His eyes snapped open. "Must you break my concentration?"
"Whatever do you think you"re doing?"
He cleared his throat. "You... you said the stones wanted to go back to the desert. I thought..." He shrugged, looking like he felt foolish. "I thought they might tell us where."
Her laugh died in her throat. Actually, not a bad idea. "Let me."
She took the stone from its box. He practically shuddered as she touched it. But of course it had no effect on her. She held it to the swinging light. The blood-red scales glittered inside it, rolling, hypnotizing. The scales expanded, wanting to show her all possible futures, but she squinted her eyes and thought hard about a single thing. The temple.
A sense of dislocation overcame her. She was looking up at sheer sandstone walls rising above the dunes of the desert floor.
She got a sense of eons of running water cutting deep chasms all along its perimeter. But this chasm had been filled. Sand and scree ran out into the desert floor in a huge alluvial fan. The scene held no human figures. But just as in her other visions, she was filled with emotion. This was an overwhelming jubilation. Was she seeing the future of the stone at the moment when it realized that it was home?
She opened her eyes. Gian stared at her with a worried frown. She had risen from the chair and was holding the box out toward one corner of the little cabin. There was a palpable tug from the box, as if it longed in that direction.
She heaved a breath. "I saw where the temple is. Or was. And I think you"re right. The stones will tell us how to find it."
His tiny smile was satisfied, determined. He nodded.
Kate glanced around the lurching cabin. Her stomach heaved. She stared at Gian, wide-eyed for a single instant, before she whirled and dashed for the door.
Kate leaned over the side in the rising wind and vomited. She had barely had enough time to make it to the leeward side. The sailors gave her a wide berth.
Gian came up behind her and hovered. "Are you all right?" He pulled a handkerchief from the stolen coat"s breast pocket and held it out to her.
"Jolly. Just jolly." She tried to get her breath. Still she was grateful for the handkerchief.
"Normally I could help that with a little compulsion. Works wonders."
"I"ve always been seasick." She held the kerchief to her mouth at another wave of nausea.
"We"re heading into a nasty blow." He pressed his lips together. "Let me try."
"It doesn"t work on me, remember?"
"You said you let Elyta compel you. That was a conscious act. Could you do it with me?"
She looked up at him. "I don"t think so." She had no wish to give in to anyone else"s will. That time with Elyta had been in extremis. But then she had to lean over the side again abruptly. b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l. How long was the trip to Algiers? Two days? As she raised herself, shaking, he took her shoulders and turned her to him. Then he pressed her body against the rail with his to steady her. A tremor ran all up and down her frame. But she had no time even to regret her reaction because his eyes just... went red. Not the deep red she knew, but a pale wash of rose.
"Think about letting go, Kate. I promise, I"ll only quiet your stomach." She felt his words as much as heard them in the rising wind.
Nothing happened.
"Relax." His voice reverberated in her chest. "I can"t overwhelm you. I only have a little bit of power." Did he know her every thought? He rubbed her shoulders and neck with those strong hands... "Think about yielding."
When had she yielded to another? She was the predator. But two days of vomiting? He"s trying to help, she told herself. It"s still Gian. She held to that and thought about... opening. Some iron rod inside her back crumbled and with it some lock on a part of her brain.
In came a wonderful feeling. Calm. Sure. She hadn"t even known what that felt like. Until now. She smiled. She couldn"t not smile. A sense of well-being came from that place in her back where she"d been so stiff and the locked part of her brain that had opened. She seemed to hang suspended in that green-red gaze, and it was a very good place to be.
His eyes went back to green. He smiled in return. "Feel better?"
She blinked in surprise. Her rebellious stomach was quiet. Yet the little ship was pitching at ever greater angles. Seamen scurried about the tiny deck. But she was calm. "I do."
"Good, then go below where it"s safer. This storm will get worse before it gets better." He led her to the cabin, a firm grip on her elbow.
As they pa.s.sed a sailor, she heard him say to his fellow seaman, "Her fault, this blow."
So many things were her fault. But not this. Wait! She had seen the vampire Illya pitched from the deck of a ship in a storm. She turned on Gian. "They will come after us, won"t they?"
"I expect so." He continued to move her toward the little cabin door. "But Elyta will think a bigger ship is faster. She"ll likely hire that xebec that was anch.o.r.ed in the harbor."
"And... and she"s wrong?"
He smiled. "Very wrong. That"s why Reteif is used to tend one of the behemoths. It carries messages, brings supplies, that sort of thing. Goes back and forth in half the time. We"ll be in Algiers long before Elyta."
Gian stood barefoot, in shirtsleeves and wet to the skin, hauling on the lines to the mainsail as Captain Gaetjens shouted for the change in tack. His strength was hardly more than human at the moment, but it was needed. The wind and rain slashed in on him as the tender headed into the trough of another wave. Water would cascade in over the prow again in another moment, and the deck would be awash.
