Alterant (29 page)

Tristan shook his head. “They’re not where I left them in the maze.”

She checked Storm’s face, since he was the walking lie detector.

He gave a little hike of his eyebrow, which she took to mean that he’d heard the truth but had reservations about accepting that as the entire truth.

What might have happened to volatile Alterants in a place like the Maze of Death? She didn’t like the idea of being trapped with spirits from a hundred and fifty years ago, whom Grady had intimated were not necessarily friendly. “You left them in that maze for the past week with all those spirits? Maybe they freaked out and found some way to escape and got caught in the fog outside.”

Tristan put his hands at his hips. “Teleporting is the only one way in or out that I’ve found. None of my three Alterants can teleport. I don’t think they’ve left the maze.”

She said, “So you know about the fog.”

“I saw the yellow haze and all the crazies when I was topside.” He grinned with malice. “That should keep VIPER busy.”

Evalle chastised Tristan with her frown. “Did you get near the fog?”

“Hell, no. I don’t want any part of something that could force me to change.”

She kept it to herself about her encounter with the fog.

Storm asked Tristan, “Why’d you put the Alterants in that maze?”

Tristan just stared for an answer.

“I do not have time, Tristan,” Evalle said. “If you want my help, then you’re going to have to give both of us some straight answers.”

Storm helped not one bit when his lips tilted with a smile.

Tristan gave him a look that promised they’d have a chance to finish their discussion some day when Evalle wasn’t around to stop the bloodshed.

Storm’s smile broadened in an easy-to-decipher message of any time and any place.

Tristan answered Storm’s question, but he spoke to Evalle. “The maze was the only place I’d found where the Alterants couldn’t hurt anything if they turned into a beast and no one would find them there. At least, I’d hoped no one would find them.”

She sent a look of question to Storm.

He gave a little nod that Tristan was telling the truth. But from the closed look on Storm’s face, he’d figured out something else Evalle hadn’t picked up on yet. She stayed quiet to let him keep prodding.

Storm scratched his chin, pondering. “What do you plan to do when you find those three again?”

Tristan’s jaw shifted with a grimace. “I’m going to give them a better chance than I had.”

Tristan clearly wanted to save his fellow Alterants, which could mean he intended to work with her. Maybe.

Evalle asked Tristan, “Why are you here? You don’t need me to find those three.”

“That’s true,” Tristan agreed. “But I may need your help containing them and getting them out of there. I don’t know what kind of mental or physical shape they’re in since they’ve moved from where I left them.”

“Oh, hell no, Evalle.” Storm stepped in front of her. “He hasn’t told you the truth since you met him. He turned a demon loose on you in Piedmont Park—”

Tristan interjected, “That was before we knew each other.”

“—then he almost let the Kujoo kill you
after
you knew each other,” Storm continued. “Then he lies to you when he escaped and could have teleported you when the demons attacked. Now he’s here wanting you to walk into a concealed space where you have to fight three—or four—Alterants?”

Tristan deadpanned, “If I wanted to kill her I could have done it in South America.”

Evalle took into consideration all that Storm said, but actually . . . “He has a point, Storm. I landed inside his spellbound cage with no way to use my powers against him and he didn’t harm me there. If I want to find those Alterants, I have to go with him.”

“Evalle, don’t,” Storm said in a voice so close to pleading that it surprised her.

“She doesn’t have a choice,” Tristan pointed out.

She’d rather not ever see the Maze of Death, but Tristan had given voice to her thoughts. She could either go with him or wait until the sand ran out of the Tribunal’s hourglass. But the look of betrayal on Storm’s face sliced past her need to appease the Tribunal and her trepidation over entering the maze.

She didn’t want to part like this, so she told Tristan, “I need to talk to Storm.”

“Make it fast.”

Storm moved toward Tristan. She put a hand on his chest to stop him and felt his thundering heartbeat. Once Tristan had backed off, she told Storm, “Please don’t call in Tzader or Quinn.”

“If I agreed to that I’d double over in pain from the lie.”

That surprised her. “Is it because of your ability to tell if someone is lying?”

“Yes.” He brushed his palm against her face. “Don’t go somewhere I can’t get to you.”

Guess that cleared up any question about whether he thought he could get to her in the maze. There went her safety net if Storm couldn’t find a way in. “Then do me this favor. Give me two hours before you contact anyone.”

“One hour.”

“Ninety minutes.”

“One. Hour.”

She had to give him a reason that would overrule his concern for her. “Ninety minutes. If you call in Tzader and Quinn before I find these three Alterants, the Tribunal might twist it around to appear as though I called them in.”

He nodded, unhappy about it, but he agreed to the compromise.

She moved close and lifted up to whisper, “Please understand. If you need me to face something like the Maze of Death to help with finding you-know-who”—she didn’t even know the name of the woman Storm was hunting—“I will.”

He nodded again, not any happier, but understanding swept his face, uncovering a gaze filled with caring that warmed her heart.

“Need to go,” Tristan called over.

When she turned to leave, Storm pulled her back around and into his arms, kissing her before she could say a word.

Embarrassment heated her skin at Tristan watching them, but only for the two seconds it took for her to realize this was a new kiss. Her empathic senses burst awake and told her this kiss had a name and a meaning—possession. Any other time, she’d have shoved a man on his butt and straightened him out about the fact that no one possessed her, but her hands refused to untangle from their grip on Storm’s shirt.

She rode a heady wave of feeling at the idea of a man like Storm wanting her this much.

When Tristan made a disgruntled noise, she smoothed her hands against Storm’s chest and gave him a slight push until he lifted his head. “I have to go.”

He dropped his forehead to hers. “Be careful.”

“I will be.”

