Secret Worlds (249 page)

Underground, mortals and Mytheans managed to exist side by side relatively peacefully, primarily because mortals thought they were alone. They occupied separate sections, with a dead zone of abandoned tunnels in between. Any weak areas were blocked by magic, but all the same, it was a careful balance.

Esha skirted around a shadow hovering in a cubbyhole. The remnants of old evil attached to the ghost might have made Esha shudder, if she did that sort of thing. But it was weak, and so she continued on. It was because of such beings that Edinburgh was the most haunted city in Europe, and who was she to mess with that reputation?

“Haunt on, ghostie,” she said to the spirit, because that little one wasn’t the shadow that had been growing, pulling at her from the abandoned spaces in the dead zone. She couldn’t be sure that the evil she sensed was from past souls, but it was
something
, and she was determined to find out what.

The Chairman looked at her again, meowing deeply once more, but not with portents of evil.

“No, we can’t eat yet.” She glanced at him wryly. He looked and sounded like such a badass until he complained about his stomach. Then he ruined both their reputations. Thank goddess only she could understand him. “Let’s go a little farther, then we’ll get food.”

He glared at her before stalking off into the dark. She followed him down the sloping corridor, constantly scanning the dimly lit tunnel. Eventually, the Chairman began to slow, not in fear, but in caution. He was never afraid, but she recognized his stance as one of wariness in the face of danger. She slowed as well, creeping along in the gloom. The smell of decay assaulted her nostrils here, and as the space widened into a larger chamber, the air became staler instead of fresher as one might expect.

She squinted into the chamber, but unable to see, focused on the fire in her palm until it glowed brighter. She looked up from the light and gasped, stumbled back, pressed herself into the stone wall. The Chairman hissed, arching his back.

A great, writhing mass of shadows pulsed in the corner of the large chamber. It was enormous, far bigger than any she’d ever seen, and the blackness at the center appeared endless.

She reached for the cat. “Chairman.”

His corporeal form vanished, and turning into shadow, he appeared at her side instantly. He twined about her legs, and when she felt nothing but the energy of his being, they disappeared.

Cadan strode down the wide hallway, the figures in the paintings on the wall glaring at him as he stalked past.

Space. He just needed some space. The lassie was going to be a problem. Her presence was a force he hadn’t felt in nearly two thousand years and seeing her had been like a punch to the gut. This new version of Boudica could really fuck with his equilibrium.

He tore off his shirt and threw it against the wall as he stalked into the empty workout room that the Praesidium kept for guardians. Various pieces of workout equipment were scattered around the space, but it was the tear-shaped punching bag hanging from the ceiling that caught his eye.

Frustration was best exorcised in physical activity. And if it couldn’t be exorcised between the sheets, which it
could not
, it’d have to be here, beating the hell out of something to help repress the memory of her struggling beneath him. The thought made sweat break out on his skin and his palms itch to touch her again.

He laid into the punching bag. She was not an option. Two thousand years ago, his love for Boudica had distracted him and he hadn’t been able to protect her. She’d died. In the cold and the dirt. When she recovered her memory of that, she’d blame him for his failure. She’d be right to. Worse, he’d be that much closer to losing her.

No, damn it, he’d lost her long ago. Best to accept it.

He hit the punching bag harder, causing the last of the screws to come loose and the bag to bounce off the nearby wall.
Shite.

“What’d that bag ever do to you?” The voice came from behind him at the open door. Warren. “Want to spar? You’ve killed the damn thing.”

Perfect. Just what he needed—someone to hit him back. He swung around to face his friend, who stood in the open door of the big room. “Aye, all right then.” He hopped lightly up and down, rolling his head to loosen up.

Warren stepped onto the floor mat that roughly marked the sparring area of the gym. They started off circling each other, looking for the best opening. They’d been doing this for centuries, and though he knew Warren’s few weaknesses and many strengths, he could never tell when something might be off one day that would give him an edge.

“How’d it go, bringing Diana in?”

