by Elana Brooks
She thought they could have a relationship based on more than just sex, too. They were already well on their way. If she agreed to spend more time with him, she was certain they’d rapidly tumble deeper and deeper into the sort of serious connection she’d never wanted. She still didn’t want it.
Or did she? How bad could it be, if it meant more incredible sex, more magical revelations, more intimacy of minds as well as bodies? How could she refuse to give him a chance, no matter how much the idea scared her?
She licked her lips. “All right.” She’d give it a week. By that time she should know better whether she could enjoy a relationship with Steve without getting sucked in so deep she drowned. “Would you like to go out to dinner again tomorrow?”
“Yes. After your first training session.” He studied her. “You do still want to train with the Covenant, don’t you?”
Whether she joined the Covenant or not didn’t depend on what happened with Steve. If they’d found her independently, she would have been just as interested in their cause. Maybe even more so, if she wasn’t fighting the sense that leaving her job for his organization meant surrendering her own desires for a man.
She’d wanted to prove to the world that psychic powers existed long before she met him. If she could help save the Earth from aliens at the same time, even better. Even the most successful business career seemed pretty insignificant compared to that. “Yes.”
“Good. I’ll submit your name to the recruiters first thing in the morning. A trainer should contact you before noon to set things up.” He turned to the elevator. “Call me after that and we’ll decide where we want to go.”
“Okay.”
He stepped back when the elevator doors opened. “I think I’m going to head up to my office and finish a few things. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
It would be a relief to escape from his presence, but at the same time Rosalia felt like he was abandoning her. She’d been looking forward to his company in the elevator, and maybe a kiss before she got in her car. To be honest, she’d hoped he’d invite her to his place. If he hadn’t, she might have invited him to hers.
Instead she stepped into the elevator. “See you then.” The doors closed between them, and the elevator sank swiftly toward the ground floor.
Chapter 14
Present
Steve slowed as Los Angeles came into sight. He tightened his hand around Rosalia’s. She squeezed back.
Only a few more minutes to change his mind. As soon as they dropped back into their bodies, Rosalia was going to expect to fulfill their promise to Solomon. He remembered that brief, tantalizing glimpse behind her eyes, deep into her soul. It would be so easy to fall into her again, all the way this time, until there was no going back. If she looked at him that way, eyes wide and trusting, he doubted he could stop himself.
He wanted to bond with her, desperately. Longed for it, ached for it. But he feared it, too. Rosalia was more dear to him than anyone or anything else in the world. And yet he’d hurt her so many times. He couldn’t allow himself to hurt her again. Let alone destroy her. He’d rather die a thousand times, sacrifice every member of the Eight, surrender Earth and humanity to the Seraphim, than to be responsible for the loss of the incredibly precious jewel that was her soul.
Always before, their union had been followed by destruction. He still didn’t know how to break the pattern. If Rosalia gave her jewel into his keeping, he didn’t know how to hold it without crushing it.
In a way, their unique ability to foresee what the Seraphim and Angel would do made it even less wise to risk bonding now. It might not be as strong or effective as it would be if they were soul bonded, but at least one heated argument wouldn’t rob the Covenant of the gift altogether.
He hoped what he needed to say wouldn’t provoke just such an argument. “Rosalia, can we talk for a minute? I think we need to reconsider—”
She stiffened. For a moment he was sure he’d angered her, just as he’d feared. But an instant later he saw what had captured her attention. Outside the building that held HBQ’s office, a bright astral form hovered. As they drew closer, Steve recognized the woman with the strange name they’d faced in New York, where she’d accompanied her soul bonded husband.
They stopped a wary distance away from her. “What do you want now?” Steve asked. “I thought we’d established that we have nothing to say to each other.”
She sneered at him. “I’m not here to talk.” She scooped her hand, and an enormous sizzling ball of energy formed over her palm. “Defend yourself!” She hurled the ball at Steve.
