Touch of Darkness

by Christina Dodd

  She didn't wake.

  The ghost didn't move. Instead he smiled, a sort of crooked, self-mocking smile that stopped her heart. "No man is worth so many tears."

  "Rurik?" she whispered. "Rurik!"

  He was sunburned and thin, with a yellowing bruise from a black eye and a weary sadness around his mouth.

  She reached out a hand to his shoulder, thinking it would pass right through his form—and touched warm flesh.

  He caught her hand, lifted it to his mouth, kissed it, and his breath touched her skin. . . .

  She launched herself at him.

  He caught her, lifted her into his arms.

  Vaguely, from the doorway, she heard a sob. His parents were there. His sister watched.

  Tasya didn't care.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck, her legs around his hips.

  She kissed him, taking his breath into her lungs, giving her breath into his. And she remembered her vow in the tunnel. "I love you." She took his head in her hands. She looked into his eyes. "I love you. I love you. I love you."

  He was another miracle in a life blessed with' miracles.

  He was alive.

  Rurik was alive.

  Chapter 32

  Firebird stood at the open window of the bedroom she shared with Tasya and gazed out into the night. "Look at that moon."

  "Wonderful." Tasya sat in her pajamas, stared at the computer screen, concentrating as hard as she could. She had to, to block out the tumult in her body. Her blood sang with need; her legs trembled with desire.

  And she lounged here playing solitaire.

  "The stars are gorgeous, too. It is so clear and so bright, I can see clear to the horse barn." Firebird made that sound like a big deal. "When I was ten, I desperately wanted a horse and Papa said no. He said a horse cost too much to buy and too much to maintain, and we were poor, struggling immigrants with no money for such frivolity. I was crushed."

  "Yeah. Bummer." Rurik was in the next bedroom. In the next bedroom, and Tasya couldn't go to him. Because the house rules didn't allow unmarried people to sleep together. They'd held hands through dinner, They'd smiled into each other's eyes. Then they'd kissed good night—repeatedly—and gone their separate ways.

  Tasya couldn't believe it. She was twenty-nine years old, held to chastity by nineteenth-century morals as applied by a former Varinski.

  "But Papa's word is law, so I didn't complain. And on my eleventh birthday, Papa bought himself a horse." Firebird wore a small, reminiscent smile. "He said he had discovered a use for it around the place/'

  Caught against her will by the story, Tasya asked, "What use was that?"

  "Giving me something to ride and care for."

  "Nice."

  "He has his moments. Anyway, my sweet old mare is still in the barn, so Papa keeps hay in the loft." Long pause. "You know, my brothers used to use that barn as their own private make-out space."

  Tasya looked up. Firebird had her attention now.

  "Yep. Because, you know, for a guy who used to have no morals whatsoever, Papa's really strict about this no-sex-under-his-roof thing."

  "I noticed."

  "Papa is a really traditional guy. And traditionally, lovers have to sneak around to get laid."

  Slowly, Tasya pushed her chair back. "Firebird, what are you trying to say?"

  "Nothing. Why do you think I'm trying to say something?" Firebird leaned out. "Look at that. That's a big bird. A hawk!"

  Tasya raced to the window in time to see the huge hawk sailing across the moon toward the barn. "Rurik," she whispered.

  "Papa has the hearing of a wolf." Firebird wandered over to her iPod and flipped on her speakers. "Better climb out the window."

  ***

  Zorana listened to the music playing over her head. Groping under the covers, she patted Konstan-tine's chest. "Tasya just went out the window."

  Konstantine grunted and caught her hand, and held it. "I heard nothing. Now, be quiet, woman. I'm trying to get some rest."

  ***

  Tasya ran across the lawn, along the path through the trees, to the barn.

  She pressed her hand on the door. With a creak, it swung open. The barn smelled of clean straw, of leather, of a much-loved horse. Moonlight streamed through the open windows, and Rurik stood beside the stall. The mare had her head laid adoringly on his shoulder while he petted her nose.

  There wasn't a female in the world who could resist him.

  He smiled at Tasya.

