Blood Pool

Chapter Fifteen

Davis arrived from the hospital in the medical examiner’s van to transport Frank’s body to the morgue. Joe Menendez handled the paperwork. It would read that Tobias was informing Frank Dubois that he was about to be arrested for the murder of Nicolette Strigoi and Mayor Dubois went wild in response.

As a result, he attempted to kill Jade Laroque during his psychotic break, and Tobias had no option other than to subdue the mayor. By any means possible.

Of course, that paperwork would never be found, kept in a confidential file. And the mayor’s certificate of death certainly would never see the light of day.

Deidre Dubois would fill out a missing person report in due time, and they would conduct a cursory search for the missing man. There would be no body to autopsy. If all worked out, even Philippe Laroque would never know what happened.

Unless his daughter told him.

“What the fuck?” Bo yelled as Tobias tried to explain what had happened in Frank’s office. Jade stood off to the side, observing the shifter. He fidgeted, barely able to stay still.

“I know it’s a lot to absorb, but I saw for myself.” Tobias turned toward Jade. “Although I still don’t understand how you kept your transformation into Lamai a secret. Who turned you and when?”

Jade’s hurt was reflected in her voice. “Your daughter turned me a week ago.”

“No. She wouldn’t,” Bo snapped. “She would’ve told me.” He ran his hands through his hair, finally resting on a muscled knot between his neck and shoulder. Tension balled up there. Bo had become a walking time bomb. “I can’t believe she and I have come this far, and now Raven’s in danger.”

Mortal danger.

“She would, and she did-though she didn’t mean to. Raven inadvertently took too much blood from me. She was very apologetic.” Jade smiled. “She didn’t tell you because you were unconscious at the time. Raven explained how she doesn’t really feed anymore. She just got caught up in the moment and the memories of our mom. The only way to keep me alive was to change me. It was really strange because she communicated with me telepathically.”

“These past few days, Raven never mentioned what happened,” Bo said in a despondent tone. What other secrets was she keeping from him?

Tobias was reeling. “I don’t understand.”

Jade fingered a strand of her curly hair. “I wanted her to change me. She was going to try a blood transfusion, but she feared it would be too little, too late. So…I bit her wrist, and she had to let me drink.”

She laughed.

Bo thought it quite odd for this woman to react this way.

Jade pinched the bridge of her nose between her brows. “You don’t understand. I can’t really blame you. When she drank from me, we connected…or rather she connected to our mom and me. Raven was devastated when she realized I could die. She only meant to scare the piss outta me, which she did. I lost total control of my blad-”

“Okay, too much info,” Bo interrupted.

“When I began to drink from her, the connection was complete. It was almost as if the three of us were in that room together. Raven, Maman and me.”

“Why didn’t she tell me?” Tobias asked.

Again, Jade laughed. “Maybe because Raven knew you’d be furious and she didn’t want to shift everyone’s focus from saving Bo. In the meantime, she had Tracy give me blood. I promised to play along. I think Raven hoped the transfusion would dilute my blood enough that I wouldn’t change, but it just took a little longer.”

“Now what do we do? Your father still has Raven, and he’ll know you’re not quite the same daughter,” Bo worried aloud.

“Yes, that will only increase his hatred. He has no idea what really went on? For all his power as a bokur?” Tobias asked.

“Did you know?” Jade countered. “My father taught me everything he knows pertaining to magick. Plus I think the only way he was able to survive my mother’s death initially was to immerse himself in finding me, then in training and raising me. Remember, Frank told my father I was your daughter, Tobias.”

“I never took Nicki’s blood. I should have. I would have known she was in trouble in spite of Frank’s shields if I had.”

Bo went into the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee. “So how did he find out? That you were his, I mean. You wouldn’t have shown signs of being a Lamai until you were around twelve or thirteen.”

Jade rolled up the sleeves of her black cable knit sweater. “The old fashioned way. He had a paternity test done.”

“Of course. He has all those connections in the medical field, so it makes sense he would have a test performed,” Tobias said as he gazed out the window, no doubt wondering where his daughter was. No longer a Lamai, Raven didn’t have the same bond to her father as before.

