"Forward!" He heard himself rage out the command.
He turned back to see his haphazard army ready to obey. There… just feet from him, locked in battle, he saw Drew and Doug.
"Ah, come on, buddy, put down the sword!" Drew pleaded.
Grant saw the fierce twist of Doug's lips as he formed them into a snarl. Doug raised his massive, blood-drenched sword, ready to strike with a vengeance.
"Shit!" Drew cried.
And he rose, with tears in his eyes, and made a clean swipe with his weapon that sliced right through Doug.
He fell.
Someone lunged against Grant's back. Someone in full armor. He nearly fell, then staggered, gained his balance, and turned back. His opponent was fierce, driving him to defensive measures as onslaught after onslaught came his way.
He swung the great, double-handed blade with all his strength and agility, catching his opponent just under the neck.
The helmet flew from the fighter.
And he paused.
Catching at her throat, trying to stanch the flow of blood, was Valeria.
And for a moment, past images flooded into his vision. Valeria… beautiful, laughing at his side, long ago…
When she had been young.
Innocent…
And he hesitated.
She'd had a daughter. She'd ridden with François… because he had threatened the girl. The daughter had lived… and the centuries had gone by…
And now, she screamed in rage, rising, catching her sword from the ground, and flying after him again.
Her sword caught him such a blow against the chest that he went down.
Her arms stretched out to the heavens. Lightning cracked against the sky. The wind roared, and he heard again the baying of the demon dogs…
"No!" he roared.
He grabbed the cross he wore around his neck, rolled when her sword would have rent him into pieces.
Staggering, he found his feet again. He didn't try to collect his weapon, but charged at her with the huge cross held high in his hands. He slammed against her, pressing the cross hard to her forehead and face.
She screamed with rage and pain that rose above the howling.
She fell to her knees.
Looked up at him…
And he knew. He saw her just as he had seen her centuries ago. He saw the snarl of triumph, the vicious snarl she had given him before…
François had not been all that had driven her to evil. She had found power, and she had loved it. And he had saved her life long enough for the earth to tear and crumble…
And crush all her enemies beneath it. And since then, she had been waiting.
He caught up his sword, and prepared to deal the death blow.
"Conan!"
The cry caused him to pause. Then, he saw again the change begin to take place in her eyes, in her features…
A smile…
That faded.
He heard the whoosh of the sword. For a moment, Valeria remained, frozen in time with that smile on her face.
Then… her head fell to her side.
"Move! He went to Valeria to fight his arm-to-arm combat this time!" Lucien told him. And he pointed.
The precipice was not what it had been before. It barely jutted from the cliff. But François had dragged Stephanie there. She was openly fighting him now, but he had her by the hair.
And there was Arturo, ready to help him, dragging Stephanie down, down by the shoulders, forcing her to her knees.
"No!"
Again, his cry rose to the night sky, to the darkness, to heaven, and beyond. He bounded upward, catching tree limbs, branches, anything to hurry his assent.
"She is Valeria!" Someone shouted. "She is the evil!"
They were mad; they were insane. They had ridden with him, and they knew…
Or did they? They only knew that evil had been dug from the past, from the ground, and that it was living among them again.
Above the roar, he could hear the rise of François's laughter.
With a desperate, mighty push, he thrust himself from the trail, jumping up on the edge where too many people struggled desperately.
He caught Arturo first, sending the man over the edge with a massive right to the jaw. Freed, Stephanie leapt up.
"Get behind me!" he ordered her.
"Grant! He's a vampire. You… you… haven't…"
Grant swung the sword. He knew he had a perfect and sure shot at the man's neck.
But François disappeared, and all he could hear was laughter.
"Stephanie, get away!" he urged her. He couldn't fight François, and hold off the people who were slowly but steadily making their way up the trail.
"I can't… I can make you see him. Grant!"
He turned just in time. Leering, furious, all but frothing at the mouth, François was at him again. Grant deflected the blow, and started to swing.
