“Who are you talking about?” Might as well get it out in the open.
“The ‘silly coed,’ ” Rhiannon mocked. “Only you knew she wasn’t just some bimbo, didn’t you? What’s her name?”
“Drew,” he said through tight lips.
She turned and leaned against the railing, staring at the sail now clear behind them. The thugs in the back of the boat had seen it too. One of them had a pair of binoculars. “Drew what?”
“Never got her last name.”
“Oh, so you’re just the ‘fuck ’em and leave ’em’ type?”
“That’s me.”
“Then you won’t mind if I sweep out your leavings.” She closed her eyes and spread her hands at her sides until they looked like claws. A gush of wind tipped the sail behind them. Clouds began to boil up on the horizon.
“Boy, they’re scurrying around now,” the guy with the binocs called.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. “No need,” he said, racking his brain. “We’ll have the sword and be out of here before they can catch us.”
“Damn right we will.” The clouds were rising into ominous thunderheads. “Whoever is on that boat will get a little wet, and of course I have to take out the motor, but they won’t die as long as you’re quick about this. If you try any tricks, you not only lose Alice, but I foresee a sailboat burning. Lightning is a bitch on the open water.”
At that moment three forks of lightning struck out from the black-bottomed clouds and straight at the stern of the yacht.
“Bitch!” he yelled, rounding on Rhiannon. “You said they’d get wet. Just wet.”
“Relax. I told you I had to take out their motor. They still out there?” she called.
“Yeah. I count three and a girl.”
Michael breathed.
“And they can stay healthy,” Rhiannon shrugged. “Unless of course....”
Michael rubbed his mouth and tried to get control. “I get it.” He scanned the shore. They were close enough to put down the anchor, but he had to be sure they were near the sword. He knew it was on the island, but he’d not been able to pinpoint it exactly so far away in the Keys. What if it was on the far side? “Gimme a minute here.” He closed his eyes against Rhiannon’s narrow look. The air was still here, heavy with heat, while a couple thousand yards behind them Drew’s sailboat was struggling in Rhiannon’s brewing storm. He felt his pulse ramp up in fear. He couldn’t let the bitch beside him kill Drew. He’d get the damned sword. Who cared if this woman and her boss who could bring people back from the dead shouldn’t have some magic sword? Lord, he couldn’t believe he was saying this. Magic swords, for God’s sake. But he knew full well that the only way Drew could have found him was to somehow know where he would be, not where he was. She hadn’t followed The Purgatory immediately. She’d have had to get a boat, a crew. The only way the yacht could have caught them was to chart a direct course, not stopping at any of the islands they’d laid into for fuel.
So she’d had a vision and that vision was leading her here, in spite of how much he’d hurt her, and for whatever reason she came. Whoever was sailing that thing was the best sailor Michael had ever encountered if he’d sailed through that hurricane. He told himself the pilot could handle what Rhiannon dished out. If the yacht made it out of Rhiannon’s localized weather event, it would be stuck in the calm. So there would be no following The Purgatory, even if Drew knew where they were headed. Drew would be safe. He had to believe that.
Focus. Find the damn sword for Rhiannon and get out of here. If there was a way later to make sure Rhiannon couldn’t use it, fine. But right now this was all about Drew.
He let his surroundings slip away from his mind as he breathed out. In. And out. He reached for a calm image. The garden. It was always the garden. Then he thought about the sword. The hilt with its jewels. It had some inscription on the blade. Latin maybe. It might not be so shiny anymore, but it had been once. That’s how he saw it. He opened himself, welcoming the power, even though when it came, it hurt. He swallowed the pain. Couldn’t let anyone see what it cost him. As always, the universe became a three-dimensional grid. The grid began to populate with things around the sword. A box filled with other stuff, he couldn’t tell just what. A huge shape, three times the height of a man. Boulder? Trees and brush, and cliffs and then, farther away, shore and surf and more rocks. The pull of the sword anchored in his chest, almost like the pull to Drew.
He opened his eyes. “Okay, I got it.” He scanned the shore, only a few hundred yards away now, then pulled back on the throttle and turned south. The island was tiny. Rhiannon stood at his side, bubbling with excitement. He could hear the whoosh of wind and thunder behind him even over the growl of the engine, but here it was dead calm. He didn’t look back. He focused on the pull of the sword, drawing him on.
