The Templar's Legacy (Ancient Enemy) Page 11

  I was finding it increasingly easy to smooth out my life’s little bumps with small nudges of the hoodoo. At first it felt like cheating, but the more I used it, the more situations I found that seemed to call for it. I managed to put aside the whole morality of coercing people without their knowledge. It was just too damned handy.

  Given my history, continuing nightmares, and Wendigota’s squirming recognition of other shadows, if it hadn’t been for Dr. Anderson and his continuous pushing of my guilt buttons I might never have gotten so comfortable with the use, or perhaps abuse, of my hoodoo.

  Recovery

  Throughout the procedure to stitch up my punctured lung and my time in post-op, I had plenty of time to consider both my summer and the many benefits of general anesthesia. Nothing good could be said about having someone cutting you open while you listened except that it was really nice to be able to breathe again. It seemed even better when I compared it to poor Mr. Johnson, who would never take another breath.

  “Finn?”

  I turned my head and saw Jen walking toward me, followed by my parents and Holly. A rush of warmth filled me as I saw her familiar mocha with cream face with its fine features framed by her luminous long black hair. It had only been a few months, but I’d missed her. I’d known Jen since she was a little girl in pigtails. I’d always felt like her big brother. In the last few years she’d become a good friend. Losing her when she’d moved away on top of losing her brother Gregg had been really hard.

  Now, seeing her focus on me and her curved athletic form started juices flowing that had no business doing so. I squirmed a bit inside. This was Gregg’s sister, after all. I felt like I’d be betraying his memory if I went there.

  Stuffing away any conflicting emotions, I broke into a big, genuine smile. “Jen! What are you doing here?”

  Her eyes were huge as she walked up. “Are you okay?”

  I started to wave my hand at her, but the twinge of pain in my chest convinced me that it was a bad idea. I said, “Oh, you know. Attacked in my sleep, stabbed in the heart by a pretty girl. The usual stuff.”

  Her stricken look let me know that my humor may not have hit its intended mark.

  “I’m fine really. It’s just a flesh wound.” I was so glad to see her again I forgot to brood about the circumstances of my condition. We had so much to catch up on.

  “Hey, big bro!” I felt two little hands grab my left hand. I turned to see Holly’s smiling face and my warmth at seeing Jen doubled. I’d never suspected that I could love someone as much as I did Holly. She was still rail thin, but her dirty blonde hair was combed and her starving waif days were past.

  “Hey, sis.” She liked to hear me call her that. She bloomed under the added acknowledgment that she was now part of a family. I turned back to Jen, carefully raised my free hand from the elbow, and offered it to her. She grabbed it with shining eyes, her full lips compressed with concern.

  I hated to see that. “Why are you crying? I’m okay.”

  “I was so worried. I thought you were going to die.”

  “You did?” I frowned at her. “Hey, why are you here?”

  “I had a dream that you were in trouble, that you were hurt bad. When you didn’t answer your phone or any text messages, I had to come.”

  Holly interjected, “Yeah, she stole her dad’s car and drove down here!”

  That fired up my battered adrenals again and drove her reasons for arriving out of my head. “What? Oh crap, Jen, your dad’s going to kill me!” A giant linebacker of a man, Mr. Washington, Jen’s dad, had held me personally responsible for Jen’s bout of insanity and Greg’s death. To be perfectly honest, I did too.

  An angry scowl replaced Jen’s sorrow. “He’s not going to do anything.”

  My mom, who’d been giving the girls some space but was still listening added, “We called and let him know that everything was okay. He’s okay with Jen being here for a little while.”

  The flood of relief washed away my anxiety and any energy I had. I was suddenly very tired.

  “Okay, good.” I tried to smile and reassure Jen. “It’s good to see you, Jen. I’m glad you came. It’s really nice having everyone here.” I blinked a few times. “I think I need to take a nap.”

  Not waiting for permission or recognition, I released my hold on consciousness and drifted off feeling safe and loved.

