“You needn’t be aware,” Raven said. “I can make you think of something else.”
“Like what will happen if we don’t leave before Nekhat comes back? No, thanks. I prefer to keep an eye on you.”
She had no choice. Raven felt her horror at the realization, and the terror and the fury blazing from his Shade. He swung his head away as his Shade flew around the table signing frantically to Willow Evans.
“If you don’t like it, then you sew me up,” Willie snapped. “You’re a doctor, too!”
Johnny’s hands flashed pale and opaque in the darkness. She recognized the sign he made, the brush of his right index finger across his left for “I can’t,” figured the cupped palm he held up to his face and rotated from the wrist signified mirror. He meant he couldn’t do it without the mirrors, which Willie had already surmised.
“You said you had no choice but to trust Raven,” she reminded him. “Clearly, I don’t, either.”
It wasn’t exactly what he’d said, but it was close enough. So was Raven, so close that Willie could see dark spatters of blood on his white shirt. Her head spun sickeningly; Raven’s fingers pressed the pulse point in her right wrist.
“Your blood pressure is dropping. It’s now or never.”
Some choice. But life was slipping away from her. She could feel it in the dull ring in her ears, the spots swirling at the corners of her vision.
“Tell me first where we’re going,” Willie said, sliding weakly down on her elbows.
“To Italy.” Raven felt her pressure drop another notch, tightened his grip on her wrist and gave it a boost. “To collect the last item I need for the Ritual.”
Tending to her took strength he didn’t have and sent his hunger soaring. He dosed his eyes until it eased, opened them and saw his Shade offering him the spare towel. Raven glanced at his blood-smeared hands. He wanted to lick them dean but resisted the urge, taking the towel, dipping it in the watering can and wiping them, instead.
“Obviously Johnny has to go with you, but why do I?”
“Because now you are known to Nekhat.”
He didn’t say that made her number one on his hit list, but he didn’t have to. Willie figured as much.
“If we go with you, if the three of us aren’t here when Nekhat comes back, he’ll leave Stonebridge alone, right?”
Raven didn’t answer. Willie pushed up on her hands, but her arms were too weak to hold her. Johnny leapt to catch her as her elbows buckled, but he couldn’t, for there were no mirrors. There was only Raven to slide his arm beneath Willie and ease her back down on the table.
Raven’s arm, too, should have passed through him like smoke, but it didn’t. His wrist bumped Johnny’s elbow as he did so, hard enough to shoot pins and needles all the way up to Johnny’s shoulder. It was impossible. He had no body, no nerves, yet he felt it. Physical sensation, for the first time outside of a mirror in 117 years.
Raven felt it, too. Johnny saw it in the startled leap of his gaze, felt the same jolt that laced up his arm shoot through Raven. He felt his yearning and his loathing at the touch of human flesh—and he felt his hunger. It roared through Johnny, white-hot and ravening, a surge of raw power that sent his senses reeling. He wanted to sink his teeth into Willie’s throat, throw back his head and howl at the moon.
Johnny gripped Raven’s wrist, felt his own flesh, cold and lifeless as the grave. Awareness washed through him, and recognition. It flickered in Raven’s dark eyes beneath the flame of his hunger—for only a moment, hardly more than a heartbeat before he dropped his gaze—along with a gleam of remorse so deep and wrenching it nearly staggered Johnny.
So did the realization that he was no different than Raven. He was a thing neither dead nor alive; a horror trapped in between, an abomination never meant to have existence. He knew it as surely as he knew that if the Ritual didn’t work he would die, and so would Raven. As they should have, as perhaps they were meant to, in Egypt over a century ago.
The certainty of it clutched him, as icy and inexorable as the void waiting to reclaim him on the full moon. He felt only sadness, a deep, grinding sorrow that he’d evaded Raven for so long, so very long, when he was and always had been his only hope of salvation.
The cloying stench of pity rolling off his Shade almost gagged Raven. It singed his senses and burned his nostrils. He beat back the hunger clawing at him. If his Shade hadn’t tightened its grip on his wrist, hadn’t forced his gaze from the pulse throbbing in Willow Evans’s throat, he would have taken her.