Rocks just beyond the surf line littered the water. “Drop anchor,” he said, not raising his voice. Rhiannon motioned to St. Claire, who looked resentful, but hopped to it.
“Can’t we get closer?” Rhiannon asked, staring at the shore.
“Not unless you fancy being marooned. Rocks’ll gut the bottom. We’ll have to swim.”
“Get over the side with the shovels,” Rhiannon ordered her crew, even as she worked at the knot of the halter top at the back of her neck.
Michael looked out at the yacht. Rhiannon’s storm was pushing it away from the island. The boat was heeling over. He could see the figures on it leaning out on the leeward side, struggling to keep it from going over. Big men. Maybe three? And one more slender figure. His heart clawed its way into his throat. “You can cancel the storm now,” Michael croaked. “In the still air, they’ll just drift.”
“Knowing that pilot, he’d find a way to manufacture a breeze.” This from St. Claire, who was running out the clattering anchor chain. “I’d keep the pressure on.”
Rhiannon’s muscle plopped into the water in trunks and sneakers. They held shovels in one hand and scooped water with the other to move toward shore. One had a pickaxe, and several had provided themselves with gunnysacks.
Rhiannon let her halter top fall. She was wearing a magenta print bikini that covered maybe a dozen square inches of skin. “Pressure it is. Let’s go.” She pushed the dress down over her hips, faced the yacht and made pushing motions with her hands, as though she was boxing the storm in. Then she turned. “You first.” She pointed at St. Claire and Michael.
St. Claire stripped off his Dockers and boat shoes along with his shirt. He too was wearing a suit. Michael wasn’t. He’d swim in his shorts. He took off his tee shirt. He saw Rhiannon’s appreciative glance. He had a few more abs showing than beefy St. Claire.
“When this is all over,” she said, as she went to the side, “we’ll have to have a drink.”
Yeah. He bet that wasn’t all she had in mind. He didn’t kick off his Nikes but jumped overboard. He struck out for shore as Rhiannon executed a perfect dive beside him and came up a few yards in. She was showing off her body. Like she could compete with Drew.
When Michael could stand up in the water he waded in to join the wet group clustered on the narrow strip of white sand. A little stream fanned out across the beach as it sought the sea. Trees loomed along the edge of the rain forest. Mahogany and some others he didn’t recognize. Birds called from inside the jungle. He took a breath. He was the leader of this pack whether he wanted to be or not. “This way.” He nodded inland.
“Hey, I didn’t know we were going to be trekking all over. Didn’t they always bury treasure chests on the beach?” St. Claire was the only one barefoot. Even Rhiannon wore flip-flops.
“It probably was the beach back when they buried it,” Michael said. He couldn’t help glancing back out at the yacht, more distant now, but still under boiling black clouds.
“Stay here, then,” Rhiannon snapped and gestured to Michael to lead the way.
“Look,” Michael said, not moving. “Why don’t we make this easy? You need my willing cooperation, not o
nly with finding this sword but other things as well, and I want whoever is on that boat safe. Why don’t we call it a draw and both get what we want?” She was the kind who liked to win. But it was worth a try. “You can always raise another storm.”
She looked furious for a minute, then speculative. Then she smiled. He wasn’t sure he liked that. “Sure,” she shrugged, and lifted her hands, then pressed them down. As Michael glanced out to sea, he saw the clouds suck up into nothing and the wind die.
“Happy now?” she asked, a little too sweetly.
“Yeah,” he said, as the tightness in his chest loosened. He pushed past her into the rainforest, following the stream. Trees filtered the light. Not much sun got down here and what there was glowed dim green. It was a little spooky. The guys behind him made enough noise to drown out the crash of the surf behind them. Not Delta Force material.
He could feel himself moving around that universal grid in relationship to the sword. This was easier than it had been in the past, and he wasn’t so exhausted. Sometimes he had to move away from the little stream, just to get through the tangle, but he always ended up back at its edge. Maybe a hundred yards in he saw the big boulder. The sword sang to him now. Was his power getting stronger? He knelt where the rock overhung the stream, creating a shelter with a sandy bottom. He kept time to the sword’s song with the thump of his heart.
