Nightbound (32 page)

“Once we take possession of the Realm, I’ll be back for you,” Robert said as he watched the guard tying Alys to the tent pole. “Then you will show me where the emeralds are hidden.”

“I didn’t have the emeralds,” she repeated wearily. “They’re not in the castle. I don’t know where they are. What your spies saw were fakes.”

Robert crouched down in front of her. “You’re being tedious, Alys. If you don’t cooperate, I’ll give you to my men for a few hours. They know many inventive ways to help jog your memory.”

“It won’t make any difference what you do to me. I never had the jewels.” She closed her eyes, unable to look at his face for another second. “You might as well kill me now.”

“You’ll die when I say you will, my dear.” Robert stood up and walked out with the guard, who took up a position just outside the tent flap.

Alys flexed her cramped, cold fingers, straining again at the plastic tie until it bit into her flesh. Robert would kill her eventually, but he would make her suffer a great deal first, and somehow she had to prepare for that. Or she might try to kill herself before he initiated the torture to come.

Don’t be a coward. Beau would want you to keep fighting.

Alys began twisting her wrists against the plastic
again, but while it bruised her, the edges of it were too dull to cut her skin. She couldn’t make herself bleed, and blood was the only thing she had that might help her work herself loose.

Blood.

The word triggered Alys’s thought matrix, and she turned her focus inward to assemble a loose construct of fragmented facts and theories. The Templar who had come to the mission had been Darkyn.
We need your blood to survive.
All of the Timucua had left their village abruptly, shortly after the Spanish priests had arrived and built the mission. The priests themselves had all disappeared; no bodies were ever found. The borrow pit she’d fallen into had been twenty feet deep.
There aren’t any burials anywhere near here.

What did they do with all that dirt and rock?

Alys imagined herself at the site, and began walking it in her mind. There were no unusual elevations in the ground around the mission or the spring pond. All of Tremayne’s property was perfectly flat.

Very funny, you guys.

When she’d stood in the center of the old village, she had looked
down
at the mission. That shouldn’t have been possible. It seemed that the natives
had
built a mound—and then they had built their village on top of it.

The construct didn’t make sense to her. Mounds were built to serve as tombs, and as such were sacred places of the dead; the Timucua would never have lived on top of one. Some of the mounds found in Florida, however, had not been tombs. Excavation had proved several had
been used by many generations of natives as ancient landfills, and were filled only with the discarded shells, bones, and other refuse of their daily lives.

If the natives had attacked and killed the priests, they wouldn’t have bothered to honor them by burying their bodies. It was more likely they would have left them to rot, burned them, or even displayed them as proof of their tribe’s ferocity.

They constructed the mound, built the village, and then they abandoned it. They fled at the same time the priests disappeared, along with the Templar.

The mission and the village had been flawlessly constructed. They had both survived intact for six centuries. Both had been abandoned. Both had been guarded by the Timucua.

…in my time there were no archaeologists digging up the earth.

The Kyn who guarded the treasure you seek was a smith, and a mason.

Mortals are easy to convince; what you see is what you believe.

Those final pieces slipped into place, completing the puzzle. Now all she had left to do was prevent Robert from ever knowing the truth.

“Guard,” she called out. “I’ve changed my mind. I’ll tell your boss what he wants to know.”

The guard shuffled inside the flap, giving her a strange look.

“He’s looking in the wrong place.” Alys pushed herself to her feet. “Take me to him.”

The guard opened his mouth, closed it, and fell over
onto his face as the man standing behind him stepped over him.

“You can’t give the treasure to our enemies, love,” Beau said, smiling. “Not after all this.”

He’s alive.
Her heart clenched as she stared at him, almost afraid he would go ghostly on her and shimmer out of sight. But no, he was there, the answer to every wish she would ever make on birthday candles and Christmas mornings and shooting stars.

“Alys?”

“Beau.” Something roared in her ears as black spots danced in front of her eyes. “I think I’m going to faint again.”

Beau came over to her, cradling her face in his hands as he put his mouth on hers. The gentleness of his kiss made Alys’s knees buckle, but he held her up, reaching behind her to snap the plastic tie with a flick of his fingers.

Alys groaned as her aching arms fell to her sides, and dragged them up to rest her numb hands against his chest. “I wasn’t going to tell them where the emeralds are. I was going to trick the guard into killing me.”

Beau smoothed the hair back from her face. “Do you have such little faith in your husband?”

“No, I thought my husband dead.” She swallowed a sob as she huddled against him. “Thank you for being immortal.”

“I’ve never been so glad of it myself.” Beau held her tightly, stroking her back with a soothing gesture before he set her at arm’s length and examined the bruises on her wrists. “Did they hurt you?”

“I’m all right. They’re more interested in getting the jewels, and they believe that I took them to the Realm. They’ve gone to attack it.” As his expression darkened, she put her hand on his arm. “It’s okay. I know how to stop them.”

“The jewels.”

She nodded. “I know where they are.”

“T
hat is excellent news, Dr. Stuart.”

They both turned, and Beau bared his fangs at the man standing over the unconscious guard.

Leeds held up his empty hands. “My name is Devan Leeds. I was sent here by the
tresoran
council to recover the jewels, and protect the Kyn.” He added something in an archaic language. At the same time, he dug his fingers into the back of his right hand, peeling away what appeared to be the scarred outer layer of his skin. He discarded the prosthesis, and showed Beau his hand, which had been tattooed with an elaborate compass.

Alys felt her lover’s tension ebb, and looked up at him. “Is it the mark, or what he said?”

“It is both. Mr. Leeds is a sentinel, one of an elite group who serve the
tresoran
council. They are our most trusted mortal allies.” Beau gave the other man a skeptical look. “My lady named you a traitor.”

