The Ruby Tear (20 page)

“Nick!” She rushed to intercept him as he walked out of the darkness with the dogs at his side. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in Europe!”

“You’re supposed to be in the city,” he said. “What are
you
doing here?” He crushed her hard to his chest. “My God, Jess, I’ve been so afraid for you!”

She smelled the good warm scent of his skin and his hair and leaned in against his familiar, long torso, recapturing the easy fit of her temple to his cheek. Flesh that would age with her flesh, blood that beat to a finite time, heat at the surface as well as the core—his humanity roused her to a giddy edge of desperate, inopportune lust.

“Nick,” she whispered, “don’t let go.”

But he stepped back and looked past her at the rental car, parked under tall trees. “He’s here, isn’t he. Have you got keys? Get in that car and drive like blazes, Jess.”

She grabbed his hand. “What about you? Nick, what are you going to do?”

“I’ve come back to face the murderous bastard, and that’s what I’m going to do. But you’re not supposed to be here! You have to go.”

She glanced fearfully back at the house, then at him. Planting both fists on his chest, she willed herself as strong as a fieldstone wall. “You can’t! Come with me. We have to talk, I’ll explain—only you can’t just march in there!”

“How’s he doing, do you think?” Nick said drily. “That safe is old, but it’s strong.”

“I don’t know, but he could come back up from the basement any minute, and I can’t be sure—we made a bargain, but if he finds you here—Nick, please—”

His hands closed around her wrists. “I can see what you’re trying to do, but it won’t work. Don’t you think I thought of it myself? He won’t find the ruby, Jess. He’ll find something, but it’s not what he’s looking for. He’ll be angry, and I think we have a pretty good idea of what he can do when he’s angry.”

She peered at his face in the gloom. “You saw? In the alley last night?” And what else had he seen, then?

“No, I was at the theater. I had some business of my own with that shit-sack Sinclair—”

“How do you know about Anthony?”

“I caught him fiddling with the wiring in your dressing room yesterday.” Nick grimaced. “Setting some newer, nastier trap in case his hired thugs missed you last night. Persistent fucker, I’ll say that for him. Don’t worry, I didn’t break his arms or smash up his precious profile, but I was tempted. Anyway, heading for your place later I saw the ambulances at the alley. It was a mess, and I guessed that it had to be about you. About
him.
”

His grim expression made it clear that he meant Ivo, not Sinclair.

“I saw your leading man with one of those gangsters before I left the country, and I saw what somebody did to them last night. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together. I want you out of here, Jess, before
you
get hurt. Take the dogs, they’ll protect you. Beth! Mac! Stay with Jess!”

He folded her into another enveloping hug—she felt his heart pounding—and kissed her forehead.

“You can’t go in there empty handed—where’s your cane, at least?”

“I forgot, it has a blade in it—it’s a sword-cane. They confiscated it at the airport. It wouldn’t have helped anyway.”

He thrust her aside, limped rapidly toward the house, and vanished inside.

“Hell!” She ran after him, afraid to call out. The dogs followed at her heels.

“I’m Nicolas Griffin,” she heard him announce at the back door to the house. “And I see you’ve found the Griffin luck.”

She stepped cautiously up onto the wraparound porch. Nick stood in the hallway facing Ivo, who had just come up the basement stairs with a small brass box in his hands.

The vampire walked down the hall towards Nick, holding the box as if presenting it to him, as a gift or a piece of evidence.

Craggen was shorter, broader in the chest and shoulders. His aura of restrained fury was palpable even from a distance. He must see Jess, but he paid her no attention as she hovered on the porch behind Nick, horrified and helpless. The vampire’s eyes, black now with the enlargement of the pupils, were fixed on Nick.

“I found this,” he spat in a tone of contempt. He opened the box and took something out of it: a gold-set stone, shining crimson in the glow of the overhead light, and a swag of golden chain that hung down from it over the back of his hand. The box he tossed into the living room as he passed its open doorway. Paddy Garrow snored on, oblivious.

Craggen held up the pendant, not looking at it, but glaring past it at Nick. “This stone is not a ruby, Mr. Griffin. It’s a triplet. Someone took two polished and faceted slices of a beryl and sandwiched a layer of red glass between them with transparent cement. It’s worthless, a clumsy fake.”

