Seduction: A Novel of Suspense (34 page)

The entrance to the cave was hard to find. In fact it had been chosen by the ancients because of how the grouping of rocks curved
and obscured the access even when the tide was low. At high tide the entrance was hidden from sight and water flooded the front chambers. You could be trapped during storms. Just a dozen years ago, a priest who had been trying to escape had drowned.

No one but the elders knew the location of the cave. Each generation passed it down to the next. Only holy men could go there. And only holy men could be entombed there. Deep in the inner reaches, far back, Owain had buried five elders there, two of whom were his mentors. Those had been difficult days. Even though Owain believed that the men’s souls would return, he’d been close to the men and their passing had been hard for him to accept. He’d missed both of them more these last few days than he had in years. In the cave, after the visions, he’d visited their tombs and tried to conjure and communicate with them. He’d prayed to them to help him understand the vision another way. To have it mean something else.

Why not me? Why don’t the gods want me?

“What?” Gwenore asked, her green eyes staring into his. “You were crying out in your sleep.”

He was amazed he’d actually fallen asleep. With all he had on his mind, he hadn’t thought he’d be able to.

“You were arguing with someone, Owain.”

“What did I say?” Perhaps his dream conversation would be important and reveal some flaw in his interpretation of the message he’d received in the cave.

“ ‘Why not me?’ That’s what you said. Over and over again.”

Owain nodded. Closed his eyes. No, it wasn’t a new divination. It was the same thought he’d been having continuously since his terrible revelation.

Gwenore stroked his hair. Combed out his tangled curls with her fingertips. She smelled of the food she’d cooked, of earth and herbs, of the sweet flowers she brewed and the oils she used to concoct her remedies. His wife came from a long line of witches, herbalists and healers who passed down their elixir recipes. Their potions soothed the skin, relaxed the soul. Some, even, could draw out and expel evil powers.

The first time he’d lain with her he’d been so intoxicated by her
aroma that he’d accused her of drugging him. She’d said no, there was nothing in the oils she wore except nature’s perfumes. But he wasn’t certain. Just as he wasn’t positive that the beverage she made for him and Brice every morning wasn’t a magical brew.

He’d watch her crush grasses, herbs and minerals, mix them with spring water and pray over them. He’d never seen her add anything suspicious. But still, how was it that he and Brice were the healthiest men on the island? That neither of them, or she for that matter, was ever sickly?

Gwenore’s fingers massaged the base of his skull, moved down the back of his neck and to his shoulders. Kneaded out the terrible knots in his muscles. She was using one of the minted oils, and the menthol was seeping into his skin and relaxing him despite his resistance. Under her skilled fingertips he was letting go. Giving up his fear. Not trying to work out his problems anymore. With each downward and upward stroke he became less in his mind and more in his body. He was not on a sacred retreat now. Not on a quest. This was his home. This was his wife.

The smoke he’d burned in the cave put him in one kind of trance. All mind, no body. His wits danced with ideas, with images. He witnessed a play of scenes acted out on a stage in the air. A theater of the gods. He lay on his back on the raised stone slab where he was protected from the waters that rushed in when the moon rose too high, and he disappeared into the visions.

But this, what Gwenore did to him, was a different kind of trance. All body and no mind. He became the sensation of his skin beneath her fingers. He was his own rising and falling and quickening breath. He was the hardening of his cock and the pulsing in his veins.

Owain was amazed he could react at all. Amazed his body was able to dismiss what his thoughts had been fixated on. Could he give in? Did the gods need him to be aware of his physical self now?

Or was he was convincing himself of that? Maybe he just desperately wanted Gwenore to take him to the forgetful place between her legs.

She disrobed. The star-shaped mark on her breast looked redder to him tonight. He reached out and touched it and his fingertip burned.

