Malachai Page 7

  Victor held up his hand and waved. “Thanks for your help, Vaughn. Give my regards to your parents.”

  Vaughn waved back. “Anytime. Don’t you be a stranger. Take care of yourself, Malachai.”

  He rotated on his heel and walked away. His first few steps shook the ground, but as he got farther away, he shrank to the size of a regular human man. He waved over his shoulder one more time and he looked exactly the same as Malachai remembered him.

  The next thing he knew, Victor, Finn, and Lincoln surrounded him. Victor squatted down and put his hand on Malachai’s shoulder. “You okay, man?”

  Malachai nodded, but he couldn’t stop staring after Vaughn. “What the hell just happened?”

  “He carried you here from the expressway. You were out cold. Come on. We’re taking you inside.”

  Finn and Lincoln got under Malachai’s arms. They hefted him upright, but they had to carry him inside because he couldn’t stand.

  They supported him to the family apartment and put him in his room. Finn and Lincoln vanished. Victor stood off to one side while Courtney and Riley helped Malachai get out of his destroyed old suit and into a pair of pajama pants. Then they folded him into his own bed and slipped out of the room.

  Malachai sank into the softness as into a dream. He hardly dared believe he was alive and back in Ogru-Kuche after his ordeal south of the expressway. He wanted to forget the whole thing. He wanted to believe none of it ever happened, but here he was, wrung out like a wet rag.

  Victor sat down on the edge of his bed. His eyes crinkled at the corners. He patted Malachai’s leg through the bedspread. “You’re gonna be okay. Fuck, you got lucky bumping into Levi the way you did. You would have been dead otherwise.”

  Malachai nodded more to himself than to his brother. “Where is he? I didn’t see him outside.”

  Victor shrugged. “He took off. You know what he’s like. He made sure you were okay and then he split. He was the one who asked Vaughn to bring you home.”

  Malachai collapsed against the pillow. “I’ll never be able to repay him. I was never so happy to see anybody in my life.”

  “I already paid him.”

  Malachai’s head whipped around. “What? How?”

  “Never you mind about that. Tell me what happened. How did you get injured?”

  Malachai winced remembering the fight. “She…..”

  Victor waited for him to continue. “Isabelle, you mean?”

  Malachai nodded down at his hands. “You’re gonna tell me I should have let them put her away. You’re gonna tell me I should have let them silence her, but I couldn’t. I’m not sorry I did it, either. No one deserves that.”

  Victor’s eyes sparkled gazing down at him. His voice drifted on the breeze. “I won’t tell you that. You made a decision. I’m not saying it was the wrong one.”

  Malachai couldn’t hold himself up anymore. He settled into the one place in the world he really wanted to be. “Maybe now you’ll think about assigning someone else to follow her.”

  Victor patted him again and stood up. Malachai felt his eyes drifting closed. He couldn’t keep them open. Just before he fell asleep, he thought he heard his brother say, “I don’t think so,” but he couldn’t be certain.

  10

  Isabelle lurked in the shadows. From a distance, she observed the lab parking lot where those men attacked her. She never expected Malachai to come back here. That would be asking too much if he was still alive at all. He probably bled to death on the streets of New Orleans after saving her life.

  When the dawn spread its grey mist over the parking lot, five more men arrived. One of them pretended to occupy the security guard’s kiosk. It wasn’t Tommy. It was some other fuckhead Isabelle didn’t recognize.

  Now she knew something fishy was going on. Tommy patrolled the parking lot for the last five years. The security company wouldn’t replace him—not with five strange men, anyway. These new guys didn’t wear any company patches, either. They wore jeans and button-down shirts and mismatched baseball caps. They didn’t even look military. They looked like mercenaries or maybe private hitmen.

  She shuddered at the thought. They showed up at daybreak. The one behind the kiosk shuffled papers while the others prowled between the cars still parked in the same spaces. Whoever owned those cars didn’t work at the lab. She knew that.

  Her phone told her it was past nine-thirty now. The other lab employees didn’t show up, either. The whole building seemed deserted—all except these goons.

