Blood Marriage (22 page)

She had no strength to pull herself up onto the roof. It was hopeless. Yet the knowledge that somewhere close something horrible stalked her, drove her on. She pumped her legs, swinging her feet back and forth in a lengthening pendulum arc until they connected with the uneven stones of the fireplace and she dug her heels into the masonry joint. Using that precarious leverage to steady herself, she tried to pull herself up, her arm muscles burning. She managed to raise her chin no more than a few inches. Relaxing her arms, she dangled helplessly from the beam, knowing she'd reached the end of her strength, yet unable to let go, holding on to hope if only for a few seconds more.

Something wet struck her cheek. She shook her head. More drops fell from above hitting her forehead, chin, neck and chest. She started to look up, but a low hiss from the direction of the hall made her head snap toward the door instead. Sheer terror propelled her to action. She released the beam, simultaneously shoving away from the fireplace wall with her feet, willing herself up through the roof opening, praying there would be something there to grab on to, to use to pull herself up. Of course there was nothing. 

Her hands clawed at empty air. Sick dread catapulted through her stomach as she started to fall downward again. Then strong hands shot down from above, clamping around her wrists.

For the space of a heartbeat she hung suspended in mid-air. Then, as if she weighed nothing at all, she was whisked up through the hole and onto the roof. The scream building in her lungs never made it to her throat. A hand clamped hard over her mouth. 

"Not a sound." Nicholas's whisper was urgent in her ear.

She nodded, tears of relief and joy welling in her eyes.

He removed his hand, allowing her to breathe. She turned her face up to his, and joy died. His head was covered by the cowl of his cloak, his eyes hidden in its dark recesses, but the blood on his lips and chin glistened wet in the moonlight.

"You're injur--" She stopped when Nicholas held a finger to his bloody lips. 

He grasped her hand and set off across the rooftop in a swift zigzagging pattern, as if he knew the spots to avoid. When they reached the edge of the roof, he released her hand. Only shock kept Elizabeth from screaming as he stepped off the roof. He landed neatly atop one of the roofless stone walls that marked the former kitchen of the ground floor and held his arms up to her. 

"Quickly! Jump!"

To her own astonishment, she did, without hesitation. He caught her in his arms and set her on her feet on the stone wall, waiting only as long as it took to steady her before once again dropping a full story to the ground below and holding his arms up to her. 

A movement in the shadows off to his right made her gasp. It was enough to warn him. He met the black-cloaked figure hurtling toward him with a hard fist to its gut, but the momentum of the creature knocked them both to the uneven ground. The thing's hood fell back. Elizabeth's eyes widened with shock. Randall. But he should be dead after that fall through the stairs.

A sudden awareness tingled along the back of Elizabeth's neck, causing her to look up. It stood on the edge of the roof above, silhouetted against the night sky, the hem of its scarlet cloak billowing in an invisible breeze as if evil seeped forth from beneath it. 

Elizabeth stepped back, remembering too late she stood on a narrow wall with nothing behind her. As she fell backward, she watched the creature with a strangely fatalistic detachment, knowing it was probably the last sight she would ever behold. The thing dropped from the roof to the wall, landing within inches of where she'd just been as Elizabeth tensed, expecting to hit the hard stone and jagged debris of the castle kitchens. Instead, she fell into a softer target. Randall's curse was cut short as he slammed face forward into a pile of rubble.

Elizabeth rolled from his back onto her knees, fighting to restore the breath knocked out of her. Nicholas grabbed her arm and she was on her feet again, fleeing with him out of the kitchen ruins and around the corner of the castle. They ran past the tower and the well, heading for the moat bridge and the forest beyond. 

The forest.
Amanda.

"Nicholas." Elizabeth used what little breath she had to form that single word.

"Don't talk. Run."

"But Amanda..." Elizabeth's words came in short panting bursts. "...moth hunting in the forest...I saw her...from the window."

"Don't worry. Amanda's quite safe. She's--" 

They'd reached the courtyard in front of the main castle entrance. A hideous flutter of red silk dropped from the castle roof above and rolled across the courtyard. Nicholas jerked Elizabeth to a stop and pushed her behind him as the creature rose to its feet.

