“I’m sorry,” she said again, and Hawk shook his head vehemently.
“It’s not your fault,” he insisted. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I dragged you down here completely unprepared. We should have waited for Lucas and Nim. We should have known Lionel would still be following us. We should have kept the cairngorm safe.” She looked like she was about to cry again. “I should have kept it safe.”
“You couldn’t have known any of this would happen.”
“I should have,” she said quietly. “And now the Quest is ruined.”
“It’s not –”
Somewhere behind them, far off in the distance, something howled, a high-pitched shrieking outcry of pain and anguish that lifted every hair on Hawk’s head and poured ice into the center of his bones. They all spun about, staring wide-eyed into the darkness.
“What was that?” Trisha whispered.
They heard it again, longer and sharper, and Trisha clutched Hawk’s hand painfully tight. All of them held their breaths and then they heard it again, fainter but still eerily unnatural. They waited, one whole minute and then two, but all they heard now was silence.
“God in Heaven,” Donna breathed. “What in the name of all the saints was that?”
“That was Chantal, wasn’t it?” Trisha asked anxiously. Hawk nodded. “What does it mean?”
“It means Savard is dead.”
64
Trisha sat on the hearth with the fire to her back and a woolen blanket wrapped around her shoulders. A warm toddy sat untouched beside her as she stared blindly at the floor in front of her, unable to string two coherent thoughts together. She started at every sound the old house made and wondered when – or if – Hawk and her father would return.
Her mother was a noisy presence elsewhere in the house, diligently clearing away the evidence of her encounter with Chantal. She tacked a sheet of plywood over the shattered window in the rear door and swept up the shards and stray buckshot. Then she knelt and scrubbed the spatters of dark blood from the floorboards and the wall. She looked worriedly at Trisha every time she passed but said nothing.
I should help her, Trisha thought guiltily, but she couldn’t move. She’s keeping herself busy until Dad gets back. I should do something too. I can’t just sit here. But her mind and her body seemed disconnected and she stayed where she was.
The old-fashioned pendulum clock hanging on the wall behind the dining table ticked away the seconds but she didn’t dare lift her eyes to check the time. The clacks of the pendulum stretched farther and farther apart, as if the clock was slowly running down, but she told herself it was just an illusion. They’ll be back any moment. They’re safe, nothing will happen to them. She couldn’t quite convince herself of that.
Heavy footsteps on the porch outside lifted her out of the shadows and she looked up in relief as the door opened and her father stepped in. He kicked the snow off his boots and wearily swept his hat from his head.
“Good God, it’s cold out there,” he breathed. He pulled off one of his gloves with his teeth and scrubbed his cheeks, trying to get the blood flowing again. He looked dog-tired and hollow eyed.
“Dad!” Trisha didn’t remember getting to her feet but she flung off her blanket and ran to him, wrapping her arms around him and pressing her cheek against his chest thankfully. It was like hugging a snowman but he embraced her with a tight squeeze and kissed the top of her head. “Are you okay?”
“Nothing a long soak in the tub won’t fix.” Trisha released him reluctantly and he unslung the rifle from his shoulder, leaning it against the wall as he undid his plaid coat and hung it on a wall hook, blowing through his stiff fingers to warm them. Her mother appeared from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel and looking him over carefully. They nodded to each other, communicating silently with that secret code couples used. All was well, except –
“Dad, where’s Hawk?” She expected to him to come in right behind her father but there was no one out there on the porch. Her heart clenched painfully. “Is he –?”
“I’m here.” Hawk appeared in the doorway, stomping his feet to knock off the snow caked to his pants all the way up to his knees. “I wanted to get this in case we needed it.” He set the bloodied axe against the wall beside the Browning and Trisha stared at it in horror.
“Oh my God,” she gasped. “You don’t think they’re coming back, do you?”
Hawk looked at her with a puzzled from and then shook his head. “No, it’s for the firewood.” He came in and closed the door firmly, shutting the winter outside. He unslung his own rifle and then pulled off his borrowed gloves, looking around for a place to put them.
