by Lani Aames
Her body launched itself into the void. The surf on the rocks rushed toward her. Her head reeled, and her stomach turned inside out. A scream ripped from her throat.
Chapter Thirteen
A blur of motion swooped under her. She landed in Claude's arms. He sprinted down the beach and halted in a swirl of sand.
Shaking, but with her feet on the ground, she clung to him. Her head spun as if she had just crawled out of a roller coaster car.
"It's all right, cherie." His hands stroked her head and her back. "I have to leave you for a minute. Stay here."
Like I can do anything else? When he let go of her, she collapsed onto the sand. She watched him levitate up to the ridge toward Philip, who crouched there roaring in fury.
Claude charged at the other vampire and slammed him to the ground. Philip rammed a fist into Claude's face and broke his hold. Through the blood-bond, Eloise's nerves echoed the pain of the blow. The two men rolled over, Claude underneath now. He rallied instantly, shoved his opponent off, and flipped him onto his back.
Though the pounding of the waves made it hard for Eloise to hear the next few words, she picked up the conversation through Claude's mind.
"Talk about wasting energy, old man. Don't bother struggling. I'm stronger than you are. You probably haven't fed worth a damn in the past few nights, with all your time spent stalking Eloise. I've feasted well." He punctuated the sentence with a hard slap to the other man's face.
"Go ahead and kill me," came Philip's sullen response. "I detest what this world has become. Noisy, artificial, foul-smelling—"
"I said I didn't want to kill you. But I'm sure as hell not going to let you run loose. Perhaps another long stretch of undeath will help you see reason."
"In other words, you plan to kill me temporarily." The other vampire's weary voice held a sardonic edge.
"Call it whatever you wish. The point is to make Eloise safe from you." Claude wrapped his hands around Philip's neck.
"Fine. At least I got to see you besotted with an ephemeral. When you thought I might slaughter your woman, you were terrified. That's satisfaction enough."
Claude tightened his grip until Philip stopped breathing and his body went slack. Through Claude's ears, Eloise heard the other vampire's heart fall silent. Is he dead?
Only dormant. And I'll make sure he stays that way for the foreseeable future. Picking up the body, Claude sprang off the ridge and hovered above the ocean surface. He raised the body over his head. With a strength she couldn't have imagined, he heaved the inert form offshore, the distance of a couple of football fields. It sank instantly.
Claude floated down to her side, helped her stand up, and folded her in a tight embrace. "He won't drown, but he won't wake up, either. Not as long as he stays underwater."
"He'll wash ashore, though, won't he?"
Leading her toward the stairs that ascended to the patio, he said, "Not anytime soon. You see, he's not dead, so his body won't float like a corpse. On the other hand, let's hope for his sake the local sea life doesn't find vampire flesh appetizing."
Her stomach knotted.
"Forgive me for subjecting you to all this."
She swallowed. "It's Philip's fault, not yours."
"I'll report to the elders and ask their advice. Eventually, I may have to dredge up and revive him myself. When and if I feel sure I can keep him away from you."
She edged away from Claude, her fingers groping for the crucifix around her neck. "But you almost killed him…"
"Oh, damn. Please don't fear me." His hand rested lightly on her arm. "I bear no malice toward the poor blighter. Now I know how he felt when his lady died. The same way I'd feel if I lost you." He opened his mind and showed her a bleak expanse of desert baking under a remorseless sun. He glanced briefly at the cross. "You said you believe I'm not a demon, that your Deity made my kind for a purpose."
She clutched the crucifix like an anchor. "I do believe that. I know you're not evil." Slowly, her grasp relaxed, and she unhooked the silver chain.
"I'm not asking you to forsake your religion," he said. "Only that it not make a barrier between us."
"It won't." She tucked the cross into her pants pocket and allowed Claude to put his arm around her waist.
He helped her into the den and settled her on the couch. "It's a relief to get out of the sun. I need a drink of water. Let me bring you one, too." When he returned with two glasses of ice water, he said, "I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to leave anyhow, right this minute. Your choice. Needless to say, whatever you do won't affect our movie deal."
She took a long gulp of the water. Her stomach began to calm down. "Good grief, I forgot all about the cab. He probably came and went already."
"I can drive you to the airport myself, if you like." He sat on the edge of the couch, at arm's length from her. She felt the uncertainty preying on his mind.
Uncertainty of what? Her feelings or his own?
"That depends," she said, staring into her glass.
"On what?"
"What Philip said." She forced the words past a lump in her throat. "That vampires can't lie to each other."
"No, the most we can do is conceal our emotions, not disguise them."
"He also said you're in love with me. Well?"
The surface of Claude's mind churned like a windswept lake. "If he saw that in my aura, it must be true."
Moisture blurred her vision. "Again with the non-answer."
"Cherie, I don't know how to answer. I have never experienced an emotion like this before. As if you've already grown roots into my heart." His eyes widened. "Oh, hell. Poetic justice at its best. I'm not just addicted. I am in love with you."
"Do you have to sound like it's a fate worse than death?" Her voice rasped with suppressed tears.