For the first time since he lay dying on the floor of Nekhat’s tomb. Raven looked directly into his own eyes. They were dark as midnight. No pupil, no iris. He remembered they’d once been gray, like his father’s. He grasped the memory and clung to it, twisted his grip and grasped his Shade’s wrist. His hunger screamed, recoiled from the contact and curled into a tight, whimpering ball.
His Shade felt it. Raven saw it in the shudder that rippled through him, the tears that welled in his eyes. He felt the ducts swell and overflow, saw his dark fringe of lashes shimmer like the stars winking behind the racing clouds.
A single tear slid from his Shade’s left eye and splashed the back of Raven’s left hand. He felt his skin sizzle, and pain— real, nerve-generated pain—flash up his arm. He jerked his hand free and almost fell, but caught himself on the table, palms spread on either side of Willow Evans.
There was a burn on the back of his hand, about the size of a glowing cigarette tip. It throbbed a raw, angry red, the edges boiling as if he’d spilled add on his hand. Only a second passed—barely more than a flutter of Willow Evans’s pulse—before the surrounding tissue reacted.
The burn vanished but the pain lingered for another few seconds. It hurt abominably, throbbed all the way up to his shoulder, and filled him with such joy he almost laughed.
It was possible. The Ritual could work.
His Shade realized it, too. Raven saw it in the wondrous smile that spread across his face as he wiped the tears from his lashes and rubbed them into his fingertips.
Ten, Willie counted, and opened her eyes.
“Decide quickly, Willow,” Raven said, “or I will.”
“Promise me Nekhat will bypass Stonebridge.”
“I can’t. He’s an aberration, a horror even among vampires. The sooner we go, the better the odds.”
Raven wasn’t asking her to decide the fate of the entire world, just her little corner of it. Still, Willie felt frozen with panic, her hands icy with indecision. But how could she choose wrongly when there was only one choice? She looked at Johnny for reassurance, could see his face and his do-it nod in the flickering moonlight.
“I won’t turn into a vampire, will I?”
“No. I’d have to kill you to turn you.”
“All right.” Willie sighed shakily. “Go ahead.”
“Bring a pillow,” Raven said to Johnny.
Needlessly, for he’d already slid a padded vinyl seat cushion from the nearest chair under Willie’s head. Air whooshed out of it as she lay back and tilted her head to keep an eye on Raven. She stiffened when he raised his right hand and a long, thin claw, razor sharp and silver in the moonlight, slid out from the tip of his index finger.
“I’m going to cut away your pant leg,” he said, and did. Willie felt the denim split, smooth and whispery as silk. Her skin crawled and gooseflesh sprang from every pore.
“You’ll feel this, but I don’t think it will hurt.”
“What do you mean, think?” she demanded, her head spinning as she sprang up on her elbows.
“There’s a certain amount of sensation in any exchange of body fluids. If it hurts, tell me.”
“You bet your ass I will.”
Willie lay down, flung out her arms and gripped the edges of the table. Gently Raven lifted her leg, sat on the table and loosened the tourniquet. Willie sucked air between her teeth as icy-hot needles of feeling came prickling back. She drew a breath and tried to relax—until the imp
lication of what he’d said hit her. She shot up on her elbows again, in time to see Raven bend his head over her slashed calf.
Moonlight glinted on his fangs, three inches long, curved and needle sharp. Pain knifed through Willie as she jerked her leg away and Raven whipped his head toward her. Red flames leapt in his eyes and a growl rumbled in his throat.
“You have passed an AIDS test?”
“Don’t be idiotic,” he snarled. “I’m dead.”
“Yeah, but I’m not, and I don’t wanna be.”
“Suffice it to say that several HIV positive patients in my care have experienced miraculous cures.”
“Oh.” Willie lay down again, the pain in her calf easing but her heart slamming against her rib cage. “In that case, you oughta bottle that stuff.”
“Lie still.” Raven removed the tourniquet and raised her leg from his lap.
“How do you handle being around blood all the time?”
“I feed well before my shift.”
“What’s a good meal for a vampire? Two pints? Three?”
