She shook her head. “No. But he offered me a job.”
“What?” he cried.
His deep rich voice flowed over her, and she forced herself to take a small step backward. Everything he did, everything he was, sent shock waves of desire through her body. “He wanted me to join his ranks. He said he would give me anything I desired and now I see he really wasn’t kidding, was he?”
“No.”
“I told him I couldn’t work for him. I could never work for such a man.”
“But you’ve been treating him.” Sort of a question.
She sighed. “I don’t think you could ever call what I was doing ‘treating him.’ He had an ability to manipulate the sessions. I often ended up revealing things about myself I didn’t want to, very Hannibal and Clarice. Though he never spoke directly of his wrongdoings, he shared a great many fantasies with me, which generally involved an advanced level of brutality. Of course he would insist he would never think of acting out these fantasies. If … if I truly can believe that you’re real, and that Darian is from Second Earth as you’ve said, then it would explain a lot but oh-my-God saying these things out loud makes me think I’m headed for the loony bin.”
He smiled suddenly. “I didn’t know loony bin was a clinical term.”
She couldn’t hold back a chuckle. “Well, I confess it helps to laugh. But Second Earth. Mortal Earth. Really?”
“Where do you suppose I’m from?”
Once again, Alison shook her head. “I have no idea but for the past fifteen minutes I’ve been trying to determine if I’m going insane or not.”
He smiled. Even his teeth were beautiful, although it was weird to see the tips of his fangs showing, not nearly as pronounced as when he’d been fighting. In fact, they were hardly noticeable.
“You’re not insane,” he said.
“What is Second Earth like?”
His gaze softened, something she hadn’t expected. “In developed areas, where ascenders congregate, the architecture is amazing and there are gardens everywhere.”
“You mean like public gardens?”
“In part. Just imagine a world of gardens, where the most sought-after prizes are given for horticulture and design.”
The image, juxtaposed with leather-kilted warrior vampires, jolted her mind. “Gardens?”
“For miles. But at the same time, these gardens are only allowed within the town and city limits. Beyond designated areas, Second Earth is in a raw state. The Colorado River is still without dams and goes through regular tidal bores since it empties, without hindrance, into the Sea of Cortez.”
A world still full of primitive wilderness yet thoroughly civilized.
She thought he had just described himself, raw, in a wild state, yet civilized. The impression struck a chord. She trembled, and desire once more sent a shock wave through her body. He closed his eyes, flared his nostrils again, and winced as though she had just hurt him.
What returned was his scent, that exotic cardamom smell that once more invaded her body. She restrained a gasp then swallowed hard. She forced herself to the point.
“So why the same place-names, or are they different on Second?”
“Same.” He smiled, just a crooked slant to the side of his mouth and absurdly sexy. “Keeps everything simple.”
She nodded. Made sense. “I have so many questions. Can you stay for a while? Talk to me?”
He searched her eyes but shook his head. His jaw took on a stubborn line, which didn’t bode well for the request. “Unfortunately, Alison Wells, I don’t have a legal precedent to allow you to retain any of what’s happened here this evening.”
“What?” She took yet another step away from him. She shook her head. Her mouth felt suddenly dry. “But what are you saying … exactly?”
Before she could react, he closed the distance in one long impossibly fast stride, clamped his right hand to her forehead and his left to the back of her head. Warm waves of power pulsed through her.
“No,” she cried. “Don’t! Kerrick, please don’t.”
He released her and spoke softly. “Don’t fight me. I have to do this. We have rules. A lot of rules.”
Tears stung her eyes. “You don’t understand. I’m alone here. I mean, I have family, but they don’t really understand me, what my life is like. I want to know more, about you, about this.” She waved her hand to encompass the now deserted courtyard.
“You’re not ascended, and the presence of a warrior in an environment like this is never a call to ascension. Not even Darian Greaves’s presence. As I said, we have careful rules about this. I’m sorry.”
