But no dice.
Gypsies are hardly strangers to harassment, and the people from the camp spread as fast as ants, disappearing into the darkness of the woods like we did. Within seconds, all that’s left in the center of the camp is Zuhna. She stands alone in their searing bright light, leaning on a gnarled walking stick.
“Dove si trova la pietra!” one of the men demands. All I can see of him is a dark suit—and a gun.
But Zuhna doesn’t flinch.
“Non qui,” she replies coolly, shaking her head.
She boldly picks up her walking stick and waves it at the camp at no one there. Several wagons are on their sides and a couple are in flames that reach high in the night sky.
I’m in awe of her bravery.
But when one of the men jabbers at her insistently in Italian and then walks up to Zuhna and hits her with his pistol, I hear Creek spit through his teeth: “That’s it—”
And before I can get a word in, Creek is gone.
Down the tree and back into the camp.
He slinks in the shadows cast by the men’s search lights as if he were made of darkness itself.
And as the same man hauls off and hits Zuhna again so hard this time that she falls to ground like a ragdoll, in short order, that man’s head is knocked against his partner, who falls with him as well.
Zuhna cries out.
Not in fear, more like a warning. But it’s no use—
I hear a loud pop-pop.
And instantly, my stomach sickens.
I want to hurl.
Though my hands are covering my eyes, I feel frozen—unable to breathe or think. Cautiously, I peek through trembling fingers at the two large bodies that are lying in the camp, their backs glowing in the search lights. Creek has Zuhna engulfed in his arms, and he’s rocking her and smoothing her hair, speaking quietly. In spite of the horror of his violence, my heart goes out to him.
Of course he’d grab the gun and shoot those men!
After years of watching his mother’s boyfriend abuse her in childhood without being able to do a thing about it, Creek wouldn’t let anything stand in the way of protecting a woman now.
And there’s no doubt in my mind those men would’ve killed Zuhna.
Nevertheless, tears stream down my cheeks.
Two bodies—two men dead—who were willing to do anything to get the ruby heart from around Creek’s neck.
Zuhna was right. It’s already proved to be one hell of a burden.
As the other gypsies slowly come out of the woods to approach the camp, timid as deer, I scramble down the tree and run to Zuhna’s side.
“Come on,” I say kindly to her, grasping her by the arm and picking up her stick. “Let me take you to one of the wagons or trailers that wasn’t harmed. You can rest while the men dig graves. Creek and I will clear out right away. If anyone tries to bother you, say you never saw us—you have no idea what happened to those men—”
“No!” Zuhna hisses back at me.
She rips her arm from my grip and grabs the walking stick, pointing with it at the meadow beyond the woods. “I will burn them right there—where they killed Martiya and her lover. Where they transgressed against my people.”
The venom in her voice sends chills through my body, and I know there’s no arguing with her. She yells a command in her gypsy tongue at her men. Within seconds, they’re towing a burning wagon toward the meadow, followed by others who’ve lit old branches like torches. They pick up the men’s bodies and throw them inside the wagon. I watch in horror as the meadow becomes an inferno, in the very same place where Martiya met her end.
And I can’t hold back anymore—I lean over and vomit what’s left of my wedding feast to the ground as the smell of burning flesh rises in the air.
Creek stands beside me, stoic, as if he’s seen worse. His hand gently massages my back, but he says no words to soften the harshness of this . . . of our . . . reality.
“Go,” Zuhna says, turning to me as I wipe off my mouth. “Go now. We know what it’s like to have our camps burned to the ground. It’s part of gypsy life, of being travelers. And de Bargona will never admit that those were his men. We’ll say they were gypsies who died in the attack. If you want to free your mother,” she taps the stone at Creek’s chest boldly with her stick, “then follow your star.”
Chapter 15
Free my mother?
By following the star . . .
Zuhna’s words tell me the de Bargona’s letter was right. Alessia is locked up in an institution, unable to leave. It’s just different than the white walls and padded cell I imagined. And those star-like cracks in the center of ruby heart are all I have to find her.
