by Ursula Bauer
Meg nodded at Kara. “Meg Carter.”
“Nice to meet you, Meg Carter. Ever traveled the mists before?”
“I told you she didn’t,” Gideon said.
Kara glanced at him. “I like to ask on my own, just to be sure. I’m not much for casualties.” She reached into a pocket and produced a small, silvery stone which she handed in through the cab to Meg. “Take this, keep it on you while we ride the passage. It’s a clan talisman. It will help prevent the sickness.”
Kara watched as Meg put it into her pocket. When she was done, Kara tapped the car and stepped back. “Okay, folks. Showtime. Keep the windows up. This is a shifting passage. We’ll need to run fast and hard but we’ll get to Jack’s in time for dinner.”
She climbed on the hog, fired it up, and started out on the small rural route. Gideon followed on her six and as they drove. The surrounding trees and rolling farmland faded out as dense, pewter mists surrounded the vehicles. He kept the accelerator floored in an attempt to stay within line of sight of his guide. His blood tingled as they left the safety of a formed reality and ventured into the uncertain paths that drifted between realms.
“I feel itchy.” Meg’s voice startled him. “Is that normal?”
“You have a small amount of magic in you right now. It’s reacting to the aura of the mists. Kara’s talisman should keep the worst of the travel sickness down. If you feel you need to vomit, there’s a bag in the glove box.”
“Other than the itch, I feel fine.” She shifted in her seat and stretched her long legs out. “You two were lovers.”
The statement surprised him. Damn, she was perceptive. “A while back. What gave it away?”
“The way she looked at you. Like you were a prime piece of steak she’d love to tear into.”
He cleared his throat, uncomfortable with this new line of discussion. “It was brief. Very brief. I ended it with her ten years ago.”
She turned to stare out into the endless, silvery clouds of mist. Her face was reflected in the window glass. “You don’t stick around much, do you?”
“Not really.” He pressed harder on the gas pedal, but it had no place to go. “Why do you ask?”
She turned back to him and studied him with a frank, assessing gaze. “I’m wondering what you’ll be doing once you’re done protecting me. That’s what’s holding you back now. Will it hold you back later, when all this is over? What then?”
“I don’t know.” And honestly, he didn’t. He’d still want her, there was no disputing that. But she was mortal, and could enjoy a real life. He was nothing more than a shadow in her world. And a dark one at that. She’d want more than a night. So would he. In the end, he knew he’d bring her ruin. He was no good. All he had to do was look to his mortal past, and the evidence was there, screaming at him like the Banshee come for her dead. “You deserve better than me, Meg.”
“You’ve only known me for two nights. You don’t get to say what I do and don’t deserve.”
She turned her eyes forward and fell silent.
Gideon was both relieved at the silence and maddened by it. Talking with her was as close as he could come to doing what he wanted—touching her, tasting her, loving her. There were two men inside of him, at constant war, and he wondered who would ultimately win: the knight who wanted her safe in an ivory tower, or the beast who wanted her naked beneath him. Her scent tantalized him, and her body heat branded him like a blazing sun. The minutes passed as hours of torment. When she leaned down to grab a notebook from her backpack, her hair spilled forward in a sexy cascade of silken fire and Gideon knew that if given the slightest opportunity, the beast would devour the knight and claim his woman in the most carnal of ways.
She opened the book and wrote in it for a while, filling several pages before he screwed up the courage to talk to her.
“You look busy, Doc. What are you writing?”
The edges of her wide mouth tilted up into a smile. “I’m taking notes, making my own instruction manual. If I can see things down in black and white, I can make better sense of them.”
Some things defied sense, but he didn’t tell her that. He knew she hated being out of control. If this made her feel better he was all for it. “So what are you covering now?”
“You. Everything about you, from your healing, to your ability to shift matter and mass at will.” Her grin widened. “You really are quite fascinating, Gideon.”
A cold chill crept up his spine. He didn’t mind her probing, but he didn’t want her probing him. A picture of her corpse from the dream flashed through his mind. He gripped the steering wheel tighter. “I’m just an ordinary guy in my world. Nothing worth knowing that you don’t already know.”