“I was sent by the council to infiltrate the
tresoran
traitors, assess their intentions, and, if possible, recover
the Emeralds of Eternity,” Leeds said. “They in turn sent me to the Realm to spy on your suzeraina.”

“You nearly killed Farlae.”

“
Nearly
being the operative word. I’m a sentinel, warrior. You know if I’d wanted him dead, I’d have finished him.” Leeds sounded tired. “Dr. Stuart, I owe you an apology. I knew my brother, Robert, was still alive, and that he was the leader of the traitors. I even discovered how he planned to use the emeralds to take his vengeance on the Kyn. But I never knew about you, or what he has done to bring you under his control.”

“Robert is your brother.” When he nodded, Alys felt a surge of bitterness. “I thought you looked familiar. And thank you for the apology, but that isn’t going to bring back my mother.”

“Nor will it restore to me the family my brother murdered,” he told her. “My parents, my aunts and uncles, my cousins—all of them died at the hands of the Brethren, thanks to Robert’s betrayal.”

“Is that why they sent you?” Beau asked. “To redeem your bloodline?”

“My bloodline burned to death with my lord Marietto, and I volunteered,” Leeds corrected. “I’d hoped to persuade Robert to end this quest for immortality, and to surrender himself and his followers to the council, but the death of his lady cemented his hatred for the Kyn.” He looked at Alys. “I know it cannot serve as an excuse for his actions, but my brother is quite insane.”

“Aye, and he is a dead man,” Beau said flatly.

“By now Lord Alenfar has summoned his men from the south,” Leeds said. “You needn’t worry, warrior. In a few hours your wish will be granted.”

“They may come too late to save my
jardin
,” Beau said. “We must do something
now
.”

“The three of us can’t stop the siege,” Alys said. “Not unless we offer Robert what he wants.”

Leeds shook his head. “As much as I wish I could save my brother, and end this private war of his, I cannot allow you to give him the emeralds.”

Beau studied her face. “But we can use them as a lure, to draw him and his army away from the Realm.”

“Especially if he thinks his brother is the one who has them,” Alys said. “We don’t have to move them. We just need a time-stamped photo of them, one we can send to his mobile. Devan, you’ll tell him that you’ll give him the jewels in exchange for ending the siege—and you’ll have to be convincing.”

“As often as I have tried to talk him out of this madness, I believe I can do that.” He sighed. “But once we lure him and his men away from the castle, what then? We are still three against an army.”

“We put an end to this. Permanently.” Alys watched both men’s faces. “As soon as we recover the jewels, we destroy them.”

Leeds bent to take the gun from the unconscious guard while Beau looped the broken tie around Alys’s wrists. “Stay behind her,” the
tresora
said, “and keep your head down. If I’m challenged, take your lady and run.”

Beau kept his hand on Alys’s waist as they walked out of the tent and headed for the car Leeds had stolen from the Realm. Although there were only a handful of guards, they all looked at Leeds, and two moved to intercept them.

“We have orders to keep her here,” one of the guards said, resting his hand on his sidearm.

“My brother sent me to bring her to the castle.” Leeds sounded bored. “You can call him to confirm, of course, if you want to be held responsible for keeping him waiting.”

Fear spiked through the guard’s scent as he nodded and quickly retreated.

“Put her in the back,” Leeds told Beau before he climbed in behind the wheel. Once they were inside, he started the engine. “I’ll have to take the road out and drive until we’re out of their sight, and then double back with the lights off. You’re sure about the location of the emeralds, Dr. Stuart?”

“Yes.” Alys watched the rearview mirror. “You’d better go now, Mr. Leeds. One of those guards is making a call on his mobile.”

Leeds drove quickly out of the camp, taking the shortest route across the fields to the road. Just before they reached it, the back window shattered. As more gunfire struck the back of the car, Beau pushed Alys down and covered her with his body. “They know.”

“Stay down.” Leeds began driving in an evasive pattern until he reached the road, where he shut off the lights and accelerated, racing into the dark until he slowed and eased the vehicle back off the road, pulling beneath a row of trees and shutting off the motor.

“What are you doing?” Beau demanded. “Keep going.”

“Wait. My brother’s thugs are not that imaginative.” Leeds’s voice sounded oddly strained.

Beau detected the scent of fresh blood. “You’ve been wounded.”

“Yes, but the round didn’t hit anything significant,” the
tresora
assured him.

Beau turned to watch the road, and after another minute every vehicle that had been left at the camp sped past them. Only when the last car disappeared from sight did Leeds restart the engine and pull back out onto the road, heading back toward Alys’s camp.

Beau helped Alys up and checked her over for new wounds. “We won’t have very long to do this, love, and no tools with which to dig. Leeds is wounded.”

“We won’t need to dig. They’re not buried. They’re submerged.” Alys curled up against him. “The source of the spring isn’t under the pond. It’s under the village, and I know how to get to it.”

Once they reached the mission, Leeds drove the car into the stables and shut off the engine. Beau helped Alys out, and then frowned as he looked at the
tresora
, who still sat behind the wheel. “Come, man. Let me have a look at it.”

Leeds grimaced and reached into his shirt pocket, removing his mobile and handing it to Beau. “I won’t be accompanying you, I’m afraid. You’ll also have to handle the negotiations with Robert.”

Beau glanced at the amount of blood smeared on the phone and yanked open the driver’s door as Leeds slumped over against it. He eased the man out and placed him on the ground. The moonlight gleamed on the exit wound in the center of his chest.

Leeds opened his eyes to give Alys a rueful look. “Tell
Lady Jayr that everything I said was a lie.” He coughed up some blood. “Thank God, that will be the last I tell.” He let out a final breath and went still.