Maybe she’d been wrong to bring him here. Maybe there was another way, another path she refused to see because of her own secret, selfish desires. She’d imagined what it would be like, having him this close, too many times to count. But that’s al it had been—a foly. In the flesh her Maximus was overwhelming. And headstrong. She hoped not too headstrong. It would make what came next far more difficult for him.
A cynical male voice interrupted her musings. “He is a guardian. From a species that is one of the first of the gods’
creations. And he is strong. Did you think he would be so easy to lul?”
“No, I suppose I didn’t.” She quickly drew the blanket she’d conjured for the warrior and tossed it over his hips. As if it mattered. Max could not see them. Could not see the marbled floor and high pilars of her home. Could not see that they were no longer alone. That they realy never had been. It was not as if she could hide anything from the new arrival anyway. She never could. “How long have you been here?”
“Long enough,” he snorted. “You asked him, but do you have any idea of the rules you’ve broken? So many I’m not sure what could happen. What the results could be. I can’t believe I agreed in a moment of weakness to help you. The possible ramifications of this are… Has it occurred to you that this decision might be the cause of—”
“It isn’t.” It couldn’t be. “I was meticulous.” She looked up at him over her shoulder and he lifted one perfect blond eyebrow. He didn’t seem convinced and, considering her own doubts mere moments before, she couldn’t say she blamed him.
After al this time she stil found him beautiful. He was like a beacon of flame, white-gold curls and pale skin shimmering over the lean muscle that wasn’t covered by his lightweight tunic. It was the visage he’d preferred for ages. Part of the reason was that he knew she liked him this way. Liked to watch his hair shimmer in the light and his silvery eyes glisten.
She couldn’t fault him for tailoring his appearance to suit her tastes. After al, hadn’t she appeared the way she did now for centuries because she’d noticed the slight darkening of Max’s eyes when he spotted certain women? Women with reddish tints to their hair and long-lashed eyes. Petite women with curving figures and ful lips.
She wondered if he would approve when he saw her or if
—after recent events—only one particular woman would do. A woman much taler and broader than his usual type. One who belonged to another.
How had he done this to her? She had been content with her lot, her task, until she’d seen the dark giant with his kind, bottomless eyes. Another Watcher. A guardian who stood so alone on the sidelines…so much like her.
But he wasn’t always alone. A faint trace of something tightened her stomach into knots at the thought of the god Shalem’s daughter Jesse. Her Igigi felt something for Jesse, had thought of the other woman even as she’d touched him. She wasn’t sure why, but she didn’t like that at al.
The man beside her gripped her arm and puled her up to her feet. He’d never touched her before, not like this. Aggressively.
But then, they had only begun to take solid form a few hundred years ago.
“You forget al we share, al I know about you.” He frowned. It wasn’t an expression their kind used often, so she knew he felt very strongly about what he was saying. So strongly it almost swayed her as he continued, “You are not alone either. But you do forget our purpose. This is not it. Lust and love. Regret and jealousy. None of those burdens are meant for us. Maybe the stubborn giant should be sent back to his own time and space. For everyone’s sake.”
She flinched. No. That couldn’t be the answer. She knew this was the right way. It had to be. “I have seen no other answer, not from gods nor men. This is the only way.” She removed his hand from her arm pointedly. “And you should shield your mind from our newest arrival’s influence. It is already affecting you.” He stepped back, startled and distracted from his interrogation. Good. Maybe now she wouldn’t have to think about what would happen if she was wrong.
Perhaps her warrior was rubbing off on her as wel, because she already knew that outcome. She would accept her punishment, even if it meant she would end up as their other companion had. If she faded into the mists and out of existence entirely. She would do anything to have this chance to talk to Maximus. To know him. To touch him again.
To give him the chance he deserved to protect his people.
She lowered her gaze, unwiling to accept his censure. “Let us be done with this for now. He must rest, if he is to heal and make the transition.”
“Heal? Or forget the world you ripped him from? Even if he agrees with the reasoning behind it, he may not forgive you for your actions.”