  She couldn’t go out there, not even to go to work or to get her car. The building exuded a venomous air that repelled her. She would probably lose her job for skipping out on work for a day and a half, but she couldn’t compel herself to go out into the open. Electric agitation made her stick to the shadows like a hunted animal.

  The patrollers returned to the kiosk and held a conference with their pal. They pointed in different directions and then the whole band dispersed to search the area. Isabelle withdrew farther into the gloom. They wouldn’t stay in the parking lot. They would canvas the neighborhood until they found her.

  She retreated to the end of the alley and turned away. She took off into the rabbit-warren of New Orleans streets and neighborhoods, but she didn’t go back to her apartment. That would be the first place they looked for her.

  Her brain tumbled in a thousand directions. What should she do? What could she do? She had enough money saved up to buy a cheap second-hand car. She could pay for it in cash and drive out of town and….and what? Where could she go? What could she do?

  She wasn’t qualified to do anything other than pathology. She never held another job after high school. She didn’t dare use Captain Fahey or anyone else at the lab as a reference. That would tip them off to where she was.

  She hunched her shoulders and hugged her arms around her torso. She shivered even though it wasn’t cold. She stumbled past early risers lined up for coffee and donuts and muffins. No one observed her passage. She might as well already be dead.

  She stayed away from Canal Street. She didn’t want to see anyone she knew. She half-considered going back to Riley’s. Maybe Riley would help her.

  She rejected that idea. What did Riley know about Isabelle’s problems? Then again, Malachai came from there. Maybe he told Riley what was going on. In the end, Isabelle decided against it. Riley and her people might blame Isabelle for getting Malachai killed.

  Isabelle winced thinking about Malachai. She should have done more to help him when she had the chance. She shouldn’t have let him walk away when he was bleeding like that. She should have stopped him. She should have taken him to the hospital.

  Just for a second, she saw again those scales flash across his skin and she dropped the notion of taking him to the hospital. Whatever he was, he didn’t belong in any hospital.

  She headed north toward the Lake, but that wouldn’t get her anywhere. She couldn’t exactly swim across it. She hiked up Esplanade Avenue, but when she spotted City Park, she pivoted aside and entered it. She didn’t really hope to hide in there, but she needed to see some green. She needed to think.

  Once the trees enveloped her, she slowed down and relaxed. She strolled here and there enjoying the pavilion and the fountains. She let go of the need to make any decisions. Those considerations could wait until she cleared her head.

  She entered a labyrinth of low hedges. It meandered in a conundrum of right angles. She could see over the top of the maze so it didn’t pose much of a challenge. She fell into a reverie of twisting and turning for no apparent reason.

  A lightning bolt of adrenaline brought her out of her thoughts. It hit her before she fully appreciated where the danger was coming from. A sixth sense warned her and made her freeze. Her head shot up and she saw one of the men from the parking lot. He stood farther along the maze. The neatly arranged pattern led her straight to him.

  She didn’t understand what snapped her out of her trance to notice him. The same high-pitch
ed charge jerked her chin sideways. Three more of those guys circled her. How did they find her?

  She whipped aside and started back the way she came. She didn’t have to look back to know they were following her. She plunged into the park, but it was all too tame and tidy and pre-planned to hide her. Not one blade of grass grew out of its assigned place. Everyone could see everything without any obstruction.

  Her gaze darted around in search of any escape, but she only spotted more of those men closing in from all sides. They wore exactly the same clothes as everyone around them, but no one could mistake their intentions. After fighting them in the parking lot, she could never forget that particular stamp on their dead features.

  She hustled out of the labyrinth and rushed toward the Pavilion itself. She needed to be around people, but all of a sudden, the park seemed deserted. She couldn’t see one person anywhere. What the hell was going on? How could these guys just magic everyone out of existence?

  She started to trot. She broke into a full run. She charged straight through the Pavilion to the street beyond, but she didn’t want to go back to town. She needed to go somewhere, but she couldn’t think where.

