“Richard,” I said, shaking my head. “I…I don't know what you're talking about. And frankly, you're beginning to scare me a little bit.”
“I'm sorry.” He looked abashed. “That wasn't my intention. I was just…trying to jog your memory.”
“Well,” I said briskly, “we'll have lots of time to talk about the past. But for right now, I think it's time to settle down for the night. I'm beat, and I bet you are, too.”
He looked suddenly weary beyond words. “You're right, Rache, I could really use some sleep.”
“Let's see,” I said, looking around to see where I could put him. “I think the best thing would be if you took the bedroom, and I can sleep on the couch.”
“No way,” he said instantly. “I'm not going to kick you out of your own bedroom. I'll take the couch.”
“You can't,” I protested, looking at the short, lumpy love seat. “You're much too tall—you won't fit. Look, I have an idea. Come with me.” I led him through the tiny but functional kitchen and into my bedroom, which was located at the back of the house.
He stopped in the doorway again, lifting his head and sniffing as he had when he entered the house earlier. “Charles hasn't been in here,” he said. It was a statement, not a question.
“Well…no,” I said. It was hard enough to keep my amorous fiancé in line when he wasn't in view of an inviting bed, so I made sure to stay out of the bedroom whenever he came over.
Richard looked vastly relived. “Well, that's good anyway,” he said. “I'm sorry—you were saying you had an idea?”
“Uh, yeah.” I decided to pass over his odd statements. We were both tired, and it was late. “I know it's here somewhere,” I muttered, going to my small walk-in closet and beginning to dig.
“What are you looking for?” Richard squeezed in beside me to help.
“I have this…oof…rollaway cot,” I said, shifting things out of the way to get to the back of the closet. “I used it that last month when Mom was so sick. I moved her into the house with me and we had a hospice nurse…Here it is.” I dragged at the heavy old iron cot, trying to budge it past the shoes and suitcases that littered the bottom of my closet.
“Let me.” Richard reached past me. Grasping the iron frame of the cot with one hand, he lifted it easily out of the closet.
“Wow.” I sat back on my heels, staring at him. “I guess I forgot, but you were always strong as a kid, too, weren't you?” I was a little afraid he might start quoting from the “teachings” again, but he didn't.
“I guess so. Where do you want this?” He patted the iron cot, which looked like a fat gray metal sandwich turned on its side.
“Well, I don't really have a guest room,” I said. “But, I thought if you don't mind roughing it a little, we could set it up in the Florida room.”
“The what?”
“It's what the real estate agents call a sun room down here,” I explained. “Basically it's a closed-in back porch with lots of windows. I don't really use mine for much of anything, and it's not air-conditioned but seeing that it's a cool night…” I shrugged.
“It sounds great.” Richard lifted the cot one-handed again, like someone carrying an oversized suitcase. “Where is it?”
“Right through there.” I nodded at the sliding glass doors at one end of my bedroom that led out to the porch. The Florida room was located off of the living room in most houses, but whoever had designed my little bungalow had obviously decided to flout convention.
“Great.” Richard led the way onto the small porch and unfolded the cot. “This is perfect for tonight,” he said. “And if you want, I can go back to the hotel tomorrow.”
“No, no,” I said hastily. “You can go back, but only to get your things.”
“Okay, if you're sure.” He sighed and sat down on the cot, which was already made up with sheets and a thin blanket. “I'll take a cab tomorrow to pick up my suitcases and get my rental car. But look, the minute you want me out, just say so. I didn't come here to disrupt your life.”
“You're not,” I protested. “I want you here, Richard. Really.”
He smiled tiredly. “Good, I want to be here. Look, it's been kind of a long night. Do you mind if I take a shower?”
“Not at all. The bathroom's through there.” I pointed through my bedroom to the open door of my bathroom. “Towels on the rack, everything else in the shower. Help yourself.”
“Thanks.” He disappeared into the bathroom, and after a minute I heard the shower running.
