Sorcerer's Vendetta (The Secret of Zanalon) (9 page)

Rachel dropped her gaze, studied a pattern on the bedspread, traced a line.    Out of the corner of her eye she saw him staring at her silently for a moment, then he moved slowly to the joining door between the rooms and opened it. Without a word, staring straight ahead, Zanalon slid his hand up the wall and pushed the switch up for the light to her room, flinching when the artificial light hit him. He moved back to the small table between the two beds at the opposite wall and carefully balanced the bright sword next to the lamp. Then he paused for a moment, silently.  She thought for a moment he would speak, but he turned again, away from her and moved back to the dresser against the wall separating their rooms, not looking at her.  He laid his palms flat on the dresser and stared at the mirror-image of the laminated top, his cloaked back to her.

She tried to meet his reflected gaze. He ignored her.

"I don't know what got into me," she said, as she slid off the bed and headed into her brightly-lit room, closing the door quietly behind herself. There was nothing else to say.

After her bath, Rachel sat on the bed in a towel and pondered, among other things, the problem of her clothes. The room was dim; the light from the bathroom was all she dared, as she was nerving herself to approach Zanalon's room. She stared at the adjoining door, got up with her bundle and advanced on it, bit her lip and turned away, started to dress, stopped. And repeated the whole sequence.

Oh pooh, he said he'd take care of my clothes. Let him,
she decided. She marched to the door before she could change her mind again and knocked, intending to hand the bundle through the door. No answer.

"Zanalon?" she called. No answer.

Touching the door handle, she wondered if he had decided to go on to his confrontation alone. She tried the door; it opened easily.

The room was dark. "Zanalon?" she called again, entering the room.

He's gone,
she thought. Something tightened in her stomach suddenly.

Rachel paused, recognizing the ache.
Wait a minute, reality check here. What am I doing, anyway, running around England with the Abe Lincoln of electricity? Ready for a change, huh? God knows he's certainly not like my last (and first) great love. So maybe I did spend three years with an atheistic scientist who convinced me that sex didn't really have any more importance to it than a handshake, unless you're interested in perpetuating mankind. At least I was safe. Not one moment with Carl was spent ping-ponging between shrinking away from him in fear for my life one minute and praying the next that ... he'd ...

Kiss me ...

There in her inner tirade, her thoughts went silent. Rachel simply felt.

He made me feel alive.

With a shake of her head, she began feeling her way into the room with stub-dreading toes.

I'll miss him.

She dropped her bundle of clothes when she reached the bed, so that she would have at least one hand free as she crawled across to reach the lamp on the stand beside it.

Rachel's hand met firm flesh. She pulled it back with a startled gasp, off-balance so that she nearly flopped forward. All she could do was sit back on her knees on the bed, clutching her towel. She heard a rustle of movement at the same instant that a dim, glowing line started by the lamp she had been reaching for, no more than candlelight. It was the sword, apparently attuned to Zanalon's state of consciousness. Her hand had fallen on his bare back; he was stripped down to only his breeches.

She gawked and giggled inanely, struck by a projection of what would have happened if she
had
lost her balance. Slapping a hand over her mouth, she tried to suppress the ridiculous image of herself flopping all over him before dumping herself in a pile of splayed legs and embarrassing anatomy on the floor beyond him.

In the dim light she saw him roll toward her, pull up on his elbow to look at her, only half-awake.

"I'm sorry, I thought you'd ... I didn't know you were ... I, uh, my clothes ..." She tried to slip back, scooting a knee across the faux satin coverlet in an odd hip waggle while clinging to her towel, still hiding the smile that tugged at the edges of her mouth. Only then did she realize that her inane imagination had masked a deeper feeling. She sighed and nearly laughed aloud. Relief flooded through her with a surge of wild joy.

He didn't leave. Thank God.

Then Rachel met his gaze. She froze.

His azure eyes became intense. Zanalon was not like the modern American man, somewhat desensitized to feminine anatomy by revealing swimwear, short skirts and x-rated movies. Instinctively, she tried to keep her towel arrayed to conceal, pulling it down modestly between her spread knees, but that pulled it tight around her as well. He tightened his hand into a fist; his body took on a rigidness akin to a cat contemplating a pounce. Slowly, as if his conscience was tugging at him to look away, yet he could not resist, his eyes traveled down across her. Rachel felt her body tingling with a too-intense awareness of his gaze as she watched his eyes. Her face flushed with heat as she realized her body's natural but completely inappropriate response to attention was going into effect; her nipples crowned the small, firm buds of her breasts, tightening into hard knots that pressed out from the thin fluff of the towel.

