by Susan Illene
“What do you mean by that?” she asked, meeting his gaze.
Her breath tickled the light whiskers on his cheek.
He took a step back. “That is something I can’t explain even if I wanted to because I’ve never figured it out.”
Bartol truly didn’t know. He was different than other nephilim, though he never knew how or why. All he knew was he’d managed to save himself and Caius once when they ran into a mid-level demon, and he’d managed to kill it—but not without dire consequences. The things that had occurred after…they didn’t bear repeating. He’d blocked them so well that even Kerbasi never found those memories during all of his infiltrations into Bartol’s mind.
Cori’s shoulders dropped in resignation. “Will you ever tell me the full story?”
“Perhaps, after this is over.”
“Okay.” She let out a breath. “There’s, um, one more thing you should know because I really don’t want secrets between us anymore.”
She didn’t appear any more excited to reveal this next part than he had about the demon. He waited, giving her a minute to work up the courage to speak. She went around the couch to pace the room, indecisiveness in her features. What could make her hesitate more than her last confession?
“Everyone wanted you to go see Zoe,” she said, stopping to face him. “We even formed a plan to convince you.”
Bartol’s muscles grew taut. “And how were you involved?”
She took a deep breath. “They pushed me to get close to you again so that maybe you’d come out of your shell and reconsider the offer. I’d wanted to see you again anyway, but until this came up, I hadn’t been able to find a way. You’re so good at avoiding me.”
“Melena helped you catch me off guard,” he said, voice flat.
“Yeah, pretty much.”
Bartol’s chest ached. How much of her actions had been real in the last few days? Had she been manipulating him just to get what she and the others wanted, or had a part of her truly wanted to be close again, to need him? He’d wanted to believe she truly cared, but this new revelation put a cloud over everything that had developed between them in the last few days. She’d stood by him in that office, but had that been for his benefit or his friends?
Icy resolve filled his veins.
“We’ll talk about this further when I return.” He headed for the den entrance, pausing long enough to add one last thing. “Until then, do not plot further against me—if you would be so kind.”
Cori rushed toward him and put a hand on his upper arm. “I’m sorry. I know it looks bad, but I swear I never meant to hurt you in any way. It just sounded like this trip could be good for you. Help you get back into interacting with the world and doing something good.”
He eyed her fingers around his bicep. “Let go.”
“I’m sorry.” She pulled her hand away. “But if it would help, I could go with you.”
“Absolutely not.”
“But you can’t leave like this,” she said, giving him an imploring look.
“Watch me.” He turned and strode away.
He’d nearly reached the foyer when she called out. “If you don’t take me with you, Bartol, I’ll follow you there. Whatever you think—I care about you.”
He spun around. “You will stay here.”
“Not if you won’t give us a chance to work this out.” She lifted her chin. “I have to go because right now I have no way of knowing if I’ll ever see or hear from you again. Maybe you’ll get out there and never come back.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She was making this much harder than it needed to be. All Bartol wanted was to get away from her for a while and think.
“It’s not ridiculous. Maybe commitment is scary for me—I don’t pretend to be perfect—but I can’t stand the thought of you leaving while angry at me.” Cori gave him an imploring look. “You have to at least give me a chance to explain and make things up to you, to show how much I care.”
“If you cared, you wouldn’t have gone behind my back and plotted with my friends.”
She pointed a finger at him. “You aren’t that perfect yourself. You’re keeping secrets about what happened with that demon, but I’m at least trying to be patient and wait for you to tell me in your own time. Do you realize how little I actually know about you? You want loyalty and commitment in this relationship, but you’re still practically a stranger to me. At least you know my worst secrets.”
Bartol couldn’t argue with her logic, though her betrayal still hurt. He might be keeping the worst part of his last demon confrontation from her, but that was something that had happened a millennia ago. What she’d done had just occurred.
Still, he would give her something for now. “What if I promise to call or text you while I’m away?”
She mulled it over. “That would help.”
“Would it keep you from leaving Alaska?”
Cori hesitated, thinking it over even harder this time. “As long as I hear from you at least once every twenty-four hours, I’ll stay here.”
“I can probably do forty-eight.”
She put a hand on her hip. “A lot can happen in that kind of time.”
“This will not be a leisure trip. At times I may be out of cell phone range or very busy. Contacting you every forty-eight hours is the best I can do, but I will try to talk to you for at least a few minutes each time—if that helps.” He actually liked the idea of this plan because it would be communication without the physical intimacy. They might be able to work out their differences and get to know each other better.
“Fine,” she conceded. “But don’t be any later than that when you call, or I’ll worry.”
“You cannot expect me to make it at the exact hour mark every time, but I will do my best.”
He turned and headed for the front door. The heat of her gaze on his back practically burned his skin. He needed to escape before he said or did something he’d regret. She might have gotten him to agree to calling her while he was gone, but he couldn’t give her anything else. Cori had conspired against him, and he wasn’t ready to forgive her for that.
