Mark of the Witch (30 page)

Tomas emerged from the trees, appearing on the path where I’d
been standing only seconds earlier. Our eyes met in that odd, spectral glow from
the cave, raindrops like a curtain between us. A curtain neither of us could
ever pass through again. We were on opposite sides.

I shook my head. “You shouldn’t have left him alone with your
sister, Tomas. He’s insane, you know.”

“I locked her door, took the key.”

That took me off guard. “Then you know?”

“I—”

“It doesn’t matter. I know now what I have to do. And I won’t
let you stop me.”

“I’m not going to try.” He started toward me, but I backed away
fast, holding up my hands like stop signs.

“Don’t come any closer!”

He stopped, and his brow furrowed. “Indy, you don’t have to be
afraid of me.”

“Don’t I?” I shook my head, took another step backward. I’d put
the pond between us now, but it also stood between me and the cave. Behind me
there was nothing but the sheer drop-off and the rocky lakeshore far below. And
yet I didn’t look. I couldn’t look. “I heard what Dom told you to do, Tomas. And
I didn’t hear you refuse.” I took a deep breath, released it. “Hell, you didn’t
even argue.”

His face was stricken and also confused, as he tried to figure
out how I’d overheard them. And then he pushed that question aside as if it
didn’t matter. “If I had told him I wouldn’t do it, he would have tried to do it
himself. I never fell for any of it, Indy. Look, I knew the bridge was washed
out. I knew he’d done something to Rayne. I was just trying to con him, to keep
him from hurting her any more—or hurting
you,
for
God’s sake—until I could get us all to safety.”

I wanted to believe him. Maybe he saw that, because he went
on.

“I thought if I could con him for one more day—the rain’s
letting up. The water should recede by dawn. We can get Rayne out of here.”

I shook my head. “I’m the one you’re trying to con.”

“No.” He sighed heavily. “I was
never
a priest, Indy. Dom was excommunicated sometime after I
entered the seminary. He pulled me out, told me I had a calling, that he had
special dispensation to ordain me himself. And I believed him.” He lowered his
head. “I think he told us he was going to that memorial service and then went
and killed Jonathon instead. I think that document Jonathon translated was the
same story you found in those scrolls. Dom didn’t want us to know the
truth.”

It all made sense. I was weakening. My heart was swelling.

“Indy, how can you be afraid of me? How can you believe I
would…kill you?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time, would it, Tomas?” I spat the
words in pure self-defense. After all, he’d only killed me then at my own
bidding. But even as I said them, there was a flash behind my eyes. Memory, the
past, playing like rapid-fire snips from a movie. I was at the edge of the cliff
with my sisters, facing the vast distance to the ground, and he was behind me.
I feel his hands on my back.

Do it, my love! You have to do
it!

I can’t. I can’t, Indira.

They’ll know.

I don’t care. I love you!

“I love you, Indy.”

I love you, too. And so I cannot let you
die with me. Goodbye, my love.

I was facing the cliff now, in real time, just as I had been in
the past. I was leaning forward, as if I would throw myself over the side.

Just as I had done before. To save my lover, because he
couldn’t do it. He couldn’t push me then, even though I’d begged him to. Even
though refusing would mean his own life. Tomas had never pushed me. I had thrown
myself
off that cliff so long ago.

“Indy!”

His harsh voice snapped me out of my trance and I spun around,
my feet slipping in the slick brown mud. I started to teeter as he lunged toward
me, my arms whirling in huge circles, my body rocking, almost going over. He
would never reach me in time! Somehow, though, I rocked the other way and fell
forward, facedown in the mud.

I heard his relieved sigh as I pushed myself up on my elbows,
smiling now, nearly laughing as I looked up at him. He hadn’t killed me then,
and I knew, somehow knew, that he had no intention of killing me now.

And then my smile died as I spotted a rain-soaked man in black
emerging from the woods behind Tomas, and heard the action of the shotgun as he
pumped a round into the chamber.

“Get up, witch,” Father Dom commanded.

Tomas’s face went lax with horror, and he turned, almost losing
his footing in the mud. “Dom, listen to me—”

“Shut up, Tomas. I’ve heard enough from you.” He wiggled the
barrel at me. “Up.”

