Gift of Gold

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  Jonas snatched the rapier from her hand as he moved by her.

  “Jonas, no, don’t touch it, it’s the dangerous one!”

  But the warning came too late. The moment his fingers closed around the hilt, the walls of the room began to curve around her and the psychic corridor opened in Verity’s mind. She tried to shout a warning but the sound died on her lips.

  She stood frozen in the doorway, her hands clenched at her sides as Jonas slipped into a fencer’s crouch. She struggled to hold on to both realities simultaneously. It was the first time she had ever attempted it and she was startled to find it was even possible. But it wasn’t easy. The two sometimes threatened to blend together, she discovered.

  The present reality was suddenly overlaid with the sensation of a man’s unrelenting fury. The fury was old and potent and timeless. It was also new and raw and reverberating through the bedroom.

  Some things never change. A man’s rage would always be a terrifying thing, whether it was very new or four hundred years old.

  Verity couldn’t tell if the rage was emanating from Jonas or from the terrible, writhing ribbons seeping down the corridor toward her. The coiling tendrils were the colors of midnight and blood and steel. The last time she had witnessed anything like them in the corridor was the night Jonas had come to this room with this rapier in his hand.

  In the bedroom she watched the two men moving around each other in a deadly pas de deux. But in her mind she stood in the time corridor and watched another scene in which a man dressed very much as Jonas was dressed did battle with an enemy. The scene flickered and died and reappeared again in quick staccato bursts.

  She closed her eyes in present time for a moment while she assessed what was happening in the corridor. She sensed the danger there and knew that someone had to deal with it. Jonas had his hands full. He must be waging a major battle just to keep his attention on the present. The past would be reaching for him through that rapier.

  The only reason why the past wasn’t swamping him was due to her.

  She was acting as a magnet for the seething ribbons of emotion that flowed from the faltering image in the corridor. The tendrils of violence and emotion wanted Jonas but they were forced to hover impotently around her.

  Instinctively she turned to search for Jonas but she couldn’t find him in the corridor. She sensed his presence but he was not in sight. She stood alone watching the short, flickering battle scene.

  The two men in the corridor circled each other with the same movements as the two in the bedroom. As the nearest one revolved slowly, rapier ready, Verity saw his face. It was the face of a man about Jonas’s age and it was locked in the same taut fighting mask. It was the face of a man who meant to kill his opponent. For some reason the other man’s face was more indistinct. The image winked in and out of sight, never progressing beyond the point where the man who was Jonas’s age drove his rapier into the chest of the other man.

  Over and over that one scene flickered in her mind. Over and over she was forced to watch the ghosts go through the motions of fighting and killing. It always ended the same way: blood welled and the image recycled.

  And all the while the tendrils of emotions flowed from the image like blood from a wound. They sought Jonas, the one who had called them forth by touching the rapier, but they were forced to tangle around Verity’s feet.

  Verity was shaken as she had never been before. She was there alone with the image and the swirl of night and blood that was flooding the corridor. She sensed the dangerous, silent hunger in the ribbons of emotion that slithered around her.

  “Verity!”

  “Jonas? Where are you?” She whirled around in the corridor, searching for him.

  “Stay where you are.” Jonas’s command came from a disembodied voice that seemed to fill the tunnel.

  “Where are you?” she screamed in her mind.

  “Trying to balance between the corridor and real time.” And then came a disgusted oath.

  “Shit.”

  There was an impression of momentary distraction and pain, then a cry from one of the women in the doorway in the bedroom.

  Verity flicked open her eyes briefly, long enough to see the blood on Jonas’s wet, muddy shirtsleeve. Kincaid had found a target.

  But Jonas was moving quickly, ignoring his wound as he danced the deadly steps that brought him closer to his opponent…

  For the first time Verity realized she hadn’t known that Jonas knew how to fence. There was no doubt that Kincaid was an expert. She remembered the swaying dummy in his office that he used for practice.

  “Verity. Pay attention, dammit.”

