Abigail took a deep breath to quell her rising fears. This was what she'd come here to do. Trade her life for the world.
You can do this.
No, I can't. I can't. I don't want to die. Not now that she had a real reason to live. She wanted to hang on to every heartbeat. Every breath. Because every one of them meant something now in a way they never had before. After a lifetime of waiting for something, anything special, each second with Jess was an extraordinary adventure in discovery ...
Of him.
Most of all, herself. She'd learned about a whole new side of her that she never knew existed. He brought out a sense of wonder and showed her miracles in the smallest things, and she didn't want to leave that. Not so soon.
One more day, please ...
Panic set its steely talons against her courage, and it wouldn't let go of her.
Until she met Jess's dark gaze. That centered and calmed her nerves. Yeah, he looked like a silly kid with his nose packed full of Kleenex. Still, it didn't detract from how gorgeous he was with his dark windswept hair falling gently into his eyes. Those sharp cheekbones and soft lips that she could nibble on until her mouth was numb. From that tough aura of I-am-here-to-kick-your-ass-and-make-it-count.
Only Jess could make Kleenex sexy.
And that brought home one simple truth. I won't die to save the world.
But she would die for him.
He didn't deserve to pay for her stupidity. He'd suffered enough in his life. It was her turn to make a sacrifice. To grow up and face the consequences of her actions. Yes, she'd been lied to, but she'd let them deceive her. There was no one else to blame.
She'd dragged an innocent man into all of this ... True, she'd seen his face that night in her room, but the woman in her now knew the man, and while she had no doubt he could have murdered her father without a second thought, Sundown would never have been able to hurt her mother.
Not like that. And there was absolutely no way he would ever search for a child to kill it. He was lethal, but never intentionally cruel.
Jess was innocent and she most definitely wasn't. She deserved to be punished for what she'd done.
Her entire body quaked from fear, yet she refused to let anyone know that. She wouldn't be a hypocrite. Lifting her chin, she nodded at Choo Co La Tah. "Where do you need me?"
"Follow me, my dear."
She took a step forward.
Jess cut her off. "We don't need to do this. I can fight Coyote. We have the ability to defeat him."
Sasha laughed hysterically. "Are you out of your effing mind? Hello? Where have you been for the last two days? I want whatever screwed-up glasses you're looking through. 'Cause from where I've been standing, we've been getting our asses seriously kicked around the block. Up a few stairs and down again."
Jess let out a sound of supreme exasperation as he cut a killing glare toward the wolf. "We're not dead yet."
"Yet is the operative word. If that's all that's in the way, I'll kill you and end it. Ren? Give me your knife."
Ren shook his head. "It's their decision."
Sasha curled his lip in repugnance. "Oh, that's it. You're fired, buddy. Get off my island until you learn to be a team player."
Abigail ignored his tirade. The only one who had her attention right now was Sundown. "It's okay, Jess. I'm ready."
"I'm not." Those dark eyes scorched her with emotions she couldn't even begin to understand. Was it possible she might mean something to him after all?
Dare she even hope for it?
She walked into his arms and held him close against her, wishing they had one more night together. I would give anything for it.
But it wasn't meant to be. And for that alone, she wanted to weep.
Jess couldn't breathe as he held on to her and pain ripped him apart. Every inch of her body was pressed against his, making him hunger for her in a way he'd never hungered for anything.
How could he lose her now when he'd only just found her? The depth of his feelings for her didn't make any sense. She had knocked him senseless, literally, from the first time he'd laid eyes on her and she kept him off-kilter.
There was no denying the agony that blistered him from the inside out at the thought of not seeing her again. The very concept of losing her staggered him.
He couldn't let go. Not of this.
Not of her.
I'm not strong enough to lose another woman I love. Yeah, he could take a savage beating and not blink. He could walk through hell itself and taunt the devil while Lucifer's demons flogged him every step of the way.
But living without her would break him. As bad as losing Matilda had hurt, this was so much worse. He wouldn't just lose the woman he loved.
He'd lose the only woman who'd ever seen the real him. The only person who knew his true feelings. He'd never been so honest with anyone.
Not even himself.
I can't let you go....
Abigail ran her hands over his muscled back and savored this last connection to the one person she'd waited her entire life to meet.
The man she loved with every part of her.
Squeezing him tight, she forced herself to let go and step back. He stared down at her while she reached into his front pocket and pulled out his watch. Opening it, she stared at the face that had changed him forever. The face that had saved him from himself and given him back his soul.
