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"Anna . . ." When her body swayed forward, Jonah moved his touch to her shoulders, holding her steady.
"Ronin made you laugh when you forgot how to do it on your own," she said, breath starting to labor. But this was important; she knew it. She clamped her hand over his on her arm, her nails digging in to hold his attention. "But his laughter is still out there. And there's your own laughter and passion inside you still. I've . . . seen it. You've given it to me, as a gift. I wanted to live long enough to see you reclaim it. You're a gift to all of us, a treasure beyond price. Please try. We all need that. We need to know you're there, protecting us. I need to know it. Promise me you'll go to the shaman."
Her head was so heavy, she needed to lay it down. So she did, sinking to the ground and laying her forehead on his knee. "You go on. Dawn's almost here. Be what you're meant to be."
The convulsion rippled over her, taking her words, seizing her internal organs, squeezing, making things blur, even the outline of his face, his pale wings like clouds. This is the way it would end, and that was fine. But, oh, she would have liked to have him a bit longer. She hadn't anticipated leaving him before he left her, and she'd wanted to remember him as happy, whole. That was okay. In a week, the Goddess had given her more than she'd ever expected.
"No. No." Seizing her shoulders, Jonah tried to lift her up, rouse her, feeling desperately for the faint flutter of a pulse. He would make his wings work, even if it destroyed his ability to use them ever again. He would get her back to her beloved sea. What had he been thinking? He could . . .
The rising sun hit his back and he snarled. "No!"
He tried to resist it, but the transformation shoved him over her body, made him press his chest down hard on her laboring one. The wings were gone in a blink, like mortal remains into dust, the small handful of feathers that always seemed to survive the process drifting across the ground. As he was held there, temporarily paralyzed by the transformation, he watched them tumble over the ground, under the truck, to Maggie on the other side. They stopped there, lying at various points against her body.
"Matt . . ." She was conscious, and now she was trying to struggle to a more upright position. When Matt tried to stop her, she batted at him, caught a lock of his brown hair and yanked, hard, to get him to pay attention. "Cellar. Take her there. Quickly. The spring."
Jonah snapped his attention to them. "The spring has magical healing properties." She coughed. "It might help." As Matt hesitated, her voice rose. "I'm in the circle now. I'm safe. She needs our help, Matt. She's dying. Go!"
He gave her a rough, desperate kiss, and then wrenched himself from her side to come to Jonah's. "I'll help you lift her. She's right. The spring might help."
Maggie was weak and helpless, lying on the ground a mere handful of feet and one gate away from the remains of the Dark One who'd almost taken her from Matt. As Jonah looked down at Anna, thought about how he felt about her, he made his decision.
"Tell me where to go," Jonah said. "Stay and care for your wife."
Twenty
IT was the second cellar they'd visited this week, though their cellar dweller might have preferred this one to his current abode. Jonah opened the door in the kitchen floor with the key Matt had given him, and took Anna down the steps, into a world of red rock and the not-too-distant but unexpected smell of salt water.
He hated he had to carry her over his shoulder like this, knew it was uncomfortable, but the stairwell was too narrow and her body as a mermaid too long to carry cradled in his arms. He tried to keep his steps even. Her lack of response put a cold fear inside him. How many dead had he carried like this, knowing the feel of lifeless weight over his shoulder? He quickened his step.
Even the first, truly deep breath of saline couldn't give him reassurance. Just when he was sure he was going to have to put her down to make sure she was still with him, she stirred weakly, her fingers brushing the back of his thigh. "Ocean?"
"Something like that. You hang on, Anna. Hang on. You hear me?"
Relief flooded him when he heard the gurgle of water, the tumbling sound of the underground water source Matt had indicated was fed by the ocean in some mysterious manner, another of the Schism's secrets, a confluence of all the elements. What more powerful representation of water could there be than the ocean?
It'd been nearly a week since he'd met his mermaid, and of course Mina had said it would wear off in a week, this detested spell. Before he'd sent them toward the cellar, Matt had said he couldn't cross the Schism's threshold into the shaman's domain as an angel. He should go today, then, but he'd felt no haste to meet the shaman from the beginning, and he certainly wasn't going to leave Anna now. Somewhere deep in his lethargic consciousness, he knew she was right about the poison. But he just didn't seem to have the will for anything but to take care of her.
"Jonah ..."
"Here we are." He didn't hesitate. It was broad, nearly a dozen feet across. As he maneuvered down the bank and walked directly into the flow of the water, he found it quickly went past his waist, lapping at his chest. Her tail was immersed first, and then he shifted her into his arms to lower the rest of her, holding on to her body as she dropped her head back. Following her impulse, he took her beneath, immersing her in the precious salt water, the smell reminding him of the aroma off the shores outside of her cottage. The echoes in the cavern caused by the flow of the water were even similar to the sound of the waves washing up on the sand.
The gills along her neck were working, soft ripples of movement. Her eyes were open and she was studying him, gazing upon him with that soft, wistful look that was so unfeigned, so scaldingly pure. Her hands held on to his biceps as the water soaked into his battle skirt.
Her color was getting better, the purple and blue shimmer of her tail becoming more luminescent, losing its brittle texture. Her cheeks filled out, their normal light pink blush returning, like the pearlescent interior of a shell. But as he watched her eyes he knew to keep her beneath the flow. She'd come far too close to the end. The strength of her body was not the only thing that had almost left her.
"You must go," she mouthed. He shook his head.
"I'll go tomorrow morning. I'm not going until I know you're all right. Besides, we need to care for our new friends."
He knew that would convince her where attending to her own welfare would not. And it wasn't a lie. Even with the healing, it would be good for him to have Maggie under observation one more night. Not for the first time, he wondered if angels were male because Dark Ones had such a devas
tating effect on female energy. Plundering their sacred balance, the well of strength that kept the Earth strong because it directly linked to the Goddess. Something shifted in his mind at the thought, a secret there he felt he should know, but didn't. He shook it off. He had no time for mysteries right now.
"You should have told me about the three days," he reproved. "I thought we agreed from the beginning that you were always supposed to tell me the truth."
Her lips curved in that smile, unapologetic but silent, for they both knew why she'd risked it.
The Dark Ones had seemed very determined that he not get here. This last attack had been the most aggressive yet. He had enough will in him to want to resist their desires, but because of hatred of his enemies, not for some higher good. He doubted the Schism would be interested in opening up for that purpose. And why should it?
As he saw the salt water restore some of Anna's strength, he couldn't ignore the stark image of her out there, a mermaid in the desert, helping him bury the vestiges of evil, willing to die for him, when he had done nothing to protect her from the beginning.
He deserved Randall's contempt.
Even as he had the despairing thought, she surfaced, holding on to him. Her expression wrenched something in him. He thought of the desolation in Maggie, created by the poison. All the Dark Ones had had to do to infect him was ride upon the despair he'd created in himself.
"Where does your joy come from, little one? Does it never flag?"
"It does, my lord. But there are always moments like this to take sadness away from me." When she smiled again, it took his breath, the way it seemed to place a balm on the aching pain in his chest.
"Every merman in that damn ocean should have been fighting for the right to love you, cherish you."
She looked startled, then that mischief he seemed unable to dampen crept into her eyes. "And what would you have thought of that, my lord? Would you willingly turn me over to their hands? Their lips? Their . . ."
