Kiss Across Deserts

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Sydney turned her head to look at Rafe. “And you?”

  Normally, vampires hated talking about how old they were, but Rafe seemed to intuit what Veris was doing, for he shrugged casually. “Sixth century Hispaniola. Spain, to you. But I met these two reprobates in Constantinople.” His tone was light, and very human.

  Sydney was processing it. Absorbing it. “How did you find out how to time travel?” she asked.

  Alex let out his breath and relaxed. She had accepted the two largest-to-swallow facts. Now, all that was left was to tell their stories.

  Veris sat back in his chair. “Taylor, you should probably start answering that question.”

  Taylor nodded, sitting forward. “But first, Alex, would you mind very much making me one of those teas you made Sydney? It smells divine.”

  Alex moved happily into the kitchen to make more tea.

  * * * * *

  When everyone else had gone and only Rafe remained, Alex stirred from his seat at the table and stood up. “I should go.”

  Sydney had her feet on the footstool and her hand on Bruce’s head. “No, stay, please. Just for a moment.” She looked at Rafe, where he sprawled in the other corner of the sofa. “You two have known each other for centuries, like Veris and Brody?”

  Alex shook his head. “We only met a little over a year ago. Our lives went in different directions. I caught up with Brody and Veris a few years ago, too. Actually, Brody found me. It happens that way.”

  She bit her lip. “Were you ever going to tell me you were vampires?” she asked.

  Rafe’s posture didn’t move, but Alex could sense his alertness increasing. “If we had kept on as we were going, Sydney, then I would have told you. My family all know.”

  “You have family?” she asked, bewildered.

  Alex stood up again. “I really should go.”

  Sydney looked like she wanted to protest again, but Rafe jumped to his feet and came over to the door as Alex reached it. He gripped Alex’s arm. “About last week…”

  Alex shook his head. “It’s done,” he said shortly. “Ask Sydney. I’m not pissed at you. You should stay and hold her. She needs the support and she needs you.” He leaned around Rafe and smiled at her. Sydney looked pale and her eyes were huge. “Call me if you want more answers than Rafe can give you. Or call Taylor. I know she won’t mind.”

  Sydney nodded.

  Alex forced himself to step out of the apartment and listen to Rafe shut the door behind him.

  * * * * *

  Sydney watched Rafe walk back to the sofa, but this time, he didn’t sit next to her. He pulled the armchair over so he was before her and he didn’t seem to have any problems moving the big old heavy antique.

  “I keep feeling like I should make you coffee or something. It’s so late,” she said. “But I guess you don’t drink.”

  “Drink. Eat.” He shrugged.

  “Why don’t I feel scared by you?” she asked. “In the movies, humans are always terrified even if they don’t know what the vampire is. Like rabbits cowering instinctively because a predator is nearby. But I don’t feel that with you. With any of you. You’ve always seemed…well, normal.”

  “We work to appear normal,” Rafe said flatly. “But you’re right, we’re not a threat to you, in particular.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’ve had…because of the sex,” Rafe said flatly.

  Sydney could feel her cheeks heating. “I haven’t had sex with Veris or Brody,” she pointed out.

  “They’re friends of mine.” Rafe shook his head. “We don’t go around hunting humans all day. Most of the time we’re working to live as normal and as happy a life as you are. Our lives just last a little longer, that’s all.”

  Sydney studied him. “Tell me about your family.”

  “I would like you to meet them,” Rafe said. “But not tonight. They’re all asleep, and you should be too. It’s very late.”

  “They’re human?” How could Rafe have a human family? It seemed impossible…and so utterly unfair.

  He stood and tugged her to her feet. “Sleep time, my beauty. Come on.”

  His hand around hers felt just as it had before. He was still the same. She looked down at his hand. “You’re not cold. I’m mean, you’re not hot, but I thought you were cold because you were…” She grimaced.

  “Undead?” Rafe finished. “You should probably only use that word when you want to offend a vampire. We’re not hot-blooded like you. We don’t have metabolisms like you, and we don’t let our hearts run continuously, so that dissipates heat, too. But we breathe and move and that generates some warmth. Enough to keep us around room temperature most of the time.” He looked down at their joined hands. “You didn’t notice until tonight.”

