Nightwing

by Lynn Michaels

“How far is Tharros, anyway?”

  “A couple hours’ drive. Well have to take your car, by the way. I don’t own one.”

  “Do you think Johnny will be there?”

  “I’m sure he will. Your friend is right. Nekhat can’t kill him twice.”

  “Johnny isn’t dead, Father Bertram. Raven is.”

  “There you go again, trying to make two out of one.” He slapped his hands against his knees and rose. “Come along when you’re ready. And don’t forget the Sacred Cedar.”

  Willie’s courage shrank along with the flames of the candles in the draft of the door dosing behind father Bertram. Was it too late to promise God she’d never skip Mass again if only He’d put Raven and Johnny back together? Probably.

  No lightning flashed, no trumpets blared when Willie picked up the Sacred Cedar. It looked and felt like what it was: a wooden stake, wedge shaped, maybe from an ax blow, its edges worn smooth by time.

  “I promise I’ll bring it back,” she told the icon. And hopefully, she prayed with all her heart, Johnny with it.

  Father Bertram fed her another omelet, put on his padre hat, picked up her overnight bag and the smaller burlap bag he called his tote sack and led her out of the nuraghe. Willie followed with the backpack and the sleeping bag. Father Bertram thought she might need it.

  Dark flashes of her terrified run with Johnny jerked through her head. She looked for the dead swath she’d seen Nekhat’s shadow slash across the heath but couldn’t find it, not even when she looked back from Monte Corrasi, from the spot where Raven had leapt off the trail. She knew she hadn’t imagined the gorse shriveling and dying. Then again, Father Bertram had already passed this way once to retrieve her bag.

  She followed him, wondering, until the backpack began to clunk against her shoulders. The stake was inside, along with a thermos of Father Bertram’s tea.

  “Wait a sec,” she said, slinging the pack off. “The Sacred Cedar is getting knocked around.”

  “Don’t fret.” He put down her bag and turned around. “It takes care of itself, and the person who’s carrying it.”

  “Is it any good against really nasty vampires?”

  “You mean Nekhat.” He picked up her bag and started off again. “I don’t know. He’s not your run-of-the-mill vampire. He was born that way, not made, like your friend.”

  Willie blinked, stunned, at Father Bertram’s retreating back. He wasn’t wearing his robe—too hot, he’d said—just a dark shirt and trousers. The sun shimmered on his broad shoulders. Willie felt her head start to spin, shook it off and ran to catch up with him. “You’re kidding.”

  “Not at all. The ancient Egyptians were very gifted in certain sciences. Genetics, unfortunately, wasn’t one of them. Their religion got in the way. All that nonsense about the divinity of the pharaoh caused some serious inbreeding. Princes died very young, like Tutankhamen. A few visionaries took a shot at genetic engineering, in the hope of strengthening the royal line. It didn’t work.”

  Willie wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer, but she asked, anyway. “What d’you mean, it didn’t work?”

  “Nekhat is one of their experiments that failed.”

  Willie stopped cold. Father Bertram walked a few feet ahead before he realized it and glanced back at her.

  “How do you know all this?”

  “A little bird told me.” He winked and kept walking.

  A little bird, Willie puzzled, then it hit her: Raven. She ran again to catch up with him. “Is that how you knew Johnny was coming?”

  “More or less. I’ve met your friend. Not here, of course, not at the nuraghe. But other places.”

  “And other times, Father?”

  “Perhaps.” He gave her a sideways smile, the sun sliding under the brim of his hat. She’d thought his eyes were brown; now she saw they were much darker, with no discernible pupil or iris. “You don’t want to know any more about vampires than is absolutely necessary. They’re a very scary lot.”

  So was Father Bertram. Another whoa-wait-a-minute rush swept over Willie as she watched him stride ahead. She followed slowly, wondering who—or what—he really was.

  The world’s worst driver, she discovered when they reached the Fiat and he took the wheel. When they stopped for gas she fished the guidebook out of her bag and buried her nose in it—until she saw on the map that they’d pass through Oristano, where Nekhat had come ashore… and that Tunisia lay just across the Mediterranean from Tharros… and that only Libya separated Tunisia from Egypt, where this whole horrible mess had started 117 years ago.

