Blood Trust - Eric van Lustbader [132]
* * *
“NO,” JACK said. “I forbid it. For you to go after Liridona alone would be the height of madness.”
“I suspected you would say that,” Alli replied. “That’s why I’ve asked Thatë to go with me.”
At once, he saw the trap she had sprung on him, and while he admired her cleverness, he also knew that what she proposed was out of the question.
“I’m sorry, Alli. Your heart is in the right place, but under no circumstances are you going off on this wild-goose chase.” Even as the words came out of his mouth, he recognized them as what Edward Carson had told him when he assigned Jack to investigate Senator Berns’s death.
Alli’s eyes were blazing. “You have no right to order me—”
“This isn’t a democracy, young lady. In case you have conveniently forgotten, the moment we step off the plane we’re back in enemy territory. An enemy, I might remind you, whose principal business is the enslavement and trafficking of girls and young women.”
She lifted her head. “I’m not frightened of Arian Xhafa.”
“That’s just what I’m afraid of, Alli, because you should be.”
“Well, shit, of course I am, Jack. I’d be an idiot not to be frightened of him. On the other hand, I’m not going to let that fright paralyze me. I mean, who does Edon have except us? Who can save her and Liridona from Xhafa, if not us? Her parents? Her father is the one who sold her and Arjeta to Xhafa’s people to pay off his gambling debts. Do you think he’s going to stop gambling and losing?”
Now it was she who took his hands. “Jack, Edon’s already lost one sister. I can’t stand by and watch her lose another.”
* * *
THE PRESSURE in Heroe’s head exploded behind her eyes like a mortar blast. She gasped as the shock wave drove through her, but her brain was far from paralyzed. She raised her service revolver until the muzzle pointed directly behind her. She pulled the trigger.
The percussion effectively deafened her in her right ear, but the agonizing pressure beneath her left eye vanished. She was released, and she staggered to her knees.
She was staring down, half-dazed by shock, the point-blank percussion, and the violent surge of adrenaline that had surely saved her life. Her knees had not sunk into the muck. They were resting on something hard. Dropping the service revolver, she dug her fingers in the muddy earth, scraped it away, and saw two faces appearing. One was of a young girl, very beautiful despite the disfigurement of her nose. Heroe had never seen her before. Feverish with dread, she uncovered more of the second girl and saw that it was Naomi Wilde’s face precisely as she had experienced it in her visitation.
She began to cry. But that release of emotion and tension brought her back to herself, and, bracing herself against the tree, she rose to her feet.
Turning, she saw Peter McKinsey sitting against the bole of a tree. The left side of his head was running red. Where the ear had been was a scorch mark, ragged and bloody.
He looked up at her and snapped his teeth together. In utter shock, she watched him lurch to his feet and come after her. She wanted to run, she wanted to defend herself, but her service revolver was at her feet.
And then he was upon her, and her nostrils dilated with the stench of death. His fists beat her down to the muck, until she was lying with Naomi Wilde and the unknown victim. And in that moment, she understood the nature of her visitation. The water turned to blood—her blood, her death. Nothing to be done, then. The future was already written. Today she would die.
McKinsey was on top of her, pounding her, and then he had her service revolver. He pointed it at her, grinning now, victory in sight. And then the world turned inside out, colors coalesced and collided. She no longer felt pain. There was no sound save the rushing of blood in her ears. Someone else’s blood.
And at that precise instant, she saw the specter of Naomi Wilde rising up behind McKinsey like a twist of smoke, drawing her gaze to the ruined side of his head. No time to weigh a decision, or even for thought.
Lashing out with