Nightwing

by Lynn Michaels

  The raven swooped onto the Fiat’s black vinyl top and dropped the ring. It cawed at her, wings spread and neck feathers ruffled.

  “Oh, calm down. I haven’t seen a single bandit.” Willie took Raven’s grip out of the trunk, tossed it onto the driver’s seat and opened the passenger door. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not watch this. Once was enough.”

  The raven picked up the ring in its beak, hopped from the top of the car to the ground, then onto the passenger seat. Willie went back to the trunk and shut it and leaned against it, her heart thudding in her throat.

  What was she doing here? How could she be in love with Johnny? She’d only known him three days, and he didn’t even have a body, for God’s sake. If the Ritual didn’t work, what would happen to him? What would happen to her? How in hell would she ever be able to put her life back together?

  Willie closed her eyes, prayed Nekhat had bypassed Stonebridge and that Frank was all right. A stiff gust of wind skittered grit across the toes of her Reeboks and blew her hair in her face again. She reached up to tug it away, felt something brush her cheek and almost wrenched her arm out of the socket flinging it away.

  Her eyes sprang open and her heart leapt up her throat when she saw Johnny standing to front of her, his hair and the sleeves of his shirt fluttering in the wind. She didn’t know where he’d come from or how, and she didn’t care.

  “Oh, Johnny.” Willie pressed her hand to the base of her throat and sighed. “Thank God you’re here.”

  He gave her a wry, where-else-would-I-be smile with a lifted eyebrow, swept the hair out of her face and tucked it behind her ear. Willie strained her senses to feel his touch, almost could and savored the feathery brush of his knuckles against her cheek.

  “Willow,” Raven said behind her.

  Willie glanced at him over her shoulder. He stood beside the car shrugging into a dark long-sleeved shirt. He caught her eye and nodded toward the gorge. Willie looked and shot off the Fiat, gooseflesh rising on her arms.

  Moments ago the sky had been clear, now there was a bank of dark clouds soaring above the far horizon. No natural storm could move so fast. It was Nekhat. It had to be.

  “Don’t even think his name.” Raven came quickly around the car, shut his grip in the trunk and plucked the key from the lock. “Thought is a magnet. It will only draw him.”

  “Oh, wonderful.” Willie felt Johnny edge nearer and her knees start to tremble. “How close is he?”

  Raven looked down the gorge and then lifted his head into the wind. His eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared.

  “Just making landfall,” he said. “Near Oristano.”

  Roughly a hundred miles, Willie knew from the map in the guidebook she’d bought and read on the plane. Nowhere near as close as it looked from this vantage point. Still, panic jolted through her. All she could think of was Nekhat; all she could see in her head was the slow, horrifying replay of his rise from the lynx.

  The wind gusted, sending Johnny’s hair streaming behind him as he came up beside her and looked down the gorge. Willie shivered at his grim, tight-jawed expression, the eerie flash of distant lightning flickering across his face.

  “Willow.” Raven caught her chin and turned her face toward him, trapping her gaze in his dark, strange eyes.

  The last time Raven had felt such numbing terror he’d felt it in himself, as he lay dying on the floor of Nekhat’s tomb. He could see it now and taste it, could sense its paler shadow in his Shade: stark, blanched-white fear, reeking of ozone. He felt Willow Evans’s heart pound wildly, her blood pressure rocket and her pulse skip erratically.

  He traced his way backward through her veins and arteries, calming her, slowing her heartbeat. When she blinked he eased his grip, dipped into her mind, found her terror there and eliminated that, too.

  His hunger stirred and his Shade whirled toward him, its fear and alarm vivid as a laser. Raven flicked the beam aside with a thought, caught Willow as she swooned and lifted her back onto the Fiat. She wobbled dizzily but flung out her hands and steadied herself, leaning forward with her head bowed over her knees.

  His Shade swooped closer, wary, warning—and jealous. Raven almost laughed, amazed, for its aura truly was green – and electric, sizzling with musky cinnamon pheromones that burned in his nostrils until he took his hands off Willow. Then his Shade relaxed, his jealousy fading to sea-foam envy and longing as salty as tears.

