She hurried, picking up the hem of her dress.
Rhys was quicker, hauling her along so fast she was in danger of tripping.
They were in a service passage with little light and no people but at an intersection ahead the connecting corridor blazed with light and she heard voices.
They couldn’t afford to be seen coming out of this corridor.
It would be remembered, later.
Rhys shouldered open a door as he reached it and pulled her into the room beyond with him. He pressed her up against a metal cabinet, his hand over her mouth.
His fury was palpable.
She was in pain. She called!
She pushed the thought at him quickly, defensively.
Did you think she was one of us?
Even his mental voice crackled with dry anger.
When I had said that you and I were alone?
Lights came on in the passage outside, shining through the wire reinforced glass panel on the door. Measured steps, many of them, headed down the corridor.
Fright touched her.
They’ve found them
.
There would be more panic, more speed, if they had.
The even steps continued along the passage, fading. Rhys dropped his hand from her mouth. “Goddamn it, Jenna, I
told
you to stay by me at all times.”
But Blennie’s actions still loomed large in her mind.
They would do that to one of their own?
Yes, dammit, don’t you get it yet? Don’t you understand? They will stop at nothing to halt us
.
You said we were safe in the hotel…
If
you stayed with me. How can I protect you if you go wandering off at the first crook of their finger?
I took care of it. He couldn’t touch me
.
He shouldn’t have been given the opportunity! You’re too important, Jenna. You’re too valuable. You can’t put yourself in jeopardy like that
.
She felt a flare of irritation of her own. “This so-called fate of mine?” To use her powers this way would imply acceptance of her so-called destiny. Well, screw that. She could talk aloud long before she met Rhys and it had served her well enough.
He slammed his hand into the cabinet beside her head, making her jump and the heavy cabinet rock a little. He gripped the top of it with both hands, shutting his eyes, his jaw tight, and shook the cabinet even harder.
“Rhys….”
He took her face in his hands.
His hands were trembling. There was no gentleness in his hold. “It’s all a game to you, isn’t it? A silly masquerade.”
“I don’t believe in fate.” She spoke the words evenly. Firmly. She knew the answer would act like fuel on a fire, but she would not lie.
“And that is how they will defeat us. Because you will chose freedom over responsibility.”
That stung. “How dare you!”
“I dare, because I know you. I
know
you. This is who you are, who you have to be. You’re true to yourself, god help us all.” He kissed her and it, too, held no trace of gentleness.
She shoved him away. Hard. But it barely pushed him back a step. “You don’t know me at all.”
He grabbed her wrists and pushed her back against the cabinet, pinning her with his own body. “I know that I love you.” He pulled her arms above her head and holding them out of harm’s reach. “I love your stubbornness and the way you crave freedom, even as I know they will spell doom for all of us.”
“Shut up!” She tried to haul her hands out of his grip but he held her easily with one hand, while he kept her face steady with the other and plundered her mouth with a kiss that stole as much as it gave.
She struggled against it, struggled to pull free, even while she knew she was utterly helpless against his strength.
You could use your other strength. Push me aside.
His hand slid over the soft paisley covering her breast.
Use the skills he had shown her against him? Become one like him? “No,” she muttered against his lips. She gasped as his hand pulled the bodice down, freeing her breasts.
No
, she repeated as his mouth closed around a nipple and searing heat and moisture bathed the sensitive tip. Her arousal was as huge as her fury. It swelled and throbbed in her, making her frantic with need. When his lips touched hers again, she opened up to him, thrusting her tongue inside, duelling with his.
His heavy body against hers was punctuated by his cock, hard and thick against her belly. She pressed her hips forward, the only freedom of movement she had.
He groaned and her hands came free as he bent down to sweep up the hem of her dress, gathering it around her waist. She was naked beneath, except for lace stockings, and the throbbing wetness between her legs. She was ready for him. Quickly she opened his trousers and released his pounding cock and pulled it towards her. “Now.” She hungered for the first hard thrust.
His hands slid around her ass, lifting her. She wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms around his shoulders and closed her eyes as he pushed inside her.
There was no pause for appreciation this time.
Rhys thrust hard, fast and each time he rammed into her, her swollen aching clit was kissed by the impact. The cold metal against her back grew slippery with sweat.
Look at me
, he commanded.
She stared into his eyes, watching the half-closed slits, the glittering focus behind the lids. She could drown in that dark sea and be swallowed whole by his will and his world.
She let herself sink into the pool of pleasure, let her climax roll over her.
She felt joy as Rhys’ orgasm gripped him, shattering his fury and sending his emotions scattering to the four winds, leaving him weak and drained.
