Servilia grabbed Julius by the hand. “Come, my love, come out to the garden with me where we can talk privately.”
Julius nodded, though he pulled his hand away.
Servilia would not be deterred. She gave him a flirtatious smile and drew him along, threading her way through the reveling senators and their paramours for the evening.
Delia fell into step behind the pair, but slowed her pace.
“Jake,” she whispered in English, low enough that only he could hear her. “What just happened? Someone tried to probe my mind.”
“Yeah,” he said grimly, continuing to look around at the crowd. “Me, too. Did you see anyone?”
“Yes, for a split second, and then he cloaked and I couldn’t see his aura anymore. That scribe over there near General Brutus is the man I’m talking about.”
Jake swung his gaze in that direction for just a moment. “Yes, I see him.”
“He’s trouble, Jake. His aura was bright red. I’ve never seen an aura like that.”
“I didn’t get a good feeling from him, either,” Jake growled. They were moving toward a small alcove with a marble balcony that overlooked the western side of the vestibulum. It was a secluded, quiet spot, away from all the festivities. Jake slowed his pace even more, leaving about twenty feet between them and the pair they were guarding. Obviously, Servilia wanted to talk to Caesar in private.
It was dark in the corridor, except for strategically placed braziers that provided just enough light for them to see into the grayness. “What do you make of it?” Delia asked.
“Damned if I know who or what he is.”
“I sense he’s a fox in the henhouse, Jake.”
He pressed his mouth into a grim line, unable to disagree. Keeping an eye on the twosome, he saw Servilia wrapping her arms around Julius’s shoulders, and wondered if she was trying to win him back from Queen Cleopatra. Tearing his gaze from that scene, Jake looked over at Delia. She was tense, her eyes darting and watchful. “A fox from where, though?” he murmured.
Shrugging, she rested her hand on the butt of her sword. “I don’t have a clue.”
“He stood out like a sore thumb.”
“Yes. I didn’t really notice him until the mind probe. And then I automatically followed the hit back to who’d sent it. And it was him, Jake. I don’t think he expected me to be aware of his assault.”
“He hit me, too. Only I didn’t have the skills to trace the probe back to him. If he can read minds, that’s not good.”
“No,” Delia breathed unhappily, “it isn’t. Could he be another time traveler?”
“From where? And who sent him?”
“Beats me. This is more Professor Carswell’s territory, not ours.”
“Maybe I should go over to the scribe and find out.”
Grimacing, Delia said, “Let’s not stir up things we don’t have a clue about, Jake. I think we’d better stick to our plan to steal that fragment from the temple and get the hell out of Dodge.”
Moving his shoulders to rid himself of the accumulating tension, Jake saw Servilia try to kiss Caesar. When he gently separated himself from her, the Roman matron looked hurt and angry. “No matter the age, love is hell,” he whispered to Delia.
Giving a sigh, she said, “There’s nothing easy about love. Servilia had been so looking forward to seeing Caesar tonight. I know she wanted to try and patch things up between them.” She felt badly for the older woman.
“Impossible, when a beautiful twenty-one-year-old Egyptian queen has given him something he’s wanted forever—a son,” Jake said drily. “There’s no way he’s going to trade his young mistress for this fifty-year-old woman.”
“Love can happen no matter what your age,” Delia said, giving him a dirty look. “Older women are too often discarded in favor of younger flesh. Maybe they don’t possess the physical beauty they once had, but they have maturity, wisdom and an internal beauty that makes their auras shine.”
“Your argument isn’t lost on me,” Jake answered in a seductive whisper. “Look at you. You’re not an eighteen-year-old. You’re reaching the end of your twenties, and you’re still beautiful and powerful.”
Swayed by his teasing, Delia tried to ignore the heat that smoldered in Jake’s eyes for her. “Just another of your lines. I’m twenty-eight and I’ve earned every bit of smarts and maturity I have. I don’t want a man who’s always pining over young bodies, like Caesar here.”