  Instinctively Verity closed her eyes again and found that she was inundated with violent tendrils of rage and pain. She was in the heart of a whirlwind now. She gasped as multicolored ribbons roiled around her, blinding her, buffeting her, seeking to break free and flow onward in search of Jonas. The storm rocked all her senses but she was able to hold herself steady.

  She was the anchor.

  Without any warning Jonas was there in the corridor, racing around a hidden curve, heading straight toward the maelstrom of emotions that was creating a storm around Verity.

  “Don’t move,” he snapped.

  Jonas stepped into the shifting currents of violence, fear, and rage that swarmed around her. It was as if he were searching for one particular tendril. At last he reached down and grasped a ribbon the color of old metal. He seized it and pulled it free of the others. When he lifted his hand it wriggled in his fist like a steel snake, eager to wrap itself around him.

  “Jonas, no!” Verity screamed with sudden insight. “I’m the one who chains them. You must not touch that thing.”

  He turned to her, golden eyes gleaming. But he said nothing as he wrapped the steel-colored emotion around his arm. The other emotions seethed restlessly at Verity’s feet, eager to assault Jonas. They were like a pack of hounds straining at their leashes. She was in danger of losing control over them now. Jonas should never have picked up that particular ribbon.

  But Jonas was gone, racing away from her down the corridor with the metallic ribbon in his grasp. The ribbon reminded Verity more than ever of a snake that was preparing to feed.

  Verity understood at last what was happening. Jonas had made a terrifying decision there in the corridor. He had deliberately taken hold of one of the most dangerous ribbons. She sensed that in doing so, he had subjected himself to a terrible risk. Neither of them knew how far he could stretch his control over his talent.

  Verity opened her eyes and the psychic scene in her head wavered and became fuzzy. She tried to hold her attention simultaneously on the heaving ribbons at her feet and on the two men fighting to the death in front of her. She had no energy left for anything as productive as screaming.

  Jonas was engaged in a series of lethal feints, thrusts, and parries that were being countered by Kincaid. But Kincaid seemed to be on the defensive now.

  The blades flashed, tangled, and clanged. Jonas came up against the wall with a jolt that momentarily broke his defense. Kincaid, obviously tiring, seized the offensive and thrust forward with all his might.

  Jonas threw himself to the side, going down on one knee. Then he lifted the tip of the rapier and thrust upward.

  Kincaid looked startled at the maneuver and then he panicked as the sharp point flashed toward him. He interrupted his attack and scrambled awkwardly backward. Jonas rushed him grimly, coming up off his knee in a smooth, long lunge. He twined the rapier with Kincaid’s weapon, catching it on his own blade. Using the leverage he had gained, he wrenched Kincaid’s rapier out of his hands.

  The blade clattered to the floor and Kincaid fell backward. He screamed incoherently and landed heavily on his side. Jonas had the point of the rapier at his throat before he could rise.

  “I’m going to put this blade through
your throat, you bastard. I warned you not to touch her. I warned you.”

  Verity was aware of a great many things at the same time. She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jonas was going to kill Kincaid. She sensed Caitlin’s throbbing passion for vengeance.

  And she felt her control slip away. The ribbons of emotion were getting ready to follow Jonas. All they needed was an opening.

  The opening would be provided when Jonas slid the rapier into Kincaid’s throat. The violence of death caused by the object to which they were attached would open the conduit the ribbons needed to come into the present.

  Verity knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jonas would be destroyed or driven insane by the emotions of the past as they swept through the rapier into him.

  “Jonas, no!” Verity darted forward and grabbed his arm just as his muscles were bunching for the kill.

  He shook her off with such force that she went spinning against the bed. Florentine gold eyes glittered with relentless fury as he turned to look at her. A four-hundred-year-old ghost looked out of those eyes, but so did a twentieth-century man consumed by rage. “He was going to rape you. Kill you. I’ll see him in hell for that.”

  Caitlin whispered hoarsely from the doorway. “Yes. Now. Kill him. Kill him!”