  ***

  When I awoke, in the all too familiar hospital room, the afternoon sunlight shone warmly through the window. I was alone with Jennifer. She was curled up in a tall-backed rocker with her feet tucked in tightly. She looked like she was sleeping. Her presence was a little fire to warm my soul. I smiled to myself, feeling lucky.

  My attention was quickly snagged by the white paper wrapping around two foot-long subs sitting on the roller tray beside the bed. My parents really knew me well. As usual, I was starved after Spring had done her healing thing. I reached out to grab the tray and pulled it over.

  “Finn?”

  “Hey, Jen. Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

  She gave me the standard white lie of someone who thought sleeping was bad. “I wasn’t sleeping. How do you feel?” She got up and walked to the side of my bed. Her hands fluttered as if she weren’t quite sure what to do with them.

  I smiled and raised my hand again. She relaxed and grabbed it. Her hands were much larger than Holly’s but they were still smaller than mine with slender, elegant fingers. Her grip was warm, tight, and comforting. Not for the first time, I noticed my little Jen was almost all growed up.

  Yep, them’s baby making hips, dude. Sick ‘em boy.

  Either I was getting better at controlling my reactions to Spring’s unwanted observations, or I was still drugged up. I barely felt any heat in my cheeks when I said, “Where is everybody?”

  “Getting lunch. I wasn’t hungry.”

  Dinner would be good about now, said Spring. My body agreed, but I wasn’t quite ready to give in to their demands.

  “Did you really steal your dad’s car and drive down here last night?”

  She arched her brow. “You got a problem with that?”

  I laughed and then cringed at the expected pain. It didn’t come.

  While you’ve been asleep, some of us have been working. You need to eat something.

  Yes, Spring, I hear and obey.

  I dropped Jen’s warm hand, grabbed the first sub in front of me, and tried to keep from drooling on my bunny nighties. A horrible thought came with the notice of my gown. I looked under the covers, and relaxed at the absence of unnatural tubes in unmentionable places.

  “Is it still there?”

  I looked up to see mirth in Jen’s brown eyes and blushed. “Uh no—I mean yes.” I scowled. “I mean shut up. The last two times I was in the hospital they catheterized me. I was afraid they’d done it again while I was asleep. They seem to take some unholy joy in doing it.”

  She laughed, and I buried my face and my embarrassment in my sandwich. It was heavenly. I savaged the sandwich in happy bliss and ignored Jen’s startled looks. When I finished it and its brother about thirty seconds later, I burped and sighed.

  In response to her raised eyebrow, I said, “Healing is hungry work you know.”

  She knew. “I just don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone polish off a sub that fast. Most people chew their food.”

  Except my dad, who swallowed his food whole and alive. I suppressed a shudder and gave her a sickly grin. “Chewing is for wimps.”

  “Why did you say she was pretty?”

  Grind, screech, ca-clunk. “Huh? What? Who?”

  “The woman who attacked you last night. You said she was pretty.”

  “I did?”

  It was little miss French fry!

  Oh yeah, I did say that. I hadn’t told anyone my suspicions. “Well...”

  “Who stabbed you, Finn?” The sudden steel in her voice took me by surprise. Sometimes it was hard to remember that the shy, tongue-tied little girl w
as long gone. She now packed a fiery, quick wit, fierce loyalty, and a command of cursing that would make a sailor swoon.

  “Well, I’m not sure if she did it.”

  She did, the backstabbing little bitch. Spring’s hurt was one of a little girl betrayed by a close friend. She’d really gotten to like Colette. Me too.

  Spring, please!

  “Who aren’t you sure of?”

  I caved and filled Jen in on Colette, and her grab for the Caduceus.

  Jen narrowed her eyes. “If she’s after the Caduceus, we need to put that bitch down.”

  “I don’t know, Jen, none of this makes any sense to me.”

  “It’s simple, Finn. We need to find out why she’s going after the Caduceus. We need to discover how she knows about it and why she stabbed you for it.”

  I studied my hands uncomfortably and said in a small voice, “I kind of told her about it.”

  Timing is everything, and in my case, the universe never missed a beat. At the same time Jen looked at me incredulously and said, “What?”, Detective Victoria Hunter spoke from the entrance to my room.