“Willow.” The growl in Raven’s voice deepened. “Shut up.”
“Sorry! I’m nervous, okay?”
Johnny leaned over her and smiled, not exactly blocking but at least blurring her view of Raven. He held up his right hand and signed, “I love you.”
“Oh, Johnny.” Willie sighed shakily. “I love you, too.”
He leaned closer and traced the curve of her jaw with his curled knuckles. She could almost feel it, as she’d almost felt the kiss he’d given her when the starfish stung her. She knew Johnny was deliberately distracting her from whatever Raven was doing, and that was peachy keen with her.
The moon glowed faintly through him, and two stars drifting beside the moon seemed to be flickering in his eyes: tiny points of light winking like the gems flanking the moonstone. Of course, they weren’t winking. It was only a trick of the light, caused by the clouds scudding across the moon, maybe, or the madly thrashing trees.
Such things weren’t possible. Neither were vampires, but there was one sucking on her leg. She could feel the tug on her flesh, the blood being siphoned from her body. Terror shot her heart up her throat and snatched her breath.
She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t move. Her heart beat more and more slowly. She imagined an EKG printout: spikes rolling into waves, the waves evening out into a flat, dead line.
Oh, God, she was dying. Raven had lied to her. He was killing her, as Nekhat had killed him, and she couldn’t stop him. Her muscles were frozen, her vision was fading. A scream she couldn’t voice rang in her head. She couldn’t see Johnny’s face anymore, only the stars in his eyes—cold, fiery suns blazing millions of light-years away, yet so close she could reach out and touch them. If only she could move.
Raise your hand, Willow, Raven snarled in her mind. His voice vibrated with annoyance in her bones and every cell in her body. You are not paralyzed. Nor are you dying.
Her right wrist jerked involuntarily. Relief flooded Willie, and a surge of something that felt like adrenaline. Only ten times better, ten times stronger than the hypo she’d taken for a killer case of hives from a penicillin allergy.
It sent her senses spiraling out of her body. She felt as if she was floating above the terrace. The stars in Johnny’s eyes spun closer in slow motion: blinding and glorious, pin-wheeling colors she’d never seen before in her head. Oh, wow, Willie thought dazedly. Oh, wow, what a light show.
His Shade shot Raven a worried frown as Raven raised his head. His fangs retracted, sated and dulled. His hunger quieted and began to purr.
So did the small calico cat that came slinking out of the shadows and jumped onto the table. She sniffed at him and Willow Evans, sensed his Shade and hissed, her gold eyes narrowing. Raven soothed her with an outstretched palm and glanced at Willow.
Her pupils were huge, her lips parted in a lopsided grin. Raven brushed her mind, caught a glimpse of the fireworks streaking behind her eyelids and adjusted her blood pressure to ease the intercranial pressure causing it. Medically speaking, she was higher than a kite. An interesting effect to have on a woman. Raven reflected wryly. One he’d never even imagined, let alone possessed, when he was mortal.
“She’ll be fine in a moment,” he told his Shade, shifting his attention to her leg cradled in his lap.
The vicious slash was now nothing more than a puckered pink seam. Raven raised her leg again and ran his tongue slowly along the ridge of newly healed flesh. He felt the chill of gooseflesh that crawled through her, the shudder of revulsion from his Shade. When he raised his head the seam had faded to a thin white line, and Willow Evans was blinking at him, bleary-eyed.
“Thank you,” she said, swallowing hard, “but if you ever touch me again. I’ll put a stake through your heart.”
“Don’t worry.” Raven pressed his fingertips gently between her eyebrows. “You’ll get your chance.”
When her lashes fluttered shut, he picked her up and carried her into the house. His Shade followed, hovering anxiously, covering Willow with a crocheted afghan as Raven laid her on a rose-colored couch. He said nothing when his Shade sat beside her and smoothed her tangled hair off her brow, merely shivered and went back to the terrace.
He lapped up the blood spilled on the table, growling in the back of his throat when the calico cat crept too near. She fled, her tail bristling, when he set fire to the carcass of the lynx with a flick of one finger, but came back once he’d scattered the pile of ash over the burned lawn and regenerated the grass with what passed in his body for urine.