She pulled her gaze from his, elsewhere, anywhere, but found herself contemplating the movement of his chest, more apparent, as his breath came harder. There was a natural, cut line curved between the ripple of muscles in his belly and like the flow of an artist's brush, it drew her eyes to follow it, downward.

Guiltily, she lifted her eyes to his. He watched her face.

Rachel knew he had seen, could see it in her eyes. She knew his desire and now the response of her body was not just shame. She matched it.

Intensity grew between them. Neither moved.

And then something changed in his eyes. Rachel couldn't have said he moved a muscle, but she sensed some slight strengthening of his will to resist, though whether it would be enough was still in doubt.

"My lady," he breathed, "I fear for your ... virtue."

Zanalon pulled his eyes from hers, stared at a point downward and to the right of her, yet she could feel his attention intently focused on her in his peripheral vision.

"I understand 'twas not thy intent to ... endanger thyself thus," he whispered between shallow breaths. "I ... shall attend to thy clothes." He glanced at her, once, stared off again.

"Go."

The slightest touch would break him, Rachel knew. She had to lean forward, brace herself on her free hand, in order to back away. Her hair slipped forward; she was so close to him that a strand brushed his cheek. He made a sound, between a sigh and a moan, and drew his gaze across the part of her body that was right before his face, up to connect with her eyes, hungry.

Rachel stopped. They were so close ...

That resistance in his eyes ... Maybe he remembered that I thought he was going to kill me.

He dropped his gaze. "I tell thee, thou art in danger," he said, his voice rough, tight in his throat. He took a deep breath, released it. "Though
not
before," he continued, "thou art anon. Only thy virtue, not thy life. Trust me in this at least."

Rachel lowered her head. The flush of heat that had surged inside her iced suddenly, twisting into a knot in her stomach.

When she looked into his eyes one last time, of all of the swirl of passionate emotions she had seen there before, brightest now was anger. His blue eyes burned with it.

"Go." His voice was little more than a deep snarl. "Now."

So that
is
it.
Quietly, she backed away. She stumbled as she retreated to her room, with a cold, certain awareness that even his gaze would not follow her.

A few moments later, there was a light knock on the adjoining door. Opening it, she caught the click of the outer door of his room as he departed, and found a bundle of clothes at her feet. Hers, yet not.

Instead of her jeans and plain blouse there was a short denim dress, like the one the woman they had seen earlier on the street had been wearing, only improved in design, tailored to Rachel's tastes and figure. Her travel-weary tennis shoes were transformed into slim high heels. Completing the outfit was a set of silver loop earrings, bangle jewelry and a shining belt of concentric rings.

Rachel smiled as she dressed, though perplexed.

When she met Zanalon in the hallway, he stared, appreciatively, then yanked his eyes away in shame. That was the closest look he gave her and the only comment, though silent, on her appearance that he made for the rest of the night. Under the circumstances, she found that much more gratifying than any words. She was glad he looked away so quickly---he didn't see her blush or her knowing smile.

"What'd you do this for?" she asked.

"I did not," he said, obviously embarrassed. "I direct the power, for the elementals are blind in this plane, but I allow them much leeway in the design o' spells. That has served me well in the past; it is part of what separates me from the mediocre." He shrugged.  "Sometimes my friends have a strange sense o' humor."

Chapter 6 – CANDLELIGHT

"Uh, listen, I was wondering ..." Rachel began, trying to ignore the stares from the other patrons of the small restaurant and pub (candle-lit, of course). She had managed to pass Zanalon off at the door as an actor in costume from a play in London, in spite of his stone-faced refusal to cooperate.

" ... about a lot of things, actually ..." she continued in an aside, as she and Zanalon followed the waitress to a quiet corner table.

" ...but what exactly happened when you tried to sum ..." Rachel paused, gave a hard look to an eavesdropper, a wide-eyed poodle-cut woman who fluttered her hand at her chest and looked away quickly. Then she continued, lowering her voice.

" ... er,
call
what's-his-name? Who were you talking to? And what did he say?"

Zanalon politely pulled out her chair for her, giving her the one facing the corner, then dropped his sword belt from his hips, re-buckled it and hung it on the back of his own, facing the room. He sat and stretched; Rachel noted that he checked the reach of the hilt at his back surreptitiously, darting a defensive glance about the room. Rachel, realizing the meaning of all of these overt actions, lost a little of her ire for what she had taken as sulkiness upon their entrance. This was no vacation for him; he was in unfamiliar enemy territory and a slip could cost him his life. Suddenly sitting with her back to the room had new meaning and the hair on the back of her neck tingled with anticipation of danger.