And pain. The pain was waiting. He would have to go through the pain to get to Joanna.
But Joanna needed him. Would the pain be bearable? Could he stand it, or would he shame himself and weep like a child?
Pace? Don’t leave me, Pace.
He reached toward the voice. Pain stole his breath. Pounding, grinding pain, throbbing, tearing and ripping through every bone and muscle with sharp, deadly claws, threatening to steal his mind and send him screaming back into the darkness. He heard a groan. Was it his? He couldn’t tell.
He wanted to go back, where the pain couldn’t reach him, but the voices pulled him into the pain and toward the world of the living.
“You should get some sleep, child.” Dee-O-Det’s voice, sounding weary and old.
“I can’t.” Joanna’s voice, even more weary sounding, and filled with fear.
Joanna? Afraid? Not his Joanna. She had more courage than ten men. What could possibly put so much fear in her voice, Pace wondered as he fought the giant claws of pain, and lost. He slipped back into the darkness without learning the answer.
He didn’t retreat as far this time. He stayed on the edge, thinking that if his mind and body could get used to the pain, he would be able to disregard it. He had done it before. But there had never been this much pain before.
Time passed. He didn’t know how much, but this time he steeled himself against the pain and fought his way to the surface. He had no choice. The soft crying tore at him deeper and more sharply than any puny claws of pain could manage.
He sensed that it was night, but his eyes refused to open. He felt the warmth of a fire against his right arm, the coolness of a mountain night on his left. There were two other people nearby, one crying—a woman—the other merely breathing.
He felt numb, and welcomed the numbness. He tried to concentrate on opening his eyes. He had to open his eyes, because that was Joanna crying, and he had to see her. He could feel the darkness waiting to take him again, and he had to see her one more time.
As he struggled, the numbness faded, and pain like he’d never known engulfed him like fire. Burning, throbbing agony, everywhere. Every inch of him screamed with it. The pain was so intense that he could barely breath.
With every ounce of his will, he managed to open one eye a fraction of the way. The other eye refused his will.
The sight before him struck him like a burning knife in an open wound.
His medicine vision.
If he had harbored any doubt that he was dying, the doubt fled. He would die soon. He had always known that when he saw the fire that burned from top to bottom, his life would end.
It danced before him now, that strange fire from his manhood vision. Small flames danced just above the ground, licking through wood, the way a fire should. But above was another fire, high in the air, and the flames licked down.
Joanna.
It was her hair. The second fire was no fire at all, but Joanna’s hair. She stood on the other side of the fire with her back to the flames. From where he lay, it looked like two fires. One small and normal, the other tall, burning top to bottom, its flames licking down.
Joanna.
So it was true then. She was his destiny. But not in the way he had thought. Not as his soul mate, the other half of himself. She was, literally, the fire he had been seeking.
“Joanna.”
He hadn’t realized he’d spoken until the pain erupted in his throat, and she turned around. Her eyes widened, and she placed the splayed fingers of one hand over her stomach in a protective gesture.
Everything came back to him then. Juerta, the desert, rain, heat, cold. His one afternoon of heaven in her arms. And the baby. Jesus, God, she carried his son.
“Pace!” With a glad cry that warmed his heart, Joanna rushed to his side.
What he wouldn’t give to feel her touch him, but he could tell she was afraid to for fear of causing him more pain. He should thank her for that, because the pain seemed to swell with each breath he took, but in the end it wouldn’t matter, because the darkness was pulling him under again.
He fought it. There was something that had to be done. “Where…is…Dee-O-Det?” The words sapped his strength.
“I am here,” came the familiar voice from behind him.
Pace tried to crane his neck, but his strength failed him. A moment later the old man came into Pace’s limited line of vision. Pace closed his eye and gathered his flagging reserves. “Cut…my wrist…and hers. Bind them…together.”
