Lost (18 page)

It was the kind
of situation that I'd never expected to find myself in, and I felt a
kind of paralysis take hold of me. Celeste was undeniably beautiful,
but I wasn't some mindless animal to act without concern for the
consequences of my actions.

I'd spent
months pursuing Jess without any success, but my lack of headway
didn't necessarily mean that I was prepared to give up. We had a
history together that went back almost as long as I could remember.
We'd grown up as friends and then later it had turned into something
more than just friendship.

Jess and I had
been together for something like four years and I wasn't ready to
throw that away if there was still any chance of getting back
together with her. Even if I was, pursuing any kind of relationship
with Celeste was a bad idea on almost every level.

She was Ash's
sister. Ash and I didn't particularly get along as it was, the last
thing we needed to throw into that dynamic was for me to date the
sister he'd been estranged from for more than ten years.

All of that was
true, but they were the kinds of things that you think about after
the fact to justify a decision that you'd made originally without
even thinking about them. The truth was that I wasn't going to make a
move on Celeste because I barely knew her. I didn't know if I could
trust her, and I certainly didn't know her well enough to decide
whether I liked her.

I needed to
keep her at arm's length for the foreseeable future, needed to fish
or cut bait where Jess was concerned before I even thought about
anyone else, but I was having a very hard time pulling my eyes away
from her.

The light from
the plant globes above us had dimmed down sometime when I'd been
asleep so the light hitting her was achingly soft. Her hair was a
loose blond tangle and her bare shoulders were exactly the kind of
delicate perfection that I'd imagined dwelt underneath her clothes
the first time I saw her.

She caught me
looking at her legs, bare up to mid-thigh where her dress ended, and
her hands slowed.

"Are you
okay now?"

I wasn't sure I
trusted my voice to not give away more than I wanted it to, but
refusing to speak would be just as bad.

"Yes,
thank you. If you hadn't come when you did then I'm not sure that I
would have made it."

"You're
welcome. I don't know that I've ever seen cramps that bad. You had me
really worried there for a while. Does that happen often?"

I shook my
head. "No, it's never been that bad before. I'd say that I lost
track of how many times I'd shifted, but that wouldn't be true. I
knew I was riding the ragged edge of what I could manage, but the
threats just kept coming. I should have stretched rather than just
falling asleep like that, but by then I wasn't thinking very
clearly."

Celeste looked
at me with eyes that I couldn't begin to read and I was struck again
by the fact that her human eyes—the deep gray eyes looking at
me at that moment—were the same eyes she had in her hybrid
form. That wasn't unheard of, Alec and Jasmin had blue eyes in both
their hybrid and human forms, but their hybrid eyes were a paler
shade of blue than they had as humans.

It was as if
she'd cast some kind of pagan spell on me with her eyes. She was
still kneeling over my stomach and she showed no sign of moving other
than to pull her hands back away from my chest.

"You've
been through more in the last two days than I gave you credit for.
Ash and Kristin are lucky to have a friend like you. Not everyone
would put everything on the line like that for their friends."

That drew a
chuckle out of me. "I'm not sure you can say that Ash and I are
friends. More like comrades in arms. To be honest, it wasn't as
though I had any other choice; the Coun'hij and Onyx were all after
me too."

She cocked her
head. "You could have dropped Ash off at the hospital and made a
run for it."

"It was
Ash's car."

"Which he
discarded without a second thought after the three of you arrived."

She had me
there. I hadn't been bluffing when I'd told Ash that I had enough
cash to go my own way. There hadn't been a compelling reason that I
couldn't have left Ash and Kristin. I didn't want to admit that
though, not to her, even if I wasn't sure exactly why.

"It's
okay, Isaac. You don't have to say anything. Just spend some time
thinking about what you'll do when you don't
have
to be the
dependable rock." Celeste suddenly shifted back a little further
away from me. "Listen to me, I don't even know what I'm saying.
This isn't what I was hoping to say to you."

"What did
you want to say to me, then?"

"I wanted
to apologize for how I treated you earlier. You didn't deserve that.
You've done nothing but deliver despite all of the things working
against you. I should be better than that, I just…well, I just
know better. I'm sorry."

"Apology
accepted, and thanks again for coming in to save my bacon just now. I
understand that probably wasn't the easiest thing you've ever done."

"Thanks.
I'm also sorry about the fact that Ash and I dragged you here. I can
understand your frustrations. Just remember that once we know where
Dream Stealer and the rest of the Coun'hij are we can finally take
them down. Over the long run that will save a lot of lives."

She looked away
from me—apparently embarrassed, although I couldn't tell
whether her sudden bashfulness was driven by our conversation or the
fact that she'd been sitting on top of me—and then jumped off
of the bed. I grabbed her arm before she could make her escape.

"Don't
worry. I'll see this through. We'll get their queen to tell us what
we need to know and then Ash will be willing to give you a chance.
The two of you can work things out, it will just take some time."

She looked at
me like I'd just grown a second head and then ran out of my room. One
second she was less than a foot from my bed and then all that was
left of her was a single bare leg disappearing around the corner.

Apparently I
still had a lot more to learn about women than I'd realized.

Isaac Nazir
The Lamia Enclave

Celeste and I
kind of tiptoed around each other for the next two days. Neither of
us seemed quite sure how to handle the moment that we'd shared our
first night in the enclave.

We worked
together well enough to make sure that Ash and Kristin were taken
care of, but beyond that we avoided each other whenever possible. I
was actually grateful to have some time to myself to think. I
couldn't remember the last time that I'd had more than a few hours
away from the constant, intrusive stress of pack life.