"Not that. But still terribly strange. I. Love. You." He moved next to her, clasped her hand, and kissed it. Sparks danced up her arm and over her entire body. She felt the same electricity sizzling through him. "Eloise, our bond gives me access to your deepest thoughts and desires. But it doesn't analyze and define them. You have to tell me in words. Do you love me?"
Trembling, she let her hand rest in his while she considered. "You threatened to make yourself an outcast by destroying Philip for me. You guided me to escape from him and then released control instantly, the way you promised. You could mesmerize me into any emotion you want me to feel, but you're not." She laid her free hand on his chest, and he shivered, his eyes half-closed. "I love you, Claude."
With a groan, he drew her into a tight embrace. She twisted around, trying to press her body against his. She ended up in his lap, her head on his shoulder.
"Stay with me. Marry me."
She insinuated her hand into his shirt and heard a purr in his throat when she skimmed her nails over his chest. "Marry? That's so human of you."
He nipped her earlobe without piercing the skin. "Human? Please, no insults. Mon amour, I promise not to treat you like a pet. Keep your own home, if you need a refuge sometimes. And, of course, your own work and bank account. I want marriage under your laws, though. I'll have no lurid supermarket tabloid speculation about you. I want the world to know you belong to me. Legally and permanently."
"As long as you know it works both ways. You belong to me, too."
"Certainement. That's what the blood-bond means." He hugged her so tightly she had to gasp for breath. "You hold my life in your hands, forever. We possess each other as long as our hearts beat."
Tracing a scratch on his collarbone with a fingernail, he guided her lips to the wound. His mouth fastened on her neck, and the life-force flowed between them in an unbroken circle. Their hearts pulsed in unison. Like two rivers pouring into one sea, their blood and passion merged. Forever.
Statuesque
©Lani Aames, 2002
Statuesque
The weathered peak of the rock formation pointed toward the sheer blue cloudless sky. Lia Morgan shaded her eyes against the s
un and studied it. She thought it was shaped a little like the prow of a gigantic ship tipped back and half-buried in the desert sand.
"This is it!" Mac shouted and started climbing for a flat table of rock at its base.
Lia watched him. She had been half in love with Mac Taylor since she first met him in college. He had taken her under his wing, showed her how to have a good time, and promised her adventure. Mac had partially filled a void in her protected and pampered life, and Lia was grateful for their friendship even if a little disappointed it hadn't gone further.
Now thirty, he was five years older than she, but he had bummed around a few years before settling on studies in anthropology, specializing in archaeology. He liked the past, he said, better than the present.
In many ways, Lia agreed. The past seemed more interesting and less complicated than the present. Ancient civilizations and antiquities had always interested her, but even so, she hadn't followed that course of study. She had majored in the more practical business and marketing, going for a lucrative career instead of adventure. Yet here she was, spending another vacation following Mac in search of the lifesize statue of Zamar and the elusive Zamarians.
If Mac had ever asked her outright, she would have told him she didn't think the statue or the Zamarians existed. All he had was a few paragraphs in a musty old tome written in the latter half of the nineteenth century by a quasi-archaeologist that everyone else in the field considered a nutcase.
She couldn't blame him for getting his hopes up when he'd discovered a map in yet another batch of scrolls he'd picked up on the black market. Usually the disintegrating sheets of papyrus were nothing more than bills of lading or a merchant's daily tally of goods bought and sold. Interesting because of their age, but nothing unique. Until the map.
How had anything as unusual as the map passed through the hands of a pirate who should be on the lookout for something more valuable? Mac had explained most black marketers were ignorant illiterates looking to make a quick buck. She supposed he was right.
Mac looked back and waved at her to get moving. Lia started climbing over the rocks to reach the flat table. As she laid her hands on each timeworn boulder, they seemed somehow familiar. She shook her head and continued climbing. How many rocks had she and Mac clambered over the past few years? Too many, and they were all starting to look alike.
Whether this led to the cavern Mac sought or not, she hoped this put a rest to his search once and for all.
She reached the flat top and stood, looking at the sand spread out as far as the eye could see. The sun hung low in the western sky to her right, even though it was still early in the evening. Mac had insisted they do this in mid-autumn, on the night the Zamarians held their sacred ritual when the sacrifice of a virgin would bring the statue of the god to life. The mid-point between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice. The night the boundary between the natural and the supernatural was most easily crossed. It was quite fitting they commence this crazy search on All Hallow's Eve—Halloween night.
The Jeep, a few yards from the base, suddenly looked out of place.
"Magnificent view, isn't it?" Mac said.
Lia barely managed a nod. The scene before her wavered as if it were going in and out of focus. She placed a hand on a nearby boulder to steady herself. Dizziness swept over her and she wondered if the desert heat had finally gotten to her. She heard Mac climb down the other side of the flat rock and knew she should follow, but her legs seemed rooted to the spot.
"C'mon, Lia. I found the entrance," he called to her over his shoulder.
She opened her mouth to call out to him for help but couldn't speak. The landscape before her blurred, went black, then…
The setting sun burns the desert fiercely with its red and orange golden glow. She lingers on the flat rock waiting for the sand to swallow the fiery orb. She has managed to escape her guards once again, but it becomes more difficult each time.
