“Give me the moonstone.” He held out one hand, his voice as tight as his clenched jaw.
“No.” So much for promising to love, honor and obey, Willie thought, moving away from him. “I’m giving it back to Nekhat.”
“Not alone, you’re not.” Johnny stopped and nodded at the temple. “He’s sitting up there waiting for you.”
Willie looked over her shoulder, at the eerie flicker still dancing along the gorse-covered hillside.
“That isn’t Saint Elmo’s fire,” Johnny said. “He likes to play with moonlight when he’s bored.”
Oh, swell. Now what? Willie hadn’t expected Nekhat to be here. She’d expected to leave the moonstone on the altar and run like hell. She was no match for a creature who could toss moonlight around like a rubber ball. Neither was Johnny, not anymore. The Sacred Cedar was, and it protected whoever carried it, but they couldn’t both carry it.
“That’s why you’re staying here,” Johnny said firmly. “I took the stone. I’ll give it back.”
She knew now that he’d lied to her, that he could still read her mind, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting out of here alive.
“And live to tell about it? Not likely, not even with the Sacred Cedar.”
Willie looked back at Johnny and saw the azurite shimmering against the hollow of his throat, in the gaped front of his ruined white shirt. She wondered why he’d put it on along with his boots and breeches, but didn’t ask.
“I think it’s safe to assume he’s still plenty sore at you for taking it.”
At Raven, not me. The thought raced through him unbidden, along with another wash of disjointedness. Strong enough to push him forward on the balls of his feet and jerk him—none too gently—toward the temple on the hillside.
“Come see how angry I really am,” hissed a soft, snarling voice, “and don’t forget the little woman.”
Not just in his head, but on the wind fluttering in Willie’s hair, a dark tangle gleaming red only where the moon touched it. He realized it in the catch of her breath, in the sudden leap of her lashes. She stared at him, wide-eyed, for an eight count and then she blinked and clenched her jaw.
“You want the stake so damn bad, you can have it!” She shouted at the temple, closing the Sacred Cedar in her left fist and raising it meaningfully. “Right in the heart!”
The wind laughed and swirled around her, tugging at her hair, lifting a funnel-shaped cloud of sand past her ankles. Johnny yanked her out of it and closed his arms around her. She buried her face in his chest until Nekhat’s laughter faded and the wind was only the wind again, then she raised just her eyes and looked at him.
“Why is he laughing?” she asked, an uh-oh tremble in her voice.
“He doesn’t have a heart,” Johnny told her. “Not like you and I do.”
“Well, of course not. He’s a monster. He’s—“ Willie’s breath caught and her eyes took another oh-my-God leap. “You can’t mean it. Everything has a heart. Even a tree.”
“What he has is an organ in his groin, on the right side of his body, that’s a combination heart and liver.” Johnny cupped her face in his hands to still the tremble he could feel seeping through her. “It rejuvenates itself like a human liver, only at an alarmingly rapid rate.”
“Oh, God,” Willie moaned, thudding her forehead against his chest. “The Sacred Cedar won’t kill him, will it?”
“No.” He pressed his lips to her hair and savored its green-apple scent. Please God, not for the last time. “It won’t kill him, but it should put him out of commission long enough to—”
“Shh!” Willie shot her hand over his mouth. “He’ll hear you.”
“No, he won’t. He’s gone.” Johnny turned her around and felt her quail against him at the flashes of light bouncing like UFOs across the hillside. “If we can immobilize him for a couple of minutes—”
“I’ve got a better idea,” Willie interrupted him shakily. “Let’s just hop in the car and get the hell outta here.”
“Too late, my love. He’d only come after us.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that.” She turned in his hands and looked up at him, her cross and the chrysocolla throbbing at her throat along with her pulse. “You do have a plan, don’t you?”
Plan, hell. He didn’t have a due, but he wasn’t about to tell Willie. She was frightened enough. And so was he.
“I’ve got an idea,” Johnny hedged, praying to God he’d think of one. “Just do what I say when I tell you to do it.”
“Too bad I didn’t,” she said, her mouth trembling and her eyes filling, “when you told me to butt out of this.”
