Calabi Chronicles: Bloodstone

by Ann Vremont

  “But you couldn’t expect to have gotten him so quickly,” she pressed. “What if an assistant answered?”

  “Not that number,” he said and waved her argument away. “Besides, didn’t you say no second-guessing?”

  “I didn’t say that I couldn’t second-guess you,” she protested but nudged his foot under the table in concession. She picked up a chip and experimentally swirled it in her shake before biting into it. The cold from the ice cream coated her tongue, followed by the heat of the salted, fried sliver of potato. The mix of sweet and salty, of cold and hot, swelled in her mouth and she closed her eyes like a well-fed cat. Opening her eyes, she dipped another chip into her shake. “Who is Claubine?” she asked, forcing a certain disinterest into her question. But her body couldn’t hide her underlying tension as she waited for him to answer.

  Kean reached across the table and squeezed Aideen’s hand. “Don’t worry, she’s one of the temple aunts, as old as—”

  “You’re certainly full of yourself,” Aideen said and pulled her hand away. Her body, relaxing against the seat, gave her away and Kean laughed.

  “I’d rather have you full of me,” he teased in a sotto voce and chuckled at the instant flushing of her cheeks.

  Aideen clasped her hands together and placed them in her lap. She forced her brows to knit together in a frown and then tried to stare Kean down. But he wasn’t interested in a staring contest and he blinked first, dropping his gaze to the soft swell of her breasts. Aideen unclasped her hands and planted them on her hips. “I’m wearing this god-awful jacket you dressed me in this morning,” she started, her cheeks growing redder as he focused his attention on her hips. “There’s nothing for you to play at seeing!” she finished and started clearing the wrappers and cups from the table.

  “I’ve got my memory, haven’t I?” he asked and hooked her by the waist as she rose from her seat. He rested his forehead against her hip and kissed the covering of fabric. “Hopefully, I’ll get a refresher soon.”

  The curve of Kean’s mouth dropped from a wistful longing to a pensive frown. Aideen pulled at his lip to keep him from biting it. “What’s wrong?”

  Her tone left him no room to dissimilate but he still tried. “Nothing,” he lied and stood to help her with the tray and paper cups. She stared him down and he relented with a heavy sigh. “Psychic now, are you?” he asked. Aideen looked away, not answering him and tossed the paper cups in the store’s trash bin. Kean pinched the sleeve of her jacket and stopped her from moving further from him. “Well?”

  “With you,” she started, still unwilling to meet his sharp gaze. “It’s like something that’s right on the tip of my tongue.” Her hands moved in the air, trying to shape her words into something that made sense. “I know how you’re feeling—or, more like I feel the vibrational patterns of your emotion. But not its source. That’s teetering on the edge of understanding and when I reach out to pull it back onto the ledge, it’s gone.”

  “And other people?” he asked, looking around the room.

  “I don’t think they’re feeling their emotions strongly enough.” She wildly shook one hand in irritation at her inability to explain it. “They aren’t vibrating with it.”

  Kean grabbed her restless hands and held them in his own. “And Everett?”

  He could feel her hands turning ice cold. He looked up and blinked against the near bloodlessness of her face. “Shh,” he said and pulled her close, needing to chase away the cold pallor that embraced her.

  Aideen’s teeth chattered as she answered. “It wasn’t so much feeling—he was empty. Like a shell for something else. Smoke and mirrors. And each mirror held a woman’s face that slowly lost its form until I was looking at myself a dozen times.”

  Aideen shuddered against him and he held her more tightly. One or two of the more curious diners at the restaurant watched them and Aideen slowly pushed Kean away. She rubbed her hands down her arms and brushed off the memory of Everett. “You’re not getting out of it that easy,” she said, reminding him of her earlier question. “What is bothering you?”

  Kean nodded toward the rental car and she followed him from the restaurant. Inside the car, she fastened her seatbelt before turning to him expectantly. “Not in town,” he said. “I’ll miss a light and we’ll wind up in the backseat of another patrol car.”