  “Not consciously. But you were hot in…in bed.”

  He tapped his chest with his other hand. “Heart. It’s next to impossible to stop it running when you’re concentrating on other things. Besides, I need the blood supply at those times.”

  Sydney could feel herself blushing even harder.

  Rafe tugged her hand, forcing her to start walking. He led her into the bedroom, switched on the bedside lamp and turned down the covers, then patted the mattress. “In you get.”

  “Are you…staying?”

  Rafe grew still. His eyes in the low light of the lamp were very black. “You want me to stay?” he asked. His voice was neither hopeful nor horrified and Sydney knew he was damming back his reactions. Hiding them, so he would not influence her.

  She recalled once more her reaction when Alex had left a few moments ago. Part of her had wanted to reach out and make him stay. But like Rafe, she had burned that bridge. There were no second chances with Alex. Sadness touched her. “I don’t want to be alone,” she told Rafe. “I’ve just found out that vampires are real, time travel is real, and who knows what other things that bite and go bump in the night are real? I’ll have nightmares if I’m alone.”

  “I suppose I can stand being a teddy bear for the night,” he said, his voice gruff.

  Sydney turned to him. “No, I didn’t mean it like that! Don’t get mad. I do need someone with me, but you’re the only person in the world right now that I would ask.” Except Alex. She held her jaw together.

  Rafe slid his hand under her hair, to cup her cheek. “I love your hair when it’s down like this. You look so young and fragile, which makes your real strength all the more powerful.” He sighed. “I’ve missed you, this last week.” It was a low spoken confession.

  “Then why did you stay away?” she demanded, more sharply than she intended. “I thought you were never coming back.”

  “I didn’t want to,” he admitted. “I don’t want to want another person again. But I do want you.”

  “Then why haven’t you kissed me yet?”

  “I don’t want you to turn away from me if I do.”

  It gave her an insight into Rafe’s mind, his fears that she would be repelled by his non-human status. So she reached up and kissed him, wishing hard that life wasn’t so complicated.

  * * * * *

  It was bitterly cold, and the light was low and subdued the way it used to get in winter, back in…

  …Wisconsin. Sydney looked around, twisting her shoulders. A sudden deep fear was sitting in her chest, stealing her breath. The street was horribly familiar. A hoar frost covered everything and there were heavy clouds overhead, threatening snow.

  Rafe was standing with her, his arms around her, dressed like she was in a parka and hood, gloves and a scarf that muffled his neck. He was looking around as curiously as she was and passersby were stepping around them. There weren’t many for State Street, so it had to be early in the morning.

  Sydney shook him. “Rafe!”

  He studied her, puzzled. “You’re…so young,” he whispered, touching her face with his woolen glove.

  Panic swirled closer and Sydney shook him. “Why are we here?” she demanded.

  “I don
’t know…” Rafe replied slowly.

  “Arlene! What the fuck!” The shout came from the right and Sydney jerked at the name. She looked, horror already spilling through her.

  Peter stood on the other side of the street, his hands on his hips. Even from across the road, she could see that the veins in his temples were throbbing. He was staring at them.

  At them! Sydney gasped and pulled herself out of Rafe’s arms. She knew what it looked like to Peter and fresh horror erupted inside her. “Peter!” She started to move toward him. “Oh, God, Peter,” she breathed. This was a disaster of the worse kind.

  She looked back at Rafe. “How can we be here?” she demanded, fear making her voice weightless. “It’s not supposed to work like this.”

  Rafe was looking at Peter, his gloves curled up into tight fists. “Who is he, Sydney?”

  She stepped back to Rafe and caught his arms and shook him. “Kiss me,” she demanded. “You have to kiss me and you have to think of my apartment, just as we left it. The light on, the bed turned down. Focus, Rafe, or we won’t get home.”

  He licked his lips, staring at her. “This is real, isn’t it? Not just the dream again?”

  “Yes, it’s real.” She glanced at Peter. He was starting to cross the road, waiting for a break in the light traffic. She shook Rafe again. “Kiss me!”