  Once again it struck her—he was alive. "I must have done something really good in a former life to deserve you." Her voice was husky with unshed tears, and she swallowed to contain them.

  Such a girl.

  "You did something really good in this life." He patted the horse one last time, gently disengaged, and strode toward Tasya, his gait long and easy. "I'm the one who never dared dream I would see you again."

  She wanted to fling herself at him as she had done this afternoon, but after that first, instinctive reaction, she remembered . . . the fight with the Varinskis, the way the light in his eyes blinked out. She'd thought he'd been killed. At the least, he'd been horribly injured, and she thought that not even his prodigious healing abilities could take an arrow through the chest without repercussions.

  "Are you really alive, or is this another dream?" She reached out to him, her hand pale in the moonlight

  He came to a halt before her, and she pressed her palm over his heart. It beat strongly, reassuring her.

  "How did you live through it?" she whispered. He captured her fingers. "Come on. I'll tell you." He led her to the ladder.

  She started up. "Your sister said you guys used this barn for a make-out den."

  "Sure. The other guys. But not me. I'm a virgin." She paused and looked down at him.

  "Liar."

  "A virgin." He looked up, making her dreadfully aware that the light cotton pajamas pulled tight as she climbed, wonderfully aware that he watched and wanted.

  She crawled up onto the hay-strewn floor, faced the trap, and watched him follow her up. "I'll have to see what I can do about that."

  "I wish you would."

  The moonlight shone through the window in a square that lit each straw and made bold shadows of the rafters, the bales, the pitchfork. It was warm up here, the heat of the August sun lingering under the eaves.

  She hadn't come prepared for seduction. Her hair was still tipped with white and curled wildly. Her arms were bare; a burst of stars decorated the material over her chest and down her thigh. The drawstring on her pants was knotted, and the waistband rested low on her hips.

  "You are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen." Going to the blanket spread over a nest in the straw,

  he stretched out and tucked his arms behind his head. He was a living, breathing invitation to sin.

  All the times they had been together, they'd been seducing, lying, attacking, lusting.

  Tonight was different. Tonight she would learn him.

  She knelt beside him, the clean straw cracking beneath her knees. Unbuttoning his shirt, she spread it wide, and traced the contours of his chest. She found the shattered skin where the arrow had entered, right below his left shoulder. But there was another wound on his shoulder, larger, uglier, where the skin didn't cover the muscle and the edges of the wound glowed red.

  "Rurik." She looked into his face.

  He watched her face. "It's over now."

  Which meant he'd suffered far more than any mere man could bear.

  She unbuckled his belt, removed his pants, discovered a slice of flesh gone from his right thigh, a chunk of bone from the thrust of his hip. She kissed each injury, her lips lingering, and breathed in the scent of him, reveling in his life, anguished about his pain.

  He slid his hand around her neck and brought her close, and kissed her. "It's all right. You're alive. I'm alive. That's all that counts."

  "No, it's not all that counts. Those bastards almost killed you. I thou
ght they had. And I hope they burn in hell."

  "I think you can rest assured of that." He kissed her again.

  "Did you kill them all?"

  "I did."

  She looked into his eyes. Smoothed his hair off his forehead. "Rurik," she whispered. "Tell me."

  He sighed, and leaned his head back. "Only if I can hold you. I need to hold you while I ... while I remember. . . ."

  Stretching out beside him, she wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her head against his chest. "Are you warm enough? Am I hurting you?"

  He crushed her to him. "This is the best I've been in three weeks."

  She listened to him breathe, and even now she couldn't believe he was here. "You're a miracle."

  "Not me. There are other miracles in this world— and so many horrors. I've lived through a few of both."

  "I saw you. You were fighting Ilya in the air." "I shredded him with my talons. I was kicking his ass—"

  "I saw you. You had him on the ropes, and then—"

  "Kassian shot me with an arrow." Rurik touched

  the spot where the arrow had pierced him. "The Varinskis are poor losers."

  Tasya swallowed over the anxiety in her throat. "I saw that, too. I thought you'd been killed."

