Jordan

by Susan Kearney

  She covered the last ten yards quickly, and then he was pulling her through. Hugging her tightly, he kissed her dirty, tear-streaked face, realizing anew that she’d been terrified but she’d still kept going.

  He held her trembling shoulders and gazed tenderly into her eyes. “You made it. You did good.”

  She buried her head into his shoulder and shuddered. “I thought I was going to die in there.”

  “You were very brave.”

  “I was scared out of my mind. If you hadn’t talked me through it…” She clutched him so hard she cut off his circulation. “We still have to crawl out.”

  “Don’t think about that now.” He smoothed her hair from her forehead, wishing he could soothe her nerves as easily. He took her hand and led her over to the key. “Here it is.”

  A smile brightened her face. Placing her hand on the force field, she touched the glass. “So close… and yet so far.” She dragged in another breath, steadied herself, then looked to him. “How do we get to it?”

  “Arthur said it would take trust,” he reminded her. “It’s time for me to give you mine.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Stomach tightening, he gestured to a flat slab of rock and they both sat. “You have to remember that when the Tribes destroyed my world, I was not yet a fully grown man, not still a boy, either, but in that awkward age between. I had great powers, but little experience and no one to guide me.”

  She swigged from the water bottle, then capped it. “What does that have to do with the key?”

  “On Dominus we had a ritual when a man turned twenty-five. I was only twenty-one when the Tribes destroyed my world, so I wasn’t yet considered an adult. Which meant I was never told about the full ritual powers of the Ancient Staff.”

  “You learned on your own?” she guessed.

  He nodded. “But I’ve learned the hard way.” He sighed. “I always knew that the Staff supplied the power to dragonshape and to morph into an owl, but I didn’t know what would happen when I lost the Staff. I thought I would die.”

  Curiosity filled her eyes. “You told me the Tribe leader, Trendonis, stole your Staff, and that’s why you and Arthur failed to unite it with the Holy Grail.” Her brows furrowed. “But you never said anything about what happened to you.”

  “Without the Staff to feed me energy to morph, I could live only as an owl.” He stood and paced, his eyes fierce. “That’s why when Arthur’s cubes dampened our energy I had to leave you on the bridge to disengage the Staff. If I hadn’t, I would have been forced back into owl form.”

  “Why would Arthur do that to you?”

  “Those cubes were machines following their programming to bring us to Arcturus and Arthur. Machines don’t know about consequences to their actions unless their programmers—”

  “Point taken, but the cubes could have tried direct communication.” She frowned at him, her agile mind skipping along. “You didn’t want to tell me you need the Staff to stay human because I might take advantage of your weakness?”

  He nodded. “The last time someone knew what the Staff meant to my survival, they arranged to steal it. I was in owl form for fifteen hundred years.”

  “You spent all those centuries as an owl… God. I’m so sorry.” Her hand went to her mouth. “I don’t blame you for keeping that a secret.”

  “There’s more. My people believe the Staff is a life form. Our evolution is symbiotic with our Staff. It gives me power. I’m uncertain what I give it. Some of our people believe it may feed off of human emotions. But there’s a third factor. With the keys missing from the Staff for so long, the Staff might not be working at optimum. I don’t really know.”

  “Are you saying we may have come all this way to retrieve the keys for nothing? That the absence of the keys for so long may have damaged the Staff so it might not unite with the Grail?”

  He shrugged. “It seems fine. Supposedly those Keys are indestructible. Everything should work exactly as planned.” He couldn’t contain his frustration. “But there are things about the Staff I should know that I don’t. Like why it makes us pulse with lust. Like how it controls the elements of Earth, Space, and Wind.”

  “All this information is fascinating, but”—she glanced toward the glass dome—“how are we going to get that key? And can you read the writing on the force field?”

  “It’s written in my birth language. It says, ‘Blocked trust is the reason for blighted dreams.’ ”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “For us to succeed, we must trust each other. I’ve trusted you by revealing my weakness.” He spun and faced her, locking gazes. “Now it’s your turn. What have you been keeping from me?”

  The universe opens the door. You enter by yourself.

  —LADY OF THE LAKE

  26

  Stomach churning, Vivianne stared back at him and licked her lower lip. “You don’t even know if trust will bring down the force field.”

  “That’s true. I’m just following Arthur’s words. And interpreting the instructions there.” He gestured to the force field with the alien inscription.

  “If he wanted you to have the key, he should have just told you what to do.”

  “He did.” Jordan sounded so sure, but nothing was that simple. Not with men who’d lived for hundreds and hundreds of years. Not with the forces at work trying to destroy Earth.

  She yearned to trust him. But she had to think without letting her emotions come into play. Or did she? Vivianne often relied on her gut instincts in business. But Jordan was difficult to read.

  She hesitated. “You must realize I’ve always suspected you were one of the moles the government warned us about?”

  “I hate the Tribes as much as you do. They ruined Dominus, killed everyone I know.”

  Stolen the Staff and kept him trapped in an owl form for over a thousand years. It was a wonder he’d retained his sanity.

  “Surely you don’t still believe I’m a spy for the Tribes?”

