Martiya recedes to the opposite wall, her entire form ablaze. Yet in spite of her fierce front, I detect fear in her eyes.
That’s when I know I’ve got her. While Alessia continues to rock and sing, I swipe my finger along the blood on my lip and stride right up to Martiya to grab her by the throat. “Eat it!” I cry, jamming my finger into her mouth. Her form burns so hot at my hands I have to let her go, waving the blisters from my fingers. I give her a shove with my boot and watch her topple from her high platform shoes to the floor. At that moment, I spy the cracks beneath her scarlet gown—the star-like fissures of the ruby heart.
Follow your star, Zuhna insisted, and that’s exactly what I intend to do to escape. “Come, Martiya,” I command. I may not be able to persuade my mother, but Martiya tasted my blood, and as far as I’m concerned, she’s my servant now. “We’re leaving this stone.”
I grab her by the hair and dive for the cracks of the star, willing myself to become vapor again. In one loud whoosh, we’re outside, hovering over the tree branch near the ruby heart like pockets of mist. But it’s nearly dark all around us as the setting sun casts a striking swath of indigo and lavender hues across the sky.
To my astonishment, I see a silhouette.
It’s a man perched in our tree, balancing precariously between two limbs and knocking in a fury on the trunk. In the dim light, I can tell his knuckles are all bloody. It’s Creek! Below him, at the base of the tree is a small group of people, including my . . . my father? He stands next to Zuhna and holds Alessia in his arms, with my own body lying at his feet. Both Alessia and I appear unconscious, our limbs as limp as ribbons.
“Robin!” I hear Creek shout, pounding fiercely. “Robin, where are you?”
“I’m here! Creek! Here!” I cry. But though Creek searches the tree and appears confused, as if he’d heard a far-off radio signal in the air, he can’t quite make out my form nearby in the twilight.
Letting go of Martiya, I swiftly race to inhabit my body again. The next thing I know, I smell the moist spring grass and earth beneath me, feel the throb of my heart and taste the blood that still dribbles from my lip. Trembling, I perch on my elbows and stare at my father, who holds the love of his life in his arms like a protective angel.
“Daddy!” I gasp, gazing at both him and Zuhna in wonder. “You’re—you’re here!”
Doyle is so stunned by my words that he nearly falls to his knees with my mother in his arms. Shaking, he sets her carefully on the grass beside Zuhna, where her cheek drops slack to the soft ground like a lifeless doll. Zuhna crouches to caress her hair, speaking softly to her in Italian, while Doyle kneels in front of me and cups my cheeks in his hands.
“My-My girl,” he sighs with a heartbreaking tenderness, like I’ve come back from the dead. “You were almost comatose for two whole weeks. Creek had me fly here from Ohio to help find the stone and draw you out with your mother. Everyone at Turtle Shores pitched in for the fare.”
When he kisses me on the forehead, his big hands holding my face like he’ll never let go, I’m stunned that what felt like an hour in the stone was really a fortnight. And it begins to sink in how much my father has recovered from his stroke, both in speech and the use of his muscles. I stare straight into his eyes with apology.
“Oh Daddy, I tried! But Alessia’s spirit is still in the stone,” I confess breathlessly. “She was young when she was trapped. She hardly knows anything else.”
I point at a red, misty patch floating near us in the air, the kind of weird phenomenon the folks at Bender Lake would call a “will-o-the-wisp,” and return my gaze to Doyle.
“That’s Martiya, Mom’s ancestor who convinced her never to leave. Alessia’s stuck inside the power of the stone.”
“No,” my father replies adamantly, shaking his head. He drops his hands from my cheeks and lifts my chin with his finger, gazing into my eyes. “The stone has no power.”
At that moment, Creek spies me from his high perch on a tree limb and leaps down, dashing over to us with just a few strides. He scoops me up in his arms and hugs me so tight I nearly burst.
“Robin! Oh, Robin—it’s you!” he cries. He squeezes me tighter and sways me in his arms before setting me to my feet. His blonde messy hair, tan skin, and almost golden aura envelop me, shimmering inside my every cell. And in that moment the world is mine—all mine, not Martiya’s! The way he looks at me, as though I’m the very air he breathes, makes me wonder if Zuhna was right—by forcing us to go by feel to find each other, we became a part one another more than ever before.
