Caught Forever Between Read online

  “Somethin’ wrong?” Devlin asked, leaning closer.

  Cass shook her head, not wanting him to come nearer. But he did anyway, closing the short distance between them. The hair on the nape of her neck rose and her hands knotted. Survival instincts insisted she not run. She caught his scent, musky and wild and clean.

  He slowly circled her several times, his shining gaze sweeping over her, nostrils flaring. She turned with him, heart pounding, refusing to give him her back again.

  Was this a test? Or had he just been in the swamp too long? Maybe both?

  He wasn’t what she’d expected. From what the mambo had said, Cass had half believed she’d have to sweet-talk the Devil himself to get her justice. But no horns sprouted from Devlin Daniels’s forehead, no cloven hooves, just dirty bare feet. She hadn’t expected him to be white, either. But why wouldn’t Gabrielle LaRue have a Caucasian godson? Louisiana was full to brimming with mingled cultures and bloodlines — one of the things Cass liked about the area.

  Devlin finally stopped in front of her. Cass met his gaze. He held out her knapsack. She took it from him, noting his long fingers with their thick, curved nails.

  “Boy,” the mambo said from behind her, voice stern. “Go on inside with yourself and put on a shirt. Mind your manners.”

  Devlin stared at Cass through his hair for another long moment before loping away with an irritated snort. Turning, Cass watched him leap up the porch steps. The mambo’s godson moved with a quick, fluid, almost animal grace. Opening the screen door, he slipped into the shack.

  A heartbeat later, the chirping-crrriicking-croaking-humming song of the insects and frogs lifted again into the sultry evening air. They know the danger is past, Cass thought, her mind still filled with the image of Devlin’s gleaming eyes watching her from behind the cover of his hair.

  “That boy never did like being told what to do,” the mambo said. “But at least he knows when to pay heed.”

  Cass saw amusement in Gabrielle’s eyes. “Which is more than you can say for most male creatures, ain’t it so, petite?”

  Cass nodded, wondering why the mambo had said male creatures instead of men. Slinging the knapsack onto one shoulder, she glanced up at the shack. It remained dark.

  “What if I can’t convince him?” she asked, hating how uncertain her voice sounded, how small. “What if he won’t listen?”

  “Oh, he’ll listen, Cassandra, he’ll listen good ’n close.” The mambo started toward the steps. “But it’s up to you to make him see the fired bullets and the spilled blood. Up to you to make my Devlin hunger to right things for your Michelangelo.”

  Cass followed Gabrielle. “And if I can’t? What then?”

  The mambo glanced back at her, her eyes night-swallowed, expression cryptic. “Then whatever you do, don’t run from him. Hear me? Don’t run.”

  Cass halted. She stared at the mambo, hoping she hadn’t heard right.

  “There always be a price,” Gabrielle said, drawing herself up. “Justice ain’t never been free, girl.” Power as dark and deadly as the bayou emanated from the mambo. Her face was cold and regal, and Cass truly saw her for what she was, a voodoo priestess steeped in magic, able to summon shambling life or shape a cold and brutal death.

  Cass’s gaze drifted back up to the lightless shack. She shivered, chilled, her fingers suddenly numb. Make Alex live for the mambo’s godson. You do that and maybe he’ll open his eyes again.

  Sucking in a deep breath of moist air, Cass said, “Devlin, what is he?” The steadiness of her voice surprised her.

  “He be the last of the coeur sauvage, the wild heart of the bayou — the loup garou.” Swiveling around to face the shack, Gabrielle placed her hands on her hips, and said in a low voice, “Turn on some lights, boy. We ain’t got your eyes.”

  Pale yellow light suddenly spilled from the shack’s windows and door. Cass stared at the mambo, wishing she could believe she hadn’t heard right, but Gabrielle hadn’t mumbled. She’d been quite clear. Loup garou. Werewolf.

  “Go on up with yourself, child,” the mambo said, waving a hand at the steps. Her bracelets jingled.

  “Werewolf?” Cass said, her voice strained.

  Gabrielle chuckled. “Don’t be calling Devlin a werewolf. That boy, he a wolf, pure and simple.”

  Cass’s gaze flicked back up to the shack. A shadow crossed behind the window, blotting out the light for a moment, then was gone. She swallowed hard, thinking of light-filled eyes and black hair, of justice in the form of claws, black and thick, and gleaming white fangs. In that moment, she realized she believed Gabrielle. Why the hell not? she thought. If there can be vampires in the French Quarter, why not werewolves in the bayou?

