Vengeance: The Niteclif Evolutions, Book 3 (2 page)

“With Bahlin, there were a few reasons to stay and a hundred to go. With you…” I paused, took a deep breath and willed myself not to cry. “With you, Hellion, there were thousand reasons to stay and only a few reasons to go. How could I deny that logic?” I missed Bahlin, and I knew I’d grieve him, but my future lay right in front of me.

“
A mhuirnín
,
I’ve never seen you look that way.” He reached for my face and I let my cheek rest in the palm of his hand. “Are ye well?”

“
Táim i ngrá leat
, Hellion,
síorghrá grá mo chroí
.”

Hellion’s eyes misted over and he ran his hand over his mouth and I could see him biting his cheek, emotionally gobsmacked at the clear and concise way I’d spoken to him in his own language. “When? How? When?”

I leaned over and stroked his face and he immediately turned it into my hand, his eyes squinched shut hard, his breathing fast and uneven, his lips a thin white line.
 

“Hellion?” I asked, uneasy at his response.

He grabbed my wrist and laid my fingers to his lips and kissed them, his emotional state confusing me.
 

“Hellion, would you tell me—”

He shook his head, keeping my fingers pressed hard to his lips. When he finally opened his eyes, the irises had eaten all the white, so from a distance he would have appeared to have two empty sockets. Up close, though, up close was the real show. Because you could see things moving in his eyes, powerful things that you knew saw
you
and were greater in sum than the man who wielded them. His voice echoed around the room when he spoke. “You are my heart, Madeleine Niteclif. I live for you now, and all that I have is yours, vow or no vow.” His eyes faded to their normal black, and he looked at me so seriously.
 

Comforted, I crawled farther up the bed and curled into his side.

He held me tightly, settling the duvet over my naked, bandaged body. “Rest,
a mhuirnín
, here in my arms.”

I shifted myself so I lay against his chest, his heart beating a strong, comforting rhythm in my ear that soothed me back to sleep.

Just as I faded out I heard Hellion whisper into my hair, “You are my heart, Madeleine Niteclif. You are nourishment for my soul and as vital as the sun on my skin. I’ll not spend another day without you so long as I live.” He pressed his lips into my hair and his arms tightened gently.

And then I drifted off. For the first time in a long time, I slept without dreaming.

I awoke again sometime near noon if I judged by the light alone. I was still cocooned in Hellion’s embrace though the man himself was wide-awake. Stock reports were flashing across the TV at the foot of the bed, the volume so low I didn’t know how he could hear anything until I realized he had an earpiece in that allowed him to listen without disturbing me. I had just glanced up at him when something caused him to stiffen, his eyes widening and his breath seeming to hang up in his throat.

I turned slowly toward the screen, but what I saw made no sense. Rocks were strewn everywhere and the ground was torn up as if something violent had occurred. The sound of the reporter’s voice filled the room as Hellion disengaged his earpiece.
 

“…initially believed it was force of nature, now experts are relatively certain the stones were leveled by some
thing
. There are marks, Sylvia, indicating the stones were physically pushed over. As implausible as it would seem, experts are confident it was no natural occurrence that destroyed this stone circle.” My stomach crashed. “Experts will agree that there seem to be two stones in particular that suffered the most damage: the altar stone was split in half, and the primary stone is in several pieces scattered all over the area.”
 

I didn’t hear what else the reporter said because a low buzzing filled my ears. I recognized the stone circle. It was mine.

Scenes of incomprehensible destruction flashed across the screen as I watched with growing horror. Gouged rocks were scattered around the field, some torn up from the ground and others pushed over; the alter stone was split and lay in two unequal halves on the ruined ground. But most shocking was the demolition of the point stone, or the stone that indicated true north. It was in pieces, broken as if it had been no more than a piece of chalk. A sickening sense of dread built as I watched the cameraman pan the area where the stone circle once stood. With the point stone gone and a couple others cracked, it appeared the most I could hope for was a reconstruction that included four stones. The circle had to have five in order to function as a place of protection and power. Without that fifth stone, the henge became just another ruin.

I turned to Hellion and found his face as pale as my own. “What does this mean for me?”

He shook his head slowly and turned the volume down. I watched as he programmed the digital recorder so we’d have the luxury to watch this later and consider the news reports and mundane speculations.

Reaching out, I grasped Hellion’s hand and we clung to each other, though I didn’t completely understand his reaction. It felt like I should, though, so I didn’t ask again for fear of appearing foolish and, well, just out of fear.
 

Hellion peeled my fingers off his and reached over to grab the empty water glass he’d fetched me earlier. He walked into the bathroom and emerged a brief moment later, the glass refreshed. Hands that could heal, love and destroy trembled violently.
 

Shit.
I hated conversations that started with such bad news that I needed to either compose myself or throw up. The whites of my eyes must have shown clearly as he sat on the edge of the bed, set the water on the nightstand, and took my hands in his. There was something strange, suspiciously familiar to sympathy, in his eyes.

Sighing, Hellion said, “
Mo chroí
, I’m not exactly sure how to break this to you.”

“Probably best just to get it over with,” I croaked, my voice still a little raspy. The way his hands shook made me more nervous than his silence. “Yeah, get it over with.”

Nodding, he started to explain, and with every word out of his mouth, a horrid realization settled over me. “The stone henge where your Evolution triggered was called Pickledean, Maddy. When your Evolution occurred, you were bonded to that henge as the Niteclif, and it became an entry and exit point for you.” He took a deep, shaky breath as if fortifying himself to go on. “The best the Council could tell, we knew you’d enter through a stone circle in Wiltshire around Midsummer’s Eve and you’d serve your ten years… Oh, Maddy.” His voice broke and he buried his face in his hands. “I’ll kill him for this.”
 

