He broke off and called Liz's name. She didn't answer and he resumed his chant, moving uncertainly through an endless fog. Had the phantom killed her already? Would he find her lifeless body staring up at him with those telltale blue lips? His fears chilled his already cold blood. He shivered, clinging to the knife as though it was his only hope. "'By the fire within the stone I pledge to hold courage fast in this dark place.' "
Submit, Defender. The guardian is lost. I promise you no fear. Take my gift, and see if I am true to my word.
"No!" he shouted defiantly. He resumed the prayer. "'By the fire within the stone I pledge to hold courage fast in this dark place.'"
The stone in his hand remained inert. He'd expected it to spark and flare as it had done when Liz had approached the ledge. He needed light. Needed it bad. He could see so little in all the gloom.
"Liz," he called again. "Liz. Liz-iz-iz-izzzzzz!"
Liz moved skittishly toward Zach's voice. The thick mist kept her from seeing her own feet, and though she repeated the prayer along with him, for some reason he couldn't hear her.
"'By the fire within the stone,'" she echoed after him, "'I pledge to hold courage fast in this dark place.'"
The circling forms above shrieked and scattered. She felt more than heard the shuddering sob wracking the mist below her feet. She stumbled through the cloudy haze, guided by the rich cadence of Zach's voice.
" 'Power above, Power divine,' " he said, then called her name again.
"Zach," she cried in return. The vapor seemed endless. Finding him was hopeless, a lost cause, not worthy of their efforts. But as they moved into the stanza regarding sorrow, her heart lifted, cleansed of sorrow as the words proclaimed.
Then there he was, emerging from the mist like a warrior hero from a Scottish tale, stance wide, holding his tiny knife in front of him as he might a sword. Liz broke into a run, arms held wide, finally trusting that she wouldn't fall.
Zach, oh, Zach, her love, her life. Zach.
And he was running, too, his arms as wide as hers, his face alight with an adoring smile, and as they met, she started to leap into his arms.
She stopped short. What if . . . ?
"I'm real, Liz," he said shakily.
With the opal between them, he crushed her against his hard chest, holding her so tightly she could barely breathe, whispering, "I'm sorry, Liz. Oh, God, I'm so sorry."
Fiery color exploded. Rainbow hues shot from between their bodies in every direction. Heat seeped from the opal and eased their chill.
Above them the bats swirled, chittering angrily, letting out shrieks that bothered them not at all. She was safe now, safe in Zach's arms. And she had no idea why he was apologizing, but she just allowed herself to receive his loving kisses, deposited so frantically she couldn't begin to return them.
Another shudder ran beneath their feet. Liz stumbled, but Zach righted her. He hadn't realized how small she was, how fragile. He'd seen her as this pillar of strength since their reunion, often wishing to find the vulnerable girl he'd loved instead. He saw now that he'd wed each of his clinging wives in an attempt to replace the girl, dooming their marriage to fail.
Now it was clear that it had never been Liz's weaknesses he'd loved. No, he'd loved her strength. He wanted to shore it up with his support and no longer cared if she loved him back. To give love, that was important, and no one he'd ever known deserved it more.
She slipped her arms around his neck and gazed up at him. Her golden eyes carried all the glittering undertones he'd seen in the opal earlier and were filled with reflections of his own emotions.
Ankouer wailed in rage. A fierce wind arose as his body writhed in anger. Zach let Liz go and stood beside her, putting the hand with the opal protectively over her shoulder and holding the knife with the other. Like fighting an elephant with a needle, he thought, as bats darted down from the sky, pecking at them as birds might. He slashed at them, one by one, and like the spider, they bled. With each one he felled, his hatred soared. Beside him, Liz fended off other creatures, her face an echo of his emotions.
Suddenly she dropped her hands. "'Power above, Power divine,'" she began, her voice high and sweet. "'I call to thee.'" Then she turned to Zach. "Stop fighting," she told him. "Ankouer feeds on hate."
But hate had hold of him now. He let go of Liz, let the opal fall. His fury at all his fears, at all he'd lost at this monster's hand, raged and raged, and he expressed it with every slash of his tiny knife.
