Sacrifice In Stone (5 page)

That wasn’t what a girl wanted to hear at
a time like this. Apprehension created a lump that stuck in her throat.

“It did not work…to prevent feelings of
love.”

Mara smiled. “That’s okay then.”

* * * * *

Lying on the sofa of the director’s
office with Mara stretched out over him, naked, her head on his chest, her leg
hiked over his thighs, her hand stroking his arm, Garrick relaxed into the
feeling of peace that filled him. He held her to him with one arm wrapped
around her shoulders. His hand stroked through her hair while the other
caressed her arm. There could be no better moment than this one if he lived an
entire lifetime. Perhaps the absolute perfect moment of a lifetime had been the
one just a few minutes before when Mara had ridden him to completion.

He was content.

From the floor where he had tossed Mara’s
dress, a scream rent the air. He jerked into a sitting position.

“Relax,” Mara said. “It’s just my cell
phone. My uncle’s calling again.”

They reclined again and eventually the
screaming ceased.

He hated the thought of leaving Mara to
her uncle and his abuse once he was gone. “Where are your parents?” he asked.

“Dead. Both dead.” Her words were
monotone. Unemotional…too unemotional.

His arms squeezed around her. “What
happened?” he asked gently.

“I was twelve. We were on our way home
from vacation. I was in the backseat and fell asleep. I woke up when I heard my
mother scream. The car had swerved off the road, through a guardrail, and we
rolled end over end down into a ravine.” Her fingers dug into his chest, the
short nails cutting into him.

Vacation. Car. Guardrail. Garrick did not
understand more than half the words she was saying. Nevertheless, he knew her
genuine pain. He wished that he had not opened such a painful topic, but now
that Mara was in the midst of it, she had to finish.

“We were all trapped.” Her voice was
choked as emotion broke through her strong façade. “The front of the car was
completely smashed and crushing in on my parents. My seat belt had come loose
at some point and I ended up wedged on the floor of the backseat. The top of
the car was pressing right against my chest and face. I could barely move.”

Mara inhaled a ragged breath. “I heard my
mother moaning. My father told us to hang on. Someone would find us…” Her voice
trailed off and she was silent for a few moments.

When she spoke again her voice was
stronger. “My father was wheezing and I knew he was badly injured. He was so
brave. He just kept saying that we had to hold on. After a few hours he started
to cry and I realized my mother was dead. Eventually, my father stopped talking
to me and I knew he was dead too.”

Garrick knew that she was leaving
unspoken the horror of being trapped with no way to move as she heard her loved
ones suffer. He knew that torment too well.

“Two days later, a hiker discovered our
car. Firefighters cut the car apart to get me out, but I wasn’t injured. Hardly
even a scratch.”

By the time she finished, his arms were
so tight around her he had to deliberately relax his hold for fear of hurting
her.

Then his stomach growled. Then it growled
again more loudly, as if demanding attention. The sound made them both laugh.

Mara slid across him and stood. “Time for
a picnic,” she said with a smile. Clasping his hand, she drew him off the sofa.

The two of them emptied the cold air
cabinet, which Mara called a fridge. Then she rifled another metal cabinet Mara
said was for something called filing. Instead of these filings, she brought out
crackers and a jar with a brown creamy substance she said was peanut butter.

After placing a blanket from the sofa on
the floor, they arranged their bounty around them and began to taste. Garrick
did not care for the food called sandwich, but the peanut butter on crackers
was delicious. The peanut butter was even more delicious when he licked it from
Mara’s laughing face.

“How about this?” He lifted a small
packet.

“Hot sauce.” Mara took it, ripped off a
corner, and returned it to him.

Garrick squirted some of the red liquid
onto a peanut butter-covered cracker.

“Uggh, don’t do that.” Mara grasped at
the cracker. “That’ll taste disgusting.”

He was too quick and held it up and out
of her reach with a chuckle. “I want to try everything.”

“Yuck.” She said the word with much
exposed tongue. “But have it your own way. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Biting off half of the hot sauce and
peanut butter cracker, Garrick was careful to project an expression of
enjoyment as he chewed and then swallowed. “Mmmmm. Extremely tasty.”

“Really?”

“You should try it.”

He held out the remaining half and Mara
took it into her mouth. Almost immediately her nose crinkled and lips curled.
She spit the cracker into her hand.

“Ugh. That’s awful.”

He couldn’t help but smile.

“I think you should eat it if you like it
so much,” she said, holding the cracker piece toward his mouth.

“Oh no.”

“Oh yes. In fact, I think it needs extra
hot sauce.” Mara squirted more red liquid onto the cracker and stuck it into
his face as he laughed, shifting his head this way and that to avoid the
cracker. He fell backward. He ended up with much of the hot sauce on his chin
and Mara sprawled over him.

Her mouth covered his. Then she nipped at
him with short kisses interspersed with delicate licks of her tongue. Arms
clasping her to him, he explored her mouth with kisses and licks of his own.

“Mmmm,” he said. “Delectable.”

“The hot sauce?”

“No. You.”

“Are you going to tell me what you found
in the journal that had you going all chopsocky on the slab’s ass?”

Garrick could tell by her tone Mara was
trying to be funny and keep the mood light. “Chopsocky. I like this word.”

She gave his arm a small pinch. “Hey.
Tell me.”

