A Candle in the Dark (23 page)

“Keep away from me.” He scrambled backward, rigid against the tree, his whole body shaking from effort. “Stay away from me, John, goddammit. Stay away from me!”

“Jiméne!” Ana shouted over her shoulder. “Jiméne, something’s wrong!”

“Not Rafael.” D’Alessandro’s head twitched from side to side. “Rafael—”

“Jiméne!”

“Christ. John—no!” Cain’s shout was so loud it echoed through the shadows. She saw terror and hopelessness, mindless, excruciating fear.

“Jiméne!”

“I am here.” Jiméne stood beside her, holding the ladle in his hand. “Stand back, Ana.”

“But—”

“Stand back.”

She stepped away, and Jiméne flung the water into Cain’s face. D’Alessandro stiffened, frozen into place, and then he sputtered and choked. His body sagged, the shaking gone, and for a moment he was completely still.

They had done this to him. For a moment, Ana was so shaken by remorse and shame she couldn’t think. They had done this to him. They had made him this. Her reasons for doing it now seemed unspeakably cruel, achingly selfish. She had done it because she was afraid of him, because she had not been able to face the fact that she was beginning to care about him.

She stared at his face, remembering how warm and comforting his body had felt wrapped around hers, and she suddenly felt tired and old.

Jiméne stepped away. “He will be fine,
cariña
,” he said softly. “Trust me.”

The moment he said the words, D’Alessandro shivered, his whole body convulsed in final, hopeless surrender. Then he began to sob. Hoarse, terrible sounds, as if torn from his soul. Though his eyes were closed, tears streamed from them, racing down his cheeks, shining in the lamplight.

He sobbed, and she wanted to sob with him. She couldn’t bear it; her whole heart felt leaden and heavy in her chest. Her reasons for staying away from him faded then. Without thinking, without knowing anything at all except that she wanted to comfort him, had to comfort him, she pulled him down beside her, wrapping her arms around him until his sobs shook her body, until she felt his hot tears on her throat.

“I’m here, Cain,” she whispered. “I’m here, with you. I’m not going away.” She said the words over and over again, until his sobs stopped and his arms tightened around her, holding her so close the ropes at his wrists cut into her skin.

It wasn’t until then that she wondered if it was for Cain she said the words.

Or herself.

Ana and Jiméne took turns watching him. Jiméne would go into town to get food and water and sleep while she took care of D’Alessandro, and she would sleep while Jiméne watched.

Except that she didn’t really sleep. She couldn’t. In the last four days, she hadn’t done more than take short, restless naps. Naps full of dreams and memories, naps so disconcerting that she kept herself awake, too afraid to sleep, staring at the shadows and listening to D’Alessandro’s hoarse, grating cries.

This was her fault. All her fault. Ana wished now that she hadn’t gone to the damn
fandango
, wished she hadn’t let him touch her, or let the pleading in his eyes convince her that it might be all right to dance with him, just once. She wished he hadn’t taken her outside into the erotic moonlight.

But most of all, she wished she hadn’t agreed with Jiméne to force him into sobriety.

Because he still hadn’t stopped tossing and turning. He didn’t stop screaming. It looked as if he were awake all the time, awake and wide-eyed, though his gaze was blank, as if he were watching things she couldn’t even imagine. By the way he was screaming, they were very dark things indeed.

Ana closed her eyes, resting her chin on her raised knees. She felt old and tired, and more alone than she could ever remember feeling. There was a dull throb of regret deep in her heart. She wouldn’t have done this to him if she had known what he would go through, but the thought didn’t make her feel any better—especially because she wondered if it was really true. She remembered how frightened she’d been that night, how panicked when she ran to Jiméne, and she wondered if knowing the price D’Alessandro would pay to become sober would have changed her decision.

Probably not.

She never would have guessed she would feel such regret, or such a need to make this all up to him. The last few days tormented her with images: D’Alessandro warning her that the men were talking about her and Jiméne, D’Alessandro rushing to her aid when she’d fainted in the jungle, D’Alessandro handing her a blanket of India rubber to protect her from the rain. A hundred little kindnesses, and she had repaid him by trusting a folk doctor over him and trying to steal the tickets, by tying him to a tree and watching him suffer.

