by Zoe Forward
Her brain replayed the words he’d spoken in her mind, telepathically, along a shared mental pathway he’d encouraged her to embrace. I may return to my time when you sleep, rouhi. Now that we know you can bring me here, we shall have another night. Rouhi meant “my soul” in his language. Her chest warmed at the recollection of his low rumble of the endearment.
He’d come from the past. 1000 A.D. Her mind could barely wrap itself around that whopper. But his massive sword and unease with technology and modern English phrasing helped her believe.
She needed him back to confirm she hadn’t imagined the whole scenario. It was not a fantasy! And she wanted a repeat.
But she had to figure out how she’d brought him here.
She pulled on a T-shirt and flannel PJ bottoms. Her roommate still wasn’t home. Sylvia must’ve stayed at Colin’s place. She should be insulted, but felt relieved to be free of him. Colin had never elicited even a fraction of the fire she felt with Zannis. The coward hadn’t even put up a fight to get her back. Zannis told Colin to take a hike and the asshole fled. Well…maybe she would’ve bolted too when confronted by an angry Thor look-alike wielding an enormous sword.
She shuffled down the hall to the bathroom with her shower caddy in hand. Her mind churned over the puzzle of how she had brought Zannis here as she went through her morning rituals—teeth, shower, makeup. As she returned to her dorm room with a wet head, her chest tingled and then burned, but not with the familiar flare of heartburn. The tingles spread down her arms and legs until her toes and fingertips prickled with heat. The barometric pressure in the air around her rose until her ears popped.
A slowly enlarging darkness spread across the wall of her dorm room like a sci-fi movie black hole. She stumbled backwards, tripped over her backpack, and landed on her ass. When the dark hole was the size of standard door, the darkness dissolved into shapes like watching a door-shaped TV.
A familiar massive male back showed through the doorway. She rose and walked trancelike toward him. “Zannis?”
He didn’t reply. She heard impacting bodies as if a fight raged in front of him. She tried to reach him on their mental pathway, Zannis?
A wave of pain lacerated her mind followed by a pervasive viciousness. She gripped her head and moaned. She fell to her knees. Make it stop, Zannis!
Zannis turned her way. She released a sigh of relief when the mental agony ceased. With a smile she moved toward him, drawn to him by a mysterious magnetism. She stepped across the threshold of the magical doorway.
Her breath hitched when his gaze captured hers. His eyes were blacked over from pupil to the whites of his eyes. A chill slithered through her chest. Was he some sort of devil?
Zannis shook his head, grimaced and stumbled backwards away from her as if combating an invisible adversary. Then he emitted a strange laugh and lunged at her.
Shocked by pain and disbelief, she stared at her chest where his massive golden sword was buried almost to the hilt. He yanked out the sword and pushed her backwards over the threshold. The doorway snapped closed. Blood gushed through her fingers where she pressed them against her chest. Her mind dimmed with faintness. How could she have been so wrong about him?
The pain of the wound paled in comparison to that of her shattered soul.
Chapter Two
Present day.
“This is your last night as a human. Let’s get drunk.”
Astrid shook off the dream haze, puzzled why that long ago college memory of the worst moment of her life had surfaced now. Flashbacks of the countless surgeries, the weeks in the hospital, and the tortuous rehab slideshowed in her brain. She’d been alone. And in pain. According to the doctors, her recovery had been miraculous. Everyone had expected her to die. She shoved the images and emotions into a dark corner of her brain, and focused on her hate for that not-a-hero.
She waved her arm at the blond hovering near the bed. “Go away, Christian.”
She pulled the comforter tight over her head and rolled, giving him her back. She hadn’t missed Christian’s artsy jeans, dark designer button-down, and spiky highlighted blond hair. During the short plane ride to New Orleans, they’d shared minutes after meeting forty-eight hours ago, he’d been the epitome of charming chill—always smiling and tossing back a bloody Mary. But he was one of them. One of the bastards that hadn’t let her die. The Scimitar Magi. They had kidnapped her when injured during a successful op to extract a kid from a cult of Persians calling themselves Hashishins. Now the magi planned to force her to become something apparently not human.
