by Nora Roberts
He could do nothing more. With what he had left, he dragged his small body to a rock, wedged himself behind it.
The last thing he saw was the flicker of stars going out as dawn crept closer.
Chapter 8
“He should have been back by now.” From the window in the parlor, Blair watched dawn break through the long night. “On his way back anyway. Maybe you should start again.” She turned around to Hoyt and Glenna. “Just start again.”
“Blair.” Glenna crossed over, ran a hand up and down Blair’s arm. “I promise you, as soon as he can be seen, we’ll see.”
“It was a stupid idea. Reckless and stupid. What was I thinking? I sent him in there.”
“No.” Now Glenna gripped both of her arms. “He went in, and we all agreed. We’re all equal in this. None of us bears all the burden.”
“He went in there without a weapon, without a shield.” She closed her hand over her crosses.
“He could hardly fly or crawl or slither around a nest of vampires with a cross around his neck,” Cian pointed out. “A beacon like that? He wouldn’t have lasted five minutes.”
“So what? He lasts ten going in naked.”
“He’s not dead.” Moira spoke quietly, and continued to sit on the floor, staring at the fire. “I’d know. I think we’d all know. The circle would be broken.” She looked over her shoulder at Hoyt. “Isn’t that so?”
“I believe it is, yes. It may be as simple as he needed to rest. Maintaining other shapes must take considerable energy and concentration.”
“It does. That’s why he eats like a plow horse.” Scooting to face the room, Moira managed a weak smile. “And he’s never, that I know, held a shape above two or three hours.”
Another nightmare, Blair thought. To imagine him skulking around the caves as the rat they’d agreed on, then, whoops, he’s a human without so much as a Popsicle stick to defend himself.
Alive, she could hold on to that. It made sense that they’d feel it if he’d been killed. But he could be in a cage, hurt, being tortured.
“I’m going to go make some food.” Glenna gave Blair’s shoulder a comforting pat.
“I’ll do it. I should practice more with the cooking,” Moira said as she got to her feet. “And I need something to do besides sit and worry.”
“I’ll give you a hand.” Glenna draped an arm over Moira’s shoulders. “I’ll bring out some coffee in a few minutes.”
“I’m going out.” Hoyt pushed himself out of the chair. “It may be I can draw something, sense something, outside the confines of the house.”
“I’ll go with you.”
But he shook his head at Blair. “I’d do better alone.”
What was she supposed to do? She wasn’t used to standing and waiting. She was the one who went out, did the job, risked her skin. She wasn’t supposed to stand and wring her hands while someone else was on the line.
“Would you mind closing those other drapes? Light’s coming in from that side.”
Baffled, she looked back. Cian was sprawled lazily in a chair—and the slant of light coming in the east windows was barely a foot from the tips of his boots.
She imagined most of his kind would have been scampering back in a fast hurry from that spread of light. Not Cian. She doubted they’d get a scamper out of him if they gave him a boot in front of a sunny window.
“Sure.” She moved over, drew them, and plunged the room into gloom. She didn’t bother with a lamp. Just then the dark was a comfort.
“What will they do to him? Don’t lie, don’t soften it. If they have him, what will they do to him?”
You know, Cian thought. You know already. “She’ll have him tortured. For the entertainment value and for the practical purpose of getting information.”
“He won’t tell her—”
“Of course he will.” Impatience whipped into Cian’s voice. It was infuriating that he was attached enough to Larkin to worry about the boy.
“She can do things to a man no human being can withstand—and keep him just this side of alive while she’s at it. He’ll tell her anything. So would you, so would any of us. And does it matter?”
“Maybe not.” She came over, gave in to her weak legs and sat on the table in front of his chair. He was giving her the truth, naked and without sentiment. It was what she needed. “She’ll change him, won’t she? That’s the big coup, siring one of us.”
“That would be two of us.”
