Gideon

by Jacquelyn Frank

  In effect, it was like lying to her. Even if she had not been able to empathize with his feelings, the way his eyes dilated slightly, accompanied by the spike in his pulse and blood pressure, would have given him away. Add to it the fact that she very easily could feel a strong anxiety lying beneath his fear, and Legna was certain of her perception.

  She took no offense that Noah was lying or hiding something in addition to the issues he had mentioned, because he had always felt that brotherly need to protect her no matter how old or how powerful she might become. He was well aware that she was more than strong enough to penetrate even his formidable attempts to shield his emotions from her. He was merely hoping that she would overlook this minor shadowing of the truth, out of her love for him. Or possibly out of his love for her.

  “Noah,” she said softly, her beautiful voice designed to soothe the minds and emotions of those she used it on.

  She reached out to touch her brother’s hair where it curled over his forehead, the contact helping her connect to the firing synapses of his brain where too many thoughts were crowding in his mind. She sent herself into him, her spirit and power coating him in a soothing sensation, toning down his fear for her safety, building up the stoic confidence in his ability to protect those he served that had been the norm five months ago.

  Noah let her comfort invade him, let her soothe him. He had resisted her attempts to do so in the recent past, feeling far too guilty for the danger she had been exposed to, to be willing to allow himself to feel better. He had wanted to be ridden by his fear and his guilt, hoping that somehow it would drive him to find the solution to their vulnerability to Summonings, a search that had been in progress almost as long as the Earth had existed. But all it had managed to do was exhaust him and fray his temper. He was ready now to be soothed, to be forgiven. He was ready for Legna’s absolution.

  “You are so much like Father,” she murmured softly, her voice threading through his soul like a powerful balm. “I was so young, but I never forgot how…how much larger than life he always seemed to me. So strong, so protective. I was never afraid when he was there. I know you say I was too little, but between both of our memories, I feel it with all of my soul.”

  Noah was so overwhelmed by the emotion she drew to the surface that he reached for her, dragged her into a tight hug that broadcast his gratitude. It was the perfect thing for her to say to him, and even though he knew such things were part of her special talents as a Demon who had mastered the inner workings of the Mind, he was happy for it nonetheless.

  “Legna,” he sighed feelingly, “how I wish Mother could see you, how beautiful you have become, how strong.”

  Legna’s eyes misted over with emotion, her arms hugging Noah as tightly as he held her. She had been too young to remember much of either of her parents, but she had always recalled their father more powerfully than their mother, who was but a ghost in her mind. Noah had known her for centuries, long enough to be able to fill Legna with stories of her. He had done equal service to their father as he had raised her after their father had been Summoned within the following year of their mother’s death. The Enforcer had been forced to destroy him in his Transformed state, but Noah had never once held Jacob liable for that painful necessity. As with many things that cut him far too deeply, though, Noah would not discuss either of their parents’ deaths.

  Demons were immortal, which mostly meant long lived. They were also quite difficult to kill, which added to an already extensive life span. So when Demons lost their siblings or parents or other family, it was usually to some great violence, and it left its mark on the sensitive souls of those left behind. Noah had always refused to tell Legna how her mother had died when Legna was little more than a toddler, and all other potential sources around her knew of his wishes and remained equally steadfast in their silence.

  She did, however, remember quite well the day her father had been Summoned by an accursed human necromancer. She knew Noah remembered it, too. It was no doubt why the trauma of last Samhain had marked him so heavily. She did not need to read his emotional memories of having watched her body dissolve into nothingness to know how that moment must have scarred him. It had scarred her as well. She would never forget the pain and terror of that instant for as long as she lived.

  But as she urged him to exchange memories of emotion using her empathic abilities—she of how she remembered their father, and carefully selecting and sharing what he held within him of their mother—they realized how very much like their parents they had become. It was comforting, healing, and uplifting to know.

  “You were Father’s angel,” he told her.

