Sawyer doesn’t waste any time. What would be the point? Words will only be lies; a touch will be an even bigger one.
He crosses the short distance between them as if he’s missed her so much, he can’t bear to be apart one more second. If he didn’t know the truth, he’d never notice the quick tensing of her body, the way she forces herself to relax, to smile, to let him draw her close and lean over, mouth hovering just above hers.
He lays his hand on her throat and she purrs; then he puts the other there and she frowns. As her eyes snap open, he squeezes, quick before she becomes a bird.
She’s strong; he’s stronger. Her hands pull on his, but they are like buzzing flies, annoying but no real trouble. Even when they begin to glow and his flesh begins to burn, he keeps up the pressure. He’ll heal soon enough.
But strangulation works no better on the Phoenix than it did on the woman of smoke. Even when the Phoenix has no breath, she doesn’t die, and eventually he releases her with a shove.
She falls to the ground, hands on her neck, taking great gulps of air. Her gaze, focused on him, is full of horror, as if he’s lost his mind instead of her.
Sawyer touches his eagle, shifts, then dives beak first, talons outstretched. Before the light fades from his change, she is a bird as well.
The battle rages. Neither one of them can win. Blood and feathers fly until the ground beneath them looks like a farmyard after a rooster fight.
This is getting them nowhere, so Sawyer flits up the mountain, leading her farther from the ground, closer to the summit and to a place he’s shared with no one else.
Below them the sun sparkles off the crystal mountain lake. He slams into her with all he has and takes her with him toward the water.
They hit the surface so hard it knocks the air out of them both. He holds her beneath as she struggles and kicks. The water begins to churn, to smoke and bubble; the chill turns to a caldron in minutes. The scent of boiling meat fills the air.
One second he is holding down a phoenix, brilliant feathers made even more so by the reflection of the sun on the water. The next he is holding down a woman, naked and slick; her dark hair mixes with the blood streaming from the deep cuts his talons are making in her skin.
She stares straight at him, and the confusion, the pain and the misery are so real—as if she doesn’t know why he is doing this—he nearly lets her go. For a second he thinks, I should have asked her, and then suddenly—
She stops fighting. Her eyes cloud over, and the life leaves her body like the air sifting from a tire. In the distance thunder rumbles, and somewhere lightning flashes. But the sky is completely clear.
Sawyer shifts, eagle to man, and drags Maria to the banks of the lake. Her face holds the eternal expression: Why?
He begins to wonder himself.
Reaching out to touch her, his hand trembles, and he yanks it back. Fury shoots through him, and thunder shakes the ground. He throws back his head; storm clouds race toward him as if he’s called them home, and he knows in a flash of understanding as bright as the lightning that slams into the earth all around them just what he has done.
CHAPTER 30
“You loved her,” I whispered, my voice full of both awe and horror.
Sawyer continued to press his forehead, his body, against mine, though he did stop crunching our hands together. “So it would appear.”
“You didn’t know.”
“No?” He rolled off me and sat on the side of the bed, scrubbing at his hair as if he’d just woken up.
“Sawyer.” I put my hand on his shoulder, felt the shimmer of the shark and yanked it back.
“Perhaps I did know. Perhaps I wanted the power that killing love would bring me. My mother had it. Why shouldn’t I?”
“You’re not her. You’re nothing like her.”
He stood and walked to the window, staring out at the night. “Soon, Elizabeth, you’ll think differently.”
I sat up then, his tone, his words, making my skin prickle. “What are you talking about?”
He produced a cigarette from nowhere, literally since he was naked, and then a match the same way. “You’ll see.” He took a drag, let the smoke trail out his nose in a slow, curling stream. “We’re all going to have to choose.”
“I have.”
“No.” Another drag. “But you will. Make sure it’s the right choice.”
“Gibberish,” I muttered. “I need help, answers, something, and he gives me gibberish.”
Sawyer glanced over his shoulder. “You can’t trust me. Sanducci is right about that.”
“You came here tonight to—” I stopped, confused. “Why did you come here?”
He let his gaze wander over me from the top of my short, dark hair down to my rapidly cooling toes, then lifted a brow.
“Ew. You just did my mother.”
He shrugged.
“There’s something you’re not telling me.”
Sawyer turned calmly back to the window and didn’t answer.