Jordan (25 page)

Her lack of trust was hurting him. When it came down to it, words didn’t mean as much as actions. Jordan had saved her life
several times. He’d saved the ship, and she sensed that if she didn’t give him her trust, she’d be burning her bridges with
him.

She’d come to care about him, more than she should. She didn’t want to trade barbs. She didn’t want to question why she was
falling for him when they had no possible future together. She shouldn’t trust him. But deep down in her heart, she did. Possibly
she always had—even after she’d learned how he’d lied to her on his employment application, she’d still trusted him on an
instinctive level.

Raising her head, she looked him straight in the eyes. “I have memories of yours, ones you haven’t shared with me.” She swallowed
hard. “For a long time, I thought you might be planting false memories in my mind to get me to believe in you.”

“I wouldn’t do that.” His eyes gleamed with a light she’d never seen before. Luminous, brilliant, they glittered a warmth
she could feel across the cave. “In fact, the same things happened to me. I have memories of you buying a necklace for a birthday
present for your mother.”

Vi gasped. He was telling the truth. She’d never told anyone the painful story of that necklace. And if he was getting some
of her memories, she wasn’t losing her mind—or her judgment. A weight lifted from her chest. “Why do we have some of each
other’s memories? Is the Staff responsible?”

“I thought the memories might be connected to lovemaking,” he admitted. “But one time, the memory came when we hadn’t done
anything.”

“I saw you as a boy. You wanted to win the prize of spending the summer at a special training camp. But you threw the race
so a friend could win.”

“I’d forgotten about that.” Jordan smiled an easy smile. “His father had never seen him race. He’d always been too busy working
to make a living.”

“So you lost so he could win with his father watching?” She leaned into him and placed a kiss on his mouth. “That was kind.”

He wrapped his arms around her. “I have the memory of your parents’ deaths. I felt your pain. Your fear of being alone. By
the Goddess, I don’t want you ever to feel that alone again.”

“What else do you know?” She clung to him, raised her head, and locked gazes with him. It felt good to tell him her secret.
Because now she felt as if she had an ally. Because the warmth in his eyes told her that he, too, had feelings he didn’t want
to admit.

“I saw you picking a lock to feed little children.”

“And I saw your world destroyed,” she told him. “And I don’t want the same thing to happen to Earth. We have to stop the Tribes.”

With a sizzle, the force field suddenly zapped with bright, bluish-white stars. She stared as the entire dome turned into
a three-dimensional star field.

Jordan stepped over to the glass.

“Don’t touch it,” she murmured.

He paid no attention, lifting the dome. The Staff also pulsed with the bluish stars, a spiraling aura, an alien energy field
that suddenly surrounded Jordan. His expression turned inward as the field took hold of him, surrounding him in a brilliant
blue vortex.

The hair on the back of her neck raised. Everything inside her was shrieking at her to run. To get away from those devastating
blue lights. Vivianne was practically jumping out of her skin.

“Jordan!” she cried. “Where’s the off switch?”

He didn’t appear to hear.

A crackling sound caught her attention, the energy swirling faster as Jordan retrieved the Key of Soil. The shimmer shined
so brightly she had to hold her hand up to block the light, and still she had to squint.

“Jordan, talk to me,” she pleaded.

But he didn’t say a word. Was the energy hostile and killing him? Or was he simply absorbing the energy?

Vivianne had no idea what to do. Those hellish bluish glows looked ethereal, otherworldly. She didn’t have a clue how to make
them go away.

Jordan wasn’t moving. Not blinking.

Backing away, holding her hand to her mouth, she stood dazed and uncertain.

As quickly as the light had turned on, it faded.

The light released its hold over him, and Jordan slumped to the cave’s floor, unconscious, the key and Staff dropping from
his hands.

Oh, God. Was he dead?

She rushed over. His flesh was clammy, and when she opened one of his eyes, his pupil was dilated and didn’t react at all.
Placing a finger to his neck, she felt for a pulse. Nothing.

His hearts weren’t beating. His chest didn’t move up and down. He wasn’t breathing.

Vivianne rolled him to his back, slammed her fist onto his hearts, and began to compress his chest. She pumped hard several
times, tilted back his head, pinched his nose closed, and breathed into his mouth.

“Come on, breathe, damn you, breathe.”

For five minutes she performed CPR, the entire time tears streaming down her cheeks. So help her, if Arthur had sent them
into a trap to die, she’d crawl out of this tunnel, find the bastard, and kill him herself.

“Jordan, you can’t leave me.” She pumped his chest, her breath coming in gasps.

And still he didn’t respond.

She kept up the CPR until her arms ached and she grew light-headed from lack of air. Finally, she rocked back on her heels,
the sudden loss sinking in. He wasn’t responding. There was nothing more to do.

Jordan was gone.

A sob broke from her chest. She’d always known she would eventually lose him, but she’d never thought it would be this soon.
Or that her agony and outrage would leave her shaking and sickened.

The cave grew dim. Without the Staff’s bright light, she would soon be left in total blackness.

If she didn’t act, this cave might become her tomb.

The idea of squeezing through that tunnel in total pitch blackness should have made her numb with fear. But the sorrow in
her heart overwhelmed her. She was so weary. Somehow she had to summon the strength to shove to her feet.

Jordan was dead, and if she didn’t crawl out, she’d die with him. But she couldn’t push to her feet, so she crawled over to
Jordan to say a final goodbye.

She brushed against the Staff and it rolled away. Instinctively, she grabbed it and placed it in Jordan’s hand, knowing the
Staff was part of him and they belonged together for eternity.

His face was so still. The stubble of his beard shadowed his jaw. With his eyes closed, he looked as if he slept.

