Gift of Gold (42 page)

She could feel Kincaid’s heavy body all along the length of her own. Dimly she realized he had an erection. The knowledge that he was getting sexually turned on by her death struggles inflamed her further. In desperation she dug her nails into his arms, determined to leave whatever scars she could.

“Dammit,” he hissed as she scraped futilely at him. “Stop fighting me or I’ll have to kill you now.”

The bedroom door slammed open and the light came on as someone struck the wall switch.

“You’re the one who’s going to die now, Kincaid,” Jonas said far too softly.

“Quarrel!” Kincaid sounded confused for an instant, as if he didn’t understand what was happening. Then he reacted, rolling off of Verity.

Verity shoved the pillow aside, gasping for air. She found herself clinging to the edge of the bed. Another half-inch and she would fall onto the floor.

Jonas hurled himself into the room. But Kincaid already had the gun he had left on the nightstand. He wasn’t aiming it at Jonas but at Verity. Jonas halted at the foot of the bed, his eyes full of the promise of death in a face that could have been carved from stone.

Kincaid sucked in air. “Don’t come any closer or I’ll blow her brains out all over that bed.”

Verity looked up at him and realized that while Kincaid held the gun aimed at her, his whole attention was on the real danger in the room. He didn’t let his gaze waver for a second from Jonas’s tautly coiled body.

“What happened to Tresslar?” Kincaid demanded as he regained his self-control. He was still breathing hard, as if he had been interrupted in the middle of a sexual encounter.

“Tresslar’s at the bottom of the cliff,” Jonas said in the same soft voice he had used to tell Kincaid he intended to kill him.

“You’re lying.”

“Am I?”

“I don’t know how you got away from him, but I’ll worry about it later. It looks as though there will have to be some last-minute changes here. The three of us are going to make another trip down those back stairs. I will keep the gun under my cloak but it will be aimed at this redhaired bitch. Understand, Quarrel? If anyone tries to question us, remember that your lady here will be the first one to go. All right, let’s move.”

Verity obeyed with alacrity, but instead of getting to her feet as Kincaid stepped away from the bed, she simply dropped over the edge and fell to the floor. Her full skirts flared out as she rolled a half-turn and came up against Kincaid’s leg. He staggered and fell heavily to his knees.

“Damn you, you bitch!”

Jonas was already moving, lunging toward his intended victim. Verity felt the floor shake as he landed on Kincaid. The gun flew from Kincaid’s hand and skittered under the bed. Verity picked up her skirts and scrambled to her feet, backing away from the heaving, twisting bodies. Frantically she glanced around, trying to locate the gun.

Jonas and Kincaid fought with silent savagery but the battle itself was far from silent. They crashed against the furniture, sending small items flying through the air. The room was filled with the dull thud of body blows, grunts, and heavily drawn breaths. Both men were well matched and both were grimly determined. Verity was afraid to leave the room, terrified that while she was gone, Kincaid might gain the upper hand.

But she had to get help. She stepped out into the hall, preparing to scream down the house until someone came to see what was happening.

She nearly collided with Caitlin Evanger, who was hurrying along the corridor, a rapier in her hand. She looked like an avenging amazon. Tavi was close behind, her handsome face taut with fear.

“Caitlin, thank God you’re here. Kincaid and Jonas are in there. We’ve got to get help.” Verity turned to Tavi. “Go downstairs and get some of the guests. Have someone call the sheriff. Hurry, Tavi.”

“It’s too late,” Caitlin whispered, her eyes feverish as she confronted the spectacle inside the bedroom. “The time has come.”

Verity looked at Tavi. “What the hell is she talking about? Go get some help.”

“She’s right,” Tavi said. “This isn’t the way she had planned it, but it looks like fate has taken a hand.”

“For God’s sake, go call the law!”

Tavi didn’t move. Caitlin was filling the doorway now, the rapier clutched in her fist. There was a jarring crash inside the room and Verity tried to see what was going on.

What happened next took place so swiftly that there was
no time to alter the result. Jonas had landed a punch that had thrown Kincaid back against the wall that held the nineteenth-century rapier. Kincaid, blood coursing down his chin, glanced up and saw the weapon. He grabbed it by the hilt.

