Nightwing (26 page)

“I will not return it!” He shouted at her. Rather, he roared it at her, his eyes blazing as he shot to his feet, streaming water and fury. “That’s the end of it. Now leave me be.”

Willie watched him vault one-handed out of the tub and stalk into the room. He gave the right hand door such a shove it cracked against the wall, hard enough to shatter a pane and make Willie jump. She sank lower in the tub, suddenly cold and shivering in the warm water.

He came back almost instantly, sprang into the tub and into her arms, burying his face in the curve of her neck. He was shaking almost as much as she was.

“I’m sorry, Willie. Forgive me.” He kissed her collarbone fervently. “I’ll never shout at you again, I promise.”

“Apology accepted.” She kissed his wet, tangled hair and tried not to cry. “I love you.”

So much it scared her, even more than it scared her to think what Nekhat might do to get the moonstone back. Especially now that she knew what it was.

She tried twice more to wheedle Johnny into giving it back. She rubbed her toes on the inside of his knee under the table while they ate lunch, but she only made his gray eyes smolder. When they went for a walk on the beach, she backed him against a wet, dark rock in a shallow, shady pool and unbuttoned his shirt. While the surf lapped at their ankles, she teased his nipples with her fingernails and bit them lightly. All that got her was a hard, quick joining and a spectacular climax in wet, warm sand.

It wasn’t what she wanted. Neither was the shower he tried to coax her into as the sun started setting, gilding the white sand beyond the lanai.

“Take off the moonstone,” she told him, “and I’m yours.”

He did and laid it on the vanity. It wasn’t what Willie wanted, but it was a step in the right direction. She wanted to spend the rest of her life with her husband. She sighed while he soaped her breasts. When he slid his fingers inside her and nipped her earlobe, she cried out and came in his hands.

He was exhausted after that, every muscle in his body shuddering from the strength it took to pin her against the shower wall with her legs wrapped around him and drive into her until he gritted his teeth to muffle the bull-elephant bellow that rang in her ears. He tumbled, half-dry and yawning, into bed, his face flushed and his eyes over-bright as he pulled her after him and pillowed his head on her breast.

“Sweet, blessed sleep at last,” he murmured, burrowing into her. “You don’t know how I’ve missed it.”

He drifted off with one arm and one leg draped over her. Willie waited until he began to snore, then wormed her way, inch by inch, out from under him. He never budged, not even when she rolled off the bed onto the floor.

She crawled around the nearly dark room, groping for her clothes, her shoes and her backpack. She dressed in the bathroom with the light off, then felt carefully on the vanity for the moonstone, tucked it in her pocket and crept into the sitting room, closing the door noiselessly behind her.

With shaking fingers she switched on the desk light, took paper and pen out of the drawer, scrawled a note and propped it against the lamp. She left it on so he wouldn’t miss it. It wouldn’t take her any more than an hour, she figured, to drive to Tharros and back, where she planned to leave the moonstone on the altar, right where she was sure Nekhat wouldn’t miss it. Hopefully, Johnny wouldn’t wake up and miss her while she was gone.

Unfortunately, he did—when a sharp prickle of unease crawled through his senses. His vampire powers were vastly dulled, but still functional. He’d managed to hide that from Willie. There was no point alarming her until he knew whether or not it was permanent, but he knew before he rolled to his feet instantly awake, that she was gone. He knew where, too, before he snatched up the note and read her hurried, backhand scrawl.

Please don’t be angry, but I’m taking the moonstone to Nekhat. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful. And I’ll be safe. I have the Sacred Cedar. If he gives me any crap, I’ll just put it through his heart. I love you. Back soon—Willie.

“Oh, dear God.” He crushed the note and ran for the bedroom. “She doesn’t know the stake won’t kill him.”

He should have told her he’d spent 117 years looking for a way to kill Nekhat and hadn’t found one, that the ancients who’d created him hadn’t either, that they’d had to settle for luring him into and sealing him in the tomb.

The void tugged at his heart as he threw on his clothes— not the void that lay in the bottomless, soulless depths of the moonstone, but the void that would fill him, that would be all he had left, if anything happened to Willie.

He didn’t realize she’d taken the Fiat until he saw the empty parking space. He closed his eyes and thought
raven,
visualized talons, feathers and a hooked beak just sharp enough to pluck out Nekhat’s eyes. Once again he located his vampire powers, but they were as weak and feeble as his frail, mortal flesh.

