The giant roared and fell to his knees as Docia twisted and twisted, forcing agony onto a creature she was sure could snap her in two with just a thought.
“Whatever I am, queen or no, you will show me respect, you oaf!”
Oaf? What the … ? Since when did she use a word like “oaf”?
“My apologies, mistress,” Asikri grunted out, making his kneeling position mean something as he bowed his head to her in acquiescence. Even when he was kneeling, his head came to nearly her shoulder line.
Impressive indeed.
Docia realized she was still holding his finger, and as if awakening from a half-numbed sleep, she comprehended she’d just committed an act of violence. She let go and jumped back, appalled, only to slam into the hard body of the other strange man in her house. Hands, large and strong, lean fingers cupping her rib cage on either side, steadied her. She felt his breath against her ear as he made a long, sibilant sound of comfort against the back of her half-shaved skull.
“Peace, my queen,” he said with that tone again, the one that made her feel like an easily spooked filly under the masterful touch of a man who could break her to his will with just the right amount of time and patience. “You know Asikri.”
No. She didn’t know Asikri. He knew that. She’d never met either of them, yet he spoke as if she should be long familiar with him. As though Ram were already a close and trusted friend.
“No, I don’t know him! Or you! Why are you here? Who are you?” she demanded, trying to turn but finding herself unable to with the way she was tucked into his body and held by his hands.
“You do,” he insisted softly. “And soon you will remember that. You will begin to remember who you are. But for now you must come with us. It is our duty to protect you, and we will do so at all costs.”
Docia watched the bigger man climb to his feet, those overlarge black eyes looking at her with a disgruntlement that was palpable. But she saw … she felt … there was a new edge of respect in his regard of her. Still, Jackson’s years of warnings welled up in her head.
“No way. If you’re going to kill me or something, you do it now. Here! I know what moving to a second location means for a female victim. I’ll be damned if I’m going to survive what I just did only to have you all rape and murder me in a cold ditch somewhere.” Well, that, and if she kept them long enough, Jackson might walk in on them. She had hope if she stayed right where she was. If she left … if she let them take her …
“We’re not here to hurt you,” Ram reassured her. “Look at him,” he urged her, making her look at the other stranger. “Do you think you would even be conscious right now if we meant harm?”
Her eyes climbed the massive wall of testosterone in front of her. The big bastard had the temerity to smirk at her, as if the idea of clocking her into unconsciousness had a great deal of merit in his book. He reached to pull his center finger back into place with a snap. The look in his dark eyes said she’d gotten the best of him only because he’d underestimated her and she’d taken him by surprise. He wouldn’t let it happen again. Not with her and, she had no doubt, never again with anyone else.
She swallowed loudly.
Great, Docia. Way to piss off the psychopathic killers. Now Jackson would be walking in the door at any minute and would be taken by surprise just like that. And although they were not hurting her at the present moment and didn’t seem intent on doing so … she couldn’t have the slightest bit of hope that they would be as gentle with a trained SWAT officer. Did Jackson even have his gun? She tried to remember if she’d seen it on his belt under his jacket before he’d gone off to the store. She knew there was a stun gun in the table by the door, as well as one in her bedside table, both gifts from her paranoid brother. Well …
Okay, sorry, Jackson. Maybe you weren’t being paranoid after all, she thought with a wince.
“I’ll go with you,” she said at last, the words falling from her in a resigned sigh. “But we better make it quick. My brother will be back soon. I don’t want anyone else hurt.”
“I appreciate your candor,” Ram said, slowly turning her to face him. He reached for her jacket and unzipped her out of it. He dropped it back off her shoulders, letting it fall to the floor. There was a peculiar sense of intimacy to the action, as if he were undressing her of something far closer to her body than just a jacket. The feel of his fingers and the way he stood with such strong surety before her made a knot clutch at the middle of her throat and made unsure heat burn over her skin. It was a painful idea, the thought that something that looked so gorgeous could possibly hurt her in the worst of ways. She had to put her faith, she realized, in the fact that he had saved her from one danger and did not mean to become yet another.
Then, as he pulled her toward the rear door of the house, she looked back at the old puffy coat and realized that it was streaked brightly with his blood and that he had most likely removed it so as not to draw any attention to them as they went out in public.
CHAPTER FOUR
Jackson plucked up a loaf of bread and a bag of powdered doughnuts, his sister’s favorites— the doughnuts, not the bread— and tore around the corner and into the next aisle. He had not liked leaving Docia alone. It went against his grain, and the more he thought about it, the more he wanted to get back to her fast. But it would be fifteen minutes until the Chinese food he had ordered would be ready, and she was completely out of food back at the house. Since she’d been hospitalized only a short while, that meant her fridge had already been in the sad state he had found it in, not to mention her pantry. He grumbled to himself under his breath at the complete lack of nutrition in her habits … and wondered if he should be promoting a continuation of that with the stupid doughnuts. But … she was all sad and fragile looking, and he simply did not have the heart to show up without the powdery confection that always seemed to make her smile, crackles of white sugar on her lips.
“Jack!”