“Diana’s her name? Figures. Classic, like she looks.”

“Just heard it from Lea. So, she fancy you?” Warren threw a low punch at his ribs, his fist fast and almost accurate.

Cadan dodged it and barked out a bitter laugh. “Nay. She was too busy screaming and running or whimpering and cowering.”

He grimaced at the memory of her looking at him as though he were the same as the demons who had chased her across Edinburgh. What the hell had made Boudica’s soul choose the small redhead? Boudica had been an excellent strategist, but you wouldn’t know it by her choice of Diana for her next life. Hell, did Boudica even get to choose? Or was it just fate that had made Diana a reincarnate? He had no idea, but whatever she’d been reborn to accomplish, Diana wasn’t nearly strong enough to do it.

“Huh. Well, I guess you canna expect her to be exactly like Boudica,” Warren said as he landed a punch to Cadan’s cheek that made lights burst behind his eyelids.

Aye, she was nothing like what he’d expected. From her lithe form and rounded curves to her fine features, she was nothing like the woman that he had known. Boudica had been magnificent—strong and tall, beautiful in a harsh way. Her passion and dogged commitment had shone like a beacon, drawing those around her to her cause.

The woman he’d just rescued was a mouse. A delicate, intriguing mouse, but a cowering mouse nonetheless. Despite the difference, something deep within him had recognized her. It had clutched at his insides and been impossible to ignore. It made him want, but his world would eat her alive unless he could keep his cock in his pants and his mind on protecting her.

“Have you heard anything new? This is worse than it seems, isn’t it?” he asked Warren.

When Warren had said that the tragedy that haunted Boudica’s first life could follow her to this one, he hadn’t wanted to believe it. Hell, he still didn’t want to believe it.

But after seeing three demons stalking her, he didn’t have a choice. Tragedy, that spectral wraith with the crimson claws, had most certainly stalked Boudica in life. And now Boudica had returned, destined to perish. Yet again.

What the hell was his withered heart supposed to do with that? Fate was a bastard. It gave him back the love of his life, twisted into a totally different person, and then threatened to take her away almost immediately.

“Aye, Cadan, someone like Boudica isn’t reborn for a picnic. That’s why she has
to remember who she was as soon as possible.”

“Gods damn it.” That’s what he was afraid of. He didn’t want her to remember the horror of that night. To have to suffer that pain again.

To suffer with her. Her suicide had broken him. She’d left him. With one quick plunge of the knife, she’d just left. It had taken centuries to get over her. He’d vowed to himself that he’d never fall for a woman like that again, and he hadn’t. Whenever the loneliness became too much, or he’d just wanted to lose himself in someone else, it was easy to find someone for the night. But it ended there.

And now she was back. He couldn’t let the past repeat itself. He was supposed to be able to protect his woman, and his failure two thousand years ago had been eating at him like a poison.

“You still care for her, do you no’?”

“Nay.” Losing his heart to her again was not an option. He wouldn’t survive losing her again. Oh, his body would, but the rest of him wouldn’t. His soul and mind would be done.

Warren’s brow scrunched, and seeing his opportunity, Cadan delivered a punch to his jaw that made Warren stumble backward.

Warren shook the pain away. “Good, so I suppose you doona mind if I have a go? Even terrified out of her mind, she was a looker.”

A red fog of rage rolled across Cadan’s vision and he charged. The force of his blow took Warren to the floor in a tangle of limbs. The feel of flesh and bone beneath his fists was as satisfying as whiskey down his throat.

“Stay the fuck away from her.” He punctuated the words with blows that made his fists ache.

Warren hit back and they rolled in a tangle of flailing fists and limbs across the black mat. As Warren whaled on his midsection, the red haze of rage dissipated behind Cadan’s eyes. With a great shove, he heaved Warren off him and they lay panting, side by side, on the mat.

“Sorry, mate, dinna realize you were no’ over her.”

“I am over her, damn it.”

