by Sue Wilder
“The warriors have tattoos,” Marge said. “I hear itching is a mild reaction.”
Lexi remembered the lines that shifted beneath bronze male skin, pagan and alive. She stared at her hand, resisted the tingling of ants squirming, not sure if she could live with such an exotic form of punishment long term.
She rubbed her thumb against the mark and watched while Marge moved around the kitchen. A glass of orange juice was placed on the table, followed by a plate of toast. Lexi accepted the mothering; it was what surrogate mothers did and Marge got more out of the nurturing than Lexi did.
Except, now Marge had Robbie to nurture. For a long moment, Lexi listened to the faint hum of the refrigerator filling the silence. “Where is everyone?”
“They thought it would be easier if they weren’t here.”
Lexi stared out the window, listening to nothing, then said, “Why didn’t you tell me about Robbie?”
“I didn’t want to keep him secret.”
But tears still pricked. Lexi reached for the mug of coffee. She’d noticed the way Marge’s hair flowed around her shoulders, loose and slightly tangled as if she’d been in a lover’s arms. A place near Lexi’s heart began to ache.
“Will you tell me about him?” she asked after a moment.
“Where should I start?”
“How did he find you?”
“Oh, that.” Marge sat down and sipped her coffee.
“Yes, that,” Lexi teased gently.
“Well, it started with boob lights.”
“Kinky.”
“In a way.” But Marge was smiling. “I was struggling with the dreams, so I went back to an old therapy mentor to talk about them. I’d already researched dream theory, even past life regression, but I wasn’t finding any credible information. I thought it might be a psychological condition.”
“I’m sorry, Marge.” Lexi leaned forward, lightly touched Marge’s hand. “I wish I’d known.”
“And if we’d been friends then,” Marge said, “I would have confided.”
“So, what did your therapy-buddy have to say?”
“That I had early onset midlife-crises disease.”
Lexi sipped the coffee and asked, “Did he prescribe a red convertible and a lover half your age?”
“He suggested I break out of my rut.”
“How does breaking out of your rut involve boob lights?”
“In the usual way. I’m home, on my bed staring up at the ceiling, and wondering how my life had gotten rutted and how I could get out of it—not getting anywhere because I didn’t think my life was rutted. And I look up and see I have a boob light on my ceiling.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You know those half-dome ceiling light fixtures that are everywhere?”
“With the little gold knobs that you unscrew when you need to change a light bulb?”
“Exactly.” Marge flicked her hand. “Nipples, right? Boob lights. And once you see something like that, you can’t unsee it. Then I realized they were all over my house. But the worst was the pendent light in the kitchen.”
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes. A penis. There, above my dining table. My house was having more sex than I was and I had to do something about it.”
“Robbie?” Lexi suggested hopefully.
“A big box store.” Marge got up to refill their mugs with coffee. “And there I was, standing in the light fixture aisle trying to decide which one to pick when this hunky guy stops and we started talking about—”
“Lighting fixtures? My god, Marge, it was a midlife crisis.”
“Well I thought about an affair but he was too young—”
“Prude.”
“And then he offered to stop by and help with the ladder. Said he knew all about handling… light fixtures.”
Lexi gulped the coffee. Marge tried to look indignant as she stood with a spoon in one hand and a container of cream in the other. They were both skilled in the art of innuendo and it was a game they played, to see who could come up with the most outrageous response.
“Well… there was that whole electricity thing to consider,” Lexi suggested.
“I certainly didn’t want my wires crossed.”
“I’m sure not. He untangled them okay?”
“You are awful.” Marge conceded defeat. Then she laughed. “It took him a few tries before I’d let him kiss me.”
Lexi stared at the mug in her hands. “Why did Robbie wait so long to approach you?”
Marge sat down before answering. “He tried several times, once when I was in grad school, another time when I was too focused on my career to see anything else.” She pushed at the hair drifting closer to her eyes.
“Marge.” Lexi touched the older woman’s hand; she understood the pressure of career no matter what the reason.
“I was driven,” Marge admitted. “I understand why, now. Robbie is a healer, a gifted one although he would never tell you so. I had this compulsion to be one, too. I couldn’t acknowledge any other aspect of life until I reached this one goal. Because then I would be happy.” Marge looked up. “But it was him. I needed Robbie. I couldn’t be happy without him. He told me that we’ve always been healers, working together in several lifetimes. I think I was trying to get back to him.”
“He let you go.”
“No.” Marge shook her head gently. “He let me grow until I could see him again—see who he was. Once I did that everything fell into place.”
Lexi pulled her pony tail over her shoulder and played with the ends. “What about the whole symbiotic I-need-you-and-you-need-me thing?”
“There’s a work-around,” Marge clarified. “He gets fractions of what he needs just by remaining close. Said I didn’t need to see him or interact with him, all he had to do was watch me and it would be enough.”
“Convenient.” Lexi wondered why Christan hadn’t taken that route. It might have been easier if he’d kept his distance. Her analysis, though, was that it had become a compulsion. For both of them. Christan seemed as driven to confront her as she was to answer him, and she realized, now, that their interactions had origins in the past. A past that had never been resolved. For either of them.
