Unbearable Read online

  “Nick is arranging things,” I told Tally. “The authorities will come and find you in a few days. Until then, all you know is that Connors is missing.”

  She let my hand go and sniffed heavily. “What’s the story?” she asked, her voice tight with control.

  “I don’t know yet. It depends on what Nick and Miguel and the others can sort out. But he’ll be found in the woods. It’s the only way to explain his…condition.”

  I saw her jaw ripple as she absorbed that. Her eyes closed for a moment. Then she turned to look at me directly. “Will you help me?”

  “Find Lirgon and Valdeg?”

  She nodded.

  “Yes. Whatever it takes,” I promised her.

  “Good.”

  I had no idea I’d come to regret that promise.

  February, 1983

  Eventually, Connors’ body was found and an enquiry determined that he had been killed by misadventure—that an unknown natural predator had taken his life. They didn’t name the predator. They couldn’t, of course, because the forensic medical examiner would not have been able to match up the wounds with the patterns of known predators.

  The enquiry and the determination of cause of death meant that the year had evolved into February before his body was released and he could be buried. The funeral was held in late February.

  Tally and Carson had a neighbor, Mrs. Washinsky, who was relentlessly human and narrow-minded. She came to the funeral, possibly thinking that the new widow next door needed the moral support because they had been such an odd couple, such a strange couple, that there would be too few mourners. I watched her expression change to one of puzzled astonishment when more and more people quietly filed to the graveside.

  They came from everywhere and all of them were in the business, or involved peripherally, or were the human partners of hunters. Donna and Oscar flew in from California. Oscar looked as though he was losing weight. Lots of it. Donna didn’t speak to anyone, including Oscar. Her jaw held tight the entire day. She was learning to live with the fact that it was the map she had found that had led Connors straight to Lirgon’s lair, where the last two gargoyles had been waiting for them.

  Miguel had slipped into New York that morning. He had been forced to disappear and stay off the radar, as he was a person of interest in the investigation into Connors’ death and his lack of documentation would be discovered if he let himself be officially processed in any way. He took the risk to return for the funeral.

  Joy and Connie were moving to San Francisco. The old Continental they had inherited from Jimmy was packed to the window sills and they were leaving straight after the funeral.

  There were others. Many others. I knew almost all of them and knew that many of them had never met Connors but they were there because it was one of their own. I think Connors would have been surprised by the people who attended. Surprised and quietly pleased. He had always considered himself to be an interloper in the business of hunting, someone who had forced his way in because of bad luck and circumstances, unlike Tally, who had been born to it. The people at his funeral said otherwise.

  Tally stood stiff and straight next to the casket, her gaze straight ahead. Afterward, at the tiny house where they had lived, she spent all her time speaking to hunters, questioning them about activity in their area. She took phone numbers and contact information.

  I kept an eye on her and on Riley, who slept in the basket at Tally’s feet or on her arm, when she wasn’t writing things down. Tally had adapted to being a mother seamlessly, incorporating feedings and diaper changes into her life, which had narrowed down to a single, fierce focus. Riley never left her side, except when Tally picked up the katana.

  Since Riley’s birth, the only time Tally had wielded the katana was for training. She and Nick became obsessive about refining their techniques, gaining the sliver of an advantage from split second timing and honing their speed.

  The gargoyles were nowhere to be found. In the seven weeks since Connors’ death, everyone had been hunting for traces of them. The lack of news was the reason Tally spent her time after the funeral cross-examining hunters from all over the country.

  So I watched the pair of them, but didn’t intervene. I had another problem to deal with, first.

  Everyone who doesn’t know Nicholas Sherwood as well as I do makes the mistake of thinking he’s a cold, controlled son of a bitch. His enemies are even less complimentary because they’ve been subjected to his ruthless and relentless will.

  But I’ve known him a very long time and for most of those centuries, I’ve been in the privileged position of having his complete trust. There are only two other people he has ever let in—both female, both human and both at the funeral, one of them only seven weeks old.

