by Amanda Quick
“That does not mean I intend to make a habit of inviting the proprietors of the firm to tea.”
“Mrs. Jones didn’t stay for tea.”
His brows rose. “Don’t tell me you invited her?”
“It seemed the polite thing to do.”
He shook his head in a resigned manner but he refrained from further comment on the subject.
“Fortunately, Mr. and Mrs. Jones are not here now,” he said. “There is only you and me and the lamp. Let us get on with this business.”
The words aroused old memories. Thirteen years ago Mr. Smith had said the same thing. Let us get on with this business. It was her intuition speaking tonight, she thought, warning her of danger. But, then, she already knew that what she and Griffin were about to attempt was very dangerous, indeed.
Griffin walked past her to the closed door. She heard the harsh rasp of iron-on-iron when he turned the key in the lock. There seemed to be an air of finality about the sound, a signal that there would be no turning back, the thought of which made her shiver and raised the hair on the nape of her neck. Dread? Fear? Foreboding? Whatever it was, there was no denying that it was tinged with excitement.
After all these years, she was about to discover the mysteries of the artifact that she had guarded for so long. A feverish surge of anticipation pulsed through her. She had been waiting for this moment, she thought. And this man.
She pushed that last thought aside. Tonight she must not be distracted. She had to concentrate solely on the work at hand. Griffin’s life and her own, not to mention their senses and their sanity, hung in the balance. Everything would depend on her ability to control her talent.
She set the journal on a nearby table.
“Please turn down the gas lamp,” she said. “I find it easier to focus on dreamlight when my senses are not too distracted by other forms of illumination.”
Griffin did as she asked, plunging the room into even deeper shadows. “What of the fire?”
“That will not be a problem,” she said.
Griffin crossed the short distance to the small table where the artifact stood.
“What now?” he asked.
“I have concluded after reading the journal that you were right when you deduced that there must be some physical contact between us in order to light the lamp and control the currents within it,” she said. She reached across the table. “Take my hand, sir.”
His fingers closed tightly around hers. Cautiously she put her free hand on the rim of the artifact, just above the crystals.
“Now touch the lamp with your other hand,” she said.
He did as she instructed.
“I told you, I can make the lamp glow a little,” she said, “but I am certain that only you can actually cause it to ignite.”
“How do I do that?”
“I think it will be an intuitive thing,” she said. “Start by opening your senses fully and feel your way into the pattern of the lamp’s wavelengths.”
“What will you do?”
“My task, as I understand it from the journal, is to make sure that the center holds. If the currents are not kept under firm control, they will become wild and chaotic. If that happens I doubt that we will survive.”
“It occurs to me that neither one of us knows what we are about here.”
“I had the same thought,” Adelaide said.
She also knew that neither of them was going to suggest that they halt the experiment.
Griffin looked down at the artifact, his alchemist’s face etched in the stark shadows cast by the fire. He said nothing but she felt energy pulse higher in the atmosphere. As yet his talent was unfocused so the extraordinary amount of dreamlight he generated crashed and roiled in harmless invisible waves in the space around them. The enthralling aura of his power threatened to further agitate her already aroused senses into a storm of sensual urgency. She struggled to control her response. She knew that Griffin was waging the same internal battle.
“It’s the lamp,” she informed him smoothly, as if she actually knew what she was talking about. “The energy it emits, even in the unlit state, appears to have a rather odd effect on our physical senses. Just ignore it.”
He looked at her over the rim of the artifact. For a few heartbeats she could not move, so unnerved was she by the heat in his eyes.
“I don’t know about you, but I find that ignoring these sensations is not an option,” he said. “So perhaps we had best move forward with all due speed.”
Entranced and compelled by the heat in his eyes, she could not breathe for a couple of heartbeats. She finally swallowed hard and took a grip on her nerves.
“Right,” she said. “Try to connect with the patterns the lamp produces.”
She knew immediately when he started to focus his energy in a deliberate fashion. Intuitively she did the same with her own talent, searching for a pattern in the paranormal storm that was trapped in the lamp. The power level in the room rose higher.
The artifact began to glow, faintly at first, but it soon brightened with the eerie hues of ultralight that came from the darkest end of the spectrum.
“Yes,” Griffin said. There was soft triumph in his voice. “Yes, I can sense it now.”
A shock of electricity seared Adelaide’s senses. She took a sharp, startled breath. Griffin’s hand clenched hers. She knew that the invisible lightning had jolted through him, as well. But the flash of dreamlight heat lasted less than a heartbeat. And then they were in the storm together.
She felt as if she were soaring on the currents of energy flooding the room. The sensation was intoxicating. On the other side of the table Griffin’s eyes burned. His hand was a manacle around hers, chaining her to him.
A paranormal fire roared inside the lamp, flaring and flashing in colors that came from the heart of the dreamscape world. Like the flames of an alchemist’s furnace they began to transform the artifact. The dull gold metal grew first opaque, then translucent and finally transparent. Adelaide stared at it, transfixed.
“It looks as if it is made of purest crystal,” she whispered.