Trisha took them, twisting them anxiously in her hands. They were stiff from the cold. “But what about Savard? Is he ... dead?” She didn’t dare hope that was true, but Hawk nodded silently.
“He’s dead,” her father confirmed flatly. “We found his body in the woods just off the road, about a mile back towards the Jefferson’s. It – didn’t look right.” He shuddered from something other than the cold.
“He died while he was trying to change forms,” Hawk told her with a haunted look in his eyes. “It’s looks like he bled to death. One of the bullets must have hit an artery. We buried the body where the animals won’t get at it,” he added. “There’ll be fewer questions that way.” Her father nodded silently.
“Thank God,” Trisha breathed. “But what about Chantal?”
“We saw her tracks around his body and followed her west. There was fresh blood along her trail. She’s hurt.” Trisha’s mother nodded, her lips set in a thin line.
“But you didn’t find her,” Trisha guessed, feeling a shiver run down her back. “She’s still out there somewhere.”
The two men exchanged a long look. “No,” Hawk admitted reluctantly, “but she won’t be coming back.”
“How do you know that?” she demanded. “We killed her father, we shot her, why wouldn’t she come back?”
“She knows she’s no match for us, Trisha. She’s gone off to hide somewhere and recover. There’s no reason for her to come back here, there’s nothing here she wants.”
“Except revenge.” Trisha couldn’t keep the quiver of fear out of her voice and she hugged herself in misery. “This whole trip has been a disaster. I lost the cairngorm and Mom and Dad are still in danger. It’s all my fault.”
Hawk blew his breath out in frustration and he grabbed her upper arms in an iron grip. For a moment, Trisha thought he was going to try to shake some sense into her, but he just made sure she was focused on him.
“Trisha,” he said firmly, “Chantal doesn’t care about you or your parents. If she wants revenge against anyone, it’ll be me. I killed her mother, remember, and Savard.”
“Well, that was me, actually,” her father pointed out. Hawk gave him an exasperated glare and he looked properly contrite. He took up the Browning and carefully checked to make sure it was unloaded before putting it away in the cabinet.
“She believes I killed Savard,” Hawk amended with a sigh. “If she survives, and that’s a big if, she’ll come after me and that’ll be her last mistake. Okay?” He waited until Trisha nodded reluctantly before he released her. “Here, I picked this up on the way back. It’s yours, right?”
He unslung Trisha’s gym bag from his shoulder and handed it to her. She took it and set it on the back of the loveseat without bothering to look inside. “Thanks,” she said dully. “But what about the cairngorm? How are we going to get it back from Lionel?”
“We don’t need to.”
“Why not?”
“Because he doesn’t have it.”
“Yes, he does,” Trisha insisted. “I gave it to him.” Hawk silently reached into the pocket of his borrowed coat and held up the cairngorm. Trisha gaped at it in astonishment as the stone flared with bright orange light. “Oh my God!” she gasped. “Is that really it?” He held it out to her and she cradled it in her hands,
scarcely daring to breathe. “Where did you find it?”
“It was lying in the snow not far from your bag,” Hawk told her, his face creasing in a smile at her delight. “This, too.” He extracted Lionel’s pistol from his other pocket and handed it to her father, who cautiously unloaded it and set it aside. “Lionel probably dropped it when you hit him with the car door.”
“Oh my God, thank you!” She flung her arms around him, staggering him back a step as she tried to kiss him on his cheek, but he grunted and tried to fend her off.
“Jesus Christ, Trisha,” he grimaced in pain, “don’t do that.”
“What’s wrong?” She let him go and watched him gingerly press his hand to his chest. “Oh my God, are you hurt? Let me see!”
Despite his protests that he was fine, she got him moved over to one of the chairs near the fireplace and tugged off his coat. She sucked in her breath in horror when she saw the bloodied rents in his shirt and the slashes across his chest, scabbed over with frozen blood. “Oh my God!”
