Forever...

by Jude Deveraux

  He had been at the top of the staircase down to the first floor when all hell broke loose as a big red car came tearing through the house.

  Adam gathered up the satchel and the woman, then stood up again and looked down, seeing the top of Taylor’s head leaning on the steering wheel. Such an act by Taylor could only mean that time had run out. The staircase was ruined, so Adam couldn’t get down that way. He had no time to hesitate. With one great leap, he jumped onto the top of the Range Rover, then carefully put the woman down on the roof. She was glaring at him hard and desperately trying to say something. But Adam didn’t want to hear what she had to say. Was she telling him that he’d be sorry for taking her? Or was she going to thank him for rescuing her? Right now Adam didn’t have time to find out.

  He scrambled down the side of the car, opened the door and roughly pushed Taylor into the passenger seat. Right now he didn’t have time for niceties.

  But what was going on? Adam wondered. Even though the side of the house had been smashed, there were still no alarms going off. But, worse, there was no Darci shouting in his head that he had to get out. No Darci telling him what he needed to do to get out. Where was she?

  Adam pulled the woman off the roof and put her across the backseat, then he got into the car behind the wheel. Please go, he prayed. The engine was still running, so maybe there was a chance. He put the car in reverse and it moved. “Thank You,” he whispered, eyes skyward, then he backed the car over the debris and out of the hole as fast as it would go. The tires were scraping something in front that had been smashed, and he could see smoke coming from under the hood, but the big car was still going.

  When he reached the top of the hill, Adam leaped out. There was no longer any need to remain quiet, so he shouted up into the tree, “Darci!”

  Here, came the weak reply. I’m—”Eiiiiiiiiiiii,” she screamed as she fell. She had awakened at Adam’s call, but she’d lost her balance and slipped off.

  Adam caught her, but the force of her hitting him made him fall back against the ground hard.

  “Adam, darling,” Darci said as she put both hands on the sides of his face and began kissing him. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine,” he managed to say. “But we have to go. Can you get in the car?” He was woozy from the impact of her hitting him, but he didn’t want her to know that. But when he stood up and took a breath, he thought that a couple of ribs might be broken.

  “You’re hurt,” she said.

  Adam saw the way she was listing to one side. She, too, was hiding injuries. “Can you get into the car?” he repeated. “We need to get out of here. Fast.”

  “Yes, of course,” she said.

  “In the back,” Adam said, holding his side as he opened the door for her. “And be careful. She is in there.”

  For one horrifying moment, Darci thought Adam meant the boss, the witch, but then she looked into the car and saw the bound-and-gagged woman lying across the seat. Instantly, Darci knew that there was no evil coming from this woman. She didn’t think twice before gently lifting the woman’s head and putting it on her lap. Darci knew evil when she was around it, and this woman was not evil.

  As quickly as he could, Adam got into the driver’s seat. Taylor had regained consciousness and was sitting up. “Where are you going?” he asked hoarsely.

  “As far away from here as I can get,” Adam answered. “I have what I came for, so I’m leaving.”

  “She will retaliate,” Taylor said in a voice barely above a whisper. “Let me out here.”

  “What?!” Adam said. The car was badly damaged and wouldn’t last much longer, so they needed to get away as fast as possible.

  “She will want someone to take revenge on, so let me out now!” Taylor said more forcibly. But the effort took his strength, and he leaned back against the leather seat and closed his eyes.

  “I’m getting us all out of here,” Adam said quietly.

  “She knows who Darci is now,” Taylor said, his voice barely a whisper but urgent. “Darci will never be safe again in her life. No matter where she goes, the woman will come after her.”

  “And you are going to stop her?” Adam asked. “How can you do that? You don’t even know what she looks like. And you’re injured.”

  “But I do,” came a voice from the backseat, a voice that neither Adam nor Taylor had heard before.

  “You took the gag off of her?” Adam said in horror, looking at Darci in the rearview mirror.

  “It was hurting her,” Darci said defiantly.

