Chapter Twenty-One #2
With an enormous force of will, Christien managed to get his knees under him and raise himself on all fours. The forest dipped and swayed, the colors blended together. He shook his head and took a ragged, painful breath.
Lucheux spun around and knocked Madelaine to the ground.
He grabbed her arm and yanked her up, pulling her to his side and placing the knife, dripping with Christien’s blood, against her throat.
She stilled, her big, brown eyes wide with panic.
Her hand dug into the arm Lucheux had locked around her throat.
A cold fury swept over Christien, cushioning him from the terror battering his heart and the pain racing down his back, numbing his legs. He reached behind him, his fingers fumbling on the gun tucked into his waistband. Could he trust himself to aim properly? To hit Lucheux and not Madelaine?
His mouth dried up as fear tried to take over.
He pushed the fear away, not allowing its icy talons to dig into his flesh and distract him.
He forced himself up to his knees. Blood dripped down his back, soaking into the pine needles beneath him.
He swayed. The only thing propping him up was the fury swirling inside him and the knowledge that if Lucheux left with Madelaine, Christien would never find her.
He tried to raise his weapon, to take aim, but the gun was too heavy and stubbornly remained pointed at the ground.
“I won’t let you take her.” His voice was weak, barely an exhalation of breath, defying his bold words.
Lucheux smiled, making a point to look at the blood pooling around Christien’s knees and the useless gun at his side.
“I don’t see where you have a choice. Besides, I’ve been waiting a long time to see your face when I take something you want.
” Lucheux laughed. “Seven hundred years, Chevalier. That’s a long time for a man who has very little patience.
But you know what? It was worth it. You want her. And I have her.”
Madelaine’s hand tightened on Lucheux’s arm.
She was struggling for each breath, her face flushed.
Christien’s heart pounded with the need to do something but he was weak, his strength fading too fast. He tried to stand, made it to his feet.
Staggered. Everything went dark for a heart-stopping moment before light swirled back into focus.
“She’s not the same person,” he said.
Sweat beaded on his brow and trailed an oily path down his temple. His stomach lurched each time he swayed. He was losing the battle to stay conscious.
“It doesn’t matter,” Lucheux said. “You want her so it’s my job to take her.”
Christien tried to wave his hand to indicate the clearing around them and Giselle still pinned to the tree, but he didn’t have the strength to lift his arm and his hand flopped back to his side. He stumbled a few steps. “So all this….is about revenge? What about…the treasure?”
Madelaine sobbed, tears racing down her cheeks.
Before her, Christien stumbled, his face gray, beaded with sweat, his breathing rapid.
She should never have left the house. She should have gone to him, told him everything was going to be okay.
That she would come to terms with…everything.
His immortality. Her reincarnation. Her sister.
She clung to the fact that he wasn’t going to die. He was badly wounded but he couldn’t die. But it didn’t alleviate the guilt that she had caused his injury and while he might not die, he could lose consciousness like Giselle.
What would Lucheux do to her if Christien passed out?
She shuddered, the thought too terrifying.
Lucheux lightly drew his blade down her throat to her breast, leaving a trail of Christien’s blood.
She froze, her gaze flying to Christien’s.
His eyes were glazed with pain. Blood dripped on the pine needles, a soft plop that reverberated inside her like the clanging of a death knell.
She smothered the need to whimper. Now was the time to be strong.
“Ah, the treasure,” Lucheux said. “Yes, let’s speak of the treasure. You’ve been holding out on me, Chevalier.”
Christien stilled and for a moment Lainie thought she was going to lose him. “I don’t know what you mean.” His voice was gravelly, laced with pain and the steel strength to remain upright. He was fighting for her, but he was losing the fight.
“The Blood of the Lion of Judah,” Lucheux said softly.
Lainie drew in a startled breath and Christien closed his eyes for a moment, his shoulders drooping. “How…did you…know?”
Lucheux shrugged. “The same way you did, I imagine. I traced her lineage and I read the Book of Revelation.”
Did he know about her sister? Lainie’s fear for a woman she never met was overpowering. If her sister didn’t know of their bloodline she wouldn’t know to protect herself and would be vulnerable.