“Here,” Michael whispered, touching the sand with two fingers. “Dig here.” He stood. “And be careful,” he said. “It’s only about three or four feet down.”
The guys were eager, and were soon grunting and sweating with effort in the heat as the sand flew and the pile next to the hole grew. Rhiannon watched with avaricious eyes. Michael felt pulled in two directions. The sword that was so near plucked at him. But the pull to Drew was getting stronger, not weaker. His whole body was throbbing. Was he just more sensitive to the connection, or was the yacht coming closer to shore?
Michael was expecting the thunk of shovel on something hard, so it didn’t surprise him. The guys let out some whoops when they realized they’d reached a real, actual treasure chest.
“Be careful with that,” Rhiannon yelled.
The two who were digging climbed out and the guy from O’Toole’s named Danny leaped down into the hole and started scraping out dirt around the edge of the box with his hands.
“Wood is really old,” he said. “It’s falling apart.”
Rhiannon leaned over, trying to see around Danny’s broad shoulders. “Pry up the lid with the shovel,” she ordered. “Just be careful.”
“Yeah. Okay.” Danny grabbed a shovel and used it on the corner of the box he’d revealed. There was a splintering sound and a piece of the lid broke off. He tossed it on the dirt pile and started in again. He tossed up another piece and stared down into the hole. “Mary, Mother of God,” he breathed.
“What is it?” Rhiannon craned her neck. “What have you got?”
The guy reached down and pulled up a handful of pearl necklace. The long rope dripped out of his fist. The pearls were dusty with decomposing wood, but they still glowed in the eerie green light under the canopy of trees. Nobody said anything. Real buried treasure. Finally the guy held the pearls out reverently to Rhiannon.
“Fuck the jewelry,” she snapped. “Find the sword.”
“Yeah. Yeah, okay.” The guy handed the rope of pearls to one of the other men, and bent down again. You could hear the sound of metal clinking as he rummaged around.
“Is it there?” Rhiannon’s voice was about to break.
The guy reached down with both hands. As he stood, he was holding a decomposing oilcloth, wrapped around something long and heavy.
“Take it,” Rhiannon directed shrilly. The two original diggers jumped to obey. “Lay it down over here.” As they set it down, she knelt beside it, hands clasped, probably so they wouldn’t shake. It looked almost like she was praying. If so, it probably wasn’t to a god he knew.
Her hands did shake as she reached out and pulled the oiled cloth back. There wasn’t any doubt in his mind what he’d see. There it was. What was surprising was that it wasn’t grimy or tarnished and there wasn’t a speck of corrosion on it. It shone as though it had been forged yesterday. Cabochon jewels glinted red and blue and green. The finely wrought hilt was cut with patterns of leaves and knotted vines. Here and there a tiny face peered out of the foliage. The hilt was gold, but the blade was gleaming steel, incised with figures, not Latin as he had first thought, but runes. This thing was way older than medieval. Arthur was supposed to have lived in the fifth century. He would have spoken Latin, since Rome had already been through Britain. Runes were even older than that. He felt a chill go down his spine.
“Holy shit,” one of the guys murmured. The others were speechless.
Rhiannon ran her fingers lightly along the length of it. Power hung in the air, vibrating outward from the sword. Even breathing the air around it told him that this blade had seen the most violent of deaths and the most elated of victories, the most wrenching tragedies, the hardest sacrifices, the most enduring loves. This sword was ... wise, for lack of a better word. It had been sought and found and lost again a hundred times down through the ages, until it had come to rest here, on an island in the middle of the ocean that, to the world at large, didn’t exist. Just like the island of the Lady of the Lake appeared and disappeared, so this island had been revealed to them and the sword was found. When they left, it would be as though the island disappeared.
Rhiannon lifted the sword by the hilt with effort. It was too heavy for her, so she just wrapped it up again in the cloth and cradled it like a baby against her breast. Standing, she turned toward the beach. “Bring the rest,” she said absently. “I’m taking this back to the boat.”
