The Warlock's Daughter (8 page)

When he spoke at last, his voice had a much lower note.
“Rain as an aphrodisiac?
To my mind, it has no power unless you can see and hear it without impediment.”

The windows along the far side of the room swung open, along with the doors leading from the vestibule. Chill, wet air swept inside on a gust of wind.

“Very nice,” she said without a shred of truth. “But you derided my storm earlier. Perhaps you have discovered that the elements can be exciting, after all. Who knows what thrilling effects we might create if we join forces.”

Hard on her words, thunder rolled, cracking in the distance with a mighty roar. The wind picked up speed and power. Rain splattered in at the windows and splashed onto the malachite flooring of the vestibule.

He should stop it. He would in a moment, when he could tear his gaze away from her as she sat opposite him with her perfect skin beaded with chill while her face was flushed with angry desire. God, but he did not know whether he wanted most to subdue her with force or with tenderness.

As if in answer to his thought, the wind rose to a tempest. Somewhere a priceless antique vase smashed and scattered across the inlaid floor. The lusters of the chandelier overhead jangled, sending bits of broken crystal sparkling downward. A picture frame bumped against the wall, then fell with a jolting impact.

She wanted him to stop her, he saw, for that would be an admission that she could affect him. She would see, then, what a storm could be with his greater aid.

The wind whipped into the house carrying lashing torrents of rain. The water flooded across the floor, wetting the Turkish carpet and pushing it into crumpled folds. It boiled into the fireplace and doused the leaping flames, extinguishing all warmth. Cold, drenching, it soaked the tablecloth and sent silver rattling to the floor.
Carita's
wine glass overturned so rainwater-diluted burgundy poured across the table, dripping to the floor like fresh blood.

And the wind and wet molded her oriental robe against her slim form with utmost fidelity, making the silk quite transparent.
Renfrey
, retrieving his own wine glass, isolated himself from the storm in a protective cocoon of air and leaned back to watch the spectacle.

Carita
made a brief, abortive gesture with one hand as if to cover herself, then desisted. Abruptly, her hair came loose and its pins tinkled on the floor like silver bells. The thick lustrous swath of her hair slid downward to become a silver curtain that enticed more than concealed. The wind caught it then. Her smile, as the silver-gold cloud of it blew around her in a wild tangle, grew diabolical.

The cat, drawn up in a bow and hissing, emerged from where he had been begging under the table. He looked at
Carita
,
then
streaked for cover beneath a china closet.

“You enjoy nakedness?” she asked in musical tones that carried easily above the clamor. “That seems bizarre under the circumstances, but is easily arranged.”

He felt the cold, wet wind on his bare skin even as he looked down. His coat, shirt and trousers were parting at the seams, falling away to lie in a tailor's puzzle of pieces in the water that washed across the floor. Even his evening shoes disintegrated, along with his braces and underclothing. His watch, chain and fob rattled into his lap. He was left with nothing by way of concealment, or dignity.

Renfrey
surged to his feet in a blaze of temper. The table, unbalanced by the rising wind, overturned with a horrendous crash of china and crystal. The broken pieces and dented silver scattered over the floor, spinning into the far corners.

“Oh, by all means,” she shouted at him as she leaped up also and backed away, “destroy this nest of seduction. That's all it is, all it ever was. What a jest, to call it a home. How would someone of
your kind
know what a home is or what a half-mortal woman might do there, or feel about it? You're only a misfit, an oddity, a mere creature with no more idea of love and home than a beast in the field!”

The bestial Minotaur, half-bull, half-man, came to him, summoned with the rage of denied desire and
vanished
hope. Its fearsome strength was
his,
and its brutish instincts. He advanced on her, inflamed, out of control, as intent as ever a mythological being had been on rapine and destruction.

She saw it in his face and alarm sprang into her eyes. Whirling away from him, she sprinted toward the open vestibule and the dark tempest in the courtyard beyond.

She was fleet, but he was faster. He caught her halfway along the path to the fountain. Snatching a wrist, he wrenched her to a halt and dragged her into his arms. He leaned over her, letting her feel his hot breath in her face while she twisted in his hold and pounded at his chest.

“No!” she cried.
“No, not like this!”

But he hardly heard for the boil of the blood in his veins and the sweet thunder in his heart and soul. He was as wild as the wind that swayed the creaking limbs of the oak above them, as fierce as the lightning that lit the sky. He wanted the woman he held and there was nothing to stop him from taking her. The principles and restraints that had once guided him had been abandoned as he divested himself of his normal body. Though they lingered, silently clamoring, in the depths of his mind, they had no power to deflect his half-crazed lust.

The colored stones of the courtyard floor were wet and matted with torn leaves and tree limbs and crushed flower petals. Still, he forced her downward with inexorable strength while tearing away, with fiendish joy, the last thin, wet layer of silk over her delectable body.

“No.
Renfrey
, please,” she said again, a whisper of unimagined grief. “I never meant to do this to you.”

He heard, oh, he heard, and something cried out in pain inside him. Still, it was not loud enough to compete with the bestial growling he made. Leaning over her, he reached for the cool, firm globe of her breast and closed his hand around it with mindless rapture.

