Forbidden (39 page)

Stohn was free at last! He had almost fallen to the ground, he’d strained so hard, the release coming so suddenly and unexpectedly. He had raced forward, wings of stone, skin of stone, body and eyes all of stone, all the weight of what he was crushing down on Kamenwati.

“What? Lose concentration, did we?” he rasped into the priest’s ear, his stony voice like the sound of granite grinding together.

Ram had taken a pretty good hit; his shoulder and half his chest had been burned by the Curse. He was in pain, but all he could focus on was looking for Docia. He needed to see her face. To feel her touch. To know he had done well by her. It was all that mattered to him in that moment.

He needn’t have fretted. She was against his back in another second, crying hysterically in grief, her immediate rage spent now that all potential targets of it had been dealt with in one form or another. She wrung him about the neck from behind, causing him excruciating pain, but he said nothing. He didn’t care. Physical discomfort meant nothing in the face of his relief that she was all right. He enveloped her head in his hand, the short fuzziness of her hair the sweetest sensation on earth to him, next to the sting of her salty tears against his burned skin. He turned, gathering her close and tight, checking all corners of the room to make certain there was no further threat to either of them. He saw Kamenwati wrest free of Stohn with the help of the remaining Templar acolytes. He fell onto Odjit’s body and in a searing scream of red light they both disap
peared. But the blood on the floor told a breathless tale: it said that for the first time in so many regenerations, Odjit would be dead and trapped in the Ether while Menes was just about to be born to continue his rule of the Bodywalkers. Without Odjit’s power to fuel them, he believed there would be no one strong enough to fight Menes. With Tameri on their side, the Templars would have little chance of fighting a diplomatic assimilation of the two halves of their people.

Marissa was in shock. She had been since the first thrust of attack, since Jackson had been ripped from her side and thrown fifty feet away. She had stared wide-eyed as a power struggle had ensued, power being the key word. She saw things that her logical, analytical mind could not accept. Watched death play out before her. Saw monstrous bewinged creatures of stone fly and leap around her to subdue the attacking force, or what was left of it after Jackson’s sister had
turned them to
ice
and scattered them everywhere. She was breathing hard, unable to focus on anything, almost too frightened to move. But when she finally forced herself, all she could do was run. She ran out of the house, making several strides before the ice on the ground got the better of her. This time there was no Jackson to catch her, no Jackson to protect her or mock her or argue with her.

As she lay sprawled on her stomach in the ice and felt the burn of skinned knees and palms, she tried to pick herself up, her whole spirit screaming to go into flight mode. She found herself staring at the wheels of Jackson’s car and saw his booted heel hanging off the edge of the hood.

She burst into tears, fear and pain and all of it making her dissolve into a mess of emotion and inaction that might get her killed. She rose to her hands and knees, kicked off her stupid heels, and crawled toward the
hood of the car. She pulled herself up by the metal of the car, somehow feeling as though she couldn’t go any further until she saw him. He was out there, all alone. No one, not even Leo, had come to him. What if … ?

She paused at the hood’s edge, taking several deep breaths, giving herself a lecture to suck it up, before peeping up over the edge to look at him.

He lay there, his body deeply embedded in the glass, shards and a starburst pattern beneath him as though he might be some kind of messiah. He looked almost peaceful, almost angelic. His dark hair, as black as his sister’s, was just starting to get long. Long for him, anyway. She knew he kept it short and succinct as required by uniform code, but she suspected it was a personal choice as well. Even when he’d been on leave, he’d always kept it uniform ready. But the odd angle of his head and the open stare of his baby-blue eyes told her just how wrong everything was. So wrong. How could a man who had loved his sister so valiantly, who had loved the law so loyally … who had loved a goddamn dog with just as much devotion as he could have a human partner, if not more … how could that be gone? Just … gone? Wiped away in such a wholly preposterous series of events?

Tears flooded her vision and she blinked them away, reaching for his hand, the rough, calloused fingertips and limply curled fingers already going cold in the frigid night. Still, she held his hand regardless. A placeholder, she knew, until his sister could get there. She was busy … but she knew Docia and knew she’d be there just as soon as she could. But Marissa couldn’t leave him lying in the cold alone until then. He deserved more than that.