  "Pretty close. Really close." Tenderly, he smoothed his hand down her bare arm as if he needed to touch something warm and alive. "I knew I was done for it. The injury was too massive for the hawk's smaller body mass—"

  "Wait a minute." Tasya half sat up. "Are you saying the arrow would kill you as a hawk/ but not as a human?"

  "Not exactly." He struggled to explain the fine points. "I didn't know if I could survive as a human, either—the arrow went right through my lung—but I had a better chance in my human form. Unfortunately, I was up high, and I can't fly as a human. I was too injured, and with the arrow in me, too off-balance to fly, anyway, and I was headed for the ground way too fast. I caught a glimpse of you." Taking her hand in his, he kissed her fingers. "I saw you turn and leave."

  "I hated to run. I hated it so much." She huddled next to him.

  "Do you think I don't know that? I also knew that if anyone could make it here with the icon, it would be you." He tilted her head up and looked into her eyes. "Only you, Tasya. Only you."

  "Because of the prophecy?"

  "No. Because no matter what the odds, you won't quit."

  At his avowed faith in her, she half smiled.

  "I wanted to give you time to get away. I figured I didn't have a lot of choice—die of the wound, or take a chance, soar until the last minute, then change into human form, and hope I didn't break my neck." Rurik's hand crushed the material of her top. "I didn't break my neck."

  She knew what that meant. "What did you break?"

  "I cracked a few ribs, did something really bad to my shoulder joint." Rurik shrugged in a way that looked more like a test of the joint than an expression of insouciance. "But with what happened afterward, that didn't matter."

  She ran her hand over him, reassuring herself, offering comfort to him.

  But she had begun to realize he had no time for sympathy. Rurik and his family were involved in a fight to the death—and beyond.

  And Rurik . . . Rurik wanted only to win. He wanted justice. He continued. "While Kassian and Sergei ran over, I yanked that arrow out of me and stuck it right through Sergei's throat."

  "Good," Tasya said.

  "Bloodthirsty girl." Rurik pressed a kiss on her forehead. "But that arrow trick really pissed off Kassian, and he picked up his walking stick—my father says those guys use everything as a weapon, and he's right—and slammed the pointed end through my shoulder. He pinned me right to the ground."

  Tasya recoiled, dug her fists into her eyes, trying to shut out the vision.

  "I looked up, and Ilya was diving, talons out, right for my eyes—when he exploded in this burst of black-and-white feathers."

  Tasya took her hands away from her face. "I used their rifle and shot him."

  "That's my girl!" Rurik chuckled, and she heard the sound deep in his chest. "I thought that must be what happened."

  "I knew I couldn't kill him, but I didn't care. I hoped I could hurt him badly. The lousy little weasel;"

  "Eagle, honey." He stroked under her top, finding the soft skin along her waist. "Not a weasel, an eagle."

  "I know a weasel when I see one," Tasya said.

  "All right," he conceded. "A weasel."

  "Keep going."

  His hand slipped below the waistband of her pants.

  She caught his wrist. "I didn't mean that. Keep going with the story."

  He groaned. "We can talk later."

  She looked down his body, and saw why he'd lost interest in telling his story. And as his hand skimmed lightly along the skin of her buttocks, she recognized a distinct diminishing of her curiosity.

  Yet he'd left too many questions unanswered, and thin slow rise of passion could be held off for a little while longer.

  She wanted to know, and she had things to say.

  "Did he fall on you?"

  Rurik sighed, but softly, content ... for now . . . to touch her. "Barely missed me, which was a good thing, because by then I was half-dead. I could have suffocated under him and not been able to push him away. That ass Kassian turned the color of borscht. He leaned over me, grabbed me by the throat, and laid, 'I'm going to finish you. Then I'm going to hunt down the woman and make her suffer.'" Rurik smiled, but it wasn't a pleasant smile. That smile made Tasya very glad she was not Kassian. "You know that trick I told you about, the one where I can will myself to change only one part of my body?" "Yes?" She wasn't sure she wanted to hear this. "I changed my hands to talons and sliced his throat wide open." Rurik gestured widely with his free arm. "Then I took out his eyes. Then—Tasya?" Tasya realized her head was buzzing and her vision blurred. It wasn't that she was squeamish. It was that mental picture of Rurik pinned to theground, yet fighting for his life—and hers. "You killed him," she said.

