Incubus (17 page)

 

Neshi stood atop a barren desert mesa, five miles away from Meical's location—close enough to keep Badru away, if necessary. He had no doubt that Badru would come. It was only a matter of how fast his little brother could replenish himself and get there. Badru would also have reckoned—and rightly—that the only way to get to Meical was to go through Benemerut.

His little brother appeared almost within reach of him. He looked so young and impetuous. It was as if he'd come to goad Neshi into a wrestling match in their father's vineyard. He sprang like a young lion, but Neshi caught him and held him at arm's length.

“Let me give you back the sun, Badru.”

“I can't let them survive. You know that.”

Whispering an incantation, Badru vanished. Seconds later, he dropped out of the dark and slung Neshi to the ground. Neshi turned himself into sand and whisked
himself away on the wind. When he materialized, his brother locked arms with him again in midair.

The bloody tears in Badru's eyes caught his gaze. He wanted to clasp Badru in his arms and hold him until his rage was spent, just as he had done so many times when his little brother's temper had gotten the best of him.

Badru's slashing blow caught him by surprise. Blood spurted from his belly, and he plummeted out of the sky. Badru caught him before he hit the ground and wrestled him down, murmuring an enchantrex.

Neshi felt his strength drain away with every ancient word.

Too late, Neshi felt his brother's nimble-fingered divination spell exposing the one secret he'd resolved to take with him to the afterlife.

Badru's eyes widened, and his voice sounded hoarse with disbelief. “How could you do this?”

Neshi made a weak attempt to catch him by the throat. “Where is your mercy? We speak of a child's life!”

The pain and weakness of the enchantrex eclipsed everything, striking him mute. Neshi lay motionless while his brother opened the earth beneath him. He felt himself fall backward, as though he would fall forever. The last glimpse he had of his brother was to watch him shoot off in Meical's direction.

The earth closed over Neshi, bringing darkness. The incantation wove through every vein, threading every sinew with numbness as hard as concrete. Icy fingers reached deeper into his body and soul than the day-
death. His heart stuttered, jerked and stuttered again. One beat. Two.

Meical…Caroline…forgive me…

The icy dark consumed him.

 

Caroline gulped down the desert air, feeling like she'd been trapped underwater.

“Sorry. It's hardest on the stomach, I'm afraid.”

Caroline looked up at Ellory, who was still holding her. “No, I'm okay.”

He set her on the ground and held her up until her legs quit wobbling. “Just breathe for a minute and get your bearings. Are you sure this is the place?”

Her legs felt like sponge cake. No time for that. Taking a deep breath, she switched on her flashlight and turned in a circle—slowly—to take in her surroundings. “This is it.”

Her feeble gold beam made little peepholes in the darkness, revealing bits and pieces of an image terror had burned into her mind. The house looked so much the same, she thought for a moment she'd stepped back in time.

It could have been the same pile of tumbleweeds crowding around the front door. The broken-out windows stared back at her. The desolate, silent desert stretched to the horizon around them. In the distance, the yellow glow of El Paso's lights and the blue twinkle of Juarez's street lamps sparkled. The only other light was the white gleam of the moon.

Caroline tried to block out the panic that assaulted her and concentrated on searching the area for a hint
of life. What she picked up on was a force of will, rage, anger and old, old hunger. Where was her Meical in that maelstrom? She had less than an hour to save him.

She drew a tremulous breath and opened her mouth to speak, but Ellory beat her to it.

“He's here,” he whispered. “But he's definitely not right. I'm coming in with you.”

She turned and shook her head at him, mortified. “You can't. I have to do this myself. Sunrise is coming. You've done what you can.”

“He's not himself. I'd be a fool to let you do this alone.”

Caroline turned a beseeching gaze on Talisen. The revenant studied her face for a minute, then tugged Ellory's hand. “She understands Meical better than we do. And she's right. The sun will be up in a few minutes.”

Ellory caught Caroline's hand in his. “You carry our hopes with you. Save him, if you can. If you can't, you needn't mourn alone. For love of him, we'll watch over you for as long as you live.”

He kissed her hand, and in the next instant, the two of them vanished.

Caroline curled her fingers around her flashlight, closed her eyes and sent her entire being into the house, straight to the pocket of misery seething in the dark, somewhere within.

