by Jasmine Walt
I couldn’t shake the feeling that everything felt familiar with him. The feel of his bicep beneath my fingers. The brush of his hip against mine as we walked.
We started at the aft, the back of the boat where Loren and I had boarded only an hour ago. We’d stepped on board and were immediately greeted with a full bar and entertainment lounge area complete with plush sofas, a glass dining set, and a big-screen television.
Tres took me past a door and onto the fly bridge, where the captain greeted me with a smile. I barely spared the man a glance as I took in all the modern technology that powered the boat. I was partial to old-fashioned sailing, but I still marveled at the screens and buttons laid out behind him.
Tres and I left the deck, passing that closed door again. We took the stairs a level down. I’d already seen the low deck cabins. There were two of them, and Loren and I had each taken one. They were the height of luxury with their own en-suites and full-sized beds.
Farther back below deck were the crew cabins. The cramped bunks made me feel sorry for the bartender, butler, and the rest of the small crew. We headed up to the main deck. When Tres bypassed the same door on the way without opening it again, I asked why.
He paused, staring at the door and then at me. “That’s the master—my bedroom. Would you like to see it?”
I hesitated.
He stepped past me and opened the door to his inner sanctum. It was done in browns, golds, and whites. It reminded me of a sheik’s desert palace set out here on the water. A queen-sized bed dominated the room. A briefcase was tossed haphazardly onto the center of the mattress like a lover impatiently waiting for the caress of its master. From the belly of the case, a phone rang.
“Do you have to get that?” I asked.
“Whatever it is can wait. I’d rather talk to you.”
“That’s refreshing. Not being at the beck and call of your phone, I mean. People nowadays keep their heads down and in their phones.”
I took a breath to stop babbling. Loren was right. I was truly awful at flirting.
“They would behave differently,” Tres said, “if they had something so beautiful to look at.”
Oh, crap. When the hell did Tresor Mohandis become charming? The large room suddenly felt too small. I felt the walls closing in on me, urging me to slip off my clothes, push aside the briefcase, and fall into the bed. Instead, I babbled on.
“Men nowadays prefer to chat with you through their phones on apps,” I said.
“Have you been searching for companionship online?”
He stood at the doorway, leaning casually against the jamb. The door remained open, but with his big body in front of the opening, it looked like I had no escape.
“No.” I shook my head. “Well, this guy I met wanted to connect with me on Instagram and—” I stopped talking and took another breath. “You know what? It’s not important.”
“I’m not going to answer my phone,” Tres said. “But you do know that this is a date?”
“I thought you were just giving an old friend a lift.”
He stepped closer, moving away from the opening and leaving me space to dart out of the room to safety. I didn’t move.
“Then let me be clear,” he said. “I’d like to have you for dinner tonight.”
“Have me?”
His grin spread as he continued to slowly eat up the distance between us. “We’ll sit down in the lounge area on the main deck. We’ll have three courses. We’ll have polite dinner conversation on topics ranging from the weather to bird-watching, and perhaps we can talk a bit of sports. All of those, I think, are safe topics for us.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. Of course, we were limited in safe topics thanks to our past battles over land and buildings. The walls stopped pressing in on me, but now his broad shoulders stretched out in front of me. He wasn’t blocking my path. I could duck around him. If I wanted to.
“There will be no phones,” he continued. “No apps, no compasses.”
Grown woman, ancient being that I was, I giggled. Then I shoved my hand over my trembling lips. Had he been this winsome a thousand years ago? I stretched my brain to try to remember.
“There will also be no sex,” he concluded.
“Oh?”
He grinned at the disappointment in my tone. “I’m not an easy man, Dr. Rivers.” He placed an affronted hand on his chest. “I’m going to make you earn it.” He leaned his head down and whispered beside my ear, “And then I’m going to make you beg for it.”
I tilted my head back and met his gaze in a challenge. “If you think you’re going to boss me around, you’ve got another think coming. I don’t take orders well.”
