Madeline rinsed her mouth with water and tears pooled in her eyes, spilling slowly down her cheeks. That bastard Salezan merited a slow and tortured death. She decided then and there to do her best to see that he got what he deserved. “Oh, Brazos,” she said quietly. “It’s a wonder you survived at all.”
He began to growl and retreated to one corner of the cell as she stepped toward him. “Salezan lied to you,” she said, advancing slowly. “Father Miguel Alcortez is not dead. I spoke with him just before I came down here. He’s upstairs, alive and healthy. Governor Salezan lied to you.”
“Quiet!” the beast roared. He came out of the shadows a vicious animal, eyes flashing, fists clenched and raised as weapons.
Madeline stood with her spine stiff and chin uplifted, facing him fearlessly as he moved close. “I tell you the truth, Mr. Night. You must accept it. Why, my very presence here is proof. You said, ‘So, you are not dead.’ You said that Salezan used me to kill Brazos Sinclair—my golden braid at his dinner table. Did Salezan serve Brazos meat and then tell him it was me? Is that why he retreated and allowed you to come forth?”
“Bitch!” It was a feral scream of rage that echoed through the dungeon and shook Madeline to the core. He grabbed her shoulders and shook her violently. “Why do you do this! I’ll kill, don’t you see? Why are you foolish enough to come into my lair and anger me?”
Then he lowered his mouth and kissed her.
Pain explodes through my body. I’d thought the Weak One dead, but he is here, battling me. Winning. He senses the source of his power within reach and attacks. Where I, like the Karankawa of long ago, draw my power from the heart and body of mine enemy, the Weak One siphons his strength from the force within the Woman. I must stop it. I must separate from her.
But he is strong. Even now, he moves my hand and brings it to her waist, feels the curve of her hip. “No,” I cry, and I tear the hand away so that my arm hangs limply at my side. But her lips, her kiss, it is strong. I struggle against it. Pull away, pull away.
I cannot.
He moves my lips. She whimpers, and it is an arrow to my heart. I feel him building inside me, strengthening. Pressure swells. Pulses. It begins as a groan deep in the hollow of my soul. I close my throat, but it, he, is too strong
.
“Maddie,” Brazos murmured against her lips.
She pulled back and gazed into lucid blue eyes. “Brazos! Oh, Brazos, thank God.”
No! I shall not allow it. I summon my energy for one great effort. My hands—not his—lift to her waist and shove her away.
She falls back, tripping on a chair leg and sprawling on the cold stone floor. We are separate; the pain within me lessens. I march toward the door, shut yet still unlocked, and I slam it with the palm of my hand. It swings open, banging against the corridor’s stone wall. The sound echoes like a death knell.
“Out,” I shout, my hands fisting at my sides. She must leave immediately. The Weak One has touched her, grown potent. He nearly defeated me.
The woman is my greatest danger. I should kill her
.
Sitting up, Madeleine threw a proud, undefeated glare at the naked beast standing beside the door and bit hard on her lip to stifle a sob. She’d been so close. Brazos had been there. He’d spoken. For a moment, she’d thought the spell of mindlessness that held him prisoner had been broken with their kiss. Like in the nursery stories told by the brothers Grimm.
Well, obviously, life was no fairy tale.
“You’re being a fool, Madeline,” she murmured, climbing to her feet and dusting herself off. Sunlight and fresh air were what he needed. Her being womanish about this business was helping neither one of them. “Listen, mister,” she said. “I don’t care how many people you think you’ve made meals of. I don’t care if you want to call yourself Night or Sinclair or the bloody king of this castle, for that matter—I’ve risked my life to come after you. I hounded my father to risk his life on your behalf. I could have rescued Father Miguel a week ago if I hadn’t been searching for you. Now, surely you’ve a loincloth or something lying around this cell. Put it on and come with me at once! We’ve wasted too much time as it is. Someone even crazier than you might be on his way down those stairs even as we speak.”
Turning her back on him, she stepped to the small cot and rifled through the bedding. No clothing there. She bent over and peered beneath it. She couldn’t see very well, so she got down on her hands and knees, then ducked her head beneath the bed and felt around on the floor, sneezing as the layer of dust she disturbed clouded around her head. Her knees caught in her petticoat, so she stretched and wiggled, trying to work the fabric around to give her more room to move.
