GABRIEL (The Innerworld Affairs Series, Book 4) (17 page)

Gabriel had told her that, although it was kept secret at the time, a few of the rebels possessed extrasensory powers that they didn't hesitate to use. She had thought it was somewhat contradictory that these people would reject advanced technology while having no qualms about using superior mental abilities but he had explained that they considered those abilities
natural,
as opposed to man-made.

One of the many objections the Friends had against the Ruling Tribunal was the edict that strictly limited the use of any special mental skills. Some of the Friends believed they were given the gifts to help others. Others believed the extrasensory abilities made them superior and they were given these powers because they were meant to lead rather than follow.

Seconds after the first probe, she felt another. This one was gentler and seemed different enough to make her think it was not from the same person. These people might call themselves Friends and speak of friendship, peace and love, but Shara wondered why such friendly people needed an armed guard at the edge of their farm and why they were so distrustful that they would try to read her thoughts even after Gabriel had given them the appropriate signals.

What would they have done to her and Gabriel if Gabriel hadn't known the hand sign? For that matter, what would have happened to her if he hadn't been with her to smooth the way? The group had seemed very menacing when they first surrounded her and Gabriel. Were they prepared to kill to protect their privacy? As suspicious as they were, she doubted if they'd believe a story as outlandish as her being a time traveler.

Again, she had a reason to be grateful for Gabriel's presence but she was still annoyed that he hadn't filled her in completely.

By the time they entered the large building Athena had called the lodge, at least twenty others had joined them, and more introductions were exchanged. The inside of the lodge had no interior walls on the ground floor but the overhead loft that rimmed the cavernous room was partitioned off into narrow, draped cubicles. Several rows of long wooden tables and benches were at the far end of the room and mats, blankets and pillows were scattered over the rest of the floor.

"As you can see, we have a rather full house at the moment. I regret that we cannot offer you a separate cell, as they have all been taken, but if you wish less crowded sleeping arrangements, you can always bed down in the meadow, as some of our other visitors have." She motioned for Misha to set the baggage against one wall. "There are over two hundred people staying here tonight and I am asking all to help where they can. If the two of you would not mind, there is a desperate need for more hands in the cookhouse."

Shara and Gabriel quickly agreed and Athena took them out the door at the other end of the building. The heat from several crackling fires wafted over them. Portions of large animals were being cooked on spits and a small army of adults and children were basting meat, stirring the contents of various pots and preparing greens.

Once Athena left them under the supervision of the hearth tenders, Shara excused herself for a moment. Under the pretense of needing something from her bag, she went back into the lodge. Making sure no one was watching too closely, she activated the special security guard she had attached to the bag before leaving Innerworld. With the guard on, the bag was locked and its weight increased to make it impossible for anyone to open or move it. The contents were far too valuable for her to be as trusting as she normally would be.

The moment she returned to the cookhouse, she was assigned a task. Fortunately for Shara, she was asked to wash a basinful of tubers, something that required no previous experience. Gabriel was put to work turning the spits over the hot fires. It was beginning to look as though they would either be freezing or burning up throughout their journey.

As soon as she thought of burning up, she made a quick mental check of her body's condition then relaxed when she was positive she was perspiring from the heat of the fire and not an inner fever.

Now that she was in the time period she wanted, she was going to be too busy to have to deal with a biological impediment. She sincerely hoped the last time-hop had expelled the unexpected fever permanently.

Shara's gaze automatically shifted to Gabriel. With his back to her, she didn't hesitate to watch the play of muscles in his arms and back as he rotated the spit. His muscular legs were braced apart to keep his balance and the tunic was insufficient to stop her from thinking of the rest of his perfectly sculpted body. On Outerworld he would have been compared to a Greek god, but now she was among the men who
were
the Greek gods and she considered Gabriel's physique superior.

Not that she was going to allow that incredible body, or his handsome face, to affect her judgment. As long as there was no fever forcing her to give in, she would resist the urge to stroke those muscles or thread her fingers through his silky blond curls, or—

She pulled her gaze back to the vegetable in her hand. Ogling Gabriel was
not
the way to control her weakness. With a little effort, she filled her mind with her mission.

Because their arrival occurred precisely when all the rebels were gathering, she was reassured about the theory of eddies and flows in time. Athena had said they had two sunrises after tomorrow before the ships departed for Terra. Surely that would be more than enough time for her to test a hair sample of every rebel in the vicinity for a DNA match with Khameira. All she had to do was wait for everyone in the lodge to go to sleep. Any Friends not in residence that night should be at the Summit in the morning. She would have to be discreet but she felt confident that she could accomplish her work without arousing suspicions.

To make sure she didn't miss anyone, her microputer contained the list of the names of the two hundred twenty rebels who were originally exiled to Terra. In order to check off those names, she had to learn each person's identity. While Athena was introducing those on hand, Shara had memorized names and faces but she didn't expect it to be that easy with everyone else in the camp. Though improvising was not one of her strengths, she was determined to find a way to test every single participant in the Friendship movement.

If only she could be sure Gabriel would not interfere. As she scrubbed the skins of a bottomless pile of tubers, she concentrated on how to get around his belief that history should not be tampered with. Reasoning with him had failed. She briefly considered offering the use of her body in exchange for his noninterference. However, she didn't believe he wanted to couple with her badly enough to forget his personal goal of preventing her from altering the past... to say nothing for the fact that coupling with him could influence her thinking instead.

"Drek!"
Gabriel shouted, jumping away from the fire and shaking his right arm.

"He's been burned," a woman named Hestia called out. "Get Apollo's case!"