  Which was why I found him out in the snow-filled backyard, looking up at the stars in the frigid sky, out where no one wanted to be. From the little saltbox behind us, the murmur of humans throbbed in the air. Light spilled out onto the snow behind him, showing his tracks. Ahead, the moonlight was making the untouched snow glow with ghostly light.

  The air was cold even to me. I would have stopped breathing to avoid getting it into my lungs, but I needed air to speak. So I ignored it. Instead, I stood next to him and looked up at the stars, too.

  “No one is to blame,” I pointed out. “Especially not you.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “You didn’t force him to the mine. You didn’t kill him. Lirgon did that.”

  “It’s the map,” Nick said tightly. I knew that tone of voice. There was anger there, deep inside, but he was holding it down. “The very convenient, suddenly there map. Why didn’t Jimmy tell us about it before he died? You know what he’s like. He couldn’t have sat on that and said nothing to save his life. He would have wanted to tell everyone. Crow about it and jump about, describing how he was going to shred gargoyles into ribbons. But instead he quietly checked out the mine by himself? Stirred up the gargoyles and led them back to his trailer?” Nick glanced at me. “How many things are wrong with that story?”

  Many of them. I shifted in the snow. At least I wasn’t melting it into an icy puddle around my shoes the way a human would. “It’s done now,” I said, trying to keep the sharpness out of my voice. “Lirgon and Valdeg are gone. You have to concentrate on tomorrow, now.”

  “Not if there’s a traitor among us.” Now his anger was audible.

  “If there is, it doesn’t matter. You really think any of us would voluntarily work with the gargoyles to betray the rest of us? Someone was coerced into planting the map and now that Jimmy and Connors are dead, they’ve got their own guilt to deal with.” Not for the first time, I thought of Oscar, with his sudden weight loss and ghastly appearance. “Oscar and Donna are already gone. They’re in California chasing demons. Miguel is in Florida somewhere. Joy and Connie will be gone by tomorrow. There’s no one left, Nick. Just you and me, Tally and Riley.” I squeezed his shoulder through the heavy overcoat. “Let it go,” I urged him.

  “I should have been there. I should have been the one to tell her.”

  Ah. That was what was eating him up. “You were busy.” In fact, he hadn’t got back to the house until nightfall the next day because he’d walked forty miles from where he’d left the car, not willing to risk hitching a ride when he was covered in Connors’ blood.

  “I was stupid!” he cried and turned to face me. His eyes showed his ravaged state of mind. “I’m supposed to be good at this and I walked us all into a trap and let the man Tally loves get killed!”

  “She doesn’t blame you,” I assured him.

  “She should!”

  I gripped the back of his neck and felt the tension there. “Guilt is useless, Nick. You know better than that.”

  He shrugged off my hand. “I’m not guilty. I’m angry!”

  “I know. But you’re angry at yourself and that’s going to impair your judgment.” I said it as calmly as I could. It didn’t surprise me that under
neath the motionless façade he’d been showing the world for the last few weeks, he was beating himself up about perceived errors, about the harm he’d delivered upon those he loved. “Is that why you haven’t come near me?” I added gently.

  “You’ve held it together!” His tone was fury-filled. “You had the guts to tell her. I’m not…I’m not….”

  “Worthy?” I suggested.

  He blew out his breath. “Christ, Damian. We’re both seen these hard times before. Over and over. Why can’t I just let it go?”

  “Because you love Tally and you can’t stand watching her hurt the way she is.”

  “Then I’m an old fool,” he said harshly. “An idiot for letting myself love at all. I know better.”

  I took him in my arms, my heart hurting just as his was. “I love you.” My voice was rough. “You can’t get away from that. Tally loves you, too. You’re going to have to go on being a fool, Nick, because you’re not going to get away from either of us.”

  Nick closed his eyes and let his head drop to my shoulder. That made my heart ache even more. He was letting himself be weak and vulnerable. He was letting me see the mortal, human core of him. He was hurting just like Tally so I held him and tried to soothe it away, knowing that nothing but time would do that. But I tried, anyway. For Nick.