“Right. Right.” She dropped her head in her hands because it felt sick. As sick as her gut, as sick as her belly. “Cian. If…we’ll have to…”
“Yes, we will.”
“I don’t think I can stand it. I don’t think I could go on with this. If he’s just dead, I can, because otherwise it would be like we wasted his life. But if she sends him back here changed, and we have to…” She lifted her head now, rubbed her hands over her damp cheeks. “How did you get through it? After King? Glenna told me you and King were tight, and you had to end him. How did you get through it?”
“I got piss-faced for a couple of days.”
“Did it help?”
“Not particularly. I grieved and I drank, then I let the anger in. It’s because of what was done to King, more than any other reason, that I’ll see this through to the end.” He angled his head, studying her. “You’ve fallen for him.”
“What? It’s not—I care about him, of course. All of us. We’re a unit.”
“Humans are so strange, their reactions to what they feel. The expressions of emotions. For you it seems to be embarrassment. Why is that? You’re both young, healthy, and caught in a situation filled with passion and jeopardy. Why shouldn’t you form an attachment?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Not for you, apparently.” He glanced over as Hoyt strode back in, and Blair sprang to her feet.
“There’s a van on the lane there. The wheels are all ripped. There are some weapons in it.”
Blair didn’t bother with a jacket, but went out, jogged down the lane. The driver’s door was open, she noted, with the key dangling from the ignition, as if someone had tried to start it, then abandoned it in a hurry.
There were a couple of swords and a cooler holding several packets of blood in the cargo area.
“Well, it’s theirs,” she said to Hoyt. “No question of that. And the chances of all four tires going flat come in at zero.” She hunkered down, stuck her finger in the wide hole in the rubber. “Larkin did this, somehow.”
“They must have abandoned it, taken to the woods, I’d think, to hide from the sun.”
“Yeah.” Her smile showed grim purpose. “At last I have something to do. I’ll go get armed.”
“I’ll go with you.”
She went into the forest with crossbow and stake, seeking out the shadows, moving like one. At the fork of a path, she and Hoyt separated, each moving deeper into light that was dappled and dim.
She found one cowering, curled on mossy ground in deep shade. A boy, she noted, no more than eighteen when he died. From his clothes—holey jeans and a faded sweatshirt, she imagined he’d probably been a student doing the backpacking thing.
“Sorry about this,” she told him.
He hissed at her, crawled over to hide behind the trunk of a tree.
“Oh come on, like I can’t still see you? Don’t make me come up there.”
She didn’t hear the one coming behind her, but sensed it. Blair did a half pivot, lowered her right shoulder, so when it leaped at her back, she flipped it over.
This one was about the same age, a girl, and looked a lot more frisky.
“You two a couple? That’s cute, and really bad luck.”
The female charged, and Blair lowered the crossbow. She didn’t just want a kill, she realized, she wanted a fight.
She dodged the kick, taking the brunt of it on the side of the hip, and the second in the small of the back. There was enough force to pitch her forward. She landed on h
er hands, sprang over, and planted the heel of her boot in the vampire’s face.
“Kickboxing classes, huh?” She saw something in the eyes when it came back at her, when they traded blows. It hadn’t fed, she realized, remembering the cooler in the van. It was desperate.
And prolonging the kill was only torturing it. This time when it charged, Blair pulled her stake and put it through the heart.
“Bitch. Stupid bitch.” The one behind the tree shouted it out, and the heavy dose of New Jersey in the voice nearly amused her.
“Which one of us?”
When he leaped up, she rolled to her toes. But he began to run away. “Oh, for God’s sake.” She snatched up the crossbow, and put an arrow in him. “Coward.”
She whirled at the sound behind her, then relaxed when she saw Hoyt coming along the path. “Only one,” he told her.
“Two here. There may be more, but they’ll have gone deeper. We should get back, see if there’s any word on Larkin.”
“I couldn’t sense anything, but neither could I sense his death. He’s a clever man, Blair, resourceful, as you can see by what he did with the wheels on the van.”