There was that damn grin again, like he knew things about me that I didn’t. “Dr. Rivers may not. But my Theta . . .”
He let the sentence drag. I couldn’t tell if there was a period, a question mark, or an ellipsis that was meant to end his statement. He didn’t stick around to clarify. He walked away, leaving me alone in his bedroom to decide for myself.
8
The encounter with Tres left me feeling drained. Between the unabated hunger, the heightened fight-or-flight response, and his charming offensive, not to mention that he was one of the oldest Immortals to walk the planet, which kicked up the allergic reaction, it was a lot to deal with. The internal and external conflict took its toll, and I decided to retreat to my private cabin for a midday nap.
Of course, the moment my eyes closed, I saw him.
Instead of a pencil or a paintbrush in his hand, Zane held a chisel. He was shirtless. Only a pair of loose tunic pants covered his strong hips and thighs. His sculpted arms hammered at the stone tablet as he chipped away at the piece of art.
My eyes fastened to the ancient number seven on his back. The marking moved as his muscles worked. He leaned in and blew away some of the dust to reveal his work.
He’d freed the image of a woman from the stone. On the woman’s head, she wore a crown. In her hand, she held something that looked like a staff with an eye. I knew it was me he was freeing from the stone. It was always me. Zane had drawn me in frescos, etched me in marble, painted me on the ceilings of chapels.
In this dream, or perhaps it was a memory, he’d drawn me as the Egyptian goddess Isis, holding the Eye of Ra. I sat on a throne surrounded by my subjects, who each held something that looked like axes in their hands. Surrounding us was . . . was that wheat?
I came closer and stared over his shoulder. With his fingers, he brushed away more of the chippings to reveal my cheekbones. His fingers brushed away the dust, lingering on the curve of my right cheek. He sat back and admired his handiwork for a moment.
“Zane?”
“Oui, ma petite nova?” He didn’t turn. He leaned down over his work, and his fingers continued bringing my form to life in the tablet.
“How are you?”
He turned then. His dark eyes opened wide, and he grinned. I knew I was dreaming, but my heart still skipped a beat. I itched to reach out and touch him, but something held me back. Likely the reality of the man who was in pursuit of me above deck. Zane was . . . I didn’t even know where he was in the present. I only knew he hadn’t come after me once we parted ways.
It struck me how dependent I’d grown upon him. Even though we couldn’t spend large swaths of time together, we were in constant contact. But it had been radio silence for weeks.
“You’re here with me,” Zane said in my dream. “I am content.”
He turned back to his work, chiseling away at my chin. I looked up, expecting to see the pyramids of Giza. Instead, I saw mountains and the Hollywood Sign of modern-day Los Angeles. I turned to Zane. The tablet was gone and a steering wheel was in his hands. We were speeding down a California highway on a bright and sunny day.
Up ahead of us was a manmade shrine. It in no way rivaled the majesty of the Egyptian temples. It was set off a paved road surrounded by young trees.
This was a memory. I remembered this day. We’d h
eard about a Cult of Isis in California and decided to go see for ourselves, just for fun. The people we found at the Isis Oasis were harmless. They reminded me of the flower children of the seventies, wanting to heal the earth with love under the divine feminine.
Zane and I had rented a room from them. That night, while they showed their devotion to their idol goddess, Zane worshipped my flesh in the bed of the rented room.
In the dream, I was transported back to that room. His body roved over mine as he made love to me with his hands, his words, his whole being. I remembered his lips on my breasts, on my belly. What I didn’t remember was the woman standing in the corner with wheat-colored hair and golden bright eyes.
“Nia,” she said. “I need you to wake up and remember.”
I jerked away from Zane in the dream and woke to tangled sheets aboard the boat. The gold fixtures in the room reminded me of the woman I’d seen in my dream. It was the second time I’d seen her while I was sleeping. I racked my brain trying to figure out who she was, what she was. Was she real? Someone from my past? Someone here in the present? I didn’t know any creatures that could enter dreams like that.