He stormed like a madman into the hotel lobby, shouting and demanding a car. He terrified the night clerk into giving him his own, slapped down money—millions of lira—and raced outside, hope springing as he slid behind the wheel of a sporty, two-year-old Peugeot.

He spun the tires as he shot the car onto the highway, reaching ahead with his dulled senses searching for Willie. He’d left his mark on her when he’d healed her wound, which made her easier to find. A sigh of relief sagged his shoulders, until he sensed the deadly, telltale, blood-red trace of a fully functioning vampire.

Chapter 26

If she hadn’t been in such a hurry, Willie might have thought to check the gas gauge before the Fiat hiccupped, bucked and died. Luckily, she was within sight of the beach at Tharros.

She had no idea how she’d get back to the hotel, but she’d worry about that after she got rid of the moonstone. Willie made sure it was still in her pocket, picked up the Sacred Cedar from the passenger seat and got out of the car.

She could just see the beach, a pale, surf-washed gleam against the night sky, and the silvery splash of the full moon on dark water. About where the temple should be on the hillside there was a dull flicker of something she hoped was just a weird reflection of moonlight on marble.

She had a bad feeling it wasn’t—made suddenly worse by the high-speed whine of a big engine rapidly approaching behind her. Willie froze in the bright white sweep of headlights and whirled at the screech of brakes and the bump of tires on the rutted shoulder. Just in time to see Johnny stretch himself out of a low, racy sports job.

How he’d gotten his hands on it she hadn’t a clue, but she winced as he slammed the door hard enough to rock it on its springs and came toward her. Looking as if he wished he had a buggy whip.

“Give me the moonstone.” He held out one hand, his voice as tight as his clenched jaw.

“No.” So much for promising to love, honor and obey, Willie thought, moving away from him. “I’m giving it back to Nekhat.”

“Not alone, you’re not.” Johnny stopped and nodded at the temple. “He’s sitting up there waiting for you.”

Willie looked over her shoulder, at the eerie flicker still dancing along the gorse-covered hillside.

 “That isn’t Saint Elmo’s fire,” Johnny said. “He likes to play with moonlight when he’s bored.”

Oh, swell. Now what? Willie hadn’t expected Nekhat to be here. She’d expected to leave the moonstone on the altar and run like hell. She was no match for a creature who could toss moonlight around like a rubber ball. Neither was Johnny, not anymore. The Sacred Cedar was, and it protected whoever carried it, but they couldn’t both carry it.

“That’s why you’re staying here,” Johnny said firmly. “I took the stone. I’ll give it back.”

She knew now that he’d lied to her, that he could still read her mind, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting out of here alive.

“And live to tell about it? Not likely, not even with the Sacred Cedar.”

Willie looked back at Johnny and saw the azurite shimmering against the hollow of his throat, in the gaped front of his ruined white shirt. She wondered why he’d put it on along with his boots and breeches, but didn’t ask.

“I think it’s safe to assume he’s still plenty sore at you for taking it.”

At Raven, not me. The thought raced through him unbidden, along with another wash of disjointedness. Strong enough to push him forward on the balls of his feet and jerk him—none too gently—toward the temple on the hillside.

“Come see how angry I really am,” hissed a soft, snarling voice, “and don’t forget the little woman.”

Not just in his head, but on the wind fluttering in Willie’s hair, a dark tangle gleaming red only where the moon touched it. He realized it in the catch of her breath, in the sudden leap of her lashes. She stared at him, wide-eyed, for an eight count and then she blinked and clenched her jaw.

“You want the stake so damn bad, you can have it!” She shouted at the temple, closing the Sacred Cedar in her left fist and raising it meaningfully. “Right in the heart!”

The wind laughed and swirled around her, tugging at her hair, lifting a funnel-shaped cloud of sand past her ankles. Johnny yanked her out of it and closed his arms around her. She buried her face in his chest until Nekhat’s laughter faded and the wind was only the wind again, then she raised just her eyes and looked at him.

“Why is he laughing?” she asked, an uh-oh tremble in her voice.

“He doesn’t have a heart,” Johnny told her. “Not like you and I do.”

