Cloudcastle

by Nan Ryan

  "Warm enough?" he inquired, grinning at her obvious pleasure.

  "Hot!" she assured, backing away from him, dipping down to sit on the smooth stone bottom. "Perfect! Wonderful!"

  Kane chuckled and drew a cigarette from his breast pocket. He leisurely smoked and enjoyed the sight of this beautiful flame-haired woman playing before him in the high-wilderness hot spring. Natalie knew he was enjoying it; and she knew that the longer he enjoyed it, the more time would Pass. Each ticking moment counted.

  She rose from the steam. Rivulets of water ran down her shoulders and over her full breasts and belly. She pirouetted, fingers trailing, skimming the warm surface of the springs. She lifted her hands behind her head and drew deep, moist breaths. She lowered her arms and backed away from Kane. Clouds of thick white steam obscured him from sight. And her from his.

  "Natalie." Kane's soft drawling voice caressed her through the thick curtain of mist. "Honey, I can't see you." Natalie smiled. "Do you want to see me, Kane?"

  "What do you think?"

  Quietly, rapidly, Natalie moved through the dense wall of fog, not stopping until she reached the rocky edge of the pool where Kane crouched. She stood directly below him glowing face tilted up to his. Her bare, gleaming breasts were visible for only a moment before she spun about and backed up between his bent knees.

  "Kane, how does the wound look?"

  Cigarette jammed between his even white teeth, Kane gently touched the wet flesh of her right shoulder. "Healing quickly, honey."

  "Hmm," she sighed. "Rub it? Scratch it a little?"

  Kane obliged. Natalie moaned and rolled her shoulders and leaned her head against his left knee. Slowly but surely, Natalie began to turn toward him while his massaging hand remained on her wet flesh. And Kane found himself grinding out his cigarette beneath his bootheel and bending to taste her wet, parted lips with his own.

  While he kissed her, Natalie turned to face him. And Kane's hand no longer stroked her wet, silky back but was filled with her full, slippery breast. Their lips separated and he raised his dark head. Fingers gently toying with a slick, firm nipple, he looked into her emerald eyes.

  Natalie raised a slim hand to his knee. Holding his heated gaze, she let inquiring fingers travel up the inside of his muscled thigh to his groin. Playfully, she touched the restrained fullness there and mid, "Have you ever made love in a hot spring, Kane?" Kane felt his groin rapidly expand.

  "Have you?" he said huskily.

  "Not till today." With her forefinger she drew a line down the straining fly of his tight pants, smiled naughtily, and splashed away.

  Ashlin Blackmore curtly told his puzzled manservant, William, that should anyone—anyone at all—come to pay a call, the visitor was to be informed that he, Ashlin, was upstairs in his bedroom, ill, and could not be disturbed. Brushing past the old man, he jerked open the heavy back door and rushed down the steps.

  Supple jacket of ebony leather concealing the heavy pistols, Ashlin mounted his coal-black horse, dug evil-looking silver spurs into the beast's shiny flanks, and whirled him about, heading into the foothills behind his mansion.

  It was the long route up to Promontory Point, but Ashlin could not afford to be seen. He would ride over the icy ridge of the upland valley, then circle back, skirting Cloudcastle as he headed northeast. He would not travel Paradise Road. He would cut through the forest, climb up out of the trees on the far side of Covington's cabin, and make straight for El Diente pass and Tahomah.

  The reflection of the bright sun against the snow caused Ashlin's squinted brown eyes to tear. Wet, slippery snow slushed beneath the pounding hooves of his galloping black steed. Gazing up at the sun-warmed slopes above him, Ashlin felt a twinge of unease.

  He dug the spurs deeper into the horse's belly. Big eyes wild, the beast thundered faster, great breaths labored as its long, fragile legs ate up the slippery white terrain.

  It was after eleven, the sun almost hot, when Ashlin, circles of perspiration staining his fine silk shirt, neck-reined his lathered mount around the high peaks of Promontory Point toward El Diente pass.

  It was eerily quiet. No sound at all, save the rhythmic clomp of his mount's sharp hooves on the sun-drenched snow. Ashlin pulled up on the big black. Suddenly the wet circles of perspiration beneath his arms grew icy cold. He shivered. He felt the fine, silky hairs on the back of his neck lifting.

  Ashlin nervously dismounted.

