Books by Maggie Shayne (300 page)

I believed him. And for the first time since I had "awakened," I felt some semblance of hope come to life in my chest. I was unwilling to believe fully in a man who was a friend of my enemy, and yet I felt instinctively that he could be trusted. That he wished to aid me in this, just as he said he did.

"How long?" I asked him.

His lips thinned. "I wish I could tell you. In my case, it was only a matter of a couple of weeks. It might very well be less with you."

"Or it might be a good deal more," I said softly.

"It's only time, my friend. You're immortal. Time is something you have in abundance."

I nodded. "Patience, however, is not," I said.

He grinned at me. "We must be related then. Distant cousins, perhaps?"

A reluctant smile tugged at my lips. I could easily come to like this strange man. "What land are we in, Duncan, that the natives dress so strangely?" I nodded at his clothes. The sturdy blue that covered his legs, much like those Arianna had worn. And the garment on top that buttoned up the front and tucked into them.

He seemed taken aback by my question, and relief filled his eyes when the door opened again and Arianna entered, carrying heaping platters of fragrant baked goods. Another woman, taller, and very dark of hair and eyes, entered behind her, carrying a tray laden with drinking vessels and containers of brew that steamed.

"Breakfast has arrived," the dark one announced cheerfully. The two women lowered the feast to a nearby table, as I eyed the newcomer. A woman of rare beauty, she was. And her coloring reminded me of someone else. Another

woman, very dark and tall. Slender as a reed, I thought, as a brief, flickering image of her crept into my mind. She'd loved me very dearly ... and I her, but...

The image vanished as quickly as it had come, and I blinked away my frustration.

"Who are you?" I asked the woman.

Arianna parted her lips, but before she could utter a word, the woman said, "My name is Raven," she said. "I'm Arianna's sister."

My brows lowered, and my mind whirled. ' 'But... but Arianna's sister is dead ..."

Three pairs of eyes widened, and Raven clapped a hand to her mouth. But already, more memories were returning.

Marten had watched Arianna and her female companion as they walked the short distance to the bakery, and again as they returned to the small house, their arms loaded down with food. He'd always hoped to come across the beautiful Arianna again, someday. The few times he'd had word that she'd been seen in any given place, however, he'd arrived only to find her gone. Or, if he did glimpse her, she would be in the company of this other woman. He supposed he could have found her, if he'd put his mind to it. And yet he hadn't. He didn't like to think too deeply about why that was. But he knew, and the knowledge was a bitter pill indeed. She'd been very convincing that day so long ago. And in the time he'd held her captive ... he'd come to care for her in a way that was completely foreign to him. When she had come to him, when she had returned his ardent kisses ... there had been a few brief moments when he'd allowed himself to believe she cared for him as well.

The truth of her motives had cut him deeply. Her rejection ... it had shamed him. So much that he still felt pain when he recalled it.

Part of him feared that when he saw her again, he would see pure hatred in her eyes as he had seen that day. It was an experience he had no desire to relive. So while he had fantasized about seeing her again, he'd done nothing to make it come about.

Now, however, events had taken a strange turn. Perhaps he would take this chance to have her, at last. He'd always wanted her. She, he reminded himself, had rejected him, tricked him, used him. Now that she was here, and he was so close to her, he found he had an urge to extract his revenge. Perhaps he would at that, when he finished with his other business.

Every year on the anniversary of Nicodimus's death, Marten visited his burial site to dance on his grave and gloat over his victory. It had been easy enough to find the burial site of his oldest enemy. For a beautiful young woman driving a wagon alone, with a satin-wrapped body bouncing in the back had been a remarkable sight in those days. So the few people who'd seen Arianna pass by had remembered her.

It ate at him that he'd never had the chance to take Nicodimus's heart himself, to drain it of its very life. Dear-borne had stolen that from him.

He'd heard old Dearborne had finally met his match. He was nearly as glad to see that old immortal dead as he had been Nicodimus. He'd hidden from that old man for centuries, in fear Dearborne would find him and kill him for no more reason than the sport of it.

