Hot Zone

by Cindy Dees

  Gathering all his remaining strength, he reversed their positions, his right forearm holding her shoulders down, his weight squashing any thought of movement on her part. His thigh forced her legs apart, and she sprawled wantonly, his for the taking, beneath him.

  He’d searched for a woman like this ever since he’d reluctantly accepted that he might be stuck in this place forever. And to think she’d just walked into his life out of the clear blue. What were the odds…?

  And then the rage came—his old friend. His wellspring. The storm within from whence came all his power. What were the odds, indeed?

  Grateful for his fury’s return, he welcomed its maelstrom. A need to dominate this woman consumed him. To take her by force and brand her with the mark of him for all time…

  Caution of who and what she was slammed into him. She’d already let slip a small demonstration of her mental powers when she forced a sexual image into his brain, past his formidable mental defenses.

  He stared down at her, trembling beneath him, appearing completely at his mercy. Surely Tessa wasn’t as helpless as all this. She was going to tempt him to rape her, and then, in his moment of climax, when all his mental defenses were down, she would destroy him.

  He flung himself away from her, springing off the bed furiously. “I will not fall for your tricks!” he snarled.

  She sat up, looking small and forlorn. A fine actress, Lady Tessa of Marconi.

  “I am no green boy you can bewitch. I am a—” he broke off. He must never utter those words aloud in this place. “I am a mighty warrior and a great sorcerer. No woman will get the best of me.”

  Tessa’s eyes glittered in irritation. “From the way you’re ranting and raving, I’d say I’ve already gotten the best of you.”

  He took an aggressive step toward the bed. Still, she didn’t flinch. And yet again he was struck by her audacity. Was she simply dense, or really so brave—and foolish? Even Artemesia had the good sense not to bait him when he was in a towering temper like this.

  “Get. Out.” Her voice was clear. Calm. Forceful. Her words fell like crystals, shattering upon his eardrums.

  She dared to toss him out? Him? Off balance, he knew not whether to roar with rage or howl with laughter.

  Time. He needed some time to regain his equilibrium. To think about the presence of this woman and what it meant.

  “This is not over, my fair-haired seductress. Not by a long shot.” And with that, he stormed out of the room.

  Bright sunlight woke Tessa the next morning. That and the oddest noise. It was loud. Vaguely human. A rumbling roar of sound all around her. What in the world? Perplexed, she arose and threw back the slatted wood shutters.

  And stared.

  Stretching away on the plain below her lay a vast tent city, extending as far as the eye could see. The sound was coming from soldiers. Training in sweeping formations, tending equipment, lounging at rest. Tens of thousands of them.

  Professor Carswell had dropped her smack-dab in the middle of the Persian army!

  As part of her military training, Tessa had studied great battles through history, picked apart the tactics, and here she stood in the midst one of history’s greatest armies. A shiver rippled through her. Of thrill or trepidation, she wasn’t sure. Maybe both.

  How far along was the invasion of Greece, anyway? Had the legendary battle of Thermopylae and the heroic stand of the Spartans happened yet? Had Athens fallen? The great naval battle of Salamis taken place?

  How was she supposed to find a bronze wedge, small enough to fit in the palm of her hand, in the middle of all this? She cast her mind outward, seeking the prize. Only a muddled tingle that might be its distinctive signature reached her.

  The number of triangular bits of bronze out there with all those soldiers and their equipment had to number in the millions. She might have found needles in haystacks before, but this was ridiculous. She had a remarkable talent for finding lost things, but not this remarkable!

  If she spent a year in this place, she couldn’t search a hundredth of that massive gathering of humanity in front of her. Now what?

  The plan was to retrieve the bronze wedge ASAP, then return home with all due haste.

  And, she amended mentally, to stay far, far away from the Sorcerer of Halicarnassus in the meantime.

  She didn’t know what had come over her last night when he’d barged into her room and her bed, but in the bright light of day, their spectacular kiss couldn’t be attributed to anything other than temporary insanity. She was on an ultra-secret military mission, for goodness sake. The last thing she needed to do was get entangled with some local man, particularly a very distracting one.