Creek is hiking beside me in the darkness along the secret gypsy path. And even though I know he’s tough as nails and can handle anything that comes our way, I feel strangely naked without Zuhna’s wisdom to guide us—and without the handgun Creek used to defend her. But the gypsies insisted on taking the men’s guns to fence through the black market so none of us could get caught or be traced to the de Bargona’s, and also to make a pretty penny. Creek says they’ll need the cash for new wagons and repairs, which is the least we can do for hiding us. We let the guns go.
Nervously, I roll the ring Creek gave me around my finger as we hasten by moonlight down the gypsy trail, with only two old coats that the gypsies gave us plus the clothes on our backs.
And a scarf over my head that says in gypsy culture that I’m a “married” woman now.
To a thief—and a killer.
Shivering a little, I can’t help wondering if this is the first time Creek has taken someone’s life.
When he taps me on the shoulder, it makes me jump.
“Robin, we’ve reached the edge of the vineyards,” he says, pointing at the rows of grapevines that extend beyond us in the moonlight. “Past here, we start climbing into the mountains. They’re huge—we need to know where your mother’s convent is.”
He slips the stone from his neck and hands it to me, silver necklace shining in the moonlight.
“Here,” Creek pauses, “hold this and concentrate.”
The stone is cold in my hands, but not nearly as cold as the feeling that still riddles through my bones.
“Creek,” I whisper, because it’s way too hard for me to spit these words out any louder, “there’s something . . . you’ve never told me—”
“You know I love you, baby,” he cuts in with a sigh, as if all I need right now is reassurance. “And our last name’s Flynn. I told you the truth—”
“No,” I interrupt, swallowing back a stone in my throat. “Creek,” the heat rises up my cheeks, and I pray to God I don’t hurl again, “h-have you ever . . . killed . . . anybody before this?”
Creek is absent in the dark.
I don’t know how he does it, but it’s as if his soul retreats to a silent dimension in shadows, like he was a figment of my lonely imagination all along. I can’t see him in the moonlight all of a sudden among the trees, and it makes me feel like I’ve fallen down a black hole. Like I don’t know who he really is—who we are—
But then I sense a warm kiss on my forehead.
“Only those who deserved it, baby,” Creek whispers, his voice shrouded in night. “I promise.”
The ruby heart lies in the middle of my hands, cool as the night air around us.
I’ve got my eyes closed, trying to concentrate.
In my mind, I picture Alessia with long, curly hair and brown eyes like mine. I should be imagining her in a nun’s outfit, repeating Hail Marys in that convent so I can figure out how to find her. But for some reason, I keep wondering what life was like for her at Turtle Shores. Did she and my dad kiss there in the moonlight under the stars, after he snuck her out from her boarding school? Did she let her hair fall loose, tumbling like dark lace around her shoulders? Did they run barefoot together in the soft sand by the shores of Bender Lake and skinny dip, the way Creek and I did?
Al
l at once, I feel a warm breeze through my hair, odd for this time of night on the gypsy trail. And rather than my soul being sucked into the cracks of the ruby heart in a whoosh, I feel like I’ve become a part of that tender breeze. When my eyes flutter open, instead of darkness, I see Creek in broad daylight by the lakeshore.
Only it isn’t Creek at all.
I realize it’s my dad.
He’s a young man, astonishingly handsome back then, with wide shoulders and a shock of blonde hair, bleached by the sun.
A young woman, a teenager really, who looks just like me in a winsome yellow dress walks up to him with hesitant strides.
Behind her is the Conté de Bargona, wearing one of his perfectly tailored suits. His eyes are stern—dark and bottomless in their disapproval—as if he has a gun in his pocket and is ordering the girl’s moves. Alessia pauses to close her eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath as though facing a death march. Then she opens them, lifts her chin, and walks forward in the sand with a pained look on her face, like she’s about to make a confession.
I watch her prim, white shoes get soiled by the sand at the lake’s edge.
