Hotter Than Hell (44 page)

But he found it difficult to regret the last few moments.

“You couldn’t tell what I was doing? I guess I’ll just have to do it again…” He kissed her again. “I can’t seem to stop wanting you.”

“In the vision, maybe I communicated my lust through the psychic link with you,” she explained. “My gift is for scrying with water energy.”

“Right,” he answered. He knew that about her. He’d read it in the file. It hadn’t been something he’d been happy about.

Frankly, he wasn’t all that comfortable with a scientific/military Project that used psychics, despite the fact that he was a bit of a psychic himself. He was a soldier first, and the mission certainly needed soldiers. But the nature of time travel had required psychics for the Project to be successful. No matter how much data time travelers collected on jaunts into the past, it was only the travelers with psychic gifts who were able to remember their actual experiences from the journey. So, Project teams took back all sorts of recording equipment. But they also took along a psychic to serve as a living, subjective memory of the events from their voyages into the past.

Psychics also came along to study the energy nexuses, the doors, as it were, where time travelers could enter and leave the eras they were visiting. The scientists in charge of the TTP didn’t always feel comfortable with all this use of psychic talent, it just wasn’t scientific enough for them, but the people in charge of funding the project insisted on using every available research tool. Besides, as far as anyone could explain the process of time travel, it still seemed a hell of a lot more like magic than it did science.

“We ought to put on our game faces and get down to business,” he said. He got up and adjusted his tunic, then helped Ginger to her feet. The woman looked good naked.

“Sorry about soaking your dress.” He reached down, grabbed, and offered her the mass of wet wool.

“It needed a spring wash anyway,” she answered. She picked up the sodden lump of cloth and began wringing it out into the bath water. “Give me a hand,” she said, and together they managed to wind the dress tight enough to squeeze out most of the water. The whole time they worked Bern tried to keep his eyes off her. He couldn’t.

“You’ve got great tits,” he told her. They were large and round and just as pale as the rest of her, but for the lovely dark circles of her nipples. Nipples that grew peaked and hard when she noticed him looking at her. He grinned as a flush spread across her chest and throat. It wasn’t only a smile that rose as he watched her.

“Ginger White, you may be the death of me,” he said.

She snatched her dress out of his hands. “I think maybe you better help me on with this.”

“Pity. I like this view so much better.” He stepped close and ran his hands over her in the pretext of helping her maneuver the wet dress. She was cool to the touch, but she went warm where he touched.

“You feel like satin,” he told her.

“Back off, soldier,” she said. He did.

When she was finally dressed, she seemed to remember what was at stake here. She had more questions for him than he could answer. “Is your name really Bern? When are you from? Do you know what happened to the rest of my team? How did you find me? Where’s the nexus? When can we go home?”

Bern held up his hands to halt her rush of words. “I’ll answer yours if you’ll answer mine.” He spotted a stone bench against the wall and led her over to it.

They sat together in the warm air of the bath, and he tried to sum up what he knew. “My team was sent out six months after yours. Our mission was specifically to search for your team—not a single member made it back. When we came in through the Tintagel nexus, it crashed behind us. We couldn’t get back.”

“So now your team is missing as well?”

He nodded. “At least my team all came through together. It didn’t look like your team made it here intact. The theory is that some kind of hiccup in the time/dimensional energy field scattered your team in transit—”

“I noticed. So we all came through at different nexus points?” she asked.

He nodded.

“I’m no physicist, but I managed to figure that out on my own.” She gave his hands a sympathetic squeeze. “So your team’s as lost here as we are.”

“Yeah. But we still had our mission. Along with hunting for you people we’ve been searching for a working exit point. No luck yet with that. It hasn’t been easy, since the energy hiccup shorted out most of your team’s ID transponders. So far you’re only the second team member we’ve found alive.”

“Who else have you found?”

“Sergeant Kaye.”

“Thank goodness! I’ve been so worried about him.” Then she blanched. “You’ve found others—

dead?”

“Yeah. Sorry. We found Dr. Bohrs’s grave outside a village near Aqua Sulus. Gwayne had been enslaved on a Saxon farmstead on the coast. We got him out of the place alive, but he caught an arrow in the throat when we ran into a raiding party the next day.”