Something had to be missing inside of her. Something important. Something she didn’t understand. She had always wanted a friend, but now it occurred to her that maybe the reason she had none was because she couldn’t be a friend back. She was too afraid of revealing something that could be used as a weapon against her, too afraid of being indebted.

More than that, she was desperately afraid that she had learned so well how to survive on her own, she had no honor left, and no understanding of what a promise really meant. She’d had to learn to be selfish, had learned the hard way that honor could be anything you made it, that the only dignity was in surviving.

Ana glanced over at D’Alessandro, who was sleeping fitfully, his body jerking, his skin bathed in sweat. She wondered what made him what he was. He was alone, like she was. He had survived too. But there was a sad integrity about him, the sense that there were things he would not do, principles he would not sacrifice.

Unlike her.

Loneliness swept over her, so intense she hugged her knees tightly, digging her fingers into her skin until it hurt. She had wanted to make Jiméne her friend, but she had made the decision based on how easy it was to manipulate him. And even then, she had the feeling that though she and Jiméne were companionable, it was D’Alessandro who had truly become Jiméne’s friend over the past days, not her. Jiméne wanted Cain sober because he would be healthier that way. She wanted him sober because she was afraid for herself. She had never once thought about how it would help him. Hardly what a friend would do.

She wondered that Cain talked to her at all. Ana closed her eyes, fighting sadness. Once again, she was on the outside looking in, just as she’d always been. Excluded. Alone. And it was all her own fault. All her own—

“Ana.” He groaned her name, it sounded dredged up from his very soul. “Ana—”

She was on her feet in a moment, racing the short distance between them, falling to her knees at his side.

“Save me,” he mumbled, tossing his head from side to side. His hair whipped into his face, clung to his skin, his mouth. His fingers curled. “Get him away from me. Christ! Christ, get him away…”

Her heart rose to her throat. Ana reached out, touching his shoulder gently. He reacted as if she’d hit him, jerking away, eyes wide open and black with fever and delusion. “Don’t touch me! Get him away! Get him away!” He clawed at his skin, scrambling with his feet, pushing against the tree. “Ana!”

“I’m here, I’m here.”

“Ana!” His voice broke. “Please God, help me. Help me…”

Desperately Ana grabbed his hands, pulling them away from his eyes, not knowing what else to do, how to calm him. “Shhh. I’m here. Shhh.” She smoothed his hair away from his face, dragging it out of his mouth, running her hands along his slick, hot skin. “Cain. Cain, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

He stared at her, but she saw with a sinking heart that he wasn’t really seeing her, though her touch seemed to calm him. She heard the whimper from his throat, and then he closed his eyes, breathing raggedly, and sagged into her arms, his face against her breasts.

His weight was heavy and solid, and Ana stared at his dark head for a moment while the memories came flooding back. Memories of holding her mother in her arms, just this way. Memories of stroking her and rocking her frail body. Memories of being needed.

Being needed. She was good at that anyway. She could comfort him, if nothing else. Especially now, when his disconcerting gaze demanded nothing of her. Yes, she knew how to be needed.

The thought sent a warm, soft feeling coursing through her, something she hadn’t felt in a long time. It surprised her, just as it surprised her how badly she wanted to help him. He had called her name, asked for
her
, though she hardly deserved such trust. But he called for her help, not Jiméne’s.

The loneliness inside her eased slightly, and Ana curved her arms around him. She felt his tighten around her waist, felt his hands dig into her skin as if he was afraid she was leaving him.

Behind her, she heard the sound of footsteps on the grass, and she turned her head to see Jiméne standing there, a jug of water in his hand.

“
Carina
,” he said softly. “Should I take over now? Would you like to sleep?”

D’Alessandro moaned. She felt the vibration of the sound deep in her chest, in her heart, and she shook her head. “No,” she whispered, trying to ignore the trembling in her voice. “No. He—he called for me.”

“He called for you.”

“Yes. Yes, he did.”

“I see.” Jiméne studied her for so long Ana turned her head away, not looking at him as he moved back to the fire, and she heard the thunking of the water jug on the ground, his heavy sigh as he followed it.