  “You told who about what and why did she stab you for it?”

  As usual, when Detective Hunter entered the room, she dominated it. She was tall and sharp with pressed edges. She was also quite beautiful, with Amerind features, shiny blue-black hair, and lean greyhound curves.

  I stammered. “Uh... nothing.”

  Now I had two very different, but very attractive, women scowling at me—and I wasn’t wearing underwear. Life was so unfair.

  The detective looked over to Jen and turned her scowl into a smile. “Miss Washington, it’s good to see you up and about.”

  Jen smiled back. “Thank you, Detective Hunter.”

  “So what has our problem child here gotten himself into this time?”

  Jen smirked. “Got himself stabbed in the lung. He was just going to tell me why this girl stabbed him.”

  “This should be good.”

  Jen nodded in agreement. They both turned and looked at me with eyebrows raised identically.

  “Hey, no fair ganging up on me!” Jen crossed her arms and Detective Hunter followed suit.

  I crumbled under the pressure. If I’d had my underwear on, it would have been a different story, but nude, I couldn’t face down that kind of firepower. Besides, they both knew just about everything weird that was going on. Hunter and I tried to hunt down Erik together when he was turning into a giant snake and killing people.

  Anyway, while tracking Erik, the detective and I had a very interesting moment, which I was eager to explore further, but not in a bunny nightie.

  Spring was amused. Yeah, it’s not like she terrifies you or anything.

  I tried to ignore Spring and patted my hair to try and tame the bed-head I knew I must be sporting. “I told Colette about my Caduceus, but after what happened on our Appalachian hike, I didn’t have a choice. I had to tell her something.”

  “What hike?” asked Hunter.

  “Colette, Jim, Dave and I took a hike on the Appalachian trail a bit over a week ago. It was kind of our last hurrah before Jim headed off to college.”

  “Can I assume this is the same Colette I met and we discussed earlier?” asked the detective.

  “Ah, yeah.” I studied my twiddling hands. I’d given my unconditional endorsement of Colette earlier, over a man’s dead body, and that didn’t say good things about my ability to read people.

  “What happened on the hike?”

  For some obscure reason, I felt guilty that I hadn’t told the detective about it sooner. It’s not like I reported to her or anything, but I knew she was as fascinated by all this hoodoo stuff as I was. Also, I’d promised I’d come to visit her grandfather to tell him about everything that was happening, but still hadn’t gotten around to it. Truth be told, I was a bit intimidated by him. He’d been my dad’s mentor and was the one who had given my dad the crystal that had so shaped my life. If he hadn’t done that, my birth mother might still be alive...

  “Finn, what happened on the hike?” asked Detective Hunter again.

  I tried to collect my whole squirming-puppy bucket of thoughts and sort though what had happened—and decide what I could tell them without completely embarrassing myself.

  I took a breath and told them what had happened, sort of.

  You What?

  I concluded my carefully edited verbal summary of the trip. “After what she’d seen, the cat was out of the bag. Colette’s very intelligent and she didn’t buy Dave’s prevarications. She knew something was up. She didn’t confront me till we picked up the second car waiting at our planned endpoint. On the way back, while she and I drove one car and Dave and Jim drove the other, she used her feminine wiles get the whole story out of me.”

  Detective Hunter raised an eyebrow again. “Her feminine wiles?”

  Jen looked at her and said, “She asked.”

  “Hey!” I protested.

  “Am I wrong?”

  I just scowled as Jen leaned back in her chair with a superior smirk.

  Hunter furrowed her brows and asked me, “So, you think these pixies attacked you because of the Caduceus?

  “It fits what I was told.”

  “Told what by who?”

  “When I’d first gotten the bear totem, I had a dream.” I’d been sitting in Spring’s oak tree, after the beating I’d received from Erik and his gang.

  “In my dream, I was a spirit warrior who, with three other warriors and a shaman, fought and killed Wendigota. In my dream my friends took the place of the warriors, and Jeff had taken the part of the Shaman. He warned me about Wendigota’s heart before the battle.