She prayed he’d find the peace he’d never had in life.

Goodbye,
my love, she thought, admitting the truth too late. She’d loved this man. She’d just been too stubborn to see it. After he’d
told her they could have no future, she’d denied her feelings. But it had done no good. How many precious moments had she
wasted fighting the obvious?

Too damn many.

She should have grabbed every opportunity they’d had. Now it was too late.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Finally, forcing herself to stand, she staggered toward the tunnel and tripped over the Key of
Soil. The key glowed with only the dimmest of light, and the Ancient Staff was pale, too; the objects were dying with Jordan.

Bending, she scooped up the Key of Soil. Turning back, the key clutched in her hand, she snapped it into place at the bottom
of the Ancient Staff. Then, hearts aching, she kissed Jordan on the mouth one final time. “Sleep in peace.”

Feeling hollow and weary and discouraged, she turned and headed toward the tunnel.

Don’t leave me.

Was she hallucinating? Hearing things that couldn’t possibly be true?

I’m still here.

He was dead.

Not anymore.

She spun around to stare at Jordan and thought his pinky might have twitched. But his chest wasn’t moving. Without a heartbeat,
without breath for the last ten minutes, he couldn’t be communicating with her telepathically.

Hoping for a miracle, she returned to his side, leaned over his mouth, and listened for a breath. “Jordan?”

Nothing.

“Jordan.” She shook him. “I can hear you in my mind, like when we’re dragons and telepathic. What do you need me to do?”

Take the Staff and insert it into the dome.
She heard the words clearly in her mind.

With a feeling of dawning wonder, she picked up the Staff. But she paused by the dome. Jordan’s touching that glass had caused
those blue lights to envelop him. If she reached inside, would those blue stars attack her?

I wouldn’t ask you to do something that would hurt you.

She spun around to look at him. He hadn’t moved. He still didn’t appear to be breathing.

Jordan was dead. She should be leaving—not reaching into the machine that had killed him.

Vi. Please believe. It’s me.
Warmth and gentle encouragement flooded her, and she felt bathed in his aura. But now that there was more of a reason to
panic, she felt oddly calm. Because no one called her Vi. No one but Jordan.

“How did you get into my head?” she asked.

It’s a pretty complicated head, Vi. You have a beautiful mind. For once, it’s going to be all right.

Nothing might ever be right again. Jordan had died, and she was losing her mind. The stress, the heartache were too much to
bear. She should ignore the voice in her head and just get out of here.

That would be a mistake.

“A mistake?”

For Earth.

“Please,” she whispered. “Just tell me what’s going to happen if I place the Staff inside that dome.”

I don’t know.

“That thing killed you.”

I’m not dead.

She stared at his body. “You aren’t breathing. You don’t have a pulse.”

She could feel amusement wafting along with his mental communication.
Vi, you don’t talk to dead people, do you?

With a shrug, she leaned over the dome. Inside was a housing similar to the one Jordan had built on the
Draco.
Holding her breath, expecting to be zapped by blue lights, she snapped the Staff into the housing.

She stared hard at the domed glass. But although the Staff pulsed more brightly, those blue stars didn’t reappear. Slowly,
she released a breath.

At the rustle of a footstep behind her, the hair on her neck stood up. She was no longer alone.

If it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would get done.

—H
ONORIAN WARLORD

S
pinning around, Vivianne eyed Jordan. He was standing, walking toward her in jerky steps like some zoned-out, nonbreathing
zombie. Horrified, she edged away until her backside smacked up against the cave wall. That thing coming toward her was not
her Jordan, who moved with the smooth grace of a panther. What had happened to the man she loved? Was he still there inside
somewhere and fighting to get out?

When she’d felt for his pulse, had it only been weak and she’d missed it? Had he gone into some kind of hibernation? Suspended
animation? Because he was now very much alive.

And the blue light shimmering in his eyes was the same. He spoke in his familiar deep voice. “It’s me.”

“Jordan?”

“I just short-circuited. And I haven’t regained complete use of my muscles after the shock to my system.”

Afraid to hope, she folded her arms across her chest to stop her shaking. Torn between hope and fear and terror, she forced
the words from her mouth. “Y-you still aren’t breathing.”

“Huh?” One side of Jordan’s forehead wrinkled. “What are you talking about?”

“Your chest isn’t moving.” She pressed harder against the wall, wishing it would open up an escape route.

He looked down and placed his hand over his chest. Then his puzzled eyes jerked to her. “You’re right. I’m not breathing.”
Reaching for his chin and missing the first time, he finally rubbed his jaw. “I no longer seem to require oxygen.”

Astonished, overwhelmed, afraid to believe he’d survived, she stared at him. “How’s that… possible?”

“I don’t know.”

He combed his fingers through his hair, but a stubborn lock fell on his forehead, in a gesture she recognized from whenever
he was trying to solve a puzzle. His movements were more coordinated now, almost normal. But he wasn’t normal. He wasn’t breathing.
But she’d never realized how the simple movement of breathing humanized a person. Without his chest rising and falling, Jordan
looked stiff, forbidding. Alien. This couldn’t be her Jordan. Could it?

Yet if by some miracle he’d come back to her, she could adjust. Adapt. Be grateful for the gift of life.

She was judging Jordan by normal human laws of nature. This man had turned into an owl.

Jordan held out his hand to her. “We need to leave.”

She looked down… and placed her hand in his. “Will removing the Staff hurt you?”

“I’d rather not find out.” He raised an eyebrow. “At least until I know you’re safely back aboveground.” He leaned over the
glass dome, and then he climbed inside and settled next to the Staff, which pulsed a little more strongly.