Kitabı oku: «Raintree: Raintree: Inferno / Raintree: Haunted / Raintree: Sanctuary», sayfa 4

Chapter Six

She went. She couldn’t stop herself. Her scalp prickled, and chills ran over her, but she went, her feet moving automatically. Her eyes were wide with alarm. How was he doing this? Not that the “how” mattered; what mattered was that he was doing it. Being unable to control herself, to have him in control, could lead to some nasty situations.

She couldn’t even ask for help, because no one would believe her. At best, people would think she was on drugs or was mentally unstable. All sympathy would be with him, because he’d just lost his casino, his livelihood; the last thing he needed was a nutcase accusing him of somehow controlling her movements. She could just see herself yelling, “Help! I’m walking, and I can’t stop! He’s making me do it!”

Yeah, right. That would work—not.

He gave her a grim, self-satisfied little smile as she neared, and that pissed her off. Being angry felt good; she didn’t like being helpless in any way. Too street-savvy to telegraph her intentions, she kept her eyes wide, her expression alarmed, though how much of her face he could see through all the soot and grime was anyone’s guess. She kept her right arm close to her side, her elbow bent a little, and tensed the muscles in her back and shoulder. When she was close, so close she could almost kiss him, she launched an uppercut toward his chin.

He never saw it coming, and her fist connected from below with a force that made his teeth snap together. Pain shot through her knuckles, but the satisfaction of punching him made it more than worthwhile. He staggered back half a step, then regained his balance with athletic grace, snaking out his hand to shackle her wrist with long fingers before she could hit him again. He used the grip to pull her against him.

“I deserved one punch,” he said, holding her close as he bent his head to speak just loud enough for her to hear. “I won’t take a second one.”

“Let me go,” she snapped. “And I don’t mean just with your hand!”

“You’ve figured it out, then,” he said coolly.

“I was a little slow on the uptake, but being shoved into the middle of a freaking, big-ass fire was distracting.” She laid on the sarcasm as thickly as possible. “I don’t know how you’re doing it, or why—”

“The ‘why,’ at least, should be obvious.”

“Then I must be oxygen-deprived from inhaling smoke—gee, I wonder whose fault that is—because it isn’t obvious to me!”

“The little matter of your cheating me. Or did you think I’d forget about that in the excitement of watching my casino burn to the ground?”

“I haven’t been—Wait a minute. Wait just a damn minute. You couldn’t have hypnotized me while we were going down nineteen stories’ worth of stairs, and if you did it while we were in your office, then that was before the fire even started. ‘Splain that, Lucy!”

He grinned, his teeth flashing whitely in his soot-blackened face. “Am I supposed to say ‘Oh, Ricky!’?”

“I don’t care what you say. Just undo the voodoo, or the spell, or the hypnotism, or whatever it is you did. You can’t hold me here like this.”

“That’s a ridiculous statement, when I obviously am holding you here like this.”

Lorna thought steam might be coming out of her ears. She’d been angry many times in her life—she’d even been enraged a couple of times—but this was the most infuriated she’d ever felt. Until tonight, she would have said that the three terms meant the same thing, but now she knew that being infuriated carried a rich measure of frustration with it. She was helpless, and she hated being helpless. Her entire life was built around the premise of not being helpless, not being a victim ever again.

“Let. Me. Go.” Her teeth were clenched, her tone almost guttural. She was holding on to her self-control by a gossamer thread, but only because she knew screaming would get her exactly nowhere with him and would make her look like an idiot.

“Not yet. We still have a few issues to discuss.” Completely indifferent to her temper, he lifted his head to look around at the scene of destruction. The stench of smoke permeated everything, and the flashing red and blue lights of many different emergency vehicles created a strobe effect that felt like a spike being pounded into her forehead. Hot spots still flared to crimson life in the smoldering ruins, until the vigilant firefighters targeted them with their hoses. A milling crowd pressed against the tape the police had strung up to cordon off the area.

She saw the same details he saw, and the flashing lights reminded her of a ball of flame…no, not of flame…something else. She gasped as her head gave a violent throb.

“Then discuss them, already,” she snapped, putting her hand to her head in an instinctive gesture to contain the pain.

“Not here.” He glanced down at her again. “Are you okay?”

“I have a splitting headache. I could go home and lie down, if you weren’t being such a jerk.”

He gave her a considering look. “But I am being a jerk, so sue me. Now be quiet and stay here like a good girl. I’ll be busy for a while. When I’m finished, we’ll go to my house and have that talk.”

Lorna fell silent, and when he walked off she remained rooted to the spot. Damn him, she thought as furious tears welled in her eyes and streaked down her filthy cheeks. She raised her hands and wiped the tears away. At least he’d left her with the use of her hands. She couldn’t walk and she couldn’t talk, but she could dry her face, and if God was really kind to her, she could punch Raintree again the next time he got within punching distance.

