One With the Shadows (29 page)

Gian stepped forward. “Gentlemen.” He didn’t shout, but she could feel him call what power he had and put it all into that one word. The protests died.

“I am Gian Urbano.” At the name, their eyes went wide. “
Reteif
is my tender.” He glanced around at the other ships floating in the harbor. “So are most others in port. I go to Algiers, with my guest. If you do not choose to take us, do not expect employment from me again.”

Two or three swallowed visibly. Several others looked down at their hands.

“Then we are clear. I would say also that common courtesy will be expected.” His voice was hard, but he ramped the power down.

They cast off from the quay, but she heard murmurs of “bad luck” “devil woman,” and “what woman dresses as a man?”

“Here, sit on this coil of rope,” Gian said, “where you are out of the way.”

She rolled her eyes in protest, but she sat. She was not wanted here. Was it that she was a woman, or because of her scar? The little ship pushed off the quay and turned into the harbor. Memories of a dreadful Channel passage one stormy night with Matthew were already affecting her stomach. The crew would really warm to her when she vomited all over this tidy little ship. Gian stood above her, hanging on the web of ropes. The wind rose. The sails belled out and the little ship picked up speed. In no time they were skimming over the water.

“Where are we taking the stones?” she asked to distract her thoughts from her stomach.

“You mean me—where am I taking the stones?
You
will stay with my friends in Algiers.”

“I’ll bet I know what kind of friends those are.” If he thought she was going to be fobbed off on some vampires she didn’t even know, no doubt as vicious as Elyta, he was very wrong. She’d find a way to thwart him when he tried to leave her behind. He would say it was for her own protection. She was getting to know him well.

“They are good people. Ian Rufford and his wife, Elizabeth. They helped me fight a … war in North Africa.” His face closed down. He looked forlorn.

She couldn’t ask what kind of war or what role he’d played in the face of that expression. “I’m not sure I’m up to any more vampires.”

“They were just like you five years ago, before they were infected. You’ll like them.”

They were made monsters? Now they lived forever and had to drink blood. How tragic.

“So, where are
you
taking the stones?” she said, to change the melancholy subject.

He let out a breath. “I … don’t know.”

“What?” This was too much. “I thought you said they were from some temple.”

“Rufford knows the general location, but it was buried under tons of sand. I’m not sure anyone knows exactly where it is.” He sounded thoughtful, but not defeated. Was he a lunatic?

“So … Your plan was to wander the desert until … what? Hell freezes?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“Come inside the cabin.” He glanced about pointedly. Seamen scurried about, trimming sails or whatever. The cabin was not appealing. But he was right. There was no privacy here.

He held her elbow as she rose. Did he have to do that? The thrill of touching shot through her. He had to duck his head to get into the cabin. It was tiny. Several hammocks hung in tiers against the wall. The legs of a rough wooden table were securely fastened to the floor. Above the table a swinging lamp cast careening light around the room. He set her securely in a chair. The rolling floor of the cabin reminded her of the hold on that Channel crossing.

“Give me the stones.”

She fished in her reticule. What was he about? He took the mahogany inlaid box and flipped it open. First he stared at the winking ruby within, then closed his eyes for a long moment. Kate began tapping her foot.

His eyes snapped open. “Must you break my concentration?”

“Whatever do you think you’re doing?”

He cleared his throat. “You … you said the stones wanted to go back to the desert. I thought…” He shrugged, looking like he felt foolish. “I thought they might tell us where.”

Her laugh died in her throat. Actually, not a bad idea. “Let me.”

She took the stone from its box. He practically shuddered as she touched it. But of course it had no effect on her. She held it to the swinging light. The blood-red scales glittered inside it, rolling, hypnotizing. The scales expanded, wanting to show her all possible futures, but she squinted her eyes and thought hard about a single thing. The temple.

A sense of dislocation overcame her. She was looking up at sheer sandstone walls rising above the dunes of the desert floor. She got a sense of eons of running water cutting deep chasms all along its perimeter. But this chasm had been filled. Sand and scree ran out into the desert floor in a huge alluvial fan. The scene held no human figures. But just as in her other visions, she was filled with emotion. This was an overwhelming jubilation. Was she seeing the future of the stone at the moment when it realized that it was home?

