2000 Kisses

by Christina Skye

  Her dress was still snagged on his badge, and that left only one option. Grimly, T.J. sheared off his remaining buttons, then peeled off his shirt, letting it fall against her.

  In another jagged burst of lightning, he saw her staring at his chest. She pushed awkwardly to her feet, his shirt dangling from the front of her dress like a medieval banner of conquest.

  T.J. frowned, finding the symbolism a little too obvious. The painful state of his hardened body made his voice harsh. “That’s one problem solved. Now I’d better look at that blasted door.”

  She adjusted her dress awkwardly, then bent to the floor, searching for the flashlight.

  T.J. closed his mind to the torture of her perfume. He heard the soft rustling of her hands on the adobe floor and winced as her knee brushed his. God grant him the ability to control his sanity a few minutes longer, he prayed. Just long enough to put a decent amount of space between them.

  About half a continent should do it.

  “Here’s my nail file.” She shoved a cold piece of metal into his hands.

  At this point, T.J. was willing to do anything. He might even try sacrificing a goat or two.

  He searched the ground in the dim light until he found the flashlight, then bent by the door. As he’d feared, it was locked tight. He could see the bent prongs of Grady’s hinge gleaming in the flashlight beam. He brushed one end, only to feel the prong snap off in his fingers.

  Tess leaned down beside him. “What do we do now?”

  He glared at the hinge. “I could try to beat the thing senseless with your nail file.” He gave a grunt of disgust. “I have training in all kinds of locks and electronic security bypass, but I never expected to get stopped by an antique door hinge.”

  “Give me the file,” Tess said.

  “Begging your pardon, but I’m not sure this is the right place or time for an amateur.”

  “One of my clients owns a high-tech security firm. One night we were talking about how all locks are designed on the same basic principle. After a few drinks, he showed me how a simple nail file or plastic credit card can bypass most of them.”

  “Is that a fact?” For some reason T.J. couldn’t get past the part about a few drinks. “Just how many drinks did you two have?”

  “A few.”

  “What happened after he gave you the crash course in breaking and entering?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  Because he was irritated as hell at the thought of another man putting the moves on her and making her sigh with pleasure. “Beats me.” He crossed his arms and stood back. “Be my guest, Duchess.”

  “So you’re going to let the amateur have a shot after all?”

  “Hell, if you can spring that hinge, I’ll cook you dinner for a week. Make that a month.”

  She gave a soft laugh. “Get your apron ready, cowboy.”

  Lightning grumbled as she crouched beside the door. T.J. knelt nearby, flashlight in hand, while she inserted the nail file down through the length of the hinge.

  “There’s usually a dead space somewhere near the middle. If so, I can—”

  She twisted her hands, and metal squeaked.

  “Well, I’ll be damned.” T.J. stared as the door swung open.

  “Probably.” Tess smiled broadly as she strode past him. “What are you grinning about?” she demanded.

  “The sight of you with that nail file. I’m going to have to add a new item to my list of suspicious equipment. What other burglary devices do you have hidden in that bag of yours?”

  T.J. saw her rummage through her backpack. “Two whole-grain energy bars. Ginseng tincture.”

  “What about these?” T.J. muttered, studying two squares of bright plastic. Were they protection for a sexual encounter? It was the right thing for any woman to do in this crazy age, but the thought left T.J. irritated.

  “Perfumed bath salts from a cruise I just arranged. This one is raspberry leaf hair balm. Great fragrance.” She dug deeper into the bag. “A half-eaten box of Godiva chocolates—hands off,” she hissed. “And my trusty nail file, of course.”

  She held up a foil survival blanket. “I guess we won’t be needing this tonight.”

  As they left the old jail, lightning skated over the mountains. Thunder boomed, echoing back and forth over the valley. T.J. saw Tess hug her arms to her chest, caught in awe. It was hard not to be overwhelmed by nature at its fiercest as another streaming bolt broke the sky, stabbing at the mountains. He had watched the magnificent light shows hundreds of times, and they never lost their power to amaze him.