“Damned Saxon invaders,” she muttered.

“You’ve been hanging with the indigenous folks too long. Remember, the Saxons are supposed to take over the island after the Romans left.”

“Yes, but not like this. The incursion seems to be happening far quicker than the archeology I’ve seen would indicate. The Roman influences that overlaid the Celtic base culture should have time to fade. If the Saxons aren’t halted soon, the world we come from won’t get a chance to develop. I’ve been starting to believe that maybe I’d transported into one of those alternate worlds the theorists worry about.”

“I didn’t think you were your team historian.”

“They brought me along for my visions. History’s just a hobby. I’m an Anglophile.”

“Me, I go where I’m sent and do what I’m told to do. Speaking of that, how did you end up as the local priestess?”

She glanced down sheepishly, before looking him in the eye again. “I know direct involvement with the locals is against the rules, but I was stuck here and I wanted to survive. I’m lucky that the holy spring’s point of origin is in the woods behind the shrine and that’s the nexus where I came through.

The Romans channeled the spring into the sanctuary pool when they built the villa. So it was easier for the inhabitants to believe that I was the only survivor of a band of pilgrims attacked by bandits when I wandered bloody and burned out of the woods than it would have been if I’d appeared out of a blaze of light in the fountain.”

“So, you decided to save yourself instead of searching for the rest of your team?”

She pulled her hands from his. “How would I look for the others? I don’t have any computer equipment. I’m too high level on the psi chart for any implant but the wrist chip.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“I’ve tried scrying to hunt for them, but I’ve never seen them, much less their locations.”

“Makes sense. Seers don’t see things connected with themselves.”

“At least not often. I thought about striking out on my own to hunt for them after the locals nursed me back to health, but it was the dead of winter. This isn’t the best of times for a woman to play tourist, between the bandits and barbarians massing outside Lord Ched’s rather flimsy walls. Since this was the only safe place I knew about, I set about proving my usefulness so I could stay. The sanctuary hadn’t had a resident seer for a long time. I used my scrying abilities and got the job. Having a real fortune teller at the holy spring increases the prestige and fame of the place. Which means a larger gathering of pilgrims bringing rich offerings for the goddess, and greater wealth for Lord Ched, at this year’s fertility festival. Unfortunately, he’s decided that the fertility part of the festivities needs a bit of rearranging, and that’s where you come in.”

Bern thought about what he knew of the local customs, politics, and religious practices, and concluded,

“The chieftain wants a warrior to challenge the Year King at tonight’s ceremony.”

She nodded.

He grimaced. “Ah, crap, he wants me to kill some kid for the right to screw his daughter.”

“Exactly. And become the local war leader. He wants you to stop the Saxons.” Ginger cleared her throat. “This is my fault, really—I told him I saw you in the water when he asked who would be the next Year King.”

Bern shot to his feet. “Oh, for crying out loud, woman!”

She jumped up to face him. “Hey, I just report what the water shows me. How was I supposed to know you were a time traveler sent to rescue me?”

“You couldn’t lie sometimes?”

“It’s not like I knew who you were when I saw you. It’s not my fault the water says you’re fated to be king! And sleep with Morga,” she added.

He heard the jealousy in her voice, and he liked it. He noticed that they’d moved close together while they argued, and that arguing with her was arousing him all over again. The attraction between them was strong and hot, and driving him crazy. Being crazy was no way to run an op. Knowing that didn’t stop him from putting his hands on her hips.

“There you are!” Lord Ched’s voice boomed out behind them before he could pull Ginger into his arms.

They turned to face the chieftain, and the trio of men that followed him into the bathhouse. Ched had a smile plastered on his face, but there was anger in his eyes. His hand was on the pommel of a dagger on his belt. Bern had been prepared to tell the man he had no interest in his game of kings and priestesses, but decided this might not be the right time to assert his opinion.

“What’s wrong?” he asked instead. He put his arm protectively around Ginger’s shoulders. He was aware of the way she leaned into him all down the length of his body.

