Once Upon a Kiss

by Nora Roberts

  “What good is a harper to a warrior?” Kadra demanded. “A fine warrior he’ll make with his song and story as sword and shield.”

  “He is what you need. You will fail without him. Even with him there is great risk.”

  “Why should I believe any of this? Any witch might conjure pictures in a fire. Any woman might spin a tale as easily as thread.”

  “The stone in your crown of rank, those in your sword, I gave to you. For strength, for clear vision, for valor, and last, for love. They were my tears when I gave you to your fate. In my eyes you see your own. In your heart, you see the truth. Now we must prepare.”

  Kadra set her hand on the hilt of her sword. “I am prepared.”

  With a heavy sigh, Rhee got to her feet. She walked to a wooden cupboard, took out a metal box. “Take this.” She offered a bag of stones. “Where you go,” she explained, “they have great value.”

  Kadra looked into the bag of shining stones. “Then where I go is a very foolish place.”

  “In some ways. In others, fantastic.” Rhee’s expression was soft. “You have much to see. I will give you what knowledge I can, but there are limits. Even for me.” She held out her hands, gripped Kadra’s before Kadra could draw back.

  “The rest,” she said, and glinting tears scored down her cheeks, “is up to you, and the man called Doyle.”

  A great roar, like rushing water over cliffs, filled Kadra’s head. In it were words, a hundred thousand words, spoken in countless tongues. A pressure, as a boulder laid on her heart, filled her chest.

  The light was blinding.

  “Valor and strength you have, my child. Use them on this journey wild. But open yourself to vision, to love, before it’s too late. Gather them close and face your fate. Would I could keep you safe with me,” she murmured, and her lips brushed a kiss over Kadra’s. “But once again I set you free.”

  The world whirled and spun. The air sucked her in, tumbled her, then spat her rudely out.

  2

  SPRAWLED IN BED, plagued by the mother of all hangovers, the man called Doyle let out a surprised and pained grunt when a half-naked woman dropped on top of him.

  He saw eyes of intense and burning green. Eyes, he thought blearily, that he’d been dreaming of moments before he’d awakened with a head the size of Nebraska.

  There was an instant of recognition, a strange and intimate knowledge, and with it a bone-deep longing. Then there was nothing but shock.

  He had time to blink, a split second to admire what he was certain was a very creative hallucination, before the very sharp and very real point of a dagger pressed against his carotid artery.

  “I am Kadra,” the mostly naked and well-armed hallucination stated in a throaty voice as oddly familiar as her eyes. “Slayer of Demons.”

  “Okay, that’s really interesting.” If he’d been drunk and stupid enough the night before to bring a crazy woman back to his apartment, and couldn’t even remember heating up the sheets with her, he deserved to get his throat cut.

  But it really wasn’t the way he wanted to start the day.

  “Would you mind getting that pig-sticker away from my jugular? You’re spoiling a perfectly good hangover.”

  Frowning, she sniffed at him, then used her free hand to pull up his top lip and study his teeth. Satisfied, she drew back the dagger, slid it handily into its wrist sheath.

  “You are not a demon. You may live.”

  “Appreciate it.” Going with instinct rather than sanity, Harper shoved her, snatched at the dagger. The next thing he knew, she’d executed a neat back flip off the bed, landed on her feet beside it. With a very big sword raised over her head.

  “You win.” He tossed the dagger aside, held up both hands.

  “You yield?”

  “Damn right. Why don’t you put that thing down before somebody—especially me—gets hurt? Then we can go call the nice people at the asylum. They’ll come pick you up and take you for a little ride.”

  Disgusted that she’d landed on a coward, she shook her head. But she lowered the sword. “Are you the harper called Doyle?”

  “I’m Harper Doyle.”

  “We have to hunt.”

  “Sure, no problem.” Smiling at her, he eased toward the far side of the bed. Whatever that feeling had been when he’d first looked into her eyes, he was sure now he hadn’t been drunk enough, hadn’t been stupid enough to bring her home with him. “Just let me get my hunting gear and we’ll be off.”

