Night Forbidden (21 page)

They promised you what if you got me to come back?

He blanched slightly, but enough so she knew she’d hit the target. His shoulders moved as if he were taking a deep breath, and his crystals burned brighter.
Truth . . . Ana, I am a member of the Guild now. I have enough votes to get them to stop the surge if you come back with me and let them study you.

Ana still held her knife and still watched Darian closely, but she’d also allowed herself to be carried a bit away by the current. The greater the distance between them, the safer she was.
I cannot leave without talking to Dad. He has been sick. I have to say goodbye.

The naked hunger in his eyes flared then faded almost instantly—but it confirmed her suspicions.
You will go?

Ana found it much easier to lie with her hands than her voice.
Yes. I will meet you later tonight, or tomorrow. Watch for my sign. I will do anything to save Envy.

But only part of it was a lie.

And Darian had unwittingly told her exactly how to make it truth.

Chapter 15

“F
or sure, sugar, I’d be more than happy to take that off your hands,” Fence drawled.

The hot piece of tail across from him giggled and pouted. Too bad he couldn’t remember her name. “I think it might be too hard,” she replied provocatively. “Even for a guy like you.”

Not only did she possess a fine ass, she also had long blond hair that had been tucked up in a loose knot, with sexy little strands randomly falling down like she’d just been laid.

“Too hard? That phrase isn’t even in my vocabulary,” he said with a wink and his slide-into-a-hot-tub grin. “Neither is soft and floppy.” His mama always claimed that smile could charm a rosary from the hands of a nun—and she’d know, because she had two sisters who were nuns.

Anyway, he could always find out the blonde’s name later. He glanced over and cocked a hand at the waitress, signaling for another beer.

When Zoë made a disgusted sound next to him, Fence turned to her. “What? At least I’m not hiding a bun in my oven from the man I love to fight with so I can fuck him like a bunny afterward,” he said in an undertone. “Who happens to be the bun’s father.”

He managed to resist the compulsive urge to turn the statement into a long spiel about hot dogs and buns and how the latter got into female ovens via wieners and franks, only because he knew Zoë wouldn’t get the joke. They didn’t really have hot dogs since the Apocalypse. Although, they
did
have sausages . . .

Zoë rolled her eyes. “What you just said is so full of ass-crap bullshit that I’m not even going waste my damn time responding.” She glared at his beer as if daring it to jump into her hands and pour itself down her throat, then lifted her own glass of iced tea. “These are gonna be some long-ass nine months,” she muttered.

“What did you say about nine months, luv?” Quent asked, suddenly appearing behind them.

Fence felt Zoë jolt in her seat next to him, and he hid a grin behind his beer mug.
Some big shit’s gonna come down pretty damn soon.

“I said I’ve had a great piece of ass in my hands for the last nine months,” Zoë replied.

Fence cast her a sidewise look that said
Nice save,
but she didn’t notice. He was pretty sure she was too busy swallowing her heart back into place.

“Has it been that long?” Quent said, pulling up a chair behind them. “I hadn’t realized. I thought it was only six months. Hell, we could have had a baby by now.”

Since Quent was right—it had been only six months since they’d arrived in Envy—Fence buried his face in his beer glass again, this time to hide an expression of “Fuckin’-a, Zoë’s sunk,” and realized he’d forgotten all about the hot piece of ass across from him.
Now what were we saying?

It was a sad state when a guy like him got distracted by a foul-mouthed prego instead of a bed-headed blonde.

He never heard Zoë’s response to Quent’s possibly innocent comment, nor did he remember what he was trying to say to the bed-headed blonde, because the doorway he’d been watching obsessively was suddenly filled by a sun goddess.

She was scanning the room, and even from where he sat he could see that her hair was still wet from her hours-long swim.

Yeah, he knew exactly how long she’d been gone, because, damn him to a blazing hell, even though he knew better, even though he’d talked himself out of the hassle of this shit, he’d gone back to the beach after he got his pussy-assed self under control and waited until Ana strode back out of the water.

Three hours later.

Good God. He’d sat on a
beach
and waited for her for three hours . . . and then made sure she didn’t even know it.

She hadn’t seen him, for he’d been situated behind a ragged pile of grassed-over concrete. He was relieved to notice that she retrieved at least her tank top while he was off puking his guts, before she’d gone for her swim. But those three hours were much too long. More than once he’d walked down to the edge of the water and thought about going in.

