Witch World (42 page)

Yet I still had a problem with the Lapras’ security. Kari would alert them the instant I left and I would be captured, probably killed. The only solution was to take Kari with me. Later, I could figure out what to do with her. I still wanted her away from Jimmy and Huck.

Spinning Kari a hundred and eighty degrees, I wrapped my arm around and applied the well-known choke hold. How did I know it? I didn’t; it came to me by instinct. But it was simple enough. I put pressure on Kari’s carotid, the artery that carried blood to her brain. She struggled perhaps five seconds before slumping unconscious in my arms. I held her neck an extra ten seconds to make sure she stayed out.

I opened the garage door and drove my car inside, briefly parking beside her vehicle. I dumped Kari in my trunk and two minutes later I was on my way past security, once more in the form of Susan Wheeler. They waved me through, no questions asked.

Soon I was out in the open desert. I took an obscure side street, a narrow road made of crumbling asphalt that probably wasn’t even on the map. I wasn’t headed toward Las Vegas. I needed time to think and driving helped me. I had gone to Kari’s house to kill her but had lost my nerve. That was okay—I
was glad I had let her live. But impulsive decisions often lead to complex consequences. It wasn’t like I could store the girl in the meat locker where I’d been thrown, although the idea was appealing.

Suddenly I heard a loud noise coming from the trunk.

Kari was awake and in a bad mood.

No need to panic. I wasn’t surprised she was awake. The effect from the choke hold wasn’t supposed to last more than ten or fifteen minutes. I remembered that from my witch-world life. But it was a little unnerving how vigorously Kari was kicking.

The backseat burst free and Kari’s head poked out.

“I’m not good enough to ride up front with you?” she said.

Her tone of voice, the ease with which she had broken free—these points made me realize I had seriously underestimated Kari. Hell, I had been duped! Fifteen minutes ago the girl had been weeping with fear and now she sounded happy as a lark.

In my rearview mirror, I watched as she climbed into the backseat area. I slammed on the brakes. I had my seat belt on, I always wore it. Kari went flying, passing through the gap between the front seats, striking the windshield. That should have been enough to knock her out cold. She barely blinked.

“You know, Jessica, your driving sucks,” she said, just before she kicked me in the jaw. I saw stars, the whole world tilted at an awkward angle. Fortunately the car had stopped and I had
enough sense left to get out before she kicked me again.

I leaped out the door without unfastening my seat belt. I just broke it. The change from the cool air inside to the blistering sun outside didn’t help the ringing in my head. I sagged against the side of the car, trying to catch my breath. But I exaggerated the gesture so Kari would come straight at me. That was a mistake on her part.

I kicked the car door shut in her face. Her head went through the driver’s-side window. Jagged glass cut her scalp and blood flowed over her blond hair. Again, the blow should have knocked her out. It should have killed her. But she pulled her head free and smiled at me.

“Not the weak witch you thought I was, am I?” she said.

A setup. Her meek behavior had been a charade. Now she had me alone in the middle of nowhere, which had probably been her intention from the start. She had the strength gene. Hell, she appeared to be stronger than me, probably because she had been a witch longer. I needed to use my wits, I needed an advantage.

Kari put one leg out of the car and I kicked at the door again, the metal cutting into her calf. Swearing, she toppled back inside the vehicle and I circled around to the trunk. I yanked it open, breaking the lock, and pulled away the carpet floor that covered the spare tire. A hasty scan revealed a steel jack that a driver could use to change a tire. Just as useful was the roadside kit. Inside it were a couple of flares and a long screwdriver.

Grabbing the tools, I hurried to the passenger side. Kari had recovered and was standing casually beside the driver’s door, the blood still streaming from her hair. She was in no hurry to catch me. I think she wanted to toy with me first. We stood on opposite sides of the car.

“Oh my, scary. You’ve got weapons,” she mocked me. “I suppose you expect me to surrender and beg for mercy.”

“I could have killed you back at the house,” I said, stabbing the side of the hidden gas tank with the screwdriver. Gasoline began to pour onto the asphalt around the rear wheel, but not fast enough for my taste. Twisting the screwdriver back and forth, I widened the hole, and a flood of fuel splashed at my feet.