  Aideen waited patiently until Exeter was fading in the car’s rearview mirror before she repeated her question. She could feel the tension in his body, knew he didn’t want her to ask.

  “Lots of things,” he answered and switched lanes for no other reason than to have the excuse of concentrating on the road ahead.

  “I know that,” she answered peevishly. “But you look at me and something comes to mind and it’s there, hovering, waiting for you to say it…almost where I can hear it.” She snapped her fingers in the air. “Then it’s gone, pushed back down.” When he didn’t answer, she turned toward her side of the car. “For Christ’s sake, Kean. Have a little pity on me. The sensation is driving me mad.”

  A warm fire started to burn in her stomach and she turned back to him, her eyes wide in disbelief. “Is that it?” she laughed. “You want something on the side of the road before we hit London?”

  “No,” Kean growled then hesitated to reconsider. “I mean…that’s not what’s bothering me. But if you want to stop—”

  “I want to know what’s bothering you about me!” Aideen interrupted.

  “Do you appreciate how much danger you’re in, Aideen?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She could see that he wasn’t stalling but carefully laying the foundation for something he had to ask her.

  “More so than anyone else…” he pressed. “The whole world is fucked if Meyrick uses the Bloodstone. But you…he needs you to use it.”

  “You think he’ll try to kidnap me,” she said, her voice flat at the possibility. She turned the idea over and wondered how much worse the next would-be kidnapper could be. Aideen shrugged and immediately regretted her nonchalance when she saw the sharp wince it provoked in Kean.

  “Yes, Meyrick will try to kidnap you,” he answered. “That puts people around you in danger and, even if we can stop him from reaching you…he still has the stone.”

  “And, if he finds a way to use it…” she started.

  “The whole world is fucked,” he repeated.

  “But that isn’t what’s knocking around inside your head so loudly I can feel it.”

  Kean changed lanes again, this time to avoid a weaving lorry. His fingers tapped an impatient beat on the car’s steering wheel. “On the plane, before we woke up, I was dreaming,” he stopped, at a loss to describe the dream.

  Aideen felt the sharp jab of sensual heat fill her groin as Kean thought of the dream that wasn’t a dream. “You and me,” she filled in the words for him. “Surrounded by fire.”

  “And we weren’t alone.” He abruptly pulled over to the side of the road, passing cars honking wildly and offering them obscene gestures. His cheeks colored and he refused to meet Aideen’s gaze as he spoke. “I’ve seen them before…far off, never venturing near—never gracing the ceremony with their full presence.”

  Aideen felt another stab of heat. This time, the blade penetrated her chest and she stiffened against its assault. “Are you saying…” she began. Her hands fluttered through the air and she wanted to roughly tap his forehead and force him to look at her. “Are you saying that you’ve participated in a temple sex ceremony?” She put one hand on the dashboard to still it and the other on the center console.

  Kean was biting at his lower lip, his entire face flushed a bright red. When he answered at last, his voice was a low rumble of warning. “Yes, Aideen, I have.” He raised his head, meeting her narrow-eyed gaze. “You can’t say that you’re jealous?”

  Aideen realized she had started to chew her own lip and pulled her face into a placid mask. If she was jealous, she sure as hell wasn’t going to tell him! In fact, until he offered more fa
cts about his own life, she wasn’t going to tell him so much as whether the sky was blue or gray.

  “Aideen, you were living your life,” Kean explained. “I was trying to live mine.” His voice held no hint of conciliation. They were facts, his unwavering gaze explained. Facts she would have to live with, just as he had to live with the fact she’d known other men before him.

  “Just how much living have you done?” she asked quietly.

  “What do you mean?” The hard edge around his mouth softened and he placed a hand on her knee.

  “Kids…a wife…things like that.” Aideen shrugged as if the answer wouldn’t matter but her whole body was poised on the verge of shattering into a million pieces.

  Aideen had time to note the rapid dilation of his pupils before he cupped her face and crushed her lips with a relieved kiss. The kiss deepened and she tilted her head back, letting his tongue slip past her lips to explore the contours of her mouth. His tongue teased her upper palate before withdrawing. His teeth drew on her lower lip and then his tongue invaded her again, sweeping against her, demanding she respond.

