Nightwing

by Lynn Michaels

  In the Light of the Sun,

  And of the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit.

  “I’ve never been any good with riddles,” she said as she gave the diary back to him. “How ‘bout you?”

  Johnny frowned and shook his head. Willie’s heart sank.

  “Then we have no choice but to trust Raven.”

  “I must, yes,” Johnny signed, “but you must—”

  Something. His fingers moved too fast for Willie to follow. She picked up the dictionary and said, “Sign it again.”

  He dragged a frustrated hand through his hair, rose and turned on his knees, plucked a pencil and a notepad out of the clutter on her desk, scribbled and gave it to her.

  “The Ritual may be dangerous. You must go before Raven comes. You will be safe and the other will not come back.”

  “Other?” Willie blinked at him. “What other?”

  Johnny shrugged, took the pad back and wrote, “I don’t know. It came last night in the body of a lynx. I thought it was Raven, but it was a creature far worse. It came for Raven and the stone he wears in his ring.”

  “Yikes.” Willie remembered the column in the Chronicle and shivered. So much for hoping Nekhat was just a clever vampire lie. If Johnny had seen him he had to be real. So did the threat to Stonebridge. “Raven said he’d come for the moonstone.”

  “Who?” Johnny flashed the sign in her face, startling her out of her daze.

  “Nekhat,” she said, rubbing her arms. “The monster who made Raven a vampire and you a homeless person.”

  He finger-spelled the name slowly, a frown of concentration drawing his eyebrows together. He spelled it again, shaking his head, and made the swipe across his forehead that meant, “I can’t remember.”

  “Thank God for small favors.” Willie sighed and pushed to her feet, steadying herself against the pedestal mirror as her head spun. Too many shocks and not nearly enough brandy, she thought ruefully.

  The sun had faded; the shadows beneath the oak tree outside the window were deepening. No wonder. Her desk dock said it was nearly six-thirty. How long had she and Johnny slow-danced in front of the mirror?

  Long enough, Willie realized as he straightened beside her, to make her forget all about hopping a plane to Alaska. The open throat of his shirt made her pulse thud; Lord Byron himself would have done murder for the unconsciously artful tangle of Johnny’s hair over his forehead. And what a shame it was that breeches that fit like a banana skin had gone out of fashion.

  Not that he didn’t look good in jeans. Or was that Raven? Willie didn’t know. She only knew that she’d no more been sucked by happenstance into Johnny and Raven’s struggle than Betsy Boyle had bought Beaches by accident.

  It was a heavy concept and cosmic beyond her grasp. She didn’t understand it; she only felt the rightness of it in her heart. It wasn’t coincidence that she had come to Beaches every summer when Johnny came. She was meant to play a part in this. Willie didn’t know the what or how of it, but there was only one way to find out. God help her. God help them all.

  “We’ve met the enemy, Johnny,” she told him solemnly. “And he’s you.”

  Chapter 16

  It was their first fight, a real doozy. Willie cried and threw things. Nothing worked until she ran upstairs and locked herself in the bathroom. It took Johnny three minutes and four seconds to slide a hastily scrawled note under the door. “You win. I’ll let you meet with Raven on the terrace first to make sure of his intentions.”

  “Yesss!” Willie made a victory fist and opened the bathroom door. Johnny glowered at her in the mirror and handed her another note. “Next time I’ll have my body back and I’ll break down the door.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Willie ripped the note in two and tossed it in the air. “Before or after you hit me over the head with your club and drag me off to your cave?”

  Johnny grabbed half the fluttering note, scribbled with the blue pencil he’d found on her desk and thrust the note at her. “Gentlemen of my day used a buggy whip.”

  “Oh, really?” Willie’s gaze shot from the note to Johnny’s face. “Well, now, hear this, Mr. Edwardian tyrant—”

  He grinned and winked, his eyes dancing with amusement. Willie stared, openmouthed. She was looking straight at Johnny, not the mirror, but she didn’t feel the least bit dizzy. Yesterday he’d looked fuzzy; now he looked—opaque. The outline of his body was quite distinct.

  “Ether you’re getting stronger,” she said, “or I’m getting used to this. I can almost see you without the mirror.”