He closed his fist in a convulsive gesture, and Jess heard a tiny cracking sound that made her flinch. Bright fragments fluttered down when he opened his palm again. He slung the chain to the floor at Nick’s feet.

“Did you think you could fool me with this trash? Where is the gem that your ancestor stole from my family? Where is the Ruby Tear?”

Nick—her Nick, not as she remembered him but stronger, more solid and steady, held his ground in the face of this blast of focused rage. The light shone through his unruly blond hair like a halo. Saint George and the dragon, Jess thought wildly, like in Ivo’s story of the origin of the gem.

“It fooled me,” Nick said, “and Griffin men before me. I never expected it to fool you.”

Craggen’s lip curled with disdain. Jess saw his body tighten for an attack.

“Ivo, wait!" she cried. Nick turned and stared at her in shock.

“For God’s sake, Jess! I told you—“

She ignored him. “Ivo, you promised!"

“You promised
me
the Ruby Tear,” Craggen retorted, his eyes blazing at her, “not a composite of crystal and red glass!”

“Your business is with me, not her,” Nick barked, turning back toward him. “Baron von Craggen, I believe you killed my father.”

The vampire dismissed the charge with an impatient shake of his burnished head. “Your father ran from me into the arms of his death. The men who killed him make their living in drugs. Your father had dealings with them before, crooked dealings. His real interests were not in emerald mines but in more common treasure of your world—cocaine, to be precise.”

There was a short silence.

Then Nick said in a weary voice. “I suspected it.” He took an audible breath and announced, “Well, then, Baron, there is no other business outstanding between us, so let’s get this over and done with.

“Your demand is justified. In spite of all the misery you seem to have caused my family, I owe you an answer, and you’ll have it. But first I want your promise that you won’t harm Jess, whether I’m alive or dead, now or ever.”

Craggen’s glance did not waver from Nick’s face. “You have my word. Now I will take what you owe me.”

Nick held up his hand. “I’ll give it to you in my own way, sir,” he said. “But first I’m coming into my own house, out of the cold.

He stepped inside, and with a swift gesture he unzipped his duffle coat and whipped the gray silk scarf from around his neck. The suddenness and unexpectedness of his move was enough to check Craggen, who stared with narrowed eyes, his nostrils flared as if to catch the scent of some trick.

From where she stood on the porch, Jess could see Nick’s hands shaking. “Be patient, please. We need to speak a moment longer.”

The dogs came pelting up, drawn by the activity and tension at the house. She ordered them to sit, one on each side of her, in the open doorway. Nick didn’t turn his head. He went on steadily.

“Baron, the stone you call the Ruby Tear was cut into smaller stones and sold a long time ago, to restore the fortunes of my family when it had been gambled away by a particularly worthless heir. That’s why none of the Griffin men who came before me tried to buy their lives by simply giving the ruby back to you. Each one in turn found that damned imitation in the safe and realized he had nothing to bargain with. It didn’t fool them either; it just doomed them.”

My God,
Jessamyn thought,
he’s playing this like a heroic stage role, and he’s good, too!
Now she saw the man who had walked through battlefields and written with clear-eyed passion about what he’d seen there.

In his own way, he was also a warrior.

Nick folded his scarf with deliberation and set it down on a small wickerwork table just inside the back door.

“What’s more, I owe you a new debt,” he said. “Jess has been in danger. I misjudged the situation and left on my own business before figuring it who was responsible for the sabotage at the theater and neutralized him.”

He glanced over his shoulder at Jess, his pale face full of guilt and worry. Then he turned back to Craggen.

“You watched out for her better than I could. You probably saved her life last night. I’d trust you to do it again if you had to.”

The vampire said harshly, “Why did you come home tonight, Griffin? Why do you talk about this small matter, instead of the wrong your ancestor did to me and mine?”

Nick spread his hands, placating. “Look, when I found out the whole story, I wanted to do what Jess has tried to do—give you the damned stone! That was my plan when I did the play: it was supposed to lure you to me, so I could offer you what belonged to you. I was going to pay you accrued interest on the value as well, at least as much as I could afford.

“So I had the stone appraised.” He shook his head and laughed ruefully. “
Big
mistake. I was left literally empty handed. So, since the only alternative left was to try to fight you, I went looking for a weapon. In Europe I collected all kinds of stories about Baron von Craggen, but no practical advice on how to deal with you.

