Desa Kincaid- Bounty Hunter Page 28

  Desa shivered, huddling up in her coat. Her head sank, and she reached up to rake fingers through her hair. “I had to go,” she said. “Bendarian wanted to use the crystal on that pyramid to unleash something horrible into this world.”

  Kalia rose to stand over her, clicking her tongue in annoyance. “I can promise you this much,” she said. “That place isn't through with you yet. No one who goes in there is ever truly free of it.”

  A small wooden porch outside the sheriff's office sat in the shade of an overhanging roof, and the tiny bit of relief it offered from the heat was enough to make Tommy bless his good fortune. The town was busy with people milling this way and that on the sandy road, all hurrying about their business under a cloudless blue sky.

  Miri was leaning against the wall with one foot propped against the wooden boards, watching the people go by. “You have to tell her how you feel,” she said at last. “Best not to let these things fester.”

  Tommy sat on the edge of the porch with his elbows on his thighs, his chin cradled in both hands. His eyebrows rose at the suggestion. “And say what?” he demanded. “Gee, Desa, I sure am mad you killed my lover.”

  The soft thumping of Miri's footsteps made him twist around. She knelt beside him, grimacing at that last remark. “You have every right to be angry.”

  “I know.”

  “Then tell Desa how you feel.”

  Wincing, he touched fingertips to his eyelids and massaged away a dull throb. “Just what makes you think she cares how I feel?” he mumbled. “Desa does as she pleases with little regard for what the rest of us think.”

  He stiffened momentarily when Miri slipped her arms around him and kissed him on the cheek. “Tell her,” she urged. “You'll never trust her if you can't work this out.”

  “Does it matter if I trust her?”

  Miri actually froze at that.

  Tommy stood up, his feet scuffing in the sand as he paced away from the porch. He turned abruptly and faced her with hands on his hips. “We could go,” he suggested. “It's not like Desa has much use for us. Maybe Sebastian was right. Maybe we should just be done with her.”

  It frightened him to realize that he was echoing his dead lover's sentiments. It was a hatred for Desa that led Sebastian down a path that ultimately brought him to a bad end. Would Tommy suffer the same fate if he let anger dictate his decisions?

  Miri was on her knees at the edge of the porch, her head bowed as she sighed. “Oh, believe me, Lommy,” she began. “Desa may not be able to admit it, but she does need us. Now more than ever, I think. I fear that Adele's betrayal will send her down a dark path.”

  Tommy wanted to reply that Desa was already on a dark path, that her whole damn life seemed to be a long road into the very heart of the Abyss, but that sounded a bit too much like something Sebastian would say; so, he swallowed his objections and let Miri have the last word. A wise man had to know when it was time to let others take the lead.

  Still, there were thoughts tumbling around in his head, and though he would have buried them under a mask of taciturn diffidence not so long ago, he was starting to realize that once you got into the habit of speaking your mind, it was hard to stop. “Maybe your brother's right,” he said. “Maybe caring only makes you weak.”

  That put a bit of colour in Miri's cheeks, and when she looked up, Tommy wanted to back away from the intensity of her stare. “My brother is a fool,” she said. “A fool who thinks that being callous is the same as being strong.”

  “But-”

  “A fool, Tommy.”

  It made him pause when Miri called him by his real name. She only did that when she was deadly serious. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps Marcus and Desa both shared a stubborn refusal to be vulnerable, and perhaps that was why both of them made foolish decision after foolish decision. He very much wanted to be away from here.

  “If you ask me, you're all fools.”

  That voice...

  Tommy felt the hair stand on the back of his neck.

  When he turned, he found Adele standing in the middle of the road in an elegant white gown that left her arms and shoulders bare. She stood in the shade of a thin parasol that she held with delicate fingers. “Hello, Thomas,” she said. “Don't suppose you'd be so kind as to help a girl find her soulmate?”

  Chapter 29

  Miri was on her feet in an instant, flinging open her duster to draw her throwing knives. She tossed them up, caught the tips of each blade and flung them at Adele one at a time. Sunlight glinted off each blade as they tumbled through the air.