  He blinked, held up his hands, turned them over several times and then raised an eyebrow at her. She could also see the first fingers of sunset backlighting his hair and washing his shirt lavender.

  “Uh-oh,” she said. “It’s almost sundown.”

  Johnny glanced at the window, then at Willie and made a sign with his arms crossed.

  “You bet I’m scared. You’ve had 117 years to get used to the idea that your evil twin is a vampire. I’ve only had a couple days.”

  Two days that seemed like a lifetime. How ironic that was, since two lives, hers and Johnny’s—three, including Raven’s, if you figured it that way—hinged on what would happen when the moon was full three nights from now.

  Not only full but eclipsed. Willie had read that in the almanac, too, but Raven hadn’t said a word about it. He’d told her only that the Ritual had to be performed on the second night of the full moon. The night of the eclipse, when the earth passed between the sun and the moon.

  Maybe that’s what the line in the Riddle meant—”When the Three are One.” Still, she didn’t like the fact that Raven hadn’t mentioned it. But if he was up to no good, she intended to find out. Brave talk from the woman who’d almost wet her pants when he’d eaten her clove of garlic.

  “Well.” Willie smiled and wiped her suddenly clammy palms on her jeans. “Guess I’ll light the luminarias.”

  Johnny nodded absently, a frown on his face as he held his hands up to the window and studied them. Willie left him to it, touching the cross around her neck for comfort as she went downstairs. The chain was whole, and had been when Raven gave it back to her. She had no idea how he’d done it, or what she was going to say to him.

  Pretend he’s alive, she told herself. You didn’t have any trouble talking to him when you thought he was a living, breathing, rich young doctor.

  What would he be—or better yet, who— after the Ritual? Still Raven, cool and remote as the moon, or Johnny, warm and vibrant as the sun? Would Johnny still love her? Would she still love him? Would the Ritual even work?

  How on earth was such a thing possible? How could the dead become the living? Was she talking to herself? Yes, but not answering—not yet, anyway—so there was still hope. Was there hope for Johnny’s immortal soul? Or was it Raven’s?

  Was it even a mortal soul, and was it theirs rather than his? Willie sighed and ruffled a hand through her hair.

  “You’re right, Frank,” she said as she stepped outside through the French doors. “I am strung out.”

  The sky was a pale, washed-out blue from the storm, fading into a tired, mostly mauve-and-orange twilight. The moon was up, a gray, pockmarked ghost. From the almanac Willie knew it was two-thirds full.

  A hunter’s moon, she thought, and shivered. She opened the storage bin, plucked up three luminarias in each hand and looked at Frank’s house. The windows were dark, the carport empty, and she was glad.

  She’d promised to tell him what was going on, but what could she say? Raven’s a vampire and Johnny’s his disembodied soul, but don’t worry. They’re getting back together, and then he and I will. Until death do us part—again.

  The thought gave Willie a chill as she went back for the rest of the luminarias and the butane fireplace lighter she kept in the bin. She laid it on the table next to the watering can she’d forgotten to put away last night.

  She was exhausted, physically as well as emotionally. Her back and her head ac
hed, her good-as-new-in-the-morning ankle pulsed like a sore tooth. She hadn’t had a shower since… the night before last. Good grief. No wonder she thought she smelled something dead.

  And then she heard the low, snarling growl behind her. She hadn’t smelled anything so vile since old Patches had lugged home a cod that had lain rotting on the beach for at least a week.

  “Like father, like daughter, eh, Callie?” Willie pinched her nose and turned around.

  The cat crouched on the edge of the terrace was a lynx, tawny and spotted. Its tufted ears lay flat against its head, its bobbed tail flicked like a snake’s tongue, and red flames flickered in its eyes.

  Willie’s heart slammed into her ribs and then plummeted to her toes. It came in the body of a lynx, Johnny had told her, for Raven and the stone he wears in his ring.

  The lynx growled, raising gooseflesh on Willie’s arms. She flung a panicked look at the French doors she’d left open, twenty feet away across the flagstone terrace. Quick as a cat moved, she’d never make it.

  Something flickered in the doorway. Hope and her pulse leapt, but it was only the sheers lifting in the evening breeze. Oh, God! Oh, Johnny, help me! She screamed silently, but he didn’t come.