When he came away from the wall it was in a swift, skilled fencing lunge that drove the tip of the blade straight toward Jonas’s chest.

Verity screamed as Jonas barely managed to dodge the blade. Kincaid recovered from the lunge and prepared for another. He could take his time, his glinting eyes said, for he was the only armed man in the room now.

Verity shoved Caitlin to one side and snatched at the hilt of the rapier she held. All she could think of now was that Jonas needed a hand and this blade was the only weapon available.

Caitlin released the blade at once. “Yes,” she said tightly. “Yes, yes, give it to him. Let him kill Kincaid with it. That’s the way it was supposed to be.”

Verity had the blade in her hand. She paid no attention to Caitlin’s fierce words as she whirled to find an opening. All she needed was an opportunity to plunge the rapier into Kincaid while he concentrated on his intended victim.

She never got the chance to land her blow. Jonas had seen the blade in her hand. He spun aside from Kincaid’s second lunge and the movement took him past Verity.

Jonas snatched the rapier from her hand as he moved by her.

“Jonas, no, don’t touch it, it’s the dangerous one!”

But the warning came too late. The moment his fingers closed around the hilt, the walls of the room began to curve around her and the psychic corridor opened in Verity’s mind. She tried to shout a warning but the sound died on her lips.

She stood frozen in the doorway, her hands clenched at her sides as Jonas slipped into a fencer’s crouch. She struggled to hold on to both realities simultaneously. It was the first time she had ever attempted it and she was startled to find it was even possible. But it wasn’t easy. The two sometimes threatened to blend together, she discovered.

The present reality was suddenly overlaid with the sensation of a man’s unrelenting fury. The fury was old and potent and timeless. It was also new and raw and reverberating through the bedroom.

Some things never change. A man
’
s rage would always be a terrify
i
ng thing, whether it was very new or four hundred years old.

Verity couldn’t tell if the rage was emanating from Jonas or from the terrible, writhing ribbons seeping down the corridor toward her. The coiling tendrils were the colors of midnight and blood and steel. The last time she had witnessed anything like them in the corridor was the night Jonas had come to this room with this rapier in his hand.

In the bedroom she watched the two men moving around each other in a deadly pas de deux. But in her mind she stood in the time corridor and watched another scene in which a man dressed very much as Jonas was dressed did battle with an enemy. The scene flickered and died and reappeared again in quick staccato bursts.

She closed her eyes in present time for a moment while she assessed what was happening in the corridor. She sensed the danger there and knew that someone had to deal with it. Jonas had his hands full. He must be waging a major battle just to keep his attention on the present. The past would be reaching for him through that rapier.

The only reason why the past wasn’t swamping him was due to her.

She was acting as a magnet for the seething ribbons of emotion that flowed from the faltering image in the corridor. The tendrils of violence and emotion wanted Jonas but they were forced to hover impotently around her.

Instinctively she turned to search for Jonas but she couldn’t find him in the corridor. She sensed his presence but he was not in sight. She stood alone watching the short, flickering battle scene.

The two men in the corridor circled each other with the same movements as the two in the bedroom. As the nearest one revolved slowly, rapier ready, Verity saw his face. It was the face of a man about Jonas’s age and it was locked in the same taut fighting mask. It was the face of a man who meant to kill his opponent. For some reason the other man’s face was more indistinct. The image winked in and out of sight, never progressing beyond the point where the man who was Jonas’s age drove his rapier into the chest of the other man.

Over and over that one scene flickered in her mind. Over and over she was forced to watch the ghosts go through the motions of fighting and killing. It always ended the same way: blood welled and the image recycled.

And all the while the tendrils of emotions flowed from the image like blood from a wound. They sought Jonas, the one who had called them forth by touching the rapier, but they were forced to tangle around Verity’s feet.

Verity was shaken as she had never been before. She was there alone with the image and the swirl of night and blood that was flooding the corridor. She sensed the dangerous, silent hunger in the ribbons of emotion that slithered around her.

