Jackson (7 page)

“I am the High Priestess of the Seattle coven. I initiated your mother, and her mother before her. You do not walk away from me, novice.”

Although Mariah spoke quietly, her words stirred something inside Audrey, who found herself briefly bowing her head in submission.

“There, now, we’re all friends again.” Hannah smiled brightly at Audrey. “All you have to do, dearest, is be initiated into the coven, and all will be explained to you.”

Audrey ignored her and spoke to the old woman. “What happens if I refuse?”

“You will be driven from our territory, and any other that belongs to a coven,” Mariah said softly. “You will become a solitary––a rogue witch––and you will be shunned and reviled by any Wiccan whose path you cross.”

“All that, just for not joining your little witch club?” Audrey chuckled. “What do you do when someone is late with their dues? Burn them at the stake?” As Mariah’s expression darkened she held up one hand. “Sorry. I forgot, that’s what other crazy people do to you guys.”

The old lady sniffed. “Not anymore. Now, will you join the circle?”
 

“You can’t refuse, really, Audrey,” her godmother said before Audrey could reply. “Without a Wiccan mate you’ll be doomed to live as a mortal. You’ll grow old and die a mortal death.”

“Like you?” Audrey asked Mariah.

The old woman murmured under her breath and passed her bony hand in front of her wrinkled face, leaving a trail of tiny sparkling silver stars that spun around her head. Her thin cheeks filled out, and the lines around her eyes and mouth slowly shrank. The grizzled cap of her iron-gray straightened and fell in soft dark red waves to her shoulders. By the time the little stars faded away Mariah looked no older than Audrey.

The High Priestess’s white teeth flashed between her full red lips. “Now why would you think that, child?”

WAITING FOR HANNAH Gardener and her young companion to emerge from the herbalist’s shop bored Henri Marquette, who finally handed off the task to his clergy aide.
 

“Watch for them, and follow them when they leave. Make note of every other place they stop.”

His aide nodded as he picked up a pair of binoculars and trained them on the herbalist’s door.

Marquette got out of that car and walked back to the SUV behind it, where his human lackey sat behind the wheel texting on his phone. As soon as he saw Marquette he switched off the device and rolled down the window.
 

“Where to, sir?”

“The south end.”
 

Marquette took the human’s phone from his hand and got in the back seat, where he pulled up a Seattle news site and scrolled through the crime reports until he found one about a suspicious fire, and gave the driver the address in New Holly.

Hannah Gardener had no idea that Marquette had her followed back to Seattle after every one of their clandestine meetings. Nor did she have an inkling of how much information he had amassed on her over the years. If she did, she might assume he intended to kill her and seize her wealth and property. Hannah Gardener didn’t know that in the seven centuries since Marquette had attained immortality he had amassed enough wealth to bury her under a small mountain of the conflict gems she coveted.
 

The Wiccan’s beauty, fortune and property meant nothing to him. Her sole value was as the only source of the mysterious potion that kept the curse ravaging his body in check. For that reason the witch was even more precious to him than his faith.

Immortality had been his reward for serving the Almighty, but until he had been cursed Marquette never imagine it could also be forged into a horrific punishment. Five years earlier, when he had stormed the Wiccan stronghold in Ireland with his Templar brothers, he had thought only of doing the work. He was sworn to wipe the heathen plague from the face of the earth, and so he had––until he had come upon the crone cowering behind one of their filthy altars, her grotesque wrinkled body naked, her joints swollen––and her belly bulging with child.

Marquette had thought it yet another ruse, and thrust his blade through the witch to dispel the enchantment. As his oiled steel pierced her body, it changed into the smooth, comely shape of a much younger woman…but the child in her belly remained.

She had fallen to her knees, staring up at his face with such a curious expression at first––as if she admired him. Her lips stretched out into a wide and terrible smile, and then she uttered a string of words in the Old Language, splayed her hand over her bleeding belly, and clamped her hand around his ankle.

