Visions of Fire and Ice (The Petiri)

by Teresa D'Amario

  She stood, yanking her shirt down. “You’re avoiding my biggest question. What is Amunkha?”

  He leaned against the dresser, his arms folded. “I don’t know where to begin.”

  She pursed her lips. It was time to get the secrets out. Whatever Ramose was, whatever Amunkha was, needed to come out if they were to go further. She’d told him she loved him in his mind, but he hadn’t responded. If he didn’t share his secrets now, it would be the end. “Then let me help you,” she said at last. “What is he?”

  He took her hands in his, his thumb caressing her palm. It felt good, right. But it wasn’t going to let him get away without answering. Then, as though he understood her frame of mind, he let out a sigh and spoke.

  “To begin with, Amunkha is, or was, my brother. I don’t know what he is now, but that man, the one who wanted to hurt you, is not the man I have known all my life.”

  The look on his face was tense. And, while he stared into her eyes, she knew her life was about to change. She tensed.

  “Amunkha and I were not born on this planet, Tamara. We were born on another world, far away. We call our home Petiri.”

  “Oh, my God. Ramose, this isn’t a game.” She tried to pull her hands away, but he held tight. She groaned in frustration. “Let’s have the truth, please. Or I’m out of here.”

  “We were on a rescue mission,” he swallowed, continuing with the stupid science fiction he was pushing on her, “but we were also a science vessel, so our intention was to learn as much as we could of your people. But before we could do any research, or find our friends, our ship was struck by a meteor and crashed into the Egyptian desert.”

  With an effort, she yanked her hands from his grasp. “This isn’t funny.”

  “It isn’t intended to be so,” he said. He’d kept his voice soft, but the intensity of his eyes showed his stress.

  “In today’s world, nobody could escape the satellite systems. People would know. The entire world would know. It’s not possible.” He had to be lying. But why? Why would he do this? He was always so calm, so determined. He didn’t joke around, or so she’d thought.

  “We have made our lives here, become as human as we could, to blend with your society.”

  “Just because the Sci-Fi Channel is filled with shows about people from outer space, it doesn’t mean it’s real.”

  “Yet this is real.”

  Of all the explanations, this was the one furthest from her mind. Gods of Egypt, or something like that, she could deal with. Amunkha’s powers had him right on the level with Set, God of Chaos. But aliens?

  “This is an awful lot to take in.” But even as she thought about it, he had to be telling the truth. So many dreams that hadn’t made sense now seemed to click into place. A few more of those center pieces of that puzzle.

  He studied her, as though trying to decide if it was safe to share. She knew this was the ultimate trust for him. To tell her about his life. She waited. He had to trust her on his own, and, if what he said was true, this required a lot of trust.

  One thing was true: Had any other man told her what he’d shared, she wouldn’t have believed it. But this was Ramose. And she knew deep inside what he said was true. For the first time since she’d met him, he was being completely truthful.

  He must have taken her silence for disbelief because he suddenly grabbed her hand and dragged her into the living room. He took her to the far wall, reaching into the bookshelf. The shelving unit slid to the side, revealing a long silver closet. A small desk slid outward, and Ramose moved toward it and touched another button. A computer screen snapped up.

  Tamara stepped forward, peering over his shoulder. Ramose touched the screen in a pattern she couldn’t keep up with. Then he stepped aside, and she moved closer.

  Video flashed on the screen. Familiar images from her dreams. A house. Soft blue grass rippled across the front yard in the breeze beneath the brightness of two suns shining in a pink sky. Tamara blanched. In her dreams, when she’d seen those in those images, Ramose had been young and carefree.

  “That was my house I built. For you.” He said the last words so soft she barely heard them.

  “When?”

  “Before I left.”

  In her dreams, she’d watched him as he built a house with his bare hands. She’d never expected to see it, in reality. But here it was. All the same colors. Blue grass and a pink sky. A shiver ran down her spine. “Why is your sky pink?”

  He shrugged. “Our atmosphere is different from your world’s and reflects different parts of the color spectrum. Instead of reflecting all but blue, our atmosphere reflects all but the length of the pink shaded radiation. Our world is warmer than yours.”

  “I see.” She stared at the pictures for a long time. Her mind couldn’t seem to grasp the various questions bouncing around in her head. And, at the same time, it was like the pieces were fitting together at last. Perhaps it was the way she stared, or the way she knew the color had leeched from her face, but he seemed to understand what she was thinking.

  “You have seen this before?”

  She nodded. She tried to speak, but nothing came out. She cleared her throat and tried again. “In my dreams.”

  He leaned forward, caging her in his arms as he tapped another button, showing more of his world. His body was cool, yet when she glanced at his hands, they didn’t show the telltale white she’d seen when he’d turned the window to frost. Maybe the cold was what kept him so cool, but she didn’t have that particular blessing. The more the pictures flicked past, the more the heat inside her burned, and not in a good way. Stress was always a trigger. Heat burned down her arms, resting in her fingers. She fought the urge to run her hands against his cool flesh, to ease the uncomfortable sensation. A part of her hungered to touch him, to accept him as he was. Human or alien, she wasn’t sure it mattered.

