“How about letting the rope go and finding another way back to the outpost?” Bosmont suggested.
“That the kind of brilliance they taught you in engineering school, Captain?” Vann asked. He had exceeded his capacity for providing encouragement. It wasn’t a substantial capacity to start with. “Drag a big rock over here, so we can wedge the end of the rope under it for now.”
“Yes, sir.”
Vann climbed to his feet so Bosmont and Boxcar could squeeze past him on the narrow trail. He remained in place, holding the end of the rope and eyeing his surroundings. As Kaika had said, there weren’t any more trees close enough to reach.
“Big rock,” Boxcar grumbled, looking upslope as he walked along the trail. “Where’s a good big rock?”
Vann rubbed his face, ignoring the grit and dirt that stuck to his palm. He had all of the geniuses out here tonight.
“Sir,” Kaika said, a dark shadow farther up the trail. “Do you want to—”
Several snaps came from under Vann’s feet. Rock rumbled on the slope overhead. Cursing, he let go of the rope and ran up the trail toward the others. The ground shifted under his feet, and rocks tumbled down from above. He was sprinting by the time he reached the others and might have bowled through them, but they were running too. He found solid ground a second before the crashing and banging grew cacophonous behind him. He kept running. Everybody did.
Vann did not stop until the trail widened and the drop-off grew less steep. He looked back. Though the darkness hid much, enough stars were out that he could see the outline of the terrain. What had been a fifteen foot hole had to be a fifty foot gap in the trail now. The odds of making it back across were dubious at best, even if someone had brought a grappling hook. He would have to hope that, as Bosmont had suggested, they could find a route back when they finished, but he questioned if that would be possible without climbing equipment. Vann berated himself for not thinking to pack some.
“Are you all right?” Lilah asked, stepping up and touching his arm. The others had kept running, probably all the way to the camp to warm their hands around the fire.
He gripped her shoulder, appreciating that she had lingered to check on him. After nearly falling down the mountainside, his blood surged through his veins, the familiar mix of exhilaration and fear still riding him. He had the urge to pull her into his arms and kiss her, to prove that he was still alive and to thank her for caring. And because it would feel brilliant to have her soft curves pressed up against him, her lips against his, hungry, eager...
Instead, Vann cleared his throat and let go of her shoulder. “Yes,” he said, his voice raspy. “But I’m really starting to hate your fossils.”
She stared up at him, probably wondering if that was a joke or if she should be offended. He hadn’t meant to offend.
“Paleontology isn’t for everyone,” she said. “Just those with lots of patience and a quirky sense of humor. Say, what do you call an extremely old joke?”
“What?”
“Pre-hysterical.”
“That’s, uhm.” Vann quirked an eyebrow, wishing he had opted for kissing her instead of talking to her. At least he knew she wasn’t too rattled by the night’s experiences if she had come up with that gem.
“Yes, that’s the typical response to my jokes.” Lilah bumped him with her arm. “I’m afraid I don’t have any specifically about magical fossils.”
“Good, because I don’t find those fossils to be funny at all. If I learn who put magic in those rocks, I’m going to wring his neck.”
“Or perhaps throw him off the side of the mountain?” she suggested.
“Only after I’ve wrung a neck or two.”
“You’re a violent man, Colonel Therrik.” Fortunately, she sounded more amused than alarmed.
“Just determined.” He reached out, touching her shoulder and pointing her up the trail. Some of her soft hair tickled his fingers, and he gritted his teeth, once again sublimating the urge to do more than touch her, though it was hard not to think about such things. With the others out of sight, he might have pushed her against the stone wall and kissed her senseless as he slid his hands under her shirt to cup her—
He shook his head. Seven gods, he was just as horny as Bosmont.
“Determinedly violent?” she asked lightly, unaware of his libidinous thoughts.
“Whatever you want me to be, Lilah,” he murmured. He took a deep breath, trying to force his muscles to relax. All of them.