  No help for it. She had to take a deep breath and start searching for the section of the medallion. And hope she got lucky.

  After availing herself of the chamber pot, she pulled on the high-waisted, loose-weave, white linen dress Athena had conjured for her. The embroidered decoration was unobtrusive, but exquisitely done. Not so gaudy as to draw attention to herself, but finely enough made to declare her high status in society.

  She tucked her all-important bronze-and-quartz cuff safely under the left sleeve, where it clasped her arm a couple of inches above the elbow.

  Time to find herself a hunk of bronze.

  This search was supposed be a breeze. After all, she’d seen and handled the mate to her missing medallion, and she had a precise sense of the vibrational energy it put out. She would try again to locate it, concentrating fully this time.

  Tessa sat down cross-legged in the middle of the bed and closed her eyes. Her consciousness expanded to take in the entire room, then the rooms around her, and before long, the entire palace.

  For as long as she could remember, she had simply to know what object was missing—to see a picture of it or even get a good description of it—to be able to find it.

  Buried objects could be a little tricky, as well as dismembered ones. She’d been worried when Professor Carswell asked her to find a piece of a missing disk, but when she found out it was bronze, she was much more confident. Metal and certain kinds of crystals gave out powerful energy fields that were a snap to sense.

  The familiar trance settled over her, her “search mode.” When she was little, she didn’t know any better and hadn’t hidden her talent. But by the time her parents had moved her to her sixth new school district, she’d gotten the idea, and managed to grow up relatively normally, if somewhat isolated from ordinary people.

  As an adult she’d successfully hidden her strange ability until the incident in Iraq. A squad of her men had gone missing in a sandstorm, and she’d set out into the blinding dust after them, alone. She’d walked right to them, and then turned around and led them unerringly back to base. And the jig was up. Rumors had circulated through the army of the oddball officer who could find lost things. Any lost thing. Anywhere. And in short order, the folks at Project Anasazi had found her.

  And here she was. In the middle of ancient Greece looking for part of a lost bronze medallion. A far cry from finding misplaced inventory on an army post.

  Where are you, little fella?

  Hmm. She was getting only a faint buzz of energy at the moment. Athena Carswell had told Tessa she would be close to the medallion when she blinked into Persia but had warned her she might not be right on top of the bronze piece.

  The code that was engraved on the last piece found could have been slightly misinterpreted. Or worse, the medallion piece could have been moved from its original location.

  The aliens who’d hidden the pieces of the disk fifty thousand years ago had apparently done their best to place the medallions in ways that would ensure their remaining undisturbed. But unfortunately, humans liked shiny things and had a tendency to pick them up and carry them off.

  Tessa opened her mind up fully, seeking what direction she should go to draw nearer to that which she sought.

  She waited.

  And waited.

  Her br
ow crinkled in confusion.

  She was getting nothing. Absolutely nothing. She never got nothing!

  Panic jumped in her gut. Had Professor Carswell and company gone to enormous effort and expense to train her and send her here, only to have her fail? She was the supposed expert at this. She’d passed every test they’d thrown at her with flying colors when they’d checked out her bold claim that she could find anything.

  What had gone wrong? Was she in the wrong time frame? The entirely wrong place?

  Professor Carswell had been specific. Somewhere near wherever Tessa blinked in, the second fragment of the medallion could be found.

  She’d gotten that reading on it so clearly when she’d first arrived last night. Why wasn’t she sensing the damned thing now? Surely it hadn’t been moved so far overnight that it was now out of her range!

  She crawled off the bed, deciding to try again outside. But as she took a step toward the wooden door, a knock sounded upon it.

  Her pulse jumped. For a hopeful second, she wondered if it was Rustam. Oh, come on. He was some half-drunk man who’d come on to her soon after she’d been bombarded with images of her first—and hopefully last—orgy. The kiss had been a complete anomaly. She was a military officer, for God’s sake. On a vital mission.

  Okay, and wearing a filmy dress and no underwear.

  Still. Their encounter had been a one-shot deal.