"'Shine your light upon my soul,'" Liz cried, falling to her knees to claw at the mist in search of the stone. Zach was in a frenzy he couldn't control. It was up to her, and she said a smaller prayer that this time words would not fail her.
"'Wash over me a love so pure, my heart is cleansed of hate.'"
His slashes lost momentum, getting weaker and less frantic, but Liz kept searching. Finally her hand brushed a hard object.
With an exultant cry, she held the opal aloft, crying.
"'Glow, glow, bright opal, free your fire. illuminate the shadows. Pave my way. . . . Pave my way, pave my way, so darkness does not fall upon this earth.'"
He glanced at her, his blue eyes dark with pain and despair, and still she chanted. Her body grew weak with the ecstasy of love, and she sank back on her heels saying the prayer that was their only salvation. "'By the fire within the stone, I pledge to hold love fast in this dark place.'"
Zach let his knife arm fall to his side. Then, suddenly, though bats still worried them and Ankouer still screeched, he was on his knees, enclosing her in his arms as she held the opal aloft, joining her in the final stanza of the prayer, the one she'd been told to recite in her darkest hour.
Power above, power divine.*
Heed my call in my hour of need.
Protect me from evil in this black place.
Power above, Power divine.
Heed my call. Heed my call.
Emitting frightened squeals the bats swooped upward and away. An earthquake rumbled beneath. The gray sky darkened to a murky black, the bats formed into storm clouds. Streaks of red crawled across the black like greedy fingers, creating fearsome cracks.
The quaking increased, and Zach steadied Liz as she stared wide-eyed into the terrifying night, holding the radiant opal high above her head. A mournful wail slithered through the unnatural storm. And with it, Liz felt a weight descend. At last she understood. The phantom's fear, his sorrow, his hate. They had twisted him into darkness personified. She knew then how he yearned for the soft, the kind, the loving. That he drank the souls of men in search of it.
Next, Maddie floated in her mind, and she comprehended the intensity of the woman's obsessive love, and the depths to which she had sunk in order to obtain it.
It was all so clear now, so frighteningly, so sadly, so hatefully clear, and the arms holding the opal began to sag. Her elbows bent. She could no longer support the burden of the stone.
Then Zach began the prayer anew, and as he spoke, tears sprang to Liz's eyes. She let her elbows fall to his shoulders, let him brace her with his strength, as the unspeakable sadness of all she perceived took over.
Her first sob came as a hiccup, but another followed, and soon she was wracked with them. Zach took her arms and wrapped them around his neck, cupping her hands so the opal still shone on the dark, red-torn sky.
As he murmured the prayer in her ear, all the pain of her lifetime spilled from her eyes in salty tears. She wept for her grandmother's sorrow, her mother's sorrow, for Maddie. So much sorrow, she couldn't contain it. Finally, almost beyond her understanding, she cried with pity for Ankouer.
The phantom's wails became like cries of an abandoned infant, and as those sobs shook the stormy terrain, Zach held the trembling Liz close to his chest. He felt her sadness, felt the world's sadness.
Inside a single flash of red that tore the inky sky, Maddie and Richard stood before them, faces twisted in rage and terrible curses streaming from their mouths. But Zach felt Richard's anger
not at all. Bathed in his love for Liz, he felt only the man's worry over his own inadequacies, his fear he'd never be as good as Zach, his yearning and his need.
And Liz felt only Maddie's love for her father, her genuine admiration for her mother, and the aching loneliness she'd lived with so long. Her empty womb, her empty bed, her empty, empty life spent in pursuit of a man who belonged to another. She wept for Maddie, feeling no shame over the tears of love and pity streaming down her face.
As Zach saw her tears, his own eyes burned. He blinked, again and again. Then, with a weepy smile, he lowered one hand and softly blotted her beautiful, shining face.
The opal exploded with light. Blue-white streaks rose into the dark panorama and entwined with the red-hot bolts. They licked at one another like dueling rapiers, blue against red, white against black.
