As for his father, he would lie to Duncan without batting an eye. Duncan sighed. He’d give the old man some time, let him rest or get his story straight or whatever he was doing up there. And then he would get the answers he needed. He’d insist on that. An hour. Two at the most, and then he’d make Nathanial tell the truth, for the first time.
* * *
I picked up the phone when it jangled.
Nathanial Dearborne’s voice rasped at me. “I need a heart. I wanted yours, but I’m out of time, Raven. Duncan’s will have to do.”
My throat went dry. I swallowed, tried to speak. ‘‘No,” was all I managed.
“You or him, darling. You or him. I won’t wait long.”
Lowering my eyes to shield them from Arianna’s probing ones, I said, “Where are you?”
I tried to keep my face expressionless as the man who’d been hunting me for most of my life told me where to meet him.
Slowly I replaced the receiver, keeping my eyes carefully turned away from Arianna’s curious, probing brown ones.
“Who was that?” she asked.
The lie stuck in my throat. I loved her. Lying to her made me physically ill. But I forced the words anyway. “Duncan. He wants to see me. To...talk.”
“Does he?”
“Yes. I, um, said I’d meet him.”
“Where?”
I looked up quickly, knowing I’d stumbled, and forced a smile that felt as weak as it probably looked. “Someplace private. Perhaps he’s beginning to remember after all.”
“Why are you lying to me, Raven?”
I looked away fast. “I’m not. Is it so hard to believe he might want some time alone with me?”
“It is when I combine it with the look on your face. You look shaken.” She gripped my chin, tilted my head to the side and stared down at me as if she were a sergeant inspecting some soldier’s rifle. “No, Raven, this isn’t the face of a girl rushing off to meet her lover.”
“I’m no girl.” I pulled myself free of her grasp, tried to act huffy when all I felt was guilt for lying to the best friend I’d ever known. My sister. “I’m over three hundred, for heaven’s sake. And you know how important this is to me. Can you blame me for being nervous?”
She only kept looking at me.
“I'd better get ready.”
“Yes. Don’t keep him waiting.”
I swallowed hard and headed from the room into one of our countless corridors and up one of the many sets of stairs. Arianna didn’t follow. My room was my refuge, and I needed it right now. I think she sensed that.
The small, oval portrait I’d labored over for months stood on the night table beside my bed, bearing little physical resemblance to Duncan, but holding his essence all the same. The face I’d blurred, but his dark gleaming eyes shone from their deep wells, and his tumbling satin hair tempted my fingers just as it always had. His shadowed jawline spoke of feelings, immense feelings, all bubbling inside him in search of escape. It captured him, my experiment in painting.
I paused a moment, to run my fingertip over the image of Duncan’s face. “For you,” I whispered. “I do this for you.”
A tear burned at the back of my eye. Sadness welling up, not because I might be about to die, or worse. I hated to think of what that sort of death was truly like. For it wasn’t death, really, but a kind of limbo. The body alive, but inanimate. The heart beating, but captive, providing life force to a foreign body. And yet that wasn’t why I cried.
I cried for the love Duncan and I had once shared. The love I’d spent so many lifetimes searching for, only to realize, at long last, that it wasn’t coming back to me. A once-in-a-lifetime kind of love like ours had been was just that. Once in a lifetime. I’d never find it again. All these years I’d naively believed that Duncan would feel just the way he had before when I finally found him again. But he didn’t. Perhaps he couldn’t. Oh, he was attracted to me, drawn to me, even claimed to love me. But it was only a faint echo of what we’d had before. And that was all it would ever be. I supposed it was time I accept that.
Yes. Difficult though it was, it was time.
And this was not the moment to let the knowledge weaken me. I needed to acknowledge, accept, and move beyond it. Tonight I would fight for my life, as I’d done so many times before. My opponent was the most powerful foe I’d ever be likely to face. He could kill me very easily. I would need to be sharp, to be quick. I’d need to be smart and I’d need to be ruthless.
Or I would die.
Sniffling, I drew my hands away from the portrait on the stand and opened the table’s drawer. From inside I took a velvet pouch and, pulling it open, removed the agate pendant. No stone was more protective than agate, and this one had been charged with a spell to make it even more so. I fastened the chain around my neck, then turned to the door.