  “Your ladyship. Be thee awake?” a female voice whispered.

  Startled, Tessa unlatched the door and flung it open. A pretty young Persian woman stood there. She looked frightened.

  “What can I do for you?” Tessa asked kindly.

  The servant blinked. “Nothing. ’Tis I who serve you. Her Highness, Queen Artemesia, sent me to attend you.”

  Tessa thought fast. Why would someone with as high a rank as Artemesia even be aware of her existence, let alone take enough interest to send a servant to her? Did it have something to do with Rustam’s visit to her room last night? This couldn’t be good. The idea was to stay as invisible as possible on this mission. Just slide in, find the medallion, and slide out. Tessa asked, “What’s your name?”

  “Malah.”

  “Nice to meet you, Malah.”

  The girl ducked her head, embarrassed, and commenced straightening up the room, which took approximately thirty seconds. Nervously, she asked, “Shall I bring food to break thy fast?”

  “That would be great.”

  In a few minutes, the girl returned with a pottery dish and a small clay jug. The former contained dates, olives, flat bread and a sharp white cheese. The jug held a milky, beige-colored water that tasted faintly of mud. But hey. It was wet. Not to mention she’d taken every inoculation known to mankind before she came on this little junket, and was loaded up on so many antibiotics that no germ stood a chance in her system for weeks to come.

  Malah waited expectantly while Tessa nibbled at the meal. All in all, it wasn’t half-bad. The fruit and bread were fresh, and the strong goat cheese grew on her. When she pushed the food away, the servant stepped forward with a small, damp towel and washed Tessa’s hands, which was a little weird. But when in Rome—or when in Persia, as the case might be.

  “My lady queen bids me invite thee to her chambers when thou hast broken fast and completed thy toilet.”

  Tessa blinked, startled. The girl was talking about her toilette—getting dressed and putting on makeup and otherwise primping. Did she look that bad? She’d already combed her hair and washed her face this morning, and Athena hadn’t sent any makeup with her.

  “I’m afraid my toilet is already done,” Tessa replied regretfully. “Am I not presentable enough for Her Highness?”

  A fleeting smile crossed the girl’s face. “You are most pesentable. And exotic.”

  “Exotic? Me?” Tessa exclaimed.

  “I have never seen a person of your coloring. Your hair is like spun gold and your eyes like silver. Your skin is as white as snow.”

  She wasn’t that pale. But in comparison to the olive complexions of the locals, she wouldn’t argue. “When have you seen snow, Malah?”

  “Back at Persepolis, baskets of it are brought down from the mountains to cool the emperor’s drink in times of hot weather.”

  “Speaking of location, what place is this?” Tessa asked curiously.

  “’Tis the city of Trachis, recently seized from the Greeks.”

  “Where is it near?” The servant gave her a strange look, so Tessa explained. “I was shipwrecked and do not know where exactly I am.”

  Malah nodded in comprehension. “We lie at the foot of Mount Oeta, a few days’ march north of the pass at Thermopylae, a short ride inland from the Gulf of Euboea. The emperor makes final preparations for his attack on Athens—” The girl broke off. Then added hastily, “Or so I have heard.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone about the emperor’s not-too-secret secret plans. It’s rather hard to disguise the movements of an army this size.”

  Malah smiled in relief. “If thou wilt come with me, my lady?”

  “I’m not your lady, but yes, I’ll come along.”

  The girl mumbled under her breath, “Would that thou were.”

  Hmm. Artemesia was a harsh mistress, eh? No surprise. Apparently, the queen was in the know about Xerxes’s military matters, however, which was a surprise. And servants like Malah overheard snippets of the planning meetings.

  In daylight, the palace turned out to be a complex of many separate buildings that must’ve comprised most of the city center of Trachis. Tessa followed the servant across rough cobblestone streets that made her grateful for her flat leather sandals.

  Rustam jolted awake, disoriented. In his dream, he’d been back on his ship, commanding his crew as he navigated vast crossings. But when he opened his eyes, his ship was nowhere to be seen. Gauze curtains obscured a stone ceiling overhead. Damn. Still stuck in Greece.

