Darkness Bound (33 page)

Jenna passed a hand over her face, inhaled a heavy breath, then squared her shoulders. She turned to face them. “I think it’s one of their Gifts. They can absorb the Gifts of others, at least while they’re in close contact. Physical contact. During the pregnancy . . . then breastfeeding . . .” her gaze flicked to Olivia, who nodded.

Slowly, Leander withdrew his hand from the bassinette and let it fall to his side. He lifted his gaze to Jenna, his body still as stone. “They can
feed
on us? Like . . .” He swallowed, leaving the word unsaid.

Vampires
.

Jenna walked toward him with a muted rustle of fabric, trailing the blanket behind her like the train of a wedding gown. “I realized tonight that my Gift of Sight was back. When I touched Weymouth, I Saw all his plans, all his lies. I knew them already from my visit to Caesar, what they’d been up to, but . . .” she trailed off to silence. After a moment, she said, “And the only difference was that I hadn’t breastfed the twins for days.”

“Why haven’t they done it with me?” Leander murmured, looking back at the girls.

Jenna said, “I don’t know. Maybe we should ask them.”

“Do they speak to you, too?”

Olivia spoke in a tone of such hushed fervor it raised all the hair on the back of Hawk’s neck.

Speak
? he thought, horrified.
Infants
?
Babies
?
Speak
?

He and Leander stared at Olivia in shock, while Jenna remained silent, her gaze on the bassinette.

“They also go into my dreams,” Olivia continued, her eyes glazed with fatigue. Her hands had begun to shake, and as she wrung them together, her gaze darted around the room as if she were looking for something lurking in the shadows. Past his horror, Hawk wondered how long it had been since she’d slept.

Leander whispered, “Dreamwalkers?”

“I think they’ve been trying to tell me that something bad is coming. Something catastrophic. And they . . . and they’re going to . . .” Olivia faltered, glancing back to the bassinette. She wrapped her arms around her body, closed her eyes, and began to rock back and forth as if trying to comfort herself. As if deeply frightened.

Jenna touched Leander’s arm, watching Olivia. She said, “We’re all tired. This can wait until morning. Grayson left with the others; will you see she gets home safely?” Her husband looked shell-shocked as he glanced down into the crib then back at Jenna in mute dismay.

“Please,” she said, when he still hesitated. “I’d like to talk to Hawk alone. Just for a moment.”

Leander’s expression transformed from dismayed to murderous. He sent Hawk a stare that could have frozen molten lava. It was crystal clear what he thought of this idea.

Jenna lifted a hand and stroked her fingers lightly down Leander’s cheek. He turned his attention back to her and she smiled up at him. “I missed you, too,” she murmured, then rose on her toes and pressed a kiss to his lips. He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her into a tight hug.

Hawk looked away, but heard what Leander whispered into his wife’s ear.

“Five minutes, woman. When I get back, you’d better be waiting in bed. And you’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”

He released her, crossed to Olivia, and took her gently by the arm. He led her from the room, stopping briefly at the top of the curved stairway to give Jenna a last, lingering look before leaving.

He sent Hawk a last look, too, this one not nearly as nice.

When he was gone, Jenna collapsed onto the settee. She crumpled boneless to the cushions as if it had taken all her strength to remain standing until now, and her knees could no longer support her weight.

Hawk leapt into motion and went to her. “Your Highness—”

“I’m fine,” she said, waving him away. Unconvinced, he squatted on the floor in front of her, ready to assist in any way he could. Her head was in her hands, and through her fingers and a curtain of golden hair, she peeked at him. “And you don’t have to call me that. In fact, I insist you don’t. It’s so . . . pretentious.” She sighed, a heavy exhalation accompanied by a shudder, and Hawk thought he’d never seen anyone so weighted, her thoughts and responsibilities and the looming threat of war wrapped around her shoulders like a mantle made of stone.

“What would you like me to call you, then?”

She sat up, and pushed her hair out of her face. “She Who Must Be Obeyed.”

Though her expression was solemn, her green eyes twinkled as she spoke, and Hawk realized she was teasing him.

“I know several bossy females who’d appreciate being called that,” he said in utter seriousness, and the Queen’s lips curled.

“Bossy?” she said with arched brows. “Aren’t you the brave one?”

“No, just exceptionally stupid.”

She laughed at that, and for a moment the weight seemed to lift from her shoulders. “Yes, that’s the testosterone. But we ‘females’ have to deal with estrogen, which makes us a little crazy.”

