Surrender (THE DRAGONFLY CHRONICLES) (28 page)

“The stars,” Moghadam began.

“Let’s move,” Jackson cut him off and propelled Kailin ahead of him down the hill while simultaneously holding her up. “Hold onto that orb,” Jackson ordered Moghadam.

“What is it?” Kailin tried to stretch her neck around.

The wind picked up sand along the dune, flinging the grains against them. It stung the back of Jackson’s neck. He kept Kailin in front of him, blocking her body. A whooshing sound flooded the silence before disappearing. Jackson and Kailin ran down the slope, still connected, Kailin still muted.

“Stop!” a voice filtered across the sand, straight into Jackson’s mind. “Give me the orb!” It was a voice Jackson knew.

Chapter Twelve

Drakkina pulsed energy into her form so they could see her as she hovered over the dunes. “Give me the orb.” She could see it in the native’s arms, wrapped and muted. She was so close to it, yet without permission, she couldn’t claim it. “It belongs to me.”

“It belongs to the one it was gifted to,” the Egyptian leader yelled. “Kailin Whitaker.”

Drakkina floated down to earth but didn’t bother to funnel enough magic into her feet to feel the touch of sand. “It belonged to my husband and matches the other half of my medallion.” She indicated the ethereal rendition of her dragonfly medallion that hung on a mirage of a chain around her neck. “The two must be reunited.”

“Why?” Jackson Black demanded. “What power will you have when the two are brought together again?”

Damn intelligent man
. Drakkina narrowed her eyes and tightened her lips. She did not have to answer his questions. She turned her gaze to Gilla’s daughter and the breeze stirred as Drakkina exhaled. Kailin looked…dazed, small, wrapped in the oversized coat.

“Kailin? Are you well?” she asked and floated closer. The girl’s mate stepped in front of her. “Step down, warrior. You have more to worry about than me. I’m here to help her.”

“I don’t trust you,” Jackson stated.

“I’m the one who lured the demons away,” Drakkina defended and floated to the side so she could see Kailin better. “Child, are you well?”

Kailin lifted her eyes. “I blew up the side of the dune. Destroyed artifacts.” She seemed to shrink within the folds of tawny cow hide wrapped around her shoulders. “I am dangerous.”

Drakkina cursed. “We’re all dangerous in our own ways. You are powerful. Power is dangerous. I should have started your training early on, but you were hard to find. I should have known Gilla would have sent you somewhere where your magic would be difficult to trace. The ancient magic here shields you. It’s so potent, its power mixes with yours to confuse your magic signature, confuses the demons.”

“I need you to teach me to control it,” Kailin said.

“Gift me the orb,” Drakkina answered.

“That’s too steep a price,” Jackson answered. “We don’t know what we’re bargaining with yet.”

Drakkina’s eyes shifted to Jackson. “What are you going to do with it except call the demons back with it?”

“It has the power to bring life,” Jackson threw back. “What are you going to do with it? Come back to life?”

Damn perceptive man!
“I will have the power to trap the demons once more, confine them together where they can’t wreak havoc on the worlds.”

“Worlds?” the native leader asked. He remained apart but had taken a defensive step closer to Kailin.

“The temporal worlds,” Drakkina answered automatically. She was tired of explaining but humans seemed to require mounds of information. “The demons plan to collapse the web of temporal lines holding apart every line of time, bringing all times and people into existence together. It will be stacks of humanity piled together, ripe for their picking.” She paused for dramatic effect though the truth hardly needed embellishment. “Most will die again immediately, suffocated, crushed, but others will remain to be fed upon, played with, and enslaved on a new world created as a playground for ultimate evil.”

Drakkina didn’t need to inhale or exhale to remain, exist in her half-alive form, a consciousness without a real physical body. She held her breath anyway while the small, dusty, group considered her words, her nightmarish prediction, on the white moon-splashed hills of sand. Her face smoothed into a practiced mask of bland indifference.

“I would help your world because of my oath to Gilla, Kailin’s mother, and my student.” They didn’t need to know more than that. “After the demons killed Druce, your father, Kailin…” Kailin’s gaze moved from her shadowed feet to Drakkina’s eyes. “Yes, they killed your father, stripped his powers from him, stole them to use against his own family. He was cocky, unprepared to face them alone, yet he did. Only his shattered corpse remained for—”

“Stop it!” Jackson yelled over Drakkina’s words. Words to persuade, words to explain why they needed Drakkina’s guidance.

