Then he grabbed the edge of the serpent tattoo and ripped it from his chest. The pain tore at his very soul, and he couldn’t suppress crying out. Almost immediately he felt himself slipping away. Quickly he slapped the tattoo over Lexi’s wound. Maybe his immortal life force would be enough to save her.
He watched in amazement as the bleeding stopped and the wound started to close. Lexi’s breathing started coming easier and color seeped back into her complexion. She seemed to be getting stronger.
Darius, on the other hand, wasn’t doing so well. The ringing in his head was getting louder by the second. He felt himself being pulled by unknown forces, but he fought to resist them. He wanted to stay with Lexi for as long as he could.
When her eyelids fluttered open, he smiled down at her.
“Darius?” Her voice was little more than a croak. “What happened?”
“Tain shot you, but you’re going to be all right.”
“I thought you were dead.” Her voice cracked with emotion.
He wanted to tell her he was fine, but he wouldn’t lie. Instead, he smiled down at her, willing her to see the love he felt because talking was becoming too difficult.
The pull on him increased, and he shook from the effort of resisting. Afraid she would feel it, he laid her down on the floor, though she whimpered in protest. “Don’t leave me,” she pleaded. “Please don’t leave me.”
He knew it was a promise he couldn’t keep. He bent and pressed a final kiss to her lips. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Then suddenly he was torn from Earth’s dimension, hurtling through space and time. Lights streaked past him, blinding him. He closed his eyes, praying that death would come quickly.
Suddenly he was no longer moving, but lying on something cold and hard. Maybe he was still in the chamber, on the floor next to Lexi? His heart leapt at the possibility, and he opened his eyes.
Quickly he closed them again, to block out the blinding light. It was harder to block out his disappointment.
After several long seconds, he sat up, and this time shielded his eyes before opening them. He found himself on the balcony of his home, surrounded by a familiar clear blue sky and the lush green woods on each side of the sapphire-blue water of Lake Pax. The sense of déjà vu was so strong that at first he doubted whether he’d ever left Ravenscroft.
The memory of Lexi’s light gray eyes when she looked up at him—of her lush, firm body pressed against his was too real to have been imagined.
“Darius!” Sekhmet cried as she and Whitley rushed out to him. “Are you all right?”
Whitley helped him to his feet, and his mother pulled him into a fierce embrace. He fought to be free. “Send me back,” he demanded. He grabbed his mother by the arms and shook her. “Please, Mother,” he cried. “I beg you. Send me back. Now.”
“I can’t,” she told him, tears springing to her eyes. “It was everything I could do to bring you back.”
“Come inside,” Whitley suggested. “Everything will be better in time.”
An icy cold enveloped Darius, and he dropped his hands to his sides, stepping away from Sekhmet and Whitley. He left them staring after him and walked through the mansion until he found his room. It was as stark and bare of emotion as he now felt. At some point, the numbness would wear off and he’d be left with nothing but pain. So for now, he welcomed the numbness.
Darius had no idea how long he slept. For all he knew, it could have been months. He had no interest in living, so there was no point in getting out of bed.
When he finally did venture forth from his room, Whitley and his mother were waiting for him in the family room. She was sitting in her favorite chair, doing something with two metal sticks and a roll of yarn. It was so unexpected to see her doing something as mundane as knitting that for a moment he actually felt a spark of curiosity. It quickly passed.
“How are you?” she asked, her concern obvious by the tone of her voice and the look on her face.
“Hello, Mother.” He walked over to her and placed a kiss on her head. “I’m…” Miserable. “Fine.”
She cupped his face with her hand and kissed his cheek. “We were worried about you.”
He walked over to sit in a chair beside Whitley and waited for the barrage of questions. He didn’t wait long.
“Tell us everything,” Sekhmet said. “Were you able to stop Amadja? What about Tain? Did you see him? Is he all right?”
“Whoa. You’re overwhelming the boy,” Whitley said. “Darius, just tell us what happened. We were worried about you.”