  Holding the reins loosely, he let his searching gaze make a wide, slow sweep of the countryside before him. He lifted wary eyes to the tall, sheer peaks above. He saw nothing. His heart abruptly began an erratic beat. He could feel eyes upon his back. Quickly he whirled about, panic rising.

  "You came." The bass voice reverberated in the silence. "I have been expecting you."

  Chapter Forty

  Paroxysms of fear rendering him temporarily helpless, Ashlin stood speechless, fixed in place by a pair of black, deadly eyes in a broad, granite face.

  Ashlin's tight, burning chest told him he had ceased breathing. He gasped frantically and sucked in a gulp of thin, dry air. The new supply of oxygen snapped his brain back into action and he ripped the heavy Colt revolvers from their black leather scabbards.

  "Yes." His voice sounded less than steady. "I have come to kill you." He aimed his right pistol straight at the broad chest of the Ute shaman, nervously noting the colorful black and white paint across the Indian's flat coppery cheekbones, the fancy shell- and hair-decorated turquoise velvet tunic atop the worn buckskins. The absence of weapons.

  Tahomah's mouth turned up into a scornful grin. "You could not persuade your lackeys to do me in," he correctly accused the slender blond man who was pointing the brace of pistols at him, silver-plated barrels gleaming in the Colorado sunshine.

  Ashlin's slim right finger tightened on the trigger. "I asked no one to kill you, old man; it's a pleasure I saved for myself."

  "You are not only a coward and thief, Yellow Hair, you are a liar."

  Ashlin felt the need to defend himself "No Blackmore has ever been a coward! From the thirteenth century every blue-blooded Blackmore male has—" He suddenly shook his blond head. "My God, I am wasting words on a stupid savage!" His eyes narrowed and, with the fully loaded revolvers aimed at the heart of the unarmed Indian, he admitted calmly, "If I am a coward, you are a fool." He smirked and indicated Tahomah's lack of weaponry.

  Tahomah's words unnerved him. "There is no need for weapons against a coward."

  Composure shaken, Ashlin snapped angrily, "You old fool! You put on that hideous shirt and expect it to deflect bullets."

  "You know little of the Ute," said Tahomah in a low, quiet voice, "This is not my ghost shirt." He lifted a gnarled, age-splotched hand to his massive chest. "My chosen-daughter, Fire-in-the-Snow, made this. It is my burial blouse. I wear it to honor the great spirit, Manitou."

  The image of Natalie painstakingly stitching the turquoise velvet shirt flashed through Ashlin's mind, and his jaw tightened. "Well, old man, I'm delighted my lovely fiancée made you a colorful shroud. I'll see to it you meet the spirit people, but first… did you kill my brother, Titus Blackmore, a dozen years ago?"

  Tahomah lifted enormous shoulders in a noncommittal shrug. "Perhaps. I kill many white-eyes." He grinned then. "All look alike to me. White-eyes like ants; no matter how many I stamp out, they keep coming."

  "You killed nobility!" Ashlin told him angrily. "My younger brother was the second son of the—!"

  "He was a noble thief and murderer. Just as you are, Yellow Hair."

  Ashlin bristled. "Enough! I should have killed you long ago. You've been a thorn in my side from the…"He began to smile an evil, pleased smile. "Take this thought with you, old man. By sundown, when the crows come to pick out your ugly black eyes, I will have taken the Manitou gold—and your precious Fire-in-the-Snow!" Eagerly anticipating a look of horror on the old man's face, he was, and strangely fearful, when the Indian authoritatively replied, "You will have neit
her the gold nor my chosen-daughter."

  "Ah, but I shall." Ashlin's voice cracked. "You can't stop me, you'll be dead."

  "I will be with the Manitou," Tahomah calmly agreed. "But hear me, Yellow Hair, the hour of your decay is near at hand. It has been foretold that at noon of the twelfth full moon, a terrible creature that flies without wings, strikes without hands, and sees without eyes will—"

  "Shut up!" Ashlin shouted, firing wildly. "Shut up!" A bullet pierced the old Indian's fleshy left earlobe. Bright red blood squirted onto his weathered cheek, his powerful neck, his brand-new turquoise spirit shirt. The black, obsidian eyes remained unblinking.

  Ashlin stared, hypnotized, at the drooping bloody mass of flesh that had been Tahomah's earlobe. And he whimpered like a frightened child when old Tahomah, smiling slightly, took a step forward, reaching an arthritic hand up to tear the bloody, loosened flesh away, dropping it to the wet, snowy ground.