Pushing him back, Gwenore mounted him. Kissed him. Kept massaging him. Her hair was spread out on his belly. Every strand like a lick of fire, teasing him. His blood was finally warming after four full days and nights of cold. He felt it quickening as the pressure inside him built. His head fell back. He closed his eyes. Concentrated only on the touch of her lips. The hot inside of her mouth. The motion of the tides, the ebb and flow of the waves on the sand were in her movements. He thought only about the naturalness of their being together. Of the wonder that one body could effect this in another. Gwenore had told him once this was the real magic they were all searching for. That they were wrong to search for it in caves. That this coaxing of a man’s blood to the surface, this building up of pressure, this sweetness that came from a man and woman lying together was the secret.

He reached down and his fingers found the other cave, the one between his wife’s legs. Where she was slick. Where she was ready. He traveled into her and she took him in, deeply, with a soft moan of pleasure. Owain wanted her to absorb him. Wanted the oblivion her lips and her legs were promising, but at the same time he was frightened of going to that sweet place. It would be a relief, yes, but what if it was such a relief, he didn’t come back? What if the job ahead of him was so horrible to contemplate that he let himself disappear? He knew of others who had left their minds, never to return. As much as he didn’t want to do what had to be done, he must. No one but him could make the sacrifice the gods were demanding in exchange for keeping the tribe safe from the Romans.

His movements became the rhythm of her breath. His breaths became the rhythm of her movements. There was nothing to tether him to reality anymore. Nothing to keep him from losing his mind.

Owain let go.

Theo knelt beside Jac. Her eyes were open but she wasn’t seeing him. He said her name. Once. Twice. A third time. The panic rose in him.

“Jac!”

She remained unresponsive.

It was happening again
. He flashed back to the time they’d spent together as teenagers at Blixer Rath. Those horrible, wonderful days. Something like this, or exactly this, had happened once before. On his last day there. She’d been present and aware one minute and then gone the next. Not asleep exactly. Not unconscious, but totally unresponsive. He’d lifted her out of the water and half-carried, half-dragged her back to the clinic where Malachai Samuels had thrown questions at him while listening to Jac’s heartbeat, feeling her pulse, pulling down her eyelids.

Theo had watched in horror. He had never been more frightened. She was his friend. Fiery and stubborn. And of course, like him, damaged and vulnerable. The idea that he’d done something to her was more than he could bear.

Malachai had repeated her name several times. When she hadn’t responded . . . what had Malachai done? Theo tried to remember, but his mind was a blank. What should he do? What could he do? He
tried to go back to that day. To build the doctor’s office in his mind. To see Jac on his couch.

Yes!

Ripping off his shirt, Theo dipped it in the water in the rut. As he did so he noticed for the first time that the floor around them was wet. Was the water from the rock splashing this far? He looked. No, the rising tide was doing more than swelling the waterfall, it was seeping into the cave.

He had to get Jac out of there. And it was going to be hard if she was still nonresponsive and half asleep like this. Theo needed her to be able to walk. As he wiped Jac’s face, he talked to her. His hand was on her back, supporting her. He felt her bones through her shirt. Felt where her flesh stopped and her bra started. He was unnerved by the intimacy.

Theo rewet his shirt and pressed it to Jac’s wrists, first the right and then the left, and then placed it on the back of her neck. He was fairly sure this was what the doctor had done. Chilled her blood and cooled her body temperature until she came to. But she wasn’t responding. Maybe he hadn’t kept it there long enough.

Again he wet the cloth and then wrapped it around Jac’s left wrist. Counted to thirty. Then the right wrist. Counted again.

What should he do if he couldn’t bring her out of this? How hard would it be to pull her through the narrow passages they had just traversed? And how much time did he have to wait before they’d be forced to leave?

The water level was rising quickly. His shoes were now soaked. Even if the inner chambers and tunnel didn’t completely flood, and he knew they didn’t from the water lines Jac had pointed out, it was possible the entrance might. He could probably wait it out, but what would happen to Jac if she stayed like this? How long was too long?