It was the dark isolation in his eyes that got to her. The loneliness. He made her crazy with thoughts she didn’t want, provoked her into emotional exchanges she would never win. Not against someone so male, who knew the secrets from lives she couldn’t remember. Maybe she’d been crazy in one of her past lives and that was it. Because when he’d wrapped his arms around her waist and dragged her close, she’d been so vividly aware of his hard body her mind had disintegrated.
Desperate little needs had driven her to stab her fingers into his wrists. Not that she’d had any chance of hurting him. His hands were massive. His arms had flexed, the muscles jumping and those tattoos had looked alive. So much energy rolling off him like a storm raging. He’d been angry and demanding, and scary as hell, but she would have melted against him if he’d touched her with tenderness. Asked her, instead of attacking her and forcing that one word into her mind. Which made her truly pathetic considering everything that he’d done. The silence became uncomfortable. A faint, lonely breeze drifted through the windows.
“Life can seem pointless,” Marge said, as if reading Lexi’s expression. “But not if it helps you get to where you’re meant to be.”
“True.” Lexi conceded the argument that had become too painful, and Marge reached out, touched Lexi’s hand, the one with the memory lines.
“I liked my life before Robbie.”
“I liked mine,” Lexi agreed.
“But I wasn’t truly happy until that day when he asked to change out my boob lights.”
Lexi’s laugh turned into a snort. She tried to drink coffee and failed. And just like that, the tension bled out of the kitchen. Marge stood, disappeared into the living room and returned with a silver laptop in her hands. She placed it on the edge of the table. “Are you through with the toast?�
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Lexi nodded. “Is that mine?” she asked, indicating the electronics.
“Yes.” When Lexi rose to help with the dishes the older woman stood in her way. “I know you. Go do what you need to do.”
Wary, Lexi placed the glass she had been holding into the sink. “What is it you’re suggesting I need to do?”
“Research. You don’t accept things at face value. I told Arsen they could explain until they ran out of breath, but you would still need to find the evidence on your own.” Marge nodded toward the table. “He’s already coded in the password for their wi-fi and cleared it with his tech people.”
And someone was ready to follow her every keystroke, Lexi concluded. But the desire to open her computer was overwhelming. She sat down, pulled the laptop closer. When she lifted the lid, the familiar welcome screen—the one with the kittens—greeted her. She tapped in her password, waited with her fingers resting on the keys. Sucked in a deep breath before navigating to the email system.
It took her a few minutes to clear several days’ worth of emails. After working through the various business-related messages, Lexi sent replies to a few, and realized how many people wanted to sell her products she didn’t need. There were no personal messages. Ever.
She navigated to the second email account, the one she kept open after her grandmother died. She clicked on the connection, waited. After five minutes, she closed the screen. Marge curled her hands around Lexi’s shoulders, bent to press a kiss to the top of her head.
“Why do I keep hoping?” Lexi asked, her throat tight.
“Hope is hard to kill.”
It had been difficult, working through the financial details of her grandmother’s life. Lexi found the records she’d never known existed. Realized her grandmother sent checks every month to an active bank account. All those years, and never had her mother once responded. There was a new life in Nevada, a husband and two children—so children were not the issue, only the timing, and the fact that Lexi had resulted from a one-night stand filled with meaningless, unprotected sex.
But she’d hoped. Believed her mother would respond to the obituary. To the brief note Lexi included, regarding the checks that would no longer be deposited, since there was no money to fund them. Her grandmother’s retirement benefits had ended with her death.
There had been nothing. The slate wiped clean. And as Marge said, her life could no longer be a pity party because her deadbeat mother left her alone.
Lexi navigated away from the email accounts with efficiency. Searched various data banks. After thirty minutes, Marge leaned in. “You’re good, Lexi, but you won’t find anything.”
“Everyone leaves some kind of electronic footprint.”
“Not Arsen. And not the immortals. They’ve been operating beneath our notice for centuries.”
“There has to be something, some way they support themselves.”
“There are corporations he controls, and even if I gave you the names, all you’d find is the public information.”
“Arsen is that good?”
“His tech team is that good. If you want to know about what he does, you’ll need to ask him. He’ll probably tell you a little of it, but not all.”
“I thought he was a surfer boy.” Lexi leaned back in the chair, rubbed eyes gritty from a sleepless night and an email account that never received mail. “You said there were enemies.”
“An old war heating up between Three and Six.”
Marge walked back to the kitchen, turned on the water in the sink. Suds bubbled up, smelling like lemons. It was the homey, comforting normal Lexi rarely experienced.
“Do you know what it’s about?” Lexi asked.
“Power and murder, what else?”
Lexi leaned in and pulled up her favorite fringe sites. “There might be clues, odd things people notice and post to the paranormal blogs. Events I can string together with common elements. What should I know about Kace?”
“He’s been an enemy for a long time.” Marge was drying the dishes now, putting them in an upper cupboard. Lexi wondered why she kept her back turned. “He never found a human mate or developed human empathy, so he’s very much the immortal. Don’t trust him, Lexi.”