  We made love that night, once we had tucked Tally and Riley into bed in the tiny room upstairs. It was the first time that year and to say I was pathetically relieved would have been an understatement.

  I had won Nick back to me, even though I had fucked up as badly as he had. I hadn’t been there for Tally any more than he had been—I had been frozen in my unexpected grief. The death of humans always takes me by surprise. Every single time. I have never gotten used to it.

  Nick’s pain stirred me to more normal life.

  The next day, we helped Tally move back into our big house just outside Albany and we got used to the sound of a baby crying. I relearned how to change diapers and Nick and Tally kept training, although Nick was not quite as obsessed about it as he had been.

  When she wasn’t training, Tally wrote letters to hunters around the world and letters came flooding back. No, nothing, sorry. All quiet here. Demons galore, no gargoyles, sorry.

  When we did finally get word, it was Nick who took the call from old friends of his in Britain, reporting on odd news from Scotland. The people of New Galloway believed wolves had moved back into Clatteringshaw Forest, right on their doorstep.

  April, 1983

  Nick and Tally travelled as husband and wife while I trailed behind as Tally’s big brother. It was an arrangement that eliminated a thousand questions and speculation yet let us share hotel rooms and accommodation.

  If it had been 1883 instead of 1983, or even 1933, we could have taken a three-day transatlantic ship to Britain and arrived with our sanity and our swords intact. However, modern jets had destroyed the shipping lines and forced us to leave our equipment at home.

  Riley travelled with us. Mostly in my arms, where she slept or smiled up at me sunnily while Tally slept between Nick and me. Vampires have a hard time dealing with altitude adjustments because our inner ear fluids aren’t as liquid as humans, but I barely noticed the flight. I was too busy looking ahead, wondering what Scotland held for us.

  Nick didn’t say anything, but I knew he was thinking the same thing. Scotland made sense. Scotland was where the gargoyles had originated. Perhaps they had fled back home.

  We landed in Edinburgh early in the morning, rented a car and drove to New Galloway, where Nick’s old hunting friend, Alasdair, had agreed to meet us. I remembered Alasdair from when Nick had dealt with the Stonebrood Clan for what everyone had thought would be the last time. That had been when Queen Victoria was still upon the throne and Alasdair had been the wee son of a demon hunter called Angus.

  Alasdair was now a frail man of ninety-two, but his wits were still intact and his rheumy eyes still sharp with intelligence as he held his hand up for Nick to shake it. “I can’t get up from me chair,” he said. “Damn me legs t’hell. So yer must take me great-grand-daughter to ride with ye. Mairead, lass. Step over and say hello.”

  Mairead had the black eyes and hair and fair skin of the pure Celt, with a charming sprinkle of freckles across her nose. She looked to be in her early twenties but she also carried herself in a way that said ‘hunter’ without showing a single weapon. She sized us all up and her expression softened as she looked into Riley’s basket and stroked her cheek.

  Then she straightened up again with a snap, as if she had been caught out.

  “Mairead is in the family business,” Alasdair explained, although all three of us had already figured that out.

  “We’ve been monitoring all the sightings as we’ve come across them,” Mairead said, pulling a map across the table and pointing to a green space just to the west of New Galloway. There were red dots all around where her finger rested. “The sightings of what they’re calling a ‘creature’ have been in clusters around the Craigencallie peaks.” She smiled. “Some are saying that Nessie has travelled south.” Her smile faded. “The people who have gone missing were all in the same general area. If this is really yer gargoyles coming home to roost, then Craigencallie would make a good nest. It’s remote, especially now before the summer starts up properly. Caves, too. Some of them so old no one knows the way of them, anymore.”

  She looked at her great grandfather and spoke quickly and I was pleasantly surprised to find I remembered more Gaelic than I had thought. She asked him about weapons and he agreed we would need them and she should see to that.

