Books by Maggie Shayne (44 page)

Her words, so earnest, so intense, caught Annie’s attention at last. She looked into Sara’s eyes and knew the girl wasn’t lying or exaggerating. Sara had shown the depth of her wisdom again and again. Now was no time to doubt her.

“All right,” Annie whispered. “If you’re sure, Sara. I'll… I’ll try.”

“I am. Now, come on. Lift one foot; put it in the stirrup.”

She obeyed as Sara steadied her. The pain was intense, but she tried. And it was difficult when every instinct in her was telling her to turn her head, view the battle, check on Ren each time she heard the metal impact sing out. Find some way to help him.

She summoned all her strength and pulled herself up into the saddle, Sara pushing for all she was worth. Then the girl jumped up behind Annie and took the reins. She clicked her tongue and the horse was off, obeying her instantly and giving the combatants a wide berth before regaining the trail.

Annie moaned in agony. Sara was showing no mercy. She kicked the horse into a gallop, and each fall of the horse’s hooves sent jarring blasts of additional agony through Annie’s trembling body.

Sara kept one arm around Annie, her strength surprising in one so young. “I’m sorry, Annie,“ she said close to her ear, ”but we’re running out of time.“

On and on they flew, back along the trail that led to the cabin. The impacts rattled Annie’s teeth, and she shuddered to think what this mad race must be doing to the baby.

She was about to protest when she heard the other hoofbeats, and looked back.

Dark as death itself, the black horseman rode after them, no longer in armor but in that hooded monk’s robe, his face concealed. And in one hand he held that deadly black sword. Something thick and red was dripping from the blade.

“No!” Annie screamed, craning her neck, eyes straining. She shook her head in frantic denial, searching the trail for a sign of Ren and not finding one.

Blackheart’s armor was gone. Did that mean the battle was over? Was Ren lying back there in the mud? Dead? Dying? She cried his name, her voice ringing straight to the heavens, she thought, and echoing endlessly in the forest. But there was no answer.

And then the pain clamped so hard, she thought she’d be torn in half. The pressure between her legs was so intense, she screamed again and again as she felt the rush of the fluids her body released.

“That’s it,” Sara said, and her voice sounded uncertain. Frightened and sad. It was the first time Annie had heard it sound that way. “I can’t stay with you any longer. My time is up.” Sara was pressing the reins into Annie’s hand. “The lake, Annie. Get to the lake.”

Annie nodded. “Yes, I know. The cabin is there, and I can—”

“Not the cabin! The lake!” Sara cried as if it was the most important thing in the world. “Don’t let me down, Annie. I need you.”

At that moment she seemed more like a frightened young girl than an oracle of wisdom. She took her hands away from Annie’s, leaving the reins there. Then she leaned forward and brushed a feather-light kiss over Annie’s cheek.

Annie felt the cramps increasing, changing, felt the pressure, wanted to push the pain away. She restrained the urge. Not yet. She couldn’t give birth on the back of a horse!

“I can’t stay with you any longer, Annie. I have to leave. But I’ll be back. If you just get to the lake, Annie, I promise you, I’ll be back.”

The horse was still galloping, and Annie could see the lake now, glimmering like a precious sapphire in the sunlight. Glittering like Ren’s eyes. She could see the cabin, too.

“You can’t leave,” she whispered. “We’re almost there. See? Sara?”

“I’ll be with you again,” the girl whispered, even as her shape thinned, becoming transparent. “Soon. Be strong for me.”

Annie turned her head to beg Sara not to leave her.

Before her eyes, Sara vanished like a wisp of smoke caught by the wind. What was the girl? An angel? A spirit sent to help her through her time of need? But if that was the case, why had she left just when Annie needed her most? Annie’s tears came faster, harder than before. She was alone now. Utterly alone, except for the madman pursuing her, intent on murdering the child whose head was beginning to stretch her body, even now.

Ren didn’t think he’d have regained consciousness at all if he hadn’t heard Annie screaming his name. It was her voice, choked with pain and grief and fear, echoing through the forest and reaching him somehow. It shouldn’t have. She was too far away for him to hear her—he knew it as well as he knew he’d heard her all the same. Though he’d been unconscious, her cries had reached him. As if by magic. And it was those cries that gave him the strength to fight his way back to consciousness.

When he had, the pain that seared every part of his body nearly made him wish he’d remained oblivious. He was coated in blood from a dozen or more wounds. Apparently Blackheart had used him for a pincushion. Simply defeating him hadn’t been enough.

But he wasn’t defeated yet, was he? No. Not as long as he drew a breath. He’d never give up trying to save his wife and his baby from the touch of evil.

