Surrender (THE DRAGONFLY CHRONICLES) (18 page)

“It seems we have the same friends,” Kailin whispered and looked back to the sky.

“You spend a lot of time with them, sleeping outdoors.”

He saw her nod in his periphery. “Steadfast, ready to listen on every clear night, not very opinionated,” she joked. She paused and her voice wavered. “They are unbreakable and loyal. I am myself with them.”

They stared upwards together in silence. Questions and comfort curled on Jackson’s tongue. Had she no human friends? No one to talk and laugh with, no one to confide in? Were Anthony and her manservant in England the only people who didn’t judge her as odd, a beautiful Ice Queen better left untouched? She was so intelligent, creative, spirited. She would make a wonderful friend for his sister.

Jackson didn’t open his mouth. Kailin wouldn’t want his words, would probably dislike him even more for what she would view as pity. Pity would ice her over when she’d finally relaxed enough to talk to him again. So he kept his words, tucked them away.

“Where did you watch the stars?” she asked.

“Nebraska, near Dakota Territory.”

“Is that where Cassy was when she got sick?”

“Yes.”

“And your parents.”

“They’re buried under the wide open sky.” His voice flattened. “I’ll be damned if I bury Cassy with them.”

“You never answered my question before,” Kailin said. “About why you brought Cassy to Egypt.”

Jackson paused, weighing his words. “I couldn’t take care of her half a world away.”

“I would have thought you’d stay with her there. You spoke of homesickness. Why wouldn’t you just tend her in Nebraska?”

“Treasure hunter, remember. The only treasures in Nebraska are rich earth and golden harvests. I’m not a farmer.”

“You do like to dig in the dirt,” she countered, the smallest hint of a smile in her voice.

He laughed softly. “Not when there is nothing to find but worms, rocks, and manure.”

“Look,” she said, pointing to the sharp tail of a star. It glowed in a diffusing arc across the sky. “A dying star.”

“I believe it is referred to less morbidly as a shooting star,” he said as the trail faded. “Make a wish on it.”

“I don’t make wishes on the death of friends,” she whispered. “No matter how glorious they are as they burst and fade to be forgotten.”

“Only forgotten from billions of miles away. The death of something so incredible would surely affect those close by. They would never forget her brilliance.”

Kailin’s chin turned again and she adjusted slightly toward him. “You wish then.”

“Hmmm, I wish…that Cassy will walk again and live a happy, long life.” He stared up but felt Kailin’s stare. His gaze moved to meet hers.

“That doesn’t sound like a treasure hunter.” Kailin blinked at him in the dark.

Was she closer to him? It seemed only a few inches separated them now. The edge of her blanket warmed his arm. “Treasure is different for different people,” he said simply.

“Defining the treasure defines the hunter,” Kailin said. Jackson’s gaze moved to her shadowed lips, their perfect shape as she formed the gentle remarks. “In that way we are all treasure hunters, Mr. Black.”

“What is your treasure, Dr. Whitaker?” he asked, his voice rough compared to the smooth ribbon of her words. The sand in between them marking the space seemed to disintegrate, dissolving like sugar in hot water. What would she do if he kissed her? Slap him? Melt into him like the night before? The risk was very much worth the treasure. Jackson pushed slowly up onto his elbow and leaned over her. Kailin’s eyes watched him, waiting. He gave her time to frown, bite out a cutting remark, jab him in the chest. All she did was readjust slightly to keep the connection between their gazes.

“Control,” she whispered.

He stilled, tension gripping between his shoulder blades. Was that her word for stop?

“My treasure,” she said, “is control and the knowledge of my origin. A normal life, also, I think.”

The grim tension in his mouth relaxed. “Normal is boring, and you, Kailin Whitaker, are anything but boring.”

Jackson lowered his head and felt a sharp breeze skim the top of his head at the same time the sand on either side of him popped in small plumes of sand. Arrows!

“Hell!” he growled low and rolled on top of Kailin. She gasped, but didn’t question his intentions. A sudden thought ripped through him.

“Kailin, are you hit?” he breathed along her ear.

“No,” she exhaled. “Where are they coming from?” She muffled a scream as another arrow sliced through the sand several feet to her right. They were exposed, an easy target.