“She needs to know, warrior. What she, what you both are up against.” Drakkina waved her arm in the air above as if she could just wish herself into the Earth Mother’s embrace. These two had no idea that was impossible right now. Drakkina’s essence was locked in limbo until she could fix the mess she had made in her greed millennia ago, anguish that still twisted her heart.

It was her own disregard of the Earth Mother’s warning that had doomed the worlds when she bound the demons together. Stripped of their independence and most of their power, Drakkina had sought to tie them so close they would destroy each other in their frustration and hatred. She’d been wrong as the Earth Mother had predicted. They’d grown strong, a miscalculation, and now they could touch the mortal world. They had calmed into a deadly force that could work together instead of against one another.

“Kailin.” Drakkina hovered close to the slender, petite blond that looked so much like her twin, Kat. “You hold the strongest, most commanding of Gilla’s powers.”

Kailin stared into her eyes. “I don’t want it,” she whispered, her smooth lips moving in the moonlight.

“It is your right, your responsibility to hold onto your gift. To use it for good, use it to battle the demons who slaughtered your father, stole his gifts, and killed your mother. She sent you away with her most valued gift so you could use it to save yourself, your sisters, and the world.”

“I will give it to you. I can’t control it.”

“No,” Jackson said. “Don’t give her anything.” The cowboy’s eyes narrowed like he could tell she was hiding something. Drakkina wasn’t surprised. A liar could sniff untruths and half-truths easier than those who blindly trusted the good in people.

Drakkina ignored him. “It is a gift to be kept, not given away. Give me the orb and I’ll teach you to control it, use it.”

Kailin turned, her booted feet sinking into the sand, and began to trudge down the dune toward the lumps that were camels below. Jackson never let go of her and she seemed to allow his harness. The two natives trudged after them.

Drakkina swallowed her curse. The girl was as stubborn as Druce. Trust was too hard to earn. It took time and energy and being nice and mostly honest while looking like one was completely honest. It seemed the only way she’d get the blasted orb. Drakkina had learned patience, hadn’t she, from Kailin’s other sisters. It was when her patience grew thin or shattered completely when things dove into disaster. Patience, she must hold onto it.

“Fine,” Drakkina said across the sand. “I will teach you to control your powers without you giving me Eógan’s orb. But don’t give it to anyone else either.” Drakkina looked sideways at the quiet native carrying the wrapped orb like a precious wee babe.

“I need to use it to get my father back,” Kailin said though she continued to trudge precariously forward.

“Druce is not coming back,” Drakkina spat and then cleared her throat. “No one comes back when demons steal their souls.”

“Anthony Whitaker is the father I know,” Kailin stated. “He is missing and I will use everything I can to bring him safely home.”

Drakkina’s make-believe heart thumped and she let it dissolve so she could concentrate on keeping the panic out of her voice. If Kailin gave the orb away, how could she ever retrieve it from someone who was criminal enough to kidnap?

“It will be at the final battle, and it must be ours. Don’t give it to them or they will use it for evil. Semiazaz could trick them into giving it to him and then we will be lost, the whole world, Kailin. These people who took your father are not good if they’d ransom a man to his daughter.” She shook her head and her pets, the iridescent swarm of dragonflies, scattered and returned to flank her. “I will teach you to harness its power, tie it to your own, but don’t let it go to anyone but someone you can trust.”

“I won’t bargain with the devil,” Kailin said without looking back. Drakkina wasn’t certain if Kailin meant that Drakkina was the devil or the kidnappers, but the girl marched with determination and new understanding. She’d keep the orb. At least for now.

****

Kailin’s emotions fluctuated between panic at what she’d done and anger at all those working against her and Anthony. Kidnappers, demons, possibly Drakkina, who had knowledge of her true parents. Questions swam through Kailin, questions she yearned to ask, but she hid the weakness that turned curiosity into an obsessive need for information.

While Jackson held her arm she let emotions instead of questions gush within, a luxury she’d never allowed before. She exhaled long and the tension, her constant control, ebbed away. She stumbled. Jackson’s hand moved and Kailin’s eyes widened as she yanked in her control, but his grasp slid down her arm to her fingers.