“I-I heard you. Right here,” Creek confesses, patting his broad chest that’s still bound by bandages, “in my heart.” His crystal blue eyes search mine for a moment before he continues. “We had to abandon our weapons in a river when the polizia spotted us, along with your dad’s cell phone and GPS that betrayed our locations. We talked our way out of suspicion, and they moved on pretty fast. I can’t quite explain it, but after that the way I found you was this strange echo of knocking, then the sound of singing, like . . . like a lullaby? It was this odd radar that led me to you.” He sweeps my wayward hair from my eyes and steals a deep kiss, his tongue tasting the blood on my lip. “Blood on blood, sweetheart. I think that’s why I could hear you. Because we’re connected now.”
“Yes, quite connected,” a rich voice calls to us through the twilight, but it isn’t my father’s. “And I’ll make certain your connection lasts forever—in death.”
I hear the hollow scrape of metal as he cocks a shotgun, but I don’t need to whip around to know who’s spoken these words.
It’s Vittorio de Bargona. And he’s found us.
Slowly, I turn to face my grandfather.
“You know how much I love beauty and symmetry,” he says, staring at the dark stretch of trail that leads to God knows what gypsy camp. Behind him are four large men with guns as long as their legs, and in the distance I spy their van. The Conté holds up his weapon that glints in the last glow of the setting sun. “What a fitting end this will be,” he continues, “for you two lovers to die in a gypsy hideout, just like your ancestor Martiya and her lover Bohemas.”
Martiya’s mist blazes redder, but she appears powerless outside the stone.
“No, let’s make that all four lovers—two whole generations of reckless de Bargona women and their trash men. The stone must be around here somewhere, sì?”
He walks up to Zuhna and points the shotgun at her chest while his men surround us in a circle.
“Zuhna, Zuhna,” he purrs. “We go back so many years, don’t-a we? To the days when you used to hide Alessia from me when she would run away as a girl, and claim you hadn’t seen her. My men made sure you would never see again, didn’t they, dear Zuhna?”
I shudder from the horror of his words, and the incredible loyalty of this gypsy woman, but Zuhna doesn’t flinch. She stands erect, her dark eyes fixed on Vittorio’s face as if she can see right through to his black soul.
“Yet though blind, you always seem to feel what many never see in broad daylight. Isn’t that right, Zuhna?” The Conté waves his gun at the nearby trail and trees. “I bet your falcon knows exactly where the stone is. Shall we find out? Either you call your bird to you with the ruby heart, or I shoot you here right now.”
“No!” I protest, lunging for him, but Creek wraps his arms around me like a vise as de Bargona’s men cock their weapons so fast, it renders me speechless.
To my surprise, my father squares his shoulders and stands taller, despite his weakened right side, to defy Vittorio—the very man who took so much from him.
“There’s no power in that stone,” he asserts in the deepest voice I’ve ever heard come from his chest. His words are slow and measured. “Only what you gave to it.”
My mouth drops. Is he being brave, or is he bluffing again? Either one could get him killed—
“Then why has my daughter looked like that for eighteen years?” Vittorio points to Alessia on the ground
, a shell of a human being with arms and legs splayed in awkward directions. “If the stone had not stolen her spirito?”
“You broke her,” Doyle hisses. “But not anymore. Her heart—her soul—it’s right here,” he pats his chest. “And before you kill us all, I’m taking her back.”
“Alessia,” he leans down and caresses my mother’s hair. “You’re not gone, my love, you live inside me. I know you. Remember those moments that made our hearts come alive? The time I washed your silky hair with rainwater after our swim in Bender Lake? We snuck up and used Granny Tinker’s rain barrel, and she got so mad she made us pluck chickens that night.”
His smile stretches so wide it startles me, his whole face warmed in light.
