Fujimoto responded with a rapid spate of Japanese, and although Rosamund understood little of the language, she understood the tone—not complimentary, and very smug.
Then he barked out a series of commands.
The assassins bowed to him, then forced Aaron to his knees. One of them grabbed his hair and stretched his neck out.
“They can’t kill him. They can’t kill him.” Rosamund repeated the mantra over and over, but she didn’t believe it.
Her eyes were dry as she stared, and stared. She had already seen Aaron die once to save her. Then he’d returned to her and before she could touch him, hold him, know that he was Aaron and truly alive . . . he would die again, and in her defense.
She couldn’t stand this.
This was her fault.
Fujimoto lifted the sword above his head with both hands. The blade glistened in the light.
Rosamund braced herself for the anguish she knew would follow.
The sword whistled as it descended . . . and as the edge reached Aaron’s neck, he turned to smoke.
The blade passed through him.
Then he was human again. Human . . . and unharmed.
Rosamund collapsed in relief, and at last the tears came, rolling down her face, relief made real.
In unison, the assassins released him and backed off, their hands held out as if they feared having touched him.
In that dreadful monotone, Deschanel said, “Neat trick.”
Fujimoto stared at Aaron, examined the blade as if somehow it had malfunctioned, then stared at Aaron again.
Slowly Aaron got to his feet, his gaze fixed on Fujimoto.
“Your guy is pissed. If the Jap was smart, he would run,” Deschanel said.
Instead, Aaron hit Fujimoto with a lightning-fast right cross to the gut.
Fujimoto flailed backward, stumbled over the piles of fallen library books, and before he landed, Aaron grabbed him by the collar, stood him up, and hit him between the eyes.
Fujimoto’s head snapped back, and Rosamund saw his consciousness shatter.
The guy slammed into the floor. He was out.
The assassins—the two who were conscious—turned tail and ran.
The shelves behind Aaron were tilted sideways. Books were scattered across the floor. The other assassins sprawled beneath Aaron’s feet, unmoving.
Aaron turned to face Rosamund and Deschanel. His eyes were cold and deadly. “Come on.”
Deschanel dropped Rosamund to the floor.
She collapsed, her arms numb, her elbows burning, and the dislocated shoulder . . . oh, God. The pain came at her in waves, each wave bigger than the next. Yet she couldn’t do anything except roll into a ball under the table and make herself as small as possible.
“Don’t be stupid. I’ve got a pistol.” Reaching into his pocket, Deschanel pulled out a handgun and pointed it at Aaron.
To Rosamund’s inexperienced eyes, the pistol looked like a cannon.
Aaron seemed unimpressed. “Use it or shut up.”
Deschanel laughed, and when he did, he boomed like Jabba the Hutt. “I like you. But you knew that.”
“I don’t like you,” Aaron replied. “So I guess I’m going to have to kill you.”
Deschanel laughed again, a slow merriment that sat so gracelessly on his flat, cruel face. He placed the pistol on the table, and flexed his fists. “I will enjoy everything I do to you.” He took a step. “You won’t.”
Aaron watched Deschanel lumber toward him, step by step, a giant who lived to create pain and death, and Aaron’s face was calm, certain. He looked as if he were waiting.
When Deschanel was four feet away from the table, Aaron leaned down to the unconscious assassin at his feet. He opened the assassin’s coat and quick as lightning pulled the handgun out of its holster. Straightening, he emptied six shots, one after the other, into Joscelin Deschanel.
The noise was tremendous, six sharp reports, and Rosamund never saw it coming.
Apparently, neither did Deschanel.
For a second, nothing changed. He kept walking.
Rosamund thought that somehow, Aaron had missed.
Then, like a giant redwood, Deschanel tilted, staggered, and slowly toppled to the floor, slamming into the linoleum hard enough to rattle the table.
He wore an expression of surprise.
Aaron leaped Deschanel’s body, pulling his cell phone from his pocket, and ran to Rosamund’s side. He knelt, not touching her. “What did he do to you?”
“Dislocated my shoulder.” Woozy as she was, sick with pain and the trauma of seeing men fight, fall, die, she could only stare at Aaron with her hungry gaze, observing the tilt of his chin, the shining black hair, the bones of his face, so masculine and sculpted, the dark, dark eyes that scrutinized her anxiously.
“You’re going into shock.” He removed his coat and placed it over her shivering body, then dialed nine-one-one, gave the location, demanded immediate assistance.
With a measured moan of distress, Rosamund worked herself into a sitting position. Tears of pain welled in her eyes and rolled down her face.
“What are you doing?” Aaron tried to help her.
Slowly, painfully, she leaned her broken body into him. “I saw you hit by all those rocks. I held your cold body in my arms.” She kissed him, breathed his scent, and soaked in his comfort. “And I don’t care . . . if this isn’t really you. I don’t care if the Others are playing a trick. For right now, you’re mine, and I don’t dare ask for eternity.”
