by Lora Leigh
“Shane.” He raised his head as Derek stepped from the shadows, moving to lean against the thick trunk of the tree, beside the bench.
He carried a bottle of his favorite Irish whisky, sipping from it pensively as he stared into the sky above them.
“Caitlin’s tears,” he whispered quietly. “You can feel them in the air.”
The very Earth itself was unsettled. Unusually so.
“Any sign from Caitlin?” Shane asked then, accepting the bottle Derek passed to him.
“Not since your and Ariel’s little battle at the bar,” he grunted.
“Arrianne has yet to call to Joshua for aid, perhaps it was merely a game your wife plays,” Shane growled before tipping the bottle to his lips and taking a long, burning drink. “They delight in playing with us. In keeping our nerves on edge, our hearts bound to their chilly breasts.”
He ignored Derek’s surprised look, turning from him instead to stare into the darkness.
“Ariel and Chantel were the most devoted,” Derek said quietly as Shane glanced back at him, seeing the wearing sobriety that haunted the other man. “That love and understanding is more precious than gold, Shane. For as exasperating as females can often be, there is much to be said for a loyal heart.”
Shane grunted at that. “How are we to know such devotion survived death and rebirth?” he snapped. “They are different…”
“No, my friend, your wife is as she always was in many ways.” Derek shrugged then. “You are the one now acting differently. She is a woman and a warrior to be proud of, not one to be chastised or reviled. Perhaps you should think about that.”
Shane narrowed his eyes, anger rushing through him, but before he could challenge him, the other man turned and stalked away heavily, hands pressed deep into his jeans pockets, his head lowered as a misty, dampening rain slowly began to fall.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“We’ve rented cabins here.” Devlin pointed to the small, red X just outside Newhalem, Washington. “If Chantel and Ariel are right, then Caitlin is somewhere in the general area. Finding her might not be easy, though. She’s parked herself in one of the most bloody, rainy areas in the States. We won’t be able to depend on tracking her element to find her.”
“She’s more than aware we’re coming, too,” Ariel pointed out as she leaned against the wall, watching the four men gathered around the maps Devlin had spread out on the long coffee table. “We’re not moving in on someone ill-prepared to deal with the surprises of the power she holds. She’s more than aware of this power, and she’s learned how to use it, especially since Chantel’s powers awoke.”
She ignored the brooding look Shane cast her. His ill-assed mood was starting to piss her off.
“She’s called out to me once, when she thought Ariel was in danger,” Derek observed, raising his head to stare first at Chantel, then at Ariel. “Is there any way we can use that? Any way to make her believe she’s needed?”
Ariel thinned her lips, restraining the sneer she would have cast him.
“Trickery is what got you into trouble the first time,” she told him, tightening her arms where they were folded beneath her breasts. “She won’t let you trick her again.”
“Because you refuse to aid him.” Shane’s look was as cool as his voice as he stared at her now.
Gray eyes were chilling, his big body tense, it was easy to see the anger slowly growing in him once again.
“It doesn’t work that way,” she informed him, her voice just as cold. “The elements can’t lie to each other, Shane. Unlike people, nature knows only honesty.” The mockery she injected in her voice wasn’t lost on him.
Just as the thickening of the tension in the air wasn’t lost on her. She would have sighed in weariness if so many eyes weren’t centered on her.
“I wouldn’t ask you to lie, warrioress,” Derek said then, leaning back in his chair, his expression somber as he watched her. “As you said, it is deception that caused her fury to begin with. It was merely a thought.”
She heard laughter in the air around her. Caitlin’s laughter. Just as she could sense another’s pain. Arriane’s pain.
She tilted her head, staring at Derek, then Joshua.
“Are you two aware that your wives see each move you make, hear each word from your lips?”
She saw their surprise. She saw Joshua’s shock and knew that he had inflicted the most pain.
Ariel, I do not need your protection… Fury echoed in the minute whisper that reached her ears.
Not her protection, her truth… Caitlin was amused, filled with laughter.
Narrowing her eyes, Ariel pulled the air close around her, surprised herself now at how easily the other two women were connecting to her. She turned, saw Chantel’s carefully blank expression, and knew that she was aware of it all.
Why hadn’t she told them? Why didn’t Derek and Joshua know the truth?
The other woman arched her brow mockingly, her emerald eyes glittering brilliantly.
As though she had done it all her life, Ariel lifted her hand, drew a tight circle in the air around her, and sent the silent command to her crystal to hold the words spoken in the room within the room. They would never escape, would never know freedom unless she released them.
“Caitlin knows well how to connect to the crystals.” She moved away from the wall, placing the protection about it, assuring herself that neither Caitlin, nor Arriane could know any pain from any words spoken now. “She’s learned how to be patient, silent, how to use the moisture in the air to conduct the information she needs. She won’t be tricked.”
“Ariel,” Chantel’s voice urged caution then.
Ariel tilted her head, closed her eyes and sent out the command for the knowledge she needed now. Chantel seemed unwilling to allow her to go further; even now Ariel could feel the connection between the two stones, sense Chantel’s hesitancy.
