Nightwing (22 page)

The backpack was on fire, searing her hand. She wanted to throw it at him and run, but she tightened her grip. She felt the jolt when her fingers closed on the hard edges of the Sacred Cedar, saw Nekhat flinch and spring to his feet. The wrenching cry he gave rang across the beach.

 So did Father Bertram’s shout: “Open the bag!”

Willie barely heard him above the sudden boom of surf at her back and the snarl from Nekhat. He was shimmering out of focus in front of her, his fangs and claws sprouting. A plume of spray soaked her and snatched her breath as she jerked her head around and saw Father Bertram running toward her, his hat clenched in one fist.

Foam swirled around her ankles, clawing at the sand and clamping a breaker like a vise around her legs. Half a second before it yanked her knees out from under her, Willie caught the zipper of the backpack and ripped it open.

A million peals of thunder, a thousand flashes of light tore it out of her hands and sent her skipping like a stone across the water, until the breaker curled over her and dragged her under. She’d been caught in surf enough to know to relax and not to fight. When the wave let go, she kicked, twice, toward the flickering patch of light on the surface.

She came up coughing and gasping for air, in the lull between breakers, felt the next one rise and whoosh behind her. She had a glimpse of the beach and Father Bertram, the backpack in one hand, his hat in the other as he ran back and forth along the edge of the water, before she took a breath and tucked herself into the wave. It flung her toward the beach and dumped her there, shivering and shaking, her teeth chattering.

Father Bertram scooped her under one arm and carried her, choking and gagging salt water, up the beach to the almond grove. He put her down on a patch of bristly grass, knelt beside her and took a silver flask out of his tote sack.

“Drink this,” he said. “It’s brandy.”

Willie did and coughed, her lungs burning. “You said,” she gasped, “the Sacred Cedar protects whoever carries it.”

“You’re alive, aren’t you? Not ripped to bloody shreds.”

Willie shuddered. “Where’s Nekhat?”

“Gone.” He handed her a small, rough towel from his sack and smiled. “He won’t be back. Not as himself, anyway. He was rather badly singed, last I saw of him.”

Willie slapped a hand against her chest; felt the chrysocolla, the azurite and her little gold cross horribly tangled in their chains but still miraculously around her throat.

“I don’t get it. My crucifix had no effect on Raven. He touched it, he played with it. It didn’t faze him.”

“Your little cross is but a symbol, Willie. The Sacred Cedar—” he nodded at the backpack lying in the sandy grass at her feet “—is the real thing.”

Which was the real Nekhat, Willie wondered, the horror in the gold kilt and braided wig or the handsome prince in white khakis? She hugged her knees to keep from shaking and watched the sun sink slowly into the darkening blue waves of the Mediterranean. The beach and the ruins of Tharros glowed a soft gray mauve in its fading light. Over her right shoulder the crest of the just-risen moon, still pale and pockmarked, rode above the leafy green crowns of the almond trees.

“Well, finally,” Father Bertram said, nodding down the beach. “Here comes your friend at last.”

Willie turned her head and saw Johnny coming toward them, one arm around Raven’s bowed shoulders, the other around his waist. The nimbus she’d seen shimmering around Johnny in the moonlight on Monte Corrasi was still there. Only now it was flickering like a light bulb on the verge of burning out.

Panic shot Willie to her feet. She ran toward them. Johnny saw her, stopped and smiled. So did Raven, lifting his head and blinking at her. He looked gray and gaunt; his strange dark eyes were eerily pale in the deepening twilight.

“Are you all right?” she asked, pelting to a halt and sliding her right shoulder under Raven’s left.

“I’m—tired,” he said, using a word she’d understand, letting her loop his arm around her. “Is Father Bertram with you?”

“Yes,” Willie said just as he came hurrying up to them, his bearded face glowering.

“Cutting it close, as usual, I see,” he said, nudging Willie aside and taking her place to support Raven.

“Don’t start, Bertie. Did you bring what I asked for?”

“Don’t I always? It’s synthetic, unfortunately. It’s all I had.”

“It’ll suffice,” Raven said wearily.

Willie hadn’t a due what they were talking about until the men swung Raven down on the sand in the shadows beneath the almond trees and Father Bertram took a blue thermal-lined bag out of his tote sack, like the one Willie had carried her lunch in when she’d worked at
Material Girl.
When he opened it and withdrew a bag of blood like the ones she’d seen in Raven’s refrigerator she spun away, swallowing hard.