  Was this why Nekhat had landed in Oristano? Did he know about Tharros? Was he there, waiting for them? Willie raised a hand to her throat, touched the azurite father Bertram had given her, set in copper like the chrysocolla, felt the tingle in her fingers when the two stones tangled with her little gold cross.

  “He’s somewhere about, I’m sure,” Father Bertram said, as if he’d been reading her mind. And Willie, clutching the armrest as he screeched the Plat around a curve, the last one out of the mountains, was sure of it.

  The western coast shimmered on the far horizon, a blue-white smudge beyond rolling green stretches. The sky was calm and perfectly clear. Willie felt the same way, so long as she kept one hand near the stones.

  She forced herself to eat lunch in Oristano, but regretted it when Father Bertram stopped at the Church of San Franceso. The wasted, tortured body of Christ draped on an austere crucifix on the left altar turned her stomach and started the Sacred Cedar throbbing, almost as if it were crying, inside the backpack.

  It quieted and so did her stomach when they reached Tharros, the ancient Phoenician port on the very tip of the Sinis Peninsula. Most of the city was underwater; crumbled walls glimmering beneath the very blue Mediterranean. Father Bertram joined the last tour of the day to explore the above-ground Roman temple and Punic shrine.

  Willie stayed on the beach, close enough that she could still see the tour party winding through the excavated fortifications, but far enough away that she couldn’t hear the guide’s voice. With her anus looped around her drawn-up knees and her eyes closed, she could almost be at Beaches.

  In Stonebridge the sun would be well up rather than setting, and there would be a dune at her back rather than an almond grove. The sand would be cool and gray, not hot and white.

  Willie took off the pack, looped it over her right arm and stretched out on her back, fingers laced over her stomach. The first streaks of bronze were just beginning to swirl and funnel together above the Mediterranean. It would be a while yet before she needed to keep watch for Johnny and Raven. She sighed and closed her eyes.

  She didn’t mean to fall asleep, but she did, lulled by the surf and the rustle of the almond trees. She didn’t wake up until her right wrist thudded heavily onto the sand. Then she jolted upright, her eyes dazzled by the glare of the sun. She remained fuzzy headed until she felt the backpack slide down her arm, heard the straps being dragged through the sand.

  Her heart slammed into her throat. She shot up and clutched the bag to her chest. Over the dull ring in her ears she heard someone chuckle. A man. His voice was very deep and very close.

  Willie scrambled around and saw him behind her, squatting on his bare heels in the sand, elbows resting on his knees. His shirt and trousers were so white it hurt her eyes. His eyes were very dark, with no discernible pupil or iris.

  In the shadow of his wide-brimmed panama hat, his face was the color of creamed coffee. His features were so perfect and so beautiful she caught her breath. His hair was glossy black, done up in a long queue that fluttered over one shoulder.

  It was Nekhat. She knew it before he smiled, showing her the tips of his very long and pointed incisors, before she tore her terrified gaze away from his face to the heavy gold amulet with the gaping hole in the center at his throat.

  “I love your name, Willow. It reminds me of my father’s palace. We had willows there along the banks of the Nile. I would lie u
nder them while I fished when I was a boy.”

  Scream and run, Willie told herself, but she couldn’t. She could only stare at him, paralyzed with terror.

  “I’m not a monster. I’m a prince. I’ll be king someday. I can make you a queen. I can make you any thing you want, if you give me that bag you have clutched to your heart.”

  The backpack was on fire, searing her hand. She wanted to throw it at him and run, but she tightened her grip. She felt the jolt when her fingers closed on the hard edges of the Sacred Cedar, saw Nekhat flinch and spring to his feet. The wrenching cry he gave rang across the beach.

  So did Father Bertram’s shout: “Open the bag!”

  Willie barely heard him above the sudden boom of surf at her back and the snarl from Nekhat. He was shimmering out of focus in front of her, his fangs and claws sprouting. A plume of spray soaked her and snatched her breath as she jerked her head around and saw Father Bertram running toward her, his hat clenched in one fist.