Chapter 39
“Hey, Samuel, did you bust them out of jail?” Charisma stood in the kitchen in Irving’s mansion and hopped on one foot, nuclear with excitement.
“With the help of Irving’s crack law team, yes, I did.” Samuel stepped aside to allow Aaron and Rosamund to step in. “Here you go. Here are the reprobates.”
Through the hubbub that broke out, no one listened to Samuel as he said, “I suppose we’re required to have a group hug?”
Aaron grinned at his friends around the long table: Irving, getting to his feet with Caleb’s help; Jacqueline, sporting a new diamond engagement ring; Isabelle, glowing with refined happiness at the sight of them; Charisma rushing at him, arms wide. “No!” He stopped her with his hands outstretched. “We were not just in jail. We were in jail in the hospital.”
Charisma took a slow step forward and embraced him gingerly, then with an eye on Rosamund’s sling, embraced her just as gingerly. “You guys do look a little rough.”
Rosamund smiled at his friends. “I’m so glad to be here.”
“Yes, being here with us beats being handcuffed to a hospital bed,” Samuel said.
“Charming as always, Samuel.” Isabelle tapped her fingernails on the table, more ruffled by Samuel’s blunt speaking than Aaron thought was warranted.
Rosamund didn’t seem offended. “Having my shoulder dislocated is not an experience I want to repeat. Neither is having it put back in its socket.”
Samuel pulled out a chair for her. “Sit down before you fall down.”
She thanked him and sank into the chair so gratefully, Aaron said, “You need to go to bed.”
“No. Please.” She relaxed with a sigh. “I’m simply tired from the trip home, and now I want to sit here and enjoy my friends.”
Irving seated himself again—at the head of the table, of course. “I’m pleased you consider this your home.”
Isabelle said, “I’m pleased you consider us your friends.”
Aaron took the bench next to her, and he relaxed, too.
The kitchen was working its magic.
Irving’s mansion was pristine, filled with delicate antiques, polished hardwood floors, and fringed velvet drapes held back with gold cords. So of course, with the possible exception of Isabelle, the Chosen Ones felt woefully out of place.
Consequently they’d moved their group meetings to the kitchen, a huge, warm, cavernous room on the bottom floor of the mansion, where they could easily
access the refrigerator for Cokes, the freezer for Popsi cles, and the stove for toasted cheese sandwiches. The floor was below ground level, the ceiling above, and when they sat around the massive, heavy table, they saw the legs of pedestrians as they walked by.
McKenna and Martha hated having the Chosen invade their domain.
The Chosen loved it, especially when McKenna and Martha did as they were doing now and rushed to create food for the triumphant homecoming.
In a suitably deferential voice, McKenna asked, “Would Mr. Eagle and Dr. Hall like a beverage? I would be pleased to serve our returning heroes.”
By that, everyone else knew they would have to serve themselves. They hurried to grab something to drink; then chairs scraped as they found their places around the table.
Aaron accepted a cup of coffee, took a long breath of air scented with freshly baked bread and a beef roast cooking in the oven, and knew a vast gratitude that he had returned to his friends, and more important, that he had returned at all.
When the Chosen Ones were settled, Caleb asked, “What happened? Sam, how did you get them out?”
“By the time I got to police headquarters, the cops had fingerprinted two of the guys on the floor and found out they were known assassins. That helped. It also helped that Fujimoto Akihiro was there, with his fingerprints all over a priceless samurai sword stolen last night from a collector here in New York City, and that Fujimoto had been at Louis Fournier’s party. So the investigators had already deduced that Fujimoto, not Rosamund, had ordered Fournier’s murder.” Samuel smirked. “At least, it didn’t take much prompting from me for them to have already deduced it.”
“Very slick.” Caleb approved.
Isabelle nodded, and for the merest second, Aaron thought he saw pride on her face.
“Tell them about Lance Mathews,” Aaron said. “Now that’s a story.”
“Lance Mathews? The Other who wanted a date with Rosamund?” Jacqueline asked.
“He’s the one. He managed to track us through Casablanca and Paris with the slimy little trick of having Rosamund text him her agenda,” Aaron told them.
“I’m sorry.” Rosamund spread her hands in apology.
“Not your fault.” Aaron had no excuse for that kind of carelessness, and he knew it. “I should have thought to ask you about him, instead of assuming that you’d be focused only on me.”
“Ego will get you every time.” Samuel laughed shortly. “Apparently, in the library while Lance Mathews was getting ready to fry Aaron, Rosamund decked him with something called a stela—”
“An irreplaceable pre-Columbian stone tablet,” Aaron filled in. “She knocked him out cold and ruined his pretty face.”
“All right, sister!” Charisma offered a high five.
With her good arm, Rosamund clumsily slapped Charisma’s hand. It was probably the first high five she’d actually exchanged in her whole restricted life.
