After that, different legends told different stories. But everyone agreed that Tariq went to Oracle.
“What did Oracle tell him?” Sky asked, slightly interested.
“The answer that got written down is, ‘Find the heart stone, then follow your heart,’” Harli said.
After that, Tariq burned himself nearly to a crisp hunting vampires. He tortured them, staking them in the shade so they would burn inches at a time. When he wasn’t fighting, he was building Anya’s tomb and searching for the stone.
“The Sun World has a place like her tomb,” Harli said, “a hall.”
“Taj Mahal,” Julian said.
Tariq finally found the heart stone in what mortals used to call Sumeria. He brought it back, added it to Anya’s sarcophagus, sealed her in, and laid a red rose on top.
Harli said, “The legends say his last words were, ‘A rose for you, my love.’ Then he pushed at the central column of the tomb. Tons and tons of stone crashed down on him. He died.”
“Romeo and Juliet,” Sky said in her strangely flat voice.
“Who?” Julian asked.
“Love story about two mortals who fell in love a long time ago. He poisoned himself. She stabbed herself with his dagger in her tomb so she could die with him.”
“That’s a love story?”
“Tragedy,” Sky said and sank into silence again.
“Some people say if you visit the tomb, you can hear Tariq and Anya laughing and talking, and everything smells like roses.” Harli looked at Sky’s hanging head and asked, “Did I make you sad?”
A faint smile came and went on Sky’s face. “No,” she said. “It’s a good story. Sometimes we have to be careful what we wish for.”
They were at Viper’s door. He let them in. Harli and Viper let Julian fly up with Sky first. She settled on the long couch, hands between her legs, fingers laced together, shoulders hunched. She could have been the captain on the Titanic—sinking fast.
In the uncertain candlelight of Viper’s place, Julian sat beside Sky. She slid one hand into his. It was cold, trembling.
“I never heard of a bridge called Forever,” Viper said to Julian. “You?”
A burst of adrenaline scent came from Sky. It was so strong it nearly stung Julian’s eyes.
“What is it?” he whispered.
“Later.” Sky’s heart kicked up to double time. She swallowed. “I’ll tell you later.”
“No,” Julian said to Viper. “I don’t think it’s in New York.”
“What about the heart stone?” Viper said. “Does it exist except for that story?”
“No one ever heard of it after Tariq and Anya,” Julian said.
“Or maybe no one needed it,” Harli said softly.
“Do we even know what it looks like?” Viper asked.
“It’s black, like jet,” Sky said.
They all turned to her.
“Red veins run through it,” she went on. “It’s small enough to fit in the palm of your hand.”
This wasn’t the time to ask how Sky knew that. “Where is it?” Julian asked.
“You better just take me to Vandar,” Sky said. “Get it over with.”
Julian’s beast snarled. It twisted in his gut, struggling for a way to get at Vandar.
Viper slid off his stool and motioned to Harli. “Let’s you and me take a walk,” he said. The sound of them landing below was faint to Julian. He barely heard the door lock.
“Talk to me, Sky.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The hunger was more urgent than Vandar had ever felt it. Agony pierced him unceasingly, stalking his reason, making his beast rage. Thirst pounded through him. He didn’t want merely to feed. He wanted to drain, to feel a mortal’s heart stop as their life’s blood rushed across his lips.
He was strolling the narrow ways of Light Town with Maggie, who walked in silence, her hand in his. With each step, it was an effort to restrain himself from barging into Night Crypt and demanding custody of the mortal female. After all, what could be done to alter the terms of the contract between now and the noon hour?
Sometime near the end of the sandbox fight mortals called World War II, the most daring of Vandar’s new vampires had begun Light Town with strings of colored bulbs hung on the unrelieved black stone walls of the tunnels underneath his brownstone. They spread year to year, like creeping vines.
After the lights came shops built into niches in the stone. They sold books, music, things to play music on, coffee. The buying and selling was done on a complex bartering system Vandar had never bothered to learn.