  “We don’t know anything about her. She could be—” “But you know everything about me, don’t you, brother?” the woman said, then, with Darci’s help, she pulled herself upright and looked at Adam in the rearview mirror. “I can help,” she said. “I can help bring her down, but I cannot do it alone. It is nearly dawn now. We must rest. Is there somewhere we can go to rest? Tonight is the time. If she is not stopped tonight, her power will double.” The way she spoke was odd, every word carefully pronounced, as though she’d learned to speak by reading, rather than by hearing other people talk.

  “Why?” Taylor said, turning around to look at the woman. But he was in too much pain to turn fully, so he couldn’t see her face. “How? What has she planned?”

  “She knew of this. She has seen some of it. I saw all of it, but I lied to her, as I often do. But she has others who can see in the mirror now, so she validates me. You do not have the true mirror. She has it. She has children locked up, and tonight she means to sacrifice them. I must stop her.”

  “You won’t be alone!” Taylor said, then had to lean back against the seat to get his breath.

  “And I will help you, too,” Darci said softly.

  “Oh, hell!!” Adam said angrily.

  “Don’t curse,” Darci said at the same time that the woman said,”Do not curse” then the two women looked at each other, and in spite of the situation, they smiled.

  In the front seat, Taylor smiled too, but Adam didn’t. If he had been alone, he would have readily agreed to go back there after that evil woman, but now he had Darci. And, he thought as he looked into the rearview mirror, he had a sister. And, glancing at Taylor, who was obviously in pain, Adam acknowledged that, with Darci’s father, he now had a family, his own family, not one where he was an outsider, an intruder.

  Now that he had everything he’d ever wanted in his life, he was going to have to risk losing it all in one night.

  16

  “I GUESS THIS IS AS SAFE as we’re going to get,” Adam said in resignation as he pulled the severely damaged Range Rover into the back of the parking lot of a cheap motel. He parked off the gravel, under a tree, where the car could not be seen from the road or even by someone driving through the parking lot. Leaving the others in the car, he woke the owner of the motel and paid cash for one room with two queen-size beds.

  While he was doing this, he was thinking about what he could say to Darci to persuade her to not participate tonight. Adam knew that he would be going into the tunnels or wherever “it” was to be held tonight—the mention of the children had decided him—but he didn’t want Darci involved. As long as he had breath in him, he’d do what he could to prevent another child being hurt, but he didn’t want Darci or Taylor or even this new person, his sister, involved.

  As for his sister, all he could see when he looked at her was that room with the tower painted over the bed. Considering how she had been raised, for all he knew, the woman could be as diabolical as the witch she’d grown up with. She’d admitted that the mirror she’d seen him take was not the true mirror, but Adam couldn’t bring himself to show her the other one he’d found. He’d already seen that he couldn’t see any visions in it. Maybe Darci could; maybe she couldn’t. The only way to find that out was to show it to her—and right now he couldn’t do that in secret. Not yet, anyway. Maybe tonight, after they’d rested, he’d find a way to show Darci the mirror in private.

  When Adam returned with the key to t
he room, the others were standing beside the car waiting for him. He studied them in the harsh yellow motel light. Taylor looked bad. There was a huge, darkening bruise on his forehead, and he was holding one arm awkwardly. Darci’s eyes were red, and she looked a bit dazed, disoriented.

  Beside Darci was the woman Adam was sure was his sister. He had to admit that she was a heroic-looking figure as she stood there with her hands bound in front of her. She was extraordinarily tall, and during the fracas, her thick black hair had come loose. It now fell in huge waves past her waist, cascading over a loose white blouse that was gathered at the neck. She had on a long cotton skirt and sandals on her bare feet.

  She was looking at him with such defiance that Adam thought that he’d not like to be pitted against a woman such as she was. For all that, so far, her words had been right, and for all that she was his sister, and for all that she hadn’t fought him when he’d taken her, in his mind, she had yet to prove herself.

