The Warrior

by Sharon Sala

  “I have a surprise for you,” he said, tugging her up from the chaise longue.

  “What is it?” she asked with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.

  He shook his head. “If I tell you, then it won’t be a surprise.”

  She managed a wan grin, then let herself be led across the hall to the room that had once been her bedroom. One that she’d begun to use as her own little nook. She had a stack of books by the chair near the window. There was a photo of her mother that she’d brought with her when she’d first run away. As she entered the room, she noticed a second frame now sitting beside the first.

  “What’s that?” she asked as she pointed across the room.

  “It’s your surprise. If you don’t like it, you can get rid of it, but I thought it would be a nice way to remember that one night in Sedona, you had a heavenly visitor.”

  Immediately, she knew what it was, but even so, she was anxious to see what he’d done.

  The frame was small but elegant. He’d chosen black, with a black velvet backing to best display her mother’s gold-and-ruby brooch.

  “Oh, John. I love it,” she said, running her fingers over the surface of the piece.

  She tilted it to the light, watching the tiny red stones as they winked from the reflection.

  “Do you ever think about that?” he asked.

  Alicia nodded. “All the time.”

  “And do you believe, the way he told you to?”

  She sighed, then set down the frame and put her hands on his chest.

  “Someday, when I’m teaching my children about God, and the subject of angels and miracles arises, I will tell them that once upon a time I was visited by an angel, and that I know they are real.”

  “What do you think about me…about what I told you?”

  “I believe you do not lie.”

  He sighed. She was skirting the issue. She didn’t say she believed he was immortal. She’d just said he didn’t lie. That left all kinds of room for the insanity theory, but he wasn’t about to go there.

  He smiled instead. “I can live with that,” he said softly, then kissed her.

  “As long as you live with me, too, we’re good to go,” Alicia said.

  He kissed her again, and when she moved from his lips to the hollow at the base of his throat, he picked her up in his arms and carried her to bed.

  The law firm representing the Ponte empire had contacted her soon after the announcement of her father’s death, requesting her attendance for a reading of his will. She’d declined, and hired her own attorney to see to the legalities. She already knew she was his heir. What the rest of the world had yet to learn was that she didn’t want his fortune. She’d inherited her mother’s money, which was more than she would ever need. She could never have spent a penny of what she considered blood money.

  When she announced her decision, through the auspices of her attorney, to sell the munitions part of her father’s empire, it stirred excitement all over the business world. But when she further stated that all the monies resulting from the sale were going to the families of the American soldiers who’d been killed in Iraq, as well as to the ones who’d come home too damaged ever to work again, the media began calling her a modern-day Mother Theresa. The money would be in the billions. It wouldn’t pay for lost lives, but it might keep the surviving families from losing everything else.

  Every talk-show host in the nation wanted her. Publishers were offering huge sums for a book deal, and Hollywood came back with a slew of similar offers for the rights to her story. She refused them all. She didn’t want to be a celebrity. She wanted to forget she’d ever been born to a man she considered a conscienceless demon.

  John knew she was suffering a combination of grief and shame, but there was nothing he could say that hadn’t already been said. He also knew, with every fiber of his being, that Ponte was not only still alive but back in the States. The physical pain that was his clue was a dull and constant ache. It triggered an ongoing barrage of dreams about the massacre, ending, as always, just as the Spanish galleon sailed out of sight.

  When John wasn’t sleeping with Alicia wrapped in his arms, he was on the balcony off his bedroom, keeping watch toward the ocean, just as he’d done so many centuries ago. He could no more explain his feelings of dread to Alicia than he’d been able to convince Chief Red Hawk of the approaching danger to the village.

  Alicia knew he was unsettled, but no matter what he thought, she knew her father was dead. The DNA proved it—just not to Nightwalker. And she knew when the nightmares overtook him. She’d pretended sleep more than once as he’d wakened with a soft, muffled sob at the back of his throat. She’d seen him slip out of bed to go stand on the balcony, staring out at the ocean in the dark. And the days were no better. He let his work slide in order to stand watch. Once she’d tried to kid him out of it, only to realize the depths of his concern.

  “Hey, John…what time does the guard change? We’re out of milk and butter.”

  He turned toward the sound of her voice, saw the laughter in her eyes, and was struck by how swiftly her joy could fade if he let her father get to her.

  “Sorry. I knew that this morning and forgot about it,” he said. He put down his binoculars, picked up a rifle from the corner of the balcony and carried it back into the bedroom.

  It was impossible to ignore the elephant in the room. “When did you break out the gun?”

  “It’s always been around,” he said in an offhand manner. “Do you want to change clothes before we go to Justice?”

  Her slacks were still clean, but she brushed at the crease, then picked a piece of lint off her shirt and ran her fingers through her hair. She’d begun going barefoot when they were home, and the thought of putting on shoes was unwelcome. It made her realize how easily she could fall into John’s habit of wearing less, not more, clothing.

  “I’ll get my shoes, and then I’m ready,” she said.