Nathanial had given me thirty minutes. No more time for dawdling. I left my haven, my bedroom, grabbing a cloak on the way. The dark blue velvet one that hung by the door, because it reminded me of that one I’d worn long ago. The one left to me by my mother. I pulled it snug around me as I tapped down the stairs. Swathed in those soft, warm folds, I felt protected. Safe.
But I wasn’t. I was far from safe. And there wasn’t much I could do about it.
I left on foot, by the Coast Road, and I knew Arianna must be watching me. She knew me too well to have believed my lie. But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she not follow me. Or that I lose her if she did. I wouldn’t have her jumping between Nathanial’s blade and mine, and dying in my place.
I walked quickly and with purpose, but not so quickly that I didn’t take time to feel. The sea wind in my face, tugging at my hair. The tiring sun, already relaxing on the western horizon, warm on my skin, bright in my eyes.
When I’d gone around a bend in the road, I turned sharply left, cutting down the steep cliff face. There was one instant when Arianna could have seen me change direction, but only an instant. And I hoped the road’s curve hid me from her sharp eyes for long enough.
Pebbles clattered away beneath my feet, and I slipped, gripped a sharp rock, scraped the skin of my palm, but held on. Digging in with fingers and the toes of my shoes, I managed to keep from falling, and slowly inched my way to where this steep face melded with the path I’d taken so many times. Here, the going eased. When I reached my boat, I took it, hoping Arianna would never think to check. And then, keeping close to shore, I paddled back the way I’d come. Avoiding rocks, bounding on waves as they tumbled toward shore, but unable to go out further, for fear Arianna would spot me from above. I moved past the point where our house stood high above, and in the other direction, until the cliff's sheer face eased again, shallowed, melted. There I rowed toward shore.
My feet got wet when I stepped out, and a wave rolled in at the same time, but I barely noticed. Too busy looking for a place to hide my craft. I dragged it into some brush, laid some loose branches and weeds over it, and brushed off my hands, satisfied that at least it didn’t leap out and shout my presence to anyone who happened to pass this way. A trained eye would still spot it, but not unless they happened to be looking. And if I’d done everything right, Arianna would have no reason to be looking for me here.
That done, I stood still, ocean at my right, and the woods to my left. The woods where I would meet Nathanial. My hand touched the hilt of my blade, closed around it, and remained there. I glanced out at the whispering trees. They glowed with soft green-yellow auras as the sun sank behind them. Like magic, a brief, luminous magic, that faded away, and the light with it.
And I felt its loss. No light now. Nothing. Just me, and the woods, and the darkness, and out there somewhere, Nathanial Dearborne, and his bloodstained blade.
* * *
Duncan didn’t intend to fell asleep. And when he woke, head thick and eyes foggy, he had the oddest sensation that it hadn’t been sleep. Not really. It had been something else. Something foreign, and malignant. Its remnants made him shudder as if something slim
y had slipped over his spine. He felt soiled.
He got up, didn’t even remember sitting down, but he apparently had. And then he remembered his conversation with his father, and the reason he hadn’t left when Nathanial had gone upstairs to nap.
He didn’t trust him.
But now, there was more.
There was an old man on a gallows, the rising sun painting his bony face, a light of malicious glee in his pale eyes as his hand caressed the lever. There was a girl more afraid than any he’d ever seen before, and yet so brave she shamed everyone else there. There was a warmth, an intense, magnetic warmth that seemed to melt from her eyes into his when she looked up at him.
“Believe me, mistress, I'd help you if I could."
“They’d only kill you as well, did you try.”
He felt it. Felt her. All of her. Her innocence, her power, her allure. Her beauty, not just the way she looked but the beauty inside her. He felt it flowing through him like warm honey, cleansing everything ugly from his soul. Filling every empty spot there was in him.
“I willna forget you.”
“If there is memory in death, Duncan, I shall remember you always.”
He remembered that moment. He’d been wearing loose black robes, and Nathanial had, too. He’d fallen in love with her, with Raven, right then. With that look, that intense moment of feeling, all of it magnified a thousand times by the imminent presence of the Reaper.
