Touch of Darkness

by Christina Dodd

  It was weird to view what had been hidden before. The rockfall had been huge; a whole section of wall

  and ceiling had collapsed, demolishing what had been a smooth path through the mountains, damming the stream, and building the lake.

  When she got to the top, she could see back the way she'd come, along the path, and forward where a thin strip of stone path still clung close to the wall,

  A really thin strip of stone. So narrow that if she inched her way around, following the summons of those luminous strangers, there was a pretty good chance she'd slide and fall, and this time she wouldn't live.

  But the people waited for her, and somehow, she knew she had to go to them. Sure—if she didn't, she'd be lost forever. But if she did . . . who were they? Where would they lead her?

  They looked familiar.

  How could they look familiar?

  With her gaze fixed on them, she put her back against the wall and walked sideways along the ledge. She kept her gaze on the strangers, kept her gaze on the strangers, kept her gaze . . . she glanced down.

  And froze.

  Her toes were hanging over the edge—and the cliff dropped straight down into the lake. It was miles down, and the boulders stuck up like teeth. If she fell...

  A thin whisper of sound brought her head around.

  "Come on, sweetheart. Come on."

  That was her mother's voice.

  That was her mother's voice.

  Eyes wide and fixed to the glow, Tasya followed the thin strip of rock around the edge of the lake. It remained sturdy beneath her feet.

  Her mother. Her parents. She'd prayed, and her parents had come to get her. Or to help her escape the caves. She didn't know. She didn't care. For the first time in twenty-five years, she could see her mother's face, the bright blue eyes, so like her own. She could see her father's face, the determined jaw, the same one she saw in the mirror every morning.

  This was the best moment of her life.

  This was the moment she realized how much she'd lost. And how much she had.

  "Mama," she whispered as she inched forward. "I miss you."

  Her mother smiled. I know.

  Tasya couldn't hear her. Not really. The words were like a breath in her mind.

  "Papa . . ."

  I know.

  The ledge widened. She moved with more confidence. "Is he there with you?"

  They didn't answer.

  She moved faster, trying to see them more clearly. "Please. Rurik. I loved him. Can I see him?"

  Her parents moved away as she came closer. The warmth of their love surrounded her, leading her onward. They smiled, rejoicing in her.

  The ledge grew wider, became a path, and Tasya hurried more and more, until she was running after them.

  But they weren't talking.

  "Oh, please. Oh, please—" The glow was growing brighter, stronger. "If I could just see him one more time . . ." She rounded a corner—and the morning sun struck her full in the eyes.

  She flung her hands up over her eyes, and herself backward. "Mama?"

  But they were gone, vanished in the light of day. They had led her ... to freedom. To life.

  Now she was again alone.

  The sense of loss struck her like a blow.

  But she couldn't falter. She couldn't collapse.

  She'd been sent into that cave to learn a lesson, and she had learned. She would go forward and do what had to be done.

  If her parents were so close, then she had faith that she would see Rurik again someday.

  Someday, they'd be together again.

  Chapter 31

  Konstantine pushed the walker, leaning heavily on the bars, as he completed one of three circuits around his home in Washington State. His clothes hung on him, as if he were an old man rather than sixty-six and a Varinski in the prime of his life. He had a stupid tube in his nose, and he was weak. So weak.

  Yet every day he walked a little farther, pushed himself to go a little faster.

  Every day, Zorana fussed and fumed. She walked with him, and dragged his oxygen on wheels and his mobile IV, but she didn't like it and in her own way, she made her opinion quite clear.

  His little wife had barely changed in thirty-five years. She was still tiny, five feet one, with the dark hair and dark eyes that had first fascinated him. Her

  skin was smooth and tanned, with a little sag at the jaw, but what man looked at a woman's jaw?

  Her lips ... ah, her lips were still as intoxicating, the lips that had changed his world.