“Oh, Pace.” Joanna was so touched that tears clogged her vision. Regardless of the pain he must feel, his first conscious thought was of her, for she knew what the cutting and binding together of a man and woman’s wrists meant to him. By such a method had his parents been married by this same shaman. Her parents, too, years later, and then again after Joanna’s mother had been killed, when her father had married Serena in the same manner. To Pace the act was more sacred and more binding than vows spoken in church.
Joanna knelt at his side, aching with everything she had with the need to touch him, but she didn’t dare, for fear of hurting him. She settled for touching his hair. “That can wait until later,” she told him.
“For me,” he said slowly, he voice fading, “there will be no later.”
Joanna felt the blood drain from her face. “Don’t talk like that,” she pleaded. “I know you’re in terrible pain, but you’re going to be fine.” Please God, let him be fine!
“I won’t. Look at me. I’m a dead man, Firefly, but I don’t want my son born a bastard, and I don’t want you to live with that shame.”
“I could never be ashamed of your son! Don’t even think it!”
“Marry me.” Despite the weakness in his voice, the words rang with the tone of an order. “Marry me now, before…before it’s too late.”
Joanna fought the urge to lay her head on him and weep. She’d done her crying earlier. She refused to break down again. She needed to be strong, for his sake. She couldn’t bear the thought of deliberately inflicting another wound on him, no matter how slight. She shook her head. “If you think I’m going to let anyone near you with a knife after what you’ve been through—”
“It can’t hurt me now.”
“Can’t hurt you?” she cried. “There’s not an inch on you that isn’t bloody. This can wait, Pace.”
“Joanna…”
He almost never called her Joanna. It was usually Jo, or girl, or Firefly. This time his use of her full name scared her. She searched inside for the brief connection they had shared so few times during the past days. When she found it, she instantly cut it off. It was too raw, too painful this time. But in that brief second when her feelings touched his, she realized that he was giving up. He was letting go. No! her heart screamed.
“Old man,” Pace said to the shaman. “Did you see…when she stood beyond the fire?”
“Did I see what, my son?”
“Her hair…the way it hung above the fire…became part of the fire.”
“I…suppose so,” Dee-O-Det said doubtfully.
“That…was my vision. The fire that burned upside down was…her hair.”
“This surprises you? Do you not know that she can hear your thoughts?”
“I know. But the vision…”
“Bah!” the old man said. “You are talking crazy again. You think your vision of fire means your death.”
Joanna sucked in a sharp breath. “No!”
“Yes!” Pace hissed. “I’ve always known what it meant. I just never knew…that you…were the fire.”
Ice formed in the pit of Joanna’s stomach and along her backbone. “You’re wrong,” she breathed. “You have to be wrong.”
“Tell her, old man. You can see the future, can’t you?”
“The future?” Dee-O-Det asked quietly. “I can see white eyes’ wagons that fly in the sky like birds. I can see great wars and much killing. I can see the Apache and the white man as friends. Is this the fu
ture? Or is it only an old man’s ramblings? You want to know if you will live, or if you will die. This I cannot tell you. It is up to you, Fire Seeker. You, and Yúúsń.”
“Me?” Pace’s voice was breathless now. It hurt Joanna to hear him struggle so hard to speak. “You think I want to die?” he ask. “You think I can stop what’s happening? I only pray I don’t die before you marry us so my son will not be born a bastard.”
Joanna choked on a sob. She shook with fear and anguish at the price Pace was having to pay because he’d tried to help her. And then she shook with anger at the defeat in his voice. “If you can hang on long enough for that, then you can just hang on a little longer, Pace Colton. I’ll marry you when you can stand up beside me, and not a minute sooner. So just make up your mind to get well. And stop talking. You’re wearing yourself out and you need rest.”
Pace tried to hang on—he had to convince her before it was too late. But the darkness pulled him down, down, until he hung in that icy cold place again, somewhere between the pain of life and the peace of death.
Chapter 14
Pace’s talk of dying terrified Joanna. She sat beside him all night, afraid to take her eyes from him for fear that if she did, he would slip away from her forever.