“I hate this stuff,” she heard Raven say. “It’s like Chinese food. Half an hour later you’re hungry again.”

“Oh, God,” Willie moaned weakly, clapping a hand over her mouth as she rushed away down the beach.

Johnny watched her go, saw her fall to her knees at the edge of the water. He wanted to go with her, as much to escape the soft sucking sound behind him as to comfort her, but he couldn’t. Raven still needed the moonstone close.

The moon was fully up above the almond trees: a bloated silver disk. The wind that had risen with it sent sand scurrying across the beach. The moonstone flashed as he raised his hand.

A faraway rumble of thunder brushed a finger of unease up the back of his neck. He didn’t like this beach. It reminded him of Egypt. He wanted off it and away from here. He glanced at the water and saw Willie still on her knees at its edge, saw a distant flash of lightning above the dark Mediterranean, leaping in the midst of a soaring bank of clouds sweeping in from the west. From Africa, from Egypt.

“Much better, thank you.” Raven sighed behind him.

He heard plastic crumple, burlap rustle, saw Willie rock back on her heels and wipe a hand across her mouth. He longed to touch her again while he could, just in case. But he couldn’t, not in front of Raven and the priest.

He felt the tug of the moon and glanced up, then heard thunder rumble and a breaker boom. After watching it foam and hiss like a homed viper, he turned toward Raven, still sitting on the sand, caught his eyes and signed urgently to him, then nodded at the moon.

“It isn’t far, but yes, we should be going.” Raven glanced down the beach at Willie. Her head was bent as she slogged her way slowly toward them through the sand. He smiled and shook his head. “What an incredible woman she is. I hope one of us remembers her in the morning.”

Johnny wasn’t even aware he’d moved, let alone leapt on Raven and locked his hands around his throat, until he saw the flicker of surprise in Raven’s eyes; he’d forgotten he still had the moonstone. Then he saw nothing but dark sky and stars and he threw back his head, gritted his teeth and did his best to choke the dead life out of Raven.

He knew he couldn’t and so did Raven. Johnny supposed that was why Raven let him bang his head up and down on the sandy grass until he wore himself out.

“I meant to tell you,” Raven said then. “In fact, I could swear I did.”

Johnny relaxed his grip. Since he’d held the moonstone, he’d had trouble discriminating between Raven’s thoughts and his, difficulty figuring out where Raven ended and he began. The Ritual of Rejoining, he thought, had already begun.

“Memories don’t always carry over,” Raven said. “There’s every possibility neither of us will know Willow Evans from Adam in the morning.”

Forgetting terrified Johnny even more than Nekhat. He loved Willie, he always had, but he knew better than anyone how easy it was to forget and how difficult to remember.

The moon tugged at him again, rolling him off Raven and to his feet. Please God, not this time, he prayed. I’ll forget anything else, everything else, just please let me remember Willie.

“The vials are in the backpack,” Father Bertram said, helping Raven to his feet.

“Yes. I’ll tell Willow. Thank you, Bertie.”

“I wouldn’t be here for anyone else and well you know it.” Father Bertram gave Raven a clap on the arm that nearly knocked him over. “I pray to God you’ll be here when I come back in the morning.”

“If I could pray, Bertie,” Raven replied with a rueful smile, “so would I.”

Chapter 22

Willie wished the wind
hadn’t carried Raven’s comment to her, that he’d at least warned her before they’d left Beaches, though she knew why he hadn’t. She might not have come. And then who would have put the stake through his heart?

The Sacred Cedar and the thermos clunked in her backpack as she struggled up the hill above the beach between Johnny and Raven. She’d found the holy water after she’d ducked into the almond grove to change into the dean jeans and ribbed green pullover Johnny had fetched from the Fiat. When she’d opened the backpack to put away her wet things, she’d seen the vials.

“Dare I ask,” she’d said to Raven as she’d shrugged into the pack, “what I’m supposed to do with holy water?”

“Cleanse the Sacred Cedar once you’ve used it.”

What an interesting euphemism, Willie had thought, for
after you kill me.
“What about the second vial?”

“You’ll need it if the Ritual doesn’t work,” he’d replied as he led the way off the beach. “To clean up the mess.”