“Don’t…do this.” Christien dropped to his knees and winced.
Lainie cried out, automatically moving toward Christien but Lucheux’s arm around her throat yanked her back.
“She’s mine now,” Lucheux said softly. He buried his nose in the crook of her neck and inhaled. She shuddered. Her stomach lurched. “And she will be mine until I find the damn treasure. Then I will use her to open it.”
Christien licked his lips and blinked slowly. “Should have killed you…that day in the bedchamber. Before you became…immortal. Bastard.”
Lucheux laughed.
Madelaine made a low sound of fear but the fear went beyond physical fear. This was never going to end. As long as she was alive Lucheux and Giselle would stalk her. She would never be safe and if she was never safe, the treasure would never be safe and humankind would always be in peril.
Suddenly the fear left her. A calmness settled over her. She focused on Christien, memorizing the lines of his face, those gray eyes that flashed like quicksilver when they made love. She wished for so much. That she could hold him one more time. Tell him how much she loved him.
More than anything she wanted to run away with him to a place where it was just the two of them. Where treasures didn’t exist. Where madmen with lofty ambitions of ending the world weren’t after her.
But those were dreams for people who could afford to dream. For people with normal lives.
For she and Christien this was reality and while she could whine that reality sucked, it wouldn’t do any good.
She got them into this predicament by being foolish and thoughtless. She would get them out of it.
Christien’s mind wouldn’t obey his command to keep focused. The forest around him narrowed. Sweat dripped down his back, igniting his wound on fire.
His numb fingers flexed then closed.
Lucheux backed up, dragging Madelaine with him.
She didn’t struggle, just looked at him with sad eyes.
The knife slipped, biting into her collarbone and drawing blood, but she didn’t wince.
’Twas as if she’d given up. Panic obliterated the pain for a moment.
He moved forward on his knees, reaching a hand out to her.
His stomach rolled, nausea combining with the pain.
He tried to focus on Madelaine, to tell her with his eyes that he wouldn’t let Lucheux take her. Except she kept fading in and out of sight. He shook his head again.
“I love you,” she mouthed.
Confused, Christien frowned.
Suddenly, her eyes rolled into the back of her head and her legs gave out. She sagged, her weight pulling Lucheux with her. His hold loosened.
Madelaine’s eyes flew open. She twisted, grabbed Lucheux’s knife and plunged it into her stomach.
Lucheux dropped her and stumbled back, a look of horror on his face.
She landed on the soft pine needles, the knife protruding from her, an ugly, lethal weapon sticking out of her beautiful body. Dark red blood pooled, then dripped down her side.
A primal cry of disbelief rushed out of Christien. Rage beat at him, thundered through his veins and chipped away at his soul. Bloodlust surged through him and with a strength he was surprised to find he still had, he raised the gun and shot Lucheux.
Lucheux’s mouth dropped open and a breath of air escaped before he collapsed.
Christien crawled to Madelaine, each movement tearing open his wound more, causing fresh blood to spill. He was losing so much his heart struggled to beat. Gently he touched her face and her eyes opened.
Her chest rose on a labored breath and when she exhaled, blood bubbled from the wound. Pain, far more pain than was caused by his injury, sliced through him. He bit back the urge to scream a denial. He’d been in enough battles to know what those bubbles meant.
The knife punctured her lung.
“What have you done?” His throat closed, fighting the sobs struggling to escape. Why? He wanted to scream at God. Why her? Why was he doomed to meet her and lose her again? Was it not enough that he’d given everything to protect the treasure? Could he not have one good thing in his life?
Her eyes fluttered open, focused on him, but the life was slowly draining from her. “I’m…sorry.”
He shook his head, fighting to stay conscious. “No, mon couer, I’m sorry. I should have protected you better.” He choked on the last words.
Her hand touched his cheek, her fingers brushing his jaw.
She blinked as if she couldn’t focus. “This is…the way it…should be. Protect the…treasure.”
He leaned over her as if to shield her from what was to come. “You are my treasure, Madelaine.”
