Part 7 (1/2)

Izzy grabbed the Medusa with both fists and pounded on the monster's left wrist, then on the top of its head. She kicked and flailed and somehow got it to let go of her. She tumbled off its back, landing hard. As she scooted away, she covered her head.

A gun went off.

There was a moment's delay, and then the minion exploded.

Eyes against her knees, she clasped her hands across the back of her neck in a protective gesture. Smoking fragments thudded to the ground around her head and shoulders. Izzy clutched her malfunctioning gun and breathed hard through her mouth, working to get herself back under control and into the action.

But there was no more shrieking, no more gunfire or explosions. As she sat up, she saw bodies on the ground and fronds and ferns undulating as something raced off. None of the bodies were her people.

Thin moonlight poured down like a weak searchlight.

We're alive. We've all made it.

What the h.e.l.l is wrong with my gun?

She pulled down the f.l.a.n.g.e on the left side of the barrel and pushed the cylinder open. The cartridges were in the chambers. The mechanism to deliver them must be faulty. Or Louise had done something to it.

”Guardienne?” Bernard shouted. He dashed toward her. ”Tu vas bien?”

”I'm...” she replied, but her voice died away as her focus went past the Medusa to a dark shape slithering next to her right boot.

Another cottonmouth!

”Snake!” she shouted.

”Where? Where?” Bernard yelled, aiming his gun at her feet.

She got to her feet and danced backward. The shape broadened and expanded, filling out into the hazy shadow of a man. It looked like the chalk outline of a murder victim. Then it lifted from the ground and rose into the air like a kite. It hung in the air about two feet from Izzy, a.s.suming a three-dimensional form, devoid of facial detail.

”Guardienne,” it rasped. Its voice was a whisper that echoed in her head, in her chest, in her bones.

”Where's the snake?” Bernard asked her.

He and the others and were searching the ground with their weapons pointed down. No one else saw the shadowy figure or heard its voice. Was she having another vision?

”It must have gotten away,” Louise observed. ”We have to get out of here. They probably weren't alone.”

”Guardienne,” the voice said again, flat, hollow and almost dead-sounding. ”Vous voyez avant vous le va.s.sal du Roi Gris.”

Roi Gris. The Gray King. The patron of the Devereauxes. Was this the Gray King? Should she kneel?

”Je cherche Alain de Devereaux,” she said aloud, before she even realized what she was doing. I am looking for Alain de Devereaux.

”Moi, aussi,” the figure said. Me, also.

”Madame, what are you seeing?” Louise demanded, her arms extended as she whirled in a circle. Mathilde ripped open one of her cargo pockets, and the two men fanned the perimeter with their machine guns.

”Do you know where he is?” Izzy asked the figure. Her French deserted her, as it usually did after a few spoken words.

The figure rose higher into the air, thinning and streaming like a column of smoke, difficult to see against the black night. Ignoring the questions of the others, Izzy s.h.i.+elded her forehead and squinted hard, straining to separate the figure from the background of trees and darkness.

Her head was throbbing, her chest and throat ached, but she shouted after it, ”Where is he?”

”What are you seeing?” Louise yelled at her, circling again. The two men followed her lead, flanking Izzy, placing her inside a circle as they scanned the black bayou with the barrels of their weapons.

The figure became nothing more substantial than a wisp of smoke that arced over the trees and trailed downward.

”What is it?” Louise insisted. ”Ms. DeMarco, tell us what is there!”

The two men swiveled in Louise's direction.

Ms. DeMarco? Not Ma Guardienne?

In a split-second instant of clarity, Izzy realized that Louise had lied to her: ”Nothing gets in, nothing gets out.”

Louise had told Izzy that her bedroom was so heavily warded that they didn't need to worry about it being bugged. That Michel was equally warded such that he couldn't be contacted telepathically. Yet, when Catherine and Laure had arrived, she had sensed their presence before they had a chance to knock.

A guilty shadow crossed over Louise's face. Then she said, ”Let's hustle!”

”My gun jammed,” Izzy said. ”You loaded it and it didn't work anymore.”

”Give it to me. It should work.” Under the guise of reaching for the gun, Louise aimed her palm at Izzy. A burst of light erupted from the center of Louise's hand, shooting straight for her.

”Non, madame!” Bernard shouted, rus.h.i.+ng Izzy and flinging her to the ground. Crouched in front of her, he formed a palm strike with his left hand. Blue light coalesced into a fireball and slammed into Louise. Louise was thrown backward, her body hurtling through s.p.a.ce until she smacked into a cypress tree. Izzy heard the impact. Then she landed on the sharp, jutting sections of cypress root encircling the tree, and fell sideways into the swamp water.

Meanwhile, Mathilde took off at a dead heat. After she'd put in some distance, she wheeled around, reached into her cargo pants, and flung something cylindrical at Bernard.

”Look out!” Izzy yelled, attempting to intercept it with another sphere of energy. But nothing came from her palm.

”Stay down!” Bernard ordered Izzy, as he shot a ball of blue light at the object and it exploded in midair.

Hugues tackled Mathilde, pus.h.i.+ng her facedown on the ground. ”Don't move!” he yelled, as Bernard got to his feet and trained his submachine gun on her.

Hugues straddled Mathilde. He wrenched her gun out of her right hand and threw it hard. Then he began patting her down, slapping his hands down her sides and back.

”What else do you have? What do you have?” he shouted at her. ”Give it up! Give it all up now or I'll blow your f.u.c.king head off!”

”Who are you working for?” The barrel of Bernard's submachine gun jammed against the back of her head. ”Talk! Now!”

Mathilde didn't move. He nudged her with the barrel. She remained motionless.

Bernard threw down his weapon and yelled, ”Merde! She's done something. Suicide spell.”

”CPR,” Hugues said. ”Get the armor off her. It's bolted.”

Izzy saw the bolt that kept the armor in place. She shouted, ”Terminus!”

Hugues slid out the bolt and pulled the two halves of the armor apart.

The men fell into French as they stripped her armor off and ripped open her sweater. Bernard pushed down too hard; Mathilde's rib cracked with a terrible wrenching sound.