“Your favorite color’s yellow. Remember how I bought you that pretty sundress? You said it reminded you of dandelions, only you called them dan-dee-leoncinos. And we danced in the moonlight as stars peered over the lake. They reminded you of the cracks in the ruby heart—flickering lights that you said were openings to your soul. How often we walked by starlight, hand in hand, or made love in the back of my old truck under a heap of quilts, counting the stars and listening to their whispers.”
My father hoists her up in his arms again, his right arm trembling.
“There’s never been a night I don’t dream of you. Your face. Your smile. I know your favorite scent—lavender. Where you’re ticklish, where your freckles are. Our daughter’s alive, Alessia! She’s right here. When your father sent her away, I broke the law to find her. I would’ve traveled to the ends of the earth to get our baby girl. I raised her, sweetheart.”
He strokes her cheek gently.
“I didn’t do a very good job, because I didn’t think I could ever be worthy of her—or of you. My life’s been a labyrinth of lies. But she has your heart, Alessia. She’s brave and bold and beautiful, like you used to be. The you I knew—the you I know still! And she follows her heart no matter what. We don’t need a ruby stone to prove our love. That tresora lives inside us. And every day I’ve breathed without you has only made those cracks in my heart bigger—bigger to accept more of you and your soul than ever before. The real magic we have is the love I have for you that will never die.”
When my father leans in to kiss Alessia, his fatigued right arm shaking to hold her close to his lips, something in me breaks.
Something I didn’t really know was there, like a crust over my heart that falls away completely. Creek hugs me tighter, and I can feel his tears against my cheek, as if something in him cracked open, too.
This is it.
This is the end for us—
But at least we’ll die whole, as a family, because we finally know what love is.
The night air is stilled by my father’s confession. No one makes a sound. Not Vittorio or Martiya or even the birds, as though time itself has stretched to embrace this moment and hold it sacred in its powerful arms. My grandfather remains stiff, standing in front of Doyle and Alessia with his lips frozen tight, yet his gun upheld, as if stunned.
“Such foolish words!” he finally breaks, crushing the quiet. He steps up to my dad and swings the butt of his shotgun at his head, making him fall to the ground in a heap with my mother in his arms. “She doesn’t hear you, you idiota!” He shouts at Doyle. Then he turns to glare at Zuhna. “Either give me the stone, or I shoot you all right now.”
“Are you really so stupido, Vittorio?” Zuhna’s lips curl into a half-smile. “I hope, for your sake, you are not afraid of ghosts.” With that, she lifts a finger to the wind, as though she can feel something on the breeze. Then she nods and points at the tree on the gypsy trail that holds the ruby heart.
Strangely, a white mist hovers over the branches. As it begins to float toward my father, it takes on a luminescent, golden color. In the darkening sky, I can make out the form of a woman wearing a yellow sundress and simple, white shoes. Her dark, curly hair spills over her shoulders, appearing windblown, and her arms are outstretched. The nearer she advances to Doyle, the louder I can hear her words.
“È davvero lei? Il mio amore?”
De Bargona’s men lift their gaze to the sky and instantly take several steps back, murmuring in Italian. One of them exclaims “Madone di mia!” and crosses himself before he points his shotgun at the apparition.
“Non essere stupido!” Vittorio cries at them, gesturing at the tree. “Go get the stone! Ora!”
Martiya’s mist by the woods swirls to become a howling wind. “Basta!” she hisses, rushing toward the stone in a stream of sparks. Within seconds, pine needles on the tree erupt into flames. De Bargona’s men begin cursing and crying out for God’s mercy in sprays of Italian. But as Martiya’s glowing presence become brighter, they wail at the top of their lungs. The men turn to dash away in fear.
“Traditores! I kill you—you traitors and your families!” Vittorio cries, uselessly shooting at them as they weave, zig-zag style, from his bullets and dive into the darkness of the woods. A couple of men dropped their weapons in the rush. In a flash, Creek grabs them and then runs toward my grandfather with his gun cocked, tossing one to Doyle. My father stands up and points it at Vittorio. Swiftly, Creek goes to the woods to fetch the ruby heart from its perch before it’s engulfed in flames. As he returns, he holds the stone up by its necklace like a spoil of war.
“Kill him now!” Martiya demands, her rage casting sparks in the sky like fireworks. “It’s our destiny!”
