by YatesNZ, Jen
Crystal Warrior
a.k.a ‘Through All Eternity’
Book One of the ‘Crystal Saga’.
Erotic Romance and Past Life Travel
JENYATESNZ
Title: Crystal Warrior
Author Name:JEN YATESNZ
Publisher: Gyneva Books
Genre: Erotic Romance and Past Life Travel
Copyright Notice: Copyright© 2015 by Jen YatesNZ
Cover Design: Ramona Lockwood www.RomanceNovelCovers.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning to a computer disc, or by any other informational storage and retrieval system without express permission in writing from the author and publisher. This work is protected under the statutes of the copyright act.
Disclaimer
The characters and events in this book are the creation of the author, and resemblance to persons, whether living or dead, is strictly coincidental. Towns and places are used as settings and have no relation to any event or actual happening outside the author’s imagination.
Dedication:
To my children, Tagaloa, Tanima, Vaiafai and especially Velani whose question, ‘Do you believe in Atlantis?’ was the seed from which this story grew.
To Peter, whose belief in me is my inspiration.
To my Divine Guidance. I could not have done it alone. Ibn Ist del Alomdino, en cala suevon ara mei.
Foreword
According to Plato, Poseidon, God of the Sea and his mortal wife Cleito, who settled in Atlantis at the beginning of its history, had five sets of male twins. Poseidon divided the land among his ten sons so each was King in his own province, but Atlas and his successors were always known as the Paramount Kings of Atlantis.
The portrayal of Atlantis in `Crystal Warrior' is the outcome of extensive reading on the subject. For a place believed by the majority to be merely a myth, it has inspired an incredible number of books, both investigative and fictional. Having read many diverse facts, beliefs, and theories on the existence or otherwise of Atlantis, I then delved into my own inner knowing, sourced information from my own soul memories (some would call this imagination) and created Taur and Gynevra's world.
Over thousands of millennia the face of the land changed and the people of Atlantis passed through many eras of prosperity and many more of terrible devastation. The ancient part of this story takes place at the end times of the last era of Atlantis.
It has been said by many that Atlantis was destroyed by the misuse of power and the exploitation of crystal energy in ignorance of what the energy really was, or could do—much like modern man exploits nuclear power today.
But I say to you, what destroyed Atlantis was lack of love—love of Man for Himself, Woman for Herself; or for each other; and Man for Man, for the Universe, and for the Creator.
How far have we come in 11,000 years?
A Dictionary of Atlantean words used in the story is included at the end of the book. Most will be self-evident but the reference is there should you require it.
Chapter 1
April 1998 AD
The Warrior Lord, greatest of all the Sons of the Dragon.
The words rippled through Georgina Hackville's mind like wind over wheat as, with a deceptive, loping grace, a husky, dark haired, stranger traversed the screen of Auckland Airport arrivals monitor. Propelling a luggage trolley, he moved with the leashed energy of a man at one with open, wild places and used to standing alone against the elements.
A quiver of unease shimmied up her spine. The thought had been almost visual. Instinctively she thrust it aside. It was probably something she'd seen in a book title or jacket blurb at the shop. Best she concentrated on finding Fran.
A more slender, blonder double of herself crossed the screen, elegant in white jeans, a shirt in vivid citrus colors and a flight bag slung over one shoulder. Georgina smiled inwardly. The shirt would be silk, the jeans would carry an expensive designer label and no doubt, the moment Fran saw her she'd chide her for her dull, business-like clothes. Self-consciously she smoothed the skirt of her dun colored gabardine office suit and went to meet her twin.
But where was the fiancé Fran was bringing home to meet her family? Georgina inhaled deeply to clear the persistent image of a commanding dark profile from her mind. Fantasies belonged between the covers of the books she loved and sold in her inner city bookshop. They didn't prowl around in body-hugging denim and tee shirt, trundling luggage trolleys through airports. What's more, she had her own fantasy man at home. Excusing herself, she stepped past others who were waiting, and went to meet her twin.
By the time she reached the concourse Fran had come through Customs and was scanning the waiting crowd. A lump rose in Georgina's throat. She hadn't realized, hadn't let herself realize, how much she'd missed her sister.
‘Fran!’ She tried to call out, but nothing would issue past the lump in her throat. Fran heard her anyway and turned, hands out-stretched, sea-green eyes alight with joy.
‘George!’ she cried. ‘Oh my God, it's good to see you! And it's so-o good to be home.’
As their arms closed convulsively about each other Georgina thought ruefully, nothing had changed since she'd last seen her twin. They both stood six feet tall in their stockings but even so, with her fine bone structure, golden blond hair and green eyes, Fran still had the etheric quality of a fairy—and the confidence to express her feelings in whatever way she felt the need, wherever she happened to be.
Georgina, cast in a more robust mold, with muddy red hair and tawny eyes, had difficulty expressing anything unless it concerned books or balance sheets. Emotion impeding words as usual, she clung to Fran with eyes closed, drinking in the familiar scent and form of her.
‘Oh, George! I've missed you.’ Fran leaned back and surveyed her sister from head to toe. ‘You look—alive. Still far too dull and conservative but definitely alive! When I was here last you were like some sort of—zombie.’