  He'd seen her glare like this dozens of time when the kids misbehaved. Her jaw was thrust forward, her arms crossed over her chest—she was stalking rather than walking.

  She was not happy with him.

  Usually, he would indulge her.

  But not in this. He would not live out the last of his days as an invalid chained to a wheelchair. He would regain at least a portion of his strength.

  He had to. Whether Zorana liked it or not, the battle would come to him.

  So now he walked and distracted her with his nonsense. "The house—I like it. Not too big, like those Californians who move in and build the huge mansions on the top of the mountain and tell themselves they are kings. Pigs in fine clothing are still pigs. We have three bedrooms—that is enough for us. And two bathrooms." He paused, lifted two fingers, and used the chance to catch his breath. "In the Old Country, two bathrooms is unheard of. Everyone would think we are rich."

  Zorana said nothing.

  "Of course, we could remodel and add a bathroom just for us. It would be a fine thing for when we have grandchildren. The trip to the bathroom is long in the winter, and you are getting older. But you don't want to talk about this bathroom scheme."

  Actually, she'd been nattering about a master bathroom for years. And it was a sign of how furious she was that she managed to remain silent when he acknowledged her wish for the first time.

  He worried about Zorana—his wife had had to be brave every day since Adrik had run away so many years ago. Now Rurik had disappeared. Jasha said Kurik had used his credit card, the one with the fake name, but the last time was many days ago, and their worry, unspoken but oh so real, gnawed at them day and night.

  "It's a good year for the grapes, especially the pinots." The rows of vines, thick with green leaves and ripening grapes, ran through their valley as far as he could see, and they lightened the heaviness of his heart. "If we keep this up, we will kick those Oregon growers' butts."

  Zorana didn't look at him. She didn't answer. But they'd been married for many years. He knew his wife, and this was a battle he would win. "The garden's doing well this year, too, and I don't want you to handle the fruit stand on your own. It is too much work for a woman your age." She huffed. He pretended not to hear. "We will hire one of the kids that works at the Szarvases'. What is that girl's name?" He pretended he couldn't remember. "The one who will do anything for money for paints?"

  "Michele."

  Ha. Zorana had had to say a word. If he kept it up, she'd have to release all that pent-up fury that he knew simmered right below the surface. "That's right. When she works, people would stop to buy."

  Zorana froze in place. "What do you mean by that?"

  He kept walking. "I mean they will stop to look at her pretty face."

  Zorana's frustration and fury boiled over, and she hurried to rejoin him. "Are you making now decisions about the fruit stand? The fruit stand I started without any help from you? The fruit stand you thought was a stupid idea? And you think I'm too old to run it?"

  He let her natter on for a while, enjoying the flush in her cheeks, the cheeks that too often lately had been pale and drawn with worry. When she finally began to run down, he said, "I think you are too beautiful, and I fear some young buck will come by and take you from me."

  She snorted. "We should have your eyes checked next time we go to that Seattle doctor."

  "No need. I saw him watching you. He fancies you himself." Konst
antine lightly struck his chest with his fist. "But I will not allow him to have you. You are mine, forever."

  Her eyes filled with quick tears. She had remembered her own vision, the one that saw him chained in hell for all eternity . . . without her.

  "Forever," he insisted. "Now give me a kiss."

  She kissed him, a kiss full of her love for him and her rebellion against this cruel fate, and he held her with one arm and cursed this disease that wasted his heart and made him unable to comfort her as they both wished.

  Ever mindful of his condition, she released him before either of them was ready, and placed his second hand on the security of his walker.

  "Let us go around the house one more time/' he said. She began to protest, then he lifted his hand, listened intently. "I hear a car coming up the road."

  She didn't question his statement; his wolf hearing had not failed him. "Do you recognize it?" she asked.

  He shook his head, and when he moved as quickly as he could toward the front, she didn't try to slow him.

  They came around the corner as the Camry pulled up in front of the porch. The woman inside sat and stared up at the house, then jumped and stared at them as they moved toward her.