  "Yes. I killed him." He sat up, leaned over her, his body a protection, his face shadowed in mystery. "All the time I was fighting, all I wanted was for you to get away. Don't cry for me. Don't feel guilty for running. You did the right thing. You brought the icon here, and I'll never forget . . . that you trusted me."

  "I did trust you. I do trust you. I'm sorry about the icon." She smoothed her palms down his cheeks. "I should have told you I had it."

  "While I was recovering, I had a lot of time to think." He leaned his forehead to hers. "You found it in the chapel, didn't you?"

  "When you first walked in, I was holding Sister Maria Helvig's hand. She was still warm. . . ." Tasya's shock had battled with her grief, and above that, she was glad for the nun. Glad she'd gone on to be with her sisters.

  "What could you say?" He sounded briskly practical, putting the memories in the past. " 'The nun is dead, but hey! I found the icon.' "

  "True. But I just didn't think to tell you about the icon. Then we buried her, then the Varinskis appeared, and then—"

  "Then you didn't like me anymore." He leaned close and breathed in the scent of her hair.

  "No, but I still loved you, and that made me madder."

  "You loved me." His warm, deep voice lingered over the words. "Tell me again."

  "I love you."

  He kissed her, his breath mingling with hers, his tongue exploring, his warmth pressed against her. Each motion was heat and life and heart, and when he slid his hand under her shirt, up her belly, to cup her breast, she wanted to die from the sweetness— and live the rest of her life in his arms. She placed her hands on his shoulders. "Are you going to tell me the rest of the story?"

  He unknotted the drawstring at her waist. "Tomorrow. I'll tell you tomorrow."

  Chapter 33

  With great ceremony, Zorana placed the immense pork roast basted with a mustard rosemary sauce on the table in the Wilder kitchen, then stepped back and smiled while her children and her husba
nd applauded and praised.

  Tasya joined in; one asset her years as a foster child had given her was the ability to observe a family's traditions, learn them quickly, and blend in without a hitch.

  Sometimes it was a matter of being one of the crowd.

  Sometimes it was a matter of staying under the radar.

  At the Wilders', it was something she did because here, at last, she was home.

  This family had taken her to their bosom without

  reservation; just as Rurik promised, Konstantine and Zorana opened their home to her, not just because she'd brought them the icon, but because she had loved their son. During those dark days when they'd thought he was dead, his parents had talked about him, asked her about his last days, shown her his baby book, cried with her.

  Now that he had returned, they didn't claim him as their own. Instead, they paid tribute to her with the place of honor at their kitchen table.

  Rurik sat on the bench beside her, dressed in a loose black T-shirt and jeans, and an old pair of running shoes, making sure she had all she wanted on her plate before he dug into his welcome-home dinner.

  Firebird had taken the evening off from her job down at Szarvas's art school. She sat beside Rurik, her skin radiant with that special glow only pregnant women possessed.

  Jasha and his fiancee, Ann, had flown up from Napa for the reunion. Now they sat across the table from Rurik, opening more bottles of Wilder Wines and keeping the glasses full.

  "All right, Mama, the food is on the table. Now can Rurik tell us what happened?" Jasha looked as impatient and annoyed as only the oldest son could look when deprived of the information he viewed as his by privilege.

  Zorana glared at her son. "Rurik should have meat. He's still weak."

  "Weak from what? What ordeals did he undergo?' Jasha gestured at his brother. "I haven't heard the story yet."

  "So weak," Rurik dramatically whispered.

  His mother patted his shoulder and gave him thi end cut of pork.

  "You are such a piece of work." Jasha sounded aggravated, but his fork went to work on his full plate, and never slowed.

  "Waiting makes Jasha irritable," Ann confided to Tasya. "If it were up to him, all the icons would be found, the pact would be broken, and we could go back to the business of growing grapes and creating wines."