“There’s a lot I don’t know. You told me as much outside the last motel. We have time, so maybe you can fill me in.” She half turned in the seat so she could look at him, the notebook perched in her lap, the pen poised like a sword in her hand. “So how old are you, Gideon, and where’d you come from? You had to be mortal once, right? What was your life like before the change?”
The chill froze into a cold anger. Not at her, but at himself. There wasn’t anything good he could tell her about that creature he was back in the mortal days. Vermin. I was vermin, a pox on those I knew. A scourge. “I’m not some lab rat in one of your experiments.”
Her pretty smile faded. “I want to know you better. Is that so wrong?”
“There’s nothing to know. I was a guy once. Just like every other guy of my day. Trying to get ahead, pass the time the best way I knew how.” She wouldn’t let up. He knew that as sure as he knew his own dark past. Somehow she’d get it out of him, strip him bare to the bone. Strangely enough, there was a part of him that wanted to be free, to let out the shame, to release the ghosts that plagued him.
“When was your day? And where? You sound American.”
He eased his grip on the wheel. Maybe if he gave her a little bit, a controlled dose, she’d leave off. “I’ve been living here for the last three hundred years, that’s why.”
She jotted this down. “Where?”
“All around. Lately, I keep a place in Virginia. It’s a cabin tucked away in the Blue Ridge mountains.”
“You’re older than three hundred years?”
He nodded. “I kind of lost count.” On purpose.
“Your body is so well-preserved,” she muttered as she wrote. “You must have phenomenal cellular regeneration. So where was home, initially?”
Home. There was a good one. Home was where ever the lust for battle took him. But he doubted she’d be happy to know that. “Britton. A little before William of Normandy’s time, back in 1066.”
The ache in his chest spread throughout his body. The discussion was painful in a way he’d never experienced. He had to stop this. He wasn’t ready. Not now. Not ever. “Listen, Doc, my past is just that. Mine. I don’t share. You want to know about my world, I’ll tell you. You want to know what I know about magic, we can talk all night. You want to know about me as a mortal, forget it. I buried my dead a long time ago. I have no intention of digging them up again to satisfy anyone’s curiosity. Even yours.”
Chapter Eight
Gideon’s response was laced with acid emotion. Meg drew back, shocked at the intense words coming from the stoic soldier. So his mortal life was a raw nerve? She’d suspected that his old life might be the source of the pain she glimpsed those few times when he was not in complete, iron clad control of himself. She never guessed at the depth of those feelings.
“Okay, your mortal past is off-limits. No problem. I guess what really interests me is the change in physiology afterwards.” Not so much a lie, she thought. She did have interest in that. But more she wanted to know him as he once was, when he was human. He was closed to her now, however, she’d have to wait for another time to draw out his truths. “What happened to you after Bast staked her claim?”
His deep chest rose and fell with a long breath. “I don’t age. I can’t die. Not by norma
l, or even most extraordinary means. I don’t get sick. I’m immune to all mortal diseases, and most magical ones. And, I can’t reproduce.”
“Immortals are sterile?”
He nodded.
She made a note. If he knew he was sterile, that meant prior to his change, he knew he wasn’t. Which meant he probably had children in his mortal life. The thought saddened her. Did he outlive his children? Watch them grow old and wither with age? A scrap of her nightmare resurfaced, a man burying his young ones. Perhaps that had happened? He could live while they could die? Either possibility was horrible. How did these immortals manage to stay sane? That thought had her scribbling again. The brain must change as well as the hormones influencing mood. Cellular regeneration, massive endocrine reprogramming, it boggled the mind. “And this is done through magic?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. I think there’s an aspect of the divine involved in some way. Maybe it just takes that much juice to turn a mortal into one of my kind.”
“So the Gods have access to powers beyond magic.”
“Some more than others. Depends.”
