by Nora Roberts
“You let him go?”Ripley paced the station house, tugging at her hair in frustration. “Just patted him on the head and told him to take a nap?”
“Ripley.” Zack’s voice held a quiet warning, but she shook her head.
“For Christ’s sake, Zack, think! The man’s dangerous. She said herself she sensed something in him.”
“It’s not his fault,” Nell began, but Ripley whirled to face her.
“This isn’t about fault, it’s about reality. Even if he were just some reporter with delusions of grandeur, that would be bad enough. He came here looking for you, he followed your path all across the damn country, talking to people behind your back.”
“That’s his job.” Nell held up a hand before Ripley could snap at her again. A year before, she would have backed away from the confrontation. Times had changed. “I’m not going to blame him for doing his job, or for what’s happening to him now. He doesn’t know what’s happening, and he’s sick, he’s frightened. You didn’t see him, Ripley. I did.”
“No, I didn’t see him because you didn’t call me. You didn’t bring me in.”
“Is that the real problem? I didn’t ask you for advice, for help?” Nell tilted her head. “Tell me, would you have called me? Or Mia?”
Ripley opened her mouth, then shut it again in one hard, thin line. “We’re not talking about me.”
“Maybe we are. Maybe we’re talking about all of this. It’s a cycle, after all. What started it is inside us. What’s inside us will end it. He was hurt,” she said, appealing to Zack now. “Confused, afraid. He doesn’t know what’s going on.”
“Do you know?” Zack asked her.
“I’m not sure. There’s a power, and it’s dark. It’s using him. And I think . . .” It was hard to say it, hard to think it. “I’m afraid, it’s using Evan. Like a bridge, from wherever it is through Evan to this poor man. We need to help him.”
“We need to get him off the island,” Ripley interrupted. “We need to get his ass on the next ferry to the mainland, and it doesn’t take magic to do that.”
“He hasn’t done anything, Rip,” Zack reminded her. “He hasn’t broken any law, made any threats. We’ve got no right to order him off the island.”
She slapped her palms on his desk, leaned forward. “He’ll come after her. He’ll have to.”
“He won’t get near her. I won’t let it happen.”
She spun back to Nell. “He’ll destroy what you love. It’s his reason for being now.”
Nell shook her head. “I won’t let him.” She reached for Ripley’s hand. “We won’t let him.”
“I’ve felt what he is, and what he’s capable of. I’ve felt it in me.”
“I know.” Nell’s fingers linked with hers. “We need Mia.”
“You’re right,” Ripley agreed. “And I hate that.”
“You’re a fascinatingwoman, little sister.” Mia leaned on the kitchen counter and watched Nell slide pasta into boiling water. “A crisis is upon us, an event that has been brewing for three centuries. Ripley frets and curses. And you cook and serve.”
“We all do what we do best.” She glanced up as she gave the pasta a quick stir. “What do you do, Mia?”
“I wait.”
“No, it’s not as simple as that.”
“I prepare, then.” Mia lifted her wineglass, sipped. “For whatever comes.”
“Did you see this? What’s coming?”
“Not specifically. Only something strong, something blighted. Something that formed from blood and vengeance. It craves what birthed it,” she said. “And grows as it feeds. It uses weakness.”
“Then we won’t be weak.”
“It underestimates us,” Mia continued. “We should take care not to underestimate it. Evil doesn’t concern itself with rules, with what’s right and fair. And it’s clever. It can twist itself into the desirable.”
“We’re together now, the three of us. I have Zack, and Ripley has Mac. I wish—”
“Don’t wish for me. I have what I need.”
“Mia . . .” Trying to find the right words, Nell got out her colander. “Even if—when—we face what’s here now, there’s one more step. Yours.”
“Do you think I’ll fling myself off my cliffs?” Mia relaxed enough to laugh. “I can promise you, I won’t. I enjoy living entirely too much.”
There were other ways, Nell thought, to leap into a void. She started to say so, then held her tongue. They had enough to deal with for now.