“What do they know, Mistress?” Joshau’s voice. This warrior had sides as different as the two names he carried. One was primitive, dark, a force to be reckoned with, a power that allowed no refusal.
Her eyes opened then and she knew the reason why Chantel had urged that caution. This man had known no loyalty, no fidelity through the centuries, but she saw something she knew Chantel didn’t. Suspicion. Pain.
“You two are without redemption.” Pain filled her heart, her soul. “One who deceived and stole another’s will. Another who knew no fidelity, no loyalty. What a sight the two of you are.”
“You judge us unfairly, warrioress.” Derek stared back at her broodingly, dark brows lowered over brilliant eyes.
“Enough, Ariel.” It was Shane’s calm, dispassionate order that sent waves of tense silence rushing over her, not to mention the anger that began to fill her.
“Enough?” she asked him carefully, ignoring Chantel’s concerned look, just as she ignored the crystal’s warning at her breast. “Maybe it is. Perhaps in reality, Caitlin and Arriane are the lucky ones. At least they knew the assholes they’re getting ahead of time. I had to be surprised by mine.”
She ignored the looks of shock that spread across the other men’s expressions, just as she ignored the anger that flared in Shane’s eyes. Turning from them, she stalked to the door and flung it open.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he snarled behind her, a breeze whipping around her, warning her that he had shot to his feet.
She turned to look back at him, a cold smile twisting her lips.
“Away from you. I’m starting to think Jonar might be the lesser of the two evils here.”
She didn’t give him time to reply, no time to strike back at her with his rough, commanding voice or the thread of dark fury she could feel building in him. Her own anger was growing in ways she had never expected, in ways she couldn’t control within herself. Like a dark cloud boiling, roiling inside her, it grew larger, darker, each time she glimpsed the unaccountable accusation in Shane’s eyes.
It was
too reminiscent of her father and his rages and that came close to the memories of the dark. She shuddered as she ran lightly down the deserted stairs that led to the lobby of the motel.
The expensive suites the warriors used were on the twelfth floor, and by time she reached the lobby exit, she could feel the tightness in her lungs, the exhaustion she was fighting in her body. Lack of sleep, the long days on the road and the tension she had been living under for so many months were beginning to build up on her. She could feel it, wearing her down, weakening her. A weakness she had been able to combat those first days in Shane’s presence.
As she reached the first floor, she leaned against the wall, closing her eyes wearily as she fought to catch her breath. She could feel the crystal fighting to aid her, to lend her the strength she needed.
I feel him, Ariel… The voice was amused, a sweet melodic sound filled with mockery. The Wizard seeks even outside himself now, hoping to follow the waves of power on the very winds…
Ariel opened her eyes slowly, as she felt the breeze in the small stairwell increase, the air thickening around her.
I know you can hear me… The voice sighed. Just as I know how foolish it is to speak to the one who searches so hard for me. Would it do me any good to beg you to turn them from me?
There was such sadness in her voice.
A light breeze teased the hair at her temples, carrying the voice to her, lingering around her caressingly as she waited for whatever the other woman would reveal. As she stood there, a glimmer of a memory coalesced within her mind. The fiery-haired woman, her eyes an ocean green, staring out at the world unseeing, dazed where once they had been clear and bright.
If only you remembered what he did to me…the voice whispered again. He was a demon and we never knew it. Reviled even by his own family and we were never told. Our father lied, Ariel, he was no savior, he was evil itself…
Ariel wanted to shake her head in denial as an image of Derek, his blue eyes watching the delicate woman with such sadness, such inner pain, that Ariel had turned her head from the sight each time she saw it.
They had all been hurting then, though she didn’t know why. She could feel it, a grief of such proportions as to weigh the very soul.
“Without you, we all die, Cait…” She commanded the winds to carry her voice, to seek out the one speaking to her so softly, the voice so filled with fear and pain.
There was silence, the air suddenly thick with oppressive fear.
A demon’s lie… The voice wavered. He would tell you anything…
“A warrior’s mistake, a man’s pain,” Ariel whispered what she remembered of the Wizard’s legacy.
It had been so long ago when her grandmother had whispered the ancient legends to her.
“A child chosen by the gods, marked by their touch, reviled in anger, cursed with deceit, and cursing in turn. Payment to atone the sins to the child. Payment to atone the sins of the child. And the tears of the rain shall wash away the pain but only with the destruction of the Wizard’s tears, shall truth be born… Caitlin, you can’t hide forever…”
So speaks the one who refuses to believe, to remember… The voice was bitter, railing against whatever she perceived as her fate. Your memories are not clear, but mine have always been. At least your Savage loved, gave you the choice to fight. The Wizard stole my very mind and took the memories of all I knew, all I loved…
She couldn’t excuse him. Ariel knew, had known since first seeing Derek, that somehow he had betrayed, and he paid the price daily.
“We can’t fight without you, Cait…” she murmured the words, flashes of memory slowly taking their place within her mind. “I’ll make no excuses for him. I will only say that we need you. Just as you need us.”
There was silence once again. A long, pain-filled silence that filled her with sadness.
