Nightwing (18 page)

The burn vanished but the pain lingered for another few seconds. It hurt abominably, throbbed all the way up to his shoulder, and filled him with such joy he almost laughed.

It was possible. The Ritual could work.

His Shade realized it, too. Raven saw it in the wondrous smile that spread across his face as he wiped the tears from his lashes and rubbed them into his fingertips.

Ten, Willie counted, and opened her eyes.

“Decide quickly, Willow,” Raven said, “or I will.”

“Promise me Nekhat will bypass Stonebridge.”

“I can’t. He’s an aberration, a horror even among vampires. The sooner we go, the better the odds.”

Raven wasn’t asking her to decide the fate of the entire world, just her little corner of it. Still, Willie felt frozen with panic, her hands icy with indecision. But how could she choose wrongly when there was only one choice? She looked at Johnny for reassurance, could see his face and his do-it nod in the flickering moonlight.

“I won’t turn into a vampire, will I?”

“No. I’d have to kill you to turn you.”

“All right.” Willie sighed shakily. “Go ahead.”

“Bring a pillow,” Raven said to Johnny.

Needlessly, for he’d already slid a padded vinyl seat cushion from the nearest chair under Willie’s head. Air whooshed out of it as she lay back and tilted her head to keep an eye on Raven. She stiffened when he raised his right hand and a long, thin claw, razor sharp and silver in the moonlight, slid out from the tip of his index finger.

“I’m going to cut away your pant leg,” he said, and did. Willie felt the denim split, smooth and whispery as silk. Her skin crawled and gooseflesh sprang from every pore.

“You’ll feel this, but I don’t think it will hurt.”

“What do you mean,
think?”
she demanded, her head spinning as she sprang up on her elbows.

“There’s a certain amount of sensation in any exchange of body fluids. If it hurts, tell me.”

“You bet your ass I will.”

Willie lay down, flung out her arms and gripped the edges of the table. Gently Raven lifted her leg, sat on the table and loosened the tourniquet. Willie sucked air between her teeth as icy-hot needles of feeling came prickling back. She drew a breath and tried to relax—until the implication of what he’d said hit her. She shot up on her elbows again, in time to see Raven bend his head over her slashed calf.

Moonlight glinted on his fangs, three inches long, curved and needle sharp. Pain knifed through Willie as she jerked her leg away and Raven whipped his head toward her. Red flames leapt in his eyes and a growl rumbled in his throat.

“You
have
passed an AIDS test?”

“Don’t be idiotic,” he snarled. “I’m dead.”

“Yeah, but I’m not, and I don’t wanna be.”

“Suffice it to say that several HIV positive patients in my care have experienced miraculous cures.”

“Oh.” Willie lay down again, the pain in her calf easing but her heart slamming against her rib cage. “In that case, you oughta bottle that stuff.”

“Lie still.” Raven removed the tourniquet and raised her leg from his lap.

“How do you handle being around blood all the time?”

“I feed well before my shift.”

“What’s a good meal for a vampire? Two pints? Three?”

“Willow.” The growl in Raven’s voice deepened. “Shut up.”

“Sorry! I’m nervous, okay?”

Johnny leaned over her and smiled, not exactly blocking but at least blurring her view of Raven. He held up his right hand and signed, “I love you.”

“Oh, Johnny.” Willie sighed shakily. “I love you, too.”

He leaned closer and traced the curve of her jaw with his curled knuckles. She could almost feel it, as she’d almost felt the kiss he’d given her when the starfish stung her. She knew Johnny was deliberately distracting her from whatever Raven was doing, and that was peachy keen with her.

The moon glowed faintly through him, and two stars drifting beside the moon seemed to be flickering in his eyes: tiny points of light winking like the gems flanking the moonstone. Of course, they weren’t winking. It was only a trick of the light, caused by the clouds scudding across the moon, maybe, or the madly thrashing trees.

Such things weren’t possible. Neither were vampires, but there was one sucking on her leg. She could feel the tug on her flesh, the blood being siphoned from her body. Terror shot her heart up her throat and snatched her breath.

She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t move. Her heart beat more and more slowly. She imagined an EKG printout: spikes rolling into waves, the waves evening out into a flat, dead line.

