Forever (33 page)

“It won’t,” he said sharply. “I’m not promising you a damn thing until you come back and make me.”

“Okay.” She paused for a beat. “But you’ll take care of Lina, right? So that she’s safe? She needs a keeper, you know.”

“I got that feeling,” he agreed dryly. “And we’ll take care of her together. We’ll keep her here with us and try to keep her from getting into too much trouble.”

“Ihron. Or no, better yet, Ahnvil. He’s big and strong and damn serious. She needs some seriousness to countermand her special kind of crazy.” She smiled, thinking of all the things Lina had done over the years. In a way she had been jealous of her sister. She just threw herself into her every passion, chased after anything if it seemed interesting enough, and dug her feet in for whatever cause she deemed justified her loyalty. Marissa had spent her entire life trying to be what was expected of her. Trying to be the steady. The rock. And now, suddenly, here she was doing the craziest thing of all, outstripping her sister.

“I’ll make sure she gets an appropriate bodyguard.”

“Not Max,” they said in unison. She laughed, the sound resonating muzzily and warmly inside of her,
clearly an effect of the drugs wending their way through her system.

“No,” he agreed. “I think Max likes her a little too much. We’ll find someone else for her daytime endeavors. Although she might find herself becoming more nocturnal if she hangs around us constantly.” He paused for a moment. “You’re feeling it, aren’t you?”

“Yes I … can you tell?”

“Your pupils are dilating. Come now, rest your head, and close your eyes. You’ll just go to sleep. expression on his face pag.”

She hoped so. She had seen some drug overdoses in the past. They didn’t always go quietly and peacefully. She didn’t want him to suffer while she went away from him. She just wanted to go to sleep and then wake up in his arms exactly the way she was.

“I feel like Juliet,” she whispered. “But I hope we won’t end up as tragic as that.”

“No. I’m going to wait for you.”

“You did this, didn’t you?” she asked him suddenly. “You said something before … you killed yourself when you lost her last time, didn’t you?”

He was silent for a long moment, his breath warm in her hair and against her scalp. “I couldn’t bear living without her after waiting so long to touch her again. And then she was with me … and we had a week. Just one week in two hundred years. A hundred before and a hundred after. I don’t know why it takes us so long to come back, but it does. And then suddenly it’s like our eyes are opened, and we can sense souls that are leaving the living world as they brush against the Ether. Then we reach out and grab hold of them and we come back if they agree to live with us.”

“It’s almost unfair, to ask someone if they want to die or live with you. Does anyone ever choose against you?”

“All the time. Or we realize we aren’t going to be
compatible souls. There are no absolutes. I think you’ve learned that lately.”

She yawned and nodded. She felt herself drifting. Almost floating and spinning.

“Jackson?” she said softly.

“Mmm?”

“I’m going now.”

“Yes, love, I know. I’ll be here waiting for you.”

“Okay,” she said.

And then she fell asleep.

Blue. The misty fog of the Ether was the most beautiful cerulean blue. Like a vast fluffy ocean, mist scudding to and fro. She felt as though she were in her own body, living, breathing, touching, and feeling, but she knew she had no substance. It was just her. No frills. No clothes. No words to define herself as a woman or a professional. All of that didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered was finding Hatshepsut and going back to Jackson.

“I am here,” a soft, dulcet voice said, the accent so beautiful and rich with a culture completely alien to her. “I am here. Has Menes sent you to me then?” An apparition appeared in the form of a tall, dark-skinned and dark-haired woman. Her hair was dressed up in braids, coarse beads woven within. “Have you come to give yourself over to me? Will you let me show you a new life and a new world?”

It was odd how off-puttingly dramatic it sounded. Was this the woman, the soul Menes loved? Now that she was incorporeal, all she had was the senses of her soul, and something told her the woman before her was not complementary to her. It felt wrong. So when the woman reached out for her she pulled back and moved away.

“What’s wrong with you, mortal female? If you do
not accept me and bring me to my king you will die. You will not come back to the man your heart broadcasts love for.”

“I …” It was weird speaking without a mouth, lips, and tongue expression on his face. vg. to do so. It was more an emanation of thought, like telepathy. “I don’t believe you!” she burst out. “You cannot be the woman that man professes to love!”

She smiled then, softening her approach. “I am sorry. I have been here so long and my last lifetime was not a good one. I didn’t wish to be born again. But Menes has talked me into it. Now come. Touch your soul to mine and we will fulfill this love story you so aspire to. I will let you know how a queen should be revered and how a king should beg for her love.”

She reached for her again and Marissa wavered with indecision. If she refused this woman she would lose her life. She would lose Angelina and Jackson and everything that meant anything to her. She will have let go of all of it for nothing. She didn’t see what choice she had. Perhaps, with time, Hatshepsut wouldn’t seem so harsh. So … cold and autocratic. But Jackson had told her that the Ether made things feel strange. Perhaps she was making harsh judgments because she was still scared of what was about to happen to her.

Enough, she told herself. You committed to this course, now finish it.

Slowly she reached out to touch the other woman’s soul.

“No!” The scream raced in on the mists, screeching from the left all the way to the right. “Do not touch her!”

