator explode? That shouldn't have been his power, unless it was latent, and even then that would be odd for a body controller to also be able to blow things up. Not that he was an expert on all the petty little powers Outsiders did or did not display.

He was ending this here whether the Outsiders liked it or not. Using his nose, he chased the pungent smell of humanity that even the Outsiders carried to the eighth floor of the building. He paused and considered his options. What on earth would drive a cardiologist who had just come out of a coma to hide on the floor that contained the cafeteria, the family waiting room, and the offices the administrative staff used?

Shrugging, he moved forward. It didn't matter. Jason would soon belong to him, and he could force him to give up all the answers he wanted.

* * * *

Gabriel nailed the last board onto the outside of the lingerie shop and hummed to himself as if he was perfectly content. An old woman walking a black and white border collie passed him. He smiled and nodded his head. She held eye contact a moment longer than he liked, and he wondered if she recognized him. Not someone to forget a face, he didn't know her but that didn't mean she wasn't one of the people who'd come to 'meet' Alexa and him when they'd first been adopted by Sebastian's parents.

It had been a great publicity stunt for his father, taking in the poor, parentless misfits and 'loving' them. The grey-haired, small woman continued walking. Gabriel exhaled. It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to be remembered except if Trent heard the conversation then put two and two together connecting Gabriel to Sebastian. That would be unfortunate.

Stopping midway down the street, the old woman turned around again.

"How much longer are you going to let this go on?" The woman, her voice shaking, unhooked the leash and Gabriel raised an eyebrow as the dog bounded unrestrained down one of New Orleans' busiest streets. None of the pedestrians seemed to notice as they continued on their way.

Gabriel's internal paranormal alert system blasted on full. It wasn't that he encountered that much weird stuff that didn't belong to him, Sebastian, or Alexa but he was pleased to see that his sixth sense about it still signaled him.

Best to pretend he was confused to her meaning and see what happened. "Ma'am? Do you need help with that dog?"

"That dog, as you called him, has lived three times as long as me. I assure you can handle himself quite nicely. He has probably gone to chase down a stray cat. I don't know. He didn't tell me."

Gabriel set his hammer into his red toolbox. "I've heard border collies are the smartest breed of dog; however I didn't know they communicated that thoroughly with their owners." He knew he sounded rude but he didn't like this woman—or whatever she was—bothering him on the street about something he obviously wouldn't want most people to know.

"You're being obtuse. Enough is enough. How can you have survived living with that thing as long as you did and now you're wasting time?"

She had the kind of tone he hadn't heard since grade school. It still managed to make his head pound. The last person who had used it had been what he supposed was a well meaning fifth-grade teacher who had chided him for daring to stand up for himself against the son of the richest man in town.

Those had been the oil company days in Louisiana. The teacher hadn't wanted her husband to lose his job and had sat Gabriel down to explain to him how life worked. The gist of it had been that some people in small town Louisiana counted and some people didn't. As the fifth foster-child in a house built to hold three people, Gabriel was not amongst the people who the teacher felt could afford to get into a fistfight with someone who mattered.

Gabriel had listened intently and then broken all the windows in the woman's car. At the time, he'd hoped her husband's job was good enough to pay for the repair. Later that night, guilt at his actions had led him to sneak out of the house and personally repair every window. The teacher had never known they'd been broken. Even then he had a talent for putting the unfixable back together. Of course, he'd gotten caught sneaking back into the house. He'd been expedited back to New Orleans and a boy's foster home.

He hadn't minded. Alexa had been sent back from Baton Rouge after she'd beat down three men who'd thought it would be funny to sexually harass an orphan.

They were never far from each other for very long. The last weeks since he'd removed himself from her presence to figure things out had been the most they'd ever been out of contact. It concerned him a little bit that she wasn't in touch. How much had Sebastian, the evil dragon creature, gotten to her in his absence?

Gabriel shook his head. There was no time for that now. Not with the strange woman with her absent dog harassing him on the street.

Putting on his most charming smile, he hoped he pulled off the southern gentleman look. "I'm sorry, ma'am, you must have me mixed up with someone else. I'm not sure what you're talking about." He put his hands in his pocket, not moving his eyes from hers. For a second, he was struck by the deep green of her eyes. It reminded him of the Spanish moss that grew on the trees in City Park. "My deepest apologies."

The old woman put her hands on her hips. "I forgot you could be like this. Oh thank heavens for sweet time." She moved closer to him and he narrowed his eyes. Something about this geriatric person was making him nervous. "Gabriel, you are late, and if you run out of time, everyone will. Go inside, you can't wait to spy on the little man in there. Get your information, get out, and get yourself to New Jersey."

Swallowing, he had to acknowledge that she knew quite a lot about what he was doing. "New Jersey?"

Lowering her voice, she whispered. "That is where Sebastian is."

"You know a great deal."

"I know that there are two ways this turns out. Nothing is set. It never is, and it breaks my heart to think of the second."

Gabriel shook his head. "How is that even possible? One person lives one reality."

