hand of hate 01 - destiny blues (23 page)

Madame Coumlie should never have been able to defeat a monstrous djemon at her age. She must have some sort of power, or she would never have tried to face it. If a demon master was sending its djemon to kill people, Rhys and I were the only ones who would be able to find him and prove it. No one but me could see the djinn. If she told me what to do, I was certain I could force all those demons back into the Hill cavern. I would need Rhys’s help to get into the caves again. A plan began to take shape in my mind.   
 

The men got up from the table and I caught Fontaigne’s eye as we drifted toward the elevator. Lance wouldn’t be going anywhere for several hours, even if he made bail, but he needed a lawyer right now. I hoped Fontaigne would help us. He wasn’t a criminal attorney, but surely he could recommend someone. I hurried to catch up to the departing group.  
 

“What’s going on?” I asked Fontaigne.  
 

“Ah. I’m going to go with agent Porter and give a statement about the demon attack, after he speaks with Mrs. Coumlie. He believes this new information on the size of the attacker will refocus the FBI’s investigation toward a demon master.”
 

I breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s good to hear.”  
 

“I’ll need you to come back to the caves with me.” Rhys clenched the keys in his hand. “We need to find that other entrance and seal it off.”
 

“Absolutely.” I nodded. “The FBI just arrested Lance for the murders.”
 

All three men stared at me.  
 

“But in light of the attack on Mr. Fontaigne and my great-grandmother, they’ll have to cut him loose, right? I mean, obviously they’ve got the wrong guy.”
 

I appealed to Fontaigne. “My brother needs a good attorney. Can you help us?”
 

The lawyer nodded. “We have a fine attorney in my firm who specializes in criminal cases. Let me give him a call.” He turned aside to make the call as we waited for the elevator.   
 

“Your brother isn’t going anywhere.” Porter said. “I need to collect these witness statements first. Without evidence of a larger demon running loose, I’ll have no pull with the taskforce.”
 

“If we bring back the two djemons I saw running loose in the caves, couldn’t we persuade the task force that someone has breached the caverns?”
 

“Not if they’re the same puny size as the others you’ve showed me.” Porter checked his watch.  “Eyewitness testimony is the only thing I have to convince the task force of the bigger threat. The sooner I take those statements, the sooner we can get the task force looking in the right direction.”
 

Rhys disagreed. “No one is going to believe Madame Coumlie, Frank. On looks alone, she isn’t credible. We must show them the breach in the cavern. Even the FBI accepts those caverns serve as containment for paranormal entities. We need to find that breach and fix it.”
 

Porter looked fit to be tied. “You know I can’t help you in those caves, Warrick. I agree the old lady isn’t credible, but with Fontaigne here as a witness, I’ve got a much better shot at convincing them.”
 

I had an idea. “What about Oneiri?” Rhys shook his head and gave me an exceedingly intense expression that said shut up, but I ignored him. “Why don’t we show them Oneiri?”
 

“What are you talking about? Who’s Oneiri?”
 

“It’s nothing.” Rhys started to dismiss my suggestion, but I interrupted.  
 

“Oneiri is Madame Coumlie’s djemon. He’s big enough.” Rhys put his hand on the back of my neck and squeezed a warning. I couldn’t understand why he was so agitated.  
 

Porter’s jaw clenched as he processed the information. “That soulless bitch,” he swore a string of oaths.  
 

“Hey, that’s my great-grandmother you’re talking about.”
 

“Consorting with an unregistered demon is an act of treason. I always had a bad feeling about her anyway. She’s condemned herself to hell, as far as I’m concerned. If I’d known she was such an abomination, I would have arrested her immediately.”
 

Heaven help Lance if they discovered he had a demon. “Show a  little respect. She is a human being, not a monster. Besides, Oneiri is all the proof you need.” I fought to control my temper.  
 

“You knew about this, Warrick?”
 

“She’s the Hand of Fate, Frank. Just because your tests didn’t find anything doesn’t mean there’s nothing there.”
 

Porter’s face reddened, his jaw clenched in anger. “You say this Oneiri thing is big enough to kill. Why didn’t either of you think to tell me earlier? Seems to me she and her demon are at the center of this whole case. The woman is a menace to society. I could have you all brought up on conspiracy charges.”  
 

“Take it easy, Frank. The old lady is no killer.”
 

“And she’d never let Oneiri hurt anyone.” I shook my head. “She’s not the one you’re looking for.”
 

The elevator dinged, and the doors opened. Porter went in first, radiating silent fury, and we all eased to the opposite side of the car. A sensation of hot wind whooshed across my skin, and I staggered against Fontaigne. I grabbed his arm to steady myself. A sense of foreboding came over me.  
 

“Are you okay” Fontaigne asked.  
 

I nodded, unable to speak, as a dreadful pressure began to build inside me.  
 

Fontaigne whispered to me, saying he’d gotten his colleague to agree to represent Lance, at least for now. I gave him a thumbs-up and kept my trap shut, my anxiety growing by the minute. Something bad was happening.  I began to sweat.  
 

A moment later the doors opened on the fourth floor, and I took off running down the hall. A flurry of activity greeted me at the nurse’s station and a group of medical personnel gathered soberly at the door of my great-grandmother’s room. I raced toward them as my premonition became reality.  
 

The women in the doorway stepped back, and two nurses switched off the monitors. The mood was subdued and respectful.  
 

“Are you the family?”
 

I nodded, my eyes filling as I stared at the still form on the bed. “I’m so sorry. She passed just a few moments ago. We checked her and she was gone.” She took my hand and gave it a sympathetic squeeze.  “It was very peaceful, I assure you.”  
 