  Adele snapped her fingers.

  Both knives became water and splashed against the ground at her feet, soaking into the sand. The sight of it sent chills down Tommy's spine. He had seen what Desa could do, but her power seemed predictable. Orderly. This was something else entirely. “Now then,” Adele said, gliding forward like a debutante at her first ball. “Maybe y'all could help a girl out.”

  Miri bared her teeth, snarling like an angry rottweiler, and then broke into a sprint. She ran at full speed as if she meant to mow the other woman down.

  “Sigh...”Adele mumbled.

  In the very instant that Miri got within arm's reach of her, she vanished and then reappeared on the roof of a building across the street. She stood with one hand on her hip and the other holding the parasol over her head. “You know, I sometimes wondered why I had such a hard time bonding with y'all.”

  She stepped off the ledge and, to Tommy's shock, she didn't fall fifty feet and break her neck. Instead, she descended a set of invisible stairs, moving gracefully and giggling with every step. “And suddenly, it's clear as day. Y'all are savages.”

  Gaping at the woman, Tommy felt sweat on his brow. “Desa!” he called out when he recovered his wits. “Help!”

  The door to the sheriff's office flew open, and Desa came hurrying out, shaking her head. “What is it, Tommy?” she grumbled. “We were in the middle of a very important-”

  She froze when she saw Adele, the colour draining out of her face. “No...” Sheriff Kalia Troval emerged a second later, and before the woman could so much as blink, Desa rounded on her and shoved her into the wall.

  “What in blazes-”

  Desa stole the sheriff's pistol, cocked the hammer and whirled around to point the gun at Adele. She didn't hesitate. She just marched forward, squeezing the trigger again and again, filling the air with the crackle of thunder.

  Bullets transformed into little puffs of smoke in front of Adele, who just stood in the middle of the road with a smile on her face. “Are we finished then?” she asked when Desa had fired all six rounds.

  Tommy swallowed.

  Adele seated herself on nothing at all, crossing one leg over the other and folding her hands in her lap. Her grin broadened as she took in the sight of them. “So...Now that you've gotten that out of your system, I thought we could talk.”

  “Who is this woman?” Sheriff Troval demanded.

  “A demon,” Desa whispered. “She took the dark power that Bendarian was trying to loose on our world.”

  Staring slack-jawed with a hand over her chest, Adele scoffed. “A demon indeed!” she said. “Desa, I thought you of all people would be capable of showin' a modicum of respect.”

  With the initial shock of Adele's arrival fading, Tommy tried to think. There had to be a way to overcome her powers. Obviously, she couldn't just do whatever she wanted – remake the world as she saw fit – or she would have done it by now. Well...He certainly hoped that was the case, anyway.

  “What do you want?” Desa spat.

  “Oh, no, no, no,” Adele replied. “This isn't right. You should all be here for this. Where is Marcus?”

  As if summoned by the sound of his own name, Marcus appeared from around the corner of a neighbouring street and stopped short when he saw Adele. His mouth twisted into a sneer of contempt.

  “Oh good,” Adele said, rising from her invisible chair. She flowed toward him with a smile tha
t would set any man's blood on fire. “There he is.”

  Marcus drew his pistol with lightning speed, raised the weapon and fired without a moment's hesitation.

  Like the others, his bullet transformed into a puff of smoke about two inches away from Adele's chest, but the instant it did, she was thrown backward, hurled as if by some violent tempest.

  Adele screamed as she flew across the street, the parasol flying out of her grip. She crashed into a wooden pillar that supported the roof above a porch, cracking it on impact, then bounced off and landed flat on her face.

  Desa watched the whole thing with her lips pursed, nodding with satisfaction. “A Force-Source?” she asked.

  Marcus didn't bother answering.

  He moved cautiously into the middle of the road with both hands clutching the grip of his pistol, his aim never wavering, not even for a moment. Tommy suspected that the only reason he hadn't fired again was that he wasn't sure if it would do a lick of good.

