Shadow's End (28 page)

Even though they sounded like they were fighting, a different kind of warmth and healing stole into him. Squeezing her fingers, he fell deeply asleep.

•   •   •

T
he spike burst out of Bel's chest. Her dark gaze turned wry, before the light in them faded.

And there was red, dripping into the white snow. Blooming like roses.

With a muffled shout, he woke in a clench.

He was still in the hospital room. The remains of a dinner tray sat on a nearby table. Bel had climbed into the bed with him, curling against his side, with her head on his chest. She was sound asleep.

As he grabbed her, she woke with a start and rose up on one elbow. Her cheek was lined with creases. “What is it?”

“I dreamed you died,” he said from the back of his throat.

Quick compassion flashed across her face. She kissed his neck, the line of his jaw, his mouth. “I'm right here, just as I promised I would be.”

He said against her lips, “You're not going anywhere.”

“No, never. I swear it.”

He drank in her breath that carried the words of that promise, kissing her deeply. She stroked his hair, kissing him back.

When he could bear to say it, he whispered, “Constantine.”

Her eyes filled with sadness. Wordlessly, she shook her head.

He had already known, but still, he had hoped against hope. He buried his face in her hair, feeling gut shot. She held him with her whole body.

After a moment, he asked, “Rune? Julian?”

“They're both going to make it. Rune—he took a bad wound to the thigh. It nicked the femoral artery, but when he fell into the icy water, it slowed the bleeding enough. Carling and the medics got to him right away.” She ran her fingers along the line of his bare shoulder. “Julian's hands were badly burned. I don't know what his long-term prognosis is. But I know he's alive.”

“What about Ferion?” He ran his hands down the long
graceful curve of her back, pressing her closer to wipe away the ugly memory of the dream.

“He's okay. He— For a few minutes, I was afraid he wasn't going to make it. I don't know much, yet, about what happened back at the Elven residence after I left except that I heard Ferion tracked down and killed a few of Malphas's spies. Malphas had fixed the soul lien so that it would kill him if anybody tried to remove the spell, but Soren was able to break it before Ferion choked to death. Soren's—” Through the palms of his hands, he felt her swallow hard. “He's gone too. Malphas was trying to run when Soren stopped him.”

Two eternal souls, gone forever.

“I remember,” he said in a low voice. He thought of the crashing Power overhead, and the destruction on Hart Island. “Gods, what a high cost. Did anybody else die?”

“No,” she told him quickly, kissing him again. “Everybody else is okay.”

He nodded, turned his face away and covered his eyes with one hand. Pain tore at him, along with sickened grief.

Silence fell in the room. Bel nuzzled his chin and stroked his hair, offering comfort. After several minutes, he whispered, “I feel like this is all my fault.”

Her head had begun to drift down to his chest again. At those words, she straightened back up. “How can you say that? Why would you think this was all your fault?!”

After spending his whole life hiding his visions, it was remarkably hard to break the silence. He forced his way through it, saying through gritted teeth, “I'm—I guess you'd say I'm psychic. I see things before they're about to happen. Sometimes I can change things just enough, so that something else happens instead.”

The alarmed concern in her eyes turned to fascination. “You have the second sight?”

He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Always have. I . . . saw what happened on the beach a long time ago.” Unable to look at her, he averted his face. “Not everything. I never see everything clearly.”

“I've had several conversations with previous Oracles over the years,” she murmured. “Every one of them said that visions can be terribly difficult to interpret.” She asked gently, “What did you see?”

“Blood, dripping from my chest wound. The white snow, the black rocks, the water—some kind of high building. Heart's blood. Hart Island, only I didn't know it was Hart Island until I got there. I'd never been to the place before, outside of my vision.”

She laid cool fingers against his cheek. “When did you first see it?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose hard, and whispered, “Two hundred years ago, when I saw you at the Vauxhall masque.”

“Two hundred years ago.” She sat up so that she could stare down at him, her expression filling with horror mingled with wonder.

He deserved her horror. It would serve him right if she walked out of the hospital room and never came back. He saw Constantine again in his mind, and another wave of pain washed over him.

“Let me get this straight,” she said. “All that time ago, you saw what you thought was your own death, and you still offered to help me?”

His jaw tightened. He nodded. “I didn't see anybody else, or any details. If I had only seen Constantine, I would never have agreed to let him come. He died because of me.”

She twisted around to face him fully, some kind of extreme reaction tightening her face and body. Whatever her initial reaction was, she held it back until she calmed and looked more balanced. He respected that so much about her, how she found her own ballast and considered her words carefully.

After a moment, she said in a slow, deliberate voice, “First things first. I think you must be the bravest man I've ever known.”

That was the last thing he had expected her to say. Frowning, he opened his mouth to reply, but she slipped her hand over his lips to stop him.

“Graydon, you saw what you thought was your own
death, and you still stepped forward without hesitation to offer to help me. You never backed down. Not once. You confronted Malphas at Wembley, you waited all this time.” Her voice wobbled until she firmed her lips and continued. “You spearheaded the investigation, you set the trap for Malphas—you drove this whole thing forward, all the while thinking it would probably kill you.”

“I had to,” he whispered. “I don't back down. I can't live my life that way. And besides, I wanted you so badly.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “I think I must be the luckiest woman in the world,” she breathed. “Second point. You need to put the blame for this exactly where it belongs, on Malphas.”

Breathing raggedly, he closed his eyes. She was only saying to him what he had said to other people before—don't blame the victim. Or, in this case, victims. Yet he had such difficulty internalizing her words.

When she spoke again, her voice had turned very gentle. “Third point. Don't take away from Constantine or Soren the power of their choices. Or Rune and Julian, either, for that matter. Maybe they didn't have the second sight, or a vision from two hundred years ago, but they could still see pretty well. They knew how dangerous it was to fight a first generation Djinn, and they chose to do it anyway, just as you did.”

