Stained (22 page)

He felt her heart accelerate as he plunged, as the clouds blurred behind them and the earth sped to meet them. When they touched down beside a grove of spindly trees, Cayne glanced up over his shoulder. Sam was hovering where he had dropped Julia. Waiting. Cayne wiped Samyaza's blood from her cheek and clutched her face in both his hands. "You need to go," he told her sternly. "Find a place to hide. Somewhere public. Somewhere Samyaza wouldn't--"

"No!" She jerked away from him, tripping as she did and falling on her butt. Cayne grabbed her slender wrists and pulled her to his chest. Her eyes were brown--the color of chocolate--and they were big and angry as they stared up at him.

"Did you see what just happened? I'm better off with you than by myself. Unless you
want
to get rid of me!"

"Julia, I only want to keep you safe."

"You're doing fine." She glanced up at the grey-blue clouds where Samyaza hung, and Cayne felt a roiling wave of remorse.

"You're never safe with him on your tail. I could focus on distracting him--while you try to figure out who the Stained are."

She was shaking her head before he finished. "I'll take my chances with you. Unless you don't want me." She might have said "to." Unless you don't want me to. But that's not how he heard it.

"I do," he murmured--soft and foreign. And found, with a bite of shock, how much he meant it.

Cayne brought her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. Then he summoned his dagger and leapt, covering a thousand feet in three swift beats of his wings.

"You remain swift," Samyaza called as Cayne neared. "But this race is about more than speed."

Samyaza flew to the left and, snarling, Cayne followed.

"How many lives do you have, Cayuzul?" Samyaza taunted.

Cayne lunged for his enemy, but the Nephilim lord spun away from the attack. He brought his feet down on Cayne's right wing, and for a moment the sky and earth spun. With difficulty, Cayne righted himself. His question burst from his throat with the power of a summer storm: "Why did you hunt me?"

"You ask questions that should not need answers."

"I don't know any answers--because of you! Why did you erase my past? Why are my memories all gone?"

Samyaza's brow furrowed. "Cayuzul."

"I said why!"

Something like disbelief crossed the Nephilim lord's ancient face. "What is it you think I did?"

"You know what you did!"

Samyaza grinned cruelly. "I scarcely believe it is true. You have no memories?" He laughed, a rich, low sound. "Then how have you come to hunt me?"

Cayne circled his enemy. "When I woke I knew you'd harmed me. I knew I'd kill you before I knew my own name."

Samyaza's smile was taunting. "Yes, I hunted you. But not even I possess the power to take one's past."

"Liar!" Cayne's hand sliced the air. "Tell me why!"

"Because you broke your oath. Because you ran," Samyaza sneered. "Because you hid."

Samyaza's body stretched and thinned, blinked in and out of focus. Cayne shook his head as his enemy's face morphed into a child's. Young. The same age as Cayne when...

Their blood was his paint, their bed his canvas. One stroke wet the brush, three more finished his masterpiece. Against the grays and whites, red was alone and beautiful.

"You stank of humanity then, and you stink of it now. Hunters are steel, never yielding, never breaking. You are a weed to be plucked."

The door opened, and two amber eyes peaked in.

The sky shattered, fragments of pastel blue and cotton-ball white that cut Cayne's eyes. Through a haze of blood he saw her face, tender and forgiving. He saw her hair, her skin, her teeth, her lips, her breasts, her toes, her thighs, her navel, her hips. He smelled her, heard the ghost of her laugh. A whisper, a touch, a fire. Blood. Spilled by the bucketful, staining the snow. Rage blinding like the sun.

Cayne choked on a sob. Through the cacophony in his head, Samyaza's laughter. Louder and louder. As her clothes are torn. As he pleads for her life. As she screams her last breath as her eyes promise love as her blood drips from his hands--

Focus returned him to excruciating clarity and his rage consumed him.
Everything was red as he burst toward Samyaza. Cayne sliced his enemy across the gut, then through the shoulder. He stabbed him in the leg, the arm, the chest. Cayne readied his killing blow, but Samyaza was able to twist free. He darted away and Cayne followed, down left right up down right; they crisscrossed the sky like show pilots.

Then Samyaza's knife was an inch from Cayne's eye and he had to tumble to avoid it. The rage receded into a pink sheen and imploded behind the image of his enemy.

Samyaza hovered, watching, a thick coat of sweat glistening across his shaved head. His wounds were already healing, a testament to his incredible power.

Cayne panted as his mind lost its hold on the tide of memories. It was a tsunami of blood.

And failure. His sin. Her death.

