by Allie Burton
X stood still. He hadn’t joined the fight. Maybe his training had been a false brag. Maybe he didn’t want to get his hands dirty. Maybe he wanted to watch which way I ran.
With my gaze on X, I grabbed the backpack. He moved forward and then stopped.
A thought struck like a bolt of lightning. I wanted to thunk myself on the head. The gold gloves on the goons must do something to weaken my touch. But X didn’t have a gold glove. He couldn’t touch me. And he knew it.
A smirk bloomed on my face. I didn’t need to fear X. X needed to fear me.
Xander continued to fight the two goons. He must’ve figured out the gold glove connection before me. The two goons worked together because they had him backing up and away. Two against one wasn’t fair. I wasn’t sure how long he could keep up the resistance.
One problem at a time. I stepped toward X.
His eyes bulged out of his bony sockets. His skeletal face paled. He took a step back and made to turn and run.
I pounced. Just a slight slap to his back.
X hit the pavement. I touched him again. Not for pleasure, just to make sure he stayed down.
Then, I turned and analyzed Xander’s situation. If I touched the men anywhere but their covered hands would they get zapped? Or did just wearing the gloves protect them from any place I touched?
Only one way to find out.
Scooting around, I tried staying out of the way of Xander’s swinging arms and not be noticed by the goons. One man flew past and I ducked. His body hit the ground. I bent down and touched his shoulder.
The goon grabbed my wrist. The gold mesh dug into my skin. Guess I had my answer. The gold glove protected his entire body. Just touching him wasn’t going to do anything.
I kicked him in the groin instead.
Screaming in pain, the goon let go of my wrist. His body curled into a fetal position. I grabbed a ceramic flower pot from a nearby mailbox and brought it down on his head. Goon One was down for the count.
I picked up a second ceramic pot and moved toward Xander. He kick-boxed with Goon Two. Sweat poured from Xander’s face. Exhaustion showed on his bright red cheeks. But his efforts proved he had more fight in him.
I signaled to move the fight my way. He nodded and maneuvered the second goon toward me. I jumped on a small retaining wall. When Goon Two got within arm’s length, I brought the second pot down on his head.
Goon Two looked stunned for a second, but it didn’t stop him. He swung around toward me.
“Aaaak!” I jumped off the retaining wall and into a colorful flowerbed on the front lawn.
Xander used Goon Two’s pursuit to give a final one-two punch. The second goon fell to the ground.
“Nice job.” I wiped the grime off my hands.
“You, too.” Xander’s winning smile sent a zap through me, warming my insides.
Sirens sounded in the distance. Looking around, I noticed a couple of house lights on.
My celebration ended. “Looks like we woke up the neighbors.” I noticed house lights flooding the streets like a spotlight. “And alerted the cops.”
“Let’s run.”
We were still running ten minutes later. Well, Xander was running. I was kind of half-jogging-half-walking-really-fast. The backpack on his shoulders bounced. I hoped shaking the oils didn’t cause a chemical reaction.
“Come on.” He turned his head to plead with me.
“I’m coming.” I panted a few feet behind him.
“We have to get away from here. From the cops and X.” A pained expression crossed his face.
Besides his initial waver when X had told him the truth about their upbringing, Xander had fought with resiliency. He must feel awful about being one of many Xanders in the Society’s history. He’d been raised to believe he was the one and only, when really he was one in hundreds.
“Do you think X knows how to stop the burnout?” My voice rose with a tremble.
“Why would the Society cut X off then?” Xander slowed down so I could catch up with him. His smooth gait showed what excellent shape he was in.
While I was not.
“They cut you off.” I grabbed my waist where a cramp formed but kept jogging. When this was over, I planned to start a workout routine. Maybe Xander could be my trainer. Our imagined sweat sessions sent warmth pooling in my belly.
By now we were several blocks away and in a section of town with a few office buildings and small shops and restaurants.
