Lexi felt him slow when they reached the open square. Buildings surrounded them on four sides. The roads leading away were narrow and dark. Roosting birds flew into the air like dead leaves in the wind. Lexi searched for the garage, saw the heavy double doors buried in a shadowed wall, dug in for the energy she needed to reach it.
Behind her, Christan was braced in a defensive stance. Two figures were moving through the shadows. Lexi’s fingers fumbled on the antique door latch before she dampened the heat of panic. It was enough. She pressed inward on the heavy metal bar and then lifted upward.
In the dark, she heard the chilling voices, the icy warning, shivered beneath the pressure waves that ripped deep clefts in the air. Then a loud animal scream, sounds she had never heard and hoped never to hear again. She closed her mind to the wet ripping and the rising iron smells of savaged flesh. Until this moment she hadn’t comprehended what men like Christan did, not even in her most vicious dreams.
Do not hope for happy endings with someone as far from you as I am.
Stiff hinges protested as Lexi forced back the wooden doors. Darted inside. The heavy-bodied Range Rover was just ahead, but her hands were sweaty. Her fingers slipped against the driver’s side door before she got it open, found the keys. But the vehicle had a stick shift and Lexi hated driving a stick shift, could never get the coordination right. She twisted around and looked back into the moonlit plaza.
Two massive animals circled while shadowy forms emerged from the alley. Lexi counted three, then dragged her gaze to the two in the center of the square. Tendons and muscles bunched beneath night dark pelts, slick with a wet sheen that wasn’t water.
With a scream, one lunged toward the throat of the other. The predator answered with a savage twist of its jaws. In seconds, the body crumpled to the ground without moving while others approached from the shadows.
Blood flowed. A massive shoulder was ripped open by a slashing claw, a red, gaping mouth hot and slick in black fur. The alpha never hesitated. New attackers lunged. Their bodies collided with such cataclysmic force Lexi felt it in her bones. The alpha turned toward the remaining enemy as more dark bodies swarmed.
Dread closed tight. Lexi’s vision shrank down to such a narrowed point she only concentrated the combatants. Sobs collided in her throat and she wondered why they continued to fight. No one would want this man for an enemy.
She saw Christan now, as he had asked her to see him. As he must have looked through centuries past, an Enforcer fighting for the Calata. He was pagan, ruthless, elegantly efficient. He wielded the righteous power of an avenging angel without a shred of compassion. And it enraged her. Not because of what he was, or the distances between them, but because he would stand alone in a dark alley so that she could get away. They had past wounds, and despite the repeating lifetimes those wounds still bled. But she would not turn her back and leave him to stand alone. Not in this lifetime.
Something urged her to move. Perhaps it was the surge of earth memory, or Christan’s power reaching out. Lexi jerked her attention to the heavy vehicle and slid onto the seat. Her heart thundered, her fingers grappled with the key, forcing it to turn. The engine roared to life.
Lexi’s first attempt to put the Range Rover in reverse ended with a jerking movement forward. She killed the engine, and screaming obscenities, tried again. This time the vehicle cooperated and she backed out into the night. The savage fight had not abated, but she refused to leave until Christan sat beside her.
She leaned over, thrust open the passenger side door and screamed his name. A horrendous animal shimmered, became a blood-streaked man in the blue-white headlights. Not Christan. Lexi slammed her foot hard on the accelerator, jerked the vehicle into motion. The man disappeared while Christan fell into the front seat. He was bleeding so heavily she forgot about driving and tried to stop the flow with her hands.
He reached out, grabbed her fingers slick and sticky with his warmth. “Drive. I heal quickly. Go.”
Lexi shifted into gear, slammed her foot down while she released the clutch, and drove into the night.
CHAPTER 27
Lexi drove with the concentration of a fleeing felon. Her fingers gripped the steering wheel while they passed red-tiled buildings, relaxed slightly when they reached the rolling countryside. Only the occasional light or exit road marked their passage. Christan opened his eyes once, giving her directions. Then he slept, and she relied on instinct to guide her. Soon the city was lost behind them, and in the place of buildings she saw the cypress trees that grew at the crowns of the hills and along the curving roads. Cypress trees had been brought from Persia thousands of years ago by Etruscan tribes. The trees survived for over 2000 years. They were the iconic trees in every Tuscan photograph; they were the mystical cemetery trees, associated with mourning, used for coffin building and smudging in the ancient burial rites. Lexi shivered and refused to think about death.
There were few cars this time of night. They remained alone on the road, the night remained silent, and when the landscape became a black space the earth called with a seductive voice. It spoke of marauding tribes overlaid by bright green flashes of civilization, the golden pageantry draped around a crimson Rome. Petty intrigue, bloody ambition. Deep love and bitter defeat and the rich, sweet flow of wine.
At one point, Lexi reached out, touched Christan’s shoulder where the wound no longer bled but was hot beneath her hand. His blood on her fingers had not quite dried where it combined with sweat. He opened his eyes.
“Good girl,” he murmured before slipping away, a mystical creature who flew out of reach. He was such a powerful being, so beyond her human experience. He terrified her; she owed him something like loyalty. How could she risk being with him? How could she not?
He woke again, offered an exhausted smile.
“Another half mile,” he said. “There’s a road to the left. Take it.”
Lexi nodded, but wasn’t sure if she could make the turn. She didn’t need to touch the earth to recognize the love and hate, the violence and pain. The emotions overwhelmed her with every passing mile. Voices rose up and crushed her.
“It’s been months,” the woman said. “I wrote letters, I cried, I waited.”
A man’s voice. “You know there is war. When I’m called I have to go.”
Voices changed. The landscape burned. Bonfires flamed with joy, then bent into grief.
“Do you ever love me? Was I land and name and nothing more?”
The road swerved. The earth was screaming with air so thick it was difficult to breathe. Cypress trees crowded, ancient sentinels shouting both a welcome and a warning… come… run. She’d been here before, loved here before. Didn’t want to be here.
“Nico is a friend,” the woman said, desperate, pleading.
“He’s calling himself Nico, now?” The man, angry, threatening. “I have warned you against him.”
“Why? Because you say he kills? You are always gone to war. You kill! Every man I know except the priest kills.”
“Not like him.”
The headlights lost the pavement and Lexi panicked. Slamming on the brakes, she shoved the gear into park and plunged from the still moving vehicle. The car door swung in the dark as she ran, unable to feel the earth beneath her feet, the rocks that tripped her.
A voice was calling in the distance, but it was too elusive and it slipped beyond her grasp. Breath tangled in her throat. Lexi tried to swallow but her mouth had gone dry. She fell to her knees and plunged stiff fingers deep into the soft earth.
But the earth didn’t calm her as she’d hoped. It overwhelmed her.
“You are not to see him again, is that clear?”
Such stunning anger, but the woman did not relent.
“Where were you when the fields caught fire? When the rains came, and the dove-cote leaked with no one to repair it? When the mercenaries were on the roads and he called his men to protect this home—where were you Christan? Here?” A bitter laugh. “A thousand miles from here thrusting between another woman’s thighs?”