Jordan (24 page)

“Just tell me how to get down there.” Vivianne sounded determined and focused.

Even experienced cave climbers might be uncomfortable with the tight squeeze, the falling dirt, the risk of being stuck. If
asking her to come down here weren’t his last option, he wouldn’t have mentioned it.

“The first downward drop’s easy,” he told her. “Pull the harness back up, latch in, and then lower yourself. It’s only about
a ten-foot descent. Just take your time.”

He heard her swearing. Although she muttered under her breath, sound bounced off the walls down here. “All right, I’m lowering
myself.”

“Easy.”

“This is not easy. I’m sweating up a storm.”

He forced himself to be patient, but after ten minutes he was biting his lower lip and pacing. Damn it. While he didn’t want
to distract her and ask about her progress, he wished she’d talk to him. Suppose she slipped? She could break her leg.

“Vi?”

“I’m down.”

“Good job.” He heard her breathing hard, and he shuddered. The next section was going to be so much worse.

“Take off the harness and leave it hanging so we can use it on the way back. Then find the entrance to the flat tunnel. All
you need to do is crawl to me.”

Clothing rustled. The harness clinked. It seemed to take forever. What was she doing?

“God. This is a wicked tight fit. Did you shapeshift to get through?”

She was breathing hard.

“I can’t carry the Staff in bird shape. I crawled through, and if I fit, then so do you.”

She remained silent. Too silent.

“Vi?” he asked softly.

“I can’t… crawl through this tunnel.”

“You can. Here’s what you’re going to do. Take off your helmet.”

“But I need the light.”

“You don’t.” He peered into his end of the tunnel, but he couldn’t see her since it wasn’t straight. “Now close your eyes.”

“What?”

“There’s no way to get lost. Just close your eyes and start belly crawling.” He heard a soft groan. “Think about scooting
along a sunny beach, the waves lapping offshore, the wind teasing your hair. Breathe in the sweet, clean salt air and keep
moving your feet, your arms, just a few inches at a time.” He kept crooning, praying she’d appear soon.

“Uh-oh.”

His pulse raced. “What’s wrong?”

“I banged my head. The tunnel’s too small, too narrow.”

“You’re almost here, and then it gets wider.”

“I’m going to back out. Rest, then try again.”

“No!” He swore. Backing out was way too difficult. When she found out how hard it was to maneuver backward, she might really
panic. “Damn it, Vi. Earth needs us to release this key. Earth needs you to keep moving forward. Crawl to me, sweetheart.”

He heard her gasping for air. His hands closed into fists, and his muscles were so tense, his nerves felt ready to snap. He
was long past telling himself his concern was all about the success of the mission. His fear was for her.

“I’m not your sweetheart,” she muttered.

Maybe not, but the futility of fighting his own feelings for her swept over him. The woman crawling through that tunnel wasn’t
a specialist at caving. She was scared, and he burned with the fierce need to banish that fear.

Even anger at him was better than her fear—he didn’t want her to panic and freeze in one place. He could work with anger.
“Hell, you wanted to come with me, wanted to prove you’re tough. Well, be tough. No more whining.”

“I don’t whine.”

“Right.”
Come on. Come on.
Where was she? “A snail could move faster,” he teased over his pounding pulse. If she got stuck… if she panicked… he wouldn’t
be able to bear it.

When she didn’t answer, he broke into a sweat. All the while he waited with thudding anxiety, praying he hadn’t encouraged
her for no reason.

“I need… a rest.”

“All right, darling, you rest,” he agreed. She sounded spent. While he yearned to let her do as she wished, to help her to
get through, he needed to toughen up. Up to now, he’d been too kind.

He knew how to push her buttons, forced himself to manipulate her. “I’ve been thinking about what Arthur said and how retrieving
this key would take trust.”

“And?” she prodded.

At least she was listening, still curious, not panicking. “So far you’ve trusted me by coming down here.” Jordan glanced at
the written instructions branded onto the force field. “After you arrive, I’ll have to trust you.”

“Huh?”

“You ever hear the story of the sword and the stone?”

“Of course.”

“Arthur was the only man who could free the sword, and that’s how he became king. Well, I arranged for the sword to respond
only to his DNA. Now he’s made this challenge specific to me.”

“How did he do that?”

Jordan swallowed hard. “He knows what I fear most.”

“What would that be?”

He heard her clothing rustling as she pulled herself forward, and his heart lightened. When he could finally see her, praise
the Goddess, he had to cling to the rock face to stop his own trembling. “You’re almost here. Just a little more.”

Despite telling himself that he wouldn’t come to care for Vivianne Blackstone in any special way, he’d lost control. Fear
for her had been slamming him for so long, he was weak with it.

Even worse, he could no longer ignore how much she meant to him. It wasn’t just her passionate lovemaking. Or her bravery.
Or her intelligence. It was Vivianne’s spirit, one as strong as his own, that drew him and made him so eager to gather her
into his arms and reassure her and himself that she was going to be all right.

She covered the last ten yards quickly, and then he was pulling her through. Hugging her tightly, he kissed her dirty, tear-streaked
face, realizing anew that she’d been terrified but she’d still kept going.

He held her trembling shoulders and gazed tenderly into her eyes. “You made it. You did good.”

She buried her head into his shoulder and shuddered. “I thought I was going to die in there.”

“You were very brave.”

“I was scared out of my mind. If you hadn’t talked me through it…” She clutched him so hard she cut off his circulation. “We
still have to crawl out.”

“Don’t think about that now.” He smoothed her hair from her forehead, wishing he could soothe her nerves as easily. He took
her hand and led her over to the key. “Here it is.”