Celeste still
seemed to be holding to our original bargain of not settling the
issue of who was dominant to whom, which meant that, for the first
time since I'd first shifted forms, I wasn't worried about protecting
myself from someone higher up the food chain or keeping whomever was
submissive to me from taking a run at me.

It was pleasant
in a way that was hard to describe, but I figured it was probably how
most people felt on vacation. For a short time I was able to forget
about all of the things that usually drove me and just enjoy the
moment. The only bad part was that I knew it wasn't going to last.
Eventually I was going to have to go back.

I slept a lot
more than normal, which was odd, but when I mentioned it in passing
to Celeste she told me that she thought it was a side effect of the
food. Her ancestors had reported similar changes during their visits
to the lamia, along with an increased ability to heal quickly from
wounds, which would have been nice except that it didn't seem to be
happening for any of us who'd entered the enclave injured.

I chalked it up
as just one more instance where the rules had changed since the last
time the enclave had hosted visitors, and hoped that Ash and Kristin
would wake up soon. It seemed to bother Celeste a lot more than it
bothered me, but I already knew that there was something going on
there that I didn't understand.

Usually when I
had free time on my hands I spent it with my nose buried in a book or
online trying to keep up with the latest developments in IT security.
Neither option was available inside the enclave. I turned on my
tablet the morning of our first full day in the enclave and confirmed
that it worked, but then just turned it back off when it failed to
register any GPS satellites. There wasn't any point in running down
the battery when I didn't have any way of recharging it.

I ended up
spending a lot of time out in the valley sitting next to the stream
and thinking. I must have gone back through the first few days after
Oblivion left Jess without any memories a hundred times while sitting
on a rock and listening to the stream.

I'd made such a
mess of things. I guess the biggest problem had been that I hadn't
been able to believe deep down inside that the Jess I'd known for so
long was really gone. She'd changed—she obviously didn't
remember any of us—but I kept seeing glimmers of the old Jess
peeking through the amnesia.

The way she
held her head when she was confused and trying not to admit it, the
fact that she loved vanilla bean ice cream more than any other
flavor, the way that she sometimes still smiled at her dad, they all
pointed to the same thing. I'd been thinking that I just needed to
jog her memory, that I needed to keep exposing her to old places and
people until the old Jess came back to us. It had made sense to me at
the time, but now I wasn't so sure.

The old Jess
would never have thrown herself into the arms of some dashing,
mysterious stranger she'd known for less than a month, but that was
exactly what the new Jess—what Jessica—had done. I'd
spent months wooing Jess when we were younger. Even back then she'd
been such a tightly coiled ball of hurt that she'd been extremely
slow to trust.

Even after Jess
had chosen to go off with Wyatt rather than staying with Andrew and
me, I'd been convinced that she'd been tricked, that he'd fast-talked
his way into her heart. The more I thought about it though, the less
I believed that had actually been what happened. If anything, I'd
pushed her into his arms.

She'd walked
around the estate for months knowing that she had a history with
everyone there, a history that she couldn't remember, but most of
them had at least left her alone to decide when and how she wanted to
proceed with them. Not me though. I'd pushed and pushed, never happy
with the tiny measures of progress when she'd opened up to me, always
wanting more, wanting things to be just like they'd been before. It
was no wonder that she'd latched onto the first new guy who had shown
an interest in her.

The freedom to
just be herself must have been intoxicating. No need to worry about a
shadowy shared history, no sense that she was competing against the
old Jess, it must have felt like paradise.

I was still
turning all of that over inside of my mind, but that process of
self-reflection had to take a back seat on the morning of the third
day when Set came calling. Set was the only lamia that had spoken to
me so far. I'd been hoping to be able to ask him more about his
people and their culture, but when I'd approached the entrance to the
main cave and asked the two lamia guards there if Set was available
they had just waved me away with threatening looks in their eyes.

Seeing Set
waiting outside the cave he'd assigned me was simultaneously a relief
and cause for alarm. I'd been wanting to talk to him, but I suspected
that he wasn't there to talk to me about lamia history or culture.

"Are you
ready for your next challenge match, sun person?"

"Do I have
a choice in the matter?"

"There is
always a choice. Your queen could withdraw her request for
hospitality and you could all withdraw."

A part of me
wanted to agree with him. I wanted to tell him that we would pack up
and go within the next five minutes, but I knew I couldn't do that.

Kristin still
hadn't woken up, but as soon as the morphine they'd given her at the
hospital had worn off she'd gone back to thrashing and moaning in her
sleep. She wasn't my girlfriend, but that didn't mean that I didn't
understand why Ash was willing to do whatever it took to save her.

Besides,
Celeste was right about how many lives we would save if we could find
the Coun'hij's base and take them all down. If it had been up to me I
would have tried the hacking route first, but now that we were here I
needed to keep winning fights as long as I could, to give Ash and
Kristin time to heal if for no other reason.

"There are
other choices, but none with consequences that I can live with. I
will meet whatever challenger you judge most appropriate. May I go
get my queen before we begin?"

Five minutes
later Celeste and I had been led to a large cave on the far side of
the valley that had a sandy circle in its center. Conscious of the
fact that there wasn't any way to get hold of replacement clothes
here in the enclave, I stripped down to my ha'bit and shifted forms
with an explosion of power that told me that my beast was ready and
willing for another fight.

I stepped into
the circle and sank my talons as far down as they would go, testing
the depth of the white sand. It was deep, much deeper than I would
have expected. The lamias hadn't just poured some sand on top of the
floor, they'd bored down into the rock, creating a depression at
least a foot deep before hauling in sand to fill it up.

Assuming that
it had all been done by hand—I hadn't seen any kind of
machinery since we'd arrived—that was a lot of work. The lamias
obviously took their challenge matches very seriously.