  The pictures told her he missed his home. His voice held the pain of loneliness and homesickness. A pain she wanted to heal.

  But he’d lied to her. If what he said was true, he’d had the ability to heal Julie the instant she’d been hurt. Instead, he’d protected his secrets and let her suffer the pain of surgery in the hospital. The moment of weakness passed and a fresh wave of heat surged to her fingers.

  “This is Petiri, my home planet. I took these images before I left so I’d always remember home.”

  More pictures flashed by, almost as if taken by a digital camera, yet they had an intricate three-dimensional quality she’d not seen on a computer before.

  “Let’s say I believe you, Ramose, though I’m not saying I do, how could you be the same man in my dreams? I know you haven’t seen them, but they are ancient. A time so old there were no spaceships or even cars. How long ago did you crash?” She stood and strode across the room to put some distance between them. Her emotions were so confused, one moment wanting to stroke the hard masculine flesh, the other fighting the building heat of anger.

  “A long time ago.” His gaze skittered to the side. Anyone who could meet her eyes when he said he was an alien, but not when she asked how long ago it happened had something major to hide.

  “How long, Ramose? For the satellites to miss you, you must have arrived more than fifty years ago. But look at you. You can’t be more than thirty-five years old!”

  “And what of you?” he countered.

  “What about me?”

  “You look no more than a teenager, yet you are almost thirty. A person does not always look their age.”

  “Right,” she said sarcastically. “Sure, I still look pretty young, but I’m not saying that I was on board a ship that landed more than fifty years ago.” Her voice trembled, which made her even more frustrated.

  “So, let’s try this a different way, Ramose. Who is your sister? You said she married a politician. Which politician?”

  He sighed deeply. Unable to be still, he moved about the room, pacing, every muscle taut. When he finally stopped in front of her, he gave her a penet
rating look, almost as though he willed her to understand.

  “You have heard of her. Her name was Kiya, favored wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten.”

  Akhenaten? She stared at him, trying to let the words sink in. The puzzle in her brain was missing a significant piece. This time the heat drained from her body, rushing toward her feet, stealing her brain of its last bit of functionality. Too much. Too fast. Not possible.

  For a minute, the room spun, and darkness filtered through her vision. She shook her head to clear it. She was not going to let this get to her. She could handle this. Sure she could.

  “The Kiya?” she squeaked.

  “Yes.”

  A plethora of emotions swam to the surface of her mind. Confusion, comprehension, and last, but not least, fear. Kiya, the mysterious mother of King Tutankhamun.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Tamara stared at the man she’d lived within her dreams since puberty. What he said didn’t make sense. “It can’t be,” she whispered. It wasn’t possible. Nobody could be that old. “That would mean you’d be...”

  “More than four thousand years old,” he finished for her.

  She shook her head. Somewhere in the depths of her mind, she’d find the common sense that told her she’d had a momentary lapse in her sanity. He couldn’t have said what she thought.

  “We age much slower than those on your world. After we reach adulthood, for every one thousand of your world’s years, we age one of our own.”

  Tamara paced the room. The heat in her blood intensified. She needed to get control. She needed to be alone. She shook her head, fighting to understand what this meant. She’d be dead and buried hundreds, maybe thousands of years before him. She’d grow old and look wrinkled... Ahh, hell, this couldn’t be.

  The fire burned inside her, rising with her frustration. Rising with the need to understand, to be like the man she stood beside.

  She glanced toward the door to the side. The bathroom. Could she get there before the heat burned through her clothes? She glanced again at Ramose. Ah, hell. She had nothing to hide from him. He knew about her talents.

  She brushed her fingers in her palms and watched the fire spark. Tiny balls of flames formed in her palms. Rolling them between her hands, she played with them as someone might play with stress balls. Because that’s what they were, a stress reliever.

  “What are you doing, Tamara?”

  She heard the wariness in his voice. A tight smile formed on her lips. His concern was something she’d heard so many times before. “What does it look like? I’m trying to not set your apartment on fire. I’m not in the mood to watch the flames eat your pretty cherry wood bedroom.”

  He arched a brow at her and then stared at her fingers as they played with the tiny orange balls. She didn’t care. With every passing moment, she grew more and more out of control. She needed something to help focus the heat, or she would set fire to something. At least this way, she was being productive by teaching herself control.

  “I’ll be old and gray before you have another birthday it seems,” she said wryly. Her gaze remained focused on the hypnotic flames within her hands. Orange and yellow, flickers of red, and even blue. The color and motion called to her like a lover, begging to caress everything around her.

  “Perhaps not, but let’s address that later.”

  “All right. We’ll shelve that for right now.” However that was the one issue which most concerned her. She didn’t care where he came from. Not even how old he was. But she didn’t want to have him watch her grow old and die. She shuddered and then focused on her other questions.

  “Explain the dreams. You knew what I was dreaming and weren’t surprised. You knew it wasn’t a past life, and yet you let me believe that’s what it was.” The flames burned brighter in her palms, and she studied them, soothing them. The power burning through her wasn’t quite normal. It was stronger, and yet more out of control than ever before.

