Sleight (36 page)

A voice glanced my ear. “Wake up…wake up before it’s too late.”

Hands were on me, heavy on my shoulders, shaking me as I sank deeper and deeper into the darkness.

“Gemma!” the voice demanded. “Say the word!” The word. The amulet. The protection from evil.

AVRAKEDAVRA! My voice was mute, my throat stripped from screaming, but as the word flashed like lightning in my head, I was awake.

Henry stood over me, his hands on my shoulders. It was his voice that had puled me from the tempest. I looked up at him, stricken by the torment on his face.

“Henry,” I sobbed.

He held me tight against his chest, my clothes soaked with sweat, my heart racing. “I’m here. I’m here…sshhh, it was a nightmare.” He fumbled around in the backseat for a box of tissue, handing me a wad. “Your nose is bleeding again.” He cupped the sheets under my leaking nostrils. “Pinch it…here.” I was gutted with exhaustion, my limbs weak. Except for my right hand. It was tensed and throbbing.

“Where are we?” I pushed against Henry with my left arm.

“At a rest area. I was afraid I’d fal asleep driving,” he said, easing back only enough to look down at my contracted arm.

Gently, he reached for my curled hand, turning it over in his palm.

He pried my knotted fingers open, one at a time, skin tearing as he puled. I holered in pain, and his shoulders slumped once my hand was freed from the bronze. On my palm was etched a raw, fresh burn, a perfect imprint of the Hebrew script of the very charm that was supposed to protect me.

The smel of charred flesh permeated the space between us.

Blisters bubbled along the triangle’s edges, the soft skin blackened and weeping. Even the slightest movement of air through the dashboard vents shot spikes of pain through my arm. I tried to keep my fingers bent just enough to protect my palm as the skin tightened and sweled.

Henry reached across me for the glove box and puled out a green zippered first aid kit.

“Let me see your hand,” he said. My head tilted back, the blood ran down my throat. I pinched harder and swiveled my body so I could rest my hand, palm side up, atop the console between the seats. He sprayed an anesthetic mist onto the burn and used gauze to dab at the fluid seeping from my skin. Despite the anesthetic coating, it stung like hel every time he touched it, and I sucked in through my teeth with one particularly painful swab.

“You okay?” he said, looking up at me. I nodded and tried to hold my breath. This burn hurt a hel of a lot more than the one from the Bunsen burner. And I didn’t have Marku here to fix me.

As Henry spread some gel across the open wound, I realized that the pads of al four fingers were burned, as wel, impressive whitish blisters shining in the fatty tissue of my fingertips. So much for the violin.

I watched him as he wrapped the whole of my right hand with sterile gauze and pressure bandage, careful not to make it too tight.

His hair was messy and his cheeks were flushed, as if he’d just run a race. A slight sheen covered his forehead. I wadded the tissue onto my lap and brushed a finger across his eyebrows.

“Let me see your nose,” he said, tilting my head back. “I think it stopped.” I test-sniffed a few times to be sure.

He handed me two smal tablets of ibuprofen and a bottle of water. “For the sweling,” he said. I thanked him and swalowed the orange pils. “We’l need to stop at a drug store or something and get some more supplies.” He’d used pretty much everything in the smal kit.

“So, what now?” I said. His eyes were troubled, his head bowed so that I was looking at his hair instead of his face. I reached over with my bandaged hand and touched his cheek with the uninjured side of my hooked fingers. We made eye contact.

“Come here,” he said, leaning toward me. When my face was close enough, he placed his left hand on my cheek and kissed me, his lips soft but desperate. “Are you okay?” I nodded. I couldn’t speak.

“That was a bad one, huh?” The dream. Yeah, it was a bad one.

“I thought this stupid amulet was supposed to keep me safe,” I said, flicking at it with my index finger.

“It wil, Gemma. I promise.”

“Please. Don’t promise anything. It’s too dangerous.” Henry lifted my chin and brushed my cheek with his finger.

“You’re a brave one. You’l get through this. I’ve seen it,” he said.

“You just have to believe. Believe in us. Believe in you.” I couldn’t respond. Nothing he could say was going to bring Marlene, or Delia, back. I just wanted…I wanted everything back to the way it used to be. Before al of this.