Again, the man started to disappear.
"No!" Stephanie shouted.
The image of the man wavered, but remained.
Grant swung.
The head of the man went flying.
Stephanie fell, first to her knees… and then, to the earth.
The wind ceased instantly.
The clang of steel was hushed.
The baying of the demon dogs had long since quieted.
"Stephanie!"
Grant screamed her name, falling down beside her.
And then, the noise began. A trembling that shook the earth. It was deep, horrible, a rumble that seemed to shake all the world…From below, someone, it sounded like Carlo Ponti, shouted, "Quake!"
Stephanie was out cold. He could barely reach her, the earth was so volatile. He stretched out his arms… caught her, drew her to him.
It was going to go. The little piece of precipice that remained. He was bogged down in armor, so heavy laden. Still, he got her into his arms… he began to run.
Behind each footstep, more of the earth gave.
He hit the trail.
The ground jolted.
He fell himself… fell… flew.
They rolled…
Downward, downward, downward…
And the world was black.
The quake that struck the area was not nearly as bad as several that had devastated the region before.
Sadly, there was a death toll.
These were things Grant learned when he awakened, days later.
He woke feeling strange. Very strange. He'd been… out… for several days. But he awoke with a savage hunger, and a strange sense of power.
He awoke, in Stephanie's bed, at the resort.
And when he started to rise, he felt her at his side.
He stared at her a long moment. Her eyes were on his, more violet than ever. Her hair was like a cloak around her…
She was naked. And she smiled as he looked at her.
"Hello."
"Hello."
"How do you feel?"
"As if I could eat an entire cow."
Her smile deepened. "But… what do you remember?" she asked him.
"Everything," he told her solemnly. "And everything is vivid, except…"
"Except?"
"When we fell, when you were in my arms… there was a tremendous flash of… light. And you were with me, and it was as if we were floating, rising. Rising above all of it, and then… I felt the strangest stab of pain, and then…"
"And then?"
"I woke up."
"I had the dream, too," she said very softly.
"The same?"
"The light… the rising… floating, in clouds. I woke earlier than you."
He nodded, looked around.
"Valeria—Reggie—is dead."
"Sadly, yes. And Arturo, too. And François. Destroyed, forever."
"Why do I feel this way?" he asked her. "We should have been in a hospital or something. And instead, I feel as if I could take on the whole world."
"I'm not sure," she said hesitantly.
"But you think you know."
"Well, fate brought us here, you know."
"Yes?"
"I think we were supposed to… be buried with the quake."
"But we weren't?" he whispered.
She shook her head.
"Fate, as Lucien told me, can be changed."
"And what does that mean?"
"François had a chance to rise again. So many more would have perished. But we triumphed."
"I still don't understand what you're saying."
"We have some friends who are… different," she told him.
"Yes?"
"Could we be different now, too?"
He stared at her hard. "Jesu!" he breathed.
"There is good and evil in all existence!" she told him.
"You don't mean—"
She shook her head, rising.
As always, she was the most beautiful creature in the world to him. She might have been descended from the sorceress, and God knew, apparently, she even had some of her power. But she had used that power for good.
Her hair was a cascade of dark silk down her back. Her eyes… held just the slightest glistening.
And she moved toward him. She crawled atop him, straddling him.
He felt a rise like nothing he had ever known before. His muscles tensed, his being quickened.
She leaned against him. "Are you very, very hungry?" she whispered.
He nodded. "Starving."
She sighed, lowering her head. He reached out, lifting her chin. He drew her to him then, finding her lips, savoring them, wondering how one could awaken from a near-grave, and feel such a desperate burst of sexual urgency.
It was Stephanie…
Always Stephanie.
Always had been Stephanie.
"Food can wait," he told her huskily.
He kissed her again. And again. And then he rose against her, and rolled her to his side, and kissed every inch of her.
He reveled as he never had before in the scent and taste of her. She was lithe and sinuous, she moved like magic and liquid against him.
He needed her like air, like water…