I need no one… But she did, Ariel could feel it. Give me peace, Ariel; I ask you one last time, turn them from me. Only you can do that.
Ariel stared into the dimly lit stairwell, fighting to make Caitlin understand.
“I can’t,” she whispered then. “My life, Chantel’s life, and the life of one that sleeps yet never rests depend on finding you. We fight together or we die…”
The Legacies her grandmother had told her were slowly becoming clearer within her mind.
“Cait, the Wizard’s Tears will only be found by facing the Wizard. To gain what you so desperately need, you have no choice but to accept what destiny holds.”
I will escape him, Ariel. Anger blended with a sigh of pain. A masculine, resigned sigh that Ariel knew could be none other’s than that of the Wizard’s.
She kept her knowledge to herself, feeling the added tendrils of power that shadowed her own, seeking the woman who had finally become desperate enough to reach out to her.
Then laughter echoed around her. Amused, yet tainted with a woman’s fury.
Bastard! The very air sizzled with Caitlin’s curse before she was gone.
“Well, that was interesting,” Shane said from the landing above her, his voice dark with disapproval.
“You heard it?” She almost winced at the sound of hope in her voice.
Despite the fact that Shane was quick to assure her she wasn’t crazy, episodes such as this one were always prone to make her doubt her own mind.
“I heard.” He nodded shortly. “It would appear the legend lied in no way. Caitlin is well aware of her past life, and fully intent on seeing vengeance. Derek has much to pay for it would seem. But the Wizard is not alone in learning his lessons from the past.”
Her eyes widened at his arrogant tone, staring back at him as he descended the final step, watching her. His hair flowed around his shoulders like a wild mane, the bare muscles of his chest and abdomen gleamed like well-oiled silk, flexing beneath the layer of flesh with a powerful effect.
Ariel’s breath caught in her throat as past and present merged once again. She saw him, ages ago, centuries ago, staring at her from the castle steps, his eyes narrowed in lust and yet with gentleness as she stood defiantly before him.
Caitlin’s voice no longer taunted her; it was now a memory, a past she sensed she had no desire to remember.
“We ride on them.” She couldn’t halt the words or the memories.
Fury washed through her, pain unlike anything she could have known as shock filled her, nearly incapacitated her.
“They killed her.” Her voice lowered as she shook her head, fighting the memory, fighting the knowledge of what had been done to a sister, the sudden overriding suspicion of what had been done to her.
“Ariel?” She watched him approach slowly, a battle waging within his gaze, his expression filled with concern.
She was shaking. She could feel every muscle in her body shuddering as the memory overwhelmed her.
“He killed her,” she repeated, her voice hoarse, her mind dazed with the sudden knowledge that began to fill her.
She didn’t need this now. She didn’t need the pain that filled her, couldn’t deal with the struggle to hold herself up beneath the onslaught of memories.
Blood and death, a sister who had sacrificed herself and had paid the ultimate price. And another, misty memory, another death, and a sacrifice. She shuddered, remembering the dark-haired woman lying near death, the unnatural wound on her abdomen slowly draining her lifeblood as Ariel stared on in horror.
I can save her, for a price… The voice had been a deadly hiss of evil. Will you pay the price?
“Stop!” Shane stood before her, his hands gripping her shoulders as he gave her a rough, demanding shake.
“What did he do to me?” She stared up at him, so thankful that he had broken the hold the emerging memory had on her that she could almost forgive him for his earlier, callous attitude.
“What did he do to us?” she whispered then. “I remember so much and yet so little. Was I a terrible wife, Shane? Did I betray you?”
He glanced away from her briefly, his ex
pression tightening convulsively before he shook his head.
“You never betrayed me. You were a most loving, gentle wife.”
“Then why?” she whispered, tired, weary of the battle growing between them, the memories that made little sense. “Why are you so angry?”
He drew in a hard breath, his lips thinning, nostrils flaring as he turned back to her.
“You know the answer to that, you just won’t face it,” he growled roughly.
“I don’t know.” She hit out at him, fury surging through her. “What do you want from me? I’m giving you everything I have. Why isn’t it enough?”
“Because there’s more.” His answer shocked her. Confused her.
She stared back at him, her eyes wide.
“What am I not remembering?” She met his gaze directly, her heart racing out of control, her breath tight in her chest.
“Only you can answer that, Ariel,” he snapped then, one large hand lifting to frame her face. “Only you can answer the questions you have. Until you find the courage to do so, there is no more that I can do.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
She was breaking his heart and had no idea of the damage being wrought. As he led her back to the room, Shane fought himself, fought his heart and every need he had to reach out to her, to comfort her, to assure her that she needed do no more than she was already. But he knew it would be only false comfort. It could be a deadly mistake, one he didn’t dare make.
He wouldn’t allow her to hide, not from him, her past, or the emotions he knew bound them together. If it was her rage that was needed to thaw the ice that encased her heart, then by God, he would enrage her.
“Son of a bitch, you have no right to drag me around like this,” she hissed behind him, digging in her heels as she pulled against his hold.