She'd tried to train herself these last months by painting the designs blindfolded. She doubted someone looking for abstract art would spend lunch money on her last disaster. Without her eyesight, her career would be the first casualty and her independence the second. She didn't know how to do anything else.
Best's disease. That was the name of the thief that had caused her blindness. She'd never even heard of it until her diagnosis. Now she knew everything about the macular degeneration that had no cure.
In the last couple of months, she'd gone from seeing well enough to drive with thick glasses to a blurry world that no lens could bring into focus.
At the rate things were changing, she'd be completely blind in only a few more weeks.
With no savings and no way to keep working, she'd end up on the streets, where she'd be at the mercy of men who made Chuck look like Galahad.
Her heartbeat sped up, thumping louder and louder in her ears. She felt light-headed and sick.
An urgent whining broke through her panic attack. Brutus tugged on his leash, pulling her forward and out of her downward spiral.
Laurette blinked to clear her mind and wished she could sharpen her sight as easily. Because of the foggy shadows, it took her a few moments to realize she was standing off the jogging path, in the grass. Brutus jumped up against her legs, his whole body moving when he wagged his stubby tail.
She took a breath to calm her nerves and dropped down to hug him. "You're right. I said let's take a walk and not think about it for awhile."
He must have taken that as a sign to take off and drag her over the footbridge at the south end of the park. She squinted through her glasses to see, but all she could make out was the creek running beneath the bridge. She saw undulated globs that were probably piles of plants and mud.
Brutus pulled her down the foot of the bridge and across the grass to where he sniffed clumps of rock and mud along the bank. She could tell he practically went on point at one spot when he yanked his head down.
"No, Brutus. We can't take anything from the park for our garden." That was all she needed at this point ... an arrest record and a fine she couldn't pay.
When he refused to leave, she knelt next to him to see if she could discern what had gotten his attention.
One rock seemed to shine as though catching the last bit of light before the sun set. Wait a minute ... She stared at the goose-egg-shaped stone for the longest time, mesmerized until Brutus barked--well, more of a yap--breaking her attention.
She could see that rock.
Clearly.
No, she couldn't see one rock when everything else was a rush of colors and shapes. She was imagining things.
"Right. Time to go." Before she had any more hallucinations that ended up with her in a straightjacket.
Laurette stood up and turned away. But she couldn't leave. She felt the strong urge to glance back at the rock.
The stone was now very clear. And sort of bright-looking.
Laurette rubbed the heel of her hand over her eyes. Was she losing her eyesight and her mind?
That rock had not glowed. Am I really seeing that or not?
She stared at the stone again. The shape seemed like that of a soft lump of red-orange lava with purple and yellow ribbons. All the colors shifted, moving as though molten.
Brutus dropped down in front of the rock with paws outstretched as if told the "down" command.
Yeah, right. Like that would happen in her lifetime.
Pick up the stone and prove to yourself it isn't molten and that you're not nuts. While she couldn't take it home, there was no law against holding a rock for a few seconds to convince herself she wasn't going bonkers.
She squatted down and touched the rock with one finger, quickly, in case it was hot. Not injurious hot, but a comforting warmth. That made no sense. She closed her eyes and let her fingers curl around the smooth shape, lifting it into her palm to identify the rock with a sculptor's touch.
She could swear the stone moved as though it was a living thing.
When she opened her eyes, the colors in her hand glowed.
She glanced around the park, but something was odd about how everything looked blurrier than before through her glasses. She used her free hand to slip her thick glasses off, and her breath backed up in her throat at what she could see.
Everything.
A young man threw a Frisbee for his dog halfway across the field. The Border collie leaped high to snatch the toy from the air. A young couple sitting on a blanket fifty feet away played with their baby, who had a new front tooth.
This couldn't be happening.
Laurette pushed her gaze to Tenth Street, which separated the park from a residential area. She wouldn't normally be able to see that street from here. Car headlights burned crisply against the twilight darkening the city.
