Warrior's Embrace (70 page)

His knife arced upward as he pulled it from
his sheath, and the sun glinted against the long blade. Soon it
would be red with his brother’s blood, and then the white witch
would die and his children would cry no more.

o0o

Kate jarred awake and sat bolt upright.
Eagle’s side of the pallet was empty. Panic pushed at her chest. He
would never have left her without a word except for one reason: he
had gone to do battle with the avenger.

“Eagle,” she called, knowing there would be
no answer.

Her hands shook as she threw on her clothes.
Scrambling on hands and knees, she looked outside the tent. Eagle
had made no attempt to cover his tracks. She grabbed her gun and
followed them, running. Snow sucked at her boots and cold winds
burned her lungs.

Overhead, an eagle screamed at her, and
voices drifted down from the bluff above.

“I won’t fight you, Cole.”

“Fight, damn you. Fight like a
Chickasaw.”

“
Eagle
!” she screamed.

Her feet slipped in the snow, and terror
gripped her as she clawed her way up the side of the bluff.

“Stay back, Kate! Don’t come any closer.”

“
Fight! Fight for the witch
woman!
”

Kate topped the bluff just as Cole’s blade
flashed toward Eagle’s throat. He sidestepped and saw her,
crouching with the gun in her hand.

“Kate! No!”

Cole took advantage of the diversion, and in
one swift move he had Eagle on the ground, the long blade at his
throat.

“You’re too easy, brother. Has the witch
woman stolen your powers?”

Kate leveled her gun at his back, but her
hands were shaking so badly, she couldn’t hold it still. What if he
moved suddenly and she killed Eagle? What if she didn’t miss and
killed Eagle’s brother?

Eagle caught Cole’s wrist and forced the
knife away. Panting, they struggled. The brothers were evenly
matched, and it seemed they might stay on the bluff forever, locked
in mortal combat.

Holding back her screams, Kate lowered her
gun and leaned against a rock, sick with fear and regret. She’d set
brother against brother.

With a mighty heave Eagle shoved Cole aside
then rolled into a crouch, his knife still sheathed. Cole glanced
from his brother to his brother’s woman. His blade made slow,
menacing circles in the air.

“Who will it be, Eagle? You or the witch
woman?”

Kate hardly saw the movement of Eagle’s hand,
but suddenly his blade flashed in the sun. Cole lunged at him.
Steel clashed against steel.

She couldn’t watch, and yet she dared not
turn away. Kate covered her mouth with her hands. But some small
sound must have escaped, for Eagle turned toward her, leaving
himself vulnerable.

Cole’s knife slashed his buckskin shirt, and
the blood bloomed from his chest.

“
No!
” Kate screamed. “
Stop
it!
”

With terrible face and eyes Eagle lifted his
knife and scored along the side of his brother’s cheek. Cole’s
laughter filled the canyon, and Kate covered her ears against its
madness.

Their battle raged while the sun climbed
upward, and slowly it brought them to the edge of the cliff.

“Give up,” Eagle said.

“Never.”

“You can’t win against me.”

The truth was so obvious that even Cole could
see. Panting, he lowered his knife. Fierce and protective love
glittered in Eagle’s face as he held out his hand.

“Come with me. I’ll get help for you.”

For a moment the madness left Cole’s
eyes.

“Come,” Eagle said once more, softly.

“To live forever in a place that has no sun?
Kill me,” he begged. “Put your knife to my throat and let me die
with honor.”

Wind and snow swirled around them as the
brothers faced each other.

“Are you a coward?” Cole screamed. “
Kill
me
.”

An eagle soared above them, its screams
echoing Cole’s. Eagle’s hand tightened on his knife. Anguish filled
his face as he hesitated. Then slowly, ever so slowly, he lifted
the blade.

“No!” Kate screamed. “Don’t let him do this
to you.”

Cole turned toward Kate, and for a moment she
saw the kindhearted, loving man who had once been her friend and
her champion.

“I never meant to do harm,” he whispered. His
eyes swung back to his brother. “I love you . . .” He took one
backward step. “
Eagle!
”

His plaintive cry echoed off the canyon
walls. For an instant, shock and horror held Kate in place, and
then she was running, running toward Eagle and wrapping her arms
around his chest.