“I want to ascend,” she cried. She felt panicky, like her future had just arrived on a strong ocean wave but an equally strong tide was dragging it back out to sea.
“I’m sorry, this isn’t the way it’s done. There are reasons for the steps we take. You have to be called to ascension. A warrior in a location like this is not a call.”
He caught her head again, a hand before and behind. The strength of these new waves paralyzed her. Tears ran down her cheeks. “No,” she whimpered staring into his eyes. “You don’t understand.”
“I don’t have a choice,” he muttered between gritted teeth. “But for God’s sake relax or this is going to hurt like hell.”
“No,” she whispered. She couldn’t lose this memory, not when for the first time in her life she had actually seen other beings do what she had been able to do since childhood.
“Please stop fighting, Alison. I don’t have a choice.”
The frequency of the waves increased. Knives sliced through her head.
He leaned close. “Relax, beautiful one,” he whispered against her ear. “I don’t want to hurt you, but my God you’re powerful.”
She knew she didn’t have a choice. The pain increased and she surrendered abruptly.
She had a sense she had fallen into his arms.
When her brain started functioning again, she heard a very soft, almost chuffing sound. Warm sweet breath flowed over her face and down her neck. More of his incredible leathery spicy scent drifted into her nose all over again. Desire engulfed her as well as tremendous relief.
He hadn’t done it.
He hadn’t taken the memory.
She drew in a strong breath, opened her eyes, then met his amazing green eyes, shards of emerald glass, sparkling, longing. She drifted the back of her fingers over his cheek. “You’re magnificent,” she whispered. “Please don’t go.”
“Shit,” he murmured.
She laughed but tears shimmered over her vision.
“Don’t fight me again,” he said.
She sighed. “I wish you wouldn’t go.”
“Don’t have a choice.”
She closed her eyes. Despair forged a wedge in her heart once more. She hurt to her toes.
He put his hand on her forehead. She surrendered. Her mind eased away and the next thing she knew she sat on the third step of the cement stairs, alone. She looked around mystified. Why wasn’t she upstairs in her office locking up for the night?
She crossed her arms over her chest and squeezed as though trying to hold something in, but what? She wiped her cheeks. She’d been crying but for the life of her she didn’t know why. The feeling was familiar, though. For weeks now her chest had ached, pulling her heart south, which spoke to every longing she had ever had for a full life, a complete life. Maybe she didn’t know why she sat where she sat, or the present cause for tears on her cheeks, but alone-and-weeping made complete sense.
She glanced at her feet and noticed a business card sitting between the tips of her shoes. She reached down and picked it up. A red rose, lying prone against a glossy black background, lay beneath words printed in a lovely scarlet script, THE BLOOD AND BITE.
How strange was this? She’d dreamed about this nightclub several times over the past two weeks.
* * *
Marcus stood behind his massive desk, phone receiver in hand. He was
in shock. Goddamn shock.
He released his strangled grip on the phone then hung the damn thing up. He looked through the glass, which topped his desk, to the sculpted gnarled base below. The base had been assembled from massive pieces of driftwood retrieved from the coast of the Olympic Peninsula and topped by a custom four-inch-thick piece of glass the length and width of a small car. Fabricated by a local artisan, the table had cost him over two hundred thousand dollars, a drop in the bucket compared with his entire fortune.
Yet he felt in danger of losing everything because of this one single fucking phone call.
He glanced at his TV. CNN ran twenty-four/seven. He knew Mortal Earth. He’d made a life here, goddammit. This was his life, the life he wanted, the life he’d chosen.
He turned to face the window, each hand now in a tight fist. He had an office near the top of a high-rise, which allowed for a magnificent view of Puget Sound. Another storm pounded Seattle and rain hit the window in successive waves, like a thousand fingertips tapping the panes all at once, releasing, then tapping again. Usually the sound soothed him. Right now, however, nothing was going to take the edge off.