I got into a comfortable sleep shirt and climbed into bed. My room was dark, lit by the diffused light from the full moon behind the curtains and the soft yellow glow coming from under the bathroom door. Despite the dim light, I could see every detail of the room clearly—I've always had excellent night vision. When I was younger I had thought it was because I was special—that I was Amon-kai, as Richard had called it.
I remembered now how my father had made up that story about us being able to see in the dark, probably as a way to explain our slanting pale green eyes and make us feel better for being different from the rest of the kids. I didn't know where Richard was getting all this stuff about the “teachings”—maybe he'd gotten some weird ideas from my father before he'd died. Or maybe it was a fantasy that he had built into a personal reality while he was in all those foster homes over the years. I knew from experience that kids can make themselves believe almost anything to lessen the pain of a bad situation.
Just thinking of Richard spending so much of his younger life being moved from home to home made me both hurt and angry. My mother had been a hard woman, difficult to get along with in many ways, but I had never suspected her of being so deliberately cruel as to refuse to take her adopted son back when my father died.
Mom had been dead almost three years now. I thought about it as I stared at the shadowy corners of my ceiling. This coming Friday it would be three years exactly. And with her dying breath she had warned me never to see my brother again. I hadn't told Richard that because I was pretty sure he'd had enough pain and rejection from our mother to last him a lifetime.
I flipped my pillow to the cool side and rolled over in bed restlessly. Why had my mother been so set against Richard and me ever seeing each other again? Why had she taken me away and spent most of the rest of her life running, moving us from place to place, and covering our tracks to keep my adopted brother or my father from ever finding us?
My musings were interrupted when Richard emerged from the bathroom in a puff of steam. A towel was draped around his lean hips, and stray drops of water beaded on his muscular torso. His arms, I noticed, were also heavily muscled, as though he worked out on a regular basis, and his skin was still the same natural dark tan it had always been. His dark hair was damp and rumpled as though he'd been drying it with a towel, and he carried his bundle of clothes under one arm. I wondered if he planned on sleeping in the nude and hoped that my nosy elderly neighbors didn't decide to come next-door and have a look at the night-blooming jasmine bushes around my Florida room as they sometimes did. They would certainly be getting an eyeful if they came tonight.
For a moment he stood at the foot of my bed, outlined faintly by the dim light from the full moon outside. I felt like he was studying me, waiting for something. My heart pounded, but I didn't know why. He was a man now—not the boy I'd grown up with, the boy I had trusted and loved above everyone else in my young life. Had I been wrong to rely on that trust and invite him into my home?
“Good night, Rachel.” His voice was deep and gentle, carrying well in the dark room.
“Good night, Richard,” I said.
It was a long time before I got to sleep and then I had the dream…
Chapter Five
The boy with wolf's eyes stared at me, a look of hope and longing on his dark face. We stood in a broad sandy field, and behind him a gray-green river flowed sluggishly. White birds with long necks stalked along its banks, hunting for frogs. Heat shimmered in the dist
ance, and the sky overhead was a merciless blue-white.
“What do you want?” I asked him, as I always did. He was familiar to me, but strange. Like someone I had known all my life and yet had not seen until that very moment.
He turned from me and walked toward the river. I followed him, treading carefully in the loose sand that wanted to fill my sandals. I had on a plain white shift, made of some kind of linen, and I was naked beneath it.
I thought he would lead me directly into the river, but instead he stopped on the banks and pointed. I turned my head to follow the strange boy's gesture and saw two massive figures carved from sand-colored stone on the bank beside me. They were posed as though seated, their huge stone hands turned palms-up in their laps in a gesture of supplication.
As I stared at the statues, I realized that one was male and one was female, which was not immediately apparent because their heads were definitely not human. I looked harder and saw that the male statue had the long muzzle and pointed ears of some kind of dog or wolf. The female possessed the sleek, whiskered face of a cat.