“The stones,” Griffin said. “Look at them.”
The crystals set in the rim of the artifact lost their murky quality. All but one began to glow with an intense inner fire. Each radiated a different color from across the dreamlight spectrum: diamond white, amber yellow, peridot and emerald greens, ruby red and exotic violets.
A senses-dazzling rainbow of ultralight lanced out across the room, spearing the walls, flashing off the mirror and illuminating the portrait of Nicholas Winters. Something shifted at the edges of Adelaide’s vision. She realized that tendrils of her hair were floating in the air in response to the charged atmosphere.
She studied the currents produced by the artifact, noting the places here and there where the wavelengths did not resonate properly with Griffin’s own patterns. The radiation in the lamp was beyond anything she had ever experienced but it was, still in all, dreamlight energy. She suddenly knew intuitively that what was required was a little fine-tuning.
She set to work coaxing the improperly oscillating sections of the currents into patterns that resonated smoothly with those that Griffin generated. It was subtle, delicate work. Like tuning a piano, she thought, delighted with her own analogy. One just knew when one got it right.
Now certain of what she was about, she made the little adjustments quickly, never letting go of Griffin’s hand throughout the process. For his part he seemed unaware of what was happening. He stood very still, gazing at the lamp as though mesmerized.
An exultant sensation sizzled through her when she tuned the last of the slightly out-of-phase currents. Everything about the patterns, powerful though they were, felt right now. The music of the spheres, indeed, she thought. She started to tell Griffin that the task was completed and that he could shut down the lamp’s power.
The words never left her mouth. Energy exploded across the wavelengths that oscillated between Griff
in and the relic. Griffin uttered a choked, agonized groan. His eyes closed and his body shuddered violently in response to the hurricane reverberating between him and the lamp. His hand clutched hers, as though she was his lifeline in the storm.
The lamp was killing him, she thought, horrified. She had done this to him.
“Griffin,” she said. “Listen to me. You must make it stop. Only you can light the lamp and only you can shut it down. I can hold the pattern constant for you but you must dampen the waves. Do you understand? Do it now.”
He opened his eyes and looked at her through the tempest of shadows and raging dreamlight. Everything about him burned with power. There was something darkly sensual and utterly masculine in the energy that swept around her, imprisoning her.
“I understand,” he said. The words were low, fierce and exultant. “You are the lady of the lamp and you belong to me.”
“I think the lamp’s energy is affecting your other senses,” she said anxiously. “Try to stay focused here, Griffin.”
His smile was slow and deeply compelling. For an instant she thought all was lost. Then, to her overwhelming relief, she sensed that he was lowering his own level of power. Slowly, deliberately, he suppressed the crashing waves of dreamlight.
The ultralight rainbow winked out as the stones lost their inner fire. The lamp stopped glowing. Within seconds it was no longer transparent. It grew quickly opaque and, at last, solid and metallic once more.
But Griffin’s eyes were still lit with a fever. Adelaide watched him circle the table and come toward her, excitement flooding her senses.
When he pulled her into his arms she could no more have resisted him than she could have turned back the tides.
19
HE WAS BURNING HOTTER THAN THE LAMP AND ALL OF THE energy he possessed was focused on Adelaide. The need to imprint himself on her, to chain her to him in the most elemental way had been building inside him since that first moment of psychical recognition in the gallery of the museum. Now it demanded release and satisfaction. He had to have her or he would go mad.
“Adelaide,” he said. “Adelaide.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
He pulled her closer, crushing her against his chest with his good arm, and brought his mouth down on hers. Her arms went around his neck as though she was every bit as desperate to bind them together as he was.
He sensed that the fire of the kiss was flashing and sparking through both of them. Adelaide’s half-choked cry of passion was a siren’s song. When her mouth opened under his, he was lost.
He got the front of her gown unfastened and pushed the stiff bodice off her shoulders and down over her hips. Her skirts crumpled around her ankles. He untied the petticoat and let it fall to a frothy heap at her feet, leaving her clothed only in a thin chemise and a pair of dainty, low-heeled, black satin mules.
“I cannot wait,” he said against her throat.
“Your shoulder.”
“Has never felt better.”
Hands shaking with the force of his need, he yanked one of the folded blankets off the sofa, snapped it open and tossed it down onto the carpet in front of the fire. He pulled off his low boots, unfastened his trousers and opened his shirt.
“I have never needed anyone like this,” he said. He kicked free of his clothing. “It is as if a fever has come over me and only you can quench it.”
With a soft sigh she lay down on the blanket. He lowered himself beside her, pulled up the hem of her chemise and knelt between her legs. The scent of her arousal intoxicated his already inflamed senses. Her knees rose, inviting him closer. He leaned over her, bracing himself on his good arm.
She was so wet and hot and full that he could hardly breathe. He pushed himself deep into her body. She arched upward to meet him. He forced himself to retreat partway and then he surged back into her. Invisible flames burned higher in the room, threatening to consume him. He looked down at Adelaide’s face. Her eyes were squeezed shut against the tidal waves of energy sweeping between them, around them and through them.
