A ripple of wind washed across the surface of the water, stirring his hair. The stench of sulfur followed. He whipped around searching for the source of it, all senses suddenly on high alert.
“I can fix your pain, you know.” Rathe's voice caused Winn's gut to curl up and twist with a slimy, painful feeling, like a slug sprinkled with salt.
Winn grunted as he turned to see the demon standing against the railing twenty feet away. “Kind of hard to believe you'd give a damn about my pain or anyone else's.” Winn put one hand protectively on the strap of his pack where the Book rested. The other he placed on the butt of the pistol in his holster. It was loaded with Marley's special silver bullets capable of killing almost anything Darkin. Anything but a ghost or archdemon. “I don't want anything you've got to offer.”
“Oh, but I assure you, you do.” A filmy image of Winn's mother appeared directly in front of Rathe, dressed as she'd been the day she died. Her brown calico skirts fluttered around her feet in the breeze, but it was her sweet, loving smile that cleaved him in half. She reached out a slender, work-worn hand. “Winchester.”
Her soft, wheat-colored hair glimmered in the arc lighting; her well-remembered blue eyes were filled with love.
He'd never thought he'd hear her sweet voice again, and doing so now made his chest ache and his eyes sting.
His arms ached to hold her, and his feet moved forward instinctively.
Mama
.
No, she wasn't.
He pulled himself up short with every fiber of his being.
She wasn't real. None of it was real. He hardened himself against the blatant trick. It struck too deep on the heels of losing Alexa.
“Give me the Book and I let her live again,” Rathe said, a gravelly edge to his voice.
“Winn, please listen to me. I love you,” she begged. Her voice only underscored the point; it wasn't quite right, not like he remembered. Sweat prickled his brow and his upper lip beneath his mustache, but he kept the tremor welling up from deep in his core from reaching his hands. Every worthless feeling. Every agonizing second of that day he remembered with clarity, and it burned like constantly dripping acid in his veins. He'd do anything to take back what had happened that day.
Anything but believe Rathe's lies.
There was nothing the demon could offer him to make him give up the Book. He'd sacrifice anything and everything to save the world, even if it was his worst nightmare come true.
“Nice try. But I know you better than that. She's not my mother.”
Winn grabbed the crossbow from his back and fired.
Thunk.
The silver-tipped bolt hit the Darkin standing in front of Rathe and flew straight through her shoulder, striking Rathe in the chest.
Her eyes widened with surprise and pain for a moment, and then she slowly slumped to the deck, a bright red spot blooming on the white expanse of her blouse. Behind her Rathe screamed in reaction to the bolt. Grabbing at the bolt with both hands, he struggled weakly to rip it from his body. Black ooze dripped from the hole in his chest.
Winn kept his attention on the agony on his nemesis's face, while his fingers tensed on the trigger as he readied to fire again. Then the filmy image of his mother at Rathe's feet began to dissolve into another form altogether.
His mother's warm honey-hued hair turned darkerâfirst mahogany, then finally to raven black. Her face too morphed, the cheekbones growing more prominent, the nose more aquiline, and the eyes going from vivid blue to a tawny amber color that was imprinted upon his memory like none other.
“Alexa!” Winn's numb fingers dropped the crossbow in his haste to reach her. Without hesitation, he rushed to her side, kneeling beside her. Gently he scooped her into his lap. She was real and solid in his arms. No apparition, not a ghost. He buried his face against her hair, deeply inhaling the sweet, dark spice. Beneath his hand he felt a faint
throb-throb-throb
.
“What the hell?” She had a goddamn pulse!
Rathe chuckled, and Winchester glared up at him, shocked he was still there. The demon clutched at his chest and pulled the bolt, letting it fall to the deck of the ship mired in dark, thick ooze. “I see your aim hasn't gotten any better,” Rathe said, his tone mocking and caustic.
Rage boiled up inside of Winn. He tensed, ready to leap up and throttle the demon with his bare hands if necessary, but everything stopped the moment he heard Alexa struggle to suck in a breath. She coughed, bright red blood tainting her lips.
“You're alive!” A mixture of relief and torment flooded his system. Dear God. What had he done?
Her whiskey eyes were hazed with pain, but her tone was pure contessa as she murmured, “For the moment.”
Winn used a handful of her skirts to try and staunch the blood saturating her bodice. “Ssh. Don't try to talk.”
She winced as he put pressure on the wound. “I bargained with the only thing I had to spare you. My immortality for your survival. He's agreed not to harm you. The rest of Kostick's prophecy is complete.”
He needed help, goddamit. Where was everyone? “What do you mean, the rest?”
“I never told you. I told no one. Kostick said that I'd be destroyed by my heart's desire.” She coughed, the blood on her lips an alarmingly bright red.
Winchester cursed in Greek, Latin, French, German, and Italian. Never had he felt so damn helpless, not even when he'd held his mother in his arms as her life's blood slipped away. His whole body shook with fear and despair.
He was going to lose her again. And there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.
“Give me the Book, and you can keep her alive,” Rathe said as he cupped a thin, grayish hand to his chest and paced the deck.
Winn had anticipated the Book would be the only thing to keep Rathe's interest. His eyes narrowed. He didn't want to give Rathe the Book. Everything within him, all the years of training beat into him told him not to, but one thing swayed his decision. He'd lost Alexa once, and it had crushed his will to live. He didn't think he could survive losing her again.
“Heal her first. Then I'll give you the Book.”
“Do I look like I was born in the last millennium? Put the Book down between us. Back away, and I'll heal her.”
“Swear to it.”
