Serpent's Sacrifice Read online

  “That you know about.”

  The back door opened just as Lionel was reaching for the handle and Marco’s now-disheveled head peeked out.

  “They’re ready to leave.”

  Lionel nodded.

  Marco fixed Alice with a brief pleading look before turning away. His shoulders slumped as he walked ahead of them.

  She wished she could say something to him, anything. But, every time she opened her mouth, the memory of that snake-like smoke, Marco’s black eyes, and the chill running down her spine, stopped the words cold.

  Her uncle and Gerald were waiting by the car. Uncle Logan’s eyes were red and his face had the haggard look of someone whose heart had been ripped out.

  “I’ll drive you both home,” Gerald said.

  Alice buried her face in Lionel’s broad chest and held him tight. He smelled of leather and expensive cologne. It took Lionel a minute to hug her back, and when he did, his huge arms were like a curtain that someone drew over the pain of this night.

  “Good night, Alice,” he whispered.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The bag teetered with each punch and kick, the dull slaps echoing through the mostly-empty loft. Sweat dripped down Alice’s back and between her breasts. She was tired and thirsty, but she couldn’t stop because every time she did the anger and loss was unbearable. So, she kept at it until she could no longer lift her arms and legs.

  Collapsing to the mat, tears mingled with sweat, her sobs were hidden in the remnants of breathless exertion.

  “You need to drink,” Rose said, tapping Alice’s shoulder with a canteen.

  “Who’s watching the store?”

  “If you haven’t noticed.” Rose eased down next to Alice. “We don’t have many customers on the days I work.”

  Alice shook her head. “I shouldn’t have snapped.”

  “I understand. You have every right to be angry.”

  Alice took a long swallow from the canteen. It had been three days and so far, no one was coming up with any leads about who had killed Aunt Diana. Not that Alice needed them to — she could guess who was behind this.

  “You should take a break,” Rose said. “Go see Logan.”

  “He’s at his boxing gym.”

  “I thought he quit.”

  “He did. I guess we both need to hit something right now.”

  “Because you can’t hit the people that killed her.”

  “Maybe not right now,” she said, her legs shaking as she got up. “But I’ll find them. You can bet on that.”

  Rose stared at the floor, a deep frown on her heart-shaped face.

  “What?” Alice asked.

  “Nothing. I should go back to the shop.”

  “You said it wasn’t busy.”

  “It’s not, but I’m reading that physics book you borrowed for me.”

  “I envy how much you seem to get out of that subject. I could never quite grasp it.”

  Rose began to explain the theory she was reading about, her hands moving as fast as her mouth in her excitement. Alice forced herself to listen, the complexity of it a welcoming distraction from how she’d been feeling.

  After several minutes, Alice shook her head. “I wish you’d had the chance to go to college. It’s criminal that they wouldn’t let you in.”

  “Mrs. Frost offered to pull some strings for me.”

  Alice stared at her. “Why didn’t she?”

  “Because, my dad wouldn’t allow it.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Rose got to her feet and slapped her fist against the punching bag, the punch half hearted. “It does if…well, it does to him I guess.”

  “Is that what Mrs. Frost wanted to talk to you about at the hotel? Trying to change your fathers mind?”

  “No, not change his mind about that. It’s complicated. I can’t go into details, but she offered me a job.”

  Alice frowned, and then her eyes became huge.

  “Not as a maid!”

  “What? No! Mrs. Frost isn’t like that. No, this is more in line with my gifts, or talents, or...whatever you want to call them.”

  Rose was shifting from foot to foot, tapping her fist against the punching bag. Though she’d never advertised her intellectual gifts, Rose had never been ashamed of them either. If given a chance to shine, she usually jumped at the chance. So, why was she being so cagey about it all now? What exactly was Mrs. Frost asking her to do?

  “What’s the job?” Alice asked.

  Rose looked up, her full lips pressed together as if she were bursting to tell Alice the truth. A few more minutes of the right questions and Alice knew she could get the answers out of Rose.

  But then, Marco walked in, knocking on the open door, a deep frown furrowing his brow. When he met Alice’s eyes, his body visibly tensed.

  “Oh, um, are you here to...?” Rose asked.

  “I’m an old friend of Alice’s.” Marco introduced himself and stretched out his hand.

  Rose smiled as she shook it.

  “Nice to meet you finally. I grew up hearing about you and Lionel.”

  Marco grinned. “Not much to tell.”

  “That’s not how Alice made it sound.”

  Marco turned and gave Alice a panicked look.

  “You know,” Alice waved her hand. “Just all the stories about our exploits. Climbing trees, beating up bullies.”

  He nodded, a subtle relief relaxing his features.

  “Well, it was nice to meet you,” he said.

  “You too,” Rose said, glancing from Marco to Alice. “I should really be getting back downstairs.”

  Rose gave a little wave as she went down the stairs, the hollow thump of her footsteps the only sound in the loft.

  Alice glanced at Marco, and then started unwrapping the tape from her hands. The heat of his gaze could still be felt though, even if she wasn’t looking at him, and a heavy silence fell between them.