I bit my lips and stood in silent shock. The nurse excused herself, saying she would send the doctor by in a few minutes if we had any questions.  
 

Porter came up behind me. “What happened? I thought she was fine.”  
 

Fontaigne answered forestalled him. “She was one hundred and twenty-seven years old. What do you think?”
 

   Porter glared angrily at me. “Well there goes my corroborating witness. How do we get hold of that djemon?”  
 

Rhys answered him. “Once the demon master is gone, so is the djemon.”  
 

“Shit.” Porter stomped off.  
 

Tears prickled as I moved toward the bed. Rhys and Fontaigne stood in the doorway; the men as alone with their thoughts as I. Tears rolled down my cheeks, but I refused to cry. I glanced at them, startled to see their eyes misting as well.  
 

Fontaigne stared at me curiously. “What’s the matter with your eyes?”
 

I wiped my tears, not understanding. Rhys and Fontaigne came closer, shock registering in their faces.  
 

Rhys stroked his chin. “Son of a bitch.”
 

Fontaigne pulled me into the little bathroom and showed me my reflection in the mirror.  
 

“All hail Mattie Blackman.  The new Hand of Fate.”
 

I gasped as I stared at my reflection in the mirror, and the color washed from my eyes, fading the iris until the brown paled to the unnatural color of new pennies. I gripped the sink to steady myself. I now had the same yellow halo around my pupils as my great-grandmother.  
 

I blinked my eyes and turned my head, inspecting myself at different angles, but I couldn’t recognize the image of me reflected in the mirror. Subtle changes to the bone structure of my face made my cheekbones appear more prominent, my jaw stronger. I ran my hands up and down my arms. Something was happening to me; inside me. My black eye and bruises faded away before my eyes. The pressure, which had built up in the elevator evaporated; replaced with a sensation of disorientation and loss.  
 

Nausea crept up in my throat. “What’s happening to me?” To the core of my being, I understood this change would be permanent. I would never be confused with ‘normal’ again.   
 

CHAPTER 25
 

In my worst nightmares, I sometimes dreamed I’d inherited my mother’s schizophrenia, but never once did I imagine I would become an everlasting member of the bizarre brigade or a poster girl for the Finger Lakes Spirit Festival.    
 

Rhys squeezed into the tiny bathroom beside us. He put his arm around me and tried to make me feel better.  
 

“You’ll be okay, Mattie. All you need are a pair of colored contact lenses. Nobody even needs to know.”
 

Our faces in the mirror wore the same dazed expression. Today had been a long one for everybody. I felt safe here in the crowded bathroom, standing next to two men I barely knew. My great-grandmother trusted these men. She trusted me. She trusted me to find a way to stop the demon master and return the djinn back into the sealed cavern. No one but me.
 

I remembered what agent Porter had said about the demons. Loaded weapons, he’d called them. I simply couldn’t think of Blix and Larry as dangerous. I thought about the phantom demon master and his monstrous djemon running loose in my hometown. The killer djemon started out just like me and Blix.  Someone had let these things loose and planned to use them to kill. This had to stop.
 

“What exactly is the Hand of Fate?” My voice sounded distant and disconnected.  
 

“Perhaps not what you think.” Rhys leaned against the doorway. “The original Egyptian legends of the three fates spoke of Amun, the ram-headed god, who impregnated a priestess of one of the snake goddesses of the waters of Chaos. The three sisters borne as a result served the poor, the wretched, and distressed mortal citizens of ancient Egypt. Not until the Greeks kidnapped them and brought them to Greece  did they became famous as the oracle daughters of Zeus and Chaos. The women eventually took human husbands, gave birth to children, and over the millennia the lineage faded, as generation after generation diluted the sacred family origins. Madame Coumlie was the last of her kind; a wild card, like a roll of the dice, or a meteorite. She dedicated herself to helping people in need, and supported the paranormal and supernatural community here in town.”
 

“She wasn’t just a fortune teller. I get that now.” Somehow, I had inherited my great-grandmother’s power, so now it was up to me.
 

“No. Most of her clients were anomalous.”
 

“What?”
 

Rhys took my hand. “You call them paranormals, but the correct term is anomalous individuals.”
 

“I promised her, Rhys. I promised I would stop him. With Lance in custody, the FBI is going to stop looking for the Night Shark. But the real killer must be a demon master; we’ve gotta find this guy.”
 

Rhys agreed. “We find the djemon, we’ll find the demon master.”
 

Fontaigne paled, and sat down on the toilet.  
 

“We’ve got to go back to the cavern. Everything starts in the caves.” All of a sudden I remembered. “Oh no, I never got a chance to ask her about her powers or what to do.”
 

“You still have the journal?”
 

Of course. I’d forgotten all about it. “Good point. What are we waiting for? Let’s go.”  
 

Thus energized, we poured out of the bathroom and Rhys and Fontaigne headed out to the hallway.  
 

“Hey guys, Give me a minute, will you?”
 

Rhys’ eyes flicked to the bed behind me. He nodded and gave my hand a brief squeeze; then followed the lawyer out to the hall to wait with Porter.  
 

I moved to stand beside the hospital bed, gazing down at her. I never even got a chance to know her; she was already gone. On to a higher plane, I hoped. Her face in repose seemed so serene.  
 

Fontaigne told me the funeral arrangements were already in place, and she had already changed her will to make me her heir. I studied the new crescent mark on my left hand. My great-grandmother was one of a kind and proud. I’d spent my whole life apologizing for my mother and trying to be like everyone else. I wasn’t some freak, I was unique. Just like her. I am the Hand of Fate. The time had come for me to own it.