Kari didn’t seem to notice. She couldn’t see what I was doing, and besides, she had always been so full of herself that she seldom stopped to consider what other people were up to. The fact that she was now a witch had not taken the spoiled cheerleader out of her.

“You couldn’t kill someone if your life depended on it,” Kari said, slowly making her way toward the trunk. “You’re too sweet, too concerned about being good. I can’t imagine what a guy like James saw in you.”

I backed toward the front of the car. “I don’t know, some guys are weird that way. They like a girl who has integrity, and who isn’t a slut.”

Kari rounded the rear, approaching the dripping gasoline.
She saw it, she had to see it, but she didn’t seem to care. She threw her head back and laughed.

“If I cheated on Jimmy he never knew. Or, I should say, he never asked. He’s a nice guy but he’s too naive for this world.”

“So all that song and dance about him being the father of your child was bullshit?” I asked, sliding a flare from my back pocket but keeping it out of her view.

Kari stopped and hardened her tone. “The bullshit was the way you justified stealing him away from me. You acted like the two of you were soul mates and that gave you the right to just walk over me. You made a big mistake when you made me your enemy, Jessica.”

“Now I suppose you’re going to make me pay?”

Kari pulled a switchblade from her pocket. Damn, I had missed that. She touched a button on the side and out popped a knife. The steel shone in the blazing sunlight, razor sharp.

Kari gloated. “Sister. I’m going to make you bleed.”

She pounced, but not before I knelt and broke the cap on the flare and scraped it across the asphalt. It took only a flick of my wrist to toss it in the pool of gasoline. Knowing what would happen next, I leaped away from the front of the car.

The rear of the vehicle exploded in a fireball.

Kari was briefly engulfed in flames, but it was the shock wave that did her the most damage. The car’s tank was practically full, and bathed in flames it made an effective bomb. The blast threw Kari off the road. Her hair caught fire and the switchblade was
blown from her hand. She landed in a smoking pile.

Raising the car jack, I was on her in an instant. I had to strike while I had the chance, I told myself. I couldn’t show mercy.

I struck as she tried to stand. She didn’t see me coming. She was too busy trying to smother her burning hair. The jack caught her in the temple, the thinnest part of the skull. I heard a faint crack and swung at her from the other side. She was tough, she kept climbing. Then I wound up and struck as hard as I could at her left kneecap. I didn’t need a witch’s subtle senses to hear a mass of bone and cartilage fracture.

Howling in pain, she fell on her back. I leaped onto her chest, pinning her arms with my knees, and pressed the jack to her throat. “Who’s bleeding now?” I sneered.

She choked as I narrowed her trachea. “You don’t have the guts to kill me,” she panted.

I pressed harder. “I don’t need guts. This is a pleasure.”

What disturbed me was I was telling the truth. More than just the thrill of victory that came from being alive when I could have been dead, I felt an orgasmic jolt shoot through the length of my spine, which left my nerves tingling. It was weird, Kari was dying, but it was like she sensed what I was experiencing.

“Pleasure for pain,” she whispered, quoting a portion of the line written on the sewer wall.

“What does it mean?” I asked, pulling back on the jack.
But I had already crushed her trachea. She wheezed like a dying beast.

“She’s got you where . . . she wants you,” she gasped.

“Susan? What does she want with me?”

Kari grinned. Then her eyes dilated and she was staring at a sky she could not see. She had stopped breathing. She was dead.

Burying her body in the desert didn’t take long. The ground in witch world seemed more porous, less substantial. I dug down six feet, using the car jack as a shovel, without taking a break.

When I was finished, I stopped to say two prayers. One for Kari and one for myself. My prayer was the more worrisome. I couldn’t exactly ask God to forgive a murder. I only hoped I could forgive myself.

I didn’t plan on telling James or Jimmy what I’d done.

BACK IN TOWN, I TRIED CALLING ALFRED AND GOT NO
answer. Then I tried the one person I really wanted to talk to, James. I shook as I dialed the number. Of course, I was going against my father’s orders. But never mind that, what was the guy really like? What if I didn’t love him the way I loved Jimmy? Hell, what if he was seeing someone else while I was off-limits?