He seemed to relax again, so Meg decided to pursue this new avenue. She’d filled twenty more pages of the small spiral bound notebook by the time the thick silver mist faded and the desert outside of Las Vegas came into view. She didn’t even feel the change, so subtle it was, moving from a channel between worlds to entering terra firma again.
The sun was still high in the sky, and the clock on the dash indicated only two hours had passed since the midday break at the rest stop. Meg jotted down the time, a few last notes on how she felt leaving the passage, and shoved the book back into her backpack.
“Jack’s place is a few minutes down the road.” Gideon waved out the window at the blonde biker Amazon, then pulled past her and took a turnoff that led them to a dirt road. “We were lucky to find a passage, and a guide. Maybe things are turning in our favor.”
Judging by the grim look on his face, Meg had her doubts but she kept them to herself. The red and gold desert was a stark contrast to the lush, almost oppressive green of upstate New York and the mountains. Heat rose in waves and dust swirled off the road in granular clouds, giving the landscape a surreal, desolate look.
Gideon took one last turn that led him into the hills, and ended at a set of ornate, two story wrought iron gates. From either end of the gates stretched a wall of hand fitted stone just as high, and a few feet thick. Iron spikes topped the wall, giving it a sinister appearance. Beyond, the road ran through the saddle of two high flats and vanished in a turn.
Gideon rolled down the window and jammed a finger against the call buzzer. The intercom connected and static erupted into the quiet desert air.
“Jack, it’s me. Open up.”
Gideon sat back. There was a grinding sound from outside, and the gates slowly parted.
He drove through, following the road into the shadows of the saddle, and when he took the final blind turn, a whitewashed Moroccan style mansion appeared, sprawling languidly across the rough landscape.
A man waited placidly for them, standing beside a graceful, three-tiered fountain tiled in cobalt and turquoise mosaic mixed with gilded flecks. He was tall, rangy, with long silver hair that ran past his shoulders and trailed down his back. His skin was pale like moonlight and his face was exotic with high cheekbones, almond-shaped cobalt eyes, dark slashing brows, and vaguely oriental features. He was wearing tight-fitting black velvet pants and a flowing white poet’s shirt open to the waist, over which he had a crimson velvet frock coat. Knee-high motocross boots with no less than twelve buckle closures each finished the outfit.
He wasn’t to her taste; that ran more to tall, broody immortals with sketchy pasts, but still, Jack Madden was a strange, sweet kind of eye candy. He reminded her of one of those animated tragic anti-heroes that decorated the covers of computer video games: all angles, impossible grace, and elegant, sensual looks.
“You’re early,” Jack drawled in a smooth baritone as they emerged from the car. “I haven’t completed my research.”
“You need to work faster, Jack. We’re on a schedule here.”
Jack nodded, and his hair swung forward, revealing the pointed tips of his very inhuman ears.
“So I hear.” He flashed a devilish smile and gave Meg the once over. “You must be the woman who made Gideon break the rules. I’m impressed. Even I couldn’t get him to go back on his precious oaths.”
“Shut the hell up, Jack.” Gideon’s body tensed as if ready for battle.
“I’m Meg Carter.” She held out her hand to shake, but Jack took it, and breathed a light kiss across her knuckles. His lips were deceptively cool, as if he were devoid of life or blood, or any kind of human warmth. She drew her hand back and suppressed a shiver. Up close, she sensed an underlying malevolence lurking just beneath the beautiful façade.
Gideon’s jaw tightened. “I should have warned you, Meg. In addition to being crazy, Jack’s a perv.”
Jack pulled his lips into a mock pout. “Rake, Gideon. Roué. Cad. Perv is far too post-modern a description for a relic like me.” He started for the arched door, the tails of the ridiculous frock coat swirling at his knees. “Let’s get started, shall we? Havers has an early supper cooking. She’ll skin us if we’re late.”
They moved into the cool interior of the house and Meg had impressions of understated wealth and great antiquity as they wound through the seemingly endless corridors and key-shaped doorways. The level of authenticity of décor made her wonder if this wasn’t transported lock, stock and barrel from the story of a thousand and one Arabian knights.