At mid morning the next day, Nod-ah-Sti placed a hand on Joanna’s shoulder. “Your family has arrived. Go and greet them, child. I will watch over Fire Seeker for you.”
“My family?” Dimly Joanna realized that for several minutes she’d been hearing a commotion growing outside, but she had paid no attention to it. “My family is here?”
“Yes, they have arrived.”
Joanna hesitated. Dee-O-Det must have been right. Gran must have had a vision. Joanna wanted to run to her family and beg them to do something to help Pace, but she knew that unless—“Spence! Did Spence come?”
Nod-ah-Sti shook her head. “I am not certain. I did not wait to see every face.”
Oh please, Joanna begged silently as she tore herself from Pace’s side and rushed out of the wickiup. Please let Spence be with them. Please please please.
As the last of the riders burst through the trees and into the clearing, Joanna saw her father first, grim faced and hard eyed, with Grandad Travis at his side. Behind them rode Gran, Serena, and Spence. Spence!
As the riders spotted her and dismounted, Joanna rushed forward. “You came! Oh, thank God you came!”
“Jo!” Her father’s arms engulfed her in welcome warmth. For a moment, just a single brief moment, she rested against his familiar strength with the fleeting wish that she was a child again and he could make all her troubles disappear.
But she wasn’t, and he couldn’t, and Pace needed help. She pulled from her father’s embrace, gave a brief hug to Serena, Gran, and Grandad, then reached for Spence. “Pace is hurt. Did you bring your bag?”
Spence was unstrapping his black medical bag from behind his saddle before she finished asking. “How bad is he?” he demanded.
“Bad.” Joanna swallowed hard. “Real bad.”
The circle was opening again before him, that circle of light that led to the Land Where the Cottonwoods Stand in Line. The place of his ancestors. It was pulling him closer and closer, promising an end to all pain.
Why was he fighting it? He couldn’t remember. He had resisted the lure before and fought his way back to the land of the living, but it had been hard, so damn hard. Why had he bothered? There was only pain there, and mistakes, and regret. His mistakes, his regrets. No one—
Joanna.
He had gone back to try to protect Joanna and the baby. Joanna had told him no. She didn’t want his protection, didn’t need it.
But that didn’t seem right. She…she had demanded that he stay with her, that he fight the pull of the peace that awaited him on the other side.
And she’d been wrong—she did need him.
One more time. He would try one more time to convince her. He had to convince her. If he concentrated with everything he had, everything he was, he thought he could find the strength to go back one more time before everything of life slipped from his grasp.
It was hard, struggling back to consciousness. So damn hard. He’d never known true fear before, not for himself. But the pain he knew awaited scared him, because he feared he would shame himself by whimpering like a baby.
This time, though, the pain didn’t seem so bad. He was almost to the surface, could hear sounds around him, people moving, whispering.
“He’s coming to.” Joanna’s voice. “Pace? Pace, can you hear me?”
Pace struggled through the darkness, through the icy cold and terrible heat, through the pain that, even though not as bad as before, still ripped the breath from his lungs, struggling all the while to reach her voice.
He worked his throat, trying to get sound to come out. “Jo?” he managed to croak. God, just that much hurt like a thousand hot knives stabbing his throat from the inside.
“I’m here, Pace.”
With an unbelievable amount of effort, he worked one eye open a fraction of an inch. He fought to clear not only his vision, but his mind. When Joanna came into focus as she knelt and leaned toward him, his mind cleared. He remembered everything.
“It’s…time, Jo,” he whispered.
She reached a hand toward his face, and Pace didn’t know which would be worse, if she touched the raw wounds on his face, or if she didn’t touch him at all. He would have flinched, but didn’t have the strength. It took him a minute to realize that she merely touched his hair.
“Time for what?” she asked him.