  Horrified, Ashlin shouted, "Stay where you are!"

  Blood dripping, Tahomah advanced, black eyes gleaming, mouth smiling.

  "God damn you!" Ashlin again fired. His hand shook; the bullet hit the approaching Indian just above the left knee. Tahomah never faltered.

  Terrified, unbelieving, Ashlin swallowed and tried to take aim. He fired two rapid volleys. The first bullet slammed into Tahomah's massive chest. The second shattered a collarbone.

  The Indian, his beautiful turquoise velvet shirt saturating rapidly with blood, continued the march toward his executioner. The smile remained on his broad face.

  Incredulous, Ashlin emptied one Colt into the stalking savage, tossed it away, and began firing the other. Sheer will keeping the walking dead man on his feet, Tahomah neared Ashlin. He stood not five feet away, his big, squat body a mass of bloody bullet wounds.

  "Die, you red bastard!" shouted Ashlin hysterically, squeezing off the final bullet straight into the proud redman's face. He heard a sickening, crunching sound as Tahomah's right eyeball exploded in its socket.

  Silently, regally, Tahomah went down. But with his good left eye, he saw the cowardly tears in the other's frightened eyes. And the telltale stain wetting the tall blond man's dark britches. Tahomah smiled contentedly and closed his eye.

  The old Ute warrior died there in his beloved Shining Mountains below the gold-filled tomb of the Anasazi, while high above on the majestic, cloud-high peaks, a great mass of wet, heavy snow, loosened by the echoing reports of gunfire, shifted ever so slightly.

  Eyes smoldering, Kane lithely rose and stripped. Natalie giggled happily when he stepped naked into the steamy pool. The laughter choked off in her throat when he reached out and grabbed her wrist.

  Sexually intoxicated by Kane, Natalie felt a delicious tremor of fear when she looked into his passion-darkened blue eyes, which impaled her through the thick, rising white mists. Kane's dark, moisture-beaded face looked fierce, and when he swiftly pulled her up against his hard, bare body, Natalie was sure he would take her immediately, roughly, eschewing any preliminaries.

  In trembling awe she looked up at him while his powerful tumescence pulsed against her wet belly. A lean, dark hand captured her up tilted chin and his harshly handsome face started its descent.

  Natalie anticipated a ravaging kiss of uncontrolled passion.

  Ever an enigma, Kane suddenly softened his cruel-looking mouth and, lips hovering just above hers, said, "You've got the sweetest kisses. I can't get enough. Never enough."

  His lean fingers released her fragile wrist and tenderly he enfolded her in his long arms. And he kissed her. Languid kisses. Delicate kisses. Brief, soft kisses of infinite tenderness. Long, deep kisses of simmering passion.

  And while he kissed her, Kane's right hand moved from Natalie's narrow waist to her hip. Mouth hotly melded with hers, his hand slipped easily down her thigh to encircle her knee.

  The first thing she knew, her leg was hooked up over his bent arm, and he was showing her just how uninhibited lovers went about making love standing belly-deep in a pool of gurgling mineral waters.

  It was difficult. It was strange. It was awkward.

  Natalie stood there in the vaporous heat on one tiptoed foot, clinging to Kane's wet, wide shoulders while he urged her right leg around him and plunged into her, his hands guiding the movements of her slippery hips.

  Brown feet planted firmly apart in the swirling, hissing spring, balance sure and perfect, Kane looked down into her half-frightened green eyes while he loved her. The intense heat of that blue gaze coupled with the firm, deep sliding of his hard, wet flesh inside hers, rapidly turned the unusual mating into a gloriously hot dance of ecstasy.

  Natalie quickly found his rhythm and moved with him, eyes locked with his, lips parted. The perspiration of sex and the hot springs dampening their thrusting bodies, they slipped and slid, flesh on flesh, flesh in flesh, flesh afire.

  Natalie could feel Kane's climax, and her own, beginning and building. And when it happened, it came with the thunder and power of a great mountain avalanche.

  Gasping and shuddering, Natalie clung to Kane and shook with explosions so powerful, she could hear as well as feel them. They sounded like Fourth of July firecrackers.

  "Ka—Kane, listen…"

  Kane's mouth closed over hers and stayed there until the last tiny tremors had ceased jerking her bare, slender body. Only then did he raise his dark head. "Gunshots."