“When Lance woke up, he was on the library floor, and the police were taking us away in cuffs. Nobody was paying a bit of attention to him, and he staggered to his feet and came running at Rosamund, screaming that he’d get her.” It was a sight Aaron would never forget—that bloodied, broken face contorted with rage, the police so complacent about the crime scene they didn’t react in time. “He was reaching for her. I thought he had her.” Aaron looked around expectantly.
“And?” Isabelle prompted.
“And he dropped dead at her feet.”
“Why?” Caleb asked.
“Heart attack,” Aaron said.
“Really.” Irving didn’t sound as if he believed it.
Aaron didn’t believe it either. It was too convenient for the Others. The guy who had screwed up his mission was gone.
But possibly it wasn’t a bad thing, either. Unless the Others already had someone lined up to take Lance’s place, they were now down a man, too. Six Chosen against six Others. Aaron liked the odds balanced.
Taking care not to touch her sling or her shoulder, he embraced Rosamund. “I have asked Rosamund to marry me.”
“Yay!” Charisma threw her arms in the air and bounced in her chair. “I knew it would happen. I knew it!”
“I recognized the way you were watching her—frustrated and hungry.” Caleb cuddled Jacqueline to his side. “I know the feeling.”
“You were never frustrated,” Jacqueline retorted. “And if you were, it was your own fault.”
“No wonder you look like shit, Aaron.” Samuel looked amused. “Any sensible woman should beat you up for suggesting she spend her life with you.”
“She hasn’t agreed.” In fact, Rosamund had looked horrified when he asked. “But I’m confident I can convince her.” Although first he had to figure out why, when she said she loved him, she was balking about making vows.
Personally, pinning her down with marriage was all he could think about.
“Aaron and Rosamund,” Irving began, “I feel as if I speak for everyone here, Jacqueline and Caleb, Isabelle, Charisma and Samuel, McKenna and Martha, and of course myself, in saying that we’re delighted that you’ve returned to us relatively unharmed and without a felony record. It’s moments like this that make me proud to be part of the Chosen Ones support group.” Without pause, he snapped, “Mr. Faa, please stop rolling your eyes.”
Samuel scrunched down in his chair like a scolded child.
Apparently the list of Chosen present set off a light-bulb in Rosamund’s brain. She looked around the kitchen, then asked, “Excuse me, Irving, but where’s Aleksandr?”
“Aleksandr has been spending a lot of time at the university. I believe he’s getting quite a reputation for successfully tutoring students in calculus. Now.” Impatience almost steamed off Irving’s lean form. “May I continue?”
Aaron leaned close to Rosamund. “He gets cranky when we interrupt his speeches.”
“I noticed,” she murmured back.
Clearly irritated, Irving asked, “Aaron! Rosamund! Is it possible to get a report on your success in searching for the prophecy?”
Aaron hated to announce the bad news. “No prophecy. We were chasing the wrong black slave prophetess from the wrong white house.”
Faces fell around the table.
“But I saw her,” Jacqueline insisted. “I saw her. She was dark-skinned. She worked in the fields. There were jungles all around. She had a vision, and they took her in chains to a tall white house. . . .” Her voice trailed off as she tried to pin down the details.
“What went wrong?” Irving asked.
Aaron took Rosamund’s hand, and held it, and together they led the Chosen Ones step-by-step through Casablanca, through Paris, and finally to the Sacred Cave in the French Alps.
“The cave was as it always was, glowing, speaking in the voice of the wind, and greedy for my blood.” As Aaron spoke, the memories grew vivid—of the glowing rocks, the breeze that taunted and danced, and the giant boulders that would have taken Rosamund’s life. He broke out in a cold sweat.
Now Rosamund grasped his hand tightly. “We entered. I used Bala’s Stone to read the prophecy, and the prophetess said she had seen us coming and deliberately led us astray, knowing that would put us in danger—because she was one of the Others.”
No one moved.
Then Charisma said, “What a hag.”
“Not the word I would have used,” Aaron said.
“I know, but Irving doesn’t like me to use vulgar language. He thinks women who have purple hair and dog collars need to have a care what they say.” Charisma seemed totally unoffended. “He’s probably right.”
Irving accepted a cup of coffee from McKenna and toasted Charisma.
“But what happened to you two?” Caleb asked. “You didn’t get those bruises from finding the wrong prophecy.”
“You’re going to have to get the rest of the story from Rosamund, because the last thing I remember”—the fear for Rosamund and the anguish of knowing he could not save her were burned onto Aaron’s memor
y—“is seeing the cave collapse.”
Every head turned to Rosamund.
“He was killed protecting me.”
Every head turned back to Aaron.
Isabelle sat on the other side of Aaron. Leaning over, she picked up his wrist. “He looks a little pale,” she told Rosamund. “But he seems to have a pulse.”