by Sue Wilder
Kace glanced at the table and back. “Well?”
“I can’t tell you what I don’t remember.”
“You wanted to come here, babe. Begged to get off the boat. Doesn’t mean you don’t have to work hard.”
“I am,” Lexi said, carefully strengthening the shields in her mind and fighting back panic because Kace was smiling.
“Not hard enough.”
The metal chair scolded the air as he leaned forward and fingered one of the knives.
✽✽✽
Darius’s voice came through the telepathic link to both Christan and Arsen. “Heads up. A convoy of three vehicles just passed through the check point.”
“How far out?”
Darius was positioned to the north of the settlement and able to see both the road and the house. “Five minutes.”
“Phillipe?”
“Found a group in black he wanted to entertain.”
“Shit,” Arsen muttered.
Christan counted ten mercenaries clustered around the building, some talking, others checking their weapons. All were on high alert even though they appeared relaxed. Christan knew there were at least ten they couldn’t see, enough to slow any effective assault and provide Kace with the time he needed to kill his hostages and teleport away. Jago would be left to his own resources.
A wave of energy surged toward Christan, from Lexi as she tried to strengthen her mental shields. He felt her growing alarm, a force that blazed hot in his thoughts. They’d become deeply connected these past few days. Three had warned him, explaining how the bond would assimilate with each strong emotion until they were both consumed.
Christan felt the darkness and realized Kace was probing around walls Lexi was struggling to rebuild, using all the skill Phillipe taught her. It wasn’t enough. He helped her push back, his energy so controlled neither his mate nor Kace realized he was there. Relief lasted for an instant. Kace retreated, and her panic returned. The fear was overwhelming.
✽✽✽
Jago brought a second chair into the room, metal with worn areas and several layers of mud and crusted rusty-brown stains. Lexi saw Kace’s features harden, and when he spoke his voice seemed to stab at her.
“You make me do things I regret, babe.”
“Abusers blame their victims all the time.”
“Stand up then.”
When Lexi refused to move, the Spaniard came around behind and hauled her to her feet, forcing her into the chair across from the man who had—in more than one lifetime—pretended to be a friend.
Kace said nothing as Jago smiled. The dark Spaniard stretched Lexi’s right arm across the table, his fingers as cruel as his expression, and it wasn’t difficult to figure out what Kace intended when the enforcer fingered a slender fileting blade. Bitter-chocolate glittered in his eyes and he was an angel both fallen and profane, had always been a fallen one. Lexi was nothing other than a means to an end, a task he had to complete.
Kace traced a blunt finger over one of her memory lines. “I understand these are sensitive, a direct connection your mate.”
“Only vaguely. You won’t hurt him through me.”
Kace touched her skin with the tip of the blade. Pressed down until a pearl of blood welled up. “Which lifetime?” he asked.
“Gemma.”
“Where are you?”
Lexi hissed as he dug deeper. “The villa.”
“Doing what?”
“Get out of that goddamned life, Nico, before I remember every lie you ever told me.”
That caused him to pause. Something flickered in his dark eyes as if he remembered the name he’d used when he played chess with Gemma and brought her books, tried to read the poetry without much success. There’d been one afternoon—it was a memory Lexi had forgotten until just now—when Nico took her into a field filled with wildflowers. The sun had been warm after several weeks of rain, and the cook had prepared a basket of food at Nico’s request, wine, bread and cheese, cold meat. Nico had spread out a blanket made with patchwork colors, set Gemma in the middle and threaded purple flowers into her hair.
“Could you ever quit?” Lexi asked, and Kace glanced up, puzzled. “Quit working as Six’s enforcer,” she added.
“No.”
“Why?” Lexi thought she reached him, reached Nico, until he shoved her curiosity away with a flick of immortal power.
“It must be this line.” Kace twisted her hand and traced the blade along her forefinger. No blood, just the icy pressure coming from his mind. He no longer saw her. Lexi might as well have been a lump in blue sitting in a dirty field.
“Which life?”
“Gaia.”
“Where are you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are the goats there?”
“Yes.”
“And Zal? Is she there?”
He pressed deeper, angrier, and Lexi panicked, her efforts urgent as she resisted both the physical and mental intrusions. Pain increased, cutting into her skin, her mind. Kace was stronger than expected, stronger than even Phillipe’s training could resist while the memories were pushing her, deep into that dream state where the Grandmother sat cross-legged on the sand. Never, Gaia, never tell the secrets in this cave no matter what happens. This is too important…
The knife twisted deeper and Lexi gagged on the sob rising in her throat.
“Tell him, cara!”
So angry, that voice snarling in her mind. It took a minute to focus on Christan’s mental communication—he sounded so strange, and there was pressure everywhere while a migraine flared with flashes of light behind her eyes.
“Do it! Tell him!”
Lexi shook her head, straining back against Jago’s grip on her wrist.
“Please.” Christan’s voice, so gentle now, with that whisper deep in his throat. “Tell him what he wants to know, cara. Tell him of the cave.”
“Christan…”
“Please. I need you to live.”