  He nodded and dropped back into the leather chair. “Sit. I will explain them.”

  Tamara studied him warily. The pain of betrayal still burned in her skin. The fire still lay in her palm, but she sat, twisting and turning the ball. She forced herself to focus there, not surprised to see it flare more brightly.

  “It’s called the Erosewyt,” he said, his voice so soft she had to strain to hear him. The muscles in his jaw twitched. “They help to show the lives of our Kha-Ib’s to one another, to help us join together.”

  “Kha-Ib. Yes, you keep using that word, yet you still haven’t told me what it means.”

  He smiled. “The literal translation is soul-heart. It means you are the heart of my soul.”

  * * * *

  Ramose heard her soft intake of breath. Her confusion and anger washed over him as if they were his own. Her pain was now his. And it wasn’t just because of what she was to him. It was who she was. He thought back to the morning before he knew what she would be to him. The gift she’d hidden from the world bespoke of power. The blue and gold eyes flashing at him spoke of her soul. The realization of her status as his Kha-Ib only served as an excuse. He no longer had to fight his growing attraction.

  And now he was hurting her. And each new pain was like a knife slicing between them.

  “What do you mean…”

  “In your language, in your world, Tamara, it means soul mate.” Her face flushed red. Her breath grew rapid, and he could swear he could see her pulse throbbing in her neck.

  “All right, I can buy soul mates.” She accepted that part too readily. He knew some humans believed in them, but it was possible she didn’t understand how deeply ingrained their connection was.

  His eyes stared at the flames, as though drawn to them. She rolled and twirled them the way another would fiddle with stress balls. The heat from the fire rose into the air above her, drawing her own scent high into the air, strengthening it. The orange and yellow twirled and spun through her fingers, dancing to the beat of her heart. A heart he could sense was waiting for more of his story, so he continued.

  “Before we were born, we existed in another place, in another form. While we were there, we met and created a covenant to be together. You chose me, and I chose you. This sacred covenant was a promise to find the other at all costs.”

  Her eyes now met his, her attention rapt. Her heat called to him in a way no other’s had before. The ice inside him wanted to feel the burn of her body against his. But he couldn’t. Not until she understood. He would give her everything. Even his ice if need be.

  “The dreams, the Erosewyt, are an unconscious communication of our souls, a reminder of the sacred covenant we made before we were born. They happen all our lives, if we let them. The last time I saw you…” He broke away and dropped onto the foot of the bed, his hands scrubbing his face again. “I was at Kiya’s wedding, and I was watching the dancers. You were there, right in front of me. It was almost… almost as if you were saying goodbye. I thought you were giving up on me. I didn’t know.” He couldn’t face her. Not now. Not when he was telling her he’d forsaken her. “I had no idea you were not alive yet.”

  “So, why is it you didn’t recognize me? I knew you the instant I saw you.”

  He shook his head. “I have not dreamed for many years until I met you at the pyramids. I had buried those memories deep in my heart. They hurt just to think of them, believing I’d left you on another world, and now I was stranded here.”

  “And that’s why you married? Because you were alone?”

  * * * *

  He blanched. “Because I was weak.”

  She sighed. Guilt and pain shown in his eyes. That was something she could ease, at least. “Four thousand years is a long time to wait.”

  He whirled to stare at her in disbelief. “You are not angry?”

  “Should I be?”

  “But I forsook you. I took another.”

  She sighed. The fireballs sparked a little higher. “I can’t say that pleases me, but I can understand that. It’
s just,” she motioned with her hand to encompass the space around them, “there’s just so much to take in.” She stared out his bedroom window at the city for long moments.

  “I understand. I’ll leave you to your thoughts,” he said. “If you wish to return to Selket’s, I would understand.”

  He spun on his heel and stepped into the kitchen.

  Tamara turned to the bedroom, walking to the bed in a daze. She dropped to the soft mattress, Ramose’s footsteps still firm in the next room.

  Oh, God, what am I going to do?

  She rested her elbows on her knees. The man was over four thousand years old. How were they going to survive as a couple if all she could think of was how old she’d look in fifty years? Or maybe even in twenty years?

  Axriad. That’s what he’d called her before. A child. The comment made sense now.

  When she’d danced for him at the restaurant, he hadn’t looked at her like a child. His eyes had darkened with hunger. Just thinking of that night sent a wave of heat rushing through her body. He was so powerful. She’d never met anyone who could control ice. A man who could encase her in a cocoon and still throw ice daggers at the man he called his brother.

  But there was more to him than his magic. He hadn’t hesitated when Julie had been hurt. He’d stepped in immediately to see she was cared for. He was a leader. A man born of ice, a man born of heart and soul.

  Every time she looked at him, she remembered his touch, and it vibrated all the way to her soul. If she’d never had the dreams, if she’d met Ramose on the street, somehow, she knew she’d still think he was the sexiest thing alive.

  How much of her attraction was driven by those silly dreams?

  None. The first time she’d laid eyes on him was the first time she’d felt attraction. Prior to that, he was nothing more than a figment of her imagination. A man who didn’t truly exist. She had never desired him, before.