  Kincaid looked from the face of the man who held him at blade point to the scarred woman in the doorway. “Who the hell are you?” he rasped. “What’s going on here?”

  “Kill him,” Caitlin screamed.

  Jonas started to plunge the rapier into Kincaid’s soft flesh. Kincaid screamed and Verity leaped up from the bed. She caught hold of Jonas’s arm one more time.

  “No,” she said tightly. “Not you, Jonas. Listen to me. You can’t kill him. Everything in that corridor is waiting for you. I won’t be able to hold those ribbons in the corridor if you kill him now. The past will devour you if you kill him.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  “No, you won’t. I won’t allow it.”

  “Dammit, Verity,” Jonas hissed.

  Caitlin moved forward, her expression savage. “I agree. He has to die. Not for what he was about to do to Verity, but for what he did to me.”

  Kincaid stared at her. He licked at his lips, obviously seeking a way to buy some time. “Who are you?”

  She looked down at him with the air of a woman pronouncing sentence on a condemned man. Then she smiled terribly. “Susan Connelly.”

  “No,” Kincaid said in a thin scream. “No, you can’t be.”

  “You’re right,” Caitlin said with an odd twist to her smile. “I’m not Susan. Not anymore.” Her eyes flashed at Jonas. “Do it now while I can see the fear in his eyes.”

  “I won’t let you use Jonas as your condottiere,” Verity warned fiercely. “This is your scene. You write the ending.”

  Caitlin stared at her. Then she lunged for the hilt of the rapier.

  Jonas blinked, startled, and released the weapon into her clutching fingers.

  Verity was instantly free of the corridor. It vanished along with the throbbing, hungry ribbons that had been swirling around her. She had time to see the metallic-colored one, cheated of its prey, rejoin the pack before the whole scene disappeared. It was a tremendous relief not to have to deal with two realities at once.

  “You’re all crazy! Crazy!” Kincaid leaped to his feet as the exchange was being made. He threw himself at Caitlin, clearly not expecting her to be able to use the rapier.

  But Caitlin raised the tip of the blade as he launched himself toward her, bringing it instinctively into line with Kincaid’s chest.

  Kincaid had no chance to alter his course. His scream of rage and pain filled the room as he impaled himself on the rapier. He clutched the hilt in both hands as he slowly crumpled to his knees. His glazing eyes met Caitlin’s as he sank to the floor in front of her. He looked stunned that such a fate could have overtaken him. Stunned that a woman could have done this to him. Then he looked very, very dead.

  There was a shout from downstairs. Apparently someone had finally figured out something was going on upstairs.

  Jonas glanced down at the dead man and then looked at each of the women in turn. “No question about it,” he said meaningfully. “A clear-cut case of self-defense. We’ve got four eyewitnesses and we’re all going to tell the same story. No sense confusing the authorities. Pay attention, ladies, while I give you the rough outline.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  His arm hurt like hell. The anesthetic the doctor had provided when he stitched up the wound was wearing off, Jonas realized. But it was worth the discomfort just to have the opportunity to be the focus of Verity’s anxious concern.

  It occurred to him that he had never seen her fuss before, unless he counted the times she got upset because a sauce separated or a soufflé fell. It was strangely pleasant to have her hovering protectively. She hadn’t left his side since the battle upstairs had ended, except to fetch and carry whatever he requested. The little tyrant had turned into a devoted handmaid.

  Jonas told himself he’d better enjoy the service and attention while he could. Knowing Verity, it wouldn’t last long.

  “I think you should be in bed, Jonas,” she said with a worried little frown as she checked his bandage for the thousandth time. “You know what the doctor said about shock.”

  “I’m not in shock,” Jonas assured her mildly. “But just in case I’m on the verge, why don’t you bring me something to drink? Whiskey might be nice.”

  “I’ve never heard of alcohol being good for shock.”

  “Trust me,” he said. “Whiskey has been used for centuries to cure everything from snakebite to shock. Works like a charm.”

