by Unknown
Even though she hated herself for lying to him, she wanted to stay here. Because she was attracted to him? Or because this was an ideal place to learn about this world?
Both things were true. But one thing she knew: she didn’t understand him. They were alone in an isolated house where they had shared a passionate kiss, and in her world she was sure he would have taken advantage of that, taken advantage of her. She wouldn’t be lying in this bed alone, or maybe she would, after he’d finished with her.
But it hadn’t turned out that way. And now she had time to think about what she should do.
Using him made her stomach knot. The moral thing to do was leave, but she had connected with him. If she left, she’d have to start all over again and try to trick another man. Who might not be as chivalrous.
Was she rationalizing? Or was Vandar reaching out and controlling her?
She shuddered. Maybe he wasn’t reaching out, but he’d planted compulsions in her mind, compulsions she couldn’t ignore. Which meant that she didn’t even know if her decisions were her own—or his.
IN his warm and comfortable office, Ramsay Gallagher disconnected from his online brokerage account and pushed his chair away from the desk. As he expected, his finances were in good shape, even with the recent economic downturn. He was a seasoned investor; he knew when to buy stocks and when to pull back and buy municipal bonds and CDs. Some of his money was in land that would only go up in value. And he had buried gold, if he needed it.
But an unaccustomed sense of anxiety had overtaken him, prompting him to take a financial inventory. And earlier, he’d checked his name through a private online database. As far as he could tell, nobody in cyberspace was checking up on him.
No surprise there, either. Over the years, he’d made himself difficult to find. None of his contacts had the address of this house. What mail he received was delivered to a post office box thirty miles away. And he was untraceable on the Internet.
The financial and privacy checks he’d just run should have put his doubts at rest, but the feeling of anxiety remained.
Standing up, he paced to the darkened window and looked out at the stars shining down on his mountaintop. In the cities, the ambient light dimmed the glory of the sky. Out here, the resplendency of the stars shone out as it had for thousands of years.
The window was large, and he could see many familiar constellations. Their names and stories came from mankind’s superstitious past, but that didn’t detract from his enjoyment of the familiar patterns.
He had studied the meaning of the star patterns and studied many ancient techniques for acquiring knowledge.
If a computer couldn’t help him, there were other alternatives he could try.
Leaving his office, he walked down the hall to a door that was hidden in the paneling. When he pressed first at the top and then halfway down the flat surface, the door slid to the side, and he reached through to turn on a light switch. The outside door was wood. Behind it was a blast door that would withstand anything but a direct nuclear strike, and maybe even that.
After sealing the entrance, he descended a flight of steps, then another, into a set of secure rooms that he had carved out of the living rock below his chalet.
If need be, he could take refuge in this hidden apartment, waiting out any danger that threatened him from the world above. He had installed a computer connection, as well as feeds from video cameras that gave him a view of the chalet’s exterior and the surrounding area.
He wasn’t under siege, but this place was more than a stronghold in time of danger. It also isolated him from contact with the world.
One area was outfitted as a lounge. To its left was a bedroom. He walked through to another pocket door. Beyond it was a chamber with rock walls that looked like the cave of a primitive people. Before stepping inside, he stripped off his modern clothing and laid them on the bed, then untied the leather band that held his dark hair at the back of his neck.
After shaking out his hair so that it hung freely around his broad shoulders, he turned to a narrow closet beside the door and brought out a leather loincloth, leather shirt, and an old-fashioned hunting knife, which he donned.
He closed the door with a leather flap hanging from a pole, then walked barefoot into the primitive environment beyond. Inside the secret chamber, it looked like he had stepped back into the ancient past.
Fur rugs covered the stone floor, and a fire pit with a hidden chimney occupied the center of the room. Fresh kindling and logs were already laid in the stone fire circle. Continuing with the illusion that he was in another time and place, he knelt on one of the buffalo robes and removed flint and steel from under one of the rocks.
Expertly, he began to strike the flint against the steel until he could drop a spark onto the kindling. The dry tinder flared up, and he leaned over to blow on the flame. When the fire was burning nicely, he removed a leather pouch from the same place where he’d gotten the flint and steel.
In it was a mixture he had learned about long ago from the elders of an Indian tribe. He had collected this batch of leaves, bark, and berries from the mountains, dried them on the screened porch at the back of the chalet, and pulverized them with an old-fashioned apothecary mortar and pestle.
He poured a heap of the powerful hallucinogen into the palm of his hand, judging the amount by eye. Then he slowly sprinkled the powder into the flames.
