Unbearable (6 page)

We all stared at her.

Her hands were shaking and she gripped the glass harder. “Oscar…Oscar died three weeks ago. Pancreatic cancer,” she added. “I think he’s probably had it for a long while. We only found out during the summer, though. He went very fast. Only, it wasn’t fast enough. I sat there and watched him writhing in agony….” She took a big slug of the rum and eggnog and looked down at the creamy liquid. “If I thought I might have been able to get away with it, I would have finished it. But….” She sighed.

I didn’t say anything. No one did. Donna wasn’t looking for sympathy or empty platitudes. She was here on a mission. It radiated from every stiff line of her body.

She kept her gaze down on the glass. “Oscar told me something before he died. He said that he was the one who planted the map in Jimmy’s trailer, the day Jimmy died. It was Oscar who helped the gargoyles.”

I glanced at Nick and Tally. They did not look surprised. Perhaps, like me, they had guessed a while ago.

Nyanther studied Donna, too. “The gargoyles threatened his family, didn’t they?” he asked.

She looked up at him, surprised. “Yes,” she said at last. “That just explains it, though. It doesn’t excuse it. Especially not because Carson….” She hesitated, looking at Tally. “I know it probably doesn’t help, but Oscar
paid
, Tally. Over and over, he paid. He screamed, sometimes, it was so bad.” She swallowed and looked down at the glass again.

Then she pushed the wrapped gift along the sofa, closer to Nick. “I brought these. You might need them one day. I know I won’t. They’re house wards, strong ones. I think they would stop Azazel himself.”

Nick didn’t reach for the box. So I did. I unwrapped it quickly. “Thank you, Donna,” I told her. “We appreciate your gesture.”

There was a shoebox beneath the gilt paper and inside were a dozen plain stones, smooth like river stones. Despite their plainness, I could feel their power, like a magnetic field. They were indeed strong.

Everyone was sitting and watching Donna with harsh expressions. They were reliving the memories that she had provoked. The express train we had been hoping to avoid was upon us, after all. Nyanther had lost his own people, too. His expression was brooding as he considered her.

So I got up and picked up one of the two last bottles of gargoyle anti-venom that we had left from this batch, that had been sitting on the bookshelf. We had distributed the rest to key contacts across the country and even more to Alasdair and Mairead in Scotland.

I held out one of the two bottles to Donna. “Here. A small gift from us.” I told her what it was.

She clenched the bottle in her fist, her knuckles white. “Thank you. I hope I never need it.”

“What will you do now?” Tally asked, her voice at least kind, even though her face was drawn.

“Me and the girls moved back to Manhattan,” she said. “Oscar wanted to live in California to get away from it all. I never did get around to liking it. I have a job in a diner. It’s not much, but it pays the bills. That’s something, I suppose.” She drank the last of the eggnog and put the glass aside firmly. “I gotta go. The babysitter would only stay until seven.” She looked at her watch and got up.

Nyanther got to his feet. “I’ll see you to the door,” he said. His gaze flickered toward me, then moved deliberately toward Tally.

He took Donna out to the front door.

I moved to sit next to Tally and picked up her hand. “Hey.”

She shook her head. She was sitting quite still, staring straight ahead.

Nick dropped down into a crouch in front of her, looking up at her. “We always thought it was Oscar,” he said gently.

“That’s
not
it,” Tally said. Her voice wobbled.

“It will be a year in just under a week,” I said as gently as I could. I wanted to draw the thorn that was hurting.

At last, she began to cry. “She looked wr…r…retched! Is that what I look like? Is that all that is left for me?”

“You’re a hunter, born and bred,” Nick said firmly. “No one can take that away from you.”

Tally began to cry harder and for the first time I realized that it wasn’t just the anniversary of Carson’s death that was prodding her. “What do I do once Lirgon is dead?” she asked, through her tears. “Keep hunting?”

“If you want,” I said as calmly as I could, although my heart was already hurting from beating too hard.

“I don’t want Riley growing up in this world!” she cried. “Yet if I don’t hunt, I must face becoming human,
normal
, again. I can’t do it! I just can’t! That’s why I don’t want Riley to grow up like me!”