Jade was lost in thought. “Frank’s magick was strong, but I think that, deep down, my father knew something wasn’t right, which is why he had the paternity test done. He always said to me, ‘You can’t trust anyone.’”

“Speaking of paternity, how is Emerald?” Bo asked Tobias.

“She’s fine, at home resting. I was with her all last night.” Tobias half-heartedly smiled. “She tried working some of her fae magick to see if she could locate Raven, but came up empty.”

Bo got up and dumped his remaining coffee into the sink. He turned and leaned against the counter, eyeing the two Lamai in the living room. “How do we even find Laroque?” Bo asked.

“I’m sure he’s not anywhere we would think to look. He won’t be on Hannah’s Vineyard or Mirabelle. I can’t sense his whereabouts or Raven’s,” Jade confessed.

“I don’t understand why your father put up with Frank after he found out he lied about you,” Bo said, puttering around the kitchen.

Jade wanted to help Bo with the breakfast dishes, taking the sponge from him. “My father never let on to Frank that he knew the truth that he was my real father. Only he and I knew…and of course you, Tobias. He knew he couldn’t trust Frank, so he used him, but he made Frank feel that they were in an alliance.” She rinsed the sponge and placed it back in the soap dish.

Bo asked another question. “How did Frank explain the situation when you never lost your incisors and grew Lamai teeth?”

“I was an anomaly, at first, and then he blamed my mother. Frank said she swore to him I was Tobias’s child. The only use my father had for Frank was that he orchestrated my abduction so my father could raise me. Then Frank played dumb for everyone else’s benefit and sobbed crocodile tears at my disappearance,” Jade said.

“Shit, that still leaves us with the problem of finding Raven,” Bo swore.

Philippe Laroque stood in the corner of his study, opening the windows to let the trade winds inside the room. He held a letter, yellowed from age. Raven Strigoi was in an upstairs bedroom guarded by two Lamai and three shifters. His mind raced as he thought about what had transpired over the past week. He worried incessantly about Jade. Was she all right? Was she safe? Had Tobias hurt her?

He used his magick in search of answers, but wasn’t happy with the outcome. She was safe, but somehow changed. The events that had taken place left an indelible mark on her. To what extent, he wasn’t certain.

And that useless mayor wasn’t answering his calls anymore. Had they turned Jade against him? Filled her head with lies so she would never want to see him again? Perhaps she finally felt a sense of belonging with the sister she’d lost so many years ago and now she hated him for taking her away from the only other family she had.

But Jade was smarter than that.

She had to realize everything he did was for her-wasn’t it? Or, more to the point, it was out of his hatred for Tobias. And his jealousy. That, he was certain, Jade knew.

Jade saw through her father’s motives and called him on it repeatedly. She’d asked him to give up this sick game of revenge, and he constantly told her no. Other than Jade, it was his only connection to Nicolette-this vendetta against Tobias. If he let it go, that meant he had to let Nicki go. He couldn’t, not this time.

In every other lifetime Philippe had visited through spiritual journeying, he witnessed Nicki choosing Tobias again and again. He’d been in love with other women, but if Nicki’s spirit was incarnated at the same time as Philippe’s, he was drawn to her, like the typical moth to the flame.

When the price became too high for him to pay and he realized his own daughter was in jeopardy, for the first time in his adult life he entertained the idea of letting go of this war. Nicolette was gone, and nothing he could do, even with all his power, could bring her back.

Perhaps Jade was right after all.

He’d fully intended to make a trade, one daughter for the other. He knew Tobias would agree to that, but what he hadn’t planned on, what no one was able to foretell, was the evil that lurked inside Frank Dubois. Like a festering boil, it became rancid inside the once-genteel man. The sins of envy and lust overtook him-the lust for another man’s wife, and the lust for power.

Frank fooled Laroque.

And Tobias. Philippe reflected on that time.

Frank was merely puffing up Laroque’s ego, asking endless questions about magick and contacting spirits, only to turn around and use everything he’d taught in good faith against him. He’d used the same technique with Laroque as he had to cover his feelings for Nicolette.

Poor Deidre.