She opened her eyes. Gian stared at her with a worried frown. She had risen from the chair and was holding the box out toward one corner of the little cabin. There was a palpable tug from the box, as if it
longed
in that direction.

She heaved a breath. “I saw where the temple is. Or was. And I think you’re right. The stones will tell us how to find it.”

His tiny smile was satisfied, determined. He nodded.

Kate glanced around the lurching cabin. Her stomach heaved. She stared at Gian, wide-eyed for a single instant, before she whirled and dashed for the door.

*   *   *

Kate leaned over the side in the rising wind and vomited. She had barely had enough time to make it to the leeward side. The sailors gave her a wide berth.

Gian came up behind her and hovered. “Are you all right?” He pulled a handkerchief from the stolen coat’s breast pocket and held it out to her.

“Jolly. Just jolly.” She tried to get her breath. Still she was grateful for the handkerchief.

“Normally I could help that with a little compulsion. Works wonders.”

“I’ve always been seasick.” She held the kerchief to her mouth at another wave of nausea.

“We’re heading into a nasty blow.” He pressed his lips together. “Let me try.”

“It doesn’t work on me, remember?”

“You said you let Elyta compel you. That was a conscious act. Could you do it with me?”

She looked up at him. “I don’t think so.” She had no wish to give in to anyone else’s will. That time with Elyta had been
in extremis.
But then she had to lean over the side again abruptly. Bloody hell. How long was the trip to Algiers? Two days? As she raised herself, shaking, he took her shoulders and turned her to him. Then he pressed her body against the rail with his to steady her. A tremor ran all up and down her frame. But she had no time even to regret her reaction because his eyes just … went red. Not the deep red she knew, but a pale wash of rose.

“Think about letting go, Kate. I promise, I’ll only quiet your stomach.” She felt his words as much as heard them in the rising wind.

Nothing happened.

“Relax.” His voice reverberated in her chest. “I can’t overwhelm you. I only have a little bit of power.” Did he know her every thought? He rubbed her shoulders and neck with those strong hands … “Think about yielding.”

When had she yielded to another?
She
was the predator. But two days of vomiting?
He’s trying to help,
she told herself.
It’s still Gian.
She held to that and thought about … opening. Some iron rod inside her back crumbled and with it some lock on a part of her brain.

In came a wonderful feeling. Calm. Sure. She hadn’t even known what that felt like. Until now. She smiled. She couldn’t
not
smile. A sense of well-being came from that place in her back where she’d been so stiff and the locked part of her brain that had opened. She seemed to hang suspended in that green-red gaze, and it was a very good place to be.

His eyes went back to green. He smiled in return. “Feel better?”

She blinked in surprise. Her rebellious stomach was quiet. Yet the little ship was pitching at ever greater angles. Seamen scurried about the tiny deck. But she was calm. “I do.”

“Good, then go below where it’s safer. This storm will get worse before it gets better.” He led her to the cabin, a firm grip on her elbow.

As they passed a sailor, she heard him say to his fellow seaman, “Her fault, this blow.”

So many things were her fault. But not this. Wait! She had seen the vampire Illya pitched from the deck of a ship in a storm. She turned on Gian. “They will come after us, won’t they?”

“I expect so.” He continued to move her toward the little cabin door. “But Elyta will think a bigger ship is faster. She’ll likely hire that xebec that was anchored in the harbor.”

“And … and she’s wrong?”

He smiled. “Very wrong. That’s why
Reteif
is used to tend one of the behemoths. It carries messages, brings supplies, that sort of thing. Goes back and forth in half the time. We’ll be in Algiers long before Elyta.”

*   *   *

Gian stood barefoot, in shirtsleeves and wet to the skin, hauling on the lines to the mainsail as Captain Gaetjens shouted for the change in tack. His strength was hardly more than human at the moment, but it was needed. The wind and rain slashed in on him as the tender headed into the trough of another wave. Water would cascade in over the prow again in another moment, and the deck would be awash.

