“So pretty, pretty, pretty,” Jabez whispered. “To-night I’ll come and visit, but not a word to Mother.” He giggled like a little child sharing a secret. “She gets so jealous.”
Jak laid his fork down on the china plate, his knuckles whitening on the hilt of the table knife. J.B. caught his eye and made a subtle, cautionary movement with his hand.
Ryan watched Krysty’s face, seeing the green eyes nar-row, then close. The girl was fighting for inner control against the hand that rested on her shoulder, then began to caress her nape. Jabez was staring beyond Krysty’s head, smiling gently at his mother, who now sat up straight and looked at him, emotionless, slate-eyed.
“Your hair is the most beautiful hair I’ve ever seen. So soft and… Aaaaarrrggghhh!”
For a splinter of a second Ryan thought Krysty had succumbed to the temptation to use the awesome power of her Earth Mother against Jabez. Then he realized that the young man had been startled and terrified by Krys-ty’s sentient hair, which had coiled and tangled around his fingers. The scream made everyone in the room look up, including the doddering old man who carried the bread.
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His eyes fastened for the first time on Ryan, and his mouth sagged open in shock.
The hand shot out and pointed. “By Jesu and the mar-tyrs! Our prayers are answered. Lord Ryan himself has come back!”
Chapter Twenty-Three
jak lauren had gone for a sec man with a table knife, cutting the man’s forearm to the bone before he was clubbed to the rush-covered floor.
Ryan, J.B. and Krysty didn’t resist.
Trader used to say that there was a time to fight. But more important was the time you decided not to fight.
The only casualty had been the old servant who’d blown the whistle on Ryan Cawdor.
Following the cry that identified the one-eyed man as the missing son of the ville, there was a moment of utter silence. Everyone reacted in different ways to the shock.
If Ryan had been counting the beats of his own heart, he would have reached twenty before anything happened in the banquet hall.
Harvey Cawdor lifted his porcine face from his dish very slowly, staring at Ryan with an expression of grow-ing horror.
Lady Rachel unfolded her hands and carefully laid each one-as if it were a rare piece of porcelain-on the linen cloth in front of her. Her face didn’t alter as she ab-sorbed the news.
Jabez Pendragon Cawdor took a dozen slow steps backward in the direction of the fireplace. His eye blinked rapidly, and his hand began to creep toward the dart gun in his belt.
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“Ryan? My brother?” Harvey muttered, shaking his head stupidly, bits of food spraying all around him. “How can…?”
“Dead,” Jabez said quietly. “You’re dead.” Then loudly, “Dead for twenty years! Bones and blood, but you shall stay dead, Uncle!”
He drew the blaster and aimed it at the center of Ryan’s chest, finger white on the slim trigger, lips peeled back off his yellowed teeth in an expression of tigerish delight.
Ryan had known this moment would come one day. If you lived your life by the blaster, it was certain that even-tually you’d die by it. You’d hear a cold voice out of the darkness telling you not to turn around, or meet it face-to-face. In the end, they were both much the same.
He heard Krysty, sounding a far way off, calling his name, but he sat there and looked into the eyes of his nephew, waiting for the shock of death.
Which wasn’t to be that day.
The old man moved first, lightning fast for his age. Mouth working, he stood there, stunned with everyone else. “Lord Cawdor, forgive me!” he shrieked, like the eldritch howl of a midnight banshee.
He threw himself at Jabez Cawdor, clawing at the young man’s face. Ryan heard the distinctive hiss of the dart gun, and the servant’s body jerked backward like a gaffed salmon. With arms flung out, he toppled over, blood frothing from his open mouth, darkening the front of his uniform.
He lay there, legs twitching, dulled eyes staring blankly at the vaulted ceiling of the hall as if he’d never noticed it before. His lips moved as he tried to speak, and he strug-gled to turn his head toward Ryan. He said something that might have been “Sorry,” and then he died.