Bay of Sighs
Page 25

“I’m making tea,” Annika said, ever cheerful.
“Tea’s for sickbeds and your aunt’s parlor. Black coffee or booze is for meetings after midnight.”
“I’ll have coffee,” Doyle said.
“I guess neither of you wants to sleep once we’re done.”
Riley flicked Sawyer a glance as she grabbed two mugs. “If coffee keeps you awake, you don’t know how to sleep.”
The annoyance on her face faded as Sasha came in with Bran. “Hey. You okay?”
“Yes, yes. I’m sorry to drag everybody up, but I—we—think it’s important.”
“Only Riley was sleeping.” Annika carefully poured the boiling water into the teapot. “Sawyer was working, and Doyle and I were outside.”
“You and Doyle. What were you doing?” Sawyer demanded before he could stop himself.
“Having a conversation,” Doyle said easily, then pulled out a chair at the table. “You should sit down,” he told Sasha.
“I think I will, thanks. It was intense.”
“If you dreamed about diving without tanks again, I’m putting a tether on you.” Riley walked over. Slapped a mug in front of Doyle, sat with her own.
“Nothing like that.”
Annika brought cups, the pot, the little strainer for the leaves. “It has to . . . It’s not step.”
“Steep,” Sawyer supplied.
“Steep. Then I’ll pour it for you.”
“Thanks, Anni. All right.” Sasha took a breath. “There was a room, lit by what seemed like hundreds of candles. The furniture struck me as antiques, wealthy, and European. Except for the chair. Nerezza’s chair—that thronelike chair I saw her sitting in, in the cave.”
“But it wasn’t the cave,” Riley prompted.
“No. No, I’m sure it wasn’t. There were windows—elaborate window treatments—I could see some sort of garden, mostly in shadows, outside the windows. Trees. She sat in the chair, and a strange black bird perched on the arm. Not like one of the things that attacked us. Smaller, but something lethal about it. Eyes more like a lizard than a bird. And there was a man—he seemed human. Late thirties, early forties, I’d guess. Attractive, in a dark suit.”
Pausing, she pushed back her hair, tumbled from sleep. “She got up, poured something into wineglasses, but I know it wasn’t wine. Even in the dream I could smell it—blood and smoke, and something cloying. But he drank.”
She shuddered. Annika jumped up immediately, poured the water through the little strainer. “You need tea.”
“I’m still cold. I can still smell whatever she gave him.” Grateful, Sasha picked up the cup, warmed her hands. “I couldn’t hear what they said—it was like insects buzzing. But she showed him the Globe of All, and I could see each of us in it, as clearly as I see all of you now. Riley turning into the wolf under the full moon, Annika with the mermaid tail sparkling in the sun. Bran, lightning in his hands, Doyle coming back from the dead, Sawyer with the compass. Myself, dream-walking. She knows all of it, and now he knows. Fear was like a hand squeezing my throat. Flames rose up, everywhere around them. I could see through the fire, see them, but there was no heat from it. It burned so cold. I wanted to get out, away. I couldn’t get out. The bird screamed, and flew across to them. It raked its beak over the man’s throat.”
Sasha lifted her fingers, traced a line down the side of her throat.
“He barely blinked. He just stared at her, at Nerezza. I could feel his lust, his greed. Even when she took a snake, a silver snake, and held it to the wound, he didn’t move.”
“Entranced,” Bran said.
“It seemed so. It drank the blood. Hissing, coiling around her finger, it drank the blood. He took it from her, used it like a pen, pressing its head, its fangs onto a kind of parchment.”
To steady herself, she drank tea. “She stood up, and her clothes fell away. His lust was huge. I know he signed his name—I couldn’t see what he wrote, but I know. And what he signed burned into the parchment, oozed blood, spewed smoke. The blood went black like the smoke; the smoke red like the blood. Then . . .”
She closed her eyes a moment, carefully drank tea. “Then, the smoke coiled up like the snake, and it slid, slithered into the wound on his throat. He made a horrible sound, and his body convulsed and twisted—impossibly—and the room shook, so violently that I fell. But he only sat there.
“She leaned toward him, licked the blood from his throat. The wound closed—left a scar, but closed. And closed in whatever had gone into him. She has a mark here.” Sasha laid a hand on her heart. “A symbol in dark red. A bat with the head of a snake. I swear it moved when she led him out of the room, spreading its wings. The bird swooped over me, screamed my name, dived down. And I woke up.”
Riley reached over to grip her hand. “I’d say you could use something stronger than tea.”
“No, this is working. She didn’t know I could see—I’m sure of that. She was so intent on him, on what she wanted from him, on what she intended to do to him, she didn’t sense me at all. And the man, he was completely in thrall—exactly as the term means.”
“Why a man?” Sawyer wondered. “A human?”
Once again Sasha shuddered. “I don’t think he was just a man when she’d finished with him.”