They’d be lucky to clear this storm. It was one of the worst he’d seen, and he had seen a thousand storms. He wouldn’t regret sending the stones to the bottom of the sea. And he’d survive. But what if he couldn’t save Kate? He tied off the line and held fast to it as he scraped the wet hair plastered to his face out of his eyes. He’d brought her into terrible danger. Even if they survived, they might fail. And if he reached Algiers, there was always the threat that he would succumb again to the nightmares that had plagued him so when he was back in the land of their genesis.

Dawn was probably just ahead. The sky roiled charcoal instead of pitch-black, but there wasn’t much difference. The storm could go on for days. Could the tender hold out against it? He staggered along the rope they’d strung from fore to aft, up to the quarterdeck above the little cabin. Gaetjens stood, feet apart, grappling with the wheel.

“We must run before the wind,” Gaetjens yelled. “She won’t tack in this blow.”

That meant they wouldn’t beat the xebec to Algiers. “Do what you must, Captain.”

“Take in the mainsail,” Gaetjens shouted.

A shriek of wood split the storm. Gian and the Captain turned as one to the mainmast. It was bending in the gale at an unnatural angle. The sound of canvas ripping and the protesting whine of rope stretched taut rose over the howl of the wind. A monumental crack sounded and the mast toppled slowly over in a billow of wet canvas. A man’s scream of pain came from the tangle. Gian bent into the wind and fought his way through the slashing rain to the deck below. The tender listed dangerously, unbalanced under the weight of the broken mast. Already sailors hacked at the ropes. The wreckage would carry them all to the bottom if they couldn’t cut it loose.

“Jenkins!” one of the sailors called. “It’s Jenkins.”

One of their number was trapped under the mast. A bloom of blood on the canvas marked the spot. Gian waded into the melee of activity and pulled the canvas free. The sailors hauled at it. He knelt, knees wide for balance, and held to the carcass of the mast to avoid sliding down the steep slope of the deck. The man was alive. Gian waited for the roll and stood. He bent, got his knees under him, and heaved on the mast. Two sailors dragged Jenkins from under it.

Gian staggered several steps toward the rail. Four others joined him. They clung to the wreckage of the mast on the windward roll and shoved it toward the sea on the leeward. The balance tipped. The waves tore at the end of the mast and snapped it free. Another shove and the bulk of the remaining stump slid over the side in a tangle of rope and splintered wood.

Gian heaved the unconscious Jenkins up and pulled him into the relative calm of the cabin. Kate stood, clinging to a rope handle on the wall, her eyes wide. When she saw the injured man, she pointed to a hammock. Gian laid the injured man down, and one of the other sailors bound him into the swinging cocoon.

“Go on,” Kate yelled over the creaking and the wind. “I’ll take care of him.”

Gian nodded. The other sailor pulled his forelock, and together he and Gian staggered out into dawn that looked like wet charcoal. At least there would be no sun today.

*   *   *

In the morning of the third day Kate woke to the cry of birds and a softly rocking ship. It was over. Gian and two sailors hung in the hammocks, dead asleep. The sailors were snoring. The injured one would make it. He had a concussion and broken ribs. After he had wakened she’d felt safe in giving him some laudanum she’d found in a little cupboard. It was actually good to hear him snore. Just to keep the little ship afloat had been all the sailors could do. She had provided food and tended the injured man. It didn’t seem like very much.

There was a sense of unreality about her situation. She couldn’t see a future she could even recognize. What was she doing going to North Africa with a vampire, with vampires chasing them, and dangerous jewels any one of the crew would probably kill them to obtain?

If only the stones would tell her own future.

She frowned. But they never had. She had not once seen herself in any of her visions. That was odd. Her two visions of Gian had both come to pass, and now there was nothing to say what his future would be either. How much she would give to see either of their futures at this moment.

Bloody hell,
she thought.
You’re turning into one of those weak minds made to become marks for people just like you.

The cry of gulls interrupted her morbid thoughts. Surely that meant they were near shore. She slipped out of her hammock and let herself out into the blinding sunlight. The captain stood at the wheel, looking exhausted. On the left about a mile away, dry hills loomed above a beach with huge surf crashing on the sand. One sailor moved about the deck coiling ropes and another sat on one of the same mending a sail with even stitches.