Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
“That’s beautiful, Danii.”
Slowly she lowered the paper and pen onto the little fire. Though the flames licked at her fingertips for a second before she let go of the paper and the gold pen, she barely felt the bite. Blue, red and gold specks colored the fire as the paper curled up and turned into smoke. The pen, in the midst of the fire, looked as if it was indestructible. Slowly, the gold exterior changed, turning black and bubbly. A thin, musical piping sounded, and she thought it must be the ink boiling away.
“Good-bye,” she whispered.
She slid her hands over her face, then felt Heketoro’s arm pull her into him. He snapped the tie holding her hair back and stroked her, his fingers working their way past tangles and knots and arranging her hair so it rested neatly across her shoulder. They sat, silent, yet together for the longest time, while the fire burned low.
He leaned over, peering at her face while simultaneously tilting her chin his way. “Do you know how very red your eyes are? Is this about more than a simple friend? A boyfriend, perhaps.”
“No.” She half choked, half laughed. “I’m… This was for my brother too. He’s been missing overseas for months. The army won’t say anything more, but I’m sure he’s dead.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “I’m sure.”
“Jacob? You mentioned him before. You should not give up. Keep your hopes alive a little longer.”
“Do you…do you know something? Like with your fae powers, or something?”
“No.” He trailed his thumb along the line of her jaw. “I just think life is too precious to give up on it easily.”
She heaved out a long sigh. “I’ll try then, but I don’t hold out much hope of him coming home.”
Eventually she sneaked her arm out and covered his where he held her at the waist.
“Thank you.”
“Did this all help? The sacrifice? When my younger brother died, I didn’t feel as though I’d said good-bye until I did this.”
She searched inside herself and found herself at peace. Why, she couldn’t say. The ritual had somehow shaped the way she looked at Nick’s death. He was gone from her life, and now she could see there was nothing more for her to do than to remember him in the best way she could. It did her no good to rail at the injustice. And even for Jacob, she now felt that wherever he was, he would find peace. This had freed her, cut the links that existed between her life and theirs.
“It helped a lot.” She twisted her neck so she could smile at him, then leaned in and kissed him chastely. This was not the time for lust. She was glad to see he recognized that too and merely smiled back at her.
The sun had drifted a long way toward the western sky by the time Heketoro unwrapped himself from around her and stood.
She looked up at him. The inner serenity she still felt let her say something she would have otherwise not revealed. “I meant to show you how strong I can be, and it seems I’ve done the opposite here.” She frowned, then grimaced ruefully. “I guess I’ve ruined my chances, and for that I’m sorry, but I’m still glad we did this. I’m still grateful you shared this with me.”
His own forehead furrowed in the middle. “Ruined your chances? I don’t understand.”
“My chance of ever coming with you to your world.” She saw him stiffen. “I know you said I couldn’t come but”—she shrugged—“I still hoped.”
“You hoped?” he said tersely. “Danii, if there was a way for this to be safe for you—” He bit off the last words as if afraid of what anger would make him say, then simply said, “Will I see you tonight?”
She nodded, sad and confused. Was that a good sign? Anger there, yes, but he also seemed unhappy. Maybe, he truly did want her to go? There was danger here too. She couldn’t tell this time, if his words were just to placate her, or if he spoke the truth.
As if she’d been given a message from above, she realized why none of this was logical, why she wanted to be with him, despite all the uncertainty and only knowing him for these few days…despite her being the Queen of Logic on every other day of her life, bar the last couple. She loved him, and love wasn’t logical. Her eyes burned with unshed tears. I do pick them, don’t I? Can’t get much more unobtainable than him?
“You will see me there tonight.” She made herself look at him. Pathetic, but she wanted him to know. “I’d do almost anything for you, even though you’re pushing me away.”
He flinched as if she’d struck him, balled his hands into fists. A gust of wind tugged at his hair, whipping it sideways and flipping leaves into the air. For a moment he watched the leaves intently, as if half expecting something else to happen. She met his eyes, knowing he was thinking of his half sister.