Oh, God, she was dying. Raven had lied to her. He was killing her, as Nekhat had killed him, and she couldn’t stop him. Her muscles were frozen, her vision was fading. A scream she couldn’t voice rang in her head. She couldn’t see Johnny’s face anymore, only the stars in his eyes—cold, fiery suns blazing millions of light-years away, yet so close she could reach out and touch them. If only she could move.

Raise your hand, Willow,
Raven snarled in her mind. His voice vibrated with annoyance in her bones and every cell in her body.
You are not paralyzed. Nor are you dying.

Her right wrist jerked involuntarily. Relief flooded Willie, and a surge of something that felt like adrenaline. Only ten times better, ten times stronger than the hypo she’d taken for a killer case of hives from a penicillin allergy.

It sent her senses spiraling out of her body. She felt as if she was floating above the terrace. The stars in Johnny’s eyes spun closer in slow motion: blinding and glorious, pin-wheeling colors she’d never seen before in her head. Oh, wow, Willie thought dazedly. Oh, wow, what a light show.

His Shade shot Raven a worried frown as Raven raised his head. His fangs retracted, sated and dulled. His hunger quieted and began to purr.

So did the small calico cat that came slinking out of the shadows and jumped onto the table. She sniffed at him and Willow Evans, sensed his Shade and hissed, her gold eyes narrowing. Raven soothed her with an outstretched palm and glanced at Willow.

Her pupils were huge, her lips parted in a lopsided grin. Raven brushed her mind, caught a glimpse of the fireworks streaking behind her eyelids and adjusted her blood pressure to ease the intercranial pressure causing it. Medically speaking, she was higher than a kite. An interesting effect to have on a woman. Raven reflected wryly. One he’d never even imagined, let alone possessed, when he was mortal.

“She’ll be fine in a moment,” he told his Shade, shifting his attention to her leg cradled in his lap.

The vicious slash was now nothing more than a puckered pink seam. Raven raised her leg again and ran his tongue slowly along the ridge of newly healed flesh. He felt the chill of gooseflesh that crawled through her, the shudder of revulsion from his Shade. When he raised his head the seam had faded to a thin white line, and Willow Evans was blinking at him, bleary-eyed.

“Thank you,” she said, swallowing hard, “but if you ever touch me again. I’ll put a stake through your heart.”

“Don’t worry.” Raven pressed his fingertips gently between her eyebrows. “You’ll get your chance.”

When her lashes fluttered shut, he picked her up and carried her into the house. His Shade followed, hovering anxiously, covering Willow with a crocheted afghan as Raven laid her on a rose-colored couch. He said nothing when his Shade sat beside her and smoothed her tangled hair off her brow, merely shivered and went back to the terrace.

He lapped up the blood spilled on the table, growling in the back of his throat when the calico cat crept too near. She fled, her tail bristling, when he set fire to the carcass of the lynx with a flick of one finger, but came back once he’d scattered the pile of ash over the burned lawn and regenerated the grass with what passed in his body for urine.

The cat sat on the table watching him. When the new seed sprouted, hissing softly above the rustle of the wind in the trees as it sprang up and swallowed the scorched spots, her ears pricked forward and her eyes narrowed. When he came back to the table she arched her back beneath his outstretched palm.

You must go.
Raven purred to Callie, fixing in her mind a place he remembered from his boyhood with trees and water and fat rabbits—a place he’d fought to hold in his memory when so much else of his mortal life had slipped away from him.
You will know when it’s safe to return.

Callie blinked up at him and meowed, jumped off the table and disappeared into the darkness.

Chapter 18

Twelve hours after Raven sank his fangs into her leg, Willie was in Italy. On the island of Sardinia off the Mediterranean coast, driving a green Fiat convertible through the Gennargentu Mountains where she was supposed to meet Raven at sunset, in the provincial town of Nuoro.

She didn’t need a road map. Before she’d boarded the flight to Rome in Boston, Raven had put into her head the directions and all the Italian she’d need to negotiate the car rental, find bathrooms and buy food. He’d done it with a two-fingered touch between her eyebrows. Sort of a Vulcan mind-meld.

She wished Johnny was with her. He’d signed to her before they’d left Beaches that he would be, every step of the way; she just wouldn’t be able to see him. And she hadn’t since he’d blown her a kiss and faded away into the garish lights of the parking garage in Boston.