  Using his body to block her view, he slid open the drawer in the nightstand and drew out his Glock. “Now, put that goddamn sword down, Xena.”

  “I am Kadra,” she corrected and studied the object in his hand. “This is a gun.” The name, the purpose of it were floating in her head, in the maze of knowledge Rhee had given her. The fascination for it, this new weapon, made her yearn. “I would like to have one.”

  She looked at him, studying his face for the first time, and found herself shocked that it brought her another kind of yearning.

  “I was sent to you,” she told him.

  “Fine, we’ll get to that. But right now, put the sword down,” he repeated. “I’d really hate to spoil my record and shoot a woman.”

  It was more comfortable to study the gun, and her feelings for an interesting weapon. “The missile goes through flesh and bone. It can be very efficient.” She nodded, sent her sword home. “Perhaps you are a warrior. We will talk.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Harper agreed. “We’re going to have a very nice chat.”

  His head felt as if someone had spent the night attempting a lobotomy with a dull, rusty blade. He could accept that. In a bemused celebration of his thirtieth birthday—how could he be thirty when he’d been eighteen two minutes ago—he’d consumed a tanker truck of alcohol. He’d been entitled to get plastered with a couple of pals. He was entitled to the hangover.

  Having a woman—a gorgeous green-eyed Amazon who filled out her black leather bikini in a way that gratified every young boy’s comic book fantasies—leap on him out of nowhere was a really nice plus. Just the sort of happy birthday surprise a man who’d reached the point of no return on the path to adulthood could appreciate.

  But having that erotic armful hold a knife to his throat wasn’t part of the acceptable package.

  And where the hell had she come from? he wondered as she stood there eyeing his gun. There was nothing but simple curiosity and avid interest on that sharp-boned siren’s face.

  Had he been so drunk he’d forgotten to lock his door? It was a possibility—a remote one, but a possibility. But she’d called him by name. No way she was from the neighborhood. He was a trained observer, and even if he’d been a myopic accountant rather than a private investigator he would have noticed a six-foot brunette with legs that went to eternity.

  “Jake.” The solution trickled through his suffering brain. Though he relaxed a little, he held the gun steady. “Jake put you up to this, didn’t he? Some weird-ass birthday surprise. Jake’s who sent you.”

  “I am sent by Rhee, the sorceress. How is it that a harper has such a weapon? Have you killed many demons?”

  “Look, it’s too early in the morning for Dungeons and Dragons. Show’s over, sister.”

  “I am not your sister,” she began as he eased out of bed. Then her eyebrows shot up. He was naked, but that neither surprised nor shocked her. Her instant and elemental attraction did.

  He was taller than she by nearly a full hand, broader in the chest and shoulders, with fine, sleek muscles.

  Reevaluating, she pursed her lips. His hair was the deep brown of oak bark, and though unkempt by sleep, it created a good frame for a strong face. His eyes were the bold blue of the marsh bells, his nose slightly crooked, which told her it had weathered a break. His mouth was firm, as was his jaw. Though his skin was pale, like a scholar’s who closeted himself with scrolls, she began to see possibilities.

  “You have a fine build for a harper,” she told him.

/>   “Yeah?” Amused now, though still cautious, he reached for the jeans he’d peeled off the night before. “How much did Jake pay you for the gig?”

  “I know no Jake. I do not take payment for slaying. It is my destiny. Do you require payment?”

  “Depends.” How the hell was he going to get into his jeans and hold the gun at the same time?

  “The knowledge was given me that these have value in your world.” She tugged the bag of stones from her belt, tossed them on the bed. “Take what you need, then dress. We must begin the hunt.”

  “Look, I appreciate a joke as much as the next guy. But I’m naked and hungover, and it irritates me to wake up with a knife to my throat. I want coffee, a barrel of aspirin, and a shower.”

  “Very well. If you will not hunt, show me how to use your weapon.”