“Oh, damn, Jackson,” she hitched out. “You were the best one. You were the best of the whole lot of them. I couldn’t say it because I had to be so goddamn profes
sional. But I should have said it. And not in anger, like in the break room. Not to shame you, but to praise you like you deserved. I’m sorry. I’m so,
so
sorry.”

She could barely see, barely breathe, her entire head ringing with a strange knell of grief that shut out the rest of the world. And perhaps it was this isolation from everything else that allowed it.…

Allowed her to feel the twitch in his fingers.

She went cold to the core, cold because she couldn’t stop the rush of hope that raced through her, even though her doctor’s brain was lecturing her on electrical misfires of muscles and nerves of the recently dead that could still twitch here and there. But then a twitch turned into the slow, methodical touch of one finger after another closing weakly but purposefully around her hand.

She screamed.

Docia was beside herself, Tameri no better. The symbiosis between them was taking root faster and faster the more they were pushed into acting as a single entity, the more they were forced to find common footing in order to wield the power they needed. Here they were, two men, each so important to her in his own way and both damaged because of her. Tameri blamed herself. She should have felt Odjit’s approach and arrival. She didn’t take into account her nascent Blending. Guilt rarely took such things into account. And as Ram turned to gather her to his scorched chest, she wanted to rebel, to punish herself for her weaknesses, her shortcomings in this mess … for Jackson’s death. She tried to push him back, tried to sit alone on the stark, cold tile and in the icy breeze blowing in the door and from the dining room. She deserved nothing more and quite a bit less. Ram had tried to warn her, tried to caution
her about the consequences of her fragile human brother coming amid them, standing on the lines of a war.

But Ram wouldn’t let her sit cold and alone. He forced her into his embrace, drew her against the warmth of his chest. She didn’t have the heart to push against him as forcefully as she would need to get away from him; the idea of causing him further damage or pain was unconscionable. She had gone dry-eyed and numb, unaware of just about everything going on around them, shock and grief burrowing deep.

She saw SingSing suddenly appear, a sloppy, dripping sandwich in her hands and an iPod nestled deep in her ears. She came up short when she saw the destruction around her, a large blob of mayonnaise oozing from between the bread and hitting the marble with a plop. She reached up with fumbling fingers to pull the deafening earbuds out of her ears.

Marissa’s scream made her, as well as everyone else, jolt in her own skin.

“Someone help! He’s breathing! Help me! Help me!”

She sounded hysterical, but Docia didn’t even notice. It was the words ringing in her ears, the hope flooding her soul, that she heard.

It’s not possible,
Tameri thought, surprise and warning in her words.
She is mistaken. You saw.…

I was dead once, too,
Docia snapped back to her, shoving free of Ram and racing out the door and down the stairs. She hit the same ice Marissa had, but her improved strength and reflexes helped her to right herself almost immediately. She ran to the car and leapt onto the hood, her feet thundering on the metal and her knees as well as she knelt, straddling one of her brother’s legs. She ignored the hysterical redhead gripping his hand and forced Tameri to use her special skills to look at him once again, to reseek those signs that had previously been absent from him.

She looked …

… and looked …

… and just when she was starting to fill with rage toward Marissa for spearing her with false hope, she saw it, the lightest fluttering beat in his carotid artery.

“SingSing!” she screamed, remembering instantly how the Djynn had healed her cold and damaged feet.

The Djynn appeared on the hood of the car in a brilliant poof of purple-and-lime-green smoke. She heard Marissa’s gasp of shock, and with a flourish of arms she said, “Ta-da!”

“SingSing!” Ram bit out, having arrived hot on Docia’s heels. It wasn’t SingSing’s fault, really. They were natural showmen, the Djynn. It was in their blood and too hard sometimes to resist.

“Right,” she said, crouching to inspect the human male embedded in the windshield. “Hmm. Barely there.” She looked Docia dead in the eye and said, “Do you wish for me to save him?”