  Grasping the porch railing, the worn wood smooth beneath her hand, Cass placed her foot on the bottom step. An image of Alex filled her mind; Alex intent on his work, inking an Intuitive design into willing flesh, his golden hair tied back, his deep blue eyes focused, intense; saw again the laugh lines etched beside his lips, felt again the warmth of his gaze.

  Cass climbed the steps. Taking a deep breath, she opened the screen door with a steady hand. Devlin stood in one corner of the sparsely furnished room, his back to the wall. His nostrils flared as she stepped into the shack. She noticed he’d pulled on a black T-shirt. Guess he does know when to listen, after all.

  Cass glanced around the room. An easy chair. A couple of wooden kitchen chairs and a square kitchen table. An acoustic guitar propped in one corner. Next to one window, an artist’s easel holding a blank canvas. And, on the walls — her gaze stopped, lingered. Paintings, unframed and raw — dark, swirling colors, the images hungry and hurting and lonely.

  Her gaze skipped from one painting to the next — an empty boat on black water, oars floating away, glowing eyes watching from the darkness lining the shore; a tree stark against a moonlit sky, animal pelts hanging from its branches and a wolf howling at its base.

  If this was Devlin’s work — he was good, very good. He was also an Intuitive. Cass felt utter truth in the images he’d created.

  She also felt Devlin’s unwavering gaze as she walked over to the table and dropped her knapsack onto it. Determined not to look at him, to see if he’d slipped silently closer, she unzipped the knapsack. She pulled out a sketch pad and pencil, a box of inks, a few clean rags, antiseptic, a small bottle of bleach and her homemade rig.

  Not having the time to replace Alex’s shattered gun, Cass’d cobbled one together, prison-style. A sandpaper-sharpened guitar-string needle, a hobby motor, a spoon for the frame, guitar strings and pen shafts, a nine-volt battery transformer for power connected to a simple foot pedal, and she was good to go.

  The screen door thunked shut as Gabrielle entered the shack. A sudden flash of heat lightning strobed through the room, bleaching out the room’s yellowish light. Cass blinked. A long moment later, thunder rolled across the horizon. Her sweat-damp dress was plastered to her back, and her hair clung to her temples and forehead. Several fans churned the hot air.

  Gathering the heavy mass of her hair, Cass tied it back into a ponytail. Turning around, she looked at the mambo’s godson, relieved he still stood in the corner, and said, “What now?”

  Devlin met and held her gaze, half of his own hidden behind the veil of his hair, but said nothing. Through a window beside him, Cass saw a jagged tongue of lightning lick from the sky to the ground, dazzling blue-white, haunting her vision for several seconds afterward. Thunder boomed. Heaviness stilled the air. Her skin prickled.

  “The loa walk and talk,” Gabrielle said, her voice reverent as she looked out the window. “This be a night for requests. The loa are listening, ma petite. Be careful what you say.”

  Devlin’s gaze shifted to his godmother. “Ils sont d’eine mauvaise humeur,” he said, his voice pitched low.

  The mambo shrugged. “Nothing for it, boy. Their mood be even worse if we turn back now.”

  Cass jumped when Devlin suddenly growled, a low, deep-thro
ated sound that vibrated through the room. He dropped down into a crouch, his long-fingered, thick-nailed hands touching the floor in front of him. His muscles rippled, and she caught the gleam of long, curving canines as his growl intensified into a snarl.

  Cass thought of the door behind her and of the mambo’s warning — Don’t run. Sweat trickled along her temples.

  “Speak, girl,” Gabrielle said, her voice an urgent whisper. “Storms make him testy.”

  Gripping the edge of the table, Cass stared at Devlin. His thick nails had become black talons. “Alex looks into the heart of people, just like you do. Everyone calls him Michelangelo ’cause his work steals the breath and lifts the soul. And someone shot him for it,” she said, throat tight but her voice level. “A bullet to the brain. His blood spattered on his own pictures.”

  Images flickered, nightmare-grained, her memory a theater without an exit.

  Flicker: Alex sprawled on the floor, blood spray on the wall behind him.

  Flicker: The sound of him choking.

  Flicker: The reek of gunpowder and blood and vomit.