  Or their noise, he thought ruefully.

  In another jagged flare he saw Tess’s arms tighten. Her face was white in the split second of illumination. “Are you okay?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Tess?” T.J. gripped her shoulder, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her eyes closed as she raised her face to the sky, murmuring words that were impossible to make out over the echoing thunder.

  T.J. had seen a lot of things in his life. He’d walked through dusty fields in Tuscany and ancient châteaus in France. He’d rubbed tanning oil on pampered movie stars in Hollywood and walked in a human shield to protect high-voltage politicians who wielded their power like automatic weapons. But nothing came close to the sight of Tess in the stormy darkness, her face a pale oval raised to the night sky.

  Electricity crackled in the supercharged air, making the hair on his neck stand on end. There was a dangerous magic in being close to such power when you knew it could slam you off your feet and whip the breath from your body.

  Seeing Tess had the same effect, especially when she stood entranced, overwhelmed by the same dark magic.

  Against every inclination, his fingers tightened on her shoulder. “Tess, we should go. It’s not safe to be out in this.”

  Again there was no answer. But as the wind churned up the street, she opened her eyes. Her gaze locked on his neck, where a thin gold chain held a battered St. Christopher medal, a boyhood gift from his mother.

  She reached out slowly, tracing the small oval as if it had deep meaning to her. Heat shot through T.J. at the brush of her fingers, and he ignored the instant hardening of his muscles. They needed to get moving and into real shelter. There was always a chance that a bolt would snap right over the ground and strike them where they stood beneath the jail’s broad adobe porch.

  T.J.’s hand circled her wrist. “Tess, what’s wrong?”

  She shook her head, as if trying to ward off unwanted thoughts. Then she raised the gold metal to her lips, whispering strange, husky words that reminded him of the Apache he’d heard spoken up on the White River reservation in the rugged rim country.

  But that was impossible, he knew. So what in the hell was going on here?

  The wind moaned, whipping up in circles and raking at T.J.’s hair and face. Even then Tess stood oblivious, shivering, caught in her private world.

  “Tess, snap out of it.” T.J. detached his shirt and badge from the front of her dress and worked his shirt around her shoulders.

  Then without a word she sank to one knee and brought his hand to her forehead as if in some ancient ritual, all the while murmuring in that same husky voice.

  T.J. pulled her to her feet, struck by a wave of uneasiness. Something was very wrong with her, almost as if the storm had triggered some primitive disorientation. Getting her inside was crucial, he thought.

  He couldn’t help feeling irritated. This was supposed to be his first weekend off in six months and he’d been planning a trip into Tucson. After some rowdy music, he’d been looking forward to a lingering night with an old and very companionable friend who’d just come through a nasty divorce.

  Instead, he was fighting his way through gale winds with a woman who was acting more than odd.

  He bit back an oath as lightning raked the air and exploded against the weather vane on top of the old courthouse. A hail of sparks lit the air and the explosion knocked T.J. backward, with
Tess still caught rigid in his arms.

  T.J. felt his heart slam hard as he smelled scorched wood, melted metal, and ozone. He stood frozen, struck with the nearness of his escape. No one could have survived a direct hit from such a bolt. If he and Tess had been crossing the square, they would probably both be dead right now.

  His hands weren’t quite steady as he pulled Tess against his side and took an awkward step through the darkness.

  Lightning arced high overhead from cloud to cloud. In its bluish light, T.J. saw a dark figure move across the deserted square in front of the courthouse. He moved neither slowly nor with fear, his steps absolutely silent and regular. If T.J. had been a superstitious man, he might have said the figure had walked right out of the lightning that had raked the courthouse.

  But that was impossible, even though this strange storm seemed somehow to have distorted nature’s normal rules.

  T.J. fingered the edge of his holster, glad for the weight of his pistol. Then he caught the glow of silver. He recognized that outline, part of a belt buckle etched with an ancient figure of a humpbacked flute player.