  She was on her own; her only weapon the butane lighter on the table a good five feet away.

  The lynx crept closer, its growl deepening, reverberating on Willie’s bones like the thrum of a big engine in low gear. She thought she saw a flash of red near the top of the driveway behind her Jeep, but didn’t dare look at it.

  If she survived this, she’d tell Lucy there really were bobcats in Stonebridge. She took a deep breath and a sideways, backward step toward the table. The lynx snarled and she froze, her breath seizing at the gleam of its fangs.

  Oh, God, it was big. Forty, maybe fifty pounds of spotted, muscled cat. It turned its head toward the table, the flames in its eyes shrinking. Willie had a heartbeat’s glimpse of a wary intelligence keen enough to register the lighter as a threat.

  When the flames in its eyes leapt again, so did Willie. So did the lynx, like lightning, swiping a paw at her as she grabbed the umbrella pole and pulled herself onto the table. She felt her jeans rip and pain shoot up her left calf, fire and ice so intense it paralyzed her.

  The table rocked beneath her on the flagstones, splashing rainwater out of the watering can, rolling the lighter out of her reach. For a second she could only cling to the pole and watch it wobble toward the edge. Until she saw the wavery image of the lynx through the glass top, gathering itself to spring after her.

  She threw herself across the table at the lighter, her right knee slipping in spilled water. She hit her chin, hard, and her shoulder, too, as she flung out her arm and her hand. Too late to stop the lighter, but just in time to see Johnny’s opaque hand snake out of nowhere and catch it.

  Relief shot through Willie, and another stab of pain, as she pushed up on one elbow and watched him, grim faced, wad one of her best yellow bath towels and strike the lighter. She heard gas hiss and held her breath as Johnny set fire to the towel and threw it at the lynx.

  The cat snarled and cuffed the fireball aside, bouncing it onto the lawn where it lay smoldering in the wet grass. Willie’s heart sank, and her only hope with it, until she heard gravel crunch, lifted her gaze and saw the red Corvette rocket over the crest of the driveway.

  The lynx saw it, too, and wheeled, screaming. Its eerie cry raised the hair on the back of Willie’s neck. So did Raven’s answering snarl as he swerved the Vette around the Jeep, slammed on the brakes and vaulted out of the car. The damp grass at his feet burst into smoky flames, and so did his eyes as he turned on the cat.

  Willie wanted to scream but couldn’t. Horror held her captive; she couldn’t look away from the claws sprouting from Raven’s fingers. The lynx leapt at him, its fangs bared at his throat. Raven spun on one foot, raking his raised right hand at the cat as it hurtled toward him. It fell with a thump, its throat torn open and bleeding, its paws twitching.

  Willie’s throat clenched with terror at the silvery shimmer rising from the body. It shifted and wavered into the shape of a man, tall and broad shouldered with long braided hair. His skin glowed bronze; the gold kilt slung low around his hips gleamed in the flames leaping around him.

  “Nekhat,” Willie breathed.

  He spun toward her, bands of color streaming like tracer bullets from the beads woven into his braided wig. His burning gaze raked over her, almost stopping her heart.

  She saw a flash of bared fangs, the wink of gold in the amulet around his neck, the hole gaping in its center like a dead, empty eye. Then Nekhat whirled and swung a powerful arm at Raven.

  Willie screamed, but his claws, thick and shiny as steel spikes, passed harmlessly through Raven’s body. Nekhat threw back his head. The muscles in his arms and throat bunched. He bellowed like a storm tide crashing on the beach—and vanished in a swirl of iridescent sparks glittering on the wind billowing the fire toward the house.

  Raven swept his right arm over the flames, snuffing them as abruptly as a pinched candle flame. Red flames still flickered in his eyes and there was nothing at all sexy about his mouth pulling back into shape over his receding incisors, nothing gentle about his fingers straightening out of gnarled hooks.

  Oh, God. Retractable fangs and claws. Willie felt her gorge rise, her head spin and a slow, icy numbness seep up her leg. She let her head fall on her outstretched arm long enough to draw a shaky breath, inhaling the acrid, burned-toast smell of scorched grass and the rusty stench of blood.