“Thought” being the operative word.

He got as far as his ankles at one point, then gave it up when he broke out in a cold sweat and his sore stomach started churning again.

Good God. If anyone ever found out about this, he’d be done. Stick a fork in him. Cooked.

He then proceeded to talk himself out of the need to worry about Ana anyway, because she was half Atlantean. She was a fish. She was as comfortable and safe in the ocean as he was in the wilderness.

It was too fucking bad they couldn’t be comfortable in the same damn place.

And aside from all that, for God’s sake, what had possessed her to try and force him to go into the water? He’d told her he didn’t want to swim. And then she pulled a stunt like that, trying to
trick
him into the ocean. Not cool.

But now as he looked across the room, even though he was still pissed his insides gave a long, slow shift—as if making a decision and then settling into it. He felt an unusual, uncomfortable hollowness in his middle and wasn’t quite sure why it left him warm and jittery. Shame, perhaps. Guilt. Even annoyance.

No, definitely annoyance. She was out of line, trying to lure him.

But he did know that he’d rather be looking at—and consequently thinking about—Ana than the blond bed-head across from him. His sun goddess lived up to her name, with her golden-brown skin beneath a loose white tunic that bared her sleek, toned arms and showed a deep vee of cleavage. Her hair flowed in light and dark ripples over her shoulders.

Jesus.
His pounding heart was pretty much out of control.

Ana had been looking around the room and when her attention came to the table where he sat with Zoë and Quent, she started to make her way toward them.

Fence was aware of a tightening in his chest as she approached, looking not at him but at Quent. He watched how she moved with that little hitch, realizing that her gait was closer to a crab-walk than he’d realized. How easily he’d forgotten her imperfections, and how fixated she seemed to be on them.

No wonder she wanted to spend as much time in the ocean as she could.

But she needed to leave him the
fuck
out of it.

At the reminder of their confrontation, he felt even more miserable. Kind of empty. His hands were goddamn
shaking
.

I’m such a fool.

“Could I talk to you? Privately?”

Fence’s heart skittered. Or leapt. Or did something acrobatic, and he turned to face Ana, suddenly ready to move in. Maybe even take a big bite of humble—

But she was leaning toward Quent, speaking to him . . . not to Fence. True, her hand was on the back of Fence’s chair—awfully close—but her body was angled away from him. Pointedly angled away from him.

Great.

Not that it would stop him from following them. Since it was Quent she wanted to speak with, it had to do with the crystal. Maybe she’d found something in the water when she was on her three-fucking-hour swim.

Quent had already risen and was pulling Zoë’s chair out so she could slip free, so Fence scraped his seat away from the table as well.

“Gotta run,” he said briefly to the bed-headed blonde, who was looking at the four of them in mild confusion. He didn’t even try to make a promise that he’d return. He wasn’t thinking about that right now.

He wasn’t thinking about anyone but Ana, damn it.

If Ana noticed or had a problem with him following them out of the pub uninvited, she didn’t show it. However, other than a brief, impersonal glance, she didn’t acknowledge him before leaving with Quent. That left Zoë and him to follow.

“So how the hell did you fuck
that
up so quickly?” Zoë asked, making no effort to keep her voice down.

“Did you say something about opportunity knocking you up?” he asked, just loud enough for her to get the message—but not enough for Quent to hear.

“Shut your trap,” she hissed.

“Talk about fucking things up . . . what do you think is going to happen when he finds out you’ve been keeping that from him? Or does he know?”

A flash of misery crossed Zoë’s exotic features, then morphed into stubbornness. “He doesn’t know. I’m not even five damn months along.”

“And you don’t think he’s noticed that your boobs are getting bigger?” Fence shot back.

“They are— How did you fucking know?” She glared at him.

Fence gave her a look. “I’m a guy, Zoë. We notice that sort of shit like we notice whether it’s sunny or raining.”

“Well, don’t be sayin’ ass-crap shit like that to him, okay? Or I’m going to have to hurt you.” She stomped ahead of him, leaving Fence with his own thoughts.

And giving him a chance to watch Ana limp along from behind.

Normally, that was a natural thing for him to do—enjoy the rear view. And while she had a long, lean torso ending in a very nice ass, one he’d really enjoyed pressed up against him when he was showing her the mirror, her labored gait made him feel tight and nervous inside.

