Part 7 (2/2)

”Don't be foolish. You can't. You mustn't even try.” She dropped the deck of cards as if she had completely forgotten them. Letting them fall and scatter upon the carpet, she took his hand, drew him to his feet. ”Come to bed, love. You'll feel so much differently when you wake tonight.

We'll do something fabulous. We'll take a trip, that's what we'll do. We can travel into the desert lands, and you can tell me about Babylon. What it was truly like to live there. You see? There is still much you have to teach me.”

As she spoke, she drew him across the room, through a doorway that led down into the bas.e.m.e.nt. She looked back as she did, toward the cards that had fallen upon the floor. For just a moment, she stilled, her gaze riveted to the two cards that had fallen faceup. One depicted the pathway between heaven and earth as a beautiful woman with her feet in the one and her head in the other. The second card showed the reaper in a black cloak, wielding a scythe.

She wrenched her gaze from the cards, her mind shouting a vehement denial. It meant nothing, she told herself, and she drew Bartrone on.

He followed without argument, nodding and muttering, ”All right, my love. All right, I'll come with you.”

Will could feel the fear in Sarafina's heart. Fear of being alone, it was nearly paralyzing in its power. She was trembling, close to tears at the thought of it.

She drew Bartrone into the bas.e.m.e.nt, through a hidden doorway, into a pitch-black room with a dirt floor. Will gasped in surprise when she lifted part of the floor upward, and he realized it was a hinged trapdoor, only made to look like the rest of the floor. Another set of stairs was below, spiraling downward into the belly of the earth itself.

”I have had word from my spies,” Bartrone said. ”Your wretched sister is old now. Her husband died young, fulfilling the first part of the curse you placed upon them. The second part has now come to pa.s.s.”

She moved only a few steps down, staring back up at him.

”A child has been born, a great-great-grandson to your sister. His name is Dante, and he is one of The Chosen.”

Her heart quickened. ”I have family again?” she whispered.

He nodded. ”His blood is like ours. He is one of the few who can become one of us. But he is still a suckling babe. Think carefully about what you do with this information, Sarafina. Allow the child to grow to manhood, and remember what I've told you-that this life we live is as much a curse as a gift. Think on that before you decide whether to bring him with you into darkness.”

Blinking, she shook her head. ”The only alternative is to watch him weaken and die in the prime of his youth, Bartrone.”

”That may be his preference. Let him decide.”

She nodded, thinking it through. ”I'll think on it. We have many years during which to discuss this. It will be a long while before he's adult enough to even consider...” Her head came up, eyes bright. ”Oh, but we must visit him! To have family again. Real family, from my own Gypsy clan.”

”Your sister is the elder woman as well as the Shuvani now, my love. She won't likely let you near him.”

Sarafina's eyes turned dark, her face deadly. ”Nor will she stop me.”

He nodded. ”Remember the things I've told you. And remember that I love you, Sarafina. In all my centuries of life, I have never loved another the way I have loved you.” He held up his free hand. ”No, don't reply in kind, my love. I know it has never been the same for you. It doesn't matter. You've been kind to me, been my companion, my friend and my lover. I'm only sorry that I have to repay you so cruelly.”

And with that he yanked his hand from hers, and, with his other, he shoved her. Sarafina stumbled down the stairs, falling the last few steps. She scrambled to her feet at the bottom, hiking her skirts in her fists and racing upward even as the trapdoor slammed down. ”Bartrone!”

she cried. She pushed against the door, but he had apparently blocked it from the other side.

”Bartrone, don't do something foolis.h.!.+ Please!”

”Goodbye, my love,” he called.

She heard his footsteps retreating back up the stairs. ”No,” she shouted. ”No! I won't let you do this!” Turning, she ran back down the spiral staircase, seeing as clearly as a cat in the darkness. She was moving with such speed that the walls around her blurred. The sensation, to Will, who felt as if he were being propelled along in her wake, was dizzying.

Then she was at another door, jerking it open.

Sunlight streamed in on her, burning her as if she were on fire. Will felt it. Her arms flying up to s.h.i.+eld her face, she staggered backward into the shadows. And then she lowered her arms slowly, breathing hard. There were burns on her skin. Will heard her thoughts. She would be all right. The burns would heal with the day-sleep, as all wounds to her kind would do. As Bartrone's would, if she could only get to him in time.

Then she looked up, through the open doorway, that threshold of yellow light, and she saw him. He stood on a small, gra.s.sy hillock in the distance, his back toward her, arms wide-open to the rising sun. As that glowing golden sphere rose higher, his form became only a dark silhouette.

And then...a flaming one.

A cry burst from Sarafina-the keening wail of one in unbearable pain. She fell to her knees, watching in anguish as her companion seemed to dance in the flames, turning this way and that as his flesh was devoured. He never made a sound. He burned alive and never made a sound.

Then his form was no more, and the flames grew lower, nearer the ground. They flickered there only a moment, then died altogether, leaving only a scorched patch of earth where he had been.

Sarafina curled onto the cold floor, sobbing.

The door was still open, the sun rising ever higher in the sky. Its rays crept across the floor, closer and closer to where she lay.

”Sarafina,” Will said. ”Sarafina, you have to get up. Now, dammit, or you'll burn as he did!” ”Leave me alone, spirit,” she whispered, the words coming very slowly, broken by sobs.

”Allow me my grief, for I've lost my only companion.”

”No. You haven't I'm here. I'm with you.”

She shook her head where it lay against her folded arms on the floor. ”You lie. I've not heard your voice nor felt your presence for fifty years. I don't even know...I don't even know what you are.”

”For me, it's only been two months, Sarafina. And I'm not a spirit, I'm a man. I live in another time, a far distant time in the future. In a place called New York. I don't know how or why I find you this way, no more than I can understand why I love you so desperately. But I do. I do, Sarafina.”

Sniffling, she lifted her head. ”Everyone who has ever claimed to love me has betrayed me.

They win my heart, my trust, my love, and then they take theirs away and leave me alone.” She closed her eyes.

”I won't. I swear it.”

Shaking her head, she lowered it again, weeping. ”Oh, Bartrone, why? Why did you leave me all alone?”

”You're not alone.”

”You do not count, spirit. Who knows when I will hear from you again? A day for you could be a century for me!”

Will racked his brain to think of something he could say that would give her something to cling to. Anything. And then he hit on it. ”There's the child,” he said quickly. ”The one Bartrone told you about. Dante. Surely you can't give up without at least seeing him?”

She was silent for a moment, except for the sniffling. Then, finally, she struggled to her feet, pressing her palms to the walls to help her stand. Will wished with everything in him that he could help her, put his arms around her and hold her, carry her away from that dangerous sunlight.

She went to the door and closed it, secured the bolt from the inside, then slowly made her way into the depths of the underground lair. ”Spirit? Are you still there?”

”I'm here.”

”Stay with me until I sleep. And...try to come to me again-sooner, this time? Can you do that?”

”I don't know if I can. But I swear I'll try.”

She nodded, then stopped beside a huge hardwood box. It wasn't a coffin. It was twice as wide, nearly twice as deep. She opened the lid, and he saw that the thing was lined with white satin sheets and pillows. And he knew with a stab of pain that Bartrone used to lie there beside her.

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