by Sue Wilder
“Lexi,” Arsen said. “What were you doing out here?”
“Walking.”
“Did you call him to come out here?”
“With what phone?”
Christan held up the cell phone he’d pried from her hand. An angry flush moved up her throat and he thought about licking her skin until the flush spread. Right. Here. In front of everyone.
“Robbie explained. Wallace gave me that phone a few minutes ago. I could hardly call if he was already here.”
“The man you were talking to is named Kace.”
“You must be confused.”
“We don’t misidentify our enemies.”
“Enemies.” The word was hard and Christan heard the accusation. Not the present-day accusation, but one much older, filled with bitterness and pain. Emotions she’d carried centuries ago.
Her posture had grown regal, her voice precise. “I was walking, not meeting anyone. As for who I met, I don’t care if you call him Abraham fucking Lincoln. I call him Wallace and I have no idea why he was out here today, nor do I care to explain anything when you can’t even be civil.” Lexi was looking at Arsen, Christan realized, not him, to whom she owed the explanation. And he heard the hesitation, as if there was more to the meeting than she admitted. Resentment was hot and heavy in his veins.
“I did not bring myself out here,” she continued, a fierce fire in the words. “You’re the ones who kidnapped me, probably drugged me, threw me down on the ground and left me there. And you’ve already admitted to the lies.”
“Lexi,” Arsen said, but she was defiant, lush in her feminine anger.
“This no longer matters, Arsen. I don’t know you. I’m not even sure if I really know Marge, and whatever happened here is your problem, not mine.”
She started to turn and Christan reached for her arm. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Lexi evaded him. “You don’t tell me what to do.”
He advanced and she retreated. Tremors slid through her, delicately fragile movements most obvious in her hands. The amber in her eyes was fading, or perhaps it was a trick of the sunlight. When she pressed the heel of her palm hard against her forehead, Christan wondered if she was remembering Kace—or the man she continued to call Wallace. Found it difficult to believe that she wasn’t. She pushed her fingers restlessly through her hair. The small gesture threw him back to the heat of an ancient sun. The sweet tang of wild oranges, the soft laughter when they made love in the shade. Centuries ago. He shut the images down.
“Where’s Marge?” There was exhaustion in her voice.
“Busy.”
“She should be here.”
“Marge can’t help you. Just tell us the truth.”
Lexi shifted her body to face him. Her eyes were unfocused, and Christan wondered if she was wandering through her own dark past, or his.
“I don’t know anyone named Kace.”
But she was lying, because she did know Kace and they both knew it. Moments ago, when Christan realized she was lost from view, he’d redirected the drone’s surveillance cameras. Arsen had been in the air. Robbie on the ground. They found her in the rocks, recognized who she was meeting—which shouldn’t have been surprising but was.
Arsen had warned against making assumptions, even though the scene was so familiar Christan saw it in his dreams. In a past lifetime, this woman stood in the center of a moon-shot road and conspired with his enemy. In this lifetime, she stood in the middle of a wilderness and did the same thing. The cold weight of anger pressed down his spine. He looked at her, wanting to see something else, but all he saw was Gemma.
“Do you believe you should not be held accountable?”
He felt the hard rasp of each word, deep in his throat. Deeper still. She looked guilty as sin and Christan thought about his enemy with his hand in her hair. Touching her face.
“I’ve done nothing.” Lexi dropped her hand to her side. It was the hand that still dripped blood. The hand with the single, stark memory line. “I don’t know you. I don’t remember any past lives with you.”
“I know you.”
“You don’t know me. You have never known me.”
The bitterness moved rough against his skin. Christan realized it was Lexi, staring at him now, and not Gemma. Lexi, who withdrew behind an emotional wall too thick for him to penetrate. And he wanted her to remember who she was. Who he was. Why they were so destructive together.