What waswrong with them? Ripley listened to the conversation hum around the table, spiced with the scent of good food well served. Everyday words in easy voices.
Pass the salt.
Jesus.
It felt as if something was simmering inside her, right on the edge of boil, ready to bubble up and spew over the lid. And everyone else kept chatting and eating as if it were just another evening.
A part of her knew it was only a lull, that space of time used to gather forces and brace. But she had no patience with it, with Nell’s utter calm, with Mia’s cool waiting. Her own brother helped himself to another serving of pasta as if everything in his life that mattered wasn’t teetering on the brink.
And Mac . . .
Observing, absorbing, assessing, she thought with a helpless resentment. A geek to the last.
There was something hungry out there, something that wouldn’t be sated with a tidy, home-cooked meal. Couldn’t theyfeel it? It wanted blood, blood and bone, death and anguish. It craved sorrow.
And its need clawed at her.
“This blows.” She shoved at her plate, and conversation snapped off. “We’re just sitting here, slurping up noodles. This isn’t a goddamn party.”
“There are a lot of ways to prepare for a confrontation,” Mac began, and laid a hand on her arm.
She wanted to slap his hand away, and hated herself for it. “Confrontation? This is a battle.”
“A lot of ways to prepare,” he said again. “Coming together like this, sharing a meal. A symbol of life and unity—”
“It’s past time for symbols. We need to do something definite.”
“Anger only feeds it,” Mia chimed in.
“Then it should be full to bursting,” Ripley snapped back and shoved to her feet. “Because I am supremely pissed off.”
“Hate, anger, a thirst for violence.” Mia brought the glass of wine to her lips. “All those negative emotions strengthen it, weaken you.”
“Don’t tell me what to feel.”
“Could I ever? You want what you’ve always wanted. A clear answer. When you don’t get it, you pound with your fists or turn away.”
“Don’t,” Nell pleaded. “We can’t turn on each other now.”
“Right. Let’s keep the peace.” Ripley heard the bite in her own voice, and even while it shamed her she couldn’t soften it. “Why don’t we have coffee and cake?”
“That’s enough, Rip.”
“It’s not enough.” Frustrated beyond bearing, she rounded on Zack. “Nothing’s enough until this is dealt with, until it’s over. It’ll be more than a knife to her throat this time, more than a knife already coated with your blood. I won’t lose what I love. I won’t just sit here and wait for it to come after us.”
“On that we can agree.” Mia set down her glass. “We won’t lose. And since arguing is bad for the digestion, why don’t we get to work?”
She rose, began to clear the table. “Nell will feel better,” she said before Ripley could make some snide comment, “if her house is put in order.”
“Fine, great.” She snatched up her plate. “Let’s be tidy.”
She sailed into the kitchen and gave herself points for not simply heaving her plate into the sink. What control. What amazing restraint.
God, she wanted to scream!
It was Mac who came in quietly behind her, alone. He set the dishes on the counter, then just turned her, put his hands on her stiff and rigid shoulders.
“You’re afraid.” He shook his head before she could speak. “We all are. But you feel that the weight of this, what happens next, is on you. It doesn’t have to be.”
“Don’t placate me, Mac. I know when I’m being a bitch.”
“Good. Then I don’t have to point that out, do I? We’re going to get through this.”
“You don’t feel what I feel. You can’t.”
“No, I can’t. But I love you, Ripley, with everything that’s in me. So I know, and that’s the next thing to feeling.”
She let herself give, just for a minute. Let herself go into his arms and be held there. Safe within the circle of him. “It’d be easier if we’d found this after.”
His cheek rubbed her hair. “You think?”
“You could’ve come along when everything was normal again, and we’d’ve gotten mushy on each other and had a regular life. Cookouts, marital spats, great sex, and dental bills.”
“Is that what you want?”
“Right this minute, it sounds aces. I’d rather be mad than scared. I work better that way.”
“Just remember, it all comes down to this.” He tipped back her head, laid his lips on hers. “Right there is more magic than most people ever know.”