  Flicker: Raleigh, sketch pad in hand, following her into the shop, face pale.

  Flicker: Bored cops. Yellow crime-scene tape. Questions.

  And looping endlessly through her mind, Raleigh’s strained voice asking if his brother was dead. He’s dead, isn’t he? Cass? He’s dead.

  Devlin stopped growling. He continued to watch her, unblinking. Cass held his gaze, riveted by the wildness stark in his eyes.

  “I think Alex sketched out a hidden evil, maybe not even recognizing what it was,” she said, kneeling on the wood floor to be at the loup garou’s eye level. “But the one he drew it for? That one realized what Alex had revealed and tried to kill him. And maybe they have,” she added, the words slow, reluctant. She swallowed. “He’s been in a coma and he may never . . . he may — ”

  “C’est assez,” Devlin cut in, sparing her from saying aloud the thing she did not want to say, ever. His voice was thick and harsh, little more than a growl. He rose to his feet in one fluid, effortless motion. “Look into my heart and draw what you see.”

  Cass straightened slowly, the velvet fabric of her dress clinging to her thighs. Heart pounding, she settled herself into one of the kitchen chairs. Flipping open her sketch pad, she picked up a pencil and poised it over the blank sheet of paper.

  She glanced up at Devlin. He stood still, watching her, his hands with their black claws at his sides. She noted claws arching from the toes on his bare feet, as well. Lightning strobed into the room. Devlin’s eyes gleamed through his hair, white fire, silver moonlight, blue heat, and Cass sucked in her breath, caught in his restless gaze.

  Her pencil scratched across the paper, sketching in hard, bold strokes as images and symbols flashed through her mind like the lightning dancing across the sky.

  A black wolf pierced through the heart with three swords. Strobe.

  Claws scraping across a bare chest, blood welling up in their wake. Strobe.

  A bloodied figure huddled among a pile of corpses — human, wolves, and some in between — blood-smeared arms wrapped around knees, head down, face hidden, long black hair spilling, spilling, spilling. Strobe.

  A blood-red moon hanging low on the horizon silhouetting a crouched figure, flames blazing where a heart should be —

  Light-headed and gasping for air, Cass felt the pencil slip from her grasp, heard it tunk against the floor and roll away. She looked up and almost fell out of her chair when she saw Devlin standing over her, his gaze on the sketch pad. His scent — musk, sweat, and night-cooled green ivy — filled her nostrils. She stared at him, her eyes following the strong line of his jaw up to the pointed tip of his ear poking through the black depths of his hair.

  The mambo had been right. This was no man. This was an upright wolf. And a wounded one, at that.

  “You seek justice, too,” Cass whispered.

  Devlin went still. Listening. Waiting. His gaze never wavered from her sketch pad.

  “Do I get mine, loup garou?” she asked. She extended her hand, thinking to touch him, pet him maybe, get him used to her scent.

  A low growl rumbled up from his throat. Cass froze, her hand still in midair.

  “Don’t touch him, child,” Gabrielle said. “You leave your scent on him if’n you do, and that’s a mighty personal thing.”

  Lowering her hand to her lap, Cass said, “Well, do I?”

  Devlin turned his head and looked at her. She tried to read his eyes, but couldn’t, their dark, moonlight-flecked depths wary and waiting. He tapped one thick, black claw against the sketch pad.

  Cass glanced down, then stared, transfixed, by the image captured in her quick pencil strokes. She recognized it as one of the Major Arcana of a Tarot deck; a tall tower struck by lightning, ravaged by fire and battered by waves, figures tumbling through the storm-darkened air, plummeting helplessly as disaster overtakes them.

  “It’s a long way back from hell, for true,” Devlin said. “Y’sure you wanna go down that road?”

  “Already on it,” Cass said. Lightning flared, and searing white light pulsed in from outside. Light pulsed in Devlin’s eyes, as well. After many long seconds, thunder grumbled. The storm was moving away.

  “Oui, m’selle,” he said, his voice low and solemn. “Je te donne ma parole. I give my word,” he translated. He shook his hair back from his face. A handsome face, Cass realized. He glanced at his godmother. A wry half smile tugged up one corner of his mouth. “Maybe we’d better drink on it.”

  Gabrielle nodded. “Oui, boy, that we should.” She crossed the room to the little dormitory-sized fridge next to the sink. She retrieved three bottles of Dixie, giving one of the ice-cold bottles of beer to Cass and one to Devlin. The third she kept for herself.