  Foam swirled around her ankles, clawing at the sand and clamping a breaker like a vise around her legs. Half a second before it yanked her knees out from under her, Willie caught the zipper of the backpack and ripped it open.

  A million peals of thunder, a thousand flashes of light tore it out of her hands and sent her skipping like a stone across the water, until the breaker curled over her and dragged her under. She’d been caught in surf enough to know to relax and not to fight. When the wave let go, she kicked, twice, toward the flickering patch of light on the surface.

  She came up coughing and gasping for air, in the lull between breakers, felt the next one rise and whoosh behind her. She had a glimpse of the beach and Father Bertram, the backpack in one hand, his hat in the other as he ran back and forth along the edge of the water, before she took a breath and tucked herself into the wave. It flung her toward the beach and dumped her there, shivering and shaking, her teeth chattering.

  Father Bertram scooped her under one arm and carried her, choking and gagging salt water, up the beach to the almond grove. He put her down on a patch of bristly grass, knelt beside her and took a silver flask out of his tote sack.

  “Drink this,” he said. “It’s brandy.”

  Willie did and coughed, her lungs burning. “You said,” she gasped, “the Sacred Cedar protects whoever carries it.”

  “You’re alive, aren’t you? Not ripped to bloody shreds.”

  Willie shuddered. “Where’s Nekhat?”

  “Gone.” He handed her a small, rough towel from his sack and smiled. “He won’t be back. Not as himself, anyway. He was rather badly singed, last I saw of him.”

  Willie slapped a hand against her chest; felt the chrysocolla, the azurite and her little gold cross horribly tangled in their chains but still miraculously around her throat.

  “I don’t get it. My crucifix had no effect on Raven. He touched it, he played with it. It didn’t faze him.”

  “Your little cross is but a symbol, Willie. The Sacred Cedar—” he nodded at the backpack lying in the sandy grass at her feet “—is the real thing.”

  Which was the real Nekhat, Willie wondered, the horror in the gold kilt and braided wig or the handsome prince in white khakis? She hugged her knees to keep from shaking and watched the sun sink slowly into the darkening blue waves of the Mediterranean. The beach and the ruins of Tharros glowed a soft gray mauve in its fading light. Over her right shoulder the crest of the just-risen moon, still pale and pockmarked, rode above the leafy green crowns of the almond trees.

  “Well, finally,” Father Bertram said, nodding down the beach. “Here comes your friend at last.”

  Willie turned her head and saw Johnny coming toward them, one arm around Raven’s bowed shoulders, the other around his waist. The nimbus she’d seen shimmering around Johnny in the moonlight on Monte Corrasi was still there. Only now it was flickering like a light bulb on the verge of burning out.

  Panic shot Willie to her feet. She ran toward them. Johnny saw her, stopped and smiled. So did Raven, lifting his head and blinking at her. He looked gray and gaunt; his strange dark eyes were eerily pale in the deepening twilight.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, pelting to a halt and sliding her right shoulder under Raven’s left.

  “I’m—tired,” he said, using a word she’d understand, letting her loop his arm around her. “Is Father Bertram with you?”

  “Yes,” Willie said just as he came hurrying up to them, his bearded face glowering.

  “Cutting it close, as usual, I see,” he said, nudging Willie aside and taking her place to support Raven.

  “Don’t start, Bertie. Did you bring what I asked for?”

  “Don’t I always? It’s synthetic, unfortunately. It’s all I had.”

  “It’ll suffice,” Raven said wearily.

  Willie hadn’t a due what they were talking about until the men swung Raven down on the sand in the shadows beneath the almond trees and Father Bertram took a blue thermal-lined bag out of his tote sack, like the one Willie had carried her lunch in when she’d worked at Material Girl. When he opened it and withdrew a bag of blood like the ones she’d seen in Raven’s refrigerator she spun away, swallowing hard.

  “I hate this stuff,” she heard Raven say. “It’s like Chinese food. Half an hour later you’re hungry again.”

  “Oh, God,” Willie moaned weakly, clapping a hand over her mouth as she rushed away down the beach.

  Johnny watched her go, saw her fall to her knees at the edge of the water. He wanted to go with her, as much to escape the soft sucking sound behind him as to comfort her, but he couldn’t. Raven still needed the moonstone close.