He hadn’t heard that particular voice, an edgy sharp female voice, in two centuries. Endelle had not spoken a word to him since he quit her elite group of warriors, not since he walked out on all the vows he had taken, not since the day he’d flipped off his warrior brothers and left them for good, yeah, two hundred years ago.
And now she’d called him back. She had a job for him, a critical job. The war against the Commander had heated up, her warriors were worked to the max, and she needed him to take Kerrick’s place because the bastard had a major ascendiate to guard, or would as soon as the female answered her call to ascension.
Whatever.
For a split second he thought about hunting for the mortal woman himself and warning her away from the shitfest called Second Earth. Then again, who was he to say what was right for anyone else? Even he hadn’t left Second because he didn’t love his world. He did. He left for other reasons, reasons that still haunted him.
Fuck.
At least he’d only have to return for a handful of days, a few pebbles from the ass-end of the riverbed of his life, Endelle had said.
Like hell it would begin and end there.
Nor could he refuse and she knew it.
Goddammit.
His week was jammed. He had meetings with three of his boards over the next few days. Several international construction bids were in the works and one major contract with a Second Earth import firm. Tomorrow night he was scheduled to have dinner with a representative from one of the Middle East royal families and in an hour, he had a fang-date with an exquisite Canadian actress. He had an emerald necklace to give her, and he’d planned on spending most of the evening buried inside her then wiping her memory about midnight. He would leave her with the necklace accompanied by a single memory of beautiful sex and a sweet but necessary good-bye. She wouldn’t remember he’d sucked on her neck though she might be a little dizzy over the next two days.
Now he’d have to cancel his evening.
Goddammit.
He turned away from the window. His gaze once more fell to the woody swirls beneath the thick layer of glass, all the twisted limbs, sea-worn, smashed about by the heavy Pacific waves, gnarled and smooth. He thought of Endelle’s eyes, the ancient lined appearance of her brown eyes. He thought about her sacrifice of service to Second.
He owed her this.
He pressed the tips of his fingers hard into the block of glass. Too hard. He eased back.
He’d made a life for himself on Mortal Earth, a goddamn beautiful life full of all the money he could want, all the women, all the toys. He’d just ordered a Harley 1200 Nightster and the newest Jaguar. Both would eat up the coastal roads like the blast of a rocket, rain or shine.
But he had to go. He had no choice. When he left the Warriors of the Blood he’d promised Endelle one thing—if she ever needed him, truly needed him, he would come. After all, he wasn’t a completely narcissistic bastard.
He thought about what he’d be doing over the next several days, putting his life on the line and all his plans on hold. He thought about his fang-date. To hell with it. Endelle and the warriors would have to wait until goddamn midnight before he left Mortal Earth. He’d get laid first.
Other thoughts intruded, thoughts beyond battling, the reason he’d left the warriors in the first place, the reason he no longer lived on Second. It was simple. At the time, if he’d stayed, he would have killed Kerrick for what he’d done.
He still would.
His fingers ached now from the pressure he once more leveled on the glass. Part of his mind warned him to back off, but the other part had turned a brilliant shade of red. His need for revenge hadn’t changed, not even a little. As God was his witness, he’d get Kerrick’s neck in his hands and he’d kill that sonofabitch.
The table shattered at the exact same moment a roar left his throat.
* * *
Kerrick felt blasted from the inside out. The sheer strain of trying not to think about Alison Wells made his eyes feel like he’d rubbed them with sandpaper.
He stood in Endelle’s office, leaning an arm on the mantel of a never-used fireplace. Windows formed the north and east walls. A scattering of lights glittered all across the base of Camelback Mountain. Phoenix in any dimension had interesting volcanic hills; this one was named for its shape.
The throne room, as Thorne called the seat of Endelle’s administration, was a comfortable space with dark wood floors covered with scattered zebra skins, more a man’s room, almost a trophy room, than the place where a bitch-on-wheels administered an entire world government.
He couldn’t begin to imagine what she had to cope with as Supreme High Administrator of Second, but right now he had his own problems, a big one with lovely blond hair and blue eyes rimmed with gold, a powerful mortal female, a woman, most likely approaching her call to ascension.