  “If you say so.” She hurried over to the bar that had been set up in the long salon at the front of the house. The remains of several half-empty bottles and a number of unopened ones still littered the area.

  The bottles of liquor had been left standing where they were when the caterers and the guests had finally realized something dramatic had happened. Only the perishable food had been put away. Caitlin had asked everyone, including the elite group of bidders, to leave as soon as the sheriff’s men had finished. The catering staff had promised to return early in the morning to clean up before the auction.

  Verity’s peacock-blue gown was gone, discarded for a pair of snug-fitting jeans and a teal-blue long-sleeved top that fastened with ten tiny buttons down the front. Jonas watched his boss bend over to find a glass behind the bar. The woman did look good in a pair of jeans.

  Caitlin, Tavi, Verity, and Jonas were alone amid the aftermath of the aborted Renaissance ball. It was time for some explanations as far as Jonas was concerned; explanations that went beyond those that had been given to the authorities.

  “I want some answers to a few questions,” Jonas said as Verity put a cool glass into his hand. She sank down onto a footstool at his feet, close at hand in case he needed anything else. Jonas absently stroked her coppery hair with a sense of amused satisfaction. This was definitely a moment to be savored.

  Across the room Tavi and Caitlin sat close together on the gray banquette that lined one wall. Neither woman had said much since the authorities had left. Caitlin seemed to have retreated into a world of her own and Tavi had not left her side.

  The story given to the sheriff’s men had been truthful up to a point. No outright lies had been told, but two of the six people who had been intimately involved in the evening’s drama were dead. The other four had stuck to their story.

  It was a simple, straightforward tale. Kincaid had apparently planned to steal Bloodlust and had hired the mysterious Tresslar to help him do it. For whatever reason, Kincaid had decided he didn’t stand a chance in the coming auction. Jonas had interrupted the theft and nearly gotten himself killed. He had gone back to the house in time to find Kincaid trying to kidnap Verity, p
ossibly because he knew she would be suspicious of his involvement when it was discovered that Jonas had gone over the cliff.

  Startled in the act of trying to subdue Verity, Kincaid had lost his gun and had gone for the nearest weapon, an old rapier hanging on the wall. Caitlin had quickly supplied Jonas with a blade of his own. Kincaid had been defeated but had made one last bid to escape. He had flung himself at Caitlin, who was holding one of the rapiers. She had instinctively brought the blade up to ward him off, and the rest was history.

  So to speak.

  Simple and straightforward. The sheriff’s men might not have liked certain parts of it, but it was a cinch they weren’t going to get any other answers. Every eyewitness told basically the same tale.

  “What do you want to know?” Caitlin asked quietly.

  Jonas took a swallow of whiskey. “The little plan for revenge you outlined to Verity and me this morning was a complete lie, wasn’t it? You never did intend to humiliate Kincaid in public. You intended to have him killed in private. By me. Let’s start with how much you know about me.” He felt Verity’s tension as she put one arm on his leg. She was watching Caitlin closely.

  Caitlin nodded slowly. “You have a right to know, I suppose.”

  “That’s putting it mildly,” Jonas remarked. “You said you heard me lecture at Vincent College a few years back?”

  “I attended the lectures because I had already heard about the experiments,” Caitlin said. She paused and then added gently, “I was a close friend of Elihu Wright. A very close friend.”

  Tavi shifted slightly and put her hand on Caitlin’s. She said nothing.

  Verity frowned thoughtfully. “Elihu Wright. Wasn’t he the old man you said gave Vincent College the money to start the Department of Paranormal Research, Jonas?”

  It was Caitlin who answered. “Elihu believed passionately in the existence of psychic phenomena of all kinds. He was determined to prove their existence and he gave millions to Vincent. In return he demanded to be kept thoroughly briefed on all research progress. When Jonas started testing, Elihu got very excited. He said that at last they had found a solid experimental subject. He was surprised at the type of psychic ability you had, Jonas. Elihu had been expecting to encounter telepathy or something more familiar. But there was no doubt about your talent.”