Marissa jerked back, barely in time, all acceptance leaving her and blocking her soul from this other one. Permission, she remembered. They couldn’t join without the host soul’s permission.

“Do not touch this false beast,” a powerful feminine voice said, belonging to a second woman, stunningly beautiful and bald. Gold and tourmaline earrings flashed in her ears, a golden collar sat at her throat. She was strong without being autocratic in her bearing. She was confident as she swept between Marissa and the other soul. “She lies. She is not Hatshepsut. She is one of Odjit’s breed. A Templar.” She spat the word like a curse. “Be gone from here, Kemisi! Be glad I was here to stop you, because my love would know you false the moment you awoke within this innocent woAl expression

CHAPTER TWENTY

Nothing had devastated Jackson as much as watching her last breath escape from her body. Even knowing what was happening, even with Menes’s complete faith in what was taking place, he found himself painfully bereft and a weight of grief settled on his heart.

class="indent" aid="OPEK5">
God. Please God. Bring her back safe
.

And now
, Menes thought within him,
you know exactly how I felt when Hatshepsut last left me
.

And he did. He felt it so keenly it just about killed him. And now he understood why Menes’s previous host had willingly allowed Menes to follow her into death. When first he’d come to understand what Menes had done f a woman, he had been appalled and had warned him there was no way in hell he was agreeing to suicide if something like that should happen again.

He had been so wrong. He knew … he knew he would be very easy to convince if something were to happen to Marissa. He hadn’t fully realized it before, but he knew now.

“Goddamn it, I didn’t tell her I love her,” he whispered to the empty room as he remained bent over her, touching her face, waiting for her to draw breath again.

She knew. Do you think she would have done this for
you if she had thought otherwise? You know. In your heart you know that she loves us and she never spoke the words. Words are not necessary when it comes to love of this depth
.

And Jackson knew Menes was right. He knew it in his soul that his other half was far more of an expert in these matters than he was, and that Menes was right. At this point love was implied. Words meant nothing, and actions meant everything.

She sucked in a breath, startling him. The emotion that raced through him had no name. It was too powerful, too encompassing to be given a mere word to describe it. Painful tears burned into his eyes as his hands framed her face … her beautiful, brave face. And it floored him that she thought her strength was an act. Well, she wouldn’t think that any longer. Not after what she had just done on faith. It left him speechless that she had trusted him so much, when he knew she was so cautious with her trust along with everything else. He wasn’t sure he deserved it, but he was infinitely delighted to have it.

“Am I alive?” she asked tentatively. Then she opened her eyes, looked into his and saw his emotion-filled eyes.

“My god, can I tell you how much that sucked?” he said, laughing unsteadily and scrubbing a hand across his wet lashes.

“Yeah, for me too!” she shot back. “I’m the one who died here. Oh, and thanks for not telling me what she looked like or anything so I didn’t almost come back with the right damn Bodywalker.”

That made hiwww.ballantinebooks.comon when that, m go still. It hadn’t even occurred to him that someone would try to deceive her. It was a tactic he had never heard of before. He hadn’t thought any of the Templars would be so profane as to interrupt
the joining of two destined souls. God, how low they had sunk.

N">“Well, Menes says you can rest assured you have the right damn Bodywalker. Jesus, it’s like he’s singing in here.” He tapped his forehead. And then his heart. “And in here. All this talk of love, but I never thought he would be emotional. He’s utterly beside himself with joy. As am I.”

“Well …” She hesitated. “I don’t feel her.”

“The Blend t will feel her soon. Menes feels her, and that is enough for now. That and the fact that you said we would have sex after you came back.” Heakes time. You

grinned at her, lecherously wriggling his brows. It made her laugh out loud.

“Can we do it in the shower again?” she asked, her hands eager on his shoulders. He swung himself out of bed, scooping her up and striding into the bathroom with her.

“I like the shower. It’s messy and clean at the same time.”

She laughed. “That makes no sense.”

She smiled at that, pulling herself up closer to him so she could kiss his cheek gently.

“Oh,” she said, “I am very much with the right guy.”

r: The World of Nightwalkers
EPILOGUE

“Where is it? I wonder where it has gone!” sang the deviant god. “Where has the priest hidden? I think I know. I think I do!”

“He ran away with my toy,” Chatha said with a pout. He plopped down on the floor ready for a good sulk.

“Oh, do not despair,” the god soothed gently. “I can fi

nd him and your toy very easily. Shall I do it?”

Chatha nodded furiously, clasping his hands together and rocking back and forth with excitement.

“Where? Where?” he asked.

“Let me see …” the god drew out slowly, obviously thinking as he seemed to search the ceiling. “Aha! There it is!” He pointed to the ceiling. “The flat lands, warm like the dclose by. Like our homeland. Hiding away!” The god sighed. “We shall get him expression on his face yearsibiglater. Him and your toy. I must wait until I have a better hold over this corporeal state. If I should go and they should kill this mortal body I will be banished back to where I came from. The placeesert, and so

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To the Saugerties police:

Yeah, I did it again. I took poetic license with your lovely police department. But I promise, this is the
last
time. (Unless, of course, there’s a next time.)