The demand was viciously unrelenting. He reached out, touched her. The contact was familiar. He should have known. He dragged a blunt finger over her cheek, slid along her jawline, then up to the corner of her mouth. Pressed inside, drew moisture out and would have rubbed it against her lower lip if she hadn’t twisted away.
“Bastard.”
“Come up with something new.”
She hesitated, then said words so familiar because she’d said them to him before, centuries ago. “I hate you, Christan.”
He answered with familiar words of his own. “And it’s so easy to do.”
There was a beat, the hesitation before the guillotine descends. A memory. An ending, fading into an inevitable conclusion. Christan thought something broke inside, felt a pain swallowed into emptiness as he lifted his hand. Arsen’s red Hawaiian shirt became a blur as the warrior moved. A palm connected solidly against Christan’s shoulder.
“Don’t.”
“Shut up, Arsen.” The utter lack of emotion would have been chilling if Christan realized it was there.
“Do not do this,” Arsen repeated, while Robbie grew tense. “Give her a chance, Christan. Give yourself a chance.”
“Fuck that.” He’d made the decision when he’d watched Kace touch her face. This woman had betrayed herself. If she wanted to be free of him, he would accommodate her, if only to see what she would do.
Energy coalesced into a one word and Christan slammed it into her mind. The force was stunning and totally unnecessary. With a second burst of telepathic power he pushed past her psychic defenses. Satisfaction curled like hot blood in his throat and he watched what was happening. Knew the magic was forming into alien symbols of red and black and bronze. Paper-dry whispers would assault her and the swirling images would settle like living things as the magic took hold. It was perhaps the most unreasonably reckless thing Christan had ever done in his long, long life and he didn’t care.
Robbie pushed a hand through his hair. Arsen’s jaw clenched until the muscle bunched.
Lexi sank down onto the ground and pressed her forehead to her knees.
Christan looked at her, then turned and walked away.
CHAPTER 8
Lexi couldn’t recall how everyone got back to the Range Rover. She’d tried to retrace her steps on her own, wanting to get to the clearing without asking for help. She planned on walking without looking back, just leaving them all behind, but became disoriented. And her head hurt so much her vision blurred.
It had been Robbie who found her sitting on the ground. She’d been pressing the heels of both hands hard against her eyes. He held her bleeding hand in his for a moment, carefully checked her head—where the wound still bled from when Wallace had thrown her into the rocks. Then he asked if she was strong enough to walk. Lexi said she was, hating the way she felt like a lost child as he led her down the path. Her earth sense had abandoned her as well as everyone else.
When they reached the clearing, there had been a lot of “what the hell just happened?” and “Lexi, please get into the car,” to which Lexi had responded badly. No one would tell her anything and for several minutes she stood mutinously in place, looking for some other avenue of escape. She didn’t want to be around any of them, not now. Perhaps not ever.
It was Marge who finally put a hand on Lexi’s arm. Marge, who told her that, for the moment, she had no other options. Marge had alternated between anger toward Christan and sympathy for Lexi, but in the end, Lexi thought the anger won out—her anger and not necessarily Marge’s, although on th
e drive to wherever they were going, Lexi doubted that assessment as well.
Dusk had descended and only a few trees were visible before the landscape lost itself in deep shadow. Lexi sat in the back of the heavy vehicle while Marge sat in front with Robbie driving. Arsen and Christan had disappeared. Lexi felt the pulsing sensations in her mind from whatever Christan had done, and her hand hurt. She cradled it within a makeshift ice pack, made with towels, not that the cold helped. Her migraine had moved to her nape where blood was sticky in her hair. She hadn’t wrapped her mind around Wallace being Kace, whom they knew and hated. And there was probably a lot more to Marge’s story than she’d revealed.
The Range Rover bounced along the dirt track, rocking occasionally. Headlights speared a faded world of olive-grey. The drone of the engine was monotonous and Lexi drifted. She tried see the lesson in this experience, guessed it went beyond the idea of change, which most people accepted at face value, thinking change was an unending upward curve. They’d find a better job, move into a nicer house. No one wanted to think about the change that dragged you somewhere else.