He shot off the bed, startling me, and began to pace the perimeter of the room. He finally came to a halt at the end of the bed. Staring at me, he crawled up the mattress and gathered me in his arms again. “Maddy, just as you needed that circle to enter your Evolution, you needed it to get out of the evolutionary cycle and trigger the end of your service.” He waited.

…to get out of the evolutionary cycle…
Understanding was gradual, like the rise of the moon from the dark horizon.
 

“No,” I whispered, shaking my head slowly. “No, Hellion. I won’t survive this, not indefinitely.”

“You will,” he growled. “By the gods, Maddy, you
will
survive this.”

I sat in his arms, numb. Bahlin had delivered his vengeance against me in the most effective manner possible. Now there would be no getting out of this cycle, there would be no end for me other than death because… Oh hell. “Hellion?”

“Say what you want done, Maddy, and I’ll see it carried out even if it means raining hell down on him myself.”

“No, no. It’s not that. It’s just, if I don’t age while I’m the Niteclif, and now I can’t get out of
being
the Niteclif, am I immortal?” The man beside me grew so still I wondered if he’d willed himself away. “Hellion?”

Moving in exaggerated slow motion, Hellion took my hand up and kissed my knuckles before setting the hand down and laying his cheek on my hair.
 

“I’ll take that as a yes.” I was strangely calm about this. “If I’m immortal, the only way for me to get out of the Niteclif role is to truly die, right?”

“Don’t speak that way,
mo duine dorcha
. We’ll find a way out—”

“No, we won’t.” Without understanding the calm conviction I felt, I knew with absolute certainty that there would be no working around my family history. My opportunity for any type of graceful, self-powered exodus was terminated, and I was faced with living this life of violence forever or finding an out through death. Closing my eyes, I shook my head. Bahlin had secured the last word.

Squeezing me tightly, Hellion asked, “Are you all right, Maddy? Please, say something.”

“I’m surprisingly okay. In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t as disorienting as half the shit that’s happened to me so far.” What I didn’t add was that it was irrelevant whether I was immortal or not since I had never believed I’d live to see the end of my term of service as the Niteclif. It had meant little to me until recently.

“I’ll see you avenged,” Hellion whispered into my hair, his hot breath sending shivers down my still bare spine.

“Avenged for what? Having my life extended indefinitely? Having the amount of time I can potentially spend with you lengthened ten-fold? Or would it be for—”

“Fine. Jest if you will, but this isn’t done between him and me, Madeleine. This isn’t nearly done.”
 

Hellion trembled with rage and began to move away when I whipped a hand out and grabbed his forearm. “Uh-uh. You’re not walking away from this. You promised to cut that crap out, remember? And it
is
done, Hellion.” I yanked on him until he spun to face me. “I lost Bahlin once when I only thought he was dead, and I survived it. I don’t think I’d survive your death, imagined or real. And if you two ever truly go up against each other, one of you will die. I’m not so naïve as to misunderstand that. So this ends, here and now.”

“I’ll tell you now that I don’t take to having what I will or won’t do spelled out for me as if I was daft, Madeleine,” he ground out between clenched teeth and a ticking jaw.

“Minutes ago you were begging me to tell you what I wanted and you’d do it. This is what I want.”

Lips thinned to a vicious slash across his face and black irises swallowed the whites all over again, a faint wind blew his hair about his head and shoulders but I didn’t falter. He could be as scary as he wanted to be. I’d stick to this like gum to hot pavement. He could try to peel me off, and I’d even go so far as to wish him luck with it.
 

“Bloody hell, woman, why don’t I get you the emasculating sheers? Then you can just take care of it all in one fell swoop?” he bitched.
 

I bit my lower lip in an effort to hide the smile that threatened to break free.

He sighed and slid down to curl up next to me, laying his head in my lap.
 

My hand automatically went to his hair and I began running my fingers through the burnished gold. “Fine. Go get them.”

He sighed. “Figure of speech, love. Keep those things away from me.” And whether a conscious thought or subconscious reaction, he casually dropped a hand across his groin. This time there was no hiding my smile or the laughter that followed.

In keeping with tradition, it took me a while to truly process what had happened. When the final connection was made in my mind and the implications of immortality registered completely, I flipped out. I had a raging fit, broke a few dishes, cursed Bahlin and generally convinced everyone in the house that eternity was way the hell too long to spend with me. Even though Hellion expressed his concern and humored me for a while, even he eventually lost his temper and told me to get a damned grip and get over myself.
 

I needed the verbal slap before I could settle down to privately consider the pros and the cons of immortality. The biggest advantage was that I’d have longer to potentially spend with Hellion, provided I could survive. The biggest disadvantage was that, despite the experience I’d gain, I ran the risk of beginning to disappear, or fade, with every failure. If I faded, a pre-ordained author would write my story and immortalize me as a fictional character that had never been. My life would be voided, my spirit dead. That scared me more than death itself because no one was so good they didn’t experience failure now and again.

I retreated to the second floor library. Maybe if I read for a while I could reclaim my sanity and force my mind to think in an organized manner again. The same page sat unread and unturned for twenty minutes as I willfully slowed my thought processes down. My mind wandered about aimlessly, sometimes recounting past events and at others trying to ordain the future. Hellion found me as my mind skipped through the injustices of the last few days.
 

“It was suddenly quiet enough that I wondered if you’d left the house,” he said, sitting down on the opposite end of the sofa and settling my feet in his lap.
 

The long, firm strokes delivered to my arches made me purr in appreciation, and I set the book aside as my eyes drifted shut. “Living forever won’t be so bad if you keep that up.”