Dark Angel (26 page)

He struck me and I cried out, falling to the ground. I pulled myself up, too dizzy to stand, and forced my back against the scratchy bark of a tree, drawing my knees up, trying to make myself as small a target as possible.

He stalked after me. “You think to threaten me?
Me
? I won’t have it. But I’ll have
you
.”

He reached down and grabbed my hair, pulling my head back. I winced from the force of his grip and the renewed pounding inside my head.

“Howard,” I shouted, struggling against his hold. “You don’t understand. He’ll kill you, you fool! He can do it.”

He yanked my hair again, and I whimpered in pain.

Howard laughed, an edge of hysteria in his voice as he jammed the bloody blade into the tree trunk above my head. “Well, then, I’d better make this worth my while, eh? Might even enjoy myself this time. Might not leave me sick and empty and puking my guts out, crying for her like a child…”

I gaped in realization. “You still love her,” I whispered. “You still love Mariah. Do not do this. For her sake, please do not do this.”

He swore and slapped me again, so hard I began to cry.

“
Don’t you say that to me.
I hate her! Walked out on me, kicked me when I was down. Thinks she’s too good for me now, doesn’t she?” He shook me like a rag doll. “Well, I know how to kick her down, too.”

The time for reasoning with him had long passed. He’d become delusional, pawing at my skirts while the fog thickened all around us, cool and damp and deadly.

“Let’s have a look at what the master so highly prizes, then.” He grunted, sprawling on top of me. “Too bad for you he’s a night man. Puts him at a disadvantage, ’cause I can go all day. All day! Who knows, I might decide to keep you when I’m done—”

He never finished his sentence. One moment he was covering me, trying to tear off my clothes as I struggled beneath him, and in the next there was an explosion of fur and snarling and—

I screamed in horror as Beast took Howard down, rolled with him, then impaled Howard’s throat with his razor-sharp teeth, ripping a chunk of flesh away, slashing and biting and—

Oh God.
I turned my head, unable to watch as the one I loved savaged the one who’d harmed me.

I’d kill for you.

And because Gerard would kill for me, Beast had.

It was over quickly. In the silence that followed, I turned my head to look.

Beast hung over what was left of Howard’s body, his back to me, his head down as if checking to ensure the man was truly dead. Blood and bits of gore had flown everywhere, even onto me, I realized with shuddering revulsion.

The creature panted heavily, his sides heaving in and out, and slowly turned toward me. Bloodlust clouded his eyes, and for a moment, I was afraid of him.

Then his gaze cleared, and he looked down at the body and back at me, bewildered, as though he did not understand what he had done.

“Catherine!”

I jumped, for a second thinking Beast had spoken. Then I realized it was Matthew’s voice.

Matthew!

He stumbled into the clearing, pale and clutching his abdomen, his shirt and waistcoat beneath his topcoat soaked with blood. In his hand he held his father’s sword.

Beast turned toward him, snarling, and I knew instantly what he would do.

“Matthew, drop your weapon!”

“Catherine,” Matthew said, stopping dead in his tracks at the sight of the huge creature standing over his bloody kill, “
do not move
.” Matthew began to walk toward me slowly, brandishing the sword at Beast in a misguided attempt to frighten him away.

“Oh, God, Matthew, you must put the sword down. He was only protecting me. If he feels you’re a threat to me, he’ll kill you, too!”

Matthew motioned with his free hand. “You must get behind me, Catherine. I will handle this; do not fear.” Matthew’s face was ashen with pain, but he was a brave, foolish man and would never desert me. I could not bear the thought of his death on my conscience, and it would break Gerard.

Beast’s head lowered, and he drilled Matthew with an icy stare, his haunches bunching in preparation for an attack.

Matthew had nearly reached me. I had to convince him to listen.

“For the love of God, please,
please
, do not do this,” I begged, my hands outstretched. “Matthew, Mariah was right.
The creature is Gerard
.”

Matthew gaped in astonishment, his head swinging around to face me. The deadly distraction gave Beast his opportunity.

He leaped.