My first instinct was to call Zane. He knew more about me and my past than I did. But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t run to him right now, especially when I no longer trusted his renditions of my past. He’d said he’d never lied to me, but he had omitted so much—and that was the same thing. When someone knew things about me that I didn’t know myself, it made me feel as though I had no control over my own life.
I sat up in the bed and pulled my computer onto my lap. I couldn’t exactly search golden-haired woman who enters dreams. After staring at the Google search field for long moments, I typed in a URL and found myself looking at a familiar website.
Zane’s smiling face blinked back at me. His eyes were cast down, which wasn’t hard since his lashes were so thick. He didn’t often show his face. Being Immortal, he would be recognized throughout the ages as the same person who had done various amazing pieces of art. But there was a profile picture of him on his home page now.
An event notification showed that he was in Italy. It looked like he had a showing in Rome all month long. He had missed the last showing he’d scheduled to come to my rescue. The exhibition was opening next week, and there would be a gala. Rome was a few hours from Greece. Maybe I could—
The banging at the door made me close the laptop. Loren didn’t wait for me to invite her in. She turned the knob and let herself in.
“I can’t believe you’re in bed.” Loren sounded exasperated. “Alone.”
I scrubbed my hands over my face and then buried my head in a pillow. It was too early to deal with her.
“Nia Rivers, I’ve watched you face down a ninja horde, but you’re afraid to be alone with this one man?”
“I’m not afraid,” I protested. “I was just tired. And he’s not the reason we’re here. We still have work to do.”
“You have work to do. I’m trying to achieve a new standard of living.”
“While I’m lying here trying to understand my old standard of living.” I pulled my head from the pillow and stared up at the ceiling. “I used to be friends with a goddess.”
I knew there were demigods—humans who had gained power by some supernatural force. But they’d been born human and then later transformed, much like store-brand comic book characters. But the Greek gods, from what I remembered, were forged from beings who were older than the very world we lived in.
If I remembered my Greek mythology correctly, the Titans, the parents of the gods of Olympus, were primeval, before mankind, animals, and even the planet. The goddess Gaia birthed the earth and her brother-husband, Uranus, birthed the sky. The two gods had children. Among them were Cronus and Rhea. Those two made another sibling-marriage and birthed the Olympians, which included Demeter, the goddess of the harvest and . . . wheat.
“Do you think she made you?”
I turned my attention to Loren. “What? No. I mean, I doubt it. I have my pupils. Plus, Immortals have always believed we didn’t have souls.”
It was postulated that there was a spark that created life. Some scientists pointed to the fusion that happened when a sperm penetrated an egg. There were those who took that theory further and pointed to that spark as the fuel of life. No Immortal remembered their parents, which was the only thing we pointed to that indicated we potentially had no souls. But perhaps that was wrong? Perhaps this Demeter, who had figured out a way to grant immortality to humans, knew more about our origins?
“Bet said speaking her name gives her power,” I said.
“What?” Loren sounded bemused. “You mean like in Beetlejuice?”
I’d learned that much of Loren’s knowledge was garnered through books and pop culture. Beetlejuice was a movie about ghosts. If the name of one particular ghost, Beetlejuice, was said three times, then he’d appear and wreak havoc on that person’s life.
We looked at each other.
“Demeter,” Loren said slowly. And then, rapidly, “Demeter, Demeter.”
We huddled on the bed, looking around the room. But nothing happened. No goddess appeared out of thin air. The ship didn’t rock. The skies didn’t open. We turned back to each other in disappointment. It had been a silly idea.
“Look,” Loren said, “we’ll deal with the Greek goddess when we get to Greece. Right now, there’s a flesh-and-blood man on deck who is interested in you. I’m not just pushing you toward him because he has a boat . . . and a plane . . . and a fleet of cars and homes all over the world.” She waved her hand in the air as though she were brushing Tres’s many luxuries away. “I’m pushing you toward him because he’s the one pursuing you.”