Lexi dragged in a bitter breath. Only for Christan would she do it, reveal the memory. Still, she hesitated, gripped by fear and pain, the sense of betraying the Grandmother. Her eyes were bright hard stones as she looked at Kace.
“There’s a cave,” she said. “Not far from here.”
Kace withdrew the knife, stared at the blood that dripped from the blade to the table. “Knew you had it in you, babe.”
He rose to his feet. Men returned, dragging Katerina out into the shattering sunlight as Lexi followed. The burkas were left behind.
“So where to?” They had all climbed into the first of the two waiting vehicles and Kace turned, his arm stretched along the back of the seat, his tone lighthearted as if asking for directions to the local store. Cheap, cracked brown vinyl had been repaired with silver tape. The design was random and odd. Carefully, Lexi studied it, trying to make sense of the pattern until it reminded her of vague, transparent imagery.
The crisscrossed mosaic of gray and white marble, a broken floor, surrounded by columns. A tree, twisted and growing up through the crack. Beyond the tree, a path leading into the mountains where there was a hidden cave, or at least there had been two centuries ago, with candles glowing in niches and an opening in the ceiling that let in the rose and yellow light.
Kace was probing into her thoughts again and Lexi lowered her shields, controlling the details she allowed him to see. Kace blinked once and then smiled, issuing instructions to the driver before the two-vehicle caravan jolted down the dirt road.
CHAPTER 22
They drove through the small town of Shahat with its few dun-colored houses, the last outpost before the ruins of Cyrene where magical plants once grew as a gift from Apollo. Cyrene became a place of plunder, of war and ruin, then a place of temporary peace, when Gaia tended her father’s shaggy black and white goats, when a girl who had run with a lion had not yet learned how to kill.
The road was narrow and paved, the buildings clustered around the single runway that once made
Shahat respectable. But no one came to Shahat these days. People were more interested in leaving.
They parked the vehicles before the road gave out, walked another few minutes in the heat to reach the perimeter of the archaeological site.
The once thriving city huddled in the Jebel Akhdar, the ruins—what remained after centuries of looting and destruction—protected between two major hills. The Temple of Zeus left only the vaguest of footprints in an open field, a few pillars, in pieces and toppled to the ground like bleached bones in the sun. A single wall bore the wounds from gunfire, killing history for the fun of it.
Further north was the steep valley where a cave system hid the Spring of Apollo. Ruins of the amphitheater and the Roman baths stood silent. The group hiked in single file through the Wadi bel Gadir, then past the Sanctuary of Demeter built into the hillside. The ancient bridge was a remnant, the remaining statues having long ago lost their heads to relic hunters or religious zealots.
Lexi led them into the hills, past the caves of the necropolis, the path beneath her feet as familiar as if she had walked it yesterday. The air vibrated with the same sweltering heat filled with the same dried-out scent of the grass. There were bits of limestone sculpture that looked like white rocks tossed on the ground. The lion statues had been looted long ago, and Lexi paused near the top of the hill, empty with the loss.
So much had changed and yet much more remained the same.
After another hour of walking Kace called a halt, went to talk to his men. Lexi sat in the shade of a gnarled tree with a canopy like an umbrella. Kat sat on the rough grass beside her.
“This was where you lived your first life?” the girl asked while a pockmarked soldier stared hard in their direction.
Lexi studied the horizon. “It was nicer then. Where did you live?”
“Some Greek island. I researched it once, couldn’t pinpoint it for sure.”
“I did the same,” Lexi admitted, remembering the day she saw the damaged foot on the lion statue and knew that once, a very long time ago, she had lived in Cyrene. “Do you remember who you were?”
“Just a girl who did what her father ordered.”
Lexi tugged up a blade of faded grass, folded it over her fingers. “Did he order you away from Arsen?”
Katerina shrugged. “It’s one past life—the only past life—that I remember vividly and only one fragment. It would seem my father was some kind of king and Arsen was a valuable fighter. When someone ran with whispers, my father sent Arsen off to war and made me watch as he left. That’s what I remember, standing at the top of a hill, staring down at the stone quay with all the boats floating on the sea. The light was so bright on the white sails. And Arsen, standing at the edge of the water waiting for the boat that would carry him out to his ship. He was in full battle armor, what passed for armor at the time, with the gold—I think he was the commander because he wore a lot of leather and gold and it was glittering in the sunlight. He just stood there, staring up at me. I stared at him. My mother stood at my side and I feel how tightly she is gripping my hand to make sure I don’t react, and then he turns away, joins the men who were lifting long oars. I remember thinking that I could see the water dripping as the oars begin to move. It was the last time I saw him.”
Throughout the story, Lexi watched Katerina absently rub her finger against the memory line that curled around her thumb. The movement was gentle until the end, when Katerina pressed hard as if trying to rub the memory away. There was a second memory line that curled very close to the first. Lexi studied the jagged edge for a long moment.
“I don’t understand,” she said finally, shredding the blade of grass. “Is that the dream that makes you afraid of him?”
“No. There’s another dream.” Katerina traced circles in the gritty sand near her hip. “I lived another life before I met Arsen, and there was a priestess, a woman with the gift of sight who belonged to my father in that Greek life. She tells me.”