A smile brightened her face. Placing her hand on the force field, she touched the glass. “So close… and yet so far.” She dragged
in another breath, steadied herself, then looked to him. “How do we get to it?”

“Arthur said it would take trust,” he reminded her. “It’s time for me to give you mine.”

“I don’t understand.”

Stomach tightening, he gestured to a flat slab of rock and they both sat. “You have to remember that when the Tribes destroyed
my world, I was not yet a fully grown man, not still a boy, either, but in that awkward age between. I had great powers, but
little experience and no one to guide me.”

She swigged from the water bottle, then capped it. “What does that have to do with the key?”

“On Dominus we had a ritual when a man turned twenty-five. I was only twenty-one when the Tribes destroyed my world, so I
wasn’t yet considered an adult. Which meant I was never told about the full ritual powers of the Ancient Staff.”

“You learned on your own?” she guessed.

He nodded. “But I’ve learned the hard way.” He sighed. “I always knew that the Staff supplied the power to dragonshape and
to morph into an owl, but I didn’t know what would happen when I lost the Staff. I thought I would die.”

Curiosity filled her eyes. “You told me the Tribe leader, Trendonis, stole your Staff, and that’s why you and Arthur failed
to unite it with the Holy Grail.” Her brows furrowed. “But you never said anything about what happened to you.”

“Without the Staff to feed me energy to morph, I could live only as an owl.” He stood and paced, his eyes fierce. “That’s
why when Arthur’s cubes dampened our energy I had to leave you on the bridge to disengage the Staff. If I hadn’t, I would
have been forced back into owl form.”

“Why would Arthur do that to you?”

“Those cubes were machines following their programming to bring us to Arcturus and Arthur. Machines don’t know about consequences
to their actions unless their programmers—”

“Point taken, but the cubes could have tried direct communication.” She frowned at him, her agile mind skipping along. “You
didn’t want to tell me you need the Staff to stay human because I might take advantage of your weakness?”

He nodded. “The last time someone knew what the Staff meant to my survival, they arranged to steal it. I was in owl form for
fifteen hundred years.”

“You spent all those centuries as an owl… God. I’m so sorry.” Her hand went to her mouth. “I don’t blame you for keeping that
a secret.”

“There’s more. My people believe the Staff is a life form. Our evolution is symbiotic with our Staff. It gives me power. I’m
uncertain what I give it. Some of our people believe it may feed off of human emotions. But there’s a third factor. With the
keys missing from the Staff for so long, the Staff might not be working at optimum. I don’t really know.”

“Are you saying we may have come all this way to retrieve the keys for nothing? That the absence of the keys for so long may
have damaged the Staff so it might not unite with the Grail?”

He shrugged. “It seems fine. Supposedly those Keys are indestructible. Everything should work exactly as planned.” He couldn’t
contain his frustration. “But there are things about the Staff I should know that I don’t. Like why it makes us pulse with
lust. Like how it controls the elements of Earth, Space, and Wind.”

“All this information is fascinating, but”—she glanced toward the glass dome—“how are we going to get that key? And can you
read the writing on the force field?”

“It’s written in my birth language. It says, ‘Blocked trust is the reason for blighted dreams.’ ”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“For us to succeed, we must trust each other. I’ve trusted you by revealing my weakness.” He spun and faced her, locking gazes.
“Now it’s your turn. What have you been keeping from me?”

The universe opens the door. You enter by yourself.

—L
ADY OF THE
L
AKE

S
tomach churning, Vivianne stared back at him and licked her lower lip. “You don’t even know if
trust
will bring down the force field.”

“That’s true. I’m just following Arthur’s words. And interpreting the instructions there.” He gestured to the force field
with the alien inscription.

“If he wanted you to have the key, he should have just told you what to do.”

“He did.” Jordan sounded so sure, but nothing was that simple. Not with men who’d lived for hundreds and hundreds of years.
Not with the forces at work trying to destroy Earth.

She yearned to trust him. But she had to think without letting her emotions come into play. Or did she? Vivianne often relied
on her gut instincts in business. But Jordan was difficult to read.

She hesitated. “You must realize I’ve always suspected you were one of the moles the government warned us about?”

“I hate the Tribes as much as you do. They ruined Dominus, killed everyone I know.”

Stolen the Staff and kept him trapped in an owl form for over a thousand years. It was a wonder he’d retained his sanity.

“Surely you don’t still believe I’m a spy for the Tribes?”

She could see the pain in his eyes, hear it in his voice. His shoulders stiffened, as if her lack of trust hurt him. Yet even
as he tightened up, his voice remained calm and level. “The Tribes cannot dragonshape.”

“So
you
say.” Frustration gnawed at her. “How do I know that you didn’t create Arthur, the Keys, this entire scenario, just to foil
any chance Earth has to go after the Grail?”

His voice turned harsh and cold. “Are you forgetting I designed almost every system on the
Draco
just to give us a chance to go after the Grail?”

“I haven’t forgotten,” she kept her tone as soft and as nonconfrontational as possible. “But what better way to derail Earth
than to subsidize our only hope, then ensure our failure?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Since then I’ve had many opportunities to take the Staff and leave you stranded.”

He also would have left himself stranded.

She hugged her legs to her chest. “Eventually, I would have found another way to power the
Draco.
”

“Maybe, but by then Earth will fall to the Tribes.” He sighed. “Nothing I can say will convince you. But think of this—don’t
you believe I could have arranged to sabotage the
Draco
and make certain that neither you nor my engineers ever saw Earth again, without blowing myself up along with you?”

With his abilities, he had the knowledge to compromise any one of a dozen systems. But had he compromised her judgment? Had
he somehow inserted those memories into her mind to sway her perceptions?