  She’d been avoiding him, her feelings bouncing from glad he was there to frightened. How often had he manipulated her feelings and she hadn’t known? If he had, was it because he believed it would help her, or because of a whim?

  The memory of what his powers looked like still made her mouth dry, but she knew that he hadn’t asked for this, any more than Lionel had. Marco had no control over how his powers manifested, did he?

  There were so many questions and every time Alice thought she was ready to ask them, something happened; her uncle would need her, or her own grief would cloud any thought about anyone else. There were times when she’d look at Marco and all she could see was the tendrils of smoke coming out of his hands.

  “Can we talk?” His voice was low, unsure.

  She shrugged. “I suppose.”

  At the start of her sparring, Alice had opened one of the huge windows, letting in a pleasant autumn breeze. When she’d been punching and kicking, it had felt like heaven. But now it was making her damp body feel chilled.

  She took her time closing it before turning back to Marco, who hadn’t moved from where he leaned against the door jam, shoulders hunched, long hands shoved into the pockets of his pants.

  There wasn’t much to do while Marco stared at the floor, and the silence was starting to get to her. She finished off the canteen and toweled off every part of herself she could reach without stripping.

  She was about to ask if he was going to say anything, when Marco looked up at her with such intensity Alice wanted to look away, but something wouldn’t let her. In the back of her mind she wondered if it was him.

  “You’re afraid of me,” he said.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “You think I’d use my powers on you without your knowledge.”

  Alice nodded.

  “You’re wrong. I’d never do that, I promise you.”

  “Did you when we were kids?”

  He looked away. “Yes. I was just learning about them. I-I didn’t think about the breach of trust it was. I wanted to he
lp you.”

  “When?”

  “The times when you were afraid to go home. When you broke your arm. But mostly, when your mom died.”

  Alice thought about that. The innocent kindness that Marco had when they were children, coupled with that kind of power. How could he not use it for good? But that was then, and now, as a man with different desires, who fights criminals every night...

  What has he become now?

  “I don’t remember seeing...” What did she call those things that came out of him? “Those...the...”

  “Shadows?”

  Alice nodded, relieved that he had a name for them and knew what she was talking about.

  “When I first got my powers, I would have to touch someone to manipulate their feelings. The shadows came later.”

  “Have you...have you ever hurt someone...or...lost control?”

  “Lionel told you about us and your dad?”

  She nodded.

  “I felt this pure, righteous fury and it unlocked the full scope of my powers. That’s the first time the shadows came, the first time I didn’t have to touch someone to use my powers. But, I didn’t understand it, and I couldn’t rein it in. Lionel stopped me. After that, it happened at school. My parents had to send me somewhere else. I just...I had felt so powerless as a kid, and now I could make the Dorn brothers, and every other bully, see their worst fears. It was...it can be...intoxicating.”

  “Is it still hard to stop yourself?”

  “Sometimes. It’s hard when I can see into someone’s mind, see their desires, all of them. Some people are so dark, it seems like it would be a good thing to make sure they would never be able to hurt anyone again.”

  “But, you can’t...I mean, can you kill them with your mind?”

  Marco shook his head. “No. But...the human mind can only handle so much. It’s very delicate, actually, and if I wanted to, I could break it.”

  Alice felt a sour taste in her mouth. Thinking about gentle Marco doing something so horrible to someone was just about the worst thing she could imagine.

  “Have you ever...”

  He closed his eyes, shoulders slumping further, as if under a heavy burden.

  “Once...It...I was still learning how to control it. I...It haunts me. And every time I feel that maybe I’m going too far, the memory of that stops me. I’m better at it now.”

  “What...I don’t know if I can ask this—”

  His eyes opened, a sincere hope shining in them.

  “You can ask me anything, if it helps.”

  “What is it like? I mean you said you can see people’s desires and fears. Can you make them feel anything you want?”

  “No. I can amplify or decrease someone’s negative emotions. To do that, I have to see what they love or fear, depending on what I want them to feel.”

  “But sometimes, it’s seemed like you can, I don’t know, sense other people’s emotions. That’s what happened when my mom died, isn’t it? And then, the other night?”

  “I can sense intense emotions. But again, only negative ones. It’s how I knew you were in trouble after your mom died, I could feel your fear. It was...it was so strong.”

  “Does it ever hurt you?”

  “Not really. If it’s very intense, sometimes it lingers, like the taste of something on your tongue. But for me, it’s in my mind.”

  “How awful, to carry that around.”

  He nodded. “I can clear it away much better now than I used to be able to, but sometimes...”

  Alice wanted to wrap her arms around him, to tell him it would be alright. She took a few steps toward him and stopped. There were still questions that needed answers.

  “So, the other night, you took away some of Uncle Logan’s grief? How did you do that, did you, um, absorb it?”

  “No, nothing like that. I just decrease it, almost like turning the burner down on a stove. It’s the only good thing about these powers. I can help someone like that, but most of the time, it’s really about...hurting them.”

  His face twisted in disgust and sorrow, and Alice knew that if he could choose to do so, Marco would get rid of these powers.

  Because he doesn’t want to hurt anyone. He never has.

  “You save people all the time,” Alice said, walking slowly toward him. “Anyone else might use them for evil, but you’re trying to help others. That makes your powers a good thing.”