  Raven’s hunger howled at the sting of it on his senses. He looked down the gorge, saw the dark stain of the storm thinning as it spread across the horizon. Nekhat was still seeking, but now he was confused and thrown off the scent.

  “Thank you, I think,” Willow said, raising her chin bravely when he faced her. “But if you ever touch me again, so help me God I will put a stake through your heart.”

  “Hold that thought, Willow. You’ll get your chance.”

  “I’m sure you’d hold still for that.” She snorted ruefully.

  “Hopefully I’ll be able to.”

  She tipped her head to one side and asked warily, “What do you mean?”

  “Think, Willow,” Raven snapped, a faint snarl in his voice. His senses crawled with hunger and Nekhat’s nearness. “The Sacred Cedar. What do you suppose it is?”

  “Well, it’s wood, I guess.” She shrugged and then froze, her spine snapping straight, her eyes leaping wide with disbelief. “Oh, my God. It’s a stake.”

  Of course it was. It had to be. Raven’s smile confirmed it, and explained his comment that hopefully he’d be able to hold still for it. The question was, could Willie?

  “Wait a minute,” she breathed shakily, and slid off the Fiat. “Now you are known to you-know-who, my foot. You brought me along to put a stake through your heart.”

  “If I could I’d do it myself,” Raven replied matter-of-factly, “but a vampire’s primary instinct is to survive. I can’t kill myself. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

  “Not very hard, I’ll bet,” Willie retorted. “You don’t look the least damn bit miserable to me.”

  “I’m not. He is.” Raven nodded at Johnny, who was frowning worriedly between them. “My body is dead, Willow, but my brain is every bit as alive as yours. My Shade took my emotions with him, but I can read yours as easily as I read a book. I know what I am through you, and I loathe myself.”

  “That doesn’t tell me why I have to put a stake through your heart.”

  “It’s the only way to kill a vampire, and the monster must die for the man to live. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Simple?” Willie heard the shrill to her voice, felt her heart thumping in her ears. “How can you call killing someone— even a vampire—simple?”

  “There’s no other way.”

  “There must be!”

  “I’ve spent the last 117 years looking, Willow.” Raven’s smile twisted wryly. “Believe me, if there was, I would have found it.”

  “Well, you better keep looking, ‘cause I won’t do it.”

  “Then go. You aren’t indispensable, merely expeditious. I’ll take some other mortal in Thrall to do it.”

  Raven tossed her the car keys. She caught them; her eyes widened with surprise, then narrowed as she wheeled away with a curt, “Let’s go, Johnny.”

  Willie slid behind the wheel and started the engine before she realized Johnny wasn’t with her. She looked up and saw him in the rearview mirror, still standing behind the car with Raven, his hair and his sleeves fluttering, his gaze locking with hers in the mirror through the back window. She knew what it meant, switched off the engine, got out of the car and bit her lip to keep from crying. Or screaming.

  “I can’t do this, Johnny,” she told him shakily. “I can’t kill anyone. Not even a vampire.”

  “You must,” he signed, and more, but too rapidly for her to follow. She looked at Raven and asked, “What did he say?”

  “He says the Ritual is his only chance for happiness, yours, too. He wants to be with you, alive
and whole, or he wants to be dead. Either way, his torment will end.”

  Johnny added a sign Willie knew, a clockwise, open-palm circle over his chest. Please.” She clapped her hands over her face and sobbed.

  Raven tasted the black, tannic wash of her heartbreak and horror on his senses, the musty orange tang of indecision from his Shade. But a surge of warm, rosy relief washed through his Shade as Willow lowered her hands and raised her face. Tears hung on her lashes; they shimmered in the artificial twilight.

  “All right, I’ll do it,” she said, her resolve as shaky as her quavering mouth, “I think I love you enough to kill you.”

  Chapter 19

  When the Three are One, the One will be Three, Then the Dark will be Light, Made One by the Sacred Cedar….

  A fierce gust of wind snapped the Fiat’s vinyl top. The little car rocked on its springs, wobbling the flashlight in Willie’s hand, lifting her gaze from Raven’s diary.

  The car was parked out of sight between two huge boulders on the edge of the road and the sheer precipice beyond the guardrail. Behind Willie reared the colossal bulk of Monte Corrasi; below, the lights of the provincial town of Oliena twinkled like diamonds on a bed of black velvet.

