Hellfire (16 page)

But he didn’t give her time to
answer. Instead, he lowered his head as she tilted her chin and raised her lips
to his. Once again, the connection was perfect, the fit as if they’d been
designed for each other.

Her lips were full and soft
and slightly moist. The way her fingers clutched at his biceps and slipped
easily around his neck was the most amazing thing he’d felt in his life. All
the reservations he’d had, the fact she was mortal and human and he a Lemurian
of the ruling class no longer applied.

She was more
royal
than any son of Artigos could ever hope to claim. More
beautiful than any woman he’d ever seen. The question now was
,
could she be interested in an exiled Lemurian warrior, one whose own father had
publicly disowned him?

Not only was Ginny
royal
, she was immortal, descended of one of the women
warriors of Lemuria, an unheralded group of heroes unlike anything he’d heard
of in his long, long life.

She was also the one who broke
the kiss, who took a step back and then sucked in one deep breath after
another. “Okay. I think we really need to back off a bit and find something for
dinner because I am starving. Then we need to find a decent room.” She pointed
at the pocket where he’d stuck the pouch of diamonds. “No. Let’s change that
request. Not just decent. I want gorgeous.”

She flashed him a sly grin,
but with her lips moist and swollen from their kiss, it was more erotic than
anything he could possibly imagine. “In fact,” she said, cocking one hip and
planting her hand firmly on the perfect curve, “it appears you can afford the
best, and after the day I’ve had, I can honestly say I’m worth it.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”
Feeling unbelievably lighthearted, considering the demon invasion going on just
beyond the portal, Alton tugged Ginny along behind him as he stepped through
the gateway and out onto the rocky side of Bell Rock. The sun was beginning to
set and a fresh breeze lifted Alton’s long braids.

Ginny’s little Ford Focus sat
all alone in the parking lot below them. The meditation group wasn’t here this
evening, and the air was free of demon stench. Of course, the wind would have
blown it away by now if the demons they’d battled earlier had come through this
portal.

“What now?” Ginny stood beside
him, clutching his hand tightly in hers.

“Now we find food and a place
where we can stay for a few days, and we get some sleep. Then we need to go out
and about and see what we’ve missed in the past hours.”

Ginny stared at the colorful
sky where the sun had just disappeared behind dark cliffs. “Hard to believe
it’s only been a few hours. In the span of one day, my entire life has
changed.” She turned and studied Alton while the wind blew little dust devils
through the shadows. He tried searching her thoughts, but her mind projected a
blank wall to him.

She might not be that great at
her newfound telepathy, but she’d certainly figured out how to keep her privacy
barriers in place.

Alton grabbed Ginny’s hand
and, with a light tug, drew her alongside for the walk back to the car.

It was dark by the time they
pulled into a gorgeous resort in Boynton Canyon, northwest of Sedona. It wasn’t
all that far from the vortex Ginny’d heard about, but at this point all she was
interested in was a long, hot shower and a comfortable bed.

They’d grabbed a couple of
tacos at a fast food place. After they ate, Alton found a jewelry shop owner
willing to accept his story of wanting to sell a couple of diamonds he’d
inherited. Of course, it had taken that weird power of his that compelled the
jeweler into not asking too many questions.

Which, of
course, made Ginny wonder if she’d inherited the same power, except she was too
blasted tired to worry about it tonight.
They’d walked away with a check
for more money than Ginny’d ever seen at one time—more than she earned in an
entire year as a 911 dispatcher—and it was still only a fraction of the value
of the few gems Alton had traded. He didn’t seem to mind a bit that he’d gotten
the short end of the deal. At this point, Ginny didn’t care either…she was hot
and tired and dirty and just wanted a room, though it still felt weird, taking
so much money from a man she barely knew.

She’d stopped at an ATM to
deposit the jeweler’s check in her account. That was another thing. It was
Alton’s money, but he’d just handed the check over like it was nothing. Of
course, she was the one with the credit card and the bank account.