He forced himself to his feet, not bothering to take stock. There was no time. Instead, he discovered his wounds as he staggered toward the magnificent white horse. He knew there was a sizable gash in his neck. The bastard’s blade must have missed the jugular or he’d have bled out already. He felt the hot sting of the cut and the sticky warmth of the blood that coated his neck and shoulder, and soaked his shirt.

The armor was gone. It would have vanished as soon as Blackheart turned away. But his sword remained, devoid of magic now, but there all the same, lying bloodstained in the mud. Ren bent to close his hand around its wet, sticky hilt, then rose again, though it cost him, and slid the blade into its sheath.

He leaned against the horse for an instant, gathered his strength, and reached up to pull himself into the saddle. His grip slid from the pommel, and that’s when he discovered another wound, this one in his forearm. The cut went to the bone, he was certain, leaving his hand and fingers blood-slicked and numb. Tough to grip the pommel that way.

Using his good hand more than his bad, he managed to drag himself up into the saddle, but when he did, he felt a hot pull in his side and then wet heat as blood pulsed anew from that reopened wound. Of course, the flow from all of his injuries increased as he moved, but he didn’t care about that. His wife was about to give birth to his child. And without his protection, the bastard who’d cut him would do the same to his baby before it had the chance to draw its first breath.

Ren would die trying to prevent that. He’d fight Blackheart to the very last breath of life in him. And beyond, he vowed.

He dug his heels into the horse’s flanks and clung to the pommel with his all but useless bloody hand. He drew his sword again with the good one. When he caught up to Black-heart, he’d be ready. He’d reach Annie in time. He would, though he sensed it would be the last act he ever committed.

Annie slapped the horse’s backside with the reins, steering it right up to the cabin door before hauling it to a stop.

The black horse was thundering toward her as she slid to the ground. God, the baby was coming. Right here, right now! But she knew that if she stopped running, if she lay down to give birth to her child, the animal behind her would kill it before it ever opened its eyes. God, what could she do?

She staggered forward, instinctively going toward the cabin. But Sara’s words floated into her mind like a healing breeze. The lake, Sara had told her.
Go to the lake.

God, but why the lake?

She shook her head, unable to see any sense in the girl’s advice. But then, Sara’s words had proved true often enough to make Annie loath to doubt her this time. And something inside was telling her to trust the girl. Sara wouldn’t steer her wrong. Sending a frantic glance over her shoulder, she hobbled around the cabin and started down the grassy slope to the gentle shore. She saw the dock, the rowboat bobbing serenely at the far end. Maybe Sara’s idea wasn’t so bad after all. If she could make it to the boat and manage to row out far enough, Blackheart wouldn’t be able to follow. Would he?

She stumbled over the grassy hill with her baby fighting to emerge into the world, its mother fighting to hold it back. Her face contorted in agony. She ran, but knew she was clumsy and awkward, as likely to trip and roll into the water as to reach the dock upright. Running wasn’t easy when one was in the process of giving birth. She poured everything she had into reaching the dock before that dark-robed beast could overtake her.

The Dark Knight pursued her. She heard the pounding feet of his horse as he came after her, down the hillside, gaining on her. God, she couldn’t outrun a horse! Her feet touched the wood of the dock. The rowboat at the far end seemed a hundred miles away. And yet, so close. Even as she hurled herself toward it, she heard the clatter of hooves on the wood.

And she whirled defensively, only to feel that wet, black muzzle pressed to her face. The horse’s breath was fetid; its flesh, hot. She tried to turn away, but the horse stepped forward, simultaneously lifting its big head. The beast butted her chin so hard, she was lifted off her feet and hurled backward.

She fell flat to the dock, her back hitting the wood so hard that it made her dizzy. Every trace of air burst from her lungs at the force of the impact. For a time she didn’t think she’d be able to inhale again. And when she was finally able to speak, she heard herself sobbing hysterically, begging, her words incoherent pleas for mercy to a man she knew had none to give.

The baby was coming.

Blackheart got off the horse and grinned down at her. He placed the tip of his sword at her throat, so she didn’t dare to move.

“Now,” he said softly, “we end this.” He pushed the black hood away from his face, and Annie was shocked to see Bartholomew Cassius standing there, staring down at her with murder in his eyes.

“Bartholomew?”

God, Ren had been right in telling her to trust no one. She’d thought Bartholomew was her friend. She’d trusted him. But he’d been an agent of evil all along. Plotting the murder of her firstborn while pretending to be her friend. The beast!

“You can have other babies, Annie. But this one is just too important to my master. You understand, don’t you? I can’t let it see life.”

He frowned, his gaze riveted to the spot where his sword pressed into her throat, instead of on her face. “But I can’t kill you. It’s not allowed. Hmm.” Then he brightened. “Ah, I have it. You lie still like a good girl, all right?”