“Actually I think it makes you tough,” he replied, all humor gone. “Tougher than we are because you feel things even more deeply than we do, and if I had to feel anything more deeply than I already do, I’d probably throw myself off a cliff. Strike that—I
would
throw myself off a cliff. I don’t know how you handle it.”

She peered at him, trying to ascertain if he was mocking her. Apparently satisfied he wasn’t, she patted the cushion beside her, inviting him to sit.

He did. They sat in awkward silence for a moment, staring at one another. When the silence grew too uncomfortable, Hawk said, “I hope you’re not trying to debate whether to take your dragon form and bite off my head. I could probably survive without it, seeing how I hardly ever use it, but I’ve gotten used to having it around. I’m sentimental that way.”

“Humor,” she said, “is something I’ve really missed. Consider your head safe.” She amended, “For the moment.”

Unsure whether she was now teasing him or not, Hawk simply inclined his head.

After another uncomfortable pause wherein she examined his face in such a way that made him feel almost naked, she said quietly, “It’s not easy, is it?”

“Life?”

“Love.”

He looked away, dragging a hand through his hair. Not easy. That might be the understatement of the century. He didn’t want her to think him a coward, but he also didn’t have the energy to lie. And he didn’t think anything he said would make a damn bit of difference one way or another, so he just went with the truth.

“I think . . . I think it might be the most terrible thing in the world.”

“No. There’s something else that’s worse. But love is a close second.”

He looked back at her to find her smiling at him, her eyes soft. She said, “Love is the most difficult journey you’ll ever embark upon, but the destination is worth all the horrible things you’ll experience during the trip. Don’t let the bumps and pitfalls scare you away from where you need to go. Hang in there until the bitter end. Believe me, I know from experience it’s worth every second of torture. One day you’ll look back and be glad for all you suffered, because the pain made the eventual joy all the more sweet.”

Hawk looked away, his throat tight. She was wrong; there would be only suffering. There would be no joy, no sweetness, not for him and Jacqueline. “This is what you wanted to talk to me about? War is coming, extinction is looming over us, your babies are—whatever they are—and you’d like to hear about my personal life?”

From the corner of his eye, he saw her sphinxlike smile. “I’m sentimental that way. So stop avoiding the subject and tell me why you’re so upset.”

Upset
didn’t begin to cover it. He closed his eyes, exhaled, and in a voice that cracked several times as he spoke said, “She doesn’t remember me. There is no destination anymore. There’s only a bridge that got burned down, and no way to rebuild it.”

“There’s always a way,” Jenna said enigmatically, but Hawk was already shaking his head.

“Morgan already tried. Jacqueline’s memory is gone; the spirit vine eroded it. She’ll never remember
us
.” He looked down at his hands, not entirely surprised to see them trembling. “And even if she somehow did remember, I can’t offer her a future. What chance of happiness could we have? All we have ahead of us now is war. Bloodshed. Death. Even if she wanted to stay, I wouldn’t allow it. I would never put her in harm’s way. And I can’t leave, especially now; it’s my duty to stay and fight. And think of how we started—what I did to her!”

Growing more and more agitated, Hawk stood and began to pace to and fro across the room while Jenna watched him, expressionless. “What woman in her right mind would trust me after a thing like that? I don’t deserve her trust. I don’t deserve
her
! I have nothing to give her, nothing worthwhile, not even my name! I’m a bastard, the illegitimate son of one of the worst men I’ve ever known—I’m nothing!”

Jenna cleared her throat. He pulled up short, breathing hard, anguish lashing him like a thousand steel-tipped whips, and stared at her.

“Are you done?”

She was looking at him with raised brows, waiting. He sent her a curt nod.

“I wish we knew one another better,” she said evenly, “because I’d love to smack you a good one upside your thick head right about now.”

Before he could formulate an appropriate response, she continued. “So you have a conscience. You feel bad about the plan. Congratulations. But let’s not forget you were operating
under pain of death
if you didn’t comply with Alejandro’s commands.”

Hawk stood stiffly, lips pinched, heat suffusing his face. “That’s no excuse—”

“Shut up,” she said mildly.

He did.

“Let’s also not forget you destroyed the pictures, and opted to challenge Alejandro in a fight to the death instead of showing them to him. Which means you’d rather risk your life than see her hurt, or disrespected, no matter how you might have felt about her at the beginning. With me so far?”

Reluctantly, he nodded.

“I applaud you for your loyalty to the colony, for thinking you need to stay and fight. And if I’m being perfectly honest, I hope that’s what you’ll do, because we’re going to need every man we can get. But, again if I’m being honest, I’m not sure if one person will make a bit of difference.” She glanced at the bassinette, then back at him, her green eyes dark and troubled. “I have . . . I have the oddest feeling that this fight and its outcome have already been determined.”