Jake wanted to reach out and touch Delia’s shoulder, but couldn’t. They were on detail as sentinels. Any fond or personal gestures would not be appropriate. “I happen to pine for just one woman.”
Again Delia snorted. “Give me a break. You’d say anything to get me into bed again.”
Jake sighed. “That’s not always true, but we can’t really discuss it now. How about later when the banquet ends? You and me in your apartment with a glass of wine?”
“I’ll think about it.”
Undeterred, Jake laughed softly, being careful not to interrupt the escalating drama out on the balcony. “You’re right, we need to focus on our mission.”
Just then, Delia heard a rustle and saw a movement beyond the balcony, in the darkness beyond the braziers. Jake noticed them, too. Both stepped forward, raising their shields and drawing their swords.
Julius Caesar was talking passionately with Servilia, who was standing at arm’s length from him, sobbing. He was so deeply engrossed in speaking to his mistress that he didn’t notice anything else.
Jake moved to the curved marble balcony and confronted the two of them. “There’s someone out there, Emperor. We suggest you retire within while we find out what is going on.”
Servilia blinked, and he could see the kohl around her eyes had run as a result of her tears. Julius gripped her arm, spun her around and quickly led her inside. “I’ll send my Praetorians,” he snapped over his shoulder.
Delia and Jake were already over the balcony and landing on the soft soil. The rustling continued, coming closer. Delia’s heart pounded with sudden terror as she saw five men appear out of the darkness, from behind the thick shrubbery. They were dressed like the robbers who’d attacked Servilia on the Via Appia. Who was sending these men to assault Servilia? Cleopatra? Caesar himself?
“Jake?” Delia whispered, lifting her sword and pointing to the right, where three of the five men were closing in, their swords drawn.
“Got it,” he rasped.
Instantly, both she and Jake moved, keeping a few feet apart as they rushed toward the enemy. Delia saw that the two men on her left were well-equipped mercenaries. There was nothing ragtag about this group of interlopers. Their armor was unfamiliar, but well-maintained. What mattered most was that they were running toward them, swords uplifted, with the intent to kill.
As she anchored herself to take a blow from a short man with fierce black eyes and a beard, she realized that the man wanted to dispense with them quickly. They were here to kill Caesar! That thought slammed into her psychic senses as sharply as the blow to her shield.
Thrusting forward with her sword, Delia forced the soldier to yelp and leap aside. Holding the round shield in place on her left arm, she struck out with her blade again and again, deflecting the hacking blows the thug rained down upon her. Then Delia caught his incoming blade and, with a twist of her wrist, knocked it from his grasp. Lunging forward, she jammed her own sword home. The point of her blade found a slit in his metal armor across his chest. She felt it sinking deep until her forward motion was stopped as her metal struck bone.
With a cry, the man staggered back, his eyes wide with surprise. Delia jerked her sword free.
To her right, Jake had taken on three men. The fifth, the companion to the one she’d just taken down, gave a cry of rage and charged her.
She had no time to think, only react. Lifting her shield as he hurtled at her, Delia was thrown off her feet. The man was like a small bear, his weight superior to hers. Slamming into the ground, her breath knoc
ked out of her, she smelled his garlic-laden breath, looked into his narrowed, murderous eyes and saw him lift his sword to cut off her head.
Twisting aside, Delia rolled, then jumped to her feet without her shield. The man howled in rage and followed her. Their swords clanged together. He charged her again. Delia stepped aside and again twisted her wrist. The man had seen what happened to his friend when she’d initiated that maneuver, and he leaped back so she couldn’t impale him, too.
Her opponent was a skilled swordsman. Delia was breathing heavily, but so was he. She heard a scream of pain to her right. Shooting a quick glance in that direction, she saw Jake kill the second of the three men who had attacked him. It was at that moment her enemy struck. Delia felt the hot, stinging slice of his blade across her right thigh. Blood ran from the opened wound. Damn! She lunged once more, knowing if she didn’t finish off her attacker quickly, she would weaken and he’d kill her.