  "It's . . . that girl, the one he was with when he vanished. I recognize her from the television," Zorana whispered. "That's Tasya—with black-and-white hair."

  "So I see." He saw, too, the parade of expressions across Tasya's face: the fiery resolution that had got her here dissolving, becoming tear-filled eyes and a| desperate disinclination to do the duty she'd come to fulfill.

  "Do you suppose he's wounded? Or coming home later?" Zorana's voice was fraught with hope.

  With obvious reluctance, Tasya opened the door and slid out of the car.

  No. Tasya showed in her face and her motions that there was no room for hope.

  His son, the babe he'd rocked, the boy he'd taught to be wary, to hunt, to control his wildness, the man who had grown into a pilot and then an archaeologist . . . was dead.

  The girl walked toward them, trying to smile with a mouth that trembled.

  He stopped, and took Zorana's arm when she would have hurried forward.

  As Tasya dug in her pocket, she stopped in front of them, her large blue eyes pleading for their understanding, for their compassion.

  Right now, he had none for anyone but himself and his wife.

  Tasya pulled out a small square, wrapped in tissue paper, and unwrapped it. She extended it toward them.

  The second icon.

  He wanted to spit on it. The price had been too high.

  Zorana's fingers shook as she took the icon and stared at the face of the Virgin, at the crucified Jesus, at the glitter of gold and the sheen of more than a thousand years. She looked up at Tasya. "Rurik?" she choked.

  Tasya shook her head.

  As if the icon were too heavy, Zorana sank down toward the ground.

  Konstantine reached for her, almost tipped over, barely caught himself.

  Tasya sprang to Zorana's side and wrapped her close.

  And the two women cried on each other's shoulders.

  As he watched them, tears gathered in Konstan-tine's eyes and trickled down his cheeks.

  All right. This Tasya had loved his son. Now she helped his wife.

  So Konstantine would take her into his family, and they would love her.

  ***

  Tasya sat at Rurik's old desk in Rurik's small bedroom in his parents' house.

  She'd downloaded her photographs onto his old computer, and now she examined them one by one, reviewing her record of the site, the excavation, the findings. . . . She wanted so badly to send her pictures to National Antiquities, to her editor at her publishing company, to the newsmagazines who had already moved on to a new story. Revenge on the Varinskis had been her goal for so long, she couldn't quite leave it behind. With the proof she had here, she could deal that family of murderers such a blow they might never recover.

  Yet for all that Rurik's family had changed their name to Wilder, they were Varinskis, and so was he. Konstantine and Zorana could not have been kinder to her, taking her into their home, treating her with the respect due the one who had found the icon— and with the love due to Rurik's woman.

  Rurik's sister, Firebird, had openly grieved for her brother. Then, ever practical, she loaned Tasya clothes from her closet until the Internet order arrived, and as if she was glad of someone close to her age in the house, she talked about her baby.

  The sonogram showed a boy. She hadn't decided on a name. She hoped he wasn't too big; all of her brothers had been over ten pounds.

  Yet Firebird never referred to the father. Whoever he was, he was completely out of the picture. Tasya would have thought he was just a fleeting mistake, but when Firebird didn't realize she was observed, she stared out the window and stroked her belly, and the expression on her face . . . rage, hurt, loneliness . . . yes, for different reasons, Tasya and Firebird had a lot in common.

  So could Tasya publicize the photographs without ruining the chance to break the pact forever? Rurlk had desperately wanted to give his father his chance for redemption. Did Tasya care?

  Before she'd met him, she hadn't cared at all. Then she'd come to this house, and found Konstantine was the one Varinski she watched warily. It didn't matter that he was dreadfully ill, spending most of his time in a wheelchair, breathing with the help of oxygen at night.

  He felt like those other Varinskis, the bastards who had tried so hard to kill Rurik, and finally succeeded. She knew why she shivered when Konstantine was near; he'd murdered, he'd raped, he'd pillaged, and for all that he'd repented, those sins dragged at his soul.