“You’ll be mad, if I don’t push this.” He whipped the comforter off the bed in one powerful tug.
“What the—” Astrid shot upright, chilled by the air attack.
Christian tossed the comforter to the other side of the room, and grinned. His cocky attitude begged for an ass kicking. The guy was pretty enough in a tanned, underwear-model way. But he didn’t interest her. Her intuition kicked out a warning—a lethal warrior hovered beneath that beautiful veneer. His smile verged on wolfish.
He said, “I get that you’ve got some sort of screwed up past. All of us have been through some wild shit before getting inducted. You’ll get over it or work through it or repress it. Just don’t tell Dr. Kira about it because she’ll make you sit on a couch and shrink talk that shit out.” He shuddered and then threw her a brilliant smile. “This…THIS is the end of life as you remember. Of mortality. So, let’s celebrate. Come get a drink with me.” His mesmerizing smile widened. It compelled.
Her skepticism fell away. She almost smiled back, ready to believe anything he said. Wait a minute. Snap of it! He’s one of them. One of the immortal Scimitar Magi asses that brought her back from the brink of the death she wanted.
“Go away.” She resumed a fetal position and rolled away from him.
“You wouldn’t be interested dressed like that. Those have got to be government-issue cargo pants, and I suspect you’re wearing a sports bra. You’ve got a curvy supermodel bod. Why hide it?” He pivoted to collect whatever she’d heard him deposit on the plush chair when he entered. He dumped clothes on the bed and a pair of black boots.
“I don’t do boots.” Liar. She just didn’t do boots for in-office work. On a mission…well, she’d donned many a disguise that required spectacular boots like those resting on the edge of the bed. A secret thrill hit her stomach. She loved trendy clothes, but denied herself the luxury. Finances were tight and clothes weren’t a priority.
He walked around to the bed until she saw his face. He smiled wide. “Tonight you do.” His voice slid to a velvety caress. “Hit the shower. Wash off the past two days of pouting. Pull on these clothes and then let’s party.” He flashed that too-handsome grin again.
“I’m not sleeping with you.” She scowled at him.
He held up his hands in a whoa-no-way. “Not on the agenda. I mean it. Talk about messing up a working relationship from the start. And when your guy shows up…there’s no way we’re having that hanging over us. Now don’t take that as an I-wouldn’t-be-interested, darlin’. If you weren’t about to get inducted, you’d be on the top of my list.” His gaze centered in on her chest.
“I don’t do one-night stands. If we go out, I don’t want to be touched. By anyone.”
“No touching. I’ll be your bodyguard. We’ll drink, dance, drink some more. Whatever. The first step is to stop this Sleeping Beauty shit. Dying will happen fast enough. Don’t doubt it. But you’ve got to enjoy what you’ve got. For Christ’s sake, Astrid, you can’t be much more than thirty. You’re a prime hottie. Flaunt it. Make men drool and enjoy it.”
A hottie? That’s a stretch. She knew how to work what she had, when required, but hot was not a word she’d ever heard used to describe her. His gist resonated loud and clear—live for the moment, carpe diem bullshit. Who knew what would transpire at tomorrow’s induction ceremony, which was to be MC’d by a goddess. Apparently, she’d been chosen by the magi’s gods.
&nbs
p; She hated the sound of that. It reeked of religious cult drivel.
According to the Scimitar leader, Ashor, she’d been selected to become an immortal warrior for the ancient Egyptian gods. Right. Like she believed that crap. Even so, she had proof these Scimitar magi could work some funky voodoo-magik, given that she’d been celebrating her arrival at death’s door two days ago. Then, the magi’s doctor stepped in and…taa-daa all bullet wounds magically healed. Damn it.
Ashor’s intense soldier gaze had transmitted a no-bullshit mantra she respected. The other seven alpha warriors obviously deferred to the broody leader who only softened when his small doctor wife, the one who healed her, appeared.
But to believe in gods? As in plural. Only a group of deluded crazies believed that. According to Ashor, she had no choice but to get on board with believing.