  Opening the door to the motel room, Adam let the others go in ahead of him, but as this woman passed him, he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “I do not trust you.”

  “You are the fool then,” she said, then walked past him, her head held high.

  Once they were inside the room, Adam closed the door. “I think we should get some sleep,” he said, looking at the two beds. In other circumstances, it would have made sense to put the two women in one bed. But he was not going to let Darci get near this woman who was nearly six feet tall.

  Abruptly, Darci turned on him. “Adam!” she said angrily. “You’re being a jerk.”

  “I must agree,” Taylor said as he sat down on one of the two chairs in the room. “I think your sister has been through enough in her lifetime without the barbarian treatment that you are according her. Really! Just look at her!” he said, turning to gaze at the woman standing in front of the door. She was tall, beautiful, regal, dressed in an old-fashioned way, and her hands were bound before her. She looked like a romantic heroine from a story about clans and warfare and honor.

  “She reminds me of someone,” Taylor said in an odd voice that made Darci look at him. Since he’d first seen her, he hadn’t seemed able to take his eyes off this proud, statuesque woman.

  “Me too,” Adam said, “but I can’t think who it is.”

  “A queen,” Darci said, smiling warmly at the woman. “She looks like a queen.”

  At that the woman smiled a bit at Darci, but she didn’t bend her neck—and she didn’t lose the arrogance of her glare at her brother.

  “Boadicea,” Adam said. “The warrior queen. That’s who she reminds me of.”

  At that the woman’s haughty look left her and she smiled; then she began to laugh. In fact, she laughed so hard that she had to sit down on the edge of one of the beds.

  “Someone laughed at one of your jokes,” Darci said to Adam in wonder. “If you had any doubt that she’s blood kin, there’s your proof.”

  Adam couldn’t help but be pleased at his sister’s laughter, but for the life of him, he couldn’t see the joke. Boadicea was a first-century queen who led the British to fight the Romans, but what was so amusing about that?

  Turning, the woman looked up at Adam. “Boadicea is my name.”

  “Aptly given,” Taylor said, his eyes never leaving the woman.

  At that moment Darci relaxed. Maybe Adam was being unreasonable about his sister, but if she could laugh at Adam’s humorless jokes, then Darci was sure that soon he’d come around. “Is anyone besides me hungry?” she asked.

  The men didn’t answer her. Adam was staring at Boadicea in speculation, as though he was trying to figure her out. And Taylor was looking at the woman as though he’d fallen in love with her.

  But Boadicea’s attention was given to Darci. In a way, it was as though she was dismissing the men as of no importance. “Do you think we could buy what you people call junk food? I have a great desire to try such a thing.”

  “It’s what I grew up on,” Darci said cheerfully. “There’s a grocery across the street, and—”

  “I’ll go,” Taylor said. “I’ll get you whatever you want.”

  “No, I’ll go,” Adam said. “I think it’s my duty.”

  Turning, Darci looked at the men in surprise. It was almost as though they were fighting over who could fetch food for this extraordinarily beautiful woman.

  Darci grimaced, then looked at Boadicea. “Have you ever heard the expression, ‘Men are slime’?”

  “Worse,” Boadicea said. “She says they are useless.”

  At that the two women shared laughter.

  Refusing to comment on what the women were laughing about, Adam looked at his watch. “It’s four A.M. and I

  think we should all get some sleep. Later we can make plans about ...about what we’re going to do tonight. And as for food, we’ll have to wait until the grocery opens. For sleeping, I think....”He trailed off. If this woman was his sister and she wasn’t the enemy, then it made sense that Darci should bunk with her.

  But the truth was that Adam wanted to hold Darci in his arms. He just didn’t know how to obtain that goal without saying that’s what he wanted.

  Standing up slowly, Taylor knew what Adam wanted, and he also knew that it was too late for subtlety. “I think that Boadicea is an unknown and therefore should not be trusted.” When he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, he could see the anger that was starting in her. “Therefore I think that a man should sleep between her and the door.”