“Where’s—” He looked around the wickiup, searching for Dee-O-Det, and saw his family. His mother and father, Serena and Matt, even Spence. “Christ.” He didn’t want them to see him like this, beaten, bloody, dying. He would have spared his mother at least.
“Move back, JoJo,” Spence said. “Let me have a look at him.”
“Hold on…college boy,” Pace muttered between split, swollen lips. “Jo and I have…unfinished business.”
“It can wait, Pace,” Jo told him earnestly. “Let Spence help you.”
Pace tried to moisten his dry, cracked lips, but he couldn’t manage the task. “No…time,” he whispered. “Now…Jo. At least say it…in front of them. Tell them…we’re married.”
Pace didn’t have to look to know that the low growl came from Matt, the shocked gasp from his mother, the stunned silence from the others.
“No!” Joanna shook her head and backed away. Her eyes were wide, her face etched in distress. “It’s not true. We’re not married.”
Pace concentrated on resisting the darkness pulling at him. He had to convince her, she had to agree before it was too late. He had one chance, and he would have to take it. “Matt.”
His face unreadable, Matt approached the pallet where Pace lay. And they accuse me of getting that stone-blank Apache look, Pace thought with a touch of frustrated humor. No Apache had ever looked more blankly stone-faced than Matt Colton just then.
Matt worked at keeping his expression blank. He was appalled at Pace’s condition. He’d seen wounds and blood in his day, but when Spence pulled aside the blanket covering Pace and even Spence blanched, Matt nearly staggered.
But just as alarming were Pace’s words about a marriage with Joanna. Matt didn’t know which shock was greater, but the father in him overruled what little sense of brotherhood Pace’s animosity over the years had left him, and a deep, burning rage pumped through his veins. “What have you done?” he growled.
“Whatever it is, it can wait,” Daniella said behind him, her voice shaking.
Matt agonized for her. Pace was her firstborn, and if he was in half as bad a shape as he looked, he wouldn’t live out the day. Dani would be devastated. They all would. But—
“Let Spence…” Her voice trailed off to a whimper of pain when Pace peered up at her with the one eye he’d managed to open a slit.
“Spence can’t…help,” Pace whispered i
n a voice that sounded ruined. “Make her…marry me, shik’is.”
At forty-five years of age, there wasn’t much that could make Matt Colton feel like weeping, but hearing Pace call him brother for the first time in fourteen years, without a hint of sarcasm in his voice, made his vision blur.
Then the rest of Pace’s words registered, and suspicion, white and hot, resurfaced. “Why,” he asked, his voice low and tight, “should I do a thing like that?”
Not much of Pace’s one open eye was visible, but what there was stared straight into Matt’s eyes. “Because—”
“Pace, don’t,” Joanna cried softly.
“I want everybody out—” Spence began.
“—she carries my son,” Pace finished.
Outside, a child shrieked in laughter. A horse snorted. A hawk cried. Inside, for a long moment, the only sound was the raspy sound of Pace’s struggle for breath.
Then Matt erupted. “You sorry, dung-eating, mother-fu—”
“Daddy!”
“If you weren’t half dead already,” Matt growled, clenching his fists at his sides to keep from reaching for Pace’s throat, “I’d kill you myself.”
Travis’s voice boomed. “Stop it, all of you!”
“But she can’t,” Serena cried at Pace, ignoring her father, ignoring Matt. “It’s barely been a week since I telegraphed you!”
“How long…do you think…it takes?” Pace asked.
“But she can’t know so soon…”
“I know,” Pace said.
“All of this can wait,” Spence said firmly. “He needs medical attention before you all pounce on him. Now get out of here, all of you.”
“No,” Pace protested. “She has…to marry me. There’s no…time.”
“Take it easy, big brother.” Spence slipped his stethoscope from his medical bag. “Let me help you.”
Pace would have laughed if he could have. Cursing took less strength. “Hell, help me? Sorry, college boy, but even you can’t help me this time.”
Apache-Colton Series Page 201