But that was the nature of change. To disrupt. Destroy.
Something screamed in the distance, a wild animal sound. Bear, cougar, coyotes lived in this wilderness, along with all their prey animals. The headlights of the Range Rover slanted as Robbie turned off the track and pulled behind a high ridge. What looked like an abandoned homesteader’s cabin came into view.
The moon had risen, full enough to see in the dark. The air was cool, fresh with the hint of moisture that only gathered at night. They trundled out of the car and up the steps to the homestead door, solid and looking new. Robbie held it open for Marge, held it for Lexi, too. Lexi’s smile was tense. She appreciated the courtesy but sensed Robbie’s distance. None of them knew what to do with her now that they’d exposed their secrets and thought she had some of her own.
Walking ahead, Robbie flipped the light switches, and it was clear this wasn’t an abandoned homestead. Stainless steel and black granite glittered in the kitchen. A fireplace made of river rock dominated a cozy living area. The dining table was large enough to seat up to twelve, but Lexi didn’t stop to count the chairs.
“Sit down,” Marge said. Robbie went back to the car, returning with bags of groceries which he sorted and put into the refrigerator. Marge busied herself, filling a bowl with warm water and collecting medical supplies before sitting at the table.
“I’m sorry you were hurt today,” the woman said. “We’ll sort through a few things first, and then you can shower and get the dirt out of your hair. Would you like tea?”
“Will it have arsenic in it?”
Marge waited until Lexi had settled in the chair. Then, she dipped a cloth into the warm water and washed the blood from Lexi’s hand. A heavy silence filled the room before Marge spoke.
“I realize you’re angry, Lexi. But what happened today could affect a lot of people I love and care about, including you, and I have to ask—why did you go to Montana?”
“What does Montana have to do with anything?”
Marge didn’t answer. Lexi glanced around the now empty kitchen and said, “Wallace contacted me. He needed an immediate location for a retreat since the one he had planned had fallen through. There was only one location to research and I needed to leave immediately—I think I mentioned that to you. I spent three days wandering around the wilderness and then I returned. The area was awkward for what he wanted and I told him so.”
“Did you know him before he contacted you?”
“No.”
“Did you know he was out there today?”
“I think I’ve been clear about that.”
Marge rubbed antiseptic into a cut, and Lexi tried not to flinch. “What were you talking about in the rocks?”
“I wasn’t doing much talking, Marge.”
“Kace must have said something,” the woman persisted.
Lexi hesitated, working through her disorganized thoughts. “Wallace asked if I liked it when Arsen shifted and I realized what he was. He never told me his other name. We talked about the dreams. He wanted me to remember something about Christan, said there was a reason I should be afraid, that he was trying to help me. And then he threw the phone and told me to call if I wanted to chat.”
“Why didn’t you tell this to Christan when he asked you?”
“I don’t recall him asking.”
Lexi pulled her hand from Marge’s grasp and wrapped both arms around her waist. She doubted she would sleep that night; she didn’t want to dream. The longing to go home was overwhelming.
After a long, long moment the woman spoke again.
“I’m going to trust you with information. Am I right to trust you?”
It hurt that Marge needed to ask, but trust was such a fragile thing, and it had been broken for both of them. Lexi nodded, not willing to speak.
Slowly, Marge reached out and reclaimed Lexi’s hand. She continued to clean away the dirt, explaining how, when Christan was forced from the Void, he’d been weak and disoriented. Three had returned him to Montana, thinking he’d be protected there. It took five minutes to explain the effects of long exposure in that place between space and matter. How vulnerable Christan had been before Arsen found him. Finally, as Marge attached a small bandage to an oozing cut, she mentioned the curious fact that Lexi had been wandering around within a half-mile from Christan’s location. Because Kace had sent her there.
“Why?” Lexi demanded.
