Chills & Thrills Paranormal Boxed Set (36 page)

The battle went on endlessly. And Liz clung to Zach, knowing
her only stability amid this chaos was her love for him. So sweet, so pure with
no hesitancy or doubt. She may never again have a chance to tell him how deep
it ran. So she loosened her terrified hold on his neck and leaned back to
capture his lips. "I love you, Zach," she breathed into the kiss.
"I love you."

The clashing ceased momentarily, as if eyes were seeking the
source of this interruption, then resumed with increased ferocity.

"And I love you, Liz," he murmured, brushing his
mouth across hers with gentle urgency that told her he finally believed her.

Instantly, without fanfare, the jagged red bolts vanished.
The light waves streaking from the opal transformed to dancing prisms of color.
The dark sky lightened. Faces appeared again— Ellie, Harris, and Jed, with the
others notably absent.

"'The two join as one, and the soft overpower the
strong,'" Zach whispered in awe.

The faces nodded together, and Harris spoke. "
Le
fantome noir
he die now. We be in your debt." Then they were gone.

The gray mist shuddered, faded, reemerged to shudder again,
each time tossing Liz and Zach about. With a final and gut-wrenching quake, the
mist shattered into millions of gray pieces.

Liz held on to Zach and Zach held on to Liz, each wanting to
protect the other from the fall to come. The next thing they knew they were
kneeling beside the crystal pool, watching pale fragments of Ankouer drop like
rainfall into the water.

"Ankouer is dead!" Zach cried in triumph, hugging
Liz fiercely.

"Yes," she said softly, sinking into his embrace.
He leaned back and looked at her in question. "Papa?" was her
response.

"He's okay. Winded and with a broken arm, but he'll be
fine."

"Where is he?"

Surprised, Zach jerked toward the spot where Frank last lay.
It was empty, totally empty. Next he scanned the cavern—the narrow ledge, the
ascending ramp, the smaller lighted cave beyond. Finally he answered Liz's
question.

"He's gone. And so is Maddie's body."

Liz climbed to her feet, and checked the cavern herself, but
she knew Zach wasn't mistaken. New tears sprang to her eyes and she let them
flow. But these weren't healing tears—they were tears born of a rage so intense
she couldn't express it any other way.

"It's not fair, Zach. We lost so much. Why my father,
too? Why did we lose it all?"

"Maybe he carried Maddie from the cave." She heard
no conviction in his voice, but he cupped her chin and lifted her face to meet
his. "You're cold, wet, and exhausted. I'm going to take you out, then
I'll come back and search for them."

Liz shook her head. "It's no use. Ankouer took them.
You know it's true."

"You gotta have faith,
cher
," he said.
"It protected us from
le fantome noir
."

"Shh." She put her finger over his lips.
"Talking about him . . . it scares me. Let's make a pact to never speak
his names again." She glanced at the lake. Ankouer's fragments still sank
slowly in the water. To dissolve into the void, she wondered, or to someday
return to dark form? They followed the path of the pieces for a long moment,
then Zach brought Liz around to face him.

"I vow, Liz," he whispered hoarsely, "as long
as my love for you endures, I'll never speak his names. Which means
forever."

His gaze bathed her in love, and Liz realized they hadn't
lost it all, they still had each other. "Mine, too," she answered,
then sank into his embrace and let him kiss her tears away.

Moonlight flooded the cavern, but by the time they stepped
from each other's arm, the moon had passed and its light grew weak. The only
other illumination came from the softly glowing opal. Liz used it to guide her
as she searched for her shoes. When she bent to slip them on, she saw a long,
red-striped cylinder.

"The flashlight." As she picked it up and turned
it on in preparation for the journey through the tunnel, a thought flitted
through her mind.

"Where's the lantern?"

"I set it down at the base of the ramp," Zach
said, looking over his shoulder. "It's not there."

"Oh, Zach!" Liz said excitedly, shoving her feet
into her Sketchers and rushing toward the tunnel. "You were right. He took
Maddie out. Papa's alive. He is, I know he is!"