  “I try to believe that. It’s easy for Lionel to know he’s good.”

  “But, it’s all a choice, isn’t it? A choice to use them for good or bad, and both of you have chosen good.”

  Marco smiled.

  “You’ll have me thinking I’m a knight in shining armor next.”

  “If it helps. That’s how I thought of you both, that night with my father. You saved my life. I’m sure lots of other people see you that way now, too.”

  “That would be nice.”

  “So...” Alice leaned on the wall next to him. “After you used your powers on my father, were you really sick?”

  “Oh, yes. For some reason, tapping into my powers like that gave me a fever for three days. My mom called a doctor — and a priest.”

  “A priest?”

  “Yeah, my eyes...I don’t know if you noticed, but—”

  “They get black.”

  “Lionel said he’d gotten a fever before his powers came on him,” Alice said. “Did you have two fevers then or…?”

  “No, just the one.”

  “So you woke up one day and you could feel what people were feeling?”

  “Sort of…It came on gradually. By the time I could touch someone and manipulate their feelings, I had figured out that Lionel had abilities too and he helped me through it.”

  “That must’ve been so frightening.”

  Marco nodded. “I thought I was going crazy. If not for Lionel, I don’t know what I would’ve done.”

  They stood inches apart, their heads down. Alice wasn’t sure what to do now. Her fear of him had dulled to a low murmur.

  Maybe, one day, it won’t be there at all.

  This was the Marco she’d known, and yet not. She looked up at him. The awkwardness of childhood had melted away and he’d become a handsome man, if not conventionally so. His body had broadened and developed enough muscle to give him an appealingly lanky body.

  Marco must’ve felt her eyes on him, because he looked sideways, an unsure grin on his lips. A broad swath of dark brown hair flopped onto his forehead, almost in his eyes.

  Alice hesitated, then reached up and brushed it back, her fingertips touching his forehead.

  “You need a haircut,” she said.

  “No time.”

  His brown eyes held hers for a moment, an intensity that Alice couldn’t define shining in them. Then he smiled, and it was gone.

  She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry I ran.”

  “I don’t blame you. Half the time I want to run away from me, too.”

  “Stop that, I mean it. I’m not going to let you talk about yourself that way; and after a while, it will get very annoying... so...just stop.”

  His grin widened. “Yes, ma’am.”

  She stepped closer and put her hand on his arm. “I mean it Marco. You define these powers, they don’t define you.”

  The smile faded and he swallowed. “You really believe that?”

  “I do.”

  Footsteps echoed up the stairs and after a moment, Rose peeked her head in.

  “Call for you downstairs. It’s Logan.”

  “Thanks, I’ll be right there.”

  Rose nodded at Marco as she backed away, a questioning look on her face. Alice gave her a tiny shake of her head and Rose shrugged.

  “What was that about?” Marco asked, having caught the last of it.

  “Nothing. Just, well, Rose is constantly trying to get me to date someone.”

  “You don’t date a lot?”

  “Oh, I do, sometimes. Not lately.” She walked toward th
e stairs. “Actually, not since graduation.”

  “You’re just too intimidating.”

  “What a terrible thought. An educated woman is too intimidating.”

  “Well...” Marco grinned at her. “Not to everyone.”

  Uncle Logan had gotten edgier about her whereabouts in the last few days, but that wasn’t the only reason he wanted her home. Something had come to light, something he didn’t want to tell her, but knew he had to.

  Running through the front door, she collided with Detective Garrick as he was coming out of her uncle’s office. His bulldog face scowled at her, his breath smelling of cigars and whiskey.

  “What the hell have you been doing?” he asked, looking her up and down.

  “Working out my anger,” she snapped back.

  Garrick snorted. “Well, there’s news, but maybe you should shower first.”

  She crossed her arms and stared into Garrick’s small, bright green eyes.

  “Alice,” Uncle Logan said, coming down the stairs, “go on, we’ll tell you after you’ve cleaned up.”

  With one last glare at the Detective, Alice ran up the stairs.

  “You should really get that girl under control,” she heard Garrick say.

  “None of your business,” her uncle replied, making Alice smile as she closed the bathroom door.

  It was the shortest shower of her life. Slipping into some black, slim-fitting pants and a gray, fitted sweater, she ran a brush quickly through her hair and grimaced at the way the curls had frizzed. Taming her bobbed hair as best she could, Alice bolted down the stairs and was in the kitchen before Garrick had finished his glass of whiskey, an achievement indeed.

  Marco was at the counter making a sandwich. When he turned to ask her something, his brown eyes widened at the sight of her, olive skin darkening. She looked down at herself, wondering if she’d put her sweater on inside out, but everything was as it should be.

  He cleared his throat and turned back to what he was doing. “Hungry?”

  “Starved.”

  “Can we begin, or do we need snacks first?” Garrick asked.

  “Just talk, don’t antagonize, for god’s sake,” Uncle Logan said.

  “We identified one of the men who attacked Diana. He’s been arrested half-a-dozen times for assault, and once on suspected murder. Each time, his very expensive lawyers get him out on some technicality.”