I pushed myself up on trembling legs. Tomas was in front of me,
but a couple of yards to the left. Dom stood dead ahead. I wondered what time it
was, whether I could release the amulet from here, whether the demon who wasn’t
a demon could be of any help to me—to us—now.

Dom shouldered the gun and closed one eye as he pressed his
cheek to the stock and peered down the barrel at me. His hand flexed as he
tightened his finger on the trigger.

I shouted “No!” and flung out my hand.

A blast of energy hit Dom, but he pulled the trigger even as he
was reeling from the impact, and Tomas dove in front of me just as I heard the
explosion of the shotgun. I saw it all. Tomas, my beautiful love, threw himself
into the path of the bullet. His body jerked in midair, and blood exploded from
his back as the slug passed straight through him. I heard it zing past my ear
before Tomas’s body smacked down on the muddy ground, hitting shoulder-first
before he tipped onto his back. He lay still, eyes closed. I stared, stunned,
first at him and then at Father Dom, who was jerking on the pump action to no
avail. Jammed.

He threw the shotgun aside and strode toward me. Murder blazed
from his eyes. Murder and madness.

“No.” I tried to harness my power to stop him, but it wouldn’t
work. I was too focused on Tomas. He was dying! I couldn’t back away. There was
nowhere to go. Nowhere but down.

Just like before.

“No, Father Dom,
don’t.
”

Even if I had never believed in demons or devils in all my
life, I would have believed in them then. Because what I saw in his eyes was
evil. Pure evil.

I tried to shuffle sideways, toward the cave, but the path
between the pool and the cliff was only a foot wide, and uneven. Rocky. Slick
now, even underwater in places, because the rainfall had raised the water
level.

“We have to help Tomas,” I pleaded with Dom. “And Rayne, we
have to help Rayne.”

“Rayne is fine. The effects of the drugs only last a day. As
for Tomas, first I have to save the world. Then I’ll save him.” He kept coming,
and I knew he would push me over the side. I didn’t want to die that way. Not
again.

“Dom, listen to me, it’s too late anyway. It’s past
midnight.”

“Liar.” He was close, way too close. And then he lunged. I
tried to dodge, but one gnarled old hand caught my shoulder, and it was just
enough to propel me off balance. I was going over this time, no help for it.
“Goddess, protect me!” I shouted as my feet slid from mud into nothingness and
my body followed them over the edge. I wasn’t airborne. My body was raking over
the cliff face, and I clutched with clawed fingers, caught hold of a rock
outcropping and held on for dear life.

“You murdering son of a bitch!”

That was Tomas’s voice! He was alive!

The rock beneath my fingers was wet and cold, and my face was
pressed to the freezing stone. Water from the pond mixed with the rain and
flowed over my hands and face, trickles now, but growing. I jammed my foot into
the cliff face over and over, in search of a toehold. Finally I found one.

Using all my strength, I managed to raise my head above the lip
of the cliff, but all I saw was the evil priest looming over me, smiling
maniacally down at me as he held a big rock above his head. He was going to
bring it down, crush my skull and send me plummeting to my death.

Then I heard the shotgun’s action work again and saw the old
priest’s eyes widen momentarily before he smiled, and I read his thoughts. He
was going to kill me anyway. He didn’t care if he died in the process.

He met my eyes, and then suddenly something flew at him from
off to one side—a huge wolf, leaping through the air like a monster out of a
horror movie. It hit him, knocking him sideways to the ground. Dropping the
rock, he rolled onto his back as the beast snarled and growled. He pushed
himself backward through the mud as the animal came at him, and just like that,
he was gone. Over the edge, falling past me as I hung there. He screamed as he
fell, and I heard the horrible sound of his body hitting the rocky shore.

My arms, trembling from the effort of holding me up, gave out,
and I started to fall, too. But a strong hand closed around my left wrist. And
then another hand grabbed the right. And as I pushed with my feet, Tomas pulled
me slowly, inexorably, up the cliff face and—finally—into his arms.

He held me so hard I could barely breathe. I couldn’t tell
which of us was shaking more fiercely, or whose tears I tasted all mingled with
mud and rainwater as we kissed there again and again.