Winn knew the archdemon's oath was binding, just as it had been for the gods of the ancients. A Darkin could swindle his or her way through trickery out of a bargain made, but an oath was unbreakable.
“I swear to heal her before I take the Book.”
Winn pulled the pack from his back and took out the precious parcel. He slid it across the worn boards of the deck toward Rathe.
Alexa bucked in his lap. She gasped and writhed as black smoke issued from the hole in her chest. Winn held her close, then met her eyes briefly before easing her down on the deck to free his hands.
His gaze flicked upward to see Rathe advancing on the oilcloth-covered Book.
Open it
, he thought hard.
You want to see it. Hold it. Touch it. Feel its magic.
The pupils in Rathe's yellow eyes widened with anticipation, the black almost wholly swallowing the malevolent yellow. He snatched up the Book and clawed at the oilcloth, eager to strip it away. A garbled, revolting laugh of triumph crackled in his throat past his black gums and pointed teeth as he held the ancient manuscript's vellum pages in his hands.
Suddenly his hands began to smoke, filling the air with the hideous stench of burning flesh and sulfur. Rathe refused to let go, even though his mouth was a rictus of pain as he began to roar, the smoke almost obliterating his hands as they blackened and charred. “What have you done!” he howled.
“Just a little present from me to you.”
Winn snatched up the crossbow he'd abandoned on the deck and shot twice more in rapid succession. Rathe dropped the Book and staggered back, staring at the silver-tipped bolts embedded in his chest. He screamed in agony and turned into a twist of oily smoke that shot into the night sky.
“Winn?” Alexa's cracked voice sounded like an angel's singing to Winn. He carefully pulled her back into his arms.
“Alexa.” He breathed her name like a prayer and held her, trying to absorb every sensation he could. He gently brushed the dark curls from her face and gazed down into her eyes.
She opened her mouth slightly and brushed her tongue over her dry lips. “You shot me,” she murmured.
Winn didn't know whether to laugh or cry. She was alive. Whole. And that was all that mattered. The earth could have opened up and swallowed him, and he'd still be content knowing she was safe once more. “I'm sorry.”
Her brow puckered. “Do you have any idea how much that hurts?”
He chuckled and rolled his injured shoulder. He knew exactly how it felt. It stung like hell. “You aren't going all soft on me, are you?”
“What if I was?”
He glanced at the bloody hole in her shirt and saw smooth unblemished skin beneath it. He wanted to kiss that patch of creamy skin and then continue onward from there. His gaze connected with her golden one. He was never going to get tired of looking at her. “I'd say I'll have to keep an extra close eye on you out in the wilds of the frontier.”
“Damn.”
Winn quirked a brow, questioning her.
“I was hoping you were planning to keep your hands”âshe leaned up, wound her arms about his neck, and kissed himâ“and your mouth on me.”
Winn couldn't stop himself from smiling. “You know I think I could manage that once this whole nasty business of closing the Gates of Nyx is over.”
He looked deeply into her eyes, trying to talk to her with his mind. He didn't know with her vampire powers gone if he even could, but the look in her eyes told him everything he needed to know. Vampire or not, Alexa would follow him to the ends of the earth and beyond.
They were stronger together than apart. “Are you certain you want to come to America? I can't offer you anything like the luxury you're accustomed to. It's rough and rugged, and there's snakesâ”
Her nimble fingers brushed across his lips, silencing him. “It's where you are, and that's enough for me.” She swept his hair off his forehead, a smile curving her full lips, making him crazy to kiss her again. “I'm not a vampire, or a contessa any longer. I'm just your Tessa.”
He kissed the tips of her fingers. “All I ever wanted was you.”
She bit her lip and gazed up at him, her eyes full of appreciation and desire. “Promise?”
“You have this Hunter's promise,” he whispered, his voice tight with longing, “and my love.”
“Do you think we have a chance to stop Rathe?”
“We do, if we do it together.”
Her eyes turned bright, full of fierce determination. “Then let's go slay a demon.”
He chuckled and kissed her. “You're starting to sound like a Hunter, Tessa.”
“You have to be careful of the company you keep. It can be a terrible influence, you know.”
The odd whisper of metal against metal drew Winn's gaze away from her for an instant. A mechanical bird, each silvery feather a meticulous and artistic impersonation of the real thing, perched on the rail of the deck and stared at Winn with glowing blue eyes. “What theâ”
Alexa twisted, her eyes narrowing. “It's a clockwork carrier pigeon. A Turlock original, by the look of it.”
A miniature door in the creature's breast slid open, revealing a small letter sealed with red wax. The bird bent, grabbed the missive, and held it in its shining copper beak, the door in its chest closing with a
clink
.
Winn reached out. A moment after he took the letter, the bird chirped once, then flapped its wings and rose into the air, darting like a silver bullet into the sky.
Small, neat handwriting slanted over the front surface of the pristine white paper.
Mr. Winchester Jackson
. The red wax on the back bore the oblong seal of the crown atop a shield surrounded by a belt bearing a Latin phrase.
Alexa sat up with a hiss of breath, her eyes widening. “That's the seal of Her Royal Highness Queen Victoria.”
Carefully Winn broke the hard wax and opened the letter to find it was merely a single sheet wrapped around another sealed note, this one addressed to Sir Marley Turlock.
“Well, what does it say?” Alexa said, her tone underscoring her impatience. She leaned in closer, her breast brushing against his forearm, making him momentarily forget all about letters, mechanical birds, inventors, or royalty.
His whole world narrowed down to focus on Alexa. Just Alexa.
“Winn?”