Heart of the Hawk (34 page)

“But what?” she prompted gently when he didn’t go on.

“He’s . . . a little older, I think, and he dresses . . . differently. And he’s in a strange place.”

“A strange place?”

“I can’t explain it. I get the feeling he’s from here, Seattle, I mean, but in the dream, he’s somewhere else. And he’s . . .”

“He’s what?”

This was going to sound crazy; Josh knew that, but what could possibly be crazier than what they themselves had been through? He took a deep breath and plunged ahead.

“I think he’s the last Hawk. But in another time.”

Kate blinked. “Another time?”

He nodded. “Later than now, I think. There are strange things around him, but I can’t see them clearly. All I can really see is him. And a woman.”

“A woman?”

“Yes. Dark hair. Sassy.” He grinned. “She’s the one who calls him Jason, and she’s giving him a lot of trouble. But then Hawk women always do that to their men.”

“Hush,” Kate said, elbowing him as she giggled.

“He’s fighting the book, Kate.”

She went very still then. “It . . . came to him?”

“Like it did to me. And he’s fighting it just as hard. I can feel it, in the dream. I can feel . . . his confusion, his pain. As if I were there, watching him.”

“I wish we could help him.”

Just like that, she had accepted it, and wished to help. Josh drew her into his arms and held her close, blessing the book, Jenna’s wizard, or whatever fate had brought them together. She drifted back to sleep in his embrace, but Josh lay awake for a long time, that other Hawk’s face still vivid in his mind.

At last, in the faint light of dawn, he got up. Pulling on his denim pants, he walked barefoot out of their bedroom into the main room, shivering a little against the damp chill. The beauty of this paradise had a price that seemed sometimes to consist of endless wet days. He stoked the fire so it would be warmer when Kate got up.

Then he crossed the room to a bookshelf that held only one volume, and picked it up. It no longer gave him that odd sense of warmth and companionship, but Josh suspected it was his own life that had changed. The cold was gone, banished by a golden-eyed woman, and he no longer needed the comfort of the book.

He took it out to the kitchen, where he lit a lamp, then fired up the stove and started a pot of coffee, fighting off yawns. As the coffee was brewing, he sat down at the table and opened the book.

As always, he smiled at the picture that had appeared on that empty, skipped page before his story began. It had emerged on the day of their wedding, that hasty, in transit, but no less heartfelt ceremony held under a spreading stand of aspens beside the train platform. It was the same kind of drawing that appeared throughout the book, as if the artist who had captured Jenna and Kane had somehow been witness to their own joining.

And perhaps, he thought with a no doubt crazy acceptance, he had.

He thought about him again, that other Hawk of his repeated, vivid dreams, thought of what he must be going through. What he must have felt when the book appeared out of nowhere, and haunted him until he was forced to believe in it. In every dream it felt stronger, that last Hawk’s resistance, and Josh felt a strange kinship with this man he would never know. Hawks really did breed true, he thought. Even when they didn’t believe it themselves.

I wish we could help him,
Kate, his ever generous Kate, had said.

He looked at the book thoughtfully, remembering how it had come to him. Then he got up, poured a cup of the fresh coffee, and thought some more. It might work, he thought. It just might work. He would try, anyway. There was nothing to lose.

He had just finished when Kate wandered sleepily into the kitchen and leaned over his chair to nuzzle his neck. It was early yet—Luke was still asleep, and the dawn quiet was pleasant, now that the rooms were warm. He reached back to give her an awkward hug.

“What are you writing?”

He showed her. “I don’t know if it will work, if you can put something in the book and have it . . . go with it, but I thought it was worth a try.”

“So you wrote him a letter? This man in the dream?”

Josh nodded ruefully. “Crazy as a loon, I know.”

She shook her head. “It’s not, if it will help him avoid some of what we went through.”

Again, that incredible acceptance, born of a love he’d never thought to find in his life. The past two years had made him realize that no matter how bleak things looked, you could never give up, because around any corner could be the reason for it all.

“What did you say to him?” she asked.

He handed her the note he’d written. She began to read it out loud, because that had become their habit as they continued what was now a family tradition of reading to each other every evening. Just the sound of her soft voice as she read warmed him even more than the fires he’d stoked.

I don’t know who or where or even when you are, or if this will ever reach you, but if I can spare you some of what I went through, I must try. If you are reading this, you are the last Hawk. If you are like me, you are fighting, as all the last Hawks have fought. Don’t. The legend is true. The book is real.

Jenna and Kane Hawk are forebears to be proud of. I hope that, whoever you are, you might even find something in me to be proud of, little though there is. Don’t let it end. It does matter. Jenna and Kane and the others deserve to live on in you.

I wish you luck, and Godspeed.

—Joshua Hawk

Kate’s voice broke on his name, and she let the letter drift from her fingers back to the table.

“I love you, Joshua Hawk.”