“Don’t give up on me. Okay?”
“Not a chance.”
She tried tocurb her impatience as the preparations were made. She refused to lie down on the couch because it made her feel too vulnerable. Instead she sat in a chair in the living room, her hands on the arms, and blocked out the monitors and cameras.
She knew she should have felt comforted by having Mia and Nell standing on either side of her, like sentinels. But she felt foolish.
“Just do it,” she told Mac.
“You need to relax.” He’d pulled a chair up to face hers, and sat there, almost idly holding the pendant. “Breathe slow. In and out.”
He put her under. So effortlessly this time, so swiftly, it brought him a quick ripple of nerves.
“She’s tuned to you,” Mia said, herself surprised at how completely Ripley had given herself over. “And you to her. That, itself, is a kind of strength.”
They would need it, she thought, as she felt something cold shiver along her skin. In response to it, she stretched out her arm and, across Ripley, clasped Nell’s hand.
“We are the Three,” she said clearly. “And two guard the one. While we are joined, no harm can be done.” As warmth seeped back, she nodded to Mac.
“You’re safe here, Ripley. Nothing can harm you here.”
“It’s close,” she said with a shudder. “It’s cold, and tired of waiting.” Her eyes opened, stared blindly into Mac’s. “It knows you. Watched you and waited. You share the blood. You’ll die through me, that’s what it wants. Death to power, and power to destruction. Through my hand.”
Grief ground down to her bones. “Stop me.”
Her head fell back, her eyes rolled back white. “I am Earth.”
She changed, even as they watched, her hair springing into curls, her features subtly rounding. “My sin must be atoned, and the time grows short. Sister to sister, and love to love. The storm is coming, and with it the dark. I am powerless. I am lost.”
Great tears spilled down her cheeks.
“Sister.” Mia laid her free hand on Ripley’s shoulder, and felt the cold again. “What can we do?”
The eyes that focused on Mia weren’t Ripley’s. They seemed ancient, and unbearably sad. “What you will. What you know. What you believe. Trust is one, justice makes two, and love, without boundaries, makes three. You are the Three. Be stronger than what made you or all is for nothing. Should you live, your heart will break again. Will you face that?”
“I’ll live, and guard my heart.”
“She thought the same. I loved her, loved them both. Too much or not enough, I’ve yet to see. May your circle be stronger and hold.”
“Tell us how to hold.”
“I cannot. If the answers live inside you, the questions won’t matter.” She turned to Nell then. “You found yours, so there is hope. Blessed be.”
Ripley gasped again, and came back. “In the storm,” she said as the first flash of lightning burst blue light into the room.
A lamp crashed to the floor. A vase of Nell’s flowers spun into the air to hurl itself against the wall. The sofa upended itself, then shot across the room.
Even as Zack whirled toward Nell, a table tumbled into his path. He leaped it, cursing, and gripping her, used his body to shield hers.
“Stop.” Mia called into the wind that had gushed into the room. “Nell, stay with me.” She tightened her hold on Nell’s hand, used her other to take Ripley’s limp one. “Still the power and quiet the air. Challenge this circle, he who dares. Here we stand, we are the Three. As we will, so mote it be.”
Will pressed against will. Magic thrummed against magic. Then as abruptly as it had begun, the wind died. Books that had been spinning in the air fell to the floor with a thud.
“Ripley.” Mac’s voice remained utterly calm, in direct opposition to his speeding heart. “I’m going to count back from ten. You’re going to wake up when I reach one. Slowly.”
He leaned close to her, brushed his lips over her cheeks, and whispered the magic he’d read in the journal.
“You’ll remember that,” he promised her, hoping it would stay in her mind when she needed it most. “You’ll hear that. You’ll know that.”
She felt herself rising as he brought her back, as if waking from a hill of feathers. The closer she came to the top, the more she began to feel the cold. And the dread.
When her eyes were open, and her vision clear, she saw the blood on Mac’s face. It trickled down his forehead, down his cheek.