  “Him?” Boadicea said, holding up her bound hands to point at Adam. There was a sneer in her voice.

  “No!” Adam said. “I should. . . .” For the life of him, he couldn’t think of a reason why he should be the one to sleep with Darci. After all, wouldn’t it make sense to have father and daughter in one bed and brother and sister in the other?

  “The two of you wouldn’t fit in one bed,” Darci said to Adam. “Look at her. She’s as big as you are. You’d be hanging over the sides of the bed all night.”

  For a moment all three of them looked at Darci in puzzlement. The beds were quite big. But then they all smiled in understanding.

  “Yes,” Adam said. “That’s a perfect solution. Okay, who gets the bathroom first?”

  “Me!” Darci yelled, then ran.

  Darci awoke from a sound sleep snuggled in Adam’s arms. At first she was too tired and too disoriented to understand his muffled cries. Hours ago, when she’d first climbed into bed with Adam, she’d been sure that she was going to die of ecstasy. Never, ever would she be able to fall asleep.

  “If we were very, very quiet,” she whispered to him as she slipped into his arms,”you could make love to me right now.”

  Adam put his lips to her ear. “I give you a promise, Darci T. Monroe,” he said. “If we get out of this alive, I swear by all that’s holy that you won’t be a virgin for more than five minutes after you tell me what I want to know from that mirror. Hey! You aren’t going to faint on me again, are you?”

  “Maybe,” she said.”Would fainting get me more kisses?”

  “I can’t kiss you and keep my sanity. Just holding you is making me go”—he smiled—”bananas. And stop that! No wiggling allowed.”

  She stopped moving, but she kept her body pressed close to his. He’d never said that he loved her, but she felt that maybe he did. Truthfully, maybe she’d felt his interest in her from the first. He’d always looked at her as though she were someone unique.

  “You want to take your watch off?” he whispered. She was still in her one-piece leotard, still wearing the beautiful gold watch he’d given her.

  “No,” she said. “I plan to wear it every day for the rest of my life. I’m going to be buried with it.”

  “By that time I’ll have bought you a dozen watches, and this poor thing won’t interest you anymore.”

  Darci had to take a deep breath before she replied to that. She knew that he was hinting at . . . she hardly dared think the word ...marriag
e. She wanted to believe in that dream, but she also wanted to be honest with him. She took a deep breath. “Under different circumstances you might not like me. Now you need me to read a mirror, so I’m important to you. But I grew up in less-than-fortunate circumstances and there are things about me that might make you change your mind. I’m—”

  She broke off because Adam kissed her. He didn’t kiss her deeply, as he had before, because with the circumstances as they were now, he didn’t know if he’d be able to stop. But he kissed her enough that he kept her from finishing her sentence. “Don’t ever let me hear you say anything like that again,” he said. “I liked you long before I knew you had any ability to boss people around with your mind. And as for where you come from, remember that I’ve been all over the world and I’ve met a lot of people. Trust me on this, Darci: You are unique no matter where you grew up.”

  “Is that good or bad?” she asked seriously.

  “It’s good. By the way, do you think you could teach me how to cast a zenobyre spell?”

  “What’s that?” she asked sleepily.

  “A halting spell,” he said. “You learned about it in college, remember? In your witchcraft minor.”

  Darci smiled as sleep began to overtake her. “I didn’t study witchcraft. I studied poetry.”

  “Why, you rotten, low-down, lying . . .” he said, parodying her earlier words, but he could feel that Darci was asleep, so he kissed her hair and closed his eyes.

  But Darci wasn’t asleep. She wasn’t sure, but she thought that, maybe, he planned to wait until she was asleep, then go to the tunnels himself. She wouldn’t put it past him to lock them in the motel room and leave them without transportation. She knew that Adam had always been a lone soldier, and this time was no different. She couldn’t risk his trying to save everyone by himself. Snuggling closer to him, she used her True Persuasion to soothe him and make him sleep.