  She whirled around a corner and barreled full tilt into a tall man striding down the sidewalk. She banged into his chest and bounced off. For half a second, she half-feared he was another one of the guys following her. She yelled out, “Oh! Sorry!”

  She started to wheel around to bolt the other way when he caught her by the upper arms. His powerful fingers dug into her muscles and he wrenched her back. He shook her into place. “Isabelle!”

  She fought to get away before she realized it was him. It was Malachai, Malachai Griffin. She gaped up at him through her scattered hair. She opened her mouth, but she couldn’t make a sound.

  He frowned down at her. While she stared at his face, he glanced up and scowled at something beyond her shoulder. She looked that way and saw the men from the parking lot. They didn’t approach, though. They hovered several yards off and eyed Malachai with their glittering, unflinching eyes.

  His jaw tightened. Then his fingers relaxed. “You’re coming with me. Come on. We’re getting out of here.”

  She blinked first at him and then at those men. They knew exactly who Malachai was. She never doubted, but they didn’t come near him. As long as she stayed near him, they didn’t come near her, either.

  Malachai rotated on his heel and marched off, back down Esplanade Avenue heading south the way Isabelle just walked. She cast one last glimpse over her shoulder at her pursuers and her stomach churned. She raced to catch up with Malachai. “Where are we going?”

  “Back to Central City.” He barked over his shoulder without looking at her. “You won’t be safe anywhere else.”

  “Hey!” She rushed up next to him, but he wheeled around to face her so fast she collided with him again. She stumbled back. “We can’t go back there. It’s too close to the…..”

  He cocked his head to one side. “The what?”

  She waved south toward the…..the lab, but she didn’t say that. She didn’t want to go anywhere closer to it. She wanted to get as far away from it as possible, but when she looked at him, she didn’t particularly want to get close to him, either.

  He waited for her to say something, but when she didn’t, he relaxed. “Who exactly do you think those men were that followed you here?”

  She opened her mouth again, but no answer seemed to fit. She shrugged. “I guess they were…. you know, thugs.”

  His mouth twisted. “You don’t really believe that. You know they weren’t. You saw their faces. Those were not thugs.”

  “Then how do you explain them attacking me last night?” All at once, she remembered something and looked down. “What happened to your leg? You got hurt last night.”

  He raised both arms and let them slap onto his thighs. He scanned the neighborhood before he bent low near her face. “Let me connect the dots for you since it looks like your brain stopped working sometime last week. You got curious about me so you ran a DNA test on a sample of my blood.” He held up a hand to silence her. “I heard every word you said to Riley outside Ogru-Kuche, so don’t bother denying it. You ran a DNA test on a sample of my blood and you found out something you shouldn’t have. You work in a top-secret military pathology lab, so I’m guessing someone at work found out what you were doing. Now these operatives are after you to shut you up. Isn’t that obvious enough?”

  She furrowed her brow. “Operatives?”

  He cracked an ironic grin and shook his head at nothing. “Don’t tell me you’ve spent the last couple decades working for the military and don’t recognize one of them when you see one.” He snorted. “Let me ask you something. Were they Police? Were they gang-bangers? No? Were they any profession at all that wears a uniform? Of course not. They’re hired assassins and they came after you last night to silence you. Jesus fucking Christ, Isabelle. Use your fucking brain.”

  She blinked up at him in astonishment. “What are you saying? You’re saying the military is trying to kill me to stop me from….?”

  Ever so slowly, she lowered her eyes. He was wearing a beautiful, charcoal-grey suit. It wasn’t the one he had on when she first met him on Canal Street. It wasn’t the brown suit he was wearing last night when he injured his leg protecting her. It was a different one and it was utterly flawless.

  He moved with the same easy grace and effortless mastery she noticed when she first saw him in front of the Sheraton. His skin glowed with vitality and life. His cheeks flushed when he smiled. His eyes glistened with just the right amount of moisture. His tongue flashed pink and quick behind his perfect white teeth. Not one speck of blood or dirt besmirched his shirt.