I screamed a warning. Matthew’s hand whipped toward Beast, his sword stabbing up just as the creature came down. Beast’s arc was too committed to stop and the rapier pierced his chest.

Chapter Twenty-two

My hands covering my mouth, my heart in my throat, I stared at Gerard lying atop Matthew on the ground before me. “Oh, God,” I whispered. “Oh, dear God.”

I took a trembling step toward them, then another, and after racing to Beast, dropped down on my knees beside him in the dirt. I reached for him, burying my fingers in his fur, then gripped Matthew’s wrist, searching for a pulse.

Beneath my hand, Matthew jerked, then groaned, and shoving, pushing, and crawling, managed to pull himself out from under Beast’s inert form. He was covered in blood, his own and Beast’s.

He rolled over, his hands propped behind him, his legs splayed before him, staring at the creature with wide, horrified eyes. “Is it—do you think it is dead?”

Please, God, do not let him be dead.

How could it be possible that every other human being on this island might be immortal but him? Was it because when Gerard was Beast, he wasn’t human?

“Beast?” I pressed my fingers to his neck, but could not feel his pulse. “Gerard?”

Matthew rose and came to me, putting his hands on my shoulders, trying to pull me away, but as we watched, something extraordinary happened.

The creature took a deep, shuddering breath, and his limbs began to shorten, the fur on his body retracting into his skin. His tail shrank and his ears and claws drew in but did not completely disappear; then everything reversed itself and he was the beast again. The cycle repeated itself several times, flickering back and forth: one moment he was almost Beast, the next almost Gerard, but never completely either. Finally it stopped, and what remained was halfway in between the beast and the man.

It seemed as though the gleaming blade forged from Templar steel had caused a disruption in whatever enchantment held Gerard hostage between the night and the day.

“It’s true. It
is
the master.” Matthew knelt beside me, as dazed as I. “What sorcery is this?”

I touched my lover’s face with trembling hands. He was vulnerable and naked, shivering with cold. “I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me. Oh, Matthew, he’s freezing. He’s in shock.” I wrapped my arms around him. “We have to keep him warm.”

Matthew took off his topcoat and, pushing me out of the way, draped it over Gerard, tucking it in around him, leaving the hilt of the sword exposed. “The blade.” He reached for it.

“No!” I stopped him. “If we take it out, he’ll likely die quicker, if he’s going to die at all.”

Matthew gazed at him. “Surely he has been cursed by some dark form of magic. I do not know whether it would be a mercy or an abomination to let such a…an unnatural thing as this survive.”

I whipped my head around, snarling at him as though I were the beast, not Gerard. “
Don’t you say that.”

He drew back in astonishment.

“He is Gerard, your master, who has shown your people compassion time and again. If you cannot do the same, then leave!” The mist grew heavier, almost drizzling now. I could hear the sound of distant voices, people calling my name and Matthew’s, occasionally Howard’s. They were looking for us.

“They cannot see him this way. Go; divert them. I have to try to save him. Mariah needs him.
You
need him. Even if you will not help me save him, at least spare him this one humiliation. Let them remember him as he was, not as he is now.”

Matthew stared at me, then gave a quick nod and stumbled off, clutching at the wound in his abdomen.

I heard Gerard cough and turned back to him. His wide, catlike eyes opened, and he stared behind me, his gaze filled with suffering. He gagged, rolling to one side, and blood spilled out of his mouth.

“Catherine,” he rasped.

“I’m here. I’m here, my love. Be at peace.” I stroked my fingers over his furred cheek, which was damp with my tears. “Shh.”

His eyes found mine. “You are—safe?” He had difficulty speaking, either from the pain or the changes in his facial structures, I could not tell.

“Yes. You saved me. It is all right, Gerard. Everything will be all right now.”

He looked down at the blade thrust through his chest and managed a wry chuckle, despite his pain. “Maybe not.”

He grimaced, drawing up his knees. He was in agony.

Oh, God, what if he could not live
or
die? What if he was trapped in this state forever? What was the right thing to do for him?

I simply did not know.