“Verity!”

“Jonas? Where are you?” She whirled around in the corridor, searching for him.

“Stay where you are.” Jonas’s command came from a disembodied voice that seemed to fill the tunnel.

“Where are you?” she screamed in her mind.

“Trying to balance between the corridor and real time.” And then came a disgusted oath.

“
Shit.
”

There was an impression of momentary distraction and pain, then a cry from one of the women in the doorway in the bedroom.

Verity flicked open her eyes briefly, long enough to see the blood on Jonas’s wet, muddy shirtsleeve. Kincaid had found a target.

But Jonas was moving quickly, ignoring his wound as he danced the deadly steps that brought him closer to his opponent…

For the first time Verity realized she hadn’t known that Jonas knew how to fence. There was no
doubt that Kincaid was an expert. She remembered the swaying dummy in his office that he used for practice.

“Verity. Pay attention, dammit.”

Instinctively Verity closed her eyes again and found that she was inundated with violent tendrils of rage and pain. She was in the heart of a whirlwind now. She gasped as multicolored ribbons roiled around her, blinding her, buffeting her, seeking to break free and flow onward in search of Jonas. The storm rocked all her senses but she was able to hold herself steady.

She was the anchor.

Without any warning Jonas was there in the corridor, racing around a hidden curve, heading straight toward the maelstrom of emotions that was creating a storm around Verity.

“Don’t move,” he snapped.

Jonas stepped into the shifting currents of violence, fear, and rage that swarmed around her. It was as if he were searching for one particular tendril. At last he reached down and grasped a ribbon the color of old metal. He seized it and pulled it free of the others. When he lifted his hand it wriggled in his fist like a steel snake, eager to wrap itself around him.

“Jonas, no!” Verity screamed with sudden insight. “I’m the one who chains them. You must not touch that thing.”

He turned to her, golden eyes gleaming. But he said nothing as he wrapped the steel-colored emotion around his arm. The other emotions seethed restlessly at Verity’s feet, eager to assault Jonas. They were like a pack of hounds straining at their leashes. She was in danger of losing control over them now. Jonas should never have picked up
that particular ribbon.

But Jonas was gone, racing away from her down the corridor with the metallic ribbon in his grasp. The ribbon reminded Verity more than ever of a snake that was preparing to feed.

Verity understood at last what was happening. Jonas had made a terrifying decision there in the corridor. He had deliberately taken hold of one of the most dangerous ribbons. She sensed that in doing so, he had subjected himself to a terrible risk. Neither of them knew how far he could stretch his control over his talent.

Verity opened her eyes and the psychic scene in her head wavered and became fuzzy. She tried to hold her attention simultaneously on the heaving ribbons at her feet and on the two men fighting to the death in front of her. She had no energy left for anything as productive as screaming.

Jonas was engaged in a series of lethal feints, thrusts, and parries that were being countered by Kincaid. But Kincaid seemed to be on the defensive now.

The blades flashed, tangled, and clanged. Jonas came up against the wall with a jolt that momentarily broke his defense. Kincaid, obviously tiring, seized the offensive and thrust forward with all his might.

Jonas threw himself to the side, going down on one knee. Then he lifted the tip of the rapier and thrust upward.

Kincaid looked startled at the maneuver and then he panicked as the sharp point flashed toward him. He interrupted his attack and scrambled awkwardly backward. Jonas rushed him grimly, coming up off his knee in a smooth, long lunge. He twined the rapier with Kincaid’s weapon, catching it on his own blade. Using the leverage he had gained, he wrenched Kincaid’s rapier out of his hands.

The blade clattered to the floor and Kincaid fell backward. He screamed incoherently and landed heavily on his side. Jonas had the point of the rapier at his throat before he could rise.

“I’m going to put this blade through your throat, you bastard. I warned you not to touch her.
I
warned you.
”

Verity was aware of a great many things at the same time. She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jonas was going to kill Kincaid. She sensed Caitlin’s throbbing passion for vengeance.

And she felt her control slip away.
The ribbons of emotion were getting ready to follow Jonas. All they needed was an opening.