Neshi was right. Meical wasn't ready to know about the baby. It could push all the wrong buttons inside of him.

Meical flinched and grew still. She could sense how stunned he was that she'd come to save him.

And how angry.

The clouds boiled overhead. The air around her grew heated. Lightning roared over the mountains in the distance. Meical's energy seemed to convulse, and for a moment she thought she caught the sound of his groan.

His voice poured into her mind, deepened by pain, dark with warning.
I didn't think you'd have enough courage to come here.

At least he could still speak to her.
I don't. But I have enough love. That's how we learn to live in this world, Meical. Your world or mine, it works the same.

She heard him sigh. He seemed so close she could almost feel his hot breath on her cheek.
I'll give you one chance to rethink this, Caroline.

You're mine, Meical Grabian. I've come to claim you.

She took a slow step forward, watching her footing on the rocky ground. Suddenly the house spat a tongue of scalding energy out the front door. It wrapped itself around her, touching her everywhere. In the shock of feeling her feet leave the ground, she dropped her flashlight. The next thing she knew she was hurtling toward the closed door. Caroline covered her face and braced herself for impact. Just before she would have smacked against it, it flew open and slammed shut behind her.

She landed in his arms, with her face inches from his. The red glow that had emanated from him earlier
now seemed confined to his eyes. Madness shone in his gaze, as clear to her as the feverish heat of his skin and the soft growl deep in his throat.

She steeled herself against an onslaught of tears. “I'll take that as a ‘Hi, come on in.'”

He moved like a specter, suddenly gone, suddenly there again, and caught her from behind. He pulled her back against him until she felt the heat of his skin through her clothes.

Meical pressed his mouth to her ear, and she gasped at the dry heat of his breath on her skin. “What do you think is going to happen here? That we'll make love? In this place?”

She drew a ragged breath, already throbbing inside. “If you'll stop playing hard to get.”

He vanished again, leaving her swaying on her feet, almost mute with her need for him. He was still there. Still listening. She cast a glance out the window. She could see the outline of the mesas against the sky now, where the black of night had begun to lighten to deep blue.

“I know what you are,” she murmured to the listening dark. “I know you were trying to explain what Neshi did to you.”

His words echoed around the room. “A miserable failure from start to finish.”

“If that were true,” she returned, “I wouldn't be here. I'd be dead. Rivera's men would have killed me, right here in this very house. You stopped them. I think you knew, in some part of your mind and heart, exactly who I was and that I needed you. With all my heart, Meical,
I believe you came here to save me that night because we belong together.”

A moment or two passed. Caroline held her breath; she could feel his confusion, his frustration as he tried to remember and his desperation to believe it was true. She cast another glance out the window. The sky had turned to a grayish-blue. A swath of pink lay on the eastern horizon.

“I remember flashes of things,” he murmured. “I wasn't all in one piece.”

He became visible slowly, standing just six feet away from her. Caroline began to edge her way closer to him.

“Neshi was working on my body,” he went on, staring at the floor. “I saw myself on his lab table, but only for an instant. Then there was nothing. I was trying to remember who I was, or where I was, or how I'd come to be there. There was silence. And then I heard you scream.”

She took a step closer, just as he looked up. But he didn't back away.

“I didn't even think,” he murmured. “I just knew I had to get to you, or I'd lose everything.”

He covered his face with his hands, and Caroline closed the distance between them and held him close. “Nothing can keep us apart now, just as nothing could keep us apart then. I'm here to see you through this, or die trying.”

“You're bound to know, it won't be like the dreams.” He nuzzled aside the shoulder of her cotton T-shirt. His
burning tongue glided up the nape of her neck, and then he nipped her. “I need too much.”

Caroline closed her eyes. “It's my turn to make our dreams come true.”

“Oh, Caroline…I do love you so…”

He lapped at her neck, waking a wave of desire in her, then locked his fangs on the side of her throat. The dance of emotions that enveloped them eclipsed the pain. Caroline lost herself in the river of life and light that was Meical. The whole world, the stars in the sky, the sleepy moon, the very ground beneath her feet, even the rising sun that she mustn't let reach him…all of it was Meical, and only Meical.

She scarcely felt it when he lifted his head. He dropped to his knees in front of her. She felt him pushing her shirt up and his hot mouth on her belly. Languid and weak all over, she looked down at him. He'd tossed his shirt aside. She ran her hands over his muscular shoulders and arms, touching as much of him as she could reach.

