Bayou Moon - Andrews, Ilona [153]
Erian swung his legs off the chair and paced, measuring the library’s length with long strides. His voice was quiet. “It’s been three hours. She’s not going to break it.”
“She’ll break it,” Richard said. “It was Vernard’s life’s work, and she was his favorite grandchild.”
“Yeah.” A bitter edge in Erian’s voice set off an alarm in William’s head.
“What is your problem?” Kaldar kept his voice low. “Did she spit in your breakfast?”
Erian pivoted on his foot. “It’s over. Why don’t the two of you get it? The feud is done, we’ve won, we’re fucking done.”
“It’s not over until we have Gustave and Spider’s head,” Richard told him.
Erian swung his hand, his face slapped with disgust. “The whole damn family went mad.”
Richard rose smoothly, crossed the library, and pulled a large leather volume off the shelf.
“What is it?” Kaldar asked.
“Grandfather was exiled under Article 8.3 of the Dukedom of Louisiana’s Criminal Code. I just realized that I never thought to check what Article 8.3 was.”
Richard unlocked the leather flap securing the book, flipped the cover open, and riffled through the yellow pages. He frowned. “Found it.”
Richard raised the book, showing them the page. The red-lettered heading read “Malpractice and Corruption of Vows.” A long list of subsections crawled down from it.
“Subsection 3,” Richard read. “Page 242.”
The pages rustled as he turned them. “Malpractice. Unlawful Human Experimentation. Gross Disregard for the Integrity of the Human Body. Intent to Create an Aberration.”
“How is that different from what the Hand is doing?” Erian asked.
“The Hand is not supposed to exist,” William said. “If captured, the Hand’s agent receives no support from Louisiana. They cut him loose because their magic modification is illegal.”
“Grandfather was convicted of using magic to tamper with the human body, which broke his Physician’s Oath.” Mikita walked into the room. “Mother says they had a conversation about it once. He knew they would come after him, but he did whatever it was anyway. He said it was too important to quit.”
“What was the nature of the research?” Richard asked.
“He was trying to find a way to teach the human body to regenerate itself. He said that humans had all of the power to heal themselves and take care of any illness. That they just needed to find the right switch inside their bodies.”
To break an oath and risk everything, his cushy blueblood life, his position, a man had to be driven. A man like that, a man with the purpose, wouldn’t have let the swamp stop him, William thought. No, he’d keep working on whatever it was. Here. In the swamp.
Looking for a way to teach the body to heal itself.
To regenerate.
His memory forced an image of a monster in the moonlight, its wounds knitting together. Pieces clicked together in his head. A self-healing, indestructible monster. In his life William had seen dozens of different animals, but he’d never met anything like the creature. It wasn’t a cat, a wolf, or a bear. It wasn’t even related to any of them.
If it wasn’t natural, it had to be made. And who would be better to make it than a man like Cerise’s grandfather.
If the monster was made, Spider would want to get his hands on it, pull it apart, find out how it came to be.
If Cerise realized that a monster her grandpa made was running around the woods, she’d move heaven and earth to kill it and kill Spider. That’s the way her mind worked: she took care of her responsibilities, and she paid her debts. Spider had twenty agents with him. They had . . . the Mars, and at least seven or eight of Cerise’s relatives were out of commission. Twenty lethal, trained, magically enhanced freaks against maybe thirty-five regular people. Nothing regular about the Mars, but even if the lot of them pulled every magic talent they had out of their asses, it would be a slaughter. Cerise would be in the front line, and she would