  Raven had left her here about half an hour ago and gone up the mountain with Johnny to reconnoiter. Her skin still crawled from the grave-deep chill that had gripped her when she’d clamped a panicked hand on Raven’s arm. He’d shrugged her off, shuddering, too distracted and preoccupied to maintain the projection of body heat.

  “You’ll be fine here, so long as you stay in the car,” he’d told her. “I’ll make sure no one can see it.”

  The finger waggle she’d watched him do in the rearview mirror didn’t look like much of a magic spell. She wasn’t even sure that’s what it was. She wasn’t sure of anything—except that Raven was dead. Unequivocally, but, please God, not irretrievably.

  He’d told her he was dead. As a doornail or a mackerel. She hadn’t believed him, but she did now. Unequivocally. But she still had her doubts about how the monster had to die so the man could live.

  She couldn’t feature Raven saying it unless he believed it was true. He might, but she didn’t know if she did, and she was desperately searching the Riddle for a way to reunite him with Johnny without putting a stake through his heart. So far, she hadn’t found one, and didn’t think she was going to.

  As much as she loved Johnny, she wasn’t sure she could kill Raven. If the Ritual worked, great, but what if it didn’t? The monster would die, and so would Johnny. Then she wouldn’t have him at all. If things continued the way they were now, at least she could have him part of the time. She’d still have Raven, too—a vampire hanging around trying to steal the man she loved.

  Only he wasn’t a man, just a shadow of one, able to touch her and make love to her only in a mirror. How long would that satisfy either one of them? That wasn’t living.

  It wasn’t fair, but the Ritual was Johnny’s only hope. Hers, too. Willie knew it; still, it terrified her. So did the possibility that the Ritual was never meant to work, that it was nothing more than a cosmic lure. If Nekhat hadn’t turned Raven into a vampire, Johnny would have died long before she was born. Maybe he was supposed to, and maybe that was the Ritual’s purpose.

  But Willie didn’t think so. The God she believed in wouldn’t give Johnny to her just to take him away. He’d give Johnny a chance to redeem himself and Raven. He’d give him a chance to live the life Nekhat had taken from him. She hoped, she prayed with all her heart as she peeked up at the night sky, still clear and black and dusted with stars above Oliena, that Johnny and Raven would come back.

  There was still no sign of you-know-who, thank God. Willie tucked the diary and flashlight into the backpack between her feet, next to the leftover bread and cheese and apples Raven had bought her in Nuoro but she’d had no stomach for.

  The knapsack was black now, like her sweater, her jeans and her Reeboks, though it had been a bright, shiny red nylon when she’d found it in the back of her closet. Raven hadn’t liked the color, so he’d changed it. Willie didn’t know if it was permanent or a projection, but she guessed from her Johnny Cash color scheme that she was going to be climbing Monte Corrasi. She hoped not all the way to the top. She didn’t know how high it was, but it looked like Everest looming over the roadway and the little green Fiat.

  The thin, rocky trail leading up the flank of the mountain looked no wider than a goat track, but Raven and Johnny came down it walking abreast. Willie’s heart leapt with relief at the sight of them in the rearview mirror.

  “Let’s go,” Raven said curtly, taking the backpack from her as she swung out of the car. “It isn’t far.”

  “What isn’t far?” Willie asked, but he’d already crossed the road and started up the trail. She shot Johnny—a pale, silvery silhouette against the dark—an exasperated look. “Do you know where we’re going?”

  He gave her a brusque, you’ll-see nod and reached for her elbow. She couldn’t feel his hand on her arm, but she could sense his urgency, and muttered, “All right, I’m coming,” as he led her across the road and up the trail behind Raven.

  He didn’t wait for them; Willie assumed because Johnny knew the way. The wind cut through her sweater and the knit pullover she’d kept on underneath. Her hair kept blowing in her eyes. She kept pushing it back; her teeth clenched to keep them from chattering, and followed Johnny.

  Where the trail was steepest there were steps chiseled into the rock. Goats didn’t need footholds, but people did, which gave Willie comfort. Raven’s expression, however, when they caught up with him at the top of a sharp rise, did not.