“To draw Christan out, attack while he was still weak,” Marge said as she took the medical supplies to the sink “And considering those facts, perhaps you can understand why the meeting in the rocks today erupted as it did, with all three of you being in close proximity again.”
The woman was removing two white mugs from a cupboard and filling them with steaming peppermint tea. She pointed out how Christan was not over the effects of the Void. Lexi looked up and said very deliberately that she didn’t give a damn about how brutal the Void was, she would not forgive Christan even when Marge asked if she would. No one had been reasonable, other than Robbie. But Marge was looking uncomfortable as she returned to the table, and Lexi had to ask.
“There’s more to this, isn’t there?”
“I’m ashamed to admit it, but yes.” Marge handed Lexi a mug of tea and sipped at her own. “Arsen knew about you six months ago. He asked if I would move to Rock Cove after your grandmother died.”
Lexi left the tea untouched. “You were spying for him?”
“I know you don’t believe me, but I was your friend first. I became your therapist because I wanted to help you. Our friendship was genuine, at least on my end, and I don’t want that to change.”
“You’ll understand if I don’t feel the same.”
“We all regret what happened today. But three girls are dead in what is considered an act of war. There wasn’t time to tell you gently.”
Lexi looked toward the kitchen window. The night was black beyond the glass. “How did they die?”
“Arsen didn’t share the details, only that immortals have an utter lack of conscience for their actions. Kace is an Enforcer, pledged to the Calata member known as Six. If Kace was operating under orders, then you were very lucky in those rocks today.”
“He knew Robbie was there, didn’t he?”
“He knew someone was there, and he didn’t want to take the chance it was Arsen. And especially not Christan.”
“Would Robbie have been able to kill him?”
“No. Not in his current state. I’ve weakened him through my vanity.” There were more victims than Lexi realized. Marge sipped her tea. After a moment, Lexi reached for her own mug. In the kitchen, a clock ticked away the seconds in soft reproof.
“How long have you and Robbie been together?”
“In this lifetime, it’s been five years. In other lifetimes, we weren’t as lucky.”
“Did he leave you?”
“Often
. I accept that it wasn’t his choice.”
“None of them had a choice, is that what you’re saying?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. Christan was obligated more than the others because of who he is—Three’s Enforcer. All the members on the Calata demanded his presence, and they weren’t friendly about it. He was required to leave often and he would be gone longer.”
Something hard and heavy was unfurling and Lexi remembered it. Felt hands that knew what they were doing. Saw him with blood all over his body. She reached for the tea knowing that her hand was unsteady and it wasn’t due to exhaustion.
“I’d rather talk about Arsen.”
Marge sighed. “Arsen is Christan’s second.”
“Which means?”
“They’re more than friends, they’re like brothers. And Arsen assumes an Christan's responsibilities in his absence—Arsen is powerful enough to be an enforcer if he wanted the job, but he doesn’t. Once Arsen picked up on your bond energy, he kept dropping in to Rock Cove. Warriors can sense who a girl’s mate is, and Arsen is particularly good at it. When he told Christan about you, well, Christan came to see for himself.”
“The disastrous meeting in my office.”
“Yes.”
Lexi chewed on her lower lip. “I’m not clear on this sensing aspect.”
“Each female has an extension of her warrior’s energy. It’s an essence—I’ve described it as a silver thread, leading the warrior to his mate when she enters a new lifetime. With billions of people in the world today, this is the primary way they have of identifying us, since we don’t always look the same in each reincarnation.”
“What other ways do they have?”
“The color of our eyes stays the same, and the first letter of our name. I’ve always had a name starting with M. Your eternal name starts with G.” Gabrielle. Galaxy. What other names were there?
“You said I was bound to an Agreement.”
“You are, and whether Christan bound you to that Agreement without telling you, or you did it knowingly, there wasn’t time for debate. The warriors had to swear allegiance to a Calata that was on the verge of killing their mates.” Marge paused. “They gave up a vital part of themselves so that we would be safe.”