“No, Willie.” He pressed a quick, fervent kiss between her eyebrows. “It’s too bad I didn’t listen to Bertie.”
What he tried not to listen to, as he led her toward the temple, were the voices crying at him from the moonstone. He concentrated instead on the feel of his wife’s hand, so small and shaky and yet so trusting in his, and tried desperately to think of a way out of this.
“The only chance we have is the Sacred Cedar,” he said to Willie, pulling her to a halt beside him halfway up the hillside. “I don’t have a prayer of getting close to him with it, but you might. If I distract him, can you do it?”
“You bet I can.” She tucked a fluttering strand of hair behind one ear and notched up her chin. “Just say when.”
He said, “I love you,” instead and caught her shoulders and her mouth in a quick, hard kiss, his fingers as shaky as hers when he took her hand again and drew her behind him up the thin path winding through the gorse toward the temple.
I’ve done this once, I can do it again, Willie told herself. No waffling this time, just do it. Don’t think about his fangs and his claws. Just think if you don’t he’ll kill you. And Johnny, too.
The pep talk got her up the hill and over the crumbled stone wall. It failed when she stepped into the temple with Johnny and saw Nekhat, awash in silvery moonlight, sitting on the altar, one leg drawn up on the stone, the other swinging lazily off the side. He wore the white khakis Willie had seen him in on the beach, his hair tied in a queue.
“Be sure you keep the stake where he can see it,” Johnny murmured, and led her forward.
Willie did, closed tight in her left hand. She shivered when Nekhat turned his head toward them and she saw the empty gold amulet winking in the open front of his shirt against the smooth bronze wall of his chest.
“Ah, Dr. Raven. You’ve brought your blushing bride and my moonstone. How thoughtful and how wise of you.” He held out one graceful, long-fingered hand. “Put it here, please.”
Willie started to reach for the ring in her pocket, but Johnny caught her arm. “Come and get it,” he said, his voice ringing in his ears over the crescendo of cries rising from the depths of the moonstone.
“So you can strike me down with your cursed Cedar?” Nekhat laughed softly and shook his head. “I think not.”
“Let my wife go,” Johnny countered, giving Willie’s fingers a trust-me squeeze, “and I’ll bring you the stone.”
“This is not a negotiation. Dr. Raven.” Nekhat’s smile vanished. “Don’t force me to take the stone.”
“Give me the ring and get behind me,” Johnny said, and Willie did, keeping the stake ready in her hand, her heart pounding at the faint red gleam beginning in Nekhat’s eyes. “Come and get it.”
“I’ll rip out your hearts and shred them while you die. Then I’ll tuck your souls away and wear them here—” Nekhat slid like smoke off the altar, tapping a finger already sprouting a claw against his empty amulet “—where you’ll be together forever and yet forever apart.”
“I don’t think so,” Johnny said, and drew back his arm.
He threw the ring toward the sky, the ankh carved into it flashing in the gleam of the full moon riding high above the temple. A thousand screams tore through Willie, or maybe it was just the terrible roar Nekhat made as he leapt to catch the moonstone.
/> He held it for only a moment, scarcely more than a single terrified beat of her heart, before streams of light so vivid they all but blinded her shot from between Nekhat’s claws and he dropped the ring. His bellow of agony knocked Willie off her feet and shattered a nearby column.
She fell on all fours, still gripping the stake, felt Johnny’s hand close on her arm and pull her up, staggered to her feet beside him and saw the ring pulsing like a strobe at Nekhat’s feet. She winced and looked away from it. Nekhat clutched a ruined, smoking paw to his chest. The vivid, blood red sheen in his eyes made her want to scream, but she couldn’t. Her throat was clenched with terror.
“What did you do to my moonstone?”
Nekhat’s voice shook the temple. One column shattered and fell. Another cracked. Fissures raced up its length and across the mosaic floor like the shivers racing through Willie.
“I did nothing,” Johnny told him, a puzzled edge in his voice. “Nothing at all.”
“Come to me!” Nekhat roared, flinging his good hand at the ring, palm up, claws half-curled.