Reflexes honed during hundreds of games of energyball sent him dodging out of the way. He flung up a shield and attempted to bounce her projectile back at her, but the surprise of her attack threw off his timing and the glowing ball ricocheted harmlessly far to one side.
A ball flew past his ear straight toward the woman’s chest. She batted it aside with a negligent flick of a shield at the last possible moment.
Open your mind to me so we can coordinate our attacks. Out loud, Rosalia said, “Watch out, Sarangerel. Steve’s the Covenant’s reigning energyball champion.”
“Child’s games.” Sarangerel launched a flurry of balls at both of them.
“I’ve fought and killed Seraphim, too,” Steve said grimly as he focused on knocking the deadly spheres away. Beside him, Rosalia’s shield blossomed and countered the attack with precise movements. In the moment after all the balls had been deflected, Steve dropped the barriers that kept his thoughts private from Rosalia. All right. Follow my lead.
Sarangerel laughed. “We’ll see if you can support your boasts with action.” She easily defended herself from the barrage of energy Steve flung to test her strength and speed.
He grimaced. She was easily as good as the best opponents he’d faced. Better than any save Beverly and Adrian when they’d fought together. Their fluid grace and unity of purpose were a wonder to behold. Their soul bond allowed the two of them to function with a single intention animating both their bodies.
Telepathy was helpful, but it wasn’t the same. Rosalia grasped the plan he sent her in a burst of images and darted to carry it out within an instant, but Sarangerel was even faster. She blocked the balls Rosalia rained on her from above and the shots Steve blasted from below. One deflected ball took a chunk out of his shoulder. He cursed the burning pain, but otherwise ignored it. His astral flesh would regenerate quickly. Only if she severed his tether would he be in trouble.
Rosalia flashed a sequence of moves into his mind. He spotted a weakness in her strategy and proposed a solution. She agreed, but the exchange cost them precious fractions of a second. Sarangerel met every attack smoothly, bouncing their balls of energy back with deft precision. Several flew far too close to Rosalia’s tether for Steve’s comfort.
Time to call for backup. Guardians! Covenant members! We’re under attack!
It would take a few moments for people to safely stow their bodies and come to join the fight. Steve was confident they could continue to hold off Sarangerel until then. He summoned the biggest, hottest, most concentrated ball of energy he could manage and drove it straight into her shield. “Try that on for size.”
It burned into her shield, but didn’t quite penetrate. She heaved and threw it aside. “Too small.” She twisted and blocked the tiny, swift missile Rosalia sent diving over her shoulder. “And too slow.”
Rosalia proposed a new strategy and Steve approved it. Rosalia approached Sarangerel from the front, both of them eyeing each other up and down. “What sort of name is Sarangerel, anyway? It’s quite a mouthful.”
“It’s Mongolian,” Sarangerel answered, pride in her voice. She fired off a few quick shots that Rosalia dodged. “As am I. Your names are the clumsy ones. Steeeeeve,” she whined, high-pitched. “Did your mother name you for the sound of your cry?”
He ignored her taunt. As Rosalia had intended, the banter was distracting her, just a bit. He took careful aim and shot
a fast, intense ball at the center of her chest.
It burned through her tether an instant ahead of her block. With the ease of long practice she grabbed the broken end before it could slither away and jammed it back into her chest. “You’ll have to try harder than that, crybaby.” With a vicious twist she blasted a ball at the first of the guardians hurrying to join the fight. It obliterated his tether. He stared for a shocked moment, then rushed back into the building to find and rejoin his body within the three minutes it could survive unharmed without breathing.
A large but diffuse ball of energy snuck up behind Sarangerel and engulfed her head. She screamed and swiped the clinging glow away. Her astral flesh was burnt and ragged, but her vision must have remained acute, because she sent a return attack at Rosalia fueled with fury heightened by pain. The brilliant ball burned through Rosalia’s shield and sliced through her tether.