  Chapter Forty-One

  Tears of despair slipping down her hot cheeks, Natalie knelt on the rocky floor of the candlelit burial chamber deep inside the Cliff Palace. Above her stood Kane, head respectfully bowed, mutely watching the sad young woman saying good-bye to the dead shaman, Tahomah.

  "He truly was a father to me, Kane."

  "I know, sweetheart."

  "This is where he wanted to be buried. Here with his ancestors. Here with the Anasazi." A sob escaped from her tight throat. "Th-thank you for cleaning him up, Kane, he was… there was so much blood, so—"

  "Don't, honey. Don't."

  She was silent for a time, her cold fingers absently patting the chiefs broad, wrinkled hand, which rested on his unmoving chest. "Who will look after me now?" she wondered aloud, feeling like a lost, confused child.

  Kane crouched down beside her. A long, protective arm encircled her slender, shaking shoulders. "I will, darling. I will look after you." Gently, he pulled her to him. Natalie rested her weary head on his solid chest. Vision distorted with tears, she saw the blurred outline of a polished panther's claw resting in the hollow of Kane's dark throat.

  "Yes," she said, sniffing and hugging him tightly. "Tahomah knew you would, didn't he?"

  Kane Kissed the silky crown of her head. "He must have, sweetheart." Slowly, Kane rose to his feet, drawing her up with him. "We have to go now, Natalie."

  Natalie nodded, looked one last time at the dead Ute chief, and turned away, murmuring, "I'll send a wire to Metaka, his granddaughter."

  The pair wound their way back through the stone corridor toward the cave's wide mouth. It was silent in the Cliff Palace, no sound but the hollow echo of their bootheels on the flat stone floor. Only the flickering, wavery, light of the candle Kane carried gave illumination.

  Kane and Natalie blindly blinked when, finding their way back into the huge anteroom at the caves opening, their dilated pupils were assaulted with bright, pervasive sunshine.

  It was nearly noon.

  The sun was directly overhead, its powerful ultraviolet rays pouring down on the sky-high snowy tops of the towering San Juans, the southern slope receiving the full impact of its burning brilliance.

  While Kane and Natalie mounted their waiting horses below the sun-drenched opening of the Cliff Palace, high over their heads a huge mass of heavy snow, loosened by the earlier echoes of gunshots, groaned and hissed and shifted.

  And gave way.

  Natalie had heard the distinctive sound once before in her life and would never forget it. A cold dread immediately claiming her, she lifted horrifie
d eyes upward and saw the faint white mist beginning to rise high into the clear blue sky.

  "Follow me!" she commanded, kicking Blaze into a rapid trot.

  Unquestioning, Kane galloped after her as the strange hissing grew louder and the giant white cloud advanced rapidly. In seconds they reached a jutting granite overhang, both bending low to duck as they guided their nervous mounts under the snow-covered, protective ledge.

  They stood clinging together beneath the ledge as the en-tire mountain seemed to start falling. High above, a vast wet snowbank had broken away from the lofty peak and was pouring down the southern dope.

  From their vantage point beneath the protective shelf, Kane and Natalie witnessed the deceptively beautiful movement of tons and tons of snow on the rampage. Like a huge tidal wave it plunged downward, the terrific thunder of the falling mass booming and rumbling and shaking the very earth around them.

  The giant, deadly cloud advanced with ever-increasing speed, threatening to swallow up everything in its path. Unleashed fury with the power of infinite destruction swept down the sunny slope, scraping away layer after layer of deep snow as it tumbled.

  Through the great white cloud, Natalie's unbelieving eyes spotted a man emerging from the Cliff Palace. Golden hair gleaming in the sunlight, a colorful carpetbag in his right hand dripping gold coins, he dashed madly out of the cave and ran frantically down the steep slope, mouth open in a scream of terror that was drowned out by the deafening roar of the rapidly descending avalanche.

  Millions of tons of heavy snow cascaded after him, the horrid hissing becoming a deep, swelling bass hum with high whistling overtones.

  Kane saw the doomed man and tightened his arm around Natalie. Both watched in helpless horror. Ashlin Blackmore released his hold on the heavy gold-filled bag and it fell to the snow, spilling out its treasure. Uncaring, Ashlin fled blindly down the vibrating mountain in a hopeless race for his life.