Seeing his look, she sighed another of her weighted sighs, lifted a hand to her forehead. “I could be wrong. These things I feel and dream . . . who knows.” She dropped her hand and raised her gaze to his. “The only thing I know for sure is that life happens one day at a time, one second at a time, and everything you think you know can change”—she snapped her fingers—“in the space of one instant to the next. So my advice to you is this: Forget the past. Take all that baggage you’ve been carrying around forever and just set it down. Then take a good hard look inside yourself, and decide what you really want, regardless of what you think you
should
want or do or be. And then go after it. With every bit of focus and determination, with absolutely no holds barred, go after what you want. Even if it doesn’t work out, you can still respect yourself, knowing you tried.”

Jenna pushed off the settee and rose to face him, the blanket pooling around her feet. “We’re all going to die one day, Hawk. Maybe one day very soon. So make the most of your life, before it’s too late. Find your happiness, and hold on to it. To hell with everything else.”

Hawk stared at her with his mouth hanging open, astonished.

One side of her mouth quirked. “Yeah. I get that a lot.”

Leander’s footsteps echoed on the lower-level stairs. He hadn’t even been
three
minutes, let alone five.

Jenna turned her head toward the sound. “I’d love to talk with you more, but I can’t guarantee my husband isn’t going to start breaking things the minute he sets foot back in this room. You know how Alphas are.” She glanced back at him and winked, leaving him speechless once again.

Leander was taking the steps three at a time, pounding up them like a man possessed. Jenna urged Hawk, “Go,” and gestured toward the opposite side of the room, and another flight of stairs, narrow and winding.

He went, befuddled, stopping just before passing to the lower level. When he looked over, she was still watching him, holding the blanket tight against her body.

“Just out of curiosity, what’s the other thing? The thing that’s worse than love?”

Her smile was beautiful, and incredibly sad. “Regret,” she said softly. “Love can be painful, sometimes cruel, but regret will devour you, bite by bite, until there’s nothing left at all. If love is a tyrant, regret is a soul-eating demon. Be careful it doesn’t eat yours.”

Then she turned and walked away.

The blade sliced deeply and cleanly through the pilot’s neck, severing his internal, anterior, and external jugular veins, exposing the muscles of his throat straight down to his spinal cord in the process.

Caesar laughed in glee at the spectacular arc of blood that sprayed across the instrument panel, dripping down the windshield and rounded walls of the cockpit. The pilot, choking on his own blood, coughed—a strangled, animal sound—and thrashed in his seat. Still strapped in, he struggled but it didn’t yield much result.

“Shh,” Caesar whispered into his ear, holding tight to the man’s head as his struggles grew weaker, the blood arcing lower and lower with each pulse of his heart. In mere moments it was over. The pilot slumped to one side, dead, and Caesar was left with nothing but a slippery red cockpit and a raging hard-on throbbing against the zipper of his trousers.

Too fast. It’s always over too fast
. What he wouldn’t give for a woman right now. A chained and screaming one, preferably.

Marcell popped his head into the cockpit, surveyed the scene without batting an eye, then said, “All clear, Sire.” Just as quickly, he was gone.

With a sigh of regret, Caesar released the limp pilot and stepped back, adjusting his crotch. “
Paenitet, amicus.
” Sorry friend. He spoke in Latin, the language of his youth, a dead language that perfectly matched the landscape of his heart. “But I do appreciate the flight.”

He turned and exited the cockpit. He had to crouch a bit as he made his way through the cabin to the open door because the plane was a smallish one, but it suited their purposes. It was fast, and there had been no pesky security checks or identification required on the way out of Morocco. Cash was still king in certain parts of the world.

Which reminded him.

Caesar returned to the cockpit, removed the wad of cash from the pilot’s flight bag, stuffed it into the small backpack he carried, then left the plane for good. Once outside on the tarmac, he showed Marcell’s tracker friend the GPS coordinates logged from Weymouth’s call on his satellite phone.

The tracker, a hunter and mercenary named Badr who Marcell had met in the souks of Marrakech, had a face like a slab of meat, adorned with a filthy black beard. Inspecting the blood on Caesar’s hands, he grinned. In a faux British accent he said, “Easy peasy, guv’nuh,” then turned and ambled away, whistling.

Caesar sent Marcell a sidelong glance. Marcell pursed his lips. “Perhaps wait until after he leads us back out of the jungle, Sire,” he suggested, and Caesar sighed, knowing it was good advice.

