Lady Midnight (52 page)

Yet, in reality, it was a flimsy, dirty place. The floor was made of earth, a musty smell in the air that spoke of how long it had been since a fire was lit in the small grate. The only sign of life was a pile of cushions and blankets in the corner.

Behind her, Michael shook his head, sending droplets of rain into the darkness. "You should take off your cloak, Kate," he said gently. "Wrap up in one of those blankets in the corner."

Kate nodded numbly and tried to answer, but her voice was gone. As she turned toward the dim corner, Michael went to the window and stared out at the night they had just left. "Where could she be?" he muttered, his tone thick with anger and anxiety. Kate's heart ached, for she knew those emotions all too well. She wanted to shout them out into the thunder, to rail against the madness that had brought them to this moment.

But she could not, not until they found Christina. All she could do right now was keep moving, come what may. That was the only way she could help Christina.

She would scream afterward.

Kate reached down to take up one of the old blankets in the pile. As she dislodged the cushion on top, a heavy object fell off, landing against her boot. She bent down to search for it with her fingertips.

"I found a candle here on the windowsill, but there's no way to light it," Michael muttered. Their lamp had gone out long ago, leaving them to stumble around by the glow of lightning.

Like the flash that lit up the room now. Kate saw a sparkle on the floor, an enticing glitter.
Her brooch.
The sapphire she had given Julian Kirkwood in a vain attempt to convince him to leave.

She snatched it up, balancing the jewel on her palm. "Michael. They were here."

He swung toward her. "What?"

That was when they heard it. A scream of utter despair.

Chapter 28

Christina stared out over the Semerwater. The scene was as different from their picnic there as London was from the moon. Its usually placid, glassy surface roiled and pitched in white-tipped waves, a wild melange of green and brown that threatened to engulf all in its path. The tree they had sat beneath on that sunny day was half submerged, and the waters had become a wild, living monster.

She could well believe there was a drowned city under there, its ghosts screaming for revenge, for retribution for their sad fates.

Christina balanced on a fallen log several feet from the reach of the swelling waves, below a sharp slope. She was unable to turn away from the scene. The wind seemed slower than before, merely tugging at her cloak rather than tearing at it. Her feet were numb in her ruined boots, keeping her rooted to the wet, rotten wood of the log.

Her tears had ceased, her racing heart slowed to a thud. She could see clearly now, see the water and sky as a black inevitability. A reflection of the darkness and selfishness of her own heart. She could not run anymore.

"Christina!" Julian shouted behind her. "Come down from there. You need to go home, to get out of this storm."

She climbed down from the log and walked a few more steps toward the water before turning to gaze at him. How beautiful he was, like no other man she had ever seen, or even dreamed of. Deceptively beautiful, like the brilliant, alluring petals of the
Amorphophallus titanum,
which drew its prey close with its fragrant loveliness and then devoured it.

"Why did you come here?" she shouted. "Everything was perfect before! We were happy. Why did you ruin it?"

He moved closer to her, his uninjured arm stretched out. She saw that he wore no shirt, that his shoulder was bound up in the white linen beneath his black coat.
He will catch a cold,
she thought, in a flash of complete irrelevance.

"I'm sorry, Christina," he called. He was obviously feeling weak, his strength swiftly waning. Only the need to get her inside, out of the rain, kept him upright. "Truly. Please, come with me now. Come home."

"How can I trust you?" she argued. She would sooner break off her own arm than take that hand. It would only snatch her away again, and she would be lost forever.

"I don't know," he answered hoarsely. "But you must. We only have each other now."

Christina stared at him, tempted—so very tempted—to take that hand. She swayed toward him, fingers outstretched. Then she heard her name, shouted above the storm.

"Christina!" Michael called.

She quickly half turned, glimpsing her brother through the rain, his horrified face. But it was too late. The momentum of her sudden movement overcame her, knocking her off-balance, shifting the center of her body to her feet. Her fingertips barely clasped Julian's hand, and she fell backward in a tumble of pain and screams, her body falling, rolling down the sharp slope inexorably toward the waiting water.

Rather than let her go, even to save his own life, Julian's hand tightened like an iron band on hers, and they fell together in a tangle of limbs.

Christina struck a stone on her left side, and she heard a sickening snap from her forearm. Pain engulfed her, enfolding her like a white-hot blanket, and she screamed, struggling against the tugging darkness. It was all over—she knew it—she was going to die at fifteen years old, never to see her brother, her niece, her mother, Mrs. Brown again. The pain and terror were horrible, yet underneath there was a strange, cool calm. A peace.

She clung to Julian's hand as they tumbled into the freezing water, and the nothingness closed over them both.

* * *

Someone screamed out, a wild cacophony that went on and on with no end, no blessed fall of silence. Only slowly did Kate realize it was
her
scream.

She smothered her mouth with her hand, pressing tightly to her lips as she stared at the spot where Christina and Julian had stood only seconds before. Their fall seemed to happen in a bizarre, slowed-down time, a blur of white and black against the night sky as they tumbled out of sight, into the water. The waves washed over Christina's head as the Semerwater rose to claim her.

Grief and wild pain stabbed into Kate's heart, and she became an incoherent, barbaric thing, howling and scrambling down the slope after Christina. When she fell, she crawled on. The water would not claim someone else she loved! Not this time. Not unless it took her, too.