She'd never had vision this good, even with glasses. Even before her diagnosis.
The rock sat in her hand, pulsing with a vibrant energy.
Her head wanted to argue that this couldn't be happening, that rocks did not restore eyesight, but her heart didn't care.
She could see.
Testing her theory, she opened her fingers away from the rock, then scanned the busy park activities again. She couldn't see as clearly as before but still better than she had with the best glasses she'd ever worn.
"What am I going to do, Brutus?"
He gave her a yap and danced around, happy.
Laurette closed her fingers once more around the rock and the world came back into sharp focus. She hooked her eyeglasses through the scooped neck of her sleeveless top.
Was this really happening? Or was she losing her mind?
If insanity was taking over, she'd use that as a basis for her defense if she got arrested for taking a piece of city property, because she held a miracle.
And she wasn't telling anyone about this rock. Or ever giving it back.
TEN
You've got one minute, then I'm leaving. With your surprise." Evalle muttered the warning on her second hike past the back side of Grady Hospital in downtown Atlanta, where heat hovered in the eighties at close to nine at night. What she wouldn't give to use her power and stir a breath of wind, something to blow away the stench of urine oozing through the humid air in this spot.
Where was that ornery Nightstalker?
The temperature dropped ten degrees to a comfortable chill.
"What happens in one minute, E-valle? Not like you gonna leave 'till we talk." Grady's deep Southern voice brushed past her ear like charred wood scraped against rough concrete.
Evalle stopped on the sidewalk running along Pratt Street. She didn't turn around. A waste of time, since no one stood behind her. "I'm in a hurry, Grady."
The translucent form of a thin male took shape, wavering in front of her. The coffee-colored skin on his jaw was covered with gray whiskers that stopped just below a slash of cheekbone. His creased nose had failed to dodge a fist or two that had left their marks. Bony elbows interrupted the long arms sticking out from his red-and-black plaid short-sleeved shirt.
The air continued to cool, a welcome change.
From what Grady had told her, he looked the same way now he had the day he'd died homeless on the streets at age sixty-eight, a decade and a half ago.
When his head came into focus, sharp eyes with two chips of coal for pupils glowered at her before his gaze dropped to the denim shoulder bag hanging against her hip. "What surprise?"
"Not until we have a deal and shake." Negotiating with Grady was like dealing with Charon on the River Styx. If you didn't set the price before you got on the boat and refuse to pay until he ferried you safely to the other side, he'd dump you in the river and leave you to drown.
Grady lifted his stubborn chin. He was a wily old bastard who gave up nothing for free. He, like all Nightstalkers, was the metaphysical remains of the less fortunate who'd died on the street. They would do anything for a craving. Sometimes it was dru
gs or food, but usually it was alcohol, and in Grady's case, there was only one thing he wanted.
Mad Dog 20/20.
All a Nightstalker needed was one quick handshake with any powerful being--and they could take human form for ten minutes.
"Whatya got?" He eyed her bag.
"Clock's ticking."
"I'm listenin'."
"I need information on two Cresyls and a Birrn demon that were running around town this weekend. Got anything on them?"
"Maybe."
"I can't play this game right now, Grady. My butt's in a sling."
"With who?"
"Everybody if I don't find out who sent the demons."
"Who'd you piss off this time?"
"I didn't do anything." Other than being born an Alterant. "But a demon mauled a human. The body's in the morgue and word is going to be out by tomorrow morning, if it takes even that long. If I don't come up with evidence to prove the demon mauled that human, everyone's first default will be that an Alterant did it. Not a good thing for me. You got anything on the attack or not?"
"Why would a Cresyl attack a human and not eat the body?"
She wanted to choke him and his game of twenty questions. But then, she hadn't mentioned that it was the Cresyl who'd killed the human. Grady definitely had information. "That's what I'm trying to find out. It's tied to the Birrn, I think."