Amused and touched by her sudden emotion, he shifted his chair and pulled her down on his lap. “And I love you, Kathleen Hawk.”

She snuggled against him with a tiny sigh. Smiling with the contentment that never seemed far away when he was with her, he reached around her and folded the letter. He flipped open the book, but was unsure where to put it. Finally he turned to his own page, the last page with any of the elegant, mysterious writing, the page that documented their wedding and their settling in Seattle. He would put it there, he thought, and hope that somehow—

He went very still.

He looked at the last entry, which for two years had been about their wedding and their move here to the town Josh knew was about to boom. It had been that way until minutes ago. Until, he thought, Kate had come to him.

He read it again. And then a third time.

“Josh?”

He knew she had felt his sudden stillness.

“Kate, I . . . are you all right?”

She sat up on his lap, looking down at him curiously, and he wondered just how strained he had sounded.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I told you, I’m just a little tired lately. Whatever was making me so sick went away.”

“I know what was making you so sick. And it didn’t go away.”

She blinked. “What?”

“Deborah was wrong, Kate. Or maybe you just needed . . . time to heal. Or maybe it’s that old wizard at work again.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Our son, Kate. Our son.”

She looked puzzled. “Luke? What about him?”

“No, not Luke. Yes, he’s our son in all the ways that matter, and always will be. But I mean . . . a baby, Kate. You’re pregnant.”

She paled. Slowly, she shook her head. He’d known she mourned the impossibility of it; she’d told him that, except for his love, she wished she could have his child more than anything in the world. He’d assured her it didn’t matter, and he’d meant it, but now the idea filled him with sheer joy. She would have to be careful, the entry said, but in the end . . . they would have a son.

But Kate didn’t believe him.

“The book has never been wrong, has it, Kate?”

Mutely, she shook her head.

“Then read about our son.”

He nudged the book toward her. And watched her face as she read. Disbelief, doubt, then hope flashed across her face like the morning sun clearing the mountains and darting across a meadow of wildflowers.

She lifted her golden gaze to his face. “A baby? Our baby?”

He nodded. “Trust it, Katie. It’s true. You know it is.”

She pressed a hand to her heart, and he knew she was feeling the same welling joy that was making his chest ache.

“Our son, Katie,” he whispered. And suddenly, with a flash of certainty whose origin he didn’t question, he picked up the letter he’d written and added, “And this man will be his . . . a few times great-grandson. Another last Hawk. And it will begin again.”

He tucked the letter between the pages almost reverently.

“And again,” she whispered, awe tingeing her voice as she watched him.

He nodded. “Forever. For the first time, I really believe that. It will go on forever.”

He felt Kate shiver, and tightened his arms around her. “A baby,” she repeated again and again in wonder. Josh found himself just grinning sillily.

After a long time, Kate lifted her head to look from the book to his face. “This means . . . the book will go away, doesn’t it.”

Her words weren’t a question, but Josh nodded. “When the baby is born. That’s how it’s supposed to work. It records the name, and vanishes. Until he”—he pointed at the letter—“needs it.”

They both stared at the book, at the family tree begun again, their own names at the top, awaiting the next entry. The name of their son. Kate laid a hand on her still flat belly.

“I . . . know what his name should be,” she whispered.

“You do?”

She turned her golden-eyed gaze on his face and nodded.

“What?”

She smiled, a tiny half-smile that made his heart turn over and made him want to take her right back to bed.

“Jason,” she said.

His eyes widened. He had a sudden, vivid flash of that other man, that last Hawk who was yet to come. The one who would fight the same battle he had fought, just as hard, just as stubbornly.

Jason.

It was perfect.

Josh threw back his head and laughed. And with an inward salute to his descendant yet unborn, he swept up in his arms the woman who would make it possible, and followed the urge he’d denied before.

And as he carried her back into their room, he spared one last thought for the man in his dreams.

Good luck, Jason Hawk, whoever, wherever . . . whenever you are. You’re going to need it.

The End

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About the Author

“Some people call me a writer, some an author, some a novelist. I just say I’m a storyteller.”

—Justine Dare Davis

Author of more than sixty books, (she sold her first ten in less than two years) Justine Dare Davis is a four-time winner of the coveted RWA RITA Award, and has been inducted into the RWA Hall of Fame. Her books have appeared on national best seller lists, including USA Today. She has been featured on CNN, taught at several national and international conferences, and at the UCLA writer’s program.

After years of working in law enforcement, and more years doing both, Justine now writes full time. She lives near beautiful Puget Sound in Washington State, peacefully coexisting with deer, bears, raccoons, a newly arrived covey of quail, a pair of bald eagles, and her beloved ’67 Corvette roadster. When she’s not writing, taking photographs, looking for music to blast in said roadster, or driving said roadster (and yes, it goes very fast), she tends to her knitting. Literally.