“Danii, you have no idea, none, as to the various ways the fae can hurt you. No concept at all. You’re as naive as a newborn, and that is why I fear to take you to my world. Do you think I decided this lightly?” He let out a sound of disgust and shook his head. “Remember, avoid Aroha. She can take other forms if she wishes it so. You’ve seen one of them already, spoken to her, the woman who walks about my lake who you think is researching the wild life.”
Ohmigod. “Bug Lady?”
“Yes. Now do you see why you need to be careful?” He gestured toward her. “Pin those notes to your front and back doors. Read them!” Then he turned and walked away.
The sheet of paper, he meant that, and she picked it up with hands that shook so much she couldn’t read what was written. Holy jumping… Bug lady was Aroha?
She watched him go, feeling cold and empty, then rose and wandered a little aimlessly into the house. Killer trotted alongside. The note was succinct and to the point, with the sentence repeated. She tore it in half so she had one for each door. Maybe she should have thought of this, but it just seemed to be taking things a step too far.
DO NOT ALLOW ANY STRANGE WOMEN TO ENTER YOUR HOUSE.
She sticky taped them inside her doors at front and back, though on sticking the second of them to the back door, she frowned and found it difficult to figure out why she had to. Strange women?
She ended up in the kitchen. It struck her as a foreign place, with the colors of the walls all wrong. Had she somehow entered the wrong house? She’d been out gardening, hadn’t she? After staring out the back window for several minutes, a blackened spot on the lawn beneath the unruly mock jasmine drew her attention. What was that from?
Her clit throbbed. She put her hand to her mound and let it rest there a second or two. She ached as if she’d just scored with half a football team.
How could she imagine sex? Was she going nuts? She clicked her fingernail on her teeth. Heketoro had been here. Yes. Hold on to that thought, woman.
Maybe she should take a day off this week and see a shrink? She prowled the kitchen before stopping before the fridge and opening it. Nearly dinnertime, and she was ravenous. She scowled at the sushi and tabbouleh. Another puzzle. The date on the tabbouleh indicated she’d bought it recently, but when? She pulled both containers out and ate standing at the counter in a daze, barely noticing the flavors, while Killer gulped down dog food.
The island—she knew she had to be there tonight. Why, she wasn’t sure. She had a feeling her memories were messed up. Had Heketoro done that? He had something to do with it. She needed to get to the bottom of all this, and the best way seemed the direct one. Go there, to this island, and check out this hunch of hers.
The crime rate might be low, but she’d be stupid to go to the lake at night unarmed. She’d take the pistol. Not that she meant to use it on Heketoro if she saw him. It was just a precaution.
Or is it? Every time she thought of him, little alarm bells seemed to ring. If there was no logical reason for what had happened to her, the sex, the tattoos, the way the man attracted her, what did that leave? The illogical? If i
t wasn’t drugs, or a porn movie, what was it? Magic? Sure it was, and as likely as Santa bringing her toys down her nonexistent chimney.
Whatever answers the island held, she was going there with her eyes wide open.
She dressed in her darkest clothes—the black leather pants she’d only worn once, a black T-shirt and a navy jacket beneath which she could hide the GLOCK and its quick-release holster. Next, she tied her hair back in a ponytail, and as a last thought, she strapped a knife in a sheath to her wrist.
When she opened the timber front door and looked out through the screen door, there sat her sister, Amy, brunette hair neatly done in a bun, attired in a tailored yellow silk suit. She was leaning back in the cane chair, with her hands behind her head and her ankles crossed.
Danii thrust open the screen door, and stood frozen, with the door propped against her. She screamed in delight.
“Amy! You never said you were here! When did you arrive? Where’s Emmanuel?”
Something nagged at her, jumping up and down inside her head, at the boundary where thoughts blossomed into distinct ideas. She stared blankly at her sister for a few seconds. Why hadn’t Amy told her she was coming?
“Is there anything wrong? Is Emmanuel okay?”
“No! Nothing’s wrong. Of course not.” Amy scrambled to her feet and pushed her yellow sunglasses up her nose. “I have something I must tell you though. Could I come in?”