“Let me see.” Her mother nudged her aside and cast an expert eye over his wounds. “Trisha, get the first aid kit from the pantry and a bowl of warm water. Some cloths too!”
Between the two nurses, the gashes on Hawk’s chest were cleaned and disinfected and bandaged in record time, although Trisha’s mother tried to persuade him to let them take him to the nearest clinic. “You’re going to need stitches and shots, young man,” she insisted. “There’s no point in taking any risks with an injury like this!”
“I’ll be fine, Donna, really,” Hawk assured her. He caught Trisha’s eye and smiled and she struggled to keep her own face expressionless. “I’m a quick healer. I’ll get it looked at tomorrow when we get back to New York, I promise.” Her mother hmphed in stern disapproval but she let it go.
She examined the bandage on his arm as well, asking what happened and if he wanted a new wrapping. Hawk declined her offer and silently unwound the gauze, holding out his arm to show her the long pink lines tracing the length his forearm. Trisha, who had some inkling of what to expect, was still astonished at how much his earlier injuries had faded since yesterday. At this rate, the scars would be completely gone by morning. Her mother muttered something Scottish-sounding under her breath and cleared away the medical supplies.
Finding Hawk a new shirt to wear proved to be more of a challenge, since none of them had anything large enough. Trisha finally remembered his Providence sweatshirt but they couldn’t find it anywhere. All four of them tried to retrace his steps through the house, but as far as any of them recalled, he just sat by the fireplace and at the dining table before heading out to search for Savard.
“No, wait, I remember now,” Hawk said, snapping his fingers. “I took it off when I was chopping wood outside.”
“Is it still out there?” Trisha asked incredulously. Her father volunteered to look for it, steeling himself for another trek through the snow, and returned a couple of minutes later with the sweater. It was as stiff as cardboard and they had to thaw it in front of the fire before Hawk could finally slip it over his head and pull it down carefully over his bandages.
With everyone patched up and warm again, her father cleared his throat to get their attention. “So now, young man,” he said with a tight set to his jaw, “I think you owe us an explanation.”
Hawk hesitated and Trisha jumped to his defense. “Can’t this wait until tomorrow, Dad?” she pleaded. “I mean, he’s hurt and we’re all tired and – and –”
“No, it’s okay, Trisha. They deserve to know the truth.” Hawk stood with his back to the fire and motioned her parents to sit together on the loveseat. Trisha perched on the hearth to offer him whatever support she could, her fingers knotted together anxiously in her lap. She couldn’t imagine this going well.
Hawk took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’ll start at the beginning,” he said. “My name is Gawain and I was born a thousand years ago.”
65
Trisha slowly ran her brush through her hair, teasing out the last tangles from her ponytail. She wore one of her mother’s old nightgowns, a plain linen smock that barely reached below her knees, and thick woolen socks to keep her feet warm. It was well past midnight now and she was exhausted, but she refused to lie down until Hawk came to bed, and he and her father were still talking over their scotch.
She eyed the bed across the room, a twin to the one she sat on, covered in a faded quilt her mother had made years ago. It was the only bed left in the house – the loveseat was far too small to lie down on – and Hawk would have to sleep there tonight, just six feet away.
He saved my life, she thought bleakly. He saved Mom and Dad. I should be grateful – I am grateful – but how do I show him that? I slept with Lionel, she cringed at that memory now, but he was just using me. Hawk hasn’t done anything to show he’s interested in me that way. Would he want me to thank him like that? Do I want to thank him like that? Would he turn me away? Would I be okay if he did? She didn’t know any of the answers.
Footsteps and voices came closer down the hall and she froze, not knowing what to do. The doorknob rattled, as if someone had his hand on it, but it didn’t turn. She quickly set her brush aside and switched off the table lamp, sliding under her covers and closing her eyes just as the door eased open.
“Light’s off,” said her father quietly. “She must be asleep already, poor thing. It’s been quite a day for her, hasn’t it?”