“Well, of course not. He’s a monster. He’s—“ Willie’s breath caught and her eyes took another oh-my-God leap. “You can’t mean it. Everything has a heart. Even a tree.”

“What he has is an organ in his groin, on the right side of his body, that’s a combination heart and liver.” Johnny cupped her face in his hands to still the tremble he could feel seeping through her. “It rejuvenates itself like a human liver, only at an alarmingly rapid rate.”

“Oh, God,” Willie moaned, thudding her forehead against his chest. “The Sacred Cedar won’t kill him, will it?”

“No.” He pressed his lips to her hair and savored its green-apple scent. Please God, not for the last time. “It won’t kill him, but it should put him out of commission long enough to—”

“Shh!” Willie shot her hand over his mouth. “He’ll hear you.”

“No, he won’t. He’s gone.” Johnny turned her around and felt her quail against him at the flashes of light bouncing like UFOs across the hillside. “If we can immobilize him for a couple of minutes—”

“I’ve got a better idea,” Willie interrupted him shakily. “Let’s just hop in the car and get the hell outta here.”

“Too late, my love. He’d only come after us.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.” She turned in his hands and looked up at him, her cross and the chrysocolla throbbing at her throat along with her pulse. “You do have a plan, don’t you?”

Plan, hell. He didn’t have a due, but he wasn’t about to tell Willie. She was frightened enough. And so was he.

“I’ve got an idea,” Johnny hedged, praying to God he’d think of one. “Just do what I say when I tell you to do it.”

“Too bad I didn’t,” she said, her mouth trembling and her eyes filling, “when you told me to butt out of this.”

“No, Willie.” He pressed a quick, fervent kiss between her eyebrows. “It’s too bad I didn’t listen to Bertie.”

What he tried not to listen to, as he led her toward the temple, were the voices crying at him from the moonstone. He concentrated instead on the feel of his wife’s hand, so small and shaky and yet so trusting in his, and tried desperately to think of a way out of this.

“The only chance we have is the Sacred Cedar,” he said to Willie, pulling her to a halt beside him halfway up the hillside. “I don’t have a prayer of getting close to him with it, but you might. If I distract him, can you do it?”

“You bet I can.” She tucked a fluttering strand of hair behind one ear and notched up her chin. “Just say when.”

He said, “I love you,” instead and caught her shoulders and her mouth in a quick, hard kiss, his fingers as shaky as hers when he took her hand again and drew her behind him up the thin path winding through the gorse toward the temple.

I’ve done this once, I can do it again, Willie told herself. No waffling this time, just do it. Don’t think about his fangs and his claws. Just think if you don’t he’ll kill you. And Johnny, too.

The pep talk got her up the hill and over the crumbled stone wall. It failed when she stepped into the temple with Johnny and saw Nekhat, awash in silvery moonlight, sitting on the altar, one leg drawn up on the stone, the other swinging lazily off the side. He wore the white khakis Willie had seen him in on the beach, his hair tied in a queue.

“Be sure you keep the stake where he can see it,” Johnny murmured, and led her forward.

Willie did, closed tight in her left hand. She shivered when Nekhat turned his head toward them and she saw the empty gold amulet winking in the open front of his shirt against the smooth bronze wall of his chest.

“Ah, Dr. Raven. You’ve brought your blushing bride and my moonstone. How thoughtful and how wise of you.” He held out one graceful, long-fingered hand. “Put it here, please.”

Willie started to reach for the ring in her pocket, but Johnny caught her arm. “Come and get it,” he said, his voice ringing in his ears over the crescendo of cries rising from the depths of the moonstone.

“So you can strike me down with your cursed Cedar?” Nekhat laughed softly and shook his head. “I think not.”

“Let my wife go,” Johnny countered, giving Willie’s fingers a trust-me squeeze, “and I’ll bring you the stone.”

“This is not a negotiation. Dr. Raven.” Nekhat’s smile vanished. “Don’t force me to take the stone.”

“Give me the ring and get behind me,” Johnny said, and Willie did, keeping the stake ready in her hand, her heart pounding at the faint red gleam beginning in Nekhat’s eyes. “Come and get it.”

“I'll rip out your hearts and shred them while you die. Then I’ll tuck your souls away and wear them here—” Nekhat slid like smoke off the altar, tapping a finger already sprouting a claw against his empty amulet “—where you’ll be together forever and yet forever apart.”