  Twisting off the cap, Cass poured nearly half of the amber-colored beer down her parched throat. Then she touched the bottle to her face and forehead, sighing and closing her eyes. Relief, as icy and soothing as the beer, poured through her. Blood would be spilled for blood.

  “Set your gun to work,” Devlin said. Again, he tapped at the Tower sketch.

  Cass realized that his claws were gone. His long fingers ended in thick, curved fingernails. How does he do that? she wondered. She glanced at his feet. Yep. No claws. Toenails. She looked back up and into Devlin’s watchful gaze. Amusement flickered in his eyes, there and gone. She flushed, but didn’t lower her gaze.

  “One more thing,” Devlin said. He touched the paper beneath the design. “I want the words ‘coup de grâce.’”

  Turning the kitchen chair around, he straddled it. He pulled off his T-shirt, muscles flexing with the movement. He tossed the T-shirt onto the floor. Gabrielle tsked, but said nothing.

  Cass opened the jars of ink and readied her rig. Scooting her chair beside Devlin’s, she said, “I need to clean your skin, okay?”

  Devlin glanced at her, nose crinkling at the antiseptic’s sharp odor. Leaning his forearms on the chair back, he nodded.

  Cass cleaned his skin, wiping it dry with a soft rag. She splashed bleach on the already sterilized guitar-string needle, just to be double sure. She tapped the rig’s foot pedal. The gun buzzed, its bumblebee-drone filling the room. Her fingers tingled. She never pretraced patterns onto flesh. She always worked by memory, freehand.

  Glancing at her sketch, Cass needled black ink into Devlin’s shoulder. His muscles tightened, then relaxed. Otherwise, he didn’t react. The pungent smell of fresh ink curled into her nostrils. As the Tower took shape beneath her fingers, Cass focused on the sketch and the skin under her needle and forgot about everything else. Even Alex.

  The night beyond the windows was still and deep when Cass lifted her foot from the pedal and sat back. The gun fell silent. She wiped perspiration from her forehead with the back of an ink-stained hand. She felt utterly drained. She tossed the little homemade gun onto the table and picked up her bottle of Dixie and poured the rest of the now-warm beer
down her throat. She closed her eyes.

  “You got talent, girl.” The mambo’s voice dropped into the silence like a pebble into a pond, her words rippling into Cass’s thoughts. “Ain’t that right, Devlin-boy?”

  “Oui,” the loup garou murmured. “For true. She should take that talent and go.”

  Cass opened her eyes. Arms still folded along the back of the chair, Devlin watched her, his half-shadowed face impossible to read.

  She stiffened, then leaned forward. “No. You gave your word.”

  Devlin looked away. He stood, a sudden and graceful movement, turning the chair around as he did. He tossed his head, but his night-black hair still tumbled across his face. “Who?” he asked.

  “Helena Danzinger,” Cass said, voice tight and hard. Unfamiliar even to herself. “My sister.”

  Behind her, Gabrielle gasped. Devlin held Cass’s gaze for a long moment, then he turned and walked to the door, but not before she saw the muscle jump in his jaw. He pushed open the screen door.

  “Wait!” the mambo called. “She never said it was her own kin that needed hunting. You sit yourself back down, boy. You don’t have to do this.”

  “Name’s been given, marraine,” Devlin said. “Word’s been given, too, for true.” He glanced at Cass. “Tomorrow night. Tell ma marraine where.” He stepped out into the night, the screen door slamming behind him.

  Face tight with dismay, Gabrielle turned to face Cass. “His kin’s been murdered, and you ask him to slay yours. You pushin’ fire, girl.”

  Cass nodded. She’d been pushing fire all her life.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Cass held Alex’s cool, unresponsive hand, her gaze on his dreaming face. At least, she hoped he was dreaming and that the dreams were sweet. The machines that monitored her Michelangelo’s every breath and heartbeat blipped and beeped, a steady, reassuring sound. Needles pierced his flesh and IVs dripped fluid and medication into his veins.

  A beige curtain partially encircled Alex’s bed, giving the illusion of privacy, but the harsh coughing from the patient on the other side provided the reality. Cass’d placed a vase of lilacs on the nightstand; the purple flowers glimmered under the lights, and their sweet, clean scent filled the room.