He felt the burn of the enchantment and kicked her away. “Curse you, heathen bitch.”
 

“My suffering is done,” the Wiccan whispered. “But never will yours be.” She closed her eyes and went limp.

Later he would learn that she had drawn on the last feeble moments of life of the unborn child to send Marquette into a living hell. It began with his fingers, which slowly began to twist and distort, and then spread up his arms and over his shoulders. His spine curved so that he could not stand up straight, and then his head became permanently twisted to one side. Open sores spread over his skin and created a stink nothing could wash away.
 
While his body gnarled into knots and his flesh rotted Marquette suffered the accompanying pain of his many afflictions, which no amount of drugs or drink could relieve.
 

Through it all, only one part of his body remained unaltered: his face. As if the witch wanted him to always have one reminder of the glory of what he had been.

His immortality gone, and his body reduced to a completely crippled shadow of his former self, Marquette made the noble decision to put an end to his pain. He fell on his sword––only to feel it snap in half under him. He then directed his clergy aide to cut off his head, and that sword suffered the same fate. He then tried every means possible to kill himself––drowning, burning, crushing, suffocating––and each time his body emerged unscathed because he was not only still immortal, but the witch’s curse had also made him invulnerable.

He believed he would live forever in torment and pain, until Hannah Gardener had contacted him and offered a treatment that would relieve his suffering for the phase of one moon. She sent the first vial to him by courier, and since nothing could kill him, he drank it…and his body returned to its former, unblemished glory.

  
Marquette felt no shame over his unholy alliance with the witch. Had he not done everything he could to end his dependency on the Wiccan? He had taken the vials to be analyzed by the best scientists in the country. Over and over they had tested the tiny traces of the potion, but all they were able to determine was that it was an infusion of simple herbs. They had reverse-engineered the potion to determine the exact amounts of the herbs used, and even recreated it. Their version did nothing but make him puke.

Marquette suspected it was not the herbs or how they were measured that gave the potion its restorative powers. The witch merely used that as a suspension to contain the healing power of the spell with which she enchanted it. Yet despite torturing over a dozen Wiccan wretches, Marquette had never been able to learn anything about the spell she used. Nor could he breech the wards that protected her estate.
 

He had briefly considered abducting and torturing Audrey Mather, the girl Hannah had taken in after her mother’s murder, for what she might know. He had never observed any particular affection between the two, however, and Hannah seemed to treat the girl like another servant. He also could not risk her being missed by Hannah, who might withhold the potion as retaliation.

The SUV stopped across the street from a blackened ruin of a house surrounded by yellow police tape. “Are you sure that’s the right address, sir?”

“Wait here.” Marquette got out, holding the door frame for a moment as a new and unpleasant pain shot up through his left leg, and then walked across the street to duck under the tape and inspect the site.

The fire had rendered the dwelling uninhabitable, but according to the news report the two adults and three children living inside had been rescued virtually unharmed. Marquette moved closer and removed the glove from his one functioning hand, extending it as he opened his mind to search for any trace of the unnatural.

While the heat of the fire had eaten through or charred every surface of the house’s interior, he felt a tiny tick of magic, and followed it to what had been a small room in the back corner.

Like the rest of the dwelling the room had been reduced to ash and burnt rubble, but he still felt the spell trace, which buzzed like a mosquito in his head. He moved his hand back and forth, sweeping it over every inch around him until the energy jabbed his palm like a stinger.

Marquette knelt in the soaked ash and began pulling aside broken wood slats and the scorched springs that were all the remained of a crib. Beneath it lay a shriveled bundle of half-melted fur the size of a walnut, and when he touched it the remnants of what enchanted it glowed a sickly yellow and crawled eagerly onto his fingers. He felt his skin wither and crack and quickly dropped the bundle before he stood and backed away from it. The glow flared and then faded away, and the bundle quickly disintegrated into ash.