“Really? I didn’t know I had the power to control you.”
“Few do. I’m not sure it’s a gift. It’s like a lion tamer with an unruly charge.”
“Hm,” was all she said, finally heading up the trail toward the others.
Vann looked back, worried about what else might befall his people while they were cut off from the outpost.
Chapter 7
Lilah slept an impressively long time, considering a pump was vibrating a few feet away, and cracks and snaps kept sounding as Bosmont split rocks. She didn’t wake until it was fully light out, which was a good thing, since the temperature had dropped further during the night, and Vann had let the fire burn down. She wasn’t as cold as she expected to be and found an extra garment draped over her, in addition to the jacket she wore buttoned to her throat. Someone’s army jacket. She smiled, recognizing the smell of Vann’s shaving soap mingled with his... determinedness. Her colleagues in the science department would have denied that such a thing could have a scent, but it was distinctly his. She was tempted to stay there, burrowed under the jacket for a while, to enjoy its warmth and the fact that Vann had thought to drape it over her during the night. When she had first met him and seen him curling a lip and uttering Zirkander with distaste, she wouldn’t have thought he possessed the ability to be considerate.
The continued bangs, cracks, and thumps convinced Lilah to poke her head out from under the jacket, along with Captain Kaika saying, “Just let me burn a little away.”
“Get back with your evil torch, woman,” Bosmont said, his teeth rattling as the rock splitter pounded away at the granite.
Worried about the safety of the fossils, Lilah tightened the boots she hadn’t removed to sleep, then hustled over to what looked like a construction zone. Several canvas tarps lay around the rubble, one pinned down with a huge rock that held the dragon skull. The fossil was still embedded in the granite; they had simply cut around it and extracted the entire lump. Several smaller rib and leg bones had received the same treatment. She spotted a second skull, the crown just visible in a newly revealed piece of rock.
“Morning, Professor,” Kaika called, waving a metal tube with a canister attached to the back. She lifted a welding mask that had been protecting her eyes. “Did you sleep well?”
A loud crack sounded as Bosmont pressed deeper into the cliff.
“Or at all?” Kaika added.
“More than you would think. I was tired.” Lilah wondered if Kaika had slept. She had been up the previous night, just as Lilah had been. She must be exhausted, unless burning things kept her feeling cogent and perky.
Around the camp, the other soldiers had been pressed into dragging or rolling the smaller rocks away and tossing them down the slope toward the creek.
“Make sure none of those have fossils in them,” Vann said, striding out of the woods with three more soldiers in tow. The missing men from the day before presumably. All of them had ragged, haunted features, their uniforms torn and stained, and their shoulders hunched with fear or shame.
Vann wore his black shirt, his muscled forearms bare to the chill air, and Lilah was torn between feeling guilty that he had given her his jacket and wanting to admire his powerful form. In addition to the rifle he’d had slung across his back the day before, he now carried that sword in a scabbard, also on a strap that let it hang across his back. She wondered what he thought he would find to hack at out here. Not her fossils, she presumed. He had better not be thinking of hacking at them.
“Sit.” V
ann pointed at the log by the fire. “Eat something and rest, because you’re about to become scouts. We need someone to find another way back to the outpost.”
The beleaguered men did not object. One even looked enthused at the order as he plopped onto the log, either at the notion of eating or perhaps at getting to go back to the barracks. All of them could use showers and a bunk.
“Already checked before letting them tote the boulders away, sir,” Bosmont said. “We’re tossing the boneless rocks in that pile and the boners in that one there.”
“Boners? Really, Bosmont?” Kaika asked. “There’s a lady present. Though I guess she’s made a career out of liking bones, so maybe it doesn’t matter.”
“I’ve already heard every joke that can possibly be made about fossils,” Lilah said.
“I think she just called you unoriginal, Bos.”
Vann grabbed his jacket from the log and came to stand beside Lilah. There was a tuft of moss sticking out of his dark hair, and he’d lost his cap the night before.