At any rate, this year, Marten's annual visit to the grave of Nicodimus had been different. This time he'd found the grave empty, barren, though refilled with freshly turned earth. And thoughts began to pound at his brain.

Dearborne, the treacherous cur who'd used him and would have likely killed him had the opportunity not been wrested from his grip, had hinted that the second death was not necessarily the final one for immortals. That there was a way even
it
could be reversed. And if anyone would know, it would have been that old man. For he'd captured and toyed with countless immortals in the time Marten had known him. He'd made use of Marten's own dungeons for his gruesome experiments on Light High Witches, before killing them in the end. He reminded Marten of a cruel cat, the way it will torture and tease a mouse until there is so

little life left in the creature that the sport is gone. Then the cat will devour it.

Yes, Dearborne had hinted, but he'd refused to tell Marten what he knew. And he'd kept his precious journals under lock and key. But now ... now the thought Dearborne had planted in Marten's mind returned. Was resurrection from the second death possible? Could an immortal whose heart had been taken, be revived? The possiblity tormented him, especially when he saw that open grave, and learned that Arianna was right here in this town. Had Arianna somehow learned of Dearborne's secrets, and used them to revive his blood enemy? Was that bastard Nicodimus once again alive and breathing?

If he was, Marten vowed, he would not be for long. And there was only one way to find out. Watch Arianna. If Nicodimus were alive somewhere, he would come to her, sooner or later. The beautiful Arianna would serve as bait for Marten's trap.

Just as she had done before.

Arianna could have choked her sister for the slip. But it was an honest mistake. Raven had known Nicodimus as a child, in another lifetime, one that had ended centuries ago. Naturally she would have no memory of that. And Arianna had only given her sister the" sketchiest of details about her own brief time with Nicodimus. No, this was her own fault, not her sister's.

"I'm so sorry," Raven whispered, backing away, eyes wide.

"No. Don't be." Arianna moved closer to the bed where Nicodimus sat, as still as stone. "You know, Nicodimus is going to need clothes. Why don't you two go into the village and see what you can find? My purse is in the kitchen."

Raven nodded, understanding. Duncan gave Arianna's shoulder a squeeze before they both turned and left. Alone with Nicodimus, Arianna wondered how much to tell him, how much he already might know.

"I... assumed I had only been in the grave a short

while," Nicodimus said softly, slowly. His gaze seemed turned inward as he searched his mind. "But if she is your dead sister... grown now ..." He lifted his gaze. "Did you revive her in the same way? I... I thought you said I was the first?"

Arianna sighed, pushing a hand through her hair. "No. No, Nicodimus. My sister drowned when she was but a child. That memory will likely return to you soon. She wasn't immortal then. She didn't die because some Dark One had taken her heart as you did. She died ... trying to save my life."

Nicodimus closed his eyes, nodding slowly. "And so returned to her next lifetime as an immortal."

Arianna nodded. "Yes. And I had to wait until she was reborn into that new lifetime to find her again."

His brows rose, but other than that, there was no reaction. "Your sister is grown," he murmured. "Born again, and a woman grown." It was as if he were clarifying this in his own mind. "Immortal, this time."

She nodded. "Yes. She's one of us now."

"And her age?"

He wanted to know how much time had passed. He wanted her to tell him. Gods, it would be so hard for him. She didn't answer him. She couldn't.

"I remember my Anya," he said slowly. "Young and fair. Hair like fire. My sons, just lads ... but they must be grown now. And Anya ... older.. .'Tis more than my mind can grasp. She ... she was pregnant with our third child when last I recall seeing her. A girl." Then his brows bunched in concentration. "But how could I know the child was a girl unless ..."

"Nicodimus, don't push yourself," Arianna pled, but it was too late. His head came up suddenly, eyes wide and anguished as the memory hit him. She saw it come, saw the utter pain that made his face into a mask of torment.

"Oh, Gods, she died! Anya died and our babe with her!" He pressed his hands to either side of his head as his eyes moved rapidly from side to side, seeing nothing but the memory, she knew. His breaths came fast and short. "She

died, she died in childbirth. Oh, Anya, sweet Anya..." Tears brimmed in his eyes, and he lowered his head, covering his face with his hands.

