Out of Sight (22 page)

P
oppy wasn’t at Fortunes.

With Liam and Ethan, Sykes stood in the living room of her apartment. Tension boiled in the atmosphere.

“I watched her come in here,” Sykes said.

“So you’ve told us,” Liam said. “Several times. But that was hours ago and no one here has seen her.”

Sykes opened and closed his hands. “She could have gone to Royal Street.”

“Already called there,” Liam said. Muscles worked in his jaw. “No luck. I’m going to ask Ben and Willow to come back from Kauai. Ben’s gonna want to be here for his sister, and so will Willow. We need everyone we can get.”

“Nick Montrachet will be with us,” Sykes said. “We’ll have to figure out how to contact the other families—and fast. But I’m going to find Poppy first, then worry about the rest of it.”

Two sets of footsteps ran up the stairs outside but they were too heavy to belong to a woman.

Nat Archer came in with David.

“At least Marley’s at home with Gray and Pascal, but it’s going to take both of them to stop her from sneaking out and trying something dumb,” Nat said. “She’s muttering about ushers or something. I think she’s lost it.”

Sykes met David’s eyes by accident and realized the boy wasn’t hearing about the Ushers for the first time. “Did you see Marley?” he asked. “Is she all right?”

“She thinks she ought to travel,” David said obliquely.

“Travel where?” Liam asked.

David raised his shoulders to his ears and kept his eyes on Sykes. “She said she was waiting to be told where.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Sykes said.

David shook his head no. “I guess not. They’re getting a doctor in.”

“Jesus.” Sykes paced around the perimeter of the room. “I’ve got to reach Poppy. Her skills are patchy, though.” He glared at Liam and Ethan.

Both men looked uncomfortable.

“Mind if I join this party?” Nat said. “When I got the news I started a search going. At this point I can’t do anything more than have officers alerted to keep an eye out for her.”

Sykes paused his walking. “At this point?”

“There’s no evidence that anything’s happened to Poppy.”

Sykes spread his arms. “Do you see her anywhere?
There’s no sign she ever came back up here after I left her and we were all lured away so we wouldn’t be around to stop anything.”

“We weren’t,” Liam pointed out.

“I was,” Ethan told his brother. “She didn’t come back here. I’ve tried her phone a dozen times.”

Liam gave a hollow laugh. “I wish she would answer but we both know how likely she is to have the thing on.”

“We’ll be lucky if she has it with her at all.” Sykes didn’t look at the brothers. “She’s starting to communicate. I don’t know when she got convinced she could only receive but not send. It might not make a difference now, but at least it would be a chance. I could try.”

“Yeah,” Liam said. “We should have helped her with that but she was always the little sister and I guess we never stopped treating her that way.”

With downcast eyes, David left. He didn’t say a word, just closed the door behind him and clattered down the stairs.

“Damn, you people are oddballs,” Nat said. He looked at the ceiling. “Come home, Poppy. Just show up and we promise not to beat the crap out of you.”

No one cracked a smile.

“We need the Harmony,” Sykes said. “We’re supposed to have it by now. I know we are.” He thought about the little angel gradually emerging from stone in his studio. Why had he been unable to work faster? Why did the piece seem to evolve only at its own pace?

“And we need another key, and the Ultimate Power,” Liam added. “The time has run out. You said we were warned to hurry, Sykes.”

“Okay,” Nat said. “We go over everything again. Go back to when you left the Court of Angels, Sykes. Switch on all those extra senses of yours and look for any little thing you might have noticed. Someone who seemed out of place. Are you sure you weren’t followed?”

Sykes gave him a pitying look, which he quickly softened. You couldn’t expect someone who wasn’t psi to know how off the wall that sounded.

“Earlier than that,” Nat continued blithely. “The call you got about going to the morgue. Did you hear anything or anyone in the background. Was the caller identified?”

“No identification. When he said Blades wanted to meet with us I assumed the secrecy was because of his job. Didn’t hear anything or anyone in the background.”

“How about anything on the way here?”

Sykes thought about the walk from Royal Street and the woman he had held and kissed. Nothing unusual? Nothing he wanted to share. “I didn’t see a thing. It was getting pretty dark. The crowds were out. Everything was normal.”

“You saw her come into this building?”

“I’ve told you I did.” He looked down and away. Very distant, very faint came the suggestion of a voice. He held up a hand for silence and listened. And listened. It didn’t come again.

“You’re sure she was inside?” Nat said.

“Yes, goddamn it.”