  She snapped her head up in time to see Johnny duck out of the house with a dishtowel in his hands. He tore it in two and flipped half over his shoulder.

  Willie glanced at her shredded pant leg and swallowed hard at the sight of blood pooling on the tabletop. Dizziness washed through her and she shut her eyes, until Johnny wrapped half of the towel around her leg and wrenched it tight just below her knee. She gasped then rolled over and leaned back on her hands.

  Johnny was glaring at Raven. Willie had flipped through the dictionary enough to recognize the swift, curt sign he made, right fist on his left palm as he raised both hands— “Help me.”

  Raven wanted to help, all right, help himself to the blood pulsing out of Willow Evans’s leg. The scent of it, hot and pungent as raw chocolate, sent his senses screaming.

  He was ravenous, his system stuck in overdrive from the day spent in avian form. It was easy to gorge, so he’d fed lightly. He hadn’t anticipated this, or the brush with Nekhat. Even in essence he was staggeringly powerful. Raven felt weak and shaky, his hunger a raw, gutting pain.

  He forced his hunger back, and his fangs into their sheaths, and then he approached the table, slowly, where his Shade hovered protectively over Willow Evans.

  It didn’t shrink away, yet Raven wished it would. It was agony to see his face after so long a time, to taste the emotions radiating from his Shade: cold tart fear, hazy brown confusion, hot red anger. The feelings tugged on his senses, yet repelled him. He felt sick and wanted to gag.

  Willow Evans nearly did when he cupped her badly clawed calf in his hand. The shiver of revulsion that ran through her made his fangs slide forward reflexively. They pricked his lips and filled his mouth with saliva.

  “So, are you going to sew me up?” she asked breathlessly. “Or am I dinner?”

  Chapter 17

  Her voice was as thin as the pulse Raven could feel skipping erratically behind her knee. Her brown eyes were glassy, the irises huge, her pupils dilated. Sure signs of hysteria and the beginning of shock from blood loss.

  Even in the smoky dark he could see the torn gastrocnemius muscle and shredded anterior tibial vein. There was still some seepage from the three-inch slash crawling with staph bacteria from the cat’s claws. He was the only doctor on the planet who could see the bacteria without a microscope— and the only physician with a screaming need to drink his patient’s blood.

  He closed his eyes and his nostril
s until the heady scent of blood faded. He felt his Shade edge closer, wary and warning, felt the cool clamminess of Willow Evans’s skin through her ripped jeans.

  It would be flaming by the time he got her to Stonebridge General. There were antibiotics there, plasma to replace the blood she’d lost, and questions he couldn’t avoid.

  And there was Nekhat. Long before the first Norseman sailed into Stonebridge harbor, Nekhat had learned how to master the elements. Already the wind had shifted, gusting out of the south. Nekhat would be here within hours to reclaim the moonstone and wreak vengeance for its theft.

  “I can’t sew you up here,” Raven said. “You need surgery to repair the vein and physical therapy to rebuild the muscle. Neither of which we have time for.”

  “I was afraid you were going to say that. How long before Nekhat comes for the moonstone?”

  “Soon.” Sooner than she could imagine, but there was no point frightening her. “If we aren’t here, most likely will bypass Stonebridge in favor of pursuing the moonstone.”

  “How likely?”

  He rubbed a hand over his mouth, but it didn’t help. His fangs still throbbed. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

  Willie blinked, surprised. She’d expected lies and false assurances. “I can’t go anyplace with this leg. You’re the doctor. Short of surgery, what do you suggest?”

  He was a vampire, too. A very hungry one. Willie saw it in the faint red gleam in his eyes and the tremble she’d noticed in the hand he’d wiped across his face.

  “A vampire rarely kills its victims,” he told her. “A corpse drained of blood with punctures in the neck points rather obviously at the cause of death. My saliva actually contains an ingenious coagulant and several fearsome antibodies. I can close your wound within minutes and kill any infection.”

  “And have dinner on me while you’re at it?”

  “By morning you won’t even have a scar.”

  “You could make a killing in plastic surgery.”

  Willie knew she sounded as goofy and giddy as she felt. She knew, too, that something had to be done about her light-headedness. And fast.