The woman he'd sold his soul to avenge.
His was the face she would carry in her watch if she had one.
Heartsick and weary, she shut the watch and placed it in his palm, then folded his fingers around it. Lifting his hand to her lips, she inhaled the deep masculine scent of his skin, then kissed his scarred knuckles. A permanent reminder of how difficult his life had been and how hard he'd fought for it. "You will always belong to Matilda, Jess. I understand that now." Just as she understood what Jess had told her about his relationship with her mother.
Being in love was vastly different from loving someone. When you were in love, it consumed you. Devoured you.
And made you deliriously happy.
That was what he did for her.
Take care of our boy, Matilda. I won't fight you for his affections.
She'd been lucky enough just to know him for a short time.
Holding back her tears, she stepped around him and climbed up the dark ground to where Choo Co La Tah waited for her.
Don't look back. Don't torture yourself. But she couldn't help it. She had to see him one last time.
Her throat tight, she turned to find those dark eyes never wavering. The look of tormented pain on his face seared her, and it made her wish she could steal every bad memory from him and replace it with only happiness.
Time seemed suspended as they stared at each other. Even her heart seemed to stop.
"Abigail..." Jess started forward, but Ren stopped him.
"She has to do this alone, penyo."
That familiar tic thumped against his lean jaw. She watched the battle he waged with himself. The indecision he had. Finally, he shoved Ren aside and sprinted up the hill to where she stood.
He took her hand into his and placed his watch in her palm. It was still warm from his touch.
She frowned at him. "What are you doing?"
"I don't want you to be alone anymore." He closed her fingers around the watch and kissed her hand just like she'd kissed his.
Those words and that single action brought her to her knees. They shattered her facade and succeeded in wrenching a sob from her. She understood exactly what he was saying. He was giving her his most prized possession.
He loved her.
And that made her cry all the harder. "Damn you, Jess," she breathed, despising her weakness in front of the others. "I hate you."
He flashed that charming grin that was as much a part of him as his slow Southern drawl. "I know ... Me, too." He clutched her hand in his.
Don't let go of me.
"Abigail? We must go."
She wiped the tears away with the back of her hand. There was so much she wanted to say to him. So much to tell.
I love you. How could three small words like that become lodged in her throat?
Jess had been right. The hardest words to live with were the ones you didn't say that you should have.
Summoning her courage, she pulled away and went to Choo Co La Tah.
Jess couldn't breathe as he watched her vanish into the landscape. How could you let her go?
Duty. Honor. He could come up with "noble" reasons all night long. But none of them made this tolerable.
One life to save the world. It was a fair exchange. The only problem was that one life had become the entire world to him.
And he'd just sent her off to her death.
Alone.
Abigail clutched Jess's watch to her heart and held it there as she followed Choo Co La Tah into a cave that looked like something other than nature had hand-carved it out of the hills. Once the darkness had swallowed them whole, he clapped his hands together three times, and on the last one, a fire ignited between his palms. He spread his arms wide, allowing the light to arc between his hands. It grew taller, stretching for the earthen ceiling far above them. Blues, greens, reds, and oranges burned in the fire, entrancing her like a melody for the eyes.
Then it shot around the room, lighting sconces she hadn't even known were there. A living entity, the candlelight danced against the walls in a way that made it appear the myriad of petroglyphs were moving.
The one on the far west side drew her attention. It showed a man with a buffalo skin holding the hand of a woman with butterfly wings. But what kept her spellbound was the design of the wings.
She'd seen that before.
Where?
Choo Co La Tah moved to stand behind her. "Open your mind, Abigail. Don't be afraid."
Something about his voice lulled her senses. Suddenly her eyelids were heavy. So heavy, it was hard to keep them open.
Stay awake.
She couldn't. Against her will, they closed and the images continued to play behind her eyelids.
Cool wind blew on her face as she ran by a small pond, searching for something.
No, she was searching for someone.
"Where are you?" she called in a loud whisper.
When no one appeared, she became frantic with worry. Where was he? Had something happened? He was never late. Terror flooded every part of her body. What would she do if he was gone?
"I would never leave you, precious."
She laughed at the deep, resonant voice that breathed in her ear. "You know not to do that to me."
He laid his lightly whiskered cheek against her smooth one, then enveloped her in his arms. Ahh ... This was what she'd been craving all day. Smiling, she allowed him to rock her while they listened to the waves lap against the edges of the pool and the birds serenade one another.
He kissed her neck. "Have you told him yet?"