The hall they were in dead-ended. Jack threw open a thick wooden door revealing a wide sunken room filled to the rafters with everything and anything a self-respecting mad scientist or crazed wizard might need. Floor to ceiling shelves lined one wall, filled with jars of unidentifiable and no doubt dangerous substances. The opposite wall contained more modern amenities, and could have easily fit in at her clinic.
Meg’s legs went weak. She stepped back, suddenly afraid to cross into the lair. “What’s going on? What are you planning to do to me?”
“Nothing I’d like to, Meg. Gideon would try to kill me, and that would eat up all our precious time.” Jack locked eyes with her, and they changed from cobalt to a deep, stormy midnight blue that made her blood chill. “I’m going to give you a brief exam. Draw some blood. Ask you some questions. If you’re lucky, I can help. If you’re not, well, we’ll deal with that later.”
Gideon put his arm around her shoulders, sending her strength and support. “It will be okay, Doc. Trust me.”
“I trust you.” Not him. She swallowed hard, realizing she had no other choice. “I guess I’m used to being the doctor, not the patient.”
Jack had her sit in a comfortable, scarlet leather wingback, while he assembled a few vaccutainers and his draw kit. Gideon stood beside her, his wide hand covering her shoulder, his heat warming her. His strength was a flow of life pouring into her.
“So you touched the canopic jar, Meg, not the artifact. Yet you’ve experienced some changes.” Jack pulled up a stool on rollers, so like the ones the clinic had in every exam room. He reached for her left arm and expertly tied tubing just above the elbow. He smiled reassuringly as he palpated for a good vein. She’d done the same herself a thousand times in her old life. Her stomach churned.
“How’ve you been feeling since?” Jack’s fingers were cool against her skin. He found a vein he liked, and before she knew it, slid in the tip of the butterfly needle and accessed the flow. Her blood ran into the thin tubing and filled the first stoppered vial. “Any physical issues? Nausea and vomiting? Rashes? Headaches? Vision changes?”
Everything fell disturbingly into place, dropping into her mind like a guillotine. “I’ve had migraines. I was going to see a neurologist. I don’t normally get them.”
“Nothing you took relieved them, am I correct?”
“Yes.”
The room appeared to tilt and Meg was glad she was seated, else she might pass out. He finished with one vial and proceeded to fill another one. She turned away, unable to look or acknowledge what was happening.
“Anything else you can think of?”
“I can heal Gideon when I touch him.”
“Go on.” He started on a third vial. “Last one, I promise.”
“My glasses give me headaches when I wear them. And my asthma’s been in remission. I haven’t had an attack since that day.”
“That’s it?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
Jack removed the thin needle of the butterfly and covered the draw site with gauze and paper tape. “There might be other changes we don’t immediately see. I think the tests might reveal some of them.”
Tests? A fine sheen of perspiration beaded up like ice water on her skin. Her blood tingled and her stomach recoiled. “I don’t feel so good.”
“It’s the magic inside of you.” Jack stored the vials in a small refrigerator located beneath a shelving unit full of assorted colored quartz crystals, and vials of vibrant purple dust. “This room is designed to enhance magical energy.”
“How long do I need to stay here?”
“I need to complete a full exam. That means physical and metaphysical. If you could take off your clothes—”
Gideon stepped between her and Jack. “The clothes stay on.”
“No, they don’t.” Jack crossed his arms and the previous hint of malevolence darkened his features with full threat. “I need to see if she’s marked in any way. It’s a significant and likely finding under these circumstances.”
“Trust me, she’s not marked.”
The men talked around her and their words blended into a buzzing sound. Her stomach went into full rebellion, and she clutched the armrests of the chair to keep from falling. Vertigo seized her and the room began to spin.
“Gideon, I can’t help you if you get in my way.” The buzzing stopped abruptly and suddenly all sounds were too loud to manage. Jack’s voice boomed inside of Meg’s skull. “Meg, you’re a doctor. You understand these things. Will you please talk your overprotective boyfriend off the ledge?”