  Rafe seemed to finally look at her, to absorb what she was saying. “Home,” he said, his voice firm, and kissed her.

  Sydney thought longingly of her apartment, the warm bed waiting for her. As Taylor had coached her, she leaned there and felt the surge of a rip-tide pull her off her feet.

  * * * * *

  The safety of her room had never looked so welcome. Sydney staggered away from Rafe’s arms and collapsed on the bed, shaking. She couldn’t get her teeth to stop chattering.

  Rafe’s hand rested on her shoulder. “What was that?” he said. “It was time travel, I get that, but it wasn’t anywhere that I remember—” and he halted like someone had turned off the volume.

  Sydney looked up at him. “Of c…course it was time travel! That was m…my life! Which isn’t supposed to happen!” The tears were burning her eyes, but she blinked them away. The old Sydney, the woman who had been Arlene, would be a sobbing mess by now. So she made herself sit up. “Don’t you get it?” she asked Rafe. “If we time travel at all, it’s supposed to be your life we go back to, but it was mine!”

  “He called you Arlene. That man,” Rafe said. His eyes were narrowing. “Who was he?”

  Sydney knew there was no point in trying to hide anything now. He had seen it all. “That was Peter. He used to be my husband…a long time ago.”

  “His fury…” Rafe murmured wonderingly. “I think he might have tried to kill me if we were still there.”

  “Probably,” Sydney said tiredly. She looked him in the eye. “He used to beat me. All the time, for any reason. That’s why I’m Sydney now.”

  “To get away from him?” Rafe asked.

  Sydney rubbed her arms, which had goose bumps all over them. “He came home one night. He’d been drinking. He barely waited for the door to shut. He just lit into me, with fists and the leather strap he called his ‘enforcer’. He…” Sydney caught her breath as it all fell into place with sickly sense. She grabbed at her stomach, but as the sickness rose, she staggered to her feet and over to the bathroom door.

  “Sydney?”

  She tried to shut the door but didn’t have time. She fell to her knees and vomited until she saw stars and was bringing up nothing but hot, acid bile. When she was done she sat back against the cabinet, completely drained, and flushed the toilet.

  Rafe crouched down next to her. “Here.” He held out her wash cloth, freshly rinsed.

  She wiped her mouth and the back of her neck, while Rafe held up her hair. Her hands were shaking.

  He took the cloth back and put it in the basin. Then he picked her up and carried her back to the bed and put her on it. He lowered himself down in front of her, his hands on either side of her knees. “Tell me,” he said.

  Sydney swallowed. “It never made any sense to me, until just now. Peter just started hitting me and yelling about the guy he had seen me whoring with. But I hadn’t spoken to anyone all day. He’d cut me off from my family, from everyone. He wouldn’t let me work, so I just wandered around Madison all day. I couldn’t even remember parts of the day.”

  Rafe’s hands curled up into the same fists he had held them in when watching Peter.

  Sydney made herself say the rest. “He beat me into a miscarriage.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Mia, the household nanny and unofficial body-guard, let Alex in. “They’re in the library,” she said. Her expression was grave. “The police detective is very upset.”

  Alex pushed away the fear that was building in him and hurried through to the library. Everyone was there, although Taylor stifled a yawn as Alex crossed over to where all the chairs were spread in a rough circle in front of the sofa.

  Rafe wasn’t sitting, though. He was moving on his feet in restless little circles, just behind the chairs. Alex could see Sydney’s head over the top of the chair closest to him.

  Veris looked up at his approach. “We have a development,” he said shortly. “Let me bring you up to speed.” He began to speak in terse sentences designed to get the facts across quickly. His words were bereft of any rhetoric, but they didn’t need poetics for the emotions of the situation to communicate themselves.

  With growing dismay, Alex filled in the blanks. No wonder Sydney was sitting in the chair, a china doll with no color in her cheeks. He glanced at Rafe. Rafe wasn’t looking at anyone. He was just shifting on his feet, staring at the floor. Tension screamed from every stiffly held joint.