Together they looked over the precipice. Cole
lay at the bottom of the ravine, his neck at a crazy angle and his
left leg folded underneath his broken body. Already the falling
snow was beginning to cover him.

“It’s over,” Eagle said.

His face was terrible as he led her away, as
frozen as the blanket of ice that would soon cover his brother.

“Yes, it’s over,” she said, knowing it was
so, for Cole would always be between them, lying at the bottom of
the ravine.

Martin Black Elk twirled his pencil in his
hand as he listened to the governor’s story.

“You have proof of all this?”

“None,” Eagle said. “Only suspicions.”

“Did Cole confess to Deborah’s murder? Did he
confess to ransacking Kate’s house and burning her clinic?”

“No.”

“Then I have nothing to go on.”

Black Elk picked up Deborah Lightfoot’s file
and scrawled “Unsolved” across the front.

“What about her family?”

“Her father doesn’t even know she’s dead, and
if her brother is capable of grief at all, it’s enough without
wondering whether a dead man killed his sister.” Black Elk put a
hand on Eagle’s shoulder. “I’m sorry about your brother. I can’t
make any promises, but we can try to retrieve the body.”

“No. He belongs to the mountains. That’s the
way he would have wanted it.”

o0o

Anna couldn’t grieve for Cole. When her
children had died, she’d wept for days, weeks, but she had no tears
for the man who had died on the mountain.

An accident, Eagle had said. Was it only two
weeks ago? Cole had slipped and fallen into the ravine while he was
hunting.

At odd moments she thought about how it must
have been, about the surprised look on his face when he tumbled to
the rocks. Had he called her name? Had he thought of her at
all?

Sweat broke out on her forehead, and she
rushed to the bathroom, sick. She closed the door so the rest of
Eagle’s office staff couldn’t hear. Holding the sides of the
commode, she lost her breakfast.

When she washed her face, she saw herself in
the mirror, gaunt, hollow-eyed, somebody she didn’t even know. A
wave of nausea overtook her again, and she bent like a willow
sapling and leaned her forehead against the cool washbasin.

Was this her body’s way of grieving for Cole?
Suddenly she remembered him as he had been the last time he’d held
her—tender, virile, loving. And she knew the truth.

She found Eagle in his office. Every time she
looked at him, she remembered the way Cole had once been.

“Anna, come in.” His smile didn’t touch his
eyes. He had been that way since the day he’d returned from the
mountain.

“I need the rest of the day off, Eagle.”

“Take as much time as you need, Anna. Is it
anything I can help you with?”

He’d been a rock for her, settling Cole’s
financial affairs, arranging memorial services, seeing that the
ranch continued to run smoothly. Like Anna, he’d shed no tears. But
in unguarded moments she could see the grief etched in his
face.

“Not this time. This is something I must do
alone.”

Anna drove carefully, avoiding the ice
patches on the road. The sign on the clinic door said CLOSED. Anna
knocked on the door anyway, and when she got no answer, she tapped
on the windows.

“Anna?” Kate came from the direction of the
stables. Bits of hay clung to her parka and her tumbled red hair.
“I’m sorry I was saddling Mahli and didn’t hear you.” She folded
Anna in her embrace, then stood back to gaze at her. “How are
you?”

“I’m pregnant.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. I’ve counted back. Nine
weeks.”

“Come inside and let me make you a cup of
tea.”

Kate’s kitchen was cozy and cheerful. A
bouquet of dried paintbrush stood in a pottery pitcher and a small
flower-garden quilt was tossed across the back of an antique wooden
bench. Anna sat on the bench and folded her hands, waiting.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come to the memorial
services, Anna. But I thought it best, under the
circumstances.”

“Yes. It was best.”

Kate sat beside her and handed her the tea.
Steam rose from the cup and warmed Anna’s cold face.

“I need your help, Kate,” she said.

“I’ll help you any way I can. You know
that.”

“I want an abortion.”