In the meantime, he, Marcell, and the silent, twitchy male known only as the Firestarter followed the tracker in a line, straight off the tarmac of the Manaus airport and into the warm Brazilian night.

Jack awoke in warm darkness to the sound of gently falling rain.

She bolted upright. She was in a room, open and spacious, in a bed . . . Oh yes. This was the same room she’d woken up in earlier. But something was different . . .

Someone was standing across the room, leaning against the wood railing, his broad back facing her, his gaze trained far off into the night.

Hawk.

She realized she’d spoken his name aloud when he turned, pushing off the railing to stare at her. In the darkness, his eyes glinted silver like a cat’s.

“You’re awake.” His voice sounded different. Flat, somehow. Empty.

“What happened? I remember you, fighting. I remember . . .” she hesitated to say it aloud, it sounded so insane. “A dragon?”

He looked at her for a long, silent moment, then turned back to the railing. “You leave in the morning. Try to get some sleep.”

Leave? Her heart leapt into her throat. When he began to move away, Jack said, “Did I faint? Did . . . did you win?”

“Yes. And no. At least, I don’t know for sure. It remains to be seen if I won.” He paused, and there was something unsettling in his short silence. His voice grew deeper. Rougher. “Not that it matters either way.”

“Why? What do you mean?” Her mouth dry, Jack slipped from the bed and stood waiting for him to answer.

But he wouldn’t even look at her. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and now she saw the tension in the line of his shoulders, the hard, clenched edges of his jaw. “Just . . . try to rest. You’ll be back home in New York tomorrow, Jacqueline. This will all be over tomorrow.”

The way he said the word “this,” the swift, pained glance he sent in her direction as he spoke that one word, made her wonder again what exactly had occurred between them, what lurked unseen in the black holes in her memory.

She needed to know. If she really was leaving tomorrow, she needed to know what she was leaving behind.

She moved toward him slowly, then stopped just a few feet away, aware of how his breathing had changed as she’d stepped closer. Aware of how his body had stiffened. Her voice came low. “And is that . . . good? Is that what you want?”

He moistened his lips. “That’s what’s best.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

There was a pause in which the only sound was the rain on the roof, dripping with a melancholy sigh through the canopy of leaves. “Yes. It’s good. It’s . . . what I want.”

The lie was so blatant she didn’t even bother to offer a retort. She simply walked in front of him, stopped a foot away, and looked up into his face. He refused to look at her, so she turned his head with her fingers on his chin. When his gaze met hers, his eyes were black.

She whispered, “I’m so sorry that I can’t remember whatever happened between us. Maybe eventually I will . . . or maybe you could just tell me.”

His eyes were tortured. He swallowed, then gently removed her hand from his face. He stepped back, out of arms’ reach. “Some things are better forgotten, Jacqueline. Sometimes . . . forgetting can be a gift.” He drew his brows together, closing his eyes just longer than a blink. When he opened them again, there was a new coldness there, a hardness that made her heart hurt.

“Hawk—”

“Sleep,” he said abruptly, turning to go. “I’ll be back just after dawn.”

Then he vanished, silent as smoke, leaving Jack alone with nothing but the sound of the rain. After a few minutes of listening hard into the darkness, Jack went back to the bed, crawled under the sheets, and lay there, staring up at the ceiling, until the first golden rays of dawn slipped through the canopy, and the birds awoke to sing their morning songs into the trees.

As was their custom, the tribe gathered at dawn at the Well of Souls for the burning.

Shrouded in white linen, Weymouth’s charred corpse lay atop a hollow rectangular altar of stone that had been built across a deep, ragged fissure in the ground, which opened, far below, to a cave with an underground river. The altar had two levels: one for the body, one for the kindling strewn beneath. Both levels were slatted with metal bars so that as the pyre burned, the ash would fall directly into the well, and eventually be swept out to sea.

Kalum
stepped forward. Though Weymouth was a traitor, he was of the Blood; therefore the Rites of Fire would be read in accordance with the ancient ways, so his soul could be purged by the flames that devoured his body, and he could pass through
Kadingir
, the Gateway of the Gods, and reunite with
Ama-gi
.

After the proper words were spoken, the kindling was lit. The flame sputtered and smoked a moment, then caught in a burst of heat and produced a flash of yellow so bright it was nearly white.

The blaze burned greedily, high and hot, sending a plume of black smoke into the dewy morning sky. It didn’t take long for Weymouth’s remains to be reduced to ash; a dragon had already done most of the work. Hawk looked on from his spot alone in the rear of the vast, silent gathering, watching Weymouth’s widow weep at the front, flanked by her stiff-backed, white-lipped sons.