  Adele looked up at him with strands of hair falling over her face, her teeth clenched as she hissed. “Now, that was just rude.” Slowly, she got to her feet. “I do hope you'll like spendin' the rest of your days as a slimy frog.”

  She snapped her fingers.

  Marcus looked down at himself with a frown, then patted his chest several times as if to make sure that he was still there. When it became clear that Adele's magic had failed, he continued his forward march.

  For the first time since her sudden appearance, Adele looked genuinely concerned. She stepped back, nearly bumping into the cracked pillar. “I said I hope you like spendin' your days as a frog.”

  She snapped her fingers again.

  Nothing happened.

  Adele's eyebrows shot up, and then she shook her head. “Well, how 'bout that?” she said. “Seems I can't transubstantiate you. Bullets, knives, but not you. What makes you so special, Marcus?”

  She stretched a hand toward him.

  Marcus was lifted off the ground and then dragged toward her. Her fingers closed around his neck. “I can still pull you,” she snarled. “Reckon I could snap your neck with only a flick of my wrist; so, why can't I transubstantiate you?”

  Marcus had an answer for her, an answer in the form of a quick punch to the face that made Adele release him and stumble back. She raised a hand to her bloody nose. “I suddenly find myself very uninterested in why I can't change you.”

  Tommy braced himself for the sight of his friend's painful death. His friend...When had he come to think of Marcus as a friend? It didn't matter; he knew then and there that he did not want the other man to die.

  “Adele!” Desa shouted, striding out into the street, distracting the other woman from her murderous intent. “He's not the one you want.”

  Clearly, she had the right of it because Adele turned her gaze away from Marcus and settled those icy blue eyes of hers on Desa instead. “I told you, honey, I'm not Adele anymore.”

  “Whoever you are,” Desa countered. “You came here for a reason. You sought me out for a reason. So, tell me...What do you want?”

  “See, that's what I like about you, Desa. You always cut right to the point.” Adele cleared her throat and went to meet Desa in the middle of the road. “You know, startin' a religion is hard work. I was thinkin' about all the miracles I'd have to start performin' just to get some attention, and then it occurred to me. What I really need is an emissary. And you, little girl, are it.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  Tommy could only see the back of Desa's head, but he knew from the way she put her hands on her hips that she was giving the other woman a withering glare. “No, I will not be your emissary.”

  “Well, ain't that a shame?”

  “So, might I suggest you be on your way?”

  “Oh no, darlin',” Adele said. “'Fraid it's not that simple.” She flowed around Desa and moved toward the sheriff's office. Her gaze lingered on Kalia Troval for a very long moment. “I see y'all found someone to take my place. Well, the more the merrier, I say. But this really isn't the venue for a negotiation.”

  Adele snapped her fingers.

  Tommy stepped back and felt his shoulders bump up against a stone wall. He was in a building of some kind, a building with a vaulted ceiling and stained-glass windows that depicted scenes of a woman in blue robes pouring water on flowers.

  There was a huge golden sun painted on the floor, and Adele stood right on top of it, smiling as she took in the sight of their new surroundings. Desa was right behind her, and Marcus was leaning against the opposite wall.

  Everyone seemed to maintain the same relative position they'd had before Adele transported them. Tommy was relieved to find Miri at his side, though the way she gaped at everything she saw made him uneasy.

  He gave a start when he saw that Sheriff Troval had made the journey with them. The poor woman looked very much like a frightened rabbit. “May the Almighty protect me,” she whispered. “I've gone mad.”

  It was only then that Tommy noticed the light fixtures. Glass devices that hung from the ceiling, each one glowing with more light than any paraffin lantern could emit. Was this Field Binding at work?

  “Now,” Adele said. “This is more like it.”

  Desa stood behind her, scowling at the other woman's back. “Play all the tricks you want,” she said. “It won't change my mind.”

  “Well, maybe you just need some time to think it over,” Adele said. “Reckon you'll have plenty of that once you meet our hosts. So, I'll leave you to it then and check back in once you've had some time to cool off.”