Alison.
Alison.
Christ.
He shoved his hand through his unbound hair. He shouldn’t have left that card on the cement step. He was interfering in the process. Bad things tended to follow interference.
The trouble was, he’d held her in his arms, this woman, Alison, and the smell of lavender clung to him like honey to skin. Every breath he took brought her scent deeper into his bones. He knew what was happening and he couldn’t stop it, yet he had no intention of doing a damn thing to help it along. He would fight to the death on this one.
And still he had left that damn card with her.
“Where the fuck is your cadroen, Warrior?”
Kerrick shifted his gaze back to Endelle. He stood up straighter. “On my sink.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Why?”
“I’m just a little pissed off.”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine. Whatever. Now, you were telling me about the mortal female. She folded and I asked you about place and distance.”
He came to attention, slinging his left arm behind his back. He still wore his kilt and harness, both bloodied, hardly proper attire for offering up a report to the Supreme High Administrator, but she’d insisted on a meeting right after he’d left Paradise Valley. He told her what happened.
“She folded right in front of you. No shit.” Endelle’s perfectly arched brows rose. Her Supremeness was impressed.
She sat low in a cradle of her enormous wings—yellow feathers this time since she could change the color at will. She wore some kind of spotted hide dress—maybe leopard—which climbed up her thighs. He had no interest in Endelle, but she was extraordinarily beautiful, and he was after all a man. She had the exotic features of an Arabian princess, olive skin, thick black hair, but her dark eyes were unusual and had an almost wooded appearance, like rough tree bark. She was also dangerous and possessed powers he couldn’t begin to imagine. She wore stilettos, the long narrow heels reminding him of a pair of dag
gers.
Fitting.
Endelle had a scorpion’s temperament.
“I did a quick profile of her powers. She may have all of Second’s abilities.”
“Goddammit,” Endelle muttered. She plucked one of her feathers and ran it between her fingers. He winced. It hurt like hell to have a feather plucked but he supposed she’d been doing it so long the experience was similar to filing her nails. She continued, “The Commander’s going to want her and in a few hours this is going to turn into a fucking shitfest. Okay, so where exactly is she in her call to ascension?”
“I couldn’t get into her head.”
“What?” She actually shifted her legs off her desk and leaned forward to stare at him. “You couldn’t get into her head?”
“I could communicate telepathically, but she has shields like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Wow.” She nodded several times. “So, did you ask about her dreams?”
“I’m not a Liaison Officer and you know the rules. Even asking is considered a violation. She had no apparent prior knowledge of anything she saw, either the death vamp or me. Our world, therefore, hasn’t commanded her dreams, otherwise she should have known more than she did.”
“But her powers…?”
“Off the chart. Only your ascension came with the ability to dematerialize.”
“Damn straight. Well, she has to be in the middle of it. I’m playing this as though we have a major ascension in progress. I think it’s just a matter of time before she makes her way to one of the Borderlands.” She rubbed her forehead. He wondered if she ever slept. But then, none of them did right now, at least not a whole lot of hours strung together.
Sleep. What would that be like?
The feather she had plucked changed colors, from pink to amber to black to green, a kaleidoscope turning along with the flicks of her thumb and forefinger, all the absent workings of her thoughts.
His gaze shifted to the view from the north window. Night had fallen, and Camelback Mountain was in silhouette against a black sky lit with stars. The same location on Mortal Earth would have put her office somewhere near Sky Harbor Airport.
Madame Endelle’s administrative building sat in a group of elegant glass high-rises, each building wide at the base, like a pyramid, and staggered inward at each floor, allowing broad patio gardens to make up part of the overall design. By tapping into the underground rivers, the Valley of the Sun on Second Earth, in populated areas, took on a tropical feel. Broadleaf trees and citrus groves kept the temps down and the air clean. Healing greenbelts winding throughout the city were the norm.