  She pushed him away, her breathing reduced to hard pants. “You haven’t answered me,” she protested and held him at bay before his mouth could reclaim hers and drive all questions, all thoughts, from her mind.

  “No, Aideen,” he said, his voice a solemn vow. “No wife or children. No attachments whatsoever.” He looked away, locked in silent battle as he tried to still his voice and shaking hands. “I was raised to love you, Aideen. How could I love another?”

  She blinked, tears spilling down her cheeks as she took his face between her hands and dusted it with kisses. “I never knew,” she said and stroked his hair. Her body struggled against the seatbelt as she tried to wrap herself around him, to comfort him with her entire being. “I never knew,” she repeated. “I never loved.”

  She felt a sharp flare of pain rise up in him and she pulled back, stared into his guarded gray eyes. Cenn. It was a lie, even if it wasn’t purposeful. She had loved. And the pain of it was written across his face.

  Aideen dropped her hands to her lap and fell back against her seat. She stared out the front windshield, unable to recall or explain what she had said. All she could manage while he waited for her to say something, anything, was a simple, “I didn’t know.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Kean agreed. He put the car in gear and watched the rearview mirror until he could pull back onto the road.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Kean waited until they were outside London, pulling into Riegate off the A-27, before he finally made the request weighing so heavily on his mind. He caught her while she was straining to catch glimpses of the manor houses they were passing.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he started in an offhand manner. Aideen turned, eyeing him sharply as she sensed a change in his energy pattern. He cleared his throat and ran the pad of his palm across the top of the steering wheel. “I’ve been thinking that an invocation ceremony would give us the guidance we need. Both to find the Bloodstone and keep you safe from Meyrick.”

  “Even if I wanted to—which I don’t,” she said forcefully. “I haven’t prepared or trained for that kind of ceremony.”

  His jaw worked from side-to-side and he took a deep breath before responding. “Aideen, you managed to travel through time.” He voiced the protest softly but the glance he shot her was unyielding. “And you’ve assisted in hundreds of your father’s ceremonies. Of course you’re prepared!”

  “Assisting doesn’t include being stretched out on an altar,” she started. Her voice dissolved into bitter acid. “Unless you’re telling me that’s all you need me to do!”

  They arrived at a gated estate and the guard waved them in. Kean’s mouth puckered and she thought for a second he was going to withdraw his request. Instead, he stopped in the middle of the drive. The house, if something that large could be defined by such a short word, was still half a kilometer or more ahead of them. Engine idling, he turned to her.

  “Aideen, you’re not refusing merely because your role would be primarily receptive.” He reached out to brush her cheek with the tip of his finger but she jerked her head back.

  “No mystery there.” She folded her arms across her chest and exhaled through pursed lips. “More like I don’t care to have sex in front of a bunch of people,” she said, her voice squeaking as she finished.

  “You wouldn’t be—” Kean began and held his hand up as Aideen sharply inhaled, ready to provide him with a lungful of disbelief. “You become part of the outer circle—looking in at the goddess and her consort.”

  Unconvinced, Aideen arched one blonde brow. “That’s how it was for you?” she asked.

  Kean frowned, his sensuous lips pulling down at the corners, and Aideen had to look away.

  “It was more like walking up a down elevator, forever getting no more than a glimpse of her robe’s hem…” He threw his hands up in the air and put the car into gear. “But we’ve already seen them, Aideen!”

  “When we were only a meter from the Bloodstone,” she reminded him.

  Kean shook his head and pulled the car onto the paved circle in front of the estate house. “You still feel its vibrations.”

  “That’s not any guarantee—” she started but he abruptly fixed his gray gaze on her. The normally dark irises paled and fissures of white heat snaked through them.

  “It was never with you, Aideen,” he said. “All those times, it should have been and it never was. It will work this time.”

  Aideen looked through the windshield at the old woman walking down the granite steps to greet them, her arms joyfully held outward. “Maybe we should discuss this when we don’t have company,” Aideen said and gave a slight tilt of her chin in the woman’s direction.