Kate set her cup on the table and walked to
the kitchen window. Outside, the winds howled against the eaves.
Rigid, she watched the snow blowing across the road, and when she
finally turned around, there were tears on her cheeks.

“I won’t abort your baby, Anna.”

“You said you would help!”

“I will ...but not that way.” She sat on the
bench and took Anna’s hand. “Have you thought this through? Do you
know the psychological damage you’ll inflict on yourself if you do
this thing?”

“All my other children were conceived in
love. I don’t want this child. It was conceived in the barn, in the
hay, like an animal.” Anna pressed her hands over her abdomen, as
if she could protect her child from the evil of its origins. “There
was no love ...only madness.”

“Are you sure?” Kate remembered Cole’s lucid
moment on the mountaintop, his whispered apology. “Cole was a
wonderful man who loved his children so much, he couldn’t handle
their death. Once, you loved him.”

Anna’s hands tightened over her womb as she
remembered the tender look on Cole’s face when he’d planted his
seed, and the way he’d called her his sweet hummingbird. At long
last she laid her head on her folded arms and cried for her
husband.

Kate got tissues from the bathroom then
reheated the tea.

“If the ranch holds too many painful memories
for you, you can stay here, rent free.”

“You’re leaving?” Anna asked.

“Yes. I’m going home.”

Anna didn’t try to dissuade her. She
understood only too well that Witch Dance could hold no hope for
Kate Malone.

“I have a sister in California,” Anna said.
“She has a guest cottage by the sea and a little shop that sells
embroidered children’s clothes. I can work with her, and I think
the change will be good for Clint.”

“And the baby?”

She placed her hands protectively over her
womb. “The baby, too.”

o0o

Kate stared straight ahead as she rode, for
she’d said good-bye to the land the day she’d returned from the
mountaintop. When Eagle’s ranch came into view, she steeled herself
to feel nothing, but instead she felt the flying sensation of
making love to him under the stars and the uninhibited joy of
riding bareback with him across the prairies. There, to her left,
she’d first seen him in the river, naked, and later they’d cavorted
in the water like lusty otters. And on the mountain she’d felt the
snow from his clothes melt upon her skin, just as he had melted
upon her skin and was there, still, a part of her that would be
there always, even though an ancient culture and a thousand miles
separated them.

He was standing beside his corral fence with
the setting sun at his back. He was beautiful, perfect. How could
she ever leave him?

She dismounted, and he shaded his eyes so he
could see her better. He used to say the sun turned her hair to
flame. Did it still, and did he notice?

“I came to give Mahli back to you.” Why
didn’t he say something? “I’m leaving Witch Dance.”

The sun blazed over them, red and gold, as
she waited for him to beg her not to go. Waited for the
impossible.

In the distance, the taxi she’d called
earlier came up the road, spewing snow from its back tires. Eagle’s
expression never changed as he reached for Mahli’s reins. He didn’t
even ask where she was going.

“I wish you well, Kate.”

The taxi driver honked the horn, and Kate
left Eagle without looking back. In the end, love had not been
enough.

Ada, Oklahoma

All the lights in Melissa’s bedroom were pink
so that the imperfections of her body were softened and the faint
lines in her face were invisible. Even the scar on her wrist barely
showed. Spread gracefully across the sheets, she watched every move
he made, watched as if her life depended on whether he went toward
the bed or the door.

Hal marveled at the power he had over her
...and at her power over him. He approached the bed naked and
kissed the inside of her wrist, where she’d slashed herself so his
blood could mingle with hers.

“I am Chickasaw now,” she said.

“Yes.” Sometimes a lie was kinder than the
truth, and Hal suddenly understood part of her power over him: He
wanted to be kind to her.

She touched the small scar on his wrist.
“Your blood flows through me and mine through you. You can never
leave me.” Tears started in her eyes. “Promise you’ll never leave
me, Clayton.”

“I’ll never leave you.” His hands trembled as
he brushed the tears from her eyes. There were no lies in him now,
for what he felt was too powerful for lies. He loved this woman
against all reason, and he would do whatever it took to keep her
...even become another man.

“You won’t let them take me back?” she
whispered.

“No. I won’t let them take you back.”