“The cloaked man…it’s Lucian…isn’t it?” I said, my voice quiet.

“Yes.” He said nothing more but instead resituated himself in his seat and started the car. “We have to get to the airport,” he said. I didn’t want to go anywhere. I wanted to climb into his lap and bury my head in his strong shoulder and never look out the window again or face another bad dream. I only wanted to feel safe and protected. And I wanted to go home.

We backed out of our parking spot, leaving behind happy, adventure-seeking families and road-weary truckers. An old man, salow and skeletal, floated near the bathroom building. As soon as I saw him, I averted my eyes. I couldn’t absorb anyone else’s pain today, dead or alive.

While Henry drove, I fumbled with the amulet in my undamaged hand, examining its construction, the foreign curves and lines of the ancient script. It looked dirty but smooth. If what I’d been told about the amulet was true, and at this juncture, I had no reason to doubt, this piece of craftsmanship was nearly three thousand years old, if it had been gilded at the same time of the AVRA-K’s writing.

It seemed odd that this relic, a priceless piece of an old, old world, was hanging around my neck when it should’ve been in an atmosphere-stabilized display case in a natural history museum.

I had only a vague idea as to where we were going, but little clue as to how far we’d get before Lucian or some other unseen force stopped us. It seemed that as long as we were moving away from the threat, it might be enough, at least for the time being. The only thing I was sure about—I never wanted to fal asleep again. Just as Lucian promised, not even my dreams were safe.

:41:

Day One

The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.

—Thucydides

Henry was quiet as he squinted against the rain hammering the windshield. It was coming down hard, and the gray of the sky blended with the gray of the road, the tire spray of other cars blurring the separation point between the two. Even the lane dividers were muted and nearly invisible under the sheen of the wet freeway pavement. I watched his face as we drove, the muscles in his jaw tensing, releasing, tensing again. His eyes looked as heavy and tired as mine felt, and I knew he too was exhausted. He’d been in the dream with me, trying to keep Lucian away and pul me back into the present.

The silence in the car, interrupted only by the occasional bump-bump sound as the tires drove over the reflective turtles, was deafening. I felt drowsy, the hum of rubber on concrete luling me inward. I had to wake up.

“Thank you for puling me out in one piece,” I said.

Henry hmmphed through the set of his jaw. “Don’t thank me.

I’ve done a pretty lousy job of keeping you safe so far,” he nodded toward my hand. “How does it feel?”

“It burns, but I’l live.” He winced as he caught site of my curled fingers. The dark circles ringing his eyes worried me. We were going to have to sleep at some point, and I could only guess that Henry had to be as afraid as I was about that fact. There wasn’t enough coffee in the world to keep our bodies awake indefinitely.

“Henry…could Lucian kil me during one of those nightmares?” He didn’t answer right away, but he didn’t need to. The crinkle in his forehead spoke volumes.

“Wow…,” I said. “How am I ever going to sleep again?”

“Thibeault wil help you. He can teach you to keep Lucian at bay.”

In theory, it sounded promising, but Thibeault was in France.

We were, as yet, stil in Washington State. I was going to be very tired for a while.

“Is your physical presence in my dreams real?”

“Yes. I’m realy there,” he said.

“Realy? But…how is that possible? Is it safe for you to be there, you know, in my nightmare with me?”

Henry paused again. “No. My body is defenseless. Unless I could get out in time…wel, needless to say, it’s very dangerous.”

“Don’t do it ever again. Promise me.”

“Gemma—”

“Promise me!” I yeled, swiveling in my seat to face him. “Never again!” I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him. “If we’re going to do this—this…whatever it is—we have to be a team. It’s enough for you to just wake me up. Please, Henry, promise me you wil stay out of my nightmares.”

He nodded, his expression solemn.

Then a new thought occurred to me. A potential strategy. “If you being present in my nightmares renders your body vulnerable in the conscious world, is the same true for Lucian?”

“No,” he said. “Lucian remains in control of himself in both realms.” My burst of excitement fizzled.

“Damn…that would’ve been an easy way to take care of him.”

