“How is my bebe? You hold onto her, oui?”
“She’s better and better,” Alain replied. “The Femmes Blanches have worked good magic for her, mon ami.”
“Merci, merci bien, mes jolies,” Andre said. He raised a bushy brow at Izzy and she saw a tear sparkling in his lower eyelashes. “You see? It’s gonna be okay. Now pass them things out. We gotta hurry, us.”
She was grateful to have something to do as she handed the necklaces one at a time to Alain, who took them from her and draped one each over Jean-Marc, Caresse and Pat. Three more for the Femmes Blanches and three for the soldiers. There was no room to move in the back; everyone was wedged in like victims of a shipwreck in a lifeboat.
Adrenaline was pumping through her body like a river. She had a wild moment where she considered bolting from the van and running away, but she knew how irrational that was. And of course she would never desert Pat. But vampires? Demons? Juju? Mojo? Words from horror movies, not real life. Her heart pounded so hard she could hear the rhythm.
Andre’s cell phone rang again. He grabbed it, grunted and said, “Oui.” After he hung up, he yelled, “Okay, this is it!”
A second later he downshifted, swung sharply to the right and the van left the road. After they breached the roadside berm of dirt and vegetation, they tilted sharply downward. The low beams revealed branches rushing up as he kept his foot on the gas and his hands on the wheel. She heard the whum-whum-whum of a helicopter. He swore in French and turned off the headlights. She held onto the armrest and the dash, holding her breath.
Then the van slammed hard into what had to be the trunk of a tree, throwing her forward against her shoulder strap, and Andre immediately killed the engine.
“Merde! Everyone good?” Andre called.
“We’re good,” Alain reported. “The wounded are stable.”
“Vite, vite,” Andre said. Movement filled the compartment behind them. “You wait, I’ll help you out,” he told Izzy.
She gave her head a shake and tried the door handle. It opened and she hopped out onto hardpacked earth. Several low-slung, rusty sedans, minivans and station wagons wheezed beneath a stand of live oaks trees, exhaust puffing from their tailpipes. A van lumbered up, followed closely behind by a pickup truck embellished with a gun rack.
“You have got to be kidding me,” she muttered, as a rangy man wearing a baseball cap and a jean jacket popped out of the nearest car. But that wasn’t her immediate concern. She had to see how Pat was doing. She knew he had been in her life before all the madness. He was the only normal person here, and he had come for her. She didn’t know how she knew that, but she did.
She circled around to the left-hand side, pulled open the panel and looked down at Pat. His face was gray and slack.
His chest isn’t rising, she thought in a flurry of panic.
“Hail Mary, full of grace,” she whispered automatically, placing a hand reverently on his forehead. So I’m Catholic, she thought. “Blessed art though among women.”
The other passengers stirred as if she had said something very odd. Then her mind filled with the image of the medieval woman with the short dark hair. Deep emotion gripped her hard, as if someone had gathered up her heart and given it a squeeze. She touched her chest as she missed not one but several beats. Then the sensation passed.
And she could no longer remember the words of the prayer.
Anxiously she licked her lips and put both her hands on Pat’s forehead. The van boiled with tension; the others were watching, waiting to see if she had the power to help him. She closed her eyes, willing herself to have that power. But as before, with Jean-Marc, she felt nothing.
“Allons,” someone said—one of the soldiers—and Izzy felt movement as people exited the van on the right side. Feeling useless, she cupped the sides of his face with her hands. He felt so cold.
Beside him, flat on his back, Jean-Marc watched her with half-open eyes, and she felt a moment’s awkwardness that she hadn’t done anything for him. If their past was half as complicated as their very short present, it would take some sorting out to see how she felt about him. She opened her mouth to speak to him, but Andre tugged hard on her elbow.
“Chére, we need to get them out of here.”
“Be careful with them,” she pleaded with Andre, then backed out just as lightning zigzagged across the sky and rain poured down as if a dam had broken.
“Hostie,” Andre swore. He held a hand over her head as if it would do any good at all. On boneless legs, she wobbled beside him to a dark-colored station wagon. “Get in the back. It’s safer there.”
She wanted to do something heroic, like insist that she didn’t want to be safe, but of course she did, and of course she knew that she had been expected to help, and had repeatedly failed, that this was happening because of her, but she didn’t know why.
The only thing she could do was not slow them down. So she climbed into the seat behind him and let him shut the door, then scooted to the far side so others could climb in. Craning her neck, she watched to see where they took Pat and Jean-Marc. Dark shapes moved in the darker rain. Lightning threw white light against the scene as a van rolled between her and Andre’s vehicle. There was a little boy sitting in the front, holding a little black stuffed animal.
No. It’s a kitten. It’s my kitten, she thought in a rush. It’s got a name, a funny name. It’s… She held her breath, waiting. Nothing popped into her head.
Then her door opened and Michel slid in, followed by a chisel-faced, dark-headed man in dark blue body armor, with a design in a patch on his biceps. She stared hard at it, trying to make it familiar. It was a tower made of stone. A gauntleted hand extended from it, either reaching for a dove that was flying out of the tower, or releasing it.
“I am Dominique de Devereaux. Jean-Marc called us in, Gardienne,” the man said, inclining his head deferentially. His accent was very thick, very French. “Lucky, Georges and Maurice. None better. I’m sorry we couldn’t get here any sooner.” He flashed her an almost boyish, lopsided grin, a startling bit of sunshine in his hard warrior’s face. “No one will get close to you, now that we’re here.”
“Thank you,” she said, faking a calm response as she wondered who “we” were, and how many. “Merci bien.”
“We have to go,” Michel insisted, pulling a pistol from a holster under his arm and cracking it open. “I have no idea why the ammo in your Medusa carried no magical payload. We’ve got several footlockers of different calibers of ammunition with us now, and everything tests out as fully loaded.”
“That’s good.” Another faked response. She was glad her Medusa hadn’t carried “magical payloads.” From what she understood, if she had shot Caresse with such a bullet, her heart would have stopped instantly.
The front passenger door opened and a dusky-hued woman in a loose-knit sweater and a long skirt sat down, slammed the door and put on her seat belt.
“Bon,” she said, trying to smile at Isabelle. “I’m glad you’re okay, chére. A bad business, this. I hope there’s room in your place in New York for all us Cajuns.”
My place in New York? Isabelle thought, wondering who this woman was and if she was a werewolf, too. “Of course there is,” she replied.
Jean-Marc did not die. He, Pat and the unsouled police officer were carried on stretchers into another van. One of his trusted Shadows lieutenants, Georges, got behind the wheel and took it down unpaved side roads that quickly became muddy gulleys as the rain poured down. Lying on his back with Alain hovering over him, he spoke to his cousin telepathically and the two assessed their situation.
Are the Bouvards among us aware that Isabelle has lost the use of her Gift, and has no memory of anything except Pat Kittrell?
Alain made a Gallic