"When I tell you, run for the bridge," Nicholas said beneath his breath. "And don't stop running until you reach Heaven's Edge. Don't wait for me. And don't look back."

"I won't leave you."

"It won't kill me, Elizabeth. But it will kill you," Nicholas said, never taking his eyes from the creature. 

What was it waiting for, Elizabeth wondered. Why didn't it attack? Then she heard a dragging sound behind her. Randall rounded the corner of the castle dragging one leg, his hood pushed back, a triumphant gap-toothed sneer on his bruised and bloodied face.

Elizabeth grabbed Nicholas's cloak to warn him, but before she could say a word a large piece of rubble exploded on the ground before him. Tiny shards of debris stung Elizabeth's skin. Scarlet reeled back. A second rock shattered behind Elizabeth, and Randall hobbled over to the castle wall and pressed himself flat against its surface. 

In a second story window above a shadow moved and one large piece of rubble after another sailed forth to burst like artillery fire in the courtyard. The evil one hissed up at the window.

"Now! Run!" Nicholas shoved Elizabeth forward. 

She didn't hesitate. She dashed through a storm of exploding rocks. Scarlet hissed and lunged for her, but was forced back by the relentless screen of rocks raining from above. Elizabeth bolted from the courtyard and across the moat bridge, fear driving her forward though every muscle in her body screamed with pain and exhaustion. 

Nicholas had warned her not to look back, but at the edge of the bridge, on the side closest to the forest, she stopped and bent over, her hands on her knees. Gulping air into starved lungs, she looked back. Nicholas had not followed her. 

In the courtyard the avalanche of rocks ceased. A shadow was framed in the window for a moment. Then it stepped out into thin air and dropped to the ground in a silent flutter of dark capes. Because of the courtyard wall, Elizabeth couldn't see what was happening on the ground, but the sounds of hissing and growling told her the battle continued.

She remained, listening, allowing her breathing to slow. Nicholas had said to run, not to stop until she reached home. But what if he needed her?

Beneath her feet the boards of the bridge creaked, pulling her gaze downward. Large blood-smeared hands reached up over the wooden edge. Elizabeth fled off the bridge, into the forest, and down the path that led back to Heaven's Edge. She ran without stopping and without looking back. Her lungs burned, her legs ached, and she could barely make out the path in the darkness. Yet her terror drove her forward with a speed she would not have believed possible just days ago when getting up a simple set of stairs had been almost beyond her abilities.

Behind her the sound of feet pounding the ground, crushing dried leaves and snapping twigs, warned her someone followed. She didn't dare look back even as the sounds drew closer. She was losing ground, but she ran on. Just when she was sure her heart would burst, her lungs, and legs, and will, would carry her no further, the rapid drumming of a horse's hooves sounded on the path. There was a grunt and the smack of bodies colliding and hitting the ground. The beat of the horse's hooves faltered and quieted. 

Elizabeth kept going, pressing her hand to the stabbing ache in her side. She came out of the woods and stumbled across the lawn, falling twice, but picking herself up and forcing herself onward. From the direction of the woods a horse whinnied and stamped the ground. Elizabeth reached the corner of the house and looked back. 

Her husband's fierce black stallion pawed the ground at the entrance to the forest path. Nicholas pushed the hood away from his face and lifted a hand to her. She raised hers in response, then watched him cover his head with the hood once more, turn the stallion and head back into the woods.

She entered the house through the kitchen door and forced her exhausted body to climb the stairs. The icy water in the pitcher on the dressing table in the master bedchamber turned brown and red as she washed the dirt and blood from her face. She didn't sit at her vanity, knowing once she sat down she wouldn't be able to rise again. She had no illusions what the injuries she'd received tonight would mean. Almost certain death. Wood dust and fine shards of rock fell from her hair as she brushed it out. Her fingers trembled as she tied it back with a ribbon, and finally went to check on her mother. 