What am I thinking? Here is Amy, probably jet-lagged and waiting on my doorstep for who knew how long, and I’m interrogating her on the porch. Duh!
“Sorry! Come in. It’s just such a surprise! Let’s have a cup of tea, or would you rather coffee?”
Again something niggled at her, some instruction, something she felt sure she should have written down in fluorescent ink and stuck to her fridge door if she’d been organized when she’d learned of it…but what it was escaped her.
“Either.” Amy smiled.
“Tea then? Come on in.” With the screen door still half-open at her back, she paused to look back as Amy stepped across the threshold. Something inside fascinated her sister.
She was, surprisingly, an inch or so taller than Danii. When and how had that happened? She flicked a look at Amy’s feet. Low-heeled pumps. Puzzled, she stared at the yellow sunglasses. Absurdly, Amy still wore them inside the house. Someone else had those exact sunglasses. Exactly those.
There was a sign behind the door. She recalled the words—something about strange women, but…Amy was no stranger.
Danii tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Amy?”
“Yes?” The woman turned, wide-eyed, cocking her head a little to one side. She held out her hand as if to shake hands with Danii.
Her sister? No. The thought jarred her, thumping into her as shockingly as a blow to the head. This is not my sister.
The fingernails were red and pointed like arrowheads, and the back of the woman’s hand bore a lacework of fine bloodred tattoos running along the ridges of her bones.
Alarm bells clanged. Danii shifted her right hand closer to the jacket opening, where with a few inches of movement, she could get at the pistol butt.
Not-Amy reached up and removed the sunglasses, revealing eyes of a startling orange, with a tinge of yellow in places.
“I’m Aroha.” She smiled and extended her arm a little farther, touching a fingernail to Danii’s arm and speaking a strange word as her fingernail scratched a feather-thin line on Danii’s skin.
Aroha? As her hand swept under her jacket toward the GLOCK, she scrambled to remember that name. She knew it from somewhere.
The moment slowed to molasses speed. Danii heard Killer’s nails clattering on the hallway floor, and Killer growling low and menacing as he walked. Killer never ever growled at friends. A fly buzzed past, wings flapping slow as a bird’s.
Those eyes—like Heketoro’s—too weird to be real. Danii shivered. Ice spread from the nail, up her arm, then outward, fanning across her chest, down to her legs, and she found herself crumpling to the floor to lie helpless and still, her head cushioned by her outstretched forearm. Her limbs were numb.
Aroha fastidiously wiped the fingernail against her shirt, then squatted, eyes almost kind with the echoes of her smile. She caressed Danii’s cheek.
“Frankly, I’m stunned at how easy it is to get into the houses of your kind. Though I can see why Heketoro likes you.” Her tongue ran along her upper lip. The tip of that tongue was tattooed with red spikes of lightning. “Now, there is something I simply must have you do for me.”
“Why?” Danii managed to croak, squeezing the sound through a narrowed throat. Using every particle of strength, she strained to raise an arm. Teeth clenched, neck muscles taut, and…nothing. Her body was there, she could feel the cold floor against her side. What had been used on her? Curare? The poison used in those darts by the natives with the blowguns? No, she was pretty sure that stuff stopped you breathing.
“Why am I doing this, Danii? I don’t think you need to know that.” The tips of the nails pressed lightly against Danii’s neck, not deep enough to scratch, but enough to hurt a little. “What use is such knowledge to someone who’ll be dead in a few hours? Listen carefully to what I say.”
“Hypnosis…can’t make…” Breathing was definitely harder. “Me do…anything I don’t want to!”
Aroha laughed, deep and sultry, and for a few seconds she leaned on Danii’s chest enough to stop her breathing. “Hypnosis? What makes you think I’d use something so primitive? Relax now. I’m a master—or should that be mistress?—at creating a geas. Listen to my words, my pretty, pretty words. I shall so enjoy watching you when you kill my brother.” She began to whisper, barely loud enough to reach Danii’s ears—repetitive, beguiling words that insinuated themselves into her thoughts and squirmed away before she could understand them.