As opposed to Zane, who was off in Rome pursuing his art career. He hadn’t even tried to call or text or see me. This had been the longest we’d gone without contact in over a hundred years. But Tres wanted to go on a date with me. Tonight.
I sighed. “All right. Help me get dressed.”
“To do that we’re going to need my wardrobe, not yours.” Loren moved the laptop out of my lap. The top flipped open before I could grab it from her.
“Loren, wait.” I reached for the laptop, but she hopped out of my grasp with it in her hands.
“Why? What do you have open on here? Porn? Something like, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Do Me?” She opened the laptop and her smile turned into a grimace.
“I was just . . .” I started. “I was checking . . .” I gave up the pretense as Zane’s face shone big on the display screen.
Loren sighed, then she shrugged. “I get it. I’ve been there. Lenny is my refrigerator.”
“What?”
“You know, a refrigerator relationship?”
She made what I thought was a lewd motion with her hands.
“To move a fridge,” Loren began, “you can’t do it in one go. Well, unless you’re a super-strong body builder or have Immortal powers. But my point is, normal people, we have to rock a fridge back and forth a couple of times before it’ll move.”
She made the motion again, which I now realized was meant to be a rocking motion, not something else.
“Zane is your refrigerator. Not surprising. The two of you are as codependent as a freezer and a fridge.”
“I’m not going back to him. I’ve been back to him eight times. There has to be a reason I keep leaving.”
“I’m not trying to get back with Lenny either. Been there, done that, more than once.” Loren shrugged again. “But the best way to get over your old man—”
“I’m not getting underneath Tres.”
“Of course not.” Loren frowned. “You’re a modern woman. You’ll get on top of him, of course.”
I burst out laughing and let her lead me next door.
“Now, let’s get you dressed for seduction.”
9
The moon shone brightly on the waters of the Mediterranean. The sea was a study in blues. During the sunlight, da
rk shades of cobalt flickered between turquoise and periwinkle. Mixed in with the waters was a sea of debris. The Mediterranean was one of the most polluted bodies of water on the planet.
I looked over the railing from the aft of the boat. With my keen sight, I could see deep into the water. A tendril poked above the surface. I jerked back. That was decidedly not an octopus tentacle. In this light, it looked more like a snake.
I peered down again. Two crystal blue eyes stared back at me. Then I saw an aquiline nose, and then a cruel mouth that kicked up into a grin.
“Nia?”
I jerked back, turning to Tres.
“Is everything all right?”
I turned back out to the waters. The octopus face was gone. I gripped the rail with unsteady fingers. Was I losing my mind? First floating women in my dreams and now winking sea creatures during my waking hours.
I turned as Tres came up to me. His dark eyes took me in, further unsettling my senses. He reached out a hand, indicating I should take it. I hated that I hesitated, but I did—and for good reason. The moment our skin touched, I felt a spark zip through me. It made me doubt that Immortals were soulless, not with a zap of energy like that.
He led me to the set table, then took his seat after I was settled. The first course was served and eaten in mostly silence. Though it was an amiable silence.
“How is your dish?” he asked.
We sat out on the deck of his yacht, docked in the middle of the sea between Turkey and Greece. He’d dropped anchor to steal this moment for our date.
“It’s delicious,” I said. “My compliments to your chef.”
“Thank you.” His grin was wide.
I studied his face, trying to catch his meaning. Then my eyes widened with incredulity. “You? You made this?”
He nodded, dabbing his dinner napkin to the corners of his mouth and failing to hide his smirk.
“I didn’t take you for a cook,” I said.
“We weren’t always well-off with humans to serve us.”
Tell me about it. Whoever tailored his clothing had outdone themselves. He looked edible tonight in a white shirt that hinted at the muscled flesh beneath. His honey-brown skin stood stark against the shirt under the interior lighting of the boat.