Zach found it hard to believe. Surely, Frank's broken arm
couldn't sustain the weight of even Maddie's slight body. But Liz had already
ducked into the tunnel, racing along at a breakneck speed Zach found hard to
match in such a cramped position. The flashlight bobbed in front of her,
weaving over the slick, damp surface, and clearly showing the sudden absence of
decomposing carcasses or caches of bones. The air was cleaner, too, easier to
breathe. When Liz rounded the curve to leave him momentarily in total darkness,
he felt no panic.

"Zach!" she cried as he made it around the curve.
"Zach!"

Frank sat in the middle of the tunnel, rocking back and
forth with Maddie cradled in his arms. His face was a mask of agony that Zach
knew came only partly from his broken limb.

"You done prevailed against Ankouer," he said
weakly.

"By the power of the opal," Liz answered.

Zach bent to relieve Frank of his burden. "I'll take
her, partner."

"
Non
, I want to hold her a while longer so her
soul can pass to heaven."

Heaven? Liz caught Zach's eye.

"Poor Maddie," Frank continued. "Ankouer lure
her with false promises. She weren't evil, just a woman who has her needs too
long denied."

"Why did you try to carry her out alone?" Zach
asked. "With your arm and that bad ticker, you could've died, too."

Frank swayed back and forth, supporting Maddie's broken neck
as if she were a baby. "I could not help you and my Izzy. But if Maddie
had been there when he die, Ankouer woulda took her soul into the void."
His pained eyes looked up at Liz. "I cheat her . . . and your
maman
,
who it be too late to help. But this I can do for Maddie. Take her broken body
home for a proper funeral."

Liz understood, and realized it was a testimony to how much
the battle had changed her. No longer did she want to rail against his affair.
While his betrayal was wrong, her father's fidelity to those he cherished could
not be questioned.

"We have to go, Papa," she said after a time.
"Let Zach help you."

And when Zach had lifted her father's burden, Liz helped him
up, supporting him as they made the final leg of the journey out of Ankouer's
lair.

* * *

"You sure you don't mind?" Liz asked, closing her
father's wooden tobacco box on both the opal and her mother's journal.

"It is fine, Izzy. I told you. You won't let me smoke
anyhow, so what difference do it make?" He was a bit cranky, and not
without reason. Although Zach had fashioned a sling out of dish towels, it
wasn't doing much to relieve the pain.

"Are you up to this?"

"
Oui
. It is a right end to this curse."

"Good."

She and Zach helped her father to his feet, supporting him
as they made the short walk to the cypress trees that had sheltered them their
first night on Quadray Island. How fitting that they'd also spend their last
day in front of the spot where they'd shared their love.

Everything else was done. They'd exited the tunnel into the
rising sun, and as it traveled up, everyone saw that the perpetual haze on
Quadray Island had vanished.

After tending to her father's arm, Liz and Zach let him
rest, choosing to forego sleep themselves so they could finish packing the
boat. Later, Zach wrapped Maddie in a tarp, and her father said a small prayer
in French, then remarked again that at least she'd be interred on consecrated
ground.

Zach had dug a hole beneath the cypress trees earlier and
Liz now knelt beside it with a small piece of canvas and the tobacco box. She
reverently wrapped the box in the canvas, feeling a pang at letting go of items
belonging to her mother. But she'd talked it over with Zach and her father, and
they all agreed to leave everything connected to Ankouer behind, although they
refrained from speaking his name. Zach later told Liz that if not for her
father's intense desire to carry back Maddie's body and the laws against it, he
would have also suggested burying the woman there.

The air was so fresh and clean now, and a soft breeze kept
the naked sun from beating too strongly on their shoulders. Small green shoots
that hadn't been there before poked out of the soil. Life appeared to be
renewing itself. As Liz leaned forward to place the canvas-wrapped box into the
hole, she wept openly. And when she joined her father in another French
prayer—with Zach haltingly trying to follow along—she noticed both men's voices
were thick. Closure. They would finally have closure, and her last reservations
about burying the cherished items disappeared.

