Forbidden (36 page)

This time she was the one who was quick to see the secret he pushed away.

“And?” Docia tried to find answers in the woman inside her, but Tameri fell profoundly silent. “What? What happens when they use modern psychotropic drugs on a Bodywalker?”

“The carbon is suppressed,” he admitted, realizing she would find out eventually. “It’s the only time you can succeed in somewhat permanently regaining your full life from your Bodywalker symbiont. It suppresses their personality, their voice, but also the healing and all other benefits as well. But it’s a living hell for the symbiont, Docia. Even worse than the human that reneges on the deal and fights the Blending is the human that medicates to shut us out.” He was very grim, his golden eyes dark with pain and fear. Perhaps the only fear she had ever seen in him. “Imagine your whole being paralyzed into submission, nothing you can do or say, your entire existence nothing more than being forced to watch as things happen to you, be they good, bad, or otherwise, and you are completely unable to raise a finger in your own defense or assistance. Unlike
the Suspension where Ram was unaware of time passing and bore no witness to it until he began to return, the imprisonment of drugs is beyond unbearable. It’s torturous. Carbons are often … damaged. They’ve come back … a little off.”

“But modern medications aren’t more than a hundred years old,” she said. “You said you have to wait in the Ether a hundred years before coming back.”

“Oh, the young,” he said with a hollow sort of laugh. It wasn’t patronizing so much as sad and … unfortunate. “There’s always been something. Be it alcohol or opiate abuse for the Middle Ages and cocaine and meth for the modern age … there’s always been some kind of self-medication long before there were things like L-dopa or haloperidol or even the more cutting-edge Tegretol or ziprasidone. It was all about building a better mousetrap, as far as we were concerned.”

“Oh, my God, that’s horrible,” she breathed, her eyes wide as she truly thought about it. “Not just for you, but for the original involved as well. Whether it’s illegal drugs or even those cutting-edge meds, I know what those side effects are like. The host is just as zombified as you are, believe me.”

“It’s a bad deal all around,” he agreed. “One that can be avoided if agreements are executed in good faith.” He drew her closer, touching his forehead to hers as he looked into her eyes. “Please, promise me you won’t risk it. I will do anything to keep you safe,” he said fiercely, “and I would hate for that to put me at odds with your brother. I have been many kinds of warriors over many lifetimes, Vincent being one of the most skilled by far, and I would not be willing to bet his skills against Jackson’s.”

“Don’t you threaten my brother!” she snapped, shoving him hard away from her. “Don’t you dare!”

“I am not threatening him,” Ram said. “I am putting
the gun in your hands, Docia. You are the one who is going to decide whether to shoot the bullet in his direction.”

She was furious, shoving him back again for good measure, folding her arms defensively across her chest, and huddling up against her door as far away from him as she could. It pained him to feel her withdraw in such a way, but it was for the best that she know exactly what he felt himself capable of doing on her behalf.

As it was, it surprised the hell out of him. Instinct told him he ought to be doing some withdrawing of his own, to put himself at a safe distance until he had taken the time to find proof that she was not deceiving him. But there was no way to prove a negative … and the same question he had asked her would apply to himself. Where would the line be? The tipping point between untrustworthy and trustworthy? What exactly could she ever do to make him fully trust her? How much time? What acts? What sacrifices? Was it at all possible?

Honestly, it wasn’t. Not without something huge on his side of the table.

A leap of faith.

It would have been much easier, perhaps, to make that leap if he were deciding only for himself. But there was an entire people at risk. A longtime friend’s safety and well-being would be on the line every moment his word and his faith put him within reach of his king’s exposed breast or back. His queen’s vulnerable neck. How would he ever live with himself if he chose wrongly and any of them were harmed or destroyed because of his bad choices? And what was he basing his desire to believe her on, anyway? A few moments of compelling conversation? An hour of passionate lovemaking?

Asikri would be the first to tell him that no man could make a wise choice once his penis was involved.

But Asikri’s crude and simplistic take on matters couldn’t suit this situation, he thought dismally. There was so much more involved than two physical bodies … and four dynamic spirits.

What had always amazed Ram was how regeneration after regeneration, Menes and Hatshepsut had managed to mesh so uncontrollably and so perfectly, no matter how different the new spirits of their originals were. And how, he had wondered, had they known the first time that they had something that would transcend everything? He looked over at Docia and wondered … if Ram had met Tameri lifetimes ago, would it have been just as powerful and undeniable a draw? Had they been denied the beauty of what his king and queen had all this time because they were supposed enemies in a war that had gone on for much, much too long?

The thought of it caused a violent pain in his chest, a sensation of loss and grief that had him blinking his eyes rapidly in an attempt to disperse the emotion.

“I have had many children,” he blurted out suddenly, without even knowing where it came from. “I have watched them come and go from this earth. There is no pain like it.” He turned his head to make certain she could see the raw emotion in his eyes. “But I think losing you in that way … in any way … would be a thousand times more painful now that I have finally learned what I have been missing.”

She sniffled a little, her lower lip trembling as she swallowed back her own pain and allowed herself to understand his. It wasn’t as hard for her as it was for him. She was a far gentler spirit. A far more empathetic one than he would ever be.

“How many children?” she asked.

“Twenty-two. And many more than that who never made it beyond their mothers’ wombs. There is nothing worse,” he felt compelled to add, “than seeing a child
never make it out of the first blush of life, be it weeks or just a few years. Nothing worse.”

“Tameri finds that a surprisingly low number for one of the oldest and greatest of your kind.”