“God! My God!”
“It’s nothing.” He hadn’t realized he was cut until she touched her hand to his face and brought it back smeared with blood. “Some flying glass. It’s nothing,” he repeated. “A couple of scratches.”
“Your blood.” She fisted her hand over it, felt the guilt, the power. The hunger and the fear.
“I’ve done worse shaving. Look at me. Relax. Nell, maybe you could get Ripley a glass of water. We’ll take a little break here before we talk about all this.”
“No.” Ripley snapped as she rose. “I’ll get it. I need a minute.” She touched his face lightly. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t control it. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right.”
She nodded as though she agreed with him, but she knew as she walked back toward the kitchen that it wasn’t. Wouldn’t be. Couldn’t be.
She knew what she had to do. What had to be done. His blood was already cool on her fingers as she walked out the back door and into the rising storm.
Twenty
She stepped outinto the wind with only one clear purpose. She would get Harding and herself off the island. Away from Mac. Away from Nell and Mia and her brother. After that, she would do whatever came next. But the most immediate danger to those she loved was inside her, and linked to whatever was inside Harding.
She had shed Mac’s blood.
She curled her fingers, still damp with it, into a fist again. Blood was power, one of its most elemental sources. The darker magics used it as a conduit, or fed on it.
Everything she was and believed rejected that. Refused it. Refuted it.
Do no harm, she thought. She would try to do no harm. But first, she would see to it, she would ensure, that no harm could or would be done to those she loved.
The murdered innocents.
It was a whisper in her ear, so clear, so urgent, she spun around expecting to see someone standing behind her.
But there was nothing but the night—the dark, and the bright and brutal force of the storm.
The farther she got from the house, the more violent the storm raged, and the more her anger grew. It would use her to hurt Mac, to get to Nell, to destroy Mia.
She would die first, and take it with her.
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br /> When she reached the beach, she quickened her pace, then whirled around at the sound behind her.
Lucy bolted out of the dark, ears alert. She nearly sent the dog back home with one abrupt command. But Ripley lowered the arm she had lifted to point and hissed out a breath.
“All right, then, come along. Might as well have a goofy dog as a familiar as none at all.” She rested her hand on Lucy’s head. “Protect what’s mine.”
Her hair flew in the wind as she and the dog jogged across the sand. The surf pounded, a wall of black water that slammed relentlessly against the shore.
The sound of it beat in her head.
Her sister was dead. Slain like a lamb for her love, for her heart. For her gift. Where was the justice?
The air itself was full of howls and screams, a thousand tormented voices. Under her feet, a dirty fog began to creep along the ground, rising until it was up to her ankles, then halfway to her knees.
The chill of it seeped into her bones.
Blood for blood. Life for life. Power for power. How could she have believed there was any other way?
Something made her look over her shoulder. Where the house should have been, with its lights glowing against the window, was nothing but a curtain of dirty white.
She’d been cut off from home—and she could see now, as the fog continued to rise and swirl and thicken, from the village as well.
Fine and good, she thought, shoving fear down beneath fury.
“Come on, then, you bastard.” She shouted it, and her voice cut through the fog like a scalpel through gauze. “Take me on.”
The first punch of power knocked her back a full three steps before she dug in.
Rage curled inside her. As she threw up her arms, embraced it, lightning slashed the sky and sea like red-tipped whips. Ah, here, she thought, here was magic with muscle. She saw herself, and not herself, standing in the gale, gathering forces. Air, Earth, Fire, Water.
Beside her, Lucy lifted her head and let out a long, ululant howl.
Harding, or what had mastered him, stepped out of the fog.
“Rip always didthrow a good tantrum,” Zack said to try to lighten the mood.
The living room was in shambles, and if he let himself, he could still feel the buzz of what had whipped through it sting along his skin.
“Fear and anger, anger and fear.” Mia paced as she spoke. “I couldn’t get through it. Ripley’s and the one she comes from. It’s so strong, so thick.”