That question pierced her happiness with an arrow of sorrow. "No. I dare not."
"Then you will marry him?"
"No," she said, dipping her chin coyly. "That I cannot."
He tightened his arms around her. "Those are your only two choices."
But she knew better. There was a third option as well. "We could run away together." She pressed his hands closer to her skin. "Just the two of us. We'd be free, and no one-"
"I have responsibilities." His tone sharpened to a dagger's edge. "Would you have me turn my back on them?"
"Yes," she answered honestly.
He clenched his teeth. "No."
That word wounded her deep in the heart that beat only for him. "Don't you love me?"
"Of course I do."
She turned in his arms so that he could see her desperation for himself. "Then come away with me. Now. Today."
His eyes glowed with warmth as he watched her giddy playfulness, and that succeeded in taking the anger from his tone. "I can't." He gave her chin a gentle caress. "You have to tell him about us."
Guilt stabbed her breast as she thought about the man who loved her as much as she loved the one before her. A man who had proven exactly how much she meant to him in a way no one ever had.
Why can't I love him? It would be so much easier if she did, and she'd tried. She really had.
Unfortunately, the heart played its own tune, and it was deaf to what the head tried to tell it.
"It will crush him, and that's the last thing I want to do. He's given me so much and been so kind..."
Anger slapped at her from his dark eyes. "Then marry him."
Those words stung her like a slap. And she didn't deserve them. "You shouldn't say that if you don't mean it. What if I did what you said?"
His nostrils flared. "I would cut his heart out and feed it to him."
Now he scared her. Was this the real him that he was showing to her because her love had made him comfortable? "What's happening to you?"
"The woman I love won't come to her senses. That's all."
She shook her head as every instinct she possessed denied his words. "There's something else. You're ... different."
"I'm the same as ever."
But she knew better. This wasn't the man who'd conquered her defenses and laid siege to what no other man had ever claimed. "Is your post corrupting you?"
He scoffed. "I'm stronger than that."
Everyone had a weakness. Everyone. "Where is your arrogance coming from?" She didn't understand it.
"The truth isn't arrogance."
She gaped at him. "Who are you?"
"I'm the man you love."
And those words hurt her most of all. "Are you not the man who loves me?"
"Of course."
She shook her head in denial. "No, that's not what you said. You put the order there that matters most to you. All you care about it is you."
"I did not say that."
"You don't have to." Tears began to flood her eyes until her vision drowned in misery. "Your words betray your thoughts." She tried to leave him, but he stopped her. She tried to gain her release. "Let me go!"
"Not until you learn to be reasonable."
Learn? She was not some infant who needed lessons. She was a woman full grown. How dare he not see that. "I'm not the one who's changing. There's something dark inside you that wasn't there before."
He scoffed. "You don't know what you're talking about."
But she did, and that knowledge beat painfully inside her.
He leaned down, his eyes glacial and foreign. "If you love me, you will tell him."
Why did she have to prove her love? Was it not enough that he saw it with his own vision?
She wrested her arm from his grasp. "I must go."
He didn't speak as he watched her walk away.
A shadow unwrapped itself from his and peeled itself from the wall. As full figured as a man, it walked toward him to stand behind his shoulder and whisper in his ear. "I told you so, didn't I? Women are ever fickle. There's no man who can keep one forever satisfied."
"Butterfly is different. She is all things good."
"And you are not."
No, he wasn't. He was a warrior, and his skin had been bathed in blood more times than he could count. It didn't pay for him to show mercy or patience. He wasn't supposed to.
At the right hand of his chief, he had slain innocents aplenty. It was his job. But now that they were at peace, he was lost.
Until he'd seen the Butterfly. She had tamed the savage inside him. Made it content to sit before hearth and watch her gentle ways. He didn't understand it. But so long as she was with him, he had no desire to pick up knife or spear.
He wanted only to please her.
Abigail blinked as the vision faded. When it was gone completely, she realized she was still standing in front of the wall with Choo Co La Tah behind her.
"Now you know," he said quietly.
Baffled, she turned to meet his kind gaze. "Know what?"
"Who you really are. Who Jess is."
More images flashed in her mind like a short-circuiting strobe trying to drive her mad. They came so fast that she could barely see them, and yet somehow her mind registered it all. "I don't understand."
He placed his hands on each of her arms. "You are the Butterfly, and Jess is the Buffalo. Peace and war. Two halves who were supposed to make one."
She shook her head in denial. "What have you been smoking or snorting or inhaling?"