“I said I love you, Indy.”

“You saved me. You saved me.” I was sobbing, nearly
incoherent.

“Karma. Full circle. Rule of Three. Whatever you want to call
it. It’s what I should have done last time.”

“It’s what you
did
do last time. Or
tried to.” I pulled back enough to meet his eyes, then looked away, past him,
around us, afraid of the wolf. But there was no animal in sight. My sobs kept
breaking up my words, but I had to tell him. He had to know. “You d-didn’t push
me then, Tomas. I threw myself off that cliff to protect you. And I’d do it
again, just like you did for me tonight, when you threw yourself in front
of—”

And then I stopped and realized that the warmth seeping between
us was coming from blood, not passion. “Oh, God, no!”

“You have five minutes, Indy,” he told me. I was surprised to
see his cell phone in his hand. I hadn’t thought of them when I’d been so
cleverly changing clocks. And he nodded toward the cave.

“I’m not sure you do, though.” I yanked off my blouse, wadding
it up and pressing it to the wound in his chest. I stood there in my soaked
jeans and my bra, shivering with cold, willing him to live.

“Do you think we found each other again after three thousand
years just to have it end like this?” he asked. His voice was tight with pain.
His smile was the bravest, phoniest thing I’d ever seen. “No way, Indy. That
would be a sucky ending to a really long story. Go on, get it done and then get
back here.”

“I can’t leave you. I won’t leave you. Nothing is more
important than love, Tomas. I realize that now. Nothing. Not my mission, not
justice for Demetrius, not a promise I made to my sisters, noth—”

“Not my vows to my God, not my belief, not my faith, not my
dogma,” he said, cutting me off. “Rayne’s been trying to tell me that all along.
Nothing is more important than love.” He frowned. “Because love is the only
thing that is, that’s what she said. Love is at the heart of all of those other
things. Love’s the core. Everything else is man-made, beliefs and theories and
rules and religions made up to try to explain the inexplicable, to know what
can’t be known. But if you strip it all away, love is what you have left. That’s
what Rayne’s been trying to make me see, all this time.”

I was crying as I stared at him, and then I gasped as two of my
teardrops seemed to fall in slow motion, expanding and glowing so brightly that
neither of us could look away. They fell to the ground, those two glowing tears,
and hardened into diamonds. The amulet formed around them, and when I picked it
up, it didn’t disappear.

I closed my eyes. “That’s the answer.” Then I opened them again
and looked toward the cave. “It’s his answer, too.” And then I rose and ran
toward the entrance, but before I crossed through the water and went inside, I
lifted my head skyward. “Lilia!” I cried out loud. “I know you’re out there
watching, sister. I’m leaving my man to save yours. You’d damn well better
return the favor!”

Mere bullets cannot defeat
love.

The voice was a whisper that came from nowhere and everywhere,
and it was also the sound of the rain stopping all at once.

I nodded and entered the cave, walking quickly all the way to
the source of the glowing light. I did not see the sad form with his longing
eyes as I had before. But I knew what I had to do. I stared into the swirling
colors, and I called out to him.

“Hear my words and know me! I am Indira, the sister of your
woman. Your name is Demetrius, and you are not a demon. You are a man. Seek
love, and remember. Seek love, and do no more harm. Seek love, Demetrius, and be
restored!”

I hurled the amulet with all my strength.

There was a flash of light from somewhere on the other side,
and then the Portal popped and vanished. Just like that. I’d done what I had
come here to do.

Turning, I moved as fast as I could through utter darkness
until I found my way back outside. And as I emerged from the cave, I saw a
beautiful woman leaning over Tomas, glowing like some ethereal angel. She
glanced my way, and I saw her smile before she vanished.

I ran to Tomas’s side and knelt, then gently tugged my wadded
up blouse away from his flesh. He blinked down at his chest as I dabbed the
blood away with rainwater. But there was no wound. No wound at all.

He lifted his eyes to meet mine. “I love you, Indira. And I’ll
never lose you again. Never again.”

I smiled down at him. “I love you, Tomas. Always have.” My
heart was nearly bursting with the power of what was between us. “Always
will.”