Terror and rage sent a storm of fiery balls blasting from Steve’s hands. Get back into your body!
I’m fine. Instead of retreating, Rosalia floated up and drifted toward Sarangerel. Their enemy was so occupied defending herself from Steve’s wild assault she never saw the neat, swift strike that cut her tether. The end slid away toward the west.
When it was a good thousand feet away, Steve stopped hurling balls. “Better take care of that,” he said, pointing.
Sarangerel looked where he indicated, glanced down at her chest, and clenched her fists. She glared at Steve with hate-filled eyes. “Next time I’ll be on guard for dirty tricks,” she spat, and zoomed after her tether without a backward glance.
“Follow her!” Rosalia demanded.
“Not until I’m sure you’re safe!”
Rosalia glared after Sarangerel as she vanished into the distance. “Never mind. It’s too late now.” She rolled her eyes. “It hasn’t even been a minute yet. I’ve got plenty of time.”
“Humor me,” Steve said through gritted teeth.
“All right,” she said with playful exasperation. She headed toward the building, pausing to look back and make a teasing face over her shoulder at Steve.
He fought to contain his anger. How could she be so cavalier when her life was slipping away second by second? Her heart wasn’t beating, for god’s sake! If her soul didn’t rejoin her body before her brain starved of oxygen, it would fade into nothingness, leaving only her lifeless corpse behind. The idea might not bother her, but it turned every muscle in his body into water and his blood into ice. Panic screamed in his mind. How long had it been? How much longer did she have?
She was moving far too slowly. He pushed aside the guardians who were gathering around her, grabbed her shoulder, and dragged her forward. “What the hell are you waiting for?”
She went insubstantial in his grasp. “For you to get out of my way.” She put her hands on her hips and glared at him.
“Don’t stop!” How could she be so stupid? “I swear, if we were soul bonded I’d drag you by your hair and slam you into your body so hard your soul would have bruises for a month!”
“Then it’s a good thing we’re not.” She put her chin in the air and refused to budge.
Oh, god, she was going to kill herself just to spite him. He needed to back down and let her win so she’d quit being such an idiot. “That’s fine with me. I don’t care what Solomon wants. I’d be a fool to trust my life to someone who’s so careless with her own!”
She sputtered at him. “Why, you insufferable—”
A guardian tugged at her elbow. “Excuse me, ma’am, but it’s been more than two and a half minutes. You need to get back into your body.”
Rosalia tore her eyes from Steve to glance at the woman’s worried face, then at the other concerned guardians clustered around her. “I’m fine,” she insisted. She turned and zipped through the window into the meditation garden. Steve followed a breath behind. She threw herself onto the cot and merged with her motionless body.
For a horrible few moments nothing happened. Then Rosalia drew a gasping breath. She panted, her gray face flushing red.
Steve realized he’d been holding his own breath and started breathing again. His astral form might not need oxygen, but he felt as lightheaded as if it had been his tether broken, his life pushed far too close to the edge. Don’t ever do that again!
It’s none of your business what I do with my own soul and body. I can take care of myself without your interference, thank you very much.
You weren’t acting like it! Of course it’s my business. If anything happened to you, I’d— He couldn’t even bear to think of it.
You’d what? She sat up on her cot, looking blindly through his astral form.
I don’t—I can’t—
What? she insisted.
Dear god, Rosalia, I’d die. I love you, I need you, I couldn’t bear the pain of losing you. Please don’t ever play with my emotions like that again.
She blinked and swallowed, her face blank.
The words he’d blurted without thinking echoed in Steve’s head. He rubbed his face. It wasn’t as if it wasn’t true. He’d loved her since that first glorious and terrible night together. She knew it, they both knew it. That’s why he’d asked her to consider bonding with him. But he’d never meant to say it like this. She deserved better. She deserved far better than a clumsy, clueless oaf who couldn’t control his temper or his words or the tone of his voice, even when her life was at stake.
