Part 22 (1/2)

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. b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l. 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 s.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p is faster. She'll likely hire that xebec that was anch.o.r.ed 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 s.h.i.+rtsleeves 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 sc.r.a.ped 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 succ.u.mb 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 slas.h.i.+ng 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 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 carca.s.s 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 coc.o.o.n.

”Go on,” Kate yelled. ”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 s.h.i.+p. 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 s.h.i.+p 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?