  He watched her fly across the hall, then started to follow her, when an inner alarm gave a jangle. He turned toward the ocean, giving the horizon one last sweeping glance, then locked the sliding doors, pocketed his wallet and met her in the hall as she was coming out.

  She put her hand through his elbow, chattering happily as they walked down the hall toward the front door, while the knot in his belly continued to tighten.

  “That bitch is giving it away!”

  Richard was so angry that the veins in his neck were bulging. A fleck of spittle hung at the corner of his lips. His face was awash in bloody fury.

  “Did you hear that?” He pointed to the television screen. “She’s put the munitions factories up for sale, and she’s donating the entire proceeds to the fucking soldiers! She can’t do that! I spent my life building all that, and she just throws it away? What kind of child does that to her own father?”

  “Obviously one whose father has been trying to kill her.”

  Richard was so shocked by the fact that Dieter had dared to make such a comment that he was momentarily mute.

  Dieter couldn’t have cared less. He’d already figured out that the man he’d sold his soul to for the tidy sum of ten million dollars was the devil. This just proved it. How could Richard rant about his child and what she was doing with her inheritance when he wanted her dead?

  Richard’s fingers curled into fists as he stared at the man he considered hired help.

  The urge to watch him die was so strong he was shaking.

  “I won’t let her get away with this,” he vowed.

  “You can’t stop the sale. You’re dead, remember?” Dieter said, and then turned his back on Richard and walked to the window overlooking Miami.

  He was so tired of doing this crazy man’s dirty work and living on the cusp of arrest that he’d actually considered the notion of killing the bastard for real himself.

  Richard flinched as if he’d been slapped. No one turned their back on him and walked away when he was talking. Ever. His gaze landed on a plaste
r bust of Aristotle displayed on an antique pedestal, and he actually took a step toward it before sanity surfaced. He paused, then took a deep breath. He couldn’t kill Dieter. He needed him.

  Dieter turned around just as the killing look passed over Richard’s face.

  “You want me dead? Do it.”

  Richard didn’t answer.

  Dieter sneered. “You don’t have the guts to do it yourself. I’ve had enough of this. I’m going out. I have my phone. Call me when you’re on to your next mad moment.”

  “If you walk out that door, don’t bother coming back,” Richard said.

  That option was more appealing than Richard had intended.

  “Really?” Dieter asked.

  Richard cursed. The interest in Dieter’s voice was not the result he’d hoped for when he’d made the threat, so he chose to ignore it and threw another question at him instead.

  “Did you rent that speedboat yet?”

  “Yes.”

  “When can we get it?”

  “Anytime after seven tomorrow morning. It’s ours for the day. If you want it longer, you can tell him when we pick it up. He wants cash, and a deposit.”

  “Fine, fine,” Richard muttered. “I want to be on the water by 8:00 a.m.” Then he ran his hand over his freshly shaved head, trying to reconnect with his purpose. “She thinks she’s safe now, coming out of hiding and moving in with that Indian. But we know where he lives.”

  “You can’t get to him from land. He’s got the perfect setup for privacy. I hot-wired that gate once, and it still set off alarms.”

  “Thus the reason for coming at them from the water,” Richard said sarcastically.

  Dieter no longer cringed at Richard’s voice. He’d become impervious, although there had been a time when that tone would have made the hair stand up on the back of his neck.

  “It’s a long trip up the coast in such a small boat.”

  “I’m down to one yacht. Even though it’s berthed in Miami, we can hardly use it now, can we? Besides, it’s not that far, and I’m assuming you don’t have a prior engagement,” Richard pointed out, then waved his hand. “Go do whatever it is you were planning to do. Just be back here by dinnertime.”

  “Yes, Mother,” Dieter said, then let the door slam behind him as he left.

  Richard picked up a water glass and threw it against the wall. It shattered forcefully, scattering hundreds of tiny shards all over the carpet; then he grabbed his hat and sunglasses, and left the room, as well. He had a sudden urge to drive by his Miami home one last time.

  Nightwalker. Nightwalker. Wake up.

  John sat up with a jerk, his heart pounding and his body covered in sweat. The room was bathed in shadows, with moonlight dappling the walls and floors. He looked at Alicia. She was still asleep. He combed his fingers through his hair, then rolled out of bed and strode through the open doors to the balcony, welcoming the ocean breeze on his heated flesh.

  The moon was full to bursting, spilling its pale glow over the water and delineating the crevices in the rocks along the bluff. Something broke the surface of the water, then quickly disappeared below. Nothing looked out of place. But he’d heard the voice, urging him to wake up. Even the Old Ones were anxious, which didn’t bode well for anyone.

  Just when he was thinking about going back inside, he heard the soft pad of Alicia’s footsteps on the balcony behind him. He turned to face her, then took a slow, deep breath, thinking, as she moved, She is mine.

  She was magnificent in the moonlight, bare to the world into which she’d been born, with her dark hair tousled and her eyelids still heavy with sleep. Her breasts swayed slightly as she came toward him, taunting him to touch. So he did.

  She walked into his arms and gave him a hug.

  “Another bad dream?”