“Tells you what?”
“It’s quite melodramatic, what she says, something about a blood debt I have to pay, from something that happened in the earlier lifetime. She calls it a curse—that’s what they believed in that time, or else I just dream it that way. She warns me that Arsen will always try to stop me, and I must never be around him. In my dream, I don’t believe her, and then I… I know what she says is true.”
“Will you tell me why you know it’s true?”
Before Katerina answered, a shadow speared across the ground and Lexi looked up, saw the narrowing in Kace’s eyes. “How much further?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Guess.” Kace turned to study the track they’d followed; from this vantage point, it was possible to see for miles, even the faint hazy blue of the distant Mediterranean.
Lexi looked around. Her skin itched with a mixture of dried salt water and sweat. “Not far now.”
Kace watched the armed men surrounding Kat as she rose to her feet, then bent down and hauled Lexi upward until she was standing.
“Be a good girl for once.”
He sounded, Lexi thought, regretful before all emotion faded from his voice and the tight expression was back. His grip on her arm was punishing as they continued up the twisting path, littered with small white stones hidden in the brown grass, and she remembered that day in the Snake River Wilderness when he threw her against the rocks because she wouldn’t go with him. Her foot slipped once. The men in black clothing spread out, taking up positions and keeping out of sight, and Kat’s blue eyes revealed her exhaustion. But her mouth had tightened into a determined line. It seemed she had come to some understanding with herself.
When they rounded a large rock outcropping Lexi dropped to her knees. She pressed her palms down hard against her thighs and tipped her head forward before reaching out to the earth. Nothing, and then, digging her fingers into the warm sand, Lexi began to hear the soft whisper, ancient voices lifting in surprise. With infinite care, Lexi sifted through the centuries until she found traces of the moment so long ago, spreading out before her in a transparent haze; it was the imprint left from that perfect summer afternoon, with the sun blazing in a cloudless sky and a faint breeze chasing the insects through the tall grass.
She could see a kid goat chasing after its mother. The hunting bird, circling in the sky, and the girl sitting on the ground, her bare legs stretched out in front of her as she watched a line of red ants make their way across the sandy ground. The girl’s hand was resting on a white cloth, and Lexi knew there was a small piece of bread wrapped inside for when the girl was hungry. But she wasn’t hungry, she was waiting because the Grandmother had promised to visit that day and tell the favorite stories, and then the girl was standing, running through the grass… The earth memory vanished and Lexi pushed to her feet.
“We need to climb to the top of this hill.”
Kace gripped her arm. “No games, babe.”
“It’s not worth lying about, just a cave where I used to go.”
They continued climbing at a faster rate. Kace kept his hand on Lexi’s arm, and when they reached what he considered the crest of the hill, he pulled her to a stop.
“Where?”
Lexi pushed forward, around the small rise to where the land dipped and a gray rock wall jutted upward. It appeared impenetrable, extending straight up for twenty feet, but the twisted brush growing at the base was not as dense as it looked from a distance. She broke the small branches, ignoring the stab of splinters against her palms. Kace was at her side, using a long machete she hadn’t noticed before, and within minutes they cleared a path to a tumble of rocks.
Lexi knew what lay behind, saw it as it had once looked, wide and welcoming in the rose and yellow light, and she held out her hands, palms upward; the cave welcomed her with a gentle flow of recognition.
“It’s here,” she said.
Kace moved, issuing an order for her to follow, although Lexi would have entered the cave on her own.
&nbs
p; The threshold was uneven and cluttered with rocks that resisted their entry, guardians, Lexi thought fancifully, imagining the Grandmother protecting her secrets. Then the cave opened into a cavern. Niches were carved into the rock, the size and shape to hold the small votive bronzes that had once filled the space with light. One votive was still wedged in a deep crack between two stones, bent and tarnished nearly black with age, and Lexi’s muscle memory was instantaneous. When she touched the spoon-shaped handle her thumb stroked the surface like a worry stone. She remembered how the votives created tiny flickering shadows on the cave wall, scenting the air. It was a secret oil the Grandmother used, saying only that some things should remain a mystery.
Light drifted down from the opening in the cave ceiling, but it was not the magical light of memory. Plants grew above the cave and had run wild for centuries. Tangled roots now hung from the ceiling, turning the light to a dingy gray. Lexi’s eyes swept over the rock paintings in rusty red oxide, faded but preserved, the familiar animal head with the curving horns; she remembered the Grandmother’s whisper in the dry, ancient air.
“You will come here often, Gaia, after I’m gone, and it will always be a special place.”
“It won’t be the same, Grandmother.”
“It will be for you, and I’ll leave a part of me behind.”
“How can you do that?”
“Magic, child. This place holds magic only for you.”
Others had followed them into the cave. Jago was holding Katerina by the arm, while the girl stood stiffly beneath the Spaniard’s control.
Kace surveyed the cave with irritation. There was refuse scattered around, rusted tin cans, some attempt at graffiti on the walls, although it didn’t look like the cave had been invaded very often.
“This place looks like a dump,” he said, and Lexi murmured that it had been nice, once. Kace was skeptical. “How do I know this is the right cave?”