  His appearance might have deceived her into thinking last night never happened, but it did happen. He staggered away from her bleeding to death. Now he was whole and healthy and perfect. His leg inside those pants would be as smooth and unsullied as it was in front of the Sheraton. He probably didn’t even have a scar or even a scab.

  Her gaze crawled up his midsection, past the buttons lying smooth and immaculate against his chest, up his smooth, furrowed neck to his face. She opened her mouth, but her voice wouldn’t make any sound. “What…. what are you?”

  He pivoted around and took hold of her elbow. “Come on. We can’t stay here.”

  He marched her down Esplanade Avenue, all the way back to Central City. Her mind kept protesting, but her body fell under his influence. He never let go of her arm. He steered her where he wanted her to go.

  She sank into a profound silence where all those questions disappeared. She couldn’t explain anything. Of course the military would want to shut her up. They wanted to stop her from telling anyone what she found or from finding out anything more.

  He led her into the most dangerous New Orleans neighborhoods in which she ever set foot. She never would have dared to go to Central City under any other circumstances. Now that he left no doubt in her mind about her situation, she saw an overarching umbrella of danger threatening her on all sides. She only intuited it before. Now he ripped away the veil and exposed it for what it was.

  A halo of security closed around her when she walked at Malachai’s side, but that was an illusion, too. Her intuition went into hyperdrive. Her delusions evaporated. She could look through a transparent film holding her apart from the rest of the world. She wasn’t alive anymore. She was a half-person drifting in a world populated by wraiths and specters.

  Malachai halted on a street corner. Derelict houses littered with trash slumped on every corner. Ratty children screamed in the yards. Mangy dogs slunk in the shadows. The place gave Isabelle the creeps.

  He scanned the intersection. “I’m going to take you somewhere safe. I just need to get permission from my boss first. I need you to go sit on the porch over there and wait until I come back.”

  He pointed to a nearby hovel. A bunch of black men with rotten teeth and bloodshot eyes slouched on the porch
smoking cigarettes between stained fingers. She followed the direction of his pointing finger and her jaw dropped. “I can’t go over there. Are you out of your mind?”

  He smacked his lips. “Will you fucking wake up already? It’s the only place on the face of the goddamned Earth where you’re going to be safe. When are you gonna open your eyes and realize that?”

  She glared at the men slumped on the broken wooden steps. “My eyes are open.”

  “Your eyes are open but you’re not looking. You have to look beneath the surface.” He threw up his hands. “Oh, for Christ’s sake! Come on.”

  He grabbed her. He hauled her across the street, stepped over a splintered picket fence, and sauntered up to the porch. A wrinkled old man with a fuzz of grey hair on his dark-brown scalp lifted his milky eyes to Malachai’s clear countenance. A faint smile parted his cracked lips. “My homeboy.”

  Malachai put out his hand and clapped it into the man’s grasp. They went through a complicated series of handshake variations before Malachai clasped the man’s shoulder with his left hand. “How ya doing, Izzy? Hey, do you fellas mind if a friend of mine sits on the porch with you for a sec? I just gotta run on over to the office and check with The Man on something. She don’t take up too much space as you can see.”

  The men gathered on the porch chortled to themselves. Some of them covered their mouths snickering at Malachai’s joke. Izzy scanned Isabelle up and down. “No problem, man. Any friend of the Crest is a friend of ours.”

  “Cool. Thanks, man.” Malachai waved Isabelle forward. “There you go. Make yourself comfortable. I’ll be right back.”

  He walked away before Isabelle could argue. He left her standing there staring at these people. Her skin crawled. She could smell them from here. Never in a million, billion years would she have gone anywhere near people like this. Now Malachai left her with no choice but to sit down next to them.

  Izzy scooted a few inches to one side. He left a tiny gap between himself and his nearest companion. It was hardly big enough for Isabelle’s ass. He made only a fleeting effort to hide his grin. “Come on, then, girl. Make yo’self comfortable. We don’t bite.”