She preferred a double wrist slash to suicide herself into oblivion—to forget past heartache and avoid the inevitable years of lonesomeness. But she’d already tried that. And about every other imaginable way to meet her maker over the past decade. All failed. She concluded someone put a karmic fuck-you curse on her that made her immune to death. Maybe this walking clothes ad had a point. What did she have to lose with a little alcohol? She murmured, “All right.”
“Great.” Christian rolled his watch, an uber-expensive silver piece. “But we’ve got an hour to make the best DJ action. So, hurry up.” He smiled again. “Trust me, we’re going to have fun.”
That smile compelled her to move.
After a quick shower she stood nude, gazing into the bathroom mirror. She traced the six tattoos now marring her skin where she’d been shot and stabbed not two days ago. Two days! The wounds should be red, irritated, and stitched up. They should hurt. Instead, the skin was smooth, scar free, and tattooed with some funky stylized, blue symbols. The wounds had been sustained during a rescue attempt organized by her top secret government organization, the Company, to liberate a child, who turned out to be a teenage pre-magus. The kid might be minus a leg after the ordeal, but he seemed happy enough puttering around with these eight testosterone gladiators.
She pulled on the new clothes, shocked that they fit. Perfectly. Hot damn. Give Christian a few gold stars. The skin-tight black jeans hugged her long legs like a second skin. She knew it must’ve been hard to get extra-tall in these. At almost six feet, her size was hard to find. The black leather boots were a wow. How in the world did Christian know she wore a size ten?
What to do with the blond hair disaster? No hair dryer around. No flat iron. The strands had already started a mutinous wave. For work she usually pulled the mass scalp-tight into a ponytail or bun. She looked younger than thirty-two, and was self-conscious about maintaining an air of authority. Her life as of forty-eight hours ago had been about getting respect from the testosterones. That required taking femininity out of the picture.
She’d just resumed field duty after six months’ probation. What a relief to get off a desk. She and her field partner, Kane Langford, had been benched after screwing up an op. Bad intel. Wrong place. Wrong time. Too many on her team died as a result of their mistake. She still didn’t forgive herself.
Last month the Company sent her and Kane back into the field without explanation for the probation lift. She suspected her boss had reached maximum tolerance of her shitty computer skills. In her defense, if they’d invested in something other than second-rate Asian crap, then the computer systems probably wouldn’t have been so easy to mess up.
For now, she had no options for her hair, and left it down. The blond strands fell past her shoulders. She shrugged. Her goal wasn’t to impress tonight.
As she pushed out of the bathroom Christian emitted a whistle. “The Amazon goddess has arrived. Not bad.”
“How’d you know my sizes?” Her cheeks burned under his appreciative perusal. She resisted the urge to squirm.
He gave her a told-you-so smile that pushed her smack-him button hard. She granted him her patented fuck-off glower that had him snapping his lips closed over his teeth.
“You might say I’m a connoisseur of everything female. I knew you had the chest to fill at least a C. That bra is way better than the uni-boob look you had going on. What is it with hotties hiding themselves in ill-fitting clothes these days?” With a head shake he headed for the door. “Let’s give your new look a test drive on the other guys. The single ones. If I prance you in front of Dakar or Ashor, we’d be lucky if either noticed you were female.”
She followed him down the hallway of the colonial style house toward a staircase, dodging packed cardboard boxes. “Moving?” she asked.
“Yep. We’re going to Mexico. Hashishins found us here. They’re this Arabic black magik cult and a major pain in the ass. They keep us in business by summoning daemons. Every night they send ensorcelled snakes after us, which is one reason we’ve got to move. Those snakes are deadly to the kids and the ladies. Well, the humans, not you once you’re one of us.” He paused at the top of a massive staircase. “You just wait until you get a turn on nighttime snake duty. It sucks, especially when they bite.” He shuddered.
“Yeah, I saw one attack one of you guys while we were rescuing Cy. Why not eliminate all the Hashishins?”
“That’s against the rules. No killing humans unprovoked.”
“Seems to me like they’re the ones striking first. What if I don’t want this job?”