“Can we slow down?” Short sprints I could handle, but I didn’t want to be a marathon runner.
As we passed a small office courtyard, he dashed in between the open iron gates. “In here.”
“What’re you doing?”
“I hear something.”
X and his goons? The cops? My heart pulsed. Even with my superior hearing, I hadn’t heard them. “What?”
I followed him into the courtyard that opened to small businesses like law firms and accounting agencies. Plants and flower pots decorated the small space. A tinkling sound greeted us.
Xander climbed over and into a short concrete fountain. The water sprayed and dripped from a series of sculptures. He held open his arms. “Water.”
“Thirsty?” I arched a questioning brow.
“No.” He held his arms wider.
The pounding of my heart halted and then picked up its pace. A sweet sigh whispered through me. He’d stopped to touch me, to hold me in his arms, to kiss me. Warmth waved across my skin melting me from the inside out.
I glanced around making sure no one peeked out an office window or strolled past. No one was around in the middle of the night. I couldn’t believe he’d paused our mad dash across the city for this. But I was so glad he did. I hopped over the edge of the fountain watching as the water retreated around my legs. I went into his arms. There was no time to be shy or embarrassed or unsure. He’d promised he’d find water soon for us to have our second kiss and he had. It might not be perfect timing, but somehow with our crazy situation it felt right.
His arms enveloped me in a reassuring hug. His warmth surrounded me, made me feel his heat. Desire flared in his eyes.
He leaned into me in what felt like slow motion. His hand rose up and stroked my cheek. Tingles spread across my face as his finger trailed to my chin. His eyelids closed right before his lips caressed mine. My entire body sparked and caught fire, responding to his kiss. His mouth opened and I tasted his minty-ness. He cradled my neck in his hand as if I was something precious. I’d never felt special to anyone before. He increased the pressure on my mouth and my knees buckled. His arms held me upright. My heart swelled with feelings. With warmth. With longing.
Xander broke off the kiss. “Sorry we can’t do this longer.” His green eyes shimmered with simmering heat. “Now that those goons know some of our moves we’ll be at a disadvantage.” He held his hand to help me climb out of the fountain.
I slipped my hand in his and let his larger fingers wrap around mine. Let him help me get out of the water.
“How did you know to go for the two goons and not X?” Xander’s first move had surprised me.
He let go of my hand and climbed out of the fountain behind me. “X brought those two men along for muscle. Plus, they each wore one gold mesh glove.” Xander swung the backpack around to the other shoulder and shook his legs trying to get some of the water off the bottom of his jeans. “I thought that odd. And I’m thinking, and I might be wrong, that through gold like water, people can touch you.” He confirmed my earlier thought.
“They were going to grab me.”
“Right. So if I took care of them, X couldn’t grab you.”
A satisfied smiled spread on my face. “Instead, we stopped X.”
“Let’s read the next clue in the privacy of the courtyard.”
I took the vessel out of the backpack and sat down on the cold concrete with my back to the wall. “Flames die. Heat intensifies.”
Xander sat down beside me and held out his ha
nd. I dropped the vessel in it.
He opened the stopper and sniffed. “Myrh.”
“Like from the three kings?”
He shrugged. “The Society hid many of the vessels in tourist locations.” He took out the vessel we’d retrieved from the Nilometer in the ocean behind the mansion. “One vessel has led to the next, except for this one.” He held the vessel up to the single light in the courtyard. “We found it out of order and by accident.”
“San Francisco has a lot of tourist destinations.”
“The biggest one is the Golden Gate Bridge.” He handed me the vessel from the Nilometer. “Look at what this says again.”
“Gateway to gold. Lights behold.” The image of the red bridge formed in my mind. “Golden Gate Bridge, definitely.”
“If the Society planned for the host to pick these up in order, then they wanted to go to the Golden Gate Bridge last. Why?” He ran his fingers over the lines of the hieroglyphics.