"Christina!" she cried, the wind ripping her words away. For one flashing instant, she saw Christina's head bob above the surface of the lake.

Michael overtook Kate on the downward slope, reaching down to clasp her hand and pull her up out of the mud but not pausing in his dash toward the water. None of her own panic was reflected in his face. He was grimly determined, his jaw set, eyes cold as the rain beaded on his lashes.

"Stay here, Kate!" he shouted, clasping her shoulders to make sure she was steady on her feet. "No matter what happens, stay here."

"Why? What are you doing?"

He didn't answer, just pulled off his boots and coat, pushing them into her arms. Then he whirled about and, in a split second, dived into the water, swimming hard toward his sister.

Kate sank slowly to her knees, cradling his clothes against her. She stared after him as his sleek head appeared and disappeared in the waves. Christina had vanished.

It was obvious that Michael was an expert swimmer, but how long would his leg hold out? How long would it be until their limbs froze in the water and they sank to the lost city below? Kate longed to turn away, to pray—to go after them, join them in whatever befell them. But all she could do was kneel there in the mud, watching, waiting, getting colder and colder.

This
was what she had feared since the day she realized she loved Michael. Her past had come into the present to drag them all down. For a few golden days, she dared to think she could be happy, that she could make Michael happy, too. That she could live as an ordinary woman, with a home and family.

That had been nothing but deadly folly.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "Don't punish them for sins that were entirely my own. Save them—and I'll go away from here. I'll do anything."

A fork of lightning struck nearby, singeing branches and sending a sizzling frisson all the way into the ground. The air was hot with the sharp scent of sulfur, and Kate was blinded by the glow. She squeezed her eyes shut.

When she opened them, it was to a miraculous sight. Michael stumbled out of the water, Christina limp in his arms. Her head lolled against her brother's shoulder, her hair trailing like mud-streaked serpents, her left arm bent at an alarming angle. Her cloak was gone, and she wore only a soaked muslin gown, but her chest moved erratically with the effort to breathe.

Michael limped toward Kate as she scrambled to her feet and raced over to throw her arms around them both. "She's alive!"

"Barely," Michael answered roughly. "Her arm is broken. We have to get her back to Thorn Hill, and you, too. You will catch the ague."

Kate could not bring herself to care. She draped Michael's coat over his shoulders, and hastily ripped off the hem of her wet night rail to bind up Christina's arm. "Come on. The search party can't be far behind us."

Michael hurried up the slope. Kate made a move to follow, but paused to glance over her shoulder at the lake. It had burst beyond all boundaries and was rising fast now—and there was no sign of anyone else in the unforgiving water. She stared out, peering through the sheets of cold rain, the blackness of the night.

She half turned, reaching for Michael and Christina—and froze when a shout washed over them, colder and thicker than the rain could ever be. She spun back around, her wet hair clinging to her face, and saw a sight straight from her most haunted nightmares.

Julian Kirkwood stood on the banks of the lake, lit by the glow of lightning like a pagan god of the sea and sky and vengeance. He shouted after them, one arm raised, the other dark with a scarlet stain along a wet white sleeve. "Katerina!" he called. "This isn't finished. I came here for
you."

This had to be a dream, part of this terrible nightmare. But still he seemed so real, sounded so... Kate fell back a step, stumbling in the mud. "Michael!" she gasped. Then, louder, "Michael!"

"Kate, we must—" Michael said hoarsely, but then he turned and saw what she did, the figure on the overflowing bank. The flash of silver on a raised pistol. Michael went very still, then slowly, so slowly, lowered Christina to her feet, balancing her against his shoulder. "Kate. Come and hold Christina."

A terror unlike any Kate had ever known engulfed her, colder than any floodwaters. Never had she seen such steely resolve in her love's eyes, never felt such—she did not even know what she felt. A hot confusion swept over her wet skin.

"Michael, no! We must not go near him," she pleaded, even as she took Christina's limp weight against her own shoulder. "We need to go home. He can't hurt us now—he bleeds!"

"Kate, my curst Kate," Michael said gently. He reached out and softly touched her cheek, for only an instant. "He says it is not finished. Well, I will finish it for him. If you can, take Tina and head for the path. I will follow."

He drew his own gun from inside the coat he had discarded before he'd dived into the lake, and turned away from her, walking away into the storm as calmly as if he strolled the gardens on a summer's day. As if he did intend to-finish this, all of this that had begun on a long-ago day in Venice, one way or the other.

Kate longed to run after him, to stop him, hold him to her, but she could not. She could only stand there, frozen, her arms around Christina. The girl moaned softly, and Kate held her, murmuring gentle words.

Finish it,
she thought.
Finish it.
As she could not.

"Katerina," Julian shouted, even as Michael came nearer to him, even as their guns leveled at each other in the lightning. "I loved you truly. I would have done anything for you! We were meant to be together, to love each other forever. How could you have let that go? How could you have driven me to this?" He swayed in the wind like a leaf, the arm that held the pistol aloft shaking. "I never wanted to hurt that girl, but I would have for you."

"Shut up, you bloody bastard!" Michael shouted, still with that strange calm in his voice. Kate felt tears trickle down her cheeks, mingling with the cold rain until she did not know where one ended and the other began. She clung to Christina, her gaze fastened to the two men, unable to look away. "You have hurt my family for the last time."