“Yeah. He’s nobody’s jackass, even if he can change into one.”
“I know what it is to care about someone, and to worry for their life.” As they walked, Hoyt’s eyes tracked through the trees, alert and watchful. “We can defend each other in this, but we can’t protect each other. Glenna taught me the difference.”
“I never had to worry about anyone before. I don’t think I’m very good at it.”
“I can tell you that the skill of it comes entirely too easily.”
When they stepped out of the woods Moira was running out of the house as if it had burst into flame. The light of absolute joy on her face had all the fear inside Blair dropping away.
“He’s coming back!” she shouted. “Larkin, he’s coming home.”
“There now.” Hoyt put at an arm around Blair’s shoulders as relief shook them. “So you needn’t use that worry skill any more today.”
It took everything he had to stay the hawk, to stay in the air. Pain and fatigue warred inside him, each threatening to break through and shatter the strength he had left. He’d lost blood, he knew that, but how much he couldn’t say. He only knew the bite at the back of his neck was a constant searing fire.
There had been no one—human or vampire—in sight when he’d come to, after dawn, in his own shape. There’d been blood on the shale, not all his own. Not enough, he comforted himself, not enough of it to mean all he’d freed had been slaughtered.
Surely some had made it. Even one…
He felt himself falter, felt his wing try to tremble itself into an arm. He bore down, calling the hawk to hold him.
There the river, he thought. There the Shannon. He was well toward home now.
He brought Blair’s face into his mind, that two-pointed smile, the strong blue of her eyes, the quick music of her voice. He would make it, he would make these last miles.
He could feel his heart—the hawk’s—racing, too fast. Even breathing was a vicious strain, and his vision was no longer sharp. There was something else inside him, something the demon in a child’s form had put in him. Inside him, pumping into his own blood, poisoning it.
A weakness, the dark of it, whispered slyly that he should just let go.
Then he heard something else, stronger.
You’re almost home, bird-boy. Keep going, you’re almost back. We’re waiting for you. Going to make you the breakfast of champions—all-you-can-eat buffet. Come on, Larkin, come home.
Blair. He held on to the sound of her voice, and flew.
There were the woods, and the pretty stream, and the stone house and stables. And beyond them, the graveyard where he was damn well determined not to end up now that he was so close.
There! There was Blair, outside the house with her face tipped up to the sky so he could see it. Her eyes. And there was Moira, his sweetheart, and the others save Cian. He gave one heartfelt prayer of thanks to all the gods.
Then his strength simply dissolved. He fell the last ten feet to the ground as a man.
“Oh God, oh God!” Blair sprinted to him, reaching him a full stride before the others. “Wait, be careful. We have to see if he broke anything.”
She began to run her hands over him even as Glenna did the same. Then she felt the raw skin at the back of his neck, and slowly brushed his hair aside.
She stared up into Moira’s brimming eyes. “He’s been bitten.”
“Oh God, sweet God. But he’s not changed.” Moira lifted one of his limp hands to her lips. “He couldn’t be out in the sun if he’d been changed.”
“No, not changed. And not broken. Banged up pretty good. His pulse is really thready, Glenna.”
“Let’s get him inside.”
“He needs food.” Moira hurried ahead as Hoyt and Blair lifted Larkin. “It would be like one of us going without food for days. Food and liquids. I’ll get something.”
“The sofa in the parlor,” Glenna ordered. “I’ll go get what I need.”
Once they’d laid him on the sofa, Blair crouched by his head. He was white as death, and bruises were already gathering. “It’s okay, you’re home now. That’s what counts. You’re home.”
“Cian—Cian said to start with this.” Moira rushed in with a large glass of orange juice. “To get the fluids and the sugar into him.”
“Yeah, good. Gotta bring him around. Come on, flyboy.”
