Touch of Darkness (4 page)

She had cursed the family with her prophecy. . . .

Each
of my four sons must find one of the Varinski icons.

Only their loves can bring the holy pieces home.

A child will perform the impossible. And the beloved of the family will be broken by treachery . . . and leap into the fire.

The blind can see, and the sons of Oleg Varinski have found us. You can never be safe, for they will do anything to destroy you and keep the pact intact.

If the Wlders do not break the devil's pact before your death, you wilt go to hell and be forever separated from your beloved Zorana.
, . .

And you, my love, you are not long for this earth. You are dying.

She'd been talking to Rurik's father, and as soon as she'd finished speaking, Konstantine had crashed to the ground, crushed in the grips of a rare disease that ate away at his heart.

Konstantine had always been one of the most hearty, commanding men Rurik had ever met. To see him stretched out on the gurney in Swedish Hospital in Seattle, IVs poked into his arms, a shunt in his chest, tubes running up his nose—in that moment, Rurik's understanding of the world had changed.

He had only a limited time to find the icon that would save his father's life and soul. If Rurik failed, destruction came to everything important to him. His family. His world.

Maybe the
whole
world.

The ferry took a sharp turn to the left, coming around the end of the island, and there it was, the village of Dunmarkie, nestled into the harbor and bragging of three dozen homes, a pub, and a market.

The streets were empty.

Rurik straightened.

As he'd done every day for the last twenty years, the captain efficiently brought the ferry into the dock. The crew hurried about, securing her moorings, setting the gangplank . . . and then they stood there, looking uneasily at the village.

"Where is everybody?" Duncan asked.

Rurik met Duncan's gaze. "Something's happened at the site."

***

Rurik cleared the last rise, looked down, and swore.

His lonely, windswept archaeological site, with its gently mounded grave that was brushed alternately by the caress of the sea breeze and the roar of brutal storms off the North Sea, was inundated by people. Villagers, fishermen, photographers, and reporters— they were all there, tromping down the pale green grass and fragile flowers, overrunning his carefully marked sections, milling, talking, jostling for position.

Where were his workers? Who was in control?

Where was his superintendent?
Where was Hard-
wick?

Grimly Rurik surged forward.

The crowd had already spotted him, and he heard his name repeated over and over again.

Ashley Sundean got to him first before he reached the edge of the crowd. She was an archaeology student from Virginia, here for the summer dig, a girl whose soft-spoken drawl hid a steel core and a hard head for drinking.

He stopped and faced her. "What is going on here?"

"It's ... it's so awful.. . ." She slumped before him.

"It sure as hell is." He saw the flash as camera
lenses turned his way, and heard them start to click and whirl. "Start at the beginning. Tell me everything."

She responded to his command voice by straightening her shoulders and looking into his eyes. "About a week after you left, we were clearing debris in section F21 on the ramp."

He glanced down the hill toward the site. A year ago and twenty feet from the mound, they'd found a stone ramp sloping down toward the grave. Since then they'd focused their attention there, sifting through the dirt, working their way toward what Rurik believed was the entrance to the tomb. They'd followed the wide path of flat stones down into the cool, dark shadows of the earth. Twelve feet below ground level, the path ended at the corner formed by the two vertical walls that sealed the grave.

Ashley continued. "A storm came up. We set up a tarp, but the water kept dripping down our necks and the wind ripped off the corner of the tarp."

"So you quit work for the day."

"Yeah." She sniffed, dabbed her red nose on her sleeve.

She'd been crying. Why had she been crying?

"It was a bitch of a night. Rain pouring down,
and wind
howling—the people in the pub said the
b
anshees had been loosed and the world was coming to an end." She shivered as if the threat was real.

He felt no skepticism. How could he? Perhaps banshees were real—he was the last man who could discount the old legends.

"When we came back the next day, the sun was out. The light was bright and crisp. We could see for miles." She looked at the tomb as if she was remembering. "The tarp was gone. Some of the stones on the rock wall lay crumbled on the ground—and right as we walked up, the sun entered the tomb for the first time since the day it had been sealed—and the beams struck gold."

"So I heard. On every news channel in every airport."

Ashley rubbed a spot on her forehead, "1 told him he should call you and then put the lid on it—"

"You told Hardwick?"

"Yes. And he didn't tell anyone, but the word got out with the villagers and from there, I swear, the rumor flew off the island without anyone saying a word." She scuffed her toe in the rough grass, holding back some . . . thing.

"But?"

"But once the reporters showed up, Hardwick couldn't take the pressure. He caved. He gave tours, he talked about the progress of the dig—he gave you all the credit. Really, he did." She touched Rurik's sleeve, so distressed he nodded acknowledgment. "He loved the limelight. We all did—it was cool to
pull our heads out of the dirt and have reporters treat us like everything we said was important. But we didn't do anything wrong."

Rurik's gaze swept the crowd, noting the reporters now surging toward them. "Talking to the press may have been cool for you, but it didn't help the site." He started forward, ignoring the reporters, the tourists, the visitors who shouted his name.

Ashley hung on to his sleeve, letting him cleave a path through the crowd. "Hardwick said we didn't have a choice."