Although her shoulders are burdened with great guilt, her heart is light because she will soon meet with her lover—the boy who was her playmate in childhood and the man who became a priest because she could never wed.
A lover who is not a lover, she muses as twilight settles across the stretch of sand. She scrambles from the rock, into the hidden entrance…
"Lia!" A hand clamped on her shoulder, and she nearly jumped out of her skin. Breathing hard, she whirled to face Mac.
"Are you all right?" he asked, but his dark green eyes were narrowed.
She had first fallen for his eyes. They were almost jewel tone, like emeralds. An unusual combination with his jet-black hair and swarthy skin.
"Yeah," she said breathlessly, as if she had been running. The vision jarred her, but for some strange reason it didn't really frighten her. She sensed a deeper meaning behind it, but a meaning she couldn't quite grasp.
Lia brushed past Mac and leapt from the table of rock. She wound her way through the jumble of boulders, heading straight toward the entrance. She waited for him to catch up.
He looked at her, his head tilted to one side, a strange look of expectation on his face she couldn't explain. "How did you know where to find the entrance? You can't see it from up there. The way it's hidden behind that outcropping of rock, you can't see it until you're right on top of it."
If she told him about the vision, he would think she'd gone mad, wouldn't he? She'd never kept a secret from Mac. But now…something deep inside her warned her not to tell.
She shrugged and pointed to the sand. "I followed your footprints."
He looked down and his gaze followed his first set of prints that led to the entrance and back again.
"No shit, Sherlock," he said more to himself than her and laughed.
Mac's sarcasm grated on her nerves. Usually she enjoyed his razor-sharp wit, a little black and a little dry, but suddenly she wanted to lash out at him. Not knowing where the feeling came from, she watched him walk to the opening in the rock face and disappear inside. She followed more slowly.
She stepped inside the tunnel. It was cooler here in the darkness. She swiped at the blonde strands of hair that had escaped her ponytail and fallen across her eyes, plastered to her skin with sweat. She pulled the flashlight from her utility belt and switched it on. The light wavered, in and out, and she wondered if the battery was going dead…
She pauses only long enough to light an oil lamp. She has passed this way so many times she could find her way to the appointed place with her eyes closed, but she moves faster with the light to show the way. She runs along the hand-carved passageway, passing entrances to chambers and other tunnels. Most of them lead nowhere, to confuse those not initiated in the ways of the goddess, but her lover has told her how to navigate the maze. She approaches the first fork.
"Where are you going, Lia?"
Mac's call interrupted the vision. Or the vision ended just as he called. Lia wasn't sure.
Lia turned around and flashed her light. Mac had turned right and she had turned left. Had the woman turned left in the vision? In her mind, Lia replayed what she had seen.
Lia remembered the woman running, not bothering to glance to either side. She had almost reached where the main passageway forked, but Mac had called to her, bringing Lia back to the present. So no, the woman hadn't made the turn before the vision ended. Yet Lia had automatically turned left.
"The way to the Chamber of Zamar is marked on the map," Mac said and held out one of several copies he had made because the original was too fragile to survive much handling. "We're supposed to go right at the first fork."
Lia pretended to study the piece of paper. She knew the left passageway would take them where they wanted to go. She didn't know how she knew, but she suspected she was somehow tapping into the knowledge of the woman in the vision. Lia looked at the map in earnest. The left passage led to a few more turns then a dead end…according to the map.
She should tell Mac about the visions and how she inhabited the woman, but as soon
as she opened her mouth, her vocal chords seemed to freeze up. Her throat muscles seized and she panicked.
"All right!" she screamed in her head. "I won't say a word!"
As soon as she made the conscious decision not to tell Mac, her throat relaxed and she was able to breathe again. She took in silent gulps of air, trying to steady her shaking hands.
"Do you see it?" Mac asked sharply and Lia sensed he was losing patience with her.
She swallowed hard. "You're right."
Side by side, they started down the corridor to the right.
"Except?" Mac prompted, flashing his light over the walls and arched ceiling.
Lia smiled. He could hear the doubt in her voice.
"What if the map is misleading? Why would anyone go to the trouble of creating this maze of tunnels and rooms, then leave a map lying around for just anyone to find?"
"But no one found it, Lia. I was just incredibly lucky to run across it in that last batch of scrolls. What are the odds!"
What were the odds? Unbelievably astronomical.
Incredible. Unbelievable. Weren't those words telling her something?
"What if it doesn't lead us to the Chamber of Zamar? Or if it does, what if it's a trap? Haven't you seen Indiana Jones?"
"That's a movie," Mac snapped. His tone had an edge to it she didn't like. "This is different."
But Lia couldn't leave well enough alone. She was edgy, her senses heightened. She was being pulled in the opposite direction, but had no idea how to get Mac to agree to go the other way without telling him about the visions.
"What if the statue isn't there?" she asked irritably. She truly wasn't trying to provoke him. The chatter helped her to burn off nervous energy. "And even if it is, it has probably been destroyed. Most old tombs and temples were raided of their valuables centuries ago."