At times, I’d felt like we were being led around by a string on the hunt for the oils, and yet X had used a tracking device. We hadn’t seen any Society member that Xander had recognized since the wharf. Hadn’t seen Jeb and I still wondered if he’d survived. “Maybe we should go to the Golden Gate Bridge first and pick up that oil. Throw them off our strategy.”
“What do you think this new vessel means?” Xander picked up our newest acquisition.
We’d been to the ocean, Transamerica Pyramid, the Wharf, Lombard Street. We needed to go to the Golden Gate Bridge. What other tourist spots are there and how did they relate to the oils? “There are seven total oils. What oils are we missing and what do they do?”
“Spikenard stimulates psychic powers.”
“With Tut in my head I think I’m psychic enough.” My lame joke went straight over Xander’s head.
His leg shook back and forth like someone with a nervous habit. Which I’d never seen him do before. “Then there’s…Fo-ti-tieng.” Redness stole up his cheeks. He stared at the ground and didn’t say anything else.
I angled my head. “And that does what?”
“Is it important what it does?” His curt tone told me more than his answer.
“The oil’s purpose relates to the locations where we’ve been finding them.”
Was the oil’s purpose that awful? Could it cause total destruction of the Earth? Could it end my powers and me?
He looked away from me. “It’s…It’s…”
Chapter Twenty-One
Olivia
I held my breath. Waiting to hear what horrible thing this Fo-ti-tieng could do. Waiting to see how a few ounces of an ancient oil could be so destructive, so terrible, to make the normally-confidant Xander stutter.
“It’s?” I prodded.
“A sexual stimulant.” His face blossomed a deeper red matching the Lombard Street bricks.
My face probably turned red, too. Heat infused inside my body and I squirmed. To think of our kiss, and what Tut and I had spoken about, and then this Fo-ti-tieng. The conclusions in my head caused hysterical laughter to bubble out. “Do you think it’s hidden in a brothel?”
“I. Don’t. Know.” Xander went back over to the fountain and splashed cold water on his face. “Don’t laugh.”
My insides squished. He was cute when embarrassed.
“I’m not laughing at you.” I covered my mouth with my hand. “I was imagining all sorts of dreadful, terrible things the oil could do.”
“I was thinking the Castro District.” Weird with his sheltered upbringing he’d heard of the famously flamboyant area of San Francisco.
I cleared the laughter from my voice. “Read the clue again.”
He huffed before reading the clue from the newest vessel. His brow furrowed in concentration, deciphering the hieroglyphics. “Flames die.” His husky voice read like it was romantic poetry. “Heat intensifies.” His still red cheeks lit his face and hair slid across his forehead.
After the confession and the kiss, the words intensified the heat inside me.
“What do you think?” His question surprised me.
A tourist destination in the city that has to do with heat and flame. I thought of the famous monument built like a fire hose. “This one is easy.”
“Figures for you it would be.” The sneer in his voice cut deep.
I jerked back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Obviously, you’ve had more,” he waved at the fountain we’d been kissing in only moments before, a moment I’d romanticized. His lips tightened as if trying to control his facial expression, “experience.”
Hurt sawed with each breath. I didn’t like the off-centered curve of his lips or the accusation in his eyes. Actually, it wasn’t an accusation. It was confirmation of what he believed to be true. About me.
“You’ve lived on the streets. Lived with this guy Fitch and a bunch of other kids.” Xander lifted his head and shot me a sharp look. “Are any of them teenage guys? Cause I know what guys want.”
A flame shot through me and I clamped my mouth shut. Last thing I needed was to have fire shooting from between my lips to signal X and the cops our location. Xander thought I was easy. He believed I’d been with other guys.
The combustible chemicals inside me exploded. I jumped to my feet so I could look directly at him. “For your information our kisses were my first and second.” I turned my back to him wanting to hide the wetness burning my eyes. “And the second kiss was our last.”
He had no right to think I was easy. I hadn’t said or done anything to give him that impression.
“Oh.” The word plopped between us like a single drop of rain.