Jackson tripped, mainly because someone stuck a foot in the path of his determined feet, almost nailing his chin on the bar of the shopping cart. He recovered and came to a stop so he could punch out the jackass on the other end of that foot.
“Whoa!” Leo Alvarez shot up a strong hand and caught Jackson’s fist just millimeters from his left cheekbone.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Jackson demanded, reaching with his opposite hand and shoving at Leo’s shoulder. They both knew Jackson would not have punched him. He was far too coolheaded for that. Well, usually, anyway.
“Just keeping you on your toes.” Leo smirked at him, dodging a second shove by moving out of Jackson’s immediate reach. “What are you doing? You look like you’re shopping on speed.” Leo picked up a box of cereal from the nearby shelf, examined it briefly as he spoke. “I haven’t heard a peep out of you for nearly a week. If I was the sensitive type, my feelings would be hurt.” Leo put the kid’s cereal full of colorful marshmallows in Jackson’s cart as Jackson pushed forward and tried to continue his shopping. He frowned at Leo, a wash of annoyance warring inside him with a nagging sensation of guilt.
“Docia was hurt,” Jackson said a bit sheepishly, knowing that of all the people in the world outside of his blood family and police friends and colleagues he should have called and told about the horrible incident, Leo ought to have been first on the list. That understanding crystallized as Leo suddenly stilled in the act of putting a box of granola bars in the cart. He was a good-sized man, easily beating out Jackson’s shoulder breadth and general height by several inches, and was built as though he spent a good deal of time in the gym. Jackson ought to know … they usually spent that time in the gym together. So when Leo went still like that, it tended to look ominous. Very … scary.
He and Leo were a little like oil and vinegar. They were good together for the most part, but all you had to do was look at them to see they were very different from each other. And not just because Leo was a font of dark, Latino good looks and Jackson was made from a sharper
cut of all-American cream cheese. Leo’s scruffy tendencies, with his medium-length black hair, semi-kempt goatee, and well-worn jeans and leather boots, were vastly different from the usually clean, almost military cut of Jackson’s hair and neatly shaven face. But now Leo was narrowing nearly black eyes on his friend in that way he had that made even big, powerful men take a few courteous steps back out of Leo’s way. He knew Leo was assessing him, registering the fact that he hadn’t shaved in several days, that he wasn’t turned out the way he usually was when he left the house, having opted for old jeans and a T-shirt because they had been fast and easy and he’d wanted to get back to Docia as quickly as possible. He supposed by this point, with her recovering so remarkably well, he should have relaxed a little. He should have gone back to work. But he couldn’t shake the memory of them telling him that his sister was dead, and damn them, they were just going to have to deal with it if he needed a few extra days to calm the fuck down and see to it she was well taken care of. They owed him at least that much. They owed it to themselves as well because he still wasn’t sure he wasn’t going to smack them around on sight.
But not telling Leo about it … that was a whole different can of worms. Funny, though, since Docia had been all over the news, lauded as some kind of miracle right there in their own hometown. How could Leo have missed that?
“What. Happened.” Leo dropped each word individually, his tone cold and brooking no other options other than to tell him exactly what he wanted to know.
Jackson gave him a quick rundown of events. He was succinct but detailed … at least, as detailed as he could be. Docia had not had very much to offer by way of information, and their investigations thus far had turned up next to nothing. All they really had was one very discombobulated witness, the make and model and color of one of the most popular purchases in the area, and scrapings of metal and paint on a patch of stone that had seen its share of scrapings and paint.
Jackson pushed on with his shopping, the urgency to get back to Docia still ticking hard in the back of his head. Leo fell into step, every so often grabbing something off a shelf and sticking it in Jackson’s cart. It shouldn’t have been funny, but Jackson had to suppress a smile. Even when his mind was busy digesting other disturbing details of life, there was a part of Leo that couldn’t stop being a wiseass, and loading up the cart with things he liked or that were so completely disgusting they ought not to be on a shelf for human consumption was as wise as it got. Jackson took a jar of pickled pig’s feet out of the cart and put it back on the shelf.
“I was out of town,” Leo said gruffly after a few minutes.
Ah. That explained it. Jackson also realized it was Leo’s version of an apology. He had nothing to apologize for. If anything, Jackson should be apologizing to him for leaving him out of the loop. Leo cared a great deal for Docia. “I should have called you,” Jackson said, letting his friend off the hook.
“Yes. You should have,” he barked at him suddenly. He turned a dark-eyed glare at him. “What the fuck, Jacks?”
“Sorry,” Jackson muttered, instantly contrite. “I was a little …” He shrugged and concentrated on pushing the cart a little faster. “They told me she was dead.”
Leo’s right brow lifted, such a familiar expression of surprise and sudden comprehension dawning that it soothed Jackson a little for having to say it out loud. It was the first time he’d spoken of it in nearly a week, of how they’d taken her away from him … and erroneously so. Though, to be fair, everyone said Docia had died. If not for the freezing cold temperature of the water … What was it the doctor had said? “You’re not dead until you’re warm and dead.”
And when he had seen Docia in the trauma bay, even he had believed there was no way she could survive what he was looking at. He too had lost faith in his sister and had thankfully been proven wrong. He would never make that mistake again. He would never give up on her again.