  T.J.’s breath hissed out in relief as recognition hit.

  “Miguel, is that you?” He squinted, trying to make out the shape moving toward him in the darkness.

  An old man moved onto the porch, his teeth the only brightness in his lined, shadowed face. “Of course. Who else would be crazy enough to walk in such a weather?” He wore black from head to foot, the only other color a heavy silver buckle at his waist. Even his hair seemed to hold the darkness where it hung straight to his stooped shoulders. But in spite of his age, an aura of power clung to the man, almost as if he had pulled down the sky, wrapping its ancient darkness around his body like a cloak.

  Some called him a brujo, one of the wild shaman-magicians who walked the barren mountains of Mexico working feats of healing or evil with equal skill, according to their whim. Others said he was a deserter from the Mexican Army hiding out in the hills north of Nogales. T.J. dismissed both stories as pure fantasy. He had crossed paths often with the old man over the last ten years, and T.J. was convinced of the man’s love for the land—if for nothing else.

  “Even the song dogs have gone to ground in this storm,” the old man said, squinting up at the lightning above the mountains. “The high canyons are already flooding.”

  Not will, but are. How would he know that, T.J. wondered.

  “So much noise and force is pleasing, is it not?”

  “Not if it strikes the courthouse and shorts out all the circuits,” T.J. said grimly. “We can’t afford another repair bill right now.”

  “It is difficult to have no money,” the old man said gravely. “But there are worse things.” He looked at Tess, and T.J. sensed his curiosity.

  “My friend isn’t feeling well. Something about this storm has upset her.”

  Miguel nodded slowly. “It is not unexpected. Such weather can pull the very soul from one who is unprepared.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re practicing magic without a license,” T.J. said. “If so, I’d have to run you in.”

  The old man laughed, a husky sound as dry as scattered sand. “I enjoy the sight of her hair, bright with the colors of the sunrise.”

  “Now, how would you know about that?” T.J. asked. “You can’t see anything now.”

  “I see what I see, Sheriff.” Then he waved one hand sharply. “Take your woman and go before the hard rains come. It will be safer for her.”

  “Safer?”

  “Go, Sheriff McCall.” This time there was a flat tone of command to the words.

  But T.J. didn’t take orders easily and never had. “Just for the record, she isn’t my woman,” he said firmly.

  The old shaman spoke in whispery tones. “She might be if you let her. This woman could be many things to you, I think.” A faint smile brushed his lips. “Sometimes a path must lead far away before it brings one home. Now go.”

  T.J. was about to ask another question, when a sheet of rain swept down out of the west, carried by a slashing wind. The last thing he wanted was to get caught by flooding. “I’ll remember that, Miguel.”

  “So you will.”

  Tess twisted against him, muttering. All T.J.’s uneasiness returned as he saw the whiteness of her face. “Tess, can you hear me?”

  She murmured, her hands locked at her chest, still caught in whatever odd dream world possessed her.

  T.J. sprinted along the porch toward his Jeep, guiding Tess beside him. Only at the far corner did he look back.

  The old man was still standing, one hand locked on his heavy belt buckle. Now the silver seemed to glow, crackling with cold light.

  He stood in the rain and wind, watching the two lonely figures run through the night. Just as they had run before, the old man thought. Once again past and present twisted close, though they had yet to remember.

  But the woman had felt the brush of the lightning. Her dreams were stirring even now as she fought to hold the two times apart.

  Miguel frowned over the words she had muttered. They were sounds he had not heard in decades, words that had long ceased to be spoken here.

  They were the words of those who had walked the high canyons ten centuries ago, living in the cliff houses that had now crumbled away to ruin.

  So she had begun to remember after all, he thought.

  A pity. It would make her danger even greater.

  10

  Lightning burned across her eyelids.

  She smelled the smoke of piñon and juniper logs, fragrant in the night. Across the valley came the low throb of drums, offered as a prayer to the storm gods who walked the clouds.