But again, I got no response. However, I relaxed a little when I got ahold of my father on my cell and he told me why James was not answering.

“I told him to avoid you,” he said. “And I told you I told him. Your first night in witch world. Don’t you remember?”

“You told me to avoid him for a couple of days.”

“A few days,” he corrected me. “Why do you need to talk to him?”

He sounded so much like a dad right then.

“Susan wanted me to bring him with me tonight,” I said.

“She suggested it, she didn’t insist on it. The last thing you want is for James to see Lara and get attached to her all over again. That will turn him into Susan’s puppet.”

“I suppose,” I grumbled.

“You don’t sound very convinced.”

“Look, I’m going through a hard time and I miss him. It would just be nice to check in with him, you know, and hear his voice.”

“How did you get his number?”

“Alfred gave it to me.”

My father paused. “Interesting.”

“Dad? How well do you know Alfred?”

“I’ve known him a while. Good man.”

“Is he a powerful witch?”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“Do you know how many witch genes he has?”

My father hesitated. “That’s odd—I just checked our database, and his number’s not listed.”

“Is he required to list it with the Council?”

“The Council doesn’t insist. Alfred probably didn’t tell us because he has a low number. We don’t go around talking about our numbers. For centuries, Cleo has discouraged the practice. It’s another way of labeling people. Like anything else it can lead to prejudice.”

“Does your file on Alfred say how old he is?”

“Why do you ask?”

“He told me he was a fighter pilot during World War Two.”

“He was. He has many skills. How did you meet him?”

“Alex is dating him,” I said. My father had not answered my question.

“No one told me about that.”

“Dad. How did you meet him?”

“By chance. He sells drugs for a pharmaceutical company in the real world. He happened to come into my office in Malibu.”

“Hatsu said I could trust him.”

“Hatsu’s very old and wise. Is Alfred with you now?”

“No. I called him the same time I called James. Everyone seems to have abandoned me on this most important of days.”

“Nonsense. The Council is going to meet with you before you see Susan. Trust me, I’ve never seen them give one person so much attention.”

“When and where?” I asked.

“Seven. I’ll call you with the location before then.”

With the late start I’d gotten, and Alfred’s extensive training and my battle with Kari, the day was already half over. The meeting was only two hours away. “I feel like things are moving too fast,” I said. “That we’re not prepared for this showdown with Susan.”

“The Council has had time to reflect. Let’s see what they have to say.”

“All right, Dad.”

“Is that traffic I hear in the background?”

“Yeah.”

“I was told you hadn’t left your hotel room today.”

“Spying on me?”

“Guarding you.”

“I snuck out. It’s no big deal. Call me as soon as you know where I’m supposed to go.”

We exchanged good-byes. I was off the phone less than ten minutes when I tried James again. There was still no answer and I was worried about him. James may have been more respectful to my father in this world but I still couldn’t imagine anyone bossing him around.

I drove to the pawnshop I had stopped at the previous day while searching the industrial area for the elusive sewer. The owner looked as seedy as his store. With a bulging gut, food stains on his shirt, and an unlit cigar in his mouth, he had shown little interest in helping me. But while in the store, I had noticed a box filled with handguns sitting in the rear storage area.

I disliked guns, I hated everything they stood for. But I was not sure if that was true of the Jessica Ralle who usually walked the streets of witch world. I recalled owning my own handgun. Indeed I remembered being a deadly shot.

Russell had taught me how to shoot. It came back to me all of a sudden. So did the pain of his death. With so much running
around, I had not had a chance to sit and properly mourn his death. And now was not the time.

I remembered that Frank had not bothered to frisk me when I met with Susan, probably because the Lapras as a whole were so arrogant, they didn’t think they could be hurt. Frankie was dead, it was true, but the next guy in line to take his place would probably be just as cocky.

This time I returned to the pawnshop with five grand in cash. I told the owner what I wanted and he told me to go to hell. But then I caught his eye and warned him that I wasn’t used to being spoken to that way. He got the picture. I was connected. He immediately apologized.