He snorted. “As if any of us has a choice…welcome to the biggest life fuck of all time.” He led a downward jog and paused before entering a swinging wooden door. “You can’t say no to the gods when they decide you’re the reincarnated soul of one of their half-human offspring.” He pushed into a modern kitchen where several guys stood around a central black marble counter nursing beers.
Christian announced, “We’re going out.”
“How the hell did you get her out of bed? And…whoa. What are you wearing?” asked a pierced out the wazoo magus she’d learned two days ago was an ex-Army Ranger named Nate.
“Kane, you now a part of this group?” Astrid asked, narrowing her gaze on her previous work partner whose longneck bottle sweated in his left fist. Kane wasn’t a magus. She found out on the plane ride here that his cousin, Dr. Kira, was the magi’s doctor.
Kane stared wide-eyed, giving her a head to leg once-over, not once but twice. His right fist massaged his five o’clock shadowed chin, and then combed through his spiky blond hair. He remained mute with a dumbstruck expression. Finally, he choked out, “Whaa…”
She suppressed a smile. A feminine thrill hit her stomach. She could count on one hand the number of times a hot, ex-Ranger, super spy found her brain-stuttering attractive. Once.
Right now.
She and Kane had danced the edge of get-it-on or keep-it-professional for several years, ever since a post-mission alcohol overindulgence led to an unforgettable kiss. She had slammed on the brakes, terrified of ruining their working relationship. She’d murmured to him, This is crazy. He’d whispered, I know what I want. And I want you. The thump-thump those words ignited in her previously deadened heart escalated terror into panic. She’d been running ever since.
Even so, for the past five years he’d been her oasis in a wasteland of emotional pain. Only he could make her smile when she entered one of her foulest moods. Only he recognized her suicidal martyr tendencies for what they were, and cared enough to caution her or protect her.
She long ago admitted she was susceptible to him. The alpha badass soldier mentality usually pissed her off, but not his. Although his obsession with her safety irritated, she found everything else sexy as hell. But she would never act on their attraction. She’d never give another man the opportunity to pulverize her heart.
Christian chuckled. “Round one to Astrid. I knew those clothes would be hot. Let’s get outta here.”
“Anyone else going with us?” she asked. Her gaze slid to Kane, hopeful.
“Just us,” Christian announced with finality. This
was not an open invite for boys’ night out.
Too bad Kane wasn’t joining them. If so, this foray into intoxication was certain to stay professional. He’d make sure she stayed out of a stranger’s bed, not that she’d ventured into any bed since Zannis. Kane’s bed, though? No guarantees on him discouraging that. Oddly, she wasn’t opposed, even though she knew he deserved more than a meaningless one-nighter. Her head pounded. A drink sounded very good. She had to be careful. She rarely imbibed beyond a single beer. Alcohol went straight to her head. Fast. Losing control terrified her.
Later in downtown New Orleans, Christian approached their table carrying fistfuls of shots. Two women ambushed him. One whispered in his ear and the other ran her hands suggestively over his chest and then southward. A beautiful smile curved his lips. He murmured to them. The girls giggled. One pulled a card from her handbag and pushed it into his jeans’ pocket before moving away.
He slid three shots in front of Astrid across a scratched blacktop table. “Drink.”
“What are those?” She pointed at the shots.
“Please tell me you’ve done a shot before.” Christian took the seat across from her.
Astrid snorted. “Of course I’ve done a shot. What poison did you choose?”
“You’re wound tight. These’ll help you relax.” He smiled. In a smooth tone he said, “Drink.”
She smiled, somehow trusting him, needing to do what he suggested. She gulped down a shot of clear liquid. Oh, crap. Tequila. The expensive stuff. Smooth and lethal.
Christian said, “Did you notice all the guys in our three-sixty? They’ve got it bad for you. I think they’re jealous of me.”
Astrid scanned. Her eyes bumped into a few nearby guys, but her body shrugged a whatever. Obviously, they were horny and looking for the easy lay. That wouldn’t be her. A few women met her gaze. “They’re not my type. I think it’s the girls who are thinking you’re the idiot to be here with me.”
“You gay?” Christian asked.