Her tummy is swelled beneath her dress.
When she reaches my dad, she stands with her feet perfectly together, then twists her heels a little, as if she’s about to click them in the hope of escaping with him to Oz.
But there’s no escape.
Instead, the Conté de Bargona orders something angrily in Italian to her from the shore. Shaking her head, Alessia says to Doyle, “Non ti amo. I never loved you.”
And she firmly grips his hand.
“So this means goodbye.”
Even so, the way she gazes into Doyle’s eyes is the stuff love songs are made of. Her face is all heartbreak, all longing—and it’s then that I see a peculiar mist leave her chest and surround my father’s hand. It’s as thin as cigarette smoke, but it clings to him like a ghost. Though her eyes are focused on Doyle, I watch them become dim—as flat as Zuhna’s.
And I feel my breath hitch.
Even though my mind argues it’s impossible, I can’t deny what I see.
Alessia’s soul has left her body to swirl around what my father holds in his hand. Taking refuge in the ruby heart she secretly slipped to him, the most precious treasure that the de Bargona family owned.
In giving him the stone, she gave him herself.
That’s where Alessia really is—not within her body inside a nun’s habit, or locked up in an old convent. That’s why it was so important to my dad to steal back the box in our old home in Cincinnati that had been foreclosed. Because it held the ruby stone—and the love of his life.
My mind is reeling.
Doyle always said, even through his partially-paralyzed slur from his recent stroke, that Alessia was in the box. No wonder he kept talking to her in his dreams—she was really there!
But how is this possible? How does she breathe, eat, pray, keep functioning?
The same way I do, I guess—like I am now when I’m having an “episode,” where my soul seems suspended from my body, but my body continues.
It’s sort of like a seizure, I imagine. Only for her it lasts much longer. Perhaps even forever . . .
I turn my gaze once again to the lakeshore. The two lovers shake hands, nothing more, for the last time. Before I see Alessia let go of Doyle’s grip, she drops her gaze and lightly touches her belly. Then she withdraws her hand without shedding a single tear, turns on her heels, and walks mechanically back to the Conté de Bargona, as if she were marching into the depths of the ocean to drown. He simply folds his arms and waits for her with an arrogant smile.
Kill him!
The ruby heart hisses to me.
Make him pay for what he does.
He destroys everything.
The stone has become hot in my hands and I drop it to the ground, my eyes blinking open in pain.
I’m waving my hands in the air, already feeling the blisters form on my palms.
“She’s here!” I gasp, blowing on my skin.
I gaze at Creek in the darkness, my body trembling from what I’ve witnessed.
“Her soul—it’s in this stone, Creek. Just like Martiya.”
“But you said she isn’t dead,” Creek replies, uneasy. “How can she be inside—”
“I don’t know,” I shake my head. “I think it’s because her heart was broken. Maybe beyond repair, after losing my dad and her baby.”
“So Martiya protects her,” Creek nods, studying the stone on the ground. “Protects what’s left of her cracked spirit.”
In the moonlight, we can see that the stone has become so hot in Martiya’s rage that the leaves around it have begun to smoke.
“C-Creek,” I stutter, deeply intimidated by what I’ve seen, “she wants me to . . . kill . . . him.”
“Who?”
“Martiya,” I confess. “She wants me to kill the Conté de Bargona.”
Chapter 16
“No!” Creek cries out in the dim light, shocking me awake. “Don’t hurt her! Don’t you dare hit Caroline . . .”
We’d decided after miles of walking last night, and barely being able to see, to bed down along the gypsy trail till dawn. But in the hush of sunrise, Creek is standing over me in the woods, taking swings.
At no one I can see.
I bolt to my feet and swiftly back up, fearing the brutal force of his blows.
“Creek,” I whisper in a hoarse voice, not wanting to give away our whereabouts, “it’s okay, you’re having a bad dream!”
He doesn’t appear to hear me and throws a high kick, as though aiming at someone’s head. When his boot lands hard against a tree, it jolts him awake. His eyes blink rapidly, confused and beginning to focus.