Hawk watched a feather of orange ash twirl lazily on the breeze, lifting high above the grove, and felt nothing but a brief flicker of jealousy. He wished in some dark, twisted part of his heart that it was he on that funeral pyre. That it was he who burned.

He whispered, “
Ana harrani sa alaktasa la tarat
.”

The road that does not turn back.

How much easier to be done with it all than to face the long, lonely years of emptiness ahead.

A small figure approached the barren hill where the pyre still smoked. Robed in black, she turned to face the gathering, her long, pale hair held back from her face with a pair of matching gold combs. She was slight and somber in the gray light, a wisp of a thing, a changeling of great power and ancient magic disguised as a mortal woman.

The woman raised her voice and said into the waiting silence, “
Im ana simtim alaku, mala sihirtu
.”

Gasps and shocked whispers rippled through the crowd. The Diamond Queen, half human, raised as an outsider in the human world, had just spoken in the Old Language.

A language no one outside this colony knew. Had
ever
known, for thousands upon thousands of years.

What she’d said was: “He goes to his fate, as must we all.”

Hawk stood in frozen stupor, unable to tear his gaze from her face. Even
kalum
looked surprised: he stood off to the side of the pyre, leaning on his cane, his eyes widening.

In English, the Queen continued. “This day is a dark one. The man who passes from this world to the next was a friend to me once. I’ve come to believe that our friendship was doomed not because of hatred or ignorance, but because the rules of our world were set up so long ago, in such a different time, that they do nothing but strangle us today. If we continue to abide by the old ways, we guarantee our extinction, whether by friend or foe. Everything must evolve to survive. I’ve lost too many people because of our outdated ways . . . I refuse to lose another one.”

She paused, looking into the crowd.

“You’re my family, not my subjects. You’re not beholden to me. Your lives are your own. From this moment on, you’re free to live your lives any way you see fit. You’re free to leave this colony if you choose. If you do so, you won’t be punished or chased. But you will be on your own. And from what I know of the world . . . you won’t be welcome. Not yet.”

A crushing silence followed this declaration, a hush of such weight it seemed to affect gravity, deepening it, so that Hawk felt himself sink down further into the ground beneath his feet.

“I say this not as a threat, but as a call to arms. If you decide to stay, as I dearly hope you will, you’ll be faced with a test. A dire one, and immediate. Our enemies know where we are, and they’re ready to strike. War is coming. Soon. Anyone who chooses to stay must be willing to fight. There’s no guarantee we’ll win, but if we don’t fight, we’re guaranteed to perish. So I’ll leave it to you. I’ll fight until I’m dead to defend my home and my people. With you or without you, I’ll fight. But with all the gods, old and new, as my witness, I pray it’s with you.” Her voice broke. “Because
you
are what I fight for. What I live for. What I would gladly die for. Every single one of
you
.”

A beat of silence. A breath of wind. A lone bird call in the trees. Then the sound of a thousand voices rising as one, a scream of support and euphoria.

A rallying cry.

Hawk looked around at all the faces as if he were in a dream. The open mouths, the raised arms, the expressions of elated astonishment, people jumping and hugging and shouting in glee as if they hadn’t just been told their lives were in danger and they might all soon be dead.

Hawk knew why there was such an outpouring of happiness. The danger didn’t matter. Not compared to what they’d just been given, something not a single soul present had ever had in their lives.

Freedom.

Hawk looked back at the Queen, marveling at her. In one fell swoop, she had crushed thousands of years of draconian Law, and gained the loyalty and love of an entire army of supernatural beasts.

They would stay. Judging by the roar that had overtaken the crowd, every one of them would stay. A single word rose above the noise, a word repeated with growing volume until it had become deafening, shaking the foundations of the Earth.

“
Ta-hu
!
Ta-hu
!
Ta-hu
!”

Fight. Fight. Fight.

Hawk raised his arms overhead, opened his mouth, and lent his own voice to the multitude.

Jack heard the cry that went up far off into the forest, and jerked upright in bed.

She listened, a rash of goose bumps covering her arms, the hair on the back of her neck prickling. She listened as the cry rose to a crescendo, distant and eerie, listened as it changed from shapeless babble to the rhythm of two syllables, chanted over and over again.

She rose from the bed, crossed quickly to the dresser, and donned the jeans, T-shirt, and jacket she found there, all freshly washed and folded in a neat pile atop the wood. She assumed they were hers, they fit her, though she didn’t recognize them. A pair of boots were beside the dresser, and she tugged those on, too, still listening to the cry of voices echoing over the tops of the trees.