  Zorana's prophecy claimed that unless he and his sons broke the pact with the devil, Konstantine would burn in hell.

  When the Varinskis had killed her parents, Konstantine had been long gone from that family, yet she couldn't forget he'd performed deeds equally horrible.

  Nor could she forget he'd fathered Rurik, and raised him to be a man she admired and loved.

  She didn't know whether to love Konstantine or hate him—or weep for him.

  Reaching out, she ran her finger along the edge of the icon. She'd given the Madonna the place of honor. Every time she looked away from the com-puter monitor, she could see the Virgin's wise, sad eyes and know that in the battle between good and evil, other losses had been suffered, other sacrifices had been made.

  Yet seeing the ghosts of her own parents had shown Tasya a very important fact—their pain no longer existed, but their love for her would never fail. Their tenderness extended past death, and brought them back to save her life.

  Although those assassins, those murderers, those Ukrainian Varinskis, would hate the idea that they'd in any way given comfort to the child who had evaded them, it was an inescapable truth that in forcing her underground, they'd both cured her fear of the dark and given her peace from the anguish that had fired her resolve.

  Now all she had to do was carefully weed through the hundreds of pictures of the Scottish site on the

  Isle of Roi. She needed photographic proof of what she and Rurik found there. She would hold them until the pact had been broken and she could once again return to normal life ... as if life could ever be normal again, without Rurik.

  As she worked, she took notes writing what she recalled about each photo, until she reached the point when she'd handed Ashley her camera so she could labor with Rurik to open the tomb.

  The first picture Ashley had taken showed Tasya mid Rurik from the back, and stiff and reserved, determinedly not touching. For a dozen shots, it was the same—the hole into the tomb got bigger, but Tasya and Rurik concentrated on their tasks.

  Suddenly, the view changed.

  Tasya had her hand over Rurik's, and the two of them were looking at each other. Looking . . . and between them Tasya saw need and outrage, anger and fear, sexual tension so high the photo blurred on the monitor.

  Tasya dashed the t
ears from her eyes.

  The emotions between them sprang forth from the photograph, a record of that moment in time before the booby trap, the treasure chest, the wall carvings, the explosion—and the truth—changed their lives.

  Had they been so obvious? Were their passions there for everyone to see?

  Since that moment in the cave when Tasya realized

  she would die, and perhaps spend an eternity without Rurik, she hadn't cried.

  Crying was not a habit she wished to cultivate.

  Yet again she had to wipe the tears from her eyes, and a single sob escaped her. She covered her mouth, but another followed, and another, and hot, rebellious tears scalded her cheeks.

  How dared he be dead? How dared he? What ruth-lessness made him hand her the icon and force her to bring it here so the pact could be broken . . . and so she could live? Her whole life had been one long stretch of loneliness, and for a brief few days, she had been alive. Not always happy, not always sure, but alive.

  Now more bleak years of loneliness stretched before her until she faded into the night, and at last found her parents, and her love, once more.

  Downstairs, she heard Konstantine roar.

  She gave a laugh, and gave a sob.

  She'd been here ten days, and discovered Konstantine roared more than he talked. It gave her comfort to hear him. He was alive—sick, but still alive. Fighting, and still alive. The old man was an inspiration . .. but then, he still had Zorana.

  The thought brought another burst of tears.

  My God, when had she turned into such a girl?

  Easy answer.

  When she'd fallen in love.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a movement, and in a reflex action she turned, fists up, ready to kill.

  A ghost stood there.

  Rurik, with his jacket flung over his shoulder.

  She stared.

  Had her parents sent him?

  He tossed his jacket on the bed.

  Bewildered, she watched it land.

  It landed with a whoosh. It wrinkled the comforter. It looked real.

  He looked real.

  Standing, she knocked her chair backward. It hit the floor with a smack loud enough to wake her and frighten the ghost.