“This is my job and I know how to do it,” Nat said. He wore no jacket and planted his fists on his hips. The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled above his elbows and every muscle and sinew flexed in his forearms. So did the ones in his jaws.

“Then do it,” Sykes said under his breath. He kept all channels open so wide he heard a scuffle of small animal feet, very small. He wondered if Poppy knew she had a mouse in her wall.

“We have to be able to do more than stand here,” Ethan said.

“We’re going to.” Sykes looked around. “Anyone got a city map?”

“I don’t need one,” Nat said through his teeth.

“There,” Liam said, nodding toward a bookcase where a row of guidebooks were lined up. He pulled out one of several for New Orleans and unfolded a map of the city from inside. “This is the one I use when people ask directions. We all think it’s the best.”

“Got a highlighter?”

Liam took one from a cup of pens and pencils on a side table.

Spreading the map on the same table, Sykes pored over the area. “I don’t know what else to do, so I’m going to search. Who’s with me?”

“We all are,” Nat said, sounding tired.

“Then we divide this up and off we go.”

Nat said. “I don’t like waiting around any more than you do. But we don’t have an idea where to start. Someone will have seen something—believe that. We’ll get a lead.”

David arrived back in the room, unusually flushed for him. He had taken off the shades and his eye looked worse than ever now, the range of colors was so much broader.

“You walked her back here and down the alley,” he said to Sykes.

“I’ve already told everyone that.”

David looked away. “I didn’t know before.”

Of course he didn’t.
“Sorry. Yes, that’s what I did.”

“You, er, stood outside the door. First facing each other, then side-by-side with you pointed toward the wall.”

Now he had everyone’s attention. “That’s right,” Sykes said.

“You left. You turned back a couple of times.”

“I waved,” Sykes told him.

“And Poppy had gone inside about then?”

“Yes.”

“You went to the morgue where I found you, right? Straight there?”

“Straight there,” Sykes agreed.

David looked miserable. “I’m not sure of the order, but Poppy came out of this building and walked down toward the street, then she turned and walked back. She got just so far and she turned around again and tried to
run. Someone came up behind her. She was dragged. Her heels made grooves in the gravel.”

Sykes wiped sweat from his eyes.

“It was probably a van that backed in. The size of the wheel base looks like it. Or a small pickup. Someone got out and went around to the passenger side. Got back in again. The footsteps from behind Poppy were heavier, like he was carrying something. He stopped a bit, then got in the driver’s seat and drove away. That’s all I’ve got.”

“What the hell?” Nat gaped. “How would you know that?”

Sykes said simply, “Patterns?”

“Patterns,” David agreed. “Yours, because I know them—Poppy’s, too. Others are just marks to me like hundreds of others—nothing I remember seeing before.”

Sykes massaged his temples. Once more there was a whispering voice very far away. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought it said, “Hear me.”

I
t was the biggest egg Poppy had ever seen. Cradled in a red bowl, from end to end the shell must measure about eight inches.

“Eat,” Zibock cried with gusto. “It is the best of the best and I’m happy to give it to you. They are rare now and must be used sparingly. But it will make you stronger. I believe you have been misused on my account. This, I regret.”

She sat on her silk bed, with pillows propped all around her, while Zibock, his own red bowl in the palm of one huge hand, stood over her. Her bowl was on her lap.

Whatever she did must be thought through carefully. To antagonize this bizarre person could be lethal. She knew this without his having said an unpleasant word to her.

Poppy swallowed. She didn’t give up easily but she couldn’t get around the conviction that she would die here.

He fixed her with his glowing eyes. “Eat,” he said.

She looked up at him and realized she was frowning.

Then he laughed, a big laugh that shook his oversized body. “Aha, it is your first of its kind. I shall show you.”

He sat on his haunches, put one end of the egg between his pointed teeth and bit down. The shell cracked open at the top, breaking off a large, ragged piece. First he sniffed the interior, then nodded. He chewed what he had bitten off and fastened his mouth over the hole in the shell. Up he tilted the egg and with a loud sucking sound appeared to inhale the contents.

Small strings of gummy material streaked his beard and little…bones?

Finally, he shoved the entire shell in his mouth and crunched, gulped, then sighed with pleasure. “Now you,” he told her.

Poppy figured this was part of a test and she had better manage to at least make a start on her sickening meal. She raised the egg, surprised at how heavy it was, and opened her teeth on the end.

“Soon you will oversee the production of our young,” Zibock said. “You will be able to get the secret to our renewal from your kind. We will work together.” He laughed again, his body quaking.