Jenna got them back to their suite unseen, checking ahead to make sure the way was clear, until they could slip out into the public corridors once more. Once inside, she helped Rhys undress and coaxed him to bed. She let him wrap himself around her once more.
Even though they were tired, the urge to talk dominated. If they talked, they remained together. Jenna felt Rhys’ need to stay close and empathized, for she wanted him close by, too. It was the end of the evening. Tomorrow, after sleep, they would be facing the solstice. She wanted to put off sleep for as long as possible.
“Tell me about Taliesin,” Jenna asked at last, when a silence grew too long.
“Why?” His voice vibrated against her back, as well as caressing her ear.
“I want to know how he died. I thought…it might explain you a little better.”
She held her breath, aware of the huge tension that gripped him. After a long moment of rigid silence, he spoke. “He was betrayed by the woman he loved.”
Unasked, he gave her an image: a man, tall in stature, taller in deed, with dark hair and eyes just like Rhys’, watching a slender, beautiful woman with long black hair sing as she played a harp. Even then, he had known Mauren’s weakness, had known that her frailty would bring his death, but because he had loved her, he had accepted it.
All this the small boy had absorbed and later, as a man, had grown to understand…
Jenna sucked in a sharp breath. “You believe I am like Mauren, don’t you? That I will betray you in the end.”
His answer took a long time to come. “It’s as true of temporals as it is of watchers. After binding, the only time a man is vulnerable is through love. A woman draws strength from it, but a man can be defeated because of it.” His lips touched her neck. “And I do love you, Jenny.”
The question she most wanted to ask pressed at her. She hesitated because she wasn’t sure she really wanted the answer. There were some things better left alone, after all. But the need to know pushed her into nudging the thought his way.
Taliesin was your father?
She felt his hesitation, a long lifetime of caution kicking his resistance into high gear. It was all the answer she needed and her heart thudded painfully. But she received an answer, too:
I knew I could not lie to you. Forgive me for trying. But it has been a long time since anyone but a few trusted watchers learned that truth.
He was your father.
It was more a mental sigh than a properly formed word-thought.
Have you lived all these years, or did you jump time somehow?
His answer came as a kaleidoscope jumble of images, a history book flickering across her consciousness in a blur of pages—wars, revolutions, suffering, the rise and fall of governments and civilizations—a cascade that left her breathless.
This I have seen
, he finished.
She began to tremble. It was true. It was all true. The man who held her now had lived for centuries. She was caught up in something so large it spanned time itself. Who was she to refuse her role in this when Rhys had spent a lifetime—more than a lifetime—at this work?
Rhys turned her over to face him, and she sensed that he did it so that she could see him, see his human-ness.
“I’m just a man, Jenny.”
“Will I live as long as you?”
“If an enemy does not end your life for you. As a watcher, this gift is yours, too.”
Her trembling grew worse.
“Then you can die?”
“I can be killed.”
Like my father
. And she saw the moment of Taliesin’s death as Rhys had seen it: the final confrontation with the band of Celts whom Mauren had refused to believe could betray them, their new Saxon cohorts ranged behind them. And the blow with a Saxon war axe that had taken Taliesin’s life.
Tears stung Jenna’s eyes, spilled down her cheeks.
“Will I be the cause of
your
death?”
He did not answer, but she could feel his troubled mind searching for words.
I do not know
, came the answer at last.
* * * * *
“It’s along here somewhere,” Rhys muttered. “Although it all looks different with so much snow.” He fought the steering wheel as the car lurched to one side, making Jenna’s stomach roll.
It was just after ninety-thirty, and the solstice began just in just thirty minutes. Rhys had delayed arriving at the place of the binding until the last minute. “The longer we’re out there, the higher the risk. I’d rather fight my way to the circle than have to fight to stay there. At least we’ll have inertia on our side.”
Jenna bit her lip, and went back to watching the snow-clogged road and the wipers trying inadequately to keep the screen clear. The snow seemed to be driving straight at them through the dark. It was still falling, as it had for three days, in thick, soft flakes that drifted to the ground, undisturbed by any errant breeze.
The circle Rhys was trying to find didn’t actually exist—not as a physical circle on the ground, although the ancient Britons had marked theirs in that way. The little circles of power radiated out like sun flares along the power lines that ran across the globe.
“The binding circle really just makes whole,” Rhys explained while coaching her that morning. “Anyone can bond—temporals do it all the time and so do watchers. Fields mesh, grow together, and become greater than the whole. But they can still be separated. That’s what happened with you and Kevin.”