“I know it. As for the healing and forgetting, time may accomplish both. But either way, we’l need him on our side if we are to succeed in our goal.” She stared soberly into his shining face, knowing how difficult this was for him as wel. “The goal we both agreed was necessary to change what must not come to pass.” He shifted beside her, his frustration in that single, tense motion clear. “You don’t have to remind me, bright one. I’ve seen it too. It is the only reason I would ever agree to this. If he can adapt, we wil know his mind soon enough. I only hope you aren’t too disappointed in how your hero reacts to what we’ve witnessed.” She shivered. What they’d witnessed. Over and over again because they had been unable and unwiling to believe what they were seeing play out before their eyes. There were countless variables, a bilion threads weaving the same conclusion.
The end of them. The end of their existence.
The end of time.
CHAPTER TWO
How nice it would have been if Max could have woken to find himself on a comfortable bed, stretching with a smile as he recaled his disturbingly vivid fantasy. He would have loved to believe he’d been brought back to the Haven pub, the Trueblood sanctuary, to tend to the injury he’d received in the tunnel. Perhaps the priestess, Glynn Magriel herself, had given him a draught of something to cause him to sleep that deeply, to dream with such clarity.
But when he opened his eyes, he knew it was an empty hope.
“Great Mother.” His curse echoed in his aching head and he grimaced. Having his voice back was no consolation for the sight that greeted him.
This was not Haven. It was not the tunnel he’d woken in earlier, either. The sand scraping his arms as he lifted himself to a sitting position, and the uncomfortable feeling of the abrasive grains al along his backside, was a testament to that. He was in a desert, alone…and he was stil naked. Was this the same arid landscape he’d traveled through with Kit and Jesse for the trials? His theory that Baal had found a way to punish him for his part in the god’s imprisonment was gaining momentum. Though he did not remember the sand being this red.
“Perhaps I’m stil dreaming.” It was a slim hope, but one he was stil clinging to.
He thought about Lux and Regina, the two Sariels he knew that regularly went walking through dreams. Hadn’t they mentioned something about control? If he could imagine clothes, his sword, perhaps they would appear.
But it was hard to imagine his discomfort away. He stil retained the aches, the wound in his side, though he could see that the bandage had been removed, and it was healing swiftly. It was also hard to imagine anything but the hot, endless desert al around him. It al felt real. Too real, damn it. And hot as hel.
He looked up at the sky. That helped. There was no blue.
A sky that was trying desperately to be sky but unable to decide what form it should take. He saw the light, felt the heat of the sun, but it was strange. Not real then.
He had died.
Max opened his arms and shouted at the sky in frustration.
“Are you playing with me? I know you can hear me, woman.
Whoever or whatever you are, whether I’m dead or dreaming, can I at least have some dignity? A pair of pants, my boots and my sword. That’s al I ask.”
“No need to shout, son
of Elam,” a familiar voice muttered behind him, causing Max to whirl around. Silas Who Waits, the giant, old Cyclops he’d met in the desert during Kit’s great walk, held out a handful of black leather. Silas himself was wearing a leather vest and pants, seemingly unaffected by the heat, his one large eye looking everywhere but Max’s naked form. “Here. The bright one may want to watch you walk your path in the altogether, but I don’t. Put these on.”
He looked exactly as Max remembered. “Silas? But you’re
—“
“With the gods enjoying peace for the first time since the world was new?” His voice was tinged with sarcasm and a touch of sadness, his forehead deeply furrowed above his eye. “That was the plan, wasn’t it? After the end of the mahan calati, the great sacrifice required by Baal. After the end of the tests, Silas Who Waits was supposed to be free to see, or not, as he wished. To dwel at the Mother’s side, yes? Yes.”
Yes. At least, that was what the god of twilight had told his daughter, Jesse. And she’d told Max. “You were not alowed entrance?”
Silas shrugged one bulging shoulder while Max slid up his black leather pants and a pair of wel-worn boots gratefuly. They were his, what he’d been wearing before he was gutted.