And abruptly he felt a tearing agony in his nose.
Wetness flowed, hot and brilliant vermilion in the lightning.
He bellowed, roaring with the pain. Releasing her, he staggered back, off balance. As he lifted his hands to clutch at his face, they fastened on the huge brass ring that pierced his nostrils.

Carita
struggled to her feet. In her hand was the nose ring's chain. She held him while the wind whipped her hair into glittering witch's locks and her eyes reflected the fire of the lightning. There was no victory in her gaze.

The punishing anguish cleared his head. He drew a deep breath, fought instinct and atavistic compulsion. Clamping down on his will with determination, he banished the Minotaur. But he could not rid himself of the hard core of his anger. As the head of the bull evolved once more into his own features, he took the brass ring and the chain and fashioned them into shackles of purest gold. Fastening them to her wrists, he bound her to him.

They stood for endless moments while the storm pummeled them with stinging debris and the rain sluiced down their bodies. Chest to breast, groin to pelvis, they absorbed each other. The gooseflesh of their chilled skin meshed while their blood poured in torrents through the creaking chambers of their hearts and their harsh breathing shuddered through them with the force of a gale.

Then
Carita
lifted her bound wrists that were caught between them. The shackles blurred, shrank,
became
bracelets of gold.

Shaking back her hair, she said in low and anguished tones, “All I ever wanted was to be loved for what I am, as I am.”

It was, he recognized, the voicing of his own tormented need. She was once more ensconced within his most sequestered self. From that source, she had mined and refined, with generosity and sure intuition, the single thing that united them, the shared longing that might make them whole.

It was also, of course, the one thing he could never give her.

“No,” he said. “If loving is death, then it's impossible.” His face set, his heart locked, he withdrew his spirit from hers with quiet finality.

It wasn't enough, of course. He had to remove temptation, wrench free of her and retreat step by step. She was left alone, her pale shape buffeted by wind and rain and his inexorable power of will.
Alone in her defeat.

Except that, standing there in the wind-swept night, she lifted her arms, holding them out to him. And the wind whirled around her in a savage tornado.

It drew every leaf and petal in the courtyard into its vortex, sucking the draperies, flapping, through the open windows of the house, sending every free bit of paper and bric-a-brac whirling in her direction. It tore the vines from the walls, whipped the water from the fountain,
made
the great oak that shaded the open space thrash and groan as if in agony.

It was the expression of her need and a demonstration that she was more his equal than he had known. It was also an illustration of the clash inside him, his fervent desire, against all odds, to go to her and be the center of the tumult in her heart.
More, to make her the warm, sweet core of his own.

He stood against it.
Immobile.

It was not enough. He had to stop her before it was too late, before he succumbed to her anguished appeal. He raised his gaze to the tree above her. The huge oak uprooted with a rending explosion. The earth rumbled and the tree swayed. There was a splintering roar. Leaves showered down. The oak toppled, began to fall, gaining speed.

Carita
squared her shoulders, lifted her chin,
closed
her eyes. The tree's shadow fell across her still face. Its darkness covered her, crashing down, down upon her.

She made no move to avoid it.

She did not attempt to resist.

~ CHAPTER 5 ~

Feathers, white, swirling like snow. The leaves, the branches, the bark and body of the oak tree were transformed so they drifted down, wind-blown, to cloak
Carita
in their softness.

Renfrey
stood panting with the effort of that final, wrenching metamorphose. Then he clenched his fist and raised it high above his head.

The storm stopped.

Yet he stood there with sweat and acid grief burning his eyes. He dared not move. It was terror that held him—the terror of what else he might do if he released even a fraction of the lock he had clamped on his supernatural powers.

Carita
, seeing his fear, felt the despairing madness leave her. Tears welled into her eyes.

“Don't,” she said in distress. “It doesn't matter. “I'm all right and—nothing has changed, nothing will change.”

Still he did not move.

Stepping lightly through the feathers, she swept them toward her with languid gestures, collecting them in a pile. In seconds, they formed a plump mattress covered by buff satin sewn with gold cord and caught with gold tassels at the corners. She was tired, so tired from her exertions that she wanted only to rest.

Yet the destruction around her was an irritant that made it impossible to relax. With housewifely thoroughness, she began to set it to rights. After a moment, she felt her purpose reinforced as
Renfrey
lent his effort.

In a short time, the courtyard was clear. Flowers bloomed and the fountain played once more in the darkness. The draperies in the house hung dry and straight, the vases and chandeliers and pictures frames were renewed and in their appointed places. The supper table sat with its crystal and silver restored and food ready, awaiting anyone with appetite enough to enjoy it.

Carita
could not even begin to consider eating. She returned to the mattress and sank down upon its softness. Drawing up her legs, she clasped them with her arms and rested her head on her knees. Her hair spilled around her in a glowing cloak, sliding forward to screen her face.

After a moment, she felt the great feathered cushion give to another weight. It was
Renfrey
settling beside her.

Time passed. The doves under the eaves cooed sleepily. A pair of moths circled a great white moonflower and each other in delirious hunger and wooing. A toad hopped with deliberation toward a station under the fountain. The night breeze, somnolent with tropic warmth, brought the scent of mint and sage and bay from a garden bed nearby.

“I almost killed you,”
Renfrey
said at last.

She heard the tightness in his voice and replied to that as much as to his words. “We almost destroyed each other, in one way or another.”