As the herbs hit the fire, pungent smoke flared up, and he leaned over the fire, taking several deep breaths.
The burning mixture made him light-headed, but he took in several more deep breaths before lying down on the buffalo robe and closing his eyes, chanting words from a Native American religious ceremony.
No longer able to speak coherently, he lay with his head swimming, bright colors dancing behind his closed lids. He appreciated the light show, and he let himself drift with it, knowing he couldn’t speed up the process. Finally, the lights began to fade, and he saw an outdoor scene. Trees. A rural area.
He knew that it was night, yet in the vision he could see as well as if it were daylight.
As he watched, the figure of a woman winked into existence. One minute she wasn’t there. In the next, she stepped from the shelter of some rocks into a woods.
She was small and slender, with curly brown hair and light eyes. She was dressed in jeans and a jacket. And . . . sandals.
Had she stepped out of a cave?
No, it seemed as though she had come out of the rocks—from somewhere else.
He didn’t know what that meant. Somewhere else? Where else could there be?
Before he could deal with that, another image assaulted him.
Lightning crackled in the sky above the woman, and he saw her running through the darkness—even though the scene came to him with unnatural light.
Wind whipped the branches of the trees around her. Then a massive oak wavered in the tempest. He tried to shout a warning, but his voice was carried away by the wind as the tree came crashing down on her.
When she disappeared in a sea of leaves, he thought she must be dead. Then, to his astonishment, he saw a pale hand emerge from the mass of green. As she struggled to free herself, he drew in a sigh of relief.
He didn’t know who she was. He wasn’t sure why he should care what happened to her. But his chest tightened as he looked at the massive tree that trapped her.
While the branches rocked, then settled down, she fell back into the leaves as though she had put out a massive effort to free herself.
An animal came speeding into the scene. It was a wolf that reached the tree before carefully picking his way to the woman, where he stood staring into her face before trotting away.
For a long moment after that, she lay still. Then, at the edge of the scene he saw the glow of fire.
He caught his breath, terrified that she was going to die.
As the glow increased, the smoke from the vision drifted toward Ramsay, mixing with the drugged smoke in the ceremon
ial room, and he started to cough. As his chest heaved, the vision began to waver. Though he tried to hold it fast, it dissolved in a shower of gold and silver sparks.
Another time he might have appreciated the twinkling display. Now it brought frustration and anger.
“Shit!”
His curse rang out through the darkened cave. When he tried to recapture the vision, more sparks flashed, this time setting off small explosions inside his head.
The vision could have been a fantasy, but he didn’t think so. It had been too specific and too tied to some other reality.
He needed to find out more about what he had seen and what was going to happen next. Had the woman died in the fire? Had the wolf brought help?
He didn’t know exactly when the incident had taken place. Was he seeing it in real time, or had it already happened? And where was it? Not around here. The trees were all wrong. And the terrain. He thought it was somewhere in the eastern United States, but he couldn’t even be sure of that.
Were there wolves in the East?
His mind turned to the animal. Was it real? Or was it a symbol of something that was important to the vision but still hidden?
As he tried to put the pieces together, more pain welled inside his head, and his fingers clawed at the buffalo skin rug.
He knew that he couldn’t push the vision, but he knew something else as well.
The woman was going to be important to him. In a way he didn’t yet understand.
What would she be to him? A lover? A friend? An enemy? Or did she herald a shift, an entirely different direction in the journey that was his life?
It had happened before—abrupt changes in his biography.
He pushed himself up and looked around the cave. It was a deliberately primitive environment. But he lived in an age that was far from primitive. Perhaps there was some way to use modern search capabilities to track her down.
Could he find out where she was?
He longed to sprinkle more herbs on the fire and go into another vision. But he knew that the ceremony wasn’t going to work twice in a row.
Still, he could speculate on how the relationship would play out. Would she be his ally? Or would he end up having to kill her to protect himself?
CHAPTER NINE
TALON WALKED QUIETLY down the hall, then listened outside Kenna’s door. When he heard nothing, he turned the knob and eased the door open. After allowing his eyes to adjust to the dim light, he saw her buried under the covers, lying with her eyes closed.
His chest tightened as he gazed at her. She was such a strange combination of traits. She seemed so innocent. She’d been upset by the things she didn’t know, but she had determination.
To do what? Escape from her past or run a con on Talon Marshall? Long con or short? Well, he guessed that depended on how long she wanted to hang around.
He’d told her they would give her staying here “a try,” when he knew that he was leaning toward keeping her close, even though it might be one of the biggest mistakes he ever made. She was a temptation. Did he want to let her stay to prove that he could keep his hands off of her?