After he returned to the SUV Marquette directed the human to drive him to the sanctuary provided for him and his men by the sworn faithful. On the outskirts of the city, the compound was protected by armed guards stationed outside its walls. Two of his own men flanked the gate, and only after thoroughly inspecting the SUV did they permit the driver to enter.

Marquette went directly from the car to his study, where his steward was using a computer to review the latest surveillance videos of Hannah Gardener’s estate.

“My lord.” The human shot to his feet and bowed. “We have received several calls from the Temple Master in Los Angeles. He wishes to speak to you at once.”

“It can wait.” Marquette went to the computer. “Who left the witch’s estate last night before sundown?”

His steward frowned. “No one but the girl. She was wearing her uniform, so I assumed she was leaving for work.”

“Show it to me.” Marquette reined in his temper as the human fumbled with the keyboard, and then watched as the screen showed Audrey Mather’s car driving out through the gates. Through the windshield he could see that she was wearing her uniform, and then frowned and took out the human’s phone and pulled up the news article about the arson again, which featured several photos taken at the scene.

One of them showed Audrey Mather standing beside an ambulance and watching the house burn.

JACKSON HEARD THE door to the basement open, and footsteps on the stairs, but kept his head down and his body limp as his abductor approached. The chains suspending him from the ceiling were enchanted, but only with a mid-level containment spell, which didn’t completely inhibit his power. To compel the bastard to release him, he would need him to come close.

A wave of icy water crashed into him, catching him off-guard and making him sputter and jerk.

“Good afternoon, Captain Daniels.” An overhead light switched on to reveal a short, wrinkled old woman holding a pail in one hand and a fire extinguisher in the other. “I hope you enjoyed your nap.”

Jackson planted his feet and straightened before he regarded the crone. She could have found out his name from his wallet, but his rank was only known to the Magus Corps and leaders among the coven––which made her a High Priestess or another operative.
 

“Release me,” he said.

“You’re wondering how I know your name. I was given the usual courtesy notification when you were sent into my territory.” The old woman set down the bucket but held onto the extinguisher. “I was not informed, however, that you came to hunt Audrey Mather.”

“Release me,” Jackson repeated softly, and let a small flare of his power show in his eyes.

Her eyes narrowed, and her aura flared brightly, indicating she could easily match his ability.
 

“I am Mariah, High Priestess of the Seattle coven. The girl you are investigating is not responsible for the humans being murdered in the south end. She only discovered she was Wiccan today. Someone is–”

“Release me,” Jackson bellowed, yanking on the chains as he lunged forward.

Mariah took a step back and lifted the hose of the fire extinguisher. “I will, Captain. As soon as you promise to leave Seattle at once.”

The air around Jackson began to snap and spark. “I am an officer of the Corps, Priestess. We do not take orders from witches.”

“You are meddling in matters that you don’t understand,” Mariah snapped, and then sighed. “Captain, I understand your anger. I know you were sent here to stop this madness. But Audrey Mather is not her mother. I swear to you, she has never killed or harmed anyone.”

So the old crone was trying to protect Audrey. “If she is innocent, she has nothing to fear from me.”

“What you and the Magus Corps do not see is what Audrey may become. The girl has the potential to become a powerful force for good.” Her mouth flattened. “I will not risk losing that.”

His instincts told him that Mariah spoke the truth, but only part of it.
 

“Is that why you tried to split my skull in half? To protect the girl from me? You’re a fool.”

“I acted in haste,” the old woman admitted, her brow furrowing. “You know how Hannah suffered at the hands of Audrey’s mother, and she has not…adjusted well to her condition. I wish to bring Audrey into the circle, so that we might enlist her aid in trying to restore Hannah to her True Self.”

“And you thought I’d get in the way,” Jackson guessed.

“I hadn’t considered you as a complication,” Mariah said. “When I came upon you in the guesthouse there was no time to explain anything.” She paused before she added, “I did not wish to hurt Audrey by exposing your real reason for seducing her. It will drive her away from us, and she will end a rogue, or worse.”