There was no such thing as
banking on Lemuria. What was the need for personal wealth when everything was
free? Still, it helped her relax a bit over swiping her card to pay for the
beautiful little adobe house the resort called a casita that was going to cost
them almost seven hundred dollars a night.

She paid less than that for a
whole month’s rent on her duplex in Evergreen, where she even had a view of
Mount Shasta out the kitchen window.

Here she looked out on
towering red bluffs—or she would, the concierge assured them—once the sun came
up in the morning.

They had one bedroom with two
beds, a nice little kitchen, a sitting room, and two large bathrooms. There was
a second bedroom available, but the door to it was locked. Ginny’d thought
about renting the entire casita so they could each have their own room, but it
seemed like a waste of money…they’d shared a room the night before without any
problem.

Who was she kidding? She
didn’t want Alton that far away.

She grabbed her bag and headed
into the bathroom closest to the bedroom and closed and locked the door behind
her. She needed to pee, she needed a shower, and she needed to think.

Not necessarily in that order.

When she joined Alton on the
deck a little while later, she was clean and every bit as confused as she’d
been while standing under the spray.

She’d at least come to one
conclusion: There was no denying the attraction she felt to the tall, slim man
sitting so comfortably in the semidarkness. For some reason her convoluted
feelings for him made her angry, but even her anger confused her.
Too many changes.
Too much, too fast.

A couple of candles flickered
on a small table beside the deck chair where he sat. He faced away from her as
he gazed out across the desert. The light flickered off his blond hair and
etched his strong features with light and shadow.

He wore his long white
Lemurian robe and his hair hung free, still damp from his shower. He should
have looked more feminine with his fair skin and flowing mane, with the soft
fabric that molded his chest and shoulders and draped over his long legs, but
she’d never seen a sexier, more masculine sight in her life.

He rested his chin on his big,
bony knuckles and stared out into the darkness. His long, narrow feet were
bare, with one ankle exposed beneath the hem of the soft robe. He reminded Ginny
of a Grecian god contemplating the fate of the world.

The image almost made her
laugh. In some ways, he was a god, and more likely than not he actually was
contemplating the world’s fate.
Immortal, pure of heart,
brave and kind.
The gods she’d read about could take a lesson or two
from this man. Still, she wondered what he contemplated, staring so solemnly
into the
darkness?

She cast out a thought, still
not quite certain how this new telepathy thing worked.
Alton?

He spun around. “Ginny. I
didn’t hear you.” Then he smiled at her, and the desire in his eyes took her
breath.

She walked slowly across the
deck. Even though she wore nothing fancier than a comfy old pair of cotton
sleep pants and a soft cami top, Ginny grew more deeply aware of herself as a woman
with each step she took.
A desirable woman.
A woman of
power unlike anything she’d known before, and she wasn’t thinking entirely of
her newfound immortality and her crystal sword.

No. This was also about the
subtle strength that seemed to spring from her core.
Her
allure as a female of worth, of value.
She walked with the knowledge
this beautiful man—a man she liked and admired more every moment she was with
him—wanted her. That simple fact strengthened and empowered her new reality.

Alton pulled a bottle of wine
out of a bucket of ice, poured some into a bell-shaped glass, and handed it to
her. It felt almost dreamlike to take the glass from him. A couple of hours ago
she’d been fighting demons with a crystal sword deep inside the Earth. Now she
stood on a small deck overlooking the Arizona desert and sipped chilled wine
from a crystal goblet.

Definitely
surrealistic.
Alton patted the space beside him and she sat close,
leaned back, and propped her feet on the deck railing in front of them.

The desert night stretched out
before them—a blanket of black velvet scattered with diamonds. They sat
together in silence, sipping their wine, staring into the night.

Alton slipped his arm over
Ginny’s shoulders and she leaned close against him. “It feels so good to be
clean,” she said. She sipped the icy pinot grigio he’d poured for her. “I
reeked of sulfur. I’ve come to the conclusion there’s nothing more disgusting
than smelling like dead demon. Yuck.”