  Veris finished up quickly. “After the miscarriage and the complications, Sydney arranged a new identity and left for the east coast. Now, we could theorize that the moment that they jumped back to tonight was engraved upon her memory, except that she doesn’t remember the moment at all. That fits with how it has always worked for us. If you go back to your younger body, you take over that body and the younger version of yourself doesn’t remember the time you borrowed it. But if she can’t remember it, how the hell did they get back there?”

  “Because of me,” Rafe said, his voice hoarse. “This is all my fault.”

  Everyone looked up at him, except for Sydney. She was staring into middle-distance, almost like she was hypnotized.

  Rafe looked at Alex. “Your serum,” he said simply.

  Alex caught his breath, wanting to deny it.

  “When you gave it to me, I went back there. I saw Sydney. Only I didn’t know it was her. I hadn’t even met her. I saw me, but I didn’t know it was me at the time. I’ve been thinking about that place ever since. The anger of the man…of Peter. The fear in Sydney’s eyes.” He pressed the heel of his hands against his eyes. “It has haunted me ever since, and I took us there.” He pulled his hands away and moisture glittered in his eyes. He choked and spun around, hiding his face from everyone.

  Alex crouched down next to Sydney and touched her arm. “The complications after the miscarriage,” he said gently. “Did they perform a hysterectomy?”

  Sydney turned to look at him. Her eyes were wide. Fear-filled. She nodded slowly. Then she laid her left hand on the flat arm of the chair and spread her fingers. The little finger was slightly crooked. “When I got home from the hospital after the procedure, Peter broke my finger. He said he would break all of them if I ever told anyone the miscarriage was his fault. When the police came around…his chums…I told them I had slipped on the ice.”

  Brody made a small sound. “He was a cop?”

  Sydney didn’t look around. She kept talking to Alex like he had asked the question. “He was a detective. First grade.” She gave a ghost of a smile. “I out-rank him.”

  “That’s who you’ve been competing against in the force,” Veris said softly.

  Tayl
or reached out for Veris’ hand and he picked hers up and held it both of his big ones.

  Rafe gave a soft sound. It sounded like a moan.

  Alex couldn’t help it. He got to his feet and went over to him and took his arm. “Come with me,” he said softly.

  Rafe let him lead him out into the foyer, where the stairs wound up to the second floor in a graceful curve, the wrought iron banisters airy and fragile-looking. Once they were out of reach of the lights from the library, Alex turned him to face him. “It’s not your fault,” he said firmly. “No one is blaming you for something you could not possibly anticipate, that you had no way of even beginning to guess might happen.” He held Rafe’s face. “Not even Sydney blames you.”

  Rafe looked at him. His eyes were still glittering with slightly pink tears. “I do,” he said heavily.

  “Then you’re indulging in Mediterranean melodramatics,” Alex said crisply. “Sydney needs you. And Veris needs you to recall everything that happened. You have the perfect memory and she’s in shock.”

  Rafe swallowed. “Cold hearted infidel,” he muttered.

  “I was a Fatimid, thank you. A long time ago.”

  “Why aren’t you tending to Sydney, doctor, if she’s the one in shock?”

  “Because you’re in shock, too,” Alex said gently. “Emotional shock, the closest vampires get to a physiological reaction. But you’re coming out of it.” He studied him closely. Rafe was focusing properly now.

  He drew in a breath as Alex watched and nodded. “Okay.”

  “Very good.” Alex waved toward the library. “Ready to talk, now, Spaniard?”

  “Spaniard?” Rafe spluttered. Then he rolled his eyes. “That was for the Infidel crack, right?”

  “I thought some indignation might do you good, too.”

  Rafe blew out another breath. “I’m not indignant,” he said softly. “I’m fucking angry.”

  “Hold onto that. We both may need it before this ends.” Alex headed back toward the library, knowing that Rafe would follow. His gaze was caught by movement in the far corner of his eyes and he looked up at the top of the stairs. Marit was sitting on the top one, her dressing gown hem wrapped around her ankles. She had been listening. As he looked at her, she lifted her finger to her lips in a request for silence.