Then she went cold, goose bumps rising on her entire body. The brief heat of anger died away, destroyed by a sudden, mind-numbing fear.

What was he?

A man and a woman who had been standing behind the police cordon, watching the massive fire, finally turned and began trudging toward their car. “Crap,” the woman said glumly. Her name was Elyn Campbell, and she was the most powerful fire-master in the Ansara clan, except for the Dranir. Everything they knew about Dante Raintree, and everything she knew about fire—aided by some very powerful spells—had been added together to form a plan that should have resulted in the Raintree Dranir’s death and instead had accomplished nothing of their mission.

“Yeah.” Ruben McWilliams shook his head. All their careful planning, their calculations, up in smoke—literally. “Why didn’t it work?”

“I don’t know. It should have worked. He isn’t that strong. No one is, not even a Dranir. It was overkill.”

“Then evidently he’s the strongest Dranir anyone’s ever seen—either that or the luckiest.”

“Or he quit sooner than we anticipated. Maybe he chickened out and ran for cover instead of trying to control it.”

Ruben heaved a sigh. “Maybe. I didn’t see when they brought him out, so maybe he’d been standing somewhere out of sight for a while before I finally spotted him. All that damn equipment was in the way.”

She looked up at the starry sky. “So we have two possible scenarios. The first is that he chickened out and ran. The second, and unfortunately the most likely, is that he’s stronger than we expected. Cael won’t be happy.”

Ruben sighed again and faced the inevitable. “I guess we’ve put it off long enough. We have to call in.” He pulled his cell phone from his pocket, but the woman put her hand on his sleeve.

“Don’t use your cell phone, it isn’t encrypted. Wait until we get back to the hotel, and use a landline.”

“Good idea.” Anything that delayed placing this call to Cael Ansara was a good idea. Cael was his cousin on his mother’s side, but kinship wouldn’t cut any ice with the bastard—and he meant “bastard” both figuratively and literally. Maybe this secret alignment with Cael against the current Dranir, Judah, wasn’t the smartest thing he’d ever done. Even though he’d agreed with Cael that the Ansara were now strong enough, after two hundred years of rebuilding, to take on the Raintree and destroy them, maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe Cael was wrong.

He knew Cael would automatically go for the first scenario, that Dante Raintree had chickened out and run instead of trying to contain the fire, and completely dismiss the possibility that Raintree was stronger than any of them had imagined. But what if Raintree really was that powerful? The attempted coup Cael had planned would be a disaster, and the Ansara would be lucky to survive as a clan. It had taken two centuries to rebuild to their present strength after their last pitched battle with the Raintree.

Cael wouldn’t be able to conceive of being wrong. If the plan failed—which it had—Cael would see only two possibilities: either Ruben and Elyn hadn’t executed the plan correctly, or Raintree had revealed a cowardly streak. Ruben knew they hadn’t made any mistakes. Everything had gone like clockwork—except for the outcome. Raintree was supposed to be consumed by a fire he couldn’t control, a delicious irony, because fire-masters all had a strange love/hate relationship with the force that danced to their tune. Instead, he had emerged unscathed. Filthy, sooty, maybe singed a little, but essentially unhurt.

A bullet to the head would have been more efficient, but Cael didn’t want to do anything that would alert the Raintree clan, which an overt murder would certainly do. Everything had to be made to look accidental, which of course made guaranteeing the outcome more problematic. The royal family, the most powerful Raintrees, had to be taken out in such a way that no one suspected murder. A fire—they would think losing their Dranir in a fire was tragic and a bitter finale, but they would completely understand that he would fight to the end to save his casino and hotel, especially the hotel, with all the guests in residence there.

Cael, of course, wouldn’t allow for the fact that setting up incidents that didn’t point to the Ansara wasn’t an exact science. Things could go wrong. Tonight, something had definitely gone wrong.

Dante Raintree was still alive. That was about as wrong as things could get.

The big assault on the Raintree homeplace, Sanctuary, was planned for the summer solstice, which was a week away. He and Elyn had a week to kill Dante Raintree—or Cael would kill them.

Chapter Seven

Dante grimly walked back to where he’d left Lorna, reluctant to leave but knowing there was nothing else he could do here. Once the police were finished questioning him, his only thought had been to check on his employees to find out if there had been any fatalities. To his deep regret and fury, the answer to that last question was yes. One body had already been pulled from the smoldering ruins of the casino, and the cops were working with the crowd to establish if there were any missing friends or relatives, which would take time. There might not be a final count for a couple of days.