“You’re a clever one,” Ched said, nodding approvingly.

“I know trouble when I see it. And it’s in your eyes right now.”

His impulse was to gather his squad and see what was going on for himself, but he waited for an explanation. Even if the Saxons were attacking the gates it wasn’t his problem unless the team he’d been sent to save was in immediate danger. He was not in charge of the indigenous situation here, and wasn’t going to interfere with the locals despite the chieftain’s plans or Ginger’s visions.

Ched cleared his throat, and Bern realized he was embarrassed. “It’s something to do with your daughter, isn’t it?”

“Morga’s run off,” Ched said. “And the Year King ran with her.” He sighed.

“But she’s the Mother’s priestess!” Ginger gasped. “And he’s—”

“You’ve been spending too much time with the locals,” Bern whispered to her in English. “A pair of runaways is not your problem.”

“But—the ceremony is tonight.” She, too, spoke English.

Ched might not have understood what Ginger said, but he recognized the desperation in her tone. “You see the problem, don’t you, Lady of the Spring? Oh, we could go after those foolish children. But if we drag them back I’ll have to execute my own daughter to appease the crowd gathered for the festival.

And you’ll have to kill that stripling she’s bonded with.”

“But what about the ceremony?” a one-eyed man asked. “Tradition—”

“We’ve changed tradition before,” Ched cut him off. He looked at one of the other men, a wizened, white-bearded fellow in rough brown robes. “Haven’t we, Bishop Myrdyn?”

The old man was carrying a gnarled staff, and reminded Bern of Gandalf.

“You’re not thinking of giving up your heathen fertility festival, are you?” the old man asked.

“Of course not!” Ched answered. “The people would riot for sure if we changed custom that far.”

“There you go again—you promise to change your pagan ways, but you always find a way out of your promises.”

“Didn’t I say I’d let you baptize as many folk as you wanted tomorrow morning? And in our own sacred pool?”

“That you did,” the Christian cleric conceded. He tugged thoughtfully on his earlobe. “Once the people are sated and sore from the sex, and their heads are splitting from too much drink, I’ll preach a sermon that will lure them to save their souls from the great sins they’re going to commit this night. It will be a fine harvest of souls. They’ll be crying for forgiveness. You’ll make a fine Year King,” he added, looking Bern over. “I’ll give my blessing to that.”

“But we need a priestess for the king to mate with,” the one-eyed man insisted. “The crops will wither without the spring mating.”

“Well, if I’m going to turn the pool into a baptismal fount, it won’t need a priestess anymore, will it?”

the bishop said, eyeing Ginger critically. He pointed at her. “Use this priestess instead of the one that’s run off.”

“That’ll work,” Lord Ched said, clapping Myrdyn on the shoulder. “One priestess is as good as another in the eyes of the goddess.”

“But—I’m not a virgin,” Ginger blurted. “The priestess of the Mother must be a virgin when she lies with her first Year King.”

“Don’t encourage them,” Bern complained. Then he realized where she was going with this and spoke loudly. “We can’t offend the goddess. I’m no virgin, either.”

Ched waved his hand dismissively. “You were both virgins once, after all. It’s virility and fertility that matter most. You’ll both do. I’m glad that’s settled.” He began to turn away.

“But I don’t want to be king,” Bern said.

“What man doesn’t want to be king?” Ched asked, turning back. “Especially when the choice is between becoming Year King or going to the goddess with the priestess and all of your men sacrificed inside the burning belly of the wicker man?” His smile had more than a touch of threat in it.

“Sex or death,” Myrdyn said. “Either way, the crowd will be entertained.”

They weren’t making hollow promises. Bern had seen the piles of kindling and a crudely woven straw statue in a field on his way into the stockade. He knew that criminals were often burned alive inside such structures during the spring festival. Lord Ched could probably get the mob angry enough at missing out on the orgy to attack his team. The ensuing massacre wouldn’t look good on Bern’s record.

And there was the chance that some of his people could get hurt. He wasn’t ready to risk any of them, especially Ginger.

All he had to do was be the Year King.

It wasn’t like he minded having sex with Ginger White.