As a little girl dashed into the lodge, Shara dropped the tuber in her hand and rushed to see how badly he was hurt. A bright red splotch on the inside of Gabriel's forearm marked the injured spot and his clenched jaw let her know it was painful. The moment the girl brought out a small chest, Hestia removed a bottle of liquid from it and poured some over the burn.

"That will do until Apollo arrives to take care of it," she assured him. "Until then, perhaps you should help Shara."

He accepted her suggestion as everyone returned to his or her individual chores.

Shara grimaced at the blistering flesh on his arm. "Did the liquid help at all?"

"It numbed the area," he said, picking up a brush and a tuber. He lowered his voice to a murmur meant only for her ears. "It will be interesting to see if Apollo really was a healer, as legend says, or just a good pharmacologist."

Shara leaned toward him and whispered back, "You didn't burn yourself on purpose just to find out, did you?"

"Do I seem that unbalanced to you?"

She cocked her head at him. "As a matter of fact, you do. What the
drek
possessed you to say we were waiting to be joined?"

He casually looked around to make sure no one was paying attention to their conversation. "It was the first thing that came to mind that made us sound a bit fanatical, like true Friends. Plus we can now use it to explain any sort of aberration, including the possibility that the fever is still with us."

She wasn't at all happy to hear him bring
that
up but his reasoning did make sense, so she moved on to her next complaint. "Why didn't you tell me about the hand sign and triangle pendants?"

"Frankly, it never occurred to me." He saw a hint of yellow in her eyes. "Are you angry with me, Shara?"

Since such a reaction was uncalled for, given his explanations, she started to deny it when she noticed how intently he was starting at her. He wasn't guessing. He was analyzing the color of her eyes! Her shoulders slumped with the realization that she could no longer keep her feelings private. "How much have you figured out?"

Though he hadn't meant to reveal his one advantage over her, he saw no choice but to tell the truth. "Your eyes are like emeralds when you're pleased or excited about something, olive-gray when you're lying or evading, yellow-streaked when you're angry and an absolutely delicious shade of chocolate when you—"

"Hush! I have no control over the changes and I don't care to wear shields all the time. Normally it's not a problem. Only a few people have spent enough time so close to me that they can read my eye color like that." Now her cheeks were flushed.

"Shara, even without your overly expressive eyes, anyone could probably guess what you were thinking. I told you once, you're not much of an actress. You show your feelings with every part of your body. If it's not your eyes, it's the set of your chin, your posture, the way you move your hands." His gaze slid to her thinly covered breasts. "The way you move your body when I—"

"Please stop saying things like that," she whispered urgently, glancing around for eavesdroppers. "You know how I feel—"

"Oh, yes," he said over the rest of her sentence. "I know
exactly
how you feel. Like velvet and satin that's been warmed by the sun."

"I'm not listening."

"You promised to be accommodating."

She narrowed her eyes at him then touched the back of her hand to his brow. "You're not feverish."

"You didn't touch the right part of me."

Without thinking of the consequences, she looked down at his lap and her cheeks heated even more. The loose tunic had a small tent formed in it.

He didn't bother to hide his grin. "It's not my fault you look so desirable in that scrap of cloth." He leaned a little closer. "The only reason I got burned was because I kept thinking about what I saw when you bent over to place that stool you're sitting on." Her lips formed an
O
and he took advantage of her surprise with a quick kiss. "If you don't want me to say things like that, try not to tease."

"I... I... wouldn't, I didn't... not on purpose." His smile told her
he
was the one who was teasing and she grimaced at him rather than give him the smile she felt inside. She then made an attempt to distract him before she gave away her true reaction to his teasing. "I think you should know, someone—two people, actually—tried to enter my mind while we were being greeted. I blocked them but I'd say we should assume we're not as accepted as they'd like us to think."

Before he could respond, Hestia came over to take a look at his arm. When she saw how many tubers were left in the basin, she pulled up another stool and helped them out.

The sun had set by the time all the food was prepared. As Shara helped bring it inside, she was pleased to see that the lodge was now filled with people she hadn't met yet. Though they all appeared to be humanoid, and the majority looked younger than her, Shara noted a wide range of differences in their individual features.

There were rather small people with yellow-brown skin, black hair, slanted eyes and prominent cheekbones. There were fair men and women as tall as her and Gabriel with wild manes of red and blond hair and bright blue eyes. Others had skin and eyes in shades of ebony. The most unusual were the men and women whose bodies were covered in intricate tattoos rather than clothing.

As the people started making their way toward the food, Hestia grasped Gabriel's elbow. "Come with me. Apollo has arrived with my brothers."

Shara followed close behind as Hestia guided Gabriel across the room to where Athena and Artemis were speaking to a group of men. One of those men stood out, even amid such a diverse crowd. Noticeably older than those around him, he was of giant stature and physique, with a riot of light brown curls that fell below his shoulders and a full beard of similar springy coils. Beyond the physical, however, there was something so regally imposing about his bearing, he could only be one of two men—Zeus or his brother, Poseidon.

Quickly Shara ran through the legendary family history Gabriel had given her. Zeus had another brother, Hades, who was less dramatic in appearance but had a penchant for fire and destruction. His sisters were Hestia, Demeter and Hera, whom Zeus made his mate once he was free of the moral restrictions of the Noronian Tribunal.

By this time, he had already fathered a considerable number of children with several of his female followers, in direct opposition to the regulated birth edicts of the Tribunal. The twins Artemis and Apollo were born of one of his women. Athena from another. The way he spread his genes around before and after going to Terra, Zeus was a prime suspect in Shara's search for Khameira's rebel ancestor.