Whatever. He stalked over to his cot and dropped into his body. He stared at the ceiling while his mind and brain reintegrated. Long after the disorientation cleared, he remained motionless. Finally, when the buzz of voices around him rose to a worried pitch, he sat up. “Everything’s fine,” he told the hovering guardians.
“Who was that woman?” someone asked. Steve recognized him as the one whose tether Sarangerel had broken.
He took a deep breath and tried to distill the day’s discoveries into as few words as possible. “She’s the one who showed up at the convention center yesterday. Angel is a rogue offshoot of the Covenant. They’re cooperating with the Seraphim against us.”
Gasps and wide, horrified eyes met this announcement. Steve felt tremendously weary. “We need to increase our security, both physical and astral. We’re going to need guards on duty at all times. Anyone who’s not busy recruiting or training will be assigned to keep watch.” Except everybody was either recruiting or training or doing some other vital task. They’d have to cut back their efforts if they were going to have enough people available to ward off further attacks. “I’ll consult with the rest of the Eight and have the new assignments to you as quickly as possible.” He sought out the head of the guardians with his eyes. “Until then, put some sort of temporary roster in effect, please. Starting immediately.”
She nodded. Steve rose from the cot, trying hard not to stagger. “I’ll be in my office if you need me.” He forced his legs into their usual confident stride as he crossed the garden to the elevator.
Rosalia ran to intercept him. Her movements gave no hint that she’d been within seconds of death minutes before. “Where are you going? We have to talk.”
The elevator doors opened. Steve gestured inside. “In my office.”
Rosalia huffed but stepped inside. Steve followed her.
As soon as the doors closed, she said, “I’m sorry. It was stupid of me to take risks like that. I didn’t realize how close I was cutting the time.”
“Just please don’t do it again.”
“I won’t.”
Steve stared at the blinking lights counting up floors. “And I’m sorry I panicked and turned into an overbearing bully. If I’d left you alone to take care of yourself like the competent woman you are, none of it would have happened.”
He caught her shrug out of the corner of his eye. “You were scared. It’s understandable.” She shuddered. “I’d have felt the same way if it had been your tether broken. I probably wouldn’t have handled it any better.”
The elevator stopped
and the doors slid open. Steve led the way out and headed down the hall to his office. He opened the door and gestured for her to take a seat in one of the chairs facing his desk. Instead of going to the swivel chair behind it, he sat down next to her and scooted his chair around to face hers. “Rosalia, this isn’t going to work.”
She stiffened. “What?”
“I can’t soul bond with you. I can’t put you at risk that way. I love you too much.” He’d said it once; he might as well keep saying it.
“We can make it work,” she insisted, but there was no conviction in her tone.
“Bullshit. We’d be dead within a day. Look how close we just came to disaster. A bond would make that sort of thing worse, not better.”
She blinked and looked away. “You’re probably right. I just hoped.”
“I know. I hoped, too.” His chest was tight. “But I think we both realize, whatever there is between us, it’s never going to be enough to sustain a soul bond.”
She looked at her hands, twisting together in her lap. “No.”
“Which means I’m going to have to step down from the Eight.”
She jerked her head up to stare at him, eyes wide. “What?”
“I certainly can’t bond with anyone else.” He rubbed his forehead. “There are other Eight-level talents in the Covenant who can. One of them will have to take my place.”
“That’s not fair.” Rosalia’s eyes were hot, her voice impassioned. “Solomon has no right to force you out. Mathieu chose you as his successor.”
“And I’ll choose someone as mine. Nobody’s forcing this on me. I’ll do whatever gives the Covenant the best chance against the Seraphim.”
“Having the most powerful psychics in the Eight does that.”
“A moderate talent with a soul bond is more powerful than a strong talent without one.” He stood up. “So I need to start researching who I’m going to pick. Maybe we’ll be lucky and one of the recruiters will have turned up someone promising in the last couple of days.”