Kill Heketoro? No. Never.
As she talked, Aroha rearranged Danii’s body, rolling her onto her back, pulling her arms and legs out straight. She unzipped Danii’s jeans, slipping them with her panties down past her buttocks to below her knees. Wherever Aroha’s skin accidentally grazed against hers, that same arousing shock sizzled through her.
Danii bit her lower lip, hard enough to taste blood. The pain was a welcome distraction from what the egg was doing to her.
Her eyes hooded, showing only a crescent of orange, Aroha surveyed Danii’s body, gaze moving leisurely upward from between her legs to her breasts. Red tongue flicking slowly out between her teeth, she reached down to unclip the chest strap of the GLOCK holster, then pushed Danii’s T-shirt up high, baring her black bra.
“Hmm, what have we here?”
Danii hissed in warning as Aroha efficiently inserted both hands into the cups and scooped out her breasts so they sat perkily above the squashed-down bra. “Don’t!” A trio of sharp fingernails lanced into her stomach, and she gasped in pain.
“Never”—Aroha leaned over, her eyes narrowed—“ever tell me no!”
Unable to stop her, Danii watched as Aroha delicately bit and licked at each nipple in turn. Her lips closed over one nipple and drew it in, enclosing it in softness. Even though she hated what Aroha was doing, her own nerve endings were determined to betray her. What that tongue was doing, oh, it was nice. Her nipples hardened. Her pulse deepened. She sighed.
“Ahh.” Aroha raised her head, then moved up Danii’s body like a lizard shifting position on a rock. She poised with her lips a bare inch from Danii’s, orange-yellow eyes locked on hers. “Perhaps”—she kissed Danii, tenderly—“perhaps, I can find a use for you afterward. But you distract me from my purpose, you naughty girl.”
When she moved away again, Danii breathed a sigh of relief, her eyes closing. Whatever happened, this woman was not winning, was not getting her way. This woman was her enemy.
I’ll fight you, she told herself, every step of the way.
Those fingers plunged inside her, thrusting upward, and when they touched the egg, she cri
ed out, driving her pelvis upward, sent into an obliterating orgasm that faded the world into a buzzing cloud of white.
The whispering voice brought her back.
“So, Heketoro, the energy is here already. You’ve brought her that close. Tonight then. Tonight. What a surprise you will find.”
Then, though she struggled to break loose, a sea of whispered words and blood closed over Danii, dragging her down into the depths.
Chapter Thirteen
When she pulled the front door shut and saw the empty cane chair, a feeling of déjà vu overcame Danii, and a prickling hinted at danger. She patted the GLOCK, then the wrist sheath. All there. Time to pay a visit to the lake. Her forehead wrinkled when she checked her watch. Seven forty-five. How did it get so late?
At the last of the porch steps, she paused, toe of boot still pointed, a millisecond before she completed the stride. Inside the house, Killer was whining.
Turning, she studied her house. Over three years she’d grown to like this little house and to love the neighbors that had come with moving here. Yet now a sense of finality came over her, a feeling that she might not see it again. She shook her head. Silly.
But she ascended the steps and let Killer out. He leaped up, frantic, placing his paws on her thighs and trying to lick her everywhere his tongue would reach.
“Down! Down, Killer!” She couldn’t help patting him. The dog trainer would be horrified. “You can come. Okay?”
Should she leave a note for her friends, in case—again, she wasn’t sure exactly why the idea had occurred to her. But she found a notepad and pen and stood at the kitchen counter and wrote a note to her friends that seemed absurd yet somehow sensible.
If I don’t come back, please don’t worry. I’m okay. I’m happy.
She stared at the page. Her parents had died years ago, and her sister had moved to Spain with her husband. The house, well, they could sell it and—
Damn. She was going crazy.
She thumped the tip of the pen into the pad a few times, then gave up, put the pottery cat on top to hold it down, and headed for the door with Killer sticking close to her heels.
Three Days of Dominance Page 15
