“And then?”
“Then I’m going to use every power at my disposal to weaken the bokor and send the elemental back.”
Jude’s smile was crooked. “You make it sound so easy.”
“As I’m sure you know only too well, these things are never easy. Fighting power with power is always a touchy thing.”
“And Caro?” Jude looked at her.
“She’s going to back me up. She’s found her power, Jude. All she has to do is direct it at the bokor or the elemental. It’ll bolster what I do.”
“The two of you together should be able to match a bokor.”
“I hope we do better than match it. Otherwise we’re lost.”
Jude nodded. “And what do you want me to do?”
“Stay close with your oils and holy water. So far they’ve worked to keep the elemental back. I may need you to surround us with them when we have the elemental contained with the bokor.”
“So it can’t escape?”
“Exactly.”
“But you’ll be locked inside with it.”
That was the point at which Caro felt butterflies in her stomach again. All of a sudden the chicken marsala didn’t seem to be sitting well, and anxiety ran along her nerve endings.
“Locked inside with it?” she repeated. “That could be a mistake.”
Damien turned to her and took both her hands in his. Strong hands, cool hands. She had a flash of memory at what they were capable of doing to her.
“We have to be inside with it. If we’re outside, Jude’s wards could be as much a wall to us as to it.”
“But I can see beyond Jude’s wards now,” she reminded him.
“Seeing beyond them and casting power beyond them are two very different things.”
She supposed she could understand that. So she was about to get locked inside a circle with an elemental and a bokor. Not her everyday sort of experience. Her mouth turned a bit dry as she considered every possible thing that could go wrong, and there were a multitude of them.
Damien’s grip on her hands tightened. “I could fight them alone, Schatz.”
The offer immediately stiffened her spine. “No. I won’t have that. I’ve been tracking this thing for a week, people have been killed and it has to stop. If there’s any chance my powers might make the difference, then I’m not staying out of this fight.”
Damien searched her face and she tried to look as determined as she could. After a few seconds, he nodded.
“And I’m bringing my gun,” she announced. “If necessary, I’m going to use it against this bokor.”
Damien shook his head. “Your power is the whitest of lights, Caro. Don’t dim it by bringing a weapon of violence with you, or violence in your heart. Please.”
Everything in Caro rebelled. Going into a dangerous situation unarmed? It violated every precept of her training as a cop. On the other hand... She closed her eyes and felt for that light within her. It was still there and even seemed a little stronger now that she knew how to call upon it.
Maybe he was right. Her grandmother had always warned her about the way evil backfired. She had never thought of her gun as evil, merely as a tool to be used only in extreme circumstances, but perhaps it would have the wrong vibe for this job.
Finally she sighed, pulled the holster off her belt and laid it on the table.
Damien smiled. “Trust. It’s important. Trust me, trust your own power.”
She looked at her holstered piece and thought that was a whole lot of trust she had just put on the table.
At Damien’s direction, she bundled up warmly against the winter night. The two vampires, impervious to the cold, simply wore their usual leathers.
Outside they darted into a dark alley, then Damien lifted her on his back. She clung tightly as they climbed straight up a building. Rock climbers had nothing on a vampire, she thought. Not only did he seem to be able to cling where there was hardly a finger or toe hold, but he moved so swiftly that they reached the top of the building in an eyeblink. Even though she was getting used to the speed at which he could move, she was still astonished at how quickly he set her on her feet.
“Now?” asked Jude.
Damien didn’t answer. He closed his eyes, murmuring something, and then held out his arm. Caro could see the blue sparks dancing along it, and from the expression on Jude’s face he could, as well.
Still murmuring under his breath, Damien turned slowly, extending his arm as if it were a pointer. A minute ticked by, then he dropped his arm.
“To the west,” he said. “The bokor hasn’t moved since last I sensed his general direction. But I’ll have to keep checking so I can home in on him.”
Then they were off again, on a wild ride from Caro’s perspective, but one she was beginning to love even though the cold wind of their movement threatened frostbite to her nose. She loved being wrapped around Damien this way, loved the way she could feel his muscles bunch and unbunch, so fast it was hard to believe any muscle could twitch that fast.
It felt like a speeded-up roller-coaster ride, leaps followed by gentle landings but enough that her stomach couldn’t decide whether it was rising or falling. Like being on a crazy elevator, she thought, and she had a wild urge to laugh because she liked it. No amusement park would ever again seem exciting.
They paused again, and she took the time to get grounded, feet firmly planted, stomach settling, as she looked out over the rooftops. This wasn’t a vantage she was used to, and it proved a bit difficult to get her bearings.
Damien was holding out his arm again, but this time he wiggled his fingers a bit, as if trying to get more detailed information.
She closed her eyes and reached out with her own senses, feeling for the elemental. It was nearby.
“Damien. It’s here.”
“I feel it,” he agreed. “Jude? Sprinkle some of that holy water on us, will you?”
Jude obliged, pulling a spray bottle out of his pocket. He must have read the astonishment Caro felt on her face, or smelled it, because he smiled faintly. She still had to get used to that smelling part.
“It’s efficient,” he said as he walked around her, spraying. After he sprayed Damien, he handed the bottle to Caro. “Do me, too, if you don’t mind.”
A moment of absurdity, she thought as she used an ordinary spray bottle to cover Jude in holy water.
Then she closed her eyes and reached out. “It pulled back a bit.”
“Let’s go,” Damien announced. “Not much farther.” He swung Caro up onto his back as if she weighed nothing at all and the roller-coaster ride began again.
Fear fluttered in her stomach as she wondered if she would survive this night.
Chapter 14
When at last they stopped, some deep instinct told her they were in the right place.
They walked cautiously to the parapet and looked down on the street below. Caro gasped as she recognized the shop. “Alika! Not Alika!”
At once she thought of the talisman in her pocket and pulled it out. As she started to hurl it away, Damien snapped his arm out and stopped her.
“You said you felt nothing ill about the gris-gris.”
“I didn’t. But if she’s behind this...”
“We don’t know she’s behind this. Not at all. I just know it started here. It could be someone else. Regardless, if she’s part of this, she gave you the talisman for protection. Maybe she wanted to protect you from the force she unleashed. Or maybe she just wanted to protect you from something else she was aware of.”
Caro tightened her grip on the talisman, hesitating. It was true they couldn’t be sure Alika was the bokor. It was equally true that she had sensed nothing evil about the pouch in her hand. More confident in her special senses, she checked it once again. It still glowed with a lavender light and seemed to offer no threat. Slowly, she returned it to her pocket. “It didn’t protect me that day on the street,” she remarked.