And, still grinning, still holding the sword to her neck, he gripped the demonic horse’s bridle and drew it forward.

“He’s well trained, my horse. He’ll take care of this little matter for me.” He frowned again. “I’m afraid this is going to hurt.” And he snapped his fingers.

The black horse’s eyes dilated wildly, and it reared up on its hind legs, forelegs pumping in the air, right above her swollen belly.

“Tell me, Annie,” Blackheart said softly as the horse danced on its hind legs, its deadly forelegs flailing in the air and poised above her, “have you ever seen a stallion dance?”

She scrambled backward but knew it was useless. She wasn’t fast enough. Those deadly hooves were going to crush her baby, and her along with it. She rolled to her side, shielding her belly with both arms.

And that’s when she saw Ren, his face smeared with a dark mingling of blood and sweat and dirt—mostly blood, she feared. He emerged from the water just beyond the dock, on the grassy shore. His face contorting with the effort, he sprang up and forward, hurling himself beneath the legs of that mad beast. And with what had to be all of his strength, he pushed her right off into the water on the other side. He shoved her so hard, she cleared the edges of the dock and splashed into the water, and just before she did, she saw him landing in the spot she’d left behind, rolling defensively onto his back. Lifting his arms to shield himself. Then she felt herself swallowed up, the chilly lake water closing over her head as she sank.

The pains in her abdomen were constant now, and the baby was determined to be born. And still her thoughts were of Ren. What was happening to him right now? Had the horse trampled him?

She struggled to the surface. When her head broke through, she inhaled deeply, swept the hair from her eyes, and swung her head around, trying to get her bearings and find Ren. When she did, she nearly vomited. He lay on the dock, curled into an unmoving ball as those horrible hooves trampled down on his motionless, armorless body, over and over again.

“No!” She screamed the words at the top of her voice. “I’m here. Here, dammit! Leave him alone! I’m the one you want!”

As if by magic, the horse stopped with its feet pawing the air. Blackheart cocked his head toward her. “It’s not you I want, sweet Annie. It’s them. Both of them. Your child
and
its father. The enmity between Ren and me goes back a long way, you see.”

“You don’t have time for both,” she said as she grimaced, praying she was doing the right thing, “because by the time you finish with him, the baby will be here.” As she spoke, she edged along the dock, ever closer to the row-boat at the end. She had no plan and little hope. She only knew she had to lure him away from her husband or he’d be dead. If he wasn’t already. He still wasn’t moving. His body was twisted and broken and bleeding.

“Kind of you to let me know, Annie. All right, then. I’ll kill the child first, since you insist.”

He flicked his forefinger, and the horse came down one last time, hooves punishing Ren’s tortured body still further. Annie stopped edging. She lunged and swam for the boat.

Smiling wickedly, Blackheart walked toward it, leaving his suddenly calm horse to wander off the wooden platform in favor of the grassy bank.

She swallowed water when the sharp pains stabbed harder, and the baby pressed nearer, stretching her, tearing her. She grated her teeth and groped. There. She had the side of the boat in her hands. Now to pull herself up into it. She was weak with grief, mindless with pain. But she managed to grip the sides of the tiny rowboat and hauled herself up…

… only to see Blackheart standing in the boat, smiling at her. “Join me, Annie?” He had one fisted hand anchored on his hip, and his weapon in the other. He twisted his sword this way and that, studying its bloodied tip, and she knew he was thinking of ways to use it on her child.

It was the smile that did it, the suggestion that he’d very much enjoy what he was about to do to her baby. That, and the sight of Ren’s bruised, blood-coated body lying so still in the bright sunlight on that dock. Rage took over, blotting out everything else.

There was a sound, a deep-throated growl, like that of a killer wolf closing in on its prey. Only it was no wolf. The sound came from Annie. Her adrenaline surged and she levered herself up, putting all her weight on the side of the boat, tipping it up so high and so fast that Blackheart tumbled right over her head and into the lake.

There was a splash, a gurgle, and then, when his head broke the surface close beside her, a terrible blood-chilling scream. He tipped his chin heavenward, his mouth working, eyes rolling as he wailed like a banshee. His arms flailed frantically, and the veins stood out in his neck as if they would surely burst.

“Pure! The water’s pure! It burns! Lucifer help me; it burns! It…”

The skin of his face collapsed on itself like melting plastic, dripping, then running down in rivulets away from eyes that turned to black smoldering bits of soot. like a Popsicle in the sun, he shrank at high speed, until there was simply nothing left. Only a hissing sound and a black mist rising from the surface of the water in the spot where he’d been.

Maria had been right so long ago. And so had Sara, Annie realized. The lake was pure and contained a magic all its own. And for the second time, that magic had saved her.

And then the baby’s head pressed through, and there was no time to marvel. She was giving birth.