Darius tried to consider how they felt. How he would have felt if he and Lexi had had a son.
A fresh new pain shot through him, but with it a small hope. Taking a deep breath, he swallowed hard. Then, slowly, he told them everything.
Lexi felt the tendrils of dawn urging her to wake up. She wasn’t ready to face the day just yet, so she rolled over and willed herself back to sleep.
She woke hours later to the sound of Mai walking through her apartment, but kept her eyes closed, hoping Mai would take the hint and go away.
“You can’t sleep your life away,” Mai told her, not unsympathetically. “Eventually, you’ll have to get out of bed and start living again.”
Lexi knew she was right. “I don’t think I can,” she said, no longer pretending to sleep. “I hurt so bad.”
Mai came over and sat down on the edge of the bed. “I thought the wound had completely healed. Maybe I’d better check it.”
Lexi sighed. “The wound healed. The heart didn’t.”
She felt the cool touch of Mai’s hand on her head. “I know, honey. It’s not easy. I was talking to Ricco and he was saying…well, he was wondering, you know…maybe Darius will come back?”
Lexi had thought so too. Each day for the first two weeks after he disappeared, she’d thought he would come back for her. Each day that he didn’t return, though, was further proof that her worst fear had been realized. He really had forgotten her. For him, there was nothing to return for.
She still saw him, though. Every time she closed her eyes, he was there beside her, telling her that he loved her, that he’d never forget her. Her heart ached so badly for him that she’d taken to sleeping later and later, just so she could spend more time with him.
It was pathetic, she knew. But it was all she had.
“Lexi,” Mai said, apparently not for the first time. “Are you listening to me?”
“What?” She felt so tired.
“There’s someone here to see you.”
For one brief moment, Lexi thought that maybe Darius had come back, but then logic exerted itself.
“Sit up,” Mai ordered, doing her best to straighten Lexi’s hair. “Okay!” she hollered.
Lexi looked at the door expectantly and was mildly surprised when her brother-in-law, Derrick, appeared.
He gave her an apologetic smile. “I know I’m probably the last person you want to see right now, but Ricco told me what happened, and under the circumstances, I thought…” He paused and took a deep breath. “I thought it might help to talk to someone who’d been through the same thing.”
Someone who knew what it was like to lose the person they loved. Like he’d lost Bev.
He came into the room, and Lexi gestured to the side of the bed. He sat down while she considered all the questions she wanted to ask him and settled on the most important. “Does it ever stop hurting?”
“I’ll let you know,” he said, his voice cracking a little.
She realized now how much he must have suffered when Bev died. “I’m so, so sorry for all the things I said,” she apologized. “I shouldn’t have blamed you. It wasn’t your fault.”
He shook his head. “There was nothing you said that I hadn’t said to myself at least a million times.”
She reached out and took his hand. “But you have to know that it wasn’t your fault.”
He covered her hand with his.“Thanks, but it doesn’t make the day a
ny easier to get through—does it?”
“No, it doesn’t.” Lexi tried to smile but couldn’t. And then it was like a dam bursting. Her pain and heartache came rushing out. And Derrick held her, letting her cry until she thought there were no tears left. They talked well into the night. She never even noticed that Mai had snuck out early to leave them alone.
When Derrick finally decided to leave, she was starting to feel better. They made plans to see each other again because he was, after all, her brother-in-law. Then she went into the kitchen and, for the first time in days, ate because she was hungry.
Afterwards, she went to her room to lie down again. The dreams she had that night when she slept were mostly the same ones she’d been having, with Darius holding her and telling her how much he loved her.
At one point, a beautiful woman appeared in her dream. Lexi had never seen her before, but she wasn’t frightened. The woman looked on her with kindly eyes, and when she waved her hand, the dreams changed. She relived each moment from the time Darius had appeared to her to the moment she’d realized Tain was about to shoot Darius and she’d morphed into a wolf to save him. Had saved him. Her last image was of waking up and seeing Darius’s face one last time, just before some force snatched him from her. “I love you,” she called to him, but he didn’t come back. “I’ll always love you.”