“For all of us,” Hawk agreed, his voice a soft murmur. “I’m sorry we brought all this to your doorstep.”
“Well, it’s done, unless you were lying about that thing coming back.” Her father sounded unusually grim and Trisha carefully cracked one eyelid open. She saw Hawk’s back through the narrow slice of open door and her father stood just beyond him, looking stern.
“No, I don’t think she’ll be back,” Hawk told him, “but you should stay alert, just in case. Trisha and I will leave first thing in the morning. No one should bother you after we’re gone.”
“And what happens after that? Where’s this Quest of yours going to take you? Will we ever see Trisha again?” His father’s voice had a hitch in it and Trisha nearly jumped out of bed to reassure him, but Hawk shook his head.
“I don’t know the answer to that,” he said firmly, “but I promise you, I’ll keep her safe.”
Her father’s eyes searched Hawk’s face for a long moment and then he nodded. “I’ll hold you to that,” he said. He held out his hand and Hawk gripped it silently. “Good night, Gawain. We’ll see you off in the morning.”
“Good night, James. Thank you.”
Her father left and Trisha closed her eyes quickly, listening to Hawk ease into the bedroom and shut the door. He stood still for a long while, probably letting his eyes adjust to the darkness, and then made his way carefully to the other bed. The springs creaked under his weight and she heard the thump of his boots being set aside and the rustle of clothing being removed. Her imagination filled in the blanks for her, showing her a remarkably clear image of him sitting in the living room of the Pendragon apartment in nothing but his shorts. Her face warmed and she was thankful for the darkness as she tried to keep her breathing steady and regular.
The bed creaked again as he lay down and tried to find a comfortable position. Finally it was quiet again and all she could hear was the soft whisper of his breathing.
This is it, she thought nervously. If I’m going to do it, it has to be now. He’s relaxed and it’s dark and no one needs to be embarrassed. She found her own breath matching its slow rhythm and her eyes refused to stay open. Tomorrow will be too late, she yawned. I have to let him know ... how I ... feel. Her thoughts faded into nothingness and she drifted down into a deep and dreamless sleep.
66
Hawk woke slowly, content to just drift aimlessly in the comforting warmth of the bed. It was quiet except for the faint sound of someone’s breathing and he pried one eye open to look for the source. Trisha l
ay in the other bed across the room, bundled up under a heavy quilt with her hair draped across her face again. Hawk smiled to himself and carefully slid to the edge of the bed.
The floor was ice-cold under his bare feet and the light leaking around the curtains was thin and pale. The sun was just coming up but he wanted to get back on the road as soon as possible. He didn’t think Chantal would dare come back after yesterday’s disastrous attack, but he couldn’t be certain. It was best that he and Trisha leave her parents in peace. Besides, they had to get that cairngorm to Nim. Hopefully she would know what to do with it.
He carefully gathered up his discarded clothing and padded to the adjoining bathroom, wincing as the door creaked slightly. Trisha stirred, murmuring something inaudible, and then settled down again, and he slipped into the bathroom and carefully closed the door behind him.
The house had only the one bathroom, but it was as large as the bedrooms, dominated by a massive claw-footed tub in the center of the room. A shower head bigger than his spread fingers hung from the ceiling and an oval rail suspended a flowing white curtain to keep the water from splashing all over the floor. He set his clothes on the counter and started the water running while he made use of the toilet and inspected himself in the vanity mirror.
The face looking back at him desperately needed a shave and a few more hours of sleep, but neither of those was likely to happen this morning. Instead, he wrestled with Donna’s bandages and finally got the fastening undone, unwrapping himself like a mummy. The scars across his chest were red but not raw and the lines on his arm were almost invisible. Two more days at most and no one would be able to tell he was ever injured.
“Thank you, Nim,” he told the mirror, wondering sourly how long it would be until he finally received a wound he couldn’t recover from. He’d been close a few times over the years, and sometimes he’d almost – almost – welcomed the end of his role in the endless battle.
Gawain (Knights of Excalibur Book 1) Page 33