Despite her vehement red display, my father ignores her.
Instead, he leans down to kiss Alessia’s limp body again on the ground. Her spirit hovers near him for a moment, floating like a golden angel, and then with a whooshing sound disappears into her physical chest. A warm glow settles upon her for a few seconds. She wraps her arms around Doyle, her skin fading back to a more human color in the twilight.
“Now’s your chance! Destroy him!” Martiya fumes.
“She’s been through enough—we’ve been through enough!” Doyle retorts, caressing Alessia’s hair. “Don’t you think this is the ultimate revenge? The fact that he could never kill our love—”
“Yes, but there’s one thing I’m going to kill right now,” Creek cuts in with his shotgun raised, staring at Vittorio. “You want this?” He dangles the ruby heart by the necklace, then throws it to the ground. “Let’s see how well you do without it.”
In a blaze of light and noise from his shot gun, Creek fires at the ruby heart, breaking it into pieces.
And all I can hear in that moment is Martiya’s raw, otherworldly wail like a siren ringing across the sky.
“Drop your weapon,” Creek orders Vittorio.
Reluctantly, my grandfather lets it fall to the ground.
“Now take off your clothes.”
As soon as the Conté fumbles to remove his shirt and pants, Creek nods his shotgun at his feet to remove his shoes and socks as well.
Then Creek shoots him in the leg.
Vittorio lets out an agonized scream and curls into a fetal position, clutching his thigh with blood dripping down his fingers.
“This is what you are now,” Creek says, stepping forward to grab his clothes. “A crippled old crazy man who has to walk naked to the nearest town without any I.D. Who runs around trying to explain to everyone about some ruby heart that he thought once gave him power through a bunch of gypsy ghosts. Who’ll rescue you now, Conté de Bargona? Your men have abandoned you.”
Creek glances at the empty space where their van used to be, then up at the red glow of Martiya. “And near as I can tell, you’re gonna be haunted by that bitch for the rest of your days.”
Creek shoves the shotgun in his face.
“And you know what part I find the most amusing? All that money you thought you took from Robin. Well, look for yourself.” He points to Alessia. “Your daughter’s alive! And now she can prove Robin’s alive, too, and they can claim back that account. So go ahead and shove that information up your Swiss banker’s ass. That is, if they e
ver let you out of the loony bin.”
Zuhna taps Creek on the shoulder.
“There’s only one more thing, miri mora,” she says to him.
Above them, her falcon flies along the horizon past the red, setting sun and circles in the sky. She holds out her arm, and the bird descends to her hand and chortles softly. Zuhna nods, listening for a moment. “Devel,” she replies. The bird lifts its wings and flies past Vittorio to the darkness of the woods.
And that’s when we see them—
At first they look like shadows, except they hover in a line near the woods, their feet not quite touching the ground, for as far as we can see.
Goose bumps spread down my neck, and I take a step back and grab Creek’s hand.
“Te’ sorthene,” Zuhna whispers.
Slowly, the phantoms grow larger and begin to take on more form. One of them I recognize as the portly gondolier who helped guide us on the trail from Venice.
Another one looks like an old nun, only with large eyes and dark, gypsy features—perhaps someone at the convent who’d once befriended Alessia.
Still another is a young and beautiful woman with caramel skin and black hair swept up in a bun. She’s wearing a demure, old-fashioned gown with an apron, and I wonder if she was a loyal servant to Martiya. Alongside them gather a whole host of other spirits taking on definition in the murkiness of the woods, each one with swarthy features and black eyes like Zuhna’s.
These are the gypsies who were the friends and protectors of the de Bargona women all along.
“No! It’s not enough!” Martiya cries to the company of ghosts as she floats toward Creek. “You destroyed the stone—we’ll never get justice now!”
But then Bohemas begins to appear among the spirits, wearing his gypsy trousers and peasant shirt and that black mask he once wore to a ball long ago. Rising up from behind the other ghosts, he moves toward us and removes his mask, staring at Doyle and Alessia with the longing of one who’s known a broken heart for centuries.
Stone of Thieves (Robbin' Hearts Series Book 2) Page 16