The Curse: Touch of Eternity (The Curse series) (33 page)

I free your souls. May they now leave their old lives behind them.”

With the last flash of lightning, she was gone. Without warning, reality descended again. Time shifted from slow motion back to normal speed. Only a lingering burning smell was proof of what had just happened.

Sean tackled Nathaira, and the two of them fell, grappling on the ground. Payton was still hanging on to my arm, his eyes locked on mine. But I was still slipping, bit by bit.

There was an honesty in his eyes that said he would never leave me, that he would hold me to the end. But I could see that his strength was dwindling. His own blood was puddling at his feet, and sweat covered his forehead. But what shook me the most was what else I could see: Payton was scared.

Payton couldn’t believe it when Nathaira attacked him.

Her terrible revelations had been truly shocking. Her treacherous murder of Kyle and her lack of remorse had taken his breath away. He’d felt as weak as a child, hardly able to keep his body under control. Cathal had seemed to feel the same way. He had watched as the hardened warrior sank weakly to the ground and cried in his hands. The words his beloved sister had said seemed to have broken him.

But Payton’s attention was abruptly turned back toward Nathaira when she raised her dagger and lunged at Sam. Using all his strength, he had grabbed Nathaira’s hair and yanked her back, away from the woman he loved.

What had happened next was literally his worst nightmare come true: Sam fell over the railing outside. At the last moment, he had managed to grab her, and he clung to her as if she were life itself. He would not let a woman fall into the depths, ever again. This repetition of events: the same desperate look in those beautiful Cameron eyes. He would not believe it was his destiny.

He was so caught up in the nightmare, so concentrated on it, that he had almost forgotten Nathaira. But when he saw her move out of the corner of his eye, he knew what he had to do. He would risk his own life, just to see love in Sam’s eyes one last time. He turned into Nathaira’s swing, prepared for death. And he was flooded with a mighty feeling of happiness.

He knew the curse had been lifted.

Payton had settled his guilt, followed his heart, and sacrificed himself selflessly for Sam. And just as was written in Vanora’s prophecy, the witch’s own daughter had been the one to make it possible. Yes, with her own selfish behavior,
Nathaira had lifted the curse that her mother had inflicted hundreds of years before.

“When you understand the truth, darkness will devour you—but you will be happy.”

Beathas’s words of farewell rang in Payton’s ears, and for a moment, he didn’t feel the blood drenching his clothes, didn’t realize that Sam was slipping more and more. He was only glad that he had escaped living for eternity without love.

He already knew what was to come. He had seen enough men die on the battlefield to know what was a fatal wound and what was not. He had lost a huge amount of blood. He could feel the end coming closer with every breath he took. He coughed and tasted blood. Despite the certainty of having done the right thing, he began to feel scared.

With a powerful jerk, Blair grabbed me under my arms, reaching over Payton and pulling me back to solid ground. Together, the three of us sank to the floor. Only now did I notice the tears I was shedding, and the trembling that seized my entire body. My shoulder was sending shock waves of pain through my limbs, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Payton.

I didn’t realize at the time that Sean was still fighting Nathaira and Alasdair, and that he was on the verge of not being able to bear many more of Alasdair’s hard blows. I had no idea that the police were storming up the stairs with their guns drawn. I only half registered the sound of the
shot that brought Nathaira down. I didn’t know that she had mumbled words in Gaelic as she lay dying, or that Sean, huddled next to her, had hastily made the sign of the cross while a final flash of lightning lit up the sky.

I was aware of none of it. I only had eyes for the man in front of me.

Payton. His love had saved me. How stupid I had been to doubt him. I realized how unfairly I had treated him, but it looked like it was too late. His eyelids fluttered. He coughed and gasped for air. I pressed my hand on his wound, but the bleeding wouldn’t stop.

His hand reached out for my face, stroked my cheek, and barely skimmed my lips. Again he drew a pressed breath.

“Please…” he barely managed to say.

Tears ran down my face uncontrollably. I told myself this couldn’t happen. But the certainty in his eyes destroyed my hopes.

“Please… Sam,” he repeated, desperately.

I knew what he wanted.

A kiss.

But I didn’t want to kiss him, not then. To kiss him and allow him to die. No, I wanted him to stay with me, to kiss me every day from now on, to hold me lovingly in his arms.

“Payton, please stay with me, stay awake. The ambulance will be here any minute!” There was so much I wanted to say. I wanted to order him to get well again, to forbid him to die. I even wished the curse would come back, with all my might, if it would mean healing his injury.

His hand fell limply from my cheek, and he closed his eyes.

“No! Payton!” My loud sobs almost suffocated me. “Please stay here.” I leaned my face down and begged. “I love you… I need you… I can’t live without you. Please… Don’t leave me!”

After every single word I kissed his face—his eyelids, the little scar on his chin, the tip of his nose. I felt a weak puff of air on my skin when I got close to his mouth, and in desperation, I kissed him. Our lips touched and our tears blended.

Then he moved no longer.

