Byzantine Heartbreak (29 page)

But Salathiel veered around her, intent on avoiding her. He was leaning forward and Ryan realized he was going to jump, too. He wanted to cry out a warning to Nia, but he was too far away to help her.

Why aren’t you jumping there yourself, fool
? he asked himself. He saw Nayara reach out her hand and snag Salathiel’s wrist. It was a fleeting touch, before Salathiel ripped his arm out of her grip.

Salathiel jumped forward and was gone.

Ryan gathered himself and jumped to where Nayara was standing in the dark morning shadow of the big column. She didn’t blink when he landed next to her.

“I know where he’s gone,” she said, her voice remote. Bodiless.

“How do you know that?” Ryan asked, puzzled.

“I read his mind, when I gripped his wrist.”

“You read...” Ryan pulled her to him and wrapped his arm about her waist. “I don’t know how you picked that up from the psi and we’re going to have to talk about it later. For right now, take us there, Nia. Quickly.”

She bent her knees and leapt, half-leaning into the jump.

It was a bad landing.

The maker’s house was luxurious, but after centuries of living, she had acquired all manner of furnishings and keepsakes that she surrounded herself with and every room was crowded.

There wasn’t enough room for a safe landing. The image Nia had taken from Salathiel’s mind was the front parlour, a particularly overstuffed room and she had not had time to consider a more spacious landing spot.

Nia landed clear of anything, but Ryan was smashed up against the stone wall. He heard and
felt
the big bones in his calves snap, as his feet tried to take up space the wall already occupied and the wall pushed back.

He fell on his back, too shocked to scream, waiting for the pain to start.

Nia pulled her long knife out of her boot, crouching over him, looking around. Her eyes were haunted with fear, alarm and concern.

“No! Don’t wait!” Ryan told her. “Stop Salathiel!”

For he had spotted Salathiel on the other side of the crowded room, struggling with his maker. He had a wooden stake in his hands and with sick dread, Ryan realized that Lathe had broken the leg off a table to acquire it. The table lay on its side, against the same wall Ryan lay beside.

Nia turned and sighted Salathiel for herself.

“You can’t hesitate,” Ryan told her. He took another quick breath, for the pain was starting to register now. Deep, shockingly strong waves of it. He clenched his thighs, digging his fingers in. “You can’t think of him as Lathe.”

Her eyes were very large, but her mouth was set. “I know,” she said. She rose slowly to her feet, pulling the second long knife from her boot as she straightened. Her gaze settled on Salathiel.

Nayara stalked him. Ryan could find no other word for it. She raised the knives and moved toward him, prowling like a predator. She seemed to move with slow grace, but she crossed the room swiftly and silently.

Ryan wondered how Nayara intended to separate Salathiel from his maker. He watched and learned how much more ruthless than he Nayara really was.

For she didn’t bother trying to wrest Salathiel away physically. She was human now. So was Salathiel and far stronger than her. Instead, she stabbed his side with the point of one of her knives. Not deep and not a vital spot. But it was enough for Salathiel to clutch at his side and stagger away from his maker, to deal with the first genuine pain he had experienced in six hundred years.

The maker dropped onto the divan, coughing and wheezing, to recover.

Nia cornered Salathiel. “You cannot kill her,” she said.

Salathiel glared at her, his blue eyes blazing with fury...and with a light that Ryan finally understood was something other than sanity. If it was madness, it was a kind that no one had ever seen before.

Salathiel looked at Nayara like she was a stranger. “I will have my way. I will make my life what I want.”

“And I will stop you,” Nayara replied calmly.

Salathiel laughed. It was a big bellow, coming from a big man, who stood over Nayara nearly a foot higher. He knew he had the upper hand in strength and if he recognized her at all, he knew he could dominate her by appealing to her heart.

Ryan wanted to cry out a warning, but it would distract her...or warn Salathiel. He moaned as the pain seemed to bite into his chest and his mind. Why hadn’t they brought modern weapons? A pistol? He’d settle for a mini cross-bow right now. Something!

Nayara brought up the long knives, their blades crossed in front of her, almost like she was shielding herself. “Don’t force me to do this, Salathiel. I will not hesitate. You have no idea what damage you have caused. I will put it right, no matter what it takes.”

Salathiel shook his head. “How noble,” he said dryly. He held out his hand, the one that had been clutching his side. “It’s a pity you didn’t try to repair the damage to my life, six hundred years ago, huh, Nia?” His hand was covered in blood. “Instead, here we stand.”

Her knives lowered. Ryan could see her hesitate.

“No! Nia, he’s lulling you!” he cried, but his voice was hoarse, barely above a whisper.

Salathiel glanced at him. “How well you know me, Celt,” he said.

He leapt at Nia.

It was so blindingly fast, Ryan could barely follow his movements. Even for a human, Salathiel had amazing reflexes.

But Nayara took a step backwards and swayed back like a willow tree bending in the wind. As Salathiel reached for her throat, she slid the knives she held in front of her up between his hands. The point where the blades crossed came to rest against the front of his throat and Nia’s own hands crossed at the wrists.

Then she pulled her arms apart with all her strength, knocking Salathiel’s hands away from her throat. The blades acted like giant sheers, severing Salathiel’s head in one cut.

Salathiel’s body’s forward motion continued and Nayara dropped to the ground beneath him, letting him surge right over the top of her. She rolled sideways and came gracefully to her feet, letting the bloody knives drop to her sides to drip onto the carpet.

Salathiel’s body lay chest-down on the rug.

The maker sat up on the divan and cleared her throat, brushing her hair out of her face. “I don’t understand,” she whispered.

“You will never understand,” Nia replied, her tone remote and disinterested. “It’s not for you to know.” She stepped forward to where the body lay, transferred her knives into one hand and leaned down slowly, as if she was very tired. She tugged and held up the silver chain Salathiel had worn about his neck. The Celtic Tree of Life hung from it.

