Key Of Knowledge (19 page)

“This is so nice.” Zoe stepped over to swing an arm around each of them. “I'm really glad Dana had sex so we could have this moment.”

On a bray of laughter, Dana gave them both a little nudge. “I'll see what I can do tonight, and maybe we can have a real weep fest after settlement tomorrow.”

J
ORDAN
slept with his arm flung over Dana's waist, his leg hooked over hers, as if he would hold her in place. Though she hadn't been the one to leave, this time around he was far from sure she would let him stay.

In her bed, or in her life.

But he held on to her as he wandered in dreams. Through the moonstruck night in the high summer heat where everything smelled ripe and green and secret.

The woods were locked in shadows, with the flicker of lightning bugs quick blinks of gold against the black. In dreams he knew, somehow knew, he was a man instead of the boy he'd been when he'd walked through the wild grass at the verge of those woods. His heart pounding with . . . fear? Anticipation? Knowledge? As he'd stared up at the great black house that rose regally toward the swimming moon.

His friends weren't close by, as they had been on that hot summer night of his memory. Flynn and Brad weren't there, with their contraband beer and cigarettes, the camping gear,
or the youthful courage and carelessness three teenage boys made together.

He was alone, the warriors of the Peak guarding the gate behind him and the house empty of life and silent as a tomb.

No, not empty, he thought. It was a mistake to think of houses, old houses, as being empty. They were filled with memories, with the faded echoes of voices. Drops of tears, drops of blood, the ring of laughter, the edge of tempers that had ebbed and flowed between the walls, into the walls, over the years.

Wasn't it, after all, a kind of life?

And there were houses, he knew it, that breathed. They carried in their wood and stone, their brick and mortar a kind of ego that was nearly, very nearly, human.

But there was something, something he needed to remember about this house, about this place. This night. Something he knew but couldn't quite bring clear in his mind. It drifted in and out, like a half-remembered song, teasing and nagging at him.

It was important, even vital, that he turned whatever was in his mind, like a camera lens, until the image came into sharp focus.

In the dream he closed his eyes, breathed slow and deep as he tried to empty his mind so what needed to come would come.

When he opened them, he saw her. She walked along the parapet under the white ball of moon. Alone as he was alone. Dreaming, perhaps, as he was dreaming.

Her cloak billowed up, though there was no wind to lift it. It seemed to him the air held its breath, and all the sounds of the night—the rustles and peeps and hoots—fell like a crash into terrible silence.

In his chest his heart began to pound. On the parapet, the woman began to turn. In a moment, he thought, in just a moment, they would see each other.

Finally . . .

The sun was a violent flash that shocked his brain, blinded him. He staggered a bit from the displacement of being shot from inky night to brilliant day.

Birds sang with a kind of desperate joy in music that sounded of flutes and harps and pipes. And he heard the rushing sound that water makes when it falls from a great height, then thunders into itself.

He struggled to orient himself. There were woods here, but not any he recognized. Leaves were verdant, shimmering green or soft and glowing blue, and limbs were heavy with fruit the color of rubies and topaz. The air had a ripe, plummy scent, as if it too could be plucked and tasted.

He walked through the trees, on ground springy and richly brown, past a waterfall of wild blue where golden fish danced in the rippling pool at its base.

Curious, he dipped his hand into it. He felt the wet, the fresh coolness. And as he let it pour from his cupped hand, he saw that the water falling from his palm wasn't clear, but that same deep blue.

It was, he thought, almost more than the senses could bear. The sheer beauty was too intense, too vivid for the mind to translate. And once seen, once experienced, how did anyone survive without it, in the pale, dim reality?

Fascination had him reaching toward the water again when he caught sight of the deer drinking on the opposite side of the pool.

The buck was enormous, its coat sleek and golden, its rack a shining silver. When it lifted its great head, it stared at Jordan with eyes as green and deep as the forest around them.

Around its neck it wore a jeweled collar with the stones catching the streams of sunlight and tossing them back in colored prisms.

He thought it spoke, though there was no movement, and no sound other than the words that formed in his head.

Will you stand for them?

“Who?”

Go, and see.

The deer turned, and walked, silver hooves silent on the ground, into the woods.

This is no dream, Jordan thought. He straightened, started to circle the pond and follow the deer.

But no, it hadn't said
come
and see, but
go
. Trusting instinct, Jordan took the opposite path.

He stepped out of the trees to a sea of flowers so saturated with color they shocked the senses. Scarlet, sapphire, amethyst, amber glinted in that streaming sun as if every petal were an individual facet cut perfectly from each gem. And in the center of that sea, like the most precious of blooms, were the Daughters of Glass, trapped in their crystal coffins.

“No, I'm not dreaming.” He spoke aloud, to prove that he could, to hear the sound of his voice. To center himself before he walked across the sea of flowers to stare down at the faces he already knew.

They seemed to be sleeping. Their beauty was undiminished, but it was cold. He saw that, the cold beauty that could never change but was forever trapped in one instant of time.

He felt pity and outrage, and as he stared into the face so like Dana's, a tearing grief he hadn't experienced since his mother's death.

“This is hell,” he said aloud. “To be trapped between life and death, to be unable to take either.”

“Yes. You have it precisely.” Kane stood on the other side of the glass coffin. Elegant in black robes with a jeweled crown atop his dark mane of hair, he smiled at Jordan. “You have a keenness of mind sadly lacking in much of your kind. Hell, as you call it, is merely the absence of all without an end.”

“Hell should be earned.”

“Ah. Philosophy.” His voice held a touch of amusement, and a canny calculation. “Occasionally, you will agree, hell is merely inherited. Their sire and his mortal bitch damned them.” He swept a hand toward the coffins. “I was merely an instrument, so to speak, who . . .” He lifted the hand, twisted his wrist. “Turned the key.”