She fumbled for his hand and grasped his fingers. “Find her,” she breathed. “Protect her.”
He didn’t have to ask who she was talking about. He didn’t want to protect her sister. He wanted to protect her.
“Promise,” she whispered.
“I promise,” he said brokenly, his body shaking with the tears he was holding back.
He lay down beside her, unable to hold himself up any longer, and draped his arm around her, willing her lungs to heal, her blood to stop draining from her. Damn it! This wasn’t supposed to happen. She was supposed to grow old and only after decades of being together was he to lose her.
“Don’t leave me,” he whispered, his voice ragged, choked with the tears falling down his face. “Don’t leave me,” he repeated.
“It’s best…this way. One less…key.” Her eyes closed. “Je t’aime, Christien.”
An anguished moan tore through him. “Je t’aime, Madelaine. Je t’aime.” He kissed her temple, cupped her face in his hands. “Je t’aime,” he kept repeating, almost frantically now, as if the words could stop the inevitable.
Her lips curled in a smile. And she stopped breathing.
Christien wept, his sobs shaking his body.
He cried out, the pain so intense he didn’t think he could possibly live through it.
He prayed to a God he was furious with to let him die with her.
But God didn’t listen and Christien had to wonder if he ever had.
He struggled to sit up, falling back a few times before he managed to get upright.
He gathered Madelaine’s body to his chest, rocking her.
Someone crouched beside him and through his tears, Christien recognized Michael.
The archangel’s eyes were full of sorrow and regret.
He laid a hand on Christien’s shoulder. Christien wanted to shake the hand away, to curse and spit on the angel who brought him to this point, but his energy was nearly spent.
“You can’t die. You know that,” Michael said softly.
A weariness weighed upon Christien. No, he couldn’t die.
Neither could Giselle nor Lucheux. They all would awaken and heal and go about their lives as they had before.
For the other two the key was gone, but they’d continue looking into Madelaine’s past and soon discover she had a sister and all of this would begin again.
For seven hundred years he’d guarded that damn treasure. He’d lost everything in those seven centuries. The brothers he fought alongside, his family, everything he’d known and loved including Madelaine.
Most of all Madelaine.
There was only so much one could ask of a man and Christien had reached his limit. “I’m finished.”
Michael’s eyebrows went up. “Finished with what?”
Christien listed to the side. The only thing keeping him upright was Michael’s hand on his shoulder. “Everything. Your bloody treasure. Them. You.”
“You can’t be finished.”
“Find some other…fool to protect it. I don’t…
care anymore.” What did it matter if the end of the world came?
He could finally rest if it did. Rest. A concept he’d never before contemplated but one that felt so bloody right.
His eyes drifted closed. He forced them open.
He didn’t want to pass out while holding Madelaine.
This would be the last time he’d be able to touch her.
“You would turn your back on what your brothers died for?” Michael asked.
“Yes.”
“You would turn your back on Madelaine’s sister?”
Christien wanted to say yes. He wanted to deny it all, but he’d promised Madelaine, so instead he said nothing.
Michael squeezed his shoulder. “Your anger is understandable.”
“Don’t,” Christien said harshly. “You have…no idea.”
“I have a very good idea.”
Nothing Michael said would make a difference. Madelaine was gone and Christien’s life was destroyed. He had no wish to live centuries more, protecting something he no longer cared about.
“They will be punished,” Michael said.
Christien’s head snapped up, but the effort cost him. Pain exploded throughout his body and he groaned. “Will they burn in the…pit of hell? Will they suffer for…eternity?”
Michael didn’t answer.
“I don’t want to hear about punishment. Let them loose on this earth. I don’t care…anymore.”
“You made a vow.”
Christien gently picked up Madelaine’s limp hand and kissed her fingers. Already her skin was turning cold.
“This is not God’s will,” Michael said.
Christian was furious that Michael would harass him now, when all he wanted to do was hold Madelaine for the remaining minutes he had with her. “God? God? You speak of God to me now? I care not—” But it was all too much and the darkness he’d been fighting finally overtook him.