Nightwing (23 page)

The wind shrieked suddenly through the temple with such ferocity it almost blew her off the altar. Raven caught and shielded her against him. Willie raked her hair back and looked at the moon. Three-quarters had vanished behind the shadow of the earth; what little remained flickered in and out of the black clouds streaking across the sky.

“The timing of the Ritual is critical,” Raven said calmly in her ear. “When the three are one, when the shadow covers the moon completely, then the Sacred Cedar must be driven. He thinks he can stop me by hiding the moon.”

“How will we know anything if we can’t see it?”

Raven pointed at the megabuck chronometer on his left wrist, doing his best, Willie thought, not to laugh at her.

“By the time, Willow.”

“Oh,” she said stupidly. “Of course.”

“His prehistoric mind-set has always been his downfall.”

What downfall? Did I miss it? Willie turned her face into Raven’s chest as another tearing gust nearly ripped her out of his hands. It would have torn the pack off her back if Raven hadn’t grabbed it. She felt a flash of heat against her shoulders and heard Raven cry out above Nekhat’s howl.

Clutching the marble edges of the altar, Willie crawled off the dais and down the steps where Johnny crouched on the floor out of the wind. Raven came after her, dropping onto the bottom step, gripping his right hand in his left, his palm pulsing a vicious, angry red.

“Now you know,” he said between gritted teeth, “why I can’t just fall on the stake.”

 Then he threw back his head and roared at the streaming black sky, “Damn you to hell!”

The wind laughed, a horrible, rumbling echo that groaned through the stones of the temple. Gooseflesh shot through Willie. She shivered and moved closer to Johnny.

“It’s almost time!” Raven checked his chronometer. Even he had to shout now to be heard. “Stay here—” he pointed at Willie, then at the floor “—until I tell you!”

She nodded and bit her lip. Johnny raised his thumb, index and little fingers, touched them to her cheek and followed Raven up the steps to the dais. She watched him go, heart thumping, wondering if she’d ever see him again. Then she turned her back to the wind, took out the stake and tucked it into the waistband of her jeans under her sweater.

“Willow!” Raven shouted. He was naked, bending on one knee and stretching his bare aim down to her. Behind him she could see Johnny undressing.

When her hand met Raven’s, the wind gave an ear-shattering bellow. It took Willie two shallow gasps to realize she was on the dais with Johnny and Raven, that she could breathe without hyperventilating, that the wind had died as suddenly as it had risen. She saw why when she looked up. The sky was utterly black, without so much as a tiny sliver of light to show where the moon was.

“Where’s the Cedar?” Raven asked.

“Here.” She pulled it out of her jeans, keeping her eyes on his face. He led her to the altar, where Johnny already stood, only his nearly transparent chest visible above the stone.

“Position the stake here.” Raven pointed at his chest, a wry smile on his face. “Where my heart would be if I had one.”

Willie wiped her palms on the thighs of her jeans and raised the stake to his chest, being careful not to touch him with it. “Oh, God, I hope I can do this.”

“You must. The monster must die so the man can live.”

And the monster was back, its red gleam beginning to flicker in Raven’s eyes. Willie swallowed. Hard.

“You said you’d hold still for this.”

“I’m trying, Willow. Your waffling doesn’t help.”

Neither did the low, eerie howls and short, echoing barks that rang over the hillside. Willie didn’t think it was possible, but Johnny turned even paler.

“It’s a projection,” Raven snarled at him, his fangs half distended. “There are no jackals on Sardinia.”

Something moved beyond the far wall of the temple. A flash of red, a gleam of white. Willie thought her heart would stop when she heard a growl, the scrape of claws on stone. Raven was wrong; there
were
jackals on Sardinia. Three of them were scrabbling over the shattered temple wall.

Moonlight flashed on their fangs and snapping jaws. Willie lilted her head and saw the clouds drifting away from the moon. Its face was completely covered by shadow. Only the nimbus remained, a vibrant silver corona shimmering like a halo.

The jackals were nearly over the wall. Johnny was frozen and almost invisible behind the altar. She knew then that she couldn’t kill Raven, and she knew why. Because she loved him. She loved Johnny, too. She loved both of them.

It stunned and amazed her, and Raven, too, when she cried, her voice shaking, “I can’t! I can’t kill you. I love you!”