He hadn’t told her where they were going, and after the holy water business, she was afraid to ask. She wasn’t sure Raven would hear her, anyway, over the wind pushing her up the hill behind him. Johnny wasn’t much of a windbreak, but she was glad to have his loving presence at her back.

She could have done, however, without Nekhat howling in her ears, whipping her clothes and snatching her breath. How he was pushing such a fierce wind inland without advancing the ugly black storm looming offshore she didn’t know. Nor did she want to. She had a nasty hunch what he planned to do with it, and that was scary enough.

So was the ruin she saw when she stopped behind Raven to catch her breath: all crumbled arches and broken stones glowing in the moonlight. By the time she realized what it was, he’d stridden a good ten yards ahead of her.

“Yo, Vlad!” she shouted, hands cupped around her mouth.

In midstride, one foot raised on a rock, Raven swung around and arched an eyebrow at her. “Vlad?”

“It got your attention. Isn’t that a church?”

“It’s a temple. Pagan, not Christian.”

It was Roman, Willie thought when they reached it and she sat down to rest. Or maybe Punic. Maybe both. Whatever it was, it wasn’t much larger than the sanctuary at the nuraghe and was shaped like a bowl scooped out of the side of the hill.

Arches that once supported a ceiling had been snapped off like broken teeth. A dais, crowned by a shattered marble altar, sat in the middle of a faded mosaic floor below the flight of broken steps where she sat.

Johnny stood, feet spread and arms folded, watching Raven sweep debris with one foot off the dais—debris that would have given a large crane trouble: shattered tops of columns, the head of a god with a curled Grecian beard and eyes with no pupils. Eyes just like Raven’s.

When he looked at the sky, so did Johnny, and Willie, too, her breath catching. Directly above the altar the moon shimmered in a silver nimbus, its lower curve already erased by the shadow of the earth. The eclipse had begun.

“Come here, Willow,” Raven said, turning toward her.

He looked so calm she was suddenly afraid. Her heart pounded, her hands went clammy and her knees shook as she made her way across the mosaic and stopped next to Johnny. The altar was a lot bigger up close, the dais a lot higher. Raven looked ten feet tall standing on top of it.

“Up here, Willow.” He offered his hand, the moon riding above his right shoulder, his dark hair fluttering across its cratered face. The moonstone ring he’d taken back from Johnny on the beach flashed on his hand. “It’s all right,” he said, almost gently. “It’s warm.”

Willie took a breath and let him help her up the three giant-size steps to the dais. The temple was pitched at an uphill angle, which gave her a dizzying view of the beach rimming Tharros, a pale gleam of surf-washed sand in the failing moonlight. The black mass of clouds hanging over the water flashed with dull, brooding lightning.

“Doesn’t he ever quit?” Willie said exasperatedly.

Raven laughed, the azurite Father Bertram had told her to give him gleaming in the hollow of his throat. His eyes, dark and fathomless again, glimmered as he smiled at her.

“You’re a rare mortal, Willow.”

“Rare, hell,” she snapped. “I’m scared to death.”

“Do you think I’m not?” Raven nodded at Johnny. “Do you think he isn’t?”

Willie glanced over her shoulder. Johnny looked so handsome and so composed, she felt even more afraid. Oh, God, she wailed silently. What will I do if he forgets me?

“Take heart, Willow. I might remember you.”

“Oh, big comfort,” she retorted. “You don’t love me.”

“But I might.” Raven smiled. “In the morning.”

“Will the Ritual take all night?”

“Your part, no.” He glanced up at the moon and shrugged. “If the Rejoining works, it could.”

“How will you know?”

“We won’t. You will.” Raven kicked a last chunk of marble off the dais and looked at her. “If we haven’t risen by dawn, rejoined in this body, we aren’t going to rise, ever again, either one of us. If you love Johnny, use the second vial. Don’t let the sun have us.”

Willie dreaded the answer but asked, “What do I do?”

“Sprinkle the body and leave. Immediately. Don’t linger.” He said it curtly and then smiled, or tried to. “And if you would, say a prayer.”

Dear God. Willie sat down on the altar, too shattered to think, too stricken to cry, until she looked at Johnny. He raised his right hand, signed, “I love you” with shaky fingers, and then made a clockwise circle over his heart. “Please.”

“I promise I will,” Willie said, her voice thick with tears, “but you have to promise you’ll remember me. And, believe me—” she shot Raven a quavery glare “—I’ll
know
who’s doing the remembering.”