  She could see the pain in his eyes, hear it in his voice. His shoulders stiffened, as if her lack of trust hurt him. Yet even as he tightened up, his voice remained calm and level. “The Tribes cannot dragonshape.”

  “So you say.” Frustration gnawed at her. “How do I know that you didn’t create Arthur, the Keys, this entire scenario, just to foil any chance Earth has to go after the Grail?”

  His voice turned harsh and cold. “Are you forgetting I designed almost every system on the Draco just to give us a chance to go after the Grail?”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” she kept her tone as soft and as nonconfrontational as possible. “But what better way to derail Earth than to subsidize our only hope, then ensure our failure?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Since then I’ve had many opportunities to take the Staff and leave you stranded.”

  He also would have left himself stranded.

  She hugged her legs to her chest. “Eventually, I would have found another way to power the Draco.”

  “Maybe, but by then Earth will fall to the Tribes.” He sighed. “Nothing I can say will convince you. But think of this—don’t you believe I could have arranged to sabotage the Draco and make certain that neither you nor my engineers ever saw Earth again, without blowing myself up along with you?”

  With his abilities, he had the knowledge to compromise any one of a dozen systems. But had he compromised her judgment? Had he somehow inserted those memories into her mind to sway her perceptions?

  Her lack of trust was hurting him. When it came down to it, words didn’t mean as much as actions. Jordan had saved her life several times. He’d saved the ship, and she sensed that if she didn’t give him her trust, she’d be burning her bridges with him.

  She’d come to care about him, more than she should. She didn’t want to trade barbs. She didn’t want to question why she was falling for him when they had no possible future together. She shouldn’t trust him. But deep down in her heart, she did. Possibl
y she always had—even after she’d learned how he’d lied to her on his employment application, she’d still trusted him on an instinctive level.

  Raising her head, she looked him straight in the eyes. “I have memories of yours, ones you haven’t shared with me.” She swallowed hard. “For a long time, I thought you might be planting false memories in my mind to get me to believe in you.”

  “I wouldn’t do that.” His eyes gleamed with a light she’d never seen before. Luminous, brilliant, they glittered a warmth she could feel across the cave. “In fact, the same things happened to me. I have memories of you buying a necklace for a birthday present for your mother.”

  Vi gasped. He was telling the truth. She’d never told anyone the painful story of that necklace. And if he was getting some of her memories, she wasn’t losing her mind—or her judgment. A weight lifted from her chest. “Why do we have some of each other’s memories? Is the Staff responsible?”

  “I thought the memories might be connected to lovemaking,” he admitted. “But one time, the memory came when we hadn’t done anything.”

  “I saw you as a boy. You wanted to win the prize of spending the summer at a special training camp. But you threw the race so a friend could win.”

  “I’d forgotten about that.” Jordan smiled an easy smile. “His father had never seen him race. He’d always been too busy working to make a living.”

  “So you lost so he could win with his father watching?” She leaned into him and placed a kiss on his mouth. “That was kind.”

  He wrapped his arms around her. “I have the memory of your parents’ deaths. I felt your pain. Your fear of being alone. By the Goddess, I don’t want you ever to feel that alone again.”

  “What else do you know?” She clung to him, raised her head, and locked gazes with him. It felt good to tell him her secret. Because now she felt as if she had an ally. Because the warmth in his eyes told her that he, too, had feelings he didn’t want to admit.

  “I saw you picking a lock to feed little children.”

  “And I saw your world destroyed,” she told him. “And I don’t want the same thing to happen to Earth. We have to stop the Tribes.”

  With a sizzle, the force field suddenly zapped with bright, bluish-white stars. She stared as the entire dome turned into a three-dimensional star field.

  Jordan stepped over to the glass.

  “Don’t touch it,” she murmured.

  He paid no attention, lifting the dome. The Staff also pulsed with the bluish stars, a spiraling aura, an alien energy field that suddenly surrounded Jordan. His expression turned inward as the field took hold of him, surrounding him in a brilliant blue vortex.

  The hair on the back of her neck raised. Everything inside her was shrieking at her to run. To get away from those devastating blue lights. Vivianne was practically jumping out of her skin.

  “Jordan!” she cried. “Where’s the off switch?”

  He didn’t appear to hear.

  A crackling sound caught her attention, the energy swirling faster as Jordan retrieved the Key of Soil. The shimmer shined so brightly she had to hold her hand up to block the light, and still she had to squint.

  “Jordan, talk to me,” she pleaded.

  But he didn’t say a word. Was the energy hostile and killing him? Or was he simply absorbing the energy?

  Vivianne had no idea what to do. Those hellish bluish glows looked ethereal, otherworldly. She didn’t have a clue how to make them go away.

  Jordan wasn’t moving. Not blinking.

  Backing away, holding her hand to her mouth, she stood dazed and uncertain.

  As quickly as the light had turned on, it faded.

  The light released its hold over him, and Jordan slumped to the cave’s floor, unconscious, the key and Staff dropping from his hands.

  Oh, God. Was he dead?

  She rushed over. His flesh was clammy, and when she opened one of his eyes, his pupil was dilated and didn’t react at all. Placing a finger to his neck, she felt for a pulse. Nothing.