“Where did you find your wayward soldiers?” she asked.
“Way down the mountain. They said that giant black wolves chased them off, herding them away from the tunnel, and then not letting them circle back so they could find the trail to the outpost again.”
“Why didn’t they shoot the wolves instead of letting themselves be herded?”
“Apparently, these were cursed wolves that couldn’t be killed,” Vann said, his tone flat with disbelief.
“Ah.”
“Anything interesting going on?” He waved at the cliff and the tarps.
“Would you believe that your officers are less mature than my seventeen-year-old students?” Lilah asked.
“Yes, but that’s not interesting. It’s just pathetic.”
“We heard that, sir,” Kaika said, as she fired up her stick, turning it into a torch. The flame melted some rock, but it appeared less efficient than Bosmont’s rock-splitting tool.
“I just woke up,” Lilah said. “I’ll take a look at what they’ve pulled out and determine my interest level.”
“Good.” He donned his jacket, then started for the tunnel.
Lilah had taken a peek into it the day before, but it had been unimpressive, and she had been told that only one fossil had been dug out of the shaft. The others were off to the left of it. If the soldiers had started their tunnel two feet to the right, they might never have found the fossils. Vann probably wouldn’t have minded that.
“Wait a second.” Lilah plucked the moss out of his hair and dropped it before waving for him to continue.
He frowned and scraped his fingers through his mussy black locks. “Anything else sticking up that I should know about?”
“Not that I’m aware of.” She bit back a smirk, feeling daring for making the innuendo—and then wondering if he would catch it. So many of her attempts at jokes fell flat.
The corners of his mouth twitched upward, and he nodded at her before waving at Bosmont. “Join me in here, Captain. I want to hear your plans for after the fossils have been removed.”
“Yes, sir.” Bosmont switched off his tool and leaned it against the wall. “Don’t touch,” he told Kaika before following Vann into the tunnel.
“You don’t let any women touch your tool, and you’re doomed for a lonely life, Bos,” Kaika called after him.
Lilah looked at her, remembering her comment from the night before, the one that had affirmed what Lilah had suspected, that Kaika had slept with Vann. She had a hunch Kaika had slept with a lot of men and wondered if her liaison with him had meant anything. She also wondered if they still... liaised.
“Believe it or not, I think I was more mature at seventeen,” Kaika said with an easy smile. “I’ve spent my whole career being the only woman in all-male units. You either make the same jokes they do, or you set yourself up as an outsider. You have to give as good as you get, and not be offended by the getting, to make it out with your sanity.”
Lilah was one of the few women in her field too. Her colleagues were perhaps less raunchy and blunt than the soldiers, but she’d definitely felt like an outsider many, many times. Would she have felt less awkward if she had done as Kaika had? Made all the dirty jokes before the men could? The gods knew it was hard to ignore the whispered comments about her feminine attributes and the assumptions that since she had them, they should be made available for the men’s use. Even worse had been the insinuations that because she had boobs and a butt she couldn’t possibly have a brain. Most of the papers she had published were listed simply as L. Zirkander, since she had noticed early on that it was easier to get them approved and printed if her gender wasn’t apparent.
“You want to play with his tool?” Kaika asked.
“Pardon?” Lilah wasn’t sure what expression had been on her face, but it had probably involved a scowl.
Kaika smiled and waved to the rock splitter, maybe trying to lighten her mood. “It’s fun, probably more fun than his other tool.”
“I heard that, Kaika,” Bosmont’s voice echoed back from the tunnel. “And don’t even think of cracking rocks while we’re in here.”
“I’ll let her try it on a boulder we’ve already extracted. One of the boneless ones.”
“Honestly, I’m more interested in the ones with bones,” Lilah said, walking toward the tarp.