A laser beam of light shot from the moonstone, caught him in the chest and knocked him back, bellowing and wavering out of focus, shifting from the prince in white khakis to the monster in a gold kilt. Jeweled beads flashed in a braided wig, then his image steadied into four tusk-like fangs snarling in the face of an angel.
“Hallelujah!” Johnny shouted, laughing. “Your toys have turned on you. They’ve had a taste of freedom and they won’t go back to being your slaves.”
“I’ll kill you!” Nekhat roared, first at the moonstone, still pulsing and warning him away at his feet, then at Johnny, his whirling red gaze almost stopping Willie’s heart. “I’ll kill you all!”
He dived at the moonstone, claws extended, and again it shot a beam of blinding white light, this one strong enough to knock him off his feet. He landed on his back with a roar that broke the altar stone and shattered the dais. Johnny leapt after him, snatching the stake from Willie’s hand.
“No!” she screamed, but he was already diving at Nekhat, the Sacred Cedar clenched above his head in both hands, its dull tip razor sharp and flashing in the moonlight.
He brought it down in a single, swift stroke. Willie knew by Nekhat’s earsplitting scream and the A-bomb flash that the Sacred Cedar had found its mark.
The temple leapt into the air around her, causing her to tumble backward and scrape her chin on the shattered floor. She managed, somehow, to push herself up on her knees and fling a look over her shoulder.
In time to see Johnny lurch upright, the Sacred Cedar in his hand, Nekhat writhing on the floor at his feet. Nekhat’s body was a nightmare of writhing animal shapes and faces.
Willie swung her head away, saw the moonstone ring lying close by, the ankh carved into it winking. She grabbed it just as Johnny took her arm and pulled her up. They ran toward the temple wall. She didn’t look back, just clutched the ring in her hand and ran for her life, slipping and nearly falling down the hill, only Johnny’s hand on her arm keeping her on her feet.
The explosion came when they hit the beach, and set Willie skidding out of his grasp onto her scraped chin in the sand, the shock wave roaring in her ears. She reeled up on her knees, saw the hillside crumbling, rolling tons of earth and rock over the temple.
The tide was booming on the beach, crashing eight-foot breakers on the sand while great chunks of rock rained down the hillside. Johnny fell on his knees beside her, rolled her onto the wet sand and threw himself over her to protect her from the fallout.
When it stopped, he pulled her up beside him. They were both were breathing hard and shaking; Johnny’s face streaked with sand and dirt. Willie gasped for air and blinked at the raw, still-rolling hillside. Johnny got up on his knees and cupped her face.
“Are you all right?”
“Y-yes,” Willie stammered shakily.
“Thank God.” He wrapped her in his arms and held her until they’d both caught their breath, then rocked back on his heels and said, “Give me the chrysocolla.”
“You can have this, too,” Willie said and opened her fist. Johnny smiled at the moonstone glowing on her palm, kissed her and slipped it into his pocket. “We’ll give it to Bertie on our way home.”
With shaking fingers Willie unfastened the chain around her neck and gave Johnny the chrysocolla. He took off the azurite and winked at her. “Behold. This is real vampire magic.”
When he touched the terminals of the two stones they began to glow. When he drew them apart, Willie blinked, surprised, at the sky lightening toward dawn, at the hillside above the beach, and caught her breath.
It was healed and whole, dotted with dewy gorse. There was no sign of the temple, no trace that it had ever existed. It was simply gone, as if it had never been.
“I buried it deep enough so no one will ever find it,” Johnny said. “And I made sure none of the tour guides will ever remember it was there.”
“A tidy night’s work,” Willie said around a yawn. “How did you do it?”
Johnny blinked at her, his eyebrows drawing together. He glanced in a puzzled way at the stones in his hands and then at Willie. A slow, joyful smile spread across his face.
“I don’t know,” he said softly. “I can’t remember.”
Epilogue
Stonebridge, Massachusetts
One Year Later
He found himself on the beach again. Since it was his birthday, it seemed only fitting.