He would try to tell her the truth…but
not all of it. “The text is plain. My freedom will last but four and twenty
hours from the hour you awakened me.” He tried to stare squarely into her eyes
to communicate truthfulness and sincerity. Now was the time to lie. “This time
when I return to the statue form, my imprisonment shall be irreversible. There
is no way to make this flesh-and-blood body permanent. There is no way, love.”

“That can’t be right.” Mara scrambled to
her feet. Plucking her dress from the floor, she pulled it over her head.
“There’s something you’re not telling me.”

Reluctantly he rose and retrieved his
trousers. Damn. Why could she not just accept his statements? As he drew the
garment over first one leg then the other, Mara was marching to the museum
director’s desk and sat down.

“Now that I know the text is in Welsh I
can find a site on the internet to translate it.” She had fiddled with some
device. Her fingers flew over the surface as if playing a piano keyboard. She
gazed intently into a something that resembled a window displaying
ever-changing landscapes of words and images. “The internet has everything.”

Garrick did not know what this internet
was but he caught her meaning.

“All right,” he said. Once at her side,
he placed a hand over both of hers, stopping their movement on the strange
piano. “The text says that I have but four and twenty hours from the moment I
was awakened and walked free of the stone to make the transformation
permanent.”

“So it’s possible.”

“Yes.”

“Let’s do it right now. We have less than
eight hours.”

“There is but one way,” he said,
examining his feet.

“How?” she asked.

He dragged his eyes up to meet hers. “For
me to live, the lifeblood of a Rushworth must be spent against the slab.”

Her blue eyes searched his in confusion.

“My love,” he said. “For me to live, you
would have to die.”

They poured over the
Transfero Vita
. Mara sat at the desk, searching frantically through
the pages and periodically translating sections using the director’s computer.
There must be some other answer but there wasn’t. The only way was her blood.
All her blood.

“What about this section of the text
here.” She pointed to a portion in Welsh.

“That is the spell the witch chanted as I
was dying.”

Mara refused to process the idea of
Garrick dying, bleeding his life away on a rock…all to give her family its
money and position. Abominable. “What does it say?”

“
Gwaed
aberthu. Dy enaid am ei
. That means, ‘Blood sacrifice. Your life for his.’”

Repeating the phrase to herself, Mara
swore to remember the phrase when the time came…but could she really do what
was necessary?

“What if I did bleed out against the
stone? Would I die or would I be trapped inside a statue?” Mara asked.

Death would be better. After her time
trapped in the car following the accident, she honestly didn’t know if she
could stand being alive but encased in stone. But how could she sentence
Garrick to that fate? He’d already spent centuries trapped. It was a wonder he
hadn’t gone insane.

Garrick turned the chair, and taking her
by the shoulders, he stood her on her feet. “You’re bleeding out on the stone
is not an option we will consider.”

Mara glanced away from him. Nothing was
off the table as far as she was concerned.

“I still don’t understand,” she said. “I
awakened part of you five years ago and then earlier today. Why didn’t that
trigger this…deadline?”

“I was never able to walk free of the
stone before today.”

Long seconds passed until the realization
hit Mara. “If this is true, then I’ve killed you. By trying to bring you back
I’ve killed you.” Taking his face in her hands, she searched his eyes. “How can
I live with that? How can I commit murder like that?”

If they could find no other way she would
sacrifice herself. She had to. She cared too much about Garrick and she
couldn’t let someone else she loved suffer while she did nothing.

“Mara, do you not know that you have
given me the most precious of gifts?” He said the words as he shook her for
emphasis. “You have not killed me. You gave me a chance to live again if only
for this short time. A chance to love you.”

Her eyes fell before the intensity in
his.

“Will you?” he asked.

“Will I what?”

“Will you let me love you?”

“Yes,” she said. In the years ahead, she
would need the memory of this time together.

Together they sank to the floor. The wool
of the Persian carpet under her was soft and the male muscle above her hard.

* * * * *

He could endure endless centuries in a
stony tomb for this. The memory of her lying beneath him.

Leaning back, he pulled her dress up and
over her head. Her form was lovely.

“Part your legs,” he said.

He saw the blush of blood rush to her
cheeks.

“Do it.”

She obeyed him.

His eyes gazed at the core of her.
“You’re glistening for me.”

“Touch me,” she begged. Her hands roamed
over the strong muscles of his biceps and forearms. Her fingertips traced the
tendons.

His right hand gently cupped her breast,
fingering the nipple to a peak. Then the hand ran down over her middle, playing
in her naval before delving lower. His fingers tickled through the crisp hair
of her mons before delving into her.

His erection was burning hot and hard.
Yet he would not take her. He must make this time last so he could remember
every second. He separated the folds of her wider and slid his fingers deep to
stroke the nub at the top of her sex.

Calling out his name, Mara pulled at his
arms, trying to bring him closer, closer, closer. Then she slid her own fingers
up his arms over his shoulders and through the mahogany mane. She leaned
forward and buried her lips against his throat. He shivered in response,
causing her to smile.

“You like that, do you?” she asked.
“You’re going to like this even better. She ran a hand down from his hair, over
his face, his chest, his middle and inexorably downward to his hard length. He
was hard and straining toward her touch. He pulled back from her questing
fingers.

“Not yet. I do not want to come just yet.
We have a ways to go,” he said.

He grasped both her arms above her head
and straddled her hips. One hand returned to the teasing magic between her
thighs. Too soon, her breath caught and held as she convulsed. Her inner
muscles pulsing, pulling at his fingers as she cried out in her pleasure.