  “You’re a piece of work.” He gestured toward the bedroom door with the Glock. “Out. Back to Central Casting, or Amazons R Us, or wherever the hell—”

  She moved so fast that all he saw was a blur of limbs and leather and flying hair. She leaped, executed a handspring off the bed, and some part of her—boot, elbow, fist—connected with his jaw.

  An entire galaxy of stars exploded in his head. By the time they novaed and died, he was flat on his back, with her standing astride him turning the Glock over in her hands.

  “It has good weight,” she said conversationally. “How is the missile…” She trailed off when with a twitch of her finger she fired. Her eyes widened with something like lust when through the open bathroom door, she saw the corner of his vanity sheared off.

  “It is faster than an arrow,” she commented, very pleased.

  Not Jake, he corrected. Jake might have a weird sense of the ridiculous, but his old college friend wouldn’t have sent him a lunatic who liked to play with guns. “Who the hell are you?”

  “I am Kadra.” She nearly sighed with the repetition—perhaps the harper was loose in the brains. With some sympathy she offered a hand to help him up. “Slayer of Demons. I have come to hunt, to fulfill my destiny. Though it does not please either of us, you are obliged to assist.”

  “Give me the gun, Kadra.”

  “It is a good weapon.”

  “Yeah, it’s a good weapon. It belongs to me.”

  Her lips moved into a pout, then her face brightened again. “I will fight you for it.”

  “I’m at a disadvantage at the moment.” He got to his feet, very slowly, kept his voice mild and easy. “You know, naked, hungover.”

  “Hung over what?”

  “Maybe we could fight later, after we clear up a few points.”

  “Very well. I will give you the weapon, and you will give me your word that you will help me hunt the Bok.”

  “Helping people’s what I do.” Maybe she was in trouble, he thought. Not that he intended to get involved, but he could at least listen before he called the guys in the white coats. “Is that why you’re here?” Gently, he nudged her gun hand aside so he wouldn’t end up with a bullet in the belly. “You need help?”

  “I am a stranger here, and require a guide.” She reached out, squeezed his biceps. “You are strong. But slow.” With no little regret, she returned the Glock. “Can you make more of the gun?”

  “Maybe.” She’d threatened him with a knife, with a sword. She’d knocked him on his ass and disarmed him.

  Damn if he didn’t respect her for it.

  In any case, she’d made his first morning as a thirty-year-old man interesting. He hadn’t become a PI because he liked the boring.

  Added to that, there was something…something about her that pulled at him. Her looks were enough to knock a man flat. But it wasn’t that—or not only that. You couldn’t find the answers, he reminded himself, unless you asked the questions.

  “I’m going to put my pants on,” he told her. “I want you to step back and keep your hands away from that sword.”

  She stepped back. “I have no wish to harm you, or any of your people. You have my word as a slayer.”

  “Good to know.” When she was at a safe distance, he tugged on his jeans, then snugged the gun in the waistband. “Now, I’m going to make coffee, and we’ll talk about all this.”

  “Coffee. This is a stimulant consumed in liquid form.”

  “There you go. In the kitchen,” he added, gesturing toward the door.

  She strode out ahead of him. Whatever shape he might have been in, Harper thought, however baffled he might be, a man who didn’t admire and appreciate that view was a sorry specimen.

  Still, he glanced at the front door of his apartment as he passed. It was locked, bolted, chained.

  So she’d locked up after she’d come in, he decided. He looked back to see her stop and gape out the living room window. Like a kid might, he mused, at her first eyeful of Disneyland.

  So high, she thought in wonder. She had never been in a hut where the ground was so far below and so many people swarmed beneath. Their costumes were strange to her, strange and fascinating. But fascination turned to awe when she watched a cab zip to the curb, saw the woman leap out.

  “She rose out of the belly of the yellow beast! How is this done?”

  “You pay the fare, they let you out. Where the hell are you from?”