"Hardwick is an idiot."

Ashley's voice went up two octaves. "Don't say things like that about him!"

"He's supposed to be in control here. So why the hell not?" Rurik pushed through to the edge of the ramp. He took in the scene at the tomb wall—and knew the answer before Ashley answered.

One wall had been broken. The rock had crumbled on the ground. Inside, a window of gold beckoned ... and the hilt of an ancient steel blade jutted from that window.

The point protruded from the back of Hardwick's skull.

And Tasya Hunnicutt, the woman whose careless courage rilled him with fury and unease, struggled to lift the body free.

Chapter 3

Tasya Hunnicutt's eyes watered as she strained to lift Kirk Hardwick's limp body off the blade. She wasn't crying, exactly, but to arrive at the scene in time to see Hardwick reaching into the tomb to retrieve the first piece of gold, and trigger a thousand-year-old booby trap—that scene would play and replay in her nightmares. And in her line of work, she had viewed enough atrocities to people her nightmares; she hadn't expected one at an archaeological dig run by the cool, decisive Rurik Wilder.

But Rurik wasn't on location, and that accounted for the mistake that had cost Hardwick his life. Rurik wouldn't have allowed Hardwick to excavate the tomb while expounding for the cameras. The reporters would never have been able to bully Rurik into rushing the excavation.

She'd walked up, seen Hardwick kneeling before the window that opened into the tomb, and heard him say, "Four to five thousand years ago, tomb mounds were constructed. Mr. Wilder's theory is that a thousand years ago, a medieval warlord called Clo-vus the Beheader took the structure and made it his own, stocking it with treasure in anticipation of his death."

Brandon Collins from the
London Globe
had shouted, "What led Mr. Wilder to that conclusion?" "He did extensive research on Clovus and on the path of destruction he cut across modern-day France, England, and Scotland." Hardwick removed stones from the wall while Rurik's team of archaeologists stood back, frowning and watching intently, their arms crossed. "Mr. Wilder documented Clovus's slow disintegration from the most powerful and feared warlord of his time to a feeble man broken by illness, and he traced Clovus's retreat to this remote location—"

At that point, Tasya had leaped onto the stone path. She was the National Antiquities representative, the only one who had a chance of talking sense into Hardwick before he did harm to the site—and Rurik did harm to him.

That was why she saw the events so clearly: she'd been about ten feet away when Hardwick interrupted himself and exclaimed with delight, "It's a treasure chest covered with gold!"

At that moment, an unseen wave of freezing rage from within the tomb engulfed her. She hadn't experienced such a shock of pure malice since the day the four-year-old she had been saw her world go up in flames. The cold took her breath away, blinded her, stopped her in her tracks.

By the time she could see and speak again, Hardwick had reached inside.

And the sword popped out of nowhere to pierce him right through the eye.

The dull glint of gold must have been the last thing he saw.

Hardwick died instantly, hung on the sword like some gruesome warning to all who dared assault the sanctity of Clovus's treasure.

The crowd gasped, murmured, shrieked . . . and shrank back from the edge of the walkway. Distantly Tasya heard the clicking and whirring of cameras and computers as the reporters and tourists fought to capture the scene and convey a story that in an instant had gone from fluff to spectacle.

No one came to her aid. They were afraid.

Tasya was afraid, too. To her, the open grave exuded a palpable malice, as thick and green as poison. She breathed it in and urgently wanted it to clear, but the malevolence was old, potent, and endless.

Yet someone had to move Hardwick off the blade, place him on the ground, and give him the rest owed
to the dead. Although she prided herself on her upper-body strength, Hardwick was both tall and pudgy, and every time she wiggled the body, the sound of the sword scraping flesh and bone made her want to throw up.

Then she heard it. The voice she'd last heard a month ago, calling her name in passion—

"Wait, Tasya, and I'll help you."

She glanced up. Saw Rurik striding down the ramp without a care for his own safety.

Two reactions hit her simultaneously.

My lover.

And ...

The fool. The damned fool.

Releasing Hardwick, she launched herself at Rurik. She plowed her shoulder into his belly, sending him sprawling, and before he could catch his breath, she crawled on top of him and got in his face. "Have you no sense? There are more booby traps."

"Who's without sense, then?" His eyes, the color of raw brandy, blazed with irritation—at her.

If his behavior was anything to judge by, she had always irritated him. "I
am
being careful, not stomping on the path with my head held high, asking to get it chopped off."

"I've walked the path before."

"Yes, and when the first stone in that wall moved, everything in this grave went out of balance." She
h
eld Rurik's shirt in her fists and whispered softly, wanting none of the reporters to hear. "The old demon who's buried here is determined to make us pay dearly for the contents. Nothing's safe."

"Then what are
you
doing here?" His abdomen was solid. He was warm.

And she was cold and afraid. He felt like security to her.

That was wrong. So wrong. "What did you want me to do? Leave Hardwick to the carrion birds?"

He seemed to stop breathing, and his lids drooped, and his eyes grew . . . clouded, as if he fought to conceal some secret within him.

Hastily, she released his shirt.