Unable to bear seeing him in so much agony, Arianna went to the bed, sank onto its edge, and put her arms around him. She hugged him close, stroked his hair. "I'm sorry, Ni-codimus. I'm so sorry, more than I can tell you. I wish ... I wish I could take this pain away."

He straightened slowly, staring hard into her eyes. "What of the boys, Arianna? What of my sons?"

She blinked, and shook her head. "I... in time you'll remember...."

His hands clutched her shoulders hard, more strength in his grip than she had realized he possessed, and his eyes stabbed into hers like daggers. "Tell me!"

Closing her eyes, Arianna took a deep breath. "There was a plague... it claimed the youngest. And your firstborn died at your side during a battle."

He released her all at once, tipped his head back, his hands like claws clutching at his face. His cry was one of such intense despair she felt tears streaming down her own cheeks. And she could only sit there, crying, watching him fight the pain, for a long time.

When at last his body stopped trembling, and his breaths came more evenly, he faced her again, eyes red-rimmed and dull with grief. "Why did you do this to me?" he asked her. "Why did you bring me back to this grief? This heartache?"

"I...I thought—"

' 'My family is gone. I belong with them, but instead I live on, alone and too weak to do more than lie in this cursed bed! Damn you for this!"

"You were not with them, Nicodimus!" Arianna got to her feet, determined to make him understand. ' 'And you'd lived for a long time without them when my foolishness got you killed. But even then, you were not with them. You were lying in a shallow grave in some state of limbo. Not dead, but not alive. Trapped there, in some in-between

place ... forever. I... I only wanted to free you from that."

"There was another way!" he shouted, glaring at her in undisguised fury. "You could have freed me by burning my heart and my body. You could have returned me to my family!"

She lowered her head. "Yes, I could have. But I didn't. I foolishly believed you would prefer life to death, Nicod-imus."

He shook his head slowly, his back bent, shoulders slumped. "At least... there was no pain there," he whispered.

"No, there wasn't. No pain. No joy. No pleasure. No life at all."

He sighed, a deep, wounded sound. "Why did you bring me back?"

She closed her eyes. "Because I owed you. I wronged you, and it was the only way I could see to make it right."

Grating his teeth, stiffening his spine as if making ready to receive a blow, he asked, "What is the year in which I now live, Arianna? Just how much time did I lie mostly dead in the grave?"

She felt her eyes widen. "I..."

"Tell me. And speak the truth. I must know sooner or later, you realize that. Simply tell me, for the love of the Gods!"

Nodding, she bit her lower lip.

"Tell me," he went on when she didn't speak right away. "I am not a fool, Arianna. I see that the window is blocked from without. I see what care you and the others take when speaking to me. It is obvious now that time has passed. The way you speak, the clothes you wear.... It is all very different. Has it been a decade?" He stared hard at her. "A century?"

He waited for her to give him the answer. Waited, and silently demanded she tell him what he needed to know. "It has been," she whispered at last, "nearly five centuries."

'Five?"

Lifting her gaze to meet his, she nodded slowly. "The year is nineteen hundred ninety-nine," she told him. "We are at the dawn of the third millennium."

He sat there, still and silent, searching inside himself for understanding.

"You'll be all right, I promise you, Nicodimus. I'll help you to adjust, and to learn, and you'll be fine. You're a strong man, an intelligent man, and—''

"A man who cannot walk across a room without help from a woman. A man held captive by his own betrayer."

"I am not your captor, Nicodimus," she whispered. "And I didn't betray you. Not the way you think—"

He shook his head slowly. "Take a dagger to my chest, woman. End it here. Undo what you've done. I've no wish to linger in this place."

She swallowed hard. "Now you're feeling sorry for yourself. I won't let you do that. It's not like you."

"And what do you know of me?"

She leaned close to him, touched his cheek with her palm and turned his face so she could stare into his eyes. "I know you well enough to know that this pain will ease. Never end altogether, but ease. I know your strength, Nicodimus. It's unlike that of any other man I have ever known. And I know, too, that even now, somewhere beneath this crippling grief, you're curious to see what the world is like, how it has changed after all this time."