She’d made three steps away when Storm told Tristan, “Bring her back with so much as a scratch on her and VIPER won’t end up with enough of you to satisfy a pack of hungry rats.”

Tristan smiled and hooked an arm around Evalle’s waist. “See you, tomcat.”

She closed her eyes, hoping she’d been right about Tristan having a soul, because he was her only way out of the Maze of Death. Sen wouldn’t come unless the Tribunal sent for her, and even then he’d probably pretend he couldn’t find her.

One way in. One way out.

TWENTY-THREE

V
oices skidded through his mind, playing dodgeball with his thoughts.

Quinn kept his eyes shut tight even though the room was as dark as a moonless night and he had an ice compress over his forehead and eyes. He tried to thicken his mental shields to stop the onslaught of voices, but the effort almost sent him back to worship the porcelain god.

He had nothing else left to throw up.

Images flashed in and out from minds he’d linked to and probed. Images as garbled as the voices.

“Quinn?”

Had he heard that voice in his head or in the room? Couldn’t have been in the room. No one could get in but Tzader.

No room service allowed since a bullet between the eyes wasn’t on the menu.

Energy swirled in the room, whipping the chilly air to frost level. No, not now.

“Quinn?”

He gritted his teeth and tried to reinforce his mental shields, but they were weak, too shaky to battle any real power. “You shouldn’t be here, Kizira.”

“Then you shouldn’t have called me.”

Huh? He tried to lift up, but an invisible hammer pounded his head with vicious enthusiasm.

“I didn’t call you, Kizira.”

“I wouldn’t have gone through all I did to be here if you hadn’t. I risked leaving my bodyguards in charge of a project I’m responsible for.”

Had he called her? He would have known that, right?

“You’re in pain. I can help.”

“No . . . don’t. Go away. Please.” His teeth chattered when the temperature dropped severely.

“I can drop the temperature even more to freeze the pain out of your brain.”

“No.” His thoughts tangled. How had she gotten in here? The mind probe. What had happened to him during that probe?

“You miss me.” She hadn’t asked, just spoken, as though saying the words would give them weight and value. “Remember the last time we were alone?”

All too well.

Good thing he’d stretched out still fully clothed. The last time he and Kizira had been alone they’d ended up naked.

Like he needed that image worming its way into his splitting head right now? She had to go. He was civilized only when he had all his faculties accounted for, and right now parts of his mind had taken a hiatus.

She spoke softly. “You were in my head today where you shouldn’t have been, Quinn. Why?”

He frowned, and even that hurt. Had he reached into her mind during the probe, too? No. She’d climbed into his, fearless of what he might have done to her. She’d
been in a vision of the future, not here today. What kind of connection had opened up by tapping the spirit of Conlan’s evil father?

No matter what, Quinn had to keep her out of his mind.

He mumbled, “How was I in your head?” but the words might have come out, “Howz I in ure ’ead?”

She made a sound he recalled from their time alone when she’d get exasperated with him. “Can you at least sit up and talk to me?”

“Honestly . . . no. Had a . . . difficult day.” When he heard the shirr of material heading his way, he opened his eyes again, but the room blurred.

Kizira crossed the room, her body appearing to flex and reshape as though she’d been caught in one of those warped circus mirrors. She moved silently, but her usual intense glow had dimmed to almost nothing.

He asked, “Why aren’t you glowing?”

“You obviously have a volcanic headache, and as I recall, light hurts your eyes.” The powder blue gown poured down her body, hugging curves and falling to her ankles. Her flame red hair—now a soft brunette—hung in a long braid over her left shoulder, falling past her breasts.

Beautiful breasts when she’d been naked.

He closed his eyes and indulged a moment of self-loathing at his mental track.

She’d stand out among all the women in contemporary clothes stalking around Buckhead outside his hotel because Kizira was like no other woman.

And she was his enemy.

He needed to keep that thought forced between the erotic images determined to crowd his mind.

The mattress depressed next to him when she climbed on.

“Kizira,” he warned. He didn’t want to use any kinetic power on her and frankly didn’t know if he had it in him to raise a decent defense. Had to keep his energy focused on locking down the walls of his mind.

The ice pack disappeared from his head. The pounding kicked his skull. He released a noise that sounded pitiful to his ears.

Her cool palm covered his forehead.

He tensed, then groaned out a sigh of relief at the instant change from brutal pain to just a splitting headache. “Go, Kizira.”

She hushed him. “Shh. Let me help you while I’m here.”

Bad idea. But bloody hell, only a fool would refuse her help, especially when he needed to get back on his feet for Tzader and Evalle.

He’d let her do her majik, then he’d thank her and send her on her way.

“Do you miss me?” she asked again. Her words came to him soft as a caress, calling to him as dangerously as the sirens who lured sailors to their deaths. But he’d been the one who’d allowed disaster to happen last time.

Too young to think past the need to have her when she’d given herself so easily to him.

Not this time.

“Quinn?” She said his name as though no one had that name but him. “I’m asking a simple question. It’s just me and you.”

Why did her words sound like music? She wasn’t singing.

Should he tell her he thought of her only twice a day?

When he was sleeping and awake.

That he’d never touched anything as soft as her skin since parting ways or that he still remembered the way sunshine had come through the open window of the mountain hut and shimmered around her when she’d leaned over to kiss him?

He should lie, but he couldn’t bring himself to hurt her, when she was easing his pain. “Yes, I miss you, but that doesn’t change . . . a simple fact. I’m Belador and you’re Medb.” Sworn enemies. “You should hate me. I should never have taken advantage of you.”

She kept soothing his head with her hand and laughed. The sound came and went as though fading in and out. “I was fully a woman when I met you.”