Strong and warm, his hand intertwined with her cold digits. He squeezed gently, his fingers sliding all the way to the juncture of her own, an intimate grasp. She thought to pull away, disentangle, but the strength and warmth of his skin made her own fingers curl into his. It wasn’t just a weakness for comfort, Kailin justified. With her emotions so raw and unchecked, it was safer to be connected firmly to the one man who could save her from herself. And save the world from what Drakkina called her gift.

After five minutes of silence, Kailin glanced to the side. Only Moghadam and his man moved next to them. The tingling she’d felt in her oddly shaped birthmark had dissipated. “Is she gone?” Kailin whispered, her lips barely moving.

“She faded several minutes ago,” Jackson answered without looking. “I’m sure she’ll be back.”

“Do you believe her?” Kailin looked up at Jackson’s strong profile. His jaw clenched, and his lips slid back showing white teeth.

“She’s hiding something. I’m sure the orb would benefit her personally. I’m just not one-hundred percent sure how.”

“She can’t just take it. It must be given.”

He shook his head. “A built-in safeguard. Items that don’t have power don’t need that level of protection. I’d say your rock is pretty damn powerful.”

Kailin let Jackson guide her in the dark around the sleeping camels. “But if I don’t know what to do with it I could…really do some damage.”

“I don’t think she’ll let you. Even though she’s hiding something, she seems to want to help. Whether her motives are purely personal or because she really wants to help this world or because she has some loyalty to your mother…” Jackson shrugged. “Don’t know…yet. But I think she’ll teach you to control what you have and in the end she might just teach you about the orb. If you ask just right, she’ll let things slip.”

“She knows about my family.”

“And you don’t.”

Kailin shook her head with only the briefest movement. “I’ve always wondered. I…don’t remember.”

Jackson stopped and drew Kailin closer. She stared at the exposed skin of his neck where he’d tied a blue square of linen like a loose cravat. She could just make out the simple weave of the knot in the moonlight.

“Don’t let her see that. She could use it against you.”

Kailin nodded and Jackson’s warm finger under her chin raised her eyes to his. “Before this is over, we’ll find out what you want to know. Everyone should know from where they hail.” Jackson moved around the packs tied to the camel, his arm stretching to remain connected.

“Don’t let go,” Kailin said. Her emotions were too exposed to trust her control.

Jackson moved close again, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. His lips came close to her ear and Kailin stood statue-still. “I don’t intend to let you go, Kailin.” His American twang rolled her name like the rub of his thumb across her palm. It tickled and made heat spread through her at the same time. Kailin scrunched her shoulder toward her ear in defense.

“Baths and using the water closet will be embarrassing to say the least,” she teased softly.

Jackson huffed a small laugh and pulled back, giving her room. Relief and disappointment collided inside Kailin in a mini geyser. She should want distance. After all, Jackson Black was the most dangerous man she’d ever met since her powers were useless against him. Ugh! Danger was seductive. “Taming the lion,” Kailin had called it once when a girl her age had risked so much to be with a local ruffian during an expedition. Kailin had never met someone who was truly dangerous before since she could control the world around her with a thought. Jackson Black was not only handsome, virile, and seductive, he was also definitely lion material.

“So what do you think?” Jackson asked. “Should we attempt to ride home in the dark on half-asleep camels or leave at dawn?”

Moghadam walked up close. “My queen, I would see you off this cold desert tonight. Javiv and I can ride into the closest town and return with lights, horses, and ammunition.” Even though the man talked to her, his gaze moved to Jackson.

“I will keep her safe here until you return,” Jackson said after a moment.

“We will return,” Moghadam said defensively, most likely from the pause.

“Of course you will,” Kailin said.

“Of course you will,” Jackson repeated. “I have your queen and the orb.”

“I will take the orb, hide it.” Moghadam’s gaze moved back to Kailin and he presented a brief bow. “I will keep it safe for you.”

“I will keep it safe for myself,” Kailin answered and smiled to hide her irritation. She’d always protected herself and her belongings before. Demons could swoop in and destroy her, but the orb stood a better chance with her over the militant man with mere pride for protection.