Jackson wrapped his body around Kailin’s, the wool blanket sandwiched in between, and rolled with her. She yelped but tucked inside the cage of his chest and arms as they slid and flipped like a log down the slope of sand. Jackson heard the thumps of arrows hitting behind them and whizzing across them.

“Let go of me,” Kailin demanded when they reached the bottom. “I can’t stop them when you’re touching me,” she panted.

Jackson released her but hated the feeling of exposing her. “Hurry then.”

Kailin half sat, half leaned on her elbows in the sand. She placed her palms outward just as an owl’s screech shot overhead. “Back,” she whispered. The sounds of jostled horses just over the rise preceded Arabic cursing. Several men from the sound of it. Anger, white and blinding, shot through Jackson. Who the hell was shooting at them? They could have killed Kailin.

Jackson leapt up and cocked his Remington. Bullets trumped arrows any day.

“Jackson!” Kailin called after him as he raced up the slope, his head ducked. “Back!” she called again and the horses neighed and sand blew in a wave in front of him toward the shadowed men.

He ducked along the ridge and counted. Six, eight, ten men fought with their horses as they danced wildly in the unnatural sand storm while Kailin’s owl dove upon them. Who the hell were they? What game were they playing? Were they part of the organization that had hired him?

The horses pranced and reared so that his shot in the dark would be just that and he didn’t want to hit an innocent animal or be blamed for the death of a compatriot. He fired over them, exploding through the jumble of curses and neighs.

The shadows ducked, yanking their horses. He fired again, scanning the dark group for any breaking the line of confusion to come closer. One large shadow emerged, the glint of a blade in his hand. Finally, someone he could shoot. Not fatally, but in a place that would prevent his escape. The man would talk once Jackson explained the consequences for silence. He watched the giant stride forward out of the fray. Jackson concentrated on the way his shadow moved, picking out what he thought was the man’s knee.

“Back,” came the whisper behind him and the advancing shadow flew backwards, disappearing into the night landscape with a hard thump and a rain of sand.

He turned. “I was planning to shoot that one.”

“I think he’d rather be thrown than killed.”

“I wasn’t going to kill him, just stop him so we could maybe get some answers,” he said through his teeth. “Like why they are trying to kill us, or rather you.”

Qeb scrambled up the slope behind them, yelling questions in Arabic and ducking when he saw the mass of shadows. The villainous group mounted their spooked horses and took off into the desert night, the owl flapping and diving against their backs.

“Back,” Kailin murmured once more, but only sand shifted ahead of them. All had fled and had taken the answers with them. “Thank the good Lord,” Kailin breathed. Jackson heard her drop to the sand dune.

“We’ll take turns keeping watch through the night,” Jackson told Qeb in his native language. The guide nodded, but his round eyes, reflecting the small amount of moonlight, were focused on Kailin.

A breeze whistled across the sand and Kailin shivered.

“You go with Qeb back to the camels and sleep,” Jackson said. “I’ll take the first watch around the perimeter.”

She looked like she would argue but didn’t. “Wake me if there is anything. I would rather not have blood spilt.”

“You may want to remember that it is your blood that they seem intent on spilling,” he clipped. Anger tensed through him. If she hadn’t pushed the large bandit away, he could be questioning him now, discovering the group’s mission. If arrows hadn’t suddenly peppered the sand around them, he could be kissing Kailin right now, reveling in her warmth as the cool breeze teased around them.

He watched Kailin’s straight back melt into the night and reemerge in the glow of the fire. She stepped gracefully around a camel’s head and sat before the embers as if at ease in the hostile environment. Well, as at ease as she ever was. She stretched her arms and rewrapped the
kufiya
around her hair and shoulders. She poked the coals with a stick she’d brought along. The outdoors suited her. She was too much to contain within walls, almost too much to contain within her perfectly formed body.

Mine
, rippled through Jackson’s thoughts.
My woman
. He half growled, half groaned. Not likely. Not now and certainly not later after he stole the orb from her.