“Gerard, you must help me. Tell me what must be done.”

His claws slid out of their sheaths, then retracted again. He pointed into the fog. “Ask
him
.”

I looked over my shoulder after Matthew, who had already disappeared into the mist, then back at Gerard. “Matthew does not know, either.”

“No.” Gerard pointed into the fog once more.

“
Him
,” he rasped, and his hand dropped to his side.

Chapter Twenty-three

Gerard’s eyes closed. He was unconscious again.

I felt the presence before I saw it. I slowly turned my head to look behind me.

The fog took on substance and form, forcing itself into a shape, one almost human, but not quite. The wind drifted through it, and it dissolved and reformed now into a face, now into a hand, then a body again until all the parts congealed into one mass, and the mass turned its gaze on me.

A feeling of déjà vu overcame me, something I’d felt in nightmares and in my darkest days of despair. I could almost remember, but then the memory slipped away even as I reached for it.

I recognized this presence, and yet I did not.

“Who—what are you?” I whispered.

A voice that was not a voice echoed in my head. I heard it with my mind, not my ears, and at first I did not understand it. It blasted like a thousand trumpets, and I clutched my head in pain.

“Too much!” I cried, and the sound immediately dimmed.

It grew more focused, softened into a million tongues, in different languages, then a thousand, then a hundred, as though it sorted and sifted through the ones it wished to communicate with. Finally, the clamor of words and voices resolved into a single shining melody, and I understood it.

“You know me. You have always known me,” it whispered to my heart. If it had had a head, I would say it cocked it, but it merely had eyes now, the rest of its form slipping away.

A chill crept over me and I shook my head, refusing to accept the evidence of my eyes. It was too much. “No.”

It shoulders had reformed, and it shrugged. “You can lie to yourself, if you wish, but you cannot lie to me. You recognize me. We are old friends.”

The gray mist formed into a face I recognized.

Jonathan’s, then Eliza’s, then my father’s, and then quickly flipping through dozens of faces of the men who had died in my arms, in hospital beds, far away in a land torn by war.

“They knew me, too,” it offered.

I took a shuddering breath, then another. The reality of all I’d been through in the past few weeks was simply too much to bear. I wanted to scream, to run, to hide. But Gerard depended on me. And my soul acknowledged what it had known from the time I was a little girl, so ill I wanted to die and yet with a will too strong to be taken even then.

Death.

“Yes, you remember now,” it said, its voice a billion strong and yet quiet as a whisper. “I am sometimes called
The Angel of Death
, although we needn’t be so formal. We have been friends and worthy adversaries for a long time. You have even known me here, where so few have needed my services.”

I closed my eyes, remembering the face in the fog the first time I had encountered the creature, the continual feeling here that I was being watched.

“And before,” the voices whispered.

Yes, before, on the beach. I had felt its cold embrace, in the moments before Gerard had found me so near to death. Near to
it
.

“Yes, that was me,” he confessed, and I sensed a hint of embarrassment. “I apologize for being so forward, but you are difficult to resist.”

Death had courted me most of my life…

“But I have business to conclude here.” His gaze bent on Gerard, who was still unconscious, and I flung myself between them.

“You cannot have him. I will not permit it.” Even though my protests were futile against such a formidable adversary, I could not help but try.

Something smiled at me from the midst of the fog. “So bold,” he murmured. “So defiant. You fight me for every one of them. You always have.” It stretched out a hand, gesturing to Gerard. “Would you have me leave him this way?”

I turned to look at Gerard, his body racked with pain.

“I am not unkind, you know,” Death told me. “My duties are a mercy to most I claim. Imagine if mortals could not die. Imagine the horrible, unendurable suffering that would ensue. Only the people here know the true cost of immortality.”

I put my arms around Gerard, guarding him fiercely. “Then heal him. Give him back to me.”

Death sighed. “I am a soldier. I go where I am directed. I perform my duties. I move on.”

A sob caught in my throat, wrenching my heart. “Do not do this. Please, for the love of God, I am begging you. I will do anything you ask!”