She saw his amazement in his eyes, in the brief flicker of the red flame. I can do this, she thought; I can save him without the stake, until Raven snarled and his fangs flashed.

“Then I’ll kill you,”
he growled, and dived at her throat.

Willie screamed and wrenched free, saw Johnny wheeling toward her. But she didn’t need his help. Her arms were already drawn over her head, the Sacred Cedar gripped in her hands.

It was all deliberate. Willie realized it when Raven shifted, not to evade the blow but to take it. She tried to pull back, but he caught her and embraced her. She felt the stake pierce his chest, the bone-deep shudder that racked his body, saw the jackals melt into the darkness and disappear.

“You tricked me!”
Willie cried, her heart breaking in her voice as Raven sagged against her shoulder.

Johnny froze and clutched his chest. He looked down and then at Willie, a startled, bewildered smile on his face.

“Don’t touch the stake,” Raven panted, his voice raw with pain. “Just—help me—onto the stone.”

Oh, God, help me, Willie screamed inside, tucking her left shoulder under Raven’s right. His legs buckled, but he flung out his hand and caught himself on the altar. He threw his head back and gritted his teeth. “Great gods, this hurts!”

Johnny sagged on one elbow against the altar as Willie helped Raven onto it. When she looked again, Johnny had sunk to his knees and pressed his forehead against the stone. He raised his head as Willie wheeled toward him, lifted his right hand and vanished in a shimmer of silvery sparks.

“Oh, no,” she sobbed. “Oh, Johnny.”

He was gone. So was Raven, Willie saw when she turned toward him. He’d pulled the stake from his chest and dropped it on the stone beside him, near the half-curled fingers of his left hand.

His eyes were closed and there was a smile on his face.

Chapter 23

The smile stayed on Raven’s face until the eclipse ended. As the shadow receded, so did the curve in his mouth, in small stages and tiny flickers. By the time the moon was full and bright again in the sky, his smile had vanished.

So had the two stars riding next to the moon, like the diamonds flanking the moonstone. Willie sat on the sleeping bag watching them. One second they were there; when she blinked, they were gone. She didn’t even think it was weird.

The moonstone had lost most of its fire. So had Willie. The stone flashed now and then on Raven’s hand, less often as the night dragged on. The second vial of holy water and the Sacred Cedar lay in her lap. She felt as dead as Raven looked, except for a tiny fear that Nekhat would show up.

If he came for the moonstone, she’d kill him. She’d killed once; she could do it again. Maybe this time without throwing up, which she’d done after she’d cleansed the stake and spread Raven’s shirt over his chest.

She’d found it on the dais, along with his trousers and his shoes. Johnny’s boots stood beside her, his prickly wool socks tucked inside. Willie wondered if Rachel had knitted them, how Johnny had stood them in the Egyptian desert. One had a hole in the heel. He’d worn it on his left foot, where the boot heel showed the most wear. She’d cried over the bloodstains on his leather vest and dried her tears with his shirt. It was yards too big, but she put it on anyway over her pullover, rolled up the sleeves and felt better.

The left sleeve was slashed; so was the yoke near the collar. If she ended up going home alone, she’d wash it and mend the ripped buttonholes and rents made by Nekhat’s claws and fangs. She’d sleep in it every night for the rest of her life and make Whit promise to bury her in it. Willie didn’t plan to bring any heirs into the world. Not without Johnny.

The last cup of tea from the thermos was cooling rapidly. Better drink it, Willie thought, and did, then bent her elbows on her knees, bowed her head and closed her eyes.

A trill of bird song jolted her awake, snapped her chin off her chest. She couldn’t believe she’d fallen asleep. The shock pushed her to her feet; the Sacred Cedar rolled out of her lap. She caught it before it hit the step and smiled bleakly. Pretty good reflexes for a zombie.

A few stars still winked in the smudge of light rimming the dark crest of the hill. It was almost dawn. Ether Johnny’s first in 117 years, or his last.

I love you,
he’d said.
Please.

Don’t linger.
Raven had warned, so Willie rolled up the sleeping bag and put everything but the Sacred Cedar and the holy water in the pack. The stake she tucked through a belt loop; the vial went in her pocket. She climbed the dais and inched up to the altar with her heart pounding in her ears.