It wasn’t that her long legs were imperfect, one of them marked with horrible scars and rippling, uneven skin that bulged in the wrong places like a lumpy pillow. No, he hardly noticed it—except when she tried to hide it, or got all tense when he touched her there.

What bothered him was that she couldn’t move with the grace and ease that someone who looked like she did
should
be able to do. He wondered if there was anything Elliott could do to help her. Maybe he’d ask. He knew that Elliott had the ability to heal people in some circumstances . . . although there was a limit to what he could do.

Fence found himself slowing his normally speedy, fluid walk so he could remain far behind Ana and Quent.

A few minutes later, as he took a seat on one of the computer chairs in the underground computer rooms, he realized his whole body was tense and annoyed. He shook his head mentally and put away his issues to listen to what Ana had to say.

Though her fingers curled together in her lap and her face was a little pale, she spoke quickly and concisely. “I’ve learned some information about what’s happening.”

Fence was about to demand how and from whom, but Quent spoke first. “There is a threat, then.”

Ana nodded. “Yes. You were right—it’s to come from the sea. And it’s going to be a great wave that will destroy Envy.”

“We’ll have to evacuate,” said Quent calmly, smoothly, in that stiff British accent. “Everyone. Do you know when it’s going to happen?”

“What about all of this?” Sage, who’d pulled off her earbuds for once, gestured to the room. “We can’t leave this. And how in the world would we get it out of here? There’s too much . . . so much. Everything we know, everything we’ve collected . . . it’ll be gone. I mean, Vaughn could get the people out of Envy—if we have time. How much time do we have? Do you know?”

“It’s tied to the moon phase,” Ana replied. Fence noticed that her eyes seemed to scan the ceiling and walls every so often. Almost nervously, as if she were expecting them to cave in on her at any moment. “In this case, the full moon. Which means we have one or two days until it reaches its fullest point.”

“One or two days? Bugger it. We need to be talking to Vaughn
right now
about getting everyone out of here,” Quent said, looking at Zoë.

“There might be a way to stop it,” Ana said. Her eyes seemed a little weary. Perhaps sad. “I think there
is
a way to stop it, it’s just a matter of whether I can get to it in time.”

“You know how they’re going to do it?” Fence asked. “And you know how to get there?”

“If my information is correct, yes, I’m pretty certain I know that.”

“And
who
is the source of your information?” he said. Not terribly nicely.

When her eyes shifted just a bit down and to the right, he had a bad feeling. “A friend,” she replied smoothly. “An Atlantean—”

“You said you hadn’t been in touch with anyone from Atlantis since you left,” Fence said, taking no care to hide his disbelief.
Has she been feeding us lies all along?
Something unpleasant curdled in his belly. “And within a day of telling us who you are and what your people are like, you’re now telling me you somehow got in contact with an old friend so quickly and easily? You expect me to—”

“Is your source trustworthy?” Quent interrupted. He gave Fence a quelling look.

“In this case, yes, I think he was telling me the truth. I can’t think of a reason he would lie about something like this.”

He.

“The Guild wants me to come back to Atlantis, and Darian is certain I could convince them to stop the wave. I—”

What the fuck kind of name is Darian?
Fence couldn’t control a derisive snort. “Yeah, right, and once you’re back there they’ll just do whatever the hell—”

“I’m not an idiot,” she said, fixing him with a sharp look right out of his mama’s playbook. “I’m not going to go back there, especially on such an uncertainty.”

Fence relaxed a bit, which allowed Quent to interject, “But you think there’s another way to stop the wave? Tell us what you know.”

“You already know how powerful the crystals can be. And as you might have realized by now, there are different ones with different properties. There’s the Jarrid stone, which can be used for communication—I told you I think I’ve figured out how to use the one you have. But that would be dangerous, because once they realize where this piece of the Jarrid stone is, they’ll be after it. Or they will definitely want to destroy it. So either way,
not
a good idea. And it could already be too late.”

Quent nodded. “Right.”

“There’s also what they call the Mother crystal, which is the primary source of the energy for the Atlanteans themselves—their body crystals. It’s an orange crystal, about this big,” she said, and showed them a circle with her thumb and forefinger about the size of cherry. “A part of it’s been missing for a long time, and without it the energy reserve is dying out. If the Atlanteans don’t get the missing piece back, their crystals will die and so will they. It’s possible that the Mother crystal, wherever it is, was also activated when my crystals came into the same proximity as that of the Jarrid stone. Like I said, these crystals are all connected by energy and they can sort of recognize each other.”