  She vanished.

  Pressing his back to the wall, Tommy hunched over and rubbed his forehead with the back of one hand. “Where are we?” he said at last. His voice was hoarse. “Where did she take us?”

  Miri strode out into the middle of the room, pausing on top of the golden sun on the floor. “The Temple of Mercy,” she mumbled. “This is-”

  “Aladar,” Desa cut in.

  Rubbing his neck with one hand and grimacing from the pain, Marcus grunted as he went to join the two women. “So, we're home at last,” he said. “I suppose we will just have to leave again.”

  “Why bother?” Desa countered. “It seems Adele can go anywhere, traverse almost any distance in a matter of seconds. We could chase her for months...or years...and we would never catch her.”

  Tommy shut his eyes tight, breathing in slowly. “Then the quest was a failure.” He slumped against the wall until his bottom hit the floor. “Well, I suppose if I was going to witness the end of the world, I'd like to do it in Aladar.”

  “Excuse me.”

  Everyone had forgotten Sheriff Troval, but when the woman spoke, all eyes turned to her. Kalia wore a scowl that could make a hungry wolf retreat. “I don't know anything about this quest of yours,” she began. “And I'm not sure how I feel about Aladar, but I do have to get back to Dry Gulch.”

  “I suppose I can help with that,” Desa said. “I-”

  A pair of wooden doors burst open to admit half a dozen men and women in blue uniforms. They filed into the room, drawing pistols, making space for the leader, a portly man with tasseled epaulettes on his shoulders.

  He had a distinguished face of olive skin, a thick dark mustache with flecks of gray and dark hair with wings of silver over his ears. “Just as the woman said,” he barked. “A disturbance in the temple.”

  “Yes, but who caused it?”

  That was a woman's voice.

  Seconds later, a reed-slender woman in flowing blue robes followed the deputies into the temple. She had a sharp face with a long nose and gray hair that she wore pulled back in a clip.

  Her expression changed when she saw them, creases forming in her brow. “Can it be?” she asked. “Desa Nin Leean, home at last?”

  “Apologies, Prelate,” Desa replied. “But I cannot stay. I-”

  “Arrest them,” the Prelate spat.

  The deputies were in motion before the
last syllable left her mouth. Tommy didn't resist when one – a young man with bright red hair – turned him around and fastened a metal device to his wrists. Two rings linked by a chain. No doubt it was intended to keep him from using his hands.

  “We'll start with charges of high treason,” the prelate went on. “Desa, Marcus and Miri at least have that much to answer for. I don't know who these other two are, but if they have abetted Desa's crime, the punishment is the same. Take them to the stockade. I will have many questions for them in the days to come.”

  Chapter 30

  The Weaver felt reality shift around her, her view of the temple blurring until it split apart. Like watching an egg crack from the inside. When the two halves of the old reality fell away, she was standing in a lush green field under a blue sky,

  Her white gown was still pristine, her golden hair still braided with not one single strand out of place. “Well, now,” she said, placing hands on her hips. “I'm pleased to see you didn't try to run this time.”

  She turned.

  Benny was kneeling in the tall grass, his snake-like features set in an expression of resignation. He looked up at her with yellow eyes that glowed, each with a vertical slit as its pupil. “What good would it do?” His voice rasped as he spoke. “You hunt me down every time.”

  The Weaver smiled down at him. “We're friends, Benny.” She reached out to lay a hand on his scaly head. “After all we've been through, do you really think I'm gonna just let you go off by your lonesome self?”

  “What do you want with me?”

  Touching her fingertips to the underside of his chin, the Weaver turned his face up to her. She bent over to kiss his forehead. “I told you, darlin',” she said. “Every god needs an adversary. That's how it works.”

  Benny was even more crestfallen upon hearing that.

  “Now,” the Weaver added, ignoring his despair. “What say you take out some of your frustration by terrorizin' some country bumpkins. I know the cutest little village just a few miles over yonder.”