  He sighed. He should have known he wasn’t fooling her.

  “It’s gone now,” he said, and laid his cheek against the crown of her head.

  “I’m still here,” she said.

  “I know, baby. I’m sorry if I disturbed you.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, taking both comfort and pleasure in being with him like this.

  But there was something that mattered that she hadn’t yet told him. Something that had been on her mind for days now. Seven, to be exact. Somewhere between the time they’d met in Justice and their time together in Sedona, she’d changed her sense of direction as to what was important in life. The two failed attempts to kill her had given her a different way of looking at the world. Suddenly there were more important things than keeping a hair appointment or getting her nails done. From the time she’d fallen in love with John Nightwalker to right now, when she’d awakened alone in their bed, she’d decided to live life without stoplights and blinders. It had been life affirming and, at the same time, life changing. She’d hesitated to broach the subject because of all his bad dreams and distractions. But maybe now was the time. Maybe this would be what it took to make him happy again.

  She leaned back in his arms, looking at his face in the moonlight. He was magnificent, her hero—but a hero who lived with too many demons.

  “John…”

  “Yes, baby?” he said softly as he fingered a loose strand of hair away from her eyes, then kissed the side of her face.

  “We haven’t talked a lot about the future.”

  He kissed the other side of her face before he answered. “You’re in mine. Am I in yours?”

  She smiled. He couldn’t have given her a better opening if she’d drafted it herself. She took his hand and laid it in the middle of her belly.

  “You are so very in me, Nightwalker, and will be for the next eight months or so.”

  John heard the words yet was afraid to believe what she was saying. Her belly was flat, her skin warm to the touch.

  “Alicia…what are you saying?”

  She took his other hand and put it on her stomach.

  “There’s a baby in there. I’m going to have your baby.”

  A look of awe swept across his face as he thought of what was growing beneath his palms. He tried to talk, but the words wouldn’t come. When her face became a blur, he shook his head and dropped to his knees, holding her close with his face pressed against her belly. This was something he’d only dreamed of. A dream that had ended with White Fawn’s death. Not only had she come back to him, but she’d come back with the one ability she didn’t have before. The ability to bear children. His imagination was already running wild, imagining what the baby would look like—what he or she might grow up to be.

  A little startled by his reaction, Alicia dug her fingers through his hair, then stroked the back of his neck. “I take it you’re okay with this.”

  She saw the shine of tears on his cheeks.

  “John…sweetheart…”

  He stood abruptly, then looked down at her, unashamed of his emotions.

  “You have made me so happy…happier than you could ever know. Thank you, Alicia…thank you for loving me and for carrying our child.”

  John cupped her face, kissing her lips, then her nose, then hugging her over and over again until Alicia got it. He was seriously happy. She smiled.

  Then he paused and stepped back, unaware that he was gathering his courage.

  “Do you remember when I told you that when this was all over, there was a question I was going to ask you?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Well, I may be jumping the gun a little bit here, but hey…this baby changes the odds.”

  “The odds of what?” she asked.

  “Of you telling me yes if I asked you to marry me.”

  Laughter bubbled. “Was a proposal going to be the question?”

  “It was.”

  “And now you think you have me over the proverbial barrel because you got me with child?”

  He grinned. “I was hoping for just such an assumption, yes.”

  “Then I say yes. To your proposal and the assumption, and to the fac
t that I’m beyond ecstatic to be having your child.”

  The innocence of his joy overwhelmed her. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and just as she lifted her lips to his, the moonlight caught the tiny feather in his ear. It seemed to wink, as if at some secret they shared. Then she told herself she was just being fanciful and gave herself up to his kiss.

  They left Miami without looking back, Richard sitting in one of the chairs at the prow of the boat, feeling the sea spray against his face and the sun beaming down on his shaven head. At first he’d been fidgety, anticipating what he was going to say to her, wanting her to understand his sense of betrayal before her broke her damn neck. But one hour passed, and then another, and the sun got hotter, and the sea went on forever, and Richard felt a constant sense of déjà vu that made no sense.

  Dieter steered without speaking, lost in his own morbid thoughts. Wondering what it was in him that made him so weak. Wondering why he was still here. It couldn’t be for the money. That was already in his bank. He could have skipped out, and there wouldn’t have been a thing Ponte could have done about the money. But he’d stayed. And not because he’d been afraid Richard would come after him and kill him. He felt a sickening sense of destiny, as if this had all been preordained before any of them had been born.

  And so they sped over the water, bouncing with the waves that slapped hard against the underside when he steered too far into the wind. Jarring them in every way possible, except into the good sense they needed to turn back.

  Richard got bored and came back to stand beside Dieter, urging him to go faster. Constantly asking how much longer it would be.

  Finally Dieter turned, pointed and shouted in his face, “Look there! That’s it. That big house on the bluff belongs to John Nightwalker.”

  For the first time in weeks, John woke up happy, remembering the news Alicia had given him during the night. He could hear her in the shower, singing what they called a golden oldie. He heard something about a pale moon rising, and then “the writing on the wall.”