Samyaza watched. Distantly, Cayne wondered why the uber Nephilim did not finish what he had started. Under the onslaught of emotion, he would almost have welcomed it.

"You killed her," he said, his voice ragged and weak.

"She was our enemy."

"I loved her!"

Samyaza shook his head. "What's done is done. Now we must consider what is to come."

"Fuck you." Cayne gasped. He blinked against tears that would not come. Tears she never saw. "You--"

"Did what had to be done." There was no anger in Samyaza's voice, and no regret. "You knew the consequence."

"I betrayed nothing."

"You betrayed me!"

Screaming, Cayne lunged again, a sloppy attack Samyaza easily evaded.

"Why don't you kill me now!"

Samyaza's wings beat impatiently as he rose out of Cayne's reach. "Ancient enemies are uniting against you. As long as you are with one of them, you will always be pursued. You too have become stained."

Samyaza flew up and away; Cayne, lost in the rhythm of his sorrow, did not follow.

His mind was an anchor, pulling him down. He saw the first stars peek through their blanket of blue and remembered the day he showed her his wings.

She was in awe. In awe and angry he had never shown her before. She wanted a flight and he was happy--no, eager--to take her. He laughed and swooped her off her feet, and a moment later she was shrieking as they soared through the inky sky.

His heart was an anchor, pulling him down. To her smile. To her voice. She was calling him. She was...

Julia was yelling, Cayne realized. Loudly. And waving. He hung in the air for a moment, smoothing the rhythm of his breath, bringing the world back into focus. Then he let himself slip into a free-fall that landed him almost on top of a palm tree.

Julia ran over as he struggled to his feet, nearly paralyzed by the fierce clamp around his throat and chest. She was frantic, reaching for him. He moved away.

"Cayne!"

"I hear you."

"Then why didn't you answer me?"

"I...I'm sorry." He set his mouth and murmured, "Saving my energy."

"Oh." She watched him cautiously. Much like she had when they first met. "You looked...different, up there."

Cayne rubbed his eyes. "Did I?"

Julia immediately began to probe his aura. Cayne could sense surprise, and he resisted the impulse to push her away; she couldn't peer into his mind. He tried to relax as she healed his wounds.

"Thanks." His voice was hoarse, and her eyes narrowed. Her mouth stuck somewhere between a smile and a frown. "Is everything okay?"

He nodded, hoping she hadn't felt the trembling he didn't seem able to stop. Each shiver was a memory. The onslaught was unyielding. "Are you?" he asked Julia.

"Oh, abducted by a flying madman, flown hundreds of feet into the air, dropped. No big deal."

He tried to smile, but he must have done a terrible job of it, because she was worried all over again. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

Her lips turned down. "Are you sure?"

He nodded.

Again, she hesitated. "I'm glad you're okay."

"Me too," he said thickly. "I'm glad you're okay."

Julia smiled. And then her eyes narrowed. "I can't believe you didn't tell me you had wings!"

Cayne forced something past the lump in his throat. "It...never came up."

"That's not the sort of thing that has to come up! You should have told me." Julia crossed her arms. "It's my job to know all your secrets."

"It is?"

She nodded. "Yes, it is. Now you're so going to take me flying. Right now."

Chapter 29

For several hours, not a cloud marred the sky as they soared over the moonlight-drenched earth.

At first Julia seemed content just to ride on his back, her arms around his neck. She said nothing about his silence and the shivers that jerked his skin. But as moments became minutes, and minutes stretched to an hour, Cayne's reticence grew deafening. He tried to participate in whatever conversation she tried to force, but memories flitted through his mind a thousand a second, stealing his voice.

Julia had seemed hurt when he rebuffed her questions and soon lapsed into her own silence. Now she was cradled in his arms, asleep, and he was lost in the memory of another nighttime ride.

Cayne wondered if the years he'd languished without his past had taken the maddening edge off his grief or if his mind just hadn't had enough time to absorb what had previously been buried.

The sorrow he hadn't understood just a few hours before was a hot knife in his memory now; maybe paler than it would have been, but far from dull.

Julia stirred, and Cayne's confusion grew. The feelings he had for her mirrored his feelings for the other, and the only thing he knew for sure was that he had to destroy Samyaza.

If anything, the drive was stronger now that he knew what he had to avenge. And what he had to protect. He listened to Julia's heartbeat and swore he wouldn't fail a second time.

"Swallow a bug?"

Despite all his instincts, Cayne almost dropped her. Julia seemed unaware as she gazed at him, a smile playing at the corner of her mouth. "Sorry. You just look...like you swallowed a bug."