  His hearts weren’t beating. His chest didn’t move up and down. He wasn’t breathing.

  Vivianne rolled him to his back, slammed her fist onto his hearts, and began to compress his chest. She pumped hard several times, tilted back his head, pinched his nose closed, and breathed into his mouth.

  “Come on, breathe, damn you, breathe.”

  For five minutes she performed CPR, the entire time tears streaming down her cheeks. So help her, if Arthur had sent them into a trap to die, she’d crawl out of this tunnel, find the bastard, and kill him herself.

  “Jordan, you can’t leave me.” She pumped his chest, her breath coming in gasps.

  And still he didn’t respond.

  She kept up the CPR until her arms ached and she grew light-headed from lack of air. Finally, she rocked back on her heels, the sudden loss sinking in. He wasn’t responding. There was nothing more to do.

  Jordan was gone.

  A sob broke from her chest. She’d always known she would eventually lose him, but she’d never thought it would be this soon. Or that her agony and outrage would leave her shaking and sickened.

  The cave grew dim. Without the Staff’s bright light, she would soon be left in total blackness.

  If she didn’t act, this cave might become her tomb.

  The idea of squeezing through that tunnel in total pitch blackness should have made her numb with fear. But the sorrow in her heart overwhelmed her. She was so weary. Somehow she had to summon the strength to shove to her feet.

  Jordan was dead, and if she didn’t crawl out, she’d die with him. But she couldn’t push to her feet, so she crawled over to Jordan to say a final goodbye.

  She brushed against the Staff and it rolled away. Instinctively, she grabbed it and placed it in Jordan’s hand, knowing the Staff was part of him and they belonged together for eternity.

  His face was so still. The stubble of his beard shadowed his jaw. With his eyes closed, he looked as if he slept.

  She prayed he’d find the peace he’d never had in life.

  Goodbye, my love, she thought, admitting the truth too late. She’d loved this man. She’d just been too stubborn to see it. After he’d told her they could have no future, she’d denied her feelings. But it had done no good. How many precious moments had she wasted fighting the obvious?

  Too damn many.

  She should have grabbed every opportunity they’d had. Now it was too late.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. Finally, forcing herself to stand, she staggered toward the tunnel and tripped over the Key of Soil. The key glowed with only the dimmest of light, and the Ancient Staff was pale, too; the objects were dying with Jordan.

  Bending, she scooped up the Key of Soil. Turning back, the key clutched in her hand, she snapped it into place at the bottom of the Ancient Staff. Then, hearts aching, she kissed Jordan on the mouth one final time. “Sleep in peace.”

  Feeling hollow and weary and discouraged, she turned and headed toward the tunnel.

  Don’t leave me.

  Was she hallucinating? Hearing things that couldn’t possibly be true?

  I’m still here.

  He was dead.

  Not anymore.

  She spun around to stare at Jordan and thought his pinky might have twitched. But his chest wasn’t moving. Without a heartbeat, without breath for the last ten minutes, he couldn’t be communicating with her telepathically.

  Hoping for a miracle, she returned to his side, leaned over his mouth, and listened for a breath. “Jordan?”

  Nothing.

  “Jordan.” She shook him. “I can hear you in my mind, like when we’re dragons and telepathic. What do you need me to do?”

  Take the Staff and insert it into the dome. She heard the words clearly in her mind.

  With a feeling of dawning wonder, she picked up the Staff. But she paused by the dome. Jordan’s touching that glass had caused those blue lights to envelop him. If she reached i
nside, would those blue stars attack her?

  I wouldn’t ask you to do something that would hurt you.

  She spun around to look at him. He hadn’t moved. He still didn’t appear to be breathing.

  Jordan was dead. She should be leaving—not reaching into the machine that had killed him.

  Vi. Please believe. It’s me. Warmth and gentle encouragement flooded her, and she felt bathed in his aura. But now that there was more of a reason to panic, she felt oddly calm. Because no one called her Vi. No one but Jordan.

  “How did you get into my head?” she asked.

  It’s a pretty complicated head, Vi. You have a beautiful mind. For once, it’s going to be all right.

  Nothing might ever be right again. Jordan had died, and she was losing her mind. The stress, the heartache were too much to bear. She should ignore the voice in her head and just get out of here.

  That would be a mistake.

  “A mistake?”

  For Earth.

  “Please,” she whispered. “Just tell me what’s going to happen if I place the Staff inside that dome.”

  I don’t know.

  “That thing killed you.”

  I’m not dead.

  She stared at his body. “You aren’t breathing. You don’t have a pulse.”

  She could feel amusement wafting along with his mental communication. Vi, you don’t talk to dead people, do you?

  With a shrug, she leaned over the dome. Inside was a housing similar to the one Jordan had built on the Draco. Holding her breath, expecting to be zapped by blue lights, she snapped the Staff into the housing.

  She stared hard at the domed glass. But although the Staff pulsed more brightly, those blue stars didn’t reappear. Slowly, she released a breath.

  At the rustle of a footstep behind her, the hair on her neck stood up. She was no longer alone.