Zach held Liz tight, protecting her from the maelstrom. At each clash of light, a head emerged in the sky. Richard, still swearing allegiance to the black lord. Ellie, telling them both that love would prevail. Then the doctor, declaring their doom, and after him, Harris, rejoicing that Izzy had been found. Maddie proclaimed it would all be hers. And finally Jed, reminding Zach again that all events had led to this night.
The battle went on endlessly. And Liz clung to Zach, knowing her only stability amid this chaos was her love for him. So sweet, so pure with no hesitancy or doubt. She may never again have a chance to tell him how deep it ran. So she loosened her terrified hold on his neck and leaned back to capture his lips. "I love you, Zach," she breathed into the kiss. "I love you."
The clashing ceased momentarily, as if eyes were seeking the source of this interruption, then resumed with increased ferocity.
"And I love you, Liz," he murmured, brushing his mouth across hers with gentle urgency that told her he finally believed her.
Instantly, without fanfare, the jagged red bolts vanished. The light waves streaking from the opal transformed to dancing prisms of color. The dark sky lightened. Faces appeared again— Ellie, Harris, and Jed, with the others notably absent.
"'The two join as one, and the soft overpower the strong,'" Zach whispered in awe.
The faces nodded together, and Harris spoke. "Le fantome noir he die now. We be in your debt." Then they were gone.
The gray mist shuddered, faded, reemerged to shudder again, each time tossing Liz and Zach about. With a final and gut-wrenching quake, the mist shattered into millions of gray pieces.
Liz held on to Zach and Zach held on to Liz, each wanting to protect the other from the fall to come. The next thing they knew they were kneeling beside the crystal pool, watching pale fragments of Ankouer drop like rainfall into the water.
"Ankouer is dead!" Zach cried in triumph, hugging Liz fiercely.
"Yes," she said softly, sinking into his embrace. He leaned back and looked at her in question. "Papa?" was her response.
"He's okay. Winded and with a broken arm, but he'll be fine."
"Where is he?"
Surprised, Zach jerked toward the spot where Frank last lay. It was empty, totally empty. Next he scanned the cavern—the narrow ledge, the ascending ramp, the smaller lighted cave beyond. Finally he answered Liz's question.
"He's gone. And so is Maddie's body."
Chapter Twenty-six
Liz climbed to her feet, and checked the cavern herself, but she knew Zach wasn't mistaken. New tears sprang to her eyes and she let them flow. But these weren't healing tears—they were tears born of a rage so intense she couldn't express it any other way.
"It's not fair, Zach. We lost so much. Why my father, too? Why did we lose it all?"
"Maybe he carried Maddie from the cave." She heard no conviction in his voice, but he cupped her chin and lifted her face to meet his. "You're cold, wet, and exhausted. I'm going to take you out, then I'll come back and search for them."
Liz shook her head. "It's no use. Ankouer took them. You know it's true."
"You gotta have faith, cher," he said. "It protected us from le fantome noir."
"Shh." She put her finger over his lips. "Talking about him . . . it scares me. Let's make a pact to never speak his names again." She glanced at the lake. Ankouer's fragments still sank slowly in the water. To dissolve into the void, she wondered, or to someday return to dark form? They followed the path of the pieces for a long moment, then Zach brought Liz around to face him.
"I vow, Liz," he whispered hoarsely, "as long as my love for you endures, I'll never speak his names. Which means forever."
His gaze bathed her in love, and Liz realized they hadn't lost it all, they still had each other. "Mine, too," she answered, then sank into his embrace and let him kiss her tears away.
Moonlight flooded the cavern, but by the time they stepped from each other's arm, the moon had passed and its light grew weak. The only other illumination came from the softly glowing opal. Liz used it to guide her as she searched for her shoes. When she bent to slip them on, she saw a long, red-striped cylinder.
"The flashlight." As she picked it up and turned it on in preparation for the journey through the tunnel, a thought flitted through her mind.
"Where's the lantern?"
"I set it down at the base of the ramp," Zach said, looking over his shoulder. "It's not there."