The doors to the hall flew open and several of the nondescript people she had seen before marched into the room. Among them was one with a head resembling a bloated, hard-shelled insect although the rest of the body appeared human. She tried not to look at the thing.

“Protector,” the one in the lead said, “we understand there are problems with some of our subjects. They
have been unable to remain with their host humans and have emerged again and terminated.”

“What?” Zibock pounded a fist on a column and the gold chains attached to his hands rattled. He paced, throwing his robes behind him each time he turned. “An error has been made. There is something we did not get quite right. By the honor of our predecessors, we cannot afford to waste more time. Bring them all in and we will regroup.”

“But they are all over New Orleans,” the man said.

“And every one of them can be located on our system,” Zibock thundered. “Get started.”

“There is another unexpected occurrence.” The spokesman snapped his fingers and the creature with the bug head went back to the door. It opened and a figure shot into the hall, propelled by a female Embran whose ears jutted from the top of her head.

“There,” the woman said. “She was trying to find a way inside. She will not say why.” With that she threw Wazoo forward and she sprawled on the carpet.

“Wazoo?” Poppy threw aside the red bowl, the egg and her silk covers to rush and help the other woman up. “How did you get here? Are the others—”

Wazoo pressed a finger to her lips, silencng Poppy, but her heart beat fast and she felt the first hope in too long.

“What others?” Zibock asked, advancing on them. He pulled Wazoo from Poppy’s grasp and studied her. “You are a different kind.”

Drooping as if she was ill, Wazoo didn’t say a word.

“You are of the New Orleans sect. The one as old as time.”

Coughing, Wazoo sagged.

“What’s the matter with you?” Zibock asked.

“We think she came to take the Protector’s new partner away. Her movements were stealthy. It was only by chance she was seen,” one of the helpful minions piped up.

Zibock threw up his hands. “Foolishness. We are unperturbed by this voodoo or whatever it is you people practice,” he told Wazoo.

He looked at Poppy. “You disappoint me. I had thought you would be flattered at my offer to take you as my partner.”

“She didn’t know I was coming,” Wazoo said.

“I cannot dally with you now.” He indicated Poppy. “I note that this one rushed to help you, which suggests she was glad to see you. Take them both to the indoctrination cell and lock them in. Do not go near them. I will decide what is to be done when I have dealt with our other problem.”

“One of our subjects told me he could not meld,” a man said. “It happened at one of the gatherings for your representative. Twice the subject attempted to enter and assume the body of one of the guests but he encountered resistance and had to make sure he could not be found afterward.”

“What do you mean? He couldn’t meld? He met resistance?”

The creature appeared nervous. “He followed the man into a small room the humans always have and walked at him to become one with him. Instead of entering the other’s body and brain, he was met with a blow that threw him back. He said the other one had a mark on his face afterward but he remained impenetrable.”

Poppy remembered the story of Liam at the rally gathering and had no doubt that event was what this Embran spoke of. They could not take over the bodies of paranormals. But who did they mean by “your representative.”

Ward.

Instantly she saw again the yellow flash from his aura and knew what it meant. Ward was insane, and capable of inestimable cruelty. It didn’t automatically make him other than human, but she had not considered that humans could be conscripted by Embran.

She felt sick and weak.

“I would have spread the powers of the Embran before you,” Zibock told Poppy. He turned to his creatures and shook his great head and rolled his eyes like an animal in agony. “Get these two. Both of them.”

The others bowed and backed away, until one looked up and said, “Not all will return. More than one have terminated. They lost their hold on the hosts, separated again, and…they terminated.”

“The fools!” Zibock pointed to the doors. “Get as many as remain. And secure these two.”

It took only one of the Embran to drag Poppy and Wazoo from the hall and along corridors, turning and turning until Poppy wondered how big this place was.

She considered trying to use the strength in her hands on the Embran. But who knew how many more would come to replace him, and perhaps she and Wazoo would be better trying to figure out another escape.

The next corridor ended at a door with a small window. “Like a prison,” Poppy murmured.

The lock was a broad band of steel that slid through a bracket and buried deep into the metal doorjamb. “Simple but effective,” the Embran said, opening the door and pushing the two women into a brightly lit room. The walls and floor were covered with some soft material in pure white. There was no furniture.

“Sleep,” the Embran said, pointing at the floor. “You will find it comfortable.”

He took a step backward and as he did so, he burst from the simple men’s clothes he had worn to assume the form of a huge spider with fangs. “I will return,” he said in the same voice as before. “But in time the Protector will also return—to deal with the indoctrination. Afterward you will be changed for the better. Think of that while you try to sleep.”