“Here, let me try this.” Glenna knelt at the side of the sofa. She dipped her thumb into a jar of balm, smeared it first on the center of his forehead. “On the chakras,” she explained as she worked. “A little chi balancing. Moira, take his other hand, push some of your strength out. You know how. Blair, talk to him again, the way I told you to when he was flying. It’ll reach him. Hoyt?”
“Yes.” Hoyt laid his hands on either side of Blair’s head. “Tell him to come back.”
“Come on, Larkin, you’ve got to wake up. Can’t just lie around all day. Besides, breakfast is ready. Please wake up now. I’ve been waiting for you.” She pressed his hand to her cheek. “Watching for you. His fingers moved! All the way out, Larkin, that’s enough damn drama for the day.”
His eyelids fluttered. “Why are women always nagging a man?”
“Guess that’s just what it takes,” she managed.
“Here we are now, here.” Moira moved around the couch to lift his head, to hold the glass to it.
He drank like a camel, then managed to smile at her. “There’s my sweetheart. Look at this, what a picture. Three beautiful faces. I’d give you all my worldly goods and a lifetime of devotion if you’d get me something to eat.”
It was Cian who stepped in, holding a small plate with two pieces of dry toast. “You’ll need to start slow.” He exchanged a look with Blair. She met it, then squeezed her eyes shut. Nodded.
“Don’t bolt it down,” she warned.
“Just bread. Can’t I have meat? I swear I could eat a whole side of venison. Or that lovely dish you make, Glenna, with the balls of meat and the noodles.”
“I’ll make it tonight.”
“You need to have just enough to take the edge off,” Blair began, “to get a little strength back. You eat a full meal, you’ll just boot it—vomit,” she explained, “when we’re taking care of the bite.”
“It was the little one, her boy. Little bastard. I was a wolf at the time, so it didn’t go as deep as it might have.”
“Glenna has balm. She used it on me when I was bitten.” Moira stroked Larkin’s hair. “It’s a terrible burn, I know, but the balm cools it.”
“You weren’t bitten,” Cian said flatly. “A scrape, not a puncture.”
“What difference does it make?”
“Quite a bit.” Blair straightened. “There’s infection, and there’s also considerable risk of the one who bit you having some control over you.”
“
Aye.” Larkin frowned, closed his eyes. “I felt something working in me. But—”
“We’ll take care of it. It needs to be purified with holy water.”
“That’s fine. Then if I could have the lovely balm Moira spoke of, and a meal, I’d be good as new—but for the fact every bone of my body feels as if it’s been hit with a hammer.”
Straight truth, Blair thought. Straight, hard truth. “Do you know the burn you felt when it sank into you? The burn you’re feeling now?”
“I do.”
“This will be a lot worse. I’m sorry.” She walked out, hurried up the steps. And Moira rushed out behind her.
“There must be another way. How can we hurt him again? He’s still so weak, and already in pain. I can see the pain in his eyes.”
“You think I can’t?” She swung into her room. “There is no other way.”
“I know it says there isn’t in the books. I’ve read them. But with Glenna and Hoyt—”
Blair pulled a bottle of holy water from her kit, and her face was set when she whirled around. “There is no other way. He’s infected. That puts him and all of us at risk.” She shot out her arm, turned up her wrist to show the scar. “I know what it’s like. If there was another way, don’t you think I’d try it?”
Moira shuddered out a breath. “What can I do?”
“You can help hold him down.”
She took down towels, bandages. She made herself walk to Larkin, look straight into his eyes. “This is going to hurt.”
“It’s going to hurt,” Cian added, “like a motherfucker.”
“Oh well.” Larkin licked his lips. “That’s heartening.”
“I might be able to block some of the pain,” Glenna began.
“I don’t think you can, or should.” Blair shook her head. “It’s part of it. It’s the way it’s done. Here, we need to get him on the floor, facedown. Get those towels under him. Cian, you’d better take his feet. Wouldn’t want any to splash on you.”
Larkin winced as they shifted him. “What would he need to take my feet for?”