"That don't make sense." Wrinkles on Grady's face piled together in a frown. "Cresyls belong to a German practicing dark arts and the Birrn to Nigerian black majik. What makes you think they're connected?"
He probably knew why and was testing to see how much information she had. "I'll share if you do. Got information or not?"
"Maybe."
He could be the most obstinate of ghouls, but he was one of the better preternatural informants because of that annoying trait. Hoping to nudge him along, she bluffed, "If you can't help me, just say so."
"Didn't say that, but I still don't see why you're in a jam, 'less you got mouthy with somebody. That I'd understand."
I will not let you bait me. But Grady had that look, the one that said he wouldn't budge until he got his questions satisfied. "Things have gotten a little more difficult for me than normal over the past eight weeks since those nine Beladors were killed in North Carolina."
"By that Alterant?" Grady floated off the sidewalk.
"Yes. Get back over here," she hissed at him.
"Oh. Didn't realize I drifted." His flickering form moved back as though blown gently, but there wasn't a breeze to be had. His gaze puckered with concern. "That ain't right to come after you every time another one shifts into a beast."
"True, but we're in the minority with that opinion." What was it going to take to move this along?
"How much you know about that Birrn killed this morning?" he asked.
She flexed her jaw muscles. Patience. "Give me a break tonight, Grady. I got a lot to do and not much time."
"You wouldn't be so wound up if you did something other than work at night. Maybe found you a nice young man to give you a--"
"Grady!"
"--back rub." He pulled off a look of mock despair a Catholic mother would be proud of. "Not much chance of that happening when you can't even get a date."
"I'm not wound up." Yet. "And I can get a date, old man."
"Better an old man than an old maid. Who dates a woman that lives underground like a mole and has weirdos for friends?" His lips stretched into a dog-happy grin. No sense of urgency at all--a luxury of the not-entirely-dead, which Evalle couldn't afford.
"You have a twisted sense of humor, Grady, but I wouldn't call you a weirdo."
"Was talkin' 'bout Tazer and Quill, those two goons you hang out with."
"His name's Tzader. Z! The T's silent and it's Quinn, not Quill. He and Quinn are not weirdos or goons." She tapped her foot. "Can we move this along?"
"And that thing you call a pet--"
"Grady!" She no longer felt guilty about her surprise for him. "Back to my demon problem. Please, for the love of Macha."
"Which you still haven't explained," he interjected. "I'm surprised those two goons aren't here helping you." The irritating rascal didn't take a breath. "But you don't need them or anyone else. Some hard tail come at you, he'd end up with his ass booted into next week."
She was glad one person, even if he was dead, had faith in her ability to defend herself.
Grady scratched at his beard. "But that's another reason you can't get a date. Men want a sweet woman, not some Amazon what's gonna kick their butts."
How did he always manage to run so far off track? "We are not discussing my love life--"
"That's for sure. Nothin' to discuss." Grady's bushy eyebrows lifted in an all-knowing way as he nodded.
"If you don't stick to the topic, I'm going to someone else." Evalle wiped a bead of sweat from her brow with the back of her hand, prepared to dicker. "I'm out of time. You ready to shake?"
"No free nothings."
"Like that ever changes? Here's my deal. We'll shake if you agree to share everything you know about the Cresyls and Birrn who were here in the Atlanta area over the past forty-eight hours," she said, spelling out the specifics.
He acted like he considered it, but they both knew he wouldn't walk away. "You got it."
She pulled her thumb free from her jeans pocket and extended her hand. Due to fear that too much power shared would alter the normal state of a Nightstalker, VIPER rules forbade an agent from shaking for more than ten seconds without special dispensation. A rare exemption she'd seen allowed only once when national security had been at stake.
But with her level of power, she could give a Nightstalker human form for ten minutes with a five-second shake.