With a feinting action, Delia sent her blade low, toward the man’s abdomen. He parried it. As he did so, she shifted her sword beneath his and thrust it into his left shoulder. The man gave a startled cry and fell backward, arms flailing.
Yanking her weapon free, Delia turned swiftly to see Jake dispatching his third attacker. She was breathing hard, explosive gasps that turned to clouds of white mist in the cold evening air as she quickly backed off. Staring fixedly at the wounded man who lay on the ground groaning, his hand pressed to his bleeding shoulder, Delia heard Praetorian guards, the elite of the Roman army, whose only job was to protect Caesar, come running into the garden. They would take care of those who survived.
Grimly, Delia allowed the captain of the guard, a grizzled veteran of many campaigns, to take over. She saw Jake’s eyes widen as he looked at her.
“I’m okay,” she told him as he reached her side. She sheathed the blade in the scabbard at her side. “It’s a flesh wound.”
Gripping Delia’s arm, he supported her, helping her to keep her weight off that bleeding leg. “Let me get you back to your apartment. We can take care of it there and see how bad it really is.”
Unable to fight the concern in his voice, she allowed him to wrap his arm around her waist, then leaned on him for support as she limped down the hall. Behind them, she could hear the uproar from the guards, the excited hubbub the attack had created.
Turning her focus on her leg as they approached their apartments, Delia rasped, “Damn, I hope this isn’t anything to write home about, Jake.” All she needed right now was a serious injury. If it was bad, she’d have to press her armband and have Professor Carswell transport her back to the present to be operated on.
Keeping his panic under control, Jake shoved open Delia’s apartment door and quickly helped her to a nearby chair. Closing the door, he discarded his armor and then leaned down and pushed back her bloodied tunic. The light from the braziers wasn’t great, but it was all they had.
Kneeling down, his hands settling gently upon her wounded leg, Jake studied the bleeding cut. It was a clean, ten-inch-long slice and his heart thundered with fear.
Fear that Delia could die.
Chapter 10
“L ucky for us that we’ve got this pouchful of twenty-first century goodies,” Delia muttered as Jake quickly cleaned the blood from the cut on her thigh.
Leaning down, he took soap and washed the area thoroughly. They put on latex gloves to prevent further infection. “Get the needle and thread out of the pouch, and start popping antibiotics.”
“Right,” Delia said, feeling the burning sensation as he cleaned her wound. She was aware that before penicillin was discovered, most soldiers would have died of infection after being wounded in a sword fight. It was almost a guarantee. She opened the packet of antibiotics and gratefully swallowed one. Jake handed her a wooden cup with water so she could wash it down.
They worked quietly, like the good team they were. “Glad that slash is horizontal across my thigh,” Delia murmured at last.
Nodding, Jake washed his hands with soap and water. “Yeah, it will be easier to heal up. If it was vertical, even with stitches, it might rip open when you did any kind of even moderate exercise.”
“I should have seen that bastard’s ploy,” she muttered, realizing with regret that she was now a liability to the mission.
Jake dried his hands and knelt in front of her. “Stop being hard on yourself. Considering the odds, we did damn good.”
She handed him the surgical needle and sterile thread. One of the many things Professor Carswell had discovered on these time jumps was how essential it was to have a few first-aid items sent along. That way, if an individual got injured or sick, he or she could remain in place and not have to return for medical treatment, thereby scrubbing the mission. And there was no way Delia wanted to leave this mission now. Jake needed her.
But she couldn’t become a liability, either.
“Give me the lidocaine,” he told her. The packet’s contents would be drizzled into the wound to numb it so that Delia wouldn’t feel anything as he sewed it up. Jake guessed it would take at least fifteen stitches to close it, and that would be no fun for her without the painkiller.
“Thanks,” he said, and quickly applied the anesthetic. The bleeding had stopped, leaving an ugly-looking cut.
“How bad do you think it is?” Delia asked, eyeing her thigh. Jake was a paramedic and had more advanced medical training than she did.
“The blade didn’t reach your muscles,” he told her, threading the needle and then placing his hand on her bare thigh. “Once I get this sewed up and you’re on antibiotics, we’ll have to make sure we keep a tight dressing around your leg. That will allow it to close up and prevent it from splitting open again.”