Now, many decades later, Light Town was a meeting place for younglings where they gathered in their favorite shops. Vandar ruthlessly enforced his one-hour-before-dawn curfew. This morning, with sunrise just hours away, the young were returning from the hunt. Light Town was coming to life.
He thought back on the long hours he’d spent with Maggie, having her. He was an inconsiderate lover at the best of times, but the urge to drain made him brutal. He wasn’t used to a bedmate exploding in orgasm the way Maggie had, desperate, panting, almost begging him not to stop. She’d more than let Vandar have his way. She’d surrendered to him, holding back nothing, not even when he’d brought her within a few breaths of screaming. That intoxicated him, tempted him to repeat past sins Maggie was far too young and too innocent to imagine.
When he’d finished with her, she asked for paper and a pencil. After he gave it to her, Vandar sat enthralled, watching Maggie draw naked by candlelight.
Her cheeks still glowed warm with sated desire as she sketched their naked bodies tangled amid a ground of flowers, his muscled form on top of her, she on her knees, her face in the blossoms, a full moon shining down on them. He’d seen his own face through her eyes and saw not the monster that looked back from the eyes of others, but a man who held his lover with tender hands while driving her to ecstasy. The sketch seemed to come straight from her heart, as though her fingers were directed by some brilliant inner light pouring itself forth onto the cheap writing paper through a common lead pencil. He would have to get her art supplies. Perhaps he would take her to shop for them himself.
He let his gaze drift over Maggie’s purple half T-shirt, down her smooth belly, to her low-riding jeans. They molded to her body, sensually outlining the cleft between her legs. The emerald in her navel had scratched his belly when she was naked and bucking under him. He reached out and touched it. She shivered and smiled up at him. There was no scent of fear.
“Did you enjoy our time together?” Vandar asked, mildly astonished to find himself so curious.
“You make love like a beast,” Maggie said. “But it’s nothing like they say about you.”
Vandar was surprised at what Maggie said, but surprised still more that she had said it.
She eyed him carefully. “Did I offend you, sir?”
They were passing through a part of Light Town hung with curtains of tiny bulbs in greens and blues. Their soft glow gave the narrow winding passage the feel of being underwater. From somewhere came the recorded sound of ocean waves. There were no shops. He knew from the scents this was a popular place for the young to satisfy their heightened sexual desires with one another. But with his presence, the way was empty.
Vandar stopped and pressed Maggie against a wall, being gentle, as he should have been earlier. “You have done nothing to offend me.” He ran his fingers over her naked belly to the emerald in her navel, then up over her breasts, feeling her nipples rise to his touch.
“It’s said you only have a woman in your bed for as long as she pleases you.” Maggie slipped her slender arms around Vandar’s thick neck. “I hope I can make that a long time.”
He’d sent many from his bed, most of them in tears, with barely a thought. But something was different about Maggie. He didn’t want to hear her say that. He wanted her to…what? Be there at the end of the night when the sun came up?
“Just around the bend,” Maggie said,
hesitantly intruding into his thoughts, “there’s a new coffee place you might like.”
It was well known Vandar enjoyed freshly brewed coffee from far-off places. He looked down at her and marveled that after all he’d done to Maggie in the past few hours, she was still shy with him. He found this puzzling but charming.
“You will have to do the bartering,” he said, knowing that with a word, younglings would rush to serve him. “I have little that would interest the young.”
“You have a lot that interests the young.” Maggie rubbed herself against him, writhing with the muscled ease of a wild creature. “If they’re okay with a man making them so hot they can’t hardly stand it.”
Vandar, Lord of the Dominion, had never been seduced. He allowed himself to see in Maggie’s eyes all that she promised, and it was everything. He kissed her and let his hands freely wander her body. She moved against him with a slow urgency that made him hard for her. He enjoyed knowing she would give herself to him again and again, and for a time he knew peace from the agony inside him.