Uncomfortably, she wondered what he’d seen, and why she heard that curious tone in his voice, but then D’Alessandro moved in her arms again, and she held him tight and rocked back and forth in time to the breeze singing through the trees, in time to the humming insects, forgetting Jiméne as she tried to remember a lullaby.

He felt like hell. Cain wasn’t sure he’d really known the definition of the word before now. His head throbbed—a low, dull ache at the back of his skull. His stomach was sore, his mouth dry, and his skin felt as if tiny bugs with sticky feet crawled all over him. His hands were still shaking—or, if they weren’t, they felt as if they were.

But mostly he felt hollow, like a reed with all the pith blown out. As if just opening his eyes would be an effort. So for a moment, he didn’t open them. He sat there, with his head against the rough bark of a tree, and remembered with painful clarity why he was here and what had happened. Or at least, he remembered most of it. Some of it was foggy and hard to focus on, and Cain had the feeling that was exactly how he wanted it to stay. The last hours had been the worst nightmare of his life. Even worse than his childhood, and God knew that was bad.

The thought made him smile, and the movement cracked his lips painfully. He tried to swallow, but his throat felt raw and strained, and there was no saliva to swallow with. What he needed was a drink. Bourbon, straight and slightly warm from the sun. The thought of it sent a pleasurable heat through his veins and his thirst intensified until his mouth was watering. Yes, bourbon. Smooth, amber bourbon…

Slow suicide.

The words plunged through him, an echo of thoughts he’d had before. Slow suicide. He remembered—or thought he did—a long time ago, when he’d vowed to stop drinking, when he felt guilty and ashamed and miserable in the morning after he’d broken the vow. God, how long ago that was. Now, in the morning, he felt afraid, mostly. Afraid of the fact that he couldn’t get through a day without a drink, or two, or ten. Afraid of his loss of control and the horrible, terrifying loss of memory. But he no longer promised himself to stop. That strength had disappeared, along with any good thought he’d ever had about himself.

Slow suicide
. Funny, how the words were so clear—almost blindingly brilliant in his mind. Funny, too, how divorced he felt from them. As if they were about someone else. As if he no longer cared enough to do anything about them.

That was true enough. He no longer cared. He was a miserable excuse for a human being—all it took was the memory of John Matson’s death to remind him of that, even if his father’s punishments and his mother’s scorn hadn’t already battered his self-esteem.

Slow suicide
. Hell, it was either that or kill himself quickly, and Cain had long ago faced the fact that he didn’t have the kind of courage it took to end his life. At least not so blatantly.

“Are you awake?” Ana’s soft voice cut through his thoughts, and Cain opened his eyes, closing them again quickly as the morning light speared through his brain.

“I don’t know,” he croaked.

“You are awake.” Relief colored her tone, he heard the swish of her skirts as she knelt beside him. “Thank God.”

That startled him. Cain peered at her through slitted eyes. Her expression was worried and concerned, and though that too was surprising, what wasn’t surprising was that she knelt just beyond his reach, and she looked wary, ready to fly at the slightest provocation.

No wonder, he thought wryly. He vaguely remembered his hallucinations—and the fact that her face had gone in and out of his delirium.

He closed his eyes again wearily. “Did I hurt you?”

“No.” She didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “No, you didn’t. You gave Jiméne a black eye, though.”

Cain smiled. “No doubt he deserved it. I suppose he’s mad because I spoiled his good looks?”

“He’ll get over it.” Amusement filled her voice. “How do you feel?”

“Thirsty.”

“Oh.” There was movement beside him; Cain heard the dripping of liquid on the grassy ground. “Here.”

“Not for water,” he said shortly.

“Oh.” He heard her disappointment and the soft thud of the ladle dropping. “You want a drink.”

“Bourbon, if you have it.” The very word made him swallow with painful longing. “Though I suppose
aguardiente
will do.”

“Jiméne said—he said you wouldn’t want it any longer.”

“He was wrong.”

“He had hoped…” She trailed off. Cain could almost hear the nervous clenching of her hands on her skirt. “You haven’t had a drink in six days.”

His eyes flew open in surprise. The sunlight exploded in his brain, and he tented his hand over his eyes long enough to look at her. Six days. He would have said one day, maybe. Two at the most. But not six days. Christ, not
six
. But then he saw the anxiety in her eyes. “You’re telling the truth,” he said flatly.