  “Jeff told me, ‘The Great Spirit has shown me Wendigota’s black heart. It is the source of his power and the path to many secrets that should be left forgotten. Any warrior who holds this heart will become as powerful as Wendigota, but you must not allow this to happen. You must bury it along with him. The power of the heart is a beacon whose shine draws many dark spirits. In their lust for power, they will attempt to take the heart or to possess the body of the one who holds it. There are darker powers than Wendigota which roam the world, and the heart cannot be allowed to fall into such hands.’

  “That dream came to me from the bear totem that Dave now wore, and when Wendigota seized me, it brought with it memories of that fight from its point of view.”

  Just thinking about it, I could feel it squirming around in its insubstantial prison. I continued, “After shaman-Jeff’s warning, I’d stayed as far away as possible from the skull holding the monster, but it wasn’t the Caduceus that had freed it from its prison. Jeff hadn’t told me that just breaking the skull was enough to set it free and my stalker-cum-assassin, Erik, had done it out of spite. Once freed, the spirit immediately possessed Erik. That’s when he went on his killing spree.”

  “That’s pretty frightening,” said Hunter even though she’d heard it from me before. “But, speaking of killing sprees, let’s get back to Colette. Why do you think she’s the one who stabbed you? In the report from the officers at the scene last night, you didn’t mention it. In fact, you said your attacker wore a... I think the technical term you used was ‘Ninja-mask-hoodie-thingy.’”

  “Hey, I don’t know what they’re called. But, even though she had one of those on, I recognized her aura.”

  “People’s auras are that distinct?”

  I nodded. “They’re all different colors. Hers is a bright violet color.”

  The detective looked intrigued. “What color is mine?”

  I’d Looked at her before, but just thinking about it pulled up my sight. Like most, her aura was beautiful. I took a moment to also appreciate her more physical beauty before I responded. “I’d call it emerald green.” She looked pleased.

  “How about mine?” asked Jen.

  I Looked at Jen as well. “Yours is intense, deep, sky blue.” I’d told her before, but she must have forgotten.

&
nbsp; Or she wants you to look at her like you looked at Hunter. We could do a threesome.

  As usual, no one around me had any idea why I seemingly blushed at random intervals.

  Detective Victoria talked over my distraction, “It’s hard to believe they’re that distinct. There are a lot more people than colors, Finn.”

  I nodded her point. “Yeah, some of them are really close.”

  “So how can you be sure it was Colette?”

  “She… uh...” I thought of her moonlit heart-shaped butt sliding through the window and blushed. “She had... the same build and eye color as Colette, too.”

  The detective cocked her head, detecting my pause, no doubt, but she let it slide. “Is there any other reason you can think of that might tell us why she would stab you to get your stick?”

  I was hugely grateful that Dave wasn’t around for that straight line.

  “I don’t know why she did it, but now I think she might have killed two other people as well.”

  “I assume you mean Mr. McCormick and Mr. Portatori?”

  “How did you...? Oh yeah, never mind.” I squirmed under Detective Hunter’s sharp gaze. Both men had been shot recently by someone who knew what they were doing. She’d been on the scene with me after I’d reported McCormick’s murder, and as for Portatori, murders were pretty rare here, but assassinations were even more so.

  Hunter’s voice matched her look when she said in a low and dangerous voice, “And you didn’t tell us this conclusion before because...?”

  I waved my hands in panic. “I didn’t know! Honest! She said Portatori was her ex.”

  “And you didn’t think we might want to talk to her when he was found shot dead?”

  “No. It’s not like that. Arrrghh.” I ran my hands down my face. “Look, a lot of stuff’s been happening. I had just started pulling the shadows off people again. After Mr. Johnson died, I was—”

  “I thought you said she only killed two people...”

  “No, he died of pneumonia, but it was probably the shadow riding him that made him too weak to fight it. I was determined never to let something like that happen again—not if I was in a position to help. So, Colette wasn’t the only thing on my mind. Touching those shadows is freaky and disturbing. It was hard to think of anything else when I started removing them again. The first person I helped was Janice...”