“Look,” the boy said. He took my hand and drew me closer. At the base of one of the statues, he pointed to some strange carvings in a language I did not know. I stared hard, feeling like I should be able to read what was written there. Slowly, the carvings resolved into words and this is what I read:
Born light and dark
Yet of one breed
If one is bitten
The other will bleed
Joined as one
Their bond to seal
If one is wounded
The other may heal
Lanor-zur
Has deadly wrath
Subject to
The full moon's path
Lana-zeel
Has wisdom's flower
To help contain
The killing power
Without the other
Each will die
Thus join they must
As Amon-kai
“What does it mean?” I turned to the boy, but he had vanished. In his place stood a rangy black wolf with the same clear, pale green eyes the boy had had. The same eyes I had myself.
The wolf looked at me, and I knew it wanted something—needed something from me but I did not know what. The same hope and longing that had been in the boy's face was plainly reflected in its beautiful, strange eyes.
“What?” I asked softly. I loved the wolf—I felt that my heart might burst with the love. It tore at me that there was something it wanted that I could not give.
Suddenly, the white-blue sky above me darkened to indigo as night fell with no warning. The huge statues by the river bank cast ominous shadows in the gathering gloom, and I shivered as a cold, dry wind, so different from the hot sandy stillness of the day, ruffled the thin linen shift I wore.
“Look.” The wolf did not speak, but I heard the word plainly anyway. I looked up and saw a huge, heavy moon, pregnant with some dreadful promise, rising over the horizon. The silvery-white orb threw a chilly light over the sluggish river and its sandy banks. Everything seemed coated in a thin layer of ice.
Then the wolf raised its muzzle and howled—a heart-rending sound that tore at my soul. So much pain, so much loneliness was reflected in that single liquid howl. So much sorrow. It spoke to me. The loss of a loved one—of the only one. An endless search, an unrequited love as bitter as the love was sweet.
“I'm sorry!” I told the wolf. “Sorry—so sorry!”
I reached forward to pet it, to soothe its torment. But when I touched its thick black fur, my hands came away wet and sticky. I looked down in horror to see they were covered in blood.
Blood and blood and blood. I was drowning in it, choking on it. In the sky above my head, the moon had turned from chilly white to bloated red, and I thought in my dazed horror, Even the moon's been dipped in blood.
“Help me!” I cried. “Please help me!” I looked wildly for the wolf, knowing only he could save me, but he was gone…
* * *
Someone shook me awake, calling my name. “Rachel, wake up! Wake up—it's just a bad dream.”
“Oh, God!” I gasped. “Blood! So much blood.”
“Shh, calm down. It's all right. It's all right.” Strong arms held me, warm hands stroking my back and pushing the tangled mass of hair away from my eyes. A deep, masculine voice whispered soothing words, words meant to calm and comfort and protect.
At first I didn't know who it was, only that I needed him—that he must not let me go. Only in his arms was I safe from the moon and the blood. Only he could protect me from the furies of the night.
“Rachel,” he whispered into my hair. “Rachel, I love you. I won't let anything hurt you.”
It was so nice to feel protected and warm. I hadn't felt this safe since I was a child. Since Richard held me in his arms while my mother and father fought downstairs…Richard! Suddenly everything came back to me. Finding him after all these years, the strange things he had said to me, my mother's warning that I must never see him again…
I opened my eyes to see him staring down into my face, a worried expression in his pale green eyes. He held me as though I were a child, cradled in his lap with my head against his chest. I could hear the steady heartbeat that had soothed me to sleep so many times when I was younger thrumming just beneath the smooth, tan skin of his muscular chest.
“Hey,” he said gently. “You okay? You woke me up—you were screaming and thrashing. Scared me to death.”