They"d be lucky to clear this storm. It was one of the worst he"d seen and he had seen a thousand storms. He wouldn"t regret sending the stones to the bottom of the sea. And he"d survive. But what if he couldn"t save Kate? He tied off the line and held fast to it as he sc.r.a.ped the wet hair plastered to his face out of his eyes. He"d brought her into terrible danger. Even if they survived they might fail. And if he reached Algiers there was always the threat that he would succ.u.mb again to the nightmares that had plagued him so when he was back in the land of their genesis.
Dawn was probably just ahead. The sky roiled charcoal instead of pitch-black but there wasn"t much difference. The storm could go on for days. Could the tender hold out against it? He staggered along the rope they"d strung from fore to aft, up to the quarterdeck above the little cabin. Gaetjens stood, feet apart, grappling with the wheel."We must run before the wind," Gaetjens yelled. "She won"t tack in this blow."
That meant they wouldn"t beat the xebec to Algiers. "Do what you must, Captain."
"Take in the mainsail," Gaetjens shouted.
A shriek of wood split the storm. Gian and the Captain turned as one to the mainmast. It was bending in the gale at an unnatural angle. The sound of canvas ripping and the protesting whine of rope stretched taut rose over the howl of the wind. A monumental crack sounded and the mast toppled slowly over in a billow of wet canvas. A man"s scream of pain came from the tangle. Gian bent into the wind and fought his way through the slashing rain to the deck below. The tender listed dangerously, unbalanced under the weight of the broken mast. Already sailors hacked at the ropes. The wreckage would carry them to the bottom if they couldn"t cut it loose.
"Jenkins!" one of the sailors called. "It"s Jenkins."
One of their number was trapped under the mast. A bloom of blood on the canvas marked the spot. Gian waded into the melee of activity and pulled the canvas free. The sailors hauled at it. He knelt, knees wide for balance, and held to the carca.s.s of the mast to avoid sliding down the steep slope of the deck. The man was alive. Gian waited for the roll and stood. He bent, got his knees under him, and heaved on the mast. Two sailors dragged Jenkins from under it.
Gian staggered several steps toward the rail. Four others joined him. They clung to the wreckage of the mast on the windward roll and shoved it toward the sea on the leeward. The balance tipped. The waves tore at the end of the mast and snapped it free.
Another shove and the bulk of the remaining stump slid over the side in a tangle of rope and splintered wood.
Gian heaved the unconscious Jenkins up and pulled him into the relative calm of the cabin. Kate stood, clinging to a rope handle on the wall, her eyes wide. When she saw the injured man, she pointed to a hammock. Gian laid the injured man down, and one of the other sailors bound him into the swinging coc.o.o.n.
"Go on," Kate yelled. "I"ll take care of him." Gian nodded. The other sailor pulled his forelock, and together he and Gian staggered out into dawn that looked like wet charcoal. At least there would be no sun today.
In the morning of the third day Kate woke to the cry of birds and a softly rocking ship. It was over. Gian and two sailors hung in the hammocks, dead asleep. The sailors were snoring. The injured one would make it. He had a concussion and broken ribs.
After he had wakened she"d felt safe in giving him some laudanum she"d found in a little cupboard. It was actually good to hear him snore. Just to keep the little ship afloat had been all the sailors could do. She had provided food and tended the injured man.
It didn"t seem like very much.
There was a sense of unreality about her situation. She couldn"t see a future she could even recognize. What was she doing going to North Africa with a vampire, with vampires chasing them, and dangerous jewels any one of the crew would probably kill them to obtain?
If only the stones would tell her own future.
She frowned. But they never had. She had not once seen herself in any of her visions. That was odd. Her two visions of Gian had both come to pa.s.s, and now there was nothing to say what his future would be either. How much she would give to see either of their futures at this moment.
b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, she thought. You"re turning into one of those weak minds made to become marks for people just like you.
The cry of gulls interrupted her morbid thoughts. Surely that meant they were near sh.o.r.e. She slipped out of her hammock and let herself out into the blinding sunlight. The captain stood at the wheel, looking exhausted. On the left about a mile away dry hills loomed above a beach with huge surf crashing on the sand. One sailor moved about the deck coiling ropes and another sat on one of the same mending a sail with even st.i.tches.She smiled at the captain. "Well done, Monsieur le Capitaine. We made it."
He gave her a grimace. "We did indeed, if you call Cagliari on Sardinia our destination."
"We"re not in Algiers?"
"The sh.o.r.e"s on the north," he said in disbelief.
"Oh." She"d never been much on direction. But now that she looked at the sun behind her, it was coming up directly in back of the boat. "How far is Cagliari from Algiers?"