She rushed behind him, following him out the door to the front porch. Bartol kept moving and ignoring her. Just a few more feet, and he’d be out of the blood barrier the sensor had set up so that no one could flash in or near the house.
“Can I at least get a hug or a kiss?” Cori asked.
He turned to look at her. “No. You lied and kept things from me.”
She strutted forward. “I’m sorry, and I regret that more than I can tell you, but if you think for one minute you’re leaving by stomping away from me, you can forget it.”
“What does that mean?”
Cori stopped before Bartol, reached up, and pulled his head down, pressing her mouth to his. Her lips were surprisingly warm, despite the cold outside. He resisted at first, but she’d caught him off guard.
The next thing he knew, his arms were going around her of their own volition. He pulled her into his embrace and lifted her off the ground. She ran her fingers through his hair and wrapped her legs around his waist. There was something about his mate when she was at her fiercest that truly turned him on. It took a full minute before their mutual touching took its toll and nightmare visions began flashing through his mind of other women torturing him in unimaginable ways. That old, helpless feeling tore through his chest like a bullet wound.
He sucked in a breath, forcing himself back to this world, and lowered Cori to her feet. “That is all I can give you for now.”
“It was a start,” she said, a weak smile on her lips.
She was well aware of what caused him to break apart from her, but the fact he’d been able to let her touch him for that long was still progress. For the briefest of moments, he’d enjoyed the feeling of her body wrapped around him. It had been Heaven—until it had become Hell.
He stared at her for a long moment. “I’ll call you soon.”
“Maybe I could see you o
ff tomorrow…or better yet, stay with you tonight.”
Bartol shook his head. “We need the time apart to think and figure out if commitment would really work for us. You’ve said as much yourself before that we rushed our relationship.”
“It figures my own words are coming back to bite me in the ass now,” she said with a sigh.
“Take care, Cori.” He flashed away.
Chapter 8
Bartol
The Russian landscape below was covered with snow, yet beautiful to behold as they flew over it. A few minutes before, the pilot had announced they would reach the city of Kirov in about half an hour. The journey had been long in some ways and short in others.
For most of Bartol’s life, he’d wished he could fly like the birds and the angels. Upon occasion, he’d gone so far as to flash to the highest mountaintops—surrounded by clouds—so that he could at least pretend to be in the air. Aviation was only getting off the ground when he’d gone into Purgatory, but he had been able to fly a couple of the early model planes. His favorite had been the SPAD used during the Great War—now known as WWI—and used by French fighter pilots. It had been an incredible experience, which had allowed him to briefly take part in the fighting without using his supernatural powers. Bartol had looked forward to the possibilities of the future back then.
All thoughts of flying planes soon left his mind after he arrived in Purgatory. There were no hints of civilization or technology in that dreadful, archaic place—one that was outside of this dimension. While it was technically on an island with mountains, they confined the nephilim prisoners deep underground in a tunnel network. It was freezing cold and always wet.
For most of his stay, Bartol had been given no clothing to wear, and he’d lived in a cell where he’d had to sit on an ice-covered floor that tore at his bare skin all while frigid water dripped on his head in an endless cycle. Sadly, that was not even the worst part about the place. His tiny prison cell was a haven against the sadistic guardian who loved to play games of torture on his prisoners almost daily. If it could be thought up, Kerbasi had done it to them in one form or another and often numerous times.
When Bartol had finally left the place months ago, planes and flying no longer interested him. He could have easily found opportunities, but it didn’t matter anymore. Only now that he’d been in flight for the better part of a day—if one included refueling stops—was he beginning to remember how much he’d loved the concept of aviation. According to Caius, the variety of aircraft and methods of flight in the twenty-first century were more than Bartol could imagine. A few movies and television shows gave him a reasonable idea, as well as the bush planes that flew over his cabin periodically, but it was still a lot to take in. He’d been in such a fog over the last few months that none of it had seemed to matter the way it once did.
It was only Cori’s presence that brought him out of his shell.
His chest tightened at the thought of her. At the airport in Fairbanks, she’d showed up the previous afternoon before takeoff, stood right outside the fence, and tried to say goodbye to him. The hurt and betrayal he felt was still raw. He’d let Lucas turn her away and tell her to leave. Through their mate bond, though, he’d sensed her despair. A part of him wanted to give her the farewell she desired, but he forced himself to push her away. There would be time enough to resolve their differences after he returned.
Rebecca settled into the wide leather seat next to him. “You look like you’re in deep thought.”
The female nerou was over three-hundred years old, but she didn’t appear to be beyond her mid-twenties. She had long, strawberry-blond hair that fell in soft waves almost to her slim waist, blue eyes, creamy skin, and a pert nose. There was something about her demeanor that told him she was likely the sweetest woman he might ever meet—as long as he didn’t upset her.
Bartol lifted a brow. “I could say the same of you. We’ve been traveling for over twenty hours, and you’ve hardly said more than a few words.”
“True.” She smoothed the khaki pants and blue blouse she wore. “I still can’t believe I agreed to meet my mother.”