  Kean and Aideen exited the car together and the old woman embraced Kean before turning to Aideen. The thin lines of her silver eyebrows rose in a delicate curve and she stood with arms slightly akimbo, as if she wanted to embrace Aideen as well but worried the gesture would be unwelcome.

  “Aideen!” she said with a smile on her faded pink lips. “So much like your mother.” Nothing in the woman’s face or voice was familiar and Aideen stood at the side of the car, mutely observing her. The old woman’s smile dropped at the corners and she offered an exculpatory shrug. “Well, let’s get your bags inside and get you settled in.”

  “No bags, Claubine,” Kean explained and started up the steps with the woman. “Things have been a bit of a blur the last two days—no time to pack.” He glanced over his shoulder, relieved to see that Aideen still wasn’t standing stubbornly alongside the car or—worse yet—walking back to the gate.

  “Well, there’s plenty here that will fit you both,” Claubine responded. “And I’ll send Vera out for the more personal items we can’t round up.”

  Kean put his arm around Claubine’s shoulder and lightly kissed her cheek. “I think our immediate comforts can be satisfied with a bath, food, robes and,” he said, stifling a yawn, “a nap while we wait for Julius to arrive.”

  A middle-aged woman stood in the foyer watching them as they entered the estate house. Dark brown hair, mixed with an iron gray that matched her neatly pressed suit, coiled in a bun. Her mouth was a slash of crimson that showed a sliver of pearl when she smiled.

  “Vera,” Claubine said and extended her arm in Aideen’s direction. “This is Miss Godwin, Gerald’s daughter. She’ll be staying with us indefinitely.”

  Aideen chafed at Claubine’s use of indefinitely and halted her progress across the foyer. Kean caught her hesitation and raised one brow in annoyance. Then he saw her fragile expression and his irritation evaporated. He moved across the marble floor until he was standing next to her. Had he not spent the last two days in such intense contact with her, he wouldn’t have noticed her almost imperceptible recoil when he placed his arm around her shoulder.

  Claubine turned, seeing only a lovers’ embrace, and smiled. “Will you be sharing a
room?” she inquired softly. Claubine’s smile grew nervous as Aideen gave a quick, negative shake of her head. “Two rooms, then, Vera.”

  Aideen felt Kean tense beside her but he remained quiet while they followed Vera up the curving staircase. Halfway down the hall of the second floor, Vera stopped in front of a set of double doors. Drawing a heavy keychain from the folds of her suit, she unlocked the doors and pushed them open. She pointed at the nightstand beside the canopied bed. Next to the lamp was a key to the room on a velvet pull-tab.

  “You can use this room,” Vera said and stepped into the center of the room. She gestured at a closed door. “Bathroom’s in there. No one’s in the opposite side, just yet, but we’re expecting more guests, so lock it when…” her hands fluttered and Aideen cut the woman’s discomfort short.

  “I will.”

  Vera gave a perfunctory nod and stepped back toward the hallway. “Kean, you’ll have your regular suite.” She turned as if expecting him to follow but he remained standing inside Aideen’s room.

  “Thank you, Vera,” Kean said, his gaze fixed on Aideen. “Just unlock it for me, if you will.”

  Another swift nod and Claubine’s personal secretary was gone.

  “Aideen,” Kean said, reaching out to keep her from shrinking away from him. She stiffened against him and he clamped down on the urge to tighten his grip. He dropped his hands to his sides and marched to the double doors, closing and locking the two of them in the room. “Let’s start with how foolish it is requesting a separate room.”

  Aideen’s mouth twisted into an angry pucker and her hands found her hips. “Foolish? Just deal with the fact that I don’t want to share a room with you, Kean.” She turned, casting a baleful glare over her shoulder as she approached the balcony doors. “Or a bed, for that matter.”

  “I’ll sleep on the floor,” he offered, his tone businesslike in its indifference. “But you’re vulnerable on your own. The gate’s just for show and the security system wouldn’t stand up against professionals. And Meyrick’s men may be mad dogs, but they’re most definitely professionals, too.”