"About three hundred sea miles."
That would not please Gian. The cabin door cracked open. Gian squinted against the light. "Good job, Gaetjens."
"I"m not sure we could have done it without you, signore."
"Come. Let"s draw a new course." He shut the door abruptly. Kate knew why. The captain gave the wheel to a sailor and ducked into the cabin. She followed. Gian had a parchment spread out on the table and weighted with the heavy tankards they used for ale.
The captain thrust an index finger at the map. "We must stand in to Barcelona or back to Rome for repairs and supplies.
Shouldn"t take above a week to get a new mast."
Gian shook his head. "No time, my friend. Can she limp into Algiers?"
The captain frowned. "Maybe. If the weather holds."
"I think the weather has done its worst." Gian moved his hand over the map, looking for a route, then pointed. "Here. We"ll hit land here, then hug the coast."
The captain looked up, concern etched in his weathered face. "You take a chance."
Gian set his lips. "The stakes are high. Our compet.i.tion has just gained ground on us. We"ll collect fresh water on sh.o.r.e here and crack on for Algiers." Glancing up, he saw Kate standing, back against the door, and touched his hand to his forelock in the cla.s.sic sailor"s salute. "Good morning." The captain headed out to the tiller, his look pensive.
"I thought you said we were faster than their larger ship," Kate whispered.
"But they are more stable in a storm," he said, "with their greater weight. And hairing they did not lose a mast themselves, they would have been able to stay closer to their course." He shrugged as though he didn"t care, but his eyes were serious. "They may be before us."
"In Algiers?" She chewed her lip in dread. She had no desire to meet Elyta again, ever.
"Perhaps. She"d find our destination in Amalfi. Or maybe they"ll go straight to the temple. You told them I was taking the stone back there."
"But they don"t have the stones to guide them."
"Maybe they don"t need them." He looked away, toward the horizon. "Elyta was once a mentor to the woman called Asharti who started the whole mess in North Africa. It was Asharti who found the temple. If they were still friends then, maybe Elyta already knows where it is."
Chapter Eighteen
On the evening of the fourth day after the storm had a bated, they drifted into Algiers harbor. They had actually made good time, or so the captain said, considering. But four more days on board a tiny boat with no privacy and no chance to be alone with Gian was torture. Gian was edgy the whole time, pacing the cabin, working all night with the sailors. It was almost as if he didn"t want to be with her. His answers to her questions were short if he answered at all. There was something wrong with him.
The gangplank was hardly set out when Gian appeared in coat and boots. "Gaetjens, escort Miss Sheridan to the Hotel Africain.
I have some urgent business I must attend to."
Gian registered her mulish expression. "You"ll be perfectly safe."
"I"m sure I will..." Indeed, the sailors had all been most kind and deferential after she"d cared for the injured Jenkins.
"In case you are looking for our cargo, I"ve taken them with me for safekeeping."
Before she could say more, he disappeared into the crowd on the docks. She was left to gather their belongings and trail after the captain to the hotel, fuming. He might be able to keep his pockets from being picked. He"d caught her out after all. But it wasn"t right to leave her without a clue as to what was next or what she was to do.
By the time she and the captain reached their destination, she was perspiring. The night was steamy. The hotel turned out to be a whitewashed affair with a tiled roof and arched windows filled with filigree iron. Inside, cool blue tiles and the luxury of indoor plants were welcome, but the French spoken by the desk clerk was even more so. Kate didn"t speak Arabic, The porter deposited Gian"s valise in one room and left her with the key to one adjacent.
"Thank you for all your help, mademoiselle," the captain said, bowing over her hand.
"Thank you, captain. You have been most kind."
"Now, I must beg forgiveness, for I have a mast to see to." He grinned. "It would not do to be unready when il signor Urbano wishes to return to Amalfi."
She sincerely hoped they had a chance to make use of that new mast.
It was nearly midnight when she felt vibrations and the faint scent of cinnamon and something else wafted through the door.
Could that be Gian? If so, he had gained back his scent.
The door opened and he strode in without knocking, looking strong and relaxed, ready. The circles that had hung about his eyes were gone. His face was pleasingly flushed and his eyes snapped with energy. His vibrations were faster again, almost at the edge of consciousness.
Blood. Why hadn"t she guessed? She felt a fool. "I see you got what you needed."
He flushed further.
"You could have had more from me, you know."
"I couldn"t risk taking from anyone on a boat that size. If they"d realized they had a vampire aboard, I"d have had them jumping overboard." He strode to the window and closed the shutters. "They"re here."
"Elyta?" she gasped.
"No, Ian Rufford and his wife. They"ve taken a villa in the old part of town."
"You mean you weren"t sure they were even in Algiers?" How like him to keep that little doubt from her.