“Yes. Well … over time I found it less and less welcome an idea to bring children into my world of war. Especially when Templars have not been above using my loved ones in the past in order to get to me.”

Docia felt immediately and suddenly ashamed. She knew the body of the emotion came from Tameri. Her guilt was profound. Such things had kept her in the Ether, to avoid taking part in the madness of the civil war. But her father had come to her and convinced her to return, coaxed her into taking on the weight of this action. If she wanted an end to the war, she could not simply hide and wait for it, he had told her. She must do her active part, show bravery.

Of course, he had not meant for her to become entangled with Ramses personally. But that too had had an impetus out of her control. Tameri wondered if it was the generosity and openness of Docia’s spirit that had allowed for it, some ingrained Templar habit inside of her wanting to place blame elsewhere. After all, she still held the body Politic responsible for as much of the war as she did the Templar fanatics. They had been miserly and judgmental, casting censure and prejudice the Templar way, blaming them for the rituals that had, in the end, trapped them all into this cycle of death and rebirth rather than allowing them to pass into the land of the afterlife once and for all. They blamed them for never again being able to look up into the face of Ra, to feel the warmth of the sun on their skin with joy and contentment.

But it had not been done on purpose. In good faith, the priests and priestesses had developed the mum-mification rituals, believing that they were helping their
people pass into the afterlife. Instead the gods had looked on it as an insult, as an act of greed and bribery, the way they tried to preserve themselves and take their riches with them. And so, as was the way of many gods, they had given them exactly what they wanted. A way to preserve their youth. A way to carry wealth with them. All they could ever want or ask for … except true death, a peaceful afterlife, and the sun.

“I am sorry,” she said, all the sincerity of two women poured into the words as she reached out to touch him, moved closer to him, all her pique with him forgotten. “Would that all on both sides could connect like we have done, Ram. Weapons and warcraft would fall away so easily and there would never be any question that we would want the best for one another.”

His eyes narrowed just a touch, the gold of his lashes gleaming from the flash of passing streetlights just as her tears had earlier. It made her think that he was really quite beautiful and such a magnificent man. She had known many of his forms over time from a distance, and they had been widely varied, but she had always found each one to be handsome. Often much to her confusion and chagrin. Now she understood why. Even as she had stood at the side of her aunt, helping her to subject war, even if only by not speaking against her, something in him had called to her.

“You know, there were rumors long ago that Hatshepsut was not only a great queen but a devout priestess before she was wed to the pharaoh of her time. She has never spoken as to the truth of it, and it is never questioned because she is so clearly Menes’s queen, but … what if … ?”

He didn’t finish the thought aloud. He didn’t have to. As they looked into each other’s eyes, they both wondered. What if? What if these enemies on opposite sides of this war were, in actuality, soul mates in hiding from
each other? The Politic and the Templar had become polarized over time, but what if the gods had chosen that as yet another punishment? Or what if, in their never-ending hubris, they were adding yet again to the curse they had pulled onto themselves? What if the gods had cursed them but given them one gift of succor? The gift of true and perfect mates of the soul.

Only they squandered the gift, keeping it distant on opposing sides of a civil war.

Ram reached for her, wrapping her in his arms and drawing her deep into his lap and hotly against the press of his lips. He kissed her, as she kissed him, with a depth of emotion and tragic sense of desperation … but more than anything, an overwhelming sense of gratitude that they had somehow seen the light.

“Lord, could this place be any more gothicy creepy?” Marissa asked as they headed up the long drive toward the Windham Mansion.

If she thought that the general feel of it was bad, she should see it from his perspective, Jackson thought. All those massive columns lining the drive, some of which had been bare previously, had suddenly sprouted brand-new monsters of stone on their tops, their fierce, grotesque faces glaring down at them, their carved bodies like those of powerfully muscular men, each crouching, stretching, or as though on the verge of flight. Fangs, hollowed-out pupils, and twisted, swollen lips only added to their monstrous effectiveness. Jackson couldn’t help the chill that walked up his spine, and Marissa’s visible shiver spoke to her similar reaction.

But once again, the thing of note was that everything around was piled with soft mounds of snow. Everything except those stone creatures. There simply was no explanation for it. His mind could try to explain it away, but the fact was there was no solution to be found. No intelligent one, in any event. A fanciful one leapt immediately to mind, that they could and did come to life at a moment’s notice to protect the home beyond.

Yeah? Where the hell were you all when the house was blowing up?
he thought wryly.

The guardhouse had been mostly restored already and was heavily staffed, almost a little too heavily. But a flash of his badge had been more than enough to gain them this long trek onward. If they had noticed he was a little out of his jurisdiction, they didn’t say anything to question him or Marissa, who didn’t even have a badge to fall back on. She had credentials of her own, but nothing that could open any doors.

Although they hadn’t gotten past any doors yet, just a gate.

As she too stared into the hollow irises of stone, Marissa was trying to figure out what had gotten into her lately. Between staying ridiculous hours when there was no reason to and now aiding and abetting Jackson Waverly on this particular tilt at an incredibly large windmill, she had no comprehension of her own actions. Well, practically none, anyway. She was more than capable of admitting to herself that she felt somehow protective of a man who was far more qualified to protect her backside than she was to protect his … physically, in any event. But the danger Jackson was in had very little to do with physicality. She no longer attributed her actions to guilt. She honestly didn’t know what she did attribute it to. She’d simply never behaved so erratically before. And from what she had learned of his character, she suspected neither had Jackson.