An involuntary shudder went through him. Was it already too late to make a clean break? Had he already bonded with her?
A few weeks ago, that thought wouldn’t have entered his mind; now the question made his throat tighten.
He didn’t want it to be true. He wouldn’t let it be true—if he had a choice. Which meant he should tell her to leave.
As the circular reasoning wheeled in his head, he kept his gaze fixed on her face. While she slept, he could do some prowling around—first on the Internet.
In his office, he went to Google and looked up “Kenna Thomas.” There were several women with that name. A jewelry designer. A financial expert. A psychologist. None of them sounded like they could be the woman sleeping down the hall. According to their biographies, all of them fit too well into the modern world, while the Kenna Thomas he knew was like a time traveler.
But he had another way to get some information. She’d had a backpack with her when he’d rescued her from the tree. He could go out there and get it and see what was inside.
After shutting off the computer, he walked to the front door and slipped outside.
The scent of the fire hung heavy in the air, but there was something else, too. Something that seemed familiar yet at the same time didn’t belong in this part of the woods.
He stood for several moments, breathing in the foreign smell. Did it have something to do with Kenna? Had someone followed her here or come with her?
OUT in the darkness, Mitch tensed when he saw Marshall step onto the porch. What the fuck is he doing now?
Mitch froze, waiting to see what would happen. When the guy walked in the other direction, he breathed out a sigh. Maybe this wasn’t the best time to stake out the bastard’s place.
He took a step back, then another, thinking he’d get the hell out of there and come back another time.
AFTER stepping into the circle of pines, Talon stared up at the stars, thinking that his long-ago ancestor had viewed the same sky. The ancestor had asked the Druid gods for powers that no men possessed and gotten more than he had bargained for.
He’d gained the ability to change himself from a human to an animal of the forest. Gained it for himself and his sons—and all the Marshall men down through the ages. But they’d paid a terrible price for the gift. Girl babies born to the clan died at birth. And half the boys died the first time they changed to wolf form.
Talon knew there was new hope for the Marshalls. His cousin Ross had married a doctor who specialized in genetics—and she had changed the equation.
Like all Marshall men who hadn’t yet bonded, Talon didn’t spend a lot of time with his relatives, but Mom had made sure he knew that Ross and Megan had a daughter, the first girl born to a Marshall since that long-ago Druid priest had changed the lives of his family.
The thought of Ross made him pause. He also knew from his infrequent conversations with Mom that a lot of the cousins were getting together. That is, the ones who were already settled down with their life mates.
He wasn’t interested in joining that happy group, but he’d also heard that Ross had been very helpful to the clan, particularly in his private detective role. Maybe he could figure out who Kenna Thomas really was.
Yeah, he might give Ross a call, but obviously not in the middle of the night. That didn’t stop him from doing some sniffing around on his own, starting with the knapsack, which might yield some clues to her background.
In a low voice, he began to say the chant that changed him from man to wolf. Once again, the muscle and sinew of his body changed. Thick fur sprang up on his skin, and when he came down on all fours, he was an animal of the night. Slipping through the pines, he started toward the place where the fire had been burning.
BEFORE Mitch could make a getaway, a huge sucker of a dog came bounding out of the darkness, heading right for him. Like it was going to have him for dinner.
Shit!
Just what he needed.
In a panic, he pulled out the revolver stuffed in his belt and fired at the beast.
A shot rang out in the darkness, the bullet whizzing by Talon. As he dodged to the side, another report followed.
What the hell?
He slithered on his belly, working his way into the leaves of the fallen tree, keeping down as he made his way in the direction from which the slug had come.
Had the shooter seen the wolf? Maybe. Or had he been hoping to get Talon Marshall?
KENNA sat bolt upright in bed. A sharp sound had awakened her. While she was deciding if it was part of a bad dream, it came again.
From outside?
She was too off balance to know, and she wasn’t sure what she was hearing, although she suspected it might be something dangerous. It had been loud, like a bolt of thunder, but different. Something that wasn’t natural.
She had gone to bed in her clothin
g, so she was fully dressed when she leaped out of bed, except for her wet sandals, which were in the bathroom.
“Talon?” she called out as she ran barefoot into the hall. “Talon?”
When he didn’t answer, fear for him made her heart thump inside her chest. In truth, she hardly knew him, yet he had become important to her in a very short time.
Standing stock-still, she listened. When she heard nothing in the house, she hurried toward the front door and threw it open. In the light from the moon, she saw the wolf streaking across the open space between the house and the woods.