The cat sat on the table watching him. When the new seed sprouted, hissing softly above the rustle of the wind in the trees as it sprang up and swallowed the scorched spots, her ears pricked forward and her eyes narrowed. When he came back to the table she arched her back beneath his outstretched palm.
You must go. Raven purred to Callie, fixing in her mind a place he remembered from his boyhood with trees and water and fat rabbits—a place he’d fought to hold in his memory when so much else of his mortal life had slipped away from him. You will know when it’s safe to return.
Callie blinked up at him and meowed, jumped off the table and disappeared into the darkness.
Chapter 18
Twelve hours after Raven sank his fangs into her leg, Willie was in Italy. On the island of Sardinia off the Mediterranean coast, driving a green Fiat convertible through the Gennargentu Mountains where she was supposed to meet Raven at sunset, in the provincial town of Nuoro.
She didn’t need a road map. Before she’d boarded the flight to Rome in Boston, Raven had put into her head the directions and all the Italian she’d need to negotiate the car rental, find bathrooms and buy food. He’d done it with a two-fingered touch between her eyebrows. Sort of a Vulcan mind-meld.
She wished Johnny was with her. He’d signed to her before they’d left Beaches that he would be, every step of the way; she just wouldn’t be able to see him. And she hadn’t since he’d blown her a kiss and faded away into the garish lights of the parking garage in Boston.
“Don’t worry how I’ll get there,” Raven had told her curtly when she’d asked. “The moonstone will see to it.”
She’d puzzled over that until the pink haze of dawn overtook the jumbo jet halfway across the Atlantic and she remembered Raven telling her the ancients called the moonstone the traveler’s stone because it protected those who traveled by night —particularly on the water when the moon was full. Then she’d closed the shade and decided what she didn’t know couldn’t scare her any more than she was scared already.
She wondered if Frank had found her note, if Whit had played the message she’d left on his voice mail. She wondered how her father had taken the news that she’d run away with a handsome, rich young doctor. Probably turned cartwheels.
The elopement was Johnny’s idea. Not that Willie thought Whit or Frank would believe it. She was worried sick they’d come after her, wondered how she’d explai
n coming home alone if the Ritual didn’t work. Mostly she was just plain scared.
The awful mountain roads, narrow and twisting through heavily wooded highlands and stretches of heath, didn’t help. As the sun sank lower toward the craggy peaks squeezing the road between them, long shadows began to slant across the hood of the Fiat. The dashboard dock said it was almost five. She didn’t feel as though she’d been driving for two hours. She felt as though she’d been driving forever.
She leaned forward and peered up at the sky. It was still clear as a bell, the hot, milky blue of the lowlands deepening to a vivid cobalt just tinged with sunset as the road wound higher. It was not comforting. It meant Nekhat had yet to sense the moonstone’s direction. She yearned to see angry dark clouds boiling over the jagged slopes, as they had swept furiously out of the south across the freeway when Raven had driven the Corvette hell bent for leather toward Boston. Only because it would mean Nekhat had bypassed Stonebridge.
The sun dipped out of sight below the bulk of the mountain, sifting gauzy mauve twilight over the road and turning the Fiat’s hood purple. Willie saw a turnaround ahead and pulled in to it. Raven had told her there were still banditos in the mountains and had warned her not to stop, but Raven wasn’t here; neither was Johnny, and she needed a break.
The turnaround overlooked a gorge tunneling away to the southwest into a gorse-dotted valley thick with purple shadows in the fading daylight. Looks like bandito country, Willie thought, chafing her arms as she got out of the car and leaned on the trunk. It was much cooler up here, even cooler than it was in the car with the air on. Time to put on the black turtleneck Raven had insisted she bring.
Willie turned to open the trunk and saw the raven perched on the guardrail edging the turnaround, the moonstone ring flashing dully in its beak. The keys slipped out of her fingers and landed at her feet with a jingling clunk. She snatched them up and glared at the bird.
“You made good time,” she said. “Catch a tail wind?”
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