She loved Frank, and he took her for granted. She wanted to raise a family with him, but Frank told Philippe he wasn’t cut out to be a father. He told Deidre his career came first. The timing wasn’t right. The years passed, and no children were born.

Deidre became distant. Though she still loved her husband, she knew that in his heart, Nicki would always come first. Deidre wrote to Philippe, pouring her heart out about her suspicions that her husband was keeping something from her. She asked whether he knew what it was.

He was so entrenched in his work in the lab-so focused on getting back at Tobias-that he hardly gave Deidre’s letters a second thought.

He should have. He would have had a better insight into the monster that dwelled inside Frank.

He opened one of the letters and read.

Dear Philippe,

I hope you are well. We received the photos of Jade, and I cannot get over how big she’s gotten-how much she looks like Nicki. I wish you would reconsider bringing her back to us. She would have a stable life here. I know how you feel about Tobias, but he agreed to let us raise her.

Frank misses her so much. That’s where the ink became streaky, and Philippe knew instinctively that Deidre had cried when she wrote this part.

He’s not the same, Philippe. I don’t know why I’m telling you this, except that maybe you can get through to him. He looks at Jade’s picture and cries for hours. He locks himself in his study and won’t let me in, won’t let me touch him.

I have tried to comfort him, but he gets so angry sometimes. I swear he called out Nicki’s name the other night in his sleep.

He claims he dreamt of Jade and must have called out her mother’s name, asking for help to get Jade back.

I don’t know when you’ll get this letter, since you’re always on the move, but I hope it finds you well.

Tell our Jade we love her and miss her.

Deidre

The pieces were coming together. Philippe had heard the rumors that Frank insisted Deidre wear green contacts when she decided to shed her glasses. In another letter from Deidre she revealed Frank refused to touch her when she had her hair straightened and made her wear the same perfume that Nicolette wore. These facts sat before him in black and white, in the letters strewn across his desk.

All from Deidre. All written without Frank’s knowledge.

Then there was his strange sexual preference of never making love to her face-to-face. Always in the dark, always from behind-and she “even heard him mutter ‘sweet Nicki’ more than a few times” when he did have sex with her.

How had he missed this? On and on, the desperate woman’s pleas for help fell upon his deaf ears. If only, he thought. If only…

His own deadly virus would not be killing him.

Philippe still wasn’t exactly sure how Frank had done it, but he knew it was him. After the night his daughter disappeared, Philippe retrieved the virus from his den and, upon examining it more carefully later, noted that one vial had less virus than the others.

He knew exactly how much should be there. Enough to dose at least three people was missing. Frank was the only person, other than himself, who knew where he hid the virus.

“Excuse me, Mr. Laroque, the-uh-woman wants to have a word with you,” Mick, the treacherous Lamai, former employee at Blood Pool, said.

Philippe gathered the letters and placed them in a locked drawer in his desk. “Good. I want to talk with her as well.”

Raven watched Laroque enter the room, carrying a tray with food. The Lamai stood leaning against the door jamb. Philippe approached her. She felt the sting of the straps that held her onto the bed digging into her skin. He placed the tray on the table at the far end of the room.

Laroque smiled. “You look more like your mother now. Your mouth is the same, your complexion-even your hands are like hers.”

Raven ignored the small talk. “Are you going to kill me?”

Laroque’s expression was stone cold. “Probably. But I do have a deal to offer, if you’re interested. As long as you can help me, I’ll let you live. And depending on how well you do, maybe I’ll even let you go.”

She struggled against the straps. “What is it?”

He stared at her for a few moments before speaking. “What do you know about the virus?”

Raven couldn’t help herself from laughing as she asked him to repeat the question.

He folded his arms defensively over his chest. “Do you think this is funny? Let me remind you, you almost lost your true love to my creation. I wouldn’t laugh too hard, or for too long.”

Raven stared at Laroque, her mouth a thin, straight line. “You see, that’s just it. Why do you need my help? You created this genius virus. What’s the problem now?”

He took deep breaths while he went over to the tray. “Are you hungry?”

“Is it poisoned? Would you even tell me if it was?” she snarled.