“No!” I cried, shaking him until the pain in my shoulder forced me to stop. Then a paramedic pushed me aside, and I leaned against the wall, numb.

“No pulse, no respiration,” the man drily noted as they bundled Payton onto a stretcher

Trying to blind out the world, I shut my eyes. I wished I could shut off everything. I didn’t want to hear anything else, didn’t want to feel any more pain. It was my fault, I thought. None of this would have happened without me.

Finally, Sean knelt next to me and lifted me up, carrying me like a child down the steps. I hardly noticed the strained, worried faces of my friends behind the police line.

During the ride to the hospital, I couldn’t get one question out of my head:

My one true love—had that been it?

S
o there I was, on a sterile white hospital bed. My shoulder and my whole right arm were wrapped up in bandages. I was pumped full of pain medication, but it couldn’t ease the agony in my heart. My mom had pulled a few strings at the hospital, so I was given a private room. The pale coral paint on the walls was supposed to convey a feeling of comfort and cheer, but the strong smell of disinfectant and the glaring artificial light destroyed any illusions that I was at a spa.

I could hear Kim’s voice. I had noticed earlier that she was sitting with Ashley in the hall. A nurse had obviously forbidden them to disturb me, and I was very grateful for that. I just wasn’t ready yet. I’d been sitting on the side of the bed for quite a while, but I couldn’t decide whether it would be better to lie down to regain my strength, or if I should summon the courage to go out to my friends. A tear fell into my lap.

What kind of medication had they given me, I wondered. Placebos? Nothing seemed to be working. But I knew at some point, the pain would ease. My throat still felt corded up when I thought of our last kiss. Payton’s soft lips had been so full of hunger, wanting more. Without the pain that had always forced him to keep away from me, he had
savored that kiss. Our lips joining together had touched off an explosion of emotion. He had lost consciousness with a quiet and happy sigh.

“Oh God, Payton.”

No, I couldn’t summon the strength to see my friends. I threw myself on the bed and buried my face in the pillow to muffle my sobs.

A touch on my shoulder made me jerk in surprise. I involuntarily asked myself what I looked like. My eyes must have been red-rimmed and swollen, my nose raw from constant blowing, and my hair sticky with dried blood. Not to mention I had a monstrous bandage on my shoulder. Still, my visitor smiled at me. This day had also left a mark on him.

“Hi, Sean.”

There was no sign of his usual carefree manner. Dark shadows lay under his eyes, and a stubbly beard covered his thin face. His lips were pressed together into a worried line.

“Hi, Sam, are you doing all right?” He patted my hand. “Ashley and I… we are worried about you.”

“I guess I’m OK. But I really want to know what happened to Payton. No one will tell me. Do you have any news?”

I didn’t really want an answer to that question. Didn’t want to hear what I already knew. That he hadn’t made it.

Sean avoided my eyes, stepped back from the bed, and brushed his hand through his hair.

“Well,” he muttered, “I don’t quite know how to tell you.”

Although I had feared as much, my heart skipped a beat. I jumped out of the bed, howling “No!” as I hit Sean again and again with my healthy hand. My cries and sobs must have penetrated the whole floor.

Finally, Sean held my fist in his hands. He looked a little sheepish as he kissed me on my head. “Sam, listen, I am sorry. I know that you love Payton, but I swear I’ll kill him if he asks me again when he can see you. You should get to him as quickly as possible!”

“What?” I pushed Sean away from me and looked into his face. His eyes were radiating happiness, and he was grinning from ear to ear.

“What? Why?” I couldn’t think clearly.

“Sam, I am sorry. I shouldn’t have teased you, but I haven’t been happy for hundreds of years. So please forgive me. I am obviously not of sound mind. Now go to him. Go! He’s in the ICU.”

Overjoyed, I ran through the corridors, almost knocking over a nurse, as I laughed and cried with relief. I fumbled into a sterile mask and gown before they’d let me go in. The seconds felt like hours. I stepped through the door.

There he was! I would have loved to run to him, squeeze his body next to me, reassure myself that his heart really was beating, but the tangle of cables and monitors held me back.

Slowly, he opened his eyes.

“Sam,
mo luaidh
! I’ve been waiting almost three hundred years for you, almost let myself be killed for you, and now this? Lying here was almost the worst torture of all because I couldn’t bear to be away from you. Come here!”

Payton pulled me down into his strong arms.

“You still owe me an answer,” Payton whispered into my hair. “My third question…”

I groaned. “Not this again.”

He continued. “The third question that I want an honest answer to is: Do you love me the way I love you? Can you not take a breath because your love is taking your breath away? Does your heart skip a beat like mine when we are near each other? And the most important thing: Don’t you want to kiss me, really kiss me, at last?”

I wanted to laugh and cry. I couldn’t swallow and could hardly speak. “I love you!” was all that I could say. My heart was beating far too quickly, and I knew that we wouldn’t allow anything to come between us again. We lost ourselves in our emotions, sinking tenderly into a deep kiss. A kiss full of forgiveness for the past, full of promise for the future, and full of immortal love.