Raven hadn’t moved. One corner of his black shirt collar was still flipped across his jaw. The right sleeve draped his groin. The rest of the shirt covered his chest and abdomen. His chin had dipped toward his collarbone; his left knee was slightly raised and bent, and his fingers were half-curled.

“Wake up,” Willie murmured. “Oh, please, wake up.”

The sky lightened slowly. The temple columns flushed pink and still he didn’t stir. Willie glanced at the sun rising and beaming like klieg lights behind the hill.
Don’t let the sun have us.
How long should she wait? She fished the vial out of her pocket, worried the stopper with her thumb and her lip between her teeth.

“Come on, Johnny,” Willie begged, her voice quavering. “Please wake up.”

He didn’t. She glanced at the sun again, its fiery rim about to break the horizon. I
love you. Please.
Willie’s heart raced in her throat. She pushed the stopper with her thumb and then snapped it shut.

No. Not yet.

The tears in her eyes blurred the first ray of sun that slanted over the hill. She watched the golden swath of light spread downhill toward the temple. When it broke over the wall, she yanked the stopper out and threw it away—savagely, almost blind with tears.

Sobbing so hard the holy water in the vial trembled, Willie raised her arm over Raven and peeled his shirt collar away from his jaw and his throat. The azurite lay on its pooled copper chain in the hollow of his collarbone; there was no pulse, no breath to move it.
Say
a prayer for us.

“Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done—” Willie’s voice broke on a wrenching sob. She shut her eyes, her throat aching. “I love you, Johnny. And God help me, Raven, I love you, too.”

She dragged the sleeve of Johnny’s shirt across her face, took a deep, shuddery breath of sun-bleached sand and bloody death, lowered her arm, opened her eyes and tipped the vial. Just as the sun washed up on the altar, just as Raven’s nostrils flared, his chest heaved and his lungs drew breath.

His eyes sprang open and locked on her face. The vial slipped out of Willie’s hand and shattered on the dais. His eyes were gray; only the pupils were black, tiny pinpoints dilating as he blinked. Did he know her? Did he remember?

“I made it,” he said, his voice soft and filled with wonder. He blinked at the sky, a soft pastel swirl of blue and mauve. A smile more breathtaking than any sunrise Willie had ever seen spread across his face.

“I made it,” he repeated, his breath catching as he shot up, his shirt clutched to his throat. His pulse beat there wildly. He peeled the shirt away slowly, almost cringing.

The ragged puncture wound that had sent Willie gagging and running for the temple wall was gone. He pressed a hand to his chest and looked at her, his eyes filling with tears.

“Oh, God. Dear God.” He threw back his head, flung out his arms and shouted, “I made it!”

His voice rang through the temple. And in Willie’s heart when he swept her onto the altar, wrapped her in his arms and buried his face in the curve of her neck. Just long enough to take a shuddery breath; then he lifted his head and his hands to the buttoned front of her pullover.

“Let me, please.” He ripped the placket open, fumbled with his hand inside, pressed his hand to her breast and sighed, his head tipped back and his eyes closed. “At last. Oh, God, at last. Flesh warmed by a beating heart.”

The sun flushed up his throat, shimmered on the azurite and the tears in his lashes as he looked down at her, his mouth quivering. He touched her face with trembling fingers, traced her eyebrows and the curve of her cheek.

“Willie. My beautiful Willow. Oh, God, how I love you.” His fingertips brushed the corner of her mouth, parting her lips and catching his breath. “I’ve made love to you but I’ve never kissed you. I haven’t kissed any woman in 117 years.”

Willie couldn’t even speak around the tears clogging her throat. But she didn’t have to.

He pressed a kiss between her brows, a chuckle thrumming in his chest, where Willie could feel his heart beating. His mouth settled over hers, breathless and tentative. A deep, sweet ache welled up inside her. His lips were warm, oh, so warm and trembled against hers.

“I love you so much. I want you so much.” Tears jeweled his dark lashes when he raised his head. “But not here, not in this place.”

A shiver ran through him, and Willie, recalling the long, awful night she’d spent here. She couldn’t begin to imagine what it had been like for him, wasn’t sure she wanted to know, or would ever have the courage to ask.

“I’ll get your clothes.” She slipped away, hugging the chill she felt after the warmth of his arms, down the steps to his folded clothes. Both sets. “Which ones?”