"Not true." She poked him in the chest, shocking him. "And you're smart enough to know that by now."

"Who
are
you?" Enough was enough.

The dog that had left her ran back around the corner and rubbed her leg as he growled at Gabriel. She stroked its ears. "Stop it, Futon." The dog stopped snarling. "Don't ask me questions. A lot of people risked everything to make sure this moment happened. It doesn't always."

"Hell, there is nothing I hate more in the world than riddles."

Her grin shocked him. "Yes there is. You just don't know it yet."

"So if this is like one giant science fiction episode, then you're from the future and you've come back to warn me that if I don't hurry and get to New Jersey then the future will be bad?"

She sighed. "I know it's like that movie with the robots and the woman who's going to give birth to the only guy who can save us. It makes your head hurt. It doesn't make it any less untrue."

Nodding, he looked at his wristwatch. It was almost time for Trent to go out to lunch. The fat man had been very insistent that he took his lunch at the same time every day. Eleven in the morning seemed early to Gabriel, but whatever. Who was he to judge when people ate?

The prophetic problem of an elderly person turned around. Almost against his will, he reached out and grabbed her shoulder. She jumped. The dog, which he expected to growl, didn't and instead wagged his tail.

"Have you and Futon ever heard the legend of the Spanish moss?"

Her eyes seemed to glisten. "Tell us again."

"I haven't heard it in a while but I think I remember it. Legend goes something like this. Sometime in the seventeen hundreds, a settler came to Charleston, South Carolina. He brought with him his Spanish fiancé, quite beautiful as I hear it."

The woman nodded. "She would be. They always are in these kinds of things."

Gabriel grinned. "Right. So one day they go for a walk together when some Native Americans suddenly attack them. The indigenous people didn't appreciate their land being taken over by this guy and his raven-haired wife."

"Imagine that?"

"Exactly." Where had he been in the story? He wiped his brow with his shirt sleeve as he realized how hot it was getting outside. One thing you could count on in New Orleans was that sometime during the day it would get very hot. "As a final statement, the native people cut off her hair and threw it onto the Live Oak Tree that they were near."

"Over time the hair shriveled up and jumped from tree to tree until it travelled all through the south eastern part of the United States." She grinned as she finished the story.

He nodded. "So you do know it. But did you know that if you stand under a Live Oak today, you can still see it jumping from tree to tree preparing to defend itself?"

"I forgot that." She paused for a moment before shoving at his arm. "Get moving Gabriel."

He stumbled backwards surprised by her strength. Nodding his head, he smiled. "Yes, ma'am."

Turning, he picked up his tools. When he looked back up, the woman and her dog were gone. Whirling around, he looked for her but she was nowhere. Narrowing his eyes, he wondered if he'd lost his mind.

Quickly, he walked to the front of the store. He knocked on the door and waited a second. No response met his pounding, so he opened it and walked in.

He should have asked that woman where he was supposed to be going in the Garden State. It's not like it was just a few square feet to navigate. What had possessed him to start talking about southern legends when he should have been demanding information from the little woman who clearly knew things he did not? That didn't seem like him.

Sighing, he stepped further into the store. "Trent?"

Nothing. Not a noise. He couldn't possibly have left for his lunch yet. Gabriel would have seen him. Knowing exactly where he needed to go, he walked with determination to the back of the store. Whatever Trent had made for Sebastian was back there.

He pressed gently against the door and it swung open. The lights in this part of the store were fluorescent and one of them hummed loudly. The whine hurt his ears and he covered them for a second. His senses had always been more acute than other people's. It was a problem in the best of circumstances and this wasn't anywhere near that. A moan caught his attention.

Whirling, he walked towards the source of distress. Gabriel crouched low to the floor, instincts telling him he didn't want to get caught by Trent. Not if he really wanted to see what was going on.

"Damn it." Trent's nasal tones filled the back room. Gabriel narrowed his eyes and physically stopped himself from sucking in his breath. Two young women, twins, he would guess, hung from the ceiling. Their wrists shackled above their heads. The veins from their necks were open and red blood oozed in a steady drip down their bodies. Trent had applied two containers that resembled medical vials to catch the drips as they flowed.

Son-of-a-bitch. Gabriel sniffed the air. He didn't know how he knew this but he knew those girls, who couldn't be more than fifteen years old at most, were still alive even though they were slipping away quickly. If he didn't move, he would lose them.

As he stood, the strangest song filled the room. Gabriel looked around but Trent made no move like he heard it. In a language he didn't understand, celestial voices began to sing, chant actually. Gabriel closed his eyes for a moment and let the sheer rightness of the experience fill his senses. The longer it went on the more resolved he was to fulfill his goal. He would save those girls and fry the dirty man who did that to them.

His eyes flew open. "You know, Trent, I've heard intravenous lines work better than vials for this kind of experience."

Trent dropped the vial he held in his right hand. The sound of glass breaking permeated the room and Gabriel looked down to see a pool of red stain the floor.

"How dare you come back here? I didn't invite you." Trent ran behind the unconscious women towards a chest of drawers.