An almost tortured groan met her ears, and she jumped, banging her head before scooting out from under the cot. “Bloody hell,” she muttered, rubbing the tender spot on her head. She’d found nothing more than well-worn leather boots beneath the bed. “Really, you must have some sort of covering around here. Surely you get cold sometimes and—” She glanced over her shoulder and stopped.
He still had the beastly look about his eyes, but the man staring with rapt attention at her backside displayed a certain physical endowment that was patently Brazos Sinclair.
Delayed reaction
, she thought, suddenly full of hope. Maybe it takes a few moments for the spell to be broken. Or maybe in real life, it took more than just a little kiss to get the job done. Maybe it took extra effort.
Madeline was good at extra effort.
She rose to her feet with feline grace. Pouting, she put a hand behind her head and said, “Ouch. I bumped my head. It hurts. In fact, I think it’s bleeding. I think—oh.” Her knees buckled, and she fell in a faint upon the bed.
Quite realistically, too
, she thought.
“Woman,” he snapped. When she remained silent, he repeated, “Woman!”
She lay on her back with her arm flung across her brow, effectively shielding her eyes so that she could peek without his seeing. He was scowling at her, looking more vicious than at any time since she’d entered his prison room. She risked a low, pain-filled groan.
The scowl transformed to a look of concern, and he took a hesitant step forward.
Such a beast you are
, Madeline silently scoffed. For a man who supposedly eats people, he certainly was a soft touch.
Speaking of soft, that wasn’t quite the effect she wanted. She’d better see to getting him over here, fast. Before the effects of her kiss and wiggles wore off.
Madeline stirred and whined loudly, “Oh, I’m burning. I’m hot,” she said as she tore at the buttons of her bodice, opening her dress and exposing a thin chemise.
He took another step forward. She sneaked a furtive glance at his loins and thought,
Now, that’s the Brazos Sinclair I know
. But it was the one calling himself Night who leaned over the bed and spoke to her. “Woman, I give you warning. I am going to kill you.”
Madeline suffered a moment of doubt as his fingers wrapped around her throat. Had she misjudged his capability for hurting her?
She opened her eyes and looked up into his furious, insane gaze, searching for a sign of the man she loved. There, past the anger and the madness, lay a plea for help, an appeal for salvation. Softly, she said, “You won’t hurt me.”
“I’ll choke the life from your body,” he hissed, putting a knee on the cot, then straddling her. “I’ll rip out your heart and feast upon it before it has ceased to beat.” The fingers around her throat tightened.
“No, you won’t,” she rasped. As she watched the struggle in his face, she knew what she must do. “I love you, Brazos Sinclair,” she said.
He flinched as though it were a physical blow. Quickly, she repeated, “I love you. And I know that you won’t hurt me because you love me, too.”
He wrenched himself off the bed. He stood with his back to her, his chest heaving with the heavy breaths he took. “Go,” he rumbled. “Go now, while I am weak enough to allow it. Take your lies and leave me.”
“I’m not lying.” She rolled off the cot and stood, laying a hand against his back. “I love you, no matter what name you choose to call yourself. Even if you had done what Salezan claimed, I’d love you still. You are my friend.” She wrapped her arms around his waist. “My husband.” She pressed herself against him. “My lover. I love you, all of you.”
He stood frozen like the stone effigies guarding the entrance to the prison. Madeline circled to his front, her hands continuing to touch him, never breaking the connection. Lifting her face, she pulled his head down toward hers. “I love you,” she repeated softly, and then she kissed him. And the kiss went on and on and on.
Love. A weapon without equal. A force more powerful than any other. She has gifted the Weak One with its might, and he has become Strength.
I yield to the power of Love.
For Brazos, it was an epiphany. A brilliant, rapturous instant in which the memories of the past and truths about the present exploded onto his consciousness. But one thought transcended all others and warmed him like a tot of French brandy.
Madeline loved him. Really loved him. Enough to challenge the monster inside him. Enough to defeat the beast. Damn, but she was some special kind of woman.
And he loved her, with a heart now whole and a soul redeemed. He loved her so much, the tumbleweed in his blood had gone to dust. He only wished he had time to love her with that other part of himself that had found new life.