He sat on the flank of a dune, arms looped around his drawn-up knees, his face tipped up to the hot July sun. The baseball cap his wife wouldn’t let him out of the house without sat on the sand next to him. He’d catch hell if he went back without it. He smiled and rubbed his thumb across the gold band she’d slipped on the third finger of his left hand on their sixth-month anniversary.
Tomorrow they’d be married a year. In his sock drawer he’d hidden the zircon-and-moonstone-studded band he’d had made for her. “You have my heart,” the inside engraving said, “now here’s my soul.”
His father-in-law wouldn’t be impressed, but he’d given up trying to woo Whit Senior when he’d raised a dubious eyebrow at the four-carat diamond he’d given Willie at Christmas when they’d visited her parents in Manhattan. His mother-in-law would love it and that made him smile. He could almost see Amelia Boyle Evans’s brown eyes, so much like her daughter’s, pooling with tears.
He opened his eyes long enough to glance at his watch, a plain, no-nonsense model on a leather strap. The chronometer he’d worn a year ago had been smashed beyond redemption on Sardinia. He didn’t miss it, or the knack he’d always had for knowing the time. It was five-thirty. His in-laws weren’t due until six, but he had a feeling they were already here.
Sometimes he still knew things, but not often enough to bother him. That sensitivity was fading, as so much of what he’d been and done was already gone, just simply erased from his memory. He still had his diaries—rather, his wife did, put away in a glassed bookcase in her office—but he felt no desire to even open them.
He’d caught Willie reading them once, avidly. She’d been sitting cross-legged on the floor, a whole stack of them around her. She’d jumped, almost guiltily, her heart pounding visibly in her throat, when he’d come into the room.
“I was just curious,” she’d said quickly.
“What about?”
“Oh—nothing in particular,” she’d said and shrugged.
He’d known she was lying, but he’d let it pass. He’d made love to her instead, on the floor in front of the pedestal mirror she still kept in her office.
He felt the sun fade against his closed lids, opened his eyes and saw the swells behind the foam-headed breakers beginning to darken toward sunset. He rose and picked up his hat, brushed sand off it and the seat of his jeans, put it on and squinted up at the long silver beams of sunlight shooting through the purple-and-gray twilight gathering on the horizon.
It was time he got himse
lf up to the house. He knew it when he saw Frank striding toward him through the knee-high beach grass, an aluminum can swinging in each hand, their silver labels catching and flashing the last of the sun.
“The warden sent me.” Frank grinned and tossed him one of the cans. “She was afraid you’d get lost again. On purpose.”
“I only got lost twice.” He made a face and held up the beer Frank had thrown him. “What’s this for?”
“Fortification.” He popped the top on his and took a swallow. “If we play our cards right, we’ll both get lost.”
He laughed. “How long’ve they been here?”
“Couple hours.” Frank shrugged and took another swallow.
“It’s her father, you know,” he said, falling into step beside him. “He still thinks he’s going to catch me beating Willie or something.”
“Or something,” Frank said, his eyes laughing over the top of the can.
“Stuff it, Chou,” he said and tried not to laugh.
The last time Willie’s parents had come to Beaches they’d arrived four hours early, just in time to catch him swaggering down the stairs in nothing but his ruined white shirt, lovingly mended by his adoring wife. Just as Willie’s mother had come through the front door, with Frank on her heels, of course, he’d shouted, “Ahoy, my love! Let’s play pirate!”
The can of beer was still cold in his hand. It made his mouth water, but thirsty as he was, he didn’t dare. He had even less tolerance for alcohol than he did for sunlight, though he was working on that. On days like today, when his wife wasn’t around.
“Better not,” he said wistfully, handing the can back to Frank. “I might tell you something I shouldn’t.”
“You mean like last time?” Devilment gleamed in Frank’s dark eyes. “So, tell me. Doc. Do you still cry in bed?”
He groaned, his face flaming, and Frank laughed.
“I won’t tell Will, honest.” Frank sighed and hung a companionable arm around his shoulders, though he had to reach up to do it. “You’re a lucky man, Johnny. She must be some hot mama.”
Wisely he kept his mouth shut. Not yet, he thought sadly, though not for lack of trying.
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