When she got up, Zach shoveled dirt back into the hole, then
tamped it down. Tears still trickled down Liz's cheeks as she silently watched
him work. When at last he leaned the shovel against the tree, he wiped the
sweat from his forehead, then walked over and traced his finger down Liz's
cheek.

"Every tear you shed adds another year to your life,
cher
."

"
Oui
," her father said.

Liz smiled, taking in the two men she adored, and who
clearly adored her in return. "Guess I'll be living well past a
hundred."

Their laughter was subdued, but light-hearted.

"Everything's done," Zach then said. "It's
time to go. My mouth's watering for some of Harris's gumbo, so let's make a
stop on our way home."

"Harris?" Her father sounded puzzled "His
place ain't there no more. Burned down not so long after he die."

"We saw him, Papa," Liz protested. "Harris is
fine. Still playing with his zydeco band."

"Been dead six, seven years at least."

The accompanying shake of his head told Liz her father spoke
the truth.

"We should have known," Zach said. At Frank's
questioning glance, he added, "He was there, inside ... during the battle.
So were Ellie and Jed."

The three exchanged solemn looks, then Zach went to claim
the shovel. As he bent for it, he paused and tilted back his head. "I'll
be damned."

"What is it?" Liz asked.

"Let's see."

He reached under a thick blanket of moss, and brought forth
a ray of sunshine.

Liz stared blankly, not quite believing her eyes. Zach held
a dancing mixture of fuchia and yellow, its outer petals soft and muted, while
the inner petals glowed with color like the opal.

He walked toward her with an awed expression. "It took
more than twenty years
, cher
, but here's the spotted orchid I promised
you."

Liz couldn't even speak, her throat was so thick, and as
Zach braided the stem of the incredible flower into her hair, new tears
streamed down her face. Zach kissed them away as he pulled her into his arms.
"I love you, Liz."

"And I love you," she whispered.

"Does that mean you two are gonna give me
grandbabies?" her father asked.

Liz let out a choked laugh and turned to see him regarding
them with obvious approval.

"Whoa, partner," Zach said. "One thing at a
time. First I have a question to ask."

He cupped Liz's cheek and brought her face back to meet his
eyes. They looked misty, Liz thought, as his next halting words came out.
"Will you marry me, Liz? For forever and a day?"

"Yes," she whispered. "What took you so
long?"

She laughed at his mock grimace. And then, in front of her
father, beneath God and the big, bright sun on Quadray Island, she kissed him
long and hard.

Three years later

Liz placed candlesticks on the gleaming cherrywood table,
then inserted tapers. She'd light them later, after she dimmed the chandelier
in the formal dining room. She had already opened the shutters to the
galerie
to let in the fragrance of magnolias that hung in the balmy May night. From the
kitchen came the spicy odors of simmering jambalaya, and peeled shrimp was
marinating in a refrigerated bowl until she was ready to dump them in boiling
water.

Everything was waiting for Zach's return.

Actually waiting felt pretty good these days. Waiting, and
having to time think. So much had happened, so fast, after their safe return to
Port Chatre. Even as they unloaded Maddie's body, people remarked uneasily that
"bad luck comes in threes." First, Ellie. Then Doc Allain—who had
declined rapidly—aging almost overnight and dying in his sleep before they'd
arrived. Now Maddie. After a cursory investigation, her death was ruled accidental,
and later that week Liz comforted her father while the priest performed burial
rites.

Then came happier times. Liz took that first brave step and
admitted her lies to Stephen and their associates and friends. Many had flown
down to watch her make her joyful promise to Zach.
 
His children had attended, too, as well as his
first wife, Rita, who Liz wasn't surprised to find she liked.

Fulfilling Liz's girlhood dream and delighting her father,
who was glad to be rid of it, but even gladder to have her nearby again, they
chose to live in Zach's old house. She now conducted most of her business by
modem or telephone, with an occasional trip to Chicago to meet with Stephen and
renew acquaintances. This absolute perfection made Liz realize how empty and alienated
her former life had been.

Giving the tapers another push to make certain they were
secure, she whirled joyously away from the table. Never had she envisioned
herself so happy, and now tonight . . . tonight she'd take perfection to
another level.