It grew still. “Anything, Catherine?”

I looked at Death, and understood it wanted something from me, had always wanted something from me. “
You
brought me here,” I whispered, knowing it was true. “You were the one who pulled me out of the water.”

I could feel its satisfaction that I had guessed correctly.

“Why? What is it you want from me?” I asked.

Behind me, Gerard shifted.

“No, Cat, don’t…don’t bargain with it,” he ground out, each word labored and wrung from him like drops of blood. “Not for my sake.
Promise me
.”

I soothed him, then gave my full attention to the specter before me.

The fog swirled around me, and I felt the cold fingers of Death brush my cheek. “A kiss.”

“What?”
I could not have understood it correctly. I turned my head, trying to track it in the wind.

“You heard me,” it said. “A kiss is what I ask. Will you give it freely?”

My breath shuddered out. “That—that is all you want?”

I felt Gerard’s claws unsheathe beneath my hand. “No…no more bargains. You cannot
win
.”

The voices whispered in my head. “Will you kiss me, Catherine?”

“Why? Why do you want this from me?”

“I think you are as curious about me as I am about you. The circumstances—this island—make it possible for us both to satisfy our curiosity. Will you do it?”

“Will Gerard live if I do?”

“He will have his life back.”

And I would lose mine. For who could survive the kiss of Death? My heart chilled, and I closed my eyes. I had no life if I lost Gerard anyway, and the people of this island needed him even more than I did.

A dawning realization caused me to open my eyes. “Gerard spoke of a bargain. Everyone tries to bargain with Death, don’t they? But he must have succeeded where others have not.”

I sensed Death’s hesitation, his surprise.

“He succeeded because it somehow suited your purpose.” And then I knew what that purpose was. “You are lonely,” I whispered. “This island—you agreed to spare the people here so you could keep them for yourself. They’re like—like pets to you. You like to visit them, to watch them. And you brought me here for the same reason.”

“They are not my pets. They are much more to me than that.” The mist drifted, thinned. “I saw an opportunity. This island is special. It has always been so, from the beginning of time. They are chosen. But he,” Death said, gesturing to Gerard, “thought that he could take liberties with the gifts he’d been given. Like the people of Babel, he thought to elevate himself above God. Instead of using his gifts to heal, he decided to make the people here invulnerable to me—to find a way to defy death. And he nearly succeeded. He experimented, abused his powers, and tampered with the very fabric of time itself. He nearly destroyed the island in the process.”

Death turned to me, righteous anger emanating from him. “I could have taken the entire island. But he offered to bargain with me: his life for theirs. I agreed, but not in the way he intended. It was decreed that he would suffer two punishments for his hubris. First was to have his wish granted. The surviving villagers—those who remained after his experiment nearly destroyed the island—became immortal. But if none died, then none could be born, either. No souls could be sent to replace those that departed, so the babes are all stillborn.”

Death’s shape drifted, then reformed. “The second punishment was this—since he used his reason to break his covenant with God, it was to be taken away from him for all the daylight hours of his life and he would become no more than a beast by day, and no less than a man by night, so that he could continue to serve his people. His punishment was just. And for staying my hand from this place, I was given the right to seek refuge here from my work from time to time. Do you understand?”

I understood its meaning. “Here, you are not Death.”

“Here, I am only Being.”

I rose, standing between Death and Gerard, resolve stiffening my backbone. I would do whatever it took to save Gerard and give him back to his people. “I understand. But how could a kiss from me matter to you at all?”

“When the storm brought you to me, I was presented with a chance to know you in a different way than I ever had before. I was curious, about you and the kiss. I observe life, but do not participate. When people cross over, the kiss is a memory many of them carry to the other side. It is often given upon the deathbed, and so it is natural they would think on it. But it endures. Humans engage in it for all reasons, for all purposes, at all ages, between all peoples and walks of life. To say hello. To say farewell. To spark desire. I am…curious,” it said again, “and if you will satisfy my curiosity, I will give your lover back his life.”

I squinted at him, suspicious. “Whole? As he was?”