A glistening bead of light caught Caroline's eye on the periphery of her vision. She turned and stared at it, as though in a daze. It gleamed, trapped and reflected in a jagged point of glass that still remained in the windowsill. Her gaze rose from the tiny dagger of light to take in the room, which filled with the blue-pink of a new dawn.

“Meical, the sun. We have to get you somewhere dark. Now.”

He searched her gaze. “There's nowhere to go.”

She fought down the memory that rose in her mind, beat back the terror. “Yes, there is, and we both know it.”

He shook his head. She hated the sound of resignation in his voice. “I won't finish this down there. Not there.”

She caught his face in her hands. “Can you think of a better place for me to save you than the place you saved me?”

She saw it then, the love in his eyes she so needed to see. No monstrous aura, only the gleam of his devotion.

Even as he nodded his consent, smoke began to rise from his skin. He let go of her and held up his hands, staring at the tendrils that wafted from his fingertips.

“Funny. There's no pain.”

C
aroline grabbed Meical's arm and dragged him to his feet, nearly tripping over her own. She shoved him toward the doorway that led into the hallway. “Remember the trapdoor. Straight ahead. That's where the basement is. Go.”

He took three steps and fell, laboring for breath. Pale gray light followed them, streaming in through the living room window. She grabbed his arms and tried to drag him farther into the shadows that lingered in the hallway. Meical gasped, shaking, and rolled onto his back.

His eyes were solid white, his pupils gone. “I'll never forget…”

“Meical, honey, stay with me.”

She caught him under the arms and half carried,
half dragged him a few feet farther down the hall. She slipped down and skidded under him, but kept pulling him along, scooting on her backside and dragging him by inches.

The trapdoor was just a few feet behind her. She let go of Meical and scrambled to it. Wrapping her hand around the withered pull rope, she gave it a tug. It creaked open, and the gaping, black hole below belched a cloud of dust and odors Caroline remembered all too well. Oil and old gasoline, dry rock and rusty metal. Anxiety unwound in the pit of her stomach.

The light in the house turned silver, then gold, as a tongue of sunlight traced its way across the hall floor in their direction. Sparks raced over Meical's chest and abdomen. His eyes widened and he gasped and shook again.

No more time. Caroline lay down, wrapped her arms and legs around Meical and rolled them toward the edge. Just as they tumbled into the darkness, she felt him jerk against her. He was dying.

Bumping down the stairs, she let go of Meical to shield her head and roll. When the world stopped rotating, she opened her eyes, flat on her back, staring up at the ceiling of the basement. Just like that night.

She could remember their faces. They hadn't concealed them. Why bother? She wasn't going to live to identify them. She had tried to crawl into the corner to get away from them, screaming and crying behind the duct tape they'd put over her mouth.

The darkness weighed her down, squeezing the life out of her. Caroline's lungs froze. Her stump throbbed
like a living reminder, and every ache from her tumble down the stairs woke a memory of pain in her body.

Light poured in from above her and shimmered like an angel through her tears. She wanted the light. She wanted the air. But to Meical that light was death. She had to close that trapdoor. But that would mean she'd be trapped here in the dark. Caroline's heart pounded so hard that her head ached.

Maybe he was dead already. She might not even be able to help him. Meical would be the first to understand she couldn't do it. She wanted out. She couldn't be here.

She clamored to her feet, choking, trying to get her lungs to breathe around the knot of terror in her chest. She dragged herself up the steps. She wouldn't stay here. She wouldn't.

Sunlight blinded her, pale and translucent. In another moment, the sun would be all the way up.

She looked down at the pool of silver-blue that fell close enough to Meical's foot for her to make out the details of the loafers he'd borrowed from John.

Meical had nothing of his own in this world. And no one. Only her—and now the child she carried, a child who would need Meical's love and protection.

He'd been alone for so long, with no one to love him. There might be nothing she could do for him. But how could she let him die alone, down there in this hole? He had saved her from precisely that, the night of her attack.

How could she live with herself, knowing she would have died alone down here, if not for him, or tell their
child how he had saved her, knowing she left him here to die by himself?