****

“
Cac
,” Drakkina cursed on a breath as her unfocused eyes picked out the details of human misery swirling in the shadows of her scrying bowl. The future was still too unstable, too easily swayed toward the darkest of outcomes. She sat cross-legged on the stone table in the center of the ten soaring monoliths. Clouds of vapor hovered about her as if they held their own consciousnesses, charged with potential. Every movement of every living thing influenced the currents forming in the future wash of gray. Sometimes the vapor would swirl in upon itself and sometimes it would billow out as the past blew against the future.

She sat between moments in an amorphous soup of non-existence. The thin planes of time formed an intricate web around her as she rested in the empty space reserved for the future. It was here that she could scry the most clearly, see into the possible events to come.

Dragonflies rested around and on top of her silk robes. The energy to create their lithe forms was so minute that she conjured them as easily as she pretended to breathe. Creating the monoliths and slab took a little more, but she preferred to sit on something as opposed to floating on clouds of nothingness.

Drakkina closed her eyes. “Dearest Earth Mother, forgive me,” she prayed. “Help me help your world, help your children. Free them from their hideous fates.”
Free me from mine
. She opened her eyes to stare into her bowl and gasped.

A man’s face stared back at her. Strong, sure jaw, eyes of jet blue tinged with gold and laughter, wavy hair that she knew would be soft through her fingers. Drakkina couldn’t breathe. The weight of the image was too heavy. The man smiled at her gently and whispered something through the mist, his lips forming declarations, making oaths he could not keep.

Drakkina blinked against the pain. Why did the Earth Mother show him? What torture was this?

“Eógan,” she whispered on the last wisp of her breath. She inhaled and blinked to clear the moisture from her sight. She should close her eyes, not let him inside where he’d weaken her. She had to be strong to win this war for humankind, to exact her revenge on the monster who’d taken her love. Yet she couldn’t close her eyes, not when she could stare into his face, memorizing the curve of his cheek, the slope of his nose, the length of his lashes, the small lines at the corner of his eyes. It had been nearly nine hundred years since she’d seen Eógan and memories fade.

“Why?” she asked with a hitch. “Why show him to me now?” As Drakkina stared into the eyes of the man she’d lost, his eyes narrowed slightly. The twinkle of humor glinted sharper, the blue darkening and spreading until only a pinpoint of black sat in the middle. Eógan’s hair lengthened and a beard sprouted, snaking down toward his chest, icing to crisp white.

Drakkina leapt back, nearly falling from her perch as she viewed the malicious face of cruel, demonic power.

“Semiazaz,” she hissed. “Deceiver, thief of souls, devil!” The demon’s face reflected brutal triumph. He smiled softly, his lips moving in direct imitation of Eógan’s words.

Drakkina shook her head and spit into his face. “No more! Show me no more!” With a flip of her hand, Drakkina upended the wide scrying bowl, sending it flying off the table to fall amongst the buttercups and cornflowers, waving in their illusion around the base of the stone table.

She purged a long, open-lipped sob into her palms, releasing a flood of loss and soul-twisting grief to engulf her, drown her. For long minutes she surrendered to the anguish she had ignored for so long that she’d thought it had disappeared. It hadn’t.

Pain stomped down didn’t dissolve with avoidance. It waited, a bomb, mostly silent, ticking patiently, waiting for the chance to detonate. No, pain didn’t dissolve within. It must be extracted like millions of fragments of piercing shrapnel from all parts of one’s existence. Only then did the victim fully heal.

Drakkina sobbed, her hands wet, her heart sore. “Eógan,” she whispered, his face renewed in her memory. “I’m sorry. I wanted too much.” She wiped a worn cloth over her face and inhaled the fragrance of soft pine and summery warmth. She traced a finger along the faded lines of color in the binding cloth they’d used at their wedding as her dragonflies danced around her, caressing her hair and face with feathery wings. Drakkina tipped her chin up, her eyes to the gray swirls of space between the lines creating the woven landscape of time.

“Earth Mother,” she whispered and felt her heart grow strong as she inhaled a cleansing breath. Despite her sins, the goddess of creation had indeed answered Drakkina’s prayer. Drakkina’s tears had forged her soul, beaten it with memories into something stronger. Eógan’s face sat clear once more in her mind, the reason she would defeat this coven. To save the world, yes, to save herself from a torturous rebirth and death, of course, but also to deliver vengeance against the beast who’d taken her love.