Part 46 (1/2)

Then Ryan's voice rang out. ”Jump! Now!”

His command broke her stupefaction. As she tried to unbuckle her safety straps and jump, the river crested over the raft, completely engulfing it. Cold, unforgiving water surrounded her, cresting above her shoulders, her head; she waited for it to recede, but it just kept barreling over her. She panicked, unable to breathe, and began pus.h.i.+ng frantically at the restraints. She couldn't remember how to undo them.

I'm going to drown. I'm going to die.

The steel waters thickened, becoming waves of blackness. She couldn't see anything, couldn't feel anything, except the terrible cold. The raft could be tumbling end over end for all she knew. Her mind seized on the image of the huge face of rock; hitting it at this speed would be like falling out of a window and splatting on the street.

Her lungs were too full; after some pa.s.sage of time she could not measure, they threatened to burst; she understood that she needed to exhale and draw in more oxygen. She fumbled at the belt but she still had no clue how to get free. As her chest throbbed she batted at the water, at her lap and shoulders where the straps were, trying so hard to keep it together, so hard.

I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die.

The ability to reason vanished. She stopped thinking altogether, and instinct took over as she flapped weakly at the restraints, not recalling why she was doing it. She forgot that she had been in a raft with the three people she loved most in the world. She forgot that she was a teenager named Holly and that she had hair and eyes and hands and feet.

She was nothing but gray inside and out. The world was a flat fog color and so were her images, thoughts, and emotions. Numb and empty, she drifted in a bottomless well of nothingness, flat-lining, ceasing. She couldn't say it was a pleasant place to be. She couldn't say it was anything.

Though she didn't really know it, she finally exhaled. Eagerly she sucked in brackish river water. It filled her lungs, and her eyes rolled back in her head as her death throes began.

Struggling, wriggling like a hooked fish, her body tried to cough, to expel the suffocating fluid. It was no use; she was as good as dead. Her eyes fluttered shut.

And then, through her lids, she saw the most exquisite shade of blue. It was the color of neon tetras, though she couldn't articulate that. It s.h.i.+mmered like some underwater grace note at the end of a movie; she neither reached toward it nor shrank from it, because her brain didn't register it. It didn't register anything. Oxygen-starved, it was very nearly dead.

The glow glittered, then coalesced. It became a figure, and had any part of Holly's brain still been taking in and processing data, it would have reported the sight of a woman in a long-sleeved dress of gray wool and gold tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, astonis.h.i.+ngly beautiful, with curls of black hair mushrooming in the water. Her compa.s.sionate gaze was chestnut and ebony as she reached toward Holly.

Run. Flee, escape, don't stop to pack your belongings. Alors, she will perish if you do not go now. Maintenaint, a c'est moment la; vite, je vous en prie . . . .

Nightmare, Holly thought fuzzily. Last year. Nightmare . . . .

The figure raised forth her right hand; a leather glove was wrapped around her hand, and on it perched a large gray bird. She hefted the bird through the water, and it moved its wings through the rush torrent, toward Holly.

”We aren't witches!” her father shouted in her memory.

And her mother: ”I know what I saw! I know what I saw in Holly's room!”

Go, take her from here; they will find her and kill her . . . je vous en prie . . . je vous en prie, Daniel de Cahors . . . .

”Je vous en prie,” the man in the deer's head whispered heartbreakingly.

It was Barley Moon, the time of harvest, and the forest was warm and giving, like a woman. The man was staked to a copse of chestnut trees, his chest streaked with his own blood.

The Circle was drawn, the tallow candles set for lighting.

”I am so sorry for him, Maman,” Isabeau whispered to her mother. The lady of the manor was dressed in raven silks, silver threads chasing scarlet throughout, as were the others in the Circle-there were thirteen this night, including her newly widowed mother's new husband, who was her mother's dead husband's brother, named Robert, and the sacrifice, the quaking man in the dead deer's head, who knew that he would soon die.

The Circle's beautiful familiar, the hawk Pandion, jingled her bells as she observed from her perch, which had been fas.h.i.+oned from bones of the de Cahorses' bitterest enemy . . . the Deveraux. She was eager for the kill; she would s.n.a.t.c.h the man's soul as it escaped his body, and daintily nibble at its edges until others caught hold of it for their own purposes.

”It is a better death,” Catherine de Cahors insisted, smiling down on her child. She petted Isabeau's hair with one hand. In the other hand she held the b.l.o.o.d.y dagger. It was she who had carved the sigils into the man's chest. Her husband, Robert, had felt compelled to restrain her, reminding her that torture was not a part of tonight's rite. It was to be a good, clean execution. ”His wagging tongue would have sent him to the stake eventually. He would have burned, a horrible way to die. This way . . .”

They were interrupted by a figure wearing the silver and black livery of Cahors; he raced to the edge of the Circle and dropped to his knees directly before the masked and cloaked Robert. Robert's height must have given him away, Isabeau thought.

”The Deveraux . . . the fire,” the servant gasped. ”They have managed it.”

Pandion threw back her head and shrieked in lamentation. The entire Circle looked at one another in shock from behind their animal masks. Several of them sank to their knees in despair.

Isabeau was chilled, within and without. The Deveraux had been searching for the secret of the Black Fire for centuries. Now that they had it ... what would become of the Cahors? Of anyone who stood in the way of the Deveraux?

Isabeau's mother covered her heart with her arms and cried, ”Alors, Notre Dame! Protect us this night, our Lady G.o.ddess!”

”This is a dark night,” said one of the others. ”A night rife with evil. The lowest, when it was to have been a joyous Lammas, this man's ripe death adding to the Harvest bounty . . . .”

”We are undone,” a cloaked woman keened. ”We are doomed.”

”d.a.m.n you for your cowardice,” Robert murmured in a low, dangerous voice. ”We are not.”

He tore off his mask, grabbed the dagger from his wife, and walked calmly to the sacrifice. Without a moment's hesitation he yanked the man's head back by the hair and cut his throat. Blood spurted, covering those nearby while others darted forward to receive the blessing. Pandion swooped down from her perch, soaring into the gus.h.i.+ng heat, the bells on her ankles clattering with eagerness.

Isabeau's mother urged her toward the man's body. ”Take the blessing,” she told her daughter. ”There is wild work ahead, and you must be prepared to do your part.”

Isabeau stumbled forward, shutting her eyes, glancing away. Her mother took her chin and firmly turned her face toward the stream of steaming, crimson liquid.

”Non, non,” she protested as the blood ran into her mouth. She felt defiled, disgusted.

The gus.h.i.+ng blood seemed to fill her vision . . . .

Holly woke up. As far as she could tell, she lay on the riverbank. The sound of rus.h.i.+ng water filled her pounding head; she was shaking violently from head to toe and her teeth were chattering. She tried to move, but couldn't tell if she succeeded. She was completely numb.

”Mmm . . . ,” she managed, struggling to call for her mother.

All she heard, all she knew, was the rus.h.i.+ng of the river. And then . . . the flapping of a bird's wings. They sounded enormous, and in her confusion she thought it was diving for her, ready to swoop her up like a tiny, waterlogged mouse.

Her lids flickered up at the sky; a bird did hover against the moon, a startling silhouette.

Then she lost consciousness again. Her coldness faded, replaced by soothing warmth . . . .

The blood is so warm, she thought, drifting. See how it steams in the night air . . . .

Again, the sound of rus.h.i.+ng water. Again the deathly chill.

The screech of a bird of prey . . .