CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
My ears popped, I blinked, and almost without thinking about it, as if guided by instinct, I sent a wave of telekinetic energy cascading away from me in all directions. The power caught Tamara off guard and sent her sprawling to the floor. Marie, likewise, had not expected to be hit with magick, and when she was hit, she seemed to almost soar across the room, landing on her side and rolling until she hit a wall.
I just used magick, I thought as my heart pounded.
Tamara looked up at me from the floor, glaring, her face twisted with rage. “How did you do that?” she yelled, “You’re not supposed to be able to use magick!”
I didn’t dare turn my head and look, but I could feel a hand on my shoulder. It was cold, but also warm and soothing, and it reinvigorated my tired body. Not only that, my instincts told me the person the hand belonged to was also responsible for my ability to use magick again, and maybe even for the way in which I was able to put up a shield for so many hours last night.
That person, I knew with almost perfect certainty, was Eliza; I could feel her anger and wrath flowing through me. Tamara hadn’t just hurt the witches of New Orleans, hadn’t only come here to trigger a rebirth of the old ways; she had burned Lumière to cinders. My house. Eliza’s house. The place that had sheltered Jean Luc and his family for hundreds of years was now gone.
I took that anger and made it my own.
I reached for Tamara with my mind, wrapped invisible, powerful hands around her, and lifted her off the floor. She kicked and struggled, but was completely unable to resist my magick—Eliza’s magick—as I tossed her aside like a doll, causing her to hit the wall with a loud crack and fall limply to the floor.
One of Marie’s vampires rushed toward me, eyes glowing and mad, teeth barred and ready to fight. But I gave him the same treatment that I did to Tamara, reaching for his body with my mind, stopping him in his tracks, and reversing his momentum so he flew away from me instead. When my hand moved to direct the magick, it was as if there were two hands acting in unison—one belonging to me, and the other to the ghost of a witch.
None of the other vampires made any sudden moves except for Marie, who began to toward Jared, still lying on the floor unaffected by any of my telekinetic blasts.
When I saw her start running, I ran also, throwing myself around him without giving it a second thought. Marie came at me with her sharp, pointed nails extended, and when she was within striking distance, she threw back her arm and brought it down on me. I shut my eyes hard, but Marie screamed and hissed as her hand struck an invisible shield with the power to burn her undead flesh.
I opened my eyes again to find her cradling not her hand, but the stump on her arm where her hand should have been. A cloud of ash had dispersed into the air, and it swirled around me now like a dust devil. She stared at her blackened wrist, then turned her eyes on me, and in them I could see my own death—this woman would kill me if given even the smallest chance.
“You bitch!” she yelled, sheer disbelief on her face.
I drew myself up and stared at her. “You came to a peaceful place and you tried to murder innocent people,” I said, “You deserve far worse.”
“Innocent?” she scoffed, “Remy. Innocent? Did you forget what he did? How this whole thing started? Of course not, because you weren’t there. I was. I know what happened. I suffered at the hand of Remy’s great purge. Entire families of vampires burned, and you think I’m the monster here.”
“You are a monster, and a stupid monster at that,” I said, pointing to where Tamara lay. “You let her convince you she was going to give you something you wanted in return for your help with her quest, but even an idiot can see your goals and hers don’t line up. Now, I’m going to give you a chance.”
“A chance?”
“You aren’t going to kill me. You can’t kill me, and you know that. But I’m also not going to kill you, because I don’t want to. I believe in second chances, so I’d like to offer you a choice.”
Marie folded her arms in front of her chest. “This should be good.”
“You can leave New Orleans, or you can stay here. But, if you choose to stay, you will abide by the rules I set, and you will not harm another witch, vampire, or human so long as you remain. If you do, you and all of your supporters will be cast out.”
“That doesn’t sound as good as the deal we had with her.”
“Deal? What deal? She would have killed you and the rest of your people as soon as she was done.”
“Please, she was so busy with you she didn’t have a clue what we were doing.”
My stomach twisted into a knot as the first sign of panic pinched my gut. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean, that while she was so consumed with her plot to take Remy out of the picture, we were busy following ours. Preparing.”
Marie made a move to the left, and I stepped to the right, getting a little closer to Jared, just in case she tried something I wasn’t excepting. “If you aren’t going to stay under my terms, then you’re going to leave. And if you won’t leave peacefully, we’ll force you out.”
“I find that difficult to believe. Especially considering that by the end of the month, we’ll outnumber you.”
My heart started pumping again to a beat driven by fear, and I became intimately aware of the alarming fact that Marie could hear it—she could literally hear how I had reacted to what she said, and I could do nothing to change that. I swallowed, clenched my hand into a fist, and willed a soft breeze to enter the room. My hair picked up, as did Marie’s. That caught her attention, but I still didn’t have words to throw at her, and the words were what mattered.