“Okay, sure thing. I hear you, she needs some time to adjust.” Warren pushed his hair off his forehead, then paused, as if he was unsure how to phrase what he had to say next, but barreled on regardless. “It’s a good thing you’re over her. Apparently, since you and Boudica were fucking in your past life, doing so again could be a trigger. Something about intimacy and trust—you could be a catalyst for her memory. In fact, we’re countin’ on it, since no one believes you can keep your hands off her.”

What the hell? Sleeping with her could help her recall her past? Diana was fated to die as a result of her task, and they thought he’d sleep with her when it meant she’d remember her identity and set out on the path to her early death? Like hell he would. He took a deep breath and tried to speak nonchalantly. “You’ll lose that bet, mate. But I doona want you or anyone else near her.”

It was now clear that if she was to survive, she couldn’t be allowed to discover her past identity, at least not until her fated task was accomplished. And there was no need for her to face her task, not when he’d take care of it for her. She finally had a second chance at life. The least he could do was make sure she got to live it.

***

Diana’s heart pounded in her ears as she looked around the room into which she’d just been pushed. A bit of the panic bubbling up within her dissipated as she absorbed her surroundings.

In...heaven. Books lined the six walls of the hexagonal room all the way to the ceiling, which was easily twenty-five feet above her head. Paintings and trinkets were propped against some of the shelves, obscuring titles that she was desperate to see. Light, trilling music drifted from the far corner where a petite figure was fiddling with an old Berliner Gramophone. Dumbledore would walk around the corner any second now.

Or maybe it wasn’t the room that was calming her. Perhaps she’d gone as crazy as a bag of cats and this was all seeming pretty normal.

She looked more closely at the small woman in the corner. A woman that she hadn’t seen properly because she was partially transparent. Most of the calm that she’d gained disappeared.

“Where am I?” Diana asked.

“I’ll be with you in a moment.” The woman waved a hand at her, but didn’t turn. Her voice was as musical as wind chimes, but not so sweet as to be silly. “Have a look about. Entertain yourself.”

Diana glanced around. Entertain herself? Where should she start? She settled on examining the bookshelf full of old marble busts. Books were stacked behind them and she peered through a gap between one of an old man and another of a young woman.
The History of the Immortal University: From Warriors to Scholars
, a large, leather-bound tome sat next to
Great Mytheans of Our Time.

Though her fingers itched to pull one out and learn more about this place, she was too polite a scholar to touch such an old-looking book without asking. Bad form and all that.

Diana shifted her gaze to the bust of the young woman. She wasn’t beautiful, precisely. Nothing so bland as that. She was striking, with a noble profile that spoke of wisdom. Diana read the small inscription below the bust.

Very impressive and very weird. Impressive for such a young woman to create something so grand, presumably far in the past, yet downright freaky that this place was supposedly filled with supernatural beings like the transparent Gramophone fan who was puttering around on the other side of the room.

Her gaze shifted to the bust of the older man, but rather than focus on his face, her gaze was dragged down to the plaque beneath.

Huh, that must be why the car had been able to drive through a tree onto a road she hadn’t seen until they were actually on it. It was all an illusion created by the clever Mr. Tuckaway.

But Mytheans were
what
, exactly? Probably the same supernatural beings that Emily’s bust referenced, but what did that mean beyond the monsters she’d seen? Witches, warlocks? Ghosts?

“All right, sorry for the delay.”

Diana whirled at the sound of the other woman’s voice. She’d come to stand behind the large, cluttered desk that stood between them. Despite the woman’s near translucence, or perhaps because of it, she had an ethereal beauty, with her silver blond hair and flowing moss-green robes. The sharp green eyes peering out from behind gilt-framed glasses were the only truly bright color to her.

“Are you a ghost?” Diana asked. She couldn’t believe she could be so rude as to blurt it out, but she couldn’t help but ask.

“No.” The woman smiled.

Had she become slightly less transparent? Diana squinted. Yes, she was definitely more opaque now. “But why are you...” Diana gestured to her.