What I see next I’ve never witnessed before since meeting him. Creek’s typical wolf-like gaze is gone. And in his eyes is the horror of a child . . .
He’s ten years old again, watching his mom’s boyfriend beat her.
Welcome to Creek’s childhood.
His mom’s boyfriend was the guy who burned Creek and his brother Dooley with cigarettes and lighters, just for kicks. Carved designs into their skin with a knife to watch them scream. The same man who got Creek’s mother so addicted that she didn’t see the rope burns from when he tied the boys up so they’d be “good” while he got high. Granny Tinker filled me in on a few snippets of Creek’s past, so I might understand why he acts the way he does sometimes.
Yet all I can do is stand here, horrified and allowing Creek the space to realize that his mom’s boyfriend is no longer here.
But I know it’s a lie—
Because ever since he killed Creek’s mom, that man is always with Creek. Trailing him, haunting him, bearing weight on Creek’s soul, like the ruby stone that hangs around his neck.
I thrust my head between my hands.
We certainly have a lot of baggage, don’t we?
“I didn’t hurt you, did I sweetheart?” Creek bursts, fully awake now and desperately peeling away my fingers from my face. He wraps me in his arms. “Oh God, tell me I didn’t strike you—”
“I’m all right, I’m okay,” I nod, but in the pale sunrise Creek spies the tears that have welled in my eyes.
“Creek, what’s happening to us?” I blurt, hearing the traces of dread in my voice. “That stone—Martiya—wants de Bargona dead,” I point at his chest. “And you want your mother’s boyfriend dead. We’ve already killed two people, and we seem to be careening down this bloody trail of vengeance—when we barely got married! What are we becoming?”
“No!” Creek grabs my wrists with a power bordering on pain. I feel his fingernails dig into my skin. “That’s not what this is about. Fuck what Martiya wants! We’re here to free your mother—crazy or not, she doesn’t deserve to live confined for the rest of her life because she went nuts after losing your dad and you.”
He steals a quick glance at the wisp of light on the horizon barely peeking through
the mountain spires. He lowers my wrists and places my fingers on the ruby heart around his neck, clutching my hands in his big palms. For the life of me, I thought I felt the heart pulse.
“We’re here to free you, Robin,” he says. “From all the pain that has influenced your life.”
I stand taller, staring straight into his eyes.
I know Creek means well, and I know he’s right. Only when I see my mother, and at least try to let her know I’m alive and still love her, can I let go of the past—even if it doesn’t turn out the way I want.
But I also know Creek has a boatload of pain he’s never been willing to talk about.
“What about you?” I demand. “And don’t you for a second give me Mr. Stone-Cold-Tough-Guy here. Last time I checked, your pain outweighs mine by a few megatons.”
Creek says nothing, and it makes me want to scream. I don’t think I can handle his silence yet one more time, and if he keeps it up I’m about ready to slap him—his lethal right hook be damned. But to my surprise, he takes a deep breath and leans in closer, tipping his forehead against mine.
“In healing you Robin, I heal me,” he breathes. “I don’t know where that asshole is who killed my mom. And maybe I’ll never know. But if I can make one woman’s life better, prove to her that love can be okay, that it doesn’t have to hurt and it can last forever—well, then maybe I can prove that to me, too.”
The sun has begun to dance a little on the back of his cropped hair, making him look like a scruffy angel. A very sad angel, with the weight of over 500 years of tragedy linked around his neck.
“We owe this to ourselves, don’t you see that, Robin?” Creek implores. “You have a mom. You have a chance to not go around haunted for the rest of your life. Like me.”
I’m stunned at Creek’s admission, that he actually formed words for his pain. And in spite of everything we’ve been through so far, I feel closer to him than ever before. Like maybe I finally broke through his ice a little. My hands cup his cheeks, knowing how hard it is for him to let that side of his heart be laid bare.
Stone of Thieves (Robbin' Hearts Series Book 2) Page 11