  “And you were Mother’s. I can feel in your heart how much she made you feel special.”

  “She swore the day I was born I would be King. Father used to laugh at her. What mother does not have the grandest dreams for her child?” Noah moved his head back to look down into his sister’s pretty face. “But I think she truly knew. I also think she knew she would not live to raise you. She made me swear to protect you above all else. At least once a week she would tell me how I must keep that promise.”

  “And you have,” Legna insisted. “I do not just say that to comfort you, so stop thinking it. It was you who saw the importance of Jacob’s connection to Isabella when she first arrived among us, even though she seemed nothing more than a human with only an honest wish to help us at the time. It was you who allowed her access to the library, skirting the outrage of the Council by doing so. Because of that access, she found the lost Demon prophecy. We discovered that Druid/human hybrids were in existence and were necessary for our survival as a species. Because of you, Jacob allowed himself to fall in love with her, to want to marry her.

  “Because of you, beloved brother, generously offering to join them in the ceremony yourself, I had my hands on her the night of the full moon those five months ago when I was Summoned. If not for that connection, Isabella would never have been dragged with me into the prison of the pentagram, allowing her powers to dampen its effect and prevent my transformation into a monster that Jacob would have been forced to hunt down and destroy.”

  “Do not,” he murmured, pulling her forehead to his lips, his desperation communicated through the hands that enfolded her head. “Do not speak of it. It shatters my soul to even think about it.”

  It would have destroyed him.

  Legna, his graceful, precious sister, caught in the dark, twisted magic of a pentagram that would have destroyed her beauty, her very soul, twisting her into a likeness of a demon humans would have expected to see. She would have become a monster who would have been hunted and destroyed in order to protect vulnerable humans and Demons alike. It would have been enough to embitter him for the rest of his life, and that was a frightening prospect for a man who ruled an entire species. He knew there was a huge difference between normal humans and the mortals from that species who dabbled in black arts and became necromancers, but if he had lost Magdelegna, he was not certain he would have been able to maintain the distinction.

  “But all has turned out well,” Legna insisted to him, squeezing his hands in comfort. “You must stop thinking such dark things, Noah, and live in the comfort of the moment. I am well,” she reiterated, giving him another little squeeze to make him absorb the impact of her statement.

  Noah nodded, smiling finally, his eyes lighting to a soft ash and jade color as he accepted her comfort.

  “Yes. You are well. And healthy.” He took her hands in his, spreading her arms wide and perusing her. “I wonder sometimes why no one has come to my door demanding to make you his mate. Perhaps it is because, like Bella and Jacob, it is a Druid who must win your heart and soul. The chance of you being matched in an Imprinting has suddenly become a tangible thing. An amazing thing. You can see it now for yourself, just as I saw it when Mother and Father were alive. No one who has ever spent time in Bella and Jacob’s presence could possibly ignore the miracle such love can be, how rewarding that deeply spiri
tual connection is. Jacob is a changed man. I have never seen him so happy or content, and Bella is glowing with love as well as her pregnancy. I find myself envious.”

  “I know.” Legna smiled softly at the mention of her new friend’s name and the good fortune Bella had found in her love for Jacob the Enforcer. “There has not been an Imprinting in our society in almost…well, frankly, I do not think I can remember when. I, for one, always used to think it was a fairy tale little girls were told. This was before I understood Mother and Father were Imprinted. I wish I had…I wish I could remember what you do. I wish I could remember the depths with which they loved one another. You make it sound so beautiful, and now that I watch Jacob and Isabella, how passionately they love, I wish it even more.”

  “Well,” Noah chuckled, “little boys were told these fairy tales as well, but I think we tended to concentrate on the part about it being the most outstanding sexual experience known to exist in the world.”

  “Noah!” Legna gave him a little shove as she scolded him. But she broke into giggles in spite of herself. “I think I might have thought about that once or twice myself. Take heart. Two Imprintings in a single week last October bodes well for you, my brother.”