Docia opened her mouth to rail her answer at her, furious at the ridiculousness of the request.

“No!” Ram bit out, grabbing Docia by the arm and giving her a shake to disrupt her knee-jerk response.

“Yes!” Marissa cried. “Save him!”

SingSing smiled, satisfaction lighting her eyes.

“As you wish,” she said in a singsong voice, clapping her hands together. The sound of power it made was like a sonic boom, and for the first time Docia realized just how powerful the goofy little Djynn might be. A wave of energy thumped downward at Jackson, his crooked body twitching violently as she laid her hands on him. And the minute she touched him, he gasped for breath, sucking it in deep and long as though he had been underwater and surfaced just in time to keep from drowning.

“Oh, my God! Jackson!” Docia cried out, reaching to
gather him close to her even as he jerked in defensiveness, trying to guard himself from further attack. He sat up, shards of glass falling like diamonds from his clothing. He coughed, his body shivering hard in the cold.

Docia felt him holding on to her, a twofold gesture of affection and anchoring himself, protectiveness and a need to feel the realness of her.

“Are you all right?” he coughed out, his lips pressing hard against her forehead, his eyes darting around to see the faces looking at him.

She laughed at the absurdity of him asking her that question. “I’m fine,” she told him. She helped him slide off the hood of the car, her eyes lifting briefly to catch Ram’s gaze.

Oh, there was no mistaking the venom that shot toward him. She was furious with him, and he suspected he knew why. But she wasn’t seeing the bigger picture. It bothered him, though, that he should have to excuse himself and apologize or make amends to her. Why did she not trust him, after all they had been through? Why did she have so little faith in him? He wanted to reach out and grab her, take her into privacy, where he could teach her a thing or two about the faith he thought he deserved.

But he exhaled a long, slow breath and let his temper cool. It was so strange, this way of feeling; this assumptive sensation that they had known each other for a lifetime and should know and trust each other to the core in all things. But the truth was that their relationship was light and young. Newly born, however old the sensation of their connected spirits might be. He had to remember that they had barely touched, barely kissed, barely loved.…

But it was hard to do so when he was so full of love and pride for her. She had fought back against one of
the worst enemies known to the body Politic. The strongest driving force of the Templar rebellion had been cut down, her strongest forces obliterated at Docia’s hand. And although Leo had struck the fatal blow, it was Docia who had softened her up enough that he was able to reach her.

“Someone needs to explain to me what in the name of God is going on here,” Jackson rasped as he stared wide-eyed at monsters of stone who morphed into men of muscle and wings of gray. Then the wings were folded back and soon gone from sight as well.

It was Kasimir who stepped forward from the group, his long, lean body expressing openness and a sort of welcoming comfort just in his expression and the way he held his hands before him.

“Allow me to help,” he said. Then, very slowly, he drew an Egyptian dagger from inside his sleeve. He raised it in three fingers, dangling it perpendicular to the ground, the gemstones so small and well crafted, the gold of it so bright and so beautiful. “This is the Dagger of Dreams. It will shift all of this reality into the world of dreams. You will know this as nothing but one of the most astoundingly vivid dreams you have ever known. And now, you will rest.”

Docia watched with shock as Marissa, SingSing, and Leo suddenly collapsed to the ground; Jackson jerked around to see it happen, then stared in shock as two lay in the snow in a perfect enchanted sleep and one curled up and began to snore on the hood of his car.

There was a tick of silence, and Docia realized everyone was staring at Jackson with wide eyes. Jackson realized it, too, and glared back at them.

“What?” he demanded.

“This blade enchants all who look upon it, except Bodywalkers and the Gargoyles who were born from us,” Kasimir said. “You should be as they are.”

Jackson scoffed. Then he stood quite still, his head cocked to one side. He seemed to be listening to something and then looked as though he were going to be ill. He hunched over into himself, and just as everyone moved to reach out a helping hand, his body straightened with violence and a powerful surge of energy lashed out in a massive circle around him, throwing them all back off their feet.