Pressing the shirt to the back of her neck again, he counted. Five seconds. Ten. Twenty. They couldn’t swim for long in the sea this time of year. The temperature was too cold. Hypothermia was a threat to anyone who did cave explorations in Jersey. When he was a boy his
mother had warned him and Ash about it all the time. No matter how warm it might be outside, freezing water could cause serious harm if they were submerged for too long.

Jac opened her eyes. Stared right at him. Frowned.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She didn’t answer. She was looking around the cave: at the lantern on the rock slab, at the walls, at the monolithic stones, then down at the amber totem she was still holding.

The last thing she’d done before going into her trance was take it out of the niche, drop it, then retrieve it.

“We need to get out of here. The cave is filling up with water,” he said.

She didn’t react at all. Theo wondered if she’d even heard him.

“Fast,” he said urging her to focus.

“Brice?”

She was scrutinizing him as if she didn’t know who he was, and worse, was afraid of him.

“What?”

She said something quickly. A string of words that he couldn’t quite understand except for the repeated name,
Brice
.

“Jac, we’ve got to get out of here.” He took the carved figure from her, put it back in one of the niches. Then rethought that, picked it back up and pocketed it. Putting one arm around Jac’s waist, he tried to help her to stand. But she pushed him away.

The water level was creeping up. It was above his ankles now. It must be seeping in through multiple cracks and crevices. He felt his toes starting to go numb.

“You have to let me help you. We have to get out of here. The cave is flooding.” He pointed.

She looked.

Theo saw her eyes go wide with fear.

When he put his arm around her again, she didn’t push him off. As he helped her up, she faltered. It was as if she were drugged. She was disoriented but able to walk with his support, and that was all he cared about for now.

“Come on. This way.” He led her out of the cavernous chamber, into the next and finally into the tunnel. Here the water was almost up to their knees. It was extremely difficult to trudge through with her on his arm like a dead weight. She was leaning into him, and the journal he’d put in his pocket was pushing uncomfortably into his ribs. He probably should have left it where it was and come back for it. What if he slipped and got it wet? If the ink ran, everything Hugo wrote would be gone. How stupid he’d been.

Finally they made it out of the cave. The enclosure was filled up with water that lapped above Theo’s knees. How was he going to climb up and out of here with Jac?

Theo hadn’t taken the line in Hugo’s letter about the tides seriously enough—
the phase of the moon will keep our secrets.
The tide must have kept these caverns often inaccessible. Today he and Jac must have just caught the end of the hour when entering them was possible.

Suddenly Jac pulled away from him. She was wading to the wall. As if she had done it a dozen times, she put her hands on two protruding rocks Theo hadn’t even noticed, and began the climb out of the chasm.

Theo followed her, wondering as he watched her scale the wall without hesitation or faltering, how she had found the hand- and toeholds.

When she reached the ground up above, she took off without looking back or waiting for him. Walking quickly, she headed in the opposite direction from where the car was, where they’d come from. He called out to her, but she didn’t respond. He ran to catch up, reached her side, put his hand out to stop her.

“Jac, where are you going?” he asked. “My car is the other way.”

She frowned at him, quizzically.

Did she really not understand what he was saying?

He took her hand. “This way.”

As it had in the cave, as it had so many years ago, fear flooded her eyes. She tried to wrest free. He managed to hold on and pulled her toward the slipway and then to the parking area. When they reached his Jaguar, she gave his car the same uncomprehending look that she’d
given him. He didn’t know what to do except force her into the car. But she fought back. Lashing out at him, Jac managed to punch him in the side of his head. Her moves were that of an experienced fighter, but her strength didn’t match her training. She hadn’t hurt him, only surprised him long enough to take off.

For one stunned moment he watched her running away, astounded.
What was happening?
He took off after her, trying to catch up, but she was fast and the best he could do was keep her in his sight.

They were out of the clearing and in the woods now. The wind sang in his ears. Branches snapped across his face. He called out to Jac to stop, but she either didn’t hear him or didn’t care. Theo wasn’t sure why, but he thought she wasn’t so much running away from him as toward something.

But that was impossible. She’d only been on the island for three days. She couldn’t know the way.