“I’ll pass that along to the men, if you like,” Kaika said, winking at one of the soldiers within earshot. The young man picked up a rock that should have been rolled by two people. He did an admirable job of flexing his muscles and looking like he wasn’t in danger of throwing out his back. “You can have your choice here, you know. If you decide you need a little relaxation mixed in with your work.”
“I’m just here to study the fossils and make a report.” Lilah knelt next to the dragon skull and did her best not to think of Vann.
“Oh, right. You said you were married, didn’t you? I suppose you wouldn’t be shopping for wares here, but if you change your mind, I can be discreet. I’ll stand guard in the hall outside of your door. Or whichever door you end up behind.”
“Mm,” was all Lilah said. She hadn’t corrected Bosmont about her marital status and wasn’t sure she wanted to correct Kaika, either. She still wore the promise necklace her husband had given her, even if she usually kept it tucked beneath her shirt. When she needed it, she could pull it out to use as a silent barrier against flirty strangers or visiting professors who thought they should have a relationship since they’d read one of her papers and since their own wives were a couple hundred miles away.
Lilah walked to her toolbox and pulled out her chisel, hammer, and brush, but almost dropped them when a thought occurred to her. Did Vann think she was married? She realized she hadn’t said that she wasn’t, and if he’d noticed her necklace, he might have assumed she was. Not that Bosmont had. Still, Vann seemed observant. Was that why he hadn’t touched her the couple of times she’d thought that he might want to? Such as in his room on the base and again the night before, after he’d nearly been pulled off the trail? She’d wanted so badly to run over there and help, but she’d been powerless to do anything except watch as he struggled to keep his soldier from falling. Afterward, he’d treated the moment as if it had been nothing, but even he must have feared for his life at some point.
She carried her tools to the fossils, debating whether she had a problem or if it would be wiser to simply go on pretending her husband still lived. She fully admitted she was attracted to Vann, but she had never been the kind of person to leap into bed with someone just to satisfy carnal pleasure. There had to be a potential for a future together, and what kind of future could she have with a soldier stationed in the middle of nowhere? Besides, she wasn’t sure what Vann felt for her, besides attraction, one that might have more to do with being stuck in a remote place with few women around. They barely knew each other, and they certainly weren’t similar types of people, unless one counted an interest in old weapons
and a shared irritation toward Ridge. Not to mention that he was very open about the fact that he’d apparently killed people—a lot of people—in his career, and he seemed to like it.
She had never been overly emotional and had a tendency to underreact or make a sarcastic comment when handed alarming news, but the scientist in her couldn’t help but wonder what such a man could be capable of in a dark moment. She’d already seen hints of his temper, and Kaika had warned her that it could get worse. Did he have a history of taking his anger out on those he was in a relationship with? She had the impression that he wasn’t married. Was there a reason women avoided him?
“Is it all right?” Kaika asked, crouching beside her.
“Pardon?” Lilah had been staring at the pile of fossils without seeing them.
Kaika waved at the skull. “We tried to be careful not to damage any of them while removing the rocks.”
“Oh. No, they’re fine. I mean, I haven’t looked that closely yet, but I appreciate you extracting them for me. I don’t usually have soldiers around to do that.” She smiled and nodded toward the rock splitter still leaning against the cliff. “I actually have something similar in my lab back home. People have these notions that paleontologists run around with toothbrushes, carefully whisking away specks of dirt. You usually have to break a lot of rock to get to fossils. Granted, it’s usually sandstone or limestone rather than granite, but it’s rarely easy.”
“Ah, good. You looked kind of concerned.”
“I was thinking about... something else.” Lilah considered Kaika, wondering if she might be a source for information on Vann’s history when it came to women. If she was seeing someone else now—had that Angulus Vann had mentioned been King Angulus?—then her interest in him should be in the past.
And yet, Lilah couldn’t bring herself to ask. She ought to have a frank discussion with him. That would be better than getting gossip from some past lover, wouldn’t it? It was always possible he wouldn’t be honest with her, but if anything, he trended in the other direction, toward blunt to a fault.