Alton laughed. A coyote howled
somewhere nearby. It was a nice, normal howl without any hint of banshee
scream.

For some odd reason, the
purity of the sound made her feel like crying. Ginny glanced at Alton. He was
staring at her. “It’s nice to hear something that sounds so normal,” she said.

He nodded. “I wondered if that
was a natural sound. We don’t have anything like it in Lemuria. What is it?”

“A coyote.
The same kind of animal that was stalking me last night.
The one that was possessed.
That’s the way they’re
supposed to sound.”

He nodded and took a sip of
his wine. “We have no animals in Lemuria. Did you notice? No birds. No bees or
butterflies or mosquitoes. Neither fish nor fowl,” he added with a melodramatic
flair.

He sounded terribly sad.

“No pets? You don’t have dogs
or cats?”

Alton shook his head. “We’ve
given up so much to live as we do within the mountain, part of, yet apart from,
the Earth that was once our home. I remember swimming with dolphins as a boy
before our continent was destroyed.
Watching birds against a
blue sky.
Catching frogs with Taron.”

“You and Taron have been
friends for a long time, haven’t you?”

Alton nodded. “He was the only
boy my age and we were the best of friends. Like brothers, as we are today. Our
people have very few children. We are so long lived that we would quickly
overpopulate our world if we could easily breed. Only a very small percentage
of our women ever conceive, and then only once. There seems to be a natural law
that allows conception only when someone has passed to the other side. It’s all
about balance.”

“But is that really living?”
She hadn’t noticed many women in that huge auditorium. A few, but they’d stayed
in the shadows, much as Alton’s mother had. “What do your women do if they
don’t have children to care for? I didn’t see any woman council members. Do
women have jobs?”

Alton stared out into the
darkness. “No. A woman’s job is to care for her man, to raise a child if she is
blessed by the gods. We have many more men than women, so if a man is lucky
enough to find a wife, he treasures her and protects her. She keeps his home a
calm and peaceful place where he can find comfort in her warmth and her loving
company.”

Ginny stared at him for a
long, slow heartbeat. Was he serious? “You’re kidding me, right? Making a
joke?”

He frowned. “Why would I joke
about this? That is a woman’s place, to care for her man.
To
defer to him in all ways.”

“Well, crap!” She snorted her
wine.
Coughed.
Embarrassed, she giggled and glanced
away. When she looked back at Alton he stared seriously at her, obviously
perplexed.

“I’m sure glad that’s not our
way,” she said. She grabbed his hand and squeezed to make her point.
“I’d go frickin’ nuts, Alton.
Tell me why? Why did your
women let this happen to them? They were once warriors.
Brave
soldiers.
Equals.
I
carry a sword with the spirit of a female demon fighter. At one time, they
fought beside their men. Why did they give up their equality? What happened to
them?”

He shook his head, but at
least he was smiling. “I have no idea, though I wouldn’t be surprised to learn
my father had something to do with it.
Women fighting in the
DemonWars?
That’s a part of our history I’ve never heard before, but
your sword and Daria the Crone are proof the women warriors existed. My father
is a terribly chauvinistic male who clings to power. He has surrounded himself
with similar men on the council. It surprises me my mother’s spirit isn’t
broken, but I can’t help but wonder what role he and the others on the Council
of Nine might have played in subjugating women.”

“I bet DarkFire can tell me.”
She started to rise. Alton stopped her with a soft hold on her wrist.

“Later. Sit with me. Enjoy the
quiet. I imagine, sometime in the near future we’ll wish we had this moment
back.”

Ginny sat. “You’re probably
right.” She ran her fingertips along the side of his face. “Just don’t ever
expect me to defer unless it’s something I would have wanted to do anyway.”

Alton laughed and grabbed her
hand.
Kissed her fingertips.
“I was right the first
time I saw you. I knew you were going to be trouble.”