“As he was. I can do no more.”

There was no question of what I would do. I had once let others I loved die while I lived. I would not do so again. If my life was to be the price for saving Gerard’s, I would gladly give it rather than being the one left behind.

I took a shuddering breath. With it, I expelled the fear. There was no point to it. I’d made up my mind, and that was all there was to it. “I will do it. But you have no form. How shall we go about it?”

“Wait…” the voices whispered.

The fog swirled again, and it reformed around the handle of the rapier, slowly sliding it out of Gerard’s body. Blood gushed from the open wound, and I feared it was too late—that I had lost him already—but the fog collected around him, streaming into the hole, plugging it up until the bleeding stopped. Then, it disappeared completely inside.

Gerard’s body transformed again, and soon he took on his natural shape. He became fully man, touched by the daylight for the first time in a hundred years.

His eyelids slid open, but the eyes looking back at me were not his.

They gleamed, dark as polished obsidian, no pupils or whites visible at all. It was a startling effect, like staring into a starless night sky. Not empty, but full of profound, endless, infinite, and unknowable space.

He smiled and rose to his feet, Matthew’s topcoat dropping from his shoulders, until he stood before me, proud and tall and beautiful. His chest still bore the mark of the rapier, but the wound had closed, and every other part of him was familiar to me, from the hard width of his shoulders to the tight ropes of his abdomen, to the strength of his bulging thighs, to his sturdy feet planted in the soil. He moved his hand, and his body was clad in his usual ensemble of black wool and linen and boots. I’d wondered before how he’d managed that, and now I understood—it was, like so many other things on this island, by magic.

If it hadn’t been for the color of his eyes, I would have thought it was Gerard from the way he held himself, the intensity of his gaze. But it wasn’t Gerard, and I would do well to remember it.

“Is he still the beast? Or will he be able to live in the daytime as a man from now on?”

“Only for today.”

He stepped forward, his hand cupping my cheek. I felt a bone-chilling shiver rush over me, a cold I recognized from so many moments of my life. I imagined the chill enveloping me, freezing me from the inside out, and I was very, very afraid.

I gasped and stepped back.

Death dropped his hand. “I am sorry. There is nothing I can do about the cold.” He sounded displeased, for my sake or his, I did not know. “Have you changed your mind?”

Gerard would live. I must focus on that alone.

“No, I have not changed my mind. We have a bargain.”

I stepped forward and lifted my face to his.

He did not touch me this time but simply leaned down and pressed his mouth to mine.

Immediately, a rushing wind blasted me, and the bitter cold—deeper, more intense than any I have ever experienced—surrounded me, making me shiver, my teeth nearly chattering. The lips pressed to mine became firmer, more insistent, and I opened my mouth beneath his, struck by the duality of sensations I was experiencing. These were Gerard’s lips, but not his, and the strangeness of it was almost more than I could bear. I was determined Death would not find me wanting in our bargain, however, so I reached for him of my own free will and pressed my body against his, kissing him harder, more fully on the mouth.

He made a sound like any man would—an inhalation of surprise, a grunt of satisfaction—and he deepened the kiss.

Images of foreign lands, savage faces, ancient times swept through my mind. There was Cleopatra, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Elizabeth I. There were farmers and soldiers and tinkers and fishwives. There was my father, my husband, my child. He had taken them all, from the great to the small. Their status never mattered to him. In the end, they came to him stripped of their achievements, of all their worldly possessions, with only their conscience and character to recommend them.

He treated them as friends or enemies according to the mercy or justice they’d been given from above, and they fought him and feared him, except for the ones who understood him, the ones who had lived long, fruitful lives or endured unbearable pain and who welcomed his embrace. And there was regret there, too, for the ones who sought him out before their time, who thrust their attentions on him, who called him before he had a chance to prepare the way. And there was sadness for the little ones, the ones who never had the opportunity to truly live.

I tasted all this in his kiss, felt it in his mind while I sped with him across all the nations of the Earth, saw people of every shape and color and kind and creed and they all came to us, came to
me
…