He said quickly, “I wouldn't take anything away from them. That's not what I meant.”

Her voice gentled even further. “Are you sure? Can you tell me that what they did was all that different from what you did?”

He ran her words over again in his mind, trying to find some fault with her logic, but he couldn't find any.

“Graydon,” she said tenderly.

He looked up at her. There was so much love in her expression, so much compassion, a lump rose in his throat.

“I know how insidious survivor's guilt can feel,” she told him. “Why did they die, and not me? There must have been something—anything—I could have done to stop it. Those kinds of thoughts will consume your soul, if you don't stop them.”

While he listened, he forced himself to breathe evenly. In and out, the raw, simple effort of living. If anybody knew about survivor's guilt, it must be Bel. What demons had she been forced to confront and exorcise over the last six months?

She pressed her lips to the corner of his mouth in a soft caress. “I'm not trying to take away your feelings. Gods, how could I? You need to feel what you feel, and grieve in your own time, and in your own way. The only thing I'm trying to say is, please, don't carry the weight of this on your shoulders. Not this, not when it doesn't belong there.”

Unable to speak, he nodded, and he had to cover his eyes.

As soon as darkness pressed against his eyelids, he saw it again—the spike bursting out of Constantine's chest. Pain burned through his muscles like acid.

He also remembered something else. Con had been shouting something at him. Grabbing him, yanking him around.

Hauling him out of the path of danger.

“I didn't change the vision,” he rasped. “Con did.”

His words shook her visibly. Even though the battle was over, terror flashed across her face, and her slender dark brows drew together. She breathed, “What did he do?”

“He pulled me out of the way, and pushed between me and Malphas.” Grief, like stones grinding together, roughened his voice. Malphas had driven that spike so hard, it had not only torn through Con's body, it had also impaled him—just not deeply enough to puncture his heart. “He took the strike meant for me.”

“He saved your life?”

His lips formed a soundless word. “Yes.”

Her fingers tightened on his flesh, digging into his arms. She whispered, “Then I'll always be grateful to him.”

He thought of how much strength and hatred had gone into Malphas's massive blow, how close he had come to losing his life. He thought of that wry look in Con's eyes at the very end. Con had known, and he had done it anyway. A wordless sound came out of him, as if he had just been struck again.

As the wave of pain passed, he grew aware of other things. Bel had gone nose-to-nose with him. Tears slipped down her cheeks, but she didn't flinch away. Her gaze was so naked, so full of emotion. He did not make this journey alone. Where he went, she went with him, right down into the darkest place. Everything he felt, she felt too.

How could she have lost everything that she had lost, and still have the strength to remain so open and compassionate?

“If I didn't have you to hold onto right now, I think I would be going more than a little crazy,” he whispered.

“If I didn't have you, I
know
I would be more than a little crazy.” Reaching up, she kissed his forehead. “What can I do for you, my love?”

A wave of tenderness washed over him. “You're doing everything.” As he took a deep breath, he remembered something else. “Did I . . . dream that you and Dragos argued?”

With a snort, she buried her face in the pillow by his head. “No, you didn't dream it. He was here, and we—we sort of did.”

He slipped his fingers underneath her chin, urging her face up. His voice deepening, he whispered, “You said I'm yours.”

Color darkened her cheeks. “Yes, and I-I might have told him that I'm moving in with you. Pretty much. Essentially.” She bit her lip. “Unless you have a problem with that?”

“Gods, no.” He locked his arms around her. “I'm never going to let you out of my sight again.”

It was a ridiculous thing to say, but she didn't contradict him. Instead, she clung to him, arms around his neck, drawing one slender leg over his hips. The reality of her presence pounded into him.

She was here, really here with him. For the first time in two hundred years, they were free from all constraint.

Free.

His hot burn of grief turned into raw need. His cock stiffened so hard, it felt agonizing.

Struggling with so many powerful emotions, he rasped, “I need you so much, and yet after what happened, it feels almost wrong.”

“Reaffirming love and life can never be wrong,” she told him softly. “That's survivor guilt. This is a gift, Graydon. An incredible, precious gift. Everything you do—everything we do—from here on out is a gift. It would be so terrible to waste it.”

When everything inside him threatened to shut down, somehow she opened doors, and she made it okay for him to walk through them.

Yes, this was a gift. And if events had happened the other way around, he knew for damn sure Constantine wouldn't waste it. In fact, Con would be the first to shove him forward, back into life.

She's your chance, man,
Con had said.
You've got to take it.

His animal surged to the forefront. With a posssessive growl, he rolled her over so that she lay on her back on the hospital bed. So recently healed, his muscles shook with need and strain.

He gritted between his teeth, “Tell me not to do this, and I won't.”

If she told him no, somehow, he would find a way to stop, if it killed him.

“I would never tell you such a thing,” she breathed. “I could never tell you no.”

Meeting her gaze, he tore off her clothing with the sharp talons that had grown to tip his fingers. Her gaze filled with fierce light. She looked like the Elven warrior who had once walked out of the shadows toward him.

She took his soul out of his body. He couldn't bear not to give it to her.

Then her clothes were gone, thrown in a ruined pile of fabric to the floor. The sight of her beauty slammed him. Dark, luxuriant hair spread everywhere, and the slender, tensile strength in her body was unutterably lovely.

In an agonized clench, the monster whispered, “I may not be able to be gentle.”

“I don't need your gentleness,” she said, as she reached up to touch his face. “I need your truth.”

Her words rocked him. Truth.

This is truth:

You tear away everything but my essence.

I need the light you carry more than I need air, food or water. I need you more than life.