  A wave of energy crackled painfully across his skin, pricking him with ten thousand tiny needles from head to toe. It must have been this sharp discomfort that had awakened him.

  A stronger wave of outright pain washed over him and he lurched upright, looking around quickly. Thank the heavens. He was alone. As a sorcerer he could probably get away with glowing in his sleep, but he would rather not have to explain the phenomenon to these superstitious locals.

  He looked down. Odd. He was still glowing.

  The energy danced across his body randomly, like heat lightning, not in the usual orderly whirl of his gathered power. The needles became knives, stabbing with a thousand assassin’s blows. What the—?

  He lashed out with his mind, slapping the force field away from his skin. That lessened the pain to a bearable level, but the indigo zigzagging rays still tingled sharply.

  Tessa.

  What was she up to? Was this an attack of some kind? Testing his power against hers when he was unconscious and his defenses were lowered? The little witch.

  He surged out of bed, ignoring his discomfort, and threw on a pair of loose trousers. He grabbed a length of linen and tossed it over one shoulder, too irritated to bother draping and belting it properly. Slamming his feet into sandals, he stormed out of his quarters.

  He burst into her room without bothering to knock. Empty! Where in the halls of hell was she? He cast his thoughts outward. And got back a buzz of disjointed energy. Oh, she was out there, all right. He just couldn’t sense where.

  Fury, and a faint frisson of fear, lashed through him. He spun and strode from her room, on the hunt. When he found Tessa of Marconi, the two of them were going to have a little conversation about her powers.

  Soldiers hustled along the streets, jostling Tessa carelessly. But when a gilt litter came by, borne on the shoulders of four African slaves and carrying a heavily veiled woman, the warriors parted respectfully.

  “Artemil,” Malah murmured to Tessa, “the emperor’s concubine.”

  “I thought he was married to Esther by now.�
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  “Begging thy pardon?” the girl asked in surprise.

  “Who is the Persian empress?” Tessa enquired quickly.

  “Esther, Jewess of Susa and Babylon.”

  “And she shares Xerxes with concubines?”

  Malah grinned. “’Tis said she holds all of his attention. But Artemil is the mother of Xerxes’s firstborn son, therefore she retains her title and status as concubine. But it is also said she comes no more to his bed.”

  “Why in the world would she come along on this campaign?”

  The maid smiled slyly. “Isn’t it obvious? She wants back into Xerxes’s bed.”

  Ahh. Bedroom politics. Artemil’s procession passed by, and Tessa and Malah continued on their way. As they walked, Tessa asked, “Is Esther here? I should very much like to see her. She is renowned even in my land as a great queen.”

  “Nay. She stays at Susa and administers the empire with her uncle, Mordecai.”

  Malah stopped at the steps of a large building bordered by double rows of tall stone columns in the classic Greek tradition. “Here we are.”

  “This looks like a temple.”

  “It was. Xerxes expelled the Greek gods from this place and installed the greatest Persian god, Ahura Mazda, in their stead. The emperor and his closest advisors stay here now.”

  Gutsy guy, tossing gods out of their homes. Tessa mounted the stairs eagerly, drinking in the gloriously carved friezes, the perfect symmetry and balance of the building’s design.

  But when they reached the doorway to Artemesia’s chambers, she hesitated. As eager as she was to meet the great warrior queen, she couldn’t afford to screw up this interview. Be unimportant. Uninteresting. Just some foreigner passing through.

  Malah held back a painted leather curtain and Tessa stepped into a giant bedroom dominated by a raised bed that could hold a half-dozen people comfortably. Oh, God. A brawny, naked man sprawled across it, asleep. As far as Tessa knew, Artemesia was a widow. Her lover, then.

  Secretly relieved it wasn’t Rustam in the queen’s bed, Tessa averted her eyes from the man and spotted the striking brunette from last night, sitting on an upholstered bench in the far corner, getting dressed. Or rather, being dressed. One serving woman brushed her nearly floor-length hair, while another slipped sandals upon her feet and tied the thongs about her ankles.