Oh? That was all he said. Where was the I’m sorry? He should be down on his knees begging for forgiveness. That sounded more like Tut. In all the commotion, I’d kind of forgotten he was inside of me. That in itself was amazing.
Lest I interfere in your romance.
Romance? Heat flooded my face and smoke probably poured from my nostrils. Tut had witnessed and possibly felt both kisses between Xander and I. And now Tut knew my anger.
The first few kisses were important. A step on the relationship ladder. Not that we had a relationship if Xander thought I was easy. To heck with him.
Loss settled on my shoulders. Tut’s attitude wasn’t helping. I wished I could ask one of the other kids at Fitch’s for advice. I missed the noisy group, missed my bed, even missed Fitch and his gruffness. I might not trust him completely, but I was used to his presence.
But our quest was important. Too important to be halted because of a dumb fight. Just because our relationship was over before it started didn’t mean I’d quit. Or let him quit. “The other oil is hidden at Coit Tower.”
Xander got to his feet. “We’re closer to Coit Tower than Golden Gate Bridge.”
“Let’s go there first.” My feelings flattened. I didn’t have time to stay angry or to feel homesick. “But the tower is closed at night.”
“We’ll scout around the outside tonight and if we find nothing, rest until morning.”
How could I rest with harsh thoughts of Xander tumbling around inside my brain?
After a twenty-minute walk, and a slow climb up several sets of stairs to the park surrounding Coit Tower, Xander and I paused to look at the amazing view. The lights from the city dazzled. The Transamerica Pyramid where we’d visited together was visible through the fog. So was Pier 39, Fisherman’s Wharf, and Aquatic Park where we had danced. Across the darkness of the bay, lights from Marin County twinkled. A beam of light swept across from the tower on Alcatraz Island. I wondered how those prisoners felt all those years ago with San Francisco within view but not within reach.
Kind of how things were going with Xander. I could see him, but I couldn’t touch him. Now, I didn’t want to.
Except, I did. The frustration seethed inside of me. It was as complex as my off again-on again conversation with Tut.
Shuffling his feet next to me, Xander stared hard at the view
as if trying to avoid looking at me. What would he think if I reached out to him? He’d probably think I played all the guys. That he wasn’t special to me. Is that the reason he couldn’t look at me? Because he didn’t believe what I’d told him and thought I was cheap.
Our kisses probably meant nothing to him, and he probably assumed they meant nothing to me. Which was best. I didn’t want him to know my true feelings. I was tough and resilient. Finding the oils was more important than my love life.
I forged ahead ignoring the tension between us. “Where should we start?”
We spent over an hour canvassing the area for a sign of where the oil might be, if it was even hidden outside the tower. Heavier fog moved in obliterating the city lights. The air had that heavy, dark-of-the-night feeling.
Finally, he said in a tired voice, “I’m exhausted.” He hadn’t napped at the park. “The vessel must be hidden inside the tower. We need to wait until Coit Tower opens.”
My feet dragged. I was hoping to finish this tonight. I wanted to go home and see Tina and Doug. I wanted to explain to Fitch what was happening so I didn’t have this shadow of fear following me. I just wanted to see something familiar. “We’re almost done and then I can go home.”
“I told you earlier, you can’t go home.” Xander sounded alert now. Sounded like he was dead set against me returning to Fitch.
Why?
It wasn’t because Xander cared as I’d earlier thought. If he cared, he wouldn’t think I was easy.
“Why not, all mighty and powerful pharaoh?” I bowed my head slightly. I might have Tut’s powers but Xander seemed to think he knew everything. “Once we find the oils, we don’t know what to do with them. Maybe Fitch can help.”
Of course, I’d have to convince him of the truth first. Maybe I could demonstrate my power—on him. A slight smile twisted on my face picturing the torture.
“How would Fitch help? From what you’ve said he’s a two-bit thief.” Xander shoved his hands on his hips. His eyebrows drew together.