  The power of the night caught her, overwhelmed her. At the same time she sensed that everything about this night was distant and unreal. Yet which world was the dream and which world was true?

  “Tess, can you hear me?”

  Hard hands.

  A voice she knew should be familiar. She opened her eyes to a stranger’s face marked with lines carved by both laughter and sorrow. She ought to know that face, but the image fled, like a cunning mirage.

  “How do you feel?”

  She raised her hand and touched his brow. Again the memories, teasing and swift. “Feel?”

  “Did the noise bother you?” He frowned. “It was the very devil when that bolt of lightning struck the courthouse.”

  “No,” she whispered.

  “No, the noise didn’t bother you, or no, you didn’t see?”

  “I didn’t—see.” Or hear or feel.

  Driven by some deep urgency, she touched his hair. Once, it had been longer. She saw it clearly, pulled back with a leather thong. Once, there had been pieces of silver at his ears and eagle feathers in his hair.

  “You’re shivering.”

  Was she?

  “Dammit, you’re freezing.”

  Dimly she felt strong fingers pull something around her cold shoulders. “It doesn’t matter.” Each word came stiffly, as if she struggled with a foreign tongue.

  “Miguel said that a storm like this can steal your soul—not that I believe in his magic.”

  “Miguel?”

  “The old man in the black clothes,” T.J. explained slowly. “We met him outside the old jail. Don’t you remember?”

  “No.” Tess closed her eyes. “I don’t seem to remember anything.”

  “Not even me?”

  His voice echoed hollowly, superimposed upon another’s, low and husky and infinitely tender. Tess forced her mind away from its seduction. Something whispered that madness waited down that twisting path. “I remember enough.”

  Too much, she thought. She thought of a man who could track the smallest creature by scent alone. A man who walked in thunder, pounding on the sand to call down the great booming echoes from the sky. She thought of a man she had known once, centuries before.

  Lifetimes before.

  But that was impossible.

  As his hand brushed
her cheek, she shivered uncontrollably.

  What was wrong with her?

  “No,” she panted. He couldn’t touch her. She was forbidden to him by her tribe. If they knew, they would hunt him down and spill his bright blood over the sand as punishment. “Don’t touch me,” she whispered. But even as she spoke, she was gripped by a fierce longing. “They’ll find out. They watch me always now.”

  “Find out? Who?”

  Rain slammed against the roof. Tess barely noticed, caught in a flood of images like running water over sand. He had come from the north when snow blocked the high passes. He was not of her tribe, not of her people, who laughed at the soft skins he wore. A sky stone blazed at his neck, only a shade lighter than his piercing eyes, and his prayer stick held strange figures of animals she had never seen.

  But his power was great. He had trusted in that power when he should have felt fear.

  Tess locked her hands to her chest as her trembling grew. She closed her eyes, fighting the pain, only to see the images burn behind her eyelids.

  The sweet brush of hands.

  The dance of skin, frenzied in the darkness while drums beat out a fierce warning.

  She said a word, low and hoarse. It was his name—the name he had once held, centuries before, when the mountains were young.

  She was sitting out of the rain.

  A car, she realized. Something brushed her shoulders. A blanket, but it was like no cloth she had ever seen. She stared at the fibers, marveling at their bright colors and precise stitches. How different the cloth looked. How different everything was in this place.

  Strong fingers dug into her shoulders. “You haven’t said a rational word since we left the jail. I need to know what’s going on here.”

  Dear God, so did she.

  “Dammit, Tess, talk to me.”

  “There’s—nothing to say. I’m fine.” She pulled away from his hands, fighting to clear her mind of the shadow images. “The storm must have made me dizzy, disoriented.” She took a hard breath. “Can we just go?”

  “You said things were different.”

  “I was confused.”

  “But—”

  “Can we just go?” She felt her control breaking under his scrutiny and his questions. She needed to be calm, to be alone so she could sort out the feelings still churning through her. “I’m tired.”