Lexi ignored the warning about trust and asked, “What makes someone an enforcer?”
“Enforcers earn the rank because of the powers they possess; that’s why they’re so terrifying. Kace belongs to Six the way Christan belongs to Three. And yes, immortals believe they own them, own all the warriors, because they created them.”
“Barbaric.”
“It’s what they are, Lexi. The immortal world runs parallel to ours, overlaps and interweaves, but it’s still separate. They have their own laws and customs. The hardest part for me was accepting that reality. I suspect it will be hard for you too.”
“Can I get rid of the thing Christan put in my head?”
“No. Once it’s done, it can’t be changed.”
“I’m starting to really hate him for doing it.” Something of an understatement, considering what the one word did, but Lexi didn’t want to fight with Marge about it.
“He’s immortal, Lexi, he thought the solution would satisfy you.”
A sharp pain pressed behind Lexi’s eyes. She felt unaccountably sad, then angry, and asked, “Did Robbie ever do that to you?”
Marge chucked. “Heavens no, I wouldn’t let him. I’d block any kind of mental influence if he ever tried.”
“I might have liked that,” Lexi said as she navigated through a series of blogs filled with vampire sightings on the Olympic Peninsula. “It might have been helpful, knowing how to stop the crazy immortal before he went ballistic.”
“What about those psychic energies you pull from the ground?” Marge asked, chuckling. “You told me you can shield yourself from the worst of it—can’t you use the same techniques?”
“They work with residual energy,” Lexi agreed, recalling how she learned to defend herself, or lose part of her sanity each time she dealt with the lingering violence and fear. “But they’re not strong enough to protect me from what Christan did.”
Marge turned and leaned against the granite counter, her hands resting on the edge. “Then ask Arsen,” she said after a moment. “A warrior won’t tell you how to defend against his own mind manipulation, but he’ll help you block someone else. Robbie would do it, but Arsen is stronger. It would serve Christan right. He can’t always have his way.”
“Does he do that a lot? Expect to get his way?”
“You should know.” Marge laughed. “And I mean that in a gentle way.”
Lexi gave up on the paranormal sites; there was another area of research she’d been avoiding. “Have you remembered your first life?”
“I think that’s the easiest life to remember.”
“Did you ever look for proof that it was real?”
“Of course.”
“And?”
“Do your research, Lexi. You won’t rest until you do.”
CHAPTER 11
Christan crouched near the top of the hill. The sun had crested the ridge and he could see the two figures emerging from the juniper trees crowding the canyon below. The men moved with stealth, but neither one was Kace; the man hadn’t waited around for a confrontation.
“Do you see them?” a voice asked telepathically.
Christan turned his head, pinpointing Arsen crouched on the hill to his left. “They’re heading your way.”
“Any sign of Kace?”
“Left mercenaries in his place. The labor pool must be drying up—these look out of their depth.”
Arsen laughed. Christan returned his gaze to the valley. The men below had moved into the sunlight where they stood, glancing cautiously around.
Christan was in his element. There were other enforcers in the service of the Calata, but none could quell insurrections as easily as he did. His appearance anywhere generated respect or fear—there was no ambiguity. Men had seen him fight
and legends had followed, but Christan cared little for legends. He valued other traits. Honor. Justice. Those who were loyal to him came to that loyalty by choice and would follow him anywhere. They were brothers. Loved and respected, a privilege earned through centuries of fighting back-to-back on bloody fields beneath an unforgiving sun. He’d taken blades for them as they had for him, and those they lost they would see again on the other side.
Theirs was a culture blending two species into one. Few outside their ranks understood what bound them—the human tendencies against the immortal influences, always at war. Human ideas like justice and compassion contributed to strength and power, but Christan’s immortal half saw the world from an analytical view. Cold, unfeeling. Empathy was a weakness that could lead to failure. That was the side that gained dominance in the Void. He’d expected the human traits to return, but now he wondered if the Void had irrevocably changed him.
Or perhaps yesterday had changed him.
Christan was honest enough to face his many faults. He was not virtuous—there’d been too much blood for virtue. But he thought of himself as just, and what he’d done bore little resemblance to justice. Once, he’d believed that to understand a man, it was necessary to strip away the veneer, get to the core of who he was, where there was neither good or evil, but truth… and what had been his truth yesterday? That he could touch her, feel her body as she struggled to get away and know an anger so strong he could hurt her and not think about it? No, that wasn’t why he’d watched the pain glitter like amber stones in her eyes and hadn’t cared.
Something had happened in those rocks. When Christan had redirected the drone. When he’d watched.
She was meeting with his oldest enemy and all he remembered was that one crystalline moment four centuries ago. Nothing more. Nothing less. Only the grace of her body when she stood in the middle of a moon-shot road that night and betrayed him. The same grace he saw yesterday when she stood in the rocks and that enemy touched her face, dragged his thumb against her cheek as if wiping away tears.
Christan’s one dominant, crushing thought was that, this time, he would decide how she freed herself from him. Not Kace. That was why he’d pushed that magic into her mind without remorse.