And then he heard it again. That sound. The creaking, the slam, the horrible snap of a slender neck when it reached the end of a rope. It sickened Duncan, and his face contorted in remembered anguish as the memory played out in his mind. And then he was there, beneath the gallows. Holding her, his tears wetting her hair. Her body so soft, so small in his arms. Innocence. Utter innocence snuffed out without a thought. And Nathanial....
In his mind he looked up at the man. Nathanial looked back. Smiling.
“God, no....” The words were a rasp, a whisper, as Duncan shook the memories away, blinked the past from his eyes and turned to face the stairs the way Raven had faced those of the gallows. Fists clenched at his sides, he strode up them.
“It’s time, Nathanial,” he muttered as he moved upward. Somehow he couldn’t bring himself to call the man “Father.” Not now. “And you’ll tell me the truth. For once in your life, you’ll tell me the truth.”
At the top he turned toward Nathanial’s room, stepped up to its closed door, and gripped the knob, not bothering to knock.
But when he twisted, he felt resistance. “Unlock this door and let me in. We need to talk. Now.”
There was not so much as a breath in answer. Duncan’s stomach clenched. “Nathanial?”
Nothing.
His heart tripped, and he thought of Raven, and for once, he wasn’t worrying about her hurting his black-hearted father. He was worried about Nathanial hurting her. Stepping backward, he slammed his shoulder into the door, then stumbled through when it cracked and burst open beneath the force of the blow.
“You’ll grow stronger than you were before.” Raven’s voice whispered through his mind. He managed to keep his footing, barely, but the splintered wood on the floor shocked him. He was stronger.
He turned, then, toward the bed. It was perfectly made, not a rumple, not a wrinkle. Beyond it the window stood open, its curtains billowing inward like ghosts.
“My God, he’s gone after Raven.”
Duncan raced to the window. Hands braced on its sill, he looked out, but his father was nowhere in sight. Not only that, but the sheer drop, and the distance to the ground loomed huge. No way out but to jump. “Quite a feat for a weak, dying old man, isn’t it?” he asked himself, and then his shoulders sagged. He’d done it, hadn’t he? Given Nathanial the benefit of the doubt in spite of what Raven had said. And now Arianna’s warning rang over and over again in his mind. It could cost Raven her life.
God, he’d been a fool.
He remembered the gallows. Then the cliffs. He couldn’t lose her again. He wouldn’t.
“Duncan! Duncan, are you here?”
He spun around at the sound of Arianna’s voice and called back to her. “Here I’m coming.” Then he ran down the stairs to greet her.
“Where is he?” She didn’t bother with preamble, and he could see she was breathless, wide-eyed, pale with worry.
“I don’t know. He did something to me, made me sleep, and slipped away. I’m afraid he’s gone after Raven.”
“She had a call a half hour ago,” Arianna said, turning in a slow circle, pushing one hand through her blond locks. “She told me it was you, that you wanted her to meet you somewhere.”
He shook his head. “I didna call her.”
She glanced at him sharply, even as he bit his tongue, but didn’t remark on his speech.
“Nathanial, then,” Arianna said after a moment. “I thought as much. She’s gone to meet him.” Closing her eyes, she tipped her head back. “But I don’t know where. I tried to follow, but she gave me the slip. Damn her for being so protective of those she loves.”
“Why would she go to fight him?” Duncan asked desperately. “I believed her, not him. And she promised she wouldn’t.”
“Oh, don’t kid yourself, Duncan. Nathanial knows exactly how to get Raven to dance to whatever tune he plays. All he had to do was threaten one of us.” She tilted her head. “Probably you, since I was safe at her side when the bastard called.”
Duncan felt a crushing sensation in his chest. “She’d face him down to protect me?”
“She’d die for you, Duncan. Just as you would have for her–did for her, once.”
He brushed past her, yanked the door wide. “We have to find her.”
Her hand on his shoulder brought him up short, but he didn’t turn. She spoke to his back. “I don’t think she can beat him. Prepare yourself, Duncan. By the time we get to her, it might be too—”
“Dinna even think it.”