The corners of Marie’s lips tugged into a smile. “Remy started the rebellion that led to the massacre of many vampires,” she said. “Now he’s dead, but you’re standing in the way of the natural order of things, which makes you the next person who has to die. And you’re right—I can’t kill you right now. But you can’t have your guard up all the time, and when there are enough vampires roaming the streets, hunting, and feeding, and killing, you’ll be so preoccupied with trying to root them out, blind spots will begin to appear. And I’ll be there, ready to take your life.”
“Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can walk all over us. We’re stronger than you think, and we will fight you to the last.”
“Maybe, but we can make new vampires far more easily than you can make new witches.”
My breathing began to turn short and punctuated. “Get out,” I said, “Get out of my house.”
“Gladly,” Marie said, turning. “Oh, and give Jean Luc my regards. Tell him we’ll be seeing each other soon.”
Marie made her exit through the ballroom side door, and the other vampires followed like a silent congregation. I threw myself to my knees and checked for Jared’s pulse. It was there, but it was weak. Tears stung my eyes as I ran my fingers through his hair, kissing the side of his head. I needed Nicole; she would be able to heal him, but I still didn’t have a phone, and his phone was upstairs in the bedroom.
My eyes turned on Tamara, who lay on her side against a wall. Not wanting to waste another moment and risk Jared suffering any permanent damage, I stood and walked right over to where she was. I prodded her shoulder with my foot, and Tamara stirred, then sprang her eyes open and looked around the room wildly. She scrambled when she saw me, bucking her legs and feet, dragging herself to a sitting position against the wall.
She threw her hand up toward me, and I grasped it with magick and pinned it to the wall with a thud that induced a pained shriek to spill out of her.
“You should very carefully choose what you say and do from now on,” I said, as I stood above her.
“What are you going to do?” she asked, “Are you going to kill me?”
This was a question I hadn’t had a lot of time to think about. In truth, I hadn’t expected to be in this situation ever, let alone right now.
On the one hand, she had orchestrated a brutal attack on the witches of this city, leaving many injured and one dead. She had also lied to me, knocked me unconscious, and dragged me to a swamp as an offering to a pack of hungry vampires. As if that wasn’t enough, she had burned down my home, my sanctuary, and reduced it to a pile of smoldering rubble.
For what? To prove a point?
If the situation were reversed, she wouldn’t be hesitating to answer the question like I was. Heck, the situation had been reversed not long ago, and I’d been sure I was dead no matter what I did. She may have wanted the same thing I did—to unite people under the same banner and bring peace to New Orleans. But she wanted to do so at the exclusion of Jean Luc’s family, and she would have killed them, too, without hesitation.
But the fact remained, I wasn’t her. I shook my head. “No,” I said, “I’m going to give you a another chance to get the hell out of New Orleans and not come back.”
Tamara’s breathing was coming out in quick bursts. “You’ll… let me live?”
“You can live, just not here.” I squatted before her. “I don’t want you to ever come back, do you understand? New Orleans doesn’t want you. The witches here don’t want you. And once they find out what you did, they’ll want to do worse to you than kill you. So, you’re done here.”
She looked like she was going to speak, but she didn’t. Instead she struggled to stand, and when she was upright, she made a slow exit, picking up speed as she went until she was running—dashing for the door. But then she stopped and turned her head over her shoulder. I braced myself, thinking she was about to use magick, but she didn’t.
“You ever wonder how I did it?” she asked.
“Did what?” I asked, approaching. I wanted to put myself between her and Jared at least, but continued to walk until I had all but bridged the space between us.
“Stopped you and all the other witches from using magick.”
I had considered the question at length, but in the heat of the moment, hadn’t thought to ask. Maybe I didn’t want to know. “How did you do it?” I asked.
“I didn’t.”
A cold tremor ran through my body, penetrating my bones. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means what you think it means, girl.”
“There’s… another witch?”
A half-smile appeared on her face. “There’s always another witch, and I can’t tell you who because I’ve never seen them; their power exceeds any witch I’ve ever known, including Remy.”
I reached for her now, thrusting my hand out and grabbing her hair. She shrieked and grabbed my hand, but I couldn’t let go. My grip was vice-like and fueled by anger. “If I ever see your pathetic face again,” I said, “I promise you, I will mount your head up on that wall.”
I released her hair and pushed her at the same time. Tamara fled through the garden doors, leaving me with my heart banging hard inside my chest and more questions than answers. I considered chasing her and forcing her to tell me everything she knew, but she had a head start. More important than that, Jared was still lying on the floor unconscious, weak, and in need of medical attention.
I ran upstairs, found his phone, and called Nicole.