“So I came back. I followed you both here tonight to end this once and for all, the only way I know how.”

Craggen folded his arms, his weight back on his heels, elaborately patient but implacable as granite.

Jess stood in the back doorway, one hand on the collar of each of the Dobermans. They quivered against her legs, nervous and alert from the anger in the air.

What could she do? What did she
want
to do?

Nick shrugged out of his coat and hung it on the panel of coat-hooks beside the door. “I can’t restore your lost treasure to you, but I think I can help you finish your quest and have your revenge.”

Oh God, what’s he talking about?

He lifted his chin and his raised voice, an actor’s voice trained for the stage, rang in the hallway. “I am the last male of my line, and I have no children. The ruby that my ancestor stole from you is gone, destroyed. In settlement of that old debt, I offer you rubies that I know you value, even if they aren’t made of gemstone.”

He slipped a penknife from his pants pocket, opened its blade, and with one swift movement jabbed himself once under the jawline. Blood sprang down the side of his neck, a beaded line of brilliant red.

Jess gasped but held back a cry.

Craggen started forward intently. His gleaming hair seemed to lift menacingly like the hackles of a wolf.

“Come take what’s yours,” Nick said. The little knife he tossed on the floor. His voice cracked slightly, but he stood still, his back rigid and his fists white-knuckled at his sides. “I won’t fight you. Take all you want. Drink your revenge.”

Now Jess screamed, “Don’t move, Ivo, or I’ll set the dogs on you!”

Nick wheeled, his eyes wide with horror. “Jess, don’t—”

Craggen chuckled. “You think your dogs could stop me, even if they tried? I’d break both their backs. But I wouldn’t want to punish them for your foolishness.

“Dogs!” he cried, and the two animals bolted from under Jess’ hands and sat down flanking the vampire, licking and sniffing eagerly at his fingers.

She flung herself past Nick, throwing him off balance so that he stumbled against the wall: “It’s not Nick’s fault! You can’t do to him what you wouldn’t even do to dogs!”

She dropped onto her knees, looking up at Ivo with tears stinging her eyes. “God damn it, this is my fault, this stupid, macho mess! If you have to punish someone, here I am. Leave Nick alone, can’t you see that he’s not like his ancestors? He’s a decent man! He deserves better!”

“And you love him,” the baron said conversationally.

“Yes,” she shouted. “I love him!”

“Not me?”

She glanced back at Nick and saw his stunned expression, the anguish of comprehension in his pale face.

“Not you,” she said quietly to the vampire. “You were a dream, Ivo, an indulgence. And that’s all I am to you, too. You say ‘love,’ but I can only be one more passing affair for you. You’d be my addiction, not my lover. I don’t regret a damned thing, and I hope you don’t either. But I love Nick. I’ve loved him for years, and I’m asking you to let him go, him and his sons, if he ever has sons.”

“Jess,” Nick began, moving up behind her to grip her shoulders. His voice was hoarse. “You’re making things worse. This isn’t your quarrel—”

“The hell it isn’t!” She stood up on wobbly legs, covering Nick’s hands with her own trembling ones so that she stood like a shield between him and the baron. She stared into the vampire’s eyes, which were nearly level with her own.

“If you hurt him you’ll have to kill me, Ivo,” she said, “or else I’ll tell everyone about you, over and over and with everything I’ve got, until somebody believes me and they go hunting you and bring you down somewhere, somehow—”

“Hush,” Craggen said. A smile curved his mobile mouth. “You stage people have no sense of moderation. Can’t you see that the scene is done? You win, Jessamyn.”

He stepped closer to her, and his voice sank to a husky whisper. He might have been alone with her, speaking to her only, with no one else nearby to overhear. “You win your brave knight, and he wins you. I was raised as an aristocrat. I know nobility when I see it. I see it now.”

Quick as a striking snake, his right hand darted out past her and she felt Nick flinch as the vampire touched him.

Craggen brought his crimsoned fingertip to his lips and licked the shining blood, Nick’s bright scarlet blood, from it. His eyes glittered. “I accept your offering, Nicolas Griffin, in settlement of our debt. Your offering—and one other.”