Chapter 21
I waited, paced, and grew restless. When the sun had descended fully beyond the western horizon to sleep in some distant place far beyond the trees, I shivered. The air cooled all at once, and gooseflesh rose on my arms and the back of my neck.
An owl hooted three times, and I turned my head quickly toward the sound. The people of Old Sanctuary would have said it was an omen, a warning of death. Accurate. There would be a death tonight. The only question was, would it be mine? Or Nathanial’s?
A chill worked up my spine, settling right between my shoulder blades, as if someone’s eyes were on me. I looked behind me, but there was only the sea. Waves rolling gently over the stony beach, pausing there like a breath held in anticipation, and then receding in a slow-motion sigh.
Swallowing my fear, I turned to face the forest again. I stiffened my resolve, drew my blade, and walked forward. One step, then another, and another. I reached the edge of the woods and paused there, sensing the presence of my enemy. I couldn’t see him, but I knew he was near, and likely had been ever since I’d arrived.
My fingers tightened on the hilt of my blade, and I stepped through the first line of trees and into the darker area beyond. “Where are you?” I called out.
“Waiting,” he answered, and his hoarse voice had little substance. Like the voice of a ghost. He must be weakening. No, it wouldn’t do to underestimate him. Perhaps that was only what he wanted me to think.
I moved forward a few more steps, which took me beyond the clusters of trees on this side and into a small clearing. Pines towered all around me, a circle made by nature. Standing in a half crouch on a carpet of grass, I moved my fingers on the hilt and scanned the shadows that loomed amid the trees.
I didn’t see him. Didn’t hear him. Instead, I felt him; the crushing impact of his aged body when he hurled himself at me from behind. The red-hot trail his blade left as it arched across my back.
I hit the ground hard, face first, but rolled fast and sprang to my feet again. He’d knocked the wind out of me, t
aken me by surprise, and sliced my flesh. I pulsed with pain, felt the blood dampening my blouse, soaking through it, to stain the cloak.
Facing him, I reached to the ties at my neck and pulled, then tossed the cloak aside. “You had the advantage, Nathanial,” I told him, careful to keep the pain from my voice. “And wasted it.”
“Too eager to see my enemy bleed, I suppose.”
“No more than I am.” I lunged and swept my dagger’s tip across his soft belly, drawing away just as quickly and avoiding his return thrust. We battled, fought, nicked and cut each other, but neither scored a killing blow.
We circled each other, both of us breathless, then lunged again, slashing and stabbing in a tangle of blades and limbs and then drawing back again.
I was tiring, panting.
He danced forward, I danced back, into the thickest cluster of trees. Then I focused on the pines. Their scent, the stringy, sticky bark, the needles that whispered their secrets all around me with every breath of a breeze that passed through them. In effect, I vanished. Melded with the pine trees and, in silence, thought of Trees Speaking and all he’d taught me.
When Nathanial pursued me, he slowed, stilled. His eyes darting this way and that as he searched for me. Then narrowing as he understood.
“You’re very good,” he whispered. Then thrust his dagger into the trunk of the tree nearest him. “Very good. But you can’t keep your focus long. I’ll find you, Raven.”
Not long, he was right. But long enough.
My feet are roots, sinking deep into the rich, black earth.
I curled my toes. I wouldn’t move. Not yet. To move would break the enchantment. I’d wait until he turned his back to me. It would give me the advantage I needed if I hoped to survive.
My body is still and strong, and my skin is like bark. The blood in my veins is pine sap, sticky and smelling of the very spirit of Earth herself.
Nathanial came closer, jabbed another tree.
My arms are limbs. Each nerve ending a fine needle, quivering, sighing on the breeze.
I could feel my heart pounding, hear it in my ears as Nathanial came still nearer, stabbing his blade into first one trunk and then another, until he reached the one right beside me. So loud, that beat in my chest. So strong with fear as I stood motionless, praying he wouldn’t hear it. It’s the pulse of life through my trunk. It’s the thrum of the spirit in me. I told myself anything to keep the image alive, the image I projected, the only thing between Nathanial’s blade and my heart right now.
Eternity: Immortal Witches Book 1 (The Immortal Witches) Page 30