In her mother's room a thin maid slept on the sofa. Her mother slept peacefully as well. Elizabeth tugged a chair to the window, pulled back the curtains and sat down to wait, to watch for her husband's return. Her mind reeled with the events of the night, with the impossible things she'd seen. But she was too spent to think, to try to make sense of the impossible. So she prayed instead. Tears streaming down her cheeks, she prayed for the safe return of her husband, that tonight had been no more than a bad dream and she would wake tomorrow to find herself sheltered in Nicholas's arms. She prayed that the injuries she'd suffered this night would not mean the end of her life and her time with Nicholas. And she prayed for the strength to stay awake, to wait for his return. Having reached the end of her endurance and with tears still rolling down her cheeks, she descended into a fitful sleep.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

A distant clock was striking four as she felt herself being lifted. Elizabeth opened her eyes. Nicholas, stripped to the waist, his face and hair as wet as if he'd just emerged from a bath, held her in his arms. She raised her own arms to wrap his shoulders and buried her face in his neck, sobbing with relief. 

They left her mother and the sleeping maid behind and he carried her into their bedroom. He set her on her feet on a rug near the fireplace. At this time of year the grate should have been empty, but a generous fire burned.

Elizabeth opened her mouth to speak, so many questions on her tongue she didn't know where to start. His finger touched her lips and he shook his head, but it was the profound weariness in his eyes that kept her silent. 

"Not tonight,
mea amor
. Not tonight," he said as he began unbuttoning her dress. "There will be trouble tomorrow. We must sleep now."

He was putting her off again, refusing to answer her questions. But she was too relieved to have him back and safe to care. And too afraid of where those questions might lead to insist. So she stood quietly and allowed him to undress her, closing her mind to the dried blood that spotted the clothes he let drop to the floor. 

When she stood naked before him, he pulled the single ribbon from her hair, letting the heavy tresses pour over her shoulders and across his scraped and bruised hands. She lifted both his hands in hers and kissed the raw skin of his knuckles, one at a time. Then she turned his hands over and pressed her lips to the insides of his palms, breathing in the smell of the soap he must have used to wash away the blood of battle. Nicholas closed his eyes as if fighting some deep emotion. When she released his hands, he stepped away, turning his back to her. He removed what remained of his own clothing, adding it to the pile of her things he'd created before the fire.

"We should sleep," he insisted again, but made no move toward the bed. Rather, he gathered her in his arms, kissing and caressing her with such tenderness that even as exhausted as she was, she ached for him. She arched away just enough so that the hardened tips of her breasts scraped his chest. Slowly she slid her fingers down the taut muscles of his stomach. He stopped her hands with his before they reached what they sought. Soft laughter rumbled through his chest.

"None of that. Get into bed." 

He knelt before the fire and began to feed their clothing to the flames. To her own surprise she didn't ask why. She simply went to the dresser and returned with scissors. Kneeling beside him, she picked up her things one at a time, cut them into pieces, and handed them to him. Watching them burn filled her with relief, as if all the fears, the terrors, the unanswered questions were burning away with them.

After the fire had consumed everything, even her slippers and the leather of his boots, she slipped her hand into his and waited. He looked at her for a long moment and then again closed his eyes. He pulled in a deep breath, releasing it as a humming sigh. When he opened his eyes again, she saw determined resignation in their blue depths. She knew he was about to tell her the truth, to answer the questions he'd never given her the chance to ask. And suddenly she was afraid, afraid he'd confirm the impossible notions that had been running through her mind since she'd discovered the twin puncture wounds in the bath, afraid he'd confirm the reality of what she had seen at the castle and the truth of what she'd seen when he'd pulled her to safety on the roof.

"Elizabeth..."

There was such anguish in that single word that she wanted to comfort him. She reached out to touch his cheek, brushing her lips against his, silencing him. His arms came around her and he laid her back on the rug, pressing her into the braided wool and covering her with his body. Though he'd made love to her gently before, the way he took her now, in the flickering glow of the firelight, was tender beyond what she would have imagined possible. She yielded to him completely, surrendering herself unconditionally, allowing him to drive himself deep into her body and even deeper into her heart.