Pursing her lips, Delia felt the warmth of his hand on her thigh. He was all business, his dark brows drawn down in a V, his mouth thinned as he focused. All the same, she couldn’t help being aware of his nearness, his touch. She remembered being explored by Jake. An incredible lover, he had made her body sing with pleasure so excruciatingly beautiful that Delia had sometimes felt faint from it. Drawing in a deep breath now, she closed her eyes.
“This might hurt a little,” he murmured apologetically as he began to stitch the wound. “That lidocaine will take the pain away, but there’s still going to be some sensation.”
Without thinking, Delia placed her hand on his broad shoulder. She felt the tension of his muscles beneath her palm. The realization that they could have died minutes ago in the melee was just now beginning to dawn upon her. Contact with Jake comforted her and she started to calm down. She knew she must be in a mild state of shock.
“Good, just hold on to me,” he murmured, bending close to her thigh in order to see what he was doing.
“You were always good to cling to in a storm,” Delia admitted with a sigh. She wasn’t going to tell Jake just how good it felt to touch him now.
He laughed softly as he continued stitching. “And you aren’t? Do you know how many times, after coming off a bad mission in Afghanistan, I looked forward to being with you? I needed you, Delia. It meant so much to feel your arms around me….”
Shocked at the reply, Delia frowned. “Why didn’t you ever tell me that, Jake?”
He gave a careful shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe because I’m not an open book like you yet.”
“Why now?” she asked in a low voice. Delia saw the expression on his face, the way he narrowed his eyes as he methodically continued his doctoring.
“I thought you were dying out there. I thought…” he looked up and met her gaze “…I’d never see you again. I just couldn’t…wouldn’t…let that happen. It scared the hell out of me, Del.”
Nodding, she watched as he dipped his head again and finished up sewing. “I see….” Well, did she really? Her heart was in turmoil. On top of that, Delia was having an adrenaline letdown from nearly dying in a sword fight.
Struggling to gather her thoughts, she said, “By any chance did you get to read t
he minds of any of those attackers? Who were they? Who sent them?”
Jake placed a dressing across the finely stitched wound, pleased with his efforts. Once that was in place, he dug into his pouch and retrieved a roll of gauze and some tape. Carefully, he wrapped the gauze around Delia’s firm thigh four times before knotting it, then taping it in place. “Yes, I got some stuff,” he admitted. At one time he would have slid his hand up her long, curved leg and begun to arouse Delia. To hear her moan and sigh with pleasure sent him spiraling on a high that made him feel as if he were in Nirvana. Instead, he pulled her bunched tunic down and gently smoothed the fabric.
Delia removed her hand from his shoulder. He rose in one fluid motion, his face once more encased in shadows because of the poor lighting in the room. “What did you get?”
Washing his hands in a fresh bowl of cool water, he said, “Queen Cleopatra hired them. The last thoughts one guy I killed had was that the gold she’d paid him was on its way to his family in Greece.”
Whistling softly, Delia slowly stood up and tested her leg. It felt solid and there was little pain. Jake had done a good job. She knew she’d have to be careful the next several days or the wound could split open again. But they didn’t have days. “Wow, that’s explosive. I wonder if Caesar will have the survivor tortured enough that he’ll squeal?”
Drying his hands, Jake said, “I don’t know. If they were the queen’s guards, they won’t fess up no matter what’s done to them.”
Shivering, Delia walked slowly and gingerly, continuing to test her leg. The lidocaine was still at work. When the anesthetic wore off, there would be pain and she’d take some of the aspirin to offset it. “But what if he does talk, Jake? That will sure put Caesar at odds with Cleopatra, won’t it?”
Jake watched her slowly move around the apartment. There was more color in her cheeks than before. Was it because they’d been touching? Jake didn’t know, but wished it was the reason. “Yes, it would. But we can’t be a part of that drama. We need to get to the temple, find that fragment and get the hell out of this time zone.”
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