Nayara tucked it into her pocket. “He didn’t understand it at all,” she muttered and turned to face Ryan.

Her eyes were glassy and he saw that her free hand was shaking. “We need...I should...” She swallowed.

Ryan held out his hand. “Wait,” he told her. “Just stop, Nia. Stop right there.”

She stopped. He could see she was trembling all over.

He looked at the maker. She was vampire. She would have strength to spare. “Help me,” he told her. “Lift me up and put me in that chair. Hurry.”

The maker shook her head. “And leave this body here? I was supposed to turn him.”

“You will. In a week’s time. He’s still alive. Don’t question this too closely. You have to help me now. I can’t explain. Just do this. Quickly.”

She eased herself off the divan and moved over to where he lay and bent over him. “Moving you is not going to do you any good at all, son of Eire.”

“If you don’t, we’re all dead. Including you.”

Her ancient eyes widened. “I see.” There was a gleam of empathy in them. She may not understand exactly what was happening here, but she grasped that profound matters were moving and she had best not get in their way. She was old, this maker, and the currents of time and the ways events intertwined between the past and the future were clearly not new to her.

She hauled Ryan up into the air and he clamped his jaw shut against the agony the movement sent washing through him. He breathed heavily, trying to stay on top of the pain and not pass out. “On the chair,” he muttered.

“I heard you the first time you told me this,” the maker assured him. She carried him over to the upholstered, formal high chair sitting alone in the middle of the room. Ryan realized it would have been placed next to the table that Salathiel had destroyed, but now it sat in isolated splendour.

As she placed him on the chair, his useless lower legs swung gently against the cross beam and he cried out. The movement of the broken bones grating together sent a wave of nausea through him. Sweat broke out across his body and he felt both hot and cold at once.

“Nia, come here,” he told her, holding out his arms. His teeth were chattering.

The maker stepped back out of the way. She looked sceptical as Nia moved like a stiff automaton over to the chair.

“Clean the knives, Nia,” Ryan told her. “Wipe them and put them back in their sheaths. You can’t carry them that way.”

The blades were still dripping blood onto the priceless rug at her feet.

Nia looked down at the blades, lifting them curiously. She looked back at Ryan and her face seemed to crumple. “Oh, Ryan,” she breathed.

The maker took the knives from Nia, picked up the hem of her dress and wiped the excess blood on it. She looked at Ryan. “Where?” she said simply.

“Boots,” Ryan said.

The maker lifted the hem a little higher and slid the knives into the sheaths in each of Nia’s boots. Then she let the hem drop back into place and pushed Nia up against the chair. “Go, child,” she said.

Ryan lifted her into his lap and paused as the movement sent more pain rolling through him. He was shuddering now, with hot and cold flashes washing through him in continual waves. “Put your arms around me,” he told Nia. She was trembling as badly as he was. When she didn’t respond, he lifted her arms up around his neck and wrapped his arms around her waist. He looked at the maker. “Stand behind the chair. When I say, tip the chair over.”

The maker’s brows lifted. Then she shrugged. “Very well.” She moved behind the majestic chair.

Ryan thought of New York City. Their apartment in Astoria and the friends he hoped to see again. He fought to clear his mind of the pain and the sickness clouding it. He wanted only to get Nia home safely. “Home,” he whispered. “Now,” he added, more loudly.

The chair tilted, tipping them forward into midair, letting him make the jump and take Nia with him.

* * * * *

Near Adoáin, Navarra, Spain. 2262 A.D.

 
“When we got back, it took another two days for the correcting tsunami to catch up with us,” Ryan said. He rolled onto his back and looked up at the canopy overhead. “Nia and I spent those two days frankly terrified, wondering if we had managed to fix things. All we could do was wait and watch everyone around us die and hope we didn’t catch the plague, too.”

Nia’s hot tears were pooling on Cáel’s chest as she rested her cheek on his shoulder. Her body had stopped shaking now, but he continued to soothe her, his hand sliding from her hip to her shoulder. She didn’t protest.

“And the wave corrected everything,” Cáel said, “when it came through at last.”

“It changed things,” Ryan said flatly. “Almost everything changed back to the way it was supposed to be. The way we remembered it. But there were tiny differences that all of us noticed as we started picking up the pieces. Faster-than-light travel went commercial five years before we remembered it happening. There were nine colonized worlds, not eight. None of them were major enough to warrant trying to go back and fix things again.”

“You call an entire civilized world minor?” Cáel asked gently.

Ryan blew out his breath. “No major
negative
changes,” he amended.

“There was one,” Cáel replied. “You and Nia let each other go.”

Nia’s hand on his other shoulder shifted restlessly. “We were just...so busy,” she said. Her voice was very small.

Cáel turned his head to look at Ryan. “Truth is, every time you looked at Nia, you saw her killing Salathiel, didn’t you?”

Ryan covered his eyes with his hand. “Yes,” he said heavily. “For the longest time, yes.”

She lifted her head to look at him, over Cáel’s chest. Her eyes were wet with tears. “I don’t have to read minds to know that, Ryan. I’ve lived with the guilt ever since.”

“And you started wearing the medallion, Nia. It was another reminder.”

She looked at the medallion swinging from her throat.

“But you did read his mind to find out these things out, didn’t you?” Cáel asked Nia.

Nia caught her breath and looked down at him. Then she glanced at Ryan.

Ryan sat up. “You read my mind?” Anger tinged his voice.

Cáel rested his hand on Ryan’s chest. “You stopped talking to her. How else was she going to learn? What she did learn scarred her deeply enough you two have lived in misery for two centuries. Let it go, Ryan.”

Ryan hung his head.