She looked up at the crusty adobe walls of the house and the brittle wood floor on her eye level, and watched the light creeping into the house through a hole in the ceiling just above her head.

She couldn't take the light down with her. She had to bring her own. And that was the light that had restored Meical before. Her light.

She jerked the trapdoor shut just as the house above burst into the light of a new day.

Easing herself down to the bottom step of the stairs, she shut her eyes tight to close out the darkness. In her mind, she built the image of the radiant glow inside her, her shield. She wrapped it around her, gathering it closer like a blanket, and recited her courage words.

I am Caroline. I control my own emotions. This fear is no longer mine. It belongs in the past. I won't accept it. I'm here and now. I am Caroline.

The faces of her attackers rose and fell, making shadows and gaps of darkness, but she visualized her light closing them out. She didn't move, scarcely breathed, until she could feel the warmth of that light inside her as clearly as she saw it glistening, downy soft and warm, on her skin. Air rushed into her lungs, but she made herself breathe slowly.

When she opened her eyes, they had adjusted to the darkness well enough for her to make out a face before her. On instinct she probed him. The only thing she could grasp before he shielded himself was that he wasn't human.

“Who are you?” she demanded. “What do you want?”

The stranger stared at her through matted ebony curls and began to murmur words that made no sense. He started toward her.

Caroline tried to back her way up the stairs, but he snapped his fingers, and every ounce of strength left her body. She opened her mouth to scream, but couldn't make a sound.

He was practically chanting now, in a language she'd never heard before. Catching her before she tumbled off the stairs, he leaned her back against him. He held out his hand, and the ceiling above opened for a split second, belched her flashlight, and sealed itself. He caught the flashlight, flicked it on and set it on the floor with its beam turned upward.

In the pale wash of blue light, Caroline watched his free hand rise as his voice grew louder, descending slowly to flatten on her belly. Suddenly he was silent. She felt a shudder pass through him.

“I can do nothing to save Meical,” he whispered. “Only you can do that. What I
can
do is buy him time. But you need to understand, it will halt his transition. He'll be just as he is now, both incubus and vampire, and as such, he'll need both your passion and your blood to live. With his dual nature, he should be able to tolerate sunlight, but he will never relinquish his craving for the night. I hope you can live with that.”

As long as she had a chance to save Meical, Caroline didn't care what it cost her. Whether heaven or hell or somewhere in between, it would be hers to discover with him.

“Forgive me,” he murmured, “but what I'm about to do isn't for
your
eyes.”

He blew softly in her ear, and the whole world faded away. Caroline found herself enveloped in her own white light again, spinning and drifting, alone in the warmth and brightness with the tiny life she carried.

The stranger's hushed voice brought her out of the ocean of white. She opened her eyes in the dim light of the flashlight to find herself propped against the wall.

He stood over her, wiping a rivulet of blood from his wrist. “It's up to you now. If he survives, tell him Benemerut is safe. This I swear.”

“Wait. Who are you?” she asked.

He gave her a boyish grin. “A fool named Badru.”

Before she could say another word, he dissolved into the floor like a ghost.

Caroline waited for her head to stop turning cartwheels and her strength to return. When her vision cleared and the roar left her ears, she crept closer to Meical's still form on the floor a few feet away. “Meical? Can you hear me?”

He didn't move, didn't make a sound. She touched his bare chest. His skin was icy to the touch.

“Come on, Meical, you know what to do. Just like you did the night I pulled you out of the snow. Remember?” She closed her eyes and reached for his being, trying to pour her love and light into him. “I'm not taking no for an answer. Feel my need for you.”

She waited, attuned to the slightest pull on her soul that would tell her he was trying to take in the warmth she could give him.

Nothing.

She kissed his cold mouth. “Come on, I'm trying so hard.”

She kissed him again.

Under her palm, where it rested on his chest, Caroline felt a pool of warmth. She lifted her mouth from his to look down at him. “Meical?”

She kissed him again. This time his lips were cool, not cold. She kissed him again. And again. Her Sleeping Beauty.

She felt a gentle tug at her soul. Yes! Caroline opened his mouth and swept her tongue around his, kissing him deeply. She filled her mind with her dreams, the power of their devotion and trust, and the pleasure of their lovemaking.

This is what you give me,
she whispered to Meical in her heart.
This is who we are.