"Do you not feel the connection here?"
Weirdly enough, she did. But that only freaked her out more.
Choo Co La Tah sighed as he realized she still wasn't ready for the truth. For all these centuries, he'd hidden her and waited for her to find a way to free herself from the curse. And still she was bound.
What a pity.
Maybe in her next life ...
"Come." He gestured toward the rock in the center of the room that lay like a bed beneath a cluster of shimmering stalactites. She was strong in this lifetime. Stronger than she'd ever been before. He saw the rebellion in her eyes that he'd waited a millennium for.
She squelched it and then went to obey. Even so, it was obvious that her submission grated against every part of her being. Her teeth thoroughly clenched, she climbed up and lay back against the cold stone slab.
Choo Co La Tah began chanting as he summoned the sacred breath to cleanse them both.
Abigail listened to his song, but she zoned out as she conjured an image of Jess in her mind. A smile spread across her face as she saw him in the car again. As she felt the memory of his touch on her body. She cupped his pocket watch in her hands and held it on her stomach.
"Choo Co La Tah?" She hated to interrupt his ceremony, but this needed to be done.
"Yes?"
"Once I'm dead, would you please return Jess's watch to him?"
"Why?"
She ran the pad of her thumb over the engraved scrollwork. "He loves it."
"Is his happiness all that matters to you?"
"No. But I don't want him to have any regrets. Not about me."
He inclined his head to her, then went back to his chanting.
Abigail was patient at first, but as it dragged on and on, it began to wear on her nerves. Why couldn't he kill her already? Was the torture part of it?
Perv.
When he started on another chant with no letup in sight, she lost all semblance of manners.
"Choo? Really? Is all this necessary?"
He paused midsyllable. "You're ready to die, then?"
Oh ... there was that.
She turned her head to look at him. "May I have what's behind door number two?"
He actually laughed. "You already chose."
"I know." She swallowed hard and closed her eyes. "I'm ready."
She felt Choo Co La Tah move to stand by her shoulder. The faintest whisper of metal scraping leather let her know he was drawing a knife. Bracing herself, she conjured Jess's face and imagined herself in his arms.
No, on a beach. A little difficult, granted, since he couldn't be in daylight without bursting into flames, but she'd loved the beach when she was a kid. And since the Apollites had the same spontaneous combustion issue with the silken sands, she hadn't been on one since her mother took her there for her fourth birthday.
But she was there now. Jess in a Speedo.
Just kidding. That was too bold a look even for him. Maybe a ...
Naked. Yeah, naked. She liked that best of all. The two of them lying in the surf like the old movie her mother had loved, From Here to Eternity.
Something cold and sharp touched her throat. Tensing, she braced herself for the cut that would end her life.
"Do you not want to fight me to live?"
Hold on to Jess. Naked. Beach. Naked.
"Answer me, Abigail. Do you want to live?"
"Of course I do." What kind of question was that?
"Then why don't you fight me?"
Abigail didn't answer. She had to hold on to Jess's face or she would be fighting him with everything she had.
"Why don't you fight?"
She opened her eyes to glare at him. "Don't you understand? I am saving my life."
"I don't follow. You're doing this to save the world?"
She shook her head. "I'm doing this to save Jess."
"For him I can cut your throat?" He laid the knife across her neck. So close, she couldn't swallow without cutting herself. She kept her eyes open this time.
Screw it. If he was going to kill her, he could do it looking at her.
"Yes."
His gaze softened immediately as a slow smile spread across his face. "That's the right answer." He pulled the knife away.
Completely confused, she scowled at him. "What are you doing?"
"You made your sacrifice. You can get up now."
She still didn't understand. "I have to die. Don't I?"
"Not all sacrifices involve death, child. As the Enapay used to say, the noblest sacrifice of all is to open your heart up completely to another person and give them the dagger with which to slay you.... You were willing to die for Jess. Bravely. You proved it. That's enough for the Spirit to see and be appeased."
Incredulous, she gaped at him. "Get out." Could it really be that easy?
"No getting out, I'm afraid, my dear. All we need to do now is make your offering and then locate those jars to protect them."
She bolted upright. "I really don't have to die?"
"Are we going to be doing this all night? Should I book us a reservation at Redundancy?"
She laughed. Until her gaze went past his shoulder to ...
It took a moment for her eyes to see it again and then to realize what it was....
That familiar shadow she'd seen on her wall as a child. The one that had whispered to Buffalo.
And before she could make a single sound of warning, it attacked.