He hadn’t been there the day Rebecca confronted Zoe, but Lucas had told him about it. The poor woman had found out how many people died or were hurt by her mother to get her out of Purgatory—where every nerou had been kept since shortly after their birth. The angels hadn’t wanted the hybrids free to roam the planet with their extraordinary powers. They might not be immortal, only long lived, but they were difficult to kill, and as they grew older, they developed talents unlike any seen before due to their mixed heritage.
Rebecca had also been shocked to find out a spell had been cast to manipulate who she would fall in love with, which turned out to be the alpha werewolf and supernatural leader of Fairbanks. The levels and depths Zoe had gone through to ensure this happened—over a hundred and fifty years of guiding the right pieces in place—were shocking.
Neither Derrick nor Rebecca realized they’d been manipulated into falling in love until after it was too late. They couldn’t bear to break up by that point, so they vowed to stay together regardless, but the female nerou swore she would never speak to her mother again. She’d said as much to Zoe last spring, and she’d kept her vow until now.
“Why did you agree to come along?” Bartol asked.
She pursed her lips. “I didn’t at first, but everyone made the argument that lives could be in danger. It irks me that my mother would ignore a potential disaster if I don’t do what she wants. And her methods for trying to draw our attention…” She paused and looked at him with regret. “I’m sorry Cori was nearly killed last month.”
“This isn’t your fault,” he said. From all accounts, the young woman didn’t have a cruel bone in her body. She might look similar to Zoe, but Rebecca wasn’t her mother.
“Still.” She sighed. “If I’d opened any of the letters my mother sent me, then I would have known there was trouble and could have warned someone.”
That was another thing. Lucas had told Bartol how Zoe was sending regular letters to the nerou compound—some to him and others to her daughter—but they both ignored them. Rebecca had let hers pile up without reading them until after Caius arrived and explained the problem. Lucas had burned the ones he’d received like they might be filled with anthrax.
Bartol shook his head. “The only person to blame is Zoe. If not for her past actions, many of us might have listened to her sooner, and this problem could have been resolved already. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen her shoot herself in the foot trying to get what she wanted. Although, I have to say, she always gets her way eventually.”
“Thank you for understanding.” Rebecca reached over to squeeze his hand. He stiffened at her touch, pulling away. She blanched. “Oh, sorry. They said you don’t like physical contact, but I forgot.”
“Everyone forgets sometimes.” He hated himself that he couldn’t control his reaction no matter who got close. Except Cori, who had a little more leeway than others.
Rebecca looked down and curled her fingers in her lap, likely sensing his discomfort with her abilities. “It must be hard for your mate, handling that problem. How do you…how do you make it work, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“It doesn’t work—at least, not very well,” he replied gruffly, reluctant to answer.
She furrowed her brows. As a woman in love herself, the issue must have disturbed her a lot. “But how do you show affection? How does she?”
“We’ve had few chances to do so, but I have progressed enough that I can touch Cori for short periods without…without too much difficulty.” Bartol had no idea why he was telling her these things. He didn’t like talking to anyone about his intimacy issues, least of all with a woman he’d barely met.
“But she can’t touch you?” Rebecca asked, eyes widening.
“No more than a brief caress upon occasion and even that is barely tolerable.”
Rebecca gulped. “What
does it…what does it do to you if she goes any further than that?”
“It brings back the nightmares Kerbasi created in my mind of my past lovers torturing me viciously through sex,” he said, shuddering as those very memories came forth. It hit him that something wasn’t right about this conversation, and he narrowed his eyes on her. “Why am I telling you this?”
Tormod sauntered over. “I probably should have warned you, but she has a way of getting people to tell her their most intimate and dark secrets. The longer you talk to her, the more she’ll get out of you.”
No one had mentioned Rebecca carried a unique talent of any kind, but he should have asked. All the nerou developed something within their first century or two. She’d had plenty of time to discover hers and fine tune it now that she was several hundred years old.
“I’m sorry.” She gave him an apologetic look. “It’s just that I could feel your pain from where I was sitting across the aisle, and I’d hoped maybe getting you to talk about it would help.”
“That’s also her thing,” Tormod said, crossing his arms. “Helping people when they don’t want it.”
Bartol ground his jaw. “No more questions and no more talking.”
“We’re almost there anyway,” Caius said, joining them from the front of the plane where he’d been sitting on a leather couch. He gestured toward the aircraft window where a city could be seen below in the distance. “That’s Kirov.”
It wasn’t their final destination, but it would get them close enough to the nerou compound that they could flash their whole group as well as luggage. Bartol took a few deep breaths to cool his anger over Rebecca’s manipulations. He knew from dealing with Tormod that the nerou were still learning to control their powers around other people, and they didn’t always mean harm. For their entire lives until coming to Earth, they’d been secluded in Purgatory where they learned very little beyond a basic education in reading, writing, and ancient history. He didn’t think they’d ever been taught proper social behavior and had to create their own code.