“They let me in.” Silas studied the arid landscape around them. “This is where you come to, son of Elam? This place? Why not the Igigi homeland with its carved cliffs and halowed hals? Why not the green hils where you dwel as Sariel guard?” Max lowered his own brow in confusion. “Silas, I didn’t want to come here. I stil don’t bloody know where here is. You said they let you in. Is that where we are? In the domain of the Goddess?”
Silas laughed. “As if any of the gods would choose this place. Anyone, other than Baal, that is. But he was a twisted bastard of a deity and we both know it. I can only hope his punishment is a true one, and that he finds no pleasure in it.” Max wondered at Silas’ newfound clarity. He sounded…
sane. When last they’d met, Silas had been driven mad with his visions of death and darkness. With his part in Baal’s sadistic game.
He reached up to absently rub the scar on his chest. Baal’s mark of ownership was something that every Igigi was born with, and was proud to have physicaly removed from their body as soon as they could survive the process. The scar that remained was a reminder that, despite their origins, the Igigi had chosen to folow the Great Mother instead. According to the Goddess who protected them and al life on earth, they would never have to suffer his mark or offer themselves up as sacrifice to Her twisted son again.
Silas had also been punished in his own way and for far longer than Max had been alive. But he was free now. They al were.
Or so Max had believed. “Why is it no one wil give me a straight answer? She wouldn’t tel me, you won’t tel me. Maybe she lied and this is Hel after al.” He studied Silas. “I don’t suppose you have a weapon on you? A sword I could use?” The Cyclops snorted. “She, huh? She is more impatient than I imagined.” He shook his head. “Earth is our Hel, son of Elam. Or had you not figured that out yet? There should be no need for weapons here. But then, I don’t think they’ve ever let a warrior in before. It’s bound to have an effect on everything. Just to be safe, let’s start this walk. I’m hoping there’l be shade up ahead near the ruins.”
They began the slow walk through the shifting red sands and he saw it. The ruins of Baalbeck. Silas, this desert, it al fit.
He’d been right about their location then. Or what their location was supposed to represent. The endless desert where he had walked as the second of Kittim, who’d survived the trials of Baal and shared Jesse’s pleasure with him. It was also the first time Max had died.
“You are more complicated than I foresaw, son of Elam. I did not know this was your future when last we met.” Max grunted. “Max, Silas. Cal me Max. I would rather not think about the shame I brought to my father’s reputation with that last attack.”
“The Shadow Were who snuck up behind you?” Max nodded at Silas’ question, unsurprised that he knew, and the man patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. “You had no control over that outcome. If you hadn’t been taken, I’m certain you would have prevailed.”
“Taken.”
Silas muttered under his breath and alowed his strides to lengthen. Max easily kept pace, never taking his eyes from the larger man. “You know what’s going on here, don’t you? I don’t need a gift of vision to see that. Silas, please. How can I defend myself if I do not know my enemy?”
Before Silas could respond he heard a familiar voice. Lux Sariel? What was he doing here? Max jogged across the dunes until the crumbling structure revealed itself. No one was there. But he heard…
A spark of light, a shimmer of heat appeared beside a chalky column. “What is that?”
“Son of Elam…Max. Wait.”
But he wasn’t listening, too intent on the image appearing like a mirage as he drew closer. Impossible. But he could see so clearly...
It was the night of the fire started by the mad Were, Grey Wolf. Zander Sariel, Trueblood Mediator, held Haven, the tiny raven-haired Unborn in his arms. He looked mad. Frenzied.
Familiar.
Zander’s brother Lux stood between Max and Kit and the predatory vampire. His voice was soft, but held a deadly warning.
“We need to get to the ruins. Quickly.”
Max stepped closer, losing himself in the memory. It had happened years ago yet felt as if it were happening now. As if a few more steps would bring him fuly into the moment.