Michael followed. Behind him, Rhiannon’s henchmen crowed over the prospect of dividing out shares in a treasure.
When they got to the beach, St. Claire ran up and reached for the sword. “Is that it?”
Rhiannon turned away before he could touch it. “We’ll float this out to the boat. Go get me all the life jackets.” The oilcloth fell open.
“Get one of the others.” St. Claire too was mesmerized by the sword.
“You’re kidding, right?”
Dowser searched the horizon for the yacht. There it was, all sails slack, too far away to see anyone. He could only hope Drew was safe along with whoever was on board with her.
As St. Claire finally splashed into the waves, Rhiannon sat down on the log of a palm tree that had washed up during some storm. “You really did it. You found the Talisman Sword.” She laughed. “Morgan will be so pleased. And you’ll get your Alice back.”
“Yeah.” Michael shoved his hands in the pockets of his shorts.
“You don’t sound happy about that.” Rhiannon frowned.
“I am happy. If Alice is really the Alice I remember.”
“Well, she’s died, hasn’t she?” Rhiannon sneered. “That’s bound to change anyone’s attitude a little.”
“Yeah.” He’d bet it changed more than just attitude.
“Well, you two can have a grand reunion and Morgan will reward you beyond your wildest dreams when you find the other Talismans for her.”
“Yeah.”
Rhiannon sent him a speculating look. “Something’s been bothering me. How did Silly Little Coed find us? She is out there on the sailboat, isn’t she? The only way she could have caught us is if she didn’t follow us to each island to refuel. Which meant she knew where we were going and came straight here.”
Smart girl. Unfortunately. He shrugged. “How would I know?”
Rhiannon looked down at the sword, then out to The Purgatory where St. Claire was gathering life jackets, and finally beyond to the tiny sail of Drew’s yacht. She took a deep breath. “So, you were real sick when we left her. That should have tipped me off.” She snapped her gaze to his face. “You don’t care about Alice, because you’ve found a new mate. One with the gene, who go
t her magic.” She stood, frowning. “You’re planning to give her the sword. Damn it, what’s her last name?”
What was she saying about Drew getting magic? And they weren’t “mates.” He tried to look blank and she began to pace furiously. “It’s Tremaine, isn’t it? Jason said the oldest daughter’s name was Drew, I think.” She slapped her forehead and made a strangled sound. “Why didn’t I remember that before? Shit.” Then she screamed. “Fuck!” She rounded on him. “What’s her power? Is she a Finder, too?”
Michael didn’t answer. He wasn’t telling this harpy jack about Drew.
“She didn’t follow us. She found the sword, once she’d seen the drawings.” Rhiannon was busy thinking again now. She slid a look to him. “Well, we don’t need two Finders, now do we? We can just dispense with dear little Drew.”
Stupid, stupid. He’d played it wrong. “Wait! You said you’d let them go if I came willingly. And I will. I’ll find these Talisman things for you, or whatever else you want.”
“Deal’s off, Dowser. Morgan has been looking for Tremaines, and she doesn’t want them alive.” Behind her, St. Claire splashed into the water, pushing his flotilla of life jackets. “You’ll do what she wants anyway, or you won’t like what she does to Alice.”
Michael thought frantically. The only way Drew was going to live through this was if Rhiannon thought she could be used. He’d deal with the comment about Alice later. One emergency at a time. “What if she’s got a really good power? Better than just being a Finder?”
Rhiannon looked triumphant that he’d confirmed her suspicions. “Yeah, right. You’d say anything. She’s the One for you.” She said the word “one” with a capital letter. “Hey, you’re a lucky guy. You’ve had two. That just doesn’t happen.”
He had no idea what she was talking about. “What if she sees the future?” he asked. “Would Morgan like it if you let that get away?”
Rhiannon’s eyes narrowed. “You’re just saying that.”
“Nope. She was having visions the night before you showed up.” He took a stab in the dark. “Something about a room with a glass roof and blue light.” Jackpot. Rhiannon’s eyes widened. He pressed his advantage. “She probably saw me finding the location of the sword in the future and that’s how they got here.”
He's A Magic Man (The Children of Merlin) Page 20