  The moon was fully up above the almond trees: a bloated silver disk. The wind that had risen with it sent sand scurrying across the beach. The moonstone flashed as he raised his hand.

  A faraway rumble of thunder brushed a finger of unease up the back of his neck. He didn’t like this beach. It reminded him of Egypt. He wanted off it and away from here. He glanced at the water and saw Willie still on her knees at its edge, saw a distant flash of lightning above the dark Mediterranean, leaping in the midst of a soaring bank of clouds sweeping in from the west. From Africa, from Egypt.

  “Much better, thank you.” Raven sighed behind him.

  He heard plastic crumple, burlap rustle, saw Willie rock back on her heels and wipe a hand across her mouth. He longed to touch her again while he could, just in case. But he couldn’t, not in front of Raven and the priest.

  He felt the tug of the moon and glanced up, then heard thunder rumble and a breaker boom. After watching it foam and hiss like a homed viper, he turned toward Raven, still sitting on the sand, caught his eyes and signed urgently to him, then nodded at the moon.

  “It isn’t far, but yes, we should be going.” Raven glanced down the beach at Willie. Her head was bent as she slogged her way slowly toward them through the sand. He smiled and shook his head. “What an incredible woman she is. I hope one of us remembers her in the morning.”

  Johnny wasn’t even aware he’d moved, let alone leapt on Raven and locked his hands around his throat, until he saw the flicker of surprise in Raven’s eyes; he’d forgotten he still had the moonstone. Then he saw nothing but dark sky and stars and he threw back his head, gritted his teeth and did his best to choke the dead life out of Raven.

  He knew he couldn’t and so did Raven. Johnny supposed that was why Raven let him bang his head up and down on the sandy grass until he wore himself out.

  “I meant to tell you,” Raven said then. “In fact, I could swear I did.”

  Johnny relaxed his grip. Since he’d held the moonstone, he’d had trouble discriminating between Raven’s thoughts and his, difficulty figuring out where Raven ended and he began. The Ritual of Rejoining, he thought, had already begun.

  “Memories don’t always carry over,” Raven said. “There’s every possibility neither of us will know Willow Evans from Adam in the morning.”

  Forgetting terrified Johnn
y even more than Nekhat. He loved Willie, he always had, but he knew better than anyone how easy it was to forget and how difficult to remember.

  The moon tugged at him again, rolling him off Raven and to his feet. Please God, not this time, he prayed. I’ll forget anything else, everything else, just please let me remember Willie.

  “The vials are in the backpack,” Father Bertram said, helping Raven to his feet.

  “Yes. I’ll tell Willow. Thank you, Bertie.”

  “I wouldn’t be here for anyone else and well you know it.” Father Bertram gave Raven a clap on the arm that nearly knocked him over. “I pray to God you’ll be here when I come back in the morning.”

  “If I could pray, Bertie,” Raven replied with a rueful smile, “so would I.”

  Chapter 22

  Willie wished the wind hadn’t carried Raven’s comment to her, that he’d at least warned her before they’d left Beaches, though she knew why he hadn’t. She might not have come. And then who would have put the stake through his heart?

  The Sacred Cedar and the thermos clunked in her backpack as she struggled up the hill above the beach between Johnny and Raven. She’d found the holy water after she’d ducked into the almond grove to change into the dean jeans and ribbed green pullover Johnny had fetched from the Fiat. When she’d opened the backpack to put away her wet things, she’d seen the vials.

  “Dare I ask,” she’d said to Raven as she’d shrugged into the pack, “what I’m supposed to do with holy water?”

  “Cleanse the Sacred Cedar once you’ve used it.”

  What an interesting euphemism, Willie had thought, for after you kill me. “What about the second vial?”

  “You’ll need it if the Ritual doesn’t work,” he’d replied as he led the way off the beach. “To clean up the mess.”

  He hadn’t told her where they were going, and after the holy water business, she was afraid to ask. She wasn’t sure Raven would hear her, anyway, over the wind pushing her up the hill behind him. Johnny wasn’t much of a windbreak, but she was glad to have his loving presence at her back.