"Oh, Zach!" Liz said excitedly, shoving her feet into her Sketchers and rushing toward the tunnel. "You were right. He took Maddie out. Papa's alive. He is, I know he is!"
Zach found it hard to believe. Surely, Frank's broken arm couldn't sustain the weight of even Maddie's slight body. But Liz had already ducked into the tunnel, racing along at a breakneck speed Zach found hard to match in such a cramped position. The flashlight bobbed in front of her, weaving over the slick, damp surface, and clearly showing the sudden absence of decomposing carcasses or caches of bones. The air was cleaner, too, easier to breathe. When Liz rounded the curve to leave him momentarily in total darkness, he felt no panic.
"Zach!" she cried as he made it around the curve. "Zach!"
Frank sat in the middle of the tunnel, rocking back and forth with Maddie cradled in his arms. His face was a mask of agony that Zach knew came only partly from his broken limb.
"You done prevailed against Ankouer," he said weakly.
"By the power of the opal," Liz answered.
Zach bent to relieve Frank of his burden. "I'll take her, partner."
"Non, I want to hold her a while longer so her soul can pass to heaven."
Heaven? Liz caught Zach's eye.
"Poor Maddie," Frank continued. "Ankouer lure her with false promises. She weren't evil, just a woman who has her needs too long denied."
"Why did you try to carry her out alone?" Zach asked. "With your arm and that bad ticker, you could've died, too."
Frank swayed back and forth, supporting Maddie's broken neck as if she were a baby. "I could not help you and my Izzy. But if Maddie had been there when he die, Ankouer woulda took her soul into the void." His pained eyes looked up at Liz. "I cheat her . . . and your maman, who it be too late to help. But this I can do for Maddie. Take her broken body home for a proper funeral."
Liz understood, and realized it was a testimony to how much the battle had changed her. No longer did she want to rail against his affair. While his betrayal was wrong, her father's fidelity to those he cherished could not be questioned.
"We have to go, Papa," she said after a time. "Let Zach help you."
And when Zach had lifted her father's burden, Liz helped him up, supporting him as they made the final leg of the journey out of Ankouer's lair.
* * *
"You sure you don't mind?" Liz asked, closing her father's wooden tobacco box on both the opal and her mother's journal.
"It is fine, Izzy. I told you. You won't let me smoke anyhow, so what difference do it make?" He was a bit cranky, and not without reason. Although Zach had fashioned a sling out of dish towels, it wasn't doing much to relieve the pain.
"Are you up to this?"
"Ou
i. It is a right end to this curse."
"Good."
She and Zach helped her father to his feet, supporting him as they made the short walk to the cypress trees that had sheltered them their first night on Quadray Island. How fitting that they'd also spend their last day in front of the spot where they'd shared their love.
Everything else was done. They'd exited the tunnel into the rising sun, and as it traveled up, everyone saw that the perpetual haze on Quadray Island had vanished.
After tending to her father's arm, Liz and Zach let him rest, choosing to forego sleep themselves so they could finish packing the boat. Later, Zach wrapped Maddie in a tarp, and her father said a small prayer in French, then remarked again that at least she'd be interred on consecrated ground.
Zach had dug a hole beneath the cypress trees earlier and Liz now knelt beside it with a small piece of canvas and the tobacco box. She reverently wrapped the box in the canvas, feeling a pang at letting go of items belonging to her mother. But she'd talked it over with Zach and her father, and they all agreed to leave everything connected to Ankouer behind, although they refrained from speaking his name. Zach later told Liz that if not for her father's intense desire to carry back Maddie's body and the laws against it, he would have also suggested burying the woman there.
The air was so fresh and clean now, and a soft breeze kept the naked sun from beating too strongly on their shoulders. Small green shoots that hadn't been there before poked out of the soil. Life appeared to be renewing itself. As Liz leaned forward to place the canvas-wrapped box into the hole, she wept openly. And when she joined her father in another French prayer—with Zach haltingly trying to follow along—she noticed both men's voices were thick. Closure. They would finally have closure, and her last reservations about burying the cherished items disappeared.
Chills & Thrills Paranormal Boxed Set Page 26