“Adelaide, look at me,” he grated.
She raised her lashes partway. Her eyes glowed hot with a power that matched his own.
“Griffin,” she whispered.
The sound of his name on her lips unleashed the last of his control. He surged into her one more time. The climax slammed through his body and all of his senses, taking him beyond anything he had ever known. Adelaide convulsed beneath him.
“GriffiN,” she said again, breathless this time.
Together they flew into the center of the raging storm.
20
SHE SAT UP SLOWLY AND LOOKED DOWN AT GRIFFIN. HE SPRAWLED on his stomach on the blanket, his face turned away from the fire. He was sound asleep and he was dreaming, but she did not sense any nightmare energy.
Carefully she disentangled herself from his arms. Something of critical importance had occurred when she had completed the process of tuning the Burning Lamp. She had assumed that once the slight distortions in the oscillating rhythms had been corrected, Griffin’s dreamlight currents would return to whatever pattern was normal for him. But she was almost certain that that was not what had happened.
The key must be properly turned in the lock.
Good lord, what have I done?
She rose a little unsteadily, gathered up her clothing and dressed by the light of the dying fire. When she had refastened the bodice of the gown she took a deep breath and cautiously opened her senses.
Griffin’s dreamprints were everywhere in the room but it was the trail of footsteps leading from the table where the lamp sat to the blanket in front of the hearth that made her catch her breath. The luminous energy flaring in the prints was more ominous and more powerful than that which glowed in any of the other psychical tracks.
She knew then that she had not saved Griffin from the fate he feared. When he awoke he would discover that he was now a full-blown Cerberus.
She tried to ponder the implications but for some reason she could not concentrate. A rising tide of unease was rattling her senses. This was a fine time to get an attack of nerves, she thought. She needed to understand what had occurred when she had worked the lamp so that she could explain it to Griffin. Then again, how did one explain a situation like this? Sorry, but you are now officially a psychical monster according to Arcane’s definition.
Griffin stirred on the blanket. She flinched a little, startled, and turned quickly to look at him.
He folded his arms behind his head and contemplated her with the lazy satisfaction of a well-fed lion.
“You are so beautiful,” he said.
She flushed. She knew full well that she was no beauty, but the fact that he found her attractive was ridiculously pleasing. He made her feel beautiful just by the way he looked at her. Of course, once she explained that she had failed him, his views would no doubt undergo a sea change. She collected herself.
“Griffin, there is something I must explain to you,” she said. “It is rather complicated.”
He got to his feet and started to pull on his clothes.
“I do not know how to thank you,” he said.
“No need, really,” she said quickly. “The thing is—”
She broke off because he was walking toward her, fastening his trousers. He stopped directly in front of her, cradled her chin in one hand and tipped up her face for a staggeringly possessive kiss. When it was over, she had to remind herself to breathe.
“I know that what just happened between us was not the most romantic of encounters,” he said. “But I swear it will be different next time.”
She swallowed hard. “Next time? Well, as to that, sir—”
“Griffin.” His smile was slow and sensual.
“Griffin. Perhaps we should allow for the fact that what just occurred between us may have been the result of the radiation from the lamp. It seemed to have a very arousing effect on our senses.”
“Not a chance in hell of blaming
it on the lamp,” he said cheerfully. “I wanted you from the first moment I saw you. By the way, speaking of that damned artifact, you never told me how it came into your possession.”
She blinked, caught off stride. “I explained that I found it when I was fifteen.”
“Yes, you did say that.” He used his fingers to shove his hair back off his high forehead. “But where did you find it? It doesn’t seem to be the sort of object that one stumbles over in an antiquities shop.” He paused, glancing at the lamp. “Or is it?”
“Does it matter?” she asked.
“I don’t know. But I would like an answer.”
She drew herself up and straightened her shoulders. It had been inevitable that sooner or later he would ask.
“I found it in a brothel,” she said, daring him to leap to the obvious conclusion.
Startled disbelief lit his eyes. “What the devil were you doing in a whorehouse?”
She raised her chin. “I believe I mentioned that my parents died when I was fifteen. I received a rather large inheritance that was managed by my father’s solicitor. He and the money both vanished within two months.”
“And you wound up in a brothel?” he asked, his voice gentling.
She narrowed her eyes. “I assure you, I did not apply for a position in a house of prostitution.”
“I did not mean to imply that you went willingly.”
“I believe that the solicitor sold me to the brothel manager.”
“Son of a bitch,” Griffin said very, very softly.
“I thought I was being sent to a new boarding school,” she added.
Energy flashed in the atmosphere.
“I’ll kill every man who ever touched you in that place,” Griffin said without inflection.
Astonishment left her speechless. He meant it, she thought. She had always known that there was something very dangerous lurking beneath the surface in him, but this was the first time she had glimpsed the shark’s fin slicing through the dark waters.
An unfamiliar emotion swept over her. She had been on her own for so long, taking care of herself, relying on no one. It was difficult to believe that this man was willing to murder any number of gentlemen whom he did not even know in order to avenge her.