‘Don't remind me,’ Georgina muttered and pulled Fran back into her arms, hugging her tight, hoping her actions said what she couldn't. Three years ago she'd just buried her husband along with a short, but character-forming chapter of her life. A chapter she now preferred to leave buried.
The crown of her head prickled and Georgina looked over Fran's shoulder into eyes the smoky iridescent green of polished alexandrite beneath hooked, black brows.
Recognition was soul deep, elemental, and centuries old.
Yet what was recognized? She'd swear on her grandmother's grave she'd never set eyes on him before except on the video monitor a few minutes ago. If she'd ever met this lethal weapon carved from flesh and bone she'd not have forgotten. A woman didn't forget six feet four inches of tanned, muscular, male potency, with eyes that seared to the bone.
Eyes that burned with a deeply accusing ancient knowing.
Georgina closed her own eyes again. She'd spent her life denying the family tendency to prescience. Why give in to it now? She gave her sister another squeeze then they held each other at arm's length to survey once more. As usual it was Fran who bubbled into speech and Georgina who remained silent.
‘I can't believe I'm actually here. I feel like I've been on that blasted plane for days!’
‘It's good to have you here, Frannie,’ Georgina managed at last. As she resorted to another hug to properly convey her feelings, she wondered why she always had this problem communicating with those she loved.
Fran squeezed her back th
en whispered loudly in her ear. ‘What d'you think? Isn't he gorgeous?’
‘Who?’ Georgina asked, jolting back from her sister. Fran's fiancé was a field engineering and mining consultant. The guy standing behind her now with eyes like jeweled rapiers looked more like a hired mercenary. It couldn't be!
Fran grinned saucily and said, ‘George, meet Torrens Montgomery—I always want to add `the third' after that impressive handle but he tells me it's probably nearer the twenty-third so it's best left alone—and Torr, this is my sister, Georgina.’
Torr Montgomery stared at the woman who was so like, yet nothing like, Fran it was uncanny. Gut-punched, all he could think was `we've already met and her name is Gina' and he couldn't say that because they all knew they hadn't. Yet he'd stake his life he knew her as intimately as he knew himself, that they were as cosmically matched as clouds to sky.
When he'd agreed to take Fran on the expedition to Peru last year, he thought he'd found his soul mate as Netta, his secretary, called it, and hadn't even known he was looking. He knew now he'd only found the twin shade of that soul. Strange thoughts for a man with minimal concern for his own soul.
He'd better say something intelligent soon or they'd both be wondering what was wrong. How could you explain something you didn't understand yourself? How could you recognize a person as the other half of yourself in one second and know in the next there was no one you trusted less?
How could a man know any of this about a woman he'd never met before, know she knew it too? Just as well he was festooned with bags of duty free booze and hidden behind the luggage trolley so neither of them would notice he was hard as a rock and twice as bloody uncomfortable.
‘Hi, Gin—Georgina. I'd appreciate it if you ignored your sister's ramble and just called me Torr.’
Georgina shivered. The rich dark voice slashed across the taut strings in her stomach with all the finesse of a novice violin player. His name, like a drum-roll from a distant horizon, would scarcely form on her lips.
‘Hi—Torr.’
Torr. The single syllable resonated in her head, in her soul, in ever-unfurling waves through the ether all about her. Georgina closed her eyes against the darkness of it.
Torr. Taur. Ta-au-ur!
‘Are you all right, George?’
Fran's voice, sharp with concern, snapped her back to her surroundings and Georgina fought to keep her focus on reality. Fran had spelt his name T-O-R-R in her letters. Why was she seeing T-A-U-R in her mind? Abruptly she dropped his hand and rubbed at her eyes.
‘Been putting in a few long nights lately. Got a couple of book signings as well as the launch of your book coming up at the shop in the next couple of weeks, not to mention speaking at a writer's conference the following weekend,’ she gabbled, knowing mention of the book launch and conference would divert Fran's attention from her reaction to Torr Montgomery. The explanation was logical and more than likely the true one, she told herself.
‘Let's get out of this place.’
‘George, I'm rapt to be launching `Galactic Memory' from your shop but I hope you haven't been running yourself ragged over this thing.’ Fran slipped her arm through her sister's and leaving Torr to bring up the rear with the luggage trolley, steered a path towards the exit. Fran's first book had been a runaway success and the publishers were confident this one would eclipse it. Hosting the book launch was a coup for her Auckland cafe-cum-bookshop. Georgina knew she could attribute much of the shop's success to her partner and international best-selling author, Gould Barrington. Even so `The Literal Cafe' was becoming the place to see and be seen in New Zealand literary circles.
‘Would you like me to drive?’ Fran asked as Torr hefted their luggage into the back of the wagon.
She'd always assumed she was the capable one in any situation and for all of their growing years Georgina had been content to allow it. Tired and more than a little off balance, she caught herself almost sliding into the old habit of letting Fran take control.