Meical groaned. She lifted her mouth from his and looked down at him. “Oh, Meical, I almost lost you.”

His eyes fluttered open, clear gray eyes with pools of black. “Caroline…”

She kissed him again and smoothed his hair out of his eyes. “I'm here. I'm here.”

“Why aren't I dead?”

“You had some extra help. I'll tell you later. We'll have some things to work out, but first we need to get through this.”

He lifted a shaking hand to her face. “If we don't do this right…”

Caroline sat up and pulled off her T-shirt, shivering
deliciously as Meical's gaze swept over her. “Since when have we ever not done this right?”

He sat up with a wince and looked around them. “I'm so sorry. I've tried so hard to make it beautiful for you, yet here we are.”

She caught his chin and kissed him again. “Don't think about that. I'm not.”

He rose up on his knees and pulled her close. Suddenly he was still. He looked left and right, as though searching the shadows around them. “Do you feel someone here with us?”

Caroline ran her tongue over her parched lips. That was, of course, her cue to tell him about the baby. But she had to be sure he was himself first. She couldn't risk anything going wrong now. “Meical, we don't have much time.”

“There's someone here. In this very room.”

He was definitely onto it. But could he handle it?

The silence hung between them while he looked this way and that. Caroline waited, spellbound by the beauty of what he was about to discover. He sat back on his haunches and stared at her abdomen. She wanted to remember the look on his face forever. He was terrified, but his hope shone in his eyes, giving them an unearthly silver gleam. That's when she knew it was all right.

He dragged in a deep breath and whispered. “Impossible.”

She waited to hear how he was going to try to explain to her. Priceless words. Priceless man. “What?”

He lifted his hand to touch her stomach and closed his eyes, mouth parted, and smiled slowly.

She put her hand over his. When he looked up to meet her gaze, she was sure her tears would give away the fact that she knew, but he was still clueless.

“I'm afraid Neshi's methods resulted in…um…something neither he nor I anticipated. He must have gone farther than he realized, when he put me back together again.”

“What are you trying to say?” she whispered, unable to maintain her pretense a moment longer.

He straightened his shoulders in an apparent effort to man up. “Caroline, you're pregnant.”

She grinned and reached down to run her hand through his hair. “Scared?”

His eyes widened. “You know about it already?”

“Neshi told me.” She ran her hand over his forehead. “I suggest we finish what we started.”

He swayed a little, but his hands unerringly found the clasp of her bra. The cool air on Caroline's bare skin sent a shudder of need through her. His kiss deepened, and she felt waves of his hunger pour out of him and wash over them both.

He dragged in a deep breath and whispered, “Impossible.”

He caught her by the elbows and helped her to her feet, kissed his way over her abdomen. He curled his hand over the back waist of her jeans and panties, and tugged. Before she could find her zipper, he had her unclothed.

Wrapping an arm around her good leg, he lifted her other leg over his shoulder, and mouthed his way
over her abdomen again, lower and lower, until tears of anticipation sprang to her eyes.

Caroline cried out at the first touch of his tongue. He groaned against her, rocking her in his grip as he made love to her with his mouth. There was no room in her for fear, no room in her for nightmare memories. She was too full of love and pleasure and need.

He took her right to the edge, then moved away from her. Caroline reached out for him to find him on his feet. He picked her up, wrapped her legs around him and sheathed himself inside her. He moved them together, deep and swift.

Caroline opened her inner eye on a world of color and light she had never seen before. Their oneness flickered between them, blinding white one moment, as red as a nova the next, while all around them, the whirlpool of their combined emotions made a cocoon that separated them from time and place.

The pleasure he needed, the pleasure she longed for, wrapped around the muscles of her hips, delicious weakness that spread through her body. She couldn't get enough of him.

She gasped out the words. “Deeper, Meical.”

He firmed his grip on her backside and pressed her against the wall. “Oh, yes! This is what I need, all I'll ever need for as long as I live. Say it, Caroline. Say it now.”

“I love you.”

Caroline wrapped her arms around him and held on, as he took her mouth in a long, hard kiss, hurling them over the edge.

Somewhere between heaven and earth, Caroline felt the darkness relinquish her incubus, and the fear she'd carried with her gave up its hold on her. The haunting memory of this house withered like a weed in the sun, replaced by the memory of their new beginning.