He should have known better than to think it would last. He felt Kraeyl before his counselor spoke. Pulling away from Maggie, Vandar turned to him and said, “What is it?”
Kraeyl, long since grown used to Vandar’s abrupt ways, bowed and said, “Could we speak, my lord?”
Whatever it was clearly wasn’t for Maggie’s ears. She sensed this and said, “I’ll go to the coffee shop.”
Vandar ran his fangs along Maggie’s neck and whispered, “No. Wait in my room.”
Maggie was still young enough to blush. Her cheeks colored under the blue-green light, and she turned to go, moving past Kraeyl.
“You did well in bringing her to me,” Vandar said, watching her go. “But you didn’t trail after me to be congratulated.”
Kraeyl looked up. The alley was a tall narrow crevice in the tunnels. “Ascend with me, my lord. This is private.”
Without waiting, Kraeyl rose straight up. Reluctantly, Vandar followed.
They stood beside each other on a narrow ledge so high up, and so far from torches, even they struggled to see.
“Tell me your hopeful news, counselor.” Vandar’s voice was a parody of good humor. “I’m sure the reason we’re up here is because you bring me news so good, it could not wait.”
Without preamble, Kraeyl said, “Oracle is here. He wants to see you.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“You ever have something happen, and it’s so bad, you forget about it most of the time?” Sky asked him. “Then something reminds you, and you think you can’t stand remembering. But then you forget all over again. Did that ever happen to you?”
Julian realized he’d seen this before. He’d seen Sky scared like this, but when? That first night in the diner? No. Not like this. Then he remembered. In the gardens, on the ledge, just before she let herself fall. He’d thought it was fear of falling off a ledge that high. Now he saw it had been something else. She’d been desperately trying to get rid of a memory, something that haunted her. What had she said before she jumped? “I’m not a coward.” Then after he caught her, she’d told him, “You just banished the ghost of a hit man.”
While he’d been thinking, Sky had gone on talking. Julian wasn’t sure he’d heard right. “What? You did a story on a hit man? I don’t remember seeing it in your clippings.”
“I didn’t file it.”
“Why not?”
Instead of answering she said, “He agreed to meet me on the roof of a burned-out building in Harlem. Hardly any light, I told him. I’d never have to see his face. All I wanted was to talk.”
What else would he do but agree? Once she’d tracked down the hit man, it would have been hard work for him to get Sky off his trail. Unless she fell off a roof in the middle of the night.
“I got there first,” Sky said.
No, you didn’t. A hunter would never let the prey enter the killing ground first.
“I’d picked a building that had only one way up to the roof. After I found a good place to watch the door, I settled down and waited.”
“He was already there,” Julian said, a statement, not a question. “What happened?”
At first Sky gave him a questioning look. Then she asked, “Would you have done it like that? Waited for me?”
“He didn’t know what he was walking into.” Julian thought about it. “He trusts you, or maybe his gut told him you were too smart to write the story. It’s the only reason you’re still alive.”
Sky said, “He came up behind me, touched my shoulder, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.”
The story came in fits and starts, as if Sky could barely stand to think about that night. The hit man’s name was Greg, or that was what he told Sky. He said he’d come to talk, like Sky wanted.
“And he had the heart stone?” Julian asked.
Sky was on her feet, pacing. She shook her head. “No. Everything was going good. We were walking, staying in the dark. He was answering a question about his first kill. Then suddenly it all went wrong.”
Watching Sky hug herself as if she couldn’t stand the fear running through her was more than Julian could take. He got up and brought her to the couch. He leaned back, one arm behind her, the other around her. She rested her head against his shoulder.
“It was a full moon. He stood right in a shaft of moonlight and grabbed my arm,” she said. “I stumbled into him, looked up at his face, and I thought I was dead.”
Greg told Sky that what she really wanted to know was how men like him survived, and now that Sky had seen his face, it was a good time to show her.
“He dragged me over to the edge.” Sky looked up at Julian. “It was a twelve-story building.”
“What did he do?” Julian said, suddenly knowing why Sky had been scared of heights.