“Don’t worry how I’ll get there,” Raven had told her curtly when she’d asked. “The moonstone will see to it.”

She’d puzzled over that until the pink haze of dawn overtook the jumbo jet halfway across the Atlantic and she remembered Raven telling her the ancients called the moonstone the traveler’s stone because it protected those who traveled by night —particularly on the water when the moon was full. Then she’d closed the shade and decided what she didn’t know couldn’t scare her any more than she was scared already.

She wondered if Frank had found her note, if Whit had played the message she’d left on his voice mail. She wondered how her father had taken the news that she’d run away with a handsome, rich young doctor. Probably turned cartwheels.

The elopement was Johnny’s idea. Not that Willie thought Whit or Frank would believe it. She was worried sick they’d come after her, wondered how she’d explain coming home alone if the Ritual didn’t work. Mostly she was just plain scared.

The awful mountain roads, narrow and twisting through heavily wooded highlands and stretches of heath, didn’t help. As the sun sank lower toward the craggy peaks squeezing the road between them, long shadows began to slant across the hood of the Fiat. The dashboard dock said it was almost five. She didn’t feel as though she’d been driving for two hours. She felt as though she’d been driving forever.

She leaned forward and peered up at the sky. It was still clear as a bell, the hot, milky blue of the lowlands deepening to a vivid cobalt just tinged with sunset as the road wound higher. It was not comforting. It meant Nekhat had yet to sense the moonstone’s direction. She yearned to see angry dark clouds boiling over the jagged slopes, as they had swept furiously out of the south across the freeway when Raven had driven the Corvette hell bent for leather toward Boston. Only because it would mean Nekhat had bypassed Stonebridge.

The sun dipped out of sight below the bulk of the mountain, sifting gauzy mauve twilight over the road and turning the Fiat’s hood purple. Willie saw a turnaround ahead and pulled in to it. Raven had told her there were still
banditos
in the mountains and had warned her not to stop, but Raven wasn’t here; neither was Johnny, and she needed a break.

The turnaround overlooked a gorge tunneling away to the southwest into a gorse-dotted valley thick with purple shadows in the fading daylight. Looks like
bandito
country, Willie thought, chafing her arms as she got out of the car and leaned on the trunk. It was much cooler up here, even cooler than it was in the car with the air on. Time to put on the black turtleneck Raven had insisted she bring.

Willie turned to open the trunk and saw the raven perched on the guardrail edging the turnaround, the moonstone ring flashing dully in its beak. The keys slipped out of her fingers and landed at her feet with a jingling clunk. She snatched them up and glared at the bird.

“You made good time,” she said. “Catch a tail wind?”

The raven swooped onto the Fiat’s black vinyl top and dropped the ring. It cawed at her, wings spread and neck feathers ruffled.

“Oh, calm down. I haven’t seen a single bandit.” Willie took Raven’s grip out of the trunk, tossed it onto the driver’s seat and opened the passenger door. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not watch this. Once was enough.”

The raven picked up the ring in its beak, hopped from the top of the car to the ground, then onto the passenger seat. Willie went back to the trunk and shut it and leaned against it, her heart thudding in her throat.

What was she doing here? How could she be in love with Johnny? She’d only known him three days, and he didn’t even have a body, for God’s sake. If the Ritual didn’t work, what would happen to him? What would happen to her? How in hell would she ever be able to put her life back together?

Willie closed her eyes, prayed Nekhat had bypassed Stonebridge and that Frank was all right. A stiff gust of wind skittered grit across the toes of her Reeboks and blew her hair in her face again. She reached up to tug it away, felt something brush her cheek and almost wrenched her arm out of the socket flinging it away.

Her eyes sprang open and her heart leapt up her throat when she saw Johnny standing to front of her, his hair and the sleeves of his shirt fluttering in the wind. She didn’t know where he’d come from or how, and she didn’t care.

“Oh, Johnny.” Willie pressed her hand to the base of her throat and sighed. “Thank God you’re here.”

He gave her a wry, where-else-would-I-be smile with a lifted eyebrow, swept the hair out of her face and tucked it behind her ear. Willie strained her senses to feel his touch, almost could and savored the feathery brush of his knuckles against her cheek.