He’d found Al Rayburn, hoarse and coughing from smoke inhalation but refusing to go to a hospital, instead helping to keep order among the evacuated guests. The hotel staff was doing an admirable job. The hotel itself had suffered comparatively little damage, and most of that was to the lobby area that connected the hotel and casino, where Dante had made his stand. Everyone in the hotel, guests and staff, had safely evacuated. There were some minor injuries, sprained ankles and the like, but nothing major. There was smoke damage, of course, and the entire hotel would have to be cleaned to remove the stench. The good news, what there was of it, was that the parking deck hadn’t been damaged, and the hotel had no structural damage. He could probably re-open the hotel within two weeks. The question was: why would anyone want to stay there without the casino?

The casino was a complete loss. About twenty vehicles in the parking lot outside the casino entrance had been damaged, and the parking lot itself was a mess right now. Twenty or thirty people had burns of varying degrees, and as many again were suffering from smoke inhalation; all of them had been transported to local hospitals.

The media had descended en masse, of course, their constant shouts and interruptions and requests/demands for interviews interfering with his attempts to organize his employees, arrange other lodging for his hotel guests, and arrange with Al for the guests to retrieve their belongings and at the same time secure the hotel from thieves posing as guests. He had his insurance provider to deal with. He had to call Gideon and Mercy, to let them know about the fire and that he was all right, before they saw all this on the news. They were both in the Eastern Time Zone, meaning he’d better get in touch with them damn soon.

Finally he’d accepted that there was little more he could do tonight; his staff was excellent, and they had matters well in hand, plus he could always be reached by phone. He might as well go home and take a much-needed shower.

And that left the problem of Lorna.

Tonight was a night of firsts. Before tonight, he’d never used mind compulsion, never known he could. He had no idea what the parameters were. At first he’d thought his own sense of urgency had provided the impetus, but even after the evacuation was over, he’d been able to control Lorna just with the words and a nudge from his mind, so adrenaline wasn’t the catalyst. He had stepped into new territory, and he had to tread lightly because this particular power could be easily abused. Hell, he’d already abused it, hadn’t he? Lorna would definitely say yes to that—when he let her speak.

Tonight was also the first time he’d brutally overwhelmed someone else’s mind and literally stolen all their available power. In the aftermath, she’d been dazed, lethargic, unable to remember even her name, all symptoms attributable to emotional shock. How extensive the amnesia was, and how temporary, was something that remained to be seen. She’d begun recovering fairly soon, but she still didn’t remember vast portions of the experience—unless she’d recovered her memory in his absence, in which case he should probably find some body armor before he released her from the compulsion.

Was she Ansara? That was the burning question that had to be answered—and soon.

His thinking went both ways. Part of him said, no, she couldn’t possibly be, or he wouldn’t have been able to overpower her mind so easily, nor would she be so susceptible to mind compulsion. An Ansara, trained from birth to manage and control her unusual abilities, just as the Raintree were, would have automatically resisted mind compulsion. The power was rare, so rare that he’d never met anyone capable of exercising it, though the family history said that an aunt six generations back had been adept at it. Rare or not, because the power existed at all, he and every other Raintree had been taught how to construct mental shields. The Ansara basically mirrored the Raintree in their gifts, so undoubtedly they, too, taught their people how to shield, which meant that the completely unshielded Lorna could not be Ansara.

Unless…

Unless she was so gifted at shielding that he couldn’t detect it. Unless she was merely pretending to be controlled by mind compulsion. He’d spoken his will aloud, so she knew what he wanted. If she also had the gift of controlling fire, she could have been bolstering the blaze, resurrecting the flames every time he managed to beat them down. No. He rejected that idea. If she’d been the one feeding the fire, he would have been able to extinguish it completely after he’d commandeered her power. Someone else must have been feeding the fire, but she could have been distracting him, deflecting some of his power.

Was she or wasn’t she? He would know soon. If she wasn’t…then he’d played some real hardball with a woman who might not be an innocent but was still far from being an enemy. He didn’t know that he would have done anything differently, though. When he’d overwhelmed her mind, it had been an act of desperation, and he hadn’t had the luxury of time to explain things to her. He might have to make amends, but he wasn’t sorry he’d done it. He was just glad she’d been there, glad she was gifted and had a pool of mental energy for him to tap.

He rounded a fire engine, where the crew was laying out their hoses in preparation for recoiling them, and stepped up on a curb. Now he could see her. So far as he could tell, she was standing in the exact spot in which he’d left her, which at least was off to the side, so she wasn’t in the way of any of the firefighters. She was filthy, her hair matted from the unhappy combination of smoke, soot and water, her posture shouting exhaustion. She still clutched a blanket around her, and she was literally swaying where she stood. He felt a quick spurt of impatience, mingled with sympathy. Why hadn’t she sat down? He hadn’t prevented her from doing that.