  “One can only hope,” Noah said with a lecherous wink that compelled his sister to cluck her tongue at him and roll her eyes in exasperation.

  “You are incorrigible! And you wonder where your nieces and nephews get it from?”

  Noah laughed, shaking his head. He realized then that Legna had once more found a way to turn the conversation away from herself and onto something entirely different. It had been her habit for as long as he could remember. Legna never discussed herself, her empathic nature always urging her to put her needs and emotions aside in order to assist others.

  “Your point is well taken, sweet. I am beyond redemption and it is no wonder none will have me. In any event, I myself am far too busy to run around trying to find a Demon or Druid who suits me, no matter how tempting the rewards. Besides, all the courting nonsense, the emotions and sensitivity…We shall leave such things to the Enforcers. Simpering and sonnets suit them far better than they do me.”

  Legna elbowed her brother in the ribs as punishment for his irreverent referral to Jacob and Isabella. Before Isabella, Jacob had been a lonely man, his soul aching to be accepted and cared for to balance out the stigma of his position as the one who enforced the laws on his own kind. So used to being held in contempt, as a necessary evil, Jacob had only discovered true happiness the day he had literally caught his Isabella up in his arms. Noah liked to tease Jacob for being “ruined” and “besotted,” but Legna knew her brother was happy for the Enforcers. Happier still, now that they would provide an addition to their race within a year, the first child born of a Druid and Demon mating in over a millennium.

  Sometimes, though, Legna could not escape the feeling that Noah teased too brightly and tried too hard for wit with his disparagements of the Imprinting. She was an empath, she was his sister, and she had eyes in her head. Legna could see what he did not think she did, what he thought he guarded so carefully from her. She had seen the many times when the Enforcers were guests in their home, when Bella and Jacob sat with their dark heads bent together with so much love and sensuality of need for each other, and how gray-green eyes so like her own had watched them covetously.

  “Well, I for one would be well pleased to see you so ‘afflicted’ as Jacob is,” she teased with warm neutrality, giving him a classic smile of beautiful mischief. “But for now, you have reminded me of an appointment I am late for.” Legna stood on her toes to buss her brother on the cheek. “You look tired and ought to nap.”

  “I am not an old man in need of naps in the middle of the night,” Noah retorted indignantly. “The moon is only just come high.”

  “Suit yourself, Noah. It was only a suggestion. Forgive me for bruising your delicate ego.” She was mocking him, stepping several feet back and spreading her arms wide as she curtsied low and reverently, with all the grace she had earned through her Demon genetics. The next moment, with a flourish of a wrist, she exploded into a soft cloud of smoke and sulfur, teleporting away before Noah had any hope of retorting to her impish behavior.

  “Brat!” he shouted to the high ceilings after her, even though he was pretty certain she couldn’t hear him.

  He stepped toward the fireplace, starting a blaze within it with the merest whisper of thought, and sat down in his favorite chair.

  “A nap indeed,” he muttered under his breath. “I can give or take energy with the snap of a finger!” he announced proudly to the empty room. “I do not require sleep in the middle of the night like some babe. I will teach that girl a lesson in respect one of these days.”

  The thought was interrupted when he yawned ferociously. Catching himself doing so, he loosed a sheepish laugh. Glancing around quickly, sealing off his home with a few spare thoughts, he settled back deeper into his chair and allowed himself the luxury of closing his eyes.

  Chapter 2

  Isabella turned and looked over her shoulder when she felt the air pressure in the room change with a distinct pop. She instantly knew who her guest was, even before the smoke had cleared. Bella cried out happily, dropping her watering can onto the window shelf and flinging herself through the remaining mist of sulfur to hug her newly arrived friend.

  “Legna!”