Leo gripped the rear of the cart, his knuckles turning white with the strength of it, a reflection of the icy hardness entering what should have been very warm, very dark eyes. In fact, Jackson had seen him shut off this hardness quite easily when he was doing the second thing he liked best … charming women.
The thing he did best was hurting humans that he felt, according to his personal code and morals, deserved it. Oil and vinegar. The cop and the mercenary. Well, Leo called himself “private security,” a problem solver. But if it walked like a badass and quacked like a badass, it was Leo.
“You want me to talk to some people?” Leo asked him.
The statement was fraught with danger. Leo’s version of talking to people was very different from Jackson’s acceptable ideas of talking to people. He liked Leo, and as long as they didn’t cross paths professionally, he was willing to live and let live and not ask too many questions. Not that he ever shut off being a cop. If Leo confessed to an inexcusable crime, they both knew Jackson would be on him like white on rice. So … they enjoyed a strange friendship that always walked the line of knowing each other better than anyone else did and yet … not.
“Information is always welcome,” Jackson said carefully. “But—”
“Relax, boy scout,” Leo scoffed, reaching out to cuff him hard on the side of the head. “I’ll try not to kill anyone in the process.”
“Leo,” Jackson said warningly.
Leo simply grinned at him, giving him a bright “What?” expression as he dropped a can of sardines in the cart.
“Sounds to me like the SPD hasn’t got shit,” Leo pointed out. “I know people who know people who are going to know more than that and they are going to want to talk to me far more than they will the rest of you boy scouts.”
“Probably because you scare the piss out of them,” Jackson muttered.
“Hey, you don’t wear a gun on one hip and a Taser on the other because you want people to think you’re not serious,” he pointed out.
Of course, Jackson had seen Leo use both a Taser and a gun on various occasions. The difference between them was that Leo was less apt to remember there were rules governing his behavior with either of those weapons. Still, Leo had a point. He always did. If he’d been a mindless thug, Jackson would have found it easy to section him off in his mind as a criminal and be done with him, but damn him, Leo was too clever for his own good. But when it came down to it, they both had jobs that threatened them with reasonably short expiration dates if they weren’t careful.
And when faced with Docia’s safety both imminently and in the past, he felt his usually staunch principles start to waver.
“Not one word,” Jackson warned after a minute, pointing a finger at him like some kind of kindergarten teacher. “Not so much as a peep about you breaking any laws in this information gathering of yours, Leo. I mean it.”
Leo smiled, his eyes gleaming with mischief and that warm, charming thing that won over so many of his female conquests.
“I promise,” he said, “you won’t hear a single peep.”
He turned and walked away, whistling brightly as he tossed a bag of candy over his shoulder, hitting the cart dead center, next to the cereal and the granola bars.
Ram didn’t know what to make of this fragile little bird that held his queen captive inside her. Her wounds and injuries were to be expected. It happened to all of them in one way or another, this weakening unto death. It was the only way they could come out of the Ether. It was the only way the Blending could be initiated. The only way each new life could begin.
But each of them chose that new life with increasing discrimination. Each to his or her own parameters, of course, but still … this would have been the last place he would have thought to look for the grand and sophisticated queen of them all and the mate of his king. But it wasn’t as though he had randomly found her out of the billions of humans in the world. It had been Cleo, their most powerful prophetess, who had guided him to Docia’s hometown and the general location of Menes’s future and past queen. His skills had led him the res
t of the way. That and the local news media. He knew all he had to do was look for a sensational tale of survival against the odds.…
Ram looked down at his hand, his fingers absently rubbing together at the tips, the ghosting sensation of having been burned still lingering near his nails. It had happened when he had touched her, reminding him of the long-ago sensation of touching hot desert sands or the feel of heavy brick that had been baked beneath the sun. Each time he had come in contact with her, it had seemed to grow stronger. It convinced him that she was indeed the vessel his queen had chosen. Though he’d never felt the sensation before, he could easily imagine that containing a presence as powerful as his queen was bound to throw off strange, residual energies.
It would simply take time for his queen to find her way to the surface, and in that time she would be vulnerable and swimming in a state of confusion. It would be his and Asikri’s duty to see to it that she remained safe during that process. Because as Cleo had pointed out before she had sent them to Saugerties, the only way they would be able to find their king would be to stick very close to their queen. If their king crossed from the Ether and into this world only to find that they, his loyal soldiers, had allowed his queen to slip back into the Ether for another century, there would be no consoling him.
And frankly, as loyal as he was, Ram had no desire to spend a hundred years bearing up under the wrath and pain of their king. Not after what had happened the last time they had failed him.
Ram grabbed at the steering wheel of the large SUV, trying to focus on the road. However, his attention once again drifted toward the delicate skull road-mapped with skillful stitchery and a few butterfly bandages to help reinforce the worst torn areas. They had thought little of her hair as they’d shorn it away, or the crowning glory it must have been before this tragic brush with what should have been her final death. But there were many deaths in the world to be had. The afterworld had not been ready for her, as it never was when it came to the shocking death of one too young to have a place at the table of Set. There had been a new purpose brought to her, one she was only beginning to discover.
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