“He pushed me,” Sky whispered. She grabbed Julian’s shirt in a trembling fist. “I was falling, Julian. The ground was spinning, and I was heading right for it. I grabbed at him. I missed. I knew I was going to die. I tasted it.”
She was breathing hard. Cold sweat popped out on her forehead. She reeked of fear and adrenaline. Julian held her closer. “But you didn’t,” he said, caressing her fist until her fingers relaxed.
“He caught me,” Sky said. “By my ankle.”
Julian waited for Sky’s horror to fade enough for her to go on. During the long pause that came, thoughts of finding the assassin and showing him a thousand ways of ancient death did a slow march through Julian’s mind.
Sky said, “I was just hanging there, arms over my head, my ankle hurting from where his fist was clamped around it. He looked right into my upside-down face and told me his address, his phone number, even his social security number.”
It was all Julian could do not to demand Sky tell him where Greg lived.
“Then he hauled me up,” Sky said.
At first, Sky told Julian, all she could do was lie on the roof, panting, looking up at the stars, not really believing she was still alive.
“He crouched over me and said, ‘Now you’re too scared to write about me. Now you know how I survive. I ever read about tonight in any paper where you work, I’ll have to kill you. Don’t make me do that. You have guts. You write good. You shouldn’t die young.’”
Julian ran his fingers through Sky’s hair, letting her take her time.
“Then he was gone,” Sky said.
He let a few moments go by before he said, “But that’s not all of it.”
“No.”
Sky couldn’t stop thinking about it. “I wrote the story. I nearly filed it. I opened about a million e-mails to my editor. But I couldn’t hit Send. I started hanging out at bars when I should have been working stories. A month went by, and I realized rent was due, I hadn’t written one story, and I was running out of money.”
“What did your brother do?” Julian asked.
“I didn’t tell CJ. I knew he’d find a way to push Greg in front of a train or knock him
off a rooftop. I couldn’t let that happen. Not because of me.”
The hardest part was coming, Julian knew. Sky’s heart was thudding, beating against her ribs so hard a mortal would have felt it.
“I felt like a coward for not filing that story. I went down to Pier 16 around one in the morning. Just going there that late was a way to kill myself. I didn’t need the East River.”
“I’m not a coward.”
But Sky still thought she was. Julian heard the cold, sharp self-accusation in her voice. “What you lived with would have worn anyone down,” he said. “And you couldn’t talk about it. It was eating you up.”
“I went right out to the edge of the pier, and I just stood there,” Sky said, as if she hadn’t heard him. “The moon was full. You know how it makes a streak on water?” She didn’t wait for Julian to answer. “I thought it was a bridge—the Forever Bridge—and if I jumped in, I’d find whatever I thought Greg had taken away on the other side.”
Pushed before a train? Knocked from a rooftop? No. Too quick.
“He came out of nowhere,” Sky said. Greg had been watching her. He’d seen the drinking.
“He told me I kept thinking he’d show up. And in a funny way, I realized he was right. I’d been waiting to die. I’d already checked out of my life.” She took a quivering breath and added, “Like a coward.”
“Fear wears anyone down.” Julian kissed Sky’s temple, felt her shaking against him.
The late-night sounds of the city—distant cars, trains underground, mortals walking lonely streets—filled the silence between them until Sky spoke again. “‘People think a hit man doesn’t have a conscience,’ he told me. ‘I think they’re right. But sometimes we try to make up for what we do. Letting you walk away like I did, that was me making up for some badass shit. Don’t kill yourself and ruin it for me, okay?’ That’s when he gave me the stone. ‘My grandmother gave me this. She said as long as I had it with me, I had her heart with me. I’m giving it to you because I want your heart to go on beating.’ He just stood there, with his hand out, the stone on it, waiting for me to take it. When I did he said, ‘If you really feel like you have to do this, don’t try the pier. I’ll take care of it. Drowning’s a hard-core way to die.’”
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