  “Bella, it is so good to see you,” Legna greeted her happily, hugging the petite Druid carefully in order to avoid squashing her rounded belly. They were acting as though they had not seen each other in ages, rather than a week. It was probably because Bella was so happy to see another woman that she was projecting it enough to affect the sensitive empath. Sometimes Legna got swept up in others’ enthusiasms, and she did not mind. It was one of the better emotions to get caught up in.

  Isabella laughed, pulling back to look at her friend, tossing back her heavy head of pitch-black hair, the tresses gleaming like raven’s feathers as they immediately snaked down the length of the Druid’s spine. Isabella barely reached Legna’s shoulder, so petite compared to the empath, who was very close to being six feet tall. All Demons were tall. Bella often complained that talking to them gave her a crick in her neck, but Legna had noticed Bella’s neck never seemed to hurt when she had to reach for her mate’s kiss.

  “You are such a liar,” Bella accused without zeal. “I look like I am carrying a small basketball under my dress. I’m only five months pregnant and I’m already tired of waddling around.”

  “Well, far be it from me to remind you, but that baby is half Demon. Five months is only a little bit over first trimester, by Demon standards.”

  “Okay, just for reminding me of that, you are no longer my friend. Poof yourself out of here right this minute,” Isabella commanded, her hands on her hips in mock indignity as she glared at the beautiful woman across from her. Magdelegna chuckled, moving with her fluid grace in order to circle the little Druid’s shoulders with a comforting arm. “And,” Bella sighed wistfully as her arm circled Legna’s waist, “you have to go and have a perfect figure on top of it.”

  “Now, now,” Legna soothed and scolded her. “How is Jacob?” she asked, guiding Bella to a comfortable couch in a cozy conversation area near a beautiful window of stained glass picturing the wilds and wildlife of a forest. The empath felt the care that had gone into the piece, saw the detail, and it was all very breathtaking. Moonlight struck through it, sending silvered colors over them as they sat on couches close to but opposite one another.

  “Busy.” Isabella exhaled hard, trying to shove her heavy hair behind her ear with impatient fingers. “I should be helping him. I am supposed to be his partner. It says so in black and white…or…well, actually it’s kind of a grayish beige scroll with little red—” Bella gasped, then growled in frustration at herself because she had found a tangent. “The point is, I am destined by this wondrous lost Demon prophecy I discovered to be the one that changes all of Demon d
estiny by working at his side. Instead, I’m stuck here, sitting on the couch, watching and feeling everything that happens to him from a distance. It really bites.” Bella pulled up her legs, crossing them in a meditation position. “I’ll tell you this, if he gives me one more order with that W word again, I’m going to divorce him before we even finish the wedding.”

  “The W…? Okay, Bella, as usual you have lost me. W word?”

  “Yeah. W,…as in Wife. Ugh! He’s always saying or thinking things in this high and mighty way and tacking the word ‘wife’ onto the end like it’s some kind of password that lets him order me around.” Bella noted her friend’s still perplexed expression, so she screwed up her face, attitude, and voice into an uncanny approximation of Jacob. “‘I do not want you hunting in your condition, wife. It is too dangerous for you and the babe to accompany me, wife. I have told Elijah that there are to be no more training lessons until after the birth, and do not argue with me about this, wife, because my mind is set.’” Isabella sagged back with a frustrated sigh. “Oy! It’s just so obnoxious and so…high-handed! You know the honeymoon is over when you go from ‘my love,’ ‘my little flower,’ and ‘my heart’ and become simply ‘wife.’”

  Legna smothered the urge to chuckle. Her little friend’s famous sarcasm always tickled her, and it was meant to tickle. Bella had a way of hiding behind her wit and humor. She was stating things that clearly disturbed her, but she mocked them in such a way that anyone who did not know her would treat it as little more than a comedy routine.

  Legna knew her better.

  “Now, Bella, you know Jacob adores you. He naturally wants to protect you. He literally worships the ground you walk on.”

  “Ha ha,” Bella said dryly. “Earth Demon. Worship the ground. Cute. Really cute.”