Looking at her, he gave a mental wince on behalf of his car seats, then immediately shrugged, because he was just as filthy. What did it matter, anyway? The leather could be cleaned.

When she saw him, pure temper flashed in her eyes, dispelling the fatigue. If he’d expected her to be cowed, he would have been disappointed. As it was, a little tinge of anticipation shot through him. Even after all she’d been through, she was still standing up for herself. Remembering the vast pool of power he’d found when he tapped her mind, he wondered if even she knew how strong she really was.

“Come with me,” he said, and, obediently, she followed.

There was nothing obedient about the way she grabbed his arm, though, pulling him around. She glared furiously up at him, indicating her mouth with a brief, impatient gesture. She wanted to talk; she probably had a lot of things memorized to say.

Dante started to release the compulsion, then stopped and grinned. “I think I’ll enjoy the quiet for a little longer,” he said, knowing that would really twist her drawers in a knot. “There’s nothing you need to say that can’t wait until we’re alone.”

Al had arranged for one of his security people to fetch Dante’s car from the parking deck, where he had a reserved slot next to a private elevator. He’d been discreet about it, because some of the guests, the ones without identification, weren’t being allowed to take their vehicles from the deck. They were already sorting out that security problem for those guests who felt they absolutely had to have a car tonight, even though Dante was providing shuttles to take everyone to the various hotels where his people had found them lodging. He was doing everything possible to take care of his guests, but he knew there could still be a lot of resentment that formed over details like him getting his car when they couldn’t.

The phantom-black Lotus Exige was idling, parking lights on, at the end of the huge casino parking lot, concealed from most of the crowd of onlookers by the huge knot of emergency vehicles with their flashing lights. Dante led Lorna along the edge of the lot; as they neared the car, the driver’s door opened and one of the security men got out. “Here you go, Mr. Raintree.”

“Thanks, Jose.” Dante opened the passenger door. Lorna directed a lethal glare at him as she climbed into the car and somehow managed to dig an elbow into his ribs. He concealed a wince, then closed the door with a firm click and went around to the driver’s side.

The Lotus was low-slung and not all that comfortable for his muscular six-two frame, but he loved driving it when he was in the mood for something with attitude. When he wanted more comfort, he drove his Jag. Tonight he would have liked to drive out into the desolate countryside and put the hammer down, to ease his anger and sharp edge of sorrow with sheer speed and aggression. The Lotus could go from zero to a hundred in eleven seconds, which was a rush. He needed to go a hundred miles an hour right now, needed to push the highperformance little machine to its limit.

Instead he drove calmly and deliberately, aware that he couldn’t let go of the tight leash he was holding on his temper. The fact that it was night helped, but the date was too close to the summer solstice for him to take any chances. Hell—could he have started the accursed fire? Was he responsible for the loss of at least one life?

The fire marshal said preliminary interviews indicated that it had started in the back, where the circuit breakers were, but the scene was still too hot for the investigators to get in there to check. If the fire had started from an electrical problem, then he had nothing to do with it, but he brooded over the possibility that the fire would turn out to have been started by something completely different. His control had wavered when he’d first seen Lorna, with the last rays of the setting sun turning her hair to rich fire. He’d lit the candles without even thinking about them; had he lit anything else?

No, he hadn’t done it. He was sure of that. If he’d been the cause, things would have been bursting into flame all over the hotel and casino, rather than in one distant spot. He’d contained his power, brought it under control. The casino fire had been caused by something else; the timing was just coincidence.

Almost half an hour had elapsed before he opened his gate with a remote control and guided the Lotus up a twisting, curving drive to his tri-level house tucked into an easternfacing fold of the Sierra Nevadas. Another button on the remote raised his garage door, and he put the Lotus in its slot like an astronaut docking a shuttle with the Space Station, then closed the garage door behind him. The silver Jag gleamed in its place beside the Lotus.

“Come on,” he told Lorna, and she got out of the car. She stared straight ahead as he stepped aside to allow her to precede him into his gleaming kitchen. He punched his code into the security system to stop its warning beep, then paused. He briefly considered taking her back to town after he’d finished talking to her, then discarded that idea. He was tired. She could stay here, and if he had to—as he undoubtedly would—he would use a compulsion to keep her here and out of trouble. If she didn’t like it, tough; the last couple of hours had been a bitch, and he didn’t feel like making the drive.

With that in mind, he reset the alarm and turned to her. She was standing with her back to him, not four feet away, her shoulders stiff and, judging by the angle of her head, her chin up.

Regretting the imminent loss of silence, he said, “Okay, you can talk now.”

She whirled to face him, and he braced himself for a flood of invective as her fists clenched at her sides.

“Bathroom!” she bellowed at him.