It was a nasty dilemma. I didn’t know what to say. So I drew her against me and let her cry on my shoulder. I think that was the first time and also the last time that Tally truly cried in that entire horrible year.

Nick’s gaze met mine. He was deeply troubled, too.

Movement caught my eye and I looked behind him. Riley was on her feet, wobbling, clutching the corner of the armchair. Her play blanket was three feet behind her.

As I watched, as Nick spun to see what I was looking at, as I pushed Tally up and pointed, Riley took two more hesitant, tottering steps, then sat down suddenly on her rear and giggled.

Tally surged out of her chair and swept Riley up in her arms and covered her in kisses. “Oh, you sweet, darling girl! You’re walking!”

It was the only light, happy moment in a month, a year, that had grown to be almost unendurable.

Nyanther was the one who saw the late night look-how-strange news report on a bear eating people in Florida and coupled it up with Lirgon’s return.

Even if I had seen the original smarmy, tongue-in-cheek report, I might still not have made any connection because one didn’t generally think of caves, ancient creatures and the supernatural as anything related to swampy, flat and above all, hot Florida.

Only, for Nyanther,
everything
was still odd and strange. So connecting the two was natural. “There
are
caves in Florida,” he insisted as we sat around the table, Tally eating breakfast I had cooked for her while Nick fed Riley. “The center of the state is riddled with them. I looked it up. They’re limestone and most of them are underwater, except where the ridges emerge, the caves are dry. It might not be a gargoyle nest the way you and I think of them, but it still fits their criteria.” He lifted his hand and touched the tip of his fingers as he counted off the criteria—a modern habit he had picked up from somewhere. “Caves. Forests—well, swampland. Which means wild animals to tide them over when they can’t find humans. Humans who are missing and remains that have been eaten, especially the legs.” He lowered his hand and shrugged. “It’s Lirgon.”

“Or a bear, or a crocodile.” Nick wiped Riley’s chin.

“Who do you know in Florida?” Nyanther insisted.

Tally picked up her coffee cup. “There’s Miguel,” she said.

Nick frowned. “Do you have contacts for him?” he asked.

“A phone number for a bar that he uses as a message drop.”

“It’s New Year’s Day,” I pointed out. “You’re not going to raise anyone until late afternoon.”

Nick sighed. “Why don’t you leave a message for him tonight?” he told Tally. “It won’t hurt for him to look into it. We could drive down while he checks it out. It would take three or four days but if we drive, we can take all our gear. We could leave on Tuesday and be there by the weekend.”

I wondered if Nick was agreeing to this as a way of getting Tally out of the house and out of New York at this time of year. I didn’t like the pallor of her face, either.

“Why leave on Tuesday?” Nyanther asked. “Why not tomorrow?”

“No,” I said at the same time as Nick.

Tally put her coffee cup down, staring at the brown liquid.

Nyanther sighed. “Forgive me,” he said. “I forgot.”

I don’t think I spoke to anyone on January 2
nd
. None of us in the house did.

We all pretended to get on with the day, however, by mid-afternoon we all gravitated toward the living room. There was a storm building, the sky was heavy with snow and a dark, iron gray color that sucked all the light out of the day.

Nick got the fire going and we simply sat. Even Riley was subdued, perhaps picking up the mood of the house. She was teething. Baby Tylenol soothed her into early sleep. Then Tally crept into the room where we were, curled up on the sofa between us and dropped her head onto Nick’s shoulder, reached back and picked up my hand.

That was where we stayed until the day moved on to January 3
rd
.

We drove down to Florida, taking four days to make the trip, because no one wanted to stay behind with Riley. So Riley came with us, happy in her baby seat on the backseat of the big Cadillac DeVille, with Tally and I on either side to keep her occupied when she wasn’t sleeping.

We took four days to keep the time in the car at a minimum per day, with lots of stops on the way.

I don’t think anyone except Nyanther truly thought we were going to find Lirgon in Florida. It just seemed so unlikely. I
know
Nick didn’t believe so because he told me on the second night on the road, in a roadside motel just south of the Virginia state border. Tally was the only one who really needed to sleep, so we took rooms on either side of her to give her time alone.

I did a lot of walking on those nights, out under the stars, my thoughts freewheeling. For the first time in my life, being in the same room with Nick had become uncomfortable.