Torr Montgomery packed the last piece of luggage into the boot and stepped back. Georgina, waiting to close the lid, was briefly impaled by a rapier-keen glance with a hint of something that might have been contempt. Why did those eyes draw her, yet seemingly reject her at the same time? As if she'd been judged and found wanting. A shimmer of anger, or was it pride, stiffened her spine. She'd been running her own business for several years now and was more than capable of taking control of any situation or driving across the city in late afternoon traffic.
Walking to the driver's door, she said, ‘You've just flown across the world. You'll be jet-lagged. I'm fine now we're out of the airport. That place unsettles me.’ And I'll stay fine so long as Taur—Torr—Montgomery stays out of my line of vision. Why had his name never affected her until she'd heard it in his own voice? The after-shocks of that moment of connection still hummed along her nerve-paths. She was as tense as a newly strung cross-bow, the kind of tension she'd put behind her with Alan's death.
As they cleared the toll-booth and eased into the city-bound traffic, Fran bubbled about the changes to the airport and its approaches, the changes in Georgina and wondered what else she'd find different. Georgina concentrated on driving and Torr remained silent behind her. Not that that made her any less aware of his presence. It was as if the back of her head and neck had become a highly receptive organ of sense.
They were almost at the apex of the harbor bridge when Fran half turned in her seat to share a glance with Torr, and announce, ‘We were thinking maybe we should get married while we're here.’
Georgina's heart stopped. The re-start a second later was agonizing. It took all her concentration to keep their speed steady and the car safely in its lane. She should've let their sister, Merryn, go to the airport as she'd offered. It had never occurred to her that Fran, the lighter half of herself, could ever do or say anything to wound her so deeply.
Even less, did she understand why it did.
‘She thinks it'd be good publicity,’ came the comment from the back seat in carefully neutral tones, which nevertheless shivered the discs up her spine. Torr Montgomery wasn't pleased.
‘Well it would!’ Fran protested laughingly, turning fully to bathe him in the brilliance of her smile. ‘But that's not the only reason.’
‘I asked you months ago to think about making it legal. You're only considering it now from the publicity angle.’
‘Torr, you don't believe that!’ Fran cajoled. ‘It's coming home that's made me all sentimental and—my biological clock's finally hammering loud enough for me to hear. What about you, George? We're twenty-nine. Don't you feel it?’
‘Um—I guess—I hadn't really thought about it,’ Georgina mumbled, shocked by her terrible anathema to the vision of Fran giving birth to Torr's baby. Stunned too, by the memory of a sleepy Gould sitting bolt upright in bed a few weeks ago when she told him she'd been wondering whether they should get married and have a baby. He'd subsided back onto his pillow just as quickly and pretended his reaction was a mock-up but she'd heard the slight shakiness in his voice when he'd assured her if she ever got pregnant of course they'd get married. Then he'd made delicious love to her until the sound of biological clocks or pattering feet couldn't be further from either of their minds—and she'd retreated back within the insulation of her world of books and business. A strange wrenching ache, almost a fear, formed deep in her gut when she thought of holding her own child in her arms and though the pull of motherhood was strong, the fear was stronger.
‘You've never mentioned it before, Frannie,’ Torr rumbled from the back seat. ‘Was there something at thirty thousand feet that wound your spring?’
Georgina glanced in the mirror. The green of his eyes was knowing and luminous and the chiseled lips were curved in a very male grin. He'd forgotten his pique. Fran's magic never failed. Georgina switched her gaze back to the road and kept it there for the rest of the trip into Takapuna on the North Shore. Something within her had torn irreparably as she'd
watched that private interchange between her sister and Torrens Montgomery.
The thought of them spending a whole month in New Zealand, in her house, stirred a peculiar panic in her stomach. Please God, Gould hasn't forgotten they're coming today, she silently prayed. He became entirely immersed in writing, researching, and actually living the amazing adventure stories for which he was famous. Georgina made herself relax. He was looking forward to meeting Fran and Torr and hearing about Peru and the many other exotic wilderness places Torr had explored in the course of his work. Thank goodness she'd had the foresight to arrange a family party tonight. Maybe by bed-time she'd have these weird sensations in perspective.
It was her sisters and her mother who were the ones who often `saw' or `heard' or `felt' things. Georgina, with a sense of irrational fear she'd never dared examine or confront, always kept her own tendency to psychic awareness completely repressed. So incomprehensible and unacceptable was her reaction to Torr Montgomery she could only ignore it.
There was no sign of Gould's sporty BMW when they drew up in the double garage above the house on the banks of a small lake on the city's North Shore. Katja, a Samoyed bitch, ghosted out of the shadows to greet her. Climbing out of the car Georgina sank her fingers into the thick creamy coat in welcome, silently praying Gould would come soon. He represented stability in a world spinning beyond her control in a way she'd vowed never to let happen again.
‘Oh my God!’ Fran breathed at her elbow. ‘Is that Katja, that little ball of fluff I bought you when I was here last? I never dreamed she'd grow that big, George! Hi, Katja.’
Georgina smiled warmly at her sister. There was no gift Fran could've given her then, in the ambivalence of her mourning for Alan, that would've brought her more joy. Keeping her hand on the dog, Georgina said, ‘Friends, Katja. Say `hello'.’