She woke up in tears and saw that it was morning. With the sun shining brightly through her window, she forced herself to get out of bed and headed for the bathroom. It was time to start living again.
When she undressed and looked in the mirror, the coiled serpent tattoo over her heart stared back at her. She touched it, as she did so often, tentatively testing its permanency. It didn’t move or rub off. It was one of the two things Darius had left her to remember him by.
She touched her stomach and wondered how the Mother Goddess could gift her with a child while robbing her of its father. It was too much to think about, so she stepped in the shower and let the steam carry her thoughts away.
An hour later, she walked into the office. Marge looked up from her desk and gave her a sympathetic smile. Lexi groaned.
“I must really look bad if you feel like you have to be nice to me.”
“Actually,” the older woman said, “you’ve got a little glow underneath the dark circles. How ya doing, sugar?”
“Honestly? I’ve been better,” Lexi admitted, going over to the case files. She had several stacked up and she flipped through them. Finally she picked one out and handed the rest to Marge. “Tell TJ that I appreciate what he’s trying to do, but I’m fine. I don’t need all the light cases.” She held up the file in her hand. “I’m going after this one, but when I come back, we’ll divide up the rest of the cases a little more evenly.”
Marge gave her a critical look and then accepted the files from her. “You got it. Welcome back.”
“Thanks.” She turned and left the office, managing to keep her composure until she reached the street. She had to fake a serious interest in the display case of the bakery next door while she took several deep breaths. One of the case files had been for Paddy Darby, leprechaun. He’d missed his second court hearing, and Lexi had a feeling no one would ever see the little man again. In any event, she couldn’t bring herself to look for him.
Pulling herself together, she walked several blocks north to an OTB. The skip she was looking for was a repeat offender, and she knew this was where he liked to bet on the day’s horse races.
She made herself comfortable waiting outside. The last two times she’d brought him in, he’d shown up right around this time.
He appeared five minutes later, walking down the street alone. When he saw her, he didn’t bother to run, like he normally did. Instead, he gave Lexi a knowing smile, pulled out a gun and shot her.
At first she didn’t even feel the pain. Her next thought was that he’d better not have shot her in the abdomen, because if he harmed her baby, she was going to kill him. Finally, she took note of the horrified expression on his face as he stared at her.
Then she realized why he looked that way. He’d shot her in the right shoulder, and, since she wasn’t wearing sleeves, a bullet wound should have been clearly visible. But there was only a small pucker in the flesh, and even that quickly disappeared.
She was as shocked as the skip was, but there wasn’t time to think about it. Already he was aiming again. Suddenly there was a flash of light on the ground between them, and when the accompanying smoke cleared, a man dressed in black pants and a black sleeveless duster stood there, his upper torso covered in tattoos.
Lexi’s heart skipped a beat as she stared at Darius. His attention was fixed on the skip, whose hand holding the gun was shaking so badly, Lexi wasn’t sure he would be able to hit anything should he pull the trigger. Darius didn’t give him the chance to try.
He tapped Fury, and the small demon shot forth and chased the skip down the street. Lexi didn’t even mind that the skip was getting away. Her entire focus was on the man before her.
He strolled forward, and she waited, hardly daring to breathe as he stopped before her. She stared into his eyes, willing him to remember her.
“Darius.” His name escaped her in a breathless rush.
“I missed you,” he told her, cupping her face. He dipped his head and kissed her. It was a long time before either of them was able to speak.
“I thought you’d forgotten me,” she said with a shaky laugh after they finally came up for air.