He broke off the kiss, took her face in his hands, and staring solemnly into her eyes, said, “I love you too, Beauty. But if you ever try another stunt as dumb as this one—and by that I mean everything from returning to Perote to daring to enter this cell—if you ever pull something like this again, I’ll plumb dust your feathers.”
A radiant smile lit Madeline’s face. “Oh, Brazos, you can dust my feathers anytime you want.”
He couldn’t resist. He took her mouth in a long, wet, sense-stealing kiss and surrendered to the need to do a little groping. “Aw, hell, Maddie,” he said when he finally found the strength to pull away. “Stop doing this to me. A man gets extra thirsty when he can’t get to water; and I doubt we’ve time to do any divining right now. Tell me what’s going on up above.”
Madeline shook herself, and Brazos witnessed the joy drain from her expression.
One more thing to hold Salezan accountable for
, he thought.
She nibbled worriedly at her lower lip before asking, “How long have I been down here, ten minutes or so?”
“Honey, you’re asking the wrong person. For all I know, I’ve been in this hellhole for a year.”
“Two weeks,” she answered, her mind obviously on another subject. “Probably by now Joseph has taken—” She stopped in midsentence and looked at him. “Brazos, do you remember? Do you know what happened to you down here?”
For a long moment, he remained silent. Oh, he remembered, all right, and he even thought he knew the truth. Obviously, Madeline was alive and well; Salezan had used Brazos’s own ploy against him. He tilted his head and looked at her. “You look cute with your hair short, Maddie.”
The look she gave him was a mixture of pleasure and vulnerability. Briefly, he considered telling her that the rest of her hair was underneath his mattress, but then he figured it’d probably just set her to crying. He hated it when she cried. He summoned the courage to ask, “Is what you said earlier true, Madeline? Is Miguel still alive?”
“Yes, he is,” Madeline answered, laying a comforting hand upon him. “He’s been here at Perote all this time. Salezan kept him alive because Father Miguel could decipher the map that is etched on the silver armband you took. It’s a map to the—”
“El Regalo de Dios silver mine,” Brazos interrupted, feeling as if the weight of Texas had been lifted from his shoulders. Savoring the words on his lips, he repeated, “Miguel is alive.”
“Um, Brazos,” she said, “about that armband. Salezan’s men brought it to the prison this morning. He’s sent for Father Miguel to decipher the map. Remember what I told you on the bridge? Salezan has threatened to kill Father Miguel once his usefulness is over. I think perhaps we should hurry.”
He muttered a curse. “Wouldn’t that be just my luck—to manage to get him killed just when I’ve learned he’s still livin’. Do you know where Salezan planned to take Miguel?”
“His library. Father Miguel was going to insist that he needed the Bible to interpret the markings.”
Brazos nodded once and gestured toward the open cell door. “Let’s get out of here. Do you think you could find me some clothes someplace? I imagine I’d be less conspicuous—oh, shit.”
Damasso Salezan stood just outside the barrier of iron bars with a gun leveled at Father Miguel Alcortez’s head. “Well, well, Mr. Sinclair” he said, sneering. “I thought we’d seen the last of you.” He gave a mighty shove to the priest’s back and sent him sprawling into the cell. Father Miguel climbed slowly to his feet, brushing the straw that covered the cell floor from his cassock. The door clanged shut, and the lock clicked into place.
Salezan turned his attention to Madeline, saying, “You, however I am not at all surprised to find here in my dungeon. You’ve quite a talent for wriggling your way out of places I’ve put you.”
Brazos dismissed Salezan with a scornful look before clasping Father Miguel by the shoulders. The two friends stared at one another, taking measure, communicating their pleasure at each other’s presence with nuances of expression long familiar. “Damn, I’m glad you’re alive,” Brazos said.
“And I you,” the priest replied. “However I’d have preferred that this meeting occur under different circumstances.”
“Yeah, well, I can’t argue with that. It does appear that we’re plowing in a bad row of stumps.”
Madeline looked at Brazos, “Plowing in a bad row of stumps? You do have a problem with languages, don’t you, dear?”
He shook his head. “I’ve a problem with sadistic Mexicans who try to drive me insane. What will you do now, Salezan? See if you can get us
all
believing your lies? Only problem is, who you gonna say has been eating who? We’re all here.”