  “I am from A’Dair. In my world, we have no beasts with round legs. I don’t—wait.” She closed her eyes, searched through the knowledge Rhee had given her. “Cars!” Those brilliant eyes opened again, smiled into his. “They are machines called cars and are for transportation. That is wonderful.”

  “Try to find one in the rain. Honey—”

  “Yes, I would like honey, and bread. I am hungry.”

  “Right.” He shook his head. “Coffee. Coffee first, then all questions can be faced. Come with me. I want you where I can see you.”

  She followed him into his tiny galley kitchen. While he measured coffee, she ran her fingers over the surface of the counter, over the refrigerator and stove. “So much magic,” she said softly. “You must have great wealth.”

  “Yeah, rolling in it.” He made a reasonable living, Harper thought. But he was what you could call between active cases at the moment. Maybe he could hold off on the guys in the white coats, see if she needed an investigator, and had enough to pay his retainer. “Jake didn’t send you, did he?”

  “I do not know this Jake.” She peered at the side of the toaster, delighted with her own odd reflection. “I know no one in this world, save you.”

  “How did you get here, to my place?”

  “Through the portal. It is…” She straightened, trying to decipher the knowledge, then to express it. “There are many dimensions. Yours and mine are two. The Bok stole a key and have entered yours. I have another.” She drew the clear globe out of her pouch. “So I have followed. To hunt, to kill so that our worlds will be safe. You are to help me in this quest.”

  Poor kid, he thought. She was definitely a few fries short of a Happy Meal. “You can’t just kill people in this world. They lock you up for that.”

  “You have no slayers to fight against evil here?”

  He dragged a hand through his hair, then rooted out some Extra-Strength Excedrin. Isn’t that what his father had done? And what he himself had wanted to do as long as he could remember? To go after the bad guys, on his own terms?

  “Yeah, I guess we do.”

  The woman was definitely in some sort of jam, even if it came out of her own oddball imagination. He would just keep her calm, ask some questions, see if he could dig out the problem. When he’d done what he could, he would make a few calls and have her taken someplace where she could get some help.

  It would be the first good deed of his new decade.

  “So, you come from another dimension, and you’re here to hunt down some demons.”

  “The king of demons and three of his warriors have entered your world. They will need to feed. First, they will hunt for animals, the easy kill, to gather strength. Where are your farms?
”

  “We’re a little short on farms on Second Avenue. So what do you do back in—where was it?”

  “A’Dair.”

  He could run a search on the name on his computer, see if he could pinpoint where she’d come from. She didn’t have a discernible accent, but the cadence, the rhythm of her speech sure as hell didn’t say New York.

  “What do you do back in A’Dair besides slay demons?”

  “This is my purpose. I was born a slayer, trained, educated. It is what I do.”

  “Friends, family?”

  “I have no family. She who raised me was killed by a tribe of Bok.”

  Mother killed, he thought. Trauma, role playing. “I’m sorry.”

  “She was a fine warrior. Clud, sire of Sorak, took her life, and I have taken his. So there is balance. I have learned that she who bore me was another. Rhee, the sorceress. Her blood is in me. I think I am here, able to be here, because of that blood.” She sniffed the air. “This is coffee?”

  “That’s right.”

  “It has a good scent.”

  He poured two mugs, offered one. She sniffed again, sipped, then frowned. “Bitter, but good.”

  To his surprise, she downed the entire mug in one swallow, then swiped a hand over her mouth. “I like this coffee. Dress now, Harper Doyle.”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “It was told to me. We will hunt the Bok together.”

  “Sure. We’ll get to that in a little while.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t believe. You think I’m loose in the brain. You waste my time with too many questions when we should act.”

  “Part of what I do in my little world is ask questions. Nobody’s calling you a liar here. Why shouldn’t I believe you’re a demon slayer from an alternate universe? I’m always getting clients from other dimensions.”

  She paced up and down the narrow room to work out the logic. He was mocking her, and this was not proper. Lesser warriors were not permitted to show a slayer disrespect.

  Yet, she admired him for it even as she found his demeanor frustrating.