Jenna, steadily eating her way through a barbecued trout, put her fork down, her appetite wilting. “The binding circle stops that from happening?”
Rhys reached over and picked up her hands and put them together, sliding her fingers between each other, as if she were about to pray. “Bonding is the joining of fields, like this.” He circled both his hands around hers, holding them together. “My hands are the binding circle.”
She looks down at his hands holding hers together, a unified piece. “Makes it whole.”
“The circle has protective powers and it can renew and heal. Native North Americans have used them for healing for centuries. The watchers also tap into the power grids formed by the earth’s field.”
“But when a watcher steps into that circle, what happens?”
“It depends on how strong that watcher’s field is.
It also depends on how strong a will the watcher has.
A weak willed watcher with a strong field will end up with a weaker bond than a watcher with a strong will and a weaker field.”
“Do you often get strong willed men with weak fields?”
“Sometimes.”
Rhys grinned.
“They’re the Kevins of our world.
The almost-non-believers.
They’re stubborn and anal and that’s where they get their strength. Their fields may not be as strong as they are, though.”
He frowned.
“There isn’t as many of them as there are in there are in the normal world.”
Jenna knew he was thinking about Kevin.
She didn’t have to touch his mind to confirm it.
She shifted uncomfortably and moved the conversation on.
“What will happen to me?”
“Whatever you want to happen. At the precise point of the solstice, the conjunction of fields and surges can be overwhelming. If you tap into the field at that point in time, you can do whatever you want. Or so they say.”
“Was does that mean, ‘tap into the field’?”
“You’ll understand better when the time comes.”
“That’s reassuring.
What if I miss the time?
Or the place?
What if I don’t know what to do at the right time, because you haven’t told me?”
Rhys grinned.
“You’ll know.”
“That’s no answer at all.”
She sat back.
“Are you looking for an instruction manual?
Because there are none.
These laws we are dealing with were bound up with the making of the universe and time, Jenna.
They don’t come with a Cambridge Companion.”
She glared at him. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to be?”
Rhys laughed.
It wasn’t a dry laugh.
It was a laugh out loud, that-was-funny laugh.
Jenna stared at him, baffled.
Finally, he sat back and let out a deep, gusty breath.
“I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, but that one has to be possibly the best of them all.”
He leaned forward and kissed her.
It was brief and sweet.
“I don’t have all the answers, Jenna.
I can only tell you what the prophecies say and give you what knowledge my experience provides.
Combined with your growing power, we have to hope that is enough.”
She bit her lip, studying him.
“Hope?” she repeated.
“How can you sound so cheerful when all you have is hope?”
He was smiling again.
“Because hope is a good thing.
Because I am here, now, after such a long time waiting for this moment.
I made it through to you, Jenny, and there were dozens of times when I truly thought I would not—that the world would stagger and fall right along with us.
But I’m here and so are you and the solstice is tomorrow.
All I have for now is hope.”
His smile faded.
“Come tomorrow, I will fight with everything I have left in me to win through for you.
After all this time, to be so close…how could I do anything else?”
Jenna let Rhys draw her into his arms.
His lips touched her temple and she could feel the strength and determination in him, shimmering like water just on the point of boiling.
She tried to take comfort from his faith when the way ahead was so unclear to her.
“You say we’re supposed to be bound,” she asked.
“Is that how it happens? We both step into the circle at the right moment and we’re…fixed? Together?”
“That’s the theory.”
His fingertips traced the line of her jaw.
“But you also say I have to make up my own mind. That I can walk away if I want.”
“You can make that choice.”
“Even though so much depends on me giving in to this?”
He smiled a little. “I’ve been around too long to believe that fate can be dodged, Jenna. All I can do is put you in the right place and let events unroll as they should. I have to play my part.”
Now he peered through the screen, squinting. “There it is. I think.” He turned the car into a narrow space between rows of evergreens wearing thick coats of snow. Beyond the trees the space opened up into a roughly rectangular area. A parking area.
There were no other cars and no tracks Jenna could see in the beams from the headlights.
Rhys switched off the engine, killed the lights and got out. Jenna climbed down slowly, feeling the crunch of fresh, deep snow beneath her boots. She shivered inside her coat.
“Listen.”
She listened and realized what she was supposed to hear. Nothing. The silence was so complete, she could imagine it feeling this way if she was deaf. There was not a single sound anywhere. Not a tree stirring in a breeze or an animal in the forest beyond the parking area. Nothing. They were far enough out of town to be beyond even the sound of traffic on the highway.