"Ready?" she asked, glancing around to make sure they were still alone. The only living thing anywhere close to this dark stretch was some poor old vagrant across the street covered in newspapers and sleeping shoved up against the hospital's back wall.
Grady's hand trembled when he started reaching for hers. He licked his lips, anticipation blooming in his sagging gaze until he paused and pulled back. "What'd you bring me?"
She shook her head, refusing to tell him what was in her shoulder bag. "Not until we shake."
"Should have made that part of the deal," he grumbled and stuck out rough fingers that had fought to survive. "Do it."
When her hand touched his, heat spread across her palm with the energy flowing from her.
The exultation on his face always plucked at her heartstrings. His life had come down to ten-minute visits to this world. She could go to other Nightstalkers, who would agree in a snap to anything she asked, but Grady was far more intelligent than the rest when it came to information, and the grouch behaved like a grandfather who gave unsolicited advice.
Her fantasy of a grandfather, since she'd never had one she knew of.
Within seconds, Grady's body turned completely opaque, his dark flesh hung loose with age, but the old coot's body emitted a quiet strength.
She withdrew her hand. "Start talking."
"What's my surprise?"
Evalle sighed and dug into her shoulder bag for the McDonald's sack filled with a hamburger, French fries and a bottle of water she lifted into view.
"You're kidding, right?" The look he gave her questioned her ability to chew gum and walk.
She ignored the hiss of irritation that slipped from his lips and pointed out, "Last time you said how much you miss the taste of hamburgers."
He rolled his eyes to the heavens as if someone up there would explain demented women to him, then swung around, searching the other side of the quiet street. Grady limped over to the homeless guy asleep.
Evalle would have zapped him with a lick of power if not for her aversion to hurting Grady in any way. Especially during his ten minutes of Nightstalker nirvana. "You forget you owe me information and that I'm on a tight schedule?"
He slipped a half-drunk bottle of wine from the b
ony fingers of the comatose bum and limped back. "I agreed to talk after we shook, but not how soon after." He downed a swig of wine and jerked the bottle away. "Lord Almighty, that sucks."
"What? Is your palate spoiled by Mad Dog 20/20?" She grabbed the bottle away from him. "I need answers."
He sighed as he stared longingly at the bottle. "The Cresyls were on a leash, part of a spell. What were you doing with the Birrn?"
Figures that Grady would know about her fighting the Birrn. "Where'd you hear about that?"
"Those two junkyard heathens."
She rubbed her hand over her forehead. "I've got to find those twins and shut them up."
"They'll sure as hell spill their guts if someone grabs 'em and plays hard."
She didn't have a nurturing bone in her body, but if someone hurt either of those two teenagers, she'd make that person beg for death.
Grady reached for the wine. "What have you got on the demons?"
She pulled it away again. "One of the Cresyls killed the human, then the Birrn ate the Cresyl. The Cresyls set me up, but I don't know if it was to bait me into a trap or any Alterant who happened to be here."
"You're the only one I've ever heard of that ain't caught yet."
That was the unfortunate part. But she could hope there were more, couldn't she? Just one more would shed doubt on the death being related to her powers. "Oh, and here's the kicker--the Birrn had Celtic markings."
Grady shook his head. "That don't make sense with the Birrn bein' Nigerian."
"Yeah, I know. So where does a Celtic connection come in? Every way I look at this, I still come up with someone out to set me up by making the mauled human appear to be an Alterant attack."
"Here's what I got." Grady finally turned serious. "The Cresyls were on a spell leash connected to the Birrn. That would mean the Birrn's master was controlling all three demons."
She handed him back the bottle. "I've never heard of that, but we could fill a library with what I don't know about demons. What about the Celtic link?"
Grady turned the bottle up, swallowing a long gulp. "The majik holding the Cresyls was Noirre."
That sent a shiver through her. Tzader's lead for the traitorous Belador had something to do with Noirre majik. But Tzader was too involved in something to break free or she'd have heard from him telepathically by now.