“I—I'm fine.” I made an effort to sit up and shift off his lap. He was wearing boxer shorts, and I could feel them against the backs of my thighs as I moved. He helped me, keeping an arm around my shoulders just in case. “It was just a dream.” I rubbed my forehead with the heel of my hand, as though to force the disturbing images out of my mind. God, the dream had been bad lately, but this was definitely the worst it had ever been.
“What was it about?” Richard asked. “Tell me and maybe you'll feel better.”
I opened my mouth to tell him, but the dream was already melting away. All I could remember were blurred images and feelings of loneliness and terror. I shook my head.
“I don't know. It was something about a wolf and the moon and a boy with some statues. And that weird word Dad always used to call us—what you were saying tonight. Something about the Amon-kai.”
“Hmm.” He kept rubbing my back absently, but his face was solemn lost in thought. Finally, he said, “That's all?”
I nodded. “All I can remember, anyway. It's…I have this dream every once in a while, but usually I dream of a boy with our eyes.” I looked at him. “With your eyes, actually.” I frowned and ran a hand through my hair. “Come to think of it, I started having that dream right after Mom took me away. Maybe the boy in my dream is you. Maybe it's more separation anxiety.”
“Could be.” His deep voice was noncommittal. “I used to dream of you, too, you know.”
“Really?” I looked up at him. “What did you dream?”
He sighed. “It was always so sad. I just dreamed your face—your eyes crying, your mouth shaping my name. It always seemed like…like you were begging me to come and get you. And I would try and try, but no matter what I did, I couldn't reach you. Then I'd wake up in a cold sweat.” He scrubbed a hand over his face, making a sandpapery sound as he rubbed the whiskers on his chin. “It was so damn frustrating seeing you hurt and not being able to help you.”
“That's the same feeling I have in my dream,” I confessed. “Like you need me and I can't get to you to give you what you need.”
“Rachel…” Richard sat up straighter beside me, and his face took on the look of a man who had something both difficult and important to say.
“Yes?” I asked, sensing the change in him at once.
“Rachel, I…there's something I have to tell you. I should have told you right away, but I was afraid of what you'd say—what you'd think of me.”
“Richard,” I said earnes
tly. “You don't have to be afraid. You're my brother—I love you, no matter what.” I was surprised at the strength of the emotion that flooded me as I said the words. Surprised that he could disappear from my life seventeen years before and yet still be so important to me—so vital to my existence. Just at that moment I couldn't imagine my life without him. Couldn't bear the thought of letting him go—of losing him—ever again.
“You're so sweet,” he whispered. “So innocent and trusting.” He stroked my cheek with the back of his hand, looking into my eyes. I felt the familiar shiver of excitement course through me at the feel of his hand on my skin. Why did I never feel that way when Charles touched me?
“Shouldn't I trust you?” I asked, my voice little more than a whisper.
His eyes darkened. “You can trust me with your life. Someday I hope you'll trust me with your heart.” He cupped my cheek gently and bent his head to me. I thought he was going to kiss away my tears again, as he had at the PD. Instead, his mouth found mine with a sweet naturalness I had never imagined.
I found myself sinking into the kiss, which lingered long past the bounds of brotherly affection or propriety. A small part of my brain understood that this was wrong—that I shouldn't be doing this. But my skin was burning, my body aching for his touch, for the press of his lips on mine. I couldn't seem to stop.
Richard ran his hands through my hair and slanted his mouth over mine, tasting me gently, leading me carefully down the road to certain damnation. It was only when he tried to deepen the kiss, to open my mouth to his that I pulled back. I could enjoy the sweet pleasure of his closed lips against mine, but to allow his tongue entry into my mouth was too much—too evocative of other acts a sister must never perform with her brother. It didn't matter that there was no real blood relation between us—we had been raised as though there was, and I simply couldn't get past my early upbringing.
“Rachel,” he whispered, trying to pull me close. I resisted him.
“No!” I panted lightly from the sweet sensations still shooting through my veins like a forbidden, addictive drug. “Richard, we can't,” I said. “You're my…we just can't.”
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