Kicking It(41)

“No.” For the first time, Amari sounded troubled.

My boots thudded, shuddering through me, and another memory stirred: my old uniform as dragon keeper—all black, masked, with night-vision goggles. Red eyes.

My hunter was a member of my family?

I sat back in my chair. “Is it possible that the Meratoliages have sent someone after me themselves?” And was it also possible that the reason my attacker hadn’t come into Philippe’s shop was because Philippe had asked one of his voodoo friends to protect the area from anyone else who might want to turn me in? His psychic visions would have given him ample time to make such a preparation.

“Either you been runnin’ from your family for a few nights now,” Amari said, “or they just found out where you is. Either way, you best get your shit together before more hunters come for you. I can whip up a protection spell now that I know who’s chasin’ you, but if Philippe is right about there bein’ money offered for you . . .”

“A spell might not help.” I swallowed. “You’re not interested in a bounty?”

“Why would I be when I already live in paradise?” she asked, gesturing round the room.

I wanted to laugh, but stayed silent instead. Outside, a bayou symphony played in the dark, creatures out there swimming in the water, brushing against vines like the ones that had given me a second chance.

This was it, then. I had to make the right decisions tonight, before the family caught up to me. Meeting Philippe had changed my patterns, changed everything.

“Don’t worry,” I told Amari. “I intend to take care of my business before dawn.”

The witch reached under the table once again, then handed me a knife with a long, gleaming blade, almost as if she had already seen that I would be needing it very, very soon.





5



Amari put the protection spell on me before I walked down the road, just to set a bit of distance between her cabin and what I knew would be tracking me down before too long.

In addition to Amari’s knife, I had taken Philippe’s revolver with me as insurance. Since I had tested my powers out only tonight, a firearm felt right in my hands. I had the feeling I was capable of much more than wrestling a strong man into submission or putting that red-eyed attacker back on its heels, but this was no time to get cocky.

After I settled into a crouch on the side of the moon-washed road, my back to one of the trees that clawed over me with branches and Spanish moss, I wasn’t certain how long I waited. But it was a while, because the sky was paling now, and my boots were tapping at me, as if counting down to the time when they would take over, shutting my body down so they could take their nourishment from me.

Yet I had told Amari that I wouldn’t be returning until my hunter had come to me or I needed a bed to slump in.

As I waited, I tried to think of the reasons I might have had for leaving Amari’s cabin and striking out for the city the previous nights. Had one of my unfiltered memories come back to me, prompting me to pursue my family before they reached me? Had I remembered that they would come to wherever I was and I wanted to get to them first, before I forgot again?

Any way about it, the boots had a price, and I would gladly pay it, not only because of the burns that returned whenever I removed the boots, but because I feared I would be a nearly mindless revenant again, just as I had been before Amari had saved me . . .

As the bayou sounds halted for a moment, chills rolled over me. My boots clutched at my legs, and I kept to my crouch, surveying the road, looking to the darkness beyond the trees to see if my attacker was near.

I should have known how this hunter operated, though, and when I slowly looked above me to the bole of the oak I was leaning against, I saw those red night-vision eyes against a black mask.

It had slid down the trunk to get to me, and it was aiming a Taser again.

Before I could think about what sort of balance and stealth that had taken, my body blipped into action: I raised the revolver, shooting to kill. But the hunter was faster. The thing dodged the bullet, yet not all the way—it clipped the Taser, sending the stunner flying once more.

When the hunter used a hand to clamp onto my arm and then flipped me to my back, the breath blasted out of my lungs, my sight scrambling. All I knew was that I’d let go of the revolver, and I had only the long knife that Amari had given to me.

I went for my side, where the blade was hanging in a sheath from my belt loop, but again, the hunter anticipated me, stepping on my arm.

It spoke in an electronically altered voice. “Don’t fight, Lilly. The Meratoliages have been searching for you quite a long time. Just come along.”

An accent like mine. “Are you one of the family?”