  Mairead glanced at us once more. “My mother would be more than pleased to care for the bairn while we’re gone and I have gear at the house. We should go now, while the day is broad. We don’t want to be caught upon the crags when the sun sets.”

  * * * * *

  I had no intention of being left behind while Nick and Tally went off hunting, even though that had been the practice for many years. I had made Tally a promise to help her in any way I could to find Lirgon and Valdeg. I wanted to be there when it ended. I wanted closure on this as much as Nick and Tally did.

  No one argued when I pulled out a finely-made broad sword from the cache Mairead displayed for us and balanced it judiciously on my hand. It would do. I didn’t like using a strange weapon any more than they did, but they took longer over the choosing of theirs. Tally settled for a lighter, shorter stabbing sword, while Nick chose the heaviest, biggest sword in the pile.

  Mairead’s mother cooed and clucked over Riley, barely looking up as we selected more blades and tucked them away in our coats and clothing. No one took a gun even though there were semi-automatics and pistols in the big pile. Bullets are useless against demons and gargoyles.

  Mairead picked up a backpack that clinked and rustled. It sounded heavy even though she slung it over her shoulder as if it weighed nothing.

  Then we all piled back into Mairead’s Range Rover and drove out to the remote and lonely Craigencallie peaks.

  * * * * *

  We got there just before noon and even though it was nearly summer, the day was gray and overcast. The wind was cold and whistled around the raw rock thrusting up into the air above the moor-like land around it. There were tracts of trees where the forest met with farming land. The trees marched north, where they became the Galloway Forest.

  The proximity of trees and the game that could be found in among them, the isolation of the area and caves was an ideal combination. Nick looked around and nodded, taking it all in as we climbed up the lower slopes of the crag.

  Tally glanced at him. “Yes, I think so, too,” she said in agreement.

  Mairead was the only one of us not breathless when we reached the rocky face of the crag, a few hundred feet above the land below. She lowered the backpack she had been carrying to the ground and pulled out a nylon rope, bright orange in color, and unwound it. “We have to scale past the Main Wall and around to the south past
the buttresses to reach the cave mouth,” she explained. “I hope yer all good with heights.”

  She clipped pitons and carabiners to her belt and they jingled softly. Then she looked up and laughed at us. “Oh, this is just because yer all strangers to the crags here. I won’t be having ye falling to ye fate on my watch.” Then she glanced up at the sky, measuring the time. “Come, now. Hurry, but slow hurry, ye hear?”

  The next few hours passed as we edged our way around the buttresses, heading south. We weren’t climbing. However, the rock wall was sheer and the ground below stony and unforgiving, forcing us to inch along. Mairead tied us all together and strung out pitons as we went.

  I was very glad to be a vampire right then. Perfect and instant healing meant that the strain to my sinews and muscles never became overwhelming. Lactic acid didn’t build up in my muscles, making them stiff and unresponsive. I didn’t get tired.

  I kept a sharp eye on Tally as she moved silently between Nick and me. I noticed that Nick was looking back over his shoulder more frequently as time passed. He was monitoring her as well. Tally was silent, as she often was these days. She also gave no sign of stress or strain. She kept doggedly on.

  “The cave mouth is all but inaccessible unless you happen to fly…or glide,” Mairead explained as she crept along a shelf barely a foot wide. “I know the way because I used to play here as a child. There’s nothing to climb around to the south where the cave starts, so the rock climbers don’t go there.”

  It was a bleak spot. The cave mouth was a narrow fissure that we passed through one at a time and that made my heart sink. “Lirgon would not fit through here,” I pointed out.

  Nick nodded, looking troubled.

  “We’re here now. We check it out and eliminate the possibility,” Tally said shortly. She turned on her flashlight and looked around the bigger cavern that had opened up just inside.

  Candy wrappers and empty soda cans littered the floor, which farther reduced my hope. “Surely, the teenagers and kids who come here would have noticed if gargoyles had moved in.”