The clear image of Lux held up a hand to stop him. “I wouldn’t if I were you, gentlemen. He’s newly mated.” Mated. Sariel and his grathita, his mate, Regina. Yes, he remembered when she fel into her slumber for her change. When he and Kit had led them to safety. This was exactly how it had happened before. Or was it only just occurring? He couldn’t be sure. Max stopped moving but reached out with his hand. “Lux can you hear me? Can any of you hear me?”
A charge of electricity tingled through his fingers. For a moment he was breathing in smoke. Felt his sword in his hand. And then he heard it. The shrieking. An agony unlike any he’d known tore through his hand and up his arm, causing him to shout out in pain. Darkness. So much darkness.
He wasn’t sure when he became aware of the grizzled Silas peering down at him with one judgmental eye. He lifted his hand and stared at his fingers. The tips were blackened, as though he’d touched burning coals. But he was stil here. Stil intact. “What happened?”
“Maybe I was right the first time. Not complicated. Al warrior. And a strong one at that. Though lumbering in without using your brain could get you in trouble around here.” Silas puled Max’s arm over his shoulder and hoisted him up with an exaggerated groan. “I’ve made camp. You’ve been out for a while. You should eat so you can get your strength back and I don’t have to carry you the whole way. I’l answer what I can, yes? Yes.” Max stared into the fire, watching the way it burned. Even this, the simplest of nature’s events, was incorrect. The flames did not sputter, they did not dance. They pulsed. The meat had been like nothing he’d eaten before. And everything he’d ever eaten. He couldn’t pin it down, but it sure as hel hadn’t tasted like chicken.
As they ate, Silas had told him he wasn’t in the gods’
heaven, and he wasn’t on Earth. He was in a between place that was hidden from view, even from the Great Mother, though she was aware of its existence.
The Cyclops prodded the fire with a scorched branch. “I was amazed when I learned that there were things, beings, beyond the gods’ reach. Knowledge they did not possess.” He grimaced.
“If only they had taken away my gift instead of keeping it intact. I would give up some of my newfound conversational skils to never have known what they were thinking. What they believed. That they did not have al the answers. Your Great Mother aside, it was a disheartening experience. At least she had compassion and believed in what she was doing.”
Max shook his head and held up his hand.
“No more blasphemy, Silas. Nothing is beyond the reach of the Mother.”
“It is not blasphemy to speak the truth, son of Elam. The Goddess herself would tel you that. I bear her no il wil. In a way, I have her to thank for being here. The bright one told me the Great Mother noticed my unhappiness and made the request. If I belong anywhere…I imagine it would be here. Here I can choose what I see. And what I don’t. It makes al the difference.” Silas leaned back on his elbow and gazed at the wavering stars.
“Here?” Max shrugged. “If I could choose, I would be in the mountains near water, with beautiful women around every corner. Not this place.”
Mocking laughter landed on Max like shards of glass. “Oh, yes, of course. I can see that. Waterfals and naked nymphs al around me, yes? Yes.”
“You are trying my patience, Silas,” Max growled. “That is the second time you’ve implied that where I am is my choice. It was my choice to save Nicolette. It was my choice to fulfil my people’s oath to the Sariel clan. And it would have been my choice to be there for Kit and Jesse when they had their first child. This…” He gestured at the ruins they’d taken shelter in. “Is not my choice.”
“That is exactly what it is, Max. I’m here now to help you through this because we are of a kind. But before you came I wandered through the old lands of our people. The lands we held before you were born. Miles of endless purple-bladed grass fields where I ran as a child. Before humans. Before the floods made it a part of the seabed.” Silas pinched the bridge of his large, hooked nose and closed his one, briliant eye as Max looked on in confusion. “I wil use smal words, son of Elam. Imagine, if you can, that we’re in a place that is beyond even your normal understanding. So far beyond our comprehension that, in order to make sense of it, it had to make sense of you first. In a way, you are walking through your own mind. And your mind takes you here, where you met me. Here, where you faced death and truly became aware of the fragility of life and the true frailty of the gods.” His mind? If it were his mind, surely he would have stumbled across his sword by now. “So Lux…the fire. That was just a memory?”
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