Laroque snorted. “You haven’t eaten in two days. If you want to kill yourself, that’s fine by me. I’m asking for your help. Why would I try to kill you? Besides, you know better than anyone that if I wanted you dead, you’d be dead already.”

He had a point. “Why did you do it?” She knew that he, more than likely, would never tell her why, and he didn’t really need to. It was because of her mother.

It always revolved around her mother.

Love. Unrequited love, untamed love, unconditional love, undying love. Could love be the cause of it all? Raven knew she would do anything for love, but would she go to the same lengths as Philippe? But hadn’t she gone further? She gave up her own identity, the very core of who she was. But would she kill another person?

As a Lamai, the answer would be a resounding “Yes!” That was part of her nature as well. The wild blood that had coursed through her veins demanded she protect those she loved at any cost. Things changed, and she was entirely human, so could she still live up to that standard? Perhaps she would. For love.

Love was a fierce emotion.

She watched as Laroque approached the bed. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked the cuffs on her hands.

“Eat.” He handed her the tray with a salad, fresh bread with cheese and what looked like roast pork. “Do you want me to take a bite to prove it’s safe to eat?”

Her gaze narrowed. “Yeah, I would.”

He took a piece of meat, tore off a chunk and popped it into his mouth. “Would you like some wine?” Taking bites of cheese and salad, he seemed to force himself to swallow.

“Fine dining while imprisoned-what a dichotomy! Water is fine. But how am I supposed to eat this meat without a knife?”

He smirked at her. “You’ll have to make do for now. I’ll have your meat cut for you next time.”

She was confused. “What?”

“You sounded like your mother just now.”

Raven speared the fresh tomato in her bowl of salad while examining the dressing. “How can you kill me if you love her so much? I’m still her daughter.” She bit into the tomato savagely.

He wore an eerie smile. “My hatred for your father compensates for that sad fact.”

Not yet accustomed to these insistent hunger pangs, she grabbed a slice of bread and took a bite. Once the aroma of the food reached her nose, Raven realized she was famished and didn’t care if the food was poisoned or not.

“And yet you need my help,” she pondered aloud.

He walked to the window, his hands behind his back. “You are as sarcastic as your father.”

“You don’t look too well,” she observed between bites of bread.

He simply stared at her and smiled.

She shrugged. “Did I say something to amuse you?”

“No, you just stated the obvious. Are you willing to help me or not?”

“I don’t know,” she said, tearing into the slice of meat. “What do you need my help with and why?”

“This virus has jumped species, so we are all at risk. This is no game, Raven. If I die, chances are you will, too. You are human now. Human, Lamai, fae, shifter are all susceptible. Need I go on?”

“Yes, but Ebola isn’t quite as contagious as other viruses, especially this strain. It’s deadly, for certain, but say you used a pox…”

He interrupted her observations. “I will certainly make sure you’re infected before I die. Feel better now?”

“Always the big bad wolf, so to speak.”

He walked over to her, his eyes like stones, emotionless. “You would know about big bad wolves, wouldn’t you?” He went to a chest at the foot of the bed and took out a blanket. “As bad as you think I am…I’m worse.”

She swallowed the last piece of bread and cheese. “I know you didn’t rape my mother.”

Philippe spun around so fast she thought she saw smoke as his heels dug into the pine floor.

“What did you say?”

Raven eyed him carefully. He must have been a lady-killer in his day, no pun intended.

He still had the good looks nature had blessed him with-chiseled cheekbones, straight nose, deep-set eyes and a generous smile. That is, when he chose to smile, and she guessed he hadn’t done that much lately.

She placed the fork down, her expression somber. “You heard me. I know what happened between you and my mother. I’m guessing that by now, my father knows, too.”

“Liar!”

Raven pushed the tray away. “Whatever. You know, Laroque, I really don’t care much what happens to me. You should understand that. Bo is alive, and that’s all that matters to me. I almost lost him. My world just about ended. My life as a Lamai is over. You really can’t do much more to me-except kill me, and then I’ll be reunited with my mother.”

Laroque took the tray and headed out the door, muttering, “Smartass like your mother, too.”