When I got back to the motel room around two in the morning, Nick was lying on the bed, his hands behind his head. The TV wasn’t on. Neither was the bedside lamp, but neither of us needed the light, anyway.

He sat up as I closed the door very softly, so no one else in the motel was woken by it.

“You’ve been a while,” he said evenly.

“It’s nice out there. Warm, even.” Compared to Albany in January, it was very nice, with just a touch of crispness in the air to make it refreshing. There were no predators, neither man nor beast, who could make it dangerous for me to walk alone in the night, either.

Nick looked down at his hands.

I sat on the other double bed, facing him. “We need to talk,” I said as gently as I could.

He still didn’t look at me. I heard his heart stir and sluggishly beat. “Is this when you tell me it’s not about me. You’re the one with the issues?” Finally, he lifted his head. There was dull fury there. Fear, too.

I sighed. “It’s all about you, Nick. You know that as well as I do. Since Connors died, you’ve been…
obsessed
. You don’t talk. Well, you were never one for talking. I’ve lost track of the last time we made love.”

“Last week,” he said. His voice was hoarse.

“That was just sex,” I said flatly. “You could have used your hand and gotten the same result.”

He flinched. “You sound like every lonely housewife ever born,” he said harshly.

“That’s all I am now,” I agreed. “Riley’s caretaker…and that’s the only reason I’m still here. Riley. Tally, too, although she doesn’t really need me either. You and she are existing on the same fumes. This useless hunt for Lirgon and the closure you think you’re going to get from it.”

“I stopped caring about Lirgon a long time ago,” Nick said stiffly. “Right after we buried Connors. You might remember. You were there, begging me to let go. So I did.”

“You haven’t let go of the need to earn Tally’s forgiveness.
That’s
what’s driving you, while all she wants is revenge.”

Nick looked down at his hands again. It made my chest ache to see him so low. This was the vulnerable man who hid from everyone but me. I know Tally never saw this side of him. Nick would rather have cut out his heart than let Tally see any weakness in him.

“Is Nyanther part of this?” he said, very quietly.

“Nyanther?” I repeated, for a moment genuinely confused. Then it clicked into place. The look Nick had given us on the plane back from Scotland. His distance lately.

I let out a gusty breath as I saw it all. “Gods, Nick…please don’t tell me you’ve been this way for months because of some latent, pathetic jealousy?”

His head jerked up, as if I had slapped him. Perhaps I had. “As if I would indulge in such a petty past time,” he said stiffly.

The mental weight that had been bearing down on me lifted and floated away. I looked at him fondly. “No, of course you wouldn’t,” I said. “Nyanther is still finding his sea legs, here in the twentieth century and I know something of what that is like, especially when I remember what my early life was like in comparison. It can make you dizzy and snatch your breath away. So we have that in common.”

“I know,” Nick growled. “I, on the other hand, have only existed for a few measly centuries.”

“Eight of them, last I checked,” I said lightly. I moved to sit next to him on the bigger bed. “Four of them we have in common, which outweighs by several hundred years any commonality Nyanther and I share.”

Nick let out an unsteady breath, watching me.

“You’re an old fool,” I told him softly.

“Yes,” he agreed. “Forgive me.”

“Already forgiven.”

He moved very quickly, even for a vampire. I still could have countered the move if I’d been of a mind to. Instead, I let him pull me down onto the bed properly and settle over the top of me. My heart hurried along, this time with happy contentedness.

“I am going to leave you limp and utterly drained,” he growled, pulling at my sweater.

“Do your worst,” I breathed back.

We had arranged to meet Miguel on the Friday, which was the fifth. The night before, we stopped just outside Jacksonville at another franchise hotel, this one with a suite we could use.

Tally settled Riley for the night, then sat cross-legged on the floor between Nick’s armchair and where I sprawled on the sofa, hogging the cushions. She put her hands together, studying us both. “Nyanther is out?”

“Swimming.” I grinned. So did Nick and Tally.

The idea of recreational swimming was another one Nyanther had adopted with enthusiasm. An entire indoor pond filled with filtered water had floored him and left him shaking his head for days. “Our human tribe drank wine because the water made them sick,” he said.