“For glory?”

“For that. For power. For all of this.” He spread his arms wide, as if to encompass his world. “All of this, which can never, will never, be theirs. Soft hearts and mortal frailties have no place in the realm of gods.”

“Yet gods love, hate, covet, scheme, war, laugh, weep. Mortal frailties?”

Kane cocked his head. “You interest me. You would debate, knowing who and what I am? Knowing I brought you here, behind the Curtain of Power, where you are no more than an ant to be flicked off a crumb? I could kill you with a thought.”

“Could you?” Deliberately, Jordan walked around the crystal coffin. He wouldn't have even the reflection of Dana between them. “Why haven't you? Maybe it's because you prefer bullying and abusing women. It's a different matter, isn't it, when you face a man?”

The blow knocked him back ten feet. He tasted blood in his mouth, and spat it out onto the crushed flowers before he got to his feet. There was more than power on Kane's face, he noted. There was fury. And where there was anger, there was weakness.

“Smoke and mirrors. But you haven't got the guts to fight like a man. With fists. One round, you son of a bitch. One round, my way.”

“
Your
way? You have no terms here. And you will know pain.”

It gripped his chest, icy claws with razor tips. The unspeakable agony dropped him to his knees and ripped a cry from his throat that he couldn't suppress.

“Beg.” Pleasure purred into Kane's voice. “Beg for mercy. Crawl for it.”

With what strength he had left, Jordan lifted his head, stared straight into Kane's eyes. “Kiss my—”

His vision dimmed. He heard shouting over the roaring in his ears, felt a flood of warmth over the hideous cold.

And the fury of Kane's voice seemed to scream through his mind: “I am not finished!”

Jordan fell into unconsciousness.

“JORDAN! Oh, God, oh, God, Jordan, come back.”

He thought perhaps he was on a boat, one that rocked fitfully in the sea. He might have drowned, he supposed. His chest was on fire, his head dull and throbbing. But someone was bringing him back, pressing warm lips to his. Dragging him back to life whether he liked it or not.

But why the hell was a dog barking like a maniac out in the open sea?

He blinked his eyes open and stared up at Dana.

Though pale as glass, she was a welcome sight. She was running a trembling hand over his face, pushing it through his hair as she clamped her arms around him and rocked.

Outside the closed bedroom door, Moe barked and threw himself against the wood.

“What the hell?” he managed and stared dully when she began to laugh.

“You're back. Okay, you're back.” Hysteria was trying to bubble and brew in her chest. “Your mouth's bleeding. Your mouth's bleeding, and your chest, and you're—you're so cold.”

“Give me a minute.” He didn't try to move, not yet, as he'd already discovered that just turning his head brought on a hideous wave of pain and nausea.

But what he could see was a blessed relief. He was in
Dana's bedroom, sprawled on the bed, mostly over her lap, while she clutched him to her breast as she might a nursing baby.

If he didn't feel as though he'd been run over by a truck, it wouldn't have been half bad.

“I was dreaming.”

“No.” She pressed her cheek to his. “No, you weren't.”

“At first . . . or maybe not. Stretch, you got any whiskey around here? I need a shot.”

“I've got a bottle of Paddy's.”

“I'll give you a thousand dollars for three fingers of Paddy's.”

“Sold.” Her laugh was too close to a sob for comfort. “Here, just lie down. I'll get it. You need to cover up, you're shaking.”

She hauled the covers over him, tucked him up like a bug in a cocoon. “Oh, Jesus God.” She shook herself as she dropped her forehead to his.

“Two thousand if you get it here within the next forty-five seconds.”

She fled the room, and Jordan figured he couldn't be in such bad shape if he could still appreciate the beauty of a naked Dana on the run.

An instant later Moe leaped on the bed and tripled every ache in his body. He started to curse, then settled for a sigh as the dog growled low, sniffed all around the bedcovers, then slurped Jordan's face.

“Yeah, that'll teach us to boot you out of the bedroom just because we want to have sex in private.”

Moe whined, bumped Jordan's shoulder with his nose, then turned three ungainly circles and settled down at his side.

Dana sprinted back, a bottle in one hand, a glass in the other. After pouring considerably more than three fingers of whiskey, she hooked an arm behind his head and lifted the glass to his lips.

“Thanks. I can handle it from here.”

“Okay.” Still, she eased him gently back against the pillows before lifting the bottle again and taking a long pull straight from it herself.

She imagined the heat of it hit Jordan's belly just as shockingly as it did hers. Steadier, she went to the closet and pulled out a robe.

“Do you have to put that on? I like looking at you.”

She didn't want to tell him her skin felt as if it had been rubbed with ice. “We shouldn't have locked the dog out of the room.”

“Yeah, Moe and I were just discussing that.” He laid his hand on Moe's wide back. “Is he what woke you?”

“Him, and your screaming.” She shuddered once, then sat on the side of the bed. “Jordan, your chest.”

“What?” He looked down at himself as she eased the covers aside. There were five distinct grooves, like a talon pattern, over his heart. They were shallow, he noted, and thanked God for it. But they bled sluggishly and were viciously painful.

“I'm messing up your sheets.”

“They'll wash.” She had to swallow, hard. “I'd better take care of those cuts. While I'm at it, you can tell me what the hell he did to you.”

She went into the bathroom for antiseptic and bandages, then just braced her hands on the sink and ordered herself to breathe until she could manage it without feeling like she was sucking razor blades into her throat.

She knew what fear was now. She'd felt it when the storm had ripped over the island and the black sea had rushed to take her. But even that, she realized, even that bone-deep terror, had been a shadow of what she'd gone through when the shocked agony of Jordan's scream had torn her out of sleep.