“I never did. Back in the chamber, after we made love, everything started to go blank, but I kept thinking how much I loved you. It seemed to work, because after several minutes passed, I remembered everything—including the fact that some force, probably Amadja and Tain, had eavesdropped on the dream I had when Whitley summoned me. They would know that I was destined to forget everything should I climax during lovemaking. I knew that had to be part of their plan. Why else would they have given you, specifically, Demon Fire? It was part of their plan all along that we make love. That’s when I knew I had to pretend to lose my memory. I’m just sorry I didn’t have a chance to tell you. I love you, Lexi. More than life itself. I want you to know that.”
“I do,” she assured him.“That arrow Tain shot should have killed me. When it didn’t, I knew there had to be a reason why, because I remembered being too weak to morph. That’s when I noticed your tattoo. I had your tattoo, but you were gone. I thought…” She hesitated, because even now, the thought brought pain. “I thought by giving me your tattoo, you had killed yourself.”
He rested his forehead against hers, still holding her close.“Don’t you realize that you’re the most important thing in my life? I couldn’t sit there and watch you die—not if there was anything I could do to save you. I gladly gave you my life-force tattoo—even if it meant my own death.” He pressed his fingers to her mouth when she would have argued with him. “Shh. Instead of dying, I was pulled back to Ravenscroft.” He gave a short laugh.
“It seems that my mother spent my entire absence working on spells to safeguard me—including one that would return me to Ravenscroft should I lose my life force.” He pulled her to him for a quick hug. “I was a crazy man when I got there. I was wild with worry about you—whether you lived or died. I didn’t want to leave you, so I demanded to be sent back to Earth—to no avail. My only means of getting to Earth lay with the life-force tattoo—which I no longer had. I was trapped in Ravenscroft.”
“What changed?”
He gave a little chuckle. “Nothing.” When she looked at him confused, he went on. “As the weeks passed, my love for you never faded. If anything, it grew stronger—just as yours did for me.” He smiled. “One day, I woke up and my life-force tattoo was back. At first, I was horrified. I thought it meant that you had died. My mother begged me not to do anything rash until she could discover the truth, which she did, apparently, by coming to you in a dream.” He smiled. “She liked you very much, by the way.”
Lexi thought back to the dream she’d had and the woman in it. “I think I remember her.”
“Once she learned that you were alive and still very much in love with me, she knew what had happened.” He smiled. “My life-force tattoo can only attach itself to me or something as precious to me as my own life—in this case, you. It just took time for the tattoo to reappear over my heart.” He pulled back from her enough to flip open the left side of his duster where she saw the life-force serpent tattoo over his heart.
Surprised, she unbuttoned her shirt enough to verify that her own tattoo was still in place. She looked up at him, confused. “I don’t get it. Are we sharing the same life force now?”
“Sounds poetic, doesn’t it? Two souls merged into one through the power of love? Mother said she couldn’t risk losing either one of us and merged our immortal life forces into our souls. That gives us the ability to travel back and forth from Earth to Ravenscroft whenever we want.”
It was all a little overwhelming for Lexi. “Our immortal life forces?”
“Yes. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me for the rest of eternity.” Taking her hand, he led her toward the street. “Now, unless you don’t mind a very public display of affection, I suggest we go someplace private.”
Lexi couldn’t remember much about the cab ride to her apartment except that she spent most of it in Darius’s arms.
When they finally walked into her apartment, he kicked the door shut and, picking her up, carried her into the bedroom.
“I’ve been fantasizing for the longest time about making love to you in a real bed,” he told her, setting her on the bed.
She smiled and pulled him down beside her. “I can’t believe you’re here,” she whispered, leaning over to kiss him. “I’m so afraid that all of this will turn out to be a dream and when I wake up, you’ll be gone.” She shuddered. “I never want to go through that again.”
“I’ll never make you. I promise.”
He kissed her then—slowly, sweetly—as if they had all the time in the world. When they came up for air, it was only so he could get rid of their clothing. Lying naked, facing each other, it was strange to see their twin tattoos. Two halves of one greater love. Lexi, who had never been one for sappy stuff, thought it was romantically poetic.
The Darkening (Immortals) Page 27