  In the bright wash of the moon his face looked as cold as stone and every bit as bleak. So did Johnny’s as he moved past her and stood beside Raven gazing at something beyond the edge of the trail. Their destination, Willie hoped.

  “I should’ve brought a rope and pitons,” she grumbled, stopping to catch her breath and rest her shuddering legs before tackling the last few feet of almost straight-up trail.

  Raven glanced back at her and offered his hand. Johnny did the same, taking a step down to help her. Where the moonlight touched his face now it was softened and diffused. A faint silvery nimbus shimmered around him like a halo.

  Willie reached instinctively for Johnny’s hand and gazed up at Raven. The moon glittered like ice on the moonstone on his finger; its reflection slanted hard and sharp across his features. So like Johnny’s and yet so different, separate, but the same. The same face, the same man.

  The Dark will be Light, the Riddle said. Made One by the Sacred Cedar. Willie hoped so, with all her heart. She took a breath and Raven’s hand, too, in her free one. She couldn’t feel Johnny’s fingers close over hers, but Raven’s were solid and strong. And warm, thank God, though lifeless as the rock surrounding them, Willie reminded herself as he tugged her up beside him and she saw what they’d been looking at.

  A nuraghe, one of the cone-shaped hill forts named for the Nuraghesi, the tribe who’d built them all over Sardinia during the Bronze Age. Willie had read about them in the guidebook, had seen a couple along the road from Olbia. This one was tucked into a fold of the mountain across a stretch of heath dotted with dew-jeweled gorse. Another set of rude steps led toward it around a right-hand curve in the trail.

  “What is this place?”

  “A monastery, of sorts,” Raven replied. Hallowed ground, Willie thought, even before he added, “Since I cannot, you must fetch the Sacred Cedar.”

  She could handle that, if only she didn’t have to drive it through his chest. Why had she said she’d do it? Why? A shiver swept through Willie, a shiver of her own doubt and uncertainty she thought, until she felt the shadow slide across the face of the moon.

  The wind fell in a hush, a quicksilver flicker of cold and dread. A shudder rippled through Willie and turned her toward the nuraghe. A shadow blacker than the night hovered above the heath, beating like a giant black wing. />
  “Oh, no,” she moaned, terror plummeting her heart to her toes. “Nekhat.”

  The wind lifted, tangling her hair, filling her nose with the stench of blood and sun-bleached sand. The low growl Raven made shot her with gooseflesh and spun her around. His eyes were red and glowing, his fangs and claws sprouting.

  Willie thought she couldn’t possibly be more frightened, until the moonstone on his finger went suddenly dark and began to smoke like a snuffed candle flame. Johnny moved beside her, his hands hovering above her shoulders.

  “Get out of here,” Raven snarled, shoving the backpack at her. “Run for the nuraghe. You’ll be safe there.”

  “And leave you here?” Willie clutched the bag to her chest to keep her hands from shaking. “No way!”

  “It’s the only way.” Raven wrenched the moonstone off his finger, laying two of his knuckles open with his claws.

  Willie saw the skin split, but no blood. She thought she’d faint when his flesh zipped back together almost instantly. She didn’t, though, only because she couldn’t run if she fainted. She couldn’t leave Raven here, either, any more than she could leave Johnny.

  “You guys seem to be forgetting something,” she said, managing to sound calm in spite of the scream stuck in her throat. “Without you there’s no Ritual.”

  “We’ll be there. Make sure you are. Tharros by sunset tomorrow.” Raven grasped Johnny’s hand, slapped the ring into it and closed his fist around it.

  The silvery nimbus shimmering around Johnny flared like a torch. Spears of light shot between his fingers, so blinding Willie flung her gaze away. She blinked and saw the shadow roil and twist above the heath, heard a faint howl above the wind that bristled every hair on her body.

  The moonstone burned like fire in Johnny’s hand. So did the memories flooding back to him. He remembered. Everything that had befallen him—and Raven, too—in the past 117 years. The camp at Thebes, Jolil and his dusty prayer rug, the black Arab mare whose name he still couldn’t pronounce.

  He remembered the moonstone flashing in the amulet around Nekhat’s throat as he’d wheeled and toppled Yusef and Jolil. Johnny knew, somehow, that so long as he held it now, the moonstone would be safe—and that Raven would not.