“And that’s exactly why he can do it. He’s had way more practice at this than I have. I can only do it because Alicia taught me, but I have yet to learn how to protect my sleeping body when I go into someone else’s dreams,” he said. Of course Alicia had taught Henry to visit dreams. To her, it would’ve been as important as teaching Henry to ride a bike.

“Promise me,” I said again, more emphatic.

“I just can’t stand to watch you suffer,” he said. He moved one hand from the steering wheel and rested it on the console, inviting me to join him. I placed my left hand in his and inhaled a deep, comforted breath as his warmth cascaded through my palm and fingers and into the rest of my body. “I promise,” he whispered.

“Where are we going? I mean, after we ditch the car?”

“Seattle, I think. Ted’s guy wil come for us and then we’l figure out the next step.”

“Are we going to try and make it to the Delacroixs?”

“That’s the plan,” he said. “We have to work out the details from Seattle. It wasn’t safe for us to do anything in Eaglefern.” He squeezed my hand. “Hey, are you getting hungry?” I shook my head. The very last thing on my mind was food.

Beyond the nagging ache of my hand, the understanding that our itinerary was as solid as mist, I was reminded of those we left behind. Ted was no doubt in his own living hel. He had sent us away to protect us from Lucian, but I could only speculate about what he was dealing with at this very second. And Irwin…poor Irwin. What could the two brothers be left with now that Marlene was gone? Now that I was gone? Why the hel didn’t they come with us?

I felt panicky al over again. They should’ve come with us. The circus was never going to be the same. And now Ted and Irwin were pinned under Lucian’s dagger, waiting for the end. Waiting for the book that would never come back to them.

The image of their despair sparked a new flame inside me. I was going to have to folow Lucian’s lead, as misguided and heinous as it was, and accept the clichés that he embodied. According to La Una, if the desire for something is great enough, the seeker must be wiling to stop at nothing in its pursuit. If I wanted to succeed in achieving my innate goals, I had to obsess about my objectives without regard to colateral damage. Forget thy neighbor. Embrace thyself.

Marku said Henry and I had been chosen to become the next keepers of humanity, as a matter of birthright. If I had to become ruthless—if I had to become like my father—I would. I wanted nothing more at that very moment than I wanted to defeat Lucian.

To kil him if need be. But first, I’d have to survive. In order to have a future, a future that included Henry and what was left of my tortured family, one simple choice had to be made.

I chose to fight.

:42:

Trust not too much to appearances.

—Virgil

At SeaTac Airport, we wound our way into short-term parking, the behemoth concrete structures like coiled mattress springs, one layer stacked atop another. With each successive floor, I grew dizzier; round and round we climbed until Henry exited to find a spot on the uppermost level of the complex.

Henry insisted on carrying my travel bag so I wouldn’t wrench my hand. If anyone had been paying close attention to our movements, they would’ve thought we were just a young couple about to get away for a weekend adventure, maybe to Vegas, maybe to Disneyland. With only two bags between us, the trip couldn’t be too involved—no roling suitcases stuffed with bikinis or too many pairs of shoes, no garment bags for suits or dresses.

When we walked past the airport’s main entrance, the departures floor, and continued along the sides of the main structure and beyond, it would’ve been obvious to that same anonymous onlooker that we in fact were flying nowhere today.

How long would it take airport security to find Henry’s car? In the post-9/11 world, I could only guess that bomb-sniffing dogs would make their rounds of the BMW before the towing company was caled. We had no choice but to dump it. Lucian would surely have reported it stolen.

Now we just needed to vaporize into the universe.

Whoever packed my bag remembered to include my passport, and we had more than enough cash to pay for tickets to France.

“Henry, why aren’t we leaving for the Delacroixs’ today, instead of waiting for Lucian to find us?”

“Ted’s being cautious. He doesn’t want us on the same plane.

And it would be best if we flew out of different airports, or at least on different flights out of the same,” he said. “The Delacroixs live in a secluded area outside of Rouen, and I don’t know how to get there. Thibeault needs to